Tip Off

by John Francome

  On the way I stopped to speak to Matt, still sitting in his car with Larry.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  I opened the back door of the car and climbed in. When I’d told him what had been said, as fully as I could remember it, I carried on to my own car.

  I drove back on to the M11 behind Matt and noticed that it had just turned twelve. I thought of Captain Greeves: a weak man who knew he had failed at every serious challenge life had presented, while carefully giving the appearance of a man firmly in control of his own destiny.

  I would keep my word to him by not telling the authorities about him when the time came – if it ever did. But sooner or later the system would catch up with him.

  By the time I reached London forty minutes later, and my phone bleeped at me, my thoughts had moved on. I picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘You might be interested to know that Lincoln has just rung me.’ Rupert Greeves was the last person I’d expected to call, and when I heard the clipped, clear voice, I couldn’t reconcile it with my memory of that hunched figure on the heath. ‘He’s anxious to have the other half of the bar-codes and says he has money. I don’t believe him, but I said I’d meet him at a flat in North London at six this evening to hand them over. I shan’t be going, but I thought you might like to.’

  ‘Do you have the address?’

  ‘Sixteen, Mulberry House, Canal Road, W9. I believe it’s a council block.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

  The line was already dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When we arrived back in London, I told Matt about Greeves’s call. He immediately wanted to put two of our men, Dougie and Jack, somewhere near the block of flats to check visitors.

  ‘But it’s a big council block,’ I said. ‘Unless they’re inside, it’s going to be impossible to know exactly who’s coming to see Lincoln.’

  ‘Unless they recognise them.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

  Matt fixed it, and checked with Monica in our Reading office to see if she had found an address for Captain Greeves through our electoral roll access.

  He put the phone down with satisfaction. ‘He must have been planning to keep the job. He’s recently registered in Newmarket – Captain R. Greeves, Mrs Sharon Greeves, and two boys of twelve and ten – as he told you. At least we know where to find him if we need him.’

  ‘What do we do now, sir?’ Larry asked.

  ‘I seem to remember you used to be a dab hand at cooking,’ Matt said. ‘Use your initiative and see if you can knock up something edible for lunch. Sara’s on her way over,’ he added for my benefit.

  ‘I was wondering what happened at your “meeting” last night,’ I said with a laugh.

  ‘It was very productive,’ he replied, allowing a faint smile to soften his deadpan expression.

  ‘So, what’s going on there now?’

  ‘Sara called me just before we got here. There’ve been some more developments at Salmon’s but she wouldn’t tell me over the phone; Harry Chapman thinks their lines are being tapped. She didn’t want to take any chances so she fixed herself a long lunch and she’s on her way.’

  I opened the door to Sara as her taxi pulled away. She came in and sniffed the air. ‘That smells good. I’m starving.’

  Larry had used his initiative by bringing in a pile of take-aways from the Pizza Express in Notting Hill Gate. He served them up in the kitchen and Sara started bringing us up to date through mouthfuls of quattro stagione.

  ‘Harry’s been tipped off that a bid for the Atlantic Hotels Division of Salmon Leisure is going to be circulated to all Salmon shareholders.’

  ‘Do you know who the tip came from?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Harry wouldn’t tell anyone that. But I do know the bid is rumoured to be coming from . . .’ she paused ‘. . . the King George Hotel Group – Lord Tintern’s company!’ She paused to watch our reaction. ‘Well, don’t you think that’s amazing?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Matt said, trying not to smile at her indignation.

  This news, momentous as it was, came as no surprise to me or to Matt, it seemed. Harry Chapman’s group, in its current state, was a natural target and the King George Hotel Group an obvious predator.

  Matt turned to me. ‘Did Emma tell you anything about this? She’s a shareholder – she must have known.’

  ‘I should think she’s probably only just heard herself. Tintern called an EGM of the four King George’s shareholders for this morning to get authorisation for some loan – obviously for this deal. But I wonder who leaked it to Chapman?’

  ‘At the office they assume Tintern’s just trying to take advantage of Salmon’s cash problems after these two consecutive runs of huge losses,’ Sara said. ‘But if he is, he’s too late now Connor McDonagh’s died – unless, of course, someone else starts up again. Everyone in the office is expecting another tipster to take over but it hasn’t happened yet. Mind you, the punters are still going for it like crazy. Turnover’s way up on what it was before this all started; only now, the punters aren’t winning all the time, and we’re making money again.’ She laughed. ‘I’m afraid Emma’s dad may have missed the boat.’

  We sat down to discuss who had most to gain from a take-over of Salmon’s by King George, and how we should react to it. Fascinating as this turn of events might be, though, it had no direct bearing on our investigations into Toby’s death.

  I held up my hand to focus the discussion. ‘This may seem like a non-sequitur, but do you think Harry could have been involved in the deaths of either Toby or Connor?’ I asked Sara.

  Her eyes widened as she absorbed the idea. ‘I don’t know but it’s possible, I suppose. Do you think he sent this guy China to see Connor?’

  ‘China thinks he was sent by the bookies, so Harry must have been involved in some way, but we’re not sure if Connor was supposed to be killed or just harassed – or Toby, for that matter.’

  As I spoke, the bell on the ground floor rang. I went up again and found Emma on the doorstep, damp from a heavy shower that had just started.

  She gave me a lingering kiss on the lips, then slightly spoiled it by swearing at the weather and pushing past me into the narrow hall of the house.

  ‘So?’ I asked, ushering her into the office downstairs. ‘What happened?’

  She saw Larry, Matt and Sara waiting. ‘I love an audience.’

  ‘Just to save you from telling us what we already know, I’ll tell you what’s happened at Sara’s office.’

  ‘I should think I can guess some of it. Frank told me he had extracted from Lord T what he was planning to do earlier this morning, and immediately leaked it to Salmon’s. He was hoping we might have had a reaction from them by the time we had our meeting.’

  ‘That’s not coming until later,’ Sara said.

  ‘So Frank’s plan worked?’

  ‘If he was trying to evoke a counter bid from Salmon’s, yes – like a dream.’

  ‘So, how was your EGM?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it was pretty grim, I can tell you. I almost felt sorry for the old bastard. He assumed it was in the bag, and even if Frank and David weren’t going to vote with him, it never occurred to him for a moment that I wouldn’t. But Frank was brilliant. He kept so calm. Lord T said it would be madness not to take advantage of Salmon’s position, and when Frank pointed out that all these massive winning gambles had come to an end, he said he thought it more than likely they’d start again soon, and it would take a week or so to sort out the formalities of a two hundred and fifty million pound loan. Then Frank, with David Green’s proxy, and I voted against raising the loan, and that was that. I thought Dad was going to explode.’

  ‘Look,’ Matt said, ‘I know this is all very entertaining, but our priority right now is to plan how we’re going to tackle Lincoln this evening. We’ve been wanting to get at him for the last week, and now Greeves has handed him to us, we can’t afford to blow it. Tresidder
’s disappeared to Spain, so Lincoln’s our only hope.’

  Canal Road was a thoroughfare of over a mile, with a smart end up by the main artery of Maida Vale, and a rough end, where the twenty-storey blocks which had replaced cheap Edwardian housing were already past their use-by-date, just thirty-five years after they’d been built.

  Every cost-cutting device known to the LCC architects’ and surveyors’ departments had been used in these shabby stacks of multiple dwellings and their inbuilt obsolescence was well advanced.

  Nobody lived here now from choice, and most of the inhabitants moved in and out like human jetsam on the ebb and flow of a grimy urban estuary.

  The police and the social services knew they were fighting a lost battle against benefit fraud, drugs and all the supplementary crimes and deprivation these attracted to this desolate area.

  It was four o’clock. I looked at the faded plastic panels, the rusting debris and waste-paper swirling in the damp March wind which eddied around the five bleak tower blocks and thought that a man could get lost in a place like this and not be missed for weeks.

  Our cars looked too bright and new for this decaying landscape. We’d left them well secured at the better end of the long, degenerating avenue, and walked singly, in scruffy jeans and jackets, towards the barren hunk of concrete that had been graced with the name ‘Mulberry House’.

  Emma had come with us in my sister’s less than gleaming VW Beetle, which despite its credibility among Catherine’s girlfriends in the fashion world, didn’t look too much out of place on a North London council estate either.

  Matt, using a plan of the estate and his experience of operations like this in Northern Ireland, had already formed an outline strategy for siting us. As we came to the actual place, he fine-tuned our positioning until he was confident that flat 16 was covered by the six of us from every available vantage point.

  It was on the fourth floor of the building; Dougie and Jack had gone in and were stationed on the floor above. I could see Dougie from time to time over the concrete balustrade of a walkway opposite Lincoln’s address.

  As we waited, the wind dropped and the clouds straggled in thin, ragged pink trails high across the London sky, and the lowered sun lit the towers with a surreal red light, reflecting off the grimy window panes.

  By six, the vista had reverted to gloomy monochrome, and watching became harder. We moved a little, from one covert spot to another, each doing our best to check the others hadn’t attracted any attention.

  There was some coming and going around the block; a few men returning from work, many more leaving their homes for an evening’s escape into drink, dope or larceny.

  We were all connected to Matt and each other with radios open on the same wavelength and exchanged minimal observations on any possibly significant arrivals, but so far no one had entered or exited Lincoln’s lair.

  Matt’s strategy was to allow twenty minutes after the appointed time of Captain Greeves’s arrival for any back-up to arrive.

  Six o’clock came and passed. At 6.15 Matt’s voice hissed over the radio, ‘Start making your way to the target.’

  No one had come to the flat; we’d had no sign that Lincoln was in there or that he didn’t have a dozen heavies already waiting with him.

  I found my blood pumping and suddenly realised what a buzz I was getting from this. Until then, I’d never really believed Matt when he’d told me how the anticipation of danger could offer such a massive adrenaline rush.

  As I made my way to the entrance of the block, I stole a glance across an expanse of rubbish-strewn concrete to where Emma sat in the VW, among the battered Fords and rusting bangers in the car-park.

  If she saw me, she did nothing to acknowledge it; I wondered if she was getting the same buzz that I was.

  I pulled the collar of my jacket up behind my neck and carried on to the wire-toughened glass doors that swung open into a bare lobby. Inside, three of the four lifts had signs to say they were out of order. Seeing no one else, though aware that Matt wasn’t far behind, I took the shallow, gum-spattered concrete steps up to the fourth floor.

  I came out into an open walkway where I could feel the crisp night breeze which had sprung up. Lurking in the shadows beyond the door to flat 16, I saw Larry already in place. A moment later, Dougie and Jack slid down the stairs into view. Taking a screw-driver from my pocket, I reached up and removed the wire and glass cover from the bulkhead light. With a sleeve wrapped around my hand, I took out the bulb and placed it on a nearby window sill.

  When Matt finally came up the stairs, there were five of us. He stopped in the stairwell, twenty feet away, and whispered to Emma over his radio. She gave the all clear; he nodded at us, and almost soundlessly, lit only by the single remaining bulb in the stairway, we converged on the door of Lincoln’s flat.

  Larry and Jack were the largest of us. They took a few paces back, ready to charge the door and hammer it with their shoulders.

  Before they did, Matt put his fist around the dented aluminium knob, and turned it. Tense but utterly silent, he pushed, and the door opened half an inch.

  I saw his mouth turn up in a grin of satisfaction; he wasn’t used to finding unlocked doors. With a quick glance at the rest of the team, he pushed the faded blue door wide open into a cramped, rancid hallway, lit only by a sliver of light from beneath one of the three doors that gave on to it.

  Matt went in; we followed, until all five of us were crowded into the cramped space.

  A sound – a chair scraping on a hard floor – froze us for a few seconds as we waited for the door to open. But the only other noise that followed was the slight cough of a man who had just taken a sharp drag on a cigarette.

  We stood motionless, trying to gauge how many people might have been responsible for these sounds. I thought that since Lincoln hadn’t even bothered to secure his door, he wasn’t expecting trouble and wouldn’t have any back-up.

  Matt came to the same conclusion. He nudged me and Larry, motioned the others to stay back for the time being, and grasped the handle of the door in front of us.

  He opened it and revealed a dirty kitchen, cluttered with fast-food debris and overflowing ashtrays. At the same time, we were hit with the stink of stale fried food and cigarette smoke.

  Lincoln looked up from a newspaper, not alarmed in the first instant, as though he’d been expecting his visitor to let himself in. It took him a moment to register who we were; when he did, he was overcome by sudden, uncomprehending fear.

  Before he’d recovered his wits, Matt and Larry were on him, pinning his arms over a cheap kitchen chair and taping his wrists behind him.

  ‘What the fuck . . .’ Lincoln screamed, before Larry’s large fist clamped over his mouth.

  ‘Listen, chum,’ Larry hissed calmly, ‘if you don’t want to get seriously hurt, don’t make a bloody sound. All right?’

  Lincoln’s eyes slid rapidly from me to Matt as he struggled for breath with Larry’s hand still clamped over his nose and mouth.

  Matt nodded.

  Larry relaxed his grip; Lincoln gasped, but didn’t yell. ‘Where’s Greeves?’ he asked flatly.

  ‘He’s not coming,’ Matt snapped.

  ‘What do you want, then?’

  Matt drew out the only other chair and sat on the opposite side of the Formica table from Lincoln. He stretched and leaned back. ‘Who have you been blackmailing?’

  ‘You’re not the filth. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  I was struck by the sibilance of his harsh London accent and the startling brightness of his coffee-brown eyes.

  ‘Fine,’ Matt said. ‘We’ll call the police if you’d rather talk to them. But they’ve got less leeway than we have in what they can do to you.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I’m sure you know who Simon is?’

  Lincoln looked at me harder than he had before, and recognition dawned on his face. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You knew Toby, didn’t you?’


  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did.’

  ‘So? What do you want?’

  ‘We want to know who killed him.’

  Lincoln blinked at my bluntness. ‘Well, it wasn’t me, all right? So you can piss off!’ he snapped unexpectedly with a hiss. ‘He behaved like a right bitch to me, but I wouldn’t never do anything like that.’

  I could see now why Miles had been so disparaging about Lincoln; if ever anyone fitted the description ‘rough trade’, Steve Lincoln did.

  ‘Like what?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Well . . . kill ’im, like.’

  ‘But you went to see him the night before, didn’t you?’ Matt went on, suddenly leaning forward, right across the table, making Lincoln cower back against Larry. ‘And someone saw you leave.’

  ‘I did, I did!’ he wailed. ‘About one-thirty, after . . .’

  Matt cut in as he leaned back again. ‘Did he give you any more money?’

  ‘He paid me some of what he owed me, that’s all. I was his partner, you know, before they started riggin’ the races. And then he gets paid off – bloody millions – and I don’t get a sniff of it! He was in a right state when I left him – crying like a baby. But I never killed him,’ Lincoln added again hastily.

  ‘Let’s go back to my first question then. Who are you blackmailing?’

  Lincoln answered by turning his head to one side and sniffing noisily with a pout of his narrow lips.

  ‘Would it help if I told you that we know he gave you a large packet of money at the Jazz Café in Knightsbridge, the Thursday before last.’

  Lincoln’s eyes flashed. ‘That was peanuts. He never left it all ’cause he had the filth on to me; he only put in enough to make sure I’d see some notes in there before they pulled me. But I was too bloody quick for ’em. And he won’t try that again. I got something on him now he can’t just rub out. I already give half of it to the News of the World – in case he does.’ He turned to Matt with a malicious, triumphant grin.

  ‘Listen, we’re not interested in anyone dumb enough to give you money unless it was them who killed Toby. So, tell us now!’ Matt’s voice was still quiet but there was a steely edge to it which wasn’t lost on Lincoln.