To Kill For (3 page)

Somehow, Browne was now standing above me, peering into my face. I pushed him away.

‘I'm okay,' I said, knowing it was a lie, knowing, too, that Browne would know it.

There was this time when me and Browne took Kid to a market in West London. I forget where it was, but it must've been somewhere around Notting Hill. We'd gone to pick up some African food so that Browne could cook it up for the girl. He'd wanted to give her something she'd like. This had been only, what, a week or so before?

We walked along, the three of us, like someone's idea of a carnival. Browne on one side, old and thin, his greying wispy hair all over the place; me on the other, a lump, a monster, battered into ugliness. And, between us, the girl, one hand in Browne's, the other in my paw, peering around, afraid to leave us, afraid of everything, but keen to see it all.

‘There,' she'd say, pointing to something.

We'd stop and look at it and Browne would hand it to her. It was never anything much, always some trinket or toy – a wooden box, maybe, or a colourful woollen hat or a cheap piece of jewellery. She liked that, the jewellery.

‘That is nice,' she would say, handing it back to Browne who, in taking it from her, would gaze at her face for a moment with some expression I couldn't read.

He would've bought it for her. He would've done anything, I think, to please her. How could I ever tell him that I might have killed her? Even if it had been an accident, I think it would've been the end of him.

‘Here,' the girl said, pointing to a food stall.

Me and Browne looked and all we could see was a load of roots and vegetables that we didn't know the names of. The girl picked something up and handed it to Browne. It looked more like a tree branch than food.

‘Yam,' she said.

‘Oh,' Browne said.

I don't think Browne knew what a yam was, but he wanted to buy her something and she wanted to please him and at least she knew what to do with a yam.

‘In Nigeria I ate yams,' she told us.

‘Then you'll eat them here too,' Browne said.

‘She's dead,' a voice said.

I looked up at Browne. How long had he been there?

‘Who's dead?'

He shook his head slowly.

‘You're in bad shape,' he said.

‘Fix me,' I said, trying to remember who was dead.

‘Why? So you can go and get yourself broken again?'

‘Yeah.'

He looked at me a long time, a kind of pain came into his face, as if he was looking at the body of an old friend, laid out in the coffin.

Then he wiped a hand over his parched mouth.

‘You're an idiot,' he said.

‘You're drunk.'

‘And what of it? How else can I cope with you? With this?'

It was a good question. He went back to his seat, and his Scotch and his silent scolding and disappointment. I understood all that. I would've been the same if I hadn't had so much fury inside me.

I stood slowly and waited for the world to stop turning. I swallowed the bile. Browne watched me, but made no move to help.

‘Christ, man, you can't do it.'

‘I have to.'

‘Have to what? Have to destroy the world? Yourself?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Wait,' he said, sighing.

He heaved himself up and slumped out of the room. When he came back he had a glass of water. He handed it to me with a couple of pills.

‘That'll help your head, for a while. Do you know where you're going? What you're going to do?'

‘I'm going to find a man,' I said.

Some funny little man, Brenda had called him. Funny. Yeah.

The first thing I did the next day was go see a bloke I knew in Romford. Then I went looking for him, for the funny little man. I knew who he was. His name was Bowker.

He wasn't at the snooker club, and he wasn't at the pub they suggested. I went to his flat. After I'd banged on the door for a few minutes, a small fat lady opened up and stood unsteadily on swollen legs, her breathing raspy. It must've been an effort to get off her sofa and walk five yards to the door. She was all lumps and sags, and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke. When she saw me, she closed her dressing gown, as if she thought I might be tempted to rape her.

‘Yeah?'

‘I'm looking for Jim Bowker.'

‘Yeah? What for?'

‘I want him. That's all.'

‘I don't know where he is.'

She started to close the door. I put my hand on it and pushed it back.

‘Where is he?'

‘I told you, I don't know. I never do.'

‘Guess.'

She looked at me for a few seconds, pretending to herself that she had a choice.

I found him at a bookies' in Hackney. I waited further up the street in the car that Cole had let me have. I didn't want to go inside the bookies' because these days they all had CCTVs. After half an hour, Bowker came out, lit up a cigarette and started walking slowly in my direction. I got out of the car and crossed the road.

When he saw me, he didn't try to run or call for help. He must've heard what had happened to Marriot. He must've known I'd come for him. Maybe he thought my fight with Marriot was only to do with the Cole thing. But Bowker had set Paget onto me and Paget had tried to kill me and he damned well knew I knew that.

Maybe he just knew that running was pointless. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it out and stared at it. Then he looked up and watched as I neared.

In the daylight, his yellow skin looked paler, his eyes darker, more sunken. He still had his thirty-year-old quiff, but it was too thin to be that black. He was wearing that shabby three-piece suit. He must've had it for twenty years. He was clinging on to some idea of past success, some memory of a decent score when he'd got himself down to Saville Row and blown a load on clobber. The suit was too big for him these days. It looked like his body was shrivelling up beneath it.

I took him by the arm and steered him along the road, between people who moved aside to avoid us. When we got to a pub, I pushed him through to the car park at the back. I had a look around. There was a brick wall along two parts of the car park, but the upper stories of a few buildings overlooked it. At the side, it had access to a residential street, but little traffic went past. It was okay, I wasn't going to do anything serious. All this time, Bowker hadn't said anything, hadn't struggled.

I let him go and crowded him a bit and he pulled away from me and flattened himself against the pub wall. He tried to smile and said, ‘I lost.'

I didn't know if he was talking about his betting. I didn't think so.

‘You know why I'm here?'

‘Paget.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Had no choice, Joe. You know that. Paget was after you and if he knew I'd seen you and not told him, he would've sliced me up. I had to call him.'

So, there it was. He thought I wanted him because he'd told Paget where to find me. Paget almost got me that time. Bowker thought he could sob his way out of that. He didn't know I knew about Brenda. If he'd known that, he would've run like a bastard.

‘I want him,' I said.

‘Can't help you. I don't know where he's gone, do I?'

‘You can contact him.'

‘How?'

‘You called him up when you set him onto me.'

‘I called him at Marriot's place.'

‘You must have had another number.'

He took too long to answer me, and he knew it.

‘I got a mobile number.'

‘Call it. Tell him I want to meet you tonight, 2 a.m., in the car park, back of the cinema, Lee Valley leisure centre.'

‘What?'

‘Do it. Tell him I'm looking for him. Tell him I'm meeting you because I think you might know where he is.'

‘But…'

‘Do it.'

‘He'll come for you.'

‘That's right.'

‘Fuck.'

He was in a spot. If he set up Paget, he was dead. If he set up me, he was dead.

‘Fuck,' he said again. ‘I can't do that. Cross Paget? Fuck that.'

‘You crossed me.'

‘I had to.'

‘Right. And now you have to cross him.'

‘Christ, Joe. He'll skin me.'

‘He won't live long enough.'

‘You think he'll come alone? He'll come with a fucking army.'

‘Do it.'

‘I ain't got a phone.'

I took a mobile from my jacket pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the phone like he'd never seen one before. Then he looked left and right, trying to find a way out of the jam he was in. He pulled another cigarette from his pack and lit it with shaking hands. He puffed on the fag for a moment, trying to think his way out. He had no chance of that. After he'd done his thinking, he fished a small black book from his jacket pocket and flicked through it. He found the number he wanted and dialled. I leaned in close so I could hear what was said. A voice came over the line. A man answered and Bowker asked for Paget. There was a pause and finally I heard Paget's voice. Bowker told Paget what I'd told him to say. Paget said, ‘Really? That's very interesting.'

The line went dead. I took the phone from Bowker. Paget's mobile number was now in the memory. I put a hand on Bowker's chest.

‘Now,' I said, ‘tell me about Brenda.'

He stopped breathing for an instant. He said, ‘Who?'

I put a fist in his diaphragm. It was only a poke, really. I wanted him to be able to talk. He doubled up and puked, his vomit splashing by my feet. He crumpled to the ground. I let him stay there until he could breathe again. Then I prodded him with my foot and told him to get up. He climbed back to his feet. His greasy quiff had fallen over his eyes.

A man came out of the pub. He looked us over.

‘What's going on?'

A few people were peering at us through the window. I told the man to fuck off.

‘This is my fucking pub, mate.'

I told him to fuck off again. He went back inside.

Bowker was shaking, rubbing his gut. Yellow spittle hung down from his lip and he wiped it off with a trembling hand. He couldn't look at me.

‘You remember Brenda,' I said. ‘Tall lady, black, worked for Marriot. She smiled a lot. They found her in an alley, carved up.'

‘Please,' he said to the ground.

‘Tell me.'

‘I didn't know what he was going to do, Joe. Honest.'

‘Tell me.'

‘I owed a lot to Jimmy Richardson. I mean, Christ, I owed a lot, twelve grand. Richardson wanted my bollocks in a sling. Paget told me he'd straighten it out if I did a small job. I had to do it. What could I do? And Paget said he just wanted a word with her.'

‘You believed him?'

‘No. No, I didn't. But I thought he was just going to put the frighteners on her. Maybe rough her up a bit. That's all.'

‘You knew I was seeing her?'

‘Course. Everyone knew. But I never thought you were a grass.'

‘So you knew she was grassing Marriot up to the law, and you thought Paget was just going to rough her up?'

He looked up at me, then, and I could see that he knew he was edging closer to his own murder. He held my jacket loosely in his hands. I knocked them off.

‘I don't believe you, Bowker. I think you knew what was going to happen to her.'

The pub's owner came out again, this time with a couple of other men, one carrying a snooker cue. I told them all to fuck off. They looked at me and then at Bowker. The owner dithered and said something to the others. He turned to me and said, ‘I don't want no trouble.'

They turned slowly and went back inside. I didn't think they'd call the law.

Bowker was sweating now, and his hands kept coming up and holding onto my jacket and tugging it. He was looking up at me and what he saw made him hold on tighter.

I was tired of his hands on me. They were dirty and sweating and gnarled and they'd touched Brenda up. They clung to me and tugged weakly and I didn't want those hands to ever touch me again. I swiped them away and he staggered and I straightened him up.

‘You killed Brenda.'

‘You can't hurt me, Joe, there are witnesses. They've seen you. You're not that stupid.'

My hand was around his throat before I knew it. He gasped and struggled, but there was nothing in him, no leverage, no strength. I raised him off the ground and pushed my face into his so that I could watch his eyes as he tried to hang onto life. His face was red, his eyes bulging, his mouth twisted. His hands scrambled against my arm. There was a crackling sound coming from him. I wanted to crush his throat. I wanted to destroy him.

I didn't kill him. I should have done, but he was right, there'd been too many witnesses. And I had other things to do. I could kill Bowker later. Maybe it was a greater punishment to let him live, to let him go back to his prison flat, and to a fat wife with swollen legs who didn't care if some thug was out to get her husband, and to his lifelong losing streak.

‘You grass me up to Paget about tonight and I'll know, and I'll come back for you.'

I dropped him and left him on the ground, his face in his own vomit.

I'd thought about holding onto him, using him as bait for when Paget showed up, but it was too long to wait and I didn't want him jamming up the works or delaying me. I wasn't thinking straight, I suppose. My head hurt, as it often did these days, a throbbing in the back of my skull that stretched through to my forehead and into the backs of my eyes.

I drove back to Browne's. When he saw me, he said, ‘Your head again?'

‘Yeah.'

He went to the kitchen and came back with a couple of pills. I wouldn't have bothered, but I had to be alert that night. I knocked them back and they wiped me out and I had to go lie down for a while.

I woke once. At least, I thought I'd woken. The girl was standing by my bed, her arms by her side and her hair hanging down in plaits. She didn't move, but stared with those large eyes. I reached out for her and touched Brenda.