London Large: Blood on the Streets (18 page)

Ronnie raised his head;
slowly, slowly. He was holding onto the sides of his chair; his face looked
like a bag of wet cement. He fixed his eyes on H’s.

‘She was fucked up, H.
Totally fucked up. I never told you about it…He nonced her. The old cunt nonced
her, when she was a kid. He was interfering with her for years, on and off.’

Boom! Another boneshaking
hammer blow, another horrible, gut-churning wrench. H processed it quickly;
he’d had plenty of practice lately, and it was not, after all, the most
unlikely story he’d ever heard. He made as if to speak. Ronnie held up his hand
to stop him, and spoke wearily, with infinite sadness.

‘Don’t say anything H.
There’s no need to say anything…there’s nothing you
can
say.’

Ronnie hung his head again
and lapsed back into silence.

H thought back to the
funeral. Ronnie hadn’t talked to Old Shitbreath, hadn’t shaken his hand, hadn’t
so much as looked in his direction. His instincts told him then that something
was wrong - badly wrong.

H let Ronnie be for ten
minutes, then said ‘Listen, Ron, I want you to come and stay with us for a bit.
I’ll take you back to ours now. Olivia’s about, she’ll look after you. She’ll
tuck you in, you can get some kip. I’ve got to go out for a bit, so I’ll drop
you off and see you a bit later, alright?’

Sir Basil
Fortescue-Fucking-Smythe - wrong ‘un. I always knew he was a fucking wrong ‘un.

He’s going to pay for
this.

Ninety minutes and
three strong black coffees later, Ronnie having been safely deposited with
Olivia, H pulled into Belgravia. He parked around the corner from his
destination. He didn’t have a plan as such: if Sir Basil was at home he’d play
it by ear. He’d calmed down enough on the drive up from Eltham to see that
going hammer and tongs at the old buffer in his own drum would get nobody
anywhere, practically speaking; if there was no one at home he’d spin the place
and see what he could find.

He snapped on a pair of
gloves, stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered around to Sir Basil’s
ground floor flat in a mansion block currently worth, he had read with
interest, £18 million. No one about. He crept up the stairs. He held his breath as
he pulled out his keys and jigglers and picked the lock. No burglar had much to teach
him
about making an entry
- not even here, in what for years had been one of the burglary capitals of the
Western world.

Inside, the hallway was
quiet; getting through Sir Basil’s door was a doddle. He was in.

No sign of a safe, so first
things first:
nine times out of ten these old blokes think sticking things
under the floor is the way to go
. H paced up and down, testing for hollows;
he found a sweet spot, rolled up the Persian rug and loosened a floorboard.
Bingo! A metal box. He jiggled the lock and pulled out an A4 brown paper
envelope.

Here we go. God give me
strength.

Photos. Disgusting pictures
of children – small boys mostly - being got at. Breathing deeply and clenching
his teeth, he stuffed the envelope into the back of his trousers and stood
still for a moment to collect his thoughts. He found himself praying that Sir
Basil would return home, now, and discover him.

If the old cunt comes in
now I’ll rip his bollocks straight off and feed them to him.

His eyes were accustomed now
to the semi-darkness. He looked around, considering his options. A collection
of framed photographs on a bookcase caught his attention. He sorted through
them and one made his flesh start to crawl, a split second before he’d properly
registered who was in it.

It was a group photograph
taken at a fancy dinner. A group of eight men sitting around a huge table
heaving with caviar and lobster, wine and vodka. H scanned the picture with
ferocious intensity. He recognized four of the faces: Old Shitbreath himself,
Sir Peregrine Blunt, and another face he had come up against plenty of times in
his thirty year career, human rights lawyer Oswald Carruthers QC, and fat know-all
around town Lord Timothy Skyhill.

At the centre of the picture
was another face, one he didn’t like the look of; a moody, foreign looking big
shot he didn’t recognize, or vaguely half-recognised but couldn’t put a name
to.

H was perplexed. What did all
these paragons of virtue have in common, from such different sides of the
political spectrum? This was no official function; this was a bunch of chums on
a night out.

Fuck me. This lot are
right at it. Sir Nonce and his noncey pals. Who else is on board? How far up
does it go? And who’s this moody looking bastard in the middle?

Questions, questions,
questions. It was time to get some answers. He studied the photo again, looking
for the weakest link in the chain…

Carruthers. Carruthers first.
He could dish it out, when he was giving it large in the courtroom; but could
he take it?

Let’s see him try and talk
his way out of this one.

H left the flat quietly,
looking outwardly composed. But inside he could feel his moorings slipping. It
took all his strength to keep himself from screaming. He’d had enough. Of this
hidden, never ending evil, of this sickening ruination of young lives. Of old
Basil and his disgusting ilk, arrogant and untouchable, year after year.

Well someone was going to
touch them now, and put the fear of God into them.

H had crossed swords on
a number of occasions with Oswald Carruthers, QC; usually either being cross
examined by him in the witness box or sitting mute while he talked a jury out
of administering proper justice to some horrible villain. Carruthers had got
more scoundrels off on technicalities than H had had hot dinners. H considered
that this might be an appropriate point in their relationship for their roles
to be reversed.

Time for me to ask the
fucking questions.

Back in his car the big man
called Amisha, the phone shaking in his hand, and began to channel his rage.

‘Hello guv, how are you
doing?’

‘Ames, Oswald Carruthers QC.
Address.’

‘I’ll have to go into
classified records...’

‘Now Ames, NOW.’

It was past midnight but it
didn’t take Amisha long to login into the police network and bypass the
security protocols. In fact breaking the protocols of the Metropolitan Police
was becoming something of a habit since she’d been teamed up with H. She felt
she had the strength to resist his demands, if she wanted to. But she didn’t
want to. By the tone of his voice she knew he was onto something important. She
gave him the address.

‘So guv, what you got, what’s
happening?’

But H had already hung up.

Twenty minutes later he found
himself sitting outside the gate of a large detached house in a private road in
leafy Richmond, home to rock stars, media types and superstar lawyers.

He felt like a volcano
moments before its eruption, ready to blow and bring its vengeance down upon an
unsuspecting populace, but collected his thoughts and stayed calm for a few
moments. He realised he’d just performed an act of breaking and entering, but
had still only gone so far. Nobody knew. As he considered the immense
implications of what he was about to do even H felt the need for a few moments’
reflection. A last minute review before he went past the point of no return,
before he himself became an outlaw.

Two absolutely mental firms
were waging all-out war on the streets of London. One of the murderous bastards
was getting hold of his best mate’s wife, who then gets slaughtered in St James
Park by someone nobody on planet earth has ever seen before.

Did Dragusha have her killed
for revenge, or out of simple spite to undermine his foe? Having met Dragusha H
knew it wouldn’t be beyond him.

Did Agapov have her killed?
Why? Fucking around with posh birds was one of his things.

Amidst this welter of chaos
and uncertainty he discovers Tara was badly nonced by the old man. And as soon
as he’d gone anywhere near Old Shitbreath and his chums he’d been suspended
within ten minutes. Those guys had power, real power; they’d had various police
enquiries shut down over the years. An old friend in MI6 had told him that.

Now, as he sat outside
Carruthers’ house his coppers intuition was zinging overtime. Something was
wrong, something was very wrong.

The more H considered it the
more apparent, in his own mind, his course of action became. His path was
clear, as clear as an open road with no exits. If he stayed this side of the
fence this fucking mess was never going to be cleared up. These people had
already shown their power, their reach. He didn’t doubt they had the ability to
close down whole lines of investigation - and get him kicked off the force.

H’s moment of calm, if not
his confusion, was passing. He had always played it close to the line but he
was about to throw away a lifetime of coppering. It was an illegal choice but,
in his world at least, the only choice. Good was good and evil was evil,
whatever the legalities.

H was about to go rogue. The
calm before the storm was over. Time for the volcano to erupt.

H stepped out of the
car, opened the boot and had a look at his tools. He always kept a crowbar and
a 14lb sledgehammer in the back. You never know when they might come in handy.
He tucked the crowbar inside his jacket, took out the hammer and walked
purposefully over to the wrought iron gates. He lifted the heavy hammer, slung
it behind his shoulders and brought it down with all the power and accuracy he
could muster. Crash! The lock on the gate managed to resist the first blow. The
second was more powerful, and more accurate. Bang! Still the gate resisted. But
H had got his eye in. Wallop! The third blow was decisive.

The gate flew open and H marched
up Oswald Carruthers’ driveway with a crowbar in his jacket, a 14lb hammer in
his hands and hatred in his eyes.

Inside the house Carruthers
stirred. He’d fallen asleep, as usual, on his luxurious leather sofa whilst
watching late night TV. He was a lonely man, his wife having divorced him some
four years ago, since when he’d never searched for another partner. For years
his habit had been to fall asleep on the sofa with a bottle of wine in hand.

He half registered the noise
of hammer on iron. Was that coming from some late night horror film or was
someone making a racket outside? Not here, he reassured himself, not in
Richmond. His peace of mind was instantly destroyed, though, when H smashed
through the lock on his front door. H’s accuracy, timing and power were
improving with each blow; the lock shattered instantly and the door burst open.

Carruthers sprang to his
feet, scared and confused, and tried to grasp what has happening. As he pulled
open the heavy oak door of his reception room a hand grasped him around the
neck, lifted him a foot off the floor and let him go. He fell to the floor,
clutching his throat and looked timidly into the face of his attacker.

‘Inspector Hawkins. May I ask
what on earth you think you’re doing? You are suspended as an officer of the
law and...’

H’s fist moved with the speed
and accuracy of Mohammed Ali in his prime as he brought it down on the lawyer’s
s nose. He felt the nose break as a mixture of bone and blood gushed outwards
and splattered against the embossed floral wallpaper that adorned the walls.

H took the picture of Old
Shitbreath and his chums from his back pocket and opened it.

He pointed to the man in the
centre of the picture.

‘Name?’

‘It’s Kyril Kuznetsov. What’s
this all about, Detective Inspector?’

‘Fuck,’ said H, realising he
had seen the Russian several times in the papers. He should have been able to
recall that.

‘And what is he to do with
you?’

‘Nothing. It was just a
social event, I meet all types of people.’

H wasn’t in the mood. He
really wasn’t. He brought his fist down in the same spot of Carruthers’ face as
before. Carruthers passed out.

Oh shit.

H made his way to the
kitchen, found and filled a bucket with cold water, returned and threw it over
his prone victim’s face . The lawyer came to.

H took out the other pictures
he had found at Sir Basil’s.

‘Do you know anything about
these?’

‘Oh God’, said Carruthers.

If H had expertise in
anything it was in reading people. He was in no doubt about Carruthers’
involuntary facial spasms, the gasping in his throat, the closing up of his
body. He’d revealed himself.

‘You sick little bastard. Who
else in this group is involved with you and
Sir Basil
Fortescue-Fucking-Smythe
. Where do you get these kids from?’

Carruthers was scared and in
pain but his thirty years in the legal profession steered him into auto-lawyer
mode. ‘Detective Inspector Hawkins, you have no evidence … Do you really think
it’s appropriate to come to my house without a warrant. In a court of law...’

H couldn’t stand it. He’d
been cross-examined and outfoxed by Carruthers one time too many. He knew he’d
lose in a court of law, no question.

But this was no court of law.
He took the crowbar out from the inside of his jacket, extended his arm to its
limit and smashed the crowbar into Carruthers’ face with maximum force. It was
a face that was never going to look the same again, as Carruthers’ cheeks split
open, his skull fractured and his jawline splintered in multiple locations. For
the second time that evening the distinguished Queen’s Counsel passed out.

Cunt.

It was 3 am by the time
H pulled up outside Amisha’s place in Greenwich. The adrenalin that had been
surging since he’d made the entry into Sir Basil’s place, and that had peaked
during his hammering of Carruthers, had ebbed and flowed away. Now he was
exhausted - manic still, but exhausted.