by Adam Baron
‘Well then. Wait, for now.’
‘We’re ready to go! Get over here. Let’s do this now.’
‘Later,’ I told her. ‘There’s something I have to do first.’
The tiny St John club was rammed when Nicky and I got there just after eleven, rammed because, though the place stays open as late as four, after a while they stop letting people in. The day hadn’t been as cold as it had been of late and the night was similarly mild, tattered straggles of low cloud uplit a browny orange against the dark sky like orange juice laced with rum. We’d parked Nicky’s car on Charlotte Street and after taking the postman’s bag out of the boot we walked south to the area north of Oxford Street that isn’t officially Soho, which people are beginning to call Noho. Nicky was nervous. He walked quickly and I had to tell him to relax, to calm down. Probably to keep his mind off what we were about to do he asked me about Jack. He told me the police had interviewed him. I told him about finding him, and about Korai. Nicky asked me what developments there had been and I told him about the print on the shard of glass that I’d spotted in McKenna’s office.
Nicky stopped. ‘That’s it, then, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘It is. It is. He’s fucked. He’ll go away. Christ.’
‘Well, I know he’s your friend, but it does look like he did it. What other explanation can there be?’
‘No,’ Nicky insisted. ‘He didn’t. He can’t have. I grew up with him and I just know it. I…’ Nicky shook his head.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What?’ He turned to me. We were almost where we needed to be.
‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. Let’s do this first.’
Nicky and I turned left off Wells Street onto Boswell Mews, a narrow lane full of post-production suites and casting agencies. I was pretty sure, actually, that I’d been to the St John before. If it was the same place, I knew it to be a small bar-cum-club that stays open late, which you’re supposed to be a member of to get in. The couple of times I’d been no one seemed to take much notice of this. I’d seen a lot of Mediterranean-looking guys in there but had assumed for no good reason that they were Greek. The name should have alerted me, I suppose, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d ever actually known it. It was just that little club off Wells Street. Now I knew that it wasn’t a Greek place: it was where a certain group of Maltese entrepreneurs hung out. Nicky had been contacted by none other than the head of the Maltese outfit in London and told to go there that night – and to bring fifteen thousand pounds with him. He’d obeyed these instructions, but not the last one they’d given him. He was told to go alone.
A small wooden sign above the door and a low rumble from upstairs flagged the entrance. The door was a thick, grey steel and was shut, but it opened before we could hit the buzzer. The rumble grew louder. I followed Nicky up a dark staircase that immediately turned to the right, where I knew the bar to be. We emerged into a small room full of smoke and noise. People were standing at a bar to the left, others were hunched round cheap-looking tables full of beer glasses and steel ashtrays. I nodded and confirmed to myself that I had been there. It was the same little dive. It looked like a skanky pub frequented by old lags in a run-down part of town rather than an in-the-know West End drinking joint, with worn stools and flimsy tables sitting on a dark red carpet patterned with grime. Only the fact that it was full saved it. I was in yet another place that needed people.
There were a lot of people there right now but in spite of the crowd the place had a flat, slow-paced feel to it, everyone sitting for the duration now. They were mostly men in their thirties, some Maltese-looking, some not, some with girlfriends but most in groups of three or four. People who just wanted a place to drink late. A slow Ron Sexsmith track sat on top of the hubbub like a dust sheet thrown carelessly over an old chair.
The bar was a small L with just enough room between the wall on the left-hand side for three stools. When Nicky and I had managed to edge through the crowd jostling for service, the man on the nearest stool saw us and stood down from it. He began to tell Nicky that he hoped he had a present for him when he saw me. He stopped in full flow.
‘You,’ he said. ‘It’s fucking you. Look, Alexander, Nicky’s brought his bodyguard along.’
The thin guy with the unsuccessful facial hair who I now knew to be Christopher Ameli looked pleased to see me but it was an amazed, what-have-we-got-here? pleased, rather than a nice pleased. He stood with his hands on his hips. He’d had his mullet clipped, the sides shorter, making him look like a prize poodle at the local fete. Not an effect he was probably aiming at. He had a cigarette in his mouth, which stayed there as he spoke. He was addressing the man on the stool along from him, his big friend, who was going through some receipts with a calculator, oblivious to the noise around him.
Friend was wearing the same Prince of Wales check suit he’d worn to the Ludensian three weeks ago, the collars of a black silk shirt wide over the lapels. He, too, looked surprised to see me but he wasn’t giving anything else away. He’d probably shaved that morning but dense stubble still sat heavy on his huge, bell of a face like a burnt field, running almost up to his eyes.
The big guy turned instantly to one of the two barmen. The guy was in his early fifties with a flat, hard face void of any expression at all. His dull eyes were cutting straight through me. They were eyes that hadn’t just seen it all, they’d seen it all twice. They had it memorized.
The bell tolled. ‘Is this him?’
The eyes didn’t let me go. ‘Yeah, ‘s him. Spent all day yesterday in the cafes, asking questions. The bookies too. Has anyone seen a big guy, and a thin guy with a beard? This is him.’
‘Right. I see. You.’ Alexander swung his face towards me, his voice vibrating with its own echoes above the din. ‘Get out of here. We’ll talk to Nicky on his own.’
‘You already did that,’ I said, just loud enough to be heard. ‘You can still see the words on him. I’m not going anywhere. Or if I do I’m taking this with me.’ I took the bag from Nicky and held it up. He stood beside me, his arms folded. ‘And you can kiss goodbye to fifteen grand. You won’t have another chance to get it. You’re not fucking us around any more.’
The bell didn’t move but a crack appeared in it, something like a smile but mixed with disbelief. No, he isn’t really saying this. Two huge arms rested on the bar as the face leaned forward.
‘So, you saw what we did to Nicky here, and you were jealous, yes?’
‘Why don’t you give that up?’ I said. ‘There’s no girl here for you to grab. Cut the stupid threats and talk to me. I’m not going anywhere. Now, you haven’t even offered us a drink. Which, after the way you’ve behaved, is the least you could do.’
The other barman had disappeared through a door into the back. All three of the men in front of Nicky and me seemed a little confused, not quite knowing what to do. They looked, collectively, like a volcano that was about to blow, but they each needed one of the others to start things off. The little guy went first. He pushed the stool aside. He had his knife out before he’d taken a step. I met his eyes. I tossed the bag at him as he came forward, unsighting him, and I sent a foot out towards his knife hand. People behind me moved back. I heard a ‘Fuck!’ as a pint went over. The huge guy was standing but his thin friend was in his way. My foot found the wrist and his blade clattered off into the crowd. I used the same foot in his groin but I was too late to turn as the old guy came over the bar, jumping right onto me, sending me backwards and down. There were more shouts of disbelief. I pushed the guy off and tried to get up. I had help. Two hands like the claws of a crane reached down to my throat and launched me back against the bar. He’d found a way through. I caught Nicky to the side. I saw a hand the size of a cabbage going backwards. I thought I was going to have to watch it come forwards again but it stopped. The eyes of the man holding me had edged to the right.
‘What is this? What is this happening?’
The shrill high
voice cut through the smoke. Someone had killed the music. The room was still. There was a wide semicircle around us. The sound of the voice put me back in school. I twisted my neck round as far as the hand at my throat would allow and I saw her. She’d come out of the door behind the bar and marched round the side. Everybody stopped.
‘In the back, now,’ she said. ‘How dare you do this in my club? In the back. I’m sorry, everyone. Go on with your drinks. A misunderstanding. Please. You, you look like you spilled your drink. Another drink for this man, Peter. Please, everyone.’
The bar gradually returned to normal, heads being shaken, stools being picked up. Ron Sexsmith kicked in again from the top with ‘Secret Heart’.
* * *
The back room was the same size as the bar. If they’d wanted to expand they could have more than doubled their space but they obviously didn’t. I got the impression that the St John was a bit like Sally’s gym, the tip of a very deep iceberg. I looked around. The carpeting was the same as next door but brighter, not showing the same wear. Old brown leather sofas lined three of the walls with low wooden coffee tables in front of two of them. Nicky and I were sitting on the sofa furthest from the door we’d gone through, looking up at a desk. It was a big, metal thing like a navy officer’s, squatting in the exact centre of the room, looking like it should have been further back. Behind the desk sat the woman who had no doubt saved me from the broken nose I’d so far managed to avoid at Sally’s. The man who had nearly given me it was sitting on the sofa on my left, while the thin guy stood with his back to the thick oak door, the low rumble from next door seeming to come through from his belly. Three other men I’d never seen before had followed us into the room and were sat on the sofas looking at us. They all seemed to know who we were.
The woman on a raised chair behind the heavy grey desk was no taller than five two. Her name was Miriam Ameli and she was, as Sal had told me, the head of the Maltese outfit in London. Miriam must have been seventy-five but she could have been anything up to ninety. She was stringy, her faced crumpled and parched as a dried pea, her short hair, dyed way too black, sitting on her head like a skullcap. She gave off strange, contradictory signals the way some old people do, looking both incredibly frail and utterly immovable at the same time. She wore a single string of pearls over a black cardigan, a delicate gold cross hobbling at her grizzled throat. She was looking at Nicky. She looked at him with irritation and distaste, as if he was half a worm in the apple she was eating. Without taking her eyes off him she lifted an arm from beneath the desk and waved it at me.
‘We told you to come alone. How dare you bring this man!’
Nicky sat up. ‘Alone? After last time?’ His voice was a shaky roller coaster, propped up by thin wooden supports. ‘No chance.’
The old lady shook her head, confused. She brushed Nicky’s point aside. ‘But that only happened because you tried to be clever with us. What did you expect? And why have you been doing this? I don’t understand. Did my husband ever give you trouble? You did what he asked and it was fine – and you made a lot of money. Why am I different? Why do you try to cheat me? What did you possibly think you could get from cheating me?’
It was a good question, and I answered it for Nicky.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He could get nothing by cheating you and that’s why he didn’t. The money was stolen.’
‘I told them that,’ Nicky insisted. ‘I told them but they didn’t want to know. Those two. They didn’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t cheat you, Mrs Ameli. I would have to be very foolish to cheat you. The money was taken from my flat at the bar.’
‘What do we care what happened to it?’ The little guy had pushed himself off the door. I liked the way he made up for his lack of size, by including every inch of the room in what he was saying, like the star of a musical. He was coming closer. ‘We made a deal, you owe us. Your problems are your problems. So, are you going to pay us? Or would you like us to terminate our relationship right now?’
‘Wait!’ Mrs Ameli brought her hands down flat on her desk, which complained with a deep, booming sound. Her voice betrayed an irritation with her nephew that I was pleased to hear. I thought about what Sally had told me about him. That he was impatient to get his turn, that he thought he should have got it when his uncle had died. He looked at the old lady and shook his head, stepping back again.
‘It is as my nephew says,’ the woman said, her voice calmer, remembering to include him. ‘We really don’t care if you were stupid enough to lose the stake. What is that to do with us? You must see that we want paying. But it looks like you know this. What have you got there?’
Mrs Ameli’s eyes fell to the floor beside me. I’d retrieved the bag from the bar and it was sat at my feet. I picked it up, casually, and popped the clasps.
‘Fifteen grand,’ I said, as if I’d just thought of it. ‘We managed to scrape it together. Nicky was going to keep paying you somehow, until he was square with you, but I’ve persuaded him not to. This is the last you’re going to get and you’re lucky to get even this. It isn’t Nicky who’s doing the cheating, it’s the other way round. You want it or not?’
‘Are we going to listen to this?’
‘Be quiet!’
The old lady was looking at me steadily. She let out a breath and turned to her nephew then back to me. She’d snapped at him again and it had embarrassed her. She knew I’d made her do it and she didn’t like the fact. She folded her arms.
‘You like Maltese cafes, I hear.’
‘The ones I’ve been to in the last few days, sure. I’ll have to pay a visit to the island sometime.’
‘I would recommend it. And you like asking questions about us, not very subtle ones at that. Do you think you can threaten us with the police, something like that, so we let your friend off? Tell them where we operate, who we deal with? Is that what you are trying to do? I have to tell you that we have some very good police friends, it wouldn’t do any good.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her nephew, angry that his aunt was letting me play with her. He couldn’t see any point to this. ‘I’m not going to threaten you with anything.’
‘I’m very glad. But then what were you doing there?’
‘Hanging out. Trying to help my friend here.’
‘You seem very attached to him.’ One of the men across from me smirked. ‘But help him how?’
‘By seeing if some rumours I’d heard were true. Rumours that would help back up an idea I’d had.’
‘Rumours. I like a nice gossip at my age. And were they true?’
‘I think so yes. In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘Pray tell.’
‘You mentioned your husband, Mrs Ameli.’
The word husband from my lips changed the air in the room. Everyone tensed, became focused. Mrs Ameli was still folding her arms but she sat up. The game had taken a direction that wasn’t funny. Her very deliberate look said, ‘Careful, tread carefully.’
‘You kind of took over things when he died, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. This club? Of course.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve spoken to some people who knew him, in a business sense. He commanded a lot of respect. He’d treat a man fairly, I was told. He would, wouldn’t he?’
The old lady nodded. ‘If the man didn’t try to cheat him. He had rules and if you played by them you had nothing to worry about.’
I nodded back. ‘He treated Nicky fairly. Did a lot for him. And you continued to be fair, no?’
‘Get to the point.’
‘The point is, Nicky is not being treated fairly now. Hasn’t been treated fairly.’
‘I’ve told you. His problems are not our concern. Asking for my money to be paid to me is as fair as I get.’
‘Even if you already have it? Even if you stole it from his bar, only days after delivering it to him?’
Miriam Ameli’s mouth opened and her han
ds gripped the front of her desk. She bucked forward in her seat. Her eyes shot open like I’d put a thousand volts through her.
‘You be very careful. How dare you say that I—’
‘Not you, Mrs Ameli. Not you.’ I nodded to the door. ‘Him. Your nephew. The man who’s been carving out a nice little space for himself recently, striking out on his own as it were. Him. Nicky’s not paying you any more because he already came and took it.’
I think he was too stunned to move. I’d had half an eye on him, expecting that knife he was so fond of to flash out as soon I’d said what I had. But he didn’t react. Everyone was looking for him. He looked back at them as if they were mad.
‘It was why he was so keen to finish Nicky the other night,’ I said, turning to the bell. ‘You had to stop him, no? Because he didn’t want Nicky figuring it out. He wanted to kill him, and write off the cash, because he knew you were never going to get it. He knew where it was.’
‘I am definitely going to kill you. That is absolutely certain, my friend.’
‘Here,’ I said, throwing the bag to him again. ‘Take a look inside.’
He caught the bag one-handed, barely moving. My eyes were full on him now. He was like a horse in blinkers, one thought only. It was rising in him but he was careful to check it. He was very calm. I think he knew he couldn’t lose his cool. Being accused of something does that to you. Everyone in the room was still looking at him. It wasn’t accusation on their faces, but they weren’t exactly with him. He let out a snort of derision and shook his head.
‘Well?’
The old lady had pushed her chair aside and was standing, looking at her nephew.
‘Well?’
‘It’s rubbish. He’s just trying to bullshit us.’
‘I mean, what’s in the bag?’
‘The money, I hope. At least it better be. Not that I am going to forgive this shit.’
‘Open it!’ she told him.
Her nephew put the bag down on the arm of the sofa and snapped the clasps. I could see him thinking, trying to get there before he saw it. His hand came out with a roll of bills.
