To Kill For (21 page)

His face was grim. Hayward and Bradley were waiting for him to spill it. I had the feeling that it was personal for Compton, but not so much for the others. I think he knew what revenge meant. I think he could taste it like I could, the bitter sweetness always with him. He glanced over to Bradley.

‘Give us one of those, will you.'

Bradley gathered his cigarettes and lighter. He half stood and reached over to give them to Compton, who snatched a fag and lit it. His hands were shaking.

‘It was in the papers,' he said, the words coming out with the smoke. ‘There was some fuss over it. Someone high up decided to target immigration-related prostitution and sex crimes – trafficking, porn, that sort of thing. Specifically, East European related crime. Glazer was senior in the vice unit and he got the job. Needless to say, the operation was dodgy from the word go. They made some arrests, sure, but when the papers forgot about it, nothing much had changed. I was in an anti-corruption squad at the time. I didn't like what I heard about Elena. A year or so ago, I was given charge of a small squad to investigate it. What you see before you is most of the squad. We needed someone on Glazer's team. You were right, he was wary about who he was stuck with, so we got young Del here from another vice unit and stuck him with Glazer. For most of the last year, we've not had a sniff of anything. And then the whole thing went stratospheric. Marriot was killed. Paget went missing.'

He paused and took a drag of his cigarette.

‘They've got something, Paget and Glazer. We don't know what, but we've an idea. They've got pull, in high places. Glazer's dangerous, and if Paget's working with him, or has him under his thumb, that makes Paget dangerous. But then, you already know that.'

After he'd finished, we were all silent. The TV mumbled in the corner, the clean-faced kid having his final showdown with the clean-faced villain. Bradley, another cigarette burning in his fingers, looked into space, a pained expression on his face. Hayward looked at Compton with the kind of eyes a dog makes at its master, a sort of longing, a sort of fear.

And me… well, now I understood.

‘He was after me,' I said, my voice hoarse. ‘Glazer, that night, at Ponders End. He was after me. That's why he was there.'

It seemed like another life. I glanced at Hayward. He was looking at me, waiting. I don't think it even occurred to him that I was talking about the night I'd shot him.

‘I don't understand,' Compton said. ‘Why would Glazer be after you?'

‘Paget told him who I was. Paget knew it was an ambush. But he also knew I wouldn't stop till I'd killed him. He needed to take me out, and this was a good opportunity. But he was alone, no men, nobody to call on and he couldn't raise his head, not with Cole hunting him. But he knew Glazer would fear my existence. He told Glazer that I was supposed to meet this grass called Bowker and Glazer took it from there. He went there to kill me.'

Bradley said, ‘Why would Glazer want to kill you?'

If I told them, they'd have something on me. I knew that. But I didn't care any more. I was past that. I didn't care what they got on me, what they would do with it. If they sent me down for a hundred years, it didn't matter. All I cared about was my vengeance, boiling now, bubbling and writhing. Compton felt it, like me, I was sure. His eyes glistened, unblinking. He knew what I'd done, and why. Maybe Bradley and Hayward did too. At any rate, they respected Compton, I could see that much. I said, ‘I knew a woman. Her name was Brenda. She was a pro, worked for Marriot. She was grassing him up to the law. I think Glazer was the copper she was grassing to and I think Glazer told Marriot what she was doing. Paget sliced her face off for it.'

Compton nodded.

Bradley said, ‘That why you killed Marriot? And why you want to kill Paget?'

Hayward put a hand on him.

‘We don't want to know.'

Bradley nodded. We wanted Paget. We wanted Glazer. We all had our own reasons. What they knew about me didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except that sweet bitterness inside us, that cancer, that lust that crept up from our balls and through our guts and into our chests. Vengeance. We wanted it. We could taste its sourness in the backs of our throats.

I got rid of them around midnight. Compton wanted me to stay in touch, to let them know what I was up to. I told him I would. He didn't believe me. It didn't matter.

After they'd gone, I switched the TV off, then the light, and I sat in darkness and tried not to think about it, about Brenda and what they'd done to her and why. There was a sickness inside me when I thought of it all, that rotten black blood pumping through my veins. I don't know how long I sat like that. I looked up when I heard a noise at the door. Browne's figure stood there, shadowy and stooped.

‘Bad?' he said.

‘Yeah.'

He went into the kitchen. When he came back he had two mugs of tea. He gave one to me and took a seat. We sat facing the blank TV screen.

One time, we went to a pub near the Angel tube station. It was a Saturday night and crowded. She was ‘off duty', as she called it, and wore jeans and a jumper. The short skirts and high heels were part of her job, the uniform. Out of hours, she didn't go near that sort of thing. I suppose she could cope better if she split the two parts of her life.

I was working in the casino, back then, as security. She worked around there too, sometimes in the casino itself, picking up the odd out-of-town businessman who'd had too much to drink or was on a winning streak or wanted company for a bit. She said she wanted to go somewhere away from all that. The Angel wasn't far enough.

There were booths in the pub, and you could have some kind of privacy. It mattered to her, that sort of thing. She liked to sit and be separate from people, as if she needed life around her, but couldn't face being a part of it.

There was a jukebox in the pub, and she'd been listening to some song, tapping her fingers on the oak table. She was chain smoking, and downing one gin after the other, trying, I suppose, to dull the knowledge she carried. After a few minutes of silence, she held out her hand and said, ‘Give us a quid, will you.'

I gave her the money and she got up and squeezed out of the booth and wandered over to the jukebox. She couldn't walk straight, and she bumped into a table, but she made it to the jukebox and placed her hands on the glass dome and started scrolling through the CDs. From where I sat, she looked like a million other women on a night out, nearing middle-age, tall, thin, trying to look young, trying to forget life for a while, trying to be just like everyone else. She looked tired, though, and her eyes were dull.

And then her face lit up for an instant and she looked at me, and there was that smile on her face, the one that made her look young. She beckoned me over. She was looking at the CD covers.

‘There,' she said, pointing at one of the covers.

It was an old Motown compilation, full of the usual stuff. I looked at it and she looked at me looking, waiting for my reaction.

‘It's a CD,' I said.

She sighed theatrically, and nudged me in the ribs.

‘I know it's a bleedin' CD, fool. I mean, look at the name there. That song. See?'

I looked, but all I could see was the usual list of singers and groups.

‘Brenda Holloway,' she said. ‘See it?'

‘Yeah.'

‘That's who me mum named me after. Brenda Holloway. That song there, “Every Little Bit Hurts”. It was a hit when me mum was pregnant with me.'

She pushed the pound coin into the slot and selected that song. She had a couple of other choices for the money so she selected the song a couple more times.

‘“Every Little Bit Hurts”,' she said again. ‘That's bloody right.'

And then her smile was gone, and the spark of her eyes, and the dullness was back and she looked hollow and wasted. She turned away from me and lurched back to the booth to wait for her song.

The heat in the pub was getting to me, and the smoke was stinging my eyes. I'd never liked herds of people. Even when I was fighting, I hardly ever sat in the crowd and watched. Here, the people heaved and laughed and shouted to each other from a few feet away and I felt like they were closing in on me, trapping me with their straight and normal lives. My neck was starting to stiffen and I could feel another headache beginning to get a grip. I pushed my way through the throng and into the Men's room. I spilled a few tablets down my throat and splashed water on my face. I waited a while and wondered why, but then I realized I was waiting for her songs to come and go.

By the time I came out, Brenda was back in the booth, facing me, but not seeing me. Her shoulders were hunched and she'd pushed herself into the wall. Sitting next to her was a man. From where I was, on the other side of the pub, I could see the man's dark blond hair and thin, long mask-like face. I could see his small mouth and his expensive suit. I could see the thick gold bracelet on the hand he was using to hold Brenda's wrist. Mostly, what I could see were his eyes, narrow and dark, slashes in the white face. He was telling her something, his hand squeezing her wrist, and he was leaning close and she was leaning as far away as she could. I could see she was in pain, gritting her teeth to keep from crying out.

I knew the man, of course. His name was Kenny Paget.

At the time, Brenda was pimped by Marriot, and Paget was his hatchet man. That was the way it was, and Brenda had stopped me several times from changing it. I hadn't understood why she wanted to stay. I didn't push her on it. But I didn't work for Marriot or Paget, and I didn't have to take their shit.

The pub was thick with people now and even with my weight, it took me a few minutes to push my way through to Brenda. By then, Paget had gone. Brenda hadn't moved, though. She was still pushed up against the wall, her shoulders still hunched, her eyes shut.

‘What did he want?'

‘Nothing.'

‘What?'

She opened her eyes and looked at me. Her face was empty. It was like she was somewhere else, seeing someone else. Then something clicked and she looked at me as if she'd only just realized I was there. Whatever was in her thoughts, it wasn't me. I turned and searched Paget out. He was at the bar. I started to move towards him, but Brenda grabbed my arm.

‘Don't, Joe. Leave it. Please.'

I nodded. But I wanted a drink, now, and Paget was at the bar and if I happened to stand next to him, well, that's just the way things happen.

He was sitting with some fancy drink in front of him. He wasn't a big man. He was quite tall and thin, wiry. I could've snapped him in two right then and there. I should've done.

I wondered if it was coincidence, him being here. I thought back, too, to the time we went to the market and Brenda was uptight, nervous, looking around her.

Paget was a vicious bastard, and he was also cunning. He and Marriot were dangerous enemies. Not that I cared for myself. I would've been happy to wipe them both out and take my chances. I don't think anyone would've blamed me. They were hated, even amongst the underworld. But they were powerful.

I'd already had run-ins with them a couple of times, both to do with Brenda. Once, they'd warned me off her. Once, I'd gone to Marriot's office and told him to leave Brenda alone.

He'd been a dull-looking bloke, Marriot. Until I smashed his face in, that is. That was after Brenda had been killed. That had been blamed on a john – just another assault on a prostitute. Still, I'd smashed Marriot to pieces, just for someone to blame. If I'd known the truth, I wouldn't have left him alive.

Up till then, though, he'd looked like a boring small businessman; grey suit, grey face, like that. He had thick-rimmed glasses and a habit of wiping the lenses with his tie.

‘Young couple like you,' he'd once said to me, ‘in love, whole world ahead of you, full of promise.'

Back then I thought he was just taking the piss, saying it for effect. Paget was there that time, and he'd found it funny. I knew how people thought of us. I didn't care. Later, though, I learned what he was planning to do to Brenda, what he tried to do to me. And those words were singed into my head. Full of promise. Yeah.

So, there we were, me and Brenda, out for a nice drink. And there was Paget, smoking a cigarette, elbows resting on the bar counter. And the music played and people chatted and drank. And I was going mad with the urge to hurt him.

He didn't look at me, but he knew I was there. The young barman saw me and came over. He didn't look old enough to be drinking in his own pub. There was a woman serving too, but she was way up the other end.

‘What can I get you?' the boy said.

‘Pint of bitter. Gin and tonic.'

‘Ice and lemon?'

‘No.'

Paget glanced up at the barman.

‘On me,' he said.

The barman moved over a few feet to pull the pint. Still without looking at me, Paget said, ‘Hello, Joe. They serve your kind here, do they?'

The barman's look was wary, like he wasn't sure if this was a joke. Paget had spoken quietly, but there wasn't much humour in it.

The pub was loud, but near the bar it wasn't so loud that the people near us couldn't hear. There were two men standing next to us. They were big, working men, builders maybe. There were plenty of sites around there at the time. They'd been talking about football, about how Arsenal were losing out to Chelsea and United. They were Gunners fans, and they were narked that their club wasn't making the buys they needed for the season.

‘I thought this was a decent kind of pub,' Paget was saying. ‘Now, I dunno. If I'd known they served nigger whores, I woulda found a better place.'

Conversation between the men next to us had stopped, and the barman was looking around him, trying to find someone, the bouncer, I guessed.