London Large: Blood on the Streets (16 page)

And that was that. Sir Basil
had stood, turned crisply and was moving away from Graham before he’d fully
registered what had happened. Dismissed like a schoolboy, by a man he could
barely look in the eye and certainly couldn’t bring himself to argue with.

He slouched disconsolately
down the stairs and into the street, feeling very much the Little Manbot and,
surprisingly, felt also a slight twinge of sympathy and regard for Hawkins.

Back to the Yard then.
Hilary’s going to rip my balls off.

As Graham exited the
club with his tail firmly between his legs he was startled to see H standing
before him. He could see he was no longer in control of himself. It seemed as
if murder was in his eyes.

‘Harry, you shouldn’t be
following me.’

‘Update me. Now.’

‘Nothing. I just cannot get
through to these people. None of them will tell me anything about Tara’s
private life. They won’t even talk to me. As soon as I try to escalate things I
get told to back off. I’m getting nowhere.’

H had had enough. He swarmed
up the stairs and headed for reception. Confronting Sir Basil Fortescue-Smythe
held few terrors for
him
. They had history. Military history first, and
after that personal history - H had, after all, been Ronnie’s best man, and Sir
Basil (or
Old Shitbreath
, as his men had always called him) had been
forced, much to his obvious distaste, to socialise with him at the wedding.

Both had got heavily,
aggressively drunk at the reception - a weakness for the scotch being just
about the only thing the two of them had in common - and had treated one
another to ‘
plenty
of verbals’, as H would later have it. It had become
one of his favourite stories:

‘You were a bolshie bastard
in the Army, Hawkins, and you’re a bolshie bastard now’, Sir Basil had told
him.

‘Have me put in the tower,
then’, was H’s reply.

‘You people…’ Sir Basil, H
liked to say, was at this point absolutely apoplectic, ‘…you people. If you
were still under my command you’d be taught some manners, damn you.’

‘Well we ain’t in the army
any more, are we, you old cunt? But you can take me outside and teach me some
manners now if you like.’

At this point Jemima had stepped
in and separated them. H had not met Sir Basil again - or Jemima, if it came to
that - until the current sorry mess began.

‘Detective Inspector Harry
Hawkins’ H told the receptionist. ‘Is Sir Basil about?’

‘Sir Basil is in the lounge,
sir. If you would wait a moment…’

But H was way ahead of him,
and was already breasting the door of the club’s inner sanctum. As seen in a
thousand and one old-school movies and TV shows. His man was seated in a circle
with five or six others - H recognised Lord Timothy Skyhill, Oswald Carruthers,
Sir Peregrine Blunt - engaged in hushed but apparently intense discussion.

‘A few words, if I may, Sir
Basil’, shouted H, bearing down fast on the circle.

‘Hawkins? What in God’s name
are you doing here?’ exclaimed Sir Basil, rising from his chair. ‘If you wish
to talk to me - though frankly I have no idea what we might have to say to one
another - make an appointment with my secretary.’

‘Nope. Now Sir Basil. Now.’

‘Is this police business,
Hawkins? My understanding is that the little fellow…Detective Inspector
Miller-Marchant, is leading the investigation. Or has he been suddenly removed
and it is now
you
’ - this with a flourish, Sir Basil playing to the
gallery - ‘who is in charge?’

A gale of laughter from the
cronies.

‘Well, he’s not going to
conduct much of an investigation with you blocking his path, is he?’

The room was buzzing with the
electric antipathy between the two men. H was working hard to control himself,
to control his language, to control his hands, which were starting to itch. Uh
oh. He was filled with loathing for this
old bastard
, but he knew he
would have to ramp it down now, before it was too late.

‘No, Sir Basil, I am not in
charge of the investigation. But I am putting you on notice: I will not stand
by and let you and your chums impede it. For whatever reasons you might have.’

At this Sir Basil let go a
barrage of expletives and threats…but H was tuning out before they hit him. He
was in the zone. His senses, his nose and skin, his copper’s intuition, were
kicking in. His flesh was crawling. Something was not right here. He did not
know what it was, but he could smell a rat; and when Harry Hawkins smelled a
rat, nine times out of ten there was a rat to be found.

This lot are up to
something.

‘Porter, have this man
removed from the premises’, Sir Basil was barking. ‘Now!’

‘Alright, I’m off. But I’ll
be back’, said H.

H jumped in the car and
slammed the door shut. He knew these full bloodied hereditary types were
difficult to deal with. Everything was always done on their terms. But this was
different. They were wilfully impeding the investigation.

Did they know about Tara and
Agapov and wanted to keep it out of the papers? He doubted it. Their types had
been through worse scandals than that and come up smelling of roses.

Now satisfied that
Miller-Marchant really was as useless as he thought and knew absolutely
nothing, H’s mind turned to his only lead, and he made a call to Confident
John.

‘H, hello mate.’

‘Alright John. That geezer I
told you about, any news?’

‘No firm sightings H. But
it’s hard to tell gossip from fact. The rumour mill’s been working overtime.
I’ve heard a top level Russian contingent has him holed up somewhere in London
but also rumours that he’s been killed. There’s talk of a full scale war but
also a reliable source is certain that the Russians and Albanians are setting
up a meet. I ain’t got anything concrete though.’

‘Ok. Keep ‘em peeled son.
Anything. Anything at all, however small or insignificant, I wanna hear it
asap.’

‘Right you are H.’

H hung up, started the car
and lit up the siren.

He called Amisha.

‘Hello Guv, where are you?
Find anything on the CCTV?’

‘Yeah, just on my way in. Ten
minutes. I’ll give you a full update when I arrive. Get the whole team
together. We’ll divide up London and work every fucking patch of grass until we
find Agapov, whether he’s alive or dead.’

‘OK guv, see you in a quarter
of an hour.’

Ten minutes later H was pulling
up by Scotland Yard when the phone went.

‘Hilary,’ he said, ‘I’ve got
a lead, I’m coming in to update everyone.’

‘H…’ …Hilary paused.

It was only a single syllable
but H could tell all was not well.

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘H, I warned you to keep well
out of the Tara case, if you had anything to report it, but not get personally
involved.’

‘Yeah, but the case is
connected somehow to the gangland murder wave, I’ve got clear proof.’

‘H, two pieces of paper in a
lock up are proof of nothing.’

H decided now was the time to
tell her about the evidence on the CCTV, and was just about to talk when she
cut him short, and came directly to the reason she had called.

‘Detective Inspector Hawkins,
I’ve called to tell you that as of this moment you are officially suspended
from duty pending a full investigation of your conduct and psychological
assessment. Do not come to the Yard, do not talk to any police officers and
take no further part whatsoever in the investigations into the murder of Tara
Ruddock and Jemima Fortescue-Smythe, the massacre in Soho, or any other ongoing
police investigation.’

Part 3

Little Ronnie sat in
his cell, lonely, distraught and in pain. How had it ever come to this? He’d
taken a couple of vicious beatings and no doubt was going to take a few more;
his old man had put half the convicts in this nick away at some point.

They could hardly believe
their luck when Little Ronnie Hawkins turned up. The son of the great H,
scourge of villains all over London, banged up on remand in Parkhurst high
security prison. Young, innocent, naive. Ripe for the taking.

The opportunity for such
easy, sweet revenge on the offspring of Hawkins of the Yard was about the best
thing they could hope for in the hellhole in which they now lived their lives.
Many of the villains H had put away were here long term, banged up until they
were too old to be a danger on the streets. Forgiveness and redemption was not
part of their makeup.

Time and time again the
events that led to his arrest went through his mind. How could he have been so
stupid?

He’d flown out alone to the
Bulgarian coast, just to get away for a week or so. Have a break from London
and forget about the dead end life he was living. This was the cheapest way
there was now for young Europeans to get stuck into the no-holds-barred sun,
sea, sex and booze madness. Ronnie had heard that in Bulgaria you could get
buckets - actual, literal buckets - of booze for next to nothing.

I think I’ll have some of
that.

He could hardly believe his
luck when, on the third day, the beautiful Elena sat down and started to talk
to him at a beach bar.

‘Where is from you?’, she asked,
her accent so other, attractive and exotic. He was bowled over in seconds.

A little later, with a couple
of buckets of he knew not what under his belt, he was introduced to her friend,
Irajlo. The pair of them seemed so genuine as they showed him around, buying
him drinks and taking a keen interest in his life back in London. He was high,
he was happy. Never in a million years would it have occurred to him that he
was being groomed.

It was on the day before his
flight back, by which time he had tasted Elena’s action and they had all become
firm friends, that the beautiful Bulgarian girl and friendly Bulgarian boy
asked him to deliver a package.

‘Nothing to it, Ronnie. They
not search good looking boys like you. Very easy money.’

But search him they had; and
found six kilos of heroin. He hadn’t even known what was in the package,
although he suspected, of course. But he had made himself blind to the contents
- Elena promised to join him in London as soon as she could - and to the
consequences.

The lights on his block came
on and the cell’s locks clanked open. Once again he’d had no sleep, thoughts of
suicide never far from his mind. But he’d made it, made it through another
long, dark night. And now another day was about to start. Another day he didn’t
know if he could get through.

He was meant to be in a
protected unit. But twice they’d got through. He didn’t know who ‘they’ were,
exactly. The beatings he’d taken had happened so quickly. Everything was a
blur. They could have killed him if they’d wanted to but, it seemed, they
wanted to keep him alive, to torment him, like killer whales toying with their
prey before moving in for the final kill.

He knew it was coming; it was
just a question of when, or whether he broke and finished the job for them.
That was the only thing stopping him from ending his life: the thought that it
was what they wanted.

As the cell door slid open he
put his head in his hands, utterly despondent. He winced in pain as it reminded
him the bruising around his puffed up eyes had not abated. He thought about the
day ahead. A deep dark well of despair enveloped him.

First breakfast. The jeering,
the insults, the spitting, the cuntings-off. Sure, he would be at a separate
table with plenty of screws in attendance, but the constant hatred was almost
as bad as a beating. It wore away at his nerves, knotted his guts up with
dread.

Then more cell time - where
he was alone and safe, for a while at least.

And then the worst part of
the day. The exercise yard, fear stalking his every step. Shaking like a leaf;
waiting - and at times praying - for the knife in the back that would end it
all. True, he was separated from the majority of inmates (though he had to walk
with the nonces, which made it even worse), but
they
could get anywhere,
whenever
they
wanted. Whoever
they
were.

Then lock up time - another
night of a despair so deep he had no idea where the bottom was, or if he would
ever reach it.

The day, as days always do,
made its inexorable way forward. Ronnie made his way to breakfast, accompanied
by the voices of his many admirers: ‘You cunt Hawkins’, ‘You’re dead, you
fucking little wanker, do you hear me boy? I said do you fucking hear me?’,
‘Any day now, you horrible little shitcunt. Get ready; you first, then your old
man.’

Ronnie kept his own counsel.
He tried to keep down a mouthful of porridge, but even that was more than his
insides could manage.

Back to the cells. Then the
day changed. When a screw next opened the cell it was at an unexpected hour.

‘You’re moving to ‘A’ wing.’

Ronnie was almost speechless
as the implications rushed through his mind.

‘What?’

‘You heard. Get your stuff
together. Five minutes.’

‘But, but that has to be a
mistake. I’m on a protected unit. I won’t last five minutes out there. That’s
as good as fucking murder.’

‘Look son, I don’t make the
rules. Either get your stuff together and go quietly or I’ll come back with a
firm and we can move you the hard way. Then I’ll have you on the liquid cosh
until you’re dribbling like a little fucking baby. Your choice.’

Ronnie snapped. He’d been
turned over twice by the inmates; if he was going to go down he would go down
fighting.

‘Go and fuck yourself.’

‘Ok son, the hard way it is.’

Five minutes passed.
Ronnie was almost past caring but prepared himself for the worst, trying to
psych himself up to go mental. He had nothing to lose now; he wasn’t going down
without a fight. But things did not go according to plan; four tooled-up
officers burst into his cell. He barely released a punch before the first
truncheon crashed into his skull, and a split second later the end of the
second thrust into his guts with the force of a battering ram.