All the Empty Places

by Mark Timlin

  He didn’t make any comment about that remark.

  ‘Turn left,’ I said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You know where we’re going, Fin,’ I told him. ‘To wherever your boys are looting and pillaging.’

  ‘I really think you’ve got it all wrong, Nick,’ he protested. ‘And you realise you’re guilty of kidnap.’

  I stuck the Detonics hard into the side of his thigh. ‘Kidnapping,’ I repeated. ‘That’s nothing to what you or Johnny or one of your little crew are guilty of. One of you is a stone killer. One of you killed Sheila.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It didn’t happen like that. I told you, Sheila was a friend. And Johnny was terribly cut up about it.’

  ‘Cut up,’ I said coldly. ‘Is that a fucking joke or what, you cunt?’ I felt my finger tightening on the trigger and I nearly blew the whole deal, and him with it, away.

  ‘No, Nick, please,’ he protested when he saw the way things were going. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You will be. Anyway I thought you hadn’t seen Johnny for months. Come on, Fin, get your story straight. Make up your mind.’

  ‘I spoke to him,’ he stuttered.

  ‘You picked him up on cable? Good show was it?’

  ‘Nick. Tell me, what is all this about?’

  ‘This is all about a roundabout, Fin. It’s all about why you meet me in your house with a gun. Hardly the most satisfactory solicitor-client relationship wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You smashed your way onto my property. You did thousands of pounds’ worth of damage. This will end up in court.’

  I had to laugh and I jabbed the gun harder into his flesh. ‘You better hope it does, Fin. But I’ve got a feeling it won’t get that far. You see, Sheila found out about your plan. Whether in the office, or from Johnny or whatever. I don’t know. She gave me a letter. You know the kind of thing, “Only to be opened in the event of my death”. Well she died, didn’t she, Fin, and whoever killed her went through her place and then they went through mine, but they didn’t find it. It was too well hidden. And I opened it and she’d written everything she’d found out down. And she’d made a tape at your office of you and your pals Johnny Tufnell and Morris making a plan.’

  His face was a picture. ‘A tape,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll be damned…’

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘A plan about robbing a safe depository this very weekend. The weekend you’re too busy to go out for a drink, and you’ve got rid of the wife and kids. All very convenient. So don’t keep lying to me or I’ll kill you now. I know where your little firm is and what they’re doing right this minute and I’m going to go down into the sewers and find them and fuck them up and you with them.’

  He didn’t say a word in reply but I could see that his hands were white on the wheel.

  ‘She was scared that someone might kill her because of what she knew, and that letter was her legacy to me,’ I went on after a moment. ‘She didn’t have much else. A few clothes, some furniture, some junk jewellery and a mortgage. Not much to show for a life was it? Oh, and she had me. Lucky girl. And I wasn’t much either. I wasn’t there to help her that day. I let her die. It was my fault and I have to live with that. And you, Fin. You were one of the few people who knew she’d be alone that night. ’Cos she worked for you and she was doing overtime and she told you I wouldn’t be around. So you, or Johnny, or Morris, or some-fucking-body took advantage of that knowledge and got that knife and killed her. And I think they enjoyed it. I found her don’t forget, and I saw what they’d done to her first hand. And you had the balls to go to her funeral and cry crocodile tears all over the coffin. You fucker. Now this gun is loaded, and I do have one in the chamber, and it’s a hot load .45, and if I pull the trigger the chances are that it’ll blow your fucking leg off, you piece of shit. And you’ll go into shock and die. Or maybe you’ll just die of blood loss. I don’t care either way. And I’ll do it, I promise. You don’t know what I’m capable of, Fin. Nor do I. But I do know that I’ve seen so many bad things and done so many bad things that one more won’t matter. So you’d better get your shit together and tell me what I want to know. Because otherwise I will hurt you, Fin. Take my word for it. You’re in a bad place and it can only get worse.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you. Just take the gun away.’

  I did as he said, only adding, ‘And don’t be clever, Fin. Drive real carefully. Obey the highway code and the traffic laws. And don’t flash your lights or otherwise draw attention to this car or else I’ll kill you and take my chances. Understood?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So tell me,’ I said.

  And he did.

  36

  ‘You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?’ said Fin as we headed for central London through light traffic.

  ‘Smart,’ I rejoindered. ‘Just the opposite. Everything was given me on a plate. And believe me I wish I’d never heard about any of it. If Sheila was still alive I wouldn’t’ve. And I’d be a very happy man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘So you know everything.’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why you’re here.’

  ‘So what do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything I left out.’

  ‘There’s not much.’

  ‘Always the slimy little lawyer, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Even with a gun up your backside.’ I nudged him with the point of the pistol. ‘Humour me, Fin. Tell me true. Start at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.’

  He nodded. ‘OK,’ he said, and he was sweating too, even though the Jag’s air conditioning was on full blast and it was far superior to the Ford’s. ‘You’re right, there is a bank depository in the City,’ he said. ‘You know the kind of thing. Private boxes for storing valuables. Johnny Tufnell met a bloke who’d worked there as a security guard. An Australian, name of Morris like you said. Mid-forties. Been around. He’d served in the Australian army in Vietnam when he was very young. Had a bad time of it apparently. He was what they called a tunnel rat. Around Saigon at the end of the war there were miles of them. Tunnels that is. The Viet Cong lived in them and popped up from time to time to do a lot of damage. They sent these kids in with a gun and grenades and high explosive to clear them out. That’s where he learnt to lay charges. Morris doesn’t like to talk about it but I gather it was rough. Anyway, he worked for the depository for a while last year and got hold of a load of blueprints of the building. They have a vault underground. They’re very proud of it. Two foot reinforced concrete walls, a door that weighs a couple of tons. You know the deal. Anyway, the door’s on a time lock. No one can get in this weekend from late Friday until Tuesday morning after the holiday. And Morris discovered its one weakness. The vaults that is. It’s built onto the original floor of the building. And the building itself is over a hundred years old. The floor is only about six inches thick. The foundations are solid, but the floor is weak. And then he did some more research. Underneath the city it’s like a honeycomb. Sewers, conduits, tunnels. He got plans of the area and reckoned that with a little work he could dig a tunnel from a disused sewer outlet bang up underneath the vault. Then using high explosive he could blow the floor and get in. And with high powered drilling equipment he could open the boxes. He reckoned there were a thousand of them and most of them were packed with goodies.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. So far it was exactly as I’d heard it on the tape. No surprises, thank God.

  ‘Yeah. Cash. Tax skims. Jewels, dope. You name it and it was down there. If each box only contained a grand that was a cool million. And he told us that he’d seen boxes that contained that much alone.’

  ‘So where did you come in? Why did he pick on you?’

  ‘The job took planning. Time. And they had to go carefully. More time. So they needed wages. And then the
re was equipment. High explosive, weapons and of course the drilling equipment once they got inside. Johnny Tufnell picked me. He knew I had the wherewithal.’

  ‘You helped Johnny before.’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘You’ve bankrolled jobs for him.’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Running with the hare and the hounds, eh Fin. That can be dangerous you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So how many are down there now?’ I asked.

  ‘Four. Johnny Tufnell, Morris and two others.’

  ‘A right ambitious little firm. Have these other two got names?’

  ‘One’s Grady. Muscle. A friend of Johnny’s from when he was inside. A dangerous man by all accounts. I haven’t met him. The further I kept away the better as far as I was concerned. And the other… I don’t know. Dobson, Robson, something like that.’

  ‘And that’s it. No surprises, Fin.’ I jabbed him with the gun again.

  ‘No. I swear. Four was fine. That’s all the job needed. Why split the take any more ways? And the more that knew about it the more chance that someone would find out…’ He looked over at me.

  ‘So you should’ve been more careful where you talked about it.’

  ‘I can’t believe Sheila did that to me.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with you. She did it in case your pal Johnny came round to her place and started up where he left off. Giving her grief. Knocking her about. She didn’t give a shit about the job itself. She wasn’t going to grass you up. Unless she had to.’

  ‘And you think one of us killed her?’

  ‘Who else?’

  He was silent.

  ‘So what about the alarms on the building, Fin?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t the place belled up?’ Although I knew, I wanted to keep him talking. Give him no time to think.

  ‘Sure. Morris explained that. There are motion sensors that set off bells and whistles and a silent alarm to the local nick. But so what? They blow the floor. Not a big hole. Just big enough to get in and out with the gear and the alarm goes off. Maybe lots of alarms all round the area. Who knows? Who cares? In fact the more the merrier. Confuse the issue. The coppers call out the keyholder who comes down and sees that everything is secure on the outside of the vault. But he can’t get inside. Not until Tuesday morning. So he resets the alarm and goes back home. There’s nothing else he can do. Old Bill have to put it down to an earth tremor or something.’

  ‘But what happens if they smell a rat and go underground themselves?’ A tunnel rat I thought, but didn’t vocalise it. This was no time for jokes.

  ‘I told you the place is like a maze. There’s a thousand places down there. Miles of tunnels. They could search for a month and never find any trace of digging. Morris has been down there and sussed it out. I think he feels at home underground.’

  If he gets in my way he’ll be there permanently I thought. And you too, you little bastard.

  37

  Finbarr drove over London Bridge and into the City which surprisingly was quite busy, it being a Sunday, and a holiday Sunday at that. It was mostly tourists on foot, fat Yanks in bad clothes gawping at buildings that were old before their country was colonised, dragging spoilt kids round the sights, when all they really wanted to see was their next Big Mac and fries. But that was good as far as I was concerned. The more people wandering about the better. At least Finbarr and I wouldn’t be so conspicuous. It was quiet in the car after Finbarr’s confession, or part confession at least. He still hadn’t owned up to the most important part – Sheila’s murder – so I put on the radio. It was tuned to one of London’s soft rock stations, Liberty or Heart FM, I didn’t know which, they all sounded the same to me. Non-stop Celine Dion, Whitney Houston or the Corrs – crap one and all. At the end of the record came the news and weather. The hot spell was about to break we were told, and heavy thunderstorms were heading our way from Spain. Big deal. I had more important things to think about.

  Then we hit the ring of steel. There were two cars in front of us going through a section of the road that had been coned off, and it was being guarded by one bored looking uniformed WPC who gestured for us to pull over. Just my sodding luck! Finbarr looked terrified as I slid the gun out of sight between the seats and hit the OFF button on the stereo. ‘Make it convincing, Fin,’ I said. ‘Or I might just shoot you and take my chances.’

  ‘What about her?’ he hissed, as the female officer walked round the car.

  ‘Her too,’ I said, but that was just to scare him into being good. There was no way I was going to shoot at some poor innocent woman copper just because she happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Or the wrong place at the right time. I never could work that one out. But he wasn’t to know that. Or at least I hoped he wasn’t.

  ‘I might just tell her you’ve got a gun,’ he said.

  ‘And I might just tell her why,’ I replied. ‘That’s going to fuck your boys up big time. This way you’ve still got a chance.’

  He let down the electric window on his side and the WPC peered in. ‘Where are you going, gentlemen?’ she asked.

  I saw Finbarr’s Adam’s apple going as he swallowed. ‘I’m just dropping my friend off at Liverpool Street Station,’ he said raspily.

  I smiled at the copper across him. She smiled back. I’d still got it.

  ‘Off on holiday?’ she said to me.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Just been visiting. Got to get back to the kids for bank holiday.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Colchester,’ I said. It was the only place I could think of that I knew was reached from Liverpool Street.

  ‘Lucky you,’ she said. ‘I’m working all weekend. And in this heat too.’

  ‘Someone’s got to keep the streets safe,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. I’m an Essex girl myself. A little village just outside Colchester as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Best people in the world,’ I said through gritted teeth. Just my bloody luck again. If she started comparing favourite pubs then I was done for.

  ‘True. Anyway, I won’t keep you. Have a good journey.’ And she waved us on.

  Finbarr put the car back into gear and drove off. ‘Well done, Fin,’ I said. ‘Oscar-winning performance.’

  ‘I hope my boys shoot you,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve said that before.’

  ‘No. I said they might shoot you. Now I want them to.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, son,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget who you’re talking to.’

  He gave me a dirty look but said nothing more.

  ‘So where do we go now?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s an NCP at the back of London Wall in Fore Street,’ said Finbarr. ‘It’s open all weekend. I’ll drop the car there, then we walk.’

  The car park was small, almost empty, and fully automatic, with no attendant in the kiosk. Finbarr put the car into an empty space on the ground floor and we went into the street. I put my gun into the pocket of my jacket but reminded him that my finger was on the trigger.

  ‘I’m not likely to forget,’ he said.

  We walked to the corner of Moor Lane and across the road into Union Street to an old-fashioned building where Finbarr stopped and took a set of keys from his pocket. On the way I flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt and covered my face with my hand. I didn’t want the cameras to see me clearly. ‘What’s this then?’ I asked, grabbing his arm before he could get the key in the lock.

  ‘The way in.’

  ‘I thought that was a manhole cover down the road.’

  ‘Use your loaf, Nick,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t be going in and out of that all the time. Somebody would’ve sussed us for sure. That was just for Morris’s recon. When he was sure it would work we needed a proper base of operations. Somewhere with some room to move, and this is where I
rented an office and some storage space as a front.’

  ‘OK, I believe you,’ I said. ‘Just one thing. Are there going to be any surprises inside? Like one of your boys waiting?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not yet. They’ll still be in the depository, or should be, opening the boxes. They’re due to start shifting the gear after midnight.’

  I watched as he opened the street door and we went inside, where a large, mosaic floored entrance hall stood empty. As we crossed the threshold a buzzer erupted into life and he went to a keypad and punched in six numbers which killed the sound. ‘No security outside of office hours,’ he explained. ‘No nosy guards around, which made it perfect for us. I’ve got an office at the back, and a storeroom in the basement.’

  ‘And a route into the sewers,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Let’s take a look then, Fin,’ I said, taking the Detonics out from its hiding place. ‘You lead the way. Just keep quiet in case there’s been a change of plan.’

  We walked across the hallway, past the deserted reception desk and through a set of double doors into a long, wide hallway with doors on both sides, each with its little brass or plastic plate informing us of the firms that resided inside. ‘Which one’s yours?’ I asked.

  ‘This one,’ he replied. The plate on the door read: INDEPENDENT REMOVALS.

  ‘A sense of humour,’ I remarked. ‘What’s inside?’

  ‘A desk and a phone,’ he said.

  ‘Show.’

  He used another key on the ring to unlock the door. I pushed him aside and opened it gently, pistol first. He’d been telling the truth. ‘Go on then,’ I said, and he led me through another set of doors into a narrower hall without carpet and finally to a door marked FIRE EXIT. He pushed the bar and we were on the fire stairs, then we headed down one flight to the basement to another fire door. Finbarr shoved it open and fumbled for a light switch that turned on fluorescent tubes which illuminated a bare-walled corridor lined with yet more doors. At the end of the corridor, set flush into the floor was a square manhole cover.