Terry had to meet up with Harlan at the apartment near Tower Bridge. He didn’t like going there. Memories of poor bloody Beezer going over that balcony. Shit, if the poor old cunt felt so bad about his life, why hadn’t he spoken to him or to Charlie? They were his mates. Close as ticks on a cat. If he’d confided in either one of them, they would have taken care of him.
If it really was suicide. But was it?
Terry remembered Charlie at Beezer Crowley’s funeral, crying his fucking eyes out, the soft sentimental sod. But he’d been choked up too. Mates like Beezer passed through but once in anyone’s life, and he was going to miss Beezer’s stupid smutty jokes and his endless good cheer, which as it turned out had maybe been fake anyway, but what the hell. He would miss Beezer every day for the rest of his life. And now, Charlie too.
Christ, we’re all going, one by one.
Maybe it was time to get out now. Just grab Jill, grab Belle, cut and run.
Shaking off his gloom, he went up in the lift and tapped on the door. Ludo opened it and Terry stepped into the grandly appointed apartment. It was flashy in the extreme, he’d always thought – typical Charlie and Nula. Huge Osborne & Little cream damask drapes at the floor-to-ceiling windows, massive white couches, vast tan-and-white cow skins on the floor, enormous cream and chocolate brown lamps all over the place. It shouted wealth and that was them, all right. Their money was always highly visible, like it comforted them after their poor childhoods to see it all out on display. Now, what had that all amounted to? Harlan would soon redecorate in the spare, minimalist style he favoured, which struck Terry as cold, just like him. Cold as ice.
The only person in the big open-plan room was Ludo, one of Harlan’s chief boys, a blank-eyed dandy always togged up in designer suits, his dark skin gleaming, flashy gold chains draped around his neck. Ludo invariably smelled as perfumed as a tart’s boudoir and he was neat as a new pin.
‘Harlan here?’ Terry asked. Maybe he was in one of the four bedrooms. Harlan liked to make people wait. Put in a late, grand appearance.
‘On his way right now,’ said Ludo.
‘So what’s the meet for?’ asked Terry.
‘You’ll see. When Harlan gets here.’
There was something in Ludo’s eyes. Something bad.
Terry felt his heartbeat pick up, felt light sweat break out on his brow.
‘I need to make a call,’ he said, finding that he needed to swallow hard to get his voice working.
‘Sure,’ said Ludo, indicating the phone by the couch.
‘It’s private.’
Ludo shrugged and displayed a rack of gleaming white teeth. ‘We got no secrets from each other, bro. Anything you say, these ears can hear.’
Terry went and picked up the phone. Dialled the number. Waited. It was a damned long time, but finally, she picked up.
‘Hi babe,’ he said, keeping his voice even. There was a lot he wanted to say right now.
‘Oh! Hi baby.’
There was strain in her voice. Irritation.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, anxious.
‘Bloody Harlan’s just pulled up on the drive,’ she said. ‘Stopped right outside. Oh, and there’s another car too . . . yeah, that’s Nipper’s.’
But I’m meant to be meeting Harlan here.
Terry felt a moment’s gut-churning panic, then he calmed himself. Breathed. If he could do nothing else, he could help his wife. Help Belle. By the sound of it, it was too late for the run code.
He watched Ludo moving around the room, picking up this, putting it down, moving along, moving around . . . now he was behind him, out of Terry’s eyeline.
Christ.
There was very little time.
He said: ‘The bag I left in the hall, is my pen in there?’
Jill was silent. She knew it was the hide code. That someone was with him, that he couldn’t speak freely. And she knew the situation was dangerous. Then she said: ‘What’s happening?’
Terry gulped. He could hear Ludo, moving lightly behind him. He thought of Jill and Belle alone down there, undefended. This was it, what Nula had warned him about, the coup that Harlan had been plotting all along – and oh shit life had been so sweet . . .
‘Just check the bag,’ he said. Hide, babe. Hide and for Christ’s sake hide Belle too.
‘One thing Harlan asked me to tell you before he got here,’ said Ludo from right behind him.
‘What is it?’ asked Terry, putting the phone back on the cradle, knowing it was the last time he would ever hear Jill’s voice, knowing it was over now.
‘Beezer? That fool weren’t no suicide.’
He felt the garotte come over his brow, then down onto his neck.
Thinking time was over.