To Kill For (10 page)

I saw Daley's name at the bottom of the first page. Next to it was a note that read, ‘See King, Nathan', followed by a group of letters ‘R, B, AR, AV, JS, NT, 3, 5'.

I pointed to Daley's name.

‘What does it mean?'

He smiled.

‘My own invention, old son. Fucking epilepsy. Used to know all this stuff, but now I can't remember my own birthday so I write it down. But I gotta be safe, so I use this code. See, anyone who wants to be fixed up with a job, or who wants contact with someone else who does, I put on the list.'

He waited for me to congratulate him. I nodded. I suppose it was a good system, a kind of criminal's yellow pages. It would take the law about two minutes to crack the code, but they probably wouldn't be able to prove anything in court. Siddons could claim the letters and numbers meant anything at all.

‘You'd be on the list if you hadn't worked for Kendall. Daley has a note about King coz they always work together. Then I give them codes according to what they do, like AR is armed robbery, B is bank, JS is jewellery store, AV is armoured van. The NT means no time served. The first number is my mark out of five for the size of the jobs. Daley gets three out of five, meaning about fifty to a hundred grand. The last number is my mark for how high I rate them; reliability, professionalism, that sort of thing. Daley and King are fucking good.'

He regarded his work for a moment. It pleased him to think he had brains.

‘You want to go on the list?' he said.

‘No.'

I finished scanning the pages. There was no Glazer. There was no Derek. But there was a name, close to the end, that meant something to me.

‘What's this?'

‘Kohl?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Know him?'

‘What's the C stand for?'

‘Carl.'

Carl. Carl Kohl.

‘Anything to do with Bobby Cole?'

‘He's Cole's nephew. They're descended from Germans, or something. One brother changed his name, made it British. The other didn't.'

That explained a lot. No wonder Cole looked annoyed when that Carl was mouthing off.

There was another name alongside Carl's; Doug Whelan.

‘Tell me about Kohl.'

‘Fancies himself, but if it wasn't for his uncle he'd be nothing. Did some small time stuff with an old mate of his – that one there, Doug Whelan. Now I hear he's working for Uncle Bobby.'

Back outside, I sat in my car and fished out my phone. I didn't think it was Green who'd threatened King, and I didn't think it was Siddons. Both had said they hadn't yet called anyone. That meant one thing; it was the third person King had called, the one he'd dismissed because of the timing. He'd said that he'd called this third person only ten minutes before receiving the threat on his kids. Someone, then, had clout.

I tried King first at home. There was no answer. That didn't surprise me. I tried his mobile.

‘Yeah?'

‘It's Joe.'

I could hear background traffic and thought that King was probably on the road.

‘Come on, man. Can't you leave me alone? I'm in enough shit because of you.'

‘Who was the third person?'

‘Huh?'

‘After you called Green and Siddons. Who did you call then?'

‘Bloke called Bowker. Jim Bowker.'

I trawled around the snooker clubs and pubs and bookies and couldn't find Bowker. I went to his flat and banged on the door. There was no answer. I hadn't expected there to be. He was smart enough to make himself scarce. After crossing me and grassing King up to whoever, he was probably halfway to China by now.

I'd told Bowker that I knew what he'd done to Brenda. That was stupid. He must've feared I'd want revenge for that. I'd forced him to pick Paget's side. When King called him, he would've known it was me who wanted the information. He would've called Paget and told him about King's interest, and then Paget would've called King and Daley and warned them off.

That was how I reckoned it must have been. But there were two things odd about it all. The first was that Paget knew Cole was after him, so why would he be bothered if King wanted him too? The second was that whoever had called King knew details about his kids, and knew it almost straight away. That didn't sound like Paget.

There were only two ways into Bowker's flat that I could see: kick the door in or smash the window. Either was going to cause noise and get attention, but I took the chance that people around here, in this block, wouldn't call the law. If they did, I'd hear the sirens and get out quick.

The door looked easier. It started to give after the fourth try, the frame splitting and warping. I heard the next door neighbour's door open. An old lady in curlers peered out at me.

‘What are you doing?' she said.

‘You know the man here?'

She made a sour face.

‘I know him.'

‘He owes money,' I said. ‘I'm collecting.'

She nodded and her thin lips got thinner. She seemed to think it fair that I should smash his door in.

‘He owes me twenty quid,' she said.

She faded away and I kicked the lock and sent the door inward in a shower of splinters.

The flat smelled of stale cigarettes. The walls were yellowed with tar, the carpet worn.

I pulled the place apart, starting in the small square living room. I emptied drawers, riffled through papers, tore apart the few books. I tried the kitchen and the bathroom and found nothing. I moved into the bedroom and went through clothes in the wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a box of oddments. Finally, I saw a cordless telephone on the floor, by the side of the bed. I snatched it up. It was a landline, not a mobile, and I supposed that was why he'd left it behind. Being a gambler, he'd made sure of having a phone on him all times and probably didn't use the landline much. I looked around some more and found nothing and left.

Outside, the old lady from next door was waiting. She had removed her curlers and put on a thick woollen coat. When I came out, she said, ‘Has he gone?'

I shrugged.

‘Did you find it?'

‘What?'

‘My twenty quid.'

I left the door open for her and walked off.

Back in the car, I looked through Bowker's cordless phone. There were dozens of stored numbers, all with what looked like coded contact details, abbreviations that meant nothing to me. I turned the thing off and drove out.

I found a small pub and ordered some food. I got a pen and some paper from the girl behind the counter, found myself a quiet corner table and began scrolling through the numbers, noting down all the details I could get from the memory. After a while, I had two sheets of paper with numbers listed. There was no Paget in the list, no Glazer, no Mike or Michael, no Derek. Instead, the details were all combinations of letters; JG, ATC, and abbreviated words like Tag and Mac. It looked like a simple code, but it was probably just Bowker's way of being discreet. They were only abbreviations of names. Tag was something like Taggart. Mac could be anything Scottish. There was no KP, though, and no MG.

I already had one number for Paget stored in the memory of my mobile. I checked the numbers I'd taken from Bowker's phone against the one I had. None of them matched.

The food came over. My head was throbbing now and I felt a clammy sickness getting a hold of me. I must have looked ill because when the girl brought my food, she lingered and looked at me.

Something was wrong. Something inside me was squirming and clenching my guts and wringing them, and an ice-cold hand gripped and squeezed my head. It wasn't anything I'd known before, but I recognized it for what it was: fear, of a kind. Not a fear of Paget, though, or of Cole or Dunham or any of those cunts – that kind of shit I was used to dealing with. They were just men, and I could face them and take my chances. And it wasn't like the fear I'd felt as a fighter, covering up because my face was mush and I knew that my brain was being thrown around more than it could cope with. And it wasn't the fear of a boy ducking to avoid Argentinean machine guns and knowing that we were going to have to advance towards them. I'd known that kind of fear, but knowing what was coming, the fear isn't so bad. This, though, was something else, a sickening hollowness. I didn't know what was causing it, but my mind kept creeping back to Brenda and how she'd been in those last weeks I'd known her.

I picked at the food for a while then pushed it aside.

I started to call the numbers I had. I went alphabetically. The first one was listed as AL. After a few rings, a man's voice said, ‘Hello.'

‘I'm trying to reach Kenny Paget or Mike Glazer.'

‘You've got the wrong number, mate.'

‘Jim Bowker gave me this number.'

‘Bowker? What the fuck did he do that for?'

‘He told me—'

‘I don't give a shit what he told you. You've got the wrong number.'

He hung up.

It went on that way. Most of the numbers belonged to bookies, pubs, that sort of thing. Some were individuals and most of those didn't seem to know what I was talking about. They'd never heard of Paget or Glazer. Some were more guarded in their answers, some were hostile, some didn't bother talking to me at all. I made a note of those ones, for what it was worth. I hadn't planned very well how I would try to get information from anyone, and I had to change my approach as I went along, pretending that Bowker had been taken ill and that I had an urgent message from him for Paget or Glazer. I don't know if anyone believed that; I wouldn't have believed it. Most of the numbers were mobiles, and they were untraceable save for fancy tracking gear which I didn't know how to get hold of. So, I plodded on with my story.

I'd gone through the numbers from A to F and I was tired of the whole fucking lot. It was lunchtime now, and the pub was starting to fill up. People sat at the tables and ate lunches and laughed and talked loudly. I tried another number. The hum of the place started to seep into my head, the pain piling up around it. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them I saw Brenda. She sat opposite me, gin and tonic on the table in front of her. She looked at me with wide empty eyes.

I blinked. She was gone. The pain wasn't.

I was into the H's by now. I dialled another number.

Something happened. The phone in my pocket vibrated. I pulled it out and looked at it. It took me a moment to realize the phone belonged to this Derek character, and I'd just dialled his number. I had him. Or, at least, I had an abbreviation of what I thought was his name: HAY. That was something, but not enough. Too many names started HAY. If it was his name. I remembered the phone call I'd answered from Derek's wife or girlfriend. I still had her number. I went to the public phone in the corner of the pub, fed in some coins and dialled the number. I recognized her voice when she answered. Some of the concern had gone from it now, but it was still wary. I said, ‘I'm trying to reach Derek Hay…'

I paused, like I was fumbling with an address book or something.

She said, ‘Hayward.'

‘Yeah, Derek Hayward. Is he there?'

‘No. May I ask who's calling?'

‘Is this his wife?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know where I can find him?'

There were some seconds of silence. Then the line went dead.

I had his name, though. Now I was looking for Derek Hayward, who must've been admitted to a hospital within the last few hours. Unless he was dead.

I started calling the hospitals. There was nothing. No Derek Haywards. I tried the pub's phone book and directory enquiries. I had a home number, so if any of the D. Haywards they'd given me had been the right one, I'd have known. I tried different spellings of Hayward, and different initials, in case Derek was a middle name or something. After a couple of hours I still had nothing. By now, the pub had cleared and my head was thick with pain. I couldn't think straight. I quitted the pub and drove back to Browne's.

When Browne saw me, he said, ‘You're still alive, then.'

He didn't bother to ask if my head hurt. He just handed me a couple of his knockout pills.

The last time he'd seen me, Eddie and his men were taking me to see Dunham.

‘Trouble?' he said.

‘Huh?'

‘From Eddie. Is it trouble?'

‘It's something.'

I downed the pills.

‘I thought he was a friend of yours. Well, as much as you can have a friend.'

‘He works for Dunham.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means he doesn't have friends when Dunham wants something.'

‘And what does Dunham want?'

‘I don't know. Something's going on. They want Paget.'

‘They want you to get Paget?'

‘No. They don't. They want him, but they want me out of the way.'

‘Why?'

It was a good question. Why?

I hit the sack and let the pills work on me.

She came to me again, in the dreams.

One day, she said to me, ‘Do you think there's a god, Joe?'

It was late summer and still hot. I'd taken her up the West End to see a film, and then we had a meal in Chinatown. She was wearing the dress I'd bought for her at the market. I could see now that it was too small for her, too short on her tall body, and too tight. It clung to her and she'd have to pull it down every now and then when it gathered. It would fit her to a T, the geezer in the market had said. Bastard. He must've seen me coming.

Brenda didn't complain.

Her skin was like black velvet against the dress which clung to her tall slim body so that she seemed unreal to me, a flowing thing, like she and the cotton were part of the same thing and a breeze would float her away. She held my hand. I was almost scared of touching her, scared that I'd crush her.