Paint It Black

by Mark Timlin

  And money wasn’t all of it. Some of the real hardliners thought that the whole deal had gone sour. Soft. Twenty-five years wasted. So a splinter group was formed. Heavy duty bad guys. They called themselves FIRE. The Free Irish Republic Executive. They left the six counties alone and targeted the mainland. London specifically.

  The security services had pretty well closed off the City of London behind a ring of steel, so the bombers moved their operation to the West End. They blasted the shit out of it that winter. The worst incident took place on a Saturday morning in November. The terrorists phoned a Sunday paper to say that there was a car bomb outside a store at the western end of Oxford Street. The coppers evacuated the place and got all the shoppers behind police lines. Then, just where the crowds were densest, a large bomb in the back of a hijacked Luton van belonging to a shopfitting firm in Basildon was triggered. It was mayhem captured on video for the world to gawp at. How many times did the TV stations repeat the pictures of the explosion that had been caught on the camcorder of a fourteen-year-old from Tufnell Park who was filming his mum and sister out doing their Christmas shopping? He earned a lot of money from that film. Other people didn’t come out of it so well. Seventy died that morning, over three hundred were treated for injury and a lot who saw it still can’t sleep.

  On the Monday morning following I went down the road for a paper. I was all bundled up in my double-breasted overcoat, and just as I reached the end of the street before turning right to go to the newsagent a car pulled up beside me.

  ‘Mr Sharman,’ a voice said.

  I froze, then turned. If someone was going to kill me so be it. I didn’t have to make the decision myself and I was grateful.

  The window of the car was down and the passenger repeated his question: ‘Mr Sharman?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He smiled and brought his hand up from behind the door. I winced until I saw that all he was holding was an envelope.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Read it and find out. Here you are.’

  I walked over to the car and accepted the envelope. Maybe another time I wouldn’t have, but I knew that this was it. Don’t ask me how, I just did.

  I bought the paper. The headlines were all about the bombing. I went home and made some tea and opened the envelope. I wanted to savour the moment. Inside was a letter and five grand in fifties. Good ones. The letter read:

  Dear Mr Sharman

  It has come to my attention that we have a common concern. I wonder if we might meet at a convenient time for you. My office number is 0171-622-3200. I am available there, five days a week, from 9.30 am until 5.30 pm. I have enclosed a nonreturnable retainer as proof of my good faith.

  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Yours sincerely

  It was signed Jason D’Arbley.

  Although he’d mentioned an office, there was no letterhead. The paper was best quality, creamy white bond with a seahorse as a watermark.

  I counted the money again. Still five grand. Non returnable. That was good. I looked at my watch. Nine on the dot. Half an hour to go. I made another cup of tea.

  At nine-thirty-five I gave the number in the letter a go. It was a direct line. ‘D’Arbley,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Nick Sharman,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Mr Sharman. Good. You got my note.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder if we might meet.’

  ‘What common concern?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d rather tell you in person.’

  ‘I might be wasting my time.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll’ve been adequately compensated by my retainer.’

  ‘I’m an expensive boy.’

  ‘So I understand. When would be convenient for you?’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘You don’t waste any time.’

  ‘I hate mysteries.’

  ‘That’s why you’re a good detective.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘People.’

  I knew if I asked ‘What people?’ he’d give me the runaround. So instead I said, ‘Three o’clock?’

  ‘Splendid.’ He gave me an address in Bloomsbury and rang off.

  I put down the phone and had a bit of a think.

  But not too much of one. Instead I went and had a shower and shaved off my beard.

  And it hurt.

  I took a cab to the meeting. I figured with five grand burning a hole I could afford it. I wore the same suit I’d worn for my wedding and Dawn’s funeral. I hadn’t worn it since. Navy blue wool. With a pale blue button-down shirt, a flashy tie, black boots and my Burberry on top. I wasn’t armed. Not so much as a toothpick.

  The taxi driver dropped me off outside a renovated Georgian terrace between Russell Square and the Euston Road. The address I was looking for was in the middle of the row. There was no indication of what went on inside on the outside. Just an entryphone with a single button. I pressed it at three o’clock precisely. Someone answered. A man. But as usual on those things, he might have been on Mars for all I could understand. ‘Nick Sharman,’ I said.

  A minute later the door was answered by the geezer who’d handed me the envelope from the car that morning. He was bigger standing up, dressed as sort of half bouncer, half butler, and said, ‘Mr Sharman. How nice to see you again so soon. Come in. Mr D’Arbley is expecting you.’

  I did as I was told, and he led me through into what looked like part office, part living room. By the window was a large desk with a couple of phones on top. Next to that was another with two computers, both switched on and scrolling some sort of stock information down their screens, two fax machines and a paper shredder. The usual shit. Opposite the window was an open fireplace, complete with a log fire that crackled away quite happily. In front of the fire were a pair of matching sofas, a low coffee table between them. It was all very cosy. The room was empty, and the butler/bouncer said, ‘Mr D’Arbley will be with you directly,’ and backed out of the room closing the door softly behind him.

  Half a minute later it opened again and another bloke walked in. He was wearing a grey pinstripe whistle, blue-and-white-striped shirt, discreet striped tie, a diamond in each cufflink and highly polished black casuals. He was about fifty I guessed, with grizzled dark hair and a face that had something of Peter O’Toole in it.

  ‘Mr Sharman,’ he said, sticking out his mitten and coming at me fast. ‘So glad you could come. Let me take your coat. Do sit down.’

  I shook the proffered German, gave up my mac without a fight and sat on one of the sofas.

  ‘Coffee, tea, a drink?’

  ‘Coffee would be good.’

  ‘And a brandy, I dare say.’ He had an Eton and Oxford voice, and I nodded.

  He pushed a bell on the wall and the butler/bouncer came back. ‘Coffee, please,’ said D’Arbley. ‘And brandy.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the butler/bouncer, and withdrew again.

  ‘I wanted our talk to be private so I’ve let all the office staff go early,’ said D’Arbley. ‘I just kept Simon on to keep us supplied with refreshments.’

  ‘Nice name,’ I said. ‘What common concern?’

  ‘Straight to the point,’ said D’Arbley. ‘I like that.’

  The coffee must’ve been brewing, because Simon came straight back in with a china pot of the stuff, two cups and saucers, silverware, cream and sugar. Plus a bottle of brandy that looked as if it had been around since Napoleon kicked off and two massive balloon glasses.

  ‘No interruptions, Simon,’ said D’Arbley as he started to be mother. ‘I’ll ring if I need you.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Simon and went out again, and D’Arbley and I were alone.

  He put my coffee and a good slug of brandy on the table between the sofas, sat on the one opposite me and said, ‘Let me put my cards on the table, Mr Sharman. Over the past few months I have been making discreet enquiries about you.’

  ‘I thought that
was my job.’

  ‘Not always discreet from what I can gather, and that’s a plus. And may I commiserate with you on your loss.’

  I raised an eyebrow. Years of practice made it perfect.

  ‘Your wife and unborn child, and your wife’s friend.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘They were murdered,’ he said.

  I’d been right. This was it.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ll come to that. Let me start at the beginning.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not.’ He got up and found me an ashtray whilst I fired up a Silk Cut.

  ‘Right,’ he said when we were both comfy again. ‘I had a wife and daughter once myself.’ A look of ineffable sadness came over his face as he went on: ‘I met my wife in New Zealand almost twenty-five years ago. After I left university I went round the world. Working manual jobs. Gaining experience. Looking for something to do with my life. I found it near Christchurch. Her name was Jennifer. I married her and we came back to England where I started an import/export business. Things went well and we had a daughter. We called her Susan. Susie.’ He smiled at that. ‘Things went even better and I built an empire. In the eighties I made frightening amounts of money. Frightening. I had a company in the City of London. My speciality was finding holes in the market and filling them. A wine lake in France would be exchanged for a glut of coffee beans in Brazil. A butter mountain in Finland would go to the old USSR, in exchange for gold in a Swiss depository, which would be used to buy tobacco from America, which would pay for rubber from Indonesia. You know the sort of thing.’

  I didn’t, but I let it pass.

  ‘We flourished. Then my wife died almost four years ago.’ He saw my look. ‘Natural causes. She was never strong, which is why we had only one child. I was left in charge of Susie’s upkeep, and I failed miserably. I thought that money was a substitute for love and attention. I was wrong. My daughter fell in with the proverbial “bad crowd”. Other children, because they were no more than that, with more money than self-discipline, and the parasites who fed off them. Susie was just fifteen when Jennifer died. A heroin addict by the time she was seventeen, dead before her nineteenth birthday.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘That was in the spring of this year. She had a boyfriend at the time. A man called Noel Tyson. He introduced her to the stuff. He worked – still works – for a man named Schofield. Derek Schofield. He’s a big-time drug importer. He is the man who had your wife murdered.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you and your wife destroyed a shipment of ecstasy that he was bringing in from Amsterdam last autumn.’

  Bingo! All the right answers. ‘How do you know all this?’ I said.

  ‘Information is my stock-in-trade. It’s how I managed to make so much money.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So. I want you to kill Schofield and Tyson. You’ve done it before, haven’t you? Killed people, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘So will you?’

  ‘You want a button man. A contract killer. I’m not sure I’m up for that.’

  ‘Even after all I’ve told you?’

  ‘Even after all that.’

  ‘Then let me show you something.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He stood up and went over to his desk. He opened the top left-hand drawer, and just for a moment I had the terrible feeling he was going to pull out a gun and shoot me. I stiffened in my seat, but all that he had in his hand when it reappeared was a brown folder. He came over, gave it to me and sat down again.

  ‘Please,’ he said, and gestured towards it.

  I opened it.

  Inside were a bunch of photocopies of newspaper clippings and a pile of photographs.

  I looked at the pictures first. They were of a woman and a girl. The oldest looked to have been taken about ten years previously from the clothes. The woman was about thirty, the girl, who I assumed to be Susan, had to be nine. That fitted.

  It was a happy photo, as were the others that appeared in obvious chronological order.

  That was until the woman no longer smiled so easily and appeared haggard and old before her years. Then she was no more, and it was the girl on her own. At first just unhappy, then sullen, then sullen and wasted. Then there were no more photos.

  The clippings were in chronological order too. Reports of the death of Susan D’Arbley, the inquest, which showed a verdict of accidental death from a heroin OD, and the funeral. There were other, smaller clippings, from what seemed to be financial journals, although these weren’t dated, about a mysterious player named Derek Schofield and all the money he had made.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘But this doesn’t change anything.’

  D’Arbley poured himself another brandy and looked at me over the rim of his glass. ‘There’s someone else I’d like you to meet,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  He got up, went over to the desk, picked up one of the phones and whispered something into it.

  A moment after he’d replaced the receiver the door behind me opened and I looked round. I didn’t recognise the man who entered for a moment, until he said, ‘Hello, Nick. Remember me?’

  ‘Toby?’ I said unbelievingly. ‘Toby Gillis.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Jesus. I don’t believe it. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since that night on the Lion Estate in Deptford.’

  What I didn’t say was, it was the night he’d saved my life, when two particularly vicious bent coppers who’d rampaged their way across London had the drop on me, and Toby blew them away.

  ‘Where’ve you been? How’s Jackie?’ I demanded, as I got up, went over to him and shook his hand. Close up he looked the same as I remembered him, just older. The same athletic build, the same mop of blond hair that fell down over one eye. Except now there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

  Jackie had been the daughter of another copper. A straight one this time. She’d been the victim of abuse from her uncle, who was yet another member of the Met. Her father had killed him, then himself. It had all been pretty sensational at the time. Front-page news. Toby was the minder who looked after her for a Sunday tabloid. He was ex-SAS. Quite a tough nut. They’d fallen for each other hard and left the country to start a new life together. I hadn’t heard from either of them since. It had to have been two years.

  ‘Jackie’s dead,’ said Toby bluntly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She killed herself.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Not Jackie too. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Long story. She got some money when her dad died. We got married and sunk it into a boatel-cum-motel in Florida, down on the Keys. Someone didn’t want us there. They put on the pressure. Jackie wasn’t up to it, so we left. We lost everything. She blamed herself. One night she shot herself with my gun.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. I still couldn’t take it in.

  ‘She was never right after her father did the same thing. But then you know all about that.’

  I did. I’d been there. ‘Toby,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you get in touch?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I thought you’d been through enough. I knew how close you were to Jackie.’

  ‘I was. Who forced you out?’ I hardly had to ask.

  ‘A bloke called Derek Schofield. The place we bought was where he was landing cocaine from South America. The previous owner had taken a cut for turning a blind eye. We wouldn’t. It was a screw-up all along the line. Everything fell apart. After the funeral, Mr D’Arbley here got in touch. He’s taken me on to deal with Schofield.’

  ‘Terminate with extreme prejudice,’ I said.

  ‘If you like. I heard what happened to your wife. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now Mr D’Ar
bley wants you to help me. Two heads being better than one.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I turned to D’Arbley. ‘But why Schofield too? If it was Tyson turned your daughter on to smack.’

  ‘Because he’s an evil man,’ replied D’Arbley. ‘I’ve done a lot of digging into his career. I know what he did either directly or indirectly to a lot of people.’

  ‘So why just us?’ I said. ‘Why aren’t there a bunch of people here?’

  ‘Because you are the only two who have both the motive and the necessary background to carry it off.’

  I looked from one of them to the other.

  ‘So are you in?’ said Toby.

  ‘It could be your daughter next,’ said D’Arbley.

  ‘What do you know about her?’ I said. He was walking on extremely thin ice.

  He held up his hands in a placating way. ‘Don’t get excited, Mr Sharman. I know how you feel about her. Very much like I felt about Susie, I imagine. But Schofield won’t be happy until you’re on your knees. He doesn’t have a forgiving nature. Believe me, I know. He’d rather hurt those close to you, than you yourself. Then watch you suffer.’

  ‘What’s wrong with going to the police?’

  D’Arbley almost smiled. ‘It’s been tried. He’s wanted by the authorities in a dozen countries. Including Great Britain, under a score of names. But he has a large wallet and the civil service are not the most generous of employers.’

  ‘He just buys them off, right?’

  ‘One way or another. Those he cannot buy, he corrupts, then blackmails. Those he cannot buy or corrupt, he has killed.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Just like that,’ he agreed.

  ‘And I’m supposed to agree to try and kill this particularly powerful individual just on your say so.’

  ‘And mine,’ said Toby.

  ‘And you saw the clippings,’ said D’Arbley.

  ‘I saw that your daughter died, not who was responsible.’