The intercom clicked, and we were left standing there for what felt like a long time. Neither of us spoke, not when it was probable that whatever we said would be listened to. We didn't even look at each other. Simply stood there.
After about two minutes, I went to press the intercom again when I heard the sound of feet clumping heavily down stairs. We stepped back from the door, and I experienced a momentary spurt of adrenalin as someone on the other side released the locks and pulled back the bolts. Then the door came open quickly and I was looking up at the smiling face of Nicholas Tyndall: six feet four and sixteen stone of murderous charm.
'Let's go for a walk,' he said in a booming but not unfriendly voice, pulling on a black puffa jacket and stepping outside.
Before I had time to reply, he shut the door, slid between us and started down the steps. Tina and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows and I shrugged, turning to follow him.
'Slow down, Mr Tyndall,' I said as we got to the bottom of the steps. 'Anyone would think you were running away from something.'
He stopped and waited for us, the smile sitting easily on his face. Tyndall looked like a man who smiled a lot. He wasn't a bad-looking guy really: early thirties, tall, well built, with clearly defined patrician features and smooth coffee skin. He was completely bald, but the style fitted him so well that it was obvious he was hairless by choice rather than fate. Today, he was dressed casually in Levi's, khaki Timberlands and a white T-shirt under the jacket. He could have been a clothes model for a company like Gap. Everything looked brand new, including him.
'What can I do for you, then?' he asked.
'I think you know why we're here,' said Tina sharply, keen to show she wasn't intimidated by Tyndall's reputation.
The grin grew wider as he sized her up. 'Do I look like Mystic Meg? I can't read minds, otherwise I'd have been outside waiting for you when you turned up. You're going to have to give me a
clue.'
'We need you to come down to the station and make a statement,' I told him.
As we caught him up, he turned and began walking steadily down the road, careful to avoid a young mother pushing her two young kids in a twin buggy. She smiled at him and glared at us.
'About what?'
'About what you know regarding the events at Heathrow on Wednesday.'
'I don't know nothing about them.'
'We'll be the judges of that,' I said, grabbing him by the arm and slowing him up. It was quite an effort, and probably not the safest move in the world, but it had to be done. You start kowtowing to the big boys and you never stop. 'We need you to accompany us down the station.'
His eyes fell to where my hand was on his jacket, and then came back to me. The expression in them was dark and cold, and even if I hadn't known his reputation I would have been able to tell that, for all his smiles and friendly greetings, this was a very dangerous and ruthless man. 'I don't like people I don't know trying to manhandle me,' he said, his tone threatening.
I held his gaze, but let my hand drop. 'I want you to take this conversation seriously, Mr Tyndall. We're not going to chase
round after you begging for your co-operation, we're demanding it. Three close associates of yours were involved in trying to rob a drug deal that ended in six deaths, and since it's well known that they don't even so much as breathe without your say-so, it's a fair bet to assume you organized it.'
'Prove it.' The classic career thug's riposte.
'We intend to, but first we want you to come down the station.'
'I ain't got time at the moment. You want to talk to me, you talk here. Otherwise, contact my lawyer.'
'All right, then. When was the last time you saw Ashley Grant? Otherwise known as Strangleman.'
Tyndall looked as if he was going to answer me with a wisecrack, then obviously thought better of it. 'A few days back. Monday, I think it was.'
'Whereabouts did you see him?'
'At the Turnharn social club,' he answered, referring to his organization's unofficial HQ off the Holloway Road. 'I play pool down there sometimes.'
'Yes, we know,' said Tina, pulling out her notebook. 'Quite a lot, apparently.'
'Listen, I don't think I want to carry on with this conversation any more. I don't like your attitude. Either of you. You want to speak to me, I want my lawyer present.'
'Hold on,' I said 'If you really have got nothing to do with this, then it'll look a lot better if you co-operate, won't it? And lawyers and co-operation aren't two words that normally go together. So talk to us now.'
'I've got nothing to say. I saw Strangleman Monday. I know him and so I spoke to him about this and that, but he's not that close to me no more, whatever you lot might think. I don't trust him, and I think he feels the same way about me. We used to do a bit of work together but not any more.
He never mentioned nothing about a robbery.'
'Where do you think he could have got the information from?'
Tyndall gave an exaggerated shrug. 'Fuck knows. I ain't got a clue, and that's the truth.'
'Do you know a Robert O'Brien?' asked Tina.
'I know of him, yeah. Most people round these parts do.'
'Have you ever met with him for any reason?'
He shook his head with a humourless smile. 'Somehow I don't think so.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, he's the last bloke in the world I'd want to meet up with.'
'Why?'
Tyndall sighed loudly, again stepping aside as an older lady in her sixties walked past on the pavement with a collie. She didn't give him quite such a pleasant look as the young mother, but hurried past head down, as if fearful he'd catch her eye. Perhaps she'd been the owner of the labrador whose head had ended up in the Asian family's kitchen.
'Why? I'll tell you why. Because when he used to hang round with that fucking nutter Krys Holtz they had a run-in with one of my cousins. Rene Phillips. Remember him?' We both shook our heads. 'He was a doorman at a club in Holborn. One night he kicked out Danny Fitzgerald, another member of Krys Holtz's little crew, because Fitzgerald was being pissed and lairy and upsetting some of the clientele. But the thing is, Fitzgerald didn't want to go, so him and Rene had a bit of a tear-up, and Rene won. None of the other doormen would get involved because they knew who Fitzgerald was, but Rene didn't scare easy. None of my family do.' He gave us both a look as he said this, and once again I forced myself to hold his gaze. 'Anyway, a couple of days later, Rene was leaving his flat when he got a tap on his
head with an iron bar. The next thing he knows he's woken up bound hand and foot in Krys Holtz's workshop. You must have heard of that?' I nodded. So did Tina. All the area's coppers had heard of Krys Holtz's infamous workshop. They were all there. Krys, Fitzgerald, Mick Noble and Slim Robbie O'Brien. And by the time they'd finished with him he was walking with a permanent limp, had all his fingers broken and part of his ear missing, and needed plastic surgery to get rid of the burns on his face.
'I never did nothing about it. At the time, the Holtzes were just about untouchable, and anyway, I'm not my cousin's babysitter. If he wants to get involved with people like that, that's his look-out, but I'll tell you this for nothing. Both of you. There is no fucking way I'd ever have anything to do with a prick like O'Brien. He's nothing. And now that he's out on his own, and without his mates to back him up, he's lucky I ain't fucking killed him.'
'Well, someone has,' I told him. 'He was murdered two days ago. I'm surprised that a man with your contacts hasn't heard all about it.'
Tyndall looked neither surprised nor unsurprised. 'I've been out of town the last few days,' he said. 'Down in Marbella. I've got a villa there. You can check my plane ticket if you want. So, someone killed him, did they?' His face broke into a wide, beaming smile. 'I'm glad. I hope it was slow. He was one geezer who definitely deserved it.'
'When did you leave for Marbella?'
He furrowed his brow in thought. 'Must have been Monday night. Yeah, Monday,' he repeated, nodding. 'I got the eight-thirty out of Stansted. Came back late last night and went straight to bed. That's why I ain't heard nothing about poor old Fat Robbie.' He looked at his watch. 'Anyway, I've got to go. I've got a meeting.' He turned and started walking back in the direction of the Canonbury Road.
We walked alongside him. 'We haven't finished asking you questions,' snapped Tina. This time it was she who put a hand on his arm, and this time he brushed it away, only stopping to glare at us each in turn.
'Well, I've finished answering them. Whoever's done over Robbie O'Brien, good luck to them. But it definitely ain't me. Now, you want to ask me anything else, you contact my lawyer.' He gave us the name of someone I hadn't heard of, and once again turned on his heel.
We continued after him, firing off questions that were invariably delivered to the back of his head while he remained tight-lipped, right up to his front door, which he slammed in our faces.
'What do you think?' asked Tina when we were back on the street. 'Would Strangleman really have carried out the robbery without his boss's knowledge?'
'I doubt it,' I answered, watching his front door. 'I can't see anything happening within Tyndall's crew that he doesn't know about, or authorize. He's not the sort of boss who lets his workers freelance.'
'But that story about his cousin. If it's true, would he really have set something up with O'Brien?'
'O'Brien's dead, isn't he? It's not that unlikely that Tyndall would have organized the whole thing with him and had him killed afterwards. It would have been a good form of revenge. I expect we'll find that the story about his cousin's true, which, like Tyndall's alibi, would be very convenient for a defence lawyer. The problem is, we're dealing with people who are good at covering their tracks.' I shook my head slowly. 'I think Flanagan's right. Our best hope's going to be finding the shooter.'
'A lot easier said than done.'
I allowed myself a thin smile. 'Isn't everything?'
16
It was near enough lunchtime so Tina and I decided that, for once, we'd go Continental and actually sit down and eat. Life's too fast in London. It's always go go go, and when your job involves go go going through the heavy tide of human corruption, then occasionally you need to sit back and take a break. We went to a cheap French restaurant I knew near Islington Green where they served moules mariniere with french fries and crusty bread, a meal that always brings back happy memories of childhood family camping trips to the coast of Brittany. And they only charged £4.95 for it as well, so, being overworked and underpaid, I felt doubly rewarded.
When we'd eaten and broken all the rules by washing it down with a glass of white wine each, we left and headed our separate ways: she to talk to Stegs's boss at SO10, me to interview his guvnor at Barnet nick.
On the way, I got a call from a Mr Naresh Patel of the Police Complaints Authority, telling me that he'd like to speak to me as soon as possible in relation to the shootings at Heathrow. Knowing there was no point putting off the inevitable, I agreed to meet him later that day. He wanted to do it at their headquarters in Great George Street over in Westminster, and though I tried manfully to get him to come to the station instead, he insisted. So we set it for four-thirty, and I phoned through to Flanagan and told him that I wouldn't be able to make the five o'clock murder squad meeting. Since it was routine anyway, he didn't mind, but told me to call him beforehand with any relevant information I'd picked up that day. I told him about our meeting with Tyndall and the fact that he'd been out of the country for the last three days.
'Setting himself up with an alibi suggests to me that he was more involved than not involved,' said Flanagan, which were my thoughts exactly. 'But, as I said this morning, it's facts we need. We've got plenty of theories.'
I told him I'd see what I could come up with.
Stegs's overall boss at Barnet, DCI Tom Clay, was overweight and looked like he'd had it with policework. It's not an uncommon trait in coppers who've been in the job too long, but Clay had it more than most. He was genuinely concerned about Stegs, though, and hoped that he'd be back on duty before too long.
'I could do with him back here,' he told me as we sat in his office on the building's third floor, overlooking the high street. Outside it was drizzling, and I wondered when we were next going to see the sun. 'He spends three-quarters of his time on SO10 business not
that it's ever done him any good.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'I mean, he gets involved in all these dangerous activities, risks his neck constantly, and it never helps his chances of promotion,
doesn't get him paid any more, and the first opportunity, they hang him out to dry.'
'I wouldn't put it quite like that.'
'Wouldn't you? I would.' He sat back in his seat and it creaked under his weight. 'He's suspended from duty; you're here asking questions about him; and he's got that arsehole Flanagan to look out for.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, taking a sip from the tepid station coffee Clay had provided me with, and remembering the atmosphere between the two men during the meeting after the hotel shootings. 'Why would Flanagan have it in for him?'
'Stegs and Flanagan haven't seen eye to eye for a long time. Flanagan was the DCI in overall charge of an op him and Yokes Vokerman did once for SO10. The two of them almost got killed. I don't think it was entirely Flanagan's fault that things went wrong, but Stegs took a different view and told him that he was an incompetent arsehole who couldn't do his job properly. I don't think either of them have ever forgotten the set-to they had, and I doubt if Flanagan'd lose any sleep if Stegs took the rap for what happened Wednesday.' He took a crumpled pack of Embassy No. Is out of his pocket and stuck one in his mouth. 'Don't tell me you're one of those new breed who can't stand the smell of smoke.'
'Do I look like I'm new breed?'
He managed a smile, his first since we'd shaken hands at the front desk ten minutes earlier. 'No, not really.'
'Then please feel free. It's your office.'
'They're trying to ban it everywhere,' he said defiantly. 'It makes me wonder why I joined up sometimes. They give the criminals a slap on the wrist, but if you're law-abiding they're on to you like a shot. So, where did you say you're from?'
'I don't think I said I was from anywhere, but since you ask, I'm based out of Islington. I've been seconded to the inquiry into the murder of Robbie O'Brien, the guy they found dead alongside his grandma yesterday.'