Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2) (3 page)

He came in her mouth deliberately, but apologised and blamed the drink. They made love violently three times that night, and woke up covered in bites and bruises. Rachel was flat-chested with large areolae and dark, prominent nipples which looked like Eartha Kitt’s face in the morning half-light and which sprang to attention at the slightest touch. This amused Harry no end. He could start to like her, he thought. But when the alarm went off she was straight up and out of the bed with her tongue in overdrive and he realised he couldn’t.

‘Do you think I’d look good with me hair in a bob?’

Not as good as you would with your head in a noose, he thought. Jesus. What was wrong with the woman? Harry skipped breakfast in favour of a mug of sweet black coffee, which he downed mechanically as Rachel munched on raw carrots. As he left she gave him her phone number – ‘Ring me, ya bastard, you know you will.’ Harry screwed it up and chucked it as soon as they had parted. He was a bastard, that much was true, but what did she expect? Lovey-dovey phone calls and chats about Elsie Tanner, alfalfa and muesli? Fuck that. He didn’t have time for that shit. His mind was already racing.

Before Harry could get involved in his first operation, he knew that he and all the other UC graduates would have to serve a testing apprenticeship. They would be put out into shady corners of the real world for six to nine months in order to create a new, criminal identity. Most of the group chose not to use their real Christian names but Harry was a Harry, there was no getting away from that. Besides, Harry, H, Hal … it had a real street ring about it. It was a name you could associate with a gangster, a hard man, a trader. A name you could trust.

But Harry who? Harry had got on well with Jeremy Tyler. He’d called him ‘Tark’, short for Tarquin, because Jeremy had been educated at Dulwich College, a minor public school in South London, but Harry’s ingrained class prejudice didn’t blind him to Tyler’s considerable talents. He was an exceptionally gifted detective constable from Thames Valley police who had an outstanding working knowledge of the arts and antiques. He could skipper his own yacht and held a full pilot’s licence. Jeremy was as different from Harry as you could get, so it appealed to the Essex boy’s sense of fun to appropriate his name. At the end of the course, he became Harry Tyler, and soon he had the paperwork to prove it. Each officer was given a starter pack to back up their new personas. Harry’s came in an oxblood-coloured briefcase with two gold-plated combination locks. He set the left lock at 999 and the right one at 814 – numbers which corresponded with his real initials H.A.D. Many crooks were going to be.

Many Rachels too.

Through a villainous friend of a villainous friend, an established UC had managed to feed Harry into Ronnie Clavin’s scrapyard in Madison Gardens, Charlton, London SE7; close enough to the Thames to be able to ‘hit the lapping water with a gob full of phlegm’, as Ronnie so poetically put it. The sole holder of Valley Metals was a burly 52-year-old with a greasy complexion whose perennial off-white string vest stretched tightly across two disturbingly developed man breasts. It was a small yard with an even smaller breeze-block office. The tin-roofed building was just about big enough to contain a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, a kettle, a cat called Mandy and a dog called Brandy, so ugly that Harry swore her arse backed away when she tried to lick it. A poster of topless Page Three beauty Christine Peake was blu-tacked to the wall above Ronnie’s head, next to a framed, autographed picture of the legendary Charlton Athletic player Derek ‘Gypo’ Hales. The yard had been in the Clavin family for sixty years. Ronnie habitually described it as ‘big enough to unload two trailers’, by which he meant two lorry-loads of stolen – ‘halfinched’ – gear.

Ronnie Clavin was a grafter not a villain, but it was well known in the area that he’d been ‘a bit of a boy’ and had ‘run with the hounds’ in his younger days. He had earned the respect of South London’s thriving criminal fraternity by keeping his mouth shut and never talking about other people’s business. Not while they were still alive, at least. So there were always faces hovering about and favours to be done. It was a perfect place for the Harry Tyler identity to be forged and for Harry’s own handsome face to be noted.

Over the weeks leading up to his first encounter with the Nelsons, Harry learned plenty about the scrap business, the yellows (brass) and reds (coppers). He also learned that Ronnie had a major source of income outside of metal dealing – he bought lorry-loads of commodities, but only on the ‘strict understanding’ – large wink – that none of the goods were stolen. ‘They have to be seconds or bankrupt stock, son,’ he told Harry. ‘That’s the company line – and that’s what you’ve gotta tell the Filth if they ever catch you unloading any cases of knocked-off onto a pallet truck, know what I mean?’

Harry found himself doing plenty of unloading too, as Ronnie had put his back out lifting fridges, or so he had said. Banjo Vic, the barman at the Conservative Club in nearby Charlton Church Lane, thought otherwise. ‘It’s the way Ron plays golf that caused that, H,’ Vic confided. ‘He always stands too close to the ball. After he’s hit it …’

Fridays seemed to be the day for any other business at Valley Metals. That was when Ronnie would retreat into the shelter of the office as a Transit van full of designer dresses or Italian suits backed into the yard. Ronnie never said what Harry should do when the bent gear arrived, but Harry knew enough to make himself busy elsewhere. Conversely, when the local CID turned up, as they did on a regular basis, Harry would scuttle off to the office while Ronnie held court in the yard. DS Gunther and DC Muldoon popped by once a month, ‘just to make sure Ronnie was well’. Clavin always seemed delighted to see them, although he must have lost a lot of bets on the football results to the two detectives because he always seemed to be handing them ‘beer tokens’ for the weekend, generally in £20 denominations. After the second time they visited, Ronnie muttered, ‘It don’t hurt to have friends in low places,’ but Harry didn’t respond. His see-no-evil approach paid dividends because five weeks into their working relationship Ronnie was referencing Harry to all and sundry as ‘the kid who works for me’ who was ‘all right’, who ‘minds his own’
.
But then why should he be suspicious? Harry had come from a trusted source and Ronnie’s yard was never going to be the target of infiltration. He was small fry. A useful idiot.

Ronnie never asked Harry too many questions about himself. He knew he was from the other side of the water, he was West Ham and therefore ‘a wrong ’un’ and that seemed to be enough. He had taken a shine to Harry as soon as he’d met him. OK, he’d slapped him down verbally a couple of times early on in their relationship, just to let him know who was guv’nor, but he liked his cocky boyish style.

It took Harry about two weeks to get the full measure of Ronnie Clavin. He was a man of fixed daily habits. He liked his bet at dinner time, £5 a day – although he had put £50, ‘a bull’s-eye, H,’ on Lloyd Honeyghan to win the world welterweight title later that year. And aside from the odd Mickey Spillane book, he read only the sports pages of the
Sun
. Every other Saturday Ronnie would watch Charlton; every Friday night without fail he would have a shave, put on a collar and tie and play bingo at the Charlton Conservative Club with his wife Marlene – her real name was Marigold but everyone called her Marlene because she dressed, spoke and flirted exactly like Boycey’s wife on
Only Fools and Horses
. They had one son, Stevie, who was in the Merchant Navy. Marlene was 44, still very sexy with eyes as bright as morning dew – and Harry would have banged it rotten if he hadn’t thought it would have mucked up his important work experience. Besides, he liked Ronnie – as much as he ever liked anyone. There was a hard cheerfulness about the man. He looked on life’s bright side, looked for possibilities in every setback and cracked gags morning, noon and night. Most men dream of getting rich and buying themselves an Aston Martin, a Lear jet and a country pile. Ronnie, who each week believed with religious certainty that he would win the pools, vowed he would splash out his fortune on a cattle farm. He pictured himself dressed like the Marlboro man, sitting on his picket fence in Montana blowing smoke rings at the sun. At heart, he was still a kid. Whenever a new customer came calling, Ronnie would get them to stand on the scales to see how much they weighed, surreptitiously slipping a steel-toecapped boot on it behind their backs so they would believe they were porking out. The only time Harry ever saw Ronnie lose his temper was when a Nigerian driver reversed a van full of knocked-off Head sports bags right over Mandy the cat. The air was blue with racial abuse – Harry had to stop his boss from killing the poor sod. Then, when the driver had gone, Ronnie sat at his office desk, held his head in his hands and sobbed like a child.

It didn’t take Harry long to get to the bottom of the incident with the Nelsons. Six days before, Ronnie had been approached by a well-known lorry hijacker from Deptford called Mickey Riordan. He had a trailer-load of Wilkinson Sword razor blades that he had stolen from a lorry park in Deptford. Ronnie had middled the parcel and attempted to sell it on to the major firm north of the river, the Nelsons. The problem was that Buck Nelson had already bought the parcel once and laid it down in SE8 for safe-keeping, only for some worthless slag with an obvious death wish to come along and thieve it from him.

Hence the visit to Madison Gardens.

Ronnie had no option but to meet up with Buck the following Monday at the George in Islington, where the errors of his ways were forcefully spelled out to him followed by a simple proposition: name the toerag who had hoisted their razor blades or be seriously hurt. Ronnie knew only too well that if he had stuck Riordan’s name up he would have had a worse fucking hiding for being a no-good grass. So he kept shtum and took a beating that left him with six broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a broken leg with a matching ankle that had swollen up to the size of half a cricket ball. When Nicky Nelson had finished with him, his brothers David and Georgie put Ron in a minicab and had him dropped off at the casualty department of Greenwich & District Hospital, which was considerate of them. He never declared who had lifted the parcel, but the lorry-load was handed back to its wrongful owners and all parties respected Ronnie for taking it like a man. On balance, he felt good about the deal. Until he heard a few months later that the Nelsons had known who the tea leaf was before they even arrived at Valley Metals, and that Mickey Riordan’s body had washed up on the Kent coast down by Whitstable a fortnight after Ronnie had been admitted to hospital.

September 5, 1986. Harry was sitting by Ronnie’s hospital bedside eating his grapes. Clavin seemed to have aged ten years. He looked weary. His face seemed heavier. Saggy.

Harry tried asking what had occurred in Islington, but Ronnie just grunted, ‘You don’t fuck with Buck,’ and changed the subject. Ronnie was plastered up but in good spirits. ‘This ain’t a bad old place,’ he observed as a redheaded nurse leaned across him to straighten his pillow.

Harry took in her full figure, slim waiste and long legs. Her heavy breasts pressed against the constraints of her uniform. ‘Will he live, nurse?’ he asked.

‘I think rigor mortis is setting in,’ moaned Ronnie.

‘Any chance of a blanket bath?’ Harry went on. ‘Not for him, for me. I’m free any time you get off work.’

‘Now you stop that, it’s so … Seventies,’ the nurse snapped in a County Antrim accent. But Harry noticed she was blushing.

‘Only pulling your leg,’ he said. ‘Bernadette, was it?’

‘No it was not, nor was it Colleen. I’m a Lucy but I’m only telling you that to stop you working through the whole book of Christian names for Ulster women.’

‘No surrender, would that be?’

‘You’d better believe it.’ She walked off to the next bed, but threw Harry a sly glance, which he caught. He smiled back and made her blush again.

When the nurse was out of sight, Harry grabbed hold of Ronnie’s medical notes and made a great show of studying them, shaking his head and tutting.

‘What do they say?’

‘Put it this way, mate, I wouldn’t bother buying any Christmas presents.’

‘Spanner.’

‘No, seriously, you’re going to be fine but if they leave you to go the distance there might be complications with the baby.’

‘Better put us down for a Caesarian then.’

‘What’s the score with Potman and Noodles, Ron?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘It ain’t everyone who wanders round packing a .45, even in South London.’

‘Funny enough I thought they’d be here by now. I got a message they was coming up today. Here, do you think I could light up in here?’

‘Better not, mate.’

Ronnie belched and nodded.

‘They’re in the scrap, obviously, but they’re proper ’eavy. They’ve got a yard over West with a car shredder that could turn a Sherman tank into a pile of iron filings in five minutes flat. Just the place to lose a body, know what I mean? If you’re in the hurting game and you’ve got a stiff to get shot of, you just call up the Potman and say the magic words “Pizza to go” and that’s it as good as done. Goodnight, Vienna.’

‘How much?’

‘Couldn’t tell ya.’

Harry stroked his chin.

‘Brings new meaning to “pizza toppings”, don’t it?’

‘Yeah. Ha, ha. You wicked bastard.’

‘And then you’re proper garlic bread …’

‘Here, speak of the devil …’

Heavy footsteps made Harry turn. It was Potman, with the smaller Noodles, a sourpuss in army surplus, in tow.

‘Well you’re still alive, then,’ the big Angel observed after hands had been shaken and hellos exchanged.

‘Barely, son, barely.’

‘Nice hospital,’ said the frowning Noodles.

‘Well, on the surface,’ Ronnie moaned. ‘But they keep running out of bog paper. When it happened the other day I used the khazi on the floor below, but it got a bit silly with me on sticks, so I calls over this staff nurse – a right sour-faced old trout – and I says, “’Scuse me, love, there ain’t been no toilet paper in the bog since Tuesday.” She looks down her nose at me and says, “Haven’t you got a tongue in your head?” “Yes,” I says. “But I ain’t got a neck like a giraffe.”’

Potman roared. ‘You must be feeling better, son,’ he said.

‘It’s the people here that cheer me up,’ Ronnie replied. ‘See that fat gut-bucket over there, with a neck like a packet of hot-dog sausages?’ He indicated a thirty-stone man in his fifties. ‘Bottomless Pete we call him, ’cos he never stops eating. Well, yesterday he comes over and tells me he thinks he’s got hand grenades.’

‘Eh?’ said Harry.

‘AIDS, boy, do keep up.’

‘I thought that made you lose weight,’ smirked Potman. ‘He’s fatter than I am.’

‘Maybe he ain’t had it long,’ said Harry. ‘Is he a mate of yours, Ron?’

‘Is he fuck, miserable bleeder. He used to do a bit of business in the yard. Don’t let him see us looking over at him and laughing or all hell will go off. He ain’t the sort of bloke you can have a laugh with. He thinks badinage is an Elastoplast, know what I mean?’

Ronnie shook his head. ‘I’ll never forget, one time he was bending me ear about how he needed to sort himself out a social life, so I put him on to this fella who gets him into a social club down in Dartford near where he lives. Anyway, they have this weekend away at some holiday camp up at Camber Sands or somewhere, you know, a comedy weekend for husbands and wives, no kids. But Bottomless leaves his missus at home and afterward he’s telling me how he’s having a pint at the bar on his Jack ’cos no fucker is talking to him and as he’s gone for a Jimmy the comedian on stage starts coating him off, does a load of fat jokes at his expense, y’know? “Keep clear of the beach, mate, or Greenpeace will cordon you off. Look at the size of him, he’s so fat he bumps into people when he’s sitting down. When he goes to a restaurant he doesn’t get a menu, he gets an estimate.” All the old fanny. So Bottomless stops in his tracks, looks at the comedian and says, “You taking the piss out of me?” and the comedian comes back with, “Fuck me, well spotted. When your IQ hits fifty make sure you sell.” The audience is in stitches, so the comic keeps going. “Only joking, mate,” he says. “I know you’ve got an open mind – I can feel the draft from here.” The audience is creasing up. Well, Bottomless walks up on stage, picks the fella up over his head, walks over to a window and hurls him out. I asked him if it was open and he said, “Does it matter, Ron?” He kills me! So then he’s gone for his slash and when he gets back all the camp security boys are there, with a deputation from the committee. Long and short of it, they tell him he’s got to go home. They follow him to his chalet, he gets packed and they point him out of the gates towards the nearest railway station. And here’s what he says to me:“You know what, Ronnie? They never even offered me a lift to the station. What kind of social club is that?”’