by Linda Coles
“What can I make you, Jack?” She held out her hand for his mug while hers finished brewing.
“I’ll have a trim macchiato with sprinkles, please,” he teased.
“Coffee with milk coming right up.”
He had the same every day, every time.
“Just had a call from Manchester, from DS Duncan Riley,” she said as Jack’s coffee brewed. “He’s coming down our way for tactical training, so he said he’d drop in. He’s quite clued up on Wilfred Day by all accounts, so I said we’d take him out for dinner, a curry or something. You up for that? He seemed a decent sort. And it would be good to pick his brains on what’s happening up his way.”
“Always up for a curry, you know me. Or Chinese. I don’t mind. It’s a shame Wong’s don’t have seating. We could treat him to crispy pork balls. Or we could take it back to your place?”
“Probably not while the house is in decorating turmoil. I’ll organize a table some place. He won’t be in a flash hotel, so he’ll welcome the dinner date rather than a garage sandwich in his room, I should imagine.”
“How much is there to know about Wilfred Day – any idea?” Jack asked as they headed back to their desks. Jack’s was a mass of manila files and paperwork, with barely enough space to put his mug down freely. Amanda’s, in contrast, was exactly the opposite. They say opposites attract, and that’s why they worked together so well. He was the milk for her cereal; she was the mug for his coffee – metaphorically speaking. His seat groaned again as he sat, letting it swivel slightly to one side and back again as he sipped from his mug. He looked deep in thought, miles away.
“Duncan is very familiar with him by all accounts,” Amanda said. “Day sounds like a special sort of character from what I know of him already, a real charmer. Seems he’s a new breed of gangster, a new generation, less thug and more brains and a good technological fit for twenty-first-century crime. Like we talked about, even prostitutes have moved more online now, away from the drafty doorways, so it follows that pimps and drug lords have done the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the prozzies are GPS tracked by their pimps now, maybe even timed. Check the customer in and check them back out again, like some sort of productivity tool almost. If they’re holed up in a flat, say, how many paying customers could you get through in one night if they don’t have to stand on street corners and the client comes to them in their room? That could be big money for some – pimps and solos.”
“You reckon there is such a thing?” Jack asked. “Is nothing exempt from the clock? Not even getting your leg over?”
“It’s business. No matter what the service, it’s a business and time is money. And technology comes to us all eventually, Jack, even you.”
“Having a dig, are we, Lacey? I didn’t do too bad when I was ailing in hospital and you wanted me to delve into the dark web. I found what we were looking for, didn’t I?” Jack mock-buffed his nails, looking chuffed with himself. His nails were looking neater, Amanda noticed, since Mrs. Stewart had taken him under her wing.
“I’ll give you that one, and I’ll be sure and hit you up when we need more dark web research done. You’ll be the man,” she said with gusto and a smile. “If only we could get you to master the coffee machine…”
“Cheeky – watch it,” admonished Jack. “Well, with that in mind, maybe I should take another snoop around, do a bit more on prescription meds and see how they are being traded, see where I end up. I’ve still got that old laptop Ruth gave me, too.” He looked thoughtful as he added, “In fact, that’s a great idea, Jack. I’ll do it later.” He slapped himself on the back and swung his seat round to face his desk, conversation over.
“Good plan, Jack,’ Amanda said. “Meanwhile, while you’re playing Inspector Clouseau with a piece of apple pie on your side table and Bake Off on the TV, remember me hard at it decorating, will you? I know which I’d rather be doing.” Amanda groaned inwardly at the thought of physical hard work after a day of mentally tough work. She wasn’t meant for physical work; her body didn’t appreciate it. A slice of pie and the TV sounded more than appealing. “Right, then. I’ll book us a table at Chat House. Will that do for you?” But Jack was engrossed in something on his screen so Amanda carried on talking to herself, her words falling on distracted ears. “Yes, okay, Amanda, you do that. Seven p.m. work for you?” she mocked. Since she was having both sides of the conversation, she turned her head to the other side to await the reply. “Perfect, Jack. Got to love a good Jalfrezi.” She turned her head again in reply. “That you do.”
Amanda picked up the phone and booked them a table. Seven o’clock it was, then.
Chapter Forty-Two
It couldn’t be that hard to do, could it?
Luke had built web pages before, but he’d never had to host them on a secret server – a server on the dark web. From his quick search, he’d found there were plenty of tutorials, YouTube videos even, informing newbies how easy it was to host a page anonymously. It didn’t seem to be much more than using hidden ports and directories. While Luke wasn’t a tech whizz in this space, he knew enough to put together what he needed without having to ask for help. Asking someone for help would set alarm bells off.
He got to work creating, making the simple site look businesslike without being sinister, and three hours later he was ready to launch their temporary business venture into what felt like outer space, the big black unknown, another world. His finger hovered over the return key. When he pressed it, the site would be launched and there would be no turning back. Once it was out there, they were in business.
He pulled his finger away from the key without pressing it and sat back in the chair, thinking. Really? Was he really willing to kill for a few thousand pounds? Would he really be able to snuff out someone’s life because he’d been paid for the task? Who the hell was he?
A hired assassin, that’s who.
But he knew flipping burgers or scrubbing floors was not going to get them where they wanted to be. No, he couldn’t see another way. Luke pressed return and waited for a confirmation message on his screen. When it eventually came, he sat and stared at it. He’d actually done it. His stall was set up and ready to go. Now it was a case of waiting and finding the next item on the list for the plan to take shape – the weapon. He texted Clinton, just one line to tell him they were now live. Then he closed his laptop and headed for the bathroom to mull over what he’d done in a hot bath. It was the next best thing to going down the pub with no money in his pocket.
The soak had in fact been fruitful. While he’d lain there steaming and thinking, his old friend Tommy had popped into his head. He’d been at school with Luke, but he’d lived on the other side of the tracks in North Kensington, a rougher part of town and nowhere near the Kensington that was famously fashionable. Trendy, suburban, movie-worthy Notting Hill, where Luke currently lived with his parents, was the meat in the town sandwich, slap bang in the middle. North Kensington was mainly mid- to high-rise blocks of estate flats where the tough kids at school lived, a place he’d only ever been once before, and a place he hadn’t had the desire to go back to, either. His father had joked that the dogs went out in twos for safety, it had been that bad. No, his friends were not the same crowd, apart from Tommy, that was. Luke had grown up in greenery, among three-story houses, each with a reasonable car out front and white-collar parents inside, though his own parents had fought to keep up appearances. They’d struggled at times to give him the education and life they wanted for him, and while he appreciated it now, as a young, independent man, he’d no clue. Until that day that Tommy had taken him to his home on the Lancaster estate.
Tommy had been a bit of an oddball friend, and Luke had been drawn to him even though he was so different from all his other mates. He had a real mischief about him, though he rarely got in any real trouble because his cheeky personality found him a way out. It seemed everyone liked Tommy. With blue NHS-issued plastic glasses, he was the butt of many jokes, but he brushed them off like
the cat hair on his T-shirt. He had a toughness about him that wasn’t sharp like the thugs that lived by him. He’d meant no harm to anyone, but loved the attention his personality afforded him.
Looking back now, Luke realized Tommy was probably starved of guidance and attention and could well have morphed into a rich life of poor crime without support. Their paths had separated when Tommy’s mother had died suddenly and he was sent away to live with an aunt up north; his father was already in prison. Whatever had happened to Tommy after that Luke had no idea. Neither boy had been big on writing letters, and there were no mobile phones back then. Luke wondered if Tommy was in prison himself now, like father like son, or if he was thriving somewhere, with a family of his own maybe, successful in a business of his own.
He thought back to a pub they had tried to get into; North Pole it had been called back then. They’d both sneaked in pretending to be part of a group of four men that had entered at the same time, hiding behind them in a vain attempt to gain their first taste of beer. They’d been rumbled almost immediately but one of the men, the youngest, Luke remembered, had bought them a half pint between them, admiring the two lads for their ingenuity and guffawing that it wouldn’t hurt to try it. In a place such as the Pole, the landlord had turned a blind eye; two boys sipping half a pint between them in the corner were no big deal compared to the other activities that went on in the place. The police busted the dingy premises on a regular basis; fighting with broken bottles was the norm and whatever substance a desperate man desired was available in the toilets. Other desperate people took part in even more desperate acts in those same toilets.
Blind eyes indeed, Luke thought. Nobody had known anything about anything.
Luke wondered about Tommy. There was always Facebook to find him.
As for the pub? There was one way to find out.
Chapter Forty-Three
It was cold and clear as Luke stepped outside. Pulling his collar up high and his hat down low, he rammed his gloved hands into his coat pockets and set off towards the bus stop, destination North Kensington and the Pole. It all seemed a bit surreal, knowing what he was trying to accomplish on his own with no experience in the line of work he’d volunteered himself for. It could all go terribly wrong, sure, but if he thought it through, planned it meticulously and practiced privately, he was educated and smart enough to pull it off. Criminals got caught because they didn’t plan enough or were a bit thick, he reasoned. That’s why they were criminals – it was their fall-back career. The successful ones were the men and women at the top, the drug lords, the modern-day gangsters, high-rolling madams. They played a different game, a game of strategy like inflated Monopoly, with huge stakes and obscene amounts of money.
Luke had read about some of the greatest criminal minds of the past; the best of them had been educated, clever and meticulous planners. And some had had values too. The infamous Ted Bundy, for instance. During his killing spree, where he had savagely mutilated and killed over thirty women including his wife, he had admitted he would never steal an uninsured car because he didn’t think it was right. He’d happily kill his wife rather than divorce her, but he drew the line at taking an uninsured car because that wasn’t fair. Go figure.
But prisons were full of the ones who had been caught, which to Luke’s mind meant they were either stupid or hadn’t given enough time and attention to the details. They had probably left evidence and clues like a trail of breadcrumbs for the police to follow.
But not Luke. He had no intention of being caught. He was the educated, creative one, and Clinton was educated and meticulous, so between them, they’d come up with the perfect plan.
After the toasty warmth of the night bus, the air outside felt like it couldn’t get any colder. Yet it surely would. The worst of winter was yet to come and even though London rarely got snow, it got bitterly cold, the wind chill making the mercury plummet. Luke rubbed his hands together as he walked through deserted streets, head down against the freezing night air, focusing on keeping his feet out of the random dog shit that littered the cracked pavement. He’d not been down these streets in years, not since Tommy had left; there’d been no need.
Most of the low-rise flat blocks had cracks of light peeking out from behind curtains, a signal someone was home, but some were still in darkness. Many others were boarded up with graffiti-covered plywood. Some of the plywood sheets had been wrenched away at a corner as someone or other attempted to break in, use the empty space as a squat, for a quick lay maybe, or somewhere peaceful to get a fix and lie low for a while. It was a dark, murky, mostly uninhabited world, left to fend for itself, unchecked, unregulated and rampant with crime.
Tommy had lived further up the street, on the tenth floor of a tower block with his mum. Luke had been there only the once and had tried not to stare at how little they had, at the decrepit state of what they did have. But Tommy’s mum had been a proud woman, and Luke smiled, remembering the big old blanket that had sat in pride of place on their sofa. She’d crocheted it herself, making the coloured wool squares out of wool from old unravelled jumpers or from skeins bought for a few pence at the market. How long it would have taken he’d no idea, but that blanket had covered every inch of the battered old sofa underneath. How sad it had been when she’d died and Tommy had to go.
As Luke approached the pub at the end of the street, he wondered once again about what Tommy would be doing now. He felt out of place and nervous in this part of town, yet Tommy had thrived here because he’d known nothing else. Luke hoped his aunt’s place had been a step up.
The pub’s entrance door opened while he was still a few steps away and a drunk made his way out, words slurring. Luke stepped aside as he passed and watched as he made it to the corner of the building before retching his liquid evening meal back up and depositing it on the concrete. A trickle ran from the splattered mess and Luke watched it roll away to the curb, feeling a little queasy inside himself. The man staggered off, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, going back the way Luke had come, back towards the darkness, the darkened homes of the derelict.
Reaching out a shaking hand, Luke opened the pub door and stepped inside.
Chapter Forty-Four
It hadn’t changed all that much in nearly fifteen years. Cheap Formica tabletops, faded once-salmon-coloured velour upholstery on the chairs and foam-covered built-in seating that ran around one half of the dim room. A long wooden bar stretched almost the length of the left side. The mirror above it reflected a roomful of wary eyes on the intruder. Luke heard the lowering of conversation as he approached the bar. A huge man in a cut-off denim jacket, with arms like Popeye and wearing dark aviator shades, slowly made his way toward him. Inside, Luke’s heart failed a beat and he swallowed involuntarily. Summoning courage from deep in his boots, Luke ordered half a bitter; it seemed the right thing to do. The man wordlessly grabbed a glass and slowly made his way back to a pump, lifted a brass tap. Luke watched it fill, a creamy head of about an inch forming on top of the deep brown liquid. It gave him somewhere to put his eyes; he dared not look up at the long mirror, where he knew he’d see so many eyes looking back at him.
Another man moved and stood next to him, too close, intimidatingly close, then another stood on his other side. Their body odour caught in his throat. The barman delivered his drink, and Luke handed over a note to pay, hoping it was enough, not really expecting to see any change. Luke was the only person who had spoken so far, though conversation in the room had resumed. With a shaky hand, he tried not to slop beer over the rim of his glass as he made his way, unaccompanied, to a vacant corner and sat down. So far so good, he thought uneasily, although it didn’t quite feel good; it felt terrifying.
He sipped his beer and tried not to catch anyone’s eye as he forced himself to look a little more relaxed than he felt. Whatever went on in the pub, the eyes he was purposefully avoiding would suddenly become blind, he knew – and stay that way. He glanced at the floor. The carpet underfoot had once been a
deep pile, but over the years it had worn in places, almost to the thread backing in spots in front of the bar. In other spots, like up against the covered seating, it had plenty of years left in it. It probably had plenty of beer in it, too, and maybe even blood.
When he did eventually chance a glance up from the floor, nobody was looking his way. Everyone had gone back to their own business, back to more important matters. And as Luke relaxed a little, he thought about the business he’d come to this particular dive for – a weapon contact. He sipped and wondered how he might do that now he was here. What was he expecting? To see a dodgy bloke hanging his shingle out, a sign saying ‘Guns for Sale’? He found some change in his pocket and nervously walked back towards the bar and waited. A packet of crisps would give him something to do while he sat. He hoped nobody would spit in his drink while his back was turned. Popeye could well be glaring at him from behind his aviators; Luke couldn’t be sure. Popeye’s sour-smelling breath greeted him on his arrival.
“Salt and vinegar crisps, please, mate.”
Again wordlessly, Popeye reached into a brown cardboard box on the floor, one that had had the front cut out, and retrieved a packet. No need for shelf space when the box itself would do. He tossed the bag roughly onto the bar, and Luke handed over change for payment. Popeye checked the amount and tossed the whole lot into the till drawer, a drawer that didn’t close. Nothing was rung through the till, Luke realized. Nothing went through the books in this place. Once again, he felt eyes all over him and headed back to his seat to consume his packet of crisps. His beer looked untampered-with; there was nothing floating on the top that looked out of the ordinary. He took a long mouthful and lifted his eyes again, his glance connecting instantly with that of a man of a similar age over to his right. He was wearing grubby jeans and a hoody, like Luke himself, so he decided to start with him. If he was going to make some headway here, if this evening’s investigative journey was to be fruitful, he might as well make a start.
