Hastily packing a bag, I walked swiftly to the train station. Every road was alive with police, cars tearing past, sirens blaring as if a disaster had taken place. Maybe it had.
It took me two and a half hours to reach Paddington, another twenty minutes to traverse slush-coated pavements and reach my lock-up at Kings Cross. It seemed to me that everything had changed and yet nothing had changed. Danger hovered on street corners. Threat in the eyes of every stranger. The last time I’d set foot in the capital was for my final kill – Billy’s.
Firing up the generator and looking around the dingy walls at the rack of disguises, the pots of coloured contact lenses and props for the tools of my old trade, I felt like a man whose pockets are filled with dirt and stone. My only saving grace: no weapons. I’d disposed of them the day I jacked in my life of crime.
And that left me vulnerable.
The cash I’d hidden behind loose bricks in a facing wall and was exactly where I’d left it. I counted it out – all ten thousand pounds – and sealed it back up. I also had two false passports linked to a couple of credit cards stashed away. I’d hung on to them as insurance, in case of emergency.
Slipping brown lenses into my blue eyes, exchanging my smart overcoat for a musty leather jacket that smelt of gun oil, and putting on a pair of leather gloves, I headed for the Caledonian Road and a barber’s where I knew China Hayes hung out most afternoons.
Fresh snow dusted the pavements. Sleet clung to my hair like a cobweb. The roads were untidy. None of it registered. All I could think of was McCallen.
Sure enough, China Hayes, his face lathered, sat in his favourite seat, two chairs in from the window, bodyguards on point. Before I’d crossed the threshold, three men with You’re dead expressions reached inside their jackets. To the barber’s credit, he didn’t flinch, simply carried on scraping with a cutthroat razor, like he’d seen it all before.
China spread the fingers of one hand, signalling to the men to keep their powder dry, their trigger fingers dancing. He gestured to the barber to step aside. I stood dutifully, my hands crossed in front of me, relaxed.
‘Search him,’ China said without a flicker of emotion.
The biggest of the goons stepped forward, did his thing and, satisfied I was clean, punched me hard on the top of my arm for reasons unknown. I looked into his slab-sided face and read hatred in his expression.
China regarded me with pale blue eyes. ‘I thought you were dead, Hex.’
It had certainly felt like it. ‘Not me,’ I said.
‘Is this a business call?’
Seemed a strange question. Surely he didn’t think I was going to ask him out for a beer. I nodded, silently maintaining eye contact.
‘Give me a few moments,’ China said.
I watched and waited while he had his face shaved, steamed with warm towels, his ear and nostril hair taken care of. No amount of cologne could mask the smell of blood that hung around a man who ordered others to wield the sword and fight fire with fire.
Next, he went for a manicure. This gave me ample time to study his poker face and pebbledash complexion, his red lips like raw offal that matched the colour of his hair. It beat me how a man like that could be a narcissist. For years I’d tried to work out why he was called China. Never fathomed it. His goons, meanwhile, stared at me with the detached hostility that comes from years of mindless killing. It didn’t bother me. To them, I was the human equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, multifunctional. To me, they were poor rusty blades and about as useful.
The barber whipped away the gown to reveal China’s trademark tropical shirt, more Hawaii than California, and locked the door and switched the ‘open’ sign for ‘closed’. China stood up and beckoned for me to follow him through to a back room that smelt of liniment and was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of hair products. At least, that’s what the labels said. If the contents were shampoo and hair conditioner, I’d eat my own jacket.
Standing proud, a desk with a telephone and computer and two office chairs – in other words China Central. Hayes sat down in the boss’s chair, a beast in padded leather with levers and switches. His back to the wall, he gestured for me to take the only other available seat. I sat. He pulled open a drawer from which he produced a bottle of malt whisky and two glasses and filled both three fingers full.
Pushing a glass in my direction, he took a long swallow and looked at me straight. I thought this my cue to open my mouth. I was wrong.
‘Someone tried to kill me three nights ago,’ he said.
I did the maths: same night I was at the party with Simone. ‘Last time I checked,’ I said, ‘there are over seven thousand organised crime gangs in the UK. Could have been any one of several.’
China arched a gingery eyebrow. He didn’t need to ask the question. I knew what he was driving at. ‘Wasn’t me,’ I said.
‘Your style.’
I bit down hard to stop my jaw clenching. Billy back from the dead, someone pretending to be me, McCallen gone – someone had my balls to the wall. ‘What happened?’
‘The brakes on my car were tampered with. By pure chance one of the boys took it to pick up petrol. Lost control on a nice clean stretch and hit a tree. No other car involved.’
‘Your man?’
‘Dead, as I would have been.’
‘Are you sure about the brakes?’
‘I am – proper job.’
He was right. It was my style. I took a drink. ‘When did you last use the vehicle?’ I wanted to estimate the killer’s time frame.
‘Early evening, same day. Probably a two-hour gap between me using it and my man taking it.’
Plenty of time. ‘Where was it parked?’
‘Here.’
Audacious, I thought. ‘Any workmen about?’ The ‘workman’ disguise was a popular ploy.
China scratched his chin. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I could check. You’re asking a lot of fucking questions.’
‘You’re making a big fucking allegation.’
‘Which you haven’t yet answered to my satisfaction.’ His stare was cold and bloodless.
‘Why would I want to kill you?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I can’t because I have no reason to harm you.’
‘You’re a hired gun. You’ll kill anyone for money.’
This had never been strictly true, but I wasn’t going to debate it now. ‘Not you. You have my word.’ I should have told him I was out of the game, but survival instinct made me hold back. I was more useful to China if he believed I was still operational.
China’s stare was without expression. To be honest, words didn’t count for much in his world. ‘You think it was a random snitch trying to muscle in?’
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘The vacuum left after Billy’s death has resulted in quite a shakedown.’
China nodded in agreement. ‘You heard about Chester?’
‘I read about it. Bad business.’
‘And Faustino?’
I did my best to stop my eyes from widening. China meant Faustino. ‘Faustino Testa?’
‘Helicopter dropped out of the sky on a nice, clear winter day.’
‘When?’
‘Last month.’ I blinked, wondering how the hell I’d managed to miss it. Had it been swallowed up by even more grim and recent news? Then it dawned on me. Faustino used a number of aliases and often travelled with a false passport. The police were probably still attempting to unravel his true identity.
‘Where?’
‘Italy, some place. One of those things, an accident, it was alleged. I heard through my contacts that someone spiked the fuel in the tank. Right up your alley, wouldn’t you say?’
I lowered my voice to impress upon China Hayes the importance of what I was telling him. ‘Since my last gig I’ve been out of commission.’
‘By last gig, you mean Billy?’
I nodded.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Someone tried to kill me on a Berlin street less than a week ago.’
China’s top lip curved in imitation of a smile. ‘Really?’
‘You can check my story. I was in a crowd at Brandenburg Gate. A man standing next to me took a bullet meant for me.’
China leant back in the seat, the leather complaining beneath him. He looked at me long and hard. I thought I saw something skitter behind his eyes. Doubt, that’s what I’d seen, as if he wanted to tell me something but wasn’t sure if the timing was right. ‘What are you trying to say, Hex?’
‘Someone is trying to roll us up.’ I didn’t need to say why. A cunning man, China could work it out for himself. He gave me another stare that managed to be level and oblique at the same time.
‘So what are we going to do about it?’