by Adam Baron
I let the rocking motion of the tube lull my thoughts to sleep as I journeyed back into town. The short, constricted life of Alison Everly, coupled with pictures of how it had ended, left me feeling flat and tired, a ball of lead weighing heavy in my stomach, the veins in my arms running with mercury. As the tube pulled into Mile End I looked up at the map opposite and suddenly saw that if I changed trains, I was only one stop away from Stepney Green. I sat up. I knew she’d be there. I knew she’d open the door to me. The doors of the tube yawned. People got off, on. The doors stayed open. My eyes found the sign pointing towards the District Line. I saw her, holding her baby in the fading light. I let the tube doors close and the train take me on to Chancery Lane.
It was already dark by the time I got to the bar. The place was rammed with the after-work crowd, the time of day Nicky really hated. When Toby looked up from a drinks order he said Nicky was upstairs. It was a little strange talking to Toby, having gone through his flat the night before. Toby was busy but he still wanted to know what had happened to Nicky. He sounded genuinely concerned. I said he’d been mugged but Toby looked at me.
‘It was those two geezers, from the other night. Wasn’t it?’
‘You’ll have to ask Nicky that, Toby. It’s his business.’
‘Billy…’
I pushed my way through the crowd and ducked under the bar. When I got upstairs Nicky showed me the space underneath the floorboards in the bedroom, where the money had been. He looked inside, as though he might not have noticed the bag, as if it might have been there all along. Nicky was still a wreck, though the fact that he was dressed gave him some semblance of normality. His left hand was bandaged like the invisible man he no doubt wished he was. I didn’t tell him about McKenna. I wanted him to concentrate.
‘Right,’ I said, closing up the floor space. ‘Got them?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go. Unless you want to wait here.’
‘I’ll come, it’s my business. But are you sure this is necessary?’
‘We have to know who did it, Nicky. That means we have to know who didn’t.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But it makes me feel shitty. Even more shitty. Believe me I feel shitty enough.’
‘Ignore it. And hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time. Think about what those guys said. That’s all you can afford to think about.’
‘I know,’ Nicky sighed. ‘I know.’
Nicky’s staff have kept their personal belongings locked in his office ever since there had been a spate of petty thefts two or three years ago, kids coming in through the fire escape. When we got to Brixton I pulled up onto the pavement outside a block of flats, the kind that were once all local authority and are now probably about half private. Nicky’s new waitress lived in one of them with her boyfriend, a trainee journalist currently working on a night desk.
The girl had been there the night the two goons came in. Nicky had told me she was always asking questions about the business. She was always flirting with him too and Nicky had invited her up for a drink one night, before remembering his rule about not sleeping with his employees. He didn’t think he’d left her alone but he wasn’t positive, he may have gone to the toilet. Then, the next day, she had come up to fetch him down to the phone, calling through to him as he was taking some money out of the floorboards in the bedroom to put in the tills. Which meant she may have seen something.
I used Nicky’s mobile to make sure there was no one at home and then pushed the car door open. Nicky made to get out too but I told him to wait there and call me on the flat number if there was a problem. He handed me the girl’s keys.
When we got back to the Ludensian Nicky put the keys back in the girl’s bag before she finished her shift. I hadn’t really expected to find anything in her flat and that’s the way it had turned out. When Nicky came to find me in the flat upstairs he had a bottle of Granddad in his hand.
‘Are we going to have to do that to everyone who works here?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. But after what you told me, I thought we’d better. She won’t know.’
‘It still makes me feel shit.’
‘You told me that. How are your ribs? How’s your mother?’
Nicky and I sat for a while. Suspecting his staff seemed to have a huge effect on Nicky, it made him looked crumpled, brought down. I’m pretty sure Nicky shouldn’t have been on the whiskey but I wasn’t going to tell him. I did tell him about my visit to Westbourne Park, though, and about another couple of ideas I had. I tried to pitch my voice light, logical. One idea, I didn’t tell him. I kept it to myself, testing it by letting it grow in my mind on its own, unaided. There was silence for a while until I remembered the bird I’d seen that day and I told Nicky how surprised I’d been that Shulpa was into that kind of thing.
He frowned. ‘Birdwatching?’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Beat me too.’
‘Actually, when I think of it, she used to go when she was younger.’ He paused. ‘She used to get taken. I never thought she was really into it herself, though – I don’t suppose sitting in those hide things is very good for a Lagerfeld evening dress. You know, there might well be more to my sister than I know.’
‘There’s a lot more.’
‘I don’t want to know about that.’
‘That’s not what I mean, tosser. She tries to hide it, but there’s a hell of a lot going on inside her.’
‘I know. I couldn’t believe how concerned she was about me. She’s never given a shit before, or at least I’ve never thought she has. She tends to use me as a free alcohol service. Maybe it’s the influence of your good self.’
‘That, I seriously doubt.’ I laughed.
We sat in silence again for a long while, drinking the whiskey. The whiskey was simple and strong, without contradictions. Images of how I’d behaved towards Nicky’s sister came back to me. God only knew what he’d say if I told him. It was dark outside but Nicky only had a small lamp on. The whiskey seemed to slow the day down. Once again I thought how strange it was that the only guilt I felt about Louise Draper was directed towards Nicky, not his sister. I still hadn’t had time to think about what that meant.
I told Nicky that I was going to deliver the first fifteen grand soon. He nodded. His dark hair fell over his battered, never-to-be-so-pretty-again face and a serious look took hold of him. His chin began to tremble, as he held his glass up to it. He shook his head, slowly, and I could see him burying his eyes into the glass as if he could see played out there everything he’d done, and was now looking for answers as to how he’d got where he had. He stopped and his head turned towards me. He didn’t look at me, but something passed between us. If he’d been a girl it would have been the moment when we both knew. I remembered when I’d felt like that with Sharon, how nervous I’d been, almost wanting to retch. It was a strange moment. I thought of what Nicky had said about his school days, how close to Jack he used to be, and I remembered being jealous, thinking that those bonds of friendship were the strongest, it didn’t matter who you met later on. I tried to find an equivalent figure. The only one was Luke. I never had any other close friends when I was young, not really, people I told everything to, who I trusted. I was always afraid they’d come round, and my dad would be my dad, and then everyone would know. Luke knew already because he was part of it. Only he and I understood.
I was suddenly aware of my watch, ticking. I looked at it, stood up, and put both my hands on Nicky’s shoulders, before crossing the room. I turned, waiting for him to look up.
He said, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing all this for me, Billy.’
‘I told you. I don’t want to hear it.’
He nodded, dismissing what I’d said. He looked round the darkened room as if he were seeing it for the first time. Outside, a woman suddenly laughed, and then was quiet again. ‘When this is over, this place is as much yours as it is mine.’
‘You never let me pay for anything anyw
ay.’ I smiled. I pulled the door open.
‘I know, but I’m going to do something. Something else. Give you half of it.’ Nicky’s voice reached out to me, spiked with slurred pain. Through the bandages and bruising he looked old, tired. ‘What am I saying? I’ll give you all of it.’
‘Nicky…’
‘Ask me for something, Billy. I’ve asked you for a hell of a lot. Please, ask me for something.’
Nicky was pleading with me. He had become drunk very quickly, the medication giving the booze a kickstart through his body. I looked at him. Sally was right. Knowing what he’d done had been painful enough, after which he’d almost been beaten to death. But even that didn’t hurt as much as asking me for help, letting me look right inside of him, to see that part of him that was a fool, a shallow, greedy fool. Now he wanted to do something for me, something to redeem himself.
I wondered if he needed to. I wondered if all this really was going to change the way I thought about him. And if I told him about Louise Draper, would that change what he thought about me?
I was about to tell Nicky again that he didn’t need to do anything for me, that his friendship was enough. But I stopped. A thought arrived in me. I don’t know where it came from. It just clicked into me like the electricity coming on after a power cut. His best friend from school. No bond’s as strong as that. I nodded, very slightly.
‘All right,’ I said. I folded my arms and looked at him, crumpled, a wreck. ‘There is something you can do. And not when this is over as a matter of fact. Right now.’
‘Anything, tell me. Billy…’
I stared hard into my friend’s eyes and pushed the door shut quietly. Nicky looked back at me, his eyes full of hope. I left it a second.
‘You can tell me where Jack Draper is, Nicky.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was just after eight when I got to Brick Lane. It was dark, a mean, thin drizzle sending the passersby scurrying along the pavements, bent over like old peasant women. I walked past the converted Truman Brewery and a new, trendy-looking cafe that hadn’t been there the last time I had. Like many areas in London, Brick Lane was changing, just as it had thirty years before, from a Jewish area to a Bengali one. Now there was a new influx; a strange race of pale, limp-looking people in orange sunglasses who never laughed in public and whose sole sense of fulfilment came from finding the right pair of antique trainers. I wondered how long the Bengalis would stick it.
The Bengalis were still in the majority, however. I didn’t know how many restaurants there were on the street, though none of them seemed very busy tonight. The waiters standing in the doorways were having a hell of a job enticing anyone to step inside and the street looked tired and flat in spite of the shimmer of the neon signs admiring themselves in the wet pavements and the occasional, illuminated waterfall flowing in a shop window.
‘You want we have best curry, sir. Please, this way.’
I was hungry enough to take up his offer but I thanked him and walked on. He may not have heard me, though; I had my hood up against the rain and the eyes of the person I was looking for. I passed another couple of restaurants that also served the best curry in London before slowing down and looking up at the street name to my left. I turned the corner from Brick Lane onto Princelet Street, where a cat darted out from beneath a car. I watched it chase off up an alley across the road, narrowly avoiding the wheels of a BMW.
This was the street. I looked up, above the row of lock-ups behind and opposite me, my eyes moving along a row of restaurant names, speciality food stores and an Asian video shop. It wasn’t long before I saw it: RAHIM AND SONS, in English and Bengali, above the window of a wholesaler’s on the other side of the road. I stood looking at it for a while before letting a cab go past. I felt tight inside; quiet and calm. For some reason I saw Draper, stepping up to take a penalty. I stepped across the road towards the clothing warehouse.
If Nicky had denied that he knew where Jack was hiding I wouldn’t have pressed him. But I wouldn’t have believed him. I think he knew that. He looked uncertain for a second because the question caught him cold and he knew I would have seen that. So he told me. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have lied if he thought I wouldn’t have known he was. Draper would have made him promise not to tell anyone and he was Nicky’s oldest friend. But he wouldn’t have lied, not with me able to see it.
Nicky smiled when he told me. Memories and whiskey deepened his eyes.
‘He was like one of us,’ Nicky explained. ‘He was always round our house Jack was. My dad thought he was great and my mum adored him. My auntie taught him how to cook, he worked in their restaurant at the weekends. The only white curry boy in Leicester. She said that if he didn’t make it in the football game he could always run their place for them. He spent more time with my family than his own. He speaks pretty good Bengali, you know? I swear, when he went to Leeds for his apprenticeship, we had this big party and the women cried like they’d lost their favourite baby. Some of the men looked a bit shaky too. Everyone in my family adored him, and when my dad left he was great. He was only young, just like I was, but he seemed to take charge of us, of my mother especially. He used to make her laugh. My mother didn’t know whether or not to stay in the Asian community but I think she saw that as they accepted Jack, they’d accept her as well.’
I nodded, not wanting to rush Nicky. Just as the idea of Alison Everly whoring herself to the Sun hadn’t fitted with my idea of her, neither did this tale of the local hero fit with what I thought of Jack Draper.
‘So,’ I asked, ‘he’s with your mother?’
Nicky smiled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t do that to her. Jack was especially close to my uncle, Asif. He never forgot him, getting him tickets to matches he was playing in. Asif's in the rag trade, like my dad, only he does a bit better. Quite a bit. He’s got a warehouse on Brick Lane, sells all over the place. He runs it with two of his sons.’
‘And Jack’s there.’
Nicky hesitated again. Letting on where Jack was hiding was another thing Nicky didn’t like himself for. ‘Listen, Billy,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t know for sure, I really don’t. I swear. But Asif would do anything for Jack, I know that. If I were Jack, I’d go to Asif's place.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘And if I were looking for him, that’s where I’d go too.’
Once I’d crossed the street I felt a pair of eyes on me and turned, unable to see who they belonged to. There were still quite a few people scurrying through the rain, all looking like they didn’t believe this winter would ever, ever end. A gesture caught my eye, from inside yet another restaurant, where another man was waving me in. I shook my head and stood outside the wholesale place, checking it out, looking at my watch to pretend I was waiting for someone. The rain zipped off my hood. The waiter’s eyes left me. There was no sign of life in Rahim and Sons. A grill had been rolled down over the window and the place was dark. Maybe Nicky was wrong. I peered through the grill as casually as I could but I still couldn’t see anything, no lights, no noise, nothing.
Down the side of the store ran the narrow cobbled alley the cat had shot up. I moved along the storefront and past the mouth of it. Then I turned back round until I was standing with my back to the alley. I took a glance up and down the street and then turned again. As casually as I could I sauntered down, my hand going to my fly as if I were going to take a piss. I didn’t know if anyone was watching me, or even if they’d care if they were. After a couple of steps I moved my hand from my fly to the inside of my coat pocket, where my fingers closed round my Maglite.
The alley wasn’t covered but there was no light in it, probably wouldn’t have been much more in the daytime. At the bottom was a padlocked gate, about six feet high, opening onto a small yard piled with wooden packing crates. I set the Maglite’s aperture to narrow and played the beam over it until I’d found a padlock. I looked back up to the street but the waiter was no longer looking at me. It was too dark. I turned back to the gate.
It was seven feet high but there was no razor wire topping it. I was about to go over it when I stopped. I held the torch beneath my arm and tested the lock.
The lock was pushed to look closed but the mechanism hadn’t been engaged. I nodded. As quietly as I could I pulled the lock open and pushed the gate, expecting an almighty creak. It didn’t make any noise at all. It must have been oiled recently. I nodded again.
I pushed the gate shut behind me, leaving the padlock as I’d found it. I was outside an old but very solid wooden door, pale blue paint peeling, secured by both a Yale and a deadlock. There was a light above the door but it was off. I put my hand over the torch but could see no light coming from behind the door. I took a step back and played the beam on it again. The door was old, and it bowed inward slightly beneath the Yale, where the deadbolt was. It meant that the deadbolt wasn’t engaged; that someone was inside. That’s what I hoped it meant. I held the torch down, and stepped forward.
I stood for a second, the rain amplified into loud thumps by my hood. I thought about it. Call the police? I could have. No. Instead I removed a long, thin piece of tough but flexible plastic from the inside pocket of my coat. I’d thought I might have had to use it earlier, if Nicky hadn’t managed to snag the waitress’ keys. I held it in my right hand. I spread my legs for leverage, leaning my left shoulder against the frame of the door. Very slowly, I slid the strip of plastic between the door and the jamb, slowly, slowly, until it met resistance it didn’t want to go past. I left it there. Any more and it would make a noise. I stopped and steadied myself, holding the strip in place with my left hand, pressing my right palm against the end that was sticking out of the lock towards me.
I’d only get one go at it. I thought I heard footsteps in the alley but it was just the rain, picking up. I rammed the strip forward as hard as I could, pushing it round into the lock and pulling it back as fast as I could. It made a loud, wrenching noise but within five seconds the door was open and I was in the building.
