Jack Carter's Law (4 page)

Gerald is sitting in the sunken bit, making the leather look scruffy. He is wearing a very expensive three-piece suit, gray chalk stripe, but with it he is wearing a cheap nylon shirt and a tie that looks as though he’s nicked it off a rack in Woolworth’s. His shoes are black and unpolished and one of the shoelaces is undone. But even if the shirt had been tailor-made from Turnbull & Asser and the tie had come from Italy and the shoes had been handmade at Annello & David he would still look a mess. One of those people that make a difference to the clothes instead of it being the other way round. Les, on the other hand, is immaculate. He is perched with his arse on the edge of the white desk, smoking a Sobranie. He’s wearing one of his corduroy suits, the pale beige one, and with it he’s got on a lavender shirt and a carefully knotted brown silk tie, a pair of off-white suède slip-ons and socks that match the colour of his tie. What is left of his hair is beautifully barbered, just curling slightly over the collar of his shirt.

Audrey is there as well.

She’s over by the cocktail cabinet, getting the drinks together.

“So,” says Gerald, “we’re finally here at last, then.”

I sit down on an armless easy chair in the raised-up part of the room. I don’t say anything. There’s no point until Gerald and Les have run through today’s double act.

“I mean, we thought maybe Cross had nicked you or something.”

Gerald laughs at the others, encouraging them to
appreciate his wit.

“We thought he might have nicked you for being double- parked,” Les says in his humourless voice.

Audrey gives Gerald and Les their drinks, then pretends to remember that I’m there and I just might want one as well.

“Do you want one, Jack?” she says.

Gerald laughs and says, “Do you want one, Jack? Eh, Audrey, why don’t you give him one?”

He almost falls off the settee, he’s laughing so hard.

“No thanks,” I say to Audrey, looking her straight in the eye. “I had one before I came here.”

Les frowns and says, “You dropped off for a drink before you came here?”

“That’s right.”

Les looks at Gerald and Gerald says to me, “Listen, you mug, we told you to come straight back here. What’s the fucking idea?”

I look at Les and say, “Les, I left Cross three-quarters of an hour ago. After what he told me I didn’t think a swift vodka and tonic would make all that much difference.”

“Why?”

I take out my cigarettes and light up.

“Because,” I tell them, “it’s my opinion that Jimmy has been done good and proper and he’s weighed up twenty-five years against appearing for the Queen. Against us. And various other past associates that we don’t need to mention here.”

Gerald stands up and begins to turn bright red. “Bollocks!” he says. “Bloody bollocks. Christ, what, with Finbow? Jesus, all Finbow has to do is pick up the phone and he’s a few grand better off and Jimmy walks out a victim of circumstances. Besides, Jimmy’d never shop us. He’s Jack the Lad. Jesus, Jimmy and me are like bleeding cousins. From way back.”

“In any case,” Les says as he lights a new cigarette from the end of his old one, “the cunt wouldn’t dare.”

“No,” Gerald says. “He’s right. The cunt wouldn’t dare.”

I shrug. There is a silence. Audrey crosses her legs and the nylons sound like static on a cheap transistor.

Les pushes his hands in the pockets of his jacket and the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth causes him to narrow his eyes and hold his head back so that he’s squinting up at the ceiling.

“Is that what you really think?” he says.

“Well,” I say, “look at it this way. Jimmy was at Norwood. He was at Walthamstow. He was at Ealing. He was at
Finsbury Park. Granted that wasn’t one of ours but it’s another job. He was at Luton and he was at Dulwich and we all know what happened there.”

There is more silence and so I go on.

“At a rough calculation, I make it that Jimmy has done about a million and a half quids’ worth of overtime for us over the last six or seven years. A real little cornerstone to the firm he’s been. A right sweet little catch he’d make for some rising star in West End Central.”

“Yes, but Jack,” Gerald says, “it’s Finbow, for fuck’s sake. Herbert fucking Finbow.”

“If it was Finbow that plucked Jimmy, he’d have phoned by now. And in any case Jimmy’s been put out of the way. Finbow’d never do that. Unless Finbow’s had the operation.”

Gerald snorts. “Oh, yes, and I’m a fucking fairy.”

I shrug again.

“Why don’t we get in touch with Finbow and find out?” Les asks, as if I should have done it already.

“If it’s Finbow, there’s no point,” I say wearily. “If it’s not Finbow, there’s still no point. Can’t you see what I’m trying to say? Jimmy’s being done proper. So whoever’s doing him we can’t get to. They’re sticking it on him.
And because they’re sticking it on him they’ve made
him some kind of offer so that it looks good for him to stick it on us.”

“Yeah, but look,” Gerald says, “supposing he gets offered fifteen instead of twenty-five. Christ, that’s not big enough for him to drop in everybody else.”

“You’ve got more faith in Jimmy Swann than his mother ever had,” I tell Gerald.

Les gets up from the edge of the desk and walks over to the drinks cabinet.

“Anyhow,” he says, “even if he took the ten years’ difference he’d know we’d get him fixed on the inside. And Jimmy never was happy in a brace-up.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Gerald says. “He wouldn’t have the bleeding stomach for it.”

“Unless,” I tell them, “they’re fixing it so nobody can get to him, ever.”

“But why would they?” Gerald says. “What’s the point? Christ, if Jimmy spills, half the population of Inner London’d be standing side by side in the fucking dock and half of Old Bill’s mob as well. Jesus, they’re understrength as it is without putting their own boys away.”

“We don’t know what the point is, do we?” I say. “That’s just it. We don’t know what’s going on.”

“I thought that’s what we paid Cross for,” Les says, again looking at me as if I was to blame for Cross’s lack of material.

“If Jimmy’s turned Queen’s evidence then Cross will be sending his information in the other direction from now on,” I say.

After a while Gerald says, “If Jimmy’s done a deal he must have given them something already.”

“That’s right.”

“So if it’s like you think it is then why hasn’t anybody been picked up yet?”

I shrug. “Depends. If they want everybody Jimmy’s worked with for the last half-dozen years, they want them all at once. They don’t want anybody clearing out at the first arrest.”

“But it still doesn’t mean we can go on our holidays before we get to Jimmy,” Les says, rattling the ice cubes in his drink. “And if you’re right, then of course we’ve got to get to him, haven’t you, Jack?”

I’m expecting that one so I say, “Sure. That’s right. If you’ve got one of those diaries with tube maps on the back then I’ll start right away. If I go through the alphabet I’ll be at Wembly about 1980.”

“We pay you,” Gerald says. “You find him. I mean you haven’t tried Finbow yet. Or Mallory. Christ, what about Mallory? Why the fuck hasn’t he been in touch? It was yesterday. Bleeding yesterday.”

I look at Les and Les looks at me. Gerald looks at both of us.

“What?” he says. So I have to spell it to him.

“If Mallory hasn’t been in touch then he knows what’s going on. So he won’t exactly be sitting behind his desk waiting for us to get in touch with him.”

Gerald stands up and walks a few paces then turns back and sits down again. His arse on the leather makes a noise like a bad diver hitting the surface of the water.

“So where are you going to start?” he says.

I shrug and get up.

“May as well start with the obvious,” I say. “At least that way we’ll make sure it’s the way it looks.”

Les downs his drink and says, “Maybe, but don’t forget Swann’s got to be found this week. Next week’s too late. And when he’s found, no mistakes.”

I walk over to the door and open it and before I close it behind me I say to Les, “I don’t make mistakes. Like, for instance, employing Jimmy Swann in the first place.”

--

Walter

T
HE RINGING TONE WHIRRS
in my ear for a long time before the receiver is lifted at the other end. There is no greeting so I say, “My name is Eamonn Andrews and this is your life.”

There is a sigh of relief and Tommy says, “It’s always nice to hear your voice on this number, Jack.”

“Seeing as I’m the only one who has that number.”

“Something like that.”

I shake a cigarette from my pocket and say, “You doing anything tonight?”

“Yeah, I was taking the old lady down Ernie’s.”

“Not any more you’re not.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re going to look for Jimmy Swann before he coughs so big you’ll never be taking your old lady down Ernie’s or nowhere again.”

There is a long silence. Tommy knows better than
Gerald and Les to worry his head about whether I’m wrong or not so he says to me, “What do you want?”

“I want you to talk to some of Jimmy’s crowd and I want at least one of them to have something interesting to say to you. If you want some extra muscle get hold of Mickey and Del but make sure they’re sweetened up. The less that gets around the better.”

“I won’t need them,” Tommy says. “This kind of thing boils me up to the value of three.”

“Yes. And if you do find him, leave enough of him for me. I want to know who he’s dealing with.”

“I’ll try. I’ll be phoning you.”

The line goes dead.

I’m back at the flat sitting on the edge of my unmade bed with the smell of the sheets reminding me of Audrey. An hour ago I got on to Con McCarty to go down to Richmond and have a look at Mallory’s house and I’m waiting for his call.

I get up and pour a drink and think about the time at Dulwich. After that one Gerald and Les should never have touched Jimmy again, but no, they said he’s good, he knows his stuff, that was an accident, happen to anybody. Sure it was an accident, a Securicor guard lying in the gutter with a hole in his stomach, hands grabbing at the hole trying to keep himself together, and Tony Warmby frozen with the pump action still smoking and Jimmy who’d screamed at Tony to shoot now screaming at him to move, for fuck’s sake move, get in the fucking car, and then putting his foot hard down and taking off half on the pavement and leaving Tony there to cop for it. Sure it had been an accident. After all, as Gerald and Les had said, we’d got away with it, hadn’t we, we’d got the score, and Tony hadn’t grassed and the Securicor man hadn’t snuffed it. And Tony’s old lady’d got his share, hadn’t she? Didn’t work out too bad at all. Except someone like Tony who would never grass was on fifteen to twenty and the person who’d virtually put him away was now grassing the rest of us.

The phone rings and it’s Con.

“Gone away,” he says. “Gone away all neat and tidy.”

“You got in?”

“Yeah, I got in all right. For someone who associates with society’s antisocial elements he isn’t very burglarproof.”

“And?”

“The works. Suits, socks, papers—you name it. Even the fridge was clear. It wasn’t what you’d call a hasty decision.”

“And nothing to say where to?”

“What do you think?”

“All right,” I say. “I’m going over to Maurice’s now. I’ve got Tommy Gardner looking into Jimmy’s friends so you may as well go over to Jimmy’s place and see what you can turn up there. Which of course will be fuck all. But it has to be done.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. Come to Maurice’s and if I’m not there I’ll be back at the club.”

Con puts down the receiver and I put on my jacket and go out of the flat and get a taxi over to Maurice’s.

I walk down the basement steps and ring the bell and the curtain at the window by the side of the door moves slightly and then a minute later the door is opened by a tall blond Adonis with a Kirk Douglas hairstyle.