Shredder (14 page)

“Sit still and shut up,” I said. “I'm going to let go in a minute, and then I'm going to get out of this car. And you're going to drive straight back to York, and you're not going to call anyone. You're not going to tell anyone I'm here or that I know about this flat. If you do, and the Turk's people catch me, I'm going to say you brought me here because you were worried about Zoe. And they'll cut your face off and feed it to you, and God knows what else, because they don't need you anymore, and that's the sort of thing they do to anyone who pisses them off. Do you understand?”

With my thumb digging into his larynx, all Patrick could manage was a tiny flick of his head. It was enough. I let him go and he clutched at his throat,
gasping, and trying to curse, but no words came out. I heaved open my door, climbed out, slammed it and walked away. Behind me I heard the Mini's engine fire up and roar as Patrick cranked the steering wheel, pulled out of the parking space into a tight U-turn and roared off into the night, heading north.

I'd forgotten about him already; I was surveying the flat where Zoe was being held prisoner, the shop below it, the other shops in that block and the flats above them. I strode down the street, trying to look as if I was headed somewhere, trying not to make my reconnoiter too obvious. As I passed on the far side of the road I raised my hand to scratch my forehead, to hide my profile in case anyone was watching from the flat. A hairdresser's nearly opposite had a deep unlit doorway piled with litter; they'd gone out of business months ago, by the look of it, so there was no light from inside to silhouette me. I stepped into the doorway, pushing myself back into the shadows, and took a good look.

The Turk's place was on a corner where a smaller road joined the main shopping precinct; the junction was a mini-roundabout. The flat took up the top two floors of a three-story building, and its lower windows were nine or ten meters above the level of the
street. To the front, facing the main drag, were two windows on each floor; round the corner, three more on each floor, plus small frosted panes that must have been bathrooms. A big flat, then, five or six bedrooms at least. Were they all occupied? I knew Zoe could be a handful, but surely she didn't need six guards, especially when she was lashed to a bed?

Unless this flat was a lodging-house for some of the Turk's heavies, and they had locked Zoe in one room there rather than find a new place just for the purpose of holding her…. That made depressingly good sense.

The electrical goods shop on the ground floor was a small independent, not part of a chain; its windows were piled high with assorted toasters, microwaves and vacuums, and even the odd laptop and music player. It was probably struggling—didn't everyone buy that sort of stuff online these days?—but the owners weren't going down without a fight. The place was neat, secure, and well maintained. The double gates onto the side street were freshly painted, massive and solid, set into a brick wall. No weakness there. The door to the stairs up to the flat opened onto the main street, and it too was solid and forbidding. One way in, one way out,
unless I climbed onto the roof and squeezed down the chimney. Absurd as the idea was, I checked out the roofline. The building didn't even
have
a chimney.

I was bone-tired, I suddenly realized, and ravenous. It had been hours since that service station sandwich. I needed to eat and I needed to rest and I needed to think. Stepping quickly out of the shop doorway, I looked up and down the street. There was a greasy spoon about five doors down, warm yellow light spilling onto the pavement.

I scurried up to it and shoved at the door, but it was locked. I didn't have to decode the red notice hanging behind the glass from a plastic suction hook to know it said
CLOSED
. Of course the café was closed, at this time on a Sunday. All the same, it looked so warm and inviting the sight of it made my stomach rumble and my bones ache. The plastic tables had been wiped clean and were neatly laid ready for Monday morning, with pots holding packets of sugar, and salt in old-fashioned glass shakers, and squeezy plastic tomatoes filled with ketchup. It would probably open at six and immediately fill up with builders having huge fried breakfasts, reading the papers, exchanging dirty jokes and calling their
clients to say they were stuck in traffic and would be there in twenty minutes, half an hour tops.

I glanced over my shoulder; the café offered a perfect vantage point to observe the flat. I'd come back first thing, settle in with a cup of tea, and I'd watch, and I'd think of something. I had to.

Eighteen hours later I still hadn't.

I hadn't gone home to West London; maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, but I couldn't leave Zoe in that place and slope off home to sleep in my own bed. If she
was
still in that place, and hadn't been moved…I pushed that thought away.

The night, like every night for the last month or so, was warm and dry, with barely a breeze to dispel the dusty, stagnant air. I wandered the local streets until I found a park. The gates were closed and locked, but it wasn't hard to scale the fence, and I went hunting for a bench to sleep on. The dark grass glittered with leftovers from the day's boozy picnics—crisp packets, doughnut boxes and empty wine cooler and cider bottles glinting in the hot moonlight. I caught a scuffle nearby, low down by the bushes, and in the blue shadows made out two foxes fighting over the carcass of a roast chicken. One panicked
at my presence and ran, and the other glanced at me in contempt before picking up his trophy in his jaws and vanishing into the undergrowth.

I sat down on the first bench I came to, folded my arms, crossed my legs, bowed my head and tried to doze, but before very long I started to get shooting pains in my neck. I tried lying down instead, along the length of the bench. My thin clothes did little to blunt the hard edges of the slats, and I wished I had a blanket—even in that muggy heat, it was hard to sleep properly without the sense of something covering me—but from sheer exhaustion and willpower I managed to doze through the night and even miss the dawn.

I heard rather than saw the park workers unlocking the gates; if any of them saw me they ignored me. They probably hoped I'd wake up by myself and wander off, and that I wasn't another of those punters who break into parks at night just to top themselves—finding a dead body can't be the best start to anyone's day. I was stiff, even a little cold, but I spent a few minutes stretching, then jogged round the park twice to warm myself up and loosen my joints and tendons. I tried not to work up a sweat; I planned to spend all day in these clothes,
and I didn't want to catch a chill from the damp of my own perspiration, or stink out that café.

It was already open by the time I got back to the shopping precinct, and two red-faced and fleshy women in butcher's aprons were hard at work cutting rolls and setting out mugs, while a chef in greasy whites clattered around in the kitchen beyond. I ordered a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea and made my way to a table by the front window. Some really early bird had already been and gone, leaving a smear of fried egg and a discarded tabloid on the tabletop. The newspaper was a good prop; I could hold it up and pretend to read while I observed the flat across the road, and it would make the staff less likely to wonder what the hell I was up to.

As it turned out, the morning rush was so frantic the waitresses had no time to wonder, and by ten, when the rush had died down, the place was so quiet they didn't seem to care why I was there or how long I was going to hog the table, provided I bought a cup of tea every hour or so. Maybe it would have been different if I'd been taking notes—that might have looked really dodgy—but I wasn't going to bother with that; my handwriting is so bad even I can't read it, so as usual I relied on my memory instead.

In the course of that morning five heavies I'd never seen before, plus one I had, came in and out of that street door, one at a time or in pairs, dropped off at the curb and picked up again by two more guys driving unremarkable but powerful Merc sedans.

The one heavy I recognized was Dean; the others who came and went I nicknamed so I could keep track more easily: Swarthy was skinny and dark, with stubble so thick and coarse you could strike a match off his chin; Roly-Poly was as beefy as a rugby player, with hairy hands and an open-necked patterned shirt that strained to hold in his big belly; Blondie was barely twenty—nearly albino, with colorless skin, thinning blond hair and invisible eyebrows. And Popeye, and Blue Shoes…Two of them wore suits, three of them jeans and blazers, and Dean wore a leather bomber jacket that had seen better days, with spotless stone-colored chinos.

Although he swaggered about like he was in charge, from the body language of the others it looked very much like Dean was an apprentice. For one thing, all the Turkish guys—as far as I could see—were armed. Four of them had a bulge under their left armpit and Blue Shoes a similar bulge under his right—he must be a southpaw…but although
Dean had been packing in Trafalgar Square, he didn't seem to be now. Clearly he hadn't distinguished himself, if they'd taken his gun away.

I calculated I could take any of them one to one—close-up, so they'd have no time to pull a weapon—but this wasn't one of those old kung-fu movies where the villains formed an orderly queue to have a go at the hero. Yeah, I could ring the doorbell, and maybe floor whoever answered it, but then I'd have to fight my way upstairs against five men, mostly armed, who knew I was coming.

Half an hour after noon I saw the door to the flat open again. This time no one came out. Instead another Merc pulled up at the curb—a sleek modern one with darkened windows—and a slight, smart figure emerged, crossing the pavement and disappearing inside within a second or two.
The Turk
. I had only caught a glimpse, but I was sure it was him, and the sight of Kemal's massive muscular torso emerging from the car's other side and following him in confirmed it. He carried a small briefcase, I noticed, that in his huge paw looked the size of a paperback.

Tell the Guvnor
. Of course, I could call him right now, hand him the Turk on a plate. Taking on this
many men would need an army, and McGovern had one—even if his had lost the last few battles. The Guvnor wouldn't hesitate to use as much violence as necessary, and plenty more besides….

That was the problem. Even if I told him Zoe was being held inside, the Guvnor wouldn't give a damn. He wouldn't risk any men to save her—his crew would probably firebomb the place, and stand back laughing while burning goons jumped out of the windows, screaming. Zoe, tied to the bed, wouldn't even get that far.

By the time I'd thought all that through, the street door opened again and the Turk strode briskly across the pavement back to his car, weaving through shoppers who barely registered his presence. When Kemal lumbered after him, though, passersby stopped in their tracks and parted to make way; he radiated such menace one or two even turned their heads to avert their eyes. The Merc's doors shut again and the car moved smoothly off.

Just like that, the Guvnor's chance had been and gone. Even if I'd called him he wouldn't have had time to rally his troops, never mind get them down here.

A cold dark cloak of despair was smothering me:
my options, if I'd ever had any, were fading fast. If I called the Guvnor I'd lose Zoe. If I called the cops, they'd nick me and ignore the Turk, because right now the government needed him more than it needed me or Zoe. I was back where I'd started, except now I'd wasted a day looking for a way out.

I'd never killed anyone—not on purpose, anyway. I'd never sat down and worked it out, never considered the million ways there are to stop a human heart, never chosen one, made the preparations. How would I kill the Guvnor? He was in his fifties, yes, but he was fit and strong, and now he was alert to the threat, and he trusted nobody. I couldn't shoot him; even if I got hold of a gun, I'd never used one, and Trafalgar Square had taught me you could fill the air with flying lead and still miss your target. What about a knife? From his kitchen, maybe? When I'd been in that gang with Jonah, hanging out in that derelict house near the river, he'd told me a bit about knife fighting, about the cut to the thigh that could kill in seconds. I hadn't been paying enough attention because the thought of it had made me sick. It still did.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill anyone in cold blood. Yes, McGovern had murdered plenty of innocent
people himself, if you believed Amobi, but I wasn't McGovern, and I didn't want to become like him.

I was going to end up in that shredder. In fact, between the Guvnor, the Turk, the Russians and the cops, I was already in the shredder, clawing at the sheer sides, dancing on the camshafts while the toothed wheels snatched at my feet.

And after me it would be Zoe's turn.

I'd missed lunch, I realized. One of the waitresses had said something to me, and I'd picked up a menu and stared at it, but the words made no sense and I had no appetite anyway. At one point three men in vests and bright orange trousers—street sweepers, I think—sat down to share my table and yammered away in Latvian or something for half an hour, while I watched the Turk's men buzz in and out of the apartment across the road like sleek fat hornets, clutching sandwiches and coffee, laughing among themselves, exchanging cigarettes. I didn't realize the Latvian street sweepers were gone until they wheeled their bin trollies past my window and went off in search of litter.

Four o'clock. New serving staff had arrived: an older, chubby bloke and a young willowy girl with clunky glasses and a faceful of piercings. I caught
shards of conversation—the two shifts conferring about whether I was worth the effort of throwing out. They decided to ignore me, and I was glad; it meant I could put off the inevitable just that little bit longer.