The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (45 page)

When I came off duty, she was parked across the street, smoking a cigarette, window wound down.

“Give you a lift?”

I’d moved up market but not by much, an upper floor flat in an already ageing mansion block between Chalk Farm and Belsize Park. A photograph of the great drummer, Max Roach, was on the
wall; Sillitoe’s
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
next to the Eric Amblers and a few Graham Greenes on the shelf; an Alex Welsh album on the record player, ready to remind me of
better times.

“So, how are things?” Diane asked, doing her best to look as if she cared.

“Could be worse,” I said. In the kitchen, I set the kettle to boil and she stood too close while I spooned Nescafe into a pair of china mugs. There was something beneath the scent of
her perfume that I remembered too well.

“What does he want?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Patrick, who else?”

She paused from stirring sugar into her coffee. “Is that what it has to be?”

“Probably.”

“What if I just wanted to see you for myself?”

The green in her eye was bright under the unshaded kitchen light. “I wouldn’t let myself believe it,” I said.

She stepped into my arms and my arms moved around her as if they had a mind of their own. She kissed me and I kissed her back. I’d like to say I pushed her away after that and we sat and
drank our coffee like two adults, talked about old times and what she was going to do with her life after the divorce. She was divorcing him, she said: she didn’t know why she hadn’t
done it before.

“He’ll let you go?”

“He’ll let me go.”

For a moment, she couldn’t hold my gaze. “There’s just one thing,” she said, “one thing that he wants. This new club of his, someone’s trying to have his
licence cancelled.”

“Someone?”

“Serving drinks after hours, an allegation, nothing more.”

“He can’t make it go away?”

Diane shook her head. “He’s tried.”

I looked at her. “And that’s all?”

“One of the officers, he’s accused Patrick of offering him a bribe. It was all a misunderstanding, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Patrick wonders if you’d talk to him, the officer concerned.”

“Straighten things out.”

“Yes.”

“Make him see the error of his ways.”

“Look, Jimmy,” she said, touching the back of her hand to my cheek, “you know I hate doing this, don’t you?”

No, I thought. No, I don’t.

“Everything has a price,” I said. “Even friendship. Friendship, especially. And tell Patrick, next time he wants something, to come and ask me himself.”

“He’s afraid you’d turn him down.”

“He’s right.”

When she lifted her face to mine I turned my head aside. “Don’t let your coffee get cold,” I said.

Five minutes later she was gone. I sorted out Patrick’s little problem for him and found a way of letting him know if he stepped out of line again, I’d personally do my best to close
him down. Whether either of us believed it, I was never sure. With or without my help, he went from rich to richer; Diane slipped off my radar and when she re-emerged, she was somewhere in Europe,
nursing Val after his most recent spell in hospital, encouraging him to get back into playing. Later they got married, or at least that’s what I heard. Some lives took unexpected turns. Not
mine.

I stayed on in the Met for three years after my thirty and then retired; tried working for a couple of security firms, but somehow it never felt right. With my pension and the
little I’d squirreled away, I found I could manage pretty well without having to look for anything too regular. There was an investigation agency I did a little work for once in a while,
nothing too serious, nothing heavy, and that was enough.

Patrick I bumped into occasionally if I went up west, greyer, more distinguished, handsomer than ever; in Soho once, close to the little Italian place where I’d spotted Diane with her
bruised eye, he slid a hand into my pocket and when I felt where it had been there were two fifties, crisp and new.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“You look as though you need it,” he said.

I threw the money back in his face and punched him in the mouth. Two of his minders had me spread-eagled on the pavement before he’d wiped the mean line of blood from his chin.

At Val’s funeral we barely spoke; acknowledged each other but little more. Diane looked gaunt and beautiful in black, a face like alabaster, tears I liked to think were real. A band played
Just Friends
, with a break of thirty-two bars in the middle where Val’s solo would have been. There was a wake at one of Patrick’s clubs afterwards, a free bar, and most of
mourners went on there, but I just went home and sat in my chair and thought about the three of us, Val, Patrick and myself, what forty years had brought us to, what we’d wanted then, what
we’d done.

I scarcely thought about Diane at all.

Jack Kiley, that’s the investigator I was working for, kept throwing bits and pieces my way, nothing strenuous like I say, the occasional tail job, little more. I went
into his office one day, a couple of rooms above a bookstore in Belsize Park, and there she sat, Diane, in the easy chair alongside his desk.

“I believe you two know each other,” Jack said.

Once I’d got over the raw surprise of seeing her, what took some adjusting to was how much she’d changed. I suppose I’d never imagined her growing old. But she had. Under her
grey wool suit her body was noticeably thicker; her face was fuller, puffed and cross-hatched around the eyes, lined around the mouth. No Botox; no nip and tuck.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she said.

“Diane’s got a little problem,” Jack said. “She thinks you can make it go away.” He pushed back from his desk. “I’ll leave you two to talk about
it.”

The problem was a shipment of cocaine that should have made its way seamlessly from the Netherlands to Dublin via the UK. A street value of a quarter of a million pounds. Customs and Excise,
working on a tip-off, had seized the drug on arrival, a clean bust marred only by the fact the coke had been doctored down to a mockery of its original strength; a double shot espresso from
Caffè Nero would deliver as much of a charge to the system.

“How in God’s name,” I asked, “did you get involved in this?”

Diane lit a cigarette and wafted the smoke away from her face. “After Val died I went back to Amsterdam, it’s where we’d been living before he died. There was this guy –
he’d been Val’s supplier . . .”

“I thought Val had gone straight,” I said.

“There was this guy,” Diane said again, “we – well, we got sort of close. It was a bad time for me. I needed . . .” She glanced across and shook her head. “A
girl’s got to live, Jimmy. All Val had left behind was debts. This guy, he offered me a roof over my head. But there was a price.”

“I’ll bet.” Even I was surprised how bitter that sounded.

“People he did business with, he wanted me to speak for him, take meetings. I used to fly to Belfast, then, after a while, it was Dublin.”

“You were a courier.” I said. “A mule.”

“No. I never carried the stuff myself. Once the deal was set up, I’d arrange shipments, make sure things ran smoothly.”

“Patrick would be proud of you,” I said.

“Leave Patrick out of this,” she said. “This has nothing to do with him.”

I levered myself up out of the seat; it wasn’t as easy as it used to be. “Nor me.” I got as far as the door.

“They think I double-crossed them,” Diane said. “They think it was me tipped off Customs; they think I cut the coke and kept back the rest so I could sell it myself.”

“And did you?”

She didn’t blink. “These people, Jimmy, they’ll kill me. To make an example. I have to convince them it wasn’t me; let them have back what they think’s their
due.”

“A little difficult if you didn’t take it in the first place.”

“Will you help me, Jimmy, yes or no?”

“Your pal in Amsterdam, what’s wrong with him?”

“He says it’s my mess and I have to get myself out of it.”

“Nice guy.”

She leaned towards me, trying for a look that once would have held me transfixed. “Jimmy, I’m asking. For old time’s sake.”

“Which old time is that, Diane?”

She smiled. “The first time you met me, Jimmy, you remember that? Leicester Square?”

Like yesterday, I thought.

“You ever think about that? You ever think what I would have been like if we’d been together? Really together?”

I shook my head.

“We don’t always make the right choices,” she said.

“Get somebody else to help you,” I said.

“I don’t want somebody else.”

“Diane, look at me for fuck’s sake. What can I do? I’m an old man.”

“You’re not old. What are you? Sixty-odd? These days sixty’s not old. Seventy-five. Eighty. That’s old.”

“Tell that to my body, Diane. I’m carrying at least a stone more than I ought to; the tendon at the back of my left ankle gives me gyp if ever I run for a bus and my right hip hurts
like hell whenever I climb a flight of stairs. Find someone else, anyone.”

“There’s nobody else I can trust.”

I talked to Jack Kiley about it later; we were sitting in the Starbucks across the street, sunshine doing its wan best to shine through the clouds.

“What do you know about these types?” Jack asked. “This new bunch of cocaine cowboys from over the old Irish Sea?”

“Sod all,” I said.

“Well, let me give you a bit of background. Ireland has the third highest cocaine use in Europe and there’s fifteen or twenty gangs and upwards beating the bollocks off one another
to supply it. Some of them, the more established, have got links with the IRA, or did have, but it’s the newer boys that take the pippin. Use the stuff themselves, jack up an Uzi or two and
go shooting; a dozen murders in Dublin so far this year and most of the leaves still on the fucking trees.”

“That’s Dublin,” I said.

Jack cracked a smile. “And you think this old flame of yours’ll be safe here in Belsize Park or back home in Amsterdam?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to bloody think.

He leaned closer. “Just a few months back, a drug smuggler from Cork got into a thing with one of the Dublin gangs – a disagreement about some shipment bought and paid for. He
thought he’d lay low till it blew over. Took a false name and passport and holed up in an apartment in the Algarve. They found his body in the freezer. Minus the head. Rumour is whoever
carried out the contract on him had it shipped back as proof.”

Something was burning deep in my gut and I didn’t think a couple of antacid tablets was going to set it right.

“You want my advice, Jimmy?” he said, and gave it anyway. “Steer clear. Either that or get in touch with some of your old pals in the Met. Let them handle it.”

Do that, I thought, and there’s no way of keeping Diane out of it; somehow I didn’t fancy seeing her next when she was locked away on remand.

“I don’t suppose you fancy giving a hand?” I said.

Jack was still laughing as he crossed the street back towards his office.

At least I didn’t have to travel far, just a couple of stops on the Northern Line. Diane had told me where to find them and given me their names. There was some kind of
ceilidh band playing in the main bar, the sound of the bodhran tracing my footsteps up the stairs. And, yes, my hip did ache.

The McMahon brothers were sitting at either end of a leather sofa that had seen better days, and Chris Boyle was standing with his back to a barred window facing down on to the street. Hip-hop
was playing from a portable stereo at one side of the room, almost drowning out the traditional music from below. No one could accuse these boys of not keeping up with the times.

There was an almost full bottle of Bushmills and some glasses on the desk, but I didn’t think anyone was about to ask me if I wanted a drink.

One of the McMahon brothers giggled when I stepped into the room and I could see the chemical glow in his eyes.

“What the fuck you doin’ here, old man?” the other one said. “You should be tucked up in the old folks’ home with your fuckin’ Ovaltine.”

“Two minutes,” Chris Boyle said. “Say what you have to fuckin’ say then get out.”

“Supposin’ we let you,” one of the brothers said and giggled some more. Neither of them looked a whole lot more than nineteen, twenty tops. Boyle was closer to thirty, nearing
pensionable age where that crew was concerned. According to Jack, there was a rumour he wore a colostomy bag on account of getting shot in the kidneys coming out from the rugby at Lansdown
Road.

“First,” I said, “Diane knew nothing about either the doctoring of the shipment, nor the fact it was intercepted. You have to believe that.”

Boyle stared back at me, hard-faced.

One of the McMahons laughed.

“Second, though she was in no way responsible, as a gesture of good faith, she’s willing to hand over a quantity of cocaine, guaranteed at least eighty percent pure, the amount equal
to the original shipment. After that it’s all quits, an even playing field, business as before.”

Boyle glanced across at the sofa then nodded agreement.

“We pick the point and time of delivery,” I said. “Two days time. I’ll need a number on which I can reach you.”

Boyle wrote his mobile number on a scrap of paper and passed it across. “Now get the fuck out,” he said.

Down below, someone was playing a penny whistle, high-pitched and shrill. I could feel my pulse racing haphazardly and when I managed to get myself across the street, I had to take a grip on a
railing and hold fast until my legs had stopped shaking.

When Jack learned I was going through with it, he offered to lend me a gun, a Smith & Wesson .38, but I declined. There was more chance of shooting myself in the foot than
anything else.

I met Diane in the parking area behind Jack’s office, barely light enough to make out the color of her eyes. The cocaine was bubble-wrapped inside a blue canvas bag.

“You always were good to me, Jimmy,” she said, and reaching up, she kissed me on the mouth. “Will I see you afterwards?”