STU was gone by the time Tallis got up the next morning. He found a scrawled note left on the coffee table conveying thanks and expressing apologies. Tallis picked it up, briefly thought about his friend, walked through to the kitchen and looked out of the window. Two blackbirds were hopping around the garden on the lookout for worms. He reckoned they were husband and wife. The bigger of the two was yanking up poor unsuspecting invertebrates and shoving them into the mouth of his mate, presumably for her to take home to the kids.
The phone rang, jettisoning Tallis out of his feathered reverie. It was Crow. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
‘You owe me.’ Crow sounded incredibly pleased with herself.
‘I seem to remember you concluding our last telephone conversation in a similar vein.’
‘That was before I knew what I know now,’ she said, resplendent.
‘Which is?’
Crow let out a raspy laugh. ‘How about we meet for a drink?’
‘I live one hundred and twenty miles away, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Only take you two and a half hours by car.’
‘You haven’t seen the car.’
‘Last time you were poncing about in a Z8.’
‘Borrowed.’
‘Well, borrow it again. The place I had in mind is full of filthy rich.’
‘You’re not making this proposition sound any more attractive.’
‘Come on, where’s your sense of adventure? I knock off at noon.’
Tallis looked at his watch. It was doable. Just. ‘This better be good.’
‘When have I ever disappointed you?’ she said, a grotesquely flirty note in her voice. ‘Meet me at the Swag and Tails, Fairholt Street, Knightsbridge, one o’clock.’ Then she clicked off.
Tallis took the train then tubed it. It took him two attempts to find the street due to the pub’s tucked-away location. Surrounded by charming terraces, festooned with hanging baskets and planters, it was as pretty as any high-class country pub you’d find in the Cotswolds. The clientele had much in common—extreme wealth, talk of big deals and country-house pursuits.
Crow was already seated, her ample frame caught in a blast of afternoon sunshine pouring in through the windows. She’d obviously gone to some trouble. Her hair was washed, her clothes ironed. Nothing, however, could relieve the crumpled appearance of Crow’s skin, or the thread veins in full cry across her cheekbones. As Tallis approached, she looked up and grinned. Same bloody awful smile, he thought, finding it curiously endearing. Perhaps it was the simple familiarity that struck a chord. He looked at her glass. It was three-quarters empty. Some things never changed. ‘V&T?’
She winked. ‘Make it a double.’
Tallis went to the bar, all bleached blonde wood, and pushed his way through a scrum of blokes downing champagne. No sign of a downturn in the economy here. He ordered a pint of Adnams Bitter for himself and took a sip while the barman was sorting out Crow’s drinks. Tallis ordered two large V&T’s to save himself the bother of having to break away at an inopportune moment.
‘Very thoughtful of you,’ Crow said, looking like a chemistry teacher as she mixed a lethal quantity of vodka with tonic. She took a taste, shivered slightly and surveyed him admiringly. ‘Nice tan.’
‘I brown easily.’
‘So I see.’
‘This is all very nice, Micky, and delighted as I am to be in your company, I’m keen to know what you’ve managed to turn up.’
Crow grinned, enjoying her brief moment of power over him. ‘Our two piss-taking poets,’ she began, ‘were found dead three days ago in a disused warehouse in Southall. They’d been beaten to death with iron bars. Word is they were in debt to the Turkish Mafia. The killing bears all the hallmarks. They go in for that kind of thing, apparently,’ she said, as though exchanging gossip about someone’s sexual proclivities.
So much in debt they’d risk going to Istanbul to kill one of their own countrymen? ‘You sure they’re the same guys?’
‘According to the set of forged passports found at the bedsit they shared in Acton. DNA confirmed their real identities: Mitchell Reid and Nathan Brass.’
And, educated guess, that same DNA would tie them to the hit in Turkey. He studied Crow with something approaching admiration. No looker, but she was bloody good at her job. And sharp. ‘Previous form?’ Tallis said, quietly filing the information away.
‘Reid, twenty-seven years of age, originally from Manchester, lived in London for the past year. Before that, resided in Birmingham. Started out with petty thieving, nicking cars, escalating to drug running then taxing.’
Ripping off drug dealers, Tallis remembered. There’d been quite a vogue for it in the naughty ’90s. The best plans were the simplest and it didn’t get much simpler. There’d usually be at least two thieves who, by paying attention to the local grapevine, would discover a stash of drugs and often large quantities of money in the flat or premises of another more serious player. Either by stealth or brute force, they’d enter the building, put a gun to the head of the said dealer then steal his stash. The whole incident was usually accompanied by a fair amount of violence. Clearly, the ‘victim’ was in no position to go to the police. It could, however, have serious consequences for the thieves if they were caught. ‘Dangerous occupation,’ he chipped in.
‘Not kidding. Brass, also known as Spider on account of a tattoo on his hand, was a real hard case, thirty years of age, early history of assault, threats to kill, supplying arms. Born in Tipton, West Midlands, Brass and his mate Reid hooked up there and finally bunked off to the smoke together. Talking of which, I’m desperate for a fag.’ To compensate, she took a deep slug of her drink, her eyes narrowed.
‘What are we talking, big league or small time?’ Tallis said.
‘Depends on your point of view. Small in London, big in Birmingham. They’d originally worked for a bloke called Kennedy.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Tallis said, sounding as disinterested as possible.
‘Not heard the name before?’ Crow said, razor-sharp.
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘Got sent down for a stretch so Reid and Brass decided to try their luck in the capital.’
‘Looks like their luck ran out. What exactly did they do for Kennedy?’
‘Bottom-rung stuff. Extortion. Dirty work when it needed doing.’ Crow eyed him, making him feel like a piece of meat on a rack. ‘What’s your interest?’
‘Personal. The journalist I told you about was a friend.’
‘Morello?’
‘You knew him?’
Crow shook her head. ‘Heard about the killing on the grapevine. After your call I followed it up.’ She took another healthy slug of vodka. ‘Strange, this Turkish-Birmingham connection. Reckon the motive was revenge?’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Pissing on someone else’s patch?’
Crow was shamelessly fishing, Tallis thought. Even she couldn’t make that one stack up. Tallis remained noncommittal.
‘Don’t have any better ideas?’ Crow grinned.
‘None.’ He smiled, pushing his empty glass towards her. ‘Your round.’
Tallis reluctantly disentangled himself from Crow an hour later. In spite of her somewhat blokey image, something he suspected she’d cultivated to maintain her own position in what was still a male-dominated environment, she was a decent woman and he secretly enjoyed winding her up and sparring with her. His parting shot was to ask her to keep him posted with regard to hard evidence establishing Reid and Brass as the same two men who’d pulled the trigger on Garry Morello, although he guessed Gayle would also let him know.
‘It will cost you more than a few drinks,’ she said with a louche smile.
‘Dinner, then.’
He spent the train journey back considering the implications of his most recently acquired information. Who’d paid for the contract to kill Garry? Who’d paid for the murder of Reid and Brass? Crow seemed to think the Turkish Mafia were involved in the death of the two young killers, or was that a red herring? And what about Kennedy? Simply a loose connection, or something heavier? Either way, he reckoned he needed to go with his original thinking: Kennedy had not gone straight. No matter what Oxslade believed, no matter that Tallis had never met Kennedy, experience told him that Kennedy was back in the game, smarter, more devious, but definitely back.
As soon as he got home, he showered, changed, found a pad and pen and, powering up his Apple Mac, negotiated his way to Google and punched in ‘Johnny Kennedy’. He had fifteen useful hits. Three items focused on the trial resulting in Kennedy’s ten-year sentence, two on his links to several sites of redevelopment, with an additional four references to what had once been Kennedy Holdings and its connection to a well-known business consortium, two on his alleged involvement in dodgy dealing in the Balkans, three on a road accident in which Kennedy’s only son had been seriously injured and—Tallis’s eyes widened—one minor piece on Kennedy’s early release from prison. Why? he wanted to know. Not keen on staring into a screen, Tallis printed off everything he could find and read it as it shunted out of his printer.
Kennedy was variously described as charming and charismatic. Certainly, if the picture was anything to go by, he seemed to fit the depiction. Square-shouldered, firmjawed, he looked capable rather than cunning. His grey hair was close cut. He had good bone structure. Tanned and muscular, dressed in a sober well-cut suit, he looked like a man at the pinnacle of his career. He had been forty-eight when he’d gone inside, which made him fifty-two now, Tallis estimated. It was reported that he was worth upwards of thirty million, something Oxslade had failed to put a figure on, Kennedy’s occupation allegedly entrepreneur, a catch-all phrase much beloved by those who have champagne lifestyles and only a passing acquaintance with Inland Revenue.
Kennedy’s business acumen seemed truly astounding for a poor lad who’d left school at fourteen and fallen through the system. As Oxslade had already confirmed, Kennedy had, at one time, owned his own construction company and made heavy inroads into a number of flagship building projects. You didn’t normally reach those kinds of dizzy heights without either great connections or some nefarious dealing along the way, something strongly suggested by the prosecution, Tallis noticed. If the QC was to be believed, Kennedy’s currency was terror. He was feared and worshipped in equal measure. Tallis felt a flash, cold as ice, ripple along his spine. His father had had the same effect on those around him, he remembered, particularly Dan. Thoughts of his father’s forthcoming funeral chased through his head. He caught hold of them, pinned them in the outer reaches of his consciousness and read on.
True to criminal form, Kennedy owned various properties abroad, including a villa in southern Spain. Interestingly, Tallis thought, he also owned a place in Hvar, a fashionable town on the Dalmatian coast, famous for its commercially grown lavender. While all this was interesting and gave Tallis a context, one piece of information fired out of the page and shot him between the eyes. Immediately, he was transported to Turkey, to the street where Garry Morello’s blood was running into the gutter, his dying words echoing in Tallis’s ears. ‘Report,’ Garry had gasped. Report.Was it simple coincidence that Kennedy’s soubriquet as an up-and-coming thug had been The Reporter?