The Crime Trade (12 page)

He walked along until he came to the house where his friend had lived for more than ten years. He stopped for a moment at the gate, recognizing the familiar yellow paint, then steadied himself before walking the three yards through the tiny but well-kept front garden up to the front door. A bunch of flowers wrapped
in black paper had been placed in the porch. He knocked hard on the door.
A few seconds later he heard footsteps, and then it opened to reveal a tall, bespectacled gentleman with a kindly smile, a dog collar and not much hair. 'Good afternoon,' he said. 'Can I help
you?'
Stegs's heart banged hard in his chest and he had to fight back a sudden urge to shriek loudly. 'Yes,' he said, as sombrely as possible. 'I'm here to see Mrs Vokerman. I worked very closely with her husband.'
The vicar nodded slowly and wisely. Stegs doubted if he was more than a couple of years older than him, but he had the demeanour of a fifty-year-old. It probably went with the territory. He opened the door wider. 'Please come in.'
'My son.'
'I'm sorry?'
'My son. Sorry, I thought you were going to say "my son". You know, "Please come in, my son.'"
'I think that's Catholics, Mr . . . ?'
'Jenner. Mark Jenner.' He had to think about that last one.
'Come in, Mark. I am sure it'll be a comfort for Gill to see you.' He looked like he meant it too. Whatever you say about these Christians, they do try hard.
Stegs followed him through the hall and into the lounge, cursing himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut. Gill was in there, sitting in an armchair sipping a cup of tea. An older lady, with her grey hair tied into two huge buns like giant headphones round each ear, held onto Gill's arm. She also had a cup of tea. On the wall was a large framed photo of Yokes, Gill and the two kids, all looking very happy as they smiled into the camera. Other photos of his former colleague and family adorned the walls and mantelpieces of the room. It was half past two.
This time the previous afternoon the man of the house had been alive and well. Stegs almost burst into tears. Thank God he hadn't had that fourth pint.
'Hello, Gill,' he said, stopping enough distance away from her so she wouldn't smell the booze and fags. 'I came round to say how sorry I am about your loss. He was a good man.'
Thank you, Mark,' she said quietly, fixing him with a moderately disapproving look.
Stegs couldn't help wondering what Yokes had ever seen in her. She was a very plain woman to look at and did nothing to try to minimize it. She wore no make-up, dressed very conservatively and had a shrewish personality. Yokes wouldn't have won any good looks contests (he had a beard for a start), but he could have done a lot better than this.
'Please take a seat. This is my mother.'
The mother nodded menacingly.
The vicar plonked himself next to the woman Stegs would only ever know as Mother, while he himself took a seat at the other end of the room, furthest away from Gill.
'The police came round this morning,' Gill said wearily, staring up towards the ceiling. They talked for a long time but were unable to give me any details of how Paul died. Were you there?'
They all looked at him. The vicar was still smiling, or maybe that was just his normal expression. Stegs suddenly had a terrible desire to masturbate, to rush out of this room, lock himself in the toilet and pull one off at the wrist. It was a reaction he often got to speed, he wasn't sure why. It was ironic, really, because amphetamines made it very difficult to get a hard-on, something that at that moment was proving quite useful. A tentpeg stiffy in a room like this would have been a disaster.
For a couple of seconds he didn't answer as his thoughts shot off here and there, so she repeated the question. 'Are you finding it difficult to talk about what happened, Mark?' asked the vicar.
'No, I'm fine. Really.' He turned to Gill, putting on his most earnest expression. 'I'm not allowed to make any comment about it either, I'm afraid, Gill,' he said, trying to stop his teeth grinding. 'All I can say is that I was part of the same operation, and that his death would have been very quick. Very quick indeed.'
The mother gasped. The name of the Lord is a strong tower the righteous run into and are safe,' she said stiffly. Whatever that was meant to mean.
The vicar nodded slowly. These are very trying times,' he said, which was a bit of a statement of the obvious. 'We must all be strong.'
'How are the children taking it?' asked Stegs, unable to think of anything else to say.
'Jacob is very upset, as you can imagine. Honey's still too young to understand.'
'Where are they at the moment?'
'My dad's looking after them.'
'Kids are very resilient. Very, very resilient. They can get through this sort of thing. Yup, definitely. No problem.'
There was a long silence. Stegs felt himself sweating. The room was stifling.
'I am the living bread which came down from heaven,' said Mother. 'If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.'
No thanks, thought Stegs, with an inner shudder.
'Amen,' said Gill quietly, and he saw tears form in her eyes.
He had to get out of there, he couldn't handle it. There was a pressure building in his head that for some reason seemed far more intense than any of the situations he'd found himself in during his undercover activities. With the exception of Frank Rentners and the steam iron, of course.
'You must be traumatized yourself, Mark,' said the vicar gently. 'You've lost a friend.'
'We've all lost a friend,' said Gill, and this time the floodgates opened. Mother squeezed her arm tightly before leaning over and giving her another encouraging quote from the Bible.
Stegs and the vicar exchanged sympathetic looks. 'I'm sure I'll be OK,' he said.
'These are trying times,' the vicar repeated, 'but with the help of the Lord we will get through them. Are you a Christian, Mark?'
'I like to keep an open mind,' said Stegs, thinking that this would be the easiest answer. It was yes, no and maybe all rolled into one, and hopefully strangled any further debate on the issue.
'Mark's a biblical name. Mark was, as I'm sure you know, one of Jesus's apostles.'
'My real name's Ken,' said Stegs, who always liked to lie when he'd had a few.
'Ah, Ken,' mused the vicar wisely. 'It's a name I always associate with hard work.
'My dad was a dustman.'
'Tell me about Paul,' said the vicar breezily, changing the subject. I knew him from the congregation at the church, and from my work in the parish, but it would be nice to hear something from one of his colleagues.'
Stegs was beginning to go off the vicar. That idiot grin just didn't want to leave his face, like it was squatting there waiting for the bailiffs, defying court order after court order. Perhaps he was retarded.
Stegs saw that Gill had brought herself back under control now, and she and Mother were also waiting for him to say something. He wished he hadn't had that speed. It was making sitting still next to impossible. 'He was a lovely guy,' he blurted out.
'Absolutely lovely. Hard-working, hard-playing, hard-everything ... a real team player. Great to be around, and very conscientious. Always on the look-out for his mates. A real copper's copper. I loved that bloke, I really did.' He shook his head to signify his sense of loss but did it a little bit too vigorously and saw a bead of sweat fly off onto the carpet.
They all stared at it for a moment, then at him, no-one saying anything, and he thought that, no, this was worse than any undercover op. Even Rentners. His left leg was going up and down like the clappers.
'Are you all right, Mark?' asked Gill.
He nodded, just as vigorously. 'I'm fine, honestly. Just a bit shocked, that's all. The whole thing's taken it out of me. Do you mind if I go to the toilet?'
'Of course not. You remember where it is, don't you?'
He stood up. 'Yeah, I do. Straight down the hall, through the kitchen, and right to the end.'
He exited quickly, wiping his brow as soon as he was out of the lounge door. He walked down the hall, through the kitchen and into the room where they kept the washing machine and the tumble-drier. This part of the house was the extension, tacked on a couple of years back. A door opposite him led to the toilet. There was also a door to his right, and this was the one that Stegs opened before stepping into Vokes's study. It was small, but still getting on for twice the size of Stegs's, and was a lot more orderly. Photos adorned the walls: of family, of Yokes in uniform, on graduation day, all that sort of stuff. At the end of the room facing the window were his desk and PC.
Stegs walked over to the desk, had a quick check through the neat stack of papers in his former colleague's in-tray, then opened the top drawer as quietly as he could. There was a transparent box containing floppy disks in there, plus a dog-eared Len
Deighton novel (SS-GB, one of Stegs's childhood favourites) and a black address book. He pocketed the address book straight away, then went to open the box of disks, but it was locked. The lock didn't look too strong so he took it out and tried to force it open, but it wouldn't go. He scanned about inside the drawer for a key but there wasn't one in there. He tried again, pulling harder this time, amazed that a piece of plastic could be so stubborn.
Just then, he heard footsteps coming through the kitchen. His teeth clenched reflexively and he chucked the box back in the drawer, shutting it at the same time.
'What are you doing, Mark?'
It was Gill's voice. He turned round from his position staring out of the window into the Vokerman back garden and organic vegetable patch, and gave her a whimsical smile. 'I was just linking about Paul. I miss him, Gill. Already. I wish I could have done something, anything...' He picked up a photo of Yokes in a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt from the desk and stared at it for a moment, shaking his head as slowly as he could, but with dose to a gram of uncut amphetamines soaring through his bloodstream it was never going to be slowly enough.
His words and actions seemed to have the desired effect, howler, and the beginnings of a smile appeared on Gill's face. 'It's ping to be hard for all of us,' she said. 'Paul was a good Christian husband and father.'
'He was,' said Stegs, putting the photo back down and walking slowly towards the door. He suddenly had an urge to take a leak for real. 'It all just seems so ... so permanent.' She gave his arm a supportive squeeze and he shot her a grim smile. 'And do you know what? I've been thinking about him so much, I haven't even been to the toilet yet.'
'Would you like a cup of tea, Mark?'
'No, thanks,' he sighed. He couldn't think of anything worse than another twenty minutes in that lounge. 'I'd better be going.' He started to move past her but, like the worst kind of doorman, she blocked his way.
She smiled her grim, worthy smile that Stegs presumed was meant to make him feel part of the flock but came out more like the expression a movie killer pulls just before he knifes his victim. 'You've come a long way to see me,' she said. 'Stay for a quick cup. It'll do you good to talk about things.'
There was something in her voice that said she really didn't want him to argue, and would take it badly if he did. He knew then that she could smell the drink, and he wondered whether they were going to make an attempt to convert him. For the life of him he couldn't work out what Yokes had ever seen in her. She was only a small woman, but there was no doubt she had the ability to frighten even the most hardy of men.
'OK, I'll stop for a quick cup, but it really will have to be quick. I've got a number of important things I have to do this afternoon. I only came to pay my respects.'
That's very kind of you. We all appreciate it. Paul always found you a very capable colleague.'
Damned with faint praise, thought Stegs. Briefly, she looked past him towards the desk and he wondered whether she had any suspicions about what he'd been doing. She then looked back at him, gave him that smile again, and turned away. 'He was a good man,' she said, going back into the kitchen, and then repeated it. 'A very good man.' He decided she hadn't.
After he'd finished in the toilet, he went back into the lounge where he was handed a cup of watery tea and then spent a very long fifteen minutes talking about and listening to all the good things Paul Vokerman had done in his life, and how much he was going to be missed. The problem with tragedies is that all
conversations relating to them go round in circles, so not a lot was actually said, but it was said in a different way many, many times. Stegs lost count of the number of occasions he heard the phrases 'good man', 'committed Christian', 'sense of justice' and 'sadly missed', but one thing was for sure, it would be a long time before he wanted to hear any of them again. Yokes had definitely been a good bloke, no question, but Stegs didn't want to share his views on him with a bunch of people like this, so it was with a sense of real satisfaction that he finished his tea and got up to leave, with goodbyes all round.
The vicar stood up, shook hands firmly, and told him [hat if he ever needed to talk to anyone to please feel free to give him a call or drop him an email. 'My name's Brian and I'm always available.' He handed Stegs a card. It seemed even the servants of the Lord had gone twenty-first century.
Stegs thanked him and told Mother that it was nice to meet her. She nodded severely and said that the Lord always welcomed sinners back into the flock. It wasn't quite the same as a goodbye but, under the circumstances, it would do. She added that she hoped she might see him again. Not if I catch sight of you first, he thought.
Gill saw him to the door and thanked him once again for coming round.
'It's no trouble at all,' he told her. 'I only wish the circumstances could be happier.'
'How well did you know Paul?' she asked.
He already had one foot outside the door but stopped and looked at her, taken aback by this sudden question. She was staring at him intently as if trying to hunt down lies. It wasn't the sort of expression he'd seen on her face before.
'Well enough, I think,' he said cautiously. 'Why do you ask?'
She continued to stare intently and he felt himself sweating under her gaze. 'I don't know,' she said, choosing her words carefully. 'He didn't seem his usual self recently. I felt that he was concerned about something. That there was a weight on his shoulders of some sort.'
'He never said anything to me about it, Gill. It's a very difficult job that he did. Perhaps it was the pressure of that.'