‘How did it happen?’
I lay on a couch in a cramped room off a poky street off the Grays Inn Road. The instruments and operating facilities inside could be found in any doctor’s surgery, but with a little added extra. For the right price, bullets could be extracted, stitches inserted, knife wounds cleaned, no questions asked.
Dr Jeremy Mason, or plain old Mr Mason to the outside world, was a real gentleman of the old school with a calm and kind bedside manner. He had the expertise of a brain surgeon, the temperament of a hostage negotiator and the disposition of a habitual drug user. Struck off many years before, he was the gangster’s friend. Not only could he stick men back together again, Humpty Dumpty style, he was a sound source of information. None of it came cheap, but he’d once saved my life and any investment in ‘Mace’, as he was known, was worth it.
I flinched. My pain threshold is high, but my leather jacket, which I’d had for years, lay in tatters like a dead animal on the floor. When Mace had peeled it off I thought he was flaying me alive.
‘A bomb,’ I said, and before Mace could respond, I added: ‘Not mine.’ My voice sounded strange. I still had trouble hearing.
‘Meant for you?’
‘For Daragh Dwyer.’
Mace peered at me once through hairy eyebrows and said nothing more. He was used to such events, I guess. He expertly cleaned up the wound, which now hurt like fuck.
‘Someone had it in for China a few days ago,’ I said speculatively. ‘Heard anything about it on the grapevine?’
‘Not a word.’ Mace sprayed the raw wound with God knew what. My eyes watered.
I tried to come at things from a different angle. I’d often thought that visiting Mace was a bit like a trip to the barber’s. Pitch the conversation right, along the lines of ‘What did you think of the match last night?’ and all kinds of stuff got disclosed. ‘Remember Lester Marriott?’ I asked.
Mace’s patrician features cracked into a smile. ‘I’ve stuck so many bits of him together he should be called the bionic man. Isn’t he down for a stretch?’
I repeated China Hayes’s statement, parrot-fashion. ‘Belmarsh – twenty years,’
‘Main or HSU?’
‘HSU, I reckon. He’s got to be a Category A.’ I pictured the grim, windowless building. Steel doors. Fingerprint recognition. CCTV. Body scans. Four officers to every prisoner. Marriot and me had been cast from the same furnace, smelted in the same fire. Shit, it could be me banged up in there.
‘Poor bastard,’ Mace said. ‘Didn’t he have a brother in the game?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Darren Marriott. Petty crook and foot soldier.’ And once upon a time, he’d worked for Billy Squeeze. Now I came to think of it, it surprised me that China had made no reference to him. Perhaps he was too distracted by the thought of imminent death.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Mace said in his fruity accent. ‘Also suspected of being a nark. Off the record, you understand, old boy?’ he said, bandaging my arm.
I tapped the side of my nose with the index finger on my good hand. ‘Of course. Any idea where I can find him, doc?’
‘Pentonville.’
I suppressed a smile. The best place for finding out the word on the street was inside a prison.
* * *
There were all sorts of rules governing prison visits. You couldn’t simply pitch up and ask to see an inmate. Most prisoners were allowed two visits a week as long as they behaved themselves, two a month for serious offenders, but they had to book the visit from the inside twenty-four hours in advance, and the designated visitor had to jump through all kinds of security hoops to prove identity, relationship to the inmate and confirm the date and time of the visit. With Titus’s deadline looming, I didn’t have enough man hours left for bureaucracy.
Back on my feet by noon, I took my walking-wounded self to a burger bar where I demolished a cheeseburger with fries and coffee that tasted sour. Next, I collected another jacket and a roll of notes, and headed out to Tufnell Park. It was a gamble. Having had my head almost blown off that morning, I wasn’t due for another slice of luck that year, never mind that day.
My destination was a three-storey house between a butcher’s and a newsagent’s. There was a strong possibility that the occupant would be at work, out sunning himself in foreign climes or cutting slimy deals with a crook that wanted favours. He could also simply be at home and would answer the door, take one look and slam it in my face. In the old days I’d turned up armed, and this usually gained me entry to most places. This time, persuasive words and hard cash were the only weapons in my armoury.
The property had received a fresh coat of paint in my absence, the front door a fashionable light aquamarine to match the French Riviera shutters. Very Farrow and Ball. I reckoned the whole lot was worth at least £500k, not bad for a screw. A security camera, positioned high and sensitive to movement, swivelled in my direction. I looked up and grinned, then, using the chrome knocker, battered on the door as though I was a member of a firearms team. A dog barked. Sounded big. I listened to the heavy lumber of footsteps and imagined the occupant staring through the fish-eye lens. More heavy tread, followed by a minor scuffle and the noise of a reluctant dog manhandled into a room.
The front door swung open. Barry Wall, six feet six, loomed over me. Even in his prison officer’s uniform, his physique looked like a geometric diagram, a series of large concentric circles with an isosceles triangle for a head. Tiny dark eyes squinted out from behind a mound of flesh and above a Cupid mouth. His dark, receding hair looked as though it had been drawn on in black biro. He wheezed hello and let me in.
Usually people freeze when they recognise my face. Perhaps elective retirement had softened my hard edges, maybe word had got round that I was out of the game, or possibly Wall’s newfound wealth had given him false confidence. As I followed him down the hall, throaty snarls vibrated from the other side of a door combined with the noise of paws wood. I don’t know why Wall kept a dog. He only had to fall on a man to kill him.
‘What you got in there?’ I said.
‘A Ridgeback. Her name’s Helga. She doesn’t like men.’
Predictably, we finished up in the kitchen.
‘Just eating,’ he said, indicating a half-eaten mound of fried food.
No shit, I thought. ‘You carry on.’ I drew up a chair.
‘Tea in the pot, if you want it,’ he muttered in between chews.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
He looked at me with his piggy, watery eyes. I came straight to the point and counted out two thousand pounds. Wall popped a piece of sausage into his mouth, imperturbable.
‘I need a visit.’
‘Who?’
‘Darren Marriott.’
He didn’t say no and he didn’t ask why. ‘When?’
‘This afternoon.’ I wanted to be on a train back to Cheltenham that evening.
Wall shook his head. A trickle of grease slid down his chin. He started to count off on his dainty little fingers all the reasons it would not be possible at such short notice. I waited for him to finish his wheezy monologue.
‘That’s why I’m paying you – to make sure it is possible.’
He rolled a fold of skin in his forehead. I imagine this was his way of raising his eyebrows. Trouble was, they were obscured by flesh.
‘Would more cash work for you?’ I said.
Wall chewed some more, took a swig of tea from a mug that said ‘Every Dog Has Its Day’ and said, ‘Five.’
I snorted. ‘Five thousand?’
‘That’s my price.’ He shoved a piece of bread between his porcine lips as though it was the end of the subject.
‘Four.’ I counted it out, thinking that it would buy him a heck of a lot of paint. At this rate he could erect an extension.
He eyed the loot in the same way he viewed his lunch. I clocked the greedy gleam in his eye. Money in that quantity looks nice and tempting when it’s laid out.
‘And I’ll need you to fix it for Darren to contact me direct by phone,’ I added. It was absolutely forbidden for an offender to receive calls.
‘Four and a half,’ Wall said.
I don’t like people pushing their luck, and scraped back the chair and stood up. ‘Forget it.’ As I went to sweep the cash back into my jacket, Wall’s clammy hand came down on mine. It was not a nice feeling.
He looked up at me with his small wet eyes. ‘I am not an unreasonable man. Make it three o’clock, ‘F’ wing.’
The detox unit, I registered. How Wall would manage to pull it off was of no concern of mine. Did I trust him? Yes, I did. He knew the consequences should he fail to deliver.