A Dark Place to Die (11 page)

In Liverpool, Stevie is starting to see things from a different angle.

For one thing, Kite is unpredictable. You don't get to be crowned the 'King' and play ball with the Colombians and the IRA without having serious history behind you, not to mention a giant set of titanium testicles.

Keith Kite doesn't look like much: small, stocky, with the doughy features common to the Irish ancestry of much of the city. He's been scrubbed up, hair sharp, clothes tailored, and he carries an aura of power with him as tangible as the smell of his expensive aftershave.

Despite this, nothing quite manages to mask his animalistic nature and Stevie suspects that is exactly how Kite likes it. His mouth has a tiny upturn at each side of the sort that Stevie associates with those who enjoyed inflicting pain and humiliation. It reminds Stevie of Heath Ledger in that Batman flick. If he had to pick one word to describe Kite it would have been 'evil'. The fucker is straight out evil.

So Stevie is somewhat relieved that Kite seems to be in no hurry to cut to the chase. The more time that passes before the ticklish subject of Max Kolomiets comes up, the better, as far as Stevie White is concerned. In the
meantime, enjoy the little tour Kite is putting on. Lunch at the docks, an afternoon at the lap dancing club owned by Kite. Earlier, while driving in Kite's Bentley, Kite ostentatiously flags down a police car to ask directions, letting Stevie see the grudgingly respectful way the coppers speak to him through the window of the car.

'Unlike you to be lost, Mr Kite,' the cop says dryly, tapping a finger against the peak of his cap in an approximation of a salute. 'You be careful around here, the place is full of rough types.'

Kite drives away, he and the Halligan brothers laughing harshly. The city is his and he knows it. Wants me to know it too, reflects Stevie.

Kite is turning his drug empire into a legitimate one, brick by brick. Bars, hotels, garages, development, development, development. Security companies, the doorman controlling distribution. A shipping company, one he'd used over the years to transport drugs, is now wholly owned by a front company run by Kite. He is making more through legitimate means than through narcotics. But the margins remain so huge in drugs that Kite won't stop.

By the time evening comes, it's all starting to make Stevie feel like a junior grade footy player making his debut in the grand final.

The dark-haired dancer is very good in bed. Skilled in a way that makes Stevie forget she has been paid for. At the hotel, he fucks her lying across a white grand piano and almost laughs out loud at the theatricality of it all. She kisses him goodbye with such a good impersonation of a lover that he forgets, for a time, she is a whore. Kite has also laid on some spectacular blow and Stevie, his system buzzing in the way that a jolt of primo marching powder
always brings, steps out for dinner with a swagger in his stride. He suppresses the troubling thought that Kite is ready to talk about the shipment.

Kite has reserved a private room at one of the new breed of gourmet places imported into the city in recent, confident, years. It sits near the crest of the high ground overlooking the city, between the two cathedrals. The food is better than any Stevie has ever tasted, but is a little fancy for him, and he never feels hungry on coke. Kite shovels it down with every sign of enjoyment. The table is a small one, with only three of Kite's closest team in attendance: Declan North, along with Matty and Dean Halligan, two of the infamous and labyrinthine Huyton Halligan family who have been heavily involved in the Liverpool drug operation for as long as anyone can remember. None of them speak much during the meal, which does little to settle Stevie's nerves. Outside the restaurant, Sean Bourke waits patiently as instructed.

After the waiter brings them brandies, Kite leans forward and, without Stevie quite knowing how, the atmosphere in the room cools perceptibly. Here it comes, Stevie thinks and tries to look calmer than he feels.

'Mr White, we've been very hospitable today, I think you'll agree?' Kite says, his mouth turned up in an imitation of a smile, a row of sharp teeth revealed. 'Now I think it's time to tell us what you're here for. Something to do with our upcoming Australian venture, I imagine.'

Stevie glances at the four faces around the table who gaze back at him blankly. Kite gives an encouraging nod.

'Jimmy,' says Stevie, his voice higher than he would have liked. 'Jimmy sent me, Mr Kite. Jimmy Gelagotis?'

'I know who Gelagotis is.'

OK, Stevie, man the fuck up and tell the Pommy cunts. He takes a deep breath and forces the words to come out calmly, with authority.

'Jimmy's taking over the Australian end.'

Kite stares at Stevie. He sits back and folds his arms across his impeccable suit.

'Is he now?'

Stevie nods. He keeps his face neutral.

'And how, exactly, is
Jimmy
going to do that? I'm in business with my good friend Max Kolomiets. That's who the deal is in place with.'

'The Russian's dead.' It comes out quicker than Stevie intends. Fuck it. The Pommy cunt has to find out sometime. With the words said, Stevie feels the worst is over.

Kite looks at North and then back at Stevie, letting the silence develop. Stevie is conscious of the clatter and chatter of the other diners in the restaurant. When Kite speaks again, his eyes have dulled and Stevie feels his sphincter clench. He looks at the man across the table and he knows, as sure as he knows his own name, that the whole deal has fallen apart.

'Hear that, Mr North?' murmurs Kite, his flat eyes never leaving Stevie's face. 'Mr White here tells me that The Russian is dead.'

North purses his lips. 'That is very disturbing news, Mr Kite,' his Irish accent soft, his face hard.

'Fucking heart attack, was it?' says Kite, his voice suddenly choked with venom, his face flooded with blood and fury. He leans forward until he is right in Stevie's space, spittle flying from Kite's mouth as he hisses out the words in a low undertone. 'Stroke? Fell under a bus? Clobbered by a rogue fucking kangaroo?'

The change is savage and, even though Stevie has been expecting a reaction, takes him aback. Dean and Matty Halligan haven't moved. North looks slightly bored.

Stevie opens his mouth but Kite holds up a hand and speaks rapidly, his voice lowered so that no-one nearby can overhear. More disturbingly, he plasters a sickly smile in place and his colour returns to normal. Stevie almost thinks he prefers the angry Kite.

'Not a fucking word, you out-of-your-depth and out-of-place motherfucking Australian cunt. Max Kolomiets was
my
boy, you understand?
Mine
. Not Jimmy fucking Gellygallopipa-fucking-opolis, or whatever the fuck that Greek twat is called,
mine
! He is
mine
to dispose of or not dispose of, as I please, not some jumped-up olive-stuffer!'

Kite's eyes are glowing. 'That's the fucking problem with the fucking world today: too many fucking incomers, poking their fucking noses in what is none of their fucking business! If it's not fucking Greeks, it's Polacks, or Latvians, or fucking Somalis, or some other greasy black bastard wop fuck convict cunt trying to grab a slice of someone else's hard-won money. In this case,
my
fucking money. It's ungentlemanly, that's what it is. It's a fucking liberty, my son. A. Fucking. Liberty.'

Kite sits back, vibrating with fury, still smiling. For a moment Stevie thinks of running, such is the violence contained in the man opposite him. Then, in an instant, Kite is ice. He sips the last of his brandy and looks at Stevie. Stevie's mind is flashing one phrase over and over again:
get out, get out, get out
, an adrenaline-fuelled instinctive scream. Jimmy made a mistake with this guy. A great big fucking grade-A mistake and Stevie's left in the middle of it.

'I'll pass along your . . . thoughts to Jimmy,' says Stevie.
He pushes his chair back from the table and begins to rise. 'I'm sorry it hasn't worked out, Mr Kite.'

'Sit the fuck down, Australian,' says Kite. 'You're going nowhere.' He glances at North. Stevie follows the direction and sees North has a gun. North holds it casually under a linen napkin, its ugly snout poking straight at him.

'I know you might be thinking that Mr North wouldn't kill you, Mr White, not here in front of all these lovely people eating their lovely dinners, but let me tell you that Mr North will do whatever is fucking necessary. Even if that does get very messy, understand? And it would get very messy, trust me. Mr North doesn't want to kill you here, but he will, if you so much as fart. For all I know, he may kill you anyway. He has a dislike of people generally that I sometimes find hard to accommodate.'

Stevie nods and sits down.

'There's no need for guns, Mr Kite,' says Stevie. Under the circumstances his voice is steady but he can feel a wetness in his eyes. 'This is just business, right?'

'Just business is right,' says Kite. 'Only we do things a bit differently over here in the mother country. Which you're about to find out.'

This is heading south in a hurry. Stevie feels sweat trickle down his spine and he has an overpowering urge to go to the toilet. He tries to catch the eye of a passing waiter but the waiter looks away, suddenly busy.

At a nod from Kite, Matty Halligan leaves the restaurant.

'When Mr Halligan arrives with the car,' says Kite, 'you're going to get up, walk across the room and get in it without any fuss. You're a big lad, and you look like you've been in a few nasties, but don't think that's going to help you here. Right?'

'Yeah, yeah, OK, Mr Kite, but there's no need for any of this, none at all. And I'll need to get the message back to Jimmy.' Stevie can't keep the panic out of his voice.

'Here's the car,' says Kite. 'Now stand. There's a good lad. If you can. Jimmy will get the message.'

Stevie rises unsteadily and Kite walks him towards the door, a genial nod to the head waiter, the bill put on the tab. Kite drapes an arm over Stevie's shoulder, every inch the genial host. With North following close behind them, they reach the door and Dean Halligan holds it open, the Liverpool wind cutting through Stevie's jacket.

'Tell me, Mr White,' says North, the Irishman's lilt low in Stevie's ear as the car door is opened. 'Are you in the way of being an art lover?'

16

It's lunchtime. Keane and Harris pull up their collars against the rain and splash across the wet cobbles from the car and into Ye Cracke.

The old pub stands halfway down a side road leading off Hope Street; only one street from the site of Stevie White's last meal. There are photographs of musicians drinking in there, and the walls are hung with drawings produced by artists who'd gone on to (sometimes) better things, their bar bill paid by art, or maybe just left there. The area's stiff with artists, the art school round the corner spewing out a steady supply. The ceiling is low and coated in a thick patina of nicotine, a memory of the days when smoke was as much a part of a pub as beer and casual violence. The walls don't seem to have been repainted, the decor not altered much in the twenty-odd years Keane has been drinking there, the dead hand of modernity not reaching this far up the city, or at least not into this patch, not just yet. It's one of the reasons Keane prefers it.

He bags a seat in the corner, back to the wall as always, in a booth that gives him and Harris privacy. Keane would have preferred a seat in the courtyard, a tiny, secluded
bolt-hole at the back of the pub. But the rain puts paid to that and they'll have to stick inside. The downside of being a copper is that people recognise you everywhere you go. The kind of recognition that comes when you haul someone out of bed at 4 am and arrest them.

Experiences like that tend to sour a person's view of you, Keane has always found.

Another reason for choosing the pub: to Keane's knowledge the pub is 'clean'. No history of drugs, no known gangland connections, no ex-cons working security. It's also the closest decent boozer to the police HQ at Canning Place where he's due for a meeting with his boss after lunch; The Fish himself, DCI Eric Perch, the coldest man Keane has ever encountered – and that includes a serial killer currently undergoing treatment at Ashworth. Perch is missing the tips of two fingers after an accident with a lawn-mower – at least that was the story. Keane prefers the canteen gossip that Perch is a zombie who got peckish one night.

Perch's promotion from outside MIT had been greeted with the enthusiasm usually reserved for prostate exams. But, despite the misgivings, The Fish does at least get results, Keane has to give him that. He achieves this in a very simple way: by cracking his teams hard and ruthlessly. Officers who don't produce find their careers mysteriously stalled, leave requests denied, their transfers to unpopular postings hastened.

But the man gives Keane the heaves, plain and simple. If meeting The Fish for a case status update doesn't warrant a lunchtime bevy, Keane doesn't know what does.

Harris comes back from the bar with the drinks. Cranberry juice for her, Becks for him. Faces following her as she passes.

'Thanks,' says Keane and takes a guilty pull. He's never
been much of a lunchtime drinker but lately finds himself drifting into having the odd one here and there. Ever attentive, and seldom slow to criticise himself, Keane has dryly noted the shortening gaps between the 'odd ones'. He'll have to watch that.

Right now, though, the beer tastes good.

'Koopman,' says Harris, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. It's both a question and a statement. She takes a small sip of her drink and looks at Keane over the top of the glass. Keane tries not to let his lust show. There is, as always, an element of sexual tension crackling between them. Just enough to help the working relationship along; not enough for it to spill over into anything messy. Keane is very happy with Julie and has been for the past three years. Harris is in a long-term relationship with a theatre nurse at Broad-green. Keane knows Harris isn't covering up her sexuality – it's simply nobody's damn business except hers – but he also has a suspicion, never to be voiced, that Harris strays from time to time with men. He isn't sure what the lesbian community's feelings are on things like that, and he sure as shit doesn't intend to have a cosy discussion on sexual politics with DI Harris to find out. Not if he wants to keep both his testicles.