Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  He nodded in resignation. “You should get compensation, Finn,” he said. “It’s an open-and-shut case.”

  “You think so?”

  “I—don’t know what you mean.”

  “Do you really believe Nicky would do a runner?”

  “Last week, I would never have believed it, no.”

  “Did you know she was getting death threats? Via email?”

  “Yes, I knew. She used to be on Twitter, and Facebook, but the abuse got so bad she gave them up. It happens, especially to women.”

  “Why didn’t she report it?”

  “She did, for all the difference it made.”

  “And she never found out who was behind it?”

  “Some creep. You can’t respond to these idiots—she never took it seriously.”

  “Maybe she should have.”

  Vora thought about what that meant and frowned.

  “What cases was she working on?” I asked.

  “She mostly dealt in corporate affairs, nothing high-profile or controversial. But she did have a few personal clients, like you …”

  “Any chance you could put me in touch with these other clients?”

  “That would be unethical. Unprofessional—I could get struck off.”

  “So what? I thought you’d retired.” Vora rubbed his forehead, looking older by the minute. “Look,” I said, “I’m not convinced Nicky ran off with my money, and I don’t think you are either. If she didn’t, something must have happened to her, possibly connected to a case she was working on. I just need to get into her office, take a look at her correspondence …” Though at my reading speed, looking at it would be all I could do, I thought.

  Vora chewed his lip, torn between doing the legal thing and doing the right thing. “You don’t need to get into her office,” he said at last. He glanced through the glass walls towards the reception area, but no one was watching. “I’ve been copying her case files, so I could pass her clients over to another firm. The police will expect to see the originals, but these …” He gathered up the copies he had stacked on the table and dropped them into the two box files. “I’ll just copy them again,” he said. “But don’t mention my name. I don’t know how you got hold of these, OK?”

  There were a few empty cartons lying about that had originally held photocopy paper. Vora clipped the box files shut and handed them to me, and I wedged them into the cardboard box.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “I’ll find her,” I said. “Or I’ll find out what happened to her.”

  “If something did happen …” Vora hesitated. “Watch out it doesn’t happen to you too.”

  They were only legal papers, but the weight of the files nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets before I made it as far as the Tube and finally got to rest the box on my lap. The carriage rumbled and rocked and swayed westwards, the other passengers playing on their smartphones or staring into space, while I peeked into the box.

  At school I’d eventually been diagnosed as dyslexic, but by the time they’d organized remedial classes I’d been expelled for fighting … and dealing drugs, and criminal damage. There were adult remedial classes I could take now, but I’d never got around to it because I couldn’t be bothered and I was too embarrassed. Now I wished I’d swallowed my pride; it was going to take me months to read all these. I didn’t have Sherwood’s money, and I would barely have time to dump this lot at the gym before my appointment at his plush brothel of an office over the pool hall. I counted my options: I could tell Sherwood I needed more time, I could tell him to go ride a donkey, or I could follow Nicky’s example and disappear … any or all of which would leave Delroy and Winnie in the firing line.

  I didn’t have any options at all.

  Sean the Wardrobe smirked when he saw me standing on the doorstep outside Sherwood’s offices, like he knew something I didn’t. I studied the bruise on his face. “It hardly shows now,” I said. “Did you dab a bit of Estée Lauder on it?” The smirk wilted into a sulky glower and he stood back to let me go first up the stairs. At Sherwood’s office he reached past me to open the door, without knocking this time, and I wondered why until I realized Sherwood was not behind his big desk. Elvis was there, though, perched on the same unit in the corner, like a pet lizard. He said nothing, just watched me, and I guessed this was another of Sherwood’s games.

  My mum had taken me to the dentist once, when I was about eight, to get a tooth extracted. I knew it was going to be painful and I wanted to get it over with, but this particular jerk of a dentist seemed to go out of his way to prolong the anticipation to screaming point. I had sat waiting in the padded chair for what seemed like a day and a half, staring at a rack full of gas cylinders and some dubious-looking chemical flask with a long clear tube leading to a mask, while Mum tried to distract me with daft questions about my favourite video games. I was reminded of that experience now.

  Already I was getting less respect than on my last visit. Sherwood knew something was up.

  “Flynn, hey,” said Sherwood as he appeared from a door in a recess beyond his desk, shrugging on his jacket. He was wearing a different suit, as sharply cut as the first. In his line of work I didn’t imagine he took a lot of board meetings or did many media interviews, so presumably the designer labels were all about image, and pretending to be a legitimate businessman when he was anything but. “Dean, get me a coffee, would you?” Elvis sniffed and left the room. So his name was Dean? Maybe he modelled himself on that old movie star James Dean—though they had nothing in common beyond the pout and the quiff and the mumble.

  Sherwood had got my name wrong and pointedly not offered me a drink—silly slights intended to needle me. When I was eight I had tried to snatch the forceps from the dentist and do it myself, and now I felt the same impulse.

  “I don’t have the money, Mr. Sherwood. And I won’t be able to get hold of it by tomorrow.”

  “Ah,” said Sherwood. He sounded disappointed that I’d cut short the foreplay.

  “My lawyer’s disappeared, and she had access to my accounts.”

  “That’s one I hadn’t heard before,” said Sherwood. “But how exactly is it my problem?”

  I took my wallet out of my pocket, tugged my credit card from its pocket and offered it to Sherwood. He looked at it as if his new kitten had brought him half a rotten rat from the garden.

  “There’s nearly nine thousand pounds in that account,” I said.

  “Nearly nine thousand?”

  “Eight and a half,” I admitted. Nicky had set it up for me so I would always have access to some cash, and I’d rarely taken out more than forty quid a week—I hated having more than that in my wallet. I did wonder why Nicky hadn’t cleaned out that account too, but then she had been in a hurry. “The PIN is six-seven-four-three.”

  “And you expect me to go to some machine outside a supermarket and stand in line to collect the money you owe me. Is that it?”

  “I’d give you all of it now, but my lawyer has to countersign the cheques.”

  “And what’s to stop you phoning your bank and getting that card stopped?”

  “I’m not going to do that. I’m not stupid,” I said.

  “Really? Because that’s not the impression I’m getting.” Elvis—Dean, rather—giggled. He had reentered silently behind me, and now he placed a china cup of coffee of Sherwood’s desk, slopping some into the saucer. He wasn’t good waiter material. I stuffed the card back in my wallet. So much for that idea.

  “You came to my office, Flynn,” said Sherwood. “You made me a business proposition, which I accepted, and now—just one day later—you’re offering me a fraction of what I’m entitled to?”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  “I don’t think so. Try harder.”

  I was about to tell him about the compensation fund and how I could pay him back in a few weeks, when I realized it would be futile to make excuses and start bleating for terms, and when you were weak it was never
good to let it show.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want?” I said.

  “I want the money you owe me.”

  “Then you’ll have to wait.”

  “Maybe I’m getting old and crabby,” said Sherwood, “but I don’t like lippy bloody teenagers telling me what I have to do.” He was genuinely angry, I realized, and on one level I felt glad to have finally got under his skin. “You must take me for a right moron, coming in here and boasting about your pal the Guvnor and how he was looking out for you.”

  “I never mentioned McGovern,” I said. “You did.”

  That might have been true, but Sherwood didn’t like me pointing it out.

  “Who gives a crap?” he shouted. He expected me to flinch, but I’d been shouted at before, by guys a lot scarier than Sherwood. He realized losing his cool wasn’t having the desired effect, and he pulled himself together, and smirked instead. “Your pal McGovern’s over,” he said. “He’s history. His bent cops got caught, and the Feds were so far up his ass they could read his mind.”

  He had his facts wrong. The Guvnor’s bent cop had turned on him and got shot. I knew, because I’d been there, but this wasn’t the time to be picky.

  “McGovern’s run off to Siberia or somewhere and he’s not coming back,” sneered Sherwood. “It’s a whole new set of faces now. Ever heard of the Turk?”

  “The who?” I said.

  “Didn’t think so,” said Sherwood. He smiled because he knew something I didn’t, and sat back in his kid-leather executive chair. “OK, you want to negotiate new terms for your loan.” I noticed he wasn’t talking about Delroy’s loan any more, and I had a feeling any negotiations were going to be a bit one-sided. “Dean tells me you’re running a gym. Does it make any money?”

  “We get by,” I said.

  “You lease the place or own it?”

  I knew what Sherwood wanted to hear. “I own it,” I lied. Maybe he had heard that Nicky had disappeared, but he didn’t know she’d disappeared before I’d managed to buy the freehold of the building, or he wouldn’t have asked.

  “Who’s got the title deeds?”

  “I have,” I lied some more.

  “Well then, let’s say three grand a month, for two years, using this business of yours as collateral,” he said. “Bring the title deeds round here Monday and we’ll draw up the papers.”

  “I don’t have a lawyer any more,” I said.

  “Not a problem.” He smiled. “Mine will look after the paperwork. All part of the service.”

  I’d never afford those payments, I knew, but that’s how Sherwood wanted it. He had no interest in owning a gym—he wasn’t the sort of guy who’d get up at five to mop a floor, and I doubted he would ask Dean to do it. He was planning to shut it down, gut the building, flog it for flats and walk away with the profit. Except that was never going to happen, because I didn’t own the building. But he didn’t need to know that yet.

  Lying had given give me time to think of something. Right now it was important to look reluctant.

  “I own the business with Delroy. I need to discuss it with him.”

  “What’s to discuss? Tell him. He got you into this.”

  “It’s not just my business—that’s my home,” I protested. “If you take it over, where do I live?”

  “Make your payments and it won’t be an issue,” said Sherwood. “And if you come up short, drag yourself to Russia and borrow it from McGovern.” He flicked his head at Dean, who heaved himself upright and slouched over to open the door.

  “Did you ever meet Nicky Hale?” I said.

  Sherwood blinked, as if annoyed at me for changing the subject. “Never heard of him,” he said.

  The doors to Sherwood’s office slammed shut behind me, and I tugged my collar up against the rain. It had been a shot in the dark anyway. Sherwood was going to benefit from Nicky’s disappearance, sure, but he was small-time, a punk and a bully—I couldn’t believe he’d have had a solicitor abducted just to get his hands on my tatty little gym.

  So who was this new guy, the Turk? Sherwood hadn’t just heard of him, he’d talked to him, judging by the smug way he dropped his nickname. It seemed to me that boasting about the big sharks you knew wasn’t a sensible thing for small fish like Sherwood to do. But that was his business, I decided, and it was high time I minded mine.

  I had to come clean to Delroy. When things got sticky in the boxing ring I had always liked having Delroy in my corner, wiping me down, taping my cuts shut and telling me where I was going wrong. If he couldn’t offer advice he’d slag me off, wind me up and make me angry, and that used to work too. I just hoped that this time he wouldn’t get dragged into the ring with me.

  four

  “What are you going to do?” asked Delroy, as we wiped down the gym’s sparring kit in a quiet interval before the evening rush.

  “I think as long as we keep making the payments,” I said, “I should be able to string him along.”

  “How? We don’t turn over anything like that much.”

  “I’ll cover it for now,” I said. The money Nicky hadn’t taken might keep Sherwood satisfied for a month or two. I could see Delroy wanted to protest, but he just nodded. He was out of his depth, I realized, and weak and ill and weary, and again I felt ashamed that I had ever got him involved in this business.

  Delroy hung the last helmet up on a hook to dry off. “Oh yeah,” he remembered. “You have a visitor.” I looked around. “She’s upstairs.” I would normally have expected him to announce news like that with a dirty grin, but he just looked grim, and abruptly I knew who it was.

  Susan Horsfall was sitting on my ripped vinyl sofa, reading. She had draped my discarded shirts over the back and, I noted with some embarrassment, picked up my discarded underwear from the floor and put it in the bin liner I was using for dirty laundry.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said.

  She jumped, and looked up and laughed, a little nervously. “Finn. Hey. Sorry—your friend Delroy sent me up, and I thought you’d be here, or at least be back soon. And there wasn’t much in the way of reading material except these …” She held up one of the case files I had carried away from Nicky’s office. I decided this wasn’t the moment to explain why my place wasn’t strewn with novels and magazines. “How did you get hold of them?” she asked.

  “They’re the files on Nicky’s other clients,” I said, ducking the question for Vora’s sake.

  “You really think she hasn’t absconded? That something happened to her?”

  “Presumably you do too,” I said, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  She wasn’t as cocky as the last time we’d met; she looked worried, and slightly ashamed. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “I kept thinking, what if you were right? It’s easier to believe she did do a runner, that she’s safe somewhere spending someone else’s money, than …”

  “Whatever the alternative is,” I said.

  “Nicky and I didn’t always get on,” said Susan. “I mean, there was a lot of crap in our childhood, and some of it was my fault. But the thought of her being taken, maybe being held prisoner, and nobody even knowing … it’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone … even my cow of a sister.” I could see she was trying to lighten the darkness with a feeble gag, and it wasn’t working. I heard a catch in her throat, and the papers trembled in her hands.

  “If you want to do something about it, you could help me,” I said.

  “How?”

  “You could tell me what’s in those files. I’m not the fastest reader in the world.”

  “You think one of her clients might have had something to do with her disappearing?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “I’m just shaking all the trees to see what falls out.”

  She turned back to the two box files. “There are only two personal clients here, as far as I can see,” she said. “Joan Bisham, and Jeremy Zeto.”

  “Who’s Joan Bisham?” />
  “Property developer being charged with insurance fraud. A building her company bought—some old pub—mysteriously burned down, with two squatters inside. One of them died in the fire. This guy Leslie survived.” She passed me a photocopy of an article from what looked like a local free newspaper. The main picture was of a man in his thirties with half of his face swathed in bandages.

  “Fraud? Why isn’t she being done for attempted murder?”

  “Her husband got done for the fire. The insurers think she was in on it. The case comes to trial in a week or so.”

  “What about the other file?”

  “Zeto? There’s not much to that one. He’s a vicar being done for drink-driving.”

  “All that paperwork for one drunk driver?”

  “Nicky really went to town on the defence, by the look of it. Witness statements … psychiatric report …”

  “Let me have a look.” I held out my hand and she passed the report to me. It was unreadable jargon, as I expected, but at least there wasn’t much of it—it was only two pages long. Maybe Zeto was paying for his own defence, and that was all he could afford. I dug through the rest of the papers in the box file. About a dozen witness statements, so dense and closely typed my eyes ached just glancing at them. What had Nicky been trying to do—drown the prosecution case under loads of bumpf?

  Under that bundle was a single printout of a photo that seemed to have been blown up from a website mugshot, of a heavily built bloke in a cheap suit with jowls that bulged over his collar. A copper, I knew almost immediately, probably from the way his narrowed suspicious eyes seemed ready to follow me around the room. He wore a shallow grin that suggested that while the picture was being taken the Met’s PR department was holding a gun to his kidneys.

  “Who’s the filth?” I said.

  “Officer in charge of the case, I think.”

  I flipped the photo over. On the reverse was Nicky’s handwriting: DS Ian something.

  “Can you read Nicky’s handwriting?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  Susan glanced at it. “DS Ian Lovegrove,” she read out. “North Met Traffic division. There’s a phone number too, but no email … What do you suppose this is?” She held up a black square of plastic—a memory card. It must have been lying loose in the box file when Vora stuffed the copies into it.