A Good Day To Die (6 page)

I didn't like the idea of depriving Slippery Billy
of a burial. I didn't know his family situation but I supposed he had loved ones somewhere, and that they'd be left wondering for the rest of their lives what had happened to him. But I had no choice. He'd made his bed and, uncomfortable as it was, he was going to have to lie in it.

As I toppled him over the edge and turned away, wiping sweat from my brow, I thought about the mysterious Les Pope, the man who'd commissioned this and Blacklip's murder, as well as at least two others. Would he be losing any sleep over his crimes? I doubted it. Like Billy West, I expected he'd just see it as business.

I pondered that particular matter as I returned to the Land Rover and continued my journey up to the Ponderosa golf club for a much-needed drink and a chance to think about the man whose murder I'd just avenged.

5

Asif Malik. He'd been a colleague of mine in Islington CID for more than a year during my last days in London. Originally I was his boss, and then, just before my ignominious departure, he'd got promoted to the same level as me, which hadn't been much of a surprise. He'd always struck me as a man who was going places. He was hardworking, bright and, most importantly of all, decent. Most coppers are decent people underneath it all, but some - myself included - get more cynical as the years go by and the crime rate keeps rising. I'd once believed in what I was doing, in my ability, as a police officer working within the strict frameworks the law sets, to change things and deliver justice to the people who needed it. But time, and the growing realization that what I was delivering was nothing more than a sticking plaster for a gaping wound, had corrupted me to the point where both my reputation and
my conscience were now well beyond repair.

It was possible that Malik had changed too. After all, I hadn't seen him in three years. But somehow I doubted it. He'd always been unflinching in his view that what he was doing was right, and what the people he was trying to catch were doing was wrong. To Malik, life had been relatively simple. There was good and there was evil, and it was the duty of all right-thinking people to try to promote the former and stamp out the latter. That was why it had upset me more than I would have expected when I'd read about his death on the Net three weeks earlier. Because he was one of the good guys, and God knows there aren't very many of them left these days.

Since leaving home, I'd followed his career on its upward trajectory, in the expat papers and on the Net, from detective sergeant in Islington CID to detective inspector in Scotland Yard's SO7 Organized Crime Unit, and then to his final, brief role as a DCI in the National Crime Squad. It had pleased me to see him doing well. First and foremost, because I'd always liked him. I think he reminded me a little of what I'd been like when I'd started out, before the rot had set in. But there was more to it than that. For some reason, the evidence of his progress helped to ease the guilt I felt periodically over the fate of the only three innocent men I've ever killed - the two customs officers and the accountant whose deaths had led to the
disintegration of my old life, and my subsequent exile. I guess I saw Malik as an extension of me: my good side. The young copper I'd mentored, and sent on to greater things. If I was capable of helping him, then I couldn't have been that bad a man. That's how I'd rationalized it on those occasions when the guilt had begun to get a grip. And it helped, because like a lot of things, there was a degree of truth in it. He had learned a lot from me, and before the secret of my other life had come out, most of it had been good.

Billy West hadn't even known who Malik was when he'd snuffed out his life along with that of the man who'd been sitting next to him in the Clerkenwell cafe that night. The job had just been an easy way to make some decent money. Nothing more, nothing less. And now there was a wife who was a widow, and two young kids who were going to grow up without a dad. I don't suppose Slippery had given them a second thought. He'd now paid the price, but Les Pope? At the moment, Les Pope slept soundly in his bed six thousand miles away, unaware and unworried that he'd made a new enemy. Someone like him probably had plenty anyway.

I had lunch in the open-fronted clubhouse at the Ponderosa, overlooking the sea and the islands beyond, but didn't see anyone I knew. Puerta Galera's a small place and the expats tend to stick together. When you're on the run for murder it's a
lot safer to keep yourself to yourself, but isolation was next to impossible in a community this size. It wasn't a problem, though. They knew me as Mick here and, as far as I was aware, they accepted my cover story that I'd lived and worked in the Philippines tourist trade for years. Most of them had been out here a long time themselves and wouldn't have known who I was anyway; and those who had come in the last three years wouldn't have been able to pick me out unless they knew who they were looking for or, like Slippery, were already acquainted with me. My appearance had changed considerably since the days when my photo had been plastered all over Britain's newspapers. I'd had two very professional bouts of plastic surgery - one in Davao City when I'd first arrived, one in Manila a year later - that had changed the shape of my nose and chin and removed the dark lines beneath my eyes. My skin was a much darker hue thanks to its prolonged contact with the sun, and my hair, thinner now that I'd hit forty and tinged for the first time with grey, had lightened for the same reason. I also wore a small, neatly trimmed beard that fitted my long thin face comfortably, and which had never been there during my time as a copper. Despite all that, however, I was still a little disconcerted by the speed with which a man I hadn't set eyes on in ten years had known who I was. Maybe it was time to think about going under the knife again.

I'd taken the day off and was in no mood to hurry back to our place, so when I'd paid the bill and driven back into Puerta Galera, I turned south instead of taking the road north to Sabang, and drove along the winding and potholed cliff-top coast road in the direction of Calapan.

And all the time I was thinking.

6

It was early evening and already dark by the time I returned to the Big La Laguna Dive Lodge, the place I now called home. It was only a small hotel, with sixteen whitewashed guest rooms arranged round three sides of a tiny courtyard, containing an even tinier pool. In front of the courtyard, facing directly onto the beach, was our open-air bar and restaurant, and next door to that was the dive shop we ran. We'd given the whole place a complete refit and paint job when we'd bought it, and had even gone so far as installing expensive rattan furniture in the rooms and the drinking and eating areas, and although I say so myself, the place looked good.

My room was right at the back of the hotel and faced straight into a Filipino family's apartment, but since I didn't spend much time in it, the view didn't really bother me. I went straight up to it now, saying hello to a couple of our guests on the way,
and showered and changed, before going back out to locate Tomboy.

I found him in the back room of the dive shop, sitting at the table with a load of paperwork spread out in front of him. He had a half-full bottle of San Miguel and a crumpled pack of Marlboros within easy reach. On seeing me come in, he smiled expectantly. 'How's it going, mate? I was beginning to get worried about you. It all went all right, didn't it?'

I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me, a signal that we could talk. 'It's all done.'

He nodded appreciatively. 'Good. Now we can get back to running this place. Did you get rid of everything?'

I told him I had and he asked me whether it had been in the place we'd discussed.

I nodded.

'You did a good job, Mick,' he said, calling me by my nickname, and sounding not unlike a man I used to do work for back in London. 'And it's going to tide us over for a long time. We won't have to do it again.'

I felt like taking him up on the 'we' bit, seeing as he hadn't done a lot, but I didn't bother. I was too tired for an argument. 'When are we going to get the balance of the cash?'

'As soon as he's seen the photos. You took 'em all right, yeah?'

I nodded and he reached over and picked up the
cigarettes, watching me with an expression that might have been sympathy. 'It's all over now. You can forget about it.'

I shook my head. 'It's not over, Tomboy. Billy Warren wasn't who he said he was. He was Billy West, a villain I had dealings with back in the old days. You must have known him. You knew every villain round our way.'

He scrunched up his face into an expression of acute concentration. 'The name rings a bell,' he said after a pause, 'but I can't picture him. It must have been after my time.'

'It wasn't. I hadn't seen him in at least ten years before today.'

He shook his head. 'Nah. Like I said, the name rings a bell, but that's it. I honestly don't remember him.'

I wondered why he was lying. Tomboy had known every villain on our patch, most of whom he'd put behind bars with his information, but if he had known Slippery Billy he wasn't saying, and I decided to let it go for now. 'Anyway, Billy West was also a shooter on the side. He'd moved into that line of business recently, and the last job he did, the one that brought him over here, was Asif Malik.'

'The two-man hit in the cafe?'

'That's the one.'

'Shit, how's that for a coincidence?' He shook his head, looking suitably taken aback. I decided he
couldn't have known about Slippery's involvement in Malik's murder, otherwise he'd never have let me near him. Tomboy had never known Malik, but he knew he'd been my partner and was a man I'd liked and respected. 'I'm sorry about that, Mick. Or maybe I'm not. At least it gave you a reason to sort him out.'

'Who's Les Pope?'

Tomboy sighed and lit one of his Marlboros. 'I was afraid you'd ask that. Why do you want to know?'

'I'm interested,' I told him. 'Apparently, he was also the man who set up the Malik job.'

I thought he'd resist telling me too much, but I think he saw in my expression that I wasn't going to be fobbed off. 'He's a lawyer.'

I managed an empty laugh. 'Well, there's a surprise.' So at least Slippery Billy hadn't been lying about that. 'Go on.'

'He does defence work as a solicitor, and he knows a few bad types, but he's always kept his nose clean, so he's never really received much attention from the law. He's also well-spoken and well-educated, which helps.'

'How do you know him?'

'The usual. He defended me on a couple of cases years ago, before I knew you. We kept in touch, and I did a little bit of work for him now and again.'

Just like Slippery had. 'What sort of work?'

'The illegal sort. Providing other clients of his
with alibis, helping them out of binds. Nothing too serious, but put it this way: he's not the sort of geezer I'd like to mess with. He knows people who could make life very difficult for you if they wanted.'

'The sort who'd pay to have people killed?'

'I suppose so, although I've got to admit it was a bit of a surprise when he rang me out of the blue last year about our man in Manila.'

'He'd never asked you to get involved with anything like that before?'

'No, course not.'

I wasn't sure I believed him. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed odd that Les Pope would have asked Tomboy to help commit murder on two occasions in the space of a year, unless he knew something about his former client that made him confident he'd go along with it. I think I'd deluded myself that Tomboy's involvement in crime while he'd been an informant of mine back in London had always been on the periphery. I still didn't want to believe that it had been anything more. After all, I liked the guy. He'd helped me out when he could have earned himself a lot of money by turning me in to the Philippine authorities when I first arrived here, and we'd lived cheek by jowl for the three years since. He was a friend. Even so, the doubts that had prickled away all day remained.

'Why do you want to know all this, Mick?' he asked, picking up his beer bottle. 'What good's it
going to do? We're thousands of miles away from Pope and London, and you know what they say. Let sleeping dogs lie.'

'Because,' I said, choosing my words carefully, 'he was responsible for killing someone I liked and respected. If it had been you he'd killed, I'd be asking the same questions.'

'Keep it down, can you?' he hissed, dragging on his cigarette.

'It's all right, I locked the front door. We can talk.'

'Look, I appreciate why you're asking the questions, but what's done is done. You know what I'm saying? It's spilt milk and all that. I'm sorry about Malik - I am - but nothing's going to bring him back, and the man who pulled the trigger ain't no more, so let's just forget about it, eh?'

'That's easier said than done.'

He took a swig of beer, banged the bottle down on the table and stood up, craning forward in my direction. When he spoke, his voice was a forced whisper. 'What the fuck are you going to do, Mick? Go back to London and pop Pope? Then get on a plane like nothing's happened and fly back here?' He raised his hands, palms outwards, in a gesture of 'What more can I say?' 'It don't work like that. You're a wanted man in London; chances are you'll be picked up before you even locate him, let alone pull the trigger. And if that happens you ain't ever going to see the outside of a nick again, are you? Not with your record. They'll throw away the key.
Are you willing to risk all that just to kill the bloke who had something to do with organizing the hit on someone who you worked with once, but ain't seen in over three years? Because I'm telling you, mate, if that's the case, it ain't worth it. Honestly.'