A Good Day To Die (11 page)

It was a pretty grim scene. Scarface lay slumped
on his side, about ten yards up the track from Tex. Moustache was still writhing on the floor with his hands over his eyes. The Scotsman was on his back, arms outstretched, a huge gash running vertically down his face. He was conscious, but no danger to anyone. And the dog-owner, his face bloodied too, was sitting upright, his glasses broken, looking across in shock at his dog's body.

Still, I thought, putting the car back into first, it could have been worse. He might be traumatized now, but one day he'd tell this story to his grandchildren. And embellish it too, no doubt.

Without warning, my vision blurred again as I experienced a sudden wave of nausea, and I had to swallow hard to stop myself from vomiting. It took some seconds for the nausea to pass and the blurring to clear. Then, keeping my head low so he wouldn't get a decent description of me, I touched the accelerator and moved away, trying not to hit Tex but not bothering to avoid Scarface, who I drove straight over. His mug would fit even better on the cover of a book about pub brawls now.

Harsh, perhaps, but when you make your living breaking the heads of people you don't know, you shouldn't expect a rash of Get Well Soon cards.

11

The place where they'd taken me was an isolated wood just off the M25 near Hemel Hempstead, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that this was where they'd planned to kill me and dump my corpse. My opinion was bolstered by the discovery of a brand-new loaded .45 revolver in the 4x4's glove compartment, which presumably was intended to finish me off, once they'd beaten the shit out of me. I'd been lucky that Tex and his owner had shown up, but the fact remained that Les Pope evidently wanted me out of the way very badly indeed, and was prepared to go to some extreme lengths to make sure he succeeded.

It took me well over an hour to get back into central London, and the whole way I was paranoid that someone would spot the streaks of blood on the bonnet and call the cops. But maybe bloodstained cars are more common in England these
days, because no one did. I parked up on a back-street in Bayswater, put the gun in my pocket (there were no spare bullets), and used a handkerchief to wipe the steering wheel, door handles and car keys clean of prints. I left the keys in the ignition and made a note of the number plate and the vehicle's make and model, before walking slowly and wearily back to the hotel, my head still thrumming away.

It was one-fifteen p.m. when I reached my room and locked the door behind me. Knowing I was going to have to do it sooner or later, I stumbled into the bathroom and stared at myself in the grimy round mirror above the sink. I looked a mess. A yellowish bruise had formed on my jawline where I'd been struck by the Scotsman's baseball bat, and there was a second bruise like a particularly enthusiastic lovebite on my neck, while several cuts and unidentified marks dotted my face. My eyes had taken on the dull, watery look you often get in the mugshots of the more unhealthy and badly nourished criminals, and even my hair looked dishevelled, sticking up in clumps on top and at the back where the blood from the initial blows with the lead piping had dried. I hadn't been expecting a pretty sight, and I wasn't disappointed.

Having little difficulty pulling myself away from the mirror, I took a long shower and felt the back of my head as I washed my hair. The lump was big, not quite golf-ball sized but enough to make me
wonder whether I might have been optimistic concluding I wasn't concussed. My eyesight was back to normal, but the headache was showing little sign of abating.

When I'd finished in the shower, I knew I had to sleep. The thought unnerved me. If I was concussed, then there was always the possibility that I might not wake up again. There were also a lot of questions that needed answering. So far, I hadn't even got started on my investigation and already I'd come very close to getting killed. It would be a lot easier simply to give up and catch the plane back the following morning. To be honest, at that point I was tempted. I'm no masochist - I don't enjoy having the shit kicked out of me by people I've never met before - and I'm not suicidal either. I'd got my payback on the men who'd attacked me, and when they thought about me in the future, it would be with trepidation. I owed Pope, true, but sometimes you've simply got to let go. Tex's owner had made the mistake of charging headlong into danger because he'd got emotional, and if I hadn't been there, things would have ended up a lot worse for him. Who'd be there to help me if things went wrong?

But I'm stubborn. When I make up my mind to do something, I do it. Sometimes I have doubts about things - I wouldn't be human if I didn't - but I never let them stand in the way of a course of action. I'm not sure if that's a good trait to have or
not, but it's irrelevant really. Like I'd told Tomboy, I've got it, and that's that. And it was the reason why there was no way I was taking the easy option now. Not until I'd brought down Pope, and whoever it was who was hiding behind him. I was just going to have to be a lot more careful, that was all.

The mobile rang. It was on the bedside table and I picked it up, guessing it would be Tomboy finding out how I was getting on. But the screen was once again showing no number.

Which meant it was Mr Pope.

'Hello, Mr Kane,' he said as I picked up. 'I'm sorry about what happened earlier, but I wanted to make sure you got the message fully. London's a very dangerous place. It's best you leave it.' There was nothing threatening in his words. Rather, his tone was sympathetic, that of a trusted friend dispensing advice.

'I am planning on leaving,' I said, my headache suddenly getting worse. My stomach was grumbling too. All in all, I was a very unhappy man.

'I wanted to make sure you knew how serious we were about you getting on the plane.'

'Well, you certainly got your message across, but somehow I don't think I was meant to be getting on it at all.' I didn't mention that I had the gun.

'It was a warning, Kane. If we'd wanted you dead, you'd have been taken out the moment you stepped inside the cafe. But next time I'll use
someone better than those idiots this morning. I underestimated you there. And overestimated them. I won't make either mistake again.'

'Glad to hear it. I won't be making any mistakes again, either.'

'I hope that means you're going to be on tomorrow's flight. This time I guarantee that nothing'll happen to you en route.'

'That's very reassuring, but I'm beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that you might not be a man of your word. I'll make my own plans, Mr Pope, and the first you'll hear of them is when I tap you on the shoulder one dark night. Then perhaps we'll talk again.'

The laughter down the other end of the phone was frighteningly genuine.

'Pope?' he said, still laughing. 'Who the fuck is Pope?'

And he hung up, leaving me staring at the bedroom wall, thinking that I had one hell of a lot of catching up to do.

12

I slept for three hours that afternoon and when I woke up I felt like shit and my stomach's growling had reached dangerous proportions. Rising thickheaded but still alive, I grabbed myself a large drink of water from the tap, got dressed and headed out to look for something to eat. Darkness had fallen and the streets were cold.

There was a Burger King fifty yards down the road, and since I hadn't had one in a good long while, I went in and ordered a large Whopper meal with Diet Coke from a man who looked remarkably like a Filipino, although I didn't bother asking him if he was or not.

I ate in the upstairs area, the only person in there, and finished the food in about two minutes flat. It wasn't that it was especially good, just that I was very very hungry. While I sat at the table slurping away at my Diet Coke, I pulled a crumpled newspaper article from my pocket.

The article was written by someone called Emma Neilson, billed as the Investigating Crime Reporter for the
North London Echo.
It was dated 3 November, just over a month earlier, and concerned the fact that one week after the double murder of former Islington police officer DCI Asif Malik, thirty-one, and Islington resident and convicted street robber Jason Khan, twenty-two, in a Clerkenwell cafe, the police seemed no nearer to solving the case. The article went on to suggest that DCI Malik, one of the National Crime Squad's newest and most talented ethnic-minority officers, had been tipped for rapid promotion within the ranks, and could possibly have become the Met's Chief Constable one day, which might have been taking journalistic licence a little too far. Malik had been an extremely good copper, there was no doubt about it, but even so he'd been a long way from the top of the pile.

Still, journalists aren't interested in presenting the bare facts. They're interested in stories, and it seemed from my trawling of the Internet over the past few weeks that Ms Neilson had been very interested in this particular one. She'd written a further three articles for the paper concerning the murders. One was simply an account of Malik's life and career, but the other two examined possible motives for his killing. In the main, these centred round Malik's work for the National Crime Squad, which had seen him involved in investigations into
a heroin-importation gang and an organized paedophile ring, although he'd also made enemies in the North London criminal underworld during the two years he'd spent in Scotland Yard's SO7 unit, prior to joining the NCS. Not surprisingly, then, there was no shortage of suspects, but in the most recent article, published the previous week, Ms Neilson had concentrated on one criminal gang in particular, who, she said, had some questions to answer. She described the gang's leader as a shadowy thug who'd been responsible for a number of murders, but didn't name him. Instead, she implied in a none-too-subtle manner that he might be getting some inside help from within the team investigating the murders. 'Just what were Malik and Khan meeting about?' she'd demanded in the last paragraph. 'And why are more than a hundred full-time detectives still asking that question? Perhaps there are those amongst them who don't wish to find out.'

The ugly head of police corruption. I didn't suppose the feisty Ms Neilson had endeared herself to the investigating officers with articles like that, but then it wasn't her job to cosy up to them, and in a time when police officers could be unmasked as hitmen, it wasn't such an outlandish accusation either. And unlike anyone else, bar the ones who'd organized it, I knew there
was
an inside man. Someone who'd passed on the message that Slippery Billy was under suspicion.

There'd been plenty of articles in the nationals about what had happened to Malik and Khan (although none had contained quite the same polemic as Ms Neilson's), but as time passed and other news stories jostled for position, interest had begun to fade, particularly in the absence of any significant new leads. The articles had got shorter; the editorials praising the sacrifices of individual police officers in the face of lawlessness had disappeared; life had moved on.

The police wouldn't give up, of course, but five weeks with no arrests is a long time. And now that the man they'd been on to had disappeared into thin air before they could even question him (there'd been no mention of Billy West anywhere in the media), morale would be dropping fast and resources thinning out as officers were moved to newer and easier cases.

But Emma Neilson was still interested and that was good enough for me. It also helped that she didn't work for one of the bigger papers. It meant she'd be easier to track down and hopefully less suspicious of my motives. I might have had the advantage of knowing who'd organized the murders as well as whose finger had been on the trigger, but I needed to find out some background on the story, and she was the ideal person to start with.

Once upon a time, I could have phoned the
North London Echo
and spoken to my old mate Roy
Shelley, but now he'd gone, and as far as he was concerned, so had I. There was no way we'd ever be renewing our acquaintance, which was a pity, and one of the oft-forgotten disadvantages of running from the law and into exile. All your relationships are killed instantly. Both my parents were dead, but I still had a brother down in Wiltshire who I hadn't spoken to in the whole time I'd been away, and would probably never speak to again either. We'd never been that close, but it still seemed a waste.

I phoned the
Echo
and asked to speak to Ms Neilson, saying my name was DI Mick Kane of the NCS. The bloke on the other end sounded suitably impressed but told me that she wasn't there. Apparently she wasn't expected in until Monday.

'Lucky her,' I said. 'How come you drew the short straw, having to man the phones on a Saturday afternoon?'

'The management seem to like her,' he answered, with just a hint in his tone that he didn't share their admiration. 'And she's better looking than me.'

'I wouldn't worry about that,' I told him. 'They're all better looking than me.'

We both had a bit of a laugh, and with small talk over and trust established, I asked him if there was a mobile number I could reach Emma on. 'It's important we get hold of her. It's to do with the murder inquiry she's been covering in her articles. I'm part of the investigating team.'

'Er, sure, I suppose so. Hold on a moment.'

I waited while he put me on hold, and a few seconds later he was back on. He reeled out her number, then asked if she was in any trouble. He sounded like he'd be quite pleased if she was, and I wondered what he had against her, and whether it genuinely did have something to do with her looks. If so, she'd definitely be worth meeting. More likely, though, it was down to the fact that she was better than him at her job.