‘No, that isn’t all, Toady,’ the walking stick man replied. ‘He’s a thieving little scrote. And you’re his fence.’
‘Ron hasn’t done any real jobs in ages. He got sent down for a while – to a real clink, and it scared him shitless. He’s only a bit-player now.’
‘You’re still his mate, though, aren’t you?’
‘If … if you mean does he come into the pub and tell me stuff when he gets pissed, then yeah … course he does.’ Ogburn tried to swallow, but there was barely any moisture in his mouth. ‘Loads of blokes do that.’
‘We’re not interested in anyone else,’ the kneeling figure said in a Midlands accent. ‘Just O’Hoorigan …’
‘That’s all I can tell you …’
The kneeler slammed another breezeblock down, this time over his groin. Ogburn would have doubled up and screamed had his pain-racked body allowed him to.
‘It’ll save us all a lot of time, Toady, if you’d stop kidding yourself that you’ve got choices in this matter,’ Walking Stick said calmly.
‘You’ve … you’ve got to take me back to hospital,’ Ogburn wept, when he was finally able to make sounds more coherent than agonised whimpers. ‘I had surgery this afternoon – on a ruptured spleen.’
‘My, my … that wouldn’t be a nice way to go.’ Walking Stick sounded genuinely concerned. ‘You’d better tell us exactly the sort of stuff Ron confides in you, and you’d better do it quick.’
‘Specifically about the last stretch he served,’ the kneeler said. ‘In Rotherwood.’
‘You said something scared him, Toady,’ Walking Stick added. ‘What was it?’
‘Nothing … nothing special. He just doesn’t want to go down again …’
Another breezeblock was laid on him, this one on his stomach, almost directly over his incision. Even though this one was placed relatively gently, he still gagged at the pain.
‘Facts, Toady,’ Walking Stick said. ‘Not fantasies.’
The next breezeblock was placed on Ogburn’s chest; their combined weight was now crushing his wounded body into the crate’s hard, timber floor.
‘Alright … alright,’ he said, struggling to breathe. ‘All I know is that Ron got told something that spooked him while he was in Rotherwood. That’s … my understanding from his drunken fucking babbling. Apparently he shared a cell with some bloke who was … who was looking to join a real tough firm when he got out. Said they had something massive going, and that he was going to get rich. But if this fella told Ronnie what it was, Ronnie never told me … I swear it!’
‘Did he say who this bloke was?’ Walking Stick wondered.
‘Didn’t give me a name, didn’t give me a description. Nothing.’
‘There’re lots of hard cases inside,’ the kneeler said. ‘What exactly was it about this one that spooked him?’
‘Whatever job he had lined up, I assume …
oh, Jesus God!
’ The weight on Ogburn’s body was growing worse by the second, particularly over his midriff. ‘It … it was fucking big apparently. Ron used to be prolific, but like I say, he’s small time now. He doesn’t want to get involved in anything really heavy. He probably thought that just knowing about this stuff would make him a target for the Old Bill. And it looks like it did … didn’t it?’
‘And
you
, Toady,’ Walking Stick said. ‘It’s made you a target too, hasn’t it? You had a chat with some officers from Greater Manchester Police this afternoon at Salford City Hospital, didn’t you?’
Ogburn shook his head feverishly. ‘They asked about Ron too – what he’s been up to and all that. What the fight in the boozer was about. I said nothing. I don’t grass people up, ever. I said I felt too rough to talk to them. The nurses showed ’em the door. Check at the hospital if you don’t believe me.’
There was a long silence, as if Ogburn’s captors were sharing unspoken thoughts. At last, Walking Stick said: ‘You sure you’re Ronnie’s only mate? He doesn’t have someone else he may have confided in. Girlfriend … boyfriend?’
‘He’s a fucking junkie as well as an alkie. No one’d go near him normally.’
‘So why’d they all jump to his defence back in that shithole you laughably call a boozer?’
‘Just the way we are in our neck of the woods.’ Ogburn tried to speak with pride, but was in too much agony. ‘Some bleeder comes shoving his arse around, we all go in …’
‘Even if it’s a copper?’
‘Especially if it’s a copper. We … we don’t like pigs, and don’t mind letting ’em know. We don’t give a shit. We look after our own …’
The kneeler chuckled. ‘I hope to Christ you never have to look after me. A job lot of you, and you got fucking leathered.’
‘It … it happens,’ Ogburn stammered. ‘Look … can I go back to hospital now? Please. I’ve told you everything I know about Ronnie. I’m not his mate. I’m the only one he talks to these days, and that’s only coz I’m the other side of the bar when he’s holding it up.’
‘Yes, well,’ Walking Stick said, ‘more the pity for you.’
‘Eh …?’
The kneeler picked up a heavy wooden lid which was roughly the same rectangular shape as the crate in which their prisoner lay. Ogburn screamed hysterically as the others closed in with hammers and nails, and the lid was slammed down on top of him.
‘
What the fuck are you doing?’
he shrieked, hoping his voice could be heard above the deafening blows. ‘
What the fuck is this? No, no no … please no, please no! Don’t bury me alive! Please, dear God no, please don’t fucking bury me alive .
. .’
The hammering ceased, the lid now fixed firmly on the crate.
‘Relax, Toady,’ Walking Stick shouted down to him. ‘We’re
not
going to bury you alive.’
‘Oh thank God, thank God …’
‘Too much like hard work digging a grave. So we’re going to bury you in the Ship Canal instead.’
‘
No! NO!’
But the muffled wail sounded for only a few seconds as they manhandled the heavy box across the disused dock, and then, with much grunting and sweating tipped it over the side. It broke the silt-black waters with a thunderous impact, and sank swiftly from view.
Pat McCulkin was a familiar figure on his home turf of Deptford. But those who knew him would have been surprised to see him walking along Creek Road at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. As usual, he cut a grumpy figure: he was sixty, with thinning grey hair, and a leathery, shrew-like face. Rings dangled from both his ears and tattoos covered most of his scrawny body, though at present, as he wore a flat cap and shabby raincoat, these only showed on his neck and hands. Even so, they gave him a less than wholesome appearance. It might only be six o’clock, but as he walked sullenly towards Greenwich, he lit what was already his third cigarette of the morning.
Of course, when he got there, the person he was supposed to be meeting – who’d already annoyed him by calling him at home at God knows what hour – was not present. McCulkin stood alone on a bleak stretch of riverside esplanade. There were no other pedestrians around. There wasn’t even much traffic on the road. Behind him, the Thames sloshed against the hull of the
Cutty Sark,
the onetime tea clipper now turned museum ship. McCulkin glanced up. The sky was overcast and it was unusually cool for August.
He swore under his breath, coughed, hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it on the pavement. And to his surprise, a phone began to ring.
He took out his mobile. No call was registering on it. Puzzled, he pivoted around, finally focusing on a waste bin attached to the post of a traffic sign. He wandered over and glanced down. A folded copy of that day’s
Guardian
had been left on top of the trash. The trilling of the phone continued; it was emanating from inside the newspaper.
McCulkin glanced furtively around – still no one was in sight. He opened the paper and found the phone. It was red in colour and looked new. He picked it up and answered.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m watching you, so don’t try anything stupid.’ It was Mark Heckenburg again.
‘What’s all this bullshit?’ McCulkin asked.
‘Don’t talk, just listen. Go straight through the foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs. No questions, no pissing about. Go now. If I see any sign that someone’s following you, you’re in big trouble.’
McCulkin pocketed the phone alongside his own and set off as instructed.
The Greenwich foot tunnel was accessible via a spiral stair that descended from under a glazed dome standing only a few yards from the
Cutty Sark
. It was forty-five feet down and, in essence, a steel pipe that ran beneath the river, though internally it was concreted and tiled. McCulkin had never liked it much, always regarding it as a mugger’s paradise. There were no hidden places where someone could jump out. It was a straight walk from one end to the other, but that didn’t mean some street punk couldn’t suddenly come down and confront you when you were hidden from the world above. He scurried across, glancing behind him several times, not just worried about muggers but curious about whom it was Heckenburg expected to be following him, and not a little concerned by it.
At the other end, he emerged in the shadow of Canary Wharf tower and the numerous other skyscrapers that surrounded it. The Isle of Dogs had changed a lot since McCulkin was a lad. In those days, it had been a tangle of wharfs and cranes, studded here and there with blocks of scruffy flats where some of London’s poorest residents had eked out a meagre existence. The glittering glass monoliths it now bristled with seemed somehow wrong for the famously deprived borough of Tower Hamlets, though he supposed it was progress of a sort.
The phone rang again. He answered.
‘The greasy spoon on East Ferry Road,’ Heckenburg said. ‘Make it quick.’
McCulkin walked doggedly along the old dockland road. The aforesaid greasy spoon, a small café with steamy windows, loomed into view. He glanced inside. There were a number of men, mainly van and lorry driver types, already in there eating breakfast, but there was no one McCulkin recognised.
A hand tapped his shoulder. He spun around.
Heckenburg was there. He was in casuals rather than his customary rumpled suit, while his face was puffy and cut in several places, as though he’d recently been in a car crash. He subjected McCulkin to a quick but thorough body search, before stepping back and saying: ‘You’ve not heard what’s going on, then? I mean with me?’
‘Am I supposed to have?’
Heck was pleased. That meant they were keeping it need to know. ‘Thanks Gemma, I owe you one. Okay, let’s walk.’
They headed north, keeping a brisk pace.
‘What about Charlie Finnegan?’ Heck asked. Finnegan – a DC in the Serial Crimes Unit, wasn’t someone Heck got on with easily, but he was McCulkin’s other official ‘handler’. ‘Has he said anything to you about me?’
McCulkin shrugged. ‘Haven’t spoken to him for about three weeks.’
Heck nodded, again pleased.
‘What’s all the cloak and dagger stuff?’
‘Tell you in a minute.’
Heck glanced behind them several times, and took one or two detours down deserted side streets, before finally ushering his guest into another tearoom, this one attached to Mudchute DLR station.
‘I need some help,’ he said, as they nursed cups of coffee and faced each other across a table. ‘Trouble is it’s got to be off the clock.’
McCulkin pulled a face. ‘You mean I don’t get paid?’
‘You’ll get paid. It just won’t necessarily come from the grass fund. If I have to, I’ll cough up from my own pocket.’
‘Sounds a bit irregular.’
‘All you need to know is that I’m in deep cover, and that, whoever asks –
whoever
– you haven’t seen or spoken to me.’
‘That include your lot?’
‘Especially my lot.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this.’
‘It’s just another job. No different from any of the others you’ve done.’
McCulkin sipped thoughtfully at his coffee, before replying: ‘What do you need?’
‘Anything you’ve got, or can find, on the Nice Guys.’
‘Never heard of them.’ McCulkin sipped his coffee again.
Heck knew immediately that he was lying. It wasn’t just McCulkin’s body language – the coffee, which was tepid and rather foul, was subconsciously being used as a shield – it was in his face too, which remained blank but had paled a little. McCulkin had also been way too quick to deny knowledge. His normal form would be curiosity. If he genuinely hadn’t heard about a firm with a cryptic name like ‘the Nice Guys’, he’d almost certainly want to know more, yet he’d asked no questions at all.
Heck was discomforted. Pat McCulkin was his main South London informant, and one of the best in the capital; he’d produced leads that had led to convictions for numerous serious offences. This was a mystery, and another mystery was something Heck didn’t need. So he cut to the chase.
‘You’re a lying little git!’
‘Whoa …’ McCulkin looked taken aback.
‘You think I’m on work experience here? Don’t jerk me around, Pat!’
McCulkin got to his feet. ‘I’m not getting up at this time of the morning to—’
‘Sit the fuck down!’ Heck shouted, his voice a whipcrack. It was so loud that the girl behind the counter looked around, startled.
Unnerved to see such fury in a man who was usually so affable, McCulkin did as he was told.
‘This is a non-negotiable situation,’ Heck said, quieter but with the same intensity. ‘I need to know who the Nice Guys are, and I need to know where they are. Right now.’
‘I’ve never heard of any Nice Guys.’
‘Don’t gimme that crap.’
‘You’re not listening to me!’ McCulkin hissed. ‘I don’t know who they are, and that’s my last word on the matter.’
‘Yeah?’ Heck smiled dangerously. ‘Well here’s mine – you’ve had a contract with the National Crime Group for several years now, haven’t you? You’ve done very well out of us. In fact, you’ve made yourself quite wealthy at the expense of your fellow criminals. Maybe it’s time the word got out.’
McCulkin swallowed; working his wet, thin lips together.
‘Poor reward for your services, I know,’ Heck added. ‘But all good things come to an end.’
‘You’re breaching the rules doing this,’ McCulkin replied.
‘That should give you an idea how serious I am.’