The Pearl King

by Sarah Painter

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Mr Smith was wearing a suit and he looked more intimidating than usual. Or perhaps that was the car and the staff sat up front.

  ‘Is this bullet proof?’ Lydia tapped the side window. ‘And don’t the tinted windows attract more attention than they deflect?’

  ‘I assume it’s important?’

  Lydia was fiddling with the door, looking for the handle, and she didn’t bother to reply. She wasn’t frightened of Mr Smith, but she liked to know she could leave whenever she chose. ‘Two Crows have been killed in Wandsworth nick.’

  Mr Smith didn’t reply.

  ‘Police have got a burner phone used to order the hits, but it will take forty-eight hours to get the records from the mobile company.’

  ‘You summoned me for another favour.’ Mr Smith’s tone was flat, his face unreadable.

  ‘I’m not asking you for anything, just sharing information.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘JRB. You know about them. More than you’ve told me. And I’m wondering if they might be stupid enough to kill a couple of Crows?’

  Mr Smith tilted his head but didn’t speak.

  ‘They were founded by a Bunyan back in the nineteenth century, but that company was dissolved in 2001. My understanding is that they had a special relationship with the Pearls. Something that has since gone a bit sour.’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ Mr Smith said. ‘And now you’re wondering if JRB are in the market for some new friends?’

  ‘It occurred to me that if they had fallen out of love with the Pearls, they might be keen to destabilise the truce. If the Families feel off-balance, they’re more likely to partner with an outsider. At least, that’s what JRB might think.’

  ‘You think they’re wrong?’

  ‘I think they’re underestimating the way the Families feel about blood. The Pearls have always been more open.’

  Mr Smith nodded. ‘Well done on finding Lucy Bunyan, by the way.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with that,’ Lydia said. ‘It was DCI Fleet and his team.’

  ‘Modesty is overrated.’

  ‘Discretion is not,’ Lydia countered. The Pearls hadn’t vanished into thin air. There were thousands of Londoners with a little bit of Pearl in their blood and Lydia, like Charlie, had assumed that they represented what was left of the Family. They had been wrong. There was still a strong core to the Family. The powerful ancestors of the Pearl Family were, impossibly, still alive, and that alone had to take a lot of juice. They had to have moved somewhere and Lydia would find them. She didn’t know if her aim was to make friends or burn their court to the ground, but she assumed she would figure it out along the way. In the meantime, Lydia had absolutely no compunction over using them as a bargaining chip with Mr Smith. ‘Interesting thing about the Pearls, though. They are able to manipulate time. Or time behaves differently around them. Or something. I bet your boffins would be interested.’

  ‘They would indeed,’ Mr Smith said. ‘I don’t suppose you have an address for them?’

  ‘As I’m sure you already know, they have cleared out.’ Lydia tilted her head. ‘Lucy Bunyan might be able to give some more information, though, once she’s recovered.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem overly distressed,’ Mr Smith said. ‘Seems to think she was at a lovely party.’

  ‘That’s good, I guess. I might know someone who spent a little more time with them, though.’

  Mr Smith went still. It was as much of a reaction as she ever got and Lydia mentally high-fived herself. ‘It’s another quid pro quo situation.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘I want you to find out who ordered the hits on Terrence and Richard Crow. And quickly.’

  ‘And in return you will introduce me to your mysterious friend?’

  ‘Well, there’s a little more legwork on your part, but yes.’

  ‘Deal,’ Mr Smith’s lips twitched in a smile. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘He went missing on New Year’s Eve 1999.’ Lydia took out her phone, navigated to the image she had taken in the Maudsley and passed it to Mr Smith. ‘If you can find his identity, contact his family, and arrange some kind of financial recompense for twenty years lost time, he will tell you everything he remembers about his time with the Pearls.’

  Mr Smith paused. ‘How do you know he was with them? What proof do you have?’

  ‘I can feel it,’ Lydia said. She glanced at the figures in the front of the car and then raised her eyebrows at Mr Smith. He nodded. ‘You know I can sense power in other people? Well I can tell which Family they belong to. With this guy, I know he isn’t a Pearl, but their signature is all over him.’

  He frowned. ‘Like residue? Magic dust?’

  ‘I guess,’ Lydia said. ‘And his entire body is covered in scars, just like the ones Joshua Williams will have when the cuts on his arms heal. Some of the partying evidently included writing on his body with a blade.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Mr Smith took out his own phone and took a picture of Lydia’s screen. Then he reached forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  The car stopped and Lydia heard the mechanism unlock her door.

  ‘You’ll look into the hits? I’m on a tight schedule.’

  ‘JRB,’ Mr Smith said. ‘I’d lay money.’

  ‘Not the Silvers?’

  Mr Smith pulled a face. ‘They’re not there, yet. And you’re right. JRB are in the market for a new alliance. That means they want the four Families at each other’s throats.’

  ‘I’m going to need a name,’ Lydia said. Charlie wouldn’t just take her word and she couldn’t even tell him about her connection to Mr Smith. She could imagine how well the news that she had been chatting to the secret service would go down.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Mr Smith said. ‘See you Thursday.’

  Lydia didn’t have a name for Charlie, but she did have the strong suspicion that the hits taken out on Terrence and Richard would be the work of JRB, working to destabilise the Families. Or, also a possibility, the work of the Pearl King. In revenge for Lydia taking away their new toy.

  Either way, it wasn’t something she would expect Big Neil to have any knowledge of and that had to be enough to stop Charlie doing whatever he was doing. Lydia felt a lurch of nausea and she pushed away the thoughts and images her mind had readily supplied. Beating a man tied to a chair. Torture.

  Swallowing hard, Lydia texted Charlie. ‘On my way. Don’t start until I get there.’

  Lydia was driving to the lock-up when her phone buzzed with a return text. With a massive effort of will, she waited until she had parked on the street to check it.

  Party over.

  Well that wasn’t good. Lydia’s stomach was rolling as she made her way to the lock-up. She banged on the door but nobody answered. She swore at the metal door and the newly-installed lock and at her obstinate, terrifying uncle. It didn’t help.

  She texted Charlie back:

  We need to talk. Where are you?

  She waited for a reply and then, out of ideas, Lydia trailed back to The Fork. She parked as close as possible and, squared her shoulders, before heading inside. Maybe the text message didn’t mean what she thought it meant. She had to keep an open mind, not jump to conclusions. And, most importantly, she had to keep her cards close to her chest. Whatever Charlie said, she would hide her feelings.

  The cafe had the closed sign flipped when Lydia arrived and there was no sign of Angel. Lydia hoped she had taken her advice in full and was on her way out of town.

  Lydia walked the empty cafe, checking the kitchen, the storage cupboard and the alley which ran behind the building. She had expected Charlie to be waiting for her, ready to issue some more orders or justify his actions. She had a cold feeling in her stomach that something was very, very wrong, but could not believe that he had meant she was cut out of family business altogether.

  Her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  Home.

 
; A one-word answer. Well, that didn’t bode well. Lydia locked the front door of the cafe and drove over to Charlie’s house, trying to ignore her gut which was telling her not to visit Charlie on his home turf. Sitting outside the house, Lydia texted Fleet to let him know what she was doing. She finished with the words ‘I will check in with you in one hour.’ She didn’t add ‘if I don’t, send help’, didn’t have to spell it out.

  Despite Charlie’s violence, the way he had spoken to her earlier, and the warning in her gut, Lydia still couldn’t quite believe she was in real danger. It was Uncle Charlie. Her dad’s brother. He was on edge, but Lydia couldn’t help but feel that fences could be mended. There had to be a way to fix this. She knew he had crossed a line with Big Neil, but she still held out hope that he was redeemable. That it wasn’t as bad as she imagined.

  The path leading up to Charlie’s front door was the first sign that things were not right. It was usually lined with corvids, but today it was deserted. The garden was silent, too, not even a breath of wind moving the shrubbery.

  Charlie opened the door before she knocked. He must have been watching her approach from one of the front windows. ‘Inside,’ he said, and turned away.

  Lydia followed Charlie into his living room. The fireplace still held the remains of the yule log and its ashes and the room didn’t look like it had been cleaned properly since the party. There were piles of papers and books stacked on the sofa and chairs, mugs and glasses and dishes on the coffee table and sticky patches on the wooden floor where drinks had been spilled. It was cold and smelled of cigarette smoke and Crow.

  Charlie leaned against the mantle and lit up, narrowing his eyes through the smoke.

  Lydia couldn’t remember seeing him smoke before and it didn’t seem like a good sign. He was wearing a coat so she couldn’t see his tattoos. She wondered whether they were moving or whether whatever she had done to him was permanent.

  ‘It wasn’t random,’ Lydia said. ‘But I don’t think it’s one of the Families. And I’m pretty certain it’s nothing to do with Big Neil. When you said ‘party over’ what did you mean? What happened with Neil? Where is he?’

  Charlie ignored her. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Lyds. I told you to keep out. You’ve wanted to be out of all this and now you are. Only thing I want from you is the keys to The Fork because you’re pissing off back to Scotland.’

  ‘There’s a company, JRB. They’re a client of the Silvers, but are effectively a shell company in the UK. Very dodgy. I’ve been investigating them for a while and it looks like they’ve been trying to make trouble between the Families. I think they want to destabilise the truce. Big Neil has nothing to do with them, no connection.’ Lydia was going to tell Charlie more, but his face was weirdly blank and he looked as if he wasn’t even listening.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Charlie dropped the butt onto the stone hearth and ground it out with his shoe. ‘But, yeah, Big Neil is off the hook,’ he said, finally.

  ‘Good,’ Lydia felt the knot in her stomach loosen. ‘Do we need to smooth things over with Big Neil’s crew?’ Beating up Neil was bad, but it was salvageable. Lydia could walk things back. With the wider community and with Charlie.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘He’s not going to run and tell tales.’

  Lydia shivered as cold premonition rolled over her. She didn’t want to say the words out loud, but she had to be sure. ‘When you said the party was over… What did you mean?’

  ‘Big Neil is no longer in attendance,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s taken up permanent residence in a housing development in Brixton. Basement flat.’

  It took Lydia a second to comprehend Charlie’s words. Then she realised. Big Neil had been added to the concrete foundations of a new build, somewhere Charlie presumably had contacts.

  ‘No windows,’ Charlie was saying, ‘but he’s not in a position to argue.’

  ‘I get it,’ Lydia said. The nausea she had been feeling disappeared as she gripped her coin tightly in a closed fist. ‘You murdered him.’

  Charlie’s face twisted into sudden anger. ‘Don’t you dare judge me. You’ve been in Camberwell for a year, I’ve been here my whole life. I’ve been keeping this family on top, keeping us safe, keeping us solvent. You have no idea what it takes.’

  ‘I’m starting to,’ Lydia countered. ‘But I don’t agree with your definition of essential action. You didn’t have to end his life. He hadn’t done anything to us.’

  ‘You think he was nice guy, Lyds? Trust me, no one will be crying at his funeral.’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ Lydia spat. ‘That doesn’t justify-’

  Charlie laughed. A short, humourless bark which would have made Lydia jump if she hadn’t been gripping her coin in her palm so tightly it hurt. ‘The ends always justify the means. Always. You think that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done? You think finishing that idiot ranks in my top five? It doesn’t even register, Lyds. It’s just business. I had to check out a lead because, in case you forgot, someone murdered,’ he emphasised the word, throwing it back into Lydia’s face like a weapon, ‘two members of our family.’

  ‘And if you’d knocked seven shades of hell out of the person responsible, I’d understand, but you knew Big Neil wasn’t a big player, that he wouldn’t have given the order even if he was linked in some way. What about a bit of restraint?’

  Charlie went very still. ‘A bit of restraint? You don’t think I’m in control? I measure every single fucking action every single fucking time. It’s not easy and you’ve got no idea what I deal with every day, Lyds. No clue.’

  Lydia opened her mouth to argue, but Charlie was in full flow.

  ‘When hard decisions have to be made, when certain things have to be done, I do them. That’s what being a leader means. I learned that from my father and so did your dad, so don’t think for a second that he’s some sort of perfect angel. You do what you have to do. And I’m good at it. That’s what makes me a leader, that’s why I was trusted to take over when Henry retired early.’

  ‘You were next in line,’ Lydia said, fury overtaking her sense of self preservation. ‘This Family is all about lineage, about blood. You were next in line and that’s why. It wasn’t some divine decree.’

  ‘Like you would know anything about that time,’ Charlie said. ‘And I bet your dad hasn’t filled you in, either. Not while he was busy protecting his precious baby girl, keeping her safe from us big bad Crows, all the nastiness he decided wasn’t good enough for his princess.’

  ‘Don’t expect me to feel bad for you,’ Lydia said. ‘You love it. You were just telling me you’re the natural leader of the Family. You can’t have it both ways.’

  Charlie’s voice dropped low and it got dangerously calm. ‘You need to watch your tone. What about a little bit of respect? I am the leader of this Family, something you seem to keep forgetting. Or is there more?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You gunning for me, Lyds? Is that what this little performance is all about? You think you’ve got what it takes to lead the Family?’ His eyes were flat and cold and Lydia wasn’t sure she even recognised him anymore. ‘You trying to take me down? Want to take your father’s place?’

  ‘That’s not-’

  ‘You’ve not got it. It’s not just about Crow power, it’s about balls.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Lydia could feel her anger returning, pushing the fear to the corners.

  ‘Family wouldn’t accept your authority. That is a fact. And neither would Alejandro.’

  ‘What have the Silvers got to do with anything?’

  ‘Allies are important.’ Charlie seemed to catch himself. ‘The right allies. Running around with your teenage dream crush doesn’t count. Alejandro and I are bonded. You push me out, you’ll have problems there, too.’

  Lydia already had problems with the Silvers. And Maria had taken over as the head of the Silver Family, a fact that Charlie seemed to be ignoring.

  ‘I don’t thin
k the Silvers are going to be our allies for much longer, anyway. Maria…’

  Charlie waved a hand, dismissive. ‘Alejandro is still in charge. Don’t let that little PR stunt fool you. And he trusts me. He knows I will do whatever is necessary for the greater good. We go way back. You’ve got none of that. None of the history. He will never trust you the way he trusts me. We’re bonded in a way you’ll never match, because you won’t make the hard decisions. I don’t flinch and Alejandro knows that. When his father needed a problem sorting, he came to me. A Crow. And not your Grandpa, either, not Henry – me.’

  ‘What problem?’ Despite herself, Lydia was diverted. There was something tugging at the back of her mind.

  ‘His own niece, Alejandro’s little cousin, was stepping out with someone outside the Family. He left it run, hoping Amelia was just acting out, bit of young rebellion, but when they got engaged,’ Charlie shrugged. ‘He called me.’

  Lydia felt as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over her head. ‘There was a Silver wedding at The Fork. Back in the eighties.’

  ‘Amelia’s wedding breakfast,’ Charlie nodded, caught up in his own recollection. ‘It had to be off Silver turf, make it easy for the cops to file it as natural causes. I had nothing against the guy, but I did the job. That’s what I mean, Lyds. You have to be willing to do the unthinkable. The ends justify the means, even when the means are pretty bloody harsh.’

  ‘You killed them? On their wedding day? The Silvers are that hung up on their bloodline that they ordered a hit?’

  ‘Old Man Silver waited until they had actually got married, when it was definitely too late for Amelia to come to her senses and call it off. He gave the kid a chance.’

  ‘How kind of him,’ Lydia said, trying to keep a lid on her fury. She couldn’t think about Jason, not now, it would make that rage boil over.

  ‘But why kill Amelia, too? Please don’t tell me it was some sort of honour killing.’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said, a flash of regret crossing his face for the first time. ‘It was an accident. That was a shame. When her new husband had his heart attack, Amelia went mental. She went for her father in front of everyone. It wasn’t discreet. Alejandro pulled her off him and into the kitchen, away from the crowd, to calm her down. I tried, too, but she wasn’t having it. She went for me, then, and I pushed her back. Bit too hard, as it happens,’ his face clouded. ‘That was an accident. I do feel bad about that one. She went back, slipped on the floor and cracked her head going down.’