Nobody Walks (16 page)

Ralph could have told the girl all this if she’d still been there, but because she wasn’t, he had to settle for telling himself.

He scrunched the paper into a ball and lobbed it at the bin below the bar.

Bettany found
himself back near the Angel, having walked clear up from the Thames, the city’s nightlife flashing past in cabs and cars and buses, or rumbling underground when he crossed one of the
thin patches, spaces where the subterranean made itself felt. His hands in his pockets, the right one curled comfortably round the Makarov—comfortably was the word, the handle moulded to fit. Dancer Blaine would have long since spread the word of his reappearance. All that nightlife in cabs and cars and buses, some of it would be responding to texts and emails by now, an equivalent to the police’s be-on-lookout-for. Twitches on threads. Bettany was under no illusions about how badly they’d want him, the Brothers McGarry and their clan, and had a pretty shrewd idea they wouldn’t have a swift exit planned either. But then, Bettany didn’t plan to be around much longer. They’d have to be extraordinarily good, or extraordinarily lucky, to get a fix on his whereabouts within the next twenty-four hours.

By then, he’d know the truth about what had happened to Liam.

Rolling over in his mind, like a ball caressed by a bowler, were the names of Vincent Driscoll, Marten Saar.

It was
clearing-out time before Ralph noticed the ball of paper on the floor. Not remembering what it was he unscrewed it, glanced at the photo, and was about to reverse the process, finding the damn bin this time, when something tugged at him, a tremor of recognition.

The photo showed a sliver of a man flanked by two others, whose images had been excised. It was black and white and looked old—not
old
old, but old. And the man, his face—it was the man from the other night, he was sure of it. Almost sure. The man who’d been looking for his son. He’d done some miles since the photo was taken, and grown a lot of hair, but if you took away the beard and general shagginess, Ralph thought you could see the same man, the same eyes staring
back at you. His eyes had been blue, which a black-and-white couldn’t show of course, but in the same way he knew the photo was old, Ralph knew this man’s eyes were blue.

Beneath the photo a phone number, and a little row of pound signs,
££££.

He’d given the man his twenty quid back, he remembered that. A man who looked like he’d been sleeping on park benches, but had money to throw at bartenders who might have served his son. Ralph had returned his money because he looked like he needed it more, and besides, he was carrying his son’s ashes in a bag. That’s what he’d said, anyway. You had to assume he wasn’t entirely there—making a nuisance of himself for streets around, crashing clubs and bars.

That was the same night two doormen had their kneecaps sorted in an alley. If not for that, this guy would have been the week’s main topic.

Everyone had seen him. Everyone would be seeing this, too, the flyer left on Ralph’s bar. And if he’d spotted the resemblance, so would someone else—it was just a matter of waiting for the pennies to drop—and then the number would be rung, and questions asked and answered.

££££

He’d felt sorry for the guy, sure. But somebody was going to collect, and Ralph had already turned money down once.

He checked the place was empty, then reached for the phone.

“So you’d be Ralph.”

“Yeah.”

“Ralphie. What’ve you got for me, Ralphie?”

“It’s like I just said to your man there—”

“Yeah, but you’re talking to me now. Just tell me what you have to say.”

Pause.

“I don’t even know who I’m talking to.”

“You can call me Bishop.”

Pause.

“Name rings a bell, does it?”

“I’ve heard of you, yeah. I reckon.”

“You reckon. That’s good. You just keep on reckoning that, Ralphie. And meanwhile, tell me what you know.”

“I serve bar.”

Pause.

“Nothing to be ashamed of there, Ralphie, but let’s cut to the chase, shall we? You serve bar where.”

“Place called Kings of Cool.”

“Hoxton way?”

“Yeah.”

“So you serve bar in Hoxton and you’re calling me because you saw my number on a flyer. Do you know the man, Ralphie?”

“No.”

“But you’ve seen him around.”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“When?”

“He had more hair, though. A beard and that. Looked like he’d been sleeping rough.”

“When?”

“Couple of nights ago?”

“You asking or telling?”

“Couple of nights ago.”

“Rough sleeper, how come he’s finding his way into a bar round N1?”

“He slipped past the doormen.”

“He slipped past the doormen. You wouldn’t be pulling my chain, would you, Ralphie?”

“It’s what happened.”

“What name’d he give?”

“He didn’t.”

“Course not, rough sleeper, finessing his way past a couple of Hoxton’s finest. What’d he drink?”

“He didn’t get a drink.”

“So he was what, just checking out the décor, Ralphie?”

“He had a photo. He was trying to find out …”

Pause.

“Getting bored here, Ralphie.”

“He had a bag with him. A cloth bag. And an urn in it … He said it was his son. His son’s ashes.”

Pause.

“You’re pulling my chain.”

“He had a photo too. Wanted to know if I recognised his son. If he was a regular. He’d been up and down the road, asking in all the clubs. Made himself well unpopular.”

“I bet he did an’ all, Ralphie. I bet he did.”

Pause.

“Okay, Ralphie. Your place doesn’t do cabaret, does it?”

“… Once in a blue moon.”

“Because if you’re making that lot up, you really should be on a stage. Son’s ashes in a bag. That is …”

Pause.

“Pinteresque.”

Pause.

“He wrote plays. Never mind. Kings of Cool. This pans out, there’ll be someone popping in, Ralphie, see you right.”

Bishop hung up.

Afterwards Ralph
washed his hands, aware he didn’t really need to. He’d washed them once already, and nobody got dirty hands just using the phone.

Still.

He washed them anyway.

Bishop didn’t
know what that was about, the stuff with the ashes in the bag, but it didn’t matter, not at four o’clock in the morning. So Martin Boyd was having some sort of meltdown, but who cared? Meltdowns made you careless. Boyd must have known getting hold of a gun was going to light up the switchboard of his old acquaintance. He had to be off his nut going to Dancer Blaine to get tooled up.

Though maybe, he thought, Boyd was on some kind of quest. A dead boy in one hand, a gun in the other, yeah, some kind of quest. That would be where the gun came in.

But it didn’t matter. Made no difference to what Bishop was going to do next, which was summon up some muscle and put it on the streets of N1. Maybe Boyd would get lucky, and see his quest through before they picked him up. If not, unfinished business would be the least of his worries. He’d be starring in his very own snuff movie, scripted by the Brothers McGarry. All Bishop had to do was set it up.

With just a few more twitches on these threads.

PART FOUR

Twenty-two storeys buys a
lot of Hackney.

What it bought Marten Saar was an almost uninterrupted view of rooftops, terraced houses and shorter blocks of flats, of pubs and sports centres, shops and office complexes, garages and schools. Trees too, and snatches of water, roads everywhere, and housing estates. The cars and buses he could see were Dinky-sized. The people shuffling around the estates weren’t even that. At this time of morning they were pale grey shadows wafting homewards. Ghosts.

This block, Saar’s, was the easternmost of a row of three, so he got to watch the sun struggle up, little more than a silver disc today, a dying light bulb behind a gauze curtain.

A sky the colour of dishrags.

Stifling, here on the twenty-second floor.

Which was not like the other floors in this block or its neighbours. To arrive was to find the flats’ front doors barred over, steel shutters pulled down, and scraps of tape the wasp-striped colour of crime scenes dangling from handles. Only one door was unobstructed, and it led into this huge room, an L-shape with
irregularly spaced windows which had once let light into different flats, and walls which changed colour every few metres, and a mosaic of different carpets, none quite joining up. The inverse L, the space’s interlocking letter, comprised a mish-mash of bedrooms, dormitories and workspace, where product was bagged into saleable quantities. At any given moment, the flat contained upwards of fifty kilos of controlled substances.

A lot of jailtime to keep on a floor with few exits.

That was what Kask said. Oskar Kask, his own right hand.

“We get raided, we’re none of us going anywhere. Unless you’re in the mood for a hard landing.”

Oskar had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him during the lean years, broken legs when legbreaking was needed, but had lately taken to saying things like
Sure, boss?
when he should have been saying
Sure, boss.

He trusted Oskar with his life. But trust needed daily renewal.

Saar wasn’t worried about surprises. You didn’t put a police team together without disturbing the pool, and the ripples would reach him long before the motors arrived—he’d spread enough money around to make sure of that. The product would be in an unoccupied flat downstairs way ahead of any doors being kicked in.

Police aside, the twenty-second floor wasn’t reached easily. While there were pairs of lifts in each corner of the towerblock, seven were piss-stinking boxes of filth, their walls so scarred by burnmarks, so obsessively scribbled on, that stepping inside was like climbing into a stalker’s head. Only the eighth lift moved without squeak or rattle, and this was guarded night and day by one of Saar’s men, on the off-chance someone who didn’t know the rules wandered in, wanting to use it. A visitor from out of town, say. A Martian.

All of which should have made him feel secure, but success carried its own burdens. The trust thing for one. The daily renewal it required. Oskar at his shoulder like he’d always been but dropping questions into his ear now, like
Isn’t it time we consolidate our market area
? Oskar could see the future falling into place, like a jigsaw completed by an invisible hand.

He claimed it would require only a small war.

That’s why they needed the Cousins’ Circle.

Saar hadn’t slept. A pale rake with a permanent five o’clock shadow and eyes like pocket calculators, he didn’t sleep much. Nights were for business, holding court in a roped-off West End club—the second best use of a velvet rope was to keep losers at bay. Saar did deals, took meetings, explored ways of shifting product. Every ounce of muskrat, the hippest strain of cannabis currently sedating the city, passed through his fingers. This monopoly was down to two things, supply and trend. The source was one Saar had cultivated for years, but he’d got lucky with the second, and everyone knew it. The thing about trends was, the clue was in the name. Blink twice and something else would come along, and muskrat would be history.

This is why we need to consolidate
, Oskar said.
Now.

Truth to tell, Oskar had a point. They’d never be in a stronger position, and once they got weaker, they could end up being consolidated themselves.

Market pressure. One of the headaches business involved.

Getting in bed with the Cousins’ Circle, though, that made him uneasy. No wonder he was pacing the floor at this hour, flicking through seventy-five channels on a plasma screen, looking for nothing in particular, and not finding it.

Elsewhere on the twenty-second, others had no trouble sleeping. There were seven of his guys in their room and a pair of girls
in his own, though he’d mostly watched and smoked. Marlboro, not product. He was lighting one now as a door opened, and he turned to see Oskar Kask, buttoning his shirt, yawning, rubbing his head with the knuckles of his right hand.

You expected sparks when he did that.

Oskar said, “You’re up early.”

“I don’t sleep. You know that.”

“Worried about the meet?”

That was something else Marten Saar had noticed lately. Oskar, others too, but mostly Oskar, saying things like
meet
when they meant
meeting.
All that effort put into learning English, so fluent they spoke it among themselves, and for what? So they could start getting it wrong on purpose. Saar blamed the TV.

He switched it off.

“Should I be?”

“Nah, boss. It’ll go like a dream.”

“Because we have such a great history together.”

Oskar Kask beetled, then unbeetled, brows.

“The thing about history, Marten, is it’s over. That’s why they call it history.”