Bombproof (16 page)

The gangster turns slowly with a fixed smile that might break into pieces if he moved too quickly. Violence flashes momentarily in his eyes. He touches his upper lip and examines his finger as if looking for blood.

‘We haven’t met.’

‘Vincent Ruiz. Great party.’

The name means nothing to Murphy. He transfers his champagne glass to his left hand and raises a cigar to his lips.

‘I know most people here, Mr Ruiz, since I invited them. I don’t recall your name being on the guest list.’

Ruiz nods and rolls a strip of venison into a bread roll, making a sandwich. ‘Nadia invited me.’

Murphy doesn’t react. ‘I don’t know anyone called Nadia.’

‘Sure you do. Nadia Macbeth. You paid a thousand quid for her. Toby Streak told me. Then you had her delivered to an address in Whitechapel where a sociopath called Puffa shot her full of brown and got her hooked on crack.’ Ruiz takes a sip of his beer. ‘Ring any bells yet?’

Murphy’s nostrils dilate and his eyes are suddenly glazed. The guests are almost imperceptibly edging away from him in a slow motion social version of moonwalking, without the Michael Jackson music.

‘You must have me confused with someone else, Mr Ruiz.’

‘I’m just telling you what people told me.’

‘They were lying.’

Ruiz plucks at a morsel of torn venison hanging from his lips and pops it inside his mouth. ‘People tend not to lie to me.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘They respect me too much.’ His eyes are dancing.

‘Are you a police officer, Mr Ruiz?’

‘Used to be.’

‘What’s your interest in Nadia Macbeth?’

‘I’m doing a favour for a friend.’

‘Your friend’s name?’

‘She doesn’t like the limelight. Shy, you know. Not like me. I love a good party.’ Ruiz smiles at a waitress. ‘Can you get me another beer, please, love?’

He turns back to Murphy. ‘Hey, I just realised, we have a mutual acquaintance.’

‘Who might that be?’

‘Sami Macbeth.’

Murphy raises his meaty hand and sucks on the cigar. ‘I don’t think I know him.’

‘That’s strange. One of your waiters remembers him dining with you on Thursday. You had oysters to start and a crème brûlée to finish. Ordered specially.’

Murphy is looking over Ruiz’s shoulder as if exchanging glances with someone. ‘You’re quite the detective.’

Murphy’s gaze now drifts across his party, watching his guests enjoy themselves, but all traces of avuncular warmth have gone. It’s almost as though he despises them as free-loaders and hangers-on, scoffing his food, drinking his booze.

‘Maybe we can discuss this another time, Mr Ruiz - as you can see I’m rather busy.’

A bouncer has arrived, a body builder in Nike running shoes and a dinner jacket with the sleeves pushed up over his gym-thickened arms.

‘Gabriel, here, will make sure you find your way out.’

The bouncer grabs Ruiz by the arm, digging his fingers into his shoulder. Ruiz doesn’t flinch. Instead, he leans down as though he’s dropped something. He straightens suddenly, catching the bouncer under the chin with the back of his head.

Gabriel goes down like a two hundred pound bag of spuds on legs of jelly.

Ruiz looks at Murphy. ‘Give me the girl, Tony. I’ll owe you one.’

Murphy smiles at him, his teeth like yellowing tombstones. ‘You got no juice any more, Mr Ruiz. There’s nothing you can give me. Nothing I need.’

Gabriel is getting up. Holding his jaw. Tasting the blood. Someone crashes into Ruiz from behind and drives a fist into his back. A second fist hooks him across the jaw and strong hands wrestle him down. He can taste the vomit and beer rising from his stomach and settling again.

They haul him upright. Pin his arms.

‘You’re trespassing, Mr Ruiz. You have damaged my property and upset my guests. I don’t know who your friend is, but she’s sent you on a fool’s errand. Sami Macbeth came to see me looking for a job. Offered his services. I told him I am a legitimate businessman. I don’t associate with criminals and ex-cons. Now if you’ll excuse me …’

Ruiz is marched across the lawn. His Mercedes is waiting. A side mirror has been torn off and the aerial is twisted into a modern sculpture. He looks at the damage and glances back towards Murphy, who is lighting another cigar, clicking his lighter shut.

OK, pal, now it’s personal.

Ruiz gets behind the wheel. Heads down the drive. As he reaches the road he has to brake hard to avoid a Porsche 911 that cuts the corner and tries to spear through the gates before him. The plates say: RAY JNR.

The cars are nose to nose.

The Porsche driver leans on his horn. Ruiz doesn’t move. A window glides down and Ray Garza’s boy pops his head out.

‘Move your fucking heap.’

Ruiz takes his foot off the clutch. Jerks forward. Nudges the Porsche.

The kid’s eyes go wide. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

He’s starting to get out. Ruiz nudges the Porsche again, pushing it towards the road. A car has to swerve.

Ray Jnr retreats. Reversing. The gates are clear. Ruiz gives him a wave as he passes. What is Ray Garza’s boy doing at a Tony Murphy party?

Across the road he notices a van parked on the footpath. A plastic tent has been placed over missing pavestones and a workman in a hard hat is perched on the edge of the hole. Something strikes Ruiz as odd about the scene. It’s not just the newness of his overalls or the paleness of the man’s skin. They’re working on a Sunday and the van has silver windows at the back. It’s just the sort of vehicle used in surveillance operations.

Reaching the intersection, Ruiz turns south towards the city and ponders whether anything has been achieved by confronting Murphy. Not a lot, he suspects, but subtlety was never one of his strengths as a detective. Subtlety can serve a purpose, but sometimes you have to rattle a cage to wake a Norwegian Blue.

26

The Red Emperor Restaurant has ducks the colour of dog turds hanging in the window alongside some weird-looking sea creature that might be inside out or might be entrails.

The restaurant fronts Macclesfield Street on the corner of Horse and Dolphin Yard, near the pagoda-style gates of Chinatown. The front window is partly covered by the menu and sign advertising a hot buffet for £4.95, all you can eat.

A white Mercedes delivery van is parked at the entrance to the yard with a foot or so spare on either side. Sami tries the back door. Locked. He moves along the side and tries the driver’s door. It opens. A real criminal would know how to hotwire a car. That’s what he should have been learning in the Scrubs. Something useful. A life skill.

Maybe the van driver is inside the restaurant, thinks Sami.

A bell jangles above the door as he pushes it open. The place is almost empty. The lunchtime rush is over. A couple are paying their bill at the cash register. A girl in a wheelchair is sitting with her mother. The van driver is at a table alone, hunched so low over a bowl of wonton soup that the spoon barely has to leave his lips.

He looks like a skinhead with close-cropped hair and scabby knuckles. Maybe he drives a van during the day and spends his nights kicking the shit out of gays, Pakis and Man United fans.

Sami takes a seat at a table nearby. The waitress is Chinese and barely out of her teens, with shiny black hair cut straight across her forehead. Everything about her is small except her almond shaped eyes, which are the colour of burnt toast.

Her nametag says
Lucy
. That’s probably her mother at the front counter - an older version, shorter, plainer, with an unapologetic face and tiny rimless glasses. And that could be her father dressed in chef’s whites, holding open the swinging half doors of the kitchen. His head is shaved and his legs are bowed.

Sami remembers his grandfather, who survived a Japanese POW camp in Burma, getting the cold sweats whenever he saw an Asian face. More than once he’d look at Japanese tourists and react as though he’d come face to face with Emperor Tojo himself.

Lucy brings the van driver a pot of green tea.

‘I didn’t order that,’ he says.

‘It’s complimentary.’

‘What else is complimentary?’ His hand brushes her knee and slides up her leg until it touches the hem of her skirt.

Lucy steps back.

The driver winks at Sami. ‘I just love chink women. They’re like chink food - you fill up and an hour later you’re hungry again.’

The nasal accent says he’s a northerner.

‘Ever been to Thailand?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘They got bar girls there who can fire ping pong balls out of their poongtangs.’ He provides the sound effects. ‘And I’ll tell you something else for nothing. They might have slanty eyes but their pussies are straight up and down, know what I’m saying? Tight and sweet.’

He’s not even bothering to whisper. That’s the thing about a lot of northerners. They think they’re droll but mostly they’re gobby and annoying.

The keys to the van are clipped to his belt. Maybe Sami should just deck the guy and take the keys. How far would he get?

‘The thing about Bangkok girls is this, right?’ The van driver is leaning across the table. ‘They might look like virgins but they fuck like demons, know what I’m saying? And if you like ’em young, Thailand’s the place. I’m not talking about jailbait. I’m no ped. But the chinks just look younger, you know.’

At some point Sami finds himself switching off. Maybe it’s the smell of the food or the less than riveting conversation. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday.

The van driver has switched to a new subject. ‘We should kick all the fuckers out, either that or hang them on the wall, know what I’m saying?’

Lucy brings him a plate of spare ribs and another of fried rice. He picks up a rib and chews it to the bone, sucking the sauce off his fingers.

‘Is that your van parked in the lane?’ asks Sami.

‘Yeah.’

‘You on a delivery run?’

‘I was until them bombs went off.’

‘Where you heading?’

‘Shoreditch and then home.’

‘Could you give me a lift?’

‘Yeah, sure, where you heading?’

‘Anywhere away from here.’

The driver attacks another rib. ‘Might take a while.’

Lucy has come back with an order book. Sami asks for the soft shell crab and fried rice.

‘You want anything to drink?’

‘Just water, thank you.’

‘Still or sparkling.’

‘Still, please.’

OK.’

The van driver watches her leave. ‘Great little arse.’

Sami leans back in his chair. Takes a deep breath. His heart has stopped racing. If he can stay off the street, he can give himself time to think.

He looks up and notices the girl in the wheelchair is staring at him. She must be going for the Goth look - blue lipstick, blue eye shadow and dyed black hair cut straight around her head like someone put a pudding bowl on her head and traced the edges.

Sami nods. She looks away.

Sami glances out the front windows. Between the hanging ducks he can see a police car pull up outside. They’re stopping people and talking to them.

An old guy in six different layers of clothes is wandering back and forth along the footpath carrying a sandwich board that says,
Judgement Day is coming
. On the back it says,
Be ready to burn
.

People step off the pavement to avoid him.

Suddenly, he stops and peers at Sami through the window. Sami tries to look away but it’s too late. The old guy bends his knees and sets down his sandwich board. He pushes open the restaurant door, walks past the cash register.

‘You need saving,’ he yells in a battered voice. ‘You’re a sinner, but there’s still time.’

Sami has a helpless hollow feeling. Everyone in the restaurant is staring at him. The sandwich board guy leans over him with his hands outstretched, palms upward, like some American evangelist drawing out the evil spirits.

‘This is a city of sin and sodomy. That’s why God is punishing it today. This man has been down to the gates of hell. He has looked in Satan’s eyes.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ says Sami. ‘You got it wrong. I’m just here for lunch.’

The sandwich board guy’s voice grows louder. ‘This man is a sinner, but he wants to repent.’

The doorbell jangles. A young bobby steps inside and stands at the front counter, holding a peaked hat in his hands.

‘What does he have to repent for?’ he asks the old guy.

‘Nothing,’ blurts Sami, squeezing his knees into the rucksack.

The bobby looks at him apologetically. ‘Is this gentleman bothering you, sir?’

‘A little.’

‘I’ll move him on directly.’ He unfolds a piece of paper. ‘I just wanted to ask if any of you have seen a man carrying a dark coloured rucksack? He’s aged from 25 to 35, slim build, light brown hair, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. If you do see someone matching this description, notify the police immediately. Please don’t approach him.’

He folds the paper and puts it into his pocket.

The van driver looks at Sami. ‘The guy sounds just like you.’

‘Think so?’

‘Yeah.’

Sami tries to laugh.

‘Do you have a rucksack, sir?’ asks the constable.

‘It’s a different colour.’

‘Can I see it?’

Sami’s hand is beneath the table, edging between his thighs, feeling for the rucksack. The zipper.

‘What’s this guy supposed to have done?’ he asks, trying to sound relaxed.

‘He’s wanted in connection with a police investigation.’

‘So he’s not dangerous.’

‘We’re asking people not to approach him.’

Sami’s right hand has found the main pocket of the rucksack. His fingers close around the semi-automatic, which is still in a plastic evidence bag. Labelled. Catalogued. Exhibit A.

The constable hasn’t moved. He’s looking for something in Sami’s eyes. Guilt. Fear. Madness. At the same time he’s edging towards the door, reaching for the handle.

He knows, he knows, thinks Sami. The only sound in his head is a dull rumbling like a bowling ball hitting the gutter and heading for oblivion.

The sandwich board guy is still standing over him, mouth open, as if trying to rediscover his train of thought. Outside, the constable reaches for his radio. Sami stands, swings the rucksack over his shoulder and heads for the kitchen.