The Wolves of London (7 page)

Luckily, though, Benny gave a dry chuckle.

‘Perhaps I’d better not answer that, on account of the fact that I might incriminate myself.’

He laughed harder, and I laughed along with him, just two old lags sharing a joke.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you want from me, Alex? Because touched as I am to hear your voice, I take it you’re not ringing to reminisce about the old days?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I need your advice.’

‘About what?’

I hesitated. ‘My daughter’s in a bit of bother through no fault of her own, and I’m… well, I’m out of my depth, to be honest. I’m not quite sure how to handle things. I was hoping you might be able to help.’

I realised how flimsy that sounded. But I couldn’t tell Benny what I really wanted – which was for him to scare the shit out of the thug who was threatening Candice. I had to let Benny come up with that suggestion himself. But how to manoeuvre him into that position? Benny wasn’t stupid; in fact, he was sharper than the weapons he had reputedly used to silence his enemies. I was beginning to wish I’d thought this through a bit more – or better yet, come up with a different plan. For all Benny’s pleasant manner, I couldn’t help but feel that I had let the big bad wolf in after all, and was now holding on to its tail in the hope that it wouldn’t unsheathe its claws and turn on me.

‘You must be desperate,’ he said, ‘to call me.’

‘I’m desperate to help my daughter,’ I replied carefully.

‘Is that so?’

I imagined his narrow face, shrewd and calculating, the coldness emanating from his ice-blue eyes, and I had to fight the urge to slam the receiver down.

A couple of seconds’ silence stretched between us, and then I said, ‘Look, Benny, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. You don’t want to be burdened with my stupid little problems. I mean, why would you? You’re a busy man.’

I clammed up, aware that I was starting to let my tongue run away with me. How old would Benny be now? Fifty? Maybe he’d retired; maybe he’d mellowed with age.

‘Have you forgotten what I told you?’ he said.

He had this knack of wrong-footing you, of making you feel as if he knew more than he was letting on. It was unsettling, and annoying too, because you
knew
he was being manipulative, and yet that didn’t stop you wanting to please him, to keep up with his way of thinking and not let him down. I suppose some of that was based on fear – you were scared of him becoming angry, because you knew what he was capable of – but not all. Benny might be outwardly unassuming, but he was also oddly charismatic. He had what is commonly termed a magnetic personality.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, cursing myself for sounding dumb.

‘In Pentonville. I said I’d look out for you, Alex. And I will. I’m a man who keeps his promises.’

Loath as I was to contradict him, I found myself saying, ‘We’re not in Pentonville now.’

‘Matter of opinion. Life’s just a bigger prison with better scenery.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. Before I could think of anything, Benny added, ‘Besides, when you sign up with me, Alex, you sign up for ever. It’s a life sentence, son.’

He laughed suddenly, a gravelly bark.

‘I’m joking. But seriously, Alex, I think we should meet up, talk about this. I can tell from your voice that you’re at your wits’ end – besides which, it would be a tonic to see your ugly mug again.’

Suddenly I wanted to backtrack, think of an excuse
not
to meet him, but I knew he’d see right through me if I hesitated. So instead I heard myself saying, ‘That’d be great. Thanks, Benny. I really appreciate it.’

We arranged to meet in a pub called The Hair of the Dog just off Barking Road, near the West Ham football ground at 5.30 that afternoon. The campus where I taught was in East London, just north of the river, so it wasn’t much more than a short northwards hop for me. I drifted distractedly through my day’s teaching like someone with a doctor’s appointment he wasn’t looking forward to, and was out of the building and hurrying towards the local DLR station at Beckton Park as soon as my last lecture of the day was over. I could have hung around a bit, taken more time to answer the questions of the half-dozen or so students who always lingered after lectures as if they didn’t have a million and one more interesting things to do, or even retreated to my tutorial room to catch up on a bit of marking. But I was restless, anxious to arrive at the rendezvous and stake out my territory before Benny arrived.

The Hair of the Dog was a corner pub on a busy road, its frontage decorated with hanging baskets as big as baby’s cribs. The expanse of wall beneath the windows was faced up with shiny ceramic tiles, which looked as though the building was protected by a chitinous, cockroach-brown exoskeleton. The old-fashioned, swinging pub sign depicted a wolfish, grinning dog wearing a bowler hat and holding a tankard of frothing ale in its strangely human-like paw. The pub was the cornerstone of a row of businesses which included a noodle bar, a dry cleaner’s and a hypnotherapy centre.

Stepping inside the pub, I was immediately assailed by that old-school and wholly comforting odour of stale cigar smoke (ingrained in the walls and still redolent), ancient cologne and the hopsy, earthy fumes of beer and whisky. The décor was old-school too – battered red leather and chipped mahogany tables. The central bar was shaped like a squared-off tug boat, which had clearly been designed in order to serve all four corners of the vast room which it bisected. The carpet was the colour of raw beef and the ceiling was still stained an acrid yellow-brown from the days when the place had been a smoker’s paradise.

At this time of day there were only a couple of dozen people occupying the myriad tables, which made the place look empty. I crossed to the bar, aware of the click of pool balls from an adjoining room and the burbles and bleeps, like robotic indigestion, from the unattended fruit machine. As a young man I’d spent many a drunken night in pubs like this, but now I felt incongruous, a middle-class pretender trying to fit in with the workers. Stupid, I know. This was London, after all. The great melting pot. My eyes scanned the bottles arranged on the shelf behind a young guy in a green polo shirt who was waiting patiently to serve me. I pondered a moment, then ordered a large glass of Chilean Merlot.

I’ve always loved that moment just before you start drinking when the barman sets your first full glass down in front of you. Today, though, my stomach was so jittery with nerves that even the gentle chink of the glass on the bar and the cherry red shimmer of light on the deep velvety surface of the wine failed to calm me. As soon as I’d paid him I all but snatched at the glass and gulped down my first mouthful. It was smooth, but it burned a little when it reached the bile in my stomach. I took another gulp, then another, and within a minute the glass was half-empty. I stopped myself from taking a fourth gulp and placed my hands on the bar. It wouldn’t do to be half-cut when Benny appeared. I needed to keep a clear head.

I was over half an hour early. I took my drink to a nearby table and passed the time wishing he’d arrive, in order to get this thing over with. I wished I’d bought a newspaper too, so that I could appear to be sitting casually, leafing through it, when he walked in. I did consider popping out and getting one, but then I got a mental image of me leaving the pub just as he was coming in, and him maybe thinking I was chickening out – so I stayed put.

The door opened a few times over the next half-hour, first to admit a gaggle of students – none of them mine, thank God – then a trio of brassy blondes, dolled up for a night out, one of whom gave me the eye, and then a couple of blokes who looked like they’d been working on a building site. Eventually, feeling like Johnny No-Mates, I took out my mobile and busied myself with it. I’d had a message from Candice asking if I’d had any further thoughts about our conversation last night, so I texted her back to say I was working on it. Then I logged on to the internet and looked at the news and sport headlines without taking anything in. I finished my wine, and at first decided not to get another until Benny turned up, then thought it’d look a bit pathetic if I was sitting there with nothing in front of me when he arrived. So I got up from my seat and went over to the bar, purposely ignoring the blonde who’d eyed me earlier and who I could see out of the corner of my eye was doing so again.

I ordered another Merlot, and was rooting in my pocket for change when I sensed a presence behind me. Thinking it was the blonde, I turned, and suddenly there he was.

‘Hello, Alex,’ he said.

He’d aged well. He had a few lines around his eyes and mouth, and his sandy hair, now cropped short, had turned grey at the temples, but otherwise he was tanned, slim and fit-looking. He was wearing a grey suit and a pale blue shirt with no tie – classy, but not too flash. Seeing him gave me a renewed and vertiginous realisation that I’d reached into the past and pulled it into the present despite my good intentions, and that there was now no turning back. I covered my apprehension by smiling and holding out my hand.

‘Benny. It’s good to see you. Thanks for coming.’

His grip was firm and dry. I was surprised to find he was shorter than I’d remembered, certainly a good three or four inches shorter than my own six-two. In prison he had always seemed to dominate any room he was in, and I supposed in the intervening years I’d mistakenly linked the force of his personality with a physical presence more intimidating than he actually possessed.

‘Good to see you too, Alex. What are you drinking?’

‘My shout,’ I said. ‘It’s because of me that you’re here, after all.’

His expression didn’t change, nor his stance. Yet suddenly I became aware that his pale blue eyes were fixed on me, and it was as if a chill had crept in from somewhere. I felt the muscles tighten in my cheeks.

Pleasantly he said, ‘Take it from me, I never go anywhere unless I want to.’

‘Course not,’ I said, trying to keep my own voice light. ‘Which is why I’m so grateful you agreed to see me.’

His ice-chip eyes regarded me a split second longer, and then flickered away to assess the array of bottles behind the bar. ‘I’ll have a Scotch and soda,’ he said. ‘No ice.’

Rather than making small talk at the bar he turned and padded across to a table near the window. He moved confidently, almost daintily, like a dancer. He sat and turned his face to the last of the day’s meagre daylight dribbling in through the distorted glass, his hands folded in his lap. He didn’t move until I had placed our glasses on the table and sat down, and then he turned to me.

‘Suppose you’re good at reading people, picking up signals?’ he said without preamble. ‘Non-verbal communication and all that?’

I shrugged, wondering whether I was being tested, hoping he wouldn’t ask me to psychoanalyse him. ‘Well, I know the theory. But practical application’s a different matter. What you become aware of more than anything, the further you read into the subject, is how many hang-ups you’ve got.’

Benny chuckled. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, that blonde over there’s got the hots for you.’ He indicated where he meant with the slightest twitch of his head.

I resisted the impulse to look over. ‘I’d have to have been blind not to have noticed that.’

We laughed together, and I felt my tension slowly easing. Then Benny said, ‘You’ve been regretting ringing me all day, haven’t you, Alex? You’ve been wondering whether you made a mistake by picking up the phone this morning?’

I’d half-raised my glass to my mouth, but now I froze and looked at him. ‘What makes you say that?’

He took a sip from his own glass, as if encouraging me to do the same. ‘Relax, son. I’m not gonna bite your head off. It’s just that I’m a bit of a psychologist myself. Purely amateur, of course. You have to be to survive as long as I have in my world. You have to know how people tick. You have to understand their motives and needs.’

‘In order to manipulate them?’ I asked, feeling suddenly bold.

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes. Sometimes just so that you know who you can trust and who’s likely to stab you in the back.’

I sipped my wine, trying not to rush it. ‘So you know how I tick, then?’

‘I know what a tough decision it must have been for you to ring me, and how you’ve been feeling since.’

‘Oh?’

He smiled. ‘No disrespect, but it’s not exactly rocket science. Soon as you did what you did to land in Pentonville you knew it was a mistake. You decided then and there to put it behind you, to better yourself, and I admire you for that. Most of the kids inside, they’re ignorant and lazy and they don’t know any better. They think being a criminal makes them tough and independent, and that going straight, abiding by the law, means they’re soft, that they can’t hack it.

‘But they’re wrong. Because it takes a lot more guts to do what you did. For young kids the pressure inside to be meaner and badder than everyone else is immense. If the government don’t want inmates to re-offend then they shouldn’t put them together in the first place. Criminality feeds off criminality. Stands to reason.’

‘So where
should
you put them?’ I said. ‘You can’t build individual prisons for people. There aren’t the resources to remove offenders from the environments that make them what they are.’

Benny gave me a crooked smile. ‘Now that’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?’

‘And what about you?’ I ventured. ‘Aren’t you putting yourself down by saying what you’re saying?’

‘I am what I am,’ Benny said. ‘I am what society made me. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, and I’m not saying I’m ashamed of it. It’s just the way it is.’

‘You seem to have done okay for yourself, though.’

‘Well, that’s because I was brought up right. I listened to my elders and respected what they told me. I kept my eyes and ears open and was encouraged to think for myself. I didn’t rush into things and I didn’t run before I could walk. It’s all about planning. Using a bit of this.’ He tapped the side of his head.

‘But this isn’t about me,’ he continued. ‘It’s about you. When I gave you my number and told you to call if you needed anything, I thought the odds were I’d never hear from you again. And to be honest, I hoped I never
would
hear from you again. If I did, I knew it’d mean that you were in trouble, or that you’d somehow slipped off the straight and narrow. I knew you’d keep my number, though, and not throw it away. Even back then you were a smart boy, and a careful one, and I knew you’d keep it as something to fall back on, just in case.’