by Mark Dawson
Murphy smiled at that, his jaw tight. The barb had found its mark; was he sensitive to accusations of cowardice? “Seems to me I have your advantage,” he said, maintaining the tone of friendly threat. “I know plenty about you. It’s only fair you know something about me before I leave you to your dinner.”
“Please.”
“You need to know that I’m the most driven and ambitious man you’ll ever meet. I’m the youngest policeman to make detective inspector in the history of the Metropolitan Police. My father was a policeman, too, and I found out that he was involved in corruption so deep that the stink could’ve stuck to me, too. I could have ignored it––it would have been safer for my reputation to do that––but I brought him down. I sent him to prison where he will die an old and lonely man. And I didn’t think twice about it, Edward. I don’t have a wife or children. I don’t even have a woman. I have no interests outside of the law. And do you know why that is? Every waking moment I’m chasing fellows like you.”
“Sounds like a awful kind of life.”
“It’s the only life I know. I don’t want another one. I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Murphy stared at him, across the table and right into his eyes, and Edward felt a momentary connection between them. “Neither do I,” he said quietly, almost in spite of himself.
Murphy fixed on the momentary connection, too. “It’s not too late for you, Edward,” he said, evenly. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but there’s not much I won’t be able to ignore if you’ll work with me. Give me the Costellos. That’s all I want. Help me put an end to the black market. All this”––he indicated around the room––“all this money and the smart clothes and the fine dining, it’ll all be irrelevant if you get caught.”
“Who said I’ll get caught?”
Murphy got up. He tapped out another cigarette and left it on the table for him. “You’ll get caught, Edward. I’ll catch you. We’ll see each other again, you can count on that. It would be better for you if it wasn’t with you in handcuffs.”
He straightened his shoulders and, with a single nod of farewell, made his way across the room to the exit.
Edward watched him go. He put his drink to his lips and finished it. His hand was trembling. He tipped the ice cubes into his mouth and crunched them, the cold making his teeth ache. The encounter had shaken him. There would have to be a recalibration. He thought about it for a moment and realised that perhaps there was something positive to be drawn from the meeting: it was new intelligence, a warning that the police were not just looking at the black market, they were looking at them specifically. Everything he suggested from this point on would have to be with that at the front of his mind. He would give them chances. Murphy might have been better keeping himself to himself.
The knowledge was a positive, certainly, but the evening had still been spoiled. He signalled the waiter.
“Yes, sir?”
“Could I have the bill, please?”
“Is everything alright?”
“It’s fine. It’s just––well, I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my appetite.”
39
JOSEPH DROVE THEM to George Costello’s scrapyard on Charlton Marshes and swung the car into the entrance to the yard. The sign above the gate said “John Williams’ Scrap”. Joseph had explained that it was one of the family’s kosher businesses. They had several, scattered across London, and used them to hide the family’s illegitimate operations and wash their dirty money. George had established it with Harry Costello at the start of the Blitz. The Costello boys had bought three second-hand Bedford trucks from the army, the big two-tonne monsters with plenty of space in the back. They would send them to bomb-sites, remove re-usable scrap and sell it on. Joseph said that he had worked in the business for a couple of months before he enlisted. He admitted that he had found it “too much like hard work”, lugging iron girders and other bits of wreckage into the back of the lorry, threw it all up as a bad lot and went back to screwing places instead. “Stick to what you’re good at,” he conceded. “I could make made ten times as much spinning drums than he could breaking his back with that malarkey.”
The family had wound the business down at the end of the war. George mothballed the lorries and still used the yard for storage, but Edward had heard the rumours about what he really kept the place for. It was quiet and off the beaten track, perfect for “business meetings” with fellows who needed persuasion to see things the right way.
Pliers, red-hot pokers, electric shocks.
None of it was very pleasant.
Edward looked around as the car bumped across the uneven ground. The yard was in a state. Beaten-up cars had been left to corrode, cannibalised for parts until there was nothing left of them but rusting, rotting husks. There was a small hut at the side of the yard. They parked and went inside. Tommy Falco had his feet on the single desk, eyes closed as he tried to grab a little extra sleep. Ruby Ward was writing in the small ledger that he always carried. Jack the Hat proffered a bottle of whisky and poured Edward a generous measure into a chipped china mug. Billy was there, too. “Alright, Joe,” he said.
“Mr. Fabian,” Ruby Ward said. “I was wondering where I’d lost you to.”
“No sore feelings?”
“None whatsoever,” he chuckled. “You’ll make me more money with this than you would flogging cars, believe me.”
Tommy had a kettle on the gas ring. He brewed up mugs of tea and handed them around with a plate of biscuits.
“Alright,” Joseph said. “Settle down. Let’s get cracking.” The men fell silent. “This new job––it’s a big one. Very big, and lots of dough to be made. My uncle knows this fellow in the army. He looks after the base at Honeybourne, old Yank place, they used to have a battalion based there. Now they’ve gone it’s just about empty––thing is, they’ve left all kinds of stuff behind. Me and Edward went and looked at it yesterday. Loads of stuff, brand new gear––cars, food, clothes, ammunition, fuel, domestic stuff. They never inventoried any of it so they don’t know what they’ve got. God knows what it’s all worth. Thousands. Millions, probably.”
“You two went to see it?” Billy said trenchantly. “You and him?”
“That’s what I just said, Billy. What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Joseph paused, a sour expression on his face, and then continued. “The fellow is going to let us onto the base. We’re going to pretend to be shifting gear for the MOD. We’re going to move it to a base in Barry.”
The men quietly absorbed the information. There were a few questions––how would they get onto the base, why was it necessary to make a second trip to Barry––but Joseph handled them all confidently.
“We just drive into the base and load up?”
“We’re going to be cleverer than that. Doc’s set up a kosher company. It’ll all look above board.”
Billy exhaled loudly.
“What is it, Billy?”
“Nothing.”
“No––what?”
“Can we have a chat––after?”
Joseph looked at him, with curiosity and irritation, but let it go. “It’ll be easy,” he said, pressing on. “There’s hardly any risk and it’ll pay bloody well. Who’s interested?”
“Are you kidding?” Jack said. “Course I am.”
“Count me in,” Tommy said.
“Ruby? You’ll be shifting it all on.”
“I like the sound of it already.”
“Billy?”
“Course,” he said.
“Alright then. Doc?”
Edward had worked late into the night. It seemed to him that the scheme needed meticulous planning if it was to proceed as they intended and, in his opinion, only he had the intelligence and forethought to do the job properly. So he had taken over their sitting room, brewing a pot of strong tea and sketching out an itinerary and a division of labour. He didn’t stop until a dozen Senior Service had been stu
bbed out in the ashtray and the tea pot was exhausted. Now he went through the list, assigning each of them a task. When he was finished he was satisfied that everyone knew what they had to do.
The men dispersed. Edward watched with wary curiosity as Joseph beckoned Billy across to him. The two went outside into the yard, moving a few feet away from the entrance hut. Edward moved a little to the left so that he could see them through the open doorway. They were too far away for him to hear what they were discussing but it was evidently heated. He could hear an angry tone in Joseph’s voice and Billy’s monosyllabic answers. Billy started speaking and then Joseph interrupted him angrily, his posture slumping as Joseph spoke, his finger jabbing in angry punctuation. Edward fussed with his shoelaces, casually observing the conversation as it became less fraught and then, finally, ended with Joseph placing a hand on Billy’s shoulder. Edward did not know what they had said. Had they been talking about him? It seemed likely. He heard a laugh rising from the yard, and, as he looked back outside again, he saw Billy’s happy face as he turned to face him. What had Billy said about him? He fretted about that, the sudden weight of worry making him sweat. He would have to keep a close eye on him, he thought. He had made such good progress with the others. Billy, though, was proving to be more difficult to persuade.
40
THE FIRST JOB WAS SET FOR FRIDAY AFTERNOON. They agreed to meet at the scrapyard. Joseph picked Edward up and they drove down to Charlton Marshes and parked behind George Costello’s Daimler, chocolate and cream with the prominent chrome grille. The driver was running a chamois over the windscreen, his peaked cap resting on the canopy. It was a beautiful motor and it looked out of place, parked there in front of stacks of salvaged metal and debris. They made their way into the yard. The trucks were parked alongside the hut, freshly painted with “DRAGON TRANSPORT” written across the sides. Tommy Falco was a whizz with mechanics and had broken down and then reassembled the engines, replacing worn out parts and changing the oil, filling the tanks with moody petrol that Ruby Ward had provided. By the time he was finished they were running nicely.
The others were idling outside the hut, dressed in the blue overalls that Ruby had procured. George Costello gave them the once-over like a sergeant major inspecting a line of men. Georgie the Bull looked as out of place as his car. He was wearing a tie with a fist-sized knot and shoes so polished you could see your face in them. He wore a panama hat and carried a gold-headed Malacca cane. He walked past one of the trucks and rapped his knuckles against the side. “Good job,” he said. “You’ve done well, lads. Looks authentic. I hardly recognise them.”
Joseph followed him. “They just need to pass muster.”
“Aye.” George sauntered back towards them, running the palm of his hand over slicked-back hair. “How are you, Bubble? You alright?”
“Yes, Mr. Costello,” Billy said. The nickname suddenly didn’t seem to bother him so much when George used it.
“Fabian?”
Edward looked from George to the hut and his mind lingered on the stories he had heard of the things that had happened here. Had Butler been brought here, perhaps? An evening of ‘persuasion?’ It made him feel frightened and uncomfortable. “Very good, sir,” he managed to say.
He eyed him carefully. “You look nervous.”
“Just keen to get started.”
“Ready to make some money?”
“Of course.”
George said, with a noticeable sneer, “Not the two-bob you lot were making spinning drums. This’ll be proper dough.”
“Yes, sir.”
George looked again at Edward in that hungry, lazy fashion he had. He couldn’t help but think of the way the big cats in London Zoo address the dead sheep that are tossed into their cage. He didn’t say anything else and turned back to Joseph instead. “You know what you’re doing?”
Joseph was calm and collected. “We’ve been planning it all week. Driven up on a dry run, scouted the base, we all know what we’re up to. It’ll run like clockwork.”
“What are you taking?”
“Refrigerators today. Big ones––for hotels and restaurants.”
“You’ve got buyers?”
“Ruby’s sorted it.”
“Won’t be hard to move,” Ruby Ward confirmed. “People will pay top whack––couple of hundred each. Can’t get them otherwise.”
“You lot best get going, then––go on, bugger off. I’ll see you tomorrow. And bring the money.”
Joseph had divided them into teams. There were three trucks and five men. Jack McVitie and Tommy Falco were paired in one cab and Joseph had the middle one. That left Billy and Edward to bring up the rear. Edward was not keen on the arrangement, far from it, and it was obvious that Billy shared the sentiment, but Joseph had insisted. He said that it was important that they took the chance to get to know each other better. Edward couldn’t argue with the logic––they couldn’t afford ill-will––but the prospect of a long drive with him and his monotonous, tiring attitude was not something he faced with any sense of anticipation.
He cranked the starting handle, opened the door and hauled himself into the cab. Billy slid into the passenger’s seat. Edward made a great mental effort to be as friendly as he could be. “Alright, Billy,” he said. “Me and you, eh?”
“Looks like it,” Billy said glumly as Edward released the brake. He pulled out of the scrapyard, crunching through the gearbox, careful to leave plenty of space between the wagon and George’s DB18.
Edward turned onto the road and settled back into the seat. He grasped the gearstick awkwardly and tried to start a conversation. “Got any more bouts coming up?”
“Yeah,” Billy said.
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Couple.”
Edward persevered. “Who against?”
“Couple of chumps.”
“And when you beat them?”
“What?”
“When you beat them, you still plan to go professional?”
He gazed out of the window and said, in a faraway tone, “Eventually.”
The conversation was awkward, clumsy and unsatisfactory. Billy made no attempt to join in. He sat there, making no effort to hide his boredom, staring glumly out of the window. The atmosphere was tense and strained and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Edward gave up and they drove on in silence. The traffic was light and they quickly made their way beyond the suburbs and out into the countryside. Buildings give way to villages, fields and woods. He made sure they kept in touch with the others, maintaining their nose-to-tail formation. They made good time.
They were just outside Oxford when Edward noticed a change in the atmosphere. The feeling of awkwardness had become something more tense and, when he turned his head to look at Billy, he found that he was already looking at him. “All this,” Billy said vaguely, “you going to be alright with it all?”
“How do you mean?”
“The job. You ain’t going to be milky when they get there? Not going to piss your pants? We’re going to be able to count on you?”
Edward was nervous, certainly, but the suggestion that he might not be reliable was irritating and he let it get the better of him. “I’m not milky,” he snapped angrily.
“I wouldn’t normally say it, but there ain’t going to be no way we can afford it if you ain’t right in control.”
Edward hesitated while his mind ran over the welter of things he might have said: bitter things, recriminatory things, hostile. His mind went back to a similar question that had been put to him during the war, during a patrol in the middle of the monsoon, and to the way that the rest of the men had laughed at him. Richard Watson had joked that Edward was scared and he had been indignant, but the other men had found his reaction even more amusing, and eventually he had ignored them all and kept his own company. Watson and the others had died during the ambush that followed and Edward had been decorated so who was laughing now?
Billy was staring at him, his
eyebrows raised, and so Edward said, “Jesus, man,” loading it with resentment, “compared to what we got up to in the jungle, this is nothing. This is child’s play.”
“Really?” Billy said, dubiously.
He laughed dryly, without humour. “You have no idea.”
There was silence for a minute. Edward stared at the road.
“Those Japs you topped––what was it like?”
Edward looked over at him severely. “I’m not going to talk about it.”
“Come on. Tell me. What was it like?”
“You don’t think about it. You just do it.”
“But what was it like? Shooting the buggers. Taking another fellow’s life?”
“You do your duty and that’s that.”
“This modesty, Doc, it don’t suit you.”
“Take the hint, Billy. I’m not going to talk about it.”
He sneered. “You ask me, it’s all bloody bollocks. You want us to think you’re some kind of war hero, but you ain’t. You ain’t nothing special at all. No better than any of us. You might’ve pulled the wool over Joe’s eyes, but you ain’t fooling me.”
The sudden outburst was shocking. Edward shook his head and gripped the wheel a little tighter. Billy put his feet on the dash and started to drum his fingers on his bent knees, making a show of his contentedness. They didn’t speak after that. Billy knew he had got under Edward’s skin, and he wanted him to know that he knew.
* * *
IT TOOK LONGER THAN THEY HAD PLANNED, nearer three and a half hours than two. There was a diversion and they approached the base from a different direction than they had when they had scouted it before. The new perspective emphasised how enormous it was. There were rows and rows and rows of huts, all organised with geometrical precision. They drove for a whole ten minutes alongside the wire fence until they came to the gatehouse. Edward pulled the truck off the road and stopped. A private approached the passenger side with a rifle. His nervousness reached a crescendo and he found himself holding his breath.