(2005) Rat Run (32 page)

. . . Bigger problems for George than his grass.

They went forward.

Ricky said, 'We sort this out, and now. Then there's no misunderstandings.'

He seemed not to see them as they came out of the car, and not to hear them as they stamped on the tarmacadam past the mountain and the open doorway, the kitchen windows that had been smashed, and came to the corner of the house. Behind him were apple trees but the gale from the fire had singed the blossom off them. Ricky was ahead, with Davey trailing him by a couple of paces, and Benji and Charlie hung back because this was not about to be their style of business.

'Sorry to see this, George,' Ricky said briskly.

'What'd you do, leave the chipper on?'

Christ, Charlie thought, his man could play cold.

George Wright had spun on his heel. On his face: end of tether, edge of control.

'What the fuck do you want?'

'That's not nice, George. I come down all polite like a friend, all sympathy. Didn't come down for abuse.

Came to find out what the situation was. You got a difficulty with that?'

'The
situation,
right. The situation is that the insurance wasn't jacked up in the last five years and it's way under. Got that? My Melanie, she's gone to her mother, she's broke down, and Hannah's with her and worse. I had a load of stuff in the house, and the safe went like an oven. The stuff's cooked - got that?

So, thank you for your bloody consideration, but I am fucked. So,
please,
drive back where you came from.

Have you got that?'

'That is not helpful, George.'

'What is bloody
helpful
? I'd like to hear it.'

Charlie could hear the softness of Ricky's voice, and could hear the rising crescendo of George Wright's anger. Davey, behind Ricky, had his hands together behind his back - where they always were when he minded Ricky - but his fists were white-knuckled, clenched.

'I tell you what's helpful, George. You had, from me, stuff on trust. I give to you and you supply, and then you pay me. Now you tell me that the stuff is burned, and I ask myself, "How is George going to pay me what he owes me?" About a hundred grand, yes? Charlie's the one with the head for figures.

Maybe a bit over a hundred thousand that's owed me.

What would be helpful is knowing when you're going to pay me - today, tomorrow, or by the end of the week.'

'Whistle for it, Ricky.'

'Not helpful.'

'I got nothing left. Whistle down your arse for it.'

Ricky's voice was ever softer, his chuckle ever more shrill. 'You're a joker, George. You do a good turn, George. "I got nothing left" - that's funny, George. No building-society book? No deposit account? A little place down on the Algarve that you can raise a mortgage on? Very funny, George. By the end of the week, and that's really generous. What you say, George?'

'Fuck off's what I say.'

Ricky moved sideways. Charlie recognized the manoeuvre. Davey now had a clear sight of George Wright. Charlie knew what would happen, had seen it before.

Ricky said, 'You know how it is, George, if I'm too generous then word of it gets round. People who owe me money hear I'm a soft touch. I get promises for payment, next month or next year, because it's said that Ricky Capel's easy to blow over. "Can't pay this month because the missus has a headache." Might be

"Can't pay next month because the family's going on holiday." Could be "Can't pay this year because the price on the street's down." Or, if the word gets round,

"Can't pay ever because the chipper caught fire."

George, I won't have that word get round, but that's your problem.'

'What I said, get lost, get off my property. I got nothing.'

Charlie knew where it was going and could not argue with the reason for it. Maybe there was a little gesture against his thigh from Ricky, or maybe Davey just read him. If ever the authority of Ricky Capel was challenged successfully then he was dead in the water. And not only Ricky, all of them. All gone, if the word went out that Ricky was the soft touch. Charlie didn't do violence, or Benji, but Davey did. Davey closed on George Wright. He lost sight of the fat little man with the bald head and the sweat on it, lost the sight of him behind Davey's shoulders.

George Wright was felled. Davey stood over him, and the heavy steel-toecapped shoe pressed down on a sprawled-out shin.

Ricky said, 'Problem with a place like this, George, the problem with all the muck around - planks, furniture, beams, everything - is that you could fall over. You could fall over and break your leg. Be easy.

Of course, if you said - after you'd broken your leg -

that you hadn't tripped up on the muck, if you said different, then you'd have to wonder where you'd hide, and where your Melanie and your Hannah would hide, come to think of i t . . . I'm very generous, by the end of the week.'

'Fuck off.'

A blur of movement, almost too fast for Charlie to follow. The shoe went up. He saw the flash of the steel on the toecap. It stamped down on the suit trousers halfway up the shin.

The scream ripped at Charlie, but Ricky didn't flinch.

The foot and ankle below the shin were bent at an idiot angle from the knee.

Ricky was walking away and Davey followed him.

It was two months since Charlie had eaten a meal with George Wright in a little bistro in Blackheath and the guy had been good company. It was a week since Benji had done the last drop-off to George Wright. He hadn't spoken up for him, and Benji beside him had not.

'Not yet, you will be . . . bastard, Ricky Capel . . .

you will be . . . Your turn, see if it isn't coming . . . You know fuck all of nothing, but you will, when it's your turn . . . What do you think's happening? You got any idea? Big man, you know everything - wait till it's your turn and see what you know . . . I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn . . . '

'Come on, guys,' Ricky said.

He was walking past Charlie, standing and rooted.

Charlie caught Ricky's arm, held him.

George Wright, from the ground, yelled, 'Want to hear it, then, want to? Bloody funny, Ricky Capel, about a chip fire. I was a target! It was petrol - petrol through the window. The target was me. Three kids on the Amersham estate were found hung upside down off a roof - did you hear that? Fucking didn't, did you? You know nothing. They pushed. Next it's the dealer. The dealer sold to the kids on the Amersham. He was tied up to a lamp post, and now he's gone. You don't know where the Amersham is?

Too low for you, Ricky Capel... I sold to that dealer.

It's a line. Me to the dealer, the dealer to the pusher kids. I had petrol chucked in my home. Does the line go the other way? Think about it, Ricky bloody Capel.

Look over your shoulder.'

Ricky pulled himself clear of Charlie.

'Mad, isn't he? Crazy man. He'll come up with it, he'll pay.' The big smile breezed on his face. 'May have to go on sticks to the bank, but he'll pay.'

It was a joke between Charlie and Benji that Davey was plank thick. He could always see when something major exercised Davey's brain. Nothing of a flywheel, like a slow set of cogs turning without oil to help. Always frowned, always blinked, always seemed to rub the side of his face hard, before spewing it.

Davey said, 'Couldn't think of it, Ricky, what the stink was. The dosser down the close, outside your house. The dosser that was there, and his stink.'

Ricky was at the car. 'What you trying to say?'

Davey blurted it: 'The stink, it was petrol. On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.'

'Forget it,' Ricky said, and dropped into the car.

Charlie didn't. And he hardly listened as they drove through the Kent countryside back towards

Lewisham, and Ricky retold stories of his grandfather's war fought alongside the father of Timo Rahman whom he was flying to meet the next day, in Hamburg.

'I want to move her there. I really urge you to sanction Polly Wilkins going to Hamburg, as a matter of urgency.'

The assistant deputy director sat, so Gaunt paced. If the ADD had stood, Gaunt would have taken a chair.

Contrariness was a trusted weapon. His stride across the carpeted office was fast, intended to create an atmosphere of crisis. To wrongfoot the man was his aim. The supine beggar would buckle, he knew it.

'I can't say I'm happy . . . '

'It's what's necessary.'

' . . . and Fenwick in Berlin, he won't be happy.'

'I'm up to speed and Polly Wilkins is.'

'It's his territory, that's what Fenwick will say.'

Gaunt rapped his response: 'Rather than satisfying Fenwick's turf aspirations, it would be better to put in place, under my control, an officer who has the feel of him.'

No name, but two faces. Last thing before coming to the assistant deputy director, on high, he had sat in his desk chair and had tilted it back and made the request of Gloria that she describe the faces. She was expert at the task, and he believed he saw better into a man's soul when his eyes were closed and he listened as she portrayed him, the quarry: so much better, so much greater insight, than when he stared at a two-dimensional photograph. She had said, 'The hair is thick, dark and worn long, but it is not unkempt and is cared-for. In the centre the hair curls back, and I don't believe that is accidental, more of a style. There is a high forehead, clean and without the skin cracks of anxiety, that pushes up on either side where the hair recedes. The forehead is that of an intelligent man, not of a brute. The eyes are big. They are open, they do not evade; there are rings under them but that is from tiredness . . . more than rings, almost bags. I like the eyes. They persuade, but do not threaten.

They have a confidence. Yes, you would trust the eyes.

The nose is prominent, straight and without

blemishes. It is not the nose of a fighting man, has not been broken, fractured or lost alignment. I discard the moustache and the beard. They are from the passports used for the first stage of his journey, not from the second stage. If they have been shaven off, he cannot have regrown that degree of facial hair. The mouth, with or without a beard and moustache, is distinctive

- distinctive because it is unique to him. Two aspects - his smile, we'll start with that. Few men smile for a passport picture. He does in each case. It is a good smile, one of honesty. I like his smile and I warm to him, open and frank, showing no deviousness. The second aspect is the teeth. The teeth are dreadful, but clean. The upper bite comes down over the lower teeth and is overfilled and prominent. Big incisors that are packed too close, so they bulge. I venture, he never met an orthodontist - sorry, Mr Gaunt. His ears are not flappers but are close back against his hair, those of my dog when it is listening, keen and alert. He is not big-boned, and from the set of him I would hazard that he is slightly built... If I had to pick on one point, I'd say that most of our guests, given wall space, have a deep-rooted suspicion of the camera, but this man is not frightened of it . . . Put another way, there's nothing in the face that demonstrates the stresses of anxiety.' He had heard Gloria out, then had buttoned his waistcoat, lifted his tie, shrugged into his jacket and taken the elevator up to where the Gods rested.

'You promised me the moon last time. All bottled up in Prague.'

'And did not deliver because of Czech in-

competence.'

'Hamburg would be different enough to override Fen wick's irritation?'

'I think so.'

'Think? Is that all you have for me to bite on?'

'I believe so. That we are this far forward is due to Polly Wilkins's efforts. She deserves the chance...'

He stopped, gazed without mercy into the assistant deputy director's face, then resumed pacing. 'After what was done to her she most emphatically deserves the chance.'

'Sanctioned.'

'A good decision.'

Not a time to hang about. Gaunt had what he had come for. He was heading for the door, anxious to be away before riders were attached. He heard the bleat at his back.

'He's dangerous, isn't he? Our man who's on the run - dangerous, yes?'

'Exceptionally so.'

'Murderous little bastard.'

The mischief caught him as he went into the outer office. Gaunt said, 'Perhaps, but rather a nice face, don't you know?'

She packed.

'Don't I get told where you're going?'

Ronnie was watching from the door. It was her apartment and Polly was the guest imposed on the girl from the visa section. Polly would not have said that she was going to Hamburg, but could have said she was going to Germany and left it vague. She did not answer but went on folding blouses and skirts, laying them over the shoes at the bottom and her smalls - didn't really have an idea of what she needed, whether the spring came warm up there or whether it would be perishing cold. The sharing arrangement had been intended as temporary, while a one-bedroom apartment for herself was redecorated, but then a refurbishment budget had gone dry and time had slipped on. It wasn't satisfactory for an officer in the Service, however junior, to share but having her own room was good enough and she'd given up nagging the man at the embassy who

allocated premises. She was precious little use to Ronnie, a lonely woman. Too early at work and too late back to offer company.

'Well, how long are you going to be away?'

She didn't know how long she would be away, and didn't answer, just went on filling the case. She could share the apartment but not her life.

The bridling voice whipped her. 'Don't mind me.

I'm not important. I'm not need-to-know. You have a good time, wherever. I'll say this, you look like the cat that found the cream. You just come back when it's finished, whenever.'

A last pair of jeans and a sweater went in. No photographs in leather frames, nothing personal. 'The cat that found the cream'? Probably. Not very fair to show it because there was little enough cream in Ronnie's existence in the visa section. While she was packing the bag Polly had thought she walked tall for the first time since the collapse of the unit in London.