Crusher (7 page)

I’d only managed to read three articles and my eyes were hurting with the effort. I thought I’d try one more click, and landed on a blog calling itself The Inside Duff, claiming it had all the “gen” on the London underworld. According to this blogger, McGovern was involved in every major crime from the Great Train Robbery to 9/11, and anyone that had ever crossed him had ended up buried under major architectural landmarks in London, because McGovern owned most of them.

The blogger tried to sound outraged and disgusted, but even I could tell he secretly admired McGovern. Born to working-class Irish parents in Northolt, the Guvnor was a diamond geezer and family man who—according to this blog—never hurt anyone but other criminals, gave shitloads to charity and never boasted about it, and was too smart and too ruthless to ever get caught. There was even a blurry picture of his house in north-west London—a huge tacky palace that made the
average Premiership footballer’s mansion look like a garden shed.

The story my dad had been writing didn’t flatter McGovern this way. In his script The Boss was a thug who had risen to the top of the shit heap by being more vicious than any of his rivals. The script wandered around the point, yeah, but Dad’s version of McGovern seemed a lot more convincing than anything I had read on the Net.

I realized I hadn’t closed the curtains. When I came in I’d turned on the lamp in the corner, but apart from that the only light in the room came from the screen of my laptop. When I looked out the darkened window my reflection was brighter than anything outside; my bulk hunched over my laptop, squinting at the words. I blushed, wondering if any passers-by had noticed my lips moving as I read. Or whether anyone was watching me from the inky shadows outside. I got up and tugged the curtains shut, then headed for the front door and locked it too. The back door I had locked and bolted before I left for the pub. Of course, I realized, my dad’s keys were still missing. OK, no one could come in while I was here, but I couldn’t bolt the front door—there was a big bolt fitted to it, but the door itself had warped so the bolt didn’t line up with the doorframe any more.

In fact, I realized, there could be someone in the
house right now, someone who’d come in while I had been down the pub. Someone who could have crept up behind me while I sat at the table reading. I stood still and listened. Not just listened; I tried to feel if there was anyone else present. But I didn’t hear anyone, and I didn’t sense anything. The house was empty apart from me, and I was alone. I suddenly felt a twinge of self-pity, and just as quickly stifled it, mentally screwing it into the carpet with my heel like a cockroach. None of that shit—not now, not ever.

I climbed the stairs, cleaned my teeth without looking at my reflection, left my clothes in a heap on my bedroom chair and crawled under the covers.

“Social Services.”

“Hi there … um … I’m looking for someone—Elsa Kendrick?”

“What’s this regarding?”

“My father died recently, and I’m seventeen.” I winced. I wasn’t making any sense—I sounded like a five-year-old who had dialled 999. “Um—I need some advice on managing money and that sort of thing, and she said I should call her, if I—”

“Hold, please.”

Thirty seconds of electronic tinkling followed. I glugged the last of my instant coffee. It had a sour tang—that milk was definitely on its way out. I’d have to go shopping. I hated shopping.

“Social Services.” A different voice, another woman—this one in her twenties, I guessed. It was only 9:20 in the morning but already she sounded harassed and tense.

“Hi, I wanted to speak to Elsa Kendrick?” I didn’t want to have to start explaining myself all over again.

“Elsa’s on leave at the moment, can I help?”

“Oh, right …” Bollocks, I thought. Here we go again on that bloody merry-go-round, a different face every day.

“Um … any idea when she’ll be back?”

“I’m afraid not. She’s away indefinitely.” What the hell happened to her? I thought.

“Sorry, when did she go on leave? I spoke to her yesterday. I thought—”

“Yesterday? Elsa was sus— I mean, she went on sick leave two months ago.”

“Wait, did you say she was suspended?”

“I’m sorry, was there something you wanted? Maybe I can help.”

“Red hair, mid-thirties, right?”

“Sorry, who am I talking to?”

“Where does she live, do you know?”

“I can’t give out that sort of information. Look, if there’s something you need, tell me what it is and I’ll see if I can help. Otherwise I’m sorry, we’re very busy.”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

“Can I take a name and number? Someone will call you back.”

“No. Forget about it. Thanks.”

I hung up. They wouldn’t have called back anyway, they never did. I stared at my mobile as if it might flash up an icon telling me my call had got me nowhere. If Elsa Kendrick was on sick leave, why did she come round here with a bunch of Social Services leaflets? Asking questions about Dad, and about where my mother was? Maybe she was in the phone book …? Unlikely. A social worker wouldn’t let her home number be listed, or she’d be pestered all day and night by cranks and drunks and weirdoes and the plain desperate. If I wanted to find Elsa Kendrick I’d have to think of some other way.

When the phone rang in my hand I nearly dropped it. The word WORK flashed up on the screen as the handset vibrated. Shit—Andy.

“Andy, hey.”

“Finn, good morning, how are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks, all things considered.”

“That’s good, that’s good. We heard about what happened. That’s really terrible, we’re really sorry.”

I was impressed. He sounded almost human. Damn it, I thought, I should have called him about taking some time off, let him know …

“Andy, I’m sorry I haven’t been in to work, everything’s kind of screwed up, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

“That’s OK, that’s OK, that’s why we’re ringing up—we wanted you to know you shouldn’t worry about it.”

Why did he keep saying
we
, I wondered? Were there two of him or something?

“Thanks, Andy, I really appreciate it. I’ll try to be back as soon as I can. I don’t even know when the funeral’s going to be.”

“We don’t want you worrying about that sort of thing, Finn. That’s why it’s been decided we should really re-examine our options vis-à-vis your position.”

“What?”

“We’ve been reviewing the staffing levels and rotas anyhow, and we need to make some efficiency adjustments.”

“Hold on—say that again?”

“We really appreciate all your hard work and we wish you all the best in the future,” Andy recited.

“You mean you’re firing me?”

“We need to redeploy our resources externally,” said Andy. Was this bullshit intended for his benefit or mine? Or was the guy really incapable of human speech? Either way I wasn’t surprised he was doing this over the phone. If we’d been in the same room I’d have decked him.

“Which means you’re firing me.”

“The fact is, we have to be strict about the image our
staff projects, on and off duty. We can’t afford to have anyone on the team in trouble with the police.”

“Andy, I’m not in trouble with the police. My dad was murdered.”

“But they’re not looking for any other suspects at the moment, as I understand it.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

“I’m afraid I cannot discuss references we may or may not have received. Your outstanding wages will be paid as usual—”

“Was it a copper called Prendergast?”

“Like we said, we wish you all the best in the future. And if you’re ever in this neck of the woods again, do call in, and remember to ask for your special Max Snax Veteran’s Discount.”

“This neck of the woods? I fucking live here, you prick!”

“Sorry, Finn, but we have to go. Have a really great day.”

And he went. Before I even had a chance to tell both of him where he could stick his Max Snax Veteran’s Discount.

My knuckles were white on the handset, as if I was gripping Andy’s windpipe. He’d fired me? Fired me! Two days after I’d won my second golden stud? Thank Christ I’m through with that place, piped up the voice
in my head. Screw Max Snax, and Andy, and that shit job.

Yes, it was a shit job, I thought, but it was a job, and now I didn’t have one. How long would the money I had last? I should find out which bank Dad used, call their customer services, tell them what’d happened.

To hell with that—the first thing they’d do would be to freeze the account. Leave it for now. There was someone I needed to talk to, somehow.

McGovern’s house looked even bigger than in the photographs. Not that I could really tell from where I was standing—across the street, surveying the place from behind a tree surgeon’s lorry bumped up on the verge. The perimeter wall was pretty forbidding—four metres high, smooth rendered brick painted white. Every seven metres or so stood a pillar crowned with a cluster of video cameras. The entrance gates were only about three metres high but they were plated in sheet steel, also painted white; unremarkable, anonymous, and impenetrable. All this security wasn’t unusual in the neighbourhood—there were other sprawling millionaire mansions, and one or two Middle Eastern embassies. But there the high walls and cameras were intended to keep thugs and criminals out … in McGovern’s case, it was the other way round.

Now I’d found the house—the name of the street had been mentioned in that Inside Duff underworld blog—I had no idea what to do next. It occurred to me vaguely I could wait till dark, dress like a ninja and throw a grappling hook over the wall. There were a few mature trees whose branches were blocking the cameras’ view, I noticed. But I didn’t have any black clothes with me. In fact, I didn’t even own any black clothes—they showed up my dandruff. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like walking up to that front gate and pressing the entry buzzer either.
Hi, my name’s Maguire, I think Mr. McGovern may have had my dad murdered?
Either they’d tell me to piss off, or they’d let me in and I’d never be seen again. Not that many people would be looking.

It had taken me an hour to get here, and I didn’t feel like going home just yet. It was mid-morning and the street was deserted, though not exactly quiet. The tree surgeon was up a plane tree nearby with a chainsaw, lopping off the spring growth and letting the green branches fall onto a cordoned-off section of pavement. His mate, in hi-viz jacket and ear protectors, was at the tailgate of the truck, feeding the branches into a shredder. The blades of the machine kept up a constant deafening whine that every minute or so rose to a crescendo as a branch was fed in, ground up and sprayed in fragments onto the growing heap in the back of the
truck. I noticed another lorry just like the tree surgeon’s coming down the street, indicating left … McGovern’s mansion was on its left. This other truck was towing a shredder, rather shinier and newer than the one beside me. The lorry slowed, turned in, bumped up over the lowered kerb and stopped with its nose against McGovern’s white steel gates. It was painted in a classy pastel green, with a business name in dark-green lettering I didn’t quite catch. The driver rolled his window down, poked the entryphone button with a gloved hand and shouted something into the mike. It gave me more time to read the name on the side of the van: “Daisy Cutters Garden Services.”

I couldn’t hear what the driver was saying, and it seemed that neither could the person controlling the gates—the driver had to repeat himself a few times to be heard over the roar of the shredder. But eventually the gates jerked and rolled open with a whine, slowly revealing a fake-cobblestone drive curving up to the white painted portico of McGovern’s house, where steps led up to a solid wood door. I just had time to register that the house resembled one of those shiny plastic Hollywood mansions you see on US TV soaps featuring shiny plastic Hollywood starlets when the gates started to hum shut again. Dammit, I thought, if I’d been quicker, I could have sneaked in behind the lorry before
the gates closed … Except, of course, I would have been spotted by the CCTV. The security staff probably would have set dogs on me, and waited a good while before calling them off. All the same, it gave me an idea. I hesitated … Was I really going to do this? If I was, I had better do it right now.

Screw it. I stepped back behind the tree surgeon’s truck, pulled off my hooded sweatshirt and my T-shirt and tied them round my waist.

The shredder in the street was still grinding and spewing when I pushed the button on the entryphone a few minutes later. I heard it crackle into life and a voice squawk out of it, but I couldn’t make out what it said. I stood well back from the microphone and shouted, “I’m with Daisy Cutter,” but I was pretty sure whoever was listening and watching couldn’t make out a word. The voice over the intercom squawked some more, and I stared up at the TV camera and nodded at the gate. I was shirtless, wearing jeans and carrying more leafy green branches in my arms than I could manage. On my face I wore the bored, harassed expression I thought a gardener’s gopher might have if he’d been sent to go pick up the trimmed branches that had fallen outside the client’s wall, but I wasn’t sure if whoever was controlling the gates could even see my face behind all the foliage. Nothing happened, and seemed to go on happening
for a long time. Had they seen me dash across from the other side of the road? Shit—had they clocked the fact that I wasn’t wearing gardening gloves? I shivered, and it wasn’t the breeze that was chilling me.

The gates jerked and shuddered and slowly parted, the motors whining. I staggered forward with my armful of greenery and gave the camera a grateful smile and a nod. I had barely stepped through when they hummed shut again, coming together with a soft metallic ring. They reminded me of a dinner gong … and I was the starter.

I was pretty sure the security people would still be watching, so I had to go through with it. I staggered up the drive, scattering fresh green leaves in my wake, towards where the Daisy Cutter lorry was parked. The real gardening crew was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear a petrol-driven strimmer firing up on the far side of the house. From what I could see there were more than enough bushes and trees in the grounds to keep a two-man crew busy all day. I dumped my armful of branches by the shredder, pulled on my T-shirt and hoodie and headed towards the sound of the strimmer, still trying to look as if I belonged. I glanced casually around to see if anyone was about, sizing up the house itself. Close-up it still looked Hollywood somehow; everything was shiny and new, expensive and vaguely
fake. Beyond the portico, by heavily draped French windows, was a sun terrace with a set of wrought-iron table and chairs that looked like they’d come from a catalogue and had never even been sat on. Leading away from the terrace and heading off nowhere in particular was a timbered framework laid out like a tunnel, for roses to climb on. A pergola, that was the word for it. I dodged into it and paused, looking around for CCTV cameras. If I could see them, they could see me. But this seemed to be a blind spot. I leaned back into a gap between rose bushes and tried to figure out what to do next. Tricking my way through the front gate had seemed like a great idea, but I would never get out the same way. In fact, I couldn’t see how I was going to get out at all, and I didn’t even know what I was looking for. What the hell was I doing?