Six
The job Tyrone Wolfe wanted me to carry out was to buy some guns from an underworld dealer based in Canning Town. Although he’d told Tommy to drive me to the destination, he’d made it clear that I was to go in and make the purchase alone. His rationale was simple: if I bought the guns, I was committing a serious crime and therefore couldn’t be a copper. But the rationale was flawed, because by sending me on my way with Tommy driving they’d put me in a position where I had no choice but to commit it, since failure to do so would have blown my cover. I wasn’t sure whether my handler at CO10 would see it quite like that, of course. DI Robin Samuel-Smith, or Captain Bob as he was universally known behind his back, liked to play things by the book. But I’d worry about that one later.
Wolfe had given me an envelope containing five grand in cash – payment for two automatic shotguns and a handgun – handed me back the rest of my possessions, including my recording watch, and told me that I was expected at the dealer’s place half an hour ago, and that he’d see me with the goods later.
We were now in Tommy’s car en route. In the back seat, sitting up with his tongue lolling out, was Tommy’s dog, Tommy Junior, an unhealthy-looking mongrel with a mangled ear who always smelled of old raincoats. The story went that Tommy had rescued him from a gang of teenage thugs who’d tied his front and back paws together and were about to dump him in the murky waters of Regent’s Canal. Tommy had thrown in one of the thugs instead, and when a second pulled a knife on him, he’d produced an extendable baton and broken his nose with it before sending him in with his mate. The others had done the sensible thing and fled.
Tommy Junior loved his master and, perhaps unsurprisingly, distrusted everyone else. He seemed to have taken a particular dislike to me because in the last three months I’d become something of a regular in the front seat, which was the one he liked to occupy.
It had taken me a month of hanging round the periphery of the north London underworld, drinking in grimy little backstreet pubs with small-time crims and putting my name about as Sean Tatelli, an ex-con on the lookout for decent work, before I got introduced to Tommy. That was three months ago now, and we’d spent a lot of time together since. For a while that had involved nothing more than going out drinking and shooting the breeze. Like a lot of criminals, Tommy was good company, with a wealth of amusing stories to tell. Slowly, though, he’d begun to take me into his confidence, giving me bits and pieces of work to do, always suggesting that something bigger would come along, until finally, today, he’d pulled up outside the flat I used for my undercover ops and told me that he had work for me. Real work this time.
‘Who’s it we’re meant to be snatching?’ I asked Tommy, keen to have something to go back to Captain Bob with.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, fixing me with deep-set eyes that always had a melancholy expression in them, even when he was telling a good story. ‘I don’t work with Wolfe as much as I used to these days. But you said he offered you a hundred grand. Well, he’s offered me one fifty, so I’m thinking him and Haddock must be making at least two apiece, maybe more, which means whoever it is we’re after’s worth a lot of money to someone. All I know is it’s one man, and his escort’s not going to be armed. That’s it. I don’t even know the location.’
‘Do you know how Wolfe got to hear of the job?’
He shook his head. ‘He’s keeping everything close to his chest, and he’s even more jumpy than usual about it. That’s why he’s being all cloak and dagger with you. He doesn’t like using people from outside the crew for work, but he needed a fourth man, and seeing as you and me are mates, and you need the work . . .’
‘Thanks for thinking of me,’ I said, feeling an unusual twinge of guilt that I was going to betray him. Tommy Allen was a violent criminal, but I’d grown closer to him than I’d have liked. At forty-five, he was only twelve years older than me, but sometimes he acted as if I was the son he’d never had.
The car fell silent, and he lit a cigarette.
I looked at it longingly. I only allow myself two cigarettes per day, one after lunch, one after supper. It’s my routine, and I stick to it. But I was sorely tempted to make an exception now, knowing that I was heading out of the frying pan and possibly straight into the fire.
I stared out of the car window, trying hard to ignore the pounding of my heart as the hotels, theatres and pavement cafés of the West End gave way to the grand Victorian buildings of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the legal quarter, and then the steel-and-glass high-rises of the City. Finally, the wealth slipped away and we were into the poorer tenements and terraced housing that was the sprawling East End. This area of London had suffered most under the bombardment of the Luftwaffe in the Second World War, and it showed in the slapdash nature of much of the architecture: Victorian tenements, 1950s terraces, 1960s tower blocks, all running into one another to the cheerful beats of Tommy’s
Best of Level 42
CD.
Tommy, I’d found out in the time I’d known him, was a big fan of 1980s music, and particularly Level 42. He’d been singing along pretty much non-stop to the tracks throughout the journey, occasionally accompanied by Tommy Junior howling from the back seat, creating an out-of-tune cacophony that would have made me gouge out my own eyes if I hadn’t been so preoccupied. Finally, as one of the band’s lesser hits, ‘Microkid’, came on, Tommy seemed to notice for the first time that I wasn’t saying much.
He turned down the music. ‘Listen, Sean, you’re not scared, are you?’
‘No, I’ve just been struck dumb by the quality of your and Tommy Junior’s singing.’
He chuckled. ‘“Lessons in Love” is Tommy Junior’s favourite. He really catches the high notes on that one.’ He turned to me, his face growing serious again. ‘I can vouch for these blokes, you know. The ones you’re buying off. I’ve done stuff with them myself before. They’re reliable.’
Which was a refrain I’d heard plenty of times before about criminals.
They’re reliable
. The problem was, for the most part, they weren’t. They tended to be paranoid, highly strung, violent, and often drugged up, which was a pretty lethal combination. In the course of my career I’ve had two guns pulled on me, four knives, an axe, a tyre iron, baseball bats, even a fake medieval ball and chain. I’ve been held down by a gang of crazed thugs, flying on a diet of vodka and crack, who doused me in petrol and threatened to burn me alive unless I gave them the drugs I was supposed to be carrying (I didn’t, and they didn’t), and many’s the time I’ve woken up in the morning wondering when my luck’s going to run out.
But in spite of all that, I knew I could never give up the job. I was too much of a believer in the old adage: evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Evil was doing pretty well as it was these days, and there was no shortage of those doing nothing. When I was a young kid, I went to sleep at night thinking that there was a copper standing guard on the street outside my window, there to protect me from all the creatures who haunt the nightmares of children, and it always comforted me to believe he was there. Now I was that copper, and there were plenty of people out there relying on me.
It was just after one p.m. when Tommy pulled into a decrepit-looking street of pre-war terraced housing north of the Barking Road. One end of the terrace ended suddenly where part of the last house had collapsed into a pile of rubble, and was then replaced by a strip of uneven wasteland on which a burned-out car sat, missing its wheels. Forlorn pieces of litter scattered and drifted across the tarmac in the dusty breeze, and in the distance, red and blue tower cranes rose like mantises above the crumbling skyline. Facing the wasteland on the other side of the road was a line of cheap, windswept shops, the majority of which were either boarded up or had the shutters down.
‘There’s the place,’ said Tommy, parking up and motioning towards a takeaway restaurant called Zafiah’s Fine Jamaican Cuisine, which sat hunched and uninviting next to an empty unit with scorchmarks up its front, like it had been petrol-bombed. A couple of kids in hoodies, their faces hidden, sat on mountain bikes outside, sharing what looked like a joint.
‘It looks closed,’ I said.
‘It is, but they’re expecting us. Just go round to the side door and ask for Mitchell. And check the guns work before you give him any money. I’ll wait here for you.’
I stared at him. ‘You’re really not coming in with me?’
He gave me a regretful, hangdog look that made his fleshy jowls hang down. ‘I can’t, mate. Wolfe wants you to do this alone. It’s his orders. That way he knows he can definitely trust you.’
‘But Wolfe’s not here, Tommy. I don’t even know these guys. You’ve got to help me out here.’
‘There’ll be no problem, Sean. Honest. You’ll be all right.’
It was then that I realized Tommy didn’t trust me entirely either. That I was doing this to prove myself to him as well as to Wolfe. I was well and truly on my own.
‘Do me a favour,’ I said, opening the door. ‘If I’m not out in ten minutes, come and get me.’
He gave me a reassuring smile, said sure, no problem, there was nothing to worry about. But in my game there always is.
It had already been a bad morning, and I had to force myself to get out of the car. At that moment I felt like jacking the whole thing in and applying for desk duties at Scotland Yard, far away from all this crap. The envelope containing the five grand was tucked into the front of my jeans, with my shirt covering it, and even though it was out of sight, I knew I was still vulnerable.
I crossed the road and walked past the kids in their hoodies, ignoring their stares and keeping my pace casual, before passing by the front of the takeaway. The interior was dark and empty, and as I rounded the corner and moved into the alleyway leading down to the side door I pondered calling Captain Bob to let him know my current status, maybe even get some emergency back-up in case things didn’t run as smoothly as Tommy was claiming they would. But Bob would never have authorized me to go inside alone. I was just going to have to hope this deal went OK, then I could pass on the information about the gun dealer, and in a few days’ or weeks’ time, when the memory of my visit had faded, the dealer could be arrested without fuss or hassle. That was the good thing about undercover work. The domino effect. Infiltrate one gang and you soon get leads on another. The underworld, like the legitimate one, is all about people doing business together.
The alleyway was narrow and dotted with black rubbish sacks, several of which had been split open to reveal decaying household detritus. Graffiti – gang signs, teenage boasts – took up most of the space on the whitewashed walls on either side, and there was a smell of animal fat in the air. I picked my way through the mess until I came to a heavy wooden firedoor that had been painted sky blue about a hundred years ago. The smell of fat was stronger here, and a pile of black bin bags had been fashioned into an unwieldy pyramid balanced against the wall opposite.
I took a deep breath and knocked hard on the door.
There was a long pause – twenty, maybe thirty seconds – and I was just about to try again when it was opened a few inches on a thick chain and a pair of cartoon-wide bloodshot eyes stared out at me from the gloom.
‘I’m here to see Mitchell. I’m expected. My name’s Sean.’
The eyes stared at me for a couple of seconds longer, then the chain was released and the door opened.
A tall, slim black man of about forty stood appraising me with a slow, disjointed gaze, and a contented smile that was vaguely disconcerting. He was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting red singlet with the name of the takeaway emblazoned across it. Behind him thin wisps of dope smoke floated out the door. ‘Who sent you, mon?’ he asked in a soft Jamaican accent.
‘Tyrone Wolfe,’ I answered firmly. ‘Are you Mitchell?’ I knew he was, of course. He might have been stoned, but he had an air of seniority about him which I’ve learned to spot a mile off.
‘That’s me,’ he said languidly. ‘You’d better come in, mon.’
As I stepped inside, he let go of the door and it shut automatically with a series of loud clicks, locking me away from the outside world.
He led me through a narrow corridor and into a cavernous kitchen, with high ceilings and no windows, that smelled of meat and dope, and walked over to a table and chairs in the middle of the room. He picked up a half-finished joint from the ashtray and took a big hit.
‘So, Sean, you got my money?’
If I said yes straight away, he might decide to rip me off rather than go through with the deal. Criminals can be very short-term like that, even supposedly reliable ones. On the other hand, if I said no, he might just tell me to get lost. In my experience, these kinds of negotiations rarely took a simple and direct route. In the end, I compromised. ‘Sure,’ I answered casually, much as I might have done if the guy had asked if I liked the colour of the paint on the walls. ‘Have you got what I came for?’
‘How come Wolfe and Haddock don’t come round here no more? They getting too high and mighty to deal with a bwoy like me?’
‘They’re busy today,’ I answered, hearing a movement behind me. I turned and saw a black guy of about twenty leaning against the kitchen door and blocking my exit. He was dressed in a gaudy tracksuit and New York Yankees baseball cap, and wore Raybans even though the room was dark. He also had his right hand behind his back, which was never a good sign. Trying to remain as unfazed as possible, I turned back to Mitchell. ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if you can get the stuff I’d appreciate it.’
Mitchell nodded slowly, never taking his big bloodshot eyes off me, then shouted something over his shoulder in a rapid Jamaican patois that I didn’t quite catch. ‘How long you worked for Wolfe, mon?’
‘I don’t work for anyone. I work with people.’
‘Yeah, well, how long you worked with him, then?’
I shrugged. ‘A few months maybe. What does it matter?’
‘I like to know who I’m dealing with, that’s all.’
‘Someone who wants to buy some guns, then get the hell out of here.’