Defend or Die

by Tom Marcus

  Alex rolled her eyes. ‘Any more helpful advice, Grandad?’

  I grinned and shut the door.

  I entered the alley and stood still for a moment, just getting my bearings. I didn’t want to get sandbagged a second time in one night. No sign of the target. Just the usual stale-piss smell and a scattering of used laughing gas canisters. One flickering street light. Good place for a mugging, I thought. I jogged down to the end where it opened out into a scruffy-looking housing estate. Is this where he lives? I looked for a window with a light on, but everywhere was dark.

  Then I spotted him, walking between two of the low-rises. I looked for another way through the estate. Maybe I could head him off. I jogged left, past a patch of worn grass with a pair of rusty swings, past a couple of blocks, over a low wall, and then I was on the street again.

  I stopped, hearing voices, and looked to my right. A queue had formed in front of a white van. A panel opened in the side, and someone was handing out styrofoam cups. A mobile soup kitchen. I pulled my hood down lower over my face and put my hands in my pockets. My clothes were too clean to really blend in, but if no one looked too closely, I could do a passable impression of a down and out just from the way I moved. I shambled over and joined the queue, behind a middle-aged woman with long grey dreadlocks, all the time keeping an eye out for the contact. Apart from the van and our little band of derelicts, the street was empty.

  Maybe I’d guessed wrong and he hadn’t come through the estate at all. Fuck. If I’d let him go, I’d need more than a cup of bloody soup to give me a warm feeling inside.

  I shuffled forward, thinking fast. Could he have got through the estate and out onto the street before I did? Or was he still there?

  Before I could decide what to do, I found myself standing in front of the hatch. Someone was holding out a cup of soup. I reached out and took it, mumbling my thanks. As I turned away I glanced back over my shoulder and for a second our eyes met.

  He had a lanyard round his neck now, with some sort of ID on it. But the blond hair and the glasses hadn’t changed, even though the intense expression had been replaced with a gentle smile. What really struck me, though, was the dog collar.

  Weston’s contact was the parish priest of bloody St Saviour’s.

  As soon as I was out of sight of the van I chucked the soup into the gutter and crushed the cup in my hand.

  There was no avoiding the obvious conclusion. Whatever Weston was doing, it wasn’t planning a terror attack. He must have woken up in the middle of the night, having a nightmare he was going to hell or something, and couldn’t wait until morning to go to confession, so the man in black could tell him Jesus still loved him and he could go back to sleep.

  My phone pinged. A message from Mrs Allenby. Please update.

  I texted back. One word: Bust.

  She took a minute to digest that, then: Reconvene 0900.

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket. There was one last shred of hope. Maybe the St Saviour’s jaunt was just a diversion, and the real meeting was somewhere else. But I didn’t put much faith in the idea. And even if it was true, it meant Weston had already outwitted us once. No disrespect to Alex, but the chances were he’d do it again.

  I didn’t much fancy ‘reconvening’ in a few hours’ time. Not unless Alex had managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat. That’s if there was a rabbit in the hat in the first place, which I was beginning to seriously doubt.

  Any minute I was expecting a message saying Weston was back home safely tucked up and saying his prayers.

  I’d been wandering aimlessly without thinking where I was going. I needed to get my bearings and start heading in the vague direction of the flat, otherwise I’d be halfway to Southend before I knew it.

  That was when I saw the bloke with the dog. I was walking in the middle of the road, and so was he. I stepped onto the pavement so we wouldn’t walk into each other.

  So did he. So we would.

  This was all I bloody needed. Some twat looking for easy pickings on the night shift. Maybe I’d still been unconsciously walking with the homeless shuffle, giving off a vulnerable vibe. I pulled myself up straighter, making myself look like a tougher proposition. With a bit of luck, he’d think better of it and just carry on his way.

  The dog seemed to have other ideas, unfortunately. It was a nasty-looking pit bull, all neck, jaws and teeth, and I could tell from the way he was struggling to keep it on the leash that it was locked on to me like a guided missile.

  We stopped at ten yards. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, both half a size too small, so there was no missing he worked out. I could have stepped back into the road to let him pass, but by this point that was only going to make me seem weak. A victim.

  Best to look like I couldn’t give a fuck and wait it out. You never know, maybe he just wanted a light.

  ‘What are you looking at, you cunt?’ he said.

  Maybe not.

  I grinned, shifting my weight onto the balls of my feet. ‘Just admiring your poodle. What’s his name?’

  He grinned back. ‘You can pet him if you like.’ He squatted, unclipping the lead from the dog’s collar.

  I didn’t wait, just turned and started sprinting back the way I’d come, trying to think where I could find a weapon. Behind me I heard the rattle of chains as the dog was set free, then the scrape of its nails on the tarmac as it came after me.

  How long before it caught me up and sank those jaws into my leg? Over distance I was pretty sure I could outlast it. Pit bulls were bred for power, not stamina, and I was still in decent nick. But that was if I made it past the first twenty metres.

  There was an alley off to my left, black bin bags spilling out. Was there an actual old-fashioned dustbin? A dustbin lid would be handy right now.

  A shape materialized from between the bags. A fox. He took one look at the pit bull hurtling towards him and dived back into the alley, scattering refuse in his wake.

  I had a split second to make up my mind. Forgetting about the dustbin lid, I veered right.

  Behind me I heard a furious tearing and scraping as the dog plunged through the bin bags after the fox.

  I stopped to get some air into my lungs. With a bit of luck, Foxy would know a way out of the alley and take the bastard pit bull with him. I looked round. His owner was marching towards me, the chain wrapped round his fist.

  ‘That dog cost me two grand,’ he snarled. ‘If he gets fucked up, you fucking owe me.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and held it out to him. ‘Should be a few hundred in there, mate.’

  He narrowed his eyes. He looked at me, then at the wallet. The next thing he felt was my fist crashing into his cheekbone. He went down like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the back of his head on the tarmac.

  I stood over him. His eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  I was tired. It had been a long night with nothing to show for it except bruised knuckles. I had dead people running around in my head.

  I didn’t particularly care if he joined them.

  I gave him a kick in the ribs. He grunted. Not dead, then. His lucky night.

  I put my wallet back in my pocket and headed home.

  25

  It was nine in the morning and I felt like I was at a funeral. It didn’t help that Mrs Allenby was dressed in black to match the mood.

  ‘Mr Logan, if you would like to brief us on last night’s activities.’

  I gave them the shortened version: Weston had his meeting at a church in a run-down part of the East End. His ‘contact’ turned out to be the priest.

  ‘Not what we were expecting,’ Mrs Allenby said.

  ‘He couldn’t have met anyone else? The priest wasn’t just the go-between?’ Ryan asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘St Saviour’s, you said?’

  I shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Let’s have a look, anywa
y,’ Ryan said.

  I went and made myself a coffee, trying to think what our next move was going to be.

  ‘Paul Martindale. Made parish priest of St Saviour’s two years ago. Does a lot of outreach for the homeless, drug addicts, people with mental health problems, etcetera. Bits and pieces in the local paper, building an inclusive community, blah blah blah.’

  I came back and sat down. ‘Just your average happy-clappy do-gooder, then.’

  Mrs Allenby tapped her pencil on the table. ‘He can’t be.’

  I made a face. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Weston went to see him, alone, in his church, at three in the morning. There’s something about that that’s just not right.’

  Mrs Allenby turned to Ryan. ‘This “outreach”. Do you have any more details?’

  ‘Let me see. He runs a soup kitchen three nights a week. Then he has what he calls “surgeries”, when homeless people are invited to come to the church to develop a “spiritual action plan”.’

  ‘When are those?’

  ‘Ah . . . Mondays and Fridays.’

  Mrs Allenby wrote something down on her notepad. ‘Today is Wednesday. On Friday, Mr Logan, I would like you to attend one of these surgeries.’

  I looked at her. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Not at all. I want us to take a closer look at the parish priest of St Saviour’s, and the best way to do that is to see him at work. Mr Logan, you have less than forty-eight hours to work up your legend and make yourself presentable. I’m told this is one of your specialities.’

  It was true. Having grown up on the streets, passing myself off as an authentic down and out was basically a piece of piss. Which was why as an A4 covert surveillance officer, I’d usually been the one who volunteered. I used to say you never really appreciated clean clothes, a warm bed and a full stomach until you hadn’t had any of them for a few days. But usually it was a question of just sitting in your sleeping bag collecting pennies while you kept an eye on targeted premises, watching who went in and who came out. Apart from the odd conversation with a kindly soul who wanted to buy you a sandwich instead of giving you money you could waste on drink or drugs, or a beat copper who wanted to move you on, you didn’t have to talk much. In fact, the less you talked, the better.

  This was going to be different, however. Mrs Allenby wanted me to try and worm my way into St Saviour’s outreach programme, and that would mean really living the part.

  And what then? What was she expecting me to find?

  ‘Sure. Not a problem.’

  ‘And while you’re doing your homework, I want Mr Oldfield to keep digging to see what else we can find out about Paul Martindale.’

  ‘Do you want me to wear a wire, or anything?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Not at this stage. Mr Woodburn, if you could have one or two options prepared, in case we need video or audio later on, that would be appreciated.’

  She turned to Alex. ‘In the meantime, we will continue to monitor the feed from the house. If Weston moves again, I want you to be ready to follow. Just in case we’re going down a blind alley.’

  Yeah, just in case, I thought.

  That seemed to be it. We all had our tasks. Mrs Allenby picked up her notepad. I caught Alex’s eye and she gave me a subtle nod.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ I said.

  Mrs Allenby put her notepad down again. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve been thinking,’ I continued. ‘The four of us. About Craig and Claire. Whether their deaths were entirely accidental.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Is there any evidence they weren’t?’

  ‘Not exactly. It’s more a question of probability. What are the chances? And a couple of us may have been targeted, too.’

  ‘May have been?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now that I’d actually said it, it sounded lame, even to me.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘That’s the point. We don’t know. And the only way we can find out is to pin down a connection, something that ties Claire and Craig together, apart from the fact that they were both part of Blindeye.’

  ‘Which we must assume nobody knows. I take it you’ve already started looking for this connection.’

  I glanced at Ryan.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So far we’ve come up with nothing. But that’s because most of what we need to see is classified. Very classified.’

  I watched the penny dropping for Mrs Allenby.

  ‘Out of the question,’ she said. ‘You’re forgetting I’m retired. I don’t have security access any more, whatever you may think. I would have to ask the Director General, and if you think he’s going to remove classified files from Thames House and hand them over to you, on the basis of . . . “probability”, you’ve got another think coming.’

  She got up to go.

  ‘I suggest we all get on with the job in hand, and stop wasting our time with far-fetched conspiracy theories.’

  Great. Now we had the worst of both worlds: we’d let the cat out of the bag but had nothing to show for it.

  I caught her eye, and saw a glint of steel.

  I’d like to see your file an’ all, I thought to myself.

  26

  When it came to the game of life, Stevie Nichols was definitely one of the losers. Dumped in an orphanage at birth, he was picked on by the other kids as soon as he could walk and talk and they had something to take the mickey out of. Maybe his mother being a teenage alcoholic had affected his brain, but he was always a little bit on the slow side compared to the rest of them, not that any of them were exactly booking their places on University Challenge. He was handy with his fists, though, and quickly learned that smacking people in the mouth before they’d had a chance to open it was a good way of making sure they didn’t say anything nasty. Unfortunately, it also meant he was soon in trouble with the law, and since the only lesson he’d ever really taken to heart was that if you were in trouble the best thing to do was to lash out, the trouble only got worse.

  When there was casual work on building sites to be had, Stevie could make enough to have money in his pocket, even if most of it went to the landlords of various pubs in Kentish Town before it ever reached home. When he couldn’t get work on the building sites, Stevie’s income took a nosedive. The truth was, he wasn’t really cut out for the service economy. Telling people to have a nice day, rather than to go and fuck themselves, didn’t exactly come naturally. McDonald’s failed to see the funny side, and soon every coffee shop and fast-food restaurant in north-west London knew that taking on Stevie Nichols was the quickest way to get sued by an angry customer with a fat lip.

  The streets took him in with open arms, as if they’d always known this was where he belonged, and even though it was no fun being cold and tired and hungry most of the time, deep inside, a part of him was relieved. At least he didn’t have to try and fit in any more. Shops would still take your money, even if they wouldn’t give you the time of day, and when he crouched in a doorway out of the rain with a half-full bottle in his hand, he had a feeling that this was as good as life was going to get.

  Still, there were some advantages to being Stevie Nichols. When I was Stevie, for instance, I didn’t have to worry about the fact that my wife was encouraging me to have some sort of relationship with another woman.

  And I didn’t have to worry about whether, deep down, I wanted to.

  I also didn’t have to worry that somebody might be trying to kill me.

  Yep, being Stevie Nichols might be no picnic, but for me it was beginning to feel like a holiday. Rainy Southend rather than Ibiza, maybe, but a holiday nonetheless. And if he woke up with a sore head from time to time, at least it didn’t feel like it was going to explode with all the crazy shit going on inside it.

  It was one in the morning and I’d walked the last mile or so. I didn’t want any of the other dossers who turned up at St Saviour’s seeing Alex dropping me off. It also gave me time to fully become Stevie: to walk and talk and think lik
e he did. By the time I turned the corner, dressed in out-of-fashion grey trackies with a matching top, and saw the church looming up ahead, I was in the zone: lonely, confused and generally pissed off with everything, but with a sort of numbness over it all like a grey cloud.

  The church door was open all the way this time, spilling warm yellow light onto the steps, where a man in a stained raincoat and pinstriped trousers, wearing mismatched trainers, one blue, one red, was rolling a cigarette. I sat down beside him and he looked up warily. He had grey hair tied in a ponytail, and a patchy beard. He could have been anything between forty and sixty.

  ‘Me last one,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said, following it up with a rasping cough that might possibly have been a laugh. ‘I bet you don’t drink neither.’ He looked at me more closely. ‘You one of them vegans, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vegans. They’re all cunts. I fucking hate them. You better not be a vegan.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m the king of the fucking vegans,’ I muttered.

  He cough-laughed again, his hand shaking so much he started spilling tobacco on the steps. ‘Fuck,’ he said, trying to scrape it up again.

  ‘Here.’ I handed him a couple of shreds. Or it might have just been dirt.

  ‘What you doing out of your palace, then?’ he said with a grin.

  ‘I heard this bloke was all right.’

  He nodded to himself. ‘He don’t give you no money, though.’

  ‘What does he do, then?’

  ‘Talks, mostly.’

  ‘What, Jesus, and all that?’ I spat onto the steps. ‘I had enough of that shit from the nuns.’

  ‘It’s a fucking church, you cunt. He’s a cunting priest. What do you expect?’

  At this point, I could feel Stevie getting annoyed. My fists were already clenched, my throat tight. There was a faint buzzing in my head, like a wasp had got trapped between my ears. I wanted to hit someone, this bloke for preference. I looked away until the feeling passed.

  He finished rolling his fag. ‘You got a light?’