Severed (16 page)

I turn my back on Lucas and make my way along the tiles until I reach the western edge of the building. The roof of the adjoining property is about ten feet away. That's a long way when you're jumping at height, but if I make it I know I'm home free because I can see it's got a two-storey extension sticking out the back, meaning that I can get back down to ground level without too much difficulty.

There are men in grubby overalls staring up at me from the yard down below. 'You're going to be all right, mate!' yells one, which is easy for him to say, I think.

Thin trails of smoke are now coming through the gaps in the tiles. Not long now until the roof collapses. From somewhere down below I hear another explosion, and once again the building shudders, as do I, almost losing my balance and heading for the ground quicker than I'd anticipated. Through the gap between the two buildings I see a police car pull up and an officer jump out, holding a radio to his mouth.

I take a few steps backwards, moving off the
guttering so that I'm standing at an angle on the sloping, smoking roof, and then I make a run for it. Two seconds later, I'm sailing through the air, legs flailing as I try to maintain my momentum. My feet land on the edge of the other roof. One slips and kicks out into space, but my hands scrape at the tiles, and before I know it I'm rolling down the roof in the direction of the two-storey extension. I roll straight off, one hand grabbing a piece of guttering to ease my fall, and somehow manage to land on my feet on the extension's flat roof. I run across it, feeling more confident now, and do a single hanging jump that lands me in the burly arms of two of the overalled workmen. 'It's OK, mate, you're safe now,' says the one who offered me the encouragement earlier, but he doesn't know the half of it. I'm not safe until I'm well away from this place.

I cough violently, and someone thrusts a bottle of water at me. I take a long drink.

'You need to sit down, mate,' says the one who gave me the water, putting an arm round my shoulder.

'Is it a brothel in there?' asks someone else.

'I've got to run.' I wipe my mouth. 'Is there a back way out of here?'

Someone points past a workshop towards a gate set into a whitewashed wall. 'It's open,' he says.

'Don't want to get in trouble with the wife then, eh?' shouts someone else, obviously the comedian of the bunch.

I break free of the group and run for the gate. The sirens are coming from all over the place now and great sheets of flame burst forth from the burning building like dragons' breaths. My lungs are bursting as I fling open the gate and stumble through onto the canal path. Lucas is still there on the bridge. I run towards it, ignoring the pain, and force myself up the steps.

By the time I reach the top I have virtually no strength left, but it doesn't matter because Lucas grabs me and hauls me over to the car. The passenger door's open and I clamber inside, keeping low while he slams it behind me. Then he's in the driver's seat and pulling away into traffic, heading north up the Kingsland Road.

'You stink,' he comments as we pass through the first set of lights, swerving to avoid a fire engine screaming down the other way with all horns blaring.

'Well, that isn't really any surprise, is it?' I
answer eventually, when my breathing's evened out a little and I've finished coughing. 'I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but what the hell were you doing setting a fire like that?'

He turns to me with a look of mild incredulity on his face. 'What the hell are you talking about?' he says. 'I didn't set any fire. I thought that was you.'

If Lucas didn't set the fire, who the hell did? And why?

Neither question is one I'm in any position to answer as I sit back in the seat and watch the shabby, cheap shopfronts of the Kingsland Road scudding past, relieved simply to be alive. I feel a small twinge of satisfaction at having dealt with the man who murdered Leah, and maybe Snowy too. Was he the man Ferrie thought had been hired to kill him, the one he called the Vampire? If he was, then he's paid for his sins now. I think back to his grunts of pain as his mask crackled and burned, and hope that he suffered in the same way Leah must have. But the reason I'm not more satisfied is I still don't
have the slightest idea why someone's gone to so much trouble to set me up, or who that person might be. And it's something that, now more than ever, I've got to find out.

'Where's the holdall?' I ask, looking down at the empty space by my feet.

'It's in the back,' Lucas replies, adding quickly when he sees me turn round to grab it, 'but it's empty.'

'Empty? What do you mean?'

'I took the liberty of getting rid of the knife in the canal while you were inside. I thought it seemed as good a place as any.'

I'm a bit concerned by this. It doesn't feel like as good a place as any to me. With at least two people dead inside the brothel, possibly more, the area's going to turn into a major crime scene, which means they may end up dredging the canal for clues as to what might have happened.

Lucas reads my thoughts. 'Don't worry, I wiped it clean. There's no way it'll ever get back to you.'

'And the DVD?'

'I've still got it.' He taps the waist pocket of his suit jacket. 'We'll destroy it when I've had a chance to watch the footage.'

I nod slowly. 'OK.'

I'm too exhausted to think straight, but even so, I can't help feeling an odd twinge of suspicion. Why the hell did he do that without talking to me first? I tell myself to stop feeling paranoid, and settle back in my seat. Lucas has just lost a good friend; he can't be in on this.

We take a roundabout route back to his offices in Commercial Street and it's just turned four o'clock when he parks up in an alley round the back. He wants me to stay in the car. 'I'm only going in to collect the file on Ferrie. It's not safe to hang about round here at the moment. Whoever killed Snowy will have got the company's address from his business cards.'

'And it's possible they could be waiting for you. It's better if I come in.'

'You look like shit,' he answers. 'You're going to stand out a mile walking round like that. Even in an area like this.'

I check myself out in the rear-view mirror and have to conclude that he's right. My head looks like it's been shoved up the exhaust pipe of a speeding lorry. Every square inch of exposed skin is smoke-blackened, and my hair, usually neat and fashionably cut, is sticking up all over
the place in bizarre formations where the blood from my scalp wound's matted. There's more dried blood on my neck, and to top it off, a rust-covered puke stain covers my shirt. 'I'll be fine,' I say, removing the shirt and wiping my face with the cleanest part of it. I try to force my hair back into shape, and when that doesn't work, Lucas produces an old beanie hat from under his seat, and I put that on.

'Come on,' he says with a sigh, 'let's get going.'

We go in the back door, and although Lucas is feigning confidence, I know he's nervous. He moves carefully through the gloomy foyer and up the winding staircase to his office. I've never quite understood why he doesn't run his operation from home. He's got a nice apartment in a modern block in Islington which would impress the punters a damn sight more than a couple of rooms above a shop on a rundown street like this one. He told me once he liked to have a base near to the City because that's where all the big money is, and to be fair his office is only a few hundred yards away from the gleaming spires of Aldgate; but this is London, where a few hundred yards can sometimes feel like a thousand miles. Whatever Lucas likes to think,
he's based in Whitechapel. This is Jack the Ripper country, the real East End, and most definitely not the financial district. As he's probably found out, people from the latter don't tend to venture into the former.

It's an ideal spot for an ambush as well, I think, as we reach the top of the stairs and he opens the door. It's an old building with plenty of alcoves, and, unfortunately, at the moment I'm unarmed, my gun having been taken from me back at the brothel. And without the security of the vest, which has probably been burned to a crisp by now, I feel both naked and vulnerable.

We step inside, and Lucas shuts the door behind us. As he surveys the room, he shakes his head slowly. There are two large desks with monitors and phones on them, arranged so that they are both facing the door at an angle. The right, and slightly larger of the two, belongs to Lucas. It's tidier than I was expecting, with everything arranged perfectly symmetrically. Snowy's desk is messy, with pens and bits of paper everywhere, as well as two empty mugs, one of which says World's Best Uncle.

'I can't believe he's dead,' Lucas says, walking up to his former employee's desk.

'Has he got family?' I ask, realizing that even though Snowy and I served together I never really knew that much about him.

Lucas lights a cigarette before answering. 'A brother, that's all. His mum and dad are dead. I think he's quite close - was quite close - to the brother. Poor sod didn't really have anyone else.' He picks up a photo on the desk and views it wistfully. 'He loved that cat,' he explains, showing me a picture of a very fat tabby cat with one eye shut sprawled next to an electric fire. Just looking at it makes me want to go to sleep.

'Cats are independent,' I say. 'He'll be all right.' Although I'm not sure this one will be. He looks like he enjoys the high life, and with his master gone who's going to provide that for him?

Lucas puts the picture down and goes round to his own desk. There's a red light flashing on his phone.

'Messages,' he says, pressing a button.

There are two of them. The first is from a guy called Kevin who wants to know how far Lucas has got in proving his wife's infidelities.

'Too far,' Lucas says to me as we listen. 'She's slept with three men in the past week.'

The other message is from someone calling himself Phil. He says that the Lexus LS 600 Lucas was interested in, registration number Whisky Three Two Three Bravo Charlie Sierra, is registered to a Mr Trevor Blake of 14 Tennyson Way in Bermondsey, a forty-four-year-old married insurance salesman with a nine-year-old son and no criminal record. Lucas writes this down on his notepad and tears off the page.

'That was the car Snowy was following,' he explains. 'The one carrying your Yugoslavs. It looks like they were false plates. Let me get the details on Iain Ferrie, then we'd better leave.'

He goes into a storage room and returns a few seconds later with a thin file under his arm.

'Listen, Lucas,' I tell him, 'you've done enough for me. Just give me the information you've got and I'll take over from here.'

He shakes his head firmly, his jaw set hard. 'No, it's personal for me now. They've killed my friend. All he was doing was his job. They're also trying to kill another of my friends. The thing is, Tyler, I've got a lot of acquaintances, women and men, but I haven't really got many
people in this world I genuinely care about. He was one of them. You're another.'

I'm touched, especially after all I've been through today.

'But I don't want you to get in any trouble,' I say. 'At the moment, you haven't done anything wrong. We go too much further down the line and you might end up doing something you regret.'

He drags hard on the cigarette. 'Let me worry about that.'

'It's not going to take the police long to ID Snowy. I sold him the car so I know it's registered in his name. Pretty soon they're going to come knocking on your door.'

'And when they do, I'll answer their questions.'

'They'll know you made calls to him very close to the time he was killed. You're going to have to tell them the truth and give me up. If you come up with a false story they'll be on to you, and I don't want you falling under suspicion on my behalf.'

'And I don't want to be putting you in the firing line either.'

'You're going to have to,' I tell him. 'You've got no choice.'

'That means that you haven't got much time to find out who's behind all of this. You need all the help you can get, so until the cops do turn up, I'm it.'

'Thanks, mate,' I say, feeling genuinely emotional. I take a deep breath and tell myself it's shock, a delayed reaction to all I've been through today. I've never been the most tactile of people. I'm an old-fashioned Englishman who believes that physical contact between men should be limited to a firm handshake. But as Lucas comes past me now I put a hand on his shoulder and pull him into an embrace. It feels weird so I pull back quickly. Lucas looks as shocked as me by this totally unexpected show of affection.

'This is turning into a very strange day,' he says, walking towards the door.

I follow him out, inclined to agree. The clock on the wall says 4.07 and I wonder, with what I think is justifiable apprehension, what the hell this strange day is going to bring next.

The first thing that happens is that we drive to Lucas's Islington apartment, or duplex as he prefers to call it, since the living accommodation is actually set over two floors. It's part of a swish glass building that stands out on a street of low-rise, low-cost 1960s houses in the slowly gentrifying area west of the bottom end of the Holloway Road. We deposit his car in the secure underground car park and go inside, pleased to find that there's no ambush or police here either.