Face Down Read online

  24

  October 15. East Peckham, Kent.

  Nobody in the post office noticed the smell, it was Monday morning, benefits day, and the place was awash with peculiar human odours – halitosis, flatulence, unwashed hair and general BO. One small parcel wasn’t going to stand out much. It was small, an ornate box beautifully gift-wrapped inside a Jiffy bag which was addressed to Nell Butcher at the Independent’s Derry Street office. It was marked personal, and sent by recorded delivery. Inside the box was a present only Gillian McKeith could love – a freshly-laid turd.

  25

  October 16. Wakefield, Yorkshire. 9am.

  Johnny Baker had been awake for two hours, watching season four of Breaking Bad on the portable DVD player in his cell. HM Prison Wakefield didn’t have much going for it, but at least Category A status meant he had his home comforts, and his little flowery in the Supermax unit was well away from the nonces who had earned the place its Monster Mansion nickname in the red-tops. Real monsters like Sidney Cooke and Levi Bellfield, the creep who murdered Milly Dowler, never crossed John’s path. If they did, they’d be brown bread.

  Johnny Baker, known as Johnny Too, still had six years to go of his twenty-one year sentence. He had been handed a fifteen year minimum in 2001 for his part in running a South London criminal empire, and as if to rub his nose in it, six years on-top rather than concurrent for the cocaine police found when they had raided his Chislehurst home.

  The Baker empire had been built on what Johnny called free enterprise and what the straight world viewed as a massive drugs, prostitution and extortion racket. The end-game had been a bloody shoot-out at a botched warehouse raid the year before. The raid had left his dim, psychotic brother Joey dead, and the surviving members of his mob incarcerated.

  According to the press, the Baker gang had either been ‘the new Krays’ (The Sun), ‘the new Richardsons’ (the more geographically accurate Daily Mail), ‘the British Sopranos’ (the Daily Star), ‘the last white English crime gang left in London’ (the Daily Express), or ‘Viagra-fuelled Gangsters of Lust’ (the Sunday Sport), strap-line: ‘I Did It Duggie Style’ – a reference to the brothers’ depraved cousin Douglas ‘Dougie The Dog’ Richards.

  John McVicar explained it better when he told ITN that the Bakers had combined the intelligence and business brain of Charlie Richardson with the unhinged brutality of Ronnie Kray, but respectable opinion was united in the conviction that Johnny Too had to be made an example of.

  Life behind bars could be cushty though, if you were one of the acknowledged top dogs of organised crime. Especially when there was the added joy of seeing your old adversaries bumped off. The death of rogue undercover filth Harry ‘Tyler’ Dean had been a particularly fond moment. It had kept John buoyant for the best part of five years. Then, just a few months ago, none other than Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Hitchcock, retired, the no-good shit-cunt who had ordered a disastrous raid on his pub, the Ned Kelly, had been nicked as part of Operation Elveden and charged with misconduct in public office for flogging tips to the gutter press. Fuckin’ have it!

  At 9.05am, Johnny hit pause for his daily prayers. He had a busy morning, the Guardian had asked him to write a think-piece about his fellow inmate Michael Peterson, known to the world as Charles Bronson, aka ‘Britain’s most violent prisoner’, whose parole was continually refused. Next year Bronson would have served four decades behind bars, and was most definitely the victim of a corrupt penal system.

  His occasional pieces about prison life, the dangers of steroid addiction, injustices such as Hillsborough and the insanity of British drug laws had built him quite a following, ranging from intense young students to women wanting to marry him. Johnny looked at the photo of Maxine Slater, his most regular correspondent, which was his iPad screensaver. She was a peroxide blonde with a dirty mind and a genius level IQ. When he got out of this shithole, she’d be his first port of call – and no doubt, ball.

  26

  Soho House, Central London. Three hours later.

  Jackie had never seen William Broadwick so angry. He’d called her on Sunday from the beer garden of his local pub, twice from his study and five times yesterday, to moan about the Nell Butcher “stitch-up”. He was no happier about it now. They sat at a far corner in her local club, as he continued to bang on about the piece. “She couldn’t have made me seem more sinister if she’d said I spend my spare time wearing a Fred West mask,” he complained.

  “You need to stop worrying about it,” she soothed. “A prominent right-wing figure is never going to get a good ride from a self-righteous left-wing newspaper, especially from that patronising bitch.”

  Jackie could never tell him that she had actually found the feature quite funny. The only thing that had wound her up about it was the picture of Willie and Fiona looking like the loving couple they weren’t.

  “The picture of you as a chubby-faced schoolboy was cute.”

  He grunted. She went on: “You spoke about damage limitation on the phone, but what possible damage can this cause you? Okay, it confirmed her readers’ prejudices about you, but any of your supporters who happened to see it would see Butcher as a sarcastic leftie snob. There was nothing damaging in it for you.”

  “I tell you what is damaging,” he said in a whisper. “These pro-Broadwick protests and meetings. Who are these people?”

  “Willie, that’s a positive development. The same thing happened with Enoch in the 1970s, ad-hoc groups sprang up, calling themselves Powellites. He didn’t encourage them, but he didn’t disown them either. It’s a good thing, on balance. It shows you’ve touched a nerve with the man in the street. The party mandarins will love that.”

  “Well maybe, but when there are demonstrations and violence it could all get out of hand very quickly. I don’t want to be publicly identified with street-fighting thugs, so I’ve made a decision. I’m going to take a break, go over to the Florida Keys with Fiona and let it all die down.”

  Jackie’s face fell like a Basset hound. “When?”

  “Immediately. I’ve spoken to the Editor, it’s all cleared.”

  “A fortnight?” she asked, sulkily.

  “Three weeks, maybe a month. That will do the trick. I’ll come back to a whole new news agenda. Butcher’s poison will be chip paper by then, the protest groups will have polished their jackboots and moved on to some other cause and we can get back to normal.”

  Jackie pictured the loving couple in bed together, in boats and on the beach. She knew they’d be sharing candle-lit meals and midnight walks, and she also knew then and there that ‘normal’ would never again be good enough for her – the mistress side of their relationship was more finished than the Liberal Democrats.

  “Are you eating?” he asked, more cheerful now.

  “Can’t,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I have to get back to the office, it’s hectic this afternoon. I only got out to see you by claiming I had an emergency dental appointment.”

  She kissed him on the cheek, hiding her disappointment behind a smile.

  “Put anything you want on my account and have a good break. I’ll see you soon, sexy boy.”

  Three weeks? Pah. It would only take three minutes for her to put her newly-forming plan into action.

  27

  Monday, November 12. Wakefield, West Yorkshire

  Sausage Fingers Finlay left the frock behind when he visited John Baker in HMP Wakefield. It was probably for the best. His attempts to contact his old cell-mate Dougie the Dog had come to nothing – Richards had apparently come out of nick and with what friends and family had felt to be indecent speed had got straight on a plane to Thailand where he’d shacked up with a child bride within the month; “some bint he’d contacted on the net”, according to Slobberin’ Ron Sullivan, the former guv’nor of the Bakers’ Ned Kelly pub, who volunteered the additional thought “contrary to rumour, it weren’t even a lady-boy either, ’cos he’s already got a half-chat kid with ’er.”

  Sa
usage Fingers had got Slobberin’ Ron to set up the prison visit. He had recognised Harry Tyler the minute he’d stepped into the gay club, because Dougie had sellotaped the snidey bastard’s newspaper obituary to the wall of their flowery. Finlay knew John Baker needed to be told, and face to face was the only way to do it. The man who’d put Johnny Too in the slammer had balls to even stay in the country.

  John had been surprisingly calm about the news and had used the visit to set up a drug deal for a third party. At the end, he’d thanked Sausage Fingers, told him to expect “a nice drink” for his trouble and asked him to report back if he had any further intel about the no-good shit-cunt’s whereabouts or associates. There was no rush, though. Time was one thing Baker had in spades. Like a psychotic clown, on the outside he was all smiles, but inside he was seething.

  28

  William Broadwick was right. A lot can happen in three weeks. The Butcher piece was quickly forgotten, and the UK’s news agenda was understandably dominated by the latest wave of Savile revelations.

  Gary Shaw kept busy too. His DCI, the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) of the murder squad, had seen the merit in his unusual idea – and so had the Chief Superintendent, who convinced the Chief Constable, who in turn liaised with the Special Case Work Section of the Crown Prosecution Service. They then approached the Home Office. A plan this bold needed the authority of the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and after much debate and deliberation clearance was given. The word filtered back to Gary Shaw: game on.

  29

  November 17. Rusholme, Manchester. 4pm

  I got to Rusholme early. Kenneth had hired the function room at a hotel near Platt Fields Park for tonight’s meeting. For our amusement, he’d booked it under the name of the Anglo-Pakistan Friendship Society. The wag! I’d planned to check the place out in advance but as luck would have it, I never even got to see it.

  Parking up, I could hear the sweet innocent laughter of children at play, kids getting the most out of what was left of the sunlight. I glanced over at the small gang of reprobates chasing each other around, they were gurgling away like a country stream in summertime. Suddenly the murmur of contented glee was interrupted by a cry of pain. One little chavvie had come off his BMX bike, and a wild-eyed girl who appeared to be his big sister was giving him a cuddle. I was transfixed. The two kids looked pretty much the same age as my Courtney Rose and Alfie must be now – same height, same hair colouring too. Uncharacteristically, I found my bottom lip trembling and to my absolute horror, I started welling up with tears.

  Suppressed thoughts flashed unbidden into my mind, along with long buried regrets. Then the revelation hit me like a wrecking ball: this was the awful price I was paying for staying alive – separation from the ones I loved. An aching sense of sadness overwhelmed me, along with a gnawing loneliness. The pain was almost physical. I did up the car window quickly, put my head on the steering wheel and wept like a Big Brother contestant who has just realised that the cameras are on them.

  Yeah, this was what I was missing while I was kidding meself that everything was sweet; the precious everyday normality of watching my children grow up. But some other geezer had been driving them to school, taking them to football, doing their homework, tucking them up in bed and kissing their bruises better...

  My normal instinct would have been to make a joke of this, maybe say something half witty like nothing is more precious than the laughter of children except the silence of not having any. But not now. Years of sorrow and pent-up emotion flooded out of me in a tsunami of unmanly grief and no doubt self-pity. Harry Tyler – Jack the Lad? No, the big, tough can-do macho man was just another weeping wimp cocooned in a private hell. The Man of Steel had a heart of mush.

  It was my fault, of course, for taking the law into my own hands. I had deliberately walked away from civilised society and turned a corner that, short of a miracle, I could never ever walk back around. And although I did not regret ridding the world of those evil slags the Nelsons, I did regret and resent the terrible personal cost.

  I squeezed and twisted the knuckles of my left hand hard to pull myself together, dried my eyes and checked my big stupid boat in the rear-view mirror. There was still three hours until the meeting, plenty of time to wash off every embarrassing trace of brine and sink a few jars. In the absence of a punch bag, beer would have to do. It wouldn’t take long to get back in the right state of mind...

  30

  Central London, 4.15pm

  Jackie Sutton hailed a taxi outside of the Carlton Club. She looked terrific in a grey mélagne business suit and Vivienne Westwood heels, and she felt immensely pleased with herself. Jackie had spent the past three hours in a blizzard of networking, socialising with Daddy’s well-connected friends in the Conservative Party hierarchy, acting as William Broadwick’s unofficial agent. She had put on a great show, saying all the right things to all the right people. She’d been waspish, witty and occasionally wise, and as she’d long suspected she was knocking on an open door. The Party readily understood Broadwick’s backwoods appeal, his media skills and common sense populist opinions. A Cabinet Minister let her know, off the record, that Cameron’s Tories would welcome an official approach from William. It would play well with the Tory Right, who felt utterly betrayed by the wishy-washy compromises Coalition government conveniently necessitated. A safe seat in the Home Counties was William Broadwick’s for the asking.

  31

  Rusholme, Manchester

  IT had been more than a month since I’d last seen Katie’s father. I’d spent it productively, taking care of business, racking up beer tokens and trying to ration the number of nights she spent round mine. And not only because she’d got hooked on the Fifty Shades books and kept on wanting me to act out the scenes either. Listen, I’m not complaining but she had got so demanding I’d had to score black market Viagra just to keep up with her. Funny enough, my local barber supplies ’em at a cockle a pop. It used to be ‘Something for the weekend, sir?’, now it’s something for the weak end...

  They were rotten books, as it happened, but to birds they were like every single aphrodisiac known to man concentrated together and converted into words on the printed page. No wonder the Met Office said we’d had the wettest year since records began...

  On top of that, alarm bells were ringing. The first major problem was knowing that creepy Ken McManus was not what he seemed, the second was the obvious side-bar that he was going to get noticed by the big boys any day now – things were getting volatile out there in the real world. The ice cream was trouble on a stick, a liability. I couldn’t afford to have him anywhere near me – let alone properly wrapped around me...which meant one way or another me and Knockers were going to be strictly a short-term thing. If I ignored those two certainties and just kept him at arms’ length then a) she was sharp enough to work out something was wrong, and b) odds-on, when the security services came sniffing around him, everyone around him and his organisation would get looked at in microscopic detail...I could not afford to come under that level of scrutiny. So clearly I had two choices – drop Katie like a red-hot cattle prod or take Ken out of the game myself.

  It was some dilemma. If I dropped her, she’d hate me. If I acted on my instincts and helped bring him down, and she found out, she’d probably hate me even more...which was a shame because once or twice, in my weaker moments, I’d found meself thinking we could have been an altar job. We hadn’t even had a proper row yet. Bright, sexy, funny, randy...what’s not to like? The old man, that’s what. It was my own personal Catch 22. Okay, Catch 69 if you must. But if I got him banged up without her knowing, I’d only be postponing the inevitable, playing poker with Fate, buying meself some time.

  With all this shit running around my brain, the sensible quick fix solution was alcohol. I’d been told that Hardy’s Well was the best battle-cruiser on the Curry Mile, good beer, no ag and friendly staff. The downside was that most of the clientele were scruffy student types, a festering mess of torn
jeans, naff T-shirts and naffer jumpers. As I walked in, I spotted old Albert Simmonds sitting at a corner table on his Todd in a dark, chalk-stripe whistle, eating a meat pie and reading the Daily Mail. He looked as incongruous as Amy Childs on Eggheads.

  I made straight for the khazi to wash the pain away and get the Tyler mask back on. Five minutes later, fully composed, I burst back in cheeky Cockney luvaduck ‘character’ mode. A long-haired layabout was slurping his pint of Guinness carelessly at the bar. Ho! A Yeti! It looked like he and the hedge he’d recently been dragged backwards through had then been dragged under a carpet, in a squat.

  A little peroxide blonde sort, quite cute with bad tattoos and a beanie hat, was keeping him from falling off the bar stool.

  “Oi, steady on big boy,” I said loudly. “Some of that is actually going in your mouth, mate.” His girlfriend laughed and I gave her a little wink. Albie heard my voice and beckoned me over. I got myself a lager top on the way, and bought the old fella half a bitter shandy.

  “No Katie today?” he asked.

  “No, she’s on a friend’s hen do up town. Dream Boys, daiquiris and dirty dancing apparently.”

  “Tut. Women today, absolutely shameless.”

  And thank gawd for that! – was the thought I didn’t express. I noticed he had gravy on his chips and felt momentarily queasy.