The Crime Trade

by Simon Kernick

  ‘You’ll be nicely reimbursed, Trevor, should it end in a result and conviction. As befits a grass of your quality.’ Like fuck you will. ‘Fancy another pint?’

  15

  There’s a story about Nicholas Tyndall that’s long been doing the rounds. For a while a couple of years back he was running a crack den out of a semi-detached house in Stepney which belonged to a retired panel beater of West Indian descent. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say allegedly, because Tyndall always denied that he had anything to do with that particular house.

  The retired panel beater’s name was Tony Lackman, and he was in his early sixties. He had no criminal record, had lived a pretty blameless life, and lived alone, having been married and divorced many years earlier. There were no children. Unfortunately for Mr Lackman, the fact that he was the sole occupant of his property and without close family made him an ideal victim for what’s becoming a fast-growing problem in London: the forced colonization of an individual’s home by a crack gang who then use it as a front for their business. It happens a lot more than people think, but because there’s usually very little publicity (the victims, often elderly, tend to comply under threat of violence), people don’t tend to hear about it. Lackman, however, was different. He wasn’t prepared to give up his home that easily and, though understandably terrified of his unwanted guests, committed the cardinal sin of complaining to the police. A few days later a team of armed officers raided the property, made several arrests and recovered a small quantity of crack cocaine. One of those arrested was a close associate of Nicholas Tyndall, but because he hadn’t been in the same room as the drugs, had later tested negative for being under their influence and had denied all knowledge of them (claiming he’d been round there for a party), he’d been released without charge.

  Two days later the dealers were back, and everything carried on like it had done before, only this time Lackman received a severe beating for his troubles and was forced to retreat to his bedroom on a permanent basis while the dealers lorded over the rest.

  Finally, Lackman could take no more and complained to the police again. The same story then played out. A few days later armed officers raided the place (although this time they were delayed by a series of deadbolts screwed into the front and back doors, giving the dealers time to get rid of some of the contraband) and further arrests were made. This time, Tyndall’s associate wasn’t in the house, having decided that he would let a guy below him run things there. That guy, way down the criminal food chain, was the only one to face charges relating to the crack cocaine found, and because the quantities recovered were so small he escaped with a fine and a suspended sentence.

  Tony Lackman wasn’t so lucky. Three weeks later his naked body was found on wasteground a few hundred yards from his home. His hands and feet were tied and he’d been shot in the back of the head. The police, in an effort to gain public co-operation, stated that he’d been tortured before his death. What was never made public, however, was the fact that he’d also been castrated and that his eyes had been gouged out.

  It had been a warning from Nicholas Tyndall to the whole community: do not defy me. And it had worked as well. Nobody was ever convicted of the crime, even though the names of the killers were widely known, and Tyndall continued to control a number of crackhouses in the area (albeit in a hands-off capacity) until he moved on to bigger, more lucrative crimes, safe in the knowledge that his reputation for violence had been suitably enhanced and that no-one would ever be daft enough to testify against him.

  I don’t like men like Nicholas Tyndall. Their very existence offends me, and one of the reasons I’m a copper is so that I can do my bit to bring them down.

  But for the moment, Tyndall remained scot-free, wealthy and powerful, living in a palatial semi-detached villa on a quiet, leafy Islington avenue just off the Canonbury Road, no more than half a mile from where Slim Robbie O’Brien had been murdered. It had originally been three spacious flats, but when Tyndall moved in he’d decided that he wanted a bit more privacy and had made it known in no uncertain terms to the owners of the other two apartments that it was about time they moved, in the process selling their properties to him. The young couple living on the ground floor did exactly that; the Asian family in the basement needed a bit more persuading, but after having a brick thrown through their window, followed seconds later by the freshly severed head of somebody else’s pet labrador, they’d come to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour and had sold at a heavily discounted price.

  The problem these days is that gangsters, whether they be small-time drug dealers with guns and attitude or wannabe urban godfathers like Nicholas Tyndall, have no qualms about using serious violence and the threat of it to get what they want, because they know that neither the judicial system nor the police service have the wherewithal or the powers to protect those who speak out against them. It’s something the Met and the government are supposedly trying to address, but sometimes, when you’re operating at the coalface, it’s difficult to get too optimistic. In the meantime, the advantage lies with the bad guys, and they didn’t come much badder than Tyndall.

  I was a little nervous about going to see him, and I got the impression Tina was too, although she wasn’t the sort to admit as much. Although neither of us had met him before, we’d heard from reliable sources that he was canny enough not to pick fights with the Law. It’s a lot harder (although not impossible) to intimidate police officers, so I felt reasonably confident that we weren’t walking straight into the lion’s mouth. However, with someone who can order the castration and blinding of an innocent householder for the sin of wanting to be left in peace, you can never be too sure.

  It was 11.20 a.m. and cloudy when we walked up the steps to the imposing front door of Tyndall’s house and banged on the knocker. Two separate CCTV cameras stared down on us from either side of the entrance portal and there were steel joins on the door’s hinges that looked like they’d been added recently to reinforce it from attack. There were also bars on all the ground-floor and basement windows, which made me wonder what the neighbours must have thought – not that I could picture any of them complaining. A sign on the door said ‘No Salesmen or Beggars’ in big black writing.

  ‘Who are you?’ said a belligerent male voice over the intercom.

  ‘Police,’ I said, holding my warrant card up to one of the cameras. Tina did the same with the other one. ‘We’re here to see Nicholas Tyndall.’

  ‘You got an appointment?’ grunted the bloke on the other end, in a way that told us he knew we hadn’t.

  ‘We don’t need an appointment,’ I told him. ‘Let us in, please.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Well, have a look round and make sure, because if he isn’t we’ll swamp this whole borough looking for him, and if we can’t find him then we’ll assume he’s hiding from us and we’ll come back here with territorial support officers, knock down this nice big door, issue you with a search warrant and rip this place apart from top to bottom. All right?’

  The intercom clicked, and we were left standing there for what felt like a long time. Neither of us spoke, not when it was probable that whatever we said would be listened to. We didn’t even look at each other. Simply stood there.

  After about two minutes, I went to press the intercom again when I heard the sound of feet clumping heavily down stairs. We stepped back from the door, and I experienced a momentary spurt of adrenalin as someone on the other side released the locks and pulled back the bolts. Then the door came open quickly and I was looking up at the smiling face of Nicholas Tyndall: six feet four and sixteen stone of murderous charm.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said in a booming but not unfriendly voice, pulling on a black puffa jacket and stepping outside.

  Before I had time to reply, he shut the door, slid between us and started down the steps. Tina and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows and I shrugged, turning to follow him.


  ‘Slow down, Mr Tyndall,’ I said as we got to the bottom of the steps. ‘Anyone would think you were running away from something.’

  He stopped and waited for us, the smile sitting easily on his face. Tyndall looked like a man who smiled a lot. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy really: early thirties, tall, well built, with clearly defined patrician features and smooth coffee skin. He was completely bald, but the style fitted him so well that it was obvious he was hairless by choice rather than fate. Today, he was dressed casually in Levi’s, khaki Timberlands and a white T-shirt under the jacket. He could have been a clothes model for a company like Gap. Everything looked brand new, including him.

  ‘What can I do for you, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you know why we’re here,’ said Tina sharply, keen to show she wasn’t intimidated by Tyndall’s reputation.

  The grin grew wider as he sized her up. ‘Do I look like Mystic Meg? I can’t read minds, otherwise I’d have been outside waiting for you when you turned up. You’re going to have to give me a clue.’

  ‘We need you to come down to the station and make a statement,’ I told him.

  As we caught him up, he turned and began walking steadily down the road, careful to avoid a young mother pushing her two young kids in a twin buggy. She smiled at him and glared at us.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what you know regarding the events at Heathrow on Wednesday.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about them.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that,’ I said, grabbing him by the arm and slowing him up. It was quite an effort, and probably not the safest move in the world, but it had to be done. You start kow-towing to the big boys and you never stop. ‘We need you to accompany us down the station.’

  His eyes fell to where my hand was on his jacket, and then came back to me. The expression in them was dark and cold, and even if I hadn’t known his reputation I would have been able to tell that, for all his smiles and friendly greetings, this was a very dangerous and ruthless man. ‘I don’t like people I don’t know trying to manhandle me,’ he said, his tone threatening.

  I held his gaze, but let my hand drop. ‘I want you to take this conversation seriously, Mr Tyndall. We’re not going to chase round after you begging for your co-operation, we’re demanding it. Three close associates of yours were involved in trying to rob a drug deal that ended in six deaths, and since it’s well known that they don’t even so much as breathe without your say-so, it’s a fair bet to assume you organized it.’

  ‘Prove it.’ The classic career thug’s riposte.

  ‘We intend to, but first we want you to come down the station.’

  ‘I ain’t got time at the moment. You want to talk to me, you talk here. Otherwise, contact my lawyer.’

  ‘All right, then. When was the last time you saw Ashley Grant? Otherwise known as Strangleman.’

  Tyndall looked as if he was going to answer me with a wisecrack, then obviously thought better of it. ‘A few days back. Monday, I think it was.’

  ‘Whereabouts did you see him?’

  ‘At the Turnham social club,’ he answered, referring to his organization’s unofficial HQ off the Holloway Road. ‘I play pool down there sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ said Tina, pulling out her notebook. ‘Quite a lot, apparently.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t think I want to carry on with this conversation any more. I don’t like your attitude. Either of you. You want to speak to me, I want my lawyer present.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘If you really have got nothing to do with this, then it’ll look a lot better if you co-operate, won’t it? And lawyers and co-operation aren’t two words that normally go together. So talk to us now.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say. I saw Strangleman Monday. I know him and so I spoke to him about this and that, but he’s not that close to me no more, whatever you lot might think. I don’t trust him, and I think he feels the same way about me. We used to do a bit of work together but not any more. He never mentioned nothing about a robbery.’

  ‘Where do you think he could have got the information from?’

  Tyndall gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Fuck knows. I ain’t got a clue, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Do you know a Robert O’Brien?’ asked Tina.

  ‘I know of him, yeah. Most people round these parts do.’

  ‘Have you ever met with him for any reason?’

  He shook his head with a humourless smile. ‘Somehow I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he’s the last bloke in the world I’d want to meet up with.’

  ‘Why?’

  Tyndall sighed loudly, again stepping aside as an older lady in her sixties walked past on the pavement with a collie. She didn’t give him quite such a pleasant look as the young mother, but hurried past head down, as if fearful he’d catch her eye. Perhaps she’d been the owner of the labrador whose head had ended up in the Asian family’s kitchen.

  ‘Why? I’ll tell you why. Because when he used to hang round with that fucking nutter Krys Holtz they had a run-in with one of my cousins. Rene Phillips. Remember him?’ We both shook our heads. ‘He was a doorman at a club in Holborn. One night he kicked out Danny Fitzgerald, another member of Krys Holtz’s little crew, because Fitzgerald was being pissed and lairy and upsetting some of the clientele. But the thing is, Fitzgerald didn’t want to go, so him and Rene had a bit of a tear-up, and Rene won. None of the other doormen would get involved because they knew who Fitzgerald was, but Rene didn’t scare easy. None of my family do.’ He gave us both a look as he said this, and once again I forced myself to hold his gaze. ‘Anyway, a couple of days later, Rene was leaving his flat when he got a tap on his head with an iron bar. The next thing he knows he’s woken up bound hand and foot in Krys Holtz’s workshop. You must have heard of that?’ I nodded. So did Tina. All the area’s coppers had heard of Krys Holtz’s infamous workshop. ‘They were all there. Krys, Fitzgerald, Mick Noble and Slim Robbie O’Brien. And by the time they’d finished with him he was walking with a permanent limp, had all his fingers broken and part of his ear missing, and needed plastic surgery to get rid of the burns on his face.

  ‘I never did nothing about it. At the time, the Holtzes were just about untouchable, and anyway, I’m not my cousin’s babysitter. If he wants to get involved with people like that, that’s his look-out, but I’ll tell you this for nothing. Both of you. There is no fucking way I’d ever have anything to do with a prick like O’Brien. He’s nothing. And now that he’s out on his own, and without his mates to back him up, he’s lucky I ain’t fucking killed him.’

  ‘Well, someone has,’ I told him. ‘He was murdered two days ago. I’m surprised that a man with your contacts hasn’t heard all about it.’

  Tyndall looked neither surprised nor unsurprised. ‘I’ve been out of town the last few days,’ he said. ‘Down in Marbella. I’ve got a villa there. You can check my plane ticket if you want. So, someone killed him, did they?’ His face broke into a wide, beaming smile. ‘I’m glad. I hope it was slow. He was one geezer who definitely deserved it.’

  ‘When did you leave for Marbella?’

  He furrowed his brow in thought. ‘Must have been Monday night. Yeah, Monday,’ he repeated, nodding. ‘I got the eight-thirty out of Stansted. Came back late last night and went straight to bed. That’s why I ain’t heard nothing about poor old Fat Robbie.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting.’ He turned and started walking back in the direction of the Canonbury Road.

  We walked alongside him. ‘We haven’t finished asking you questions,’ snapped Tina. This time it was she who put a hand on his arm, and this time he brushed it away, only stopping to glare at us each in turn.

  ‘Well, I’ve finished answering them. Whoever’s done over Robbie O’Brien, good luck to them. But it definitely ain’t me. Now, you want to ask me anything else, you contact my lawyer.’ He gave us the name of
someone I hadn’t heard of, and once again turned on his heel.

  We continued after him, firing off questions that were invariably delivered to the back of his head while he remained tight-lipped, right up to his front door, which he slammed in our faces.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Tina when we were back on the street. ‘Would Strangleman really have carried out the robbery without his boss’s knowledge?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I answered, watching his front door. ‘I can’t see anything happening within Tyndall’s crew that he doesn’t know about, or authorize. He’s not the sort of boss who lets his workers freelance.’

  ‘But that story about his cousin. If it’s true, would he really have set something up with O’Brien?’

  ‘O’Brien’s dead, isn’t he? It’s not that unlikely that Tyndall would have organized the whole thing with him and had him killed afterwards. It would have been a good form of revenge. I expect we’ll find that the story about his cousin’s true, which, like Tyndall’s alibi, would be very convenient for a defence lawyer. The problem is, we’re dealing with people who are good at covering their tracks.’ I shook my head slowly. ‘I think Flanagan’s right. Our best hope’s going to be finding the shooter.’

  ‘A lot easier said than done.’

  I allowed myself a thin smile. ‘Isn’t everything?’

  16

  It was near enough lunchtime so Tina and I decided that, for once, we’d go Continental and actually sit down and eat. Life’s too fast in London. It’s always go go go, and when your job involves go go going through the heavy tide of human corruption, then occasionally you need to sit back and take a break. We went to a cheap French restaurant I knew near Islington Green where they served moules marinière with french fries and crusty bread, a meal that always brings back happy memories of childhood family camping trips to the coast of Brittany. And they only charged £4.95 for it as well, so, being overworked and underpaid, I felt doubly rewarded.