To Kill For (5 page)

I didn't say anything. What was there to say? I didn't care about his junk, and he knew it. He wanted me to ask how he'd known about my plan to get Paget. He wanted to watch me run around in circles. This was his revenge, small as it was, for not telling him about my plan. I didn't need to ask him, though. There was only one way he could've known.

‘You had me under surveillance,' I said. ‘Very clever.'

I felt more stupid than ever. He smiled, as much as he could smile.

‘You led us straight to Bowker. I squeezed him a bit and he told me about your plan. The boys here did the rest.'

‘Now we've sorted out who did what and why, tell me where Paget was hiding out.'

‘Won't do you any good.'

‘Where?'

‘Some pokey old house on a council estate, apparently. Not his style. He wasn't there.'

‘Go on.'

‘Place was owned by some bird. Turns out she was an old girlfriend of Paget's. Did you know he had an old girlfriend?'

‘Does she know where he is?'

‘No.'

‘Sure?'

‘Oh, yes. I'm sure.'

A couple of the men chuckled. I glanced round at them. I noticed that some of the men, the older ones, didn't look amused by all this. They mostly looked away from me, down at the floor or at their drinks or at the lousy fucking abstract paintings. I turned back to Cole.

‘Give me the address.'

‘You gonna use your charms on her?'

‘Give it to me.'

Cole watched me for a while and sipped his drink. He turned to one of the men behind me and said, ‘Carl, give it to him.'

Carl, who looked about twelve, was sitting in a chair, legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed. He grinned at the private joke. He fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He held it out, still grinning. I walked over and snatched the piece of paper from his hand.

‘I'll get him,' Cole said. ‘I've flushed him out of one hiding place. He's running out of friends.'

I was about to ask him about the other man in the car, the stocky white bloke who'd got away. I stopped. Cole hadn't mentioned him. Nobody had. I ran through the moment when Cole's crew had hit me. Did they even know there was another bloke? I tested that idea by saying, ‘The bloke in the car, who was he?'

Cole shrugged.

Nobody said, ‘Which bloke?' They didn't know there'd been a second man. I'd have to find out about him. Behind me, a thin nasally voice said, ‘Who gives a fuck about him?'

I turned and looked at the thin voice. Carl was smiling at me, a cocky look on his cocky little face.

‘If he'd known any more, he would have told me.'

I noticed then, for an instant, a flash of irritation cross Cole's face. It was the way Carl was taking credit for the job, I thought, that annoyed Cole. The ‘would have told me' bit. The fact that Cole was tolerating him was interesting. Anyone else and he would have given him a bollocking. Maybe Cole was holding back because I was there. Maybe Carl was going to get a slap later.

But there was something else wrong with this Carl. He didn't fit into this crew. Cole's other men were pros, but this one was more like a giddy amateur, experiencing it all in a heady rush. He was enjoying this more than anyone and I wondered what a wanker like him was doing working for Cole.

‘By the time we'd got rid of him, he was unconscious,' Carl was saying. ‘Geezer was more red than black.'

He seemed to want me to congratulate him. I turned back to Cole.

‘Eddie Lane came to see me,' I said. ‘Tells me you're bent on getting Paget, that you and Dunham had an agreement to fix the Albanians first and now you're fucking it up. Wants me to get you to play ball.'

‘Fuck Dunham. And fuck Lane. And fuck you. I don't answer to any of you lot.'

‘What's this agreement with him about?'

‘It's bollocks. Dunham's losing it, getting old. He's scared of these Albanians – fucking cowboys. He's scared they're gonna start on his turf after they've taken mine. Well, they ain't fucking taken mine yet.'

Headlights lit the room up. A car ground to a halt outside.

‘That'll be Steve,' someone said.

‘Show him in,' Cole said. ‘Take him out back,' he added, glancing at me.

‘And the law?' I said. ‘You got them squared away?'

‘Fixed. We just gave them some info on the Albanians, blamed them for Marriot's death. Few payments to senior coppers. Hey presto.'

‘Easy,' I said.

‘Sure. If you've got the power.'

He took a sip of his drink. It was a slow sip, as if he was thinking about things.

‘These Albanian cunts,' he said. ‘Dunham's idea. We combine forces, take them out and carve up their turf, divide their business. I don't trust Dunham. Anyway, the Albanians can wait.'

‘You know what they're into?'

‘I don't plan on exploiting the kids and women they've smuggled in, if that's what you mean.'

‘If you did, I'd have to come after you too.'

Carl laughed at that. Nobody else did. Cole was quiet for a while, studying me.

‘What do you think I am, Joe?' he said. ‘I don't do that kind of thing. I know they brought that girl into the country, the one you looked after.'

‘Kid,' I said. ‘That was her name.'

‘Yeah. Kid. I'm not a fucking animal.'

I didn't think Cole was the type to get involved in that kind of thing. But I had to make my point. I said, ‘Got any ideas where Paget would go?'

‘Have I got any ideas, he asks me.' He looked around the assembled mass and winked to his wife. ‘When I get an idea, you'll read about it in the paper.'

Carl got a kick out of that one. Cole enjoyed his wit for a moment, then he looked at me and his eyes went cold, became hooded.

‘Marriot and Paget ripped me off. They ripped off my money and they ripped off my junk. I don't let people get away with that. You took out Marriot. Fine. Well that leaves Paget, and he's still got my junk and I'm gonna get it and get him and nobody's getting in my way.'

‘I want Paget.'

‘You're not listening to me, boy. I don't give a shit what you want. The only reason you're breathing is because you got my money back off Marriot. I owe you for that.'

‘I didn't do it for you.'

‘Don't get in my fucking way again,' he said.

One time, about three weeks before she was killed, Brenda said, ‘Have you got any ambition, Joe?'

We'd been in her flat, sitting at that small Formica table she had, eating Chinese. It was late and she'd finished work. There was some kind of soft classical music on. It wasn't my thing, but I think she thought it added to the atmosphere, so I let it go.

‘To do what?'

‘I don't know. Anything.'

‘Anything else, you mean.'

She smiled and her eyes sparked to life and her face lit up. She looked a hundred years younger.

‘You got me,' she said. ‘Well, have you?'

‘No.'

She nodded and carried on eating for a while.

‘I have,' she said. ‘Did I tell you? I'm saving up.'

She had told me, but she'd forgotten. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

‘I want to be a beautician. I want to own me own place. A beauty parlour. They call them parlours. I wonder why. Isn't that what they called a lounge in posh places?'

I shrugged.

‘I like the sound of that,' she was saying. ‘What should I call it? I was thinking Brenda's Parlour, but that's got no ring, you know? I can't think of anything that rhymes with parlour. Or Brenda.'

‘Big spender,' I said.

She laughed, but she was forcing it. Something was bothering her. She was trying too hard to be bright and happy.

‘If you want money,' I said, ‘I can let you have some.'

She touched my arm.

‘No, Joe. No. I don't want any money.'

‘I've got plenty. You might as well do something with it.'

She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

‘That's sweet,' she said.

It wasn't sweet. My money wasn't doing anything. I just saved it up for the sake of it. I'd never known what to do with it. I'd never wanted a fast car or an expensive watch or any of that shit.

‘It's not much to ask, is it?' she said. ‘To be a beautician? That's not much.'

She wasn't telling me, she was telling herself. Or trying to. I don't think she was getting through.

‘You wanted to be a carpenter, didn't you?' she said. ‘I remember you told me.'

That was true, as far as it went. It was something I'd once enjoyed, when I was young, when I still thought there was a choice. Then, I'd thought I could use my hands to make something. Turned out I could use them better to pull things apart.

‘Sometimes I don't think I'm going to make it,' she was saying. ‘You know? I mean, I think, Who are you kidding? Who do you think you are? I mean, look at me, Joe. Just some over the hill black tart. Who the bloody hell would want me to make them beautiful?'

I said, ‘You're not so bad.'

When I looked at her, she was resting her fork on her plate and looking off into some middle-ground. She hadn't heard me. She had that look, the one Kid had had sometimes. It made Brenda look like a child, lost, scared, trying not to show it. Kid had been a child, she had been lost and scared and hammered by the world. I suppose Brenda was a child too, in a way. She still had the sort of stupid dreams that children had, like wanting to be a beautician.

I finished eating and went to make a cup of tea. When I came back, she'd given up with the meal and had gone to sit on the sofa. She had the window open, the curtains pulled back. A weak cold breeze wafted into the place and carried a far-off smell of wet air and diesel, and the sound of droning traffic. She was smoking and gazing at the darkness outside. In her hand was a glass of gin. It was a big glass and it was mostly full. I saw the bottle on the floor. I didn't see any tonic.

There was a glaze to her eyes, and I thought she'd been crying. I put the mugs of tea down on the table. She kept her eyes on the window. In a low, distant voice, she said, ‘I can't stand it, Joe. Sometimes, I just can't stand it. What they do.'

I knew what she was talking about. Marriot did things with kids.

‘Get out, then. I've told you, do something else. Fuck Marriot. He gives you any grief, I'll rip him apart.'

She smiled vaguely, like she was humouring a child. But the smile wore away from her face, and her gaze was back into that middle distance again, between here and nowhere, between what she was and what she knew she could never be. I don't know why she did that to herself. I'd told her enough times that life was a piece of shit. If she'd got used to that, she wouldn't have been endlessly disappointed. But when I would say that to her, she would look at me with her thin smile and it would be like she was sorry for me, like I was the one suffering, and she was here to make everything all right.

So she carried on with her suffering, and with her life, and with me. She was a romantic, I suppose, or an idealist or whatever. You can't do much with people like that.

Whatever she saw there, in that middle-land, she didn't want me in on it. I think she thought she was protecting me. Maybe she was.

It's funny; Brenda thought she could protect me. Kid thought so too. And Browne. None of them could do anything for themselves except be victims, but they all thought they could protect a violent, war-torn monster like me. I say it's funny. It's not. It's about as far from funny as you can get.

‘We could go somewhere,' I said. ‘We can start again. Somewhere.'

‘You don't understand, Joe. I can't explain it. I have to carry on. Not for me, but…'

There were tears coming down her face. She stubbed her cigarette out and took a long drink from the glass. She shook her head and wiped away the tears. She looked at me and forced a smile.

‘I'm being stupid,' she said. ‘Come on, let's go and get some fresh air.'

I should have listened to her. Things would've been different. She might've had six years more life, for one thing. We might still be together. Who knows, she might've got her beauty parlour.

Anyway, I should have listened to her. I should have understood what she was telling me. I should have done lots of things. I should have killed Marriot and Paget back then, before they'd killed her, before they'd used Kid, before anything.

I should have done those things.

But I didn't, and people were going to pay for that.

When I found the place, it was starting to get light, if you could call it light. The sky was heavy and grey, and the dawn was no more than a strip of lighter grey against the black horizon.

It was a post-war terraced house. The roof made of some kind of corrugated concrete. It must've seemed a good idea to someone once, someone who didn't have to live here. There was a high hedge at the front of the small garden, and an overgrown lawn with children's toys littered about. The toys must've been there for years. The plastics had weathered, the bright yellows and reds now weak and faded. Thick grass had grown around them so that it was like a graveyard, a monument to dead childhood.

I pressed the doorbell and waited. After a while, a middle-aged woman opened up and looked out at me. She was wearing an apron and her sleeves were rolled up.

‘Are you the police?' she said.

They'd called the law, then. I didn't want to be around when they came. I said, ‘No.'

This baffled her. If I wasn't law, what could I be? It didn't make sense.

‘Who are you, then?'

‘Are you Paget's old girlfriend?'

‘Who's Paget?'