To Kill For (15 page)

Browne must've been keeping a look out for me too because his front door opened and he stepped out and looked over at us.

I was going to tell these blokes to fuck off, but I changed my mind. I didn't need grief from Dunham.

There was another reason why I decided to go along. I wanted to know why Dunham was paying me so much attention, why he was so bothered about finding Paget. A meeting with him and Eddie might not be a bad idea.

I waved Browne back. Red Hair held his hand out for my Makarov. I wasn't giving that up and Red Hair let it go, which meant he was under orders to be polite.

We didn't go up the West End this time. Instead, we went for a ride in the country. The drive took forty minutes and all that time the two up front didn't say a word. Every now and then one of them would look at the other and they'd grit their jaws or sigh. They must've been waiting outside Browne's a long time and they weren't going to blame Eddie or Dunham for sending them there, so it was all my fault and now they were giving me the silent treatment like a pair of old women. I wondered where the fuck Dunham got these clowns.

We slowed when we came to a village. I thought we were in Hertfordshire, or Buckinghamshire. The village was one of those stockbroker-belt type places, full of mock-Tudor houses and fat men with fat faces and their thin tight-arsed wives who stared at strangers.

We slowed in front of a wrought iron gate, brick pillars on either side, a security camera on one pointing down at us. A ten-foot-high brick went in both directions from the gate. I guessed it must encircle Dunham's entire property. On top of the wall were black iron spikes.

Red Hair got out of the car, went up to the gate and pressed some numbers into a panel on the lock. The gate opened slowly and we drove in. I surveyed the grounds as best I could from the car. On both sides, there was open land, grass running from the front of the house to the high wall.

The house was a cube the size of a factory. It was a lot like Dunham: a squat block that shouted power, flattening everything else around it. I suppose they'd call it a mansion, Dunham's country seat.

The car stopped and we all got out. From there I could see a wooded area that ran from the wall and stopped fifty yards from the rear of the house. All around the rest of the house was the grass.

The front door opened and Eddie came out and met us at the top of the steps. I glanced up and saw another security camera. Red Hair trotted up the stairs and whispered something in Eddie's ear. He was telling him I hadn't handed over my gun.

Eddie dismissed the troops with a nod and they faded away. Eddie wasn't worried that I was tooled up. He still thought I was playing along. Above us, in the wet grey sky, crows tossed and fell and screeched, like they were crying out something to me, a warning maybe.

‘Welcome to the country,' Eddie said. ‘Like it?'

He smiled at me, but there was something forced about it.

‘Should I?'

‘People do, you know. They come out here for holidays.' He nodded over his shoulder at the building. ‘Vic paid three mill for this pad. What do you think of it?'

‘Ugly. Dunham should feel at home.'

He laughed. I wondered why.

He led me into a hall that was bigger than my old flat. The ceiling was twenty feet up and the staircase contained enough marble to build another house. The place was full of antique furniture and old oil paintings and stuff like that. All very expensive and tasteful. Dunham was trying hard to forget who he was and how he'd managed to pay for everything.

We wandered through the hall and then through a door and into a living room. The room was too large. Only a corner of it was used. There, a TV was on. A kid's cartoon was playing. A woman sat in a large chair, half facing us. Her legs were crossed, a glass of something colourless in her hand, a magazine on her lap. On a small side-table a cigarette burned in an ashtray.

Her light hair was pulled tightly away from her face. Her cheekbones were strong, her eyes were large, her nose was straight. She was good looking, and she looked like she'd never smiled in her life. Eddie glanced over at her. She sipped her drink and turned the page of her magazine. Her actions were too well timed, and I knew she knew Eddie was looking at her, and he knew she knew it. Everyone knew everything. We were all so fucking smart, all so cool.

Facing the TV was a huge white sofa. A small blonde girl was perched on the edge of it, lost in its size. She kicked her legs as the cartoon characters ran around. I remembered the photo in Dunham's office. There'd been a picture of Eddie and a girl, taken in a country garden, which, I supposed had been here. The woman ignored us as we passed, but the girl looked up for a moment. Eddie waved. She smiled and waved back. Then she saw me. She stopped kicking the sofa. Her hand fell.

At the far end of the room was another door, solid oak, half a foot thick. We went through this and into a library. The walls were lined with leather-bound books. There was a heavy desk at the far end and beyond that a window overlooking the garden. Two leather seats were this side of the desk. Eddie pointed to one of the leather seats. I sat. He sat. We waited. We looked like we were waiting for the headmaster. Eddie crossed his legs, then uncrossed them, then stood and walked over to the window. I saw his eyes glaze over for a moment as he looked out of the window at the garden. Then we heard a door close and Eddie blinked.

Another door opened and Dunham came in, walked slowly over and sat behind his desk.

‘Got anything?' he said to me.

‘No.'

He looked at Eddie, but it took Eddie a while before he turned away from the garden, as if he had to do something he didn't want to do, and was delaying it.

But he ignored whatever it was and said, ‘You've been gone awhile, Joe. Where've you been?'

‘Around.'

‘Around where?'

‘Here and there.'

‘And you didn't find Paget?'

‘No.'

Eddie nodded.

‘What did you find?'

‘Nothing.'

Dunham smiled.

‘You just had a short break?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘I don't care.'

‘Can he read, Eddie? Coz we don't seem to be on the same fucking page.'

That crack smelled like a routine, like I was being treated to an act. I'd felt that since the first time I'd met Dunham.

‘We just want to find Paget, Joe,' Eddie said.

‘I'll find him.'

‘And hand him over to us?'

‘You can have what's left of him. There won't be much.'

‘I thought we had a deal,' Dunham said. ‘You let us know what you get, we fix Paget, get the junk back to Cole, he pays the Albanians their money. Everything's settled.'

‘And what do you get out of all this?'

‘We get peace,' Eddie said.

‘Since when are you interested in peace?'

‘It's just strategic. We let the Albanians calm down for a while, then we get rid of them, Cole and us.'

‘Why would you care about the Albanians? They don't stray on your turf. Unless you've moved into prostitution and people trafficking.'

Dunham leaned forward. I could see a vein throbbing in his forehead.

‘It would be a mistake to fuck with me. I'm not some cunt like Cole.'

‘What kind of cunt are you?'

He wasn't smiling now, but he hadn't exploded either. That was interesting. I was still getting the treatment, then.

Eddie said, ‘Take it easy, Joe. We're on the same side.'

‘I'm on my side.'

‘Not if the Albanians come for you. Then you'll want to be on the strongest side. Which is us.'

‘They won't come for me. They've got problems of their own.'

I caught something then, a flicker of a look between Dunham and Eddie.

‘You didn't hear about Cole, then?' Eddie said.

‘What?'

Even as I said it, I felt a tug in my guts that said, Yes, I know.

‘He got hit last night.'

‘While you were on your short break,' Dunham said.

It came back to me like the taste of bile. I was in the bar in that hotel in Birmingham. I was watching the news on TV. They mentioned a shooting in East London. They showed a house riddled with bullet holes. It was Cole's house. My head had been so fucked up with pills and booze I'd watched the pictures and listened to the voice and seen right through all of it.

Dunham was smiling grimly. He was enjoying himself. I was wrong and he was right and he loved it, the power of it.

‘Is Cole dead?' I asked Eddie.

‘No. Nobody was home.'

‘They're not quite the finished mob you seem to think, are they?' Dunham said. ‘Maybe now you'll start trusting us.'

There was nothing I could say to that. They'd scored a point off me and I was on the back foot. Now they wanted me to block up and go to the ropes. Instead, I thought I'd try and land a punch of my own. I said, ‘What do you know about Glazer?'

Eddie's eyes narrowed and glistened with that amused expression he sometimes had. He smiled thinly. Dunham didn't look so happy now. I thought I'd hit him on a sore point, but now he looked like he didn't give a shit. Or tried to, anyway. That was interesting.

‘What do
you
know about him?' he said.

‘Fuck your games.'

‘You're in over your head, Joe,' Eddie said. ‘If you've got a lead on Paget, tell me what it is.'

‘Why?'

‘What does Cole know?' Dunham said.

That was a mistake. I could see it in Eddie's eyes. He was still smiling, but the glint had gone. Dunham had split with the script. We were supposed to be making plans for Paget and the Albanians and all that shit, and suddenly Dunham's forgotten all about them and wants to know about Cole. That was strange. That mention of Glazer had hit home.

I was sure I was right – they were playing some kind of game – but the more I saw Dunham, the more I knew of him, the less I thought he was the type to play games. He was a knot of power, a man with a mission, serious and vicious. People like that didn't fuck about. No, the more I watched them both, the more I knew they were playing Eddie's game. Dunham had gone along with it for a while, but I'd hit him with the fact that I knew about Glazer and he'd dropped his guard a moment and let me see that I'd hurt him, if only a bit.

Whoever Glazer was, then, they didn't want me to know about him.

Dunham was tired of games now. His face seemed to cloud over, his eyes became hooded and dangerous. He was becoming himself, creeping out of the daylight and back into the slimy dark pool.

‘How would I know what Cole knows?' I said.

‘Now you listen to me,' he said, his voice thick as mud, ‘you're gonna forget about Paget.'

‘We need you and Cole to concentrate on the Albanian threat,' Eddie said, still trying to make like the Albanians were dangerous. I kept my eyes on Dunham.

‘Paget's mine,' I said. ‘I want to watch him bleed for what he did.'

Dunham said, ‘I don't give a fuck what he did.'

Eddie turned to him.

‘He killed a woman, Vic. Cut her up.'

‘My heart bleeds.'

‘The woman was Joe's bird.'

‘I know it. She was grassing Marriot to the filth, wasn't she?'

I'd hit him with Glazer and he'd staggered. Now he was hitting me back. He sank into his seat and watched me from behind his large desk and smiled at me.

I turned and walked out of the room and past the woman with coldness in her eyes and past the kid who stared at me. I walked through the hall with its antiques and paintings that made the place taste more sour, more rank. I walked out into the dark day and looked at the gloomy sky and felt the cold air blast me in the face. I watched the crows above whirl and fall and screech their murderous cries.

Eddie had followed me out. He put a hand on my shoulder. I didn't try to break it off. I had a grip on myself.

‘Don't take it personally. He gets carried away sometimes, likes to stick the knife in a bit too much. He didn't mean what he said in there, about your bird. He has a wife. Has a daughter too. You saw them, in there. He loves the girl, always talks about her. That must tell you something.'

‘Sure.'

He was trying too hard to make like Dunham was a saint, which, I thought, might mean that whatever Dunham had going on, Eddie didn't like it.

Whatever it was, it was bad.

By the time they dropped me off outside Browne's, I felt like I'd done ten rounds. My body weighed a hundred tons. My arm throbbed but it was a dull and distant pain. My head was fuggy.

On top of all that, I felt an emptiness that was more than hunger, it seemed to start in my gut and work its way through to my fingers.

I told myself I just needed a change of clothes and a shower and a shave. I told myself to shut up and get on with it. I told myself to find Paget and kill him.

The car stopped and Eddie's boys waited, keeping their eyes ahead. It took all I had to open the door and climb out.

I stumbled into Browne's house. He heard me and came out of the lounge and grabbed me by the arm. I almost pulled the both of us down, but he held on. He pushed me into the lounge and steered me to the couch. I fell onto it. He disappeared. When he came back, he was carrying a tray of food and a cup of tea. He put the tray on my lap. My hands shook with the effort of picking up the knife and fork. Browne took them from me and cut the food up and fed it to me. I didn't know what he was shovelling in my mouth. I couldn't taste it. I could feel the blood pulsing around my head, though, and the emptiness swelling and sucking me in.

‘You can't go on like this,' Browne was saying. ‘You know that, don't you? It'll kill you.'

‘No choice.'

He was right. I was right. It didn't matter.