Darren Marriott looked petrified. I don’t know whether he was expecting to see his brief, but he most definitely was not expecting to see me. Somehow, Wall had managed to get us into an interview room alone with no glass between us, simply a low table, two chairs. No rubdown, no metal detectors, no sniffer dog. The lens on the camera in the corner was blank, unseeing.
‘Hello Mr Hex,’ Marriott said, eyes darting, left leg twitching, fingers tattooing a drum roll on the formica.
I overcame my natural aversion to sitting in a place that I’d spent my adult life avoiding, and leant back, hands in my pockets, and smiled. Marriott junior was a good-looking guy. Dark, with even features, he had a strong jaw line, liquid brown eyes with unusually long lashes for a man. In another life, he could have been a model. I wondered if he was having a bad time inside. Lester, his nondescript brother, was nothing like him. It doesn’t pay to stand out too much if you’re a button man.
‘Darren, I want to talk to you about Billy.’
Darren’s face clouded. His neat nose twitched and his eyes watered. For a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears. I can be frightening but I couldn’t understand why Darren should fear me in here. He couldn’t know that I had pushed Billy under a train. Even if he did, I was there illicitly, the equivalent of Daniel in the lions’ den. Wall could get rumbled. I could get rumbled. If anyone was in danger, it was me. Then it dawned on me. Darren was genuinely upset that Billy was no longer with us. I waited for him to compose himself.
‘Billy was like a dad to me,’ he snivelled.
Yeah, he did that caring, sharing thing so well, I thought.
‘Treated me like one of the family. And his poor girls,’ he gulped.
I arranged my face into one of open compassion.
‘You know,’ Darren said, big-eyed, ‘We was really getting somewhere in the film industry. You know Billy helped me, Mr Hex?’
‘I’d heard.’ Rumour had it that Billy had once tried to get Marriott Junior into films in the US. I think the pinnacle of Darren’s career was a minor role in a porno version of Snakes on a Plane.
‘Got me an audition for a film, a proper one,’ he said, flashing me an honest look, ‘a gangster movie, low budget, British, know what I mean?’
I nodded. I didn’t need to go to the movies to see stuff like that. I had enough pictures to last me a lifetime.
Darren reeled off a list of names of actors, a director and a couple of producers; people I’d never heard of and was never likely to. I did my best to look in the know and impressed.
‘When he died everything went tits up. Got myself into a bad place, booze and drugs and that. Couldn’t pay my way. Couldn’t see a way out.’ Darren pushed the heel of his hand into his eyes. He was actually crying. He looked at me with his big, pleading spaniel eyes. ‘Got any blow on you, Hex?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sure Barry will see you right, if you ask him nicely.’ Barry was not averse to smuggling in the odd bottle of vodka, cigarettes or drugs to the right people as long as there was something in it for him.
Now we’d got the small talk out of the way, I got straight to the point. ‘Darren, you’re obviously upset about Billy, I appreciate that, but do you know anyone on his team, someone who stood to lose, maybe a supplier, who’d want to exact vengeance?’
‘Vengeance?’
I blinked. He had to rate as the only guy in town who didn’t know that men like Billy don’t die through natural causes, or by ‘accident’. Darren might rate highly in the looks department, but his intelligence was severely impaired. Maybe drugs had stunted his brain. I leant forward conspiratorially. ‘Rumour has it he was pushed.’ I should know, as I did the pushing.
Darren’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. I could almost hear the cogs slowly turning and misfiring. ‘Shit,’ he whispered finally, ‘wasn’t my no-good brother who did Billy, was it?’
I shrugged, wide-eyed, spread my hands. Darren, in his addled way, thought that Billy’s killer was the same guy wreaking havoc now. It suited me not to put him straight. ‘Thing is, Darren, someone is out to make trouble, someone professional. All kinds of people are getting whacked.’ I reeled off the names of the most recent players, counting them out on my fingers.
‘Can’t be Lester,’ he said. ‘He’s inside.’
But there could be any number of others. It wasn’t one of the new guys who’d knock anyone off for a few grand – this was an expert, someone who’d studied my methods, and someone trained to fill the void I’d left behind.
‘You’ve not heard anything on the wire?’
He shook his head.
‘Of course, there could be another explanation for the current spate of killings.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, hopeful.
‘Could be Billy’s wife, one of his kids seeking revenge.’ China Hayes thought otherwise but it always paid to corroborate facts.
‘Nah,’ he said without hesitation. ‘They haven’t got it in them. His girls are barely into their teens.’
‘Did you ever discuss business interests in front of the family?’
‘Billy was always careful about that. He’d have killed me if I’d let on about work. We only ever talked about me breaking into films.’
‘Did he have any other women in his life?’
‘No way.’
‘Rent boys, prostitutes, anyone at all?’
Darren’s eyes blazed with indignation. I was obviously trampling on precious memories. ‘That’s a filthy suggestion.’
‘Business associates who’d go down the pan without him?’
‘I wasn’t close enough to know.’
‘Right,’ I said, disappointed.
Darren thought for a moment. He’d stopped drumming the table and his left leg was still. Suddenly, his face darkened. ‘But if someone is out for revenge, that’s good, isn’t it? Man should get a medal. Billy never deserved to die like that.’ He gave an involuntary shudder.
Perhaps I needed to modify my opinion. Darren wasn’t as empty-headed as he seemed and not quite so easy to manipulate as I’d imagined. ‘I agree, but it’s getting out of hand. You know what it’s like. A guy gets killed. Another guy takes revenge. Fair enough, but when it turns into a cycle of violence, it’s not good for anyone. How long are you inside for?’
‘Got another thirteen months.’
‘You’ll need somewhere to work once you’re out of here and if all the main players are pushing up daisies, where does that leave you?’
Darren frowned. His tongue peeked out of the corner of his mouth as he was thinking his position through. It always paid to push the numero uno argument. Won every time.
‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ I said, appealing to the acquisitive side of his nature. He glanced at the door and lowered his voice even though it was just him and me in the room.
‘Want me to ask around?’
‘If you could, but take it easy. Be cool. Don’t push too hard. I need to know who is giving the orders and who is carrying them out.’ I pushed two twenties and a ten across the table. It wasn’t enough for what I wanted him to do, but any more could look suspicious and draw attention. People might start asking questions. Besides, fifty quid in jail is worth a lot more than on the outside. ‘Barry is going to fix it for you to contact me,’ I added.
Darren scooped up the cash. ‘You can count on me, Mr Hex.’
‘Any whisper in the wind, I’d be grateful if you could keep me informed.’