by Owen Mullen
For a second the mask slipped and unease flickered behind her eyes. I saw it and realised the truth wasn’t far. ‘George Ritchie checked you out. You are who you say you are. I accepted that weeks ago or you wouldn’t have got within a mile of this place. I’ll try again.’
She interrupted before I could speak. ‘Wherever this is headed, whatever’s on your mind, Luke, you’re wrong.’
‘Am I? I don’t think so. I really don’t, Charley. We’ve got an insider.’
‘An—’
‘An undercover copper. A mole. Somebody trying to destroy us.’
Charley’s head went back and she laughed, long and loud. Under the navy shirt her tits bobbed like plastic ducks at bath-time. She stopped, looked at me, and started again, tears streaming from her eyes; she wiped them with the palm of her hand. ‘And you think it’s me? You think I came all the way across the pond to take you down? Why would I do that, brother?’
Whoever had coached her could be proud of themselves; they’d done a fine job. She was more convincing than anybody I’d ever come up against, denying, even when the signs pointed to her, brassing it out like a true professional.
‘That’s the part I can’t figure out.’
‘Maybe because there’s nothing to figure out. I’ve never been on the inside of anything. That’s why I’m here.’
This woman was good. Really good.
‘What fucked-up resentment did our bitch of a mother put in your head, eh?’
Her expression softened, the mocking amusement disappeared and there was hurt in her eyes. Her head moved slowly from side to side. ‘You still don’t believe me?’
‘I believe you’re who you say you are. What I don’t understand is why.’
She was making me doubt myself – that was her gift. I wondered how many men had been persuaded against their better judgement and how it turned out for them.
I’d never know. It was time to end the charade. My fingers closed round the gun in my jacket. She saw it and her jaw fell slack, her tongue pink against white teeth.
‘Really? Really, brother?’
‘Don’t call me that.’
The stubby barrel drew level with her chest. Doing her here was madness. I didn’t care. I needed it to be over. Felix and Vincent would clean up the mess – that’s what I paid them for. Lately, they’d had plenty of practice.
The tension was broken by my mobile. For a second, I considered letting it ring, then changed my mind. Mark Douglas’s words rushed like a flash flood down the line. Suddenly, I felt like a sleeper waking from a bad dream, disturbed and disoriented, stupidly staring at the weapon in my hand, unsure how it had got there.
He sounded breathless, as if he’d been running. ‘Tell me you haven’t… tell me she’s all right.’
‘She’s here, Mark.’
‘Thank God. It isn’t her, Luke. It isn’t Charley.’
Her eyes moved from the gun in my hand and back to me. I hadn’t realised it was still pointed at her. Across the room, Charley’s expression morphed from surprise into something I didn’t want to name. Her features crumpled; she was close to tears. And I finally got it. Charley might be tough as old boots on the outside, but she’d trusted me, her brother, her family. As understanding of what had just happened dawned, she knew her status hadn’t changed after all – her whole life she’d been on the outside and she still was.
I had been wrong but so was she. If it had been Nina, I’d have shot her, too.
Sister or no sister.
‘Charley, I—’
She cut me off, her voice heavy with sadness and disbelief. ‘You were going to do it. You were really going to shoot me.’
I lowered the weapon. ‘You don’t… I’m...’
I’d crushed her and it was too late to make it better. Charley wagged a disappointed finger, warning me to leave it where it was.
‘Don’t. Don’t say it, Luke. Not if it isn’t real.’
Douglas heard the exchange in the room at the other end of the line. When Luke came on, he sounded weary. Mark said, ‘We’ve got a name.’
‘Who?’
‘Colin Bishop.’
‘Colin? Not Kenny?’
‘Just Colin. The piece of crap in front of me sold him the old man’s details. That’s all he knows. Between him and his girlfriend they’ve had a nice sideline going on. Been at it for a couple of years. What do you want me to do with him?’
‘Ritchie’s guys should be there soon. They’ll take him. Great work, by the way.’
Douglas ran his tongue over his dry lips and glanced across at Hume. ‘As for the other thing, no worries, it’s sorted. Or, at least, it will be tonight.’
36
At twenty minutes to midnight an orange moon hung above London town. Two miles away, the river would be an amber thread silently snaking through the city. Inside the door of LBC, Fortuna towered over me, impassive and aloof. People arriving at the club recognised who I was and nodded, probably imagining Luke Glass had it all going on. Tonight, nothing could be less true but the goddess had come through – we had the name of the bastard who’d been yanking our chain.
My plan to leave after I came out of Wandsworth seemed a lifetime ago. I’d listened to Danny’s ‘Team Glass’ shit and let him persuade me to stay.
That was my first mistake. It hadn’t been my last.
Colin Bishop was a drug addict who couldn’t organise his way out of a paper bag. Acting without his cousin, Kenny, was a red flag. Somebody was working the fat bastard from behind. When I knew who, I’d know everything and retribution would follow.
Charley hadn’t showed for work. No surprise. Tomorrow I’d call her and try to put what I’d broken back together. I didn’t fancy my chances.
Mark Douglas’s girlfriend was propping up the bar, asking every five minutes if anybody had seen him. At some point I’d put Nina in a cab and send her home before it got ugly. Douglas was busy clearing up his own mess. His arrogance had compromised us – one of the guys he’d brought in was an undercover cop. Until this morning, hiring the Glaswegian ex-copper had been one of my better decisions. When this was over, we’d be having a chat.
The detached house in Hendon had been Elise Stanford’s dream, something she’d believed they could never afford. Because of Oliver’s hard work, they had. But the service got everything and occasionally she wished they spent more time together. Elise switched the TV off and glanced across to the armchair by the fire. Oliver had hardly said two words all night; he was worrying. Lately, he’d been a different person, shunting her to Cornwall and avoiding sex. Men were different from women: women were more open, talking about their troubles. Oliver had old-fashioned ideas about husbands and wives. He wasn’t a sharer, bottling things up, dealing with them on his own.
Elise said, ‘I’m going to bed. Are you coming?’
She knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
‘You go ahead, I’ll be up soon.’
‘It’s Saturday night. Surely you don’t have work to do?’
He faked a weak smile that didn’t come close to fooling her. ‘Bits and pieces. Bits and pieces.’
She sighed. ‘Well, try not to be too long, eh?’
‘I won’t be.’
At the living-room door she stopped and looked at the handsome man she’d married two decades earlier. The suntan had faded, there were bags under his eyes and his hair was thinning at the temples; he’d aged and she hadn’t noticed.
Elise said, ‘I love you, Oliver.’
‘I love you, too, my darling.’
‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘I’m lonely.’
‘Are you? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’ He spread his arms in a gesture of powerlessness. ‘This damned job…’
She screwed up her courage and blurted it out. ‘Maybe you should think about retiring? Let somebody else carry the weight for a change.’
Stanford felt as though he’d been punched in the
stomach.
‘Retiring?’
‘And we could drive around Europe for a couple of months, stopping at all these lovely vineyards before we’re past it.’
The policeman felt emotion well up inside him. His wife was unhappy. In the early days, living in the shoebox basement flat in Bayswater, dreaming about the French trip had kept them going on the last rainy Tuesday of the month before his salary as a PC hit the bank, when they were down to beans on toast and dreading the electricity bill. That pipe dream had got lost, hadn’t been mentioned in years. Stanford found being reminded of it strangely comforting.
Elise said, ‘We’d get by on the pension. I mean, we’d just have to, wouldn’t we?’
He laughed. ‘We’d have a bloody good shot at it.’
‘The Met have had their money’s worth out of you. Make the decision before somebody makes it for you. Perhaps it’s time.’
He was sincere. But he knew the moment she closed the door behind her his fevered mind would take him back to the damning conversation in the toilet, with Bremner slurring his words, telling him about the insider in Luke Glass’s organisation as his world soundlessly collapsed around him.
He spoke quietly. ‘Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is, Elise. Hold on, I’m coming upstairs with you.’
The older George Ritchie got, the less sleep he needed. His lifelong habit of going home every evening by a different route had been all but abandoned. It wasn’t necessary; there was nobody left to go up against them. Running the operation had been a breeze. Until the double hit in Lewisham and Lambeth had exposed flaws and weakness in the system, born of complacency. Without a rival to keep them on it, they’d lost their edge. Luke had his own problems, otherwise he’d have had plenty to say. With the threats he was facing on the other side of the water, Eamon Durham and River Cars had been forgotten.
But George Ritchie hadn’t forgotten. For him, it was a personal affront that couldn’t go unanswered. The hardman from the north east had a way of dealing with it that was all his own.
Upstairs above the King of Mesopotamia, Felix Corrigan and Vincent Finnegan waited to be given the green light. Ritchie leaned back in his chair. ‘We all set?’
Felix said, ‘All set, George.’
Ritchie’s brow furrowed. ‘Good. Good. You know exactly what I want?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any questions?’
Vincent said, ‘No questions, but Luke won’t like it.’
Ritchie was pragmatic. ‘That can’t be helped.’
‘I’m saying, he really won’t like it. She’s his sister.’
‘Heard you the first time, Vinnie. Is this your way of telling me you’re out?’
‘I’m in. We’re both in. And we get why you’re doing it but…’
George Ritchie was a career criminal, known for his patience. While talentless hotheads overreacted with violence to every turn in the road, he stayed calm. What they were about to do flew in the face of that reputation. Then again, maybe it didn’t. The Geordie was making a point. Who liked it or didn’t like it played no part in his thinking.
He said, ‘Where is it?’
‘Not far.’
Ritchie smiled a thin smile and looked at his watch. ‘Plenty of time for a drink if you need one.’
Felix replied for both of them. ‘Take you up on that later, George. Right now, alcohol would only get in the way. We need clear heads.’
Ritchie nodded his approval; it was the right answer. ‘That you do, lads.’
A security guard touched my arm and whispered the message he’d been sent to pass on. I kept my expression neutral. Not easy. With the shit going down around me, the last thing I needed was Nina causing a problem. My sister thought all she had to do to get what she wanted was stamp her foot.
This time, she’d called it wrong.
She was missing her boyfriend. If she forced my arm up my back, I’d tell her where he was, though, guaranteed, it wouldn’t enrich her life. Douglas was off sorting the problem he’d caused before it destroyed us. Nina liked him. For what it was worth, so did I. Right now, his tart was making an arse of herself.
She was at the bar, dressed for battle, the silver dress so tight it might’ve been sprayed on. Her black bra strap was showing. Nina was too gone to notice. She turned towards me, her face flushed with alcohol, telltale traces of white powder on her nose: high as well as drunk.
I put my hand on her arm. ‘You’re going home.’
She swayed on the stool and shrugged me away, slurring, ‘Fuck off. I’m a big girl.’
‘Yeah, well, start acting like it.’
‘I own 50 per cent of this place, in case you’ve forgotten.’
Arguing with her was never a good idea and like this, it was impossible. But I wasn’t in the mood for her nonsense. ‘Maths never was your strong suit. Your interest is 30 per cent.’
‘Thirty!’ She giggled. ‘What’ve you been smoking, brother?’
I took her wrist and squeezed. ‘Not tonight. I’m warning you, not tonight. Another word and I’ll throw you out in the street where you belong.’
Her face twisted in contempt. ‘Who do you think you are?’
‘Twenty per cent.’
Through the booze and the coke, she somehow realised she was on dangerous ground.
‘Where’s Mark? Why isn’t he here?’
‘He’s busy. Get your bag.’
I dragged her off the barstool; she tripped and I caught her. Close up the smell of whisky was overpowering. All over the club, people broke off from their conversations to check out the commotion. Nina saw the look in my eyes and shrank from it as I pulled her to me.
‘I’m done carrying you. Done making excuses for you. Get it together or get lost. As for your boyfriend, he works for me – you’ll see him when you see him. Conversation over.’
‘And I’m done with your don’t-make-me-angry shit. It was 50 per cent before she stuck her face in the frame, and I don’t recall being asked if I wanted to hand a perfect stranger nearly half of my stake. You do what you like with yours, brother, I’m keeping mine. Didn’t take her long to worm her way in, did it? Well, not with me. Never with me. Do you hear me? Never!’
I could’ve broken her bloody neck, there and then. ‘I’m sick of you, Nina. Fuck off out of my sight.’ I pushed her towards the security guard. ‘Pour her into a taxi and send her home.’
The car rolled to a stop under a tree and they sat listening to the engine cool. They’d driven slowly, careful to stay below the speed limit in case some zealous coppers pulled them over. Across the river, the city was a neon blur. Fraser drew a hand through the stubble on his chin and looked at the reflection of the moon on the river. ‘Why here? It’s too public.’
Douglas answered. ‘You know why.’
‘Yeah, but central London’s asking to get caught. We could dump it down river.’
‘That won’t do the job.’
‘All it’ll take is an insomniac walking his dog—’
‘Listen, we’re doing it my way. Live with it.’
Fraser heard the anger in Mark Douglas’s voice and backed-off. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so.’
He exhaled deeply. ‘Okay. I didn’t expect it, that’s all.’
Douglas’s reply was terse. ‘Neither did I.’
The exchange was a symptom of the pressure they were under. Fraser wasn’t wrong – it was too public. Given a choice, Mark Douglas wouldn’t have picked this place or this time. He’d had no choice. In a few hours, some Sunday-morning mudlark foraging the foreshore would discover more than broken roof tiles and the long stems of Victorian clay-pipes. Douglas didn’t envy them.
His partner’s concern was understandable; he took the edge out of his voice. ‘We do what we have to, you know that.’
Fraser glanced over his shoulder and finished his thought. ‘Yeah, except I didn’t see it coming. Did you?’
They opened the boot and stared at the reason they were here
: the dead man was unrecognisable, half his face blown away by the bullet, moonlight washing what little was left, fragments of bone and brain sticking to his clothes like dead flies.
Fraser said, ‘Christ, what a mess.’
‘We’re sending a message.’
‘Yeah, loud and clear. Nobody’s going to miss it.’ He turned away from the mutilated man and whispered to himself, ‘Poor bastard.’
Douglas took the arms, Fraser the legs, and between them they carried him down the embankment’s granite steps. Yards away, the Thames rolled silently past. At low tide, the rotted wooden stumps of an old mooring rose out of the wet ground. It was stony, their shoes sank in the slimy shingle and they stumbled, almost falling.
Fraser cursed. ‘This is fucking madness.’
Douglas ignored him and waded into the cold water, hauling the body behind him. When it was waist-high, he let go and watched it float into the night. So far, they’d been lucky. Fraser scanned the road behind them, checking for the passer-by, the witness who would send them to prison for a very long time.
There was no one.
Back in the car, Douglas started the engine and pulled away, conscious of his sodden trousers against his skin; if that was his biggest problem, he had no problems. He drove through the empty south London streets feeling himself relax for the first time since the call from Luke, telling him they had an insider.
A lifetime ago Fraser had asked a question. Douglas answered him. ‘You asked if I saw it coming.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. And that makes me wonder what else I’m missing.’
Charley crawled across the floor and emptied what was left of the bottle into her glass, missing the lip, spilling most of it. In her dragged-up life there had been many bad days with a mother barely able to take care of herself, let alone a daughter. But not like today. Her own brother had been seconds away from killing her. When she closed her eyes, she saw the gun’s ugly barrel pointed at her and knew he was going to shoot. The call from Douglas saved her. Twenty seconds later, it would’ve come too late.