Take the A-Train (23 page)

‘Sharman, show yourself at the door, arms above your head.’ I did as I was told. The staircase itself was dark, but I stood in the light coming from the room. ‘Turn around,’ the voice ordered. Once again I did as I was told. I heard the sound of the bolt of an automatic weapon being thrown and footsteps again and felt cold metal on my neck. ‘Cocked and ready, son,’ whispered the voice. ‘Walk into the room, and no messing.’ Again I obeyed. ‘OK, turn around.’ I did, and saw a good-looking black guy in a tweed overcoat open over a dark jacket and grey trousers, a white button down shirt, neat tie and black shoes. He looked like a schoolteacher except for the S&W 9mm semi-automatic he held comfortably in his right hand.

‘Nice touch, the gun,’ I said. ‘It takes all the formality out of the rest of the outfit.’

‘Shut up,’ said the black man wearily.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Alistair?’ I said. ‘I’m Nick Sharman. You must be Christian.’ I put out my hand.

Christian just stood there. ‘Don’t screw around,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ So we went.

He wrapped the shotgun in my mac and tucked it under his arm and put the shells into the side pocket of his coat which spoiled the line somewhat, but I said not a word. He allowed the folds of the mac to cover his gun hand too. ‘Just walk to the car,’ he said. ‘No tricks.’

‘No tricks,’ I said. It wasn’t him I wanted to see anyway.

When we got to the street I couldn’t see the Sierra. I didn’t look too hard, I didn’t want Christian getting suspicious. But I thought that it would be just my luck if Fiona had suddenly been taken short and was right then racing round looking for a ladies’ loo.

Christian gestured at a gun-metal grey Audi parked a few car lengths down the road. A tiny red light behind the windscreen showed that it was alarmed up. ‘That’s us,’ he said.

He took a remote control from his coat pocket with his left hand and pressed a button. The red light winked out. I walked in front of him to the car. ‘Doors are open,’ he said. I got in the passenger side, he got behind the wheel and shoved the shotgun on to the back seat. ‘I don’t really need this, do I?’ he said, referring to the pistol.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘You couldn’t take it off me anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d beat your shit in.’ And the gun disappeared under his coat.

Thus warned, I put on my seat belt and waited for the magical mystery tour.

Before he switched on the engine, he picked up the phone, punched out a number and said: ‘Got him.’

He drove the car out of Stockwell, through Clapham to Battersea. I didn’t look back once, but I wanted to.

I wondered if we were going to the lock-up, but we went past, down Silverthorne Road, into some back doubles and out in Queenstown Road opposite a block of nouveau desirable shops and restaurants. He pointed at one restaurant in particular, with a frontage twice as long as any of the others and a sign that read
LET
THE
GOOD
TIMES
ROLL
in dead neon over the front. Outside was parked a familiar looking BMW with a large figure in the driver’s seat. ‘That’s it,’ he said.

‘Smart place,’ I said. ‘Em did do well. Smart name too.’

‘But I don’t think they’re going to roll for you,’ said Christian.

‘You’d be surprised,’ I replied. ‘I can be the life and soul of any party.’

‘Not this one,’ he said dryly, spotted a gap in the traffic and pulled into the side road at the end of the block, then into an alley at the back where he stopped behind Teddy’s Suzuki.

A full set, I thought.

‘Out you get.’

I did as I was told, and he fetched the Winchester and propelled me through a door set in a high fence, across a yard and through another door into the kitchen of the restaurant. The kitchen was empty and cold, and haunted with the spicy ghosts of old cooking.

‘Let the staff off early?’ I asked.

‘We’re closed.’

‘And at the busiest time of the year too. Emerald won’t be pleased.’

‘He’s in no position to do anything about it.’

But he will, pal, eventually, I thought.

Christian closed and locked the kitchen door behind us, left the key in the lock, and walked me through the large dining room which was dim and shadowy but looked comfortable and expensive, with a huge bar along one wall, well stocked with spirits and mixers and all the paraphernalia of the cocktail barman’s trade. At the back of the bar was a mirror, fully twenty foot long, and I saw my reflection, which was none too clever.

He showed me another door in the side wall of the room, marked ‘Staff Only’, which opened on to a flight of bare stairs leading upwards. I walked up in front of him, through another door, and down a corridor. He stopped me outside a door about half way down, marked ‘Private’. He rapped on the frame with his fist.

‘Come in,’ said a voice I half recognised, and Christian gestured for me to open the door, which I did.

I
t was a tiny office, with just one barred window that allowed a little of the afternoon light to creep in over the sill before it was suffocated by the pall of cigarette and cigar smoke that floated across the room at shoulder height. The real illumination came from three low wattage fixtures set into the polystyrene ceiling. They gave off a custard yellow light that seemed to add to the gloom rather than dispel it. The room looked as if it had been furnished from the remnants of a garage sale, with a scarred wooden desk, clear except for a telephone and a huge ashtray overflowing with butts and ash, three chairs and a two-seater sofa that had seen better days. The walls were nicotine-coloured and the carpet was a dirty green that had been worn scabby in front of the desk and at the door.

The room was too crowded with people for comfort. Lupus sat in the Capo’s chair behind the desk, sucking on a Havana. Jack Dark sat primly on an upright armchair in front of the desk, Ronnie’s bulk about filled the sofa and Teddy stood leaning against the wall by the window, smoking a cigarette. The room smelt of sweat and deceit and stale smoke.

Christian pushed me inside, but not hard enough for me to retaliate. The four men already in the room looked at me, and I looked right back. ‘Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,’ I said. But they weren’t.

Christian threw the shotgun on to the desk and scattered the shells around it. ‘Heavy artillery,’ he said. ‘Not friendly.’

‘Sharman,’ said Lupus, ignoring the gun, ‘we’ve been expecting you.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Did you bake a cake?’

‘Get on with it,’ said Jack Dark. ‘We’re not here for conversation.’

‘What are we here for then?’ I asked.

‘As if you didn’t know,’ said Dark.

‘I’m here to help Emerald, like I always was,’ I said.

‘And yourself,’ said Dark.

These people had no concept of friendship. To them, friends were people you used, or who used you.

‘No,’ I said, ‘just Emerald.’

‘Bullshit!’ said Lupus. ‘People like you don’t give a shit for people like us. You smelt money, big money. We tried to kill you off and that didn’t work. Then Dark sticks his nose in and tried to buy you off. Stupid bastard!’ He gave Dark a particularly nasty stare. ‘You just kept coming. Now you’re here for the big pay-off.’

‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for who framed him. I don’t want any part of the money.’

‘Then you’re more of a mug than I thought.’ Teddy spoke for the first time.

‘Teddy,’ I said, ‘it really is you. I thought someone had pissed against the wall.’

His face suffused with blood and his nostrils flared. He came off the wall, fists clenched.

‘Stay still,’ said Lupus.

‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘Stay still. If you come near me, I’ll break your bloody neck.’

‘Big talk,’ he sneered.

‘I’d believe him, if I were you,’ said Lupus calmly. ‘He’s capable of doing it.’

Teddy subsided against the wall again, but kept screwing me, as if maybe I’d wilt like a flower out of water. Fat chance.

The telephone on the desk rang suddenly. Lupus scooped up the receiver and listened without speaking. He put it down after ten seconds or so. Everyone looked at him, but he said nothing.

‘How
did
you find us?’ asked Jack Dark after a moment.

‘I was lucky. I found one of your customers and they co-operated.’ Lupus gave Christian a killing look. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I would have kept on stirring the shit until the turd I was looking for popped up. You just made it a little easier. It was very careless of you to leave a bit of a customs sticker on the packet.’ Another killer look passed from Lupus to Christian. They were flying around all over the place this afternoon. ‘You’re not the pros I took you for. And as for those two who were fronting for you – Jesus, they were a bust waiting to happen.’

‘They had the right connections,’ said Dark. ‘And there’s plenty more where they came from.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s dispensable, even your supplier. And with him dead, I guess the game was about over. Were you doing business with him long?’

‘Long enough,’ said Lupus.

‘But why did you kill him?’

‘He got chicken,’ said Dark. ‘And greedy. He liked the money but he was afraid of getting pulled.’

‘Who can blame him?’ I asked. ‘Most people are.’

‘If you can’t do the time …’ said Dark. ‘He knew what he was letting himself in for. Then he got a conscience and decided we’d be better off out of the way.’

‘You didn’t have to torture them.’

‘He asked for it,’ said Dark. ‘Nobody crosses me.’ He said it with such certainty that I believed him.

‘And the woman too?’

‘What was I supposed to do? He wouldn’t talk, the crazy bastard. He took my money, screwed me on the deal, tried to turn us in and when that didn’t work, fucked off, vanished. I don’t know who he thought he was dealing with. It was a bit of a surprise when we turned up on his doorstep. And he still wouldn’t tell me where the cash was. So Ronnie here had to show him the error of his ways.’ Ronnie almost blushed. ‘But it wasn’t until we started on that tart he was shacking up with that he’d tell us where he’d put the money.’

‘How did you find him?’

‘The woman. She was straight. Had a kid, a little boy who lived with her mother. She had to take his Christmas presents round. Stupid slag. We had someone watching the mother’s flat, and he followed her to where they were hiding out. We heard about it as we were leaving the Indian, so we made a detour.’

‘How the hell did he know to call me?’

‘You’ve got a friend on the force, haven’t you?’ said Dark.

‘Yes.’

‘When he started sniffing around, Taylor got to hear about you.’

Taylor had sent out a cry for help, and I hadn’t answered. Nice one, Nick!

I could still smell the stench in the flat and see the faces of the man and woman who’d died in agony. It was another little debt I had to pay back.

‘And when I did go, I took one of yours with me.’ I looked at Teddy who was still screwing me. ‘You must have thought it was your birthday.’

‘We did,’ said Dark. ‘But it was lucky for you you called him and he called us. If you’d turned up while we were there, we’d’ve done for you too. Especially after that malarky with Ronnie in the restaurant. It just seemed like a better idea to leave you around for the coppers to find.’ He looked over at Teddy. ‘If he’d have hit you a bit harder, you’d be out of our hair now.’

‘Banged up with Emerald in jail, you mean?’

‘Right.’

‘It’s just as well I’ve got a hard head, then. So Emerald was telling me the truth all along. He really doesn’t know anything about all this.’

‘That’s right,’ said Lupus. ‘We just used him for what we needed. He’s getting old and stupid and soft. When he bought his bloody restaurant, he thought he could just sit back and enjoy life.’

‘Such loyalty,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you making enough money on the straight?’

‘There’s never enough money,’ said Teddy.

‘You’re the worst of the lot,’ I said with as much contempt in my voice as I could muster. ‘You’re his own flesh and blood. I thought he was looking after you.’

He didn’t even bother to grace the remark with an answer.

‘So if Emerald had nothing to do with the drug dealing, why did Taylor grass him?’ I asked.

‘He didn’t,’ said Lupus, and smiled mirthlessly. ‘He grassed an address. It was the old man’s hard luck that his name was on the lease. Taylor thought Teddy owned the lock-up. Some joke! He doesn’t even own the suit he’s wearing. Watkins, see, but Old Bill nicked the wrong Watkins and it worked out good for us.’

‘But not for Em.’

He nodded.

‘How did you find Taylor in the first place?’

‘Same old story. He needed money. He had a house he couldn’t afford down near the coast. A car he couldn’t afford. A wife he couldn’t afford, and he liked women and gambling. Expensive women, and he was a lousy gambler. Teddy used to see him around the clubs. He likes gambling too. One time Taylor was drunk and coked up and on a losing streak, not that that was unusual. He told Teddy he could get as much stuff as he wanted, at a good price and in bulk. It’s’ not surprising considering half the dope confiscated in England ended up with him. My old friend there, Jack, put up the cash and we used a few of the boys who were fed up with going straight to help us out. They were glad to do it. There’s not a lot of excitement in catering these days.’

‘But why did you leave the stuff lying about when you’d been tipped off that the law was going to bust the lock-up?’ I asked.

‘We didn’t,’ said Lupus. ‘We went down and cleared the place out, at what, ten that night? Taylor planted the stuff later. He didn’t even know that we knew anything was up. We certainly weren’t going to hang around and watch what happened, were we?’

‘But half a million quid’s worth!’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it a bit excessive?’

‘He wanted to make sure everyone involved went down hard,’ said Dark. ‘No bail or anything. He didn’t care what he did. He was getting flakey. His bosses knew he was up to something. He was spending dough like water. He got the shits and done a runner. He didn’t want to be caught with any gear on him, so he dumped it on us. He already had the cash. If he hadn’t panicked, none of this would have happened. Thank Christ he didn’t know I was bank-rolling the deal.’