“Disagreement?” I asked, perking up.
“They’d turned on each other,” he said simply. “Once they’d come to the conclusion that Billy the Brick had done a runner with their money, they spent a while trying to find him with no joy, then started blaming each other for the mess. I was worried they’d start popping each other off on my manor.”
“And you couldn’t have that,” Caz murmured.
“No,” he glared at her, “I couldn’t. Look, Your Highness, I know what you think of me, but get one thing straight – I don’t stand for collateral damage.”
Caz sipped her coffee and put the tiny cup back in its saucer. “Go on.”
“In business, you don’t, shall we say, make an omelette without breaking eggs. But unless you want a kitchen that looks like a fucking war zone, you break only the eggs you need for the omelette, and you break them into the bowl.
“You don’t go flinging eggs at the walls and hoping that some of the yokes will splash back into the bowl. Which is basically what these fuckwits were in danger of doing. Till I had a word, put them straight and things settled down.”
Caz sipped her coffee again.
I wondered how far the cuisine metaphors were likely to go, lifted my cup and realised I’d drained it already and that my heart was racing.
“Oh don’t get me wrong,” Chopper clarified, “I don’t believe for a second that they all stopped looking. But they went on to doing so quietly. Discretely. Until this bloody corpse showed up in your—” here, he glared an accusation at me, as though I had been responsible for putting the stiff where it was found, “basement.”
“And now they’re getting noisy again?” Caz asked.
Chopper laughed. “Darlin,’ most of ‘em are dead or locked up. Which makes the Chisel thing even weirder.”
“The Chisel thing?” I perked up further.
“Oh yeah,” he smiled wolfishly, “that’s why I asked you to pop round.”
“To be clear,” Caz interjected, “you basically kidnapped us off the street.” But she canned it at a glance from me.
“Talking of which,” Chopper responded, “a friend of yours, Danny – one Charlie Chisel – has been reaching out on the grapevine to anyone he knows from the old days.”
Caz frowned, leaning in to the conversation as Chopper dropped his voice.
“Seems someone very close to him hasn’t come home in a couple of days.”
“Alex,” I guessed, remembering how Chisel’s wife was no longer on the scene.
Chopper nodded. “Chisel’s let it be known that if the boy’s immediately returned – unharmed – there’ll be no repercussions on anyone. But, if so much as a hair on his head is damaged, Chisel will burn the city to the ground.”
“Shit,” I whispered.
“Shit, indeed,” Chopper nodded.
“Has he been in touch with the police?” I asked, realising, as I did so, how unlikely that act would be.
“Obviously,” Chopper deadpanned. “He’s also been in touch with the Battersea Dogs Home, Claire Rayner, Saint Anthony and Doris fucking Stokes. Of course he hasn’t called the filth. He hasn’t even been contacted by the kidnappers.”
“So how does he even know that Alex’s been kidnapped?” Caz asked.
“The kid’s a bit of a loudmouth, but he’s a proper daddy’s boy. And Chisel’s been everywhere, asked everyone. None of his mates have a clue where he is. And he had no reason to go missing, so…”
“So we still haven’t explained,” I said, “why he hasn’t gone to the police.”
Chopper sighed deeply, in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger fashion, and shook his head. “Danny, I’m not entirely sure what Charlie Chatham told you about his business.”
“Demolition,” I said. “Sold it and made a packet.”
Chopper nodded. “’Bout right,” he said, “except it doesn’t explain the nickname.”
A light went on.
“Put it this way, son,” Chopper’s eyes glistened menacingly, “he weren’t no fucking stone mason. Charlie was importing grade ‘A’ Columbian when half of London was on the stuff. Used the profits to build a nice little legit business and then sold it all off at a massive profit.”
“Which left him,” I guessed, “with time on his hands and a lot of ready cash.”
“He’s bright, your mate,” Chopper smiled at Caz. “Lots of ready cash,” he stressed to me.
“So he’s gone back into his old business,” I surmised, and Chopper nodded.
“Only, from what I hear, this time it’s more of a hobby than a business. Now don’t get me wrong,” he held a hand up in silent display of his discomfort, “I ain’t got a lot of time for drugs, but everyone’s got something, I suppose, and he ain’t pissing into my chips, so I live and let live.”
“But now his son’s been kidnapped,” I offered.
“Well it’s like this,” Chopper admitted, “if it was me – if one of mine went missing, and I called Chisel – I’d like to think he’d offer whatever assistance he could.”
“So, to be clear,” Caz interrupted again, “you’d like Danny to look around for some possibly furious, probably heavily-armed drug gangsters that have kidnapped Chisel’s son cos Chisel Pere has urinated on their French fries?”
This time I shook my head, my gaze never leaving Chopper’s face. “That’s not it, is it?” I asked.
“Then what?” Caz began, and only Chopper’s sardonic little smile stopped her.
“Chopper,” I said to Caz, “knows people. Hell, he probably knows everybody.”
“Kind of you,” he smiled opposite me.
“The possible involvement of dodgy drug gangsters wasn’t even mentioned by Chopper,” I said, watching as the smile deepened. “And that, I’m guessing, is because you’ve already reached out to every psycho drug lord in greater London and discovered that none of them know what’s happened to young Chatham.”
“Went as far as Greater Manchester,” Chopper admitted, “just in case. And not a fucking dicky bird.”
“Which must be driving Chisel insane,” I surmised.
“So if Alex hasn’t been kidnapped because of the drugs connection,” Caz – the light beginning to dawn for her too – offered, “he must have been kidnapped for some other reason.”
“And the most obvious other reason right now,” I offered, “and one which we think has already had two men murdered, is the mysterious theft and double-cross of a few millions in diamonds, which have never been seen again.”
“So, what are we saying?” Caz asked. “That Chisel had a hand in the double-cross?”
“Or that someone thinks he had,” I suggested.
“The chimps,” Chopper muttered, “seem to be throwing their shit around. Again.”
I shook my head. “Billy the Brick is dead. As is Johnny Ho and Jimmy Carter. Tim Boyle’s got God – not that that guarantees he’s not a murderer and kidnapper, I suppose, but that doesn’t leave much of the original gang around to go kidnapping spoiled brats off the street.”
“Wait,” Caz interjected. “Billy was killed to get the stones, right?”
We nodded.
“And Jimmy cos he was nosing around and, it seems, might have found out who’d pinched them.”
Again, we nodded.
“Johnny Ho,” I noted, “choked on a crispy prawn. So what’s your point?”
“Well, one was killed to get the stones and one to stop him asking where they’d gone to. What if this thing – this kidnapping – was because someone thinks Chisel actually has the stones and that someone wants them.”
Chopper turned his smile on Caz. “What indeed?”
“So, what exactly do you want us to do?” I asked. “Find the boy? Or find the stones?”
“Either or,” Chopper replied. “It’s up to you.”
I thought for a moment. “I guess we need to figure out who’s got the boy first,” I said.
“Well who’s left?” Caz asked.
“From t
he original gang? Tiny Tim – God-botherer or not, he might be viewing this as a matter of honour. Chisel, though he’d hardly kidnap his own kid. Gary the Ghost—”
“Who the what?” Chopper asked.
“Gary the Ghost,” I said, realising that this was a new name to him. “Some bloke – mate of a mate – who turned off the power in the vault during the robbery. None of the others ever saw him, he dealt only with Billy, so if he’s been cut out of his share he would be a tricky one to track.”
“And the only one left is Al Halliwell,” Caz said, and Chopper threw his head back and laughed out loud.
“Well he ain’t gonna be hard to track,” he laughed. “He’s been banged up for a couple of years, and, from what I hear about his behaviour inside, ain’t gonna be getting out any time soon.”
“Well,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment, “I guess he’s out of the equation.”
I should have known better. “You’ve never met Mo Halliwell, have you?” Chopper asked, in much the same way Caz was wont to enquire if I’d ever made the acquaintance of one of the Astors, or Lady Hermione Fortescue-Fuckaduck.
I shook my head.
Chopper snorted. “So,” he said, “you know the way the Pope is, like, God’s voice on earth?”
I nodded.
“Well Mo Halliwell is her boy’s voice, hands, legs and sodding fists on earth. They could bury Al Halliwell six feet under in a lead-lined box, and so long as Mo could get to a Ouija board, she’d still do his bidding.”
I did not like the sound of this. “So where do we find Mo Halliwell?” I asked, hoping that Chopper would tell me she’d gone to her winter place in the Caribbean.
No such luck.
Caz wrote the address down in her tiny Mulberry notebook, slid the notebook and the pen back into the bag – ignoring the audible chink as the pen knocked against the bottle of cognac nestled therein – and pinned Chopper with a smile.
“So we’ll go and see Mrs Halliwell,” she confirmed, as though she were my own personal Moneypenny.
“Love,” Chopper growled, “I only need Danny for this.”
“Ah, but,” she replied before I could say a word, “we come as a pair, you see. Where Danny goes, I go.”
“No secrets,” Chopper smiled, glancing surreptitiously at me.
“Something like that. So, here’s what you can do for us,” Caz, suddenly all business, answered him.
“I’m doing something for you?” Chopper came the closest I’d ever seen him to flustered.
“Fair’s fair,” Caz smiled coldly. “I would suggest that, whilst Danny and I,” she glanced pointedly over her shoulder, “have something that your current staffing structure lacks, you, in turn, may have something we could use.”
“Those two things,” Chopper asked, “being what, exactly?”
“Brains and muscle,” Caz responded without clarifying which was which. “Put bluntly, we’ve just met the most lovely young lady, who – for reasons we don’t need to go into here – finds herself in need of a guardian angel or two.”
“Caz.” I could see where this was going. Caz ignored my attempt to interrupt.
“I’ll give you her address, and you’ll have someone keep an eye on her place for the next few weeks. Anyone attempts to harass, disturb or annoy her, I’d like your,” her smile deepened, “associates, to make it clear to the young lady’s harassers that such behaviour is severely frowned upon.”
Chopper, the glisten back in his beady eyes, smiled a shark-smile at her. “How severely.”
“Hospital severe,” Caz answered, the smile gone from her face, “as opposed to mortuary. But severe enough to ensure the lady has a quiet life in the future.”
Chopper considered the demand for a moment, then nodded. “Let me have the address,” he said to Caz, before turning to me. “You wanna watch this one,” he said, “she’ll be doing you out of a job soon.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Well,” Caz announced, as though she were observing a newly-acquired Titian at a country house party, “how utterly charming is this? And to think it’s just a short walk from my flat. I mean, if I ever need my roots doing, my phone unlocking, my parts waxing or my person bronzing, I shall know exactly where to come.”
The sign above the door of a shop on North End Road read: ‘Mo/Reen Maison de Beauty,’ and underneath, in smaller letters, announced, as if the primary sign were insufficient, that the services on offer within were those of a ‘Hair Salon, Nail Bar, Tanning Boutique and Intimate Beautifier,’ before – in even smaller and clearly more recent lettering – adding ‘Mobile Phones unlocked.’
The street, despite a constant, slow drizzle, was buzzing, shoppers passing by with bags laden with purchases from the market, the Polish deli on one side, and the West African green grocer on the other doing a roaring trade in exotic meats and gourds, as traffic – trapped in the narrow channel created by the market stalls that began a little further along the street – crawled like treacle along the road.
From our vantage point under an awning outside a shop on the opposite side of the street, we watched the windows of Mo/Reen, which were so densely steamed up that the listed services might have been occurring, at this minute, just on the other side of the plate glass and nobody would have been any the wiser.
“I’m not sure,” I murmured, imagining Caz’s usual hairdresser, “that this lot would offer you a glass of Veuve with your trim and roots.”
Caz smiled, dodging as a sudden breeze made a fluorescent orange plastic bucket and spade set – hanging from the awning we were sheltering under – swing dangerously close to her sleek coiffeur. “A shot of tetanus,” she purred, “would be welcomed with open arms, if I’d been unlucky enough to be anywhere near sharp objects in there. Speaking of which,” she nodded at the door, “oughtn’t we go within?”
“Yeah,” I said, yet I held back.
“Something up?” Caz looked sideways at me.
I frowned. “Something. I just can’t put my finger on it yet.”
Caz tutted, swatting idly at a bright plastic colander which had now joined the bucket and spade in a wind-powered aerial battle above her head. “Well we’re not getting any younger, dear heart, and the merchandise in this store is becoming decidedly more aggressive. Not to mention,” she added, eyeing a short dark figure who stood glowering at us from the doorway of the shop, “the proprietor himself.”
I turned and grinned at the shopkeeper, who scowled back at me. “Okay,” I said, zipping my jacket up and putting my head down against the rain, “in for a penny.” And we both – Caz holding a hand above her head as though a set of splayed fingers would prevent her hair from frizzing – dodged between almost stationary vehicles and crossed the road.
The door, when we pushed it open, triggered a bell above it that didn’t so much jingle as toll. Menacingly.
The space before us was a large open square, with the walls to the left and right basically made up of two vast mirrors. In front of the mirrors were four vast, almost sculptural, barber’s chairs and at the back of the room – on either side of a doorway that lead, I presumed, to the rooms where tanning, manicures and intimate beautifying went on – were two more chairs, each with a space-age-looking overhead hair dryer hovering above.
In the middle of the floor stood two free-standing wash basins, the chairs beside these, in common with almost all the chairs in the room, completely bereft of customers.
The single obvious punter in the space was an almost unnaturally skinny woman who was managing the difficult trick of looking simultaneously vulnerable and hatchet-faced as a tall, younger female applied highlights; wrapping bunches of the customer’s hair in tin foil, before listlessly shoving the most recent bunch to one side, grabbing another hank of hair, slapping it on another sheet of foil, and, with supreme boredom, dabbing more gunk – the floral scent which reached me across the room not quite masking the reek of ammonia – onto the hair.
To our right was a free-stand
ing reception desk. The woman behind it, having glanced up on our arrival, now returned to studiously flicking through a magazine. On the counter top, a high-domed cage held a small black bird, its nervous, jerky motions the most energetic thing in the entire room.
Caz closed the door behind her, the movement triggering the bell once again.
“Nice tits!” A high, reedy voice cackled, before launching into hysterical laughter.
It was a moment before I realised that the sound was coming from the bird and not the receptionist, who slammed a hand onto the desk, silencing the avian harasser and glaring accusatorily at us. “We’re fully booked,” she growled. “Unless you want a sunbed.”
I stepped forward, my smile – the one that I always assumed was ‘little boy lost,’ but which Caz insisted was more ‘psychotic on day release, with chronic IBS’ – in place, and was about to make some vague enquiry about times for appointments when Caz, dipping into her handbag, withdrew and held out an ancient Nokia and asked, “Can you unlock this?”
I glanced at the phone, the phrase ‘The Rosetta Stone couldn’t unlock that fossil,’ in my head but kept my mouth shut.
The woman behind the counter – her face redolent of those shrunken heads you sometimes see in museums and tanned a colour redolent of something from a Cuprinol sample chart – glanced at the phone, her pinched mouth tightening even further as every fibre of her being telegraphed her feelings about Caz’s ancient telephony.
“It’ll cost you,” the woman said, beckoning Caz forward and bending over the phone, her blonde hair – cut in a style that suggested someone believed the pudding bowl coiffeur was on the way back into fashion – dropping forward to hide her face.
“How much?” Caz asked and a figure was announced, in a way and with a tone that suggested haggling was not only expected, but would be appreciated.
Caz, of course, agreed the figure immediately, which caused the raisin-faced old dear to squint suspiciously at her and scrutinise the phone more closely.
Death Of A Devil Page 23
