Dead Time (4 page)

‘You looking for a backhander?’ he said.

‘Now you’ve hurt my feelings, Pete the Mod,’ I said. ‘I spoke to Wendy Lane. She told me that this was where she met Lenny.’

‘Yeah, Wendy worked here.’

‘What did she do here?’

Pete the Mod gestured at the women sliding up and down the poles.

‘What does it
look
like women do here?’

‘Wendy Lane was a stripper?’

‘Wendy was an exotic dancer.’

I thought about that for a while.

‘Look, I already talked to DCI Flashman and I don’t have to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I know my rights. You’re either walking out or I’m having you slung out. Your shout.’

He walked to the other end of the bar. My eyes alighted on the thin white legs of the woman dancing on the bar. She had long black hair and large dark eyes and a small gold crucifix around her neck. Mediterranean, I thought. Italian or Spanish. A good Catholic girl who was wondering what she had got herself into.

A heavy weight plopped down on the bar stool next to me. It was the old skinhead from the end of the bar. He raised a meaty paw to the inner thigh of the girl before us and guffawed with pleasure when she recoiled from his touch.

I touched his arm.

He looked at me with his cruel, watery eyes.

‘When do the gentlemen get here?’ I said.

His face creased with incomprehension. ‘What?’

‘Faces Gentlemen’s Club,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see any gentlemen. When do they get here? The gentlemen?’

‘What are you talking about, mate?’

‘I’m not your mate,’ I told him. ‘And if you ever disrespect a woman in my presence again, then I’ll break your arm.’

I looked up at the girl. She was watching me. I felt a stab of pity for her but then I couldn’t think about her any more because the bouncer who should have been on the door was coming out of the toilet, buttoning his fly, and heading towards Pete the Mod who was furiously jabbing a thumb in my direction.

The bouncer approached me.

He was a big man but inside his XXL dinner jacket it was the kind of bulk that is measured in width as much as height. He was built like Mike Tyson, or a refrigerator, or possibly Mike Tyson’s refrigerator. There was a livid white scar high on his scalp, as if someone had removed the top of his skull to have a look inside.

‘Sling the bastard out,’ Pete the Mod said.

The bouncer and I looked at each other.

‘Hello, Roy,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘Max,’ he nodded, and smiled with embarrassment.

Pete the Mod was staring at us, dumbfounded.

‘I know Roy from Fred’s gym,’ I explained. ‘Smithfield ABC. Trained there for a long time, didn’t you?’

The bouncer nodded shyly.

‘And I saw him fight a couple of times at York Hall,’ I said. ‘When he was a pro. Sugar Roy Robertson! Roy was a very good heavyweight. He should have stuck at it a bit longer.’

Sugar Roy shrugged.

‘You got to live the life, Max,’ he said. ‘I had trouble with my weight. Liked my nosh too much…’

Pete the Mod clipped him round the ear.

‘You great useless lump!’ he said. ‘Just chuck him out or I’ll do it myself!’

Everybody was watching us. The girl on the bar had stopped dancing. I smiled at Sugar Roy Robertson. In his day, which was about five years ago now, he had been one of those fighters that I had always loved. Plenty of heart, always coming forward, a real warrior. Didn’t mind getting hit if he could hit his opponent in return. Always entertaining to watch. And he was a nice man. I didn’t want to fight him. Not least because one of his big hands would knock me unconscious if it was ever allowed to connect cleanly.

‘Sorry about this, Max.’

‘Me too, Sugar Roy.’

He took my arm, gripping it high above the elbow, lifting it, pulling me off balance. I bent my knees, dropping my centre of gravity, letting my weight release me from his hold and stepping away from him just as he loaded up to give me a big right. Before his fist had started coming forward I dropped a short left hook on the tip of his chin. He was going to hit me hard. But I hit him first.

The short left hook buckled his legs and his huge hands fell to the bar to stop himself falling. He blinked at me, wondering what had happened as I placed my card in front of Pete the Mod.

‘Sugar Roy always kept his guard a bit low,’ I told him. ‘If you’re going to keep your hands that low, you better be like Muhammad Ali or Floyd Mayweather. You better know how to dance. Call me if you hear anything about what happened to Lenny Lane.’

I walked to the door, neither taking my time or rushing, uncertain if they were going to let it go. In my experience, men who dress like this lot rarely let it go.

I was back on the street when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see the Mediterranean girl who had been dancing on the bar, a parka thrown over her string bikini.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For standing up for me.’

I got her accent immediately.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said. ‘What part of Italy are you from?’

‘Calabria.’

‘You’re a long way from Calabria – what’s your name?’

‘Cara,’ she said. ‘Cara Maldini.’

‘Cara, you should either go back inside or go home. You’re going to catch hypothermia standing out here.’

In the doorway of Faces I could see figures huddling. They were draining the bottles they were holding. They were working themselves up for what they wanted to do to me.

Multiple assailants, I thought. Not good.

‘Go,’ I told her.

She leaned towards me and quickly kissed my cheek.

‘They’re not telling you the truth,’ she whispered, and turned away. She went back inside Faces, removing her coat, as the men in the doorway began to walk towards me.

I turned away as the first bottle smashed into the pavement ahead of me. I still did not run. But by now I was walking very, very fast. Another bottle disintegrated against the roof of a parked car. The third one caught me between my shoulders blades.

They cheered. I began to run. And so did they.

A car screamed to a halt by my side and the passenger door flew open. I got inside and DC Edie Wren hit the accelerator before I had the door shut again. She pushed a strand of red hair from her forehead and looked in the rearview mirror. A small diamond glittered on the third finger of her left hand.

‘Assaulting a police officer,’ she said. ‘We should go back mob-handed and nick the lot of them, Max. I got your message. Any joy on Lenny Lane?’

‘People keep talking about this Serbian. Goran Gvozden. Lenny’s martial arts teacher.’

‘Flashman of the Yard’s got this one, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But it was me that found the body. And it happened outside my front door. And nobody executes a drug dealer in my neighbourhood and gets away with it.’

Wren laughed. ‘Fair enough.’

The streets of west London flashed by.

‘Nice ring,’ I said. ‘Is that what you got for Christmas?’

She nodded, smiling with a sort of shy pride.

‘He’s semi-separated from his wife. They sleep together but they don’t have sex.’ A beat. ‘Is that just bullshit, Max?’

I shrugged. There was nothing good and true I could say.

‘Thanks for coming out,’ I said.

‘It’s okay. He’s at home now. You know…’ she shot me a look. I had never met anyone so tough who was also as vulnerable as Edie Wren. ‘With his two kids,’ she said. ‘And her.’

She swung the car onto Savile Row, a street famous for bespoke tailors and the rooftop where the Beatles played their last gig. In the distance I could see the big blue lamp outside number 27. West End Central.

‘What about you?’ Wren said. ‘Santa bring you any good presents?’

‘Scout bought me
Nighthawks
by Edward Hopper,’ I said.

Wren laughed.

‘What did Scout do?’ she said. ‘Rob a bank?’

Everyone bowed when they entered the Double G dojo.

Hard-bodied men and women who had given ten, twenty or thirty years to the martial arts and wide-eyed children wearing brand new white cotton kit with a white belt – elite and novice alike, they all paused at the short flight of steps that led down to the mats, and they all bowed in the direction of the man who ran the Double G.

Goran Gvozden stood in the middle of the hall, a big grin on his great slab of a face, nodding at his students as they filed from the mats and took a seat at the low benches that circled the hall.

Edie Wren and I took off our shoes and joined the spectators.

Gvozden was holding a long bamboo stick with both hands. He was testing its weight, getting the feel of it as his students settled on the benches. Two young men faced him, dressed all in black, their faces covered in what looked like beekeeper’s masks with a metal grille on the front. They also held bamboo sticks as long as swords.

When the students were seated and silent, Goran Gvozden nodded at the two masked men. They slowly bowed to each other.

Then Goran Gvozden gripped the bamboo sword above his head like a battle-axe and he flew at them.

Chopping, slashing, bringing the sword down on his opponents with enormous force. They backed off, expertly defending themselves with swords held high and horizontal above their heads, lightly diverting or blocking his blows, and then suddenly they were coming back at him, slashing at his neck and his ribs, and he was stopping maybe half of the blows with wild defensive parries, but many more were getting through, hitting his sides and shoulders with a bullwhip crack. His bamboo sword was smashed from his hands.

A murmur ran through the crowd.

Goran Gvozden was losing this fight.

And then suddenly he was in the air, attacking again, moving with enormous grace for a man so large, the outside ridge of his two bare feet slamming into the abdomen of his two attackers, knocking the wind right out of them, doubling them up.

Everybody laughed. Goran Gvozden helped the black-suited men on the ground to their feet. He had a big grin on his face. The men took off their headguards, and they were smiling too.

Plenty of hard knocks but no hard feelings.

Somehow everyone’s honour had been satisfied.

Goran Gvozden and the two men in black bowed deeply to the spectators. Everybody stood up and applauded. They were still clapping when Wren and I went up to him and showed him our warrant cards.

‘Mr Gvozden? I’m DC Wolfe and this is DC Wren. We have a few questions, if you have a moment.’

The big grin was dialled down just a little.

‘That will be about my friend Lenny,’ he said, his English good but the accent heavy. ‘Please. Come into my office.’

There was a small room at the back of the dojo that was somewhere between a modest office and a shrine to the martial arts. Beyond a single desk with a large iMac, the walls were covered with souvenirs of Goran Gvozden’s life in karate – photographs of him taking part in competitions, holding awards, and posing with large groups of people all dressed in identical white pyjamas. Mounted in pride of place above his desk were three long, gently curved samurai swords. One of them was in a black lacquered sheath. The steel blades of the other two were mottled by time. They did not look like replicas. They looked like the real thing.

‘That was kendo outside, right?’ I said, as we sat opposite him. ‘The Japanese art of sword fighting?’

‘Oh, no – that was just a bit of fun,’ he said. ‘Our guests are serious
kendoka
– kendo practitioners – but I just wanted my students to experience a noble and ancient art.’

Through the window of his office we could see his students getting back to their
kata
drills, the heavily choreographed kicking and punching routines that are the foundation of karate.

‘You teach
Wado Ryu
karate?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘And how long did you teach Lenny Lane?’

He thought about it. ‘Nearly eight years,’ he said. ‘Not including the time he was away.’

‘You mean prison,’ Wren said.

‘Yes. Prison. I taught him for many years.’

I paused, waiting for some expression of remorse or regret. But there was nothing. Wren and I exchanged a look and I carried on as her gaze drifted up to the samurai swords on the wall.

‘You knew him very well then,’ I said.

‘It’s strange,’ he said, his great hands rubbing together, as if he was washing them. ‘Lenny and I knew each other a long time. But most of our conversations were about this.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘We talked about karate.’

‘You talked about karate for eight years?’ Wren said, her eyebrows raised with disbelief.

‘You could talk about any martial art for a century and you wouldn’t come to the end of it,’ he said. ‘Do either of you study a fighting art?’

‘I have a black belt in origami,’ Wren said. ‘DC Wolfe does a bit of boxing.’

‘The martial art of the Western world,’ I said. ‘So you weren’t friends with Lenny Lane?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Gvozden said. ‘Lenny was my friend but it was a friendship that was limited to the world I live in.’ A pause. ‘We didn’t discuss the world that he lived in.’

‘But you knew he was a drug dealer,’ I said. ‘You knew he did five years for distribution. You must have known all of that?’

‘I knew what I read in the newspapers – and there was enough of it. The Man Who Made Ibiza Dance – how could I miss it? But you get all sorts in a fighting gym – as perhaps you know, detective. You get children – and adults – who want to stand up to bullies. You get wild kids who are looking for discipline and direction. You get people who want to be fit, and people who want to defend themselves, and you get people who just like to fight.’

‘And which one was Lenny Lane?’ said Wren.

‘I think he was looking for something he was good at,’ Gvozden said.

‘Apart from selling drugs.’ Wren laughed.

Goran Gvozden was not smiling now.

‘I wonder how good he was at that,’ he said mildly. ‘He did five years in prison, somebody murdered him before he turned forty and he had no money. That doesn’t sound like success to me.’

‘How do you know he had no money?’ I said.