So when they'd gone to the pub, there'd been no reason to suspect that things were going to go wrong. It was just a first meeting. He and Vokes weren't even wearing wires, relying instead on the fact that officers from SO11, Scotland Yard's intelligence-gathering unit, had put a tracking device under Rentners' car, just in case they changed venues. Brewster, who'd met the two of them in a Burger King just down the road, had been laughing and chatting, and was keen to know when he could expect some money. Stegs remembered that he'd told him it wouldn't be too long and that he had nothing to worry about because he, Stegs, was a man of his word. Brewster had seemed happy enough with that.
Rentners had been in the pub with three of his men. They all looked pretty much identical: shaven-headed, powerfully built, and togged out in three-quarter-length black leather jackets, black jeans and Timberlands. Like a doormen's barbershop quartet - not that Stegs expected this lot to break out in song, not unless it was the Funeral March anyway. Rentners had been shorter than the rest, and older - probably about forty-five - but you could tell from the way he stood in the middle of the group, one elbow resting on the bar, that he was the leader. He had a black goatee beard modelled along the lines of one Satan might wear, and a similarly fiendish half-smile. All that was missing were the horns and forked tail.
He'd looked the three of them up and down slowly and
silently, trying to maximize the menace, then said straight away that they were going somewhere else. No-one had argued, this sort of welcome being par for the course, and the seven of them had left the pub through the back entrance that led out to a tiny car park. Two Mercedes, both black, were parked next to each other. Brewster was ushered into one along with two of Rentners' goons, while Stegs and Yokes were invited into the back seat of the other. Rentners sat in the front passenger seat while the fourth member of the group drove.
'Where are we heading?' asked Yokes, who on this particular occasion was acting as the senior of the two of them.
'Just for a little drive,' growled their host, with that same devilish little half-smile which was not designed to make the recipient feel any better. 'Sit back and relax.'
And with that, he pressed a button and a tinted partition came down, making further communication impossible. The two SO10 men glanced at each other, but remained calm. In the end, Frank Rentners was a businessman and they were potential customers with some serious money to spend, so neither of them expected any real problems. They'd done this sort of thing plenty of times before.
They drove through the streets of south London for close to three-quarters of an hour, losing the other car in the process. The driver kept to the quieter roads, occasionally doubling back on himself until eventually they were into the suburbs. They passed through Orpington, crossed the M25 at Swanley, and continued in a south-easterly direction. There was still no sign of the other car, and Stegs wondered whether they were going to see Brewster again that day, and whether the SO11 men were also on their tail.
An hour and five minutes into the journey by Stegs's watch, they suddenly pulled off the road they were travelling on and drove up a dirt track through woods until they came to a modern
two-storey red-brick house set back on its own behind a small, neatly trimmed garden. The other Merc was already there, parked up on the driveway, along with a red Golf. They pulled up behind the Merc and the driver cut the engine.
Rentners got out along with the driver, and beckoned them to do the same. 'Are you hungry?' he asked, when they were standing on the driveway.
It was one o'clock in the afternoon and they both said they were, so Rentners, his smile a little more welcoming now, ushered them towards the house. Stegs noticed that he had his own key which he used to let them in, and he wondered briefly if this property was in Rentners' name.
The interior was surprisingly sparse. There were no pictures or ornaments in the hallway, and the unfashionable black carpet looked cheap. Rentners led them through to a large dining room that looked out on to trees. A large table took up most of the room and it was laid for seven people. Two bottles of Ty Nant mineral water were in the middle of the table along with a bottle each of red and white wine. Even eighteen months on, Stegs Jenner remembered all these little details. He remembered everything about that day.
Brewster was already sitting down at the table along with the other two. He greeted them with a slightly confused smile, as if he too" wasn't a hundred per cent sure what was going on. Stegs and Yokes took seats opposite him.
'Help yourselves to drinks,' said Rentners, and disappeared out of the room.
Stegs helped himself to a glass of red. He wouldn't have drunk on duty normally but it was Chateauneuf du Pape. Whatever else could be said of Rentners, he had good taste in wine. Yokes shot him a sideways glare and poured himself some water.
this is very nice,' said Stegs, not really meaning it at all.
It wasn't nice. It was weird. He'd been working with SO40 a long time, and no-one had ever fed him at a first meeting.
'It is, isn't it?' said Brewster, an excruciatingly ingratiating smile on his face as he looked around. Stegs thought then that he really didn't like Brewster. He had the furtive air of a child molester.
Nobody else spoke.
A few minutes later, Rentners returned carrying a huge pot. A big, blonde-haired woman in a kitchen apron came in behind him. She was carrying bowls which she put down in front of everyone without speaking. Stegs thanked her but she ignored him, not even looking his way.
'Spaghetti al araba,' said Rentners, who must have thought he was John Gotti or Tony Soprano, lifting the lid off the pot. 'I hope you all like chilli.' He then doled out a portion of spaghetti in a tomato sauce to each and every one of them while the blonde came back several times bringing salad and garlic bread. 'Bon appetit,' he growled when he'd finished, before sitting down at the head of the table and proceeding to stuff his demonic face. As they ate (and Stegs would always remember that the food was excellent), Rentners asked the two of them questions. What sort of quantity of gear were they after? How were they raising the funds needed? Where'd they done time? Did they know so and so? The questions were probing but nothing unusual, and the two of them answered confidently and without hesitation. Only once did Rentners speak to Brewster, to ask him if he knew how a mutual acquaintance of theirs was doing. Brewster, between sizeable mouthfuls of spaghetti, said he hadn't seen the bloke for ages. Rentners nodded, as if accepting the answer, and carried on talking to the two SO10 men. Yokes did most of the talking, but Stegs had entered the discussion where necessary, and he remembered thinking, as he poured himself a second glass of the
Chateauneuf du Pape, that it wouldn't take more than a few meetings to reel in Rentners. He obviously rated himself very highly, and they're always the easiest to bring down because they never see it coming.
Rentners was the first to finish. As he did so, he gave his belly a satisfying rub and raised his glass. To crime,' he chuckled.
To crime,' said everyone else with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Stegs even raised his glass.
Then Rentners lifted up the empty bottle of white wine and smashed it over Brewster's head. Brewster didn't even know what had hit him, he simply slid off the chair and fell to the floor. Stegs and Yokes stared at Rentners, wondering whether they'd missed something. Yokes began to speak, but their host stood up and pulled a long-barrelled Browning from the waistband of his black jeans and pointed it at him.
'Shut the fuck up, cunt!' he hissed, his face dissolving into a malevolent glare, which hadn't required much of a transformation.
At the same time, Stegs felt something warm and metallic being pushed against his temple as the bloke next to him - the one who'd driven them down there - produced his own gun. Stegs carried on chewing. When he'd finished, he turned to Rentners and glared right back. 'What the fuck is this? What are you trying to do?'
'Shut your fucking mouth, copper!' snarled Rentners, moving the gun round so it was pointed right between Stegs's eyes.
Stegs felt his heart shoot up to his mouth and he silently thanked God that he had Yokes with him because he knew his partner was experienced enough to handle this sort of situation.
'What the fuck are you talking about?' he yelled, indignant.
Who the fuck's a copper? How do I even know you're not a
fucking copper?' He stood up, flinging his serviette onto the table
and ignoring the gun to his head, a picture of righteous anger. Bluff, bluff - it's always bluff.
'Get fucking down!' roared Rentners, his gun hand shaking with rage.
'All right, Steve,' said Yokes. 'Sit down and take it easy.' Stegs slowly sat back down while Yokes turned to Rentners and spoke calmly but with barely suppressed irritation. 'What the fuck is this, Mr Rentners? We came here to do business. We don't like having weapons pointed at us, and having accusations made that are, quite frankly, fucking insulting.'
'Don't fucking try that one. You're coppers. I know you are. And him' - he motioned with the Browning towards the prone form of Brewster - 'he's a fucking grass. You're here to fucking set me up.'
'Bollocks!' yelled Stegs. 'I can't believe you're doing this to us.' 'Is this the way you treat all your customers, Frank? Because if it is--'
'SHUT THAT FUCKING MOUTH!' roared Rentners. 'NOW! BOTH OF YOU! YOU HEAR ME? NOW!'
The whole world had probably heard that. It left Stegs's ears ringing, and he knew that this was serious. Very serious. Rentners had killed before. Knifed a man in the heart over an alleged drugs debt. He'd got off on manslaughter charges because the bloke had also slept with his missus, which meant extenuating circumstances. Nineteen times he'd stabbed him, the defence barrister at his trial describing it as a passionate rage in search of an outlet, which seemed a very generous way of looking at it. Some fucking outlet. The point was, though, that this was a bad situation. Rentners was unpredictable, he was violent, and he had a gun. Stegs was as scared as he'd ever been, but he knew it would be fatal to show it. He gave Rentners a look that said that he wouldn't forget this sort of treatment.
'Get 'em in the weights room,' said Rentners, ignoring him, 'and wake that cunt up. I don't want him missing all the fun.'
Yokes started to tell him that he was making a big mistake but never finished the sentence as Rentners let fly with a wicked right hook that sent him stumbling back into the wall. Yokes was a big lad, six two and about fifteen stone, but he was left dazed by the ex-boxer's blow, and offered little resistance as Rentners grabbed his shirt and pulled him back out into the hallway. At the same time, the one with the gun against Stegs's head hauled him to his feet and led him out the same way, keeping the weapon in position. 'Make a wrong fucking move and you die,' he told Stegs helpfully.
The weights room took up the whole of the basement. It was even more sparsely furnished than the rest of the house and, being windowless, was brightly lit by strip lights on the ceiling. It was also carpetless, and consequently quite cold. At one end of the room were two racks of weights, a treadmill, and several other exercise machines. A single leather sofa was at the other end, about thirty feet away, facing this makeshift gymnasium.
Rentners shoved Yokes onto the sofa, and Stegs followed a couple of seconds later. Their hands were then forced behind their backs by one of Rentner's gunmen, and amid continued protestations they were tied with duct tape. While this was going on, Brewster was dumped unceremoniously onto the stone floor halfway between the sofa and the nearest rack of weights. For the first time Stegs noticed a steam iron plugged into one of the mains sockets a few feet away from him.
'This is fucking ridiculous,' he told Rentners, trying hard not to look at the iron. 'We're here offering you money for your merchandise, and you're treating us like shit. If I'm a fucking copper, why aren't I wearing a wire, then? Come on, search me. See if I'm fucking wearing one.'
A tiny glimmer of doubt crossed Rentners' features, then disappeared. Tape their fucking traps up, Tone,' he told the gunman.
Tone stuffed the gun in his waistband and took the duct tape back out of his jacket.
'He's right, Frank,' said Vokes, trying hard to keep the nerves out of his voice. 'Search us if you don't believe us. Don't fucking do business with us if you don't trust us, but tying us up and doing all this is just going to make your reputation--'
He was forced to stop when Tone pulled the tape round his mouth several times over, before biting the end off it.
'You'd better make sure you never run into me again, Tone, you cunt!' snarled Stegs, as Tone prepared to do the same thing to him. When he'd finished, he punched Stegs in the side of the head, knocking him into Vokes. Their eyes met for a second, before they were pulled apart. Stegs thought that Vokes was more nervous than he'd ever seen him.
Brewster was taking his time coming round, so one of the other men disappeared into an alcove round the corner. The sound of running water followed and then he returned with a full bucket. He chucked it over Brewster, and now Stegs realized why the room wasn't carpeted.
Brewster coughed and spluttered and tried to sit up. Rentners then stepped forward and kicked him in the face. 'Lie on your front, now!' he demanded.
Brewster appeared confused but did exactly what he was told. Tone then came over, leant down, and ripped the shirt off his back, leaving only the arms still attached to him. He chucked the material to one side, then wrapped more of his roll of tape round Brewster's wrists, binding them together. He did the same with his ankles. Brewster didn't move while any of this was going on, or say anything.
'You're a grass, aintcha, Brewster?' said Rentners gently, walking round the other man. 'You're trying to fit us up, aintcha? And these geezers, they're coppers, right?'
Brewster desperately protested his innocence, but it was no good. Stegs could see in Rentners' face that they were going to punish him whatever he said. Rentners had decided he was guilty, and now that he had that thought in his head it was going to take a miracle to budge it. Stegs didn't believe in miracles. That was more Vokes's line. He'd bet that Brewster was praying for one, though.