Hearts of Stone

by Mark Timlin

  Up ahead, St George’s Circus was blocked with police vehicles, so I turned left into Garden Row, across St George’s Road, sharp left into Geraldine Street, and round West Square, with the police Rover tight on my tail. I doglegged through to Brook Drive, turned right, and hit ninety up the narrow street between the lines of parked cars. Then left into Kennington Road, and right into Walnut Tree Walk, with the copper still keeping up. Right again into Lambeth Walk, shot the curve, accelerating all the time, then hard left by the pub into Lambeth Road and towards the river, foot hard down and the engine screaming in protest.

  The car flew across Lambeth Bridge, and the Rover fell behind. There were more police cars east and west on Millbank, so I took the Horseferry Road turning, jumped the red lights by the hospital, and when I looked in the mirror it was to see a procession of headlights and flashing blue lights following me. I knew I had to lose them and find somewhere to lie low, or I was in serious trouble. I zig-zagged through Victoria and Pimlico, taking left and right turns randomly as they came, not worrying about traffic lights or one-way systems, trying to lose the pursuing convoy. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was going to be captured. Although nothing in the Met could keep up with the Ford I was driving, they had the numbers, and I could imagine that the radio waves were burning up as every copper in London was called into the hunt.

  Eventually, more by luck than judgement, I managed to shake off my pursuers, and when I found myself on Chelsea Embankment, heading west, I tromped the accelerator down and the needle on the speedometer touched a hundred and forty as I sped along, with the river gleaming dully on my left. The road was clear ahead and I thought I’d got away clear, until another Rover, or maybe the same one, swerved out of a side road behind me and continued the chase. I shot across the hump at the junction by Battersea Bridge, and the car nearly took off. The Ford roared through the curves, still doing a hundred and twenty.

  When I saw Lots Road coming up on my left, I took a desperate chance and hit the brakes and spun the car through the gap between the kerb and the bollards in the middle of the junction. The four-wheel drive and the ABS kept the car on the road, just. But, even so, I felt the nearside wheels lift off the tarmac and I thought for a second I’d lost it. But the wheels touched down again with a screech of rubber, and I was heading towards the gasworks at the top of the road.

  The Rover’s driver didn’t do so well. I heard a scream of protest from his tyres as he tried to manoeuvre through the corner, but he didn’t make it. The car’s wing caught the bollard, and tossed it twenty feet into the air, turning it over with a crunch of tortured metal, then the police car rolled through the window of the shop on the corner in a shower of glass. I hoped the driver and his mate were OK. It wasn’t their fault that the Met couldn’t afford to come up with a car that could keep up with mine. Vorsprung durch Technic. As they say.

  I drove through to a council estate in Fulham, cut the lights, and eased the car into a space between two artics parked up for the night. I slid down lower in the driver’s seat and waited. From time to time I could see the reflection of blue flashing lights in the windscreen of the truck in front of me, and I just sat and waited for them to find me. There was little point in doing anything else. If I kept moving, I knew I was done for. What I needed was some traffic to get lost in. I sat there for nearly an hour as the sky lightened and London came awake around me.

  Eventually I plucked up the courage to move on. I drove sedately through Fulham to Kensington, and didn’t see a single police car on the whole journey. I found an underground car park that had just opened, and parked the Ford in a quiet corner on the lower ground floor.

  I walked around until I found a seedy hotel with a ‘Vacancy’ sign lit in the front window. I booked in as Mr Smith, and paid cash in advance. A slovenly porter showed me to a single room furnished in regulation motel-issue cardboard furniture, with plastic shag-pile on the floor that smelled like cats had been fucking on it, and a battered colour TV with a dodgy horizontal hold, which was chained to the wall. But it was a sanctuary, if only a temporary one.

  I made coffee from the complimentary makings laid out for me on the sideboard, and sat on the bed and got out my cigarettes. When I looked for my Zippo, I couldn’t find it. It was the least of my worries right then, but somehow it seemed like a bad omen. I begged a book of matches from the woman behind the reception desk and went back to the room, where I stayed for most of the rest of the day.

  The TV news was full of the story. Seven people shot to death in an underground loading bay. What did I expect? There was no mention of me or the chase. The police were obviously still looking. But, then, I knew I could count on that.

  I stayed sitting on the bed as the day dragged on. It was grey outside, with a low cloud base stalled over the city. It fitted my mood perfectly. The weatherman on TV forecast heavy rain later, which suited me fine. I could use all the cover I could get. Twilight came early as the clouds persisted, and eventually about six, I decided to fulfil my obligation to Brady and go and try and find out what had happened to Alfie.

  40

  I walked back to the car park through the gloom, and checked out the Cosworth. It hadn’t been disturbed as far as I could see. I got inside and found my lighter on the rubber mat under the steering wheel. Now, maybe that was a good omen. I paid the fee and headed back to South London. The sky was getting darker by the minute, and the clouds seemed to loom even lower in the sky as I went. One by one the street lights clicked on, and I switched on my headlights. But it hadn’t started raining yet.

  I parked the Cosworth in a side street off the Kennington Road, one turning up from the cul-de-sac where Brady had lived. On the corner, outside a pub, was a call box. I phoned Brady’s number from there. I needed a quick shufti round the drum, and more importantly, I needed to know if any coppers were hanging around. I knew that if they were, they’d answer the phone. They always do. They can’t resist it. But no one picked up, even after I let it ring twenty times.

  I went back to the car and got the torch I always keep in the glove compartment of any car I drive, for occasions such as this, then sauntered down and turned into the cul-de-sac and checked out the house. It was dark and deserted-looking. I rang the front-door bell, just in case, and was ready to do a runner if anyone I didn’t know answered. But I came up with a nish again. Then I went down the narrow alley at the side and through the picket gate and into the tiny garden.

  I tried the kitchen door and window, and the patio door. All three were locked. I looked up. The bathroom was directly above the kitchen. The soil pipe came out of the wall next to the window and descended through the paving stones to the sewers running below. The bathroom window had translucent glass at the bottom of the window, louvred glass at the top. So much for security, I thought. I put one foot on the kitchen windowsill and, using the frame and the pipe as a ladder, I started to climb.

  The kitchen window was in shadow, but as I got higher, I was lit by a street lamp opposite. It felt like a spotlight, and I felt like a bug on a snowball, but luckily no one was around to see. I kept hold of the pipe with one arm, and knelt on the narrow sill of the bathroom window and, using my free hand, pushed the panes of louvred glass out of their metal runners and into the room. There were three of them and to me the sound of them hitting the floor inside was as loud as an orchestra tuning up. But once again no one seemed to notice. I wondered if I was in a neighbourhood watch area. If I was, the neighbours were falling down on the job.

  The gap I had opened was about eighteen inches deep, and I squirmed between, slipped, caught myself before I fell, and pulled myself through, hanging upside-down above God-knows-what before I could turn, arm muscles shaking, and dropped with a crash into a puddle of broken glass. I was breathless, and stayed where I’d dropped for a couple of minutes to get myself straight. As I crouched there, I listened for any sound outside or inside the house that said I had company,
or was about to.

  But there was none. Just a well of silence.

  When I’d calmed down, I started through the house, leaving the lights off and using only the narrow beam of the torch, filtered through my fingers, for illumination. I was looking for something, anything. But if you’d asked me what, I wouldn’t have been able to say.

  I went through the two bedrooms upstairs. Nothing. Then I went down and started on the ground floor. I was standing in the living room where Brady’s party had been held, with the top drawer of the black wooden sideboard open in front of me, and the minutiae of home owner’s insurance in my hand, when the light in the room was switched on.

  I froze, then turned slowly. Alfie was standing in the doorway, his hand still on the light switch. He was wearing a black Burberry over black sweat pants and black hi-top Reeboks. His face was drawn into lines that belonged to someone much older, and if ever a black man was pale, it was him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘Looking for you but I didn’t think I’d find you,’ I said, switching off the torch.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘You don’t seem to find that strange.’

  No reply again. And that was when I realised what the story was.

  ‘Because a little bird told me you were in the hands of the bad guys,’ I went on: ‘kidnapped. Held to ransom. A hostage to fortune. But if you were – kidnapped, that is – it occurs to me that, under the circumstances, whoever kidnapped you wouldn’t have let you go to wander hither, thither and yon to tell anyone who they were. So I really didn’t expect you to walk in as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘I live here,’ he said.

  ‘Not good enough,’ I said. ‘Not good enough by a mile.’

  ‘I…’ he said.

  ‘So it further occurs to me,’ I went on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘that the only conclusion I can come to is that you were one of the bad guys yourself.’

  He shook his head and looked down at the carpet.

  ‘Don’t try to kid a kidder, Alfie,’ I said. ‘You were there. Brady told me,’

  He looked up at me. ‘How…?’

  ‘On the phone. He called me from his car. He was dying, but wouldn’t call an ambulance or the police. He called me. Asked me to look out for you. What a fucking mug punter, eh, Alfie? Have a good laugh about that, did you?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t meant to happen that way.’

  ‘So what way was it meant to happen?’

  He said nothing, so I said it for him. ‘You didn’t think he was going to be there, did you? You thought he’d be safely out of the way somewhere, and I’d be doing the deal. So it was supposed to me that got gunned down.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it must have been a big surprise to one and all when Brady made an appearance.’

  ‘They said no one would be hurt,’ said Alfie. ‘If Brady hadn’t been there, nobody would have known about me.’

  ‘I would,’ I said. The words hung in front of us like a bad smell. ‘And you must have known that Endesleigh and the rest were going to arrive.’

  He just shook his head.

  ‘Well, didn’t you?’ I insisted.

  ‘I didn’t know they were going to kill them.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I tried to stop them.’

  ‘Bollocks. They’d have killed you too if you had. You just let it happen, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did he really ask you to help me?’ All of a sudden he looked worse, if that were possible.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He started to cry. ‘It should have been you,’ he said.

  I knew it. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll never sit down in here again,’ he said. ‘I’m finished here.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ I said. Funnily enough I didn’t feel anger or anything like that. More sorrow really. Whoever was behind this had used Alfie as much as he’d tried to use me. ‘But why did you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘I needed money to get him away from all this.’

  ‘All this what?’

  ‘His job. The drugs and the drinking. It was driving him crazy.’

  ‘Where were you going to go?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Anywhere. Anywhere warm and far away, where we could be together.’

  Touching, I thought. ‘So you knew that he was a policeman?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘He didn’t know that.’

  ‘He thought he was so clever. I’ve known for ages. You’re not one, are you?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘But you used to be?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I thought so. You’re like one.’

  ‘I just got dragged into this mess. It wasn’t my idea, believe me.’

  He made no reply again.

  ‘So he had no idea?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you were planning?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So what made you think he’d go with you? He was a policeman, and a straight one by all accounts, even if the job was driving him mad.’

  ‘He loved me,’ said Alfie.

  ‘And love conquers all?’ I said.

  He didn’t answer me again.

  Then I asked the most important question of all. ‘So who was there with you?’

  ‘Lasky,’ he said simply.

  ‘Lasky?’ I replied, and furrowed my brow. I knew the name – but from where?

  ‘Gregor,’ he said, and everything fell into place.

  ‘The geezer at the party?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Runs restaurants.’

  ‘Amongst other things.’

  ‘Like protection?’

  Again a nod.

  ‘He’s got a couple of geezers working for him drive a big red Yankee truck?’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘Sure. We had a little run in last autumn. I remodelled the bodywork a trifle.’

  ‘That was you?’

  It was my turn to nod. ‘So that’s why he was visiting you the afternoon Brady and I fixed up the deal with Seeley and Hughes?’ I asked.

  One more nod.

  ‘And I thought you two were carrying on.’

  This time a shake of the head, but by then I didn’t care.

  ‘Brady didn’t tell me he was there,’ I said.

  ‘He kept well out of sight. His men did the shooting.’

  ‘How did he know where to go?’

  He cocked his head in a puzzled way.

  ‘Last night,’ I said. ‘When Brady was killed. How did you know where the deal was going down?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And how much was your cut going to be?’

  ‘Around a hundred and fifty grand.’

  ‘Not bad. And who has it now?’

  ‘Gregor.’

  ‘And the drugs?’

  ‘Those too.’

  ‘You’re a very trusting soul.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money now. Not now that Brady is dead.’

  ‘Do you know what he intends to do with the dope?’

  ‘Sell it back.’

  ‘But Seeley and Hughes are dead.’

  ‘Not to them. To the people who employed them.’

  Brady’s big boys, I thought. Talk about honour amongst thieves. ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. Tonight maybe.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told you I’m not interested. But somebody is.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been staying here. I couldn’t bear it. I came round earlier and somebody was here. I saw them moving about?’

  �
�Who?’

  ‘Don’t know. I didn’t wait to find out.’

  ‘Police?’ I asked. I knew it hadn’t been, because if it was they would have still been there. But I asked anyway.

  He shook his head. ‘The other police don’t know about this place. Only the people on the squad knew, and they’re…’ He didn’t finish the sentence. ‘His official address is in Streatham, with his wife.’

  ‘His wife?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he was married.’

  ‘Surprised?’ asked Alfie, a little fire returning to his demeanour.

  It was my turn to shake my head. ‘Not really. I just never thought about it.’

  And that was about all the questions I had for him.

  ‘So what happens now?’ he asked after a minute.

  ‘What happens now, is that you and I are going to Kennington nick, and you’re going to tell them everything you know. Right?’

  He hesitated, and I wondered if I’d have to apply some physical pressure. God knows, I didn’t want to. He looked in a bad enough state as it was. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But can I just have a few minutes here. I won’t be back, and I want to say goodbye.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ I said magnanimously. ‘Take all the time you need.’

  He walked out of the door and up the stairs.

  41

  I listened to Alfie walking about upstairs. His feet crunched on the broken glass on the bathroom floor, then moved across the hall to one of the bedrooms. Then there was silence, interrupted just once by a thump on the ceiling above me. I imagined him saying his last farewells to Brady’s ghost. I lit a cigarette and went to the drinks cabinet and poured a large brandy. I thought I deserved it. I sat down and sipped the drink and finished the cigarette. After a few more minutes I went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Alfie!’ I shouted up. Nothing.

  I walked up the first few steps and shouted again. Again there was no reply. I went up the rest of the way. The master bedroom door was closed. I tried the handle. It was locked. I knocked. ‘Alfie!’ I shouted through. Then I realised. ‘Oh shit,’ I said, and put my shoulder to the door. It was stronger than it looked. On the third try the lock splintered and the door burst open.