by Mark Dawson
Edward allowed himself the indulgence of a private smile. Joseph had looked for Billy for three days with no success. He seemed more and more convinced of his guilt to the point that just the mention of his name now would trigger his temper. Edward didn’t have to do anything to foster his suspicion. Edward was proud of his work. He had engineered things so that Joseph would reach his own conclusions and everything else had followed naturally from there. He thought that it had been masterfully executed and, tonight, he would start to snip away the loose ends.
Joseph had asked Edward to replace Billy as Best Man and he had graciously accepted. That really was the icing on the cake, he thought. He allowed himself a moment of smugness. His fingers closed around the box in his right-hand pocket and he pulled it out.
Eve and Joseph were gazing at each other happily. Edward stared out into the crowd beyond. There were plenty of faces that he recognised. He drew his gaze forwards and, at the front, there was Chiara. She was one of Eve’s bridesmaids. She was wearing a peach-coloured dress, the same as the others, and the colour suited her. She noticed Edward’s eyes on her and she smiled at him softly.
The vicar arranged Joseph and Eve so that they were facing each other. At his direction, Joseph took the ring and slipped it onto Eve’s finger.
“I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Joseph bowed his head and kissed Eve. As he withdrew, and before he turned to the congregation, he looked to his side, at Edward, and smiled.
* * *
THE RECEPTION was to be held in the garden of Halewell Close. A large marquee had been erected on the main lawn, and, within it, thirty tables had been arranged, each of them set for ten guests. Bunting had been draped across the surrounding trees and lanterns hung from their boughs. A second, smaller marquee abutted the first and it was here that the meal was to be prepared and served. The food was to be provided by the kitchen at Claridges. The catering tent had been crazed with activity all day. There had been a generous budget for ingredients, and Ruby Ward had provided everything they could possibly have required. They peeled and diced vegetables, prepared consommés, butchered meat. Those not invited to the service parked their cars on the lower lawn, an array of sparkling metal and chrome worth many thousands of pounds. Immaculately dressed waiters and waitresses distributed glasses of champagne as the guests assembled inside the tent. Edward took a flute and drained it in a single, thirsty gulp.
“Hello,” Chiara said as he sat down next to her on the top table. “You look very handsome.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “And you look lovely. That’s a beautiful dress.”
She smiled at him, a little shyly. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Yes, of course––but it’s all a little, I don’t know––”
“Hectic?”
“Well, yes––exactly. And strange.”
“The people who aren’t here?”
“Exactly.”
They both looked out across the space: the bar was jammed tight and children scampered between the tables.
“I do wonder about my aunt sometimes,” she said with a long sigh. “This is typical––any excuse to show off. I think Joseph would have preferred something a little quieter, but he wouldn’t have had much say in the matter.”
Joseph and Eve were in the middle of the table, to Edward’s left. They were beaming with happiness, his hand resting atop hers on the table. Violet was next to Joseph. Eve’s parents had not been invited.
“No news about Billy?” she asked.
Edward hesitated, seeking earnestly for the truth. “Not that I’ve heard,” he said. “It’s very strange.”
“Joseph is convinced he’s the one who spoke to the police.”
“So it must be possible.”
“I heard him talking to Violet about it yesterday. It’s been days since anyone saw him. It doesn’t look good, does it?”
“No,” Edward allowed. “It doesn’t.” He took a gulp of his champagne, pleased with himself again. It was astonishing the difference it made. He felt more confident, more in control, and he felt that that confidence must be obvious in his posture and bearing, and on the ease with which he could put all the right expressions onto his face. All the doubt that he had felt… how foolish he had been!
“Joseph will kill him if he finds him,” Chiara confided.
Edward nodded, thinking that that wouldn’t be necessary.
The meal was pleasant. The cook had prepared a seafood starter, followed by breast of chicken. The food was excellent and the drink flowed freely. The conversation was boisterous, fuelled by the alcohol, and Edward soon forgot his anxiety.
The dishes were cleared away and, eventually, one by one, the others left the table until Edward and Chiara were left alone. Edward suddenly felt an overwhelming closeness to Joseph’s sister. The strength of feeling took him by surprise. Edward stayed at her side all evening, and after Joseph and Eve had taken their first dance he suggested they join them. She pressed herself against his body as they spun around the dancefloor, her head nestled into the space between his chin and shoulder. Her scent drifted into his nostrils, floral and sweet, and as he glanced down he saw that her eyes were closed and a smile was on her face.
He allowed his mind to wander. He would have to leave soon. He was going to kill Billy tonight. He had thought of it before as a means to end all the trouble he was causing, but there had always been another way. Now, though, there was not. All the possibilities had narrowed down into this one, unavoidable, point. He led Chiara around the floor as other couples joined them. Murder was distasteful to him but sometimes it was a necessity. Once you had accepted that it was simple enough. He felt peaceful at the prospect.
65
FIERCE APRIL RAIN WAS LASHING down outside the tent. It was a little before two and the party was still going on, the band striking up again and the sound of happy laughter followed Edward as he left the tent. Time to go. He put on his overcoat and regretted not bringing his umbrella. He had spent a couple of pounds on his hair this morning and the rain was going to make a terrible mess of it. He waited beneath the canvas awning and stared out into the empty gardens, the rain falling so hard that the driveway was running like a river.
He collected his car and set off back to London. The drive was easy, with no traffic to delay him. He allowed himself to think. Billy wasn’t what you’d consider clever, but he was cunning. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that, if he could, Billy would use the advantage he had over him for as long as he stayed in Soho. He was full of hate and jealousy, and he had been given a dreadful weapon to use against him. He would hold it over him for as long as he needed, using the prospect of it to have him do whatever he wanted. The money? That was just the start. Edward knew he had no other choice but he reminded himself that it was all Billy’s fault. It could all have ended up very differently.
Edward collected Jimmy and then set off for Southend. They reached the garage at the edge of the town just before three. There was a Humber parked next to the closed café. Detective inspector Charlie Murphy was smoking out of the open window. Edward slowed and parked alongside. Rain ran off the brim of his trilby as he left the shelter of the car and skipped around the deeper puddles. He opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Jimmy got into the back.
“Evening, inspector.”
“He’s in the boot,” Murphy said. “We’ve had him in a cell for a week. Fair to say he’s not happy.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Probably best you don’t know.”
“Yes,” he said, sucking down on the cigarette. “Probably.” He flicked the dog-end out of the window.
“What’s going to happen to the men you arrested?”
“They’ll be weighed off. I’m guessing they’ll get a two-stretch. With good behaviour, they’ll be away for eighteen months.” He looked across the car at him shrewdly for a moment. “That’s what you wanted, wa
sn’t it? George and his thugs out of the way for a bit.”
“It’s like you said––things have been running away with themselves. It was all unnecessary, all that aggravation. Something had to be done.”
“And you’re going to do it?”
“Someone has to.” Edward smiled at him. “It’s for the best.”
“What about Spot? You said––”
“That’s in hand.”
Murphy indicated the back of the car with a jerk of his head. “What did he do?”
“Made a very serious misjudgement.”
Murphy took another cigarette from the packet and lit it. His face looked jaundiced as the lights of a passing lorry raked through the car. “You and me are square, then,” he said.
Edward gave him the keys to his car. “We are.”
Murphy opened the door but paused. He turned back to face him. “Just so we understand each other,” he said, “this was a one-time thing. We’re not friends and we’re not allies. You do what you do and I do what I’ve got to do. I’m still going to clear up Soho.”
“I understand.”
“You know what happens if you get in my way? There won’t be any more favours, Fabian. You’ll be nicked just as quickly as the next man.”
Edward nodded. He felt a jolt of irritation: he was powerful now, and he wanted Murphy to acknowledge it. “There’s another side to that coin, inspector. If you put me in a spot where it’s you on the one hand and my liberty on the other, if you’ve got me boxed in and out of choices, let’s be clear about one thing: you will not get in my way. We’ve done business together now and I can’t say that I’d feel good about it, but you’ve got to know: I won’t hesitate.”
“Then we understand each other.”
“Perfectly.”
“Get rid of the car when you’re finished with it.”
* * *
BILLY STRUGGLED and bucked, his heels clattering and then catching against the lip of the boot, but his shackles were secure and Edward yanked him out. Billy tried to scream, the noise muffled by the rag they had jammed into his mouth. He made himself a dead-weight, the toes of his shoes scraping muddy troughs into the grass verge as they dragged him onto the wooden jetty. Their boat was waiting for them, bobbing on the swells. Edward stepped onto the deck first and then, pulling hard, he dragged Billy after him.
Jimmy went into the wheelhouse and made the preparations for casting off. It was a small fishing skiff, fifteen feet from bow to stern, and powered by a small motor. It belonged to a friend who owed Jimmy a favour. He turned the ignition to switch on the engine and unknotted the mooring ropes. The rag must have dropped out of Billy’s mouth for he exclaimed, loudly, “What is this?” His voice was full of panic. “Who are you? Please, I ain’t done nothing to no-one. Come on, mate. Let me off.” Edward took him aft, hauling him down the shallow flight of steps into the room below where there was a tiny kitchen and store. He left him on the floor and went up on deck.
Jimmy started the engines. The noise seemed horribly loud but no-one came. They sailed out of the harbour, the engine chugging and then, when the navigation lights at the end of the harbour were at their backs, he opened the throttles and they picked up speed, cutting through the glassy water and leaving star-speckled froth behind them.
They sailed for an hour until the only evidence of the town were the pinpricks of light on the dark shoulder of land behind them.
“This is far enough,” Jimmy shouted. He cut the engines and the boat drifted, rising and falling on the swells, quiet save for the ticking of the engine and the soft slap of the waves against the hull.
Edward propped himself against the rocking of the boat and went back down to the kitchen. Billy was on his knees, his shoulders braced against the cooker. He heard his feet on the steps, his head turning in that direction. “Please,” he said, “Tell me what I’ve done. I’ll put it right, I swear I will.”
“Shut up, Billy.”
Edward went behind him and looped an arm around his waist and dragged him towards the steps.
“Fabian?”
Billy lifted his legs up and kicked against the wall, knocking Edward over and landing atop him. “Hold on,” Jimmy said, coming down to help. They took him at the shoulders and ankles and, together, they hauled him up the stairs. The sack bulged as he strained at his shackles but they were too tight. They dropped him in the middle of the deck.
“Fabian?” Billy pleaded from behind the burlap sack.
Jimmy handed him the carving knife he had brought from the kitchen. Edward pulled it back and stabbed Billy in the chest, two times. The knife cut a gash through his shirt and into the flesh beneath, filling with a line of blood as Edward watched. Billy fell back and bucked against the floor, writhing, twisting. He gave a roar that frightened Edward with its loudness and strength and he clambered atop his thrashing body, stabbing him with the knife two more times, into the neck, slashing with the edge of the blade, again and again. He stabbed downwards again, on his knees now, blood splashing from each fresh puncture, and, for an instant, he was aware of tiring as he raised and stabbed, and still Billy thrashed, his shoulders straining, his hog-tied legs jerking up and down. Edward freed himself, stabbing again and again, holding the knife in both hands, the tip pointing down, and plunged it, hard, right into Billy’s heart. Billy’s body suddenly went limp, relaxed and still. Edward shuffled backwards on his knees, straightened his back, tried to regain his breath. He looked down: Billy was motionless, and covered in blood. He stared at him, searching for a sign of life––a gasp, a bloody sputter––but there was none. He was afraid to touch him now, afraid to touch his chest or feel for a pulse, but he did, taking his wrist between his thumb and forefinger. There was a pulse, faint and indistinct, and it seemed to flutter away as he touched it, as if the pressure of his own fingers quenched it. In the next moment, it was gone.
He pushed up with his legs and stood, a little unsteady. He looked down at Billy’s wiry form on the floor and felt a sudden disgust. It was his fault that he had had to do this. Jimmy unhooked the boat’s anchor and attended to the body, feeding the rope through the space between Billy’s shackled wrists and his back, looping it three times and knotting it expertly. The rope was long, maybe fifty feet, but the sea was deep here. The anchor would drag the body down and hold it beneath the surface. It might drift, but they were far enough from shore that that wouldn’t matter. Jimmy heaved the rusting metal anchor onto the side and pushed it over. The rope unspooled rapidly until it grew taut on Billy’s body, and by that time they had manoeuvred his torso over the gunwale. Edward could tell from the buoyancy of the rope that the anchor was not yet at the bottom.
The sacking had worked free around Billy’s head and, as they hefted him up, it flapped loose. As his body balanced on the gunwale the clouds crept aside and moonlight was cast against the water. His face was lit, frozen, the lifeless eyes, the briny froth from a large wave crashing over his head. Edward thought of his leering grin, what he had seen and what he might have said. Fuck you, Bubble, he thought. Fuck you, and fuck you, and good riddance. He found a sudden surge of anger and shoved upwards, hard, flipping him at the waist so that his body inverted, his legs splashing as they slammed against the surface of the water. The body went straight down, sucked away into the blackness until there was no sign that it had ever been there at all.
It’s finished, he thought, suddenly filled with a wonderful happiness. Done. He laughed, as he had often laughed alone, with similar relief after awful moments.
Jimmy went back to the galley and returned with a bottle of spirits. He cleaned out two dirty tumblers and poured double measures. Edward drank his. He thought how stupid and unnecessary Billy’s death had been but how he only had himself to blame. He was a selfish, greedy, cruel bastard who had sneered at him and threatened his father, threatened his family, threatened his future and the rewards he had worked so hard to attain, threatened the life that he deserved. He looked out at the sea, the ra
in hammering a drumbeat against the roof of the boat, and he said, low and calm, the tightness in his throat gone: “Billy Bubble, it was all your fault.”
Jimmy went into the cab and the engines started again with a splutter. The boat lurched forwards and picked up speed. He spun the wheel and they carved around so that the coast was before them again. Edward went forwards and rested against the wheelhouse. He was soaked to the skin: he ignored the rain and the sprays of spume. The boat cut through the rising swells, ascending and descending, a long, easy pattern. He collected a bucket and mop and went back to start to clean up the mess.
Eventually, the buildings of Southend came into view again.
66
THE SUN HAD RISEN from behind grey, dispiriting clouds during the drive back to London but the gloom still persisted. Edward had taken Jimmy back to his flat where they had embraced quickly, arranging to meet later. Edward would have liked to have stopped, perhaps had something to eat or even to sleep for an hour or two, but there had been no time for any of that. He would have to manage without. He had been full of adrenaline during the drive and, now that things were drawing faster and faster towards the conclusion that he had engineered, he was alert with the anticipation of what was to come.
Two more tasks, he kept reminding himself.
One task for Joseph.
One task for him.
Two more things to do and then they would be done. And then, finally, he would be able to relax.
He parked outside the warehouse in Soho. A sign above the doorway announced the building as belonging to SMC Cartage & Co but he knew that the business had been appropriated by Jack Spot as a front for his own black market operations. He sat with his feet propped against the dashboard, an unlit cigarette hanging limply from between his dry lips. His eyes were black and empty. He reached into the back for the 9mm Sten submachine gun that was resting on the bench seat. Ruby Ward had provided it for him yesterday.