End of the World Blues (37 page)

Walk with a man a hundred paces…
Kit’s smile was sour. He was planning to walk far more than that in the company of Robbie and Alfie, assuming they all got lucky.

“Shit,” said Robbie. He’d been a foot soldier when he originally met Kate O’Mally, standing silent while she ripped strips from some local don. It was, admitted Robbie, unlikely Mrs. O’Mally had even known his name, for which he remained extremely grateful. As for Alfie, the boy was too young to have those kind of memories. He’d heard of her nephew though. You didn’t cross central London without getting Mike Smith’s permission first. At least people like Alfie didn’t.

“You mean,” said Alfie, “the girl is Mr. Smith’s cousin?” It was an interesting update in the lexicon of fear.

In unspoken agreement, Alfie and Robbie moved to the bar and got themselves a whisky chaser, washing the spirit down with a bottle of Beck’s. Robbie lit the teenager’s cigarette for him, because Alfie’s hand was shaking too badly to work the lighter. Neither would look at Neku when she returned from rinsing out her mouth, splashing water on her face, and whatever else she’d been doing in the staff bathroom.

“How many ways out of here?” asked Kit.

“Only one,” Robbie said. “Why?”

“Because it’s a trap,” said Kit. “Gunmen are out there, waiting…” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the corridor. “And we’ve got about half an hour before someone blows down that door.”

“Oh shit,” said Alfie. “You were telling Mr. de Valois the truth?”

“Yeah,” said Kit. “It’s a bad habit of mine.”

“But he had his own man in the drug squad.”

“I know,” said Kit. “But Sergeant Samson has been suspended. I bet he didn’t tell de Valois that.”

Alfie looked sicker still. “How many ways?” Kit insisted.

“Front door, side windows…”

“Both covered,” said Kit. “Anything else?” The two men shook their heads. “Over the roof? Across a back garden? Come on,” he said. “There must be another way.”

“Attic,” Alfie said. “Round here most houses have linked attics.”

“Probably walled up. Mortgage regulations,” Robbie added. “My brother used to be a builder.”

“Then you know how crap they’ll be,” said Alfie.

Having left on all the lights and restarted the music, Kit, Neku, Alfie, and Robbie went up the stairs two steps at a time. And unlikely as it sounded, the rubbish stacked on the club stairs got worse the higher they climbed. The first floor had changing rooms, if such a label could be given to a room stripped of everything but a mirror, overhead bulb, and a cracked lavatory in one corner.

“Those are mine,” said Neku, grabbing a handful of clothes in passing.

“Was mine,” Kit said, tossing segments of finger into the open bowl and pausing to check it flushed properly.

When Robbie and Alfie looked at each other, Kit wondered if it was the finger or discovering that Neku spoke proper English after all. So abandoned was the next level that its floors had been painted white with pigeon shit. A broken window showed where the birds got in. A short run of ladder led to the attic and a hole in the roof above revealed night sky.

“You go first,” Kit told the boy, who did as he was told. It didn’t actually matter to Kit in what order Alfie and Robbie climbed. But simple commands, easily obeyed, kept the two men under his control.

Robbie was right, a wall had been built; and Alfie was right, because the brickwork was crap. Cheap cinder blocks had been stacked clumsily on top of each other and glued into place with cowpats of dripping mortar.

“Amateurs.” Robbie sounded personally offended.

“Makes it easier,” said Alfie, producing a lock knife and grinding it into a crack between two blocks. “I’ll need some help,” he said.

So Robbie stepped forward and together the two men sawed at the crude mortar, reducing it to dust. “Buggered,” said Robbie, but he was talking about the blade.

“No matter,” Alfie said. “We’re done.” And he proceeded to kick down the wall with a quiet ferocity that spoke of current anger or a lifetime of unresolved issues.

The attic next door was also empty, in better condition than the one they’d just left, and, best of all, not bricked up on its far side. A partition had been built, but this was made from flame-proof board and Alfie tore it down without even having to be asked.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re above the Golden Balti.” Catching Neku’s glance, he added, “That’s the local take out.”

Which left the Japanese girl little wiser.

A flight of steps led down to a small landing stacked with empty ghee tins and a large wooden crate reading Rajah Spices. Someone had set up a canvas bed in a bathroom. A copy of a local Bengali paper lay open on the floor.

“Quietly now,” said Kit.

The floor below held a storeroom, customer lavatories, and a bemused-looking waiter who was obviously wondering about the noise. When Kit put his hand to his lips, the man nodded.

No one challenged Kit, Neku, and the other two as they filed through the crowded restaurant, squeezing between a large group waiting for take away near the door. And no one made a fuss when they reached the street outside, crossed the High Road, and cut under a railway arch into a passage that led to a car park beyond.

“We’re square, right?” asked Robbie.

Kit nodded.

“I mean, for real? It was a mistake, right? We didn’t know she was…” He glanced at Neku, who stared back. It was Robbie who looked away.

“I’m cool with you if she is,” said Kit.

After a moment, Neku nodded.

“That’s settled then,” he said, turning to include Alfie in the conversation. “None of us were here,” said Kit. “You didn’t see me and I didn’t see you. If anyone asks you, just stick to that.”

Somewhere away to his right a black helicopter came thudding low over the houses, a siren fired up three streets away, and a thunder flash could be heard, rattling shop windows like fireworks. Brigadier Miles had obviously just told her boys to go in.

Trying to ride a motorbike with an amputated finger was a bad idea. The actual practise was worse. Every gear change make Kit chew his lip and fight to keep his hand on the bars. He’d probably have been crying with frustration if the night wind hadn’t got to his eyes first.

The Suzuki belonged to Alfie and was the machine Kit would have expected. Cheap, flashy, and done up with after-market accessories. On the plus side, the tank was full, the machine was licenced, and Alfie had been pitifully willing to offer Kit its use.

It was the wrong side of midnight when Kit left the motorway. There was no need to kill the lights as he approached speed cameras but he did it anyway. Kit liked the way darkness turned the black top to an icy strip, lit by little more than the sodium glare of a village nearby.

At a service station south of the M25, he stopped to refill the bike and use the bathroom. As an afterthought, Kit asked Neku if she wanted a coffee. In return, she asked him a question of her own.

“Why did you kill him?”

So he told her.

Sitting next to a glass window, in a café deserted enough to have been ripped from an Edward Hopper painting, Kit explained about the debts he owed. How he’d never really fallen out of love with Mary and why he let Kate O’Mally drag him back from Tokyo.

Kit realised half way through his story that Neku knew none of this. And then he realised no one did, except No Neck, Micki, and that other girl the day Mary’s postcard arrived; and they didn’t count, because he’d been drunk and they’d been careful not to mention it again. Almost everything that mattered to Kit in the last fifteen years had happened inside his head.

Conversations with ghosts.

He’d kissed a girl and it was the wrong girl or the wrong time. He’d lived badly and lived well and neither felt more real than the other, because everything after Josh was counting bells. Like Mary, Kit had just been adding and subtracting to keep the devil at bay.

All those lives snuffed out in the cross-hairs of an M24 sniper rifle needed shifting up one, to make space for the truth. Josh killed himself but Kit had provided the reason.

“You’re sad.” Neku’s voice was matter of fact.

“I’m cold,” said Kit, taking the coffee she offered. It was sweet and still hot, bitter from having stewed in a glass flask on a ring for the previous hour.

“Losing a finger does that,” Neku said. “It’s the shock. My brother…” Whatever she was about to say got lost when Neku took herself to the restrooms. She was still wiping her mouth when she got back.

“How are you?” Neku asked Patrick Robbe-Duras, when Pat finally stopped fussing about the damp and cold and how Neku must feel after such a long ride in the middle of the night.

“I’m okay,” said Pat, sipping his whisky on the rocks.

Neku smiled. Their next discussion involved whether or not another coffee would keep Neku awake and her insistence that all Japanese girls hated hot milk, so that was out of the question.

“No tradition of keeping cows,” she said.

Pat nodded, doubtful.

After this, as the conversation turned to biscuits versus cake, Kate caught Kit’s eye and nodded towards the kitchen door.

“Good idea,” said Neku, hooking ice from Pat’s glass. “Chill your finger,” she told Kit. “Then cut back the knuckle and sew the flesh shut.”

Kit took the ice Neku offered. Smiling, when he realised Kate’s mouth had dropped open.

“I can do it later,” said Neku. “If you’d rather.”

Leading Kit along a corridor, Kate opened a heavy door to reveal a very traditional-looking study, lined with books Kit doubted she’d ever read and hung with a Gully Jimson nude probably chosen years before and barely looked at since. Cigarette smoke clung to a leather armchair, and a waste paper basket overflowed with newspapers. It looked like a room no one had bothered to clean in a very long time.

“You want me to do it?” Kate asked, nodding at Kit’s injured hand.

Kit nodded his head.

Kate O’Mally was surprisingly good with a knife. Well, surprising to Kit, who’d always assumed her nickname of
butcher
indicated clumsiness, not skill. All the same, it hurt like fuck and there was no other way of putting it. Slicing back flesh, Kate cut free gristle and bone, flicking the remains onto her desk. It looked like one of those chewy bits of chicken.

She let Kit sew the ends together.

“Pat arrived this afternoon,” said Kate. “Just turned up in a taxi, collected his cases, and told me to pay the driver. Said he’d come back for good if I’d accept that Mary was gone.”

“What about his own house?”

Shrugging, Kate said, “I hardly dare ask. You need a drink?”

Kit shook his head.

“Don’t suppose I should either.” Seating herself at the desk, Kate rummaged through a drawer until she found a Partegas box. “Want one of these instead?”

The cigars were dry and burned too quickly, but Kate and Kit still sat there and smoked them anyway, watching curls of smoke obscure the ceiling. Kit understood what Kate was doing. She was ensuring he understood this meeting was social. They were no longer enemies. In her own way, the rituals Kate O’Mally lived by were as rigid as those Yoshi had followed.

“People have been calling,” Kate said, finally coming to the point. Sucking in a final mouthful of smoke, she let it escape between her lips and ground her cigar stub into a glass ashtray. “A surprising number of people.” She smiled. “A man from the MOD, for a start.”

“What did you say?”

“Said I’d never heard of you. Anyway, you know Jimmy the Greek?”

Kit shook his head.

“That’s good,” said Kate. “You don’t want to know him. Anyway, Jimmy was also on the line. He runs an outfit in High Barnet. One of his boys is called Robbie. Nasty temper, but a good chemist. Anyway, Jimmy’s worried because he loaned Robbie to a Russian and now the Russian is dead and Robbie’s scared that he and I have unfinished business.”

“I told Robbie it was cool,” said Kit. “And the guy was Chechen.”

Kate reached for another cigar.

“Armand de Valois was Chechen,” said Kit. “Not Russian. Although he was pretending to be French…”

“You were there when he died?”

“I killed him.”

“You? A Chechen mafia leader. Feel like telling me why?”

He made the kid dance.

“Neku,” said Kit, and the old woman nodded. It was answer enough.

“The Greek wants a meeting.” Blowing fresh smoke towards the ceiling, Kate sat back in her chair. In anybody else this might be taken as a sign of relaxation, but Kit could tell Kate was worried about something.

“So send your nephew,” said Kit.

“That would make it business. I want you to go,” said Kate. “Sort out the problem…”

Maybe laughing wasn’t the right response. “Look,” said Kit, when Kate had stopped scowling. “I’ll call Jimmy.”

“Call him?”

“That’s my best offer.”

Kate pushed her mobile across the desk and waited while Kit punched in the number she gave him.

“Mr. Giangos?”

A sleepy grunt from the other end and a woman in the background, followed by a snapped instruction to be quiet. One didn’t need Greek to understand what was being said. “Yes?”

“I’m calling on behalf of Kate O’Mally.”

“What,” Jimmy Giangos said, “she can’t call me herself?”

“It’s about Robbie,” said Kit, ignoring the question. “Mrs. O’Mally wants you to know there is no problem. In fact, everything is fine. She will tell her nephew this.”

Kate raised her eyebrows.

“The problem was Mr. de Valois. This has now been solved.”

On the other side of the desk, Kate O’Mally actually began to smile. Although Kit’s next words knocked the smile from her face and reduced Kate to frozen silence.

“What problem? He kidnapped Kate O’Mally’s granddaughter.”

Jimmy Giangos actually gulped.

“Robbie didn’t tell you that?”

“No,” said Jimmy the Greek. “He forgot to mention that bit. We knew nothing about…”

“Mrs. O’Mally understands that,” Kit said. “She sends her regards.” Shutting off the phone, Kit looked up to see Kate staring at him.