Capital Punishment (26 page)

The sound of the gun discharging seemed to make the living room expand and contract. The gunman’s shoulder jerked with the recoil, jolting them all. Isabel keeled over to one side, fell off the sofa to the floor and convulsed.

2.00 P.M., MONDAY 12TH MARCH 2012

Branch Place, Hackney, London N1

‘How do you know about this place?’ asked Skin.

‘Friend of mine.’

‘He’s got friends. Who’d have thought it?’ said Skin. ‘Well yeah, Nurse, I gathered that, didn’t I? What’s the connection?’

‘He was one of my prescription drugs clients in the bad old days.’

‘He still on them?’

‘No, he deals.’

‘Hard or soft?’

‘Everything. Mainly H, pills, bit of grass,’ said Dan. ‘He and a huge Jamaican called Delroy Dread, a crack dealer who pushes my mate’s H to the black kids, run the estate, although they’re not exactly friends. They keep a respectful distance. Nothing happens around here without them knowing it, or allowing it.’

Skin, hands in pockets in a new fur-lined jacket, looked up at the grey, bare brick exterior, which was in need of repointing. The building looked derelict.

‘Has it got everything we need? Running water, electrics, heating?’ asked Skin. ‘We might be here for some time. Like a couple of weeks.’

‘A couple of
weeks?’

‘You don’t know,’ said Skin. ‘How long does it take to get a couple of million in cash together? How long does it take to persuade someone to part with a couple of million? How long will it take us to work out how we’re going to receive a couple of million? It’s not something you want to do under pressure. You’ve got to let the people you’re dealing with know you’re very comfortable with all the time in the world.’

‘Downstairs is a workshop which he uses as an art studio. Upstairs there’s a small flat with everything we need, he says.’

Dan unlocked the double doors and they went into the studio. Huge windows divided into small panes overlooked the Regent’s Canal at the back of the property. Pots full of brushes, tubes of oil paint, stacks of paper, books and a collection of old sunglasses covered a long table, which was backed up against one wall. In the open space, by the window, stood a couple of easels and leaning face in against the other wall were canvases of all sizes.

They went up some brick stairs to the flat above. It was furnished, but not by an interior designer. There were old armchairs, a battered leather sofa, some chrome, tubular kitchen chairs and a formica table in the living room. Coming up from the floor to the roof beams were the same windows as the studio below. The bedroom had a single metal-framed bed in it with a foam rubber mattress, some soiled sheets and a dirty blanket. Pieces of old fitted carpet, curling at the edges, partially covered the floor. The curtains over the window hung like scapegoats, as a warning to others.

‘This is what I like about the place,’ said Dan, looking out of the window.

‘What’s there to like?’ said Skin, hands in pockets, looking up at the ceiling, a single bulb hanging from a flex, energy-saving.

‘The canal,’ said Dan.

‘You got a boat?’

‘No,’ said Dan, ‘but that’s our escape route if it all fucks up.’

‘I can’t swim.’

‘Then you’ll have to stay and die,’ said Dan.

Skin joined him at the window and took a wary look out.

‘Fuck me,’ said Skin, rearing back. ‘It’s bloody miles down there. I don’t go for heights, you know.’

‘But you’re not afraid of anything Pike can chuck at you?’

‘It’s different when I’m on the ground with a gun in my hand.’

‘We’ll just have to do our best to arrange that scenario when the shit hits the fan.’

‘Your friend have a name?’

‘He calls himself MK.’

‘As in Milton Keynes?’

‘I don’t think that was uppermost in his mind.’

‘How much does he want?’

‘He’s offering a special rate for a mate. Five hundred a week.’

‘I suppose it
is
a short let,’ said Skin, meanly.

‘And he knows...’

‘What?’

‘I don’t just want it for a fuck pad,’ said Dan. ‘We’re up to no good.’

‘How did you know him before you sold him drugs?’

‘He was a patient on my ward. Broke his leg in a motorbike accident, had a lot of pain from skid wounds on his dick. Couldn’t pee. Ended up addicted to painkillers.’

‘Is he reliable?’ asked Skin, leaving the bedroom, checking out the bathroom.

‘I saved his life when he OD’d once. He always said he owed me one.’

‘So we’ve got at least one life before he cashes us in.’

‘He won’t. It’s not in his nature.’

‘There’s no seat on the toilet,’ said Skin, ‘and no curtain on the shower.’

‘You looking for a discount now?’

‘I’m just saying,’ said Skin, putting his head round the door before moving off to the kitchen. ‘No oven.’

‘You planning a Sunday lunch?’

‘Lamb, bit of rosemary and garlic. Lovely,’ said Skin. ‘At least there’s gas in the bottle for the hob.’

‘Fridge working?’

‘The light comes on, no beer and there’s something furry in the salad box,’ said Skin, coming back to the bedroom. ‘But ... I suppose we’ll take it.’

‘Been married long?’ asked Dan.

‘Another ten minutes if this is the best you can do,’ said Skin. ‘How about if we need the place for longer?’

‘I’ll have to ask.’

Skin collapsed on the bed. ‘So where are you kipping?’

Frank D’Cruz was ashen, immobile on the sofa. The white noise played on. Boxer picked Isabel up off the floor, righted her on the sofa.

‘Wait,’ said D’Cruz. ‘Look.’

The white noise ceased. The screen showed a bed in a room. There was the sound of whimpering, crying and the coughing up of excess emotion. Into the frame came Alyshia, squirming across the floor, dragging herself on her elbows in her long black mermaid dress, high heels hidden under the tail. A black carp out of water. She reached the bed and looked as if she might try to pull herself up onto it, but had second thoughts and crawled underneath, lay there shuddering, like an animal gone off to die on its own.

After some moments, the voice-over began.

‘I had the distinct impression, and I doubt that I’m wrong, that you weren’t taking me very seriously. That’s you, Frank. I’m sure you’re watching this. I know how your mind works. You’re still assuming that, in the end, this can be sorted out with money, your unfathomable pocket. I can almost hear you saying it to yourself: “Even if it’s ten million, I can handle that”. That’s the sort of loose change you’ve got fluttering around in your offshore accounts, I imagine.

‘That little demonstration was, perhaps, a bit too graphic, but it was designed to show you just how powerless you are in this particular situation, Frank. You have no cards. What I want to see from you is how seriously you’re taking me. I’ve given you a demonstration of my intent. Now I want a demonstration of your sincerity. I’ve shown you mine. Now you show me yours.’

The sound and picture abruptly cut. The white noise resumed. D’Cruz collapsed back onto the sofa, still transfixed by the screen as if there would be more. As if he wanted there to be more.

‘What’s he talking about, Chico?’ asked Isabel, whose recovery had been accompanied by a hardening. ‘You must know something, for God’s sake. You have to act. You’re just a spectator at the moment. You’ve said and done bugger all. You saw what she was wearing: that dress you bought her in Paris, the diamond necklace you gave her for her twenty-first. These people are goading you. How many more attempts, how many more mock executions do we have to suffer before we get to the real one?’

She’d riled him now and D’Cruz leapt to his feet, rounded on the television, which still spewed white noise.

‘I don’t know what he’s talking about. That’s just the bloody point. He’s talking in riddles. He doesn’t want my money. I am powerless. I have no bloody cards. But somehow I have to show that I’m taking him seriously. Give him a demonstration of my sincerity. What is this bollocks?’ he roared, shaking his fist at the screen.

‘Are you involved in something controversial that demands a decision?’ said Boxer.

‘Everything I bloody touch is controversial. What isn’t controversial out of construction, energy, manufacturing ... even the bloody cricket is controversial. And they all demand decisions instantly, all the bloody time,’ roared D’Cruz.

‘But is there something crucial happening right now?’ asked Boxer. ‘Where your decision to proceed or not will have an impact. A move you could make that would somehow show your sincerity to the kidnapper.’

‘What does that bloody mean? What is sincerity?’

‘Something politicians and businessmen are experts at imitating in order to get their own way,’ said Isabel. ‘But, when the time comes, find it impossible to deliver.’

‘Ha fucking ha, very bloody funny,’ said D’Cruz viciously. ‘Why is it that businessmen are always cast as the villains of the piece, when all we do is create work, jobs, trade and prosperity? Why is profit always looked down on as an “ulterior motive”, as if this isn’t what everybody is trying to do when they see a bargain at the market, get a house cheap because of a foreclosure or make an offer for a steelworks because you can make it stop losing money and give shareholders a return?’

‘Is that your main motivation when you buy a business for Konkan Hills Securities?’ asked Isabel. ‘Shareholder return?
That’s
what Jordan means by “sincerity”. You don’t give a shit about shareholder return. You’re motivated by adding wealth to your name. Climbing up the
Forbes
magazine India Rich List. Being number one. And you don’t care how many people you tread into the mud on your way up to that supreme position. You can’t even be
sincere
about your own ruthlessness.’

Isabel’s rant finished on a high-pitched screech, with her ring finger rapping the glass top table in front of her.

A silence ensued while both parties fumed. Boxer decided to let it continue in the hope that it would eventually induce some calm. The outburst of emotion didn’t surprise him after the gruelling horror of the mock execution and its aftermath: their daughter creeping under the bed, desperate for some semblance of protection.

‘What about those slums you were talking about on Saturday?’ said Isabel. ‘When you had your premonition. Remember? They were protesting “on the BB bloody C”, the slum dwellers.’

‘What about them?’ asked D’Cruz.

‘Why were they rioting?’ asked Boxer.

‘Because the bulldozers are coming. They’re squatting on prime real estate in the middle of the city and they think they can go on living there for eternity.’

‘What he means,’ said Isabel evenly, ‘is they’re rioting because they’ve got nowhere else to go. Some of these people have been living there all their lives. It’s their home. Not much of one, it has to be said, but—’

‘They
have
got alternative accommodation; they just don’t want to live in it. They prefer to live in a shit hole in the city centre rather than move to a clean high-rise a few blocks away.’

‘But there’s too little housing for the numbers living there. A lot of them will have to give up their livelihood, because you can’t have a pottery or a tannery in a high-rise apartment. They might be given a place for nothing but they know there will be fees on top. Like “lift charges”: paying to use the lift, which an old woman on the fifteenth floor might appreciate.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Boxer, holding up his hands. ‘This isn’t the time for a major debate. I’m sending this DVD to Pavis and I’ll talk to Martin Fox. In the meantime, Frank, you should think about what you can do to resolve this problem. You know your world better than anybody in this room.’

‘It’s just that the word “sincerity” doesn’t appear in it,’ said Isabel.

Boxer made a small hand gesture for her to quieten things down and left the room.

Mercy and Papadopoulos were sitting in the front of a Ford Mondeo behind the Crime Scene Investigator’s van, in front of the Grange Road house. Papadopoulos had just given her a report on the Jim Paxton killing.

‘And the girl, Jim’s neighbour, did she hear anything?’ said Mercy.

‘It wasn’t my job to interview her,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘What I know, just from chat, is that she works in a call centre, raising funds for charities. She comes home late and gets out of her head most evenings and, if she doesn’t, she’s not hanging around at home, which is a dump. She didn’t even know he’d taken delivery of a flat screen TV, which apparently arrived last Wednesday.’

‘Where was she at time of death?’

‘That would be between two and four in the morning of Sunday eleventh of March. She said she didn’t get home until seven from an all-nighter in a warehouse in Bermondsey. They’re checking her story. I was told to fade away,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘What about this shooting here? Somebody must have heard or seen something?’

‘The neighbour heard a bang, didn’t think anything of it. Happens all the time.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Of course I’m kidding. We’re not in bloody Helmand.’

‘Just one bang?’

‘The young guy in the corridor—who, according to his wallet, is called Victor Scully—had fired his gun, which didn’t have a suppressor.’

Knock on the window. One of the forensics. Mercy buzzed it down.

‘We’ve found a bullet, which looks as if it comes from Victor Scully’s gun. We’ve also found blood, which does not belong to either body. We’re pretty sure there were two gunmen and one of them has been hit.’

‘Enough for a DNA sample?’

‘Plenty. Don’t worry, it’s been despatched.’

Mercy called DCS Makepeace, made sure the DNA sample was put on fast track. She called Nelson, asked for another meeting.

They drove down to the Old George on Bethnal Green Road. Nelson was already there, sitting in the cathedral gloom, staring into his pint, looking as old as the pub’s interior. Papadopoulos went to the bar, ordered a ginger ale and a tonic water.

‘Big night out?’ asked the barman.

‘Oh, go on then,’ said Papadopoulos, ‘give us a double Britvic orange on the rocks with lemonade and an umbrella.’