Personal (33 page)

I said, ‘Purfleet,’ because I liked the sound of the name. I had seen it on a road sign. I figured it was east and a little south of Barking. The guy indicated a scraped-up Ford Mondeo the colour of sewage, and he said, ‘Climb aboard.’

Which we did, side by side on the rear seat. The guy slid in behind the wheel and took off, smooth and competent, left and right through the back streets, working the gearshift, keeping the diesel purr going. I figured he was aiming to join the main Purfleet road as late as possible, to beat the traffic, which worked for me. I waited until I saw a bleak stretch up ahead, with weedy sidewalks, and boarded windows, and a forlorn line of shuttered small-business workshops, and I pulled out my gun and waved it in the mirror, long enough for the guy to see it for what it was, and then I touched it to the back of his neck, and I said, ‘Pull over, right here.’

Which he did, instantly sweating and panicking, and he said, ‘I don’t have any money on me.’

I said, ‘Have you been robbed before?’

He said, ‘Many times.’

‘This is different. We’re not going to rob you. We’re going to pay you for your time. Every minute. We’ll even give you a tip. But we’re going to drive now, and you’re going to ride in the back. OK?’

The guy didn’t answer.

I said, ‘Put your hands behind the seat.’

Which he did, and I wrapped his wrists with about a yard of duct tape, and then his elbows with a yard more. Uncomfortable, but necessary, to keep him out of action. I asked him, ‘Do you breathe well through your nose?’

He said, ‘What?’

‘No nasal congestion, no deviated septum, no adenoidal conditions, no current flu-like symptoms?’

He said, ‘No.’

So I wrapped another couple yards around his head, over his mouth, again and again, and then I slid out of the car and opened his door. I found his seat recline lever, and I laid him on his back, and I taped his knees, and his ankles. Then I hoisted his feet up in the air and I shovelled him backward and upside down over his seat into the rear compartment. Casey Nice took his shoulders, and we got him laid out on the floor, a little compressed, but liveable. I found a cell phone in his pants pocket, and I left it on the sidewalk. I put two of the Romford Boys’ fifty-pound notes in his shirt pocket. We figured that was a decent tip. Then Nice got in the front passenger seat, and I got in behind the wheel, and we drove off again, eight twenty-five in the evening, about three miles from where we wanted to be, which was Romford.

We navigated by a shifting mix of dead reckoning and memories, of our previous trips, and of the maps we had seen on Bennett’s second computer, and we got to Romford OK, with about twenty minutes to spare, but then we agreed we needed more detail and precision, so I pulled over and Nice ducked out to a newspaper store and came back with an A–Z street atlas. We sat together with the taped-up guy grunting on the floor behind us, and we found Charlie White’s address, which gave us a drive from one page to the next. Five minutes, maybe. Rush hour was over, and traffic was moving right along. But slower than it looked, clearly, because it took us seven minutes, not five, to get to the end of Charlie White’s street.

Which was a hard-boiled, somewhat leaner-and-meaner version of Little Joey’s street. The houses were a generation older, their chimneys a little taller, and their bricks a little shinier, but fundamentally the deal was the same. Lots of walls, lots of fences and gates, and lots of late-model automobiles.

Including a black Rolls-Royce and a black Jaguar, parked nose to tail two houses down on the left, behind a fence just like Joey’s. Part red brick, with a knee wall and tall spaced pillars, and part wrought iron, painted black and twisted into shapes like licorice, with two electric gates made of the same stuff, one for in and one for out. The Rolls-Royce was parked ahead of the chase car, which made logical sense, at least linguistically. Both gates were closed.

There was an 84 per cent chance he would leave home exactly one hour before
.

Five minutes.

I looked at the map and said, ‘They’re heading for the North Circular Road. They’ll turn left out of the house. They’ll drive away from us. We need to be at the other end of the street.’

Nice said, ‘Do you want to risk a drive-by, or should we go around the block?’

‘We took a minicab for a reason. We can get away with a slow cruise, like a guy looking for an address, and then turning around and pulling over and waiting for his customer.’

‘These people have drivers of their own.’

‘Not all of them. Only the working-class heroes.’ I backed up a little and made the turn, and drove exactly like a guy looking for an address, slow and obvious, peering out the side window all the time. Charlie’s place was a solid old pile, fairly ornate, built back when bricklayers were cheaper than bricks. The front garden was long gone, replaced by a shallow curving driveway, in one gate and out the other, over flagstone slabs and gravel shapes, between concrete urns and concrete angels, some of them with pans of water held high above their heads, for the birds to drink.

I turned around two houses later, and I pulled into the kerb, and I waited.

Etiquette meant everything. And ten o’clock meant ten o’clock. Therefore exactly one hour before meant nine o’clock. And at eight fifty-nine on the nose Charlie’s front door opened, and he stepped out. He looked just like his photograph. Seventy-seven years old, bulky, round-shouldered, with thin grey hair, and a plain face, and a nose the size of a potato. He was wearing a black suit with a black tie under a black raincoat. Behind him came a shorter old guy, who I assumed was the driver. Behind the short guy came a stream of six younger men, all plainly dressed, all with shaved heads, all a useful size. Four of them headed for the Jaguar, and the other two trailed along towards the Rolls-Royce, now directly behind old Charlie himself, because by that point the driver had hustled on ahead to open his door.

Which was awkward, because it was a suicide door, with the handle at the front, one of a seamless pair with the driver’s door handle, which was on a regular door, and Charlie was approaching from the rear, all of which meant Charlie had to pass by his driver, and then stand and wait until the guy opened up, and then reverse direction, and get in. But between them they got the job done eventually. Charlie settled back, and the driver closed the door on him, and he opened his own regular door, and he slid in, and the two guards got in on the other side, one in the front and one in the rear.

At nine o’clock exactly the gate started to move.

FORTY-SIX

I WAS CLINGING
to two crucial assumptions, the first of which was that the short old guy in the Rolls-Royce thought of himself as a bit of an artist. Maybe he was a veteran wheelman from way back, an old pro, adaptable to any circumstance, whether the requirement was for a fast getaway from a bank job, or a silent chauffeur for the top boy, but one who secretly colluded in his boss’s obsessions, such as for precision timekeeping, especially with sensitive destinations ahead. Therefore I expected the guy to touch the gas when the gate was open some exact accustomed distance, such that it would be still wider open when the car actually got there, thereby allowing the car to pass through, fast and neat and fluent, but with only inches to spare, as if the guy’s mechanical precision was somehow a homage or a tribute to his boss’s chronological precision. I figured that was how an artist would play it.

Which meant I had to guess the guy’s hit-the-gas signal, and hit mine about three seconds earlier, because I was still some ways down the street, and I had distance to make up. But I couldn’t afford to arrive either early or late, so I set off at a slow roll, which I thought was acceptable, because a minicab driver might need to make a note or put his pen away, before looking up and engaging his brain and taking off for real. I saw the Rolls-Royce move when the gate was about two-thirds open, slow and smooth, a modest, whispering acceleration, as if the driver intended to take the turn into the street without pausing, as one fluid move.

I watched the speed of the gate and the speed of the car, and the depth of the sidewalk, and the distance between where I was and where I would need to be, and I let the back part of my brain make a quick and dirty decision about when to go, and I hit the gas when it told me to. The grimy old Ford jumped forward, ten yards, twenty, and then I stamped on the brake and the car came to a dead stop, right where the Rolls-Royce wanted to be, so the Rolls-Royce driver stamped on his own brake in turn, and he came to a stop with his majestic grille two feet from Casey Nice’s door, and behind him the chase car stopped two feet from his back bumper.

Then the next split second was all about Casey Nice sliding out through her narrow gap and heading left, her gun out exactly like the federal agent she was, with me skittering around the hood from the other flank, gun out too, and heading right, breathless, for the all-bodyguard side of the limousine, for the twin door handles, right there side by side in the middle of the car, such that both handles could be grabbed at once, and both doors thrown open at the same time.

The second crucial assumption I was clinging to was that modern automobiles had a device that locked the doors automatically, but only when a predetermined speed had been achieved. Which I was sure had not been achieved. Not in this case. Not yet.

I held the Glock finger and thumb and put my hands on the handles.

And pulled.

Both doors opened.

And both doors opened on Nice’s side, too, which put us exactly where we wanted to be in relation to the chase car, which was each of us safely behind our very own hunk of armoured steel and armoured glass.
The back doors and the back glass
, Bennett had said, in his sing-song voice. And the back doors were hinged at the rear, and they opened wide, to a full ninety degrees, so they stuck straight out sideways, like Little Joey’s ears, thereby keeping us protected as we went about our business.
Only against handguns
, Bennett had continued, but I figured that was OK, because I was sure the guys in the chase car had nothing bigger. Not that I expected them to shoot at all. Too much risk of hitting Charlie. They would know the rear windshield was armoured, but Bennett hadn’t mentioned anything else, so they wouldn’t risk a wild deflection through a soft-skinned area like the trunk, or a rear wheel arch, because it could come through the upholstery and hit a back seat passenger anywhere from the ass to the neck. So I expected them to freeze for a second, and then to react, and then to change their minds, and finally to do what they should have done first, which was come swarming out of the car and straight at us. But they would do it fourth, not first, which would give me three clear seconds to get my business done,
one thousand, two thousand, three thousand
, like the long lonely flight of John Kott’s bullet, through the cold Parisian air.

My business was to aim the Glock at Charlie White’s head in a threatening manner, while using the linoleum knife in my other hand to cut the rear guard’s seat belt, in two places,
slash, slash
, and then to lean in and launch a kind of backhand elbow to the far side of the guy’s head, so he ended up falling out, and then to shuffle sideways and do it all again, to the guard in the front,
slash, slash
, the elbow, the guy falling out, and then to turn and kick the back seat guy, in the head, and the front seat guy, the same, to keep them out of action on the ground, and then to hustle back to the Ford, and move it out the way, and jump out again, and turn, by which time I was into the fourth second, and they were out of their car.

But I had to fire anyway. All part of the plan. But not at their tyres. The angle was wrong. The bullet would have bounced off, literally. Tyres can be freakishly strong. Best way to disable a modern automobile is to fire through the grille. Under the hood. All kinds of wires there, and computer chips, and sensors.

Which is what I did. Four rounds, spaced but fast, crouched wide around my armoured door,
bang-bang-bang-bang
, which set the four guys back a step, which gave me time to lunge forwards and slam my front door shut, and to hurdle the guys on the ground, and to shuffle and pivot and dump myself down next to Charlie, and to haul my rear door shut, while Nice in the front hit the gas, having used her own Glock and her own knife on the short guy, and the Rolls-Royce surged forward like a tidal wave and howled down the street. The four guys ran after us for half a block, just like the movies, and then they stopped, and watched us go.

FORTY-SEVEN

THE ROLLS-ROYCE FELT
exactly like it should, given the things people like to say. It was very hushed, and it was very smooth. The rear bench was built like an armchair in an officers’ club. It was deep, and wide, and soft. Next to me Charlie White was still belted in. His body was facing front, but his head was turned, and he was staring at me. A strand of his hair had fallen out of place. Up close his nose was like most of an avocado pear. But overall he looked exactly like a gang boss. He was full of power and strength and confidence.

I said, ‘Are you armed, Charlie?’

He said, ‘Kid, you know you just signed your own death warrant, right? Please tell me you’re clear about that. No one does what you just did.’

‘But?’

‘But nothing.’

I said, ‘There’s always something, Charlie.’

‘Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?’

‘So much I should cut my losses and shoot you in the head and walk away while I still can?’

He said, ‘You could do that. Or you could get a stay of execution just long enough to get out of town. That’s what I’m offering. But I only ask once, and I take your first answer, so you’d better put your thinking cap on, kid, about what comes next, about how hard it’s going to be, and how hard it’s going to be every day for the rest of your life.’

‘What do you want us to do in exchange for that?’

‘Get out of my car.’