by Dan Kavanagh
Duffy reckoned he had him now. He put on a calmer tone.
‘Well, if you want to think it over, I suppose I could show you where it is. I mean, I’ve got a key to the shed.’ The hook was going into the roof of the mouth: would he notice?
‘You what? How?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t ever use it, but Mr Hendrick gave me one when he hired me.’
‘O.K., that’s a good idea. It’d be awkward tomorrow with all the other people around. Where are you now?’
‘I’m at home, but I can get out there in about half an hour. If I get there before you I’ll let myself in and turn on one of the small lights. I shouldn’t think it’s a good idea to turn them all on.’
‘No, quite right. I’ll set off straight away now. Oh, and, maybe you could bring that bit of the stuff you took this afternoon. Then we can put it all back together.’
‘Of course.’
Duffy put down the phone. Then he took a chair from Mrs Boseley’s office and placed it beneath the one light he had turned on, about a third of the way down the shed. Next to the chair he put his holdall, having first extracted a couple of items which he stuffed down the front of his blouson. Then he went over and waited near the side door for Gleeson to arrive. He’d have two advantages: Gleeson wouldn’t know quite where he was, and it was very dark in the shed. It was even darker than in Dalby’s wankpit. Twenty minutes went by.
‘Duffy.’ The side door clicked shut and Gleeson stood there blinking into the murk.
‘Over here,’ said Duffy from about ten yards away. Gleeson walked towards him, and Duffy immediately said, in as peremptory way as possible, ‘This way.’
He turned away from Gleeson and set off fast across the shed. That’s what it looked like to Gleeson, anyway, who trotted in pursuit. Except that after taking four paces Duffy wheeled round, and, as Gleeson came up to him, punched him extremely hard at the top of the stomach. Gleeson’s momentum increased the effect of the punch: he bent half-forward, gasping for breath. Duffy wasn’t much of a believer in the left-uppercut, right-cross-to-the-point-of-the-chin school of fighting. If you had hurt someone in a particular place, it always seemed logical to Duffy to hurt them some more in the same place. This time he used his knee. Then he used his fist again.
Gleeson didn’t fall over. He just stood there, all gorilla-armed, eyes popping, as if he was in the middle of a heart attack. He barely noticed as Duffy dug into his blouson and handcuffed his wrists. He racked them up tight, the way he used to do with villains he really disapproved of. Then he dug out a length of rope and sat on the floor by Gleeson’s feet. He looped the rope round the far foot and pulled it until it was next to its partner, almost toppling Gleeson in the process. Then he tied the ankles together.
Duffy took a while to get his breath back. Gleeson took longer. Duffy gave him time for the heart attack to subside. He wasn’t a sadist. Not yet. Then he said,
‘Hop.’
Gleeson stared at him, half-scared, half-puzzled. Duffy pointed across the shed at the chair set up under the light.
‘Hop. Oh, and by the way, if you feel like shouting, I’ll put a gag in your mouth and pour half a pint of Castrol down your nose. All right?’
Gleeson hopped, like a child in a school race. He looked pathetic. He looked as if he’d gone in for the sack race and someone had stolen his sack. Duffy didn’t feel sorry for him. He thought he could hold that sentiment at bay for as long as it took. For ever, come to think of it.
Gleeson hopped as far as the chair, looked at Duffy, and sat himself down in it. Duffy got out some more rope and tied him to the chair.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘here are the rules. If I tip you over from this side, you smash the back of your head in. If I push you over from behind, you smash your face in. If you start screaming, I pour Castrol down your nose, O.K.?’
Gleeson could have worked most of that out for himself. But Duffy wanted him to know that their minds were as one. Gleeson nodded. He looked scared. He was right to be.
Duffy pulled over two empty packing-cases and placed them just outside Gleeson’s kicking range. He sat down on one, and unpacked his holdall on the other. He did it in an order which, he hoped, would keep Gleeson guessing for as long as possible. First a box of matches. Then a lemon. Then a candle. Then a knife. Then two saucers. Then a small tin of Marvel milk. Then a plastic bottle. Then a spoon. Then a small polythene bag of white powder. Then an oblong cardboard box. He opened the box and took out a hypodermic. Then he lit the candle. Then he looked at Gleeson. Then he said,
‘Right.’ And flicked out the match.
‘I don’t know anything about this,’ said Gleeson.
Duffy barely paid attention to him. That’s what they all said. Some of them used to say it whimperingly, pathetically, when they’d been caught with their pants messed and the half-dressed child on their knee; some of them said it confidently, aggressively, when they’d been picked off the street outside Fine Fare and thought they’d just cleared the goods through the fence in time, and they knew their fucking rights and Bendy Benson, lawyer to crooks for twenty years, would be round to fix them bail pretty soon.
Gleeson said it midway between these two points. But even if he’d said it at the top end of the scale of confidence, Duffy wouldn’t have been perturbed. No Bendy Benson would be popping into Hendrick Freight tonight, with his soiled briefcase and paralysing attacks of fairmindedness. And Duffy wouldn’t exactly be fretting about the Judges’ Rules. He might even have to trot round the back of Gleeson from time to time and see how he liked that.
‘I don’t know anything about this,’ repeated Gleeson, in the sad mumble of a drinker into his beer.
‘Gleeson, this isn’t going to be complicated,’ said Duffy, still not bothering to look at him. ‘It may be painful, but it isn’t going to be complicated. Oh, one thing first, though.’
He dug into Gleeson’s inside jacket pocket, leaning close to his face as he did so but again pretending he wasn’t there, and pulled out Gleeson’s wallet.
‘Fair amount of folding in here. I should be careful where you go, carrying this lot around.’ He reached in and took out twenty pounds. ‘That’s for the stud, Gleeson. I reckon that’s what it’ll cost. And you’re lucky I’m National Health, otherwise it would have burned you a sight more.’
Gleeson falsely discerned a lightening in Duffy’s tone.
‘I didn’t really mean to do it,’ he said.
‘That makes it worse, not better,’ replied Duffy coldly. He walked round the back of the chair, noted where the useful parts of Gleeson’s back were, and readjusted him so that the crossbar didn’t protect his kidneys too much. While he stood there he flicked the Start switch in the right-hand pocket of his blouson.
‘Right. Now you’re going to tell me everything you know, from the beginning.’ A stab on the Pause button in the left-hand pocket. ‘And if you stop, or hesitate, or lie, I’m going to hurt you. And if you scream or shout, you’ll get Castrol down your nose.’ To indicate that this wasn’t a figure of speech, Duffy dug into his holdall and placed a round, one-pint tin of the oil on the packing-case.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re going to tell me all about the heroin, and Mrs Boseley, and Dalby, and how it comes in, and where it comes from, and who it goes to, and when the next shipment’s coming through.’ Always ask them more than they’re likely to know, that was one of the rules.
‘I just work here.’
Duffy walked round the back, flipped the Pause button, punched Gleeson hard in the kidneys, waited, punched him once more, and started recording again.
‘It’s a nice big Granada you’ve got in your drive. Wife has private money, does she?’
‘Pools,’ he grunted. Why didn’t they ever think up anything better than that?
‘How often do the pools come through?’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ This was getting tedious. Duffy flipped the Pause c
ontrol and punched Gleeson again. Then he changed tack. Escalate quickly, that was one of his rules.
He sighed, strictly for Gleeson’s benefit, picked up the hypodermic and held the point of the needle briefly in the candle flame. Then he made as if he was having second thoughts, turned towards the Castrol tin, and carefully rubbed the needle in the accumulated dirt round the pourer.
‘You need it explained? I’ll explain it. When we’ve finished, I’m going to use this spike to inject you. Now, as far as you’ve got a choice, here it is. This little bag,’ he pointed at the polythene with the white powder, ‘is, they assure me, ninety per cent pure. No, of course I didn’t find it in the shed,’ he replied to Gleeson’s questioning glance, ‘I went out and bought it. Now, I’ve only got their word for it, but as far as there are straight dealers, they’ve always proved straight. You might like to take a risk on how pure it is, but then again you might not.’
He let Gleeson puzzle at that for a while, then continued.
‘If you feel you’re unable to co-operate, or if you lie to me, or if you hold back, I’m going to inject this ninety per cent pure straight into your arm.’ Which would kill you; he didn’t need to tell him that. ‘If you feel you can co-operate, then, when we’ve finished, I’m going to cut the smack with Marvel.’ Which would make you feel you’d been hit with a sledgehammer, but wouldn’t actually kill you. ‘Whether or not I drop the needle in the dirt a few times before I inject you depends very much on how I feel the evening’s going.’
‘You wouldn’t kill me, Duffy.’ There wasn’t much bravado in the voice.
‘I would kill you with no second thoughts.’ What did another death on the route matter, especially that of someone who shifted the stuff? He said again, in a perfectly level voice, ‘I would kill you with no second thoughts.’ He left Gleeson to work out the angles, to imagine himself sitting roped to the chair, with a smear of blood on the inside of his forearm where the spike had come out, pop-eyed with fear, even after death. And the police would come, and they’d put it down as another small score being settled by someone on the heroin trail; and then they’d go into Gleeson’s bank account, and then they’d watch Hendrick’s shed for a while, but of course they wouldn’t catch anything, and after a while they’d decide to keep it on file, which is another way of saying they’d wash their hands of it, and what did it matter anyway, just a fat pusher with mutton-chops roped to a chair, waiting for the dawn. It wasn’t a nice death, either; you shitted yourself, you got a comic erection, you drowned in sweat. There was nothing to be said for it at all. Duffy’s thumb flicked in his right-hand pocket.
‘I didn’t know what it was at first. I didn’t, I swear I didn’t.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘About two years – two and a half years. One day Mrs Boseley comes up to me and says, “Would you mind delivering this case personally? I wouldn’t want it to get lost on the way.” It was something to go to Dude’s. So I said fine – I like the driving, anyway. So I took it – I don’t even remember what it was now – and I drove it to Dude’s and forgot about it. And the next day Mrs Boseley gives me forty quid. Forty quid! “Just a little cash bonus, Gleeson, for delivering that case so well.” Well, first of all I think, Christmas is early this year, then I think, Does she fancy me or something, then I sort of forget about it. Then it happens again, only this time it’s fifty quid I get, and Mrs Boseley thanks me very nicely, and I think, Well if she does fancy me she’s going a very funny way about it.
‘The third time it happens I decide to ask. So after I’ve made the delivery I go to her office and say, “It’s all right, what I’m doing, is it, Mrs Boseley?” and she says, “I’m very satisfied.” And I say, “But, I mean, what is it I’m delivering?” and she says, “Are you sure you want to know?” and I think it over and I say, “No, I don’t think so.” And I say to myself, that’s the last time you do this, Gleeson.
‘And then a few months later Mrs Boseley tips me the wink again, and I say, “I think you’d better find yourself another driver,” and she gets up and closes the door of her office. I remember her doing that. Then she sits down and says, “No, you’re my driver, Gleeson.” And I say, “I just resigned.” And she says, “I’m afraid you can’t.” I say, “Why?” and she says, “Because I’d never find another driver as reliable as you,” and I say, “Bullsh”, or words to that effect, and she just says, “And in any case I can’t let you.” And it makes me feel there’s something up. So I say, “Why not?” And she says, “Because you’re in it now, like it or not. Stand or fall together,” she says. I say, “What have I been taking to Dude’s, then?” And she says, “Small amounts of heroin for medical purposes. Just small amounts; just for someone’s old grandfather who became a heroin addict in China and has to get some stuff regularly, and the import regulations are so silly about it.” And then she gives me a hundred pounds. In advance.’
Duffy hadn’t heard the story before, but he’d heard the pattern of confession a million times – across an interrogation table, from the witness box, in a police cell. First it was I’m Just Mister Nice Guy; then it was Look What They Made Me Do. You wanted to say, if you were Mister Nice Guy you wouldn’t have let Them Make You Do it. But that would be wasted breath. Duffy more or less believed Gleeson’s story; at least, he didn’t disbelieve him enough to hit him.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, it’s sort of carried on from there. I just deliver. I just get paid for each run.’
It could be right, but Duffy didn’t think so. There was always a first point at which a villain decides to halt his story. He thinks, they can’t prove any more than that, so I’ll stop there. That was what Gleeson was doing. Except that the circumstances were different. Duffy didn’t have to prove anything. The burden of proof had shifted. Gleeson had to prove to Duffy that he’d told him everything he knew.
‘And why was McKay crashed?’
‘He was nicking things. He very nearly nicked the last shipment. By chance. We couldn’t take the risk.’
Duffy picked up the knife and cut the lemon in half. He felt like a genteel tea-lady as he squeezed a little juice into the tablespoon. He looked across from the spoon to Gleeson. His guest didn’t look at all happy.
‘Go on.’
‘Go on what?’
In response, Duffy tipped out the small amount of white powder from the polythene bag on to the saucer. Then he picked up the tin of Marvel, began to lever off the lid with the handle of the knife, seemed to have second thoughts, and banged the lid back down. Then, in case Gleeson got any ideas about sneezing or suddenly blowing hard, he put the spare saucer upside down over the one with the powder in it.
‘Who, how, where, when?’
‘There’s only Mrs Boseley and Dalby, I don’t know anyone else, Mrs Boseley doesn’t tell me.’ That was probably correct: heroin trails were normally run as tightly as possible. So Duffy merely said, for the tape’s benefit as much as for the state of Gleeson’s soul,
‘And you.’
‘And me. The stuff comes in about every three months or so. I take it to Mr Dalby.’
‘Always?’
‘Always. No one else.’
‘And you deliver personally to him?’
‘Yes. Mrs Boseley makes a call before I leave and he’s always at the door when I get there.’
‘Which door?’
‘What do you mean, which door?’
‘What does it look like, this door?’
‘It’s just a door, wooden door, says 61 on it.’ Uh-huh; the back way, of course.
‘And he pays you?’
‘No, he just says, “Thank you, my fine fellow”, or something snotty like that, and then shuts the door.’ That was three of the four questions. Now the vital one.
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘How does it come through?’
Gleeson paused. Duffy unscrewed the plastic bottle and poured a small amount of water on top of the lemon ju
ice. He could sense Gleeson’s popping eyes following the operation.
‘It varies. Sometimes it’s in one thing, sometimes another. They never use the same system.’
‘What is it next?’
‘I don’t know. Mrs Boseley knows.’
‘How does Mrs Boseley know?’
‘I don’t know.’ But he didn’t sound confident about not knowing. Duffy picked up the tin of Marvel and put it down on the floor. On the other side of the packing-case. Where he might easily forget about it.
‘It’s marked on the air waybill number. There’s always a double-four in them.’
Duffy got up and headed off towards Mrs Boseley’s office. After a couple of steps he stopped, turned round, came back, lifted up the Castrol tin, waved it under Gleeson’s nose, set it down again, and went off, all without a word. He returned with the file of invoices referring to Dalby’s business, and with the file of forthcoming shipments.
‘Show me.’ He ran his finger down the first page until Gleeson nodded; then they went down every page in turn. All the shipments, as Gleeson had said, had a double-four in their air waybill number. Duffy opened the Forthcoming file. Again, he let Gleeson do the work, merely running his finger down until the nod came. It came very soon. 783/5236/144. One case tinned lychees. Port of origin: Hong Kong. Arrival date: Thursday. The day after tomorrow. No wonder they had been getting jumpy.
‘That’s the one?’ said Duffy, and read the file number into the record.
‘Yes.’
‘And where’s the heroin in them?’
‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me something like that. I wouldn’t want to know anyway. It’ll be somewhere in one of the tins, I suppose.’
‘How many tins?’
‘It’s on the invoice.’ Duffy showed him the file again and let him do the reading. ‘One gross eight-ounce tins of Chung Mon lychees.’ Thanks very much. Duffy reached inside his right-hand pocket, switched the tape off, and began to get excited. Quite visibly so.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Go on what?’ The pitch of Gleeson’s voice was rising with his panic.
