Face Down Page 9
Holly shook Jackie’s hand. “Call me Bang Bang,” she said. She was a striking Anglo-Asian girl with an Essex accent, long dark hair and teeth that would dazzle an Osmond. Jo ordered “a gallon of lady petrol” – three bottles of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, Brut NV. Jackie cheered up remarkably quickly.
35
Johnny Too had only demanded two things; the easy bit was he wanted to liaise with Gary Shaw, and only Shaw, throughout the sting operation. The hard part was he wanted Harry Tyler to be his close protection officer.
“But Tyler’s dead,” the baffled DI had replied. Johnny Baker told him all about Sausage Fingers Finlay’s encounter with the ghost of the Met’s best in Blackpool. Shaw, still baffled, had said he’d look into it.
On the train back to London Kings Cross, he googled Harry Tyler’s obituaries on Wattsie’s iPad. All of the nationals had faithfully reproduced the official MI5 sanctioned line that Tyler, real name Harry Aaron Dean, had been an undercover officer who had died in the course of an on-going investigation. All of them mentioned that he had been recommended posthumously for the Queen’s Police Medal for gallantry, but the details of his death – the crucial where, when, why and how – had not been disclosed. It all had the whiff of cover-up, thought Shaw.
Rhona Watts looked at the headshot of Tyler in uniform. “He’s fit,” was her verdict. “But why is he dead, if he isn’t?”
“I’m really not sure.”
“Could he have gone rogue?”
“A few of them do. I heard of one U/C guy, Mark Moody, about ten years back who started doing private work importing large quantities of class A narcotics for organised crime gangs. He got away with it for nearly a year and a half, because he could travel in and out of the country with impunity, using the shield of genuine police operations. He ended up being monitored 24/7 by the Spooks, but got out of it before anyone could bring him down. Lives in Mazzaron apparently. Another one who was suspected of transporting Charlie, Kev Hanscombe, works as an emergency defence lawyer in Loughton now. The firm, get this, is called Sidney Springer & Partners – Sid, CID, and Springer because they’re all ex Old Bill and they’re all earning twice as much now working for the dark side springing villains, shoplifters and piss-taking travellers as they ever did batting for our team.”
Wattsie grimaced. “Okay, so if Tyler had gone rotten, and hadn’t wrangled his pension before he got found out...or if he’s on Witness Protection...or off working for OGA...or been seconded for a long-term deep cover op...”
“Who knows, Rhon? There are umpteen possible explanations for what’s gone on and why he’s still alive when the world thinks he’s croaked. All I know for certain is we’ll have to kick this upstairs. If Harry’s alive, someone at MI5 or GCHQ will know. And if we need him on side, then we’ll need top level clearance to get him there. Strings will have to be pulled – and quickly.”
36
Friday, November 23.Manchester, 6pm.
I’d bowled in to Jolly Butcher half an hour ago, just having a nose to be honest. It was the nearest boozer to the Roundthorn Industry Estate, a functional but ugly outcrop of twenty-odd business units.
The barmaid’s face told a thousand stories, none of them good, so I’d struck up a conversation with a couple of guys from a struggling stationery supply firm. Turned out that they were based pretty much next door to dear old Kenneth’s warehouse, and surprise surprise, they reckoned the workers there were mostly Romanian and probably illegal. I’d definitely have a sniff about. A would-be politician, wrapped in the English flag, using illegal immigrant labour? If the word got out, it would nobble his plans as effectively as slipping a groom a bromide daiquiri on his wedding night. More importantly, the UK Border Agency would get Ken at least a two stretch quicker than you could say porridge.
37
Pembury, Kent. Four hours later.
The hotel was two stars. It was the first thing that Jackie had noticed. It was their first night together since their break, and Willie had taken her to a drab little hole outside Tonbridge that cost him £69 a night. It was the only 69 that would come up tonight as well, she was sure about that. It wasn’t like he was even paying for it, the paper was. Broadwick had come to Kent to do “vital research for the column” – a good excuse for a night away from the missus, granted, but why not treat her to a night in Danehurst House? The answer was so blindingly obvious, she didn’t even have to ask – there was less chance of anyone who “mattered” seeing them here, or in the insultingly bog standard burgers and ribs pub restaurant he’d taken her to beforehand. That was what she was to him now, a cheap leg-over; something he could take for granted. He booked a functional hotel for his functional whore. Well, things wouldn’t stay that way for too much longer.
Jackie played her pompous lover like a master puppeteer, teasing him all night with promises, touching him under the table, making sure he drank so much that he became indiscreet, and then so much more that he’d be incapable of the sex she no longer felt like allowing him. In the morning he came to with a hangover that was as hard to avoid as his increasingly hoary hard-on. Broadwick had little recollection of any of the previous night’s conversations. He did not remember Jackie talking about all of his former school-friends in great detail, or letting on which ones he didn’t like and more crucially telling her which disgruntled old chum would most like to see the great man’s world of lucrative infamy collapse on him.
He certainly didn’t see the female photographer with the Nikon D3200 night lens camera take some surprisingly good shots of them snogging in the car park, entering the hotel arm in arm and leaving together all smiles the next morning. Bang-bang! Bang-bang! Bang-bang!
38
Saturday 24 November, mid-day. Bolton, Greater Manchester
I’d popped into the Oak for a pie and a pint. The plan was to read the paper, pick out a few horses and have a leisurely afternoon indoors with me feet up watching Channel 4 Racing. In the event, the small message in the Telegraph’s Announcements section changed all of that.
The message consisted of just six simple coded words, but it was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. I re-read them seven or eight times, letting their meaning sink in. Then I clicked into action. Suddenly, my heart was racing. I left the pint, picked up a cheap Nokia 2600 pre-paid mobile and drove over to Woodheys Park to make a call I’d dreamt about making for more than ten years.
The conversation was short, clipped, largely oblique and almost too good to be true. The second part of it would be conducted face to face in a location of my choosing and entirely on my terms. There were dogs with two dicks who didn’t feel as chuffed as I currently did. So what was the catch? I couldn’t afford to be too trusting, not yet. These people played by their own rules.
I dumped the phone in a dog-shit bin and drove randomly for miles, thinking things over with just a Sam Cooke’s CD for company. A Change Is Gonna Come indeed.
I ended up in Penketh, Warrington, in a cosy good-value Italian called Delgados. By the time the 10oz pepper steak arrived, medium rare as requested, I’d made up my mind. The second bottle of Barolo was just for celebration. The third, on the house from restaurateur Julie, put the tin hat on it. I may have slept in the car, but I slept happy.
39
Sunday 25 November, 2pm. The French House, Soho
Holly Kirpachi was already drinking Breton cider at the bar when Jackie Sutton arrived. Jackie ordered a 2007 bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé Monternot and ushered Bang Bang away from a small group of slightly whiffy admirers. In the corner of the small pub, they talked intently but in near whispers. Jackie gave the reporter a name and a phone number. “He’s the one,” she said simply.
40
Wednesday 28 November, Tonbridge, Kent, 1.55pm
Gary Shaw had disappeared up to London for various secret squirrel meetings; he was due back for an up-date sometime this afternoon. Detective Sergeant Wattsie Watts had put the DI’s crossword to one side a while ago and had started scribbling on her
notepad. She wrote out letters, then crossed them out and wrote out the same letters in a different order again and again, until she found what she had been looking for.
Shaw had come back unannounced and thought he’d caught Rhona doodling. He was just about to bollock her when she showed him the list of crossings out that led from ‘Cam O’Dolland’ to ‘Old MacDonald’. She then did the same trick with ‘Miles Farger’ and found ‘Farmer Giles’ even faster.
“It could be a red herring, guv,” she said. “Or...”
“Or it could be that the man we want, the mystery man in the flat cap, is telling us he’s a farmer,” he said. “Which narrows the suspects down to what? About 330,000?”
“Probably a few hundred in easy striking distance of here,” noted Rhona.
“Too many,” said Gary Shaw. “Farmer fucking Giles. He’s rubbing our noses in it.”
41
Friday 30 November, London. The West End.
I was due to meet Johnny Too in Quo Vadis in Soho, but en route I got a text saying to meet in the snug bar of the Angel, a Sam Smiths pub in St Giles High Street first. It was a standard trick, change the location at the drop of the hat to give the other side less chance to secrete hidden cameras around the gaff. I’d done it twice when I’d met Gary Shaw with the SO13 boys on Wednesday. I’d gone with my brief, plus I’d had an old mate on standby around the corner. Leroy McLellan, one of the hardest-punching heavyweights ever to come out of the Lynn AC gym,; forty-four professionals wins, thirty-eight by knock-outs. As it happened, it would have made more sense for me to have brought him with me tonight...
Johnny was in the pub ahead of me. Up at the bar, knocking back organic cider, his shoulders wide enough for two prop forwards. When he saw me, John flashed a smile that didn’t quite reach those mesmerising blues eyes.
I held my hand out to shake his, but it had already curled into a big wrecking ball of a fist that was coming straight at me. Fuck. I ducked back quickly enough to miss the full impact, but not fast enough to swerve it entirely. I caught the wall to stop myself falling and launched back at him with all I had.
The next four minutes were the hardest of my life. Baker was always strong, but now he was strong and fit – all those hours in the prison gym had worked wonders.
I was glad the old footwork hadn’t entirely deserted me, and that he’d clearly had a few.
Panting, Johnny had my throat between his thumb and forefinger, pinching, pressing choking...the room started to swim. But then my anger energized me. I grabbed his right hand with my left and started to crush it. Now his face curdled in pain. I wrenched his hand away, squeezing it with reserves of strength I didn’t know I had. I chinned him hard with my right, kneeing him in the bollocks as he staggered back. Gasping, he clawed at my face, like a girl, and grabbed me in a bear hug. John tripped me up backwards and slammed my face down on the Axminster. Not the sort of rug-munching I had in mind on a night out.
It took two barmen and a couple of Spurs geezers from the saloon bar to pull us apart. I can’t say I wasn’t grateful. If I’d ever been in a harder fight, the memory of it had been knocked clean out of my brain. It was like going two rounds with Adrien Broner. And now look at me – I was panting like some old sixty-a-day crone with emphysema, trying to spit the taste of pub carpet out of my mouth.
“That was for Joey, you understand?” Johnny spat. He glared at the men holding him, who released their grip immediately.
I waited for the “and for Dougie and for Geraldine” – but the words didn’t come. Did he even know about Geri? Something else to worry about... Nothing was broken, but I had a cracked tooth and my neck felt numb. Both of our faces were bruised and swollen from blows. I was no slouch when it came to a ruck, but I’d felt a bit like The Thing when he had to take on The Hulk (‘Page after page of pulse-pounding thrills!’ as I recall) – fighting gamely in completely the wrong weight division. Not that I would ever have backed down to the dirty Millwall cowson.
“Are we going to be okay, John?” I asked.
“Good as gold, mate. Just wanted to clear the air, know what I mean? Besides, I have to get on with you and do this thing...it’s the condition of me getting out. Afterwards, who knows?” He turned on the bar staff. “What are you fuckin’ looking at? Divs! Ain’t you seen geezers have a tear-up before? For fucks sake! People getting upset about a little bit of fighting! How do they think we got an empire? At least he reacted like a man and fought back. Come on H. Let’s get a proper beer.”
Johnny Too’s whole demeanour had changed. To carry on The Hulk analogy, it was as if the big green guy had instantaneously morphed back into nice bright affable Bruce Banner.
Fuck me, next time I come out with this lunatic, remind me to pack a cosh.
John walked out of the pub like nothing had happened and turned left, walking towards Soho via Denmark Street. I shrugged, wiped my mouth and caught up with him.
A mob of punky birds, all ripped fishnets and bad hair, had come filing out of the Intrepid Fox and started crossing St Giles High Street. They were in their late twenties and early thirties. Once you looked past the weird corpse make-up and the fact that one of them appeared to be wearing half a pawn shop, they weren’t bad looking. The women were covered in slogans: ‘She’s taken, we’re not’, ‘Future trophy bride’, ‘Final fling before the ring’, ‘Buy me a shot, I’m tying the knot’ and so on.
“A hen night,” I said, dumbly.
“Nice one, Columbo. I can see how you got the job.”
“I’m trained to observe...miss.”
Baker smiled. “Here H, I know we were going to eat but I’m thinking let’s hold the steak and go for pussy.”
“I’m with you, bro, either way I’m gonna love chewing the gristle.”
A beautiful line, I felt, redolent of Casanova at his most romantic... The women were heading for the 12 Bar club.
“Barnet Mark still run this gaff?” John asked me.
“I couldn’t tell you, John. Don’t think I’ve been here since the Libertines played it.”
He walked to the front of the queue. “You got any Chelsea slags in here?” he said menacingly to the greasy-haired rockabilly in the Cock Sparrer T-shirt taking money at the door.
“Johnny Too! Fuck me!”
“Barnet, you old tart! Who’s on tonight? No West Ham shit, I trust.”
“No, it’s a Ska night. Jennie Bellestar, 1-Stop-Experience. Fuck me, John. It’s been years…”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry, mate. Do you know John King?”
Barnet clasped his arm around a smart, self-assured man in a combat jacket with a Chelsea badge on his lapel.
“The writer? No! Nice to meet you John, I read all your books inside. Loved England Away. This is Harry, Harry Tyler. He’s had a good hiding with the ugly stick, the poor bastard, but we go back a way.”
Cock Sparrer’s song ‘Secret Army’ was playing over the sound system, which seemed pretty apt. I had a chat with the author, both of us admiring the club’s framed selection of old music press covers, while Johnny turned his charm on the hen party, treating them to buckets of innuendo and champagne on ice. The man was as smooth as plate glass, albeit much harder to punch a hole through.
By the time we’d reached the stage area, we’d amassed a crowd of hangers-on, including a dealer, Jennie ‘Bellestar’ Matthias from the One-Stop-Experience, most of the hens and sultry Carly, the raven-haired bride-to-be, with her head-turning bee-hive and dangling gold hoops that would have given Fat Pat Butcher cause for concern. “One hen and twelve chicks in search of some old cock,” John had said, with such a disarming smile that none of them had minded. Barnet closed off the top balcony for our party...
42
Saturday 22ndh November. Eltham, South East London. 9am.
Holly Kirpachi knocked at the council house door. The unshaven, middle-aged occupant was in his dressing gown and initially reluctant to let her in. It was too early, he moaned.
A flash of her smile, followed by a flash of her cheque book, was all it took. Bang, bang!
43
Central London
We woke up, or perhaps I should say came to, at 9.30am the next morning in a suite at the Covent Garden Hotel in Monmouth Street. Johnny was in bed with bride-to-be Carly and her spaniel-eyed limpet friend. I appeared to have ended up with Rosie, a rockabilly barmaid. My mouth was as dry as a tramp’s flannel, my neck was still sore and the tooth hurt like buggery. Only the aching head and the back full of scratches hinted at the night of drunken exertion and coke-fuelled contortion that had been wiped from my memory. Even half-asleep, Carly looked gorgeous. Like a young Salma Hayek, I’d thought last night, but most of her colouring was now decorating Johnny’s pillow, and the classy coiffed bee-hive hair was currently more Giant Haystacks than sultry Hayek.
“Have you girls got to be anywhere?” I asked, adding innocently “Like a church?”
The bride-to-be blushed for good reason. “Oh Christ,” she shrieked. “Oh shit! Oh shitting, fucking hell!”
“Easy,” said Johnny, with a smile. “Put the cuckoo back in the clock, love. Where have you got to be?”