by James Craig
‘Good luck with that,’ Carlyle replied. He was conscious that his patience with all of them had run out. Ward or no Ward, he was going to walk out of the building with some useful information. Fuck her. If she didn’t like it, she could go crying to Simpson for a second time.
‘Whaddya mean?’ Durkan caught sight of Balthazar hovering in the doorway and dismissed him with a curt wave of the hand.
Ward made to speak but Carlyle cut her off. ‘Who would ever award a murdering terrorist bastard like you any compo?’
‘Ah, so you’re gonna play the ancient history card, is that it?’ Durkan took a more genteel sip of his drink. Carlyle could see, however, that his hands were still shaking.
‘It’s hardly ancient history.’
‘It is to me.’
Carlyle shook his head. ‘You won’t remember me, but our paths have crossed before.’
‘Have they indeed?’ Durkan placed his glass on the table.
‘Remember the MacDermott Arms in Kentish Town?’
A wry smile played across Durkan’s lips. ‘Vaguely.’
‘I was on duty, the day you walked out of there.’ Carlyle tutted. ‘Right under our bloody noses.’
‘A lifetime ago.’ Durkan turned to Ward. ‘I bet you weren’t even born then, eh love?’
Ward bristled but said nothing.
Durkan turned back to Carlyle. ‘Have you been up there recently?’
‘Nah,’ Carlyle said. ‘Not for a long time. Not my patch.’
‘The MacDermott Arms is gone. Some developer turned it into flats.’
‘That’s what happens,’ Carlyle observed.
‘I suppose so. Even Kentish Town is yuppie territory now, or whatever the equivalent of yuppies is these days. It’s progress, of a sort.’ Durkan pondered. ‘So you were at the MacDermott Arms, eh? You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t recall individuals. There were so many coppers there that day.’
‘It was quite an operation,’ Carlyle admitted.
‘I got away with it on that occasion, but my luck ran out soon enough.’
‘It usually does.’
‘Aye well. So you were one of Maggie’s boot boys?’
‘Kind of,’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘I signed up to be a policeman, not some paramilitary thug. First there was the miners’ strike, then you lot.’
Ward rolled her eyes. The look on her face said, Put a sock in it, Grandad.
Catching her expression, Durkan began wagging his finger in mock disapproval. ‘You should know your history, girl.’
Ward gave a dissenting moue; apparently unsure of how best to proceed, she seemed content to remain silent and for the conversation to meander.
For his part, Durkan seemed to be putting his beating behind him. The cut above his eye still gaped, but at least the bleeding had stopped. ‘That’s the thing about people today,’ he added, warming to his theme. ‘You mention the War on Terror and all they think about is Al Qaeda. We were there first.’
‘True enough,’ Carlyle agreed. ‘I remember that my dad was always rather disappointed you didn’t manage to blow Thatcher to Kingdom Come.’ Recalling the package he had yet to deliver to his father, the kernel of an idea popped into his head. He quickly stored it away for later review. ‘She really wound him up. He had a foam brick that he would throw at the telly every time she came on.’
‘Ah well,’ Durkan said, ‘the funny thing now is that I’m very glad that I didn’t blow her to Kingdom Come.’
‘People did die though,’ Carlyle reminded him, his nostalgia belatedly mingling with disgust.
‘Casualties of war.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
Durkan slowly recited a list of the victims. ‘Sir Anthony Berry, Eric Taylor, Jean Shattock, Muriel Maclean, Roberta Wakeham. Who else even remembers their names?’
‘Their families, for a start.’
‘Look, I’m not defending what happened. But we were only after the one person. And, ironically, if we had succeeded, things would have turned out a whole lot worse for me.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘Without her, none of this would be possible. She was a great woman; I have no doubt that history will treat her kindly.’
I don’t know about that, Carlyle thought.
Not interested one way or the other, Ward yawned expressively.
‘The benefits of hindsight, eh? Durkan said. ‘Anyway, that was all decades ago. We move on.’
Carlyle squirmed at the thought of how old he had become. ‘It’s not that far in the past really.’
‘You don’t think so? To me, it’s about as relevant to us as – I dunno,’ he contemplated a comparison, ‘as the Vikings were to the Victorians. I find it hard to believe that the young fella doing all those things back then was even me.’
But it was, Carlyle thought. You can’t shrug off your past that easily. He glanced through the open doors of the office. Outside, most of the onlookers had drifted back to their computer screens. Standing between the two police officers, Hunter stared into the middle distance. He looked like a man who was planning his next move.
This game is far from over, the inspector reflected.
‘Don’t you wish that you could go back and tell your younger self some home truths?’ Durkan asked. ‘I know I do.’
‘Of course,’ Carlyle said, ‘although I could probably think of some better uses for time travel.’
Their middle-aged musing was finally interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone on the desk. Eyes fixed on Carlyle, Durkan grabbed the handset. ‘Yes?’
The voice on the other end of the line was calm. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘I thought I told you that I was not to be interrupted,’ Durkan snapped. ‘I’ll call you back.’
‘No. I’ll call you.’
‘Okay.’
The line went dead.
Putting down the phone, he said, ‘That was my secretary . . .’
Out of the corner of his eye, the inspector could see Durkan’s PA in the antechamber outside. Happily chatting to one of the lingering rubberneckers, the woman was nowhere near a phone.
Yes, this game was very far from over.
Keen to pre-empt any further reminiscing, Ward stepped across to the desk and handed Durkan a business card. ‘Let’s wrap this up. Do you want to press charges over the assault?’
Durkan glanced in the direction of his attacker. ‘The man clearly has problems. I don’t want to add to them. On the other hand, you simply can’t behave like that.’
Says the man who casually killed five innocent people in a Brighton hotel and maimed others for life. The inspector said nothing.
‘Let me think about it.’
‘In the meantime,’ Carlyle reminded him, ‘we still need to speak to Mr Isaacs urgently.’
Durkan gave an obedient nod. ‘I understand.’
Heading for the door, Carlyle paused. ‘One last thing.’
Durkan and Ward glared at him in unison.
‘Ryan Fortune.’
‘Who?’ Durkan made a performance of consulting his memory banks. ‘I don’t know the name.’
Big surprise, Carlyle thought.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘If you don’t know him,’ said Carlyle sharply, ‘it doesn’t matter.’
TWENTY-NINE
Thirty yards from the main entrance to Thatcher Towers, Joseph Isaacs watched an angry-looking cloud hovering over the South Dock. Not for the first time, he gave himself a pat on the back for investing in a Homburg from the wonderful Bates Hats on Jermyn Street. In his opinion, the Homburg was the most elegant of headwear, and perfect for such an inclement climate to boot.
Almost immediately, he saw the first drops of rain splash the nearby paving stones. One thing the security consultant wasn’t going to miss about London was the lousy weather. He hadn’t yet decided on his next port of call, but it would definitely be somewhere warmer: Lisbon, maybe, or perhaps Valencia. While he waited, Isaacs ran through possible locations in h
is head, ending up with a ‘long list’ of thirty-two cities around the globe. The biggest problem, he concluded, was too much choice.
Standing in the shadow of a green-liveried flower delivery van, Isaacs dropped his cigarette end on to the kerb and kicked it into a drain with the toe of his brogues. Placing a fresh smoke between his lips, he fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for a lighter. Before he could locate it, two uniformed police emerged from the building. Isaacs’ eyes narrowed. Quant had told him that a total of five cops were in Durkan’s office. He wanted to make sure that they had all left the building before making his next move.
Between the two uniforms was a tall, well-built man, who moved like he was in a daze. That would be Hunter. Isaacs felt his sphincter twitch at being in the presence of a man whose whole family had perished at the hands of one of Isaacs’ own associates. The security consultant had protested about Fortune’s choice of Andrew Carson as the final member of his team from the very start. Unfortunately, he had not protested vigorously enough. Well, shit happened. Isaacs could live with it, just as long as the husband didn’t catch up with him.
Relaxing slightly, he watched the Military Policeman allow himself to be bundled into a waiting silver Astra, shuffling on to the middle of the back seat to let the uniforms squeeze in on either side of him.
Where were the others?
A few moments later, he observed as a man and a woman came out of the building and approached the car. Even at this distance it was clear that they were engaged in quite a violent argument. The man pointed towards Hunter, provoking some angry gestures from the woman, who stalked round the vehicle and jumped into the front passenger seat.
‘Five cops,’ Isaacs muttered to himself. ‘Perfect.’
Watching the Astra pull away, the fifth officer took out his mobile and made a short call. Shoving the phone back in his pocket, he headed off along the South Colonnade in the direction of the tube station. Hands in pockets, head bowed, shoulders slouched, the man looked deep in thought as he disappeared into the crowd. Lighting his cigarette, Isaacs took a deep drag, resting his backside on the bonnet of the van before taking a battered mobile from his jacket. Clicking the back off the phone, he removed the battery and then the sim card, before tossing the card into the sewer. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out the £10 sim he had bought an hour earlier at a nearby newsagents. Sticking the sim in the slot, he reassembled the device and switched it on, enjoying another couple of puffs while it found the network.
Wreathed in a halo of pale blue smoke, he dialled the number from memory and let it ring until he got an answer.
‘They’ve gone,’ Durkan said tensely.
‘I know. Just remember to keep this conversation short and vanilla. No details.’
‘Where are you?’ Durkan hissed.
‘I’m gonna have to lie low for a while.’
‘You can say that again. What the hell were you playing at with the credit card?’
‘Short and vanilla, Gerry. Short and vanilla.’ Isaacs sighed to himself. The financier was truly an analogue man in a digital world. He thought that just because he had his office swept for bugs every fortnight, no one could be listening in on his conversations. Edward Snowden’s revelations had gone straight over his head; he just couldn’t grasp the idea that the technological advances of the last fifteen years had made the forces of law and order omnipresent. In Gerry’s world, you were only in trouble when the British Army came kicking your door in at three o’clock in the morning.
‘Ye can stuff yer vanilla shite up yer arse!’
Whatever. Isaacs scratched his head as he watched a bright red Porsche roll down the street in front of him. His boss was right, it was a schoolboy error. ‘I was put on the spot. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a mistake.’
‘They asked about you.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I had to give them your mobile number.’
‘That doesn’t matter. I’ve changed it.’
‘They also asked about Fortune.’
Fucking hell, how many times? ‘Not on the phone. Ten minutes. Usual place.’
At least the rain had stopped. Sitting on a bench, Isaacs sniffed the air tentatively. The brief downpour had done little to improve the air quality, which had recently been plagued by high levels of pollution – a mixture of local car emissions and dust carried from the Sahara Desert. Air quality – that was another factor to take into consideration when choosing a new place to live.
He spotted Durkan approaching from the direction of Thatcher Towers. The Irishman looked less than happy to be out and about. Over one eye he wore a large plaster. You’re looking old, Isaacs thought, too old for this game, at least. He let his gaze fall on the giant video screen on the far side of Canada Square Park. It was showing an advert for a car – or rather, it was an advert for a driving machine, the kind of toy all the bankers that worked in the surrounding offices liked to splash their bonuses on – speeding up a mountain road without another vehicle in sight. Man and machine in perfect harmony.
Not quite like Commercial Road in the rush hour then.
Durkan approached the bench and sat down with a heavy sigh.
Isaacs gestured towards the plaster. ‘What happened to you?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Durkan grunted.
Tiring of the small talk, Isaacs moved straight to the point. ‘Fortune’s dead.’
‘Eh?’ Gerry Durkan almost dumped the contents of his coffee cup right into his lap.
‘Carson shot him and did a runner with the diamonds. That’s what it looks like, anyway.’
‘The little shite . . . after all we’ve done for him.’
‘That’s what happens when the sub-contractors start sub-contracting,’ Isaacs observed.
‘The cops said there were four bodies. Who were the others?’
‘Woman and her two little kids. The family of the big guy who was in your office.’
Durkan blanched. ‘Jesus H Christ!’ He gingerly fingered the plaster above his left eye.
‘Give you a smack, did he?’ Isaacs grinned.
‘He was like a fucking zombie on crack.’ Durkan didn’t feel the need to go into any more detail.
‘Lucky for you they have no idea. Otherwise Daniel Hunter would have torn you limb from limb.’
‘Hunter?’ Durkan scowled. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’
‘Hunter is the Military Policeman who took Carson down for shooting a pair of Taliban soldiers after they’d surrendered,’ Isaacs explained. He wondered if they shouldn’t have had this conversation earlier, say, around the time Durkan had hatched his ‘risk-free’ plan to rip off Bob Biswas and, in the process, collapse the Hydra joint venture business that was threatening to bleed him dry.
‘Political correctness gone mad,’ was Durkan’s take on the Taliban situation. ‘People are so . . . sensitive these days. Who are they trying to kid? Shoot to Kill is hardly new. Think about The Rock, for a start.’ The reference to the 1988 fatal shooting of three members of the IRA by members of the SAS on the forecourt of a Gibraltar petrol station meant nothing to Isaacs, but Durkan failed to notice. ‘It’s only bloody murder when the Establishment says so.’
‘It was the technology that did for Carson,’ Isaacs commented. ‘A video camera on another soldier’s helmet. It’s a lot harder to do things unnoticed than it was.’ He was about to add ‘in your day’ but thought better of it.
‘I wouldn’t want to be a soldier these days, right enough.’
Soldier? Isaacs let it slide. He had no desire to start arguing about Durkan’s attempts at rewriting history. ‘By all accounts, Hunter is a solid citizen. He might have had a run-in with Colinson, Fortune’s sidekick, at some point as well but I’m not sure about that.’
‘They should have left him alone.’
‘Yes, they should. But they didn’t want him coming after Carson a second time, so they nabbed his wife and kids to try and keep him in his box.’
The look
on Gerry Durkan’s face suggested a man trying to pass a bowling ball anally. ‘Which genius decided that was a good idea?’
‘Not me,’ Isaacs said flatly. ‘Carson obviously didn’t want Hunter in the game; Fortune thought it was something they needed to manage.’
‘Fucking idiots,’ Durkan scoffed, ‘they’ve fucking managed it all right.’
‘When we let them loose,’ Isaacs offered, ‘we have to accept that they . . . do things.’
‘They end up shooting a woman and her fucking kids,’ Durkan struggled to keep his voice under control, ‘and you put that down to them using their bloody initiative?’
‘Carson’s gone a bit crazy.’ Isaacs reached for his cigarettes then decided against it.
‘Fuck me,’ Durkan wheezed, ‘that’s the understatement of the fucking year.’
‘It’s done now.’
‘You can say that again,’ Durkan grieved. ‘This is turning into a right fucking mess.’
‘We just have to move on. I’ll find Carson. Recover the diamonds.’
‘You’d better. And sooner rather than later.’ Durkan shot his security consultant a sideways glance. ‘I still know people, you know.’
Yeah, geriatric people. Isaacs was careful not to sneer. ‘I will deal with it,’ he reiterated.
‘Do you know where Carson is?’
‘I know where to find him.’ Isaacs let his gaze return to the massive video screen. Now it was running an almost identical advert for a different car.
‘How?’
Isaacs ignored the question. ‘Once I find him – and deal with him – I’m out of here.’
‘Fair enough.’ Durkan took the hint not to ask too many questions. ‘Once it’s done, I wouldn’t hang around.’
‘No.’
‘That stupid fucker Carson has taken a simple job and turned it into a total bloodbath. Make sure he suffers.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Isaacs replied, looking mildly disgusted. ‘Just let me do it my way – oh, and I will expect a bonus on completion.’
‘Fine.’ Durkan knew this was not the time to quibble about money.
