East of Innocence (6 page)

BY MIDDAY, MY
hangover has abated, three cans of Coke undoing the ill effects of the bottle of Burgundy and three glasses of rum I’d emptied the night before after getting back from Gabe’s, soothing my murderous and culpable mood in front of banal late-night television. I am ready for Baldwin’s visit now, infused with that warm, charged, delicious anticipation I always feel before the threat of confrontation and violence; it is the feeling I imagine an addict experiences walking home to his flat with his score in his pocket, about to sate an urge that can never be fully mastered.

Baldwin keeps me waiting, but I would not have expected anything less. Twenty minutes late, I hear the bell ring and walk to my small lobby, let him in. He walks past me without a word, looking at the tiny entranceway with the deliberately unimpressed air of a man taking a look about a vacant house he knows he can well afford. Although I have to admit that what he sees is not in the least impressive: two metres of mismatched floor tiles and a bulb that wants a lightshade.

‘Through here?’ he asks, opening the only door, into my office. I do not bother to reply, follow him in, already furious that he has taken control of my space. If he sits behind my desk, I promise myself emptily, I will break his jaw. All policemen are the same, I know, years of state-backed authority washing out any vestiges of human manners; they no longer have any need of them, do not have to ask permission to act as they please. Yet Baldwin takes this arrogance and somehow makes it personal; I feel as if he has my arm up behind my back. I push past him, get behind my desk, stake my claim. He looks at me, amused, and lowers himself into the chair facing the desk. I am surprised it is big enough for his bulk. Baldwin is massive; perhaps eighteen stone, perhaps forty-five years old, his face loose and pouchy but beneath the soft exterior he gives the impression of immense solidity, uncooked pastry draped over granite. He has grey hair cut short and flat on top like a marine sergeant’s and flat incurious eyes which regard the world as a dentist would a loose tooth. Just as, by outraged consent, we will no longer suffer predatory paedophiles to act as priests, so too I believe we should not allow violent sadists to join the police force. His presence makes me want to take a shower.

‘Sit down,’ he says. He is in my place of work, giving me orders. It is as if, as I step into the ring for a much awaited title fight, my opponent attacks me from behind with a baseball bat. How can I have been psychologically ambushed in my own office?

‘You want to talk about Billy Morrison,’ I say, my voice level, trying to regain the initiative. Baldwin pats his
jacket, retrieves a notepad from his inside pocket, takes his time.

‘I’ll ask the fucking questions,’ he says calmly. ‘If you don’t mind.’ He looks down at his notepad then looks up, smiles at me. But his eyes remain flat and expressionless; he has the unassailable air of a predator who long ago took his place at the top of the food chain for granted. I am not easily intimidated but Baldwin makes me wish we had an ocean between us. ‘Francis Connell, that’s your old man. Right?’

‘That has nothing to do with the investigation at hand,’ I say. ‘Let’s keep to the script, shall we?’

‘Just saying,’ he says. ‘You in the law, him the wrong side of it. Wonder what he thinks. Of all this.’ He gestures with his hand at my little office. ‘All this,’ he repeats, allowing himself a soft wet chuckle.

‘Billy Morrison,’ I say. ‘We discuss him or this conversation is over.’

‘Right. Down to business. I’ve got some information on young William Morrison, something you might find useful. Save you some of your no doubt valuable time.’ He looks around, looks at me.

‘Go on.’

‘Don’t fucking
go on
me, pal,’ he says. ‘First things first. I help you, I’m going to need something from you.’

‘As an officer of the law, any information you might have pertinent to my client’s case, you are obliged to share with me,’ I say. ‘You know that.’

Baldwin closes his notepad, pokes it back in his jacket pocket. He leans forward, the chair creaks ominously. ‘See that? That’s me going off the record. Right?’

‘Not right,’ I say. ‘This meeting is finished.’

‘Hold up,’ says Baldwin. ‘Let’s see if we can’t help each other. Now, I’ve got a confession to make. I made my mistakes, with Terry. Used the stick, not the carrot. Bad psychology. Didn’t work.’

‘Who’s Terry?’

‘Right, yeah. Nice try. Fucker’s skipped off, someone tells me he’s in Spain but nothing I can do about that now. He did pass on some useful information though. See, I want what he gave you. You give it to me, I’ll help you out with Billy Morrison. The carrot.’ He looks at me, head to one side as if he’s inspecting a suspect mole. ‘I think I’d need a bigger stick for you.’

‘So tell me what you know about Billy Morrison’s case,’ I say. ‘It’d better be some carrot.’

‘And you’ll hand over the discs?’

‘What would I want with them?’ I say.

It turns out Billy, as Baldwin explains it, doesn’t quite fit the role of innocent victim he has been playing in his hospital bed. Ten nights ago, he and three friends piled into a Transit van, drove up an isolated farm track five miles from junction 28 of the M25 and cut their way through a link of quarter-inch chain securing the gates of a wire fence that ringed a corrugated iron-sided barn. They used an angle grinder to cut through the lock on the barn door and loaded up twenty thousand pounds’ worth of Japanese stereo equipment, which, in turn, had vanished from a shipping container in Tilbury Docks a week earlier.

In Billy’s world, the perfect crime constitutes one you are not caught at the scene of, and Billy made it back to his house unscathed. As far as he was concerned, he had got away with it; having got away with it, he could not help but boast of it. And this boasting inevitably reached the ears of the aggrieved party, in this case, Baldwin told me, his jowls wobbling with spiteful mirth, a serious character called Vincent Halliday, a local underworld name I am familiar with myself and who had arranged the initial robbery from Tilbury Docks. I can easily imagine his reaction on being informed that not only had he been ripped off by Billy bloody Morrison, but also that Billy was telling anybody who would listen about what a piece of piss it had been.

Billy’s hit and run was no accident. The hit that Halliday put out on him in retribution, Baldwin tells me, is the worst-kept secret since Prince Harry was born with ginger hair. He doesn’t know who drove the car, doesn’t particularly care; this is one investigation that’s going nowhere fast.

‘Spare you the trouble,’ he says. ‘Fuck that Billy Morrison off, he’s a mug and he’s a fucking dead man. Yes?’

Oh, Billy. I busy myself with arranging the pens on my desk, unwilling to meet Baldwin’s eyes, which I know will be relishing this moment. Knowledge is power, and right now Baldwin is making me look like a primary-school child playing at lawyers.

‘So, quid pro whatever. The discs, sunshine. Now would be good.’

‘I don’t know what I can do with that information,’ I say, looking up at him. ‘Do you have any evidence?’

‘Very funny. The discs.’

‘Because, this is my problem. If what you say is true, and if there is no evidence of this crime, then how am I going to prosecute this Halliday and get significant criminal damages for my client? And if I can’t get him damages, then how am I going to get paid?’ I frown at Baldwin, an expression of bafflement. ‘I thought you were going to help me?’

Baldwin looks at me in surprise. The penny is dropping; he begins to understand that I’m not going to hand over those discs. Even if it wasn’t for Terry and his sister, I would keep them on principle; anybody who comes to my territory and acts in the manner he has acted will get nothing from me.

‘Oh,’ says Baldwin. ‘You’re going to make me fetch my big stick.’

‘You found the door all on your own on the way in,’ I say. He doesn’t reply. I meet his eyes, regard him coolly. ‘So go on,’ I say. ‘Fuck off.’

Visiting hours start at four o’clock, and the two-hour wait to see Billy feels like an age, which I try to occupy with casework but cannot concentrate. The electric buzz from my meeting with Baldwin has me wired like a come down from a night out clubbing. Despite winning the closing round, I cannot shake the feeling that from the bell Baldwin had the upper hand; I replay the moment he walked into my office obsessively, trying different tactics, taking different shots, trying to work out how I could have taken him on points.

At five minutes past four, I walk up to Billy’s bed where he is talking on his mobile, laughing the exaggerated bark of an Essex wide boy on the make. I would like to force his phone into his mouth, down his throat, the thought of his strangled surprise making my hands become fists. I stand over his bed and he looks up at me, sees something in my face; I have never been adept at hiding my feelings. He says a quick ‘Ta-da,’ hangs up.

‘All right, Danny son?’ he says.

‘If your legs weren’t already broken,’ I say, ‘I’d be doing them now.’

As far as Billy is concerned, the crime that put him in his hospital bed is an event as distant as his own birth; he is intellectually incapable of making the link between his petty criminality and his present situation. But my gloves are off; I will not pull my punches.

‘Heard of a man named Vincent Halliday?’ I ask him. Billy’s eyes glance guiltily across the room, down, anywhere but at me, like a dog that’s been caught eating the Sunday joint. ‘Because he knows all about you. And while I’m making a mug of myself calling the police five times a day, he’s drinking fucking Martinis in his swimming pool wishing whoever it was he paid to have you offed did a better fucking job of it.’

But I am not a cruel man; my words have hit home and I have no interest in punishing Billy unnecessarily. I stop, watch him process what I have told him.

‘Halliday?’

‘Remember those stereos you stole? They were his.’ Of course, this isn’t entirely accurate; but Halliday did steal
them first, which, in the criminal world I have more than a passing acquaintance with, does confer some extra-legal rights. ‘He had you taken out, Billy. I’m sorry.’

Billy may be simple, but he too has an instinctive knowledge of the rules his world is governed by and he immediately knows, with a sudden clarity he is unused to, that by crossing a man like Halliday his life is now forfeit; that this temporary sanctuary in a hospital ward is as transient as a summer’s day. Quietly he begins to weep. Again, oh, Billy. He looks up at me like a baby looks up at a bottle of milk.

‘Danny? You can sort this, right?’ A small tear rolls down his thin, unloved and unshaved cheek. ‘Right?’

8

GABE’S VOLLEY HAS
never been as reliable as his baseline game but, now that he is playing off one leg and a prosthetic limb, a cup on one end attached to his knee and a Nike Air trainer on the other, he has no choice but to stay up at the net; he lacks the speed to chase a wide, deep ball down a tramline. Perhaps I am being harsh on his volley; since his accident he has worked on his net game and right now is putting away angled balls with a casual contempt. Our opponents, two lean investment bankers who sauntered on to court and dumped their expensive tennis bags with a complacent authority, are now running with sweat and wondering how these two men, one with a false leg and the other a meaty thug as wide as he is tall, can be beating them quite so viciously.

I am serving, thirty–love up in the third game of the second set, one set and two games up in the match. These men are not used to losing, either in tennis or, I suspect, judging by their top-line equipment and the Porsche they arrived in, life; they do not appear to be enjoying the experience. My serve has seventeen stone of well-drilled bulk
behind it and the man I am serving to, his once-immaculate blond hair plastered to his scalp and eyes dark with exhaustion, can only watch the ball hiss past him down the T and thud into the green screens hanging on the fence behind. He takes a deep ragged breath and goes for his towel. Gabe turns around, looks at me, winks.

‘Serve.’

I nod, grin, bounce the ball, toss it up and cream a flat serve wide to my opponent’s backhand. He doesn’t get within two metres of it, flailing flat-footed, his racket waving clumsily like a drunk wielding a broken bottle. He is absolutely finished. If it had not been for the graceless air of privilege they arrived with, I might feel pity for our opponents.

Gabe has been given, by the local tennis authority, special dispensation to remain exclusively a net player except on his serve, not swapping after every point as the rules stipulate. It is an allowance that he did not ask for and argued strenuously against, until the pain I felt watching him forlornly chase passing shots caused me to deliver an ultimatum: stay at the net or I would no longer play with him. As a war hero, there has been little muttering; besides, Gabe is a popular and well-liked man. Of course, there will always be exceptions.

‘This is bullshit,’ says the man who has just watched my serve go by, tanned with close-shaved black hair and a razor-sharp goatee. ‘I stayed at the net all game I’d have energy to burn.’