Jack Carter's Law (29 page)

“Oh, that,” he says, turning his attention back to the rifle. “Favourite, isn’t it? Gerald and Les’ll like me for that part.”

“What part is that, Peter?” I ask him.

Peter snaps back from his private paradise.

“Oh, do me a fucking favour,” he says. “What you trying to come? I’ve done
you
a fucking favour. I’ve done Gerald and Les a fucking favour. What is this, the Gang Show? I’ve saved Gerald and Les more than just twenty grand. Fucking stroll-on. I mean, you didn’t have the balls for it, did you? Fucking right you didn’t. And then Mallory. Jesus fucking wept.”

I’m about to do what I’ve been wanting to do for the last twenty-four hours but now it’s Con’s turn to stand between me and Peter. He grips my wrists and pushes his face close to mine.

“No,” he says. “Remember. Remember what you said to me, Jack. We haven’t the time. Not this time. But there’s always another time. Isn’t there, Jack?”

I look into Con’s face again and then I look beyond his shoulder and I see that Peter is back in his own private communion with the rifle. I relax myself and try to make my mind a blank by thinking forward to our call on Jimmy Swann but all there is in the front of my brain are the pictures of Lesley and Hume as they were in the
photographs.

“All right, is it, Jack?” Sammy says to me. I turn to look at Sammy and Con releases his grip.

“It’s all there,” Sammy says. “Everything you asked for.”

I can’t speak right away so Con answers on my behalf.

“Yeah, it’s great, Sammy. Everything’s lovely. You’ll be on extras for this.”

“The other stuff I was lucky with,” Sammy says. “The shooters were no problem. But the other stuff . . . ”

“Yes, Sammy,” I tell him. “Like Con says, you’ll be on extras.”

“I only . . . ” Sammy says, but he doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead he turns to his wife.

“Can’t you shut that little bleeder’s noise?”

“Shut it yourself,” his old lady says, not even bothering to look at him.

“Anyway,” I say to Sammy, “thanks again. Somebody’ll be round after Christmas.”

Sammy nods and Con and I begin to gather up the goods and put them in the cricket bag that Sammy has thoughtfully placed on a sofa for us. Con takes the rifle off Peter and puts it with the rest of the stock and then I pick up the cricket bag and we go out of the flat and into the hall and Sammy opens the front door for us.

As I go out I say to Sammy, “Well, thanks again, Sammy. As I say, we’ll be in touch.”

“Yeah. Fine.”

He wishes us a Merry Christmas and we go down the steps to where the car Con and I came in is parked.

“Right,” I say to Con and Peter. “Get in and I’ll tell you the drill.”

Peter gets in the back and Con gets in the passenger seat beside me.

After I’ve briefed them I ask them to tell me what I’ve just told them and they do, word perfect, and then I say, “The important thing, for both parties, is not the actual blast. It’s making sure of the way out. I’ve already done it, but not in a hurry. Any panic, in the dark, and you’re dead. Same applies to me. I’ve got the same kind of route, but if I run into a greenhouse or a trellis fence then I’m finished. But it’s more important for Con than for me. Because the second it blows he’s got to be out of it. And the car’s got to be moving before he’s in it. But not too quick, Peter, eh? He’s got to get in it, right?”

I look at Peter but because of the darkness in the back of the car I can’t tell whether or not he’s made a gesture so I ask him again and he forces himself to answer.

“The point is,” I say, “it’s not so important for me to move quite so fast. They won’t be expecting what’s coming from me, and by the time they work out which direction it’s come from I’ll be in the other motor and off. But for Con, all they’ve got to do is look out onto the back garden and they could see him as clear as if he was strolling under Blackpool Illuminations. So try the way back first, before you do the plant.”

“Too fucking right I’ll try it first,” Con says.

“It’s the kitchen that’ll get the blast. According to Hume, at that time of night there’s a two on two off in the hall and those that are off doss down upstairs in Jimmy’s room. His wife and kids are somewhere else. So unless someone comes into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, the kitchen will be dark and there’ll be no light shining on the activities underneath the kitchen window.”

“Oh, well,” Con says. “That makes all the difference. I mean, I’ve got nothing to worry about, have I?”

“Just one small point,” Peter says. “A detail, really. How is it you’re the one with the safe job? How is it you’re the one over the road?”

I look at his vague shape in the darkness. “You want to ask that question again?”

Peter doesn’t ask the question again.

“Right,” I say. “I’ll take the Mini. You two use this. And afterwards I’ll meet you where we arranged.”

I open the door and get out and before I close it Con says, “What happens if it doesn’t work?”

“Don’t ask,” I say, and close the door.

Half an hour later I’m parking the Mini in the street that runs parallel to the one where Jimmy’s safe house is. I get out and push the driving seat forward and take the rifle out of the bag on the back seat and wrap it in my overcoat and close the door and cross the road.

Most of the houses are dark, and I’m glad the house I’m interested in isn’t one of the exceptions. I go to the front gate and look around me and after I’ve done that I straddle the gate and walk over to the built-on garage and open the trellis gate and walk down the path that runs alongside the garage. I pause at the corner of the gate in case a light from the kitchen or the room above is illuminating the back garden but I’m in luck. So I cross the small lawn and pass the garden shed and climb over the low fence that separates this garden from the ones at the back of the houses that face on to the parallel street beyond. I cross the second garden and reach the other house and this one doesn’t have a built-on garage so I walk along the path that runs along the side of the house and stop when I get to the corner. Then I have a look at Jimmy Swann’s safe house, two houses down on the opposite side of the road. There is only one light shining out into the night and that is coming from the diamond window in the front door, illuminating the F
OR
S
ALE
sign in the front garden. The rest is dark as Jimmy Swann’s grave.

I lean back against the wall and look at my watch. The illuminated dial tells me there’s five minutes to go until Con does his party piece. I look up at the night sky. It’s clear now, and all the stars are sharp and bright against the blackness. I take my cigarettes out and put one in my mouth without lighting it and suck on it now and then. I look at my watch again. A minute to go. I unwind my overcoat from round the rifle and then I put my overcoat on and have a look across the road. From the angle I’m at I can see the black shape of the smallest kitchen
window set in the side of the house. Con should be under it by now but I can’t make out any movement. By now he should have the air-brick well and truly filled and by now he should be setting the fuse. Either Con’s getting good in his old age or he hasn’t fucking well turned up. And then I see what I’ve been waiting for. A match is struck, the flame dies, and the sparks begin, but before the match goes out I can see the bent shape of Con legging it round to the back of the house. I settle the rifle into my shoulder and watch the sparks fizzing onto the hard dry snow. Then, behind me, an oblong of light flashes onto the wall of the next house and then after that there is the sound of a door opening and the clink of milk bottles. I turn round and see a doubled-up figure about to place the bottles on the step and my movement causes the figure, a man in a dressing gown, to incline its head in my direction and then straighten up and at that precise moment the explosion rocks the whole street and strangely enough the loudest sound in my ears seems to be the smashing of the dropped milk bottles behind me. I whirl round and look across the road and I’m just in time to see the whole of the back of the house lit up as Con
hurls the petrol bombs through the big kitchen window round the other side. Frames explode from the small side window and I know from their size and their sound that Con has done it just right. Upstairs the lights go on and down below I can see a faint glow begin to illuminate the front rooms’ dark windows.

Then the front door flies open and a shirt-sleeved figure races round to the side of the house and from behind me the other figure says, “What the bloody hell . . . ”

But before he can say any more I turn round and point the rifle at him and he half backs, half falls back into the house. I swing round again. By now the flames are beautiful. I can even see them billowing out from the blind side of the house. I put my eye to the sight and then I have the open front door in my vision, and through the door comes another piece of filth, dragging a shooter from a shoulder holster, not having any idea what he’s going to do with it once he’s got it out. And almost immediately after this figure come two more, and one of them is Jimmy Swann.

Jimmy is wearing a neat red satin dressing gown but there’s nothing neat about his face, foreshortened and distorted in my sights; he looks like an astronaut experiencing twenty Gs. The filth who’s shepherding him out is superfluous. Jimmy really doesn’t need any guidance, and as he hurries down the garden path away from the flames, to safety, I steady the rifle so that the cross is resting perfectly on the middle of Jimmy’s furrowed forehead, and then I pull the trigger three times, and immediately the last bullet leaves the barrel I turn away and run back down the side of the house, and as I pass the open door I glance into the house but there is no sign of the man who’d been putting out the milk bottles. That’s the trouble with the world today, I reflect. A lack of public spirit. Nobody seems to be prepared to have a go these days.

--

Walter

D
AWN
.

The leaden sky soars above us, making the passing snowy fields seem twice as brilliant and even though we’re traveling the broadness of the landscape gives the impression that we’re not traveling fast at all.

Peter is asleep on the back seat and I’m sitting in front next to Con, my head resting on the back of the seat, eyes half closed, enjoying the irresponsible sensation of being driven by a good driver.

But I don’t want to doze off again so I take my cigarettes out and light up and then I say to Con, “Ever fancied living out here, Con? I mean, in the country?”

“ ’Course I have, haven’t I?” he says. “I mean, I don’t just have the lockup. I got a nice little place between Saffron Walden and Thaxted.”

“Yeah, the lockup,” I say.

“Nice place,” Con says. “Got in before the boom, didn’t I? How I got on to it was, I figured the lockup might come in handy one day, so while I was scouting it I drove about a bit and I come across this place and I think to myself, Just the kind of place my old mother would have liked, if she’d have lived to see it. Roses round the door and all that. So I bought it. Four grand it cost me. Fucking criminal.”

I sit up and take the map from the glove compartment, then I unfold the map and have a look and after I’ve done that I say to Con, “You should be at Otley in about ten minutes. You go through it and you keep straight on, making for a place called Cretingham, but you don’t go as far as that. I’ll tell you where to turn off.”

In the back of the car Peter stirs and raises himself up on one elbow and looks out of the window as if he’s looking at the surface of the moon.

“Where the fucking hell are we?” he says.

Neither of us answers him. He sits up properly and takes a small mirror out of his inside pocket and starts tarting himself up.

We drive through Otley, a long-strung-out village with a new estate on its outskirts, and then we find the road that leads to Cretingham and I take out Eddie’s notebook and start looking for Blackbird Lane. A few minutes later I spot the signpost but Con is already past it so he brakes hard and reverses back past the turning.

“Take it slow from now on,” I tell him.

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice,” Con says, and I can see what he means. Blackbird Lane twists and turns and is only wide enough for one car at a time. There are lots of small muddy lay-bys so you can pull in if something’s coming the other way. We drive along between deep hedges for about ten minutes and then we round a corner and we’re on the brow of a hill and before us is a small valley, the road we’re on twisting down into it and up the other side. I tell Con to stop the car. On the valley’s opposite slope, there is a layout that could only belong to Walter Coleman. It’s so neat and tidy that from where we are it looks like a child’s model farm. It sticks out the same way an office block would in this rambling landscape. Everything’s just been done up, the gates, the gardens, the footpaths. Even the barn roofs have been retiled. You can almost see the shine on the coaching lamps and count the pebbles on the newly laid drive.