In the Dark (19 page)

‘Any idea what they talked about?'

‘I wasn't invited.'

‘What about in the cab?'

‘I never listen.'

Helen doubted that very much, but she could see that she wasn't going to get a fat lot more. As she slipped her notebook back into her bag, she noticed the faded stain on the carpet at her feet.

‘What's that, Ray?' Her tone made it clear enough that she knew the answer already.

Jackson smiled. ‘I don't think this copper died in the back of my cab.'

Helen said nothing; thinking about the state of her sheets, the two hours she'd spent at the hospital in the middle of the night. She reached down to scratch at the stain with a fingernail.

‘Some twat had a nosebleed,' Jackson said. ‘Fair enough?'

‘They can be nasty . . .'

He opened the door and stepped out, waited for Helen to do the same.

‘My car's parked at the end of the road,' she said.

Jackson opened the door wider. ‘Shouldn't take too long to walk there then.'

 
Ollie and Gospel had been working a corner near the Lee Bridge end of the shopping centre since lunchtime. Now, it was just starting to get dark and Ollie reckoned they'd done about two hundred pounds' worth of business in the last eight hours. Two hundred and thirty, as soon as Gospel got back with the three rocks their latest customer was waiting for.

Wave would have to be seriously happy with those sorts of figures.

Ollie looked across the road at the short white man in the doorway opposite. He was a bit older than the usual punter, and a bit less jittery. He was staring straight back at Ollie, like he was asking the question. Ollie held one hand up, fingers spread.

Give it five minutes . . .

It had been ten, maybe more, since Gospel had left for the stash house with the punter's money. She was one of the quickest, too; didn't waste time gassing while she was handing over the cash. Ollie was starting to wonder if there might be a problem when his mobile rang.

He recognised Gospel's number on the display. ‘Where the fuck are you?'

The man's voice was very deep and very calm. ‘Your girlfriend's a bit busy, you hear me? Now shut your hole and listen.'

Ollie listened as he was given instructions: told where to go, to get there as quickly as he could and to talk to nobody on his way. He was already moving, but in no particular direction, weaving up and down the same few feet of pavement, his mind racing, the sweat starting to prickle all over his body.

‘This is a big mistake, man.' He almost dropped the phone when he heard Gospel scream.

‘Don't make me do that again,' the man said.

Ollie looked across the road and saw that his punter had gone. When he stepped back from the kerb, the man was at his shoulder. Leaning in good and close, so that Ollie could feel what he had in his pocket.

‘I think you should do as you're told.'

 
From Acton, Helen drove down to the Uxbridge Road, pulled into a side street, and picked up a bus into the centre of town. She did not want to spend an hour trying to park and enjoyed watching the world go by from the top deck, but she started to regret making the trip at all from the moment she arrived. It was a hot day and the streets were crowded. It took her fifteen minutes to walk from Marble Arch to John Lewis, and when she got there the smell in the perfume department made her feel as though she might throw up at any moment.

Once she started to feel a bit better, she pottered very slowly around the maternity departments of Lewis's and a few other big stores. She remembered that the cot they had bought six months before was still boxed up in the small bedroom, waiting to be assembled. That there was still painting to be done. She bought packs of baby-grows even though she already had more than enough, and a plastic plate, mug and cutlery set that would not be needed for at least six months.

She trudged from shop to shop, sweating until she could smell herself.

Helen was not the happiest of shoppers at the best of times, had always been a ‘get in, buy it and get out' woman. Jenny had laughed about it, said it was unnatural that any woman did not enjoy browsing. That somehow the shopping genes had not been divvied up equally between them.

Today, she browsed for hours, stroking the clothes and picking up the tiny pairs of shoes. She just needed to think about the baby for a while. About
herself
and the baby.

By five o'clock, when she got back to Tulse Hill, she felt like she'd run a marathon. There was the usual slew of messages on the machine: her dad and Jennie; Roger Deering again; Paul's mum saying that she knew there had been no decision made about a date yet, but that she
really
wanted to talk about music for the service. Two other callers had not bothered to leave messages.

Helen lay down on the sofa, wondering who to call back first. When she woke up three hours later, the room was dark. She opened her eyes and her first thought was of Paul, going somewhere he shouldn't in the back of Ray Jackson's cab. She thought about blood on a carpet and blood on a pavement.

And she felt ashamed of herself.

It was a week,
less
than a week, and already he was starting to disappear; the Paul she
thought
she knew, at any rate. And this was not about memory playing tricks or perception being warped by grief. This was her own stupid fault. She'd become too curious for her own good.

For anyone's good.

Would it not be better if she stopped now, forgot everything she'd found out, everything she'd begun to suspect? After all, whatever she thought Paul might have been up to, she didn't
know
, not for sure. Did any of it matter anyway, now that he was dead?

It was not a difficult question. That was another way in which Helen differed from her sister. She could never bury her head in the sand.

She turned on the lights and drew the curtains; made herself a cup of tea and sat down to write a list.

 
She jumped at the buzzer. It took her half a minute to get to the intercom, by which time whoever had been downstairs at the front door had already gone.

 
Ollie had walked fast along Loampit Vale, with the man who had posed as a customer walking twenty feet behind him all the way. He had turned off where he'd been told, to find the Mercedes waiting near the entrance to Tesco's.

Gospel was sitting in the passenger seat with her knees drawn up to her chest. A large black man sat next to her, squeezed behind the wheel. Ollie was ushered into the back by the older man, and they pulled away, with Gospel screaming abuse as the car went round the block then eased into traffic on the main road.

They drove north for ten minutes or so.

Ollie had got to know his companions well enough by the time the Mercedes turned onto side streets just shy of the river. They parked behind a smart development of executive apartments at Deptford Creek and talked some more. The light on top of Canary Wharf winked at them from across the water, and the tip of the Gherkin poked through the smog away to their left. Through the car window, Ollie could see the derelict wooden pier crumbling into the water, and a drifting necklace of long-abandoned motorised torpedo boats that had been home to a series of squatters for many years. The dirty-green water was deep here; deeper than anywhere else in the river. The only stretch in which the big aircraft-carriers could turn - he'd seen that on television some time - and probably the safest if you wanted things to sink and stay hidden.

By now, the man in the back with Ollie had a gun laid across his knee, but the big man up front with Gospel was clearly the one running things.

‘It's not complicated,' he said. ‘We just need confirmation, really.'

Gospel spat into the big man's chest, then whipped her head around to Ollie. ‘Don't say shit.' When she turned around again, the big man punched her hard in the face, then stared down at the spit on his shirt.

There was a second or two before the girl began to moan and splutter; before she cupped her hands to try and collect the blood.

‘This won't take a minute,' the big man said to Ollie. ‘But that's enough time to decide whether you're going to be stupid or not.' He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, then demanded one from his colleague on the back seat. The older man passed his own forward. The big man handed one handkerchief to Gospel, and used the other to dab first at his shirt, then at the gobbets of blood that had dripped onto the seat.

He looked at Gospel and sighed. ‘How old are you?'

‘She's fourteen,' Ollie said. ‘Please . . .'

‘Fucking
shut
up,' Gospel shouted, moving her hands away from her face just long enough to get the words out.

‘You should be at school,' the man said. ‘The pair of you.' He leaned across as though he might stroke her hair, but instead grabbed a handful of it and smashed her head back into the side window.

Ollie shouted out in shock and banged his fists against the passenger seat. He felt the gun being jabbed into his side and when he leaned back again, still shouting, he realised that he was crying. ‘Jesus . . .'

In the front, Gospel's eyes were wide. Her breathing was heavy and wet.

The big man turned round to look at Ollie. Said, ‘She's fine.'

‘Say nothing,' Gospel spluttered.

The man rolled his eyes then turned them on Ollie. ‘If you weren't actually involved in the incident we're talking about, you've got nothing to worry about. That's a promise. We just need to know that we're on the right lines.'

Ollie was rocking back and forth, tearing at his dreads. It was hard to think straight when he was focusing so hard on not shitting himself, right there in the car.

‘Was it your crew?'

It felt like the gun was going to break through his skin at any moment. Push right through the ribs.

The big man shifted around in his seat, grunting with the effort and draping one arm across the headrest. ‘Don't make me swap seats with my friend back there,' he said. ‘He's not as gentle with young girls as I am.'

The old man laughed and blew Gospel a kiss.

There was a little more blood after that, but not too much, and when all the information that was required had been given, Ollie and Gospel were told to get out of the car. To take the soiled handkerchiefs with them.

As Ollie reached for the door, the older man dragged him back. Said, ‘You're
white
, for crying out loud, and you've got black man's hair. What's all
that
about then, you silly cunt?'

The older man moved into the front. As they drove away, he fastened his seat belt and took a last look at the two teenagers in the rear-view. He saw the boy sink to the floor; watched the girl start lashing out at him with fists and feet.

‘World's gone mad, Clive, you ask me.'

‘Tell me about it, Billy,' Clive said.

EIGHTEEN

‘Where d'you get the suit?'

‘Charity shop,' Easy said.

‘It stinks, man.'

They were in a line of slow traffic moving across Vauxhall Bridge, heading for an address in Paddington. Easy was driving the Audi, with Theo in the passenger seat. Mikey sat in the back, flicking through a copy of
Loot
.

‘I didn't have time to get it dry-cleaned, you get me?' Easy glanced over. ‘It looks OK, that's the main thing. A smart suit and that nice, innocent face.'

Theo didn't own a suit as such, but he had a few decent jackets. Designer stuff, nicer than the ill-fitting, stinky shit he had on now at any rate. But he had not wanted to leave the flat in his best gear; to try to explain to Javine why he was getting dressed up. Easy said that it didn't matter, that he'd take care of everything. He'd picked up the suit earlier in the day and Theo had got changed in the car.

‘I can't find this damn ad,' Mikey said.

‘Keep going,' Easy said. ‘It's the section at the back, after the caravans. I've circled the ones we can do tonight.'

Mikey turned the pages, and read: ‘“Dark Desire. Curvy ebony princess”. Curvy means fat, right?'

‘Yeah,' Easy said. ‘Probably got bigger tits than you.' Mikey stuck one finger up above the paper, waved it at the mirror. Easy shrugged and accelerated towards an amber light. ‘Listen, long as the bitch has been getting plenty of business, I don't care
how
big she is.'

They pulled up twenty-five minutes later at the end of a road between St Mary's Hospital and the station. Theo checked the number of the flat and Easy ran through things one last time.

‘Ten minutes should be about right,' he said. ‘Just to make sure she's nice and relaxed.'

‘He's the nervous one, innit?' Mikey said. He leaned forward and poked Theo in the shoulder. ‘If it ever got into the bedroom, I reckon he'd be limp, man, like a dead worm.'

Theo got out of the car and walked to the door of the flat without looking back. The road was well lit and he wondered how many people would be able to see his face if they were staring out of their windows at that moment.

The woman who answered the bell was not as large as Mikey had predicted, but there was plenty of her. She was in her forties and darker skinned than Theo. Nigerian, he reckoned. Her make-up was serious and he thought her hair was probably a wig, but the smile looked genuine enough.

He could see how a man, one who hadn't come here to rob her, might find her sexy.