Hawthorn told him sometimes about other cases he was working on. A couple of murders. A robbery. Vague, no details. Sometimes Hawthorn asked him if he knew certain people. He named names. Most of them were unfamiliar. Once or twice there was one he thought he knew, but he said nothing.
– How come you know no one?
– I’m not …
– What?
He brushed the skin of his chest.
– I’m not a crook. I don’t hang out with crooks.
Hawthorn said nothing for a while. He was smiling.
– What are you then?
– I just do the driving thing.
– And the pickpocketing thing. And the hotel thing.
– I rob, sometimes. Yeah. But I’m not a crook. I don’t like crooks. I don’t like all that. I stay away from it. I avoid those people.
– How are you going to get ahead?
– I don’t want to get ahead.
Mishazzo asked him one day:
– Why are you looking in the mirror?
– I am?
– Are we being followed?
– No. I don’t think so.
– So why?
– I didn’t know I was looking in the mirror.
– You’re looking in the mirror all the time.
– Sorry.
– That’s OK. You know what to do if we’re being followed?
– I tell you. I drive normally. I describe the car.
– Yes. If it happens, then we drive back to Tottenham. Back to the office. Nice and slow. Nice and normal. It will be police.
He nodded.
Mishazzo swayed his shoulders so that his head travelled from one edge of the mirror to the other.
– If it isn’t police then what do you do?
Price had said that it would always be police. That no one else is that stupid.
– I don’t know.
Mishazzo laughed.
– Then we call the fucking police my friend. We call 999 and you put your fucking foot down.
One day he counted up all the things he’d written. And he counted up all the things she had written. He had written more. More sentences, entries, whatever they were. He wasn’t sure about words. Sometimes she wrote a whole page. Or more. Sometimes she drew little doodles, or pictures. Faces and flowers and a house with windows and a fence in the front and a path to the door, and the sun overhead. Her drawings were terrible, like an infant’s. But he stared at them for ages. Once he started to draw something. A face, he thought. But it was a mess from the first mark he made and he scribbled it out.
He didn’t tell Hawthorn about the book.
He thought that if she died, he would keep it. But he would destroy it before he died, and he would let no one else look at it. No one else in the world, ever, would read it. It would be something that had happened only for them, and when they were gone it would be something that had never happened.
That made him sad to the point of crying, almost, and he felt like an idiot.
One morning there was a man in the car with Mishazzo. This was not unusual. But this time Mishazzo did not want to go to a café. He wanted to be driven around.
– Drive east. Go toward the Olympics. I need to see what it looks like now. We can talk as we drive.
He could sense a pause as the other man gave Mishazzo a look.
– It’s OK, Mishazzo said quietly. It’s good.
They talked about cars. They talked about money. They talked about expanding something that was working well. The man mentioned a name. Gull. Gull, he said, wanted no
splash-back
. They talked about money again. Mishazzo produced a little calculator from his briefcase and they added numbers. Small numbers. 86 plus 134, 17 divided by 5. The other man wrote down some of the numbers on a scrap of paper on his knee. They seemed then to be talking about hurting someone, but then they seemed to be talking simply about collecting someone. Or something. Then they were laughing about everything.
He drove around the Olympic fences, past the hoardings – the long colourful boards sometimes marked by graffiti. They couldn’t really see anything. Mishazzo got bored and told him to turn around. In the back seat they were talking about music. Mishazzo wanted a CD played, then a different one, a specific song.
He braked sharply. He’d been fiddling with the CD player. There was a short silence. Then he apologized.
– My fault, said Mishazzo. I employ you to drive. Not to be my fucking DJ.
Mishazzo and the other man started to sing in the back seat. They sang songs they both knew in raucous, untuned voices and laughed, and he found himself laughing as well, and singing sometimes too when he knew the words or the tune.
The man handed him a roll of money when he got out of the car. It was nearly one hundred pounds in grubby fives and tens that smelled of his father’s kitchen, and sweat, and ropes. Mishazzo told him to drive back to the office. That was it for the day.
– Now you see, he said. Now you see how dull my business is. But it pays well. And it makes you friends.
They lay next to each other in the bed and touched each other and laid their faces one against the other and when they were tired of talking they fucked and when they were tired of fucking they talked, and many different afternoons became one afternoon that persisted in his mind for the rest of his life and he never knew what to make of it, then or after.
– What does Mishazzo do?
– What?
– Mishazzo. Why are you interested in him? What does he do?
– You don’t know?
– I know some.
Hawthorn didn’t say anything.
– I know he does some buying and selling. Stolen cars.
Hawthorn nodded.
– I know he owns a couple of cafés.
– He does.
– They’re just cafés.
– Yeah. They are.
– So what else does he do?
Hawthorn hummed and rubbed his nose.
– He owns two launderettes.
– I didn’t know that.
– Yeah. The launderettes, the cafés. He owns that building in Tottenham.
– The office? I thought he rented.
– No. He’s the landlord. Or maybe his daughter is.
– He has a daughter?
– He has two daughters. Their mother is dead.
– So what does he do?
– He provides. Largely speaking, that’s what he does. He’s a businessman. He talks. He makes deals. He negotiates. He opens up conversations with people running various … rackets, all over North London. He offers them things they might need. Resources. And he introduces people to other people. Broker. Provider. Facilitator.
He nodded. Mishazzo was a businessman. A talker. Like his father.
– It’s tangled.
He wanted to ask Hawthorn how dangerous Mishazzo was. Whether he hurt people. Whether he got Price to hurt people. Whether that was part of business or whether it was all exaggerated.
– What laws has he broken then?
– All of them.
– He doesn’t kill people.
Hawthorn looked at him suddenly, his eyes a bit wide.
– He doesn’t kill people, he agreed.
– He doesn’t?
– No.
They said no more about it. He didn’t believe him.
Child looked at them. He looked at them and seemed to shut his eyes for a tiny moment. He looked from one to the other and seemed to pause, and shut his eyes. For a second. Two seconds. And then he muttered
Oh for fuck’s sake
, and he went to the counter to pay for their coffees and Hawthorn’s slice of cake and the bottle of water.
He never saw Child again.
Mishazzo stared at him. In the mirror. All he could see was the middle of Mishazzo’s face. His eyes. Half of his forehead. His nose. His upper lip. Mishazzo said nothing. He didn’t want music. They were driving to the café in Holloway. He looked sad. Depressed. As if he wanted to confide something.
– Your girl is good?
– Yes sir.
– What is her name?
– Mary, he lied.
– Mary?
Mishazzo laughed.
– She is a virgin?
He turned into Seven Sisters Road. The sun came through the passenger window and warmed his face. He did not want anything to go wrong.
– She has a job?
– Yes.
– What does she do?
– She’s a receptionist.
Mishazzo nodded.
– Where is she a receptionist?
– At an estate agent’s.
– Where?
– Oh. Down in the City.
– Down in the City. She likes that?
– Yes, I think so.
– You think so?
– She likes it. She likes working there. She likes the people. She likes being in the City.
– Commercial?
He looked in the mirror at Mishazzo’s third of a face. He could tell nothing from it.
– What do you mean?
– Commercial property? Residential property?
– Residential.
Mishazzo’s voice was impatient. Maybe it was the traffic. There wasn’t much of it but it was veering all over the road.
He felt his face light up. His skin was hot on the left.
– Do you want me to stay on Seven Sisters?
– Why wouldn’t you stay on Seven Sisters?
Mishazzo’s eyes were on his left. Everything was burning up. He wanted to crash the car. For a second he thought about it. He could swerve suddenly, glance off the van on his inside, spin around, be hit by the approaching bus. He could skid off the road into railings. He could hurt himself if he did it hard enough. He could end up in a bed with people bringing him grapes and cards, watching TV all day, with her by his side.
He shifted in his seat so that the eyes were smaller. He drove with his shoulder pressed up against the door as if trying to open it.
He called Hawthorn. It went straight to his voicemail and he hung up.
He walked through the park. He tried Hawthorn again. Twice.
He sat at a bench and looked at some boys playing football. He called again and left a message.
– Call me please. As soon as you can.
She was at work. He could see the café from the bench. He stayed put. There were the boys playing football. There were some people walking. There were no parked cars.
She was surprised to see him.
– What’s wrong?
– Nothing is wrong. I finished early. Thought I’d come over.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal for a while. She kept asking him what was wrong. He kept laughing and saying
Nothing. Nothing
.
Hawthorn called him back just as they got home.
– What is it?
– Nothing.
– Nothing?
– What time tomorrow?
– The usual. What’s wrong?
He looked at his fingers and watched her close the curtains against the low sun. He felt that something awful was
happening
but he didn’t know what, and he stared at her back in shadow and suspected that the feeling itself was the awful thing, and then she said something and he lost his train of thought and Hawthorn had hung up.
He waited early by the car, smoking, looking at the street. He wasn’t thinking about anything. He didn’t notice Price until he heard him. Price standing in the door of the café a couple of doors down from the office. They sat in there a lot of the time – Price and some of the others that he’d driven around. They sat there fiddling with their phones, reading the papers, annoying the waitress, doing whatever it was they did, coming and going.
– You avoiding me?
– What?
Price motioned to him. He glanced at the office, threw down his cigarette, walked over.
– I never see you these days. You don’t socialise. You don’t come see me.
– Well, I’m working. It’s been busy.
– Lots of busy. Hither and thither and yon. It’s as good as The Knowledge.
He nodded. Price was smiling. All friendly, hands in pockets, rocking a little back and forth.
– How’s the car? It need anything?
– It’s fine.
– How’s the missus?
He tensed, and his stomach did something, and he tried to look blank but he was sure he didn’t.
– Who?
– Mary Mary, all contrary. The boss was telling me. You should come out at the weekend. To my place. Sunday
afternoon
. I have some of the lads over sometimes. Girlfriends, wives, kids. That sort of thing.
Price was wearing jeans. A blue jumper. He was smiling. He had his hands stuck halfway into his pockets.
– Don’t look so fucking shocked, kid. It’s a good thing. Wholesome. Family-friendly. Barbecue and drinks. Got a big plunge-pool thing for the kids. Watch out for Vinnie’s missus after she’s had a couple. You’ll love it.
– Whereabouts?
– Near Braintree. Easy. You can take the car if you want I suppose. But probably better to hitch a lift with Pawel. Teetotal. He doesn’t live far from your place. Five minutes. Give or take.
– I said I’d see my father this weekend.
Price frowned.
– Don’t bring your father, no offence.
– I mightn’t be able to make it though.
Price rocked back and forth. Glanced to his left.
– You should come. You know, put on some friendly. It’d be smart. Let me know tomorrow.
Price nodded to his left.
– Your date is here.
Mishazzo was standing outside the office door looking at them, a little smile on his face, his umbrella clutched under his arm and his hands peeling the cellophane off a packet of cigarettes.
They drove all the way to Luton, not talking, listening to Ernest Carvallio’s
Music Of The Barrios,
the smile on Mishazzo’s face as constant as the road.
– Is there a procedure? For … if I get in trouble. What happens? What do you do?
Hawthorn rubbed his eyes. He smelled of a long day.
– You’re a long way off anything like that.
– He knows where I live.
– Of course he knows where you live. What made you think he wouldn’t know where you live? You probably told him where you live. When you went there first.
– No.
– Your father then.
He said nothing. He sipped his coffee. He bounced his fucking knee and he looked out the fucking window.