Sonata of the Dead (30 page)

My fingers found the envelope that the manuscript to Patrick Simm had arrived in. The lack of stamps or franking materials was frustrating, and I had to admire the nerve of the guy, stepping up and delivering the thing by hand in broad daylight. He might have been spotted.

But that didn’t make sense. He’d been careful every step. No fingerprints. No sightings. I raised the envelope to my face and inhaled. Utterly neutral. No embossings. No labels. No return addresses. I shook the envelope. I rubbed it like Aladdin, thinking a Royal Mail genie might pop out and offer me three wishes but only if they were correctly addressed and weighed no more than one hundred grams. I spread the flaps and stared inside. Something. A sticker with a barcode on it, and a name: Mustard Bikes.

The Hack hadn’t delivered the parcel in person after all. He’d paid a cycle courier to do it for him.

* * *

Mustard Bikes was based in one of the arches near Stamford Brook station in Chiswick. It took a while to find it. I got there early to find a controller sitting at a desk just inside the red concertina doors. He was eating noodles from a cup and speaking into a radio. Something about a bag of video cassettes to be taken to Lewisham from Wardour Street. Behind him was a bicycle in bits on a large piece of tarpaulin, and a set of tools.

‘Help you?’ he said. He lifted the noodles on a fork and sucked them through a pursed mouth that looked like something prolapsed from a jungle ape’s backside. He wiped his mouth against his arm: his sleeve was streaked with stock.

‘Breakfast of champions,’ I said, thinking of Romy.

‘Fuck all else in. Except for a packet of Malted Milk biscuits, and they taste like sick don’t they?’

‘Are you Jay Taylor? Is this Mustard Bikes?’

‘Yes and yes.’

‘Recently,’ I said, ‘a package – an envelope filled with papers – was delivered by one of your couriers to an address in Mayfair. Albemarle Street. I need to know who booked that job.’

‘“One of my couriers”,’ he said. His voice was full of mockery. ‘I’ve only got one.’

‘Right. Mustard
Bike
, then. I could do with speaking to him. Or you, if you’ve got an originating address.’

‘I have to be honest,’ he said, as he put the cup of noodles down and drew a large ledger towards him, ‘I almost never make a note of what job is going where, never mind where it came from.’

‘An organised outfit,’ I said.

‘We do okay,’ he said, smiling.

‘I’m surprised,’ I said. ‘You must be shelling out at least ten grand on this place in rent each year. Plus business rates. And you’ve got just the one cyclist? What’s he pulling in per job. Three quid? Four?’

‘Around that, yeah. The tiddlers, yeah. But there are still some people out there who prefer the personal touch, rather than faxes and emails. And some pay well, for, you know, special jobs.’

‘I can believe it,’ I said. ‘What was the Albemarle job? Was that special?’

‘I can’t see it in here,’ the controller was saying, pointedly studying the reams of blank pages.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Ditch the comedy. This is important.’

‘Unpack what you mean by “important” using, oh, I don’t know, monetary terms.’

‘How about I unpack it in pints of blood shed from your worthless sack of shit body?’

He pushed himself back from his desk and stood up. He was half a foot taller than me, but clearly he sat at a desk all day sucking noodles through his arsehole mouth. His belly hung over the waistband of his pants. I punched him straight away, right in the neck. He went down, coughing and spluttering, surprised more than anything. I picked up the cup of noodles and emptied them over his head. Then I grabbed hold of his hair and dragged him over the open ledger. I pressed his face into the blank page.

‘Look really close,’ I said. ‘Study it hard and tell me what you see. I’d be fascinated to hear.’

‘Cuh-unt,’ he said, in a strangled voice. I made it even more strangled by grabbing his wattle and really digging my nails in. He made a weird animal shriek. I smelled garlic and soy sauce on his breath.

‘People are dead,’ I said. ‘I want to stop it. This is the only lead I have at the moment. I would like to follow it. You are preventing that. Now spill your fucking guts or I will spill your fucking guts.’

‘All right, all right,’ he said, as if he’d only been having a bit of fun with me and I’d gone over the top with my reaction. I let him go and he sat up. His throat looked as though someone had bitten him. Noodles clung to his hair and skin like a kid’s pasta collage gone wrong. ‘I don’t enter details on hush jobs.’

‘Hush jobs,’ I said. ‘You mean bent jobs.’

He ignored me. ‘I don’t know where it originated from,’ he said. ‘You’d have to talk to my brother. His address is on the job list.’ He flicked a piece of paper in my direction.

‘Your brother, the courier?’

‘Yeah, we’re a family business.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘I don’t know. Sucking down porridge. On his fucking bike somewhere, delivering shit.’

‘Call him.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘But you’ll call him when I’ve gone.’

‘Fucking dead right.’

I picked up his rig and hurled it at the wall.

‘That’s the best part of a grand you owe me.’

I grabbed his hair and twisted. When he raised his hands to try to loosen my grip, I slipped my free hand into his pocket and relieved him of his phone. I smashed that against the wall too.

‘Keys,’ I said.

‘Just fucking leave,’ he said.

‘Keys, or I’ll throw
you
against the wall.’

He handed over his keys. Outside I shut the concertina doors and locked them. Then I dropped his keys through the grate of a drain and hurried back to my own car. I was shaking with the buzz that comes from acts of violence, more so that they seemed these days to be emanating from me. The closer to getting what I needed, the nastier I was becoming. I wasn’t sure I was too happy with that, although, I thought, as I perused the list Jay Taylor had given up, at least it meant quicker results.

* * *

Ryan Taylor lived in a flat in an estate in Dalston. I got there by nine a.m., pessimistic about my chances of catching him before he went off on his jobs for the day. There was a guy sitting in a Ford Kuga smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. I asked him if he knew Ryan Taylor and he nodded.

‘Out though,’ he said. ‘Early bird. Back late and all.’

I thanked him and checked the list of jobs again. I’d arranged them into order travelling south to north from this Dalston beauty spot. There was no guarantee that Ryan would have done the same, but it made sense to do it this way, especially if speed was of the essence.

I really didn’t want to do this, but I couldn’t think of a way around it. It might eat up a big chunk of the day; there was every chance I’d only catch up with him when he arrived back at his flat. At least, if that happened, he’d be dead on his feet and unlikely to give me any trouble.

In the end I found him almost immediately. But I was lucky. He’d stopped off at a café on Kingsland Road for his breakfast and he’d locked his bike – a stripped-back single-speed Dawes Mono in bright yellow, a real mustard bike – at head height on a railing opposite, presumably so he could keep his eye on it while he waited for his bacon bap.

I stood by his bike and let the air out of his tyres. He came out with a white paper bag, the cleats on his soles skittering on the pavement. He was hunched over to balance himself against any sudden slips and he wore one of those ridiculous speed helmets that resembles an elongated teardrop.

‘You look like a shit velociraptor,’ I said.

‘You’re the cunt gave my brother grief,’ he said.

‘So he managed to call you after all? Anyway, he gave himself grief. Everyone has the option to make the right decision and avoid grief. The alternative is time-wasting and bruises. I wonder which way you’ll go.’

‘You made my decision for me when you let the air out of my Halos. You fuckhead.’

‘I just want to know who booked the delivery of a manuscript to a literary agent – Patrick Simm – on Albemarle Street in the recent past.’

‘Who gives a fuck?’

‘I do. And so do the police. We’ve got reason to believe the person who sent it is a murderer. We want to stop him before it happens again. You could help.’

‘I’ll consider it after I’ve used my pump on your arse.’

‘Leave your filthy little fetishes for your Dalston hellhole,’ I said.

He came for me and I sidestepped easily. His cleats slipped on the pavement and he fell awkwardly, his left leg shooting out to the side.

‘Ooh,’ I said, wincing. ‘Unintentional yoga.’

He got up, haltingly, and leaned back against the railing. ‘You’ve fucked my groin,’ he said.

‘Words I hope never to hear ever again,’ I said.

‘That’s me buggered today,’ he said. ‘That’s my wedge gone.’

‘I’ll compensate you. The full whack. In return for some information.’

He slid down to the ground and pressed a gloved hand against the top of his thigh. ‘What makes you think I should remember a job that might have happened weeks ago?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe because it was unusual in some way. Maybe you saw something you didn’t want to see. Not a usual client. A client who paid over the odds to do something that the post office could have done for much less.’

It was starting to rain, but it was little more than a fine mist. It beaded on Ryan’s woollen cycling jersey. The radio fastened to the bandolier around his chest chuckled and chirped. He wore Lycra cycling shorts; his calves were taut, nut brown, cabled with veins. He stared at me.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I need to get a wiggle on. Rack what passes for your brains.’

‘Woman,’ he said. ‘Older woman. But toned, you know. A MILF. Hell, maybe even a GILF. I’ve got no qualms about ancient pussy, as long as it’s bookended by top tatas and a bubble arse.’

‘I’m sure she’d be thrilled to know that,’ I said. ‘Name?’

‘No name.’

‘Address then?’

‘I don’t remember. Somewhere out in Waltham Cross.’

‘If you could narrow that down a bit.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Yeah, you do
, I thought.
A guy like you who might be fit, but has bad teeth and eyes that are too close together. A guy whose hair always looks greasy and lank no matter how much you wash it. You haven’t had a girlfriend for some time because they don’t like your shithole address or your shithole brother or your shithole mouth. Or maybe it’s your total lack of respect for anyone, let alone the women you lust after. The smirk on your lips – unnecessary, unsuccessful, unearned – that makes you look contemptuous, not beguiling or sexy or mysterious, as you’d have it. Your eyes constantly looking at the tatas or the bubble and never any deeper than that. Evenings in the pub with your no-mark mates, leaning back against the bar. Do that. Had her. Till it bled. And then back home to a microwaved pot and Pornhub and a spit-slicked fist.

I came to and his face was a bubbling, fizzing mask of blood and snot. He was moaning at me, maybe he was begging me to stop. My right hand was mashed into a fist, hair matted against it. I’d hit him so hard that one of my knuckles had been dislocated and driven back into my hand. Sirens wailed. So did he.

I let go of him and dropped to my knees. ‘Where in Waltham Cross?’

And then I heard that he wasn’t begging me to stop. He was reciting an address, over and over. I leaned in close to his mouth.

Station Approach
.

I was heading back to the car when a plain-clothes crime-fighting duo in an unmarked black BMW 3 Series pulled up, blocking my way. Their radio hissed and spat with dead code as they pushed me into the back seat.

‘We don’t need to do this,’ I said. ‘Not now at least.’

‘We do, actually,’ said the driver. He was bald and there were spidery white scars all over the skin. ‘We had a complaint from a guy about you. This guy was wearing his breakfast. Noodles, apparently. Someone saw him stuck in a window of an archway warehouse in W6 and called the police. He wasn’t trying to break in, he was trying to break out. It was his shop. Someone had locked him in. You, specifically.’

‘Hello, Ian,’ I said.

Ian Mawker was sitting in the back seat reading the
Daily Mail
. He was sucking food out of his teeth and he pointedly did not look up when I joined him.

‘You’re under arrest,’ he said.

‘Oh, fuck off, Ian. I’ve got an address.’

‘An address for who?’

‘It’s “whom”. And it’s him. The Hack. We can be there in half an hour if you stick your ice cream jingle on.’

‘Where you’ll be in half an hour is a cell in Stoke Newington nick. What’s the address?’

‘You don’t play this game very well, do you? You think I’m going to tell you unless you loosen your girdle and relax? We go together or not at all.’

‘If you don’t tell us, nobody goes, and time ticks on. Sarah could still be okay now. In half an hour, who knows? Or is that “whom” as well?’

‘Hey, Humpty,’ I said to the driver. His eyes drilled into mine via the rearview mirror. ‘Did you know that an anagram of “Ian Mawker” is “I am a cunt”?’