The Wolves of London (21 page)

T
wo hours later we were sitting in the conservatory attached to the back of Benny’s house, drinking coffee so strong it was like a slap to the senses. The caffeine, combined with my lack of sleep, made my limbs tingle and my thoughts quick and feverish. I looked out over Benny’s back garden, which was the size of a football stadium and dominated by a lawn like a billiards table. Although it was October, the grass was such a bright emerald green in the autumn sunshine that to my gritty eyes it seemed to vibrate with life. The flower borders must have been a riot of colour in the spring, but at this time of year they were full of little bushes and twiggy things that looked brown and dead. The garden was surrounded on all sides by a double enclosure of tall trees, which were shedding their leaves, and a high wooden fence.

Benny’s wife, Lesley, a pretty, soft-spoken woman, perhaps ten years Benny’s junior, was out on the lawn, playing with a little yappy dog, throwing a red ball for it over and over.

Whoever it was that said crime doesn’t pay clearly didn’t know what they were talking about. I knew Benny had been born and raised in Hoxton, but he had obviously done well enough out of his chosen profession to rise above his humble beginnings and leave the horrible council estates of East London far behind. His house, which was maybe not
quite
palatial enough to be called a mansion, was in a genteel, leafy suburb just south of Guildford. It was only a forty-minute train journey to Waterloo, but it seemed a million miles away from the noise and dirt of London.

Within half an hour of speaking to Benny, a dove-grey X-type Jag with tinted windows and a dark-suited chauffeur who looked capable of snapping an average-sized man in two had cruised into the private car park abutting the hotel. I had told Benny that we needed to buy clothes, toiletries and phone chargers, that we didn’t have anything with us except what we were standing up in, but Benny had said that he would sort that out for us, that under no circumstances were we to venture on to the streets.

‘Are we really in that much trouble?’ I asked.

Benny’s response had been characteristically non-committal. ‘It’s best not to take any chances.’

Despite his calmness, his swift response to my mentioning the Wolves of London served only to turn my paranoia up another notch. Every second that Clover and I spent in the open – even leaving the hotel and hurrying across the car park to where the Jag was waiting for us – I half-expected some sort of attack. Where that attack would come from, or what form it would take, I had no idea. In the past twenty-four hours the world had become an unpredictable place, one in which it seemed that literally anything was possible.

I didn’t start to relax until we had worked our way out of the snarl of traffic in central London and were accelerating south on the A3. Even then, when Benny’s Jag was sliding smoothly through the southbound traffic, eating up the miles, I couldn’t shake off the notion I would never feel truly safe again. I glanced at Clover, who was staring anxiously out of the window on the opposite side of the car, and guessed that she felt the same. Sensing that I was looking at her, she turned and a nervous smile flickered on her face.

‘You all right?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said, then surprised me by reaching across the gap between us and gripping my hand tight. For the rest of the journey we sat holding hands like a couple of daft teenagers.

Benny’s house, The Redwoods, was at the end of a private road lined with impressive, widely spaced dwellings, all of which had been individually designed and built. It could hardly be seen from the road because of a high brick wall and a tightly packed screen of tall trees beyond it. We only knew we had arrived when the chauffeur stopped in front of a pair of black iron gates, opened the glove compartment and extracted a silver remote no bigger than a credit card. Opening the window, he pointed the remote at the gates and pressed a button. When the gates swung soundlessly open, he replaced the remote in the glove compartment and guided the car up the drive.

The house was on our left, attached to a double garage, whose closed doors were directly in front of us. I expected the doors to open like the gates had done, but the chauffeur halted in front of them and cut the engine. As he stepped out of the car to open Clover’s door for her, I got out on my side. I was standing up straight, stretching my back, when Benny appeared at the door of the house, beneath a porch with a red-tiled floor, over which jutted a wooden canopy, painted blue and decorated with hanging baskets.

Wearing a pair of silver-framed bifocals and a blue polo shirt untucked over designer jeans, Benny looked like a businessman relaxing at home on a Sunday morning.

Mildly he said, ‘Hello, Alex. You look as though you’ve been crapped out of a cow’s arsehole.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, because I feel even worse.’

To my surprise Clover ran past me and straight into Benny’s arms. He hugged her like a father greeting a long-lost daughter and then led us inside.

The house was light and spacious, the cream walls and carpet contrasting with the dark wood of a Victorian grandfather clock ticking sonorously to our left and an antique writing desk which faced it across the hallway. The paintings on the walls were bold, hot slashes of autumnal colour – reds and oranges, yellows and browns – and there was a piece of modern sculpture on a plinth by the stairs that looked both shell-like and vaguely sexual, its sensuous curves and crevices like an invitation to probe and caress.

Moving nimbly for a man of his age, Benny led us upstairs to a landing from which the corridor branched right and left. The right-hand corridor was slightly elevated, accessed via a trio of steps set at right angles to the main staircase. Benny skipped up the steps and strode along the corridor, jabbing a finger at the first door on the left. ‘Alex, you’re in here. Monroe, yours is the fourth door on the right, next to the bathroom.’

He waved away our thanks and told us that Lesley had been down to ‘the village’ to buy us what we needed, all of which we would find in our rooms. Then he said he would stick some coffee on and see us downstairs in fifteen minutes. His words brooked no argument – not that I was tempted to offer one. Wary as I was of his motives, my over-riding emotion was gratitude that he was willing to help us. It’s possible that, left to our own devices, Clover and I might eventually have rallied and formulated a plan, but without Benny’s intervention we would, for a time, have been like boxers on the ropes, reeling from a barrage of blows and able to do little more than react to what was being thrown at us.

The room he had pointed out to me had an oatmeal-coloured carpet and a double bed with a blue and orange duvet. In place of the right-hand wall was a long fitted wardrobe unit with mirrored doors, whereas the upper two-thirds of the wall opposite the foot of the bed was an expanse of leaded windows overlooking the back garden and the fields beyond. On the bed, still in their bags and with the labels attached, were two pairs of jeans – one blue, one black – a couple of long-sleeved tops, a grey, zip-up hoodie, a three-pack of boxer shorts and a six-pack of new socks. It was nothing fancy, but it was decent, practical gear with no designer logos or flashes of colour to distinguish it. Making a mental note to find out how much Lesley had spent and pay either her or Benny back later, I changed out of my smelly clothes into a light grey top, the blue jeans and the hoodie.

After transferring the heart from my black jacket into the hoodie’s side pocket, and setting my phone to charge using the new charger, I picked up a small plastic bag of toiletries bearing a Boots logo, which had been sitting next to the clothes, and wandered up the landing until I found a bathroom. I ripped my new toothbrush out of its wrapper and cleaned my teeth, and then squirted some body spray under my armpits. Feeling not exactly refreshed, but at least less like a refugee, I went downstairs.

Ten minutes later, at Benny’s request, Clover – who had changed into a black sweatshirt and jeans – and I were recounting our experiences. I started by describing how, the previous morning, I had gradually come to realise that my daughter had been abducted, and then Clover took over, telling Benny about the anonymous email she had received. Still half-suspecting that Benny had either sent the email himself or was otherwise involved in Kate’s disappearance, I studied him closely as Clover handed over her phone so that he could read the message. However, if Benny
was
involved, the expression on his face gave nothing away. He handed the phone back, then listened to the rest of our story silently, his mouth set in a grim line, his pale eyes fixed unblinkingly on whichever of us was talking.

It was when I came to the part about how McCallum had died that things became a little awkward. As I described how the black figure had come screeching at me from across the room, Clover butted in, flashing me a look which I interpreted immediately. Benny was a tough, straightforward man, with a set view of the world and it wasn’t, therefore, difficult to picture him not only dismissing our wild tales, but accusing us of wasting his time and taking advantage of his hospitality. We had enough enemies as it was, and if Benny wasn’t one already, then he wouldn’t be a good name to add to the list. For that reason, when Clover said, ‘Alex didn’t mean to hit the old man as hard as he did – did you, Alex?’ I shook my head, trying to look ashamed.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I swear, Benny, I only tapped him, but he went down like a ton of bricks.’

Benny nodded gravely. ‘He was old. His skull must have been as thin as an egg shell. Don’t blame yourself.’

We glossed over the attack on the Incognito, told Benny we’d heard screams and crashes and had guessed that the place was under attack and that the attackers had come for the heart. We said that when we had peeked round the door we’d seen people lying dead and a man standing on the stage with some kind of weapon in his hand.

‘We felt bad, but there was nothing we could do,’ Clover said. ‘So we shut and locked the door, then got out of there as fast as we could.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Benny assured her. ‘Playing the hero’s all very noble, but at the end of the day you wouldn’t have been any less dead.’

Apart from my dream about Lyn, which I didn’t mention, the rest of the story was straightforward enough. When I had finished telling it, Clover asked, ‘So who are they, Benny, these Wolves of London?’

Benny sighed and took a sip of coffee, his eyes swivelling to regard his wife playing happily with the dog outside. I was on tenterhooks as I watched him. I could have murdered a cig, but I had had neither the time nor the opportunity to light up since my disastrous encounter with McCallum.

At last Benny said, ‘They’re a superstition, an underworld rumour, a story told by villains. They’re supposed to be… how shall I put this? A dark force. Unstoppable. Something to strike fear into the hearts of fearless men.’

I exchanged a look with Clover. ‘A dark force? You mean they’re… supernatural? Is that what you’re telling us?’

Benny gave a soft snort of laughter. ‘What I’m telling you is that they’re a
story
. I’m not for one minute suggesting the story is true.’

‘So you don’t believe in them?’ I said.

‘I believe that whoever is invoking their name means serious business.’

‘But where do these stories come from?’ Clover asked. ‘They must have
some
basis in fact.’

Benny shrugged. ‘Maybe. But what
you’ve
got to worry about is that a lot of bad deeds have been committed in their name.’

‘Bad deeds?’ I said.

‘More than bad.’ Benny’s voice was quiet, lacking in drama. ‘Unspeakable. Deeds that can turn the stomachs of even the hardest men.’

Clover’s lips had tightened. ‘Like what?’

‘Things it’s probably best not to hear about.’

Clover abruptly slapped the arm of her chair. ‘Come on, Benny. You can’t not tell us. If these Wolves of London – or whoever is using the name – are after us, we need to know what they’re capable of.’

A leaf the colour of fire swirled from a nearby tree and bumped against the window. More leaves were already darkening the conservatory roof, pressing against the glass like tiny yellow and brown hands.

Benny sighed. ‘Murders,’ he said. ‘But not
just
murders. Torture. Mutilation. Things you wouldn’t believe. Things which no one was ever arrested for. Which the suspects all had cast-iron alibis for.’

‘So these Wolves are what?’ I asked. ‘A vigilante force? Mercenaries?’

Benny shrugged. ‘Maybe. But the things they do…’

‘Go on,’ I muttered.

Once again he glanced out of the window at his wife, and for the first time, as the sun caught his face and shone in his pale eyes, I got the sense – whether real or imagined – that whatever terrible things he had done in the past, it was now all over, that he had lost the taste for it. He might still be head of the pride, but I suspected (or perhaps simply hoped) that the loyalty and respect he commanded these days was based on former glories, not present deeds.

‘There was one bloke I knew,’ he said quietly. ‘Back in the late eighties, early nineties. He had a couple of kids, a boy and a girl. The boy was six or seven, the girl a couple of years younger. One night, while they were asleep, someone came in through their bedroom window, anaesthetised them and cut out their eyes. From what I heard it was a neat job, like a surgical operation. Whoever did it even cauterised the wounds so they wouldn’t bleed to death.’

His voice betrayed no emotion, but I felt a chill of dread and revulsion run through me. Clover was gaping at Benny in shock.

‘Is that true?’

He nodded. ‘Oh yeah.’

‘But why would someone do something like that? It’s…
horrible!
’

‘It was a warning,’ Benny said, ‘or maybe a punishment for something the father had done. Lots of people got hurt because of it. But the bloke never did find out who it was.’

‘So how do you know it was to do with the Wolves of London?’ I asked.