by Mark Timlin
A STREET THAT RYHMED AT 3 AM
Sharman and Judith seek what little consolation they can from each other, but she instinctively knows that Sharman needs to take his mind off things. Pushed by her, he accepts a seemingly straightforward, if unlovely job babysitting a big-time American dealer who is in custody but doing one last deal – only this time on the right side of the law.
But when Sharman’s around, babysitting is one step away from carnage and disaster; wanted by the police, he turns for help from the most unlikely of sources – the Yardie gangs that infest the estates of ‘sarf London’. What begins as work turns to vengeance for his ex-wife’s murder and a battle to save the innocence – and life – of his daughter.
About the Author
Mark Timlin has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best-selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles for various newspapers and magazines. His serial hero, Nick Sharman, who appears in Take the A-Train, has featured in a Carlton TV series, starring Clive Owen, before he went on to become a Hollywood superstar. Mark lives in Newport, Wales.
‘The king of the British hard-boiled thriller’ – Times
‘Grips like a pair of regulation handcuffs’ – Guardian
‘Reverberates like a gunshot’ – Irish Times
‘Definitely one of the best’ – Time Out
‘The mean streets of South London need their heroes tough. Private eye Nick Sharman fits the bill’ – Telegraph
‘Full of cars, girls, guns, strung out along the high sierras of Brixton and Battersea, the Elephant and the North Peckham Estate, all those jewels in the crown they call Sarf London’ – Arena
Other books by Mark Timlin
A Good Year for the Roses 1988
Romeo’s Tune 1990
Gun Street Girl 1990
Take the A-Train 1991
The Turnaround 1991
Zip Gun Boogie 1992
Hearts of Stone 1992
Falls the Shadow 1993
Ashes by Now 1993
Pretend We’re Dead 1994
Paint It Black 1995
Find My Way Home 1996
Sharman and Other Filth (short stories) 1996
A Street That Rhymed at 3 AM 1997
Dead Flowers 1998
Quick Before They Catch Us 1999
All the Empty Places 2000
Stay Another Day 2010
OTHERS
I Spied a Pale Horse 1999
Answers from the Grave 2004
as TONY WILLIAMS
Valin’s Raiders 1994
Blue on Blue 1999
as JIM BALLANTYNE
The Torturer 1995
as MARTIN MILK
That Saturday 1996
as LEE MARTIN
Gangsters Wives 2007
The Lipstick Killers 2009
for Charlotte and Amy
‘We deal in lead, friend’
Steve McQueen in
The Magnificent Seven
PROLOGUE
When the lift arrived in the deserted basement garage, we walked across the rubber- and oil-stained floor, looking for Latimer’s car. Finally I spotted it in one corner and said, ‘There it is, the blue saloon.’
Lopez just grunted in reply. I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in any traffic jams with him. What the fuck am I doing here? I thought.
I got out the keys and walked round to the boot, when I heard a faint sound from the shadows, close to the gap where a dim sign proclaimed ‘EXIT’ in blue neon letters, and the back window of the saab imploded: another bullet screeched off the bodywork close to where I was standing, and Lopez, with an amazed look on his face, dropped the bag and coat he was carrying and fell to the ground with a thud. I saw muzzle flashes come from the darkness, but heard only the discreet coughs of silenced gun barrels.
I just stood there for a stunned second before reacting. Then I dropped the bag I was carrying too, ducked down behind the car and peered over the top of the boot.
Lopez was lying a yard or so away from me, scrabbling at the concrete with hands and feet. ‘Help me!’ he cried gutturally. ‘For Christ’s sake, help me!’
I had no choice. Risking more bullets, I crabbed away from the car on my hands and knees until I was next to him. I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and his belt and dragged him awkwardly into the shelter of one of the buttresses that stuck out into the body of the car park. ‘Oh shit!’ he cried. ‘Oh shit, oh fuck, oh Jesus Christ it hurts!’
It looked like it did too. The bullet had hit him dead in the centre of his back and exited through the front of his coat. There was blood spurting from both the entry and exit wounds. I tore off my jacket, ripped off my shirt and made a pad for his chest where most of the blood seemed to be coming from. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said.
He held up his hand and I placed it over the hole where the bullet had exited him and I pushed his palm hard against the flow of blood. ‘Hold that tight,’ I said.
‘Oh Jesus!’ he cried. ‘Sweet Jesus help me!’
‘Gun!’ I screamed. ‘Where’s your fucking gun?’
‘Jesus please…’
‘The fucking gun!’ I yelled, running my hands under his arm where he’d concealed it before, but felt nothing. Where the fuck did he keep the sodding thing? Or had he left it behind with Shapiro before getting ready for the flight? ‘Lopez,’ I almost screamed in a whisper. ‘Are you armed?’
He stopped calling for divine intervention for a second and pointed with his free hand to his waist. I ran my hands round his belt and felt a concealed holster inside his trousers at the small of his back. I yanked up his jacket and pulled out his .45 automatic. The pistol was huge and heavy, warm from his body heat, and fitted into my hand like it had been custom-made for me. I chambered a round and held the gun in front of me. I heard a sound like a shoe scraping on concrete from behind a parked car and fired, spraying bullets every which way. I heard them clanging on to metal and smashing glass and hoped I didn’t hit a fuel tank, or else detective kebab would be on the menu. I also hoped that it wasn’t some innocent passer-by investigating the sound of the ambusher’s bullets or I might be guilty of sending some civilian to an early grave. Before the clip was empty, I eased my finger off the trigger. I didn’t have any spare magazines.
‘Mother!’ Lopez cried. ‘Where are you?’
‘She’s not here,’ I said. ‘Shut up.’
‘I can see her. Mother!’ And he reached out the hand that wasn’t pressed to his chest.
‘No,’ I said.
Then he turned and looked at me. ‘Hold me,’ he said. ‘Hold me, Mother.’
Shit! I thought. He thinks I’m his fucking mum now. Under other circumstances it would’ve been hysterical. But here, now, it was as sad as shit.
I wiped a bloodstained hand across my face and went closer. I sat with my back against the brick and heaved him to me. He lay across my legs with his back against my chest, and the only thing I could think was that if the gunnie came round the corner, the first bullets would probably finish Lopez off. I held the gun straight out over his shoulder and waited.
‘Oh Jesus fuck! Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh God, stop it hurting. Mother, help me!’ He wouldn’t stop.
I looked down at him and knew he was going fast. ‘Momma. Momma. I said we’d be together some day.’ He looked up. ‘Momma,’ he said. ‘You look so beautiful.’
I touched his head. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’ll be all right soon.’ There was n
othing I could do to help.
‘Kiss me, Momma,’ he said. ‘Give me a kiss.’
I felt like someone was playing a cruel trick on us both.
‘Kiss me,’ he pleaded.
So I did. I leaned my head forward and gently touched his forehead with my lips. And as I did it, I felt the life ebb out of him and he slumped in my arms.
1
Friday night/Saturday morning
Judith was with me when it happened, thank God. Well, not with me exactly, and thank God for that too. See, she’s fifteen now, a young woman. And I still live in the same little studio flat in Tulse Hill. And somehow it just didn’t seem right any more for us to share a room. She never said a word, but she needs her privacy. And I do too. So when she comes to visit me, she stays round my mate Charlie’s gaff. He’s a car dealer and garage owner with a proper wife and two daughters of his own. And he’s got a big house in West Norwood with lots of space and it’s just a few minutes’ drive away. Judith’s always got on well with Charlie and his family, and vice versa, so all in all it worked out for the best.
Then one day, just over a week before Christmas, the best became the worst and would never be the same again.
The reason that Judith was down in London was that my ex-wife Laura and her new – well not so new now – husband Louis, and their son David, were in America. Louis is a dentist and there was some sort of convention in New York. Then they were due to fly to Chicago, where Louis had a whole bunch of relatives, and spend the holiday there, with Judith meeting them the Tuesday before Christmas Day, which that year fell on a Monday. Now it was really my turn to have her for Christmas, but it was an opportunity she didn’t want to miss, and I was quite happy to have her the week prior to her leaving and for a few more days when they all came back in the new year.
At the time I was doing some security work for a supermarket firm. No. Not dressed up in some pathetic imitation of an American cop’s uniform with a radio on my hip and about as much authority as a spam salesman. I was undercover in the main warehouse, which was big enough to take half a dozen jumbo jets and was losing stock like a leaky sieve. That is if all sieves weren’t leaky by definition. It had taken me a week and a half to work out who was at it. A right nasty little firm with one of the under-managers as the Mr Big. But proving it was a different matter, and on the day that Judith arrived from Aberdeen, I dumped what I’d found on the security director’s desk and told him I didn’t do the Christmas shift.
So there we were. The Friday night before Judith was due to jet out to Chicago. I’d taken her out for a Chinese in Streatham, then round to my local bar. Judith had tarted herself up so that she looked like twenty and I think most of the patrons in the place thought that I’d done a bit of cradle-snatching and was out with a new bird.
We’d sat in the bar till closing, me drinking JDs and Judith on the orange juice, having a great time taking the piss out of all and sundry. Then I’d walked her round to Charlie’s, had a quick cuppa, then sloped off home and into bed, which is where I was when my phone rang at God knows what hour.
It was ten past three, as it happens, and I climbed out of a bad dream and into a worse one.
‘Hello,’ I said, when I’d remembered in my dazed state where the phone was.
‘May I speak with Mr Nicholas Sharman?’ a male voice with an American accent said.
‘Speaking.’
‘Mr Sharman. My name is Jake Kowalski. I am assistant chief of security at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.’
A freezing hand clutched at my gut.
‘I am trying to trace the next of kin of Mrs Laura Rudnick.’ Rudnick was Louis’s surname.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Her husband is her next of kin.’ But I did understand. I just didn’t want to admit it.
‘Mr Sharman. Two hours ago, six o’clock in the evening our time, a Seagram International 747 incoming from New York City crashed on landing at the field.’ His voice cracked. ‘I’m afraid all four hundred passengers on board were killed. Mr and Mrs Rudnick and their son David were on the passenger manifest. We checked with the travel agency involved. A Ms Judith Sharman was listed as Mrs Rudnick’s NOK in the event of an accident to the party. It was noted that she was a minor and could be contacted through you at this number. I’m so sorry, Mr Sharman. This place is mayhem. The holiday season and all. The airport has been closed and we’ve got flights stacked up from here to Alaska. I’m supposed to be off myself… but I don’t expect you want to hear this.’
I didn’t, but I felt for the geezer. His worst nightmare had just happened. ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘There’s no chance of a mistake? A missed flight. Something like that.’
‘They checked in an hour before take-off in New York. I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s a mistake at all.’
‘What about Louis’s family? They’re in Chicago somewhere.’
‘Contact has been made. But they wanted us to get in touch with…’ He hesitated, ‘…Judith and her guardian. I guess she’s an orphan now.’
‘Not while I’m still breathing. I’m her natural father.’
‘Apologies, Mr Sharman. After twenty-five years in this business you never get used to this sort of situation.’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘What arrangements are you making?’
‘They’re sketchy at the moment. To be blunt, the plane’s hardly cool even though it’s twenty below out here. Christ knows what state the bodies will be in…’ Another pause. ‘…sorry again.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I used to be a cop myself.’
‘Thank God for that. Can I leave telling your daughter to you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t envy you.’
‘I wouldn’t envy you in the same circumstances.’
He gave me a number to contact and several names in case he was off duty. ‘I’m so goddamn sorry it had to be done like this,’ he said when I’d written them down. ‘Anything we can do at O’Hare will be done.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘But I’m the messenger. And you know what used to happen to the messengers who brought bad news.’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Well, so long, Mr Sharman, and a merr… shit. Force of habit. It’s not going to be, is it?’
‘Not for me and my daughter,’ I said, and broke the connection.
2
I dropped the phone beside me and lay back on the pillow as a wave of unutterable grief swept over me. ‘Fuck,’ I said aloud. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
I looked at my watch. It was three-fifteen. Barely five minutes had passed since the phone rang and changed Judith’s and my life for ever. And how many other lives would be changed before the day was much older? Hundreds, probably thousands, and all because a huge tube of pressurized air and frail humanity had somehow malfunctioned in a cold land thousands of miles away. Malfunctioned. Now there’s a word.
I got up then, pulled on my dressing gown, went to the kitchenette and put on the kettle. As I heard the water inside begin to boil, I found a bottle of Jack in the kitchen cabinet and took a swig straight from the neck. As the raw liquor burnt its way down into my gut I saluted thin air with the bottle and said, ‘Well, Stanley. Another fine mess you’ve got me into.’
I put down the bottle, stuck a teabag, milk and sugar into a cup, and when the kettle clicked off I added boiling water and stirred the contents round until I was satisfied with its strength.
I took the tea back to bed, found my cigarettes and lit one. It tasted bad. The tea didn’t taste much better.
Laura, I thought. Jesus. Laura. If only I’d been a better man she would never have been flying over that frozen landscape. How did it feel? I wondered. Did they have time to realize what was happening? Did she hold Louis’s hand as the plane dropped out of the sky? Did she manage to embrace her baby son who should’ve been mine, if only I’d bee
n a better man? Did she scream as the plane hit and burst into flames? Did she think of Judith? Did she think of me?
I tasted the tea again, lit another cigarette and looked at my watch. Three-thirty. Wasn’t there news on the half-hour through the night on Channel 3?
I found the remote on the bed and hit the ‘ON’ button. The TV picture showed Big Ben then went to the news reader. The plane crash was the top story. With pictures. Normally you take that sort of thing for granted. Wars, famine, disaster brought to your home every hour on the half-hour, and you carry on snogging your girlfriend or eating a slice of pizza. Unless it’s a picture of one of the few people you’ve ever loved being barbecued for the edification of the nation. Then you switch off and, try as you might not, begin to cry.
Then the phone rang again.
I picked it up. ‘Hello,’ I said with a gulp, praying it wasn’t Judith. That somehow she’d found out.
‘Nick?’ It was a woman, not Judith. I didn’t recognize the voice although it was very familiar.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Jane.’
Jane. Who the fuck was Jane? I didn’t know any Janes. It would be just my luck to have a secret admirer choose that moment to tell me she’d been lusting after my pure white body for months. ‘Jane?’ I said.
‘Jane. Jane Hornby. Née Harris. Laura’s sister. You do remember Laura, don’t you?’
That was a bastard thing to say but I didn’t take the bait. If Laura had been a bit of a bitch, Jane was the super-bitch of the family. Apart from their sodding mother, of course, who’d never liked or trusted me and had proved herself gloriously correct, much to her own satisfaction. I think the fact that Mum had caught me drunk one night just before the wedding with my hand up Jane’s skirt hadn’t helped much. Jane had wanted a fuck that evening, big time, and had never forgiven me either for trying or being caught, I was never sure which.
‘Hello, Jane,’ I said.
