It was gone seven o’clock when he pulled up unsteadily in front of the exclusive electronic goods shop of Bang & Olufsen on Rosslyn Hill. Jon Snow was talking silently to the shop window on the Channel 4 news from a television priced at £6,000. Abruptly the image changed to a young woman, who seemed to be giving a different type of news. Then he was looking at a picture of himself with the name Gareth Wheeler underneath, aka ‘Dan’, and next to him a shot of someone called William Skates, aka ‘Skin’.
A couple joined him at the window. They, too, stared at the television and, after a moment, the guy leaned across to him slowly and said out the corner of his mouth: ‘I think we’ll be going to Dixons in Brent Cross.’
The new consultant sent from Specialist Crime Directorate 7 introduced himself at the front door.
‘I’m Rick Barnes, from the Met Kidnap Unit,’ he said.
Boxer shook hands, took his coat.
‘We’ve met before,’ said Barnes.
‘Have we?’
‘In the pub, with Mercy.’
‘Don’t mention Mercy being a cop to Isabel,’ said Boxer, who remembered him now. He’d taken a fancy to Mercy and she’d asked Boxer along to make sure it didn’t go anywhere.
He led Barnes through to meet Isabel, who wasn’t interested in him, her mind too full of the afternoon’s phone calls to fit another person in. Barnes sat opposite her. He had dark, short hair, thinning on top, blue eyes, sharp cheekbones and a thin-lipped mouth. He was lean and hard, as if he trained a great deal. He was dressed in a grey jacket, red tie and white shirt. He leaned slightly as if he was about to suddenly leap forward and hurdle Isabel and several pieces of furniture around the room. His intensity filled the air, crowded Isabel out of her own home. Boxer started to brief him on the afternoon’s developments.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Barnes. ‘I’d rather hear this from Ms Marks.’
‘I’ve just appointed Charles as my Crisis Management Committee,’ said Isabel. ‘He will brief you on everything you need to know.’
Barnes took a long, hard look at Boxer and remembered how much he disliked him. The feeling was mutual. Five minutes into the briefing, Isabel cut in.
‘Why hasn’t he called?’ she said. ‘It’s been more than an hour since his last call. You said he would get back to me in—’
‘He seemed a bit drunk,’ said Boxer.
‘How did that manifest itself?’ asked Barnes.
‘This morning he was nervous and tentative, said he was going to call us back in two hours’ time, which turned into something like seven, and he was considerably bolder, with a thickness to his voice,’ said Boxer. ‘You’ve heard the recordings?’
‘But why hasn’t he called back?’ asked Isabel.
‘By now he will have seen the Channel Four news. He’s paranoid about using mobile phones. I think he’s going back to where they’re holding Alyshia to talk to his partner. Because he’s had a few drinks and is on his way down from a high after securing a hundred thousand pounds from us, he might have lost some of his focus.’
‘He threatened to send me her finger.’
‘That was just the frustration talking.’
‘And where the FUCK is Chico?!’ shouted Isabel, hammering the glass table top with both fists.
‘That’s the ex-husband, Frank D’Cruz.’
‘I have been briefed,’ said Barnes.
‘I presume Martin Fox is no longer the director of operations,’ said Boxer. ‘Can your boss find Frank D’Cruz? He’s supposed to be bringing us the money, so . . .’
‘They’re working on it,’ said Barnes, not enjoying this situation, having his professionalism picked over by a fellow consultant. ‘Are you going to be the delivery boy?’
‘Isabel Marks has entrusted me with that task,’ said Boxer, ignoring the slight.
Saleem Cheema came out of his armchair like a rocket when he saw the Channel 4 news. He went straight to his computer, found the shots on a news website and printed them off.
He sent a text to Hakim Tarar with the code. Five minutes later, Tarar called.
‘Did you see the piece on Channel Four?’ asked Cheema.
‘I saw it.’
‘Do you know either of those guys?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘They’re from your part of town: Stepney, Bethnal Green.’
‘They’re not anybody I’ve ever dealt with.’
‘One of them used to be a nurse. Gareth Wheeler, aka “Dan”. He got struck off for stealing drugs, selling them in clubs, did some time in Wandsworth.’
‘OK. I’ll ask around, see if he’s in the business. But I don’t think he’s in my area. I know them all, even the ones who don’t deal our stuff.’
‘Start checking in other areas: Haggerston, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Dalston. The police think they’re still local. They had their van crushed in a Bethnal Green breaker’s yard.’
‘They both did time,’ said Tarar, ‘so there’s a chance they’re users rather than dealers.’
‘If you need to, you can make some promotional offers: buy two get one free. That sort of thing might help jog your dealers’ memories.’
‘You’re making this sound really important.’
‘I’ve been told it is, but I don’t know why.’
Dan bought a torch and came in the way he’d gone out, down the canal, except that he carried on a bit further and came out on the other side of the tower blocks of the Colville Estate. The wind was bitterly cold and whipped up the rubbish in the street, sending it flashing across the road, where a paper plastered itself against a set of railings. Dan lunged at it, peeled it away, took a while to get it into focus. It was a police flyer with shots of Skin and himself, face on and in profile. Skin’s tattoo was unmissable. He stuffed it in his pocket, trotted through the estate and into Branch Place, let himself in through the double doors and sprinted up the stairs to the flat.
Outside the flat door he calmed himself and eased the key in silently. He heard voices as he closed the door, walked down the corridor, veered off into the living room, put on a hood and listened outside the bedroom door.
They were laughing.
He pushed the door open.
Skin had no hood on. He was lying on the bed with Alyshia, both of them smoking weed.
‘It’s the masked man,’ said Skin. ‘Fancy a toke?’
‘What the fuck’s going on here?’
Skin looked around, as if to check on unusual disturbances that had escaped his notice.
‘Not a lot.’
‘Why aren’t you wearing your hood?’
‘Too fucking hot.’
‘Surprised you didn’t send her down to the shops for a takeaway.’
‘Not when there’s all those ready-cooked meals you bought.’
Dan saw the two empty plates on the floor by the bed, four fag ends and a dark, oily weed butt stubbed out in the remnants of a white sauce. Two cans of Stella.
‘If she had gone, she could have bought one of these back for you to look at,’ said Dan, throwing the balled-up flyer at him.
‘No need to get the hump,’ said Skin. ‘Have a toke of this mate and . . . chill.’
Skin picked open the ball of paper, smoothed it out on his chest and stretched it out over their heads.
‘Gareth Wheeler?’ he said. ‘What’s the Dan shit all about?’
‘One of the old lifers I was treating inside said I looked like Dan Dare and it stuck. And I hate being called Garry.’
‘Who’s Dan Dare?’ asked Alyshia.
‘Before your time,’ said Skin. ‘Before mine ’n’ all.’
‘Why are you still wearing your hood?’ asked Alyshia. ‘Now that we all know you’re really Dan Dare.’
‘Sounds like Cockney rhyming slang,’ said Skin. ‘I’m feeling a bit Dan Dare.’
‘Let’s talk,’ said Dan, tearing off his hood.
Skin hopped over Alyshia. They went into the other room.
‘You’ve be
en gone for fucking hours,’ said Skin. ‘And I can tell you’ve had a few. So what’s the game? My turn to step up, yet?’
‘The family know we’re in trouble,’ said Dan. ‘They know Pike’s gang and the cabbie’s lot are looking for us. And the police. We made it on to Channel Four. So . . . we’re fucked.’
‘You’re telling me you’ve been out all this time and you haven’t even come back with an offer?’
‘Oh no, I’ve had an offer.’
‘Is it more than the fiver I said I’d take?’
‘It’s a hundred grand.’
‘Fuck me,’ said Skin, hitting him on the shoulder. ‘That’s fifty grand. That’s fifty grand more than I had this morning. What you looking so sick for? Get back there and accept it. We can’t move with her, and we’ve got to get out of here, so we take what they’re offering and leg it. You didn’t seriously think we were going to get a million each, did you?’
‘You’re high.’
‘Not so high that I don’t know the difference between fifty grand and fuck all,’ said Skin. ‘Where are we going to get them to do the drop?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Dan. ‘You don’t want to be seen on the street, looking like you do, so you stick to the canal.’
‘Small problem,’ said Skin. ‘No boat.’
‘You want to go down there on a boat you might get to Limehouse Basin by the weekend. There’s about ten locks to get through,’ said Dan. ‘You’re going to walk it.’
‘How far?’
‘About three and a half, four miles.’
‘That’s an hour.’
‘You got anything else to do, apart from your duties as page boy to the court of Princess Alyshia?’
‘I’m just saying, it’ll take me an hour. We need to build that into our timings.’
‘All right, sorry. I’m just a bit stressed, with London on red alert for our arses.’
‘Take a hit,’ said Skin, handing him the last dark inch of spliff. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
Dan took a huge toke, held it in until he squeaked and his eyes filled and streamed. The drug slipped into his blood and suddenly he didn’t feel hounded anymore.
‘The worst that can happen,’ said Dan cheerfully, ‘is that we die horribly long, tortuous deaths in the hands of one London gang or another.’
‘I’ll shoot you before it comes to that,’ said Skin. ‘Promise.’
‘That’s a very fine thing for you to say, Skin,’ said Dan. ‘You’re a true friend.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Skin. ‘Tell us about the drop.’
‘Limehouse Basin is like a marina surrounded by blocks of fancy flats, full of people who work in Canary Wharf and take home more in their bonuses than we’re going to get for putting our lives on the line for this fucking kidnap.’
‘Let’s get to the detail, Garry.’
‘Don’t fucking Garry me, Mister Skates.’
He showed Skin the route down to the Limehouse Basin on the A-Z guide, talked him through the details.
‘How do you know all this shit?’
‘I go walking. I’ve been up and down this canal a hundred times.’
‘You’re a sad fucking case, you know that?’
‘But now, finally, my sadness pays off,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll get Alyshia’s mother to drive her car down to the Basin and leave it under the arches of the DLR with the money in the boot. You should be able to see it from the tunnel under Commercial Road, which means you’ll be able to see her leave the car and walk away. I’ll get her to go back up the slip road and wait by the DLR station. You pick up the money and, either go back up the canal, onto Commercial Road, or around the blocks of flats, down to Narrow Street. From there you can walk along the Thames towards Shadwell, or the other way to Canary Wharf. You could get the DLR back to Bank from there, catch the tube to Angel and back here down the canal.’
‘Why the fuck would I want to come back here?’
Silence.
‘Kiss the princess goodbye?’
‘You’re drunk and stoned,’ said Skin. ‘As soon as I’ve got the money and checked it, I’ll call you. You call the mother, tell her the address, release her and get out.’
‘Where shall we meet?’
More silence.
‘That’s good,’ said Skin. ‘We’ve got nowhere to go.’
‘Out of London.’
‘What time are we going to do the drop?’
‘Midnight?’ said Dan. ‘There won’t be any DLR or tube, so we’ll be on night buses.’
‘Fucking ridiculous,’ said Skin. ‘We’re not making our getaway with fifty grand a piece on the fucking night buses. No fucking way. I’ll steal a car.’
‘You can steal cars?’
‘I was brought up on twocking and ram-raiding.’
‘Twocking?’
‘And finally, I’ve found something you don’t fucking know,’ said Skin. ‘Taking Without Consent. Joyriding, to you.’
‘When did you last do that?’
‘It’s a kid’s crime. Twenty years ago.’
‘Things have moved on in the car alarm business since then.’
‘So you don’t want me to nick a transit, it’s got to be a Porsche fucking Cayenne now, has it?’
24
7.20 P.M., TUESDAY 13TH MARCH 2012
Regent’s Park, London
‘I’m sorry about the death of your friend,’ said Chhota Tambe, sitting at the vast desk in his house overlooking Regent’s Park, smoking a Wills Insignia cigarette and indicating a chair to the American, who was dressed in black jeans and a fleece-lined flying jacket.
‘Quiddhy knew the risks of the business we were in,’ said Dowd, who’d been drawn here by the promise of money, his eyes not leaving the cash in neat blocks in front of the Indian.
‘And you’ve found a satisfactory way of dealing with the bodies?’ said Tambe, brushing ash from his blue pin-stripe bespoke suit, which he believed made him look at least two inches taller than his four foot ten.
‘McManus had some Irish contact from way back. He’s taken care of them for us,’ said Dowd, who showed him a photograph he’d taken of the two dead men on his mobile phone. Chhota Tambe grimaced.
There was calculation in showing Tambe the bodies. Dowd wanted him to know he deserved his money. He refused an offered cigarette and smirked at Tambe’s tie with its bands of orange, lime green, gold lamé and pink, which diminished him, if not in stature, then in the eyes of his tailor.
‘And where’s McManus now?’ asked Tambe, sitting back in his gilt-edged velour chair, finger and thumb plastering his pencil moustache over and again, out to the corners of his mouth.
‘He left town,’ said Dowd.
‘And where will you go now?’ asked Tambe blandly, glancing over Dowd’s head at the wall beyond, inwardly seething with a torrential rage.
‘I thought I’d lose myself for a few months before heading back to Dubai.’
On the wall behind Dowd, in a huge gilt-frame, was a portrait painted from a photograph of Tambe’s elder brother Bada Tambe – Big Tambe. There was no family likeness. Big Tambe had been everything his younger brother wasn’t: tall, good-looking and charismatic. It was this portrait of his elder brother, which was replicated in Chhota Tambe’s houses in Dubai and Mumbai, that had been his mind’s focus for nearly twenty years. He’d loved his big brother and he could still feel the stab of grief as fresh as the day when he was told that Bada Tambe had died back in 1993.
However, there was one other person who had occupied Chhota Tambe’s thoughts besides his elder brother over the same period of time: Frank D’Cruz. With the same passion that Tambe had loved his brother, he hated Frank D’Cruz. It was one of the great balancing factors in his life.
‘The girl?’ said Tambe. ‘You said the glass panel was shot out. But you’re sure she survived.’
‘There was no blood in the room where she was being kept.’
‘The police are
on their tails, you know: the ones who shot your friends,’ said Tambe, straightening the cigarette packet, aligning it with the money, as he was a man of great order. ‘It was on Sky news.’
‘I’d better get going then,’ said Dowd, standing.
‘This is for you,’ said Tambe, easing the block of money across the desk.
Dowd accepted it with a nod, put it in his holdall.
‘My men will take you to wherever you want to go,’ said Tambe, coming round the desk, no bigger standing than he was sitting. ‘Can I suggest the Eurostar to Paris? It’s the quickest way out of the country.’
Dowd shook the small, soft hand. The two heavyweights who’d been standing by the door took him down to the garage.
‘You mind me asking a question?’ said Dowd, as they stood crammed into the small lift. ‘How long’s this been going on between your boss and Frank D’Cruz?’
The two heavies looked at each other, grinned, couldn’t resist it.
‘Depends who you’re asking,’ said one.
‘I’m asking you,’ said Dowd.
‘We’d tell you it was on the day Sharmila left Chhota Tambe and went to work for Frank D’Cruz.’
‘And what if,’ said Dowd, thinking about it, ‘I was to ask the man himself?’
‘Then you’d get a very different story,’ said the heavy.
They both laughed as the lift door opened. There were three cars in the garage. They went to a Range Rover, opened the back door for Dowd, who got in. The two heavyweights got in either side of him. No driver. He didn’t know what it was at first, this strange pain in both sides that seemed to take his breath away. He looked from one man to the other. They were leaning in on his shoulders, pushing into his rib cage and he had the odd sensation of life draining away inside him.
Dan felt safer in the dark. He didn’t need to travel so far afield now. He went down the canal as far as Broadway Market and walked the few hundred yards to London Fields, where he disappeared into the central darkness, sat on a bench and made his call.
‘Hello, Dan,’ said Isabel Marks, as if he’d made no threat to amputate her daughter’s finger, nor that any protracted interlude at a vital moment of the negotiations had occurred. He was stunned by the strength in her voice, cowed by it.