by Peter McLean
She has her own path to follow.
Adam had told me that once, too, what felt like a long time ago now. Of course, the lying bastard had been deliberately trying to engineer her fall back then as well. The last thing I needed was to be remembering his words right now. Any of them.
For fucksake, shut up Adam. Just shut up about everything and let me find Olivia. I’ll worry about everything else later.
I got on the phone and started making enquiries. I know a lot of fucking insalubrious people, I have to admit. If Dimitri had been fired by the Russian then he had to be working for someone else by now – the bloke was hard as nails but he was far too stupid to have set up his own firm. Sure enough it wasn’t long before one of my pet scrotes informed me he was now working as a minder for Mickey Two Hats.
Mickey was a grotty old wanker who ran a snooker hall about a mile away from my flat. Well, what he actually did was launder money for armed robbers and drug dealers, but the snooker hall was his front. He must have been doing quite well for himself too, if he could afford to take Dimitri on. Muscle like that didn’t come cheap.
I put the phone down and looked at Trixie. She was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette, and staring vacantly into space.
“Trixie?”
“Mmmm? Oh, sorry I was miles away,” she said. She smiled at me but it really did look a bit forced. “Any luck?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Mickey’s snooker hall down by the station. Can we do it without Mazin this time? I can get away with going in there, but not with turning up in a sodding limo. Mickey’s no detective but even he might think that was a bit fucking odd.”
Trixie shrugged. “If you like,” she said.
It was only about a mile away as I said, so we walked. I’m not a big fan of walking as a rule but it was actually quite a nice afternoon for once and I felt like stretching my legs to work off some of the tension. We turned the corner at the end of a parade of tatty shops and crossed the car park behind the station, and there next to the cash and carry was Mickey’s place. The faded green sign just said “Snooker”, with an unimaginative picture of a pint of lager and a triangle of red balls underneath it.
Mickey wasn’t exactly a marketing expert, but then he didn’t need to be. People who knew what he really did came to him, if you know what I mean. I had been to the place a few times myself to be fair, but only to play a couple of frames when I was bored. I’m not that great at snooker and I’d never had enough money to need to launder it so it wasn’t one of my regular haunts.
I pushed the front door open and stepped inside with Trixie behind me. It was gloomy in there, with most of the table lights switched off that early in the day. There were a couple of lads I didn’t recognize knocking balls about on a table at the back, but one look was enough to tell me they were just killing time rather than playing properly. They were staff, then, which meant they were crooks.
Mickey himself inhabited a cramped little office at the back of the club and seldom came out of it. I nodded to the boys at the table and walked that way. As I had been rather hoping, Dimitri appeared from somewhere and got in my face before I reached the office door.
“You want something, Drake?” he asked me.
I could feel Trixie slide away from me and get between me and the snooker players, covering my back as always. I took a slow, cold breath and felt the Burned Man rear up inside me.
“Yeah, I do as it happens,” I said. I looked at Dimitri’s flat, ugly face and went hot and cold all over, all at once. “I want my fucking daughter!”
I went for him in a rush of rage so violent it even surprised me. Dimitri was six foot four and must have been half again my weight, but when the Burned Man got the bit between its teeth there was no stopping it. My left hand shot out and closed around Dimitri’s throat, squeezing mercilessly as I rammed him backwards into the wall. His eyes bulged in his ugly, scarred face and I hit him in the guts. Hard.
Again, the Burned Man encouraged me. Burn him!
My right fist burst into flames and I pulled it back ready to break Dimitri’s head open, and never mind that that wouldn’t have got me any answers at all. When the Burned Man got fired up so did I, these days.
A deafening roar made my ears ring. It’s amazing how loud a shotgun is in a confined space.
My head whipped round and I saw Mickey Two Hats standing in his office doorway with a smoking double-barrelled sawnoff in his hands. He was a fat bloke in his mid sixties, with a dodgy combover and a crumpled and dandruff-encrusted suit that looked like it had last been drycleaned sometime in the Nineties. All the same, he was the one with the shooter. He had fired the first one into the ceiling, thank fuck, but there was another shot left in that bloody thing and now he was pointing it right at my head.
This was a bit ticklish, to put it mildly.
Trixie was balanced on the balls of her feet, keeping one eye on the two blokes at the snooker table whilst obviously figuring how quickly she could reach Mickey and whether or not she could get that gun out of his hands before he blew my head off. Just the fact that she was thinking about it rather than simply doing it made me realize how thin her chances were. I still had Dimitri pinned to the wall in front of me, and my hand was still very conspicuously on fire.
“You’d better have a fucking good excuse for this, Drake,” Mickey said. “And that’s a smart trick, but however you’re doing it you’ll run out of paraffin in a minute. I can wait.”
I stared down the barrels of his shooter and slowly let the fire gutter out. It was easier to let Mickey believe what he wanted, and if he needed hurting I’d rather let Trixie take him from the side than run the risk of a face full of lead.
“All right, Mickey,” I said. “I’ve got no problem with you, it’s this fucking animal I’m here for.”
Dimitri was standing very still, taking shallow, laboured breaths with my hand all but crushing his windpipe. Not for the first time I wondered where the Burned Man was getting the physical strength it was feeding to me. It’s horribly powerful but only a god can create energy from nothing, and it’s not a god. I risked a glance to my left and saw one of the snooker players sway unsteadily on his feet. He was white as a sheet and his face was shiny with sick sweat, as though he was about to pass out.
Right, well I supposed that answered that question then.
“He ain’t done nothing to you,” Mickey said. “He works for me now, not that Russian cunt.”
“So who wanted my little baby daughter taking then, Mickey? You?”
“Your what? Nah. For fucksake, geezer. I don’t do that sort of thing.”
No, no I knew he didn’t. Mickey Two Hats was as dodgy as they come but he was old school, you know what I mean? He’d no more hurt someone’s kid than he would their mum. People just didn’t do that sort of thing, as I said. The right sort of people didn’t, anyway. The gang kids these days, well maybe they were different, but not the sort of geezers I knew. No one in the life would do that.
Only someone bloody well had, hadn’t they?
“He was called Dimitri,” I said. “I only know one Dimitri, and I’m about to break his fucking neck.”
“Don,” Trixie said quietly. I turned and looked at her. “Don, do you really suppose there’s only one man in London called Dimitri?”
I stared at her, and I started to feel a bit cold.
Well I mean no, obviously not, but I had been so sure. So fucking sure it was him. Of course it was someone I knew, it had to have been. It always fucking is, isn’t it? Why would anyone else…
“I’ve got problems with the Serbians,” Mickey said, interrupting my train of thought. “Big problems. That’s why I’m all tooled up and shit – I need the protection. Whatever you think he’s done, Dimitri ain’t left my side in three fucking weeks.”
Oh for fucksake.
I’d been a complete fucking idiot about this, hadn’t I? Thinking about it, I had no idea why Olivia had been taken, which meant it could have been anyone. Ab
solutely fucking anyone at all. I let go of Dimitri’s thick neck and took a cautious step backwards, keeping an eye on Mickey’s shooter as I went.
“I think…” I started, and all of a sudden I felt ill. “I think I might have been a bit of a prick.”
“I think you fucking have,” Mickey said. “It’s a good job I know you, Drake.”
I nodded. He didn’t of course, not really, but he probably knew of me if nothing else. We had a lot of iffy acquaintances in common, after all. He knew I was part of his world, at least. That was basically why he hadn’t shot me yet.
I looked at Dimitri, and sighed.
“Sorry,” I said.
He rubbed his neck and glared at me, but said nothing. He’d probably never been choked that hard in his life, and certainly not by a bloke my size. I reckoned that had probably surprised the crap out of him.
“We should probably go,” Trixie said.
I looked at Mickey Two Hats and his sawnoff shotgun, and nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “Look, Mickey…”
“Fuck off,” Mickey said. “Fuck off, and don’t ever come back.”
We went.
* * *
It was a bit of an uncomfortable walk back to my flat. That was twice today I had dragged Trixie into a pointless confrontation with people who were nothing to fucking do with anything. Four men were dead and I couldn’t even make myself care. Fuck me, I had changed recently. Not for the better, I’m ashamed to say. What exactly was I becoming?
A man who has to get his daughter back, I told myself.
You really are a thick cunt, the Burned Man helpfully informed me as we trudged back down the high street.
Even the nice weather had deserted me, and it was bloody cold out there now.
Yeah, thanks pal, I thought at it. You got any better ideas?
You’re fixated on these worthless fucking gangsters, it said. Think bigger. For fucksake Drake, you work for a fucking goddess. Think outside the neighbourhood for once.
It went quiet after that, but I supposed it had a point.
I still had no idea where Olivia was and now I didn’t even know who had taken her. Think, Drake, I told myself. White blokes. Masks. Guns. Dimitri. A black van. It certainly still sounded like gangsters’ handiwork, but as the Burned Man said maybe I should be thinking bigger than that. I had to do something.
Fuck what I was becoming, it didn’t matter. Not now. I had to find Olivia.
Anything in my power to protect you, I had promised her, and I had promised myself I wouldn’t let her down, too.
It was time to fucking prove it.
When we got home I got back on the phone. It was about three o’clock by then and I was starving, so I sat nibbling at a bloody horrible sandwich from the newsagents while I called every scumbag I knew. That was a lot of phonecalls, to be fair. Trixie sat on the sofa, looking at me with a tight-lipped expression that I didn’t even want to think about. She really, really wasn’t best pleased, and I honestly couldn’t blame her. I tried my best to shut her out as I made call after call.
I even reached out to Wormwood for fucksake, that’s how desperate I was now. No one knew anything, or if they did they weren’t talking. Eventually I worked my way all the way down my mental list of useful people, and there right at the bottom was Harry the Weasel.
The Weasel, in case you don’t remember, was an unfortunate little bloke who wanted to be my apprentice. He was thoroughly horrible, and last year he had betrayed me for a paltry amount of money and almost got me killed. I wasn’t really on speaking terms with Harry the Weasel any more, but needs must when the devil drives and all that.
“Mr Drake,” he said in obvious surprise when he realized it was me on the phone. “I thought you were dead, like.”
I was getting heartily sick of hearing that by now, and I had never had a lot of patience with the Weasel at the best of times. All the same, he knew damn near everyone and he was fucking good at sniffing out information. I looked at what was left of my grotty sandwich and chucked it in the bin under my desk.
“Well I’m not dead, and I need to see you,” I said. “Meet me at Big Dave’s and I’ll buy you a late lunch.”
I hung up on him and looked at Trixie. “Right,” I said. “I’m meeting Weasel for a bite to eat down at Dave’s. I want to see what he can ferret out for me. Want to come?”
“No thank you,” she said, and stalked into the kitchen.
Right, that was me told then wasn’t it? I sighed and went out.
* * *
Big Dave’s café was on the high street next door to Mr Chowdhury’s grocers shop. It was a proper old fashioned greasy spoon too, not one of these poncy hipster places where they want to serve your chips in a Wellington boot and your drink in an old jam jar or some such stupid fuckery like that. I pushed the door open and grinned at Big Dave.
“All right?” I greeted him.
“Rosie!” he exclaimed, his fat face lighting up like the sun. “Fucking hell, I thought you were dead!”
He always called me Rosie. It’s because I don’t like tea, you see. No, of course you don’t. “Rosie Lee” is cockney for “cup of tea”, and I can’t bloody stand the stuff. I’m strictly a coffee drinker, so Big Dave calls me Rosie. That’s about the standard of the local banter around these parts. You get used to it.
I went up to his greasy counter and shook his big greasy hand.
“Do us a coffee will you, mate?” I asked him. “I’m meeting the usual grotty article here for lunch in a bit. You’ll have to excuse him, I’m afraid.”
Dave just shrugged.
“As long as someone’s paying for him, he’s welcome,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ll sort him out,” I said.
Dave nodded and handed me a chipped mug full of thick, burned black coffee, and I gave him a pound. You can keep your five quid crapachinos, thank you very much. This is what a cup of coffee should look like. I headed to a table in the corner and sat leafing through someone’s abandoned newspaper. I was just finishing my coffee when Weasel appeared.
He was a sorry sight, as usual. He was no more than five foot six, and already half bald despite only being in his early thirties, with a droopy lower lip and a lazy eye that made him look thick. He wasn’t thick, though. He could be stupid sometimes maybe, but he wasn’t thick. He was wearing a nasty cheap tracksuit and a pair of prison-style white trainers, and that big naff gold ring he had bought with the money he had earned by selling me out last year. Little git.
“All right, Weasel?” I said.
“Hello Mr Drake,” he muttered as he wriggled into the seat opposite me.
I waved Big Dave over and ordered us both a coffee and a fry up. It really was the safest thing on the menu. Dave’s not exactly what you’d call a culinary adventurer, if you know what I mean.
“Where you been, Mr Drake?” Weasel asked me once Dave had set our drinks down in front of us and retreated to his frying pans.
“Away,” I said, I and that was going to be the end of it as far as he was concerned. It was hardly his fucking business, after all. “You keeping your nose clean, Weasel?”
He had just got out of prison last time I saw him, after all. I needed him out on the streets listening and watching, not banged up in the Scrubs where he was neither use nor ornament.
“I have, Mr Drake,” he said proudly. “I’ve been studying, too. I’m getting good at my Goetia these days.”
Oh joy.
The Goetia, in case you didn’t know, is one of the great classical grimoires. It’s the first book of The Lesser Key of Solomon the King and it’s basically a manual of how to summon demons.
If there was one thing Harry the Weasel shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near, it was magic.
Dave came back with our lunches before I could say anything about that. He put a big plate of fried sausage, fried bacon, fried eggs, fried bread and baked beans down in front of each of us, and mercifully went away again. I think he would have fried the
beans too if he could have worked out how to do it.
“Listen to me, Weasel,” I said. “I need some information. Someone kidnapped a little baby girl in Edinburgh last night. My little girl.”
Weasel gaped at me, a forkful of dripping, greasy bacon halfway to his mouth.
“Have you got a little girl, Mr Drake?”
“Yes Weasel, I have,” I said. “I have, and I. Want. Her. Back. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr Drake,” he whispered, and it looked like he had lost his appetite all of a sudden. “Do we know anything?”
I told him what the copper had told me. I also told him to forget about the Russian. I was more than satisfied that that line of enquiry was a dead end.
“I know a Dimitri,” he said, after a moment. “Not the Russian’s monster, another one. I had a look at him once, in this pub we was both in. A proper look, as you might say. He’s got a red aura, Mr Drake. I think he’s… you know. Not human, like, if you know what I mean.”
Oh, I knew all right. Hard though it might be to believe, Harry the Weasel was already a magician for all that he shouldn’t have been. Not a very good one, to be fair, but good enough that he could see auras if he really worked at it. He might not know what a red aura meant when he saw one, but I fucking did.
“Soulless,” I muttered around a mouthful of eggs.
“You what, Mr Drake?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Cheers Weasel. I might forgive you yet.”
“I hope so, Mr Drake,” he said. “I really do still want to learn off you, you know.”
I nodded.
“I know you do, Weasel,” I said. “I know.”
And I want a fucking Bentley, mate. Looks like we’re both out of luck, doesn’t it?
Chapter Eighteen
I paid up after we had eaten, and chased Weasel off down the road. He still wanted to learn off me, did he? Well the first thing he needed to learn was not to fucking sell me out again. After that little lesson had well and truly sunk in maybe we’d see, but that was a long way off yet as far as I was concerned.
