Shredder (3 page)

I stared. “You don't have all this already?” I said.

“We have conflicting descriptions,” Amobi said, not meeting my eye.

“So what's his real name?”

“He goes under half a dozen names. We call him the Turk too.”

“You don't know who he is, what he looks like—you've got nothing,” I said.

“I wouldn't say that,” said Amobi, frowning.

“Why not? Because you don't want to admit it?” I said.

“We're on to him, Finn,” insisted Amobi. “We're going to track him down and bang him up. We've handled thousands of wise guys like him, believe me.”

Not like this guy, you haven't, I thought. But I kept my mouth shut. Amobi knew this business better than me—he had to. Maybe the Turk
was
just another hoodlum. Maybe all his cool swagger, all his perfect calculation, was just bluff and front. Maybe.

Amobi turned back to Zoe. “We'll get you into witness protection,” he said. “That won't be a problem.”

“It will be a problem,” said Zoe, “because I have coursework to do.”

“You can work at a safe house,” Amobi reassured her. “In fact, it'll be easier—no distractions.”

“Really? Will I have access to the Internet?”

Amobi sucked his teeth. “Sorry. Internet access can be traced, which would compromise the safety of—”

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Zoe. “How long would this go on? I haven't witnessed anything—and it wouldn't be like I was waiting for a trial, would it? I'd be stuck in some dump with a bunch of jerks miles from anywhere, maybe for years. I'd lose my place at college, lose touch with all my friends—”

“It wouldn't be for years,” said Amobi. “We should be able to resolve this in a few weeks.” His look slid over to me.

“You're kidding,” I said.

“Finn…” I knew I was in trouble when he used my name. He leaned forward, earnest and appealing. “I'm flattered you came to me. I know how much you distrust the police force, and I know you have good reason. But we're not superheroes, you know? We can't save the world by ourselves. We need the help of the public. We need you.”

“Then we're all screwed,” I said.

“If the Turk wants you to introduce him to the Guvnor, do it,” he said. “Arrange the meeting, tell us where and when it's going down, let us do the rest. We'll look after Zoe.”

“And who's going to look after me?”

“You've managed pretty well so far.” He grinned.

I said nothing, because this was exactly what I'd asked for. Zoe would be safe with him, and the sooner McGovern and the Turk met up, the sooner this would all be over. With any luck they'd kill each other. I wondered if that was Amobi's plan—to sit back and watch, then move in with mops and bleach and bin bags. But this way Zoe would get her life back; and even if that life didn't include me, I owed her that much.

“How's he going to contact you?” asked Amobi.

“The Turk? He's not. I have to call him, at midnight, three days from now.”

“He gave you a number? Why doesn't he just call you?”

“I wondered that myself,” I said.

“What number did he give you?”

I told him. “If you call it, he'll know I've spoken to you,” I said.

“We're a little more subtle than that,” smiled Amobi.

“Great,” said Zoe, her voice tight with sarcasm. “Except McGovern's in Moscow or somewhere, and Finn doesn't speak any Russian, so finding him might be a problem.”

Amobi raised his hands, flashing his pale palms. “It just so happens that McGovern has recently returned to this country. We don't know exactly where he is, but we can point Finn in his general direction.” He smiled at me. “And the Turk's right, isn't he? McGovern does like you, a little.”

“He won't like me for long if he thinks I'm running messages for his rivals,” I said.

“Then just tell him the truth,” said Amobi. “That the Turk threatened you.”

“Assuming I can find him,” I said.

“You'll find him, Finn,” said Amobi. “You're a very resourceful young man.”

That was all I needed, a pat on the head. I felt like a spaniel being offered a biscuit before being sent into a minefield.

“I'll give you a new number to reach us,” said Amobi. “A voicemail drop. Just ring and leave a message, or send a text.” As if on cue, his phone pinged. His message alert was an incongruously tinkling little fairy bell. Amobi slipped his smartphone out of his pocket, glanced at the screen and frowned.

“Bad news?” I said.

He looked up, his poker face sliding back into place before he calculated that what he knew we'd soon find out. “Another suicide bomber,” he said. “Bristol this time.”

“What?” I said. “Is it bad?”

“We caught him before he had a chance to detonate,” said Amobi.

“How?” asked Zoe.

Amobi smiled. “It's what we're paid for,” he said. “But I have to report in.” He stood up, pushing back his chair.

“So you lot cover terrorism too?” I said.

“We cover everything,” said Amobi. “And there's
not enough of us to go round.” He reached for the door handle, then paused and turned back. “Zoe, I'm going to get you into a safe house tonight, so you two need to say your goodbyes. I'll be back shortly.” He slipped out, and the door clicked shut behind him. In the silence that settled over the room I felt a tube train far below making the building rock.

“I'm sorry about this,” I said to Zoe.

“Stop apologizing—it's really getting on my nerves,” said Zoe. Softening, she added, “Anyway, it looks like we're doing the right thing.”

Now that we had a plan, now that she was safe, her anger was dissolving, but she didn't know what she ought to feel instead. She unfolded her arms and perched them on her hips, then seemed to realize that made her look like a bossy ten-year-old. She raised her hands to her face and ran them through her spiky hair. Then she turned from the window, took three strides towards me, grabbed my face and pulled it down to hers. Her tongue slid into my mouth, and I tasted her and smelled her scent and felt her firm curves pressed against me, and I folded her into my arms, and the beige room and the stifling heat and the fear evaporated in a moment that was over all too quickly.

She pulled her face away, so that our lips parted but our breath still mingled.

“I'm sorry I took it out on you,” she said.

“Stop apologizing,” I said.

“Give McGovern the message and get out of there, OK? And be careful. I…don't want to lose you.”

“You'll always have Patrick,” I said.

“Oh, Finn,” she said. “Don't be so bloody stupid.”

Amobi checked his mirrors, signaled—he drove as fastidiously as he dressed—and pulled over to the curb, carefully avoiding a bus stop. He kept the engine running; the car was a bland and anonymous Ford, but I got the impression there was serious power under the hood if it was ever needed.

It was a sweltering afternoon in London's East End. I'd spent the previous night back in my own bed, wired and sleepless—not from the sticky heat, or trepidation at the task that faced me, but with thoughts of Zoe and how we'd parted. Right now I just wanted to get the Turk's stupid errand over and done with so I could get back to Zoe and pick up where we'd left off.

“The pub's called the Horsemonger,” said Amobi. “It's five minutes' walk straight down this road, right-hand side, on the corner.”

“The Horsemonger? Seriously? What's the food like?”

“I wouldn't eat anything they cooked up in that place.” He looked across at me. “Good luck, Finn. Be careful. And call me as soon as you get the chance, OK?”

“Yeah, OK,” I said, trying to sound as if this was no big deal, largely for my own benefit. “See you around.”

I stepped out, shut the door and walked on without looking back. Amobi hadn't wanted to drop me too close to the pub itself, for obvious reasons, so I tried not to draw attention to the fact that we were together. I wondered for a moment if it was paranoid to imagine that my every move was being monitored; then I figured that in the circumstances a little paranoia was probably healthy.

But I soon wished Amobi had been a little less cautious. The street was broad and hot and noisy with traffic, running north–south with no shelter or shade from the sun. My shirt had glued itself to my skin as soon as I stepped out of Amobi's car, and now I felt rivulets of sweat running down my sides. The heat was getting to everybody—I could hear voices raised in anger, and from the corner of my eye I saw
the traffic start to slow and circle cautiously around some obstruction.

Across the road two police patrol cars, lights flashing, had swerved round to box in a knot of black kids who'd been hanging out on some park benches. It looked like another of those stop-and-search operations the cops were entitled to use on any civilian who looked suspicious but only ever seemed to use on black teenagers. Usually the kids being detained simply tolerated it, with sullen resignation, but today it felt different: tempers were flaring like gas off an oil rig. These kids were crowding the pavement, arguing loudly with the cops—four burly constables in stab vests and shirtsleeves, all of them pasty white, with faces flushed by heat and righteous exasperation—and for a moment I thought the cops would snap and pull out their batons and pepper sprays. But the shouting and waving and finger-pointing went on, and I remembered I didn't have time to stop and gawp like the pedestrians around me—I had to keep going and find the Guvnor's pub.

How long had I been walking? I looked to the corner on my right, but I couldn't spot any pub, and I briefly wondered if Amobi's information was up to date. Half of London's boozers had closed in the
last few years; drink was so much cheaper in supermarkets that people preferred to get pissed at home in front of their tellies, and a lot of former pubs had been converted into offices or flats. The place on the corner ahead of me, for example—that looked like it had once been a pub; it had a tiled exterior and frosted windows like an old-fashioned saloon bar, but there were none of the signs you'd associate with a boozer—no tables outside, no blackboards advertising karaoke or cheap cocktails. Looking closer, however, I noticed a discreet signboard hanging over the door at right angles to the front wall, showing a badly painted horse's head, and olde-worlde gold lettering underneath so small it was barely legible, even if you weren't as dyslexic as me.

The Horsemonger
.

It wasn't exactly inviting. It looked like a “local” pub, the sort that only locals knew about—and where only locals were welcome. The door onto the street was solid, heavy and painted black. I half expected it to be locked, but it gave when I pushed it, and I caught a whiff of old beer. When I pushed harder the door swung open. I stepped into the stale, stuffy dimness, and the noise of the street died away behind me.

Inside, pop music burbled from a blown speaker system, so distorted it was hard to tell what the tune was or even what era it was from. The ceiling and walls were nicotine-yellow, the luridly patterned carpet was sticky underfoot, and a one-armed bandit bleeped and flashed in the corner, ignored by the handful of customers I could see. There was one middle-aged bloke lost in a newspaper at a side table, fumbling in a bag of pork rinds, and in the far corner to the left of the bar two men in their late twenties—one big and bearded, the other short and wiry—sat with their heads close together, conferring solemnly in a way that suggested they weren't here to relax and get drunk.

The blond, blousy woman behind the bar was displaying a lot of pale wobbly cleavage as she wiped down the beer taps. She worked at it listlessly, as if to give herself something to do while she half listened to an old man perched on a tall stool at the bar telling her some story that probably didn't end. He was in his midseventies, I guessed, and lean, with thin black hair slicked down and gray hairs sprouting from his big fleshy ears. Like most old people he wore too many clothes for the hot weather: a cozy cardigan, a collared shirt and even a tie. He looked
as if he lived here; in front of him a half-pint glass of lager was slowly going flat, and he squinted as he took a drag from his cigarette. Smoking had been banned in pubs years ago, but nobody here seemed bothered about details like that. I wondered how such a dump stayed in business, until I remembered it belonged to the Guvnor. Most likely its main function was to launder money, not serve customers. McGovern usually preferred more upmarket investments—I'd worked in his fancy Pimlico restaurant, till it had been redecorated with blood and brains—but maybe he felt sentimental about the Horsemonger. Or maybe he'd forgotten it existed.

The old man's mumbled monologue dried up as I stood at the counter. The barmaid glanced at me and stifled a sigh, as if I was someone who'd wandered in by mistake and would soon wander out again.

“Yes, love?” Her voice was flat, bored and devoid of welcome.

“Could I get a…half of lager, please?” I glanced at the old bloke in the cardigan, who ignored my existence and tapped his cigarette into his personal ashtray. I expected the barmaid to ask me to choose a specific lager, but she merely picked up a glass, tilted it under the nearest tap, flipped the serving
lever and watched the glass slowly fill. I opened my mouth and closed it again; I had thought of making small talk to break the ice before I dived in, but the ice in here felt about a meter thick. I head-butted it instead.

“I was hoping to talk to the boss,” I said. No reaction at first. Maybe she thought I was looking for a job.

“You're talking to her,” she said as she scraped the foam off the top of the lager with a wooden scraper that looked like it was also used for cleaning the floor.

“No, I mean the boss. The governor,” I said.

No sudden silence; no one dropped a glass, and the Muzak didn't suddenly stop. Old Cardigan sucked on his cigarette, his wrinkled cheeks pulling tight against his cheekbones, but still he didn't look at me or betray the slightest interest. That was what told me how closely he was listening. The barmaid plonked the lager in front of me, with some irritation; the beer slopped over the rim to make a gross puddle on the counter.

“Like I said, you're talking to her. That'll be two pounds fifty.”

I dug in my pocket for coins, expecting her to ask what it was I wanted, but she said nothing more. I
slapped the coins on the counter. I didn't ask for the Guvnor again, because there was no point—she'd heard me, and the old man had heard me, and Little and Large in the corner had stopped chatting and were studying their drinks, so I was pretty sure they'd heard me too. I picked up the beer with my left hand, shoved the cash across the bar with my right and raised my glass.

“Cheers,” I said, and took a sip. It was sour and stale, but it was cold and wet, so I gulped it anyway, and stood there and waited.

The barmaid sighed so I could hear her this time, turned to the till and punched in the sale, dropped the money into the cash register and wandered off to the other end of the counter. There were no customers up there to serve, so she started to rearrange her packets of snacks instead.

I wondered how long I'd have to wait. At this rate I'd still be here at closing time—if this place ever closed—broke and full of rancid beer. Those guys in the corner, maybe I should sit next to them, start a conversation. Or maybe I should skip the formalities and knock their drinks over. I had to make some sort of noise, create a ruckus big enough to come to the attention of McGovern.

The old man screwed his cigarette out in the
ashtray and slipped off his stool. He wobbled slightly as he straightened his cardie, and I wondered if he was drunk or just really old, but then his glance met mine. His eyes were a frosty bloodshot blue, and there was something in them that looked like pity. He flicked his head almost imperceptibly—
this way
—and headed towards the rear of the bar, towards the door that led to the toilets. I didn't really want to follow him in there—if the public bar was this grim, God knew what the loos would be like—but I didn't have many options. The old man was spry for his years, and though his spine was a little bent he moved quickly, and the door had shut behind him before I finally decided to go after him, leaving my drink on the bar.

Beyond the door a long smelly passageway led to the toilets, but the old man had pulled open another door off to the left, and was vanishing through it. Following him, I found myself outside again, in the pub's backyard—a fenced-off patch of concrete at the end of a long grimy alley lined with battered metal bins and wheeled plastic trash cans that hummed with flies and stank of hot, festering garbage. I glanced up; a dozen windows overlooked the yard, every one of them dusty and disused. A good
place to have a private conference, or to discourage nosy visitors.

Old Cardigan had paused by the rear fence, with his back to me, and as I watched he reached into a pocket, pulled something out and unfolded it. When he turned round I saw it was an old-fashioned razor, and now it hung loose in his hand like it was part of him, like he used it every day. But not for shaving.

Behind me the door burst open again, and the two blokes I had last seen staring down into their pints emerged, their faces hard-set and their fists clenched. I raised my hands to calm them down and got as far as saying, “Wait a minute—” when the shorter of the two of them charged up and threw a punch in low to my stomach. I blocked it but didn't counterpunch—I was hoping we could still talk, but that was a mistake, because they weren't interested in conversation. The larger bearded one had ducked behind me while I was parrying his little mate, and now he threw his arm round my neck and closed his elbow on my windpipe.

“You know what gets my goat about kids these days? They got no sense of history,” said the old man as he walked slowly towards me. I held still, keeping my eyes on the blade that glinted in his
hand. The shorter guy backed aside, grinning, looking forward to the show. “They know nothing about the men who made this country great,” the old man was saying. “Nothing about showing respect. About speaking when you're spoken to, about minding your own business. I mean, how hard can it be to teach this stuff?” He waved the razor in mild exasperation. “Kid sticks his hand in a fire, he gets burned—lesson learned, he doesn't do it again, does he?” He smiled as he came to the point; he had old-fashioned British teeth, blackened and yellow and pointing in all directions. He raised the blade to the level of my chest, and I knew that in the next instant it would flash across my face and open it to the bone. “A scar is a lesson. It goes deep enough, you'll never forget it.”

“For God's sake, you don't even know why I'm here—”

He grinned. “I don't give a damn.”

One brisk kick sent the blade flying over his head. It bounced off a wheelie bin behind him and went skittering off across the concrete. I heard Old Cardigan curse, and glimpsed him turn to go after it, but at that moment I was busy piling backwards towards the wall behind me, making sure the large
guy with his arm around my neck slammed his big beardy head hard against the iron drainpipe.

He grunted in pain and his grip weakened, and I grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm, holding his hand locked back while I turned to his pal, Little, who was piling towards me in fury, his right fist pulled back over his shoulder. I let him throw the punch, dodged to my right, and slammed my free fist square into his pockmarked face, feeling the gristle crack and flatten. He yelped and clutched his nose as blood and mucus squirted through his fingers.

It gave me time to push Large away, far enough to land a hard kick to his solar plexus with the ball of my foot. While he staggered, wheezing and gasping for breath, I swung him round in a circle, hoping to drive him headfirst into the brick wall, but he collided heavily with a dustbin instead. The clang was gratifying, but it meant he wasn't out of the fight just yet—and now Little had recovered, wiping blood and snot off his face and onto his pastel-green polo shirt, and he came back at me twice as hard.

The lid of the dustbin had come to my hand as Large slammed into it, and now I grasped the handle almost instinctively and raised it like a rusty metal shield, diffusing Little's flurry of punches. He
snatched at the rim, hoping to wrench it out of my hands, so I let him have it, in the nose again to start with, then ramming it against his cheeks and jaw as he stumbled backwards.

By now the old man had found the razor and was cleaning it on an old tissue. Little had fallen back against the pub's back door, his legs liquefying, while Large was slowly getting to his feet. Grasping the handle of the bin lid firmly, I slammed it down on the back of his head a few times to encourage him to stay on the floor.