Angelmaker (79 page)

And then there are the others: the ones who went pro and made good, who don’t like surprises or displays. Dave Tregale, who can shift money around the globe, into the white economy and out of the black and back again; Lars the Swede, once Joe’s teacher in basic personal defence, who can have you removed from circulation in seven languages; Alice Rebeck, of unknown origins, now a retriever of lost
journalists from foreign lands, and—so it is whispered—vanisher at need of over-curious investigators. Half a dozen others, names to be mentioned with circumspection, if at all.

These, too, receive the invitation from Jorge, from Tam, from a new law firm titling itself Edelweiss Feldbett, or by signs and portents unknowable.

Joe Spork is putting a job together
.

These are not people who are used to receiving instructions any more, not men or women who take kindly to midnight pre-emption. They do not enjoy fireworks. Still less are they comfortable with one another’s company, here, in—of all places—the grand hall of the Pablum Club (to the Hon Don’s most strenuous
sotto voce
discontent). But where, after all, would you be less likely to look for a gathering of serious crooks, than in a very exclusive members’ club in St. James’s?

The hour comes, and a little after, and this great, gathered mass of criminality grows restless. Sure, they’ve renewed some old acquaintances and seen some people they always thought there might be some chemistry with, back in the day, and met some new people there might be some with now (ho ho!) and of course it’s always nice to hear what everyone else is up to, even in the most guarded terms, and work out where there might be an opportunity, perhaps even the possibility of collaboration. But still and all (murmur black suits and serious faces, pinstriped ladies and elegant dames) time is money, after all. And Big Douggie and Caro and Tony Wu, sitting at the edges and in the shadows, feel out of place and very straight-laced, and wish they were somewhere else.

And then a man comes in by the east door. He comes in quietly, as if they weren’t all waiting for him. He grins and shakes hands and waves, and lets the rumour make him bigger. He flings wide his arms and embraces a respectable geezer whose bank specialises in discretion.

“Liam!” the fellow says. “As I live and breathe! Liam Doyle, of all the things, they said you were dead!”

“Not me,” cries the oldster, much delighted, “I haven’t gone on yet, and bollocks to those as wish I would! There’s cash yet in the old cow!”

“I’m sure there is!” replies the other. “I’m sure indeed. Can you still dance, though, Liam? You danced the foxtrot with Caro once, in the Primrose Hill house.”

“Blow me!” replies Liam Doyle. “I’m sure I did! I would have
danced anything in those days! Well, I’ve no idea. I haven’t danced in … oh, well …” And his voice trails away.

But before it can become maudlin, Liam’s friend says “I bet you’ve still got it!” And Liam says it’s true, he has, of course! Of course he has. And then it’s “Hullo, Simon, I know that’s you, my God, is this your wife? How superb, I swear, she looks like a queen, and I’m not talking about our bloody queen, God bless, I’m talking Titania! Yes, I am! May I kiss the bride?” And he does, planting a smacker on the gentle, homely face and grinning as if he’s won a prize. “And Big Douggie! I see you there! Come off the bench, man! You remember Douggie, don’t you, Simon?” And Simon does, in fact they had a brawl back in the day, and bloody Hell, if Douggie wasn’t the toughest bastard ever threw a punch,
I swear to you, Douggie, I still dream about it, seeing that fist on its way!

“Well,” says Douggie, “I don’t mix it up, now. I teach the young ones. But, well, every now and again I show them a thing or two, for laughs. I think they go easy on me, mind …” And he grins, gap-toothed, and everyone thinks
Not if they bloody want to get out of the ring alive, they don’t
. “How about you, Simon?”

“Oh, well,” says Simon, a bit sad, “I’ve moved on a bit. I still follow the boxing, or … I used to …”

And once again the whisper of regret. So many things we used to do. So many laws we used to break and laugh at. And now we creep around and make more money and what are we, if not crooks?

Well, rich, of course, and happier for it
.

Happier, absolutely.

Around and around it goes. Joe has the touch, the memory for every face, and there’s a fire in him, a rich desperate longing for days everyone had forgotten about, and the strength in his arm to make you believe. Behind him goes the whisper: that’s Joe Spork. He’s putting a job together, and he’s going to ask us to help.

It must be some job
.

He will ask, won’t he?

Sure he will
.

And finally, when the nerves and the nostalgia are about ready to boil over, Joe climbs up on the back of an extremely expensive Italian leather sofa in his workman’s boots, and he says:

“I expect you’re wondering why I asked you all here this evening!”

They are. Of course they are.

“I may have misled you a bit, in a way. I think I told Jorge I was planning a big job. Well, I’m not.” He grins, a naughty-boy grin, Mathew’s face staring over a mustard polo neck and a tan bullhide coat, superimposed on the weathered, blockish features of his son. “I’m not planning a big job. I’m planning ten. Or a hundred. However many it takes to make the point. I’m talking about the brass ring. I’m talking about robbing every bank in London and half of Hatton Garden, hitting the payroll and the Mint and everything in between.

“Now I know, because I’ve seen you, that you don’t do those things any more. I know, at least, that that’s what you think. And I also know, because I’ve seen you, that when you see the Bond Street caper, with those lads lifting a hundred grand a pop and busted by the end of the week, or the Heathrow diamonds, or the Millennium Dome, you look at those sorry jobs and you think to yourselves: I could have done that twice as fast and taken twice as much and I’d be sitting in bloody Duke’s Bar when the Lily came and nothing to say I was ever anywhere else. Because those jobs were grand, but they had no exit, and they were brassy, but they had no class. And you’ve got class.”

The Old Campaigners grin at one another. Sure enough, they have class. They know the importance of balls, for sure, but also of smarts and timing, and above all, of getting away with it. Robbing is easy. Robbing clean is hard—but that’s what separates the men from the boys, isn’t it?

“I remember, don’t I, how it’s done? I remember when the Boldbrook delivery was taken by person or persons unknown, and the police were swarming the Crespind Club because they’d had a tip-off the place was a brothel. Which it unquestionably was. But when they got there it was all awash with bigwigs in their drawers, so when the same fellow called in a robbery at Boldbrook—ten minutes before it happened—they told him to stick it in his ear, and then of course when Boldbrook himself called they told him the same thing. And no one ever told a bloody word of how it was done, not the cracksman nor the lookout nor not a one of them, because they were men of the life. Women of the life. (I won’t name names, but I could. We all know who they were. And not a one of us has ever told, have they?)

“But I look at you, and I see one more thing. I see talent going to waste. I see skills like no one ever had before or since. I see the long con and the short, I see high-score planners and forgers and dippers and smugglers and high-wall men and strong arms and gunhands
and lead-footed getaway drivers and what have you done for us lately? You’ve let crime get white-collar and dull. You’re rich and you’re dying of respectability. I see you, Boy Reynolds. I see you with your arm in a sling! Crashed a souped-up Mercedes into a sand dune at one hundred and eleven miles an hour between Paris and Dakar.

“Because you are bored. You are so bored you could die of it.

“You’re all respectable and safe. And not one of you is having any fun.

“Well, I’m in deep shit. I touched something I wasn’t supposed to. I know things I mayn’t. I’m at war with Brother Sheamus of the Ruskinites and Mr. Rodney Titwhistle of the Legacy Board, and what they will do to me if they get me doesn’t bear discussion. I’m on the run from the law, and these days that’s a short course. They’ve had me once: not again. No more white rooms and torture for this lad. Not again.

“They’ll have SO19 out there, anyway, so no matter. God help any poor bugger caught outside in a fedora this month!” Joe grins again, and this time it’s the wolf grin, the wartime grin, the Englishman’s inner barbarian, which every one of them keeps close at hand for the dark days.

A flash of Argyle socks as Joe shifts his weight and opens his arms to them again.

“And I’ll tell you, people. I’m having more fun than I have ever had in my entire, safe, taxpaying life!

“What’s it all about? I’ll tell you. There’s a wicked sort who wants something he can’t have. He can’t have it because if he gets it he’ll likely kill us all. He’s a lunatic and a bad egg. He’s not a crook, he’s a devil, and that’s all there is to it. I mean to put a stop to him. I mean to stop him dead. And if I don’t, well, it’ll be down to you lot anyway, because he’s bought the government or some such thing, and is sheltered in their breast. If I don’t do the job, my lords, ladies, and assorted crooks, we shall all go down six feet. Think of him as a mad bugger who wants to test a nuclear bomb in Trafalgar Square. He doesn’t, but it’s as good as. But here, you leave that to me. I’ll take care of the Opium Khan. All I want you to do … is steal every blighted thing that isn’t nailed down and preferably most of what is!

“I am going to raise unholy Hell. The Tosher’s Beat is going to ring again to the sound of escaping felons. The rooftops will buzz to the sound of our circular saws, and all across the mighty city of London
things of enormous value will be liberated from vaults of veritable impenetrability. We will remind everyone on Earth that London’s crooks are the best there have ever been.

“And in the process, we will save the world.

“And if that doesn’t sound like fun, you rotten lot, you have forgotten the meaning of the word! So all those in favour …” he makes calming motions with both hands, as if holding them back. “All those in favour can signify by acclamation. My name is Joshua Joseph Spork. But you can call me: Crazy Joe! So let’s hear you say it. If you raise the roof of this place, we’re on, and we’re away.

“Now, then: what’s my name?”

There’s a roar of laughter and applause, and a lot of glasses raised.

From the back, a woman’s voice says: “Crazy Joe!” and then a man’s from the far corner: “Crazy Joe!” And then Big Douggie growls it out and Tony Wu, and even Dizzy Spencer, and then the great, too-cool, too-professional black-suited multitude are chanting it in a gathering wave of noise which breaks over Joe Spork and seems to set him alight, and he roars like a great ape and swears to God he will embrace every one of them, all at once, and it seems he will really try, and then his arms are full of a small, sassy, dark-haired beauty with outrageous toes, and as he raises her into the air for a passionate, demonstrative kiss, no one remembers or cares that Polly Cradle was the first to call out his name, or that her brother was the second.

Later, when the Pablum’s function room is all but empty, a man in a black suit is left standing with Mercer Cradle, who brings him to Joe Spork in a quiet corner. He’s tall and pale and very grave. Joe Spork takes his hand.

“Mr. Spork,” the man says, “my name is Simon Alleyn.”

“Very pleased to meet you. Thank you for coming.”

The Master of the Honoured & Enduring Brotherhood of Waiting Men nods and says nothing. It’s very effective. Tool of the trade, no doubt.

“I’ve got myself into a big fight, Mr. Alleyn. I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”

“So I understand. It’s not really our kind of thing. Not even for Brother Friend, I’m afraid.”

“No.”

“No, we let the police handle that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure. But there’s something you might want to know, all the same.”

“Go on, then.”

“Billy Friend was murdered by Vaughn Parry.”

Simon Alleyn doesn’t blink. His face doesn’t change at all. And yet Joe Spork is aware of having his fullest attention.

“Should I understand, then, Mr. Spork, that Vaughn Parry has somewhat to do with all this?”

“In a way, he is at the heart of it.”

“In a way?”

“You could argue that he is … no longer who he was. That he has become someone worse.”

“Worse.”

“Very much worse.”

“And you know where he is?”

“Yes.”

Simon Alleyn studies the empty air in front of him for a moment. Then he nods. “The Waiting Men have business with Brother Vaughn. Whoever he is now.”