Capital Punishment (34 page)

‘Go on, then,’ said Cheryl.

‘Archibald Pike. He runs a crew out of Bermondsey,’ said Shearing. ‘What was Jack doing with
him
?’

‘All Jack told me was that he’d been approached for a job because his black cab was still in full working order.’

‘But why did he need to do the job? He wasn’t short of money.’

‘She’s up the duff,’ said Ruby, cocking her head at the morose Cheryl. ‘Needs a roof over her head. Scully said he’d do the work at cost on the Grange Road house, but there were a lot of materials to pay for, a new roof...’

‘What was Jack getting for this job?’

‘Ten grand.’

‘That would have been all right, wouldn’t it?’ said Shearing. ‘Nobody gets money like that these days without taking some sort of risk, though, Ruby.’

‘It wasn’t that kind of job, the way it was described to him.’

‘I heard what happened to the two sheep Scully sent along. Once you’ve seen something like that, you want to find yourself a shooter with a bit more experience than young Vic.’

‘So what’s this mean, Joe?’ asked Ruby, her derision getting the better of her. ‘You going to do anything or you going to let this Archibald Pike walk all over you?’

‘I’m told, by the size of him, that would not be a wise thing to do,’ said Shearing. ‘What I’m doing, Ruby, is seeking some clarification from Mister Pike. When I’ve heard that, I’ll hold a meeting and we’ll decide what action to take.’

‘So there will be some action?’

‘Let’s see what Mister Pike has to say for himself first.’

They slept apart having agreed, after the intensity of Isabel’s guilt the last time, that they wouldn’t sleep together until after Alyshia’s release. Boxer had been up early, done his circuit training routine and had taken a swim in the basement pool. He was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when Isabel came in fully dressed. They kissed.

She spooned out some muesli, cut some apple and banana into it and sat down across the table from him, flipped open the
Guardian
.

‘You know Mercy’s still in love with you, don’t you?’ she said, as if she was reading it from an article in the newspaper.

Boxer poured another coffee, blinking that statement in.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I told you. We’d been through that one and come out the other side, years ago.’

‘You
might have done, but I can tell you she hasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I can tell,’ she said. ‘The same happened to me. I split from Chico when I still hadn’t got over him. That’s why you’re the first man I’ve been to bed with in seventeen years. What about Mercy: has she had any affairs?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Boxer, shaking his head slowly, thinking about it.

‘And you would know, wouldn’t you?’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘There’s unfinished business,’ said Isabel. ‘She knows about us. She’s hurting. Why do you think she came round last night?’

‘She’s the co-consultant on this kidnap. We have to update each other on all developments.’

‘Really?’ said Isabel. ‘I think she came to take another look at us together. To see what we were like. To confirm to herself. To find out what she was up against.’

‘Up against?’

‘She’s been living in hope.’

‘I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there,’ said Boxer. ‘I haven’t caught a whiff of anything like that since we split up.’

‘She hides it because she knows that to show it would be the end of the thing,’ said Isabel. ‘But she can’t hide it from me because I’ve already been there.’

‘What about Sharmila?’

‘Sharmila was and is a trophy wife. Their intimacy is restrained.’

‘Does that mean
you’re
living in hope?’

‘I was, for some time, even with what I knew about Chico. That’s why I hung around for three years before we got divorced,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s very difficult to shake off your first love. That intimacy is long-remembered. You’ll see. Once Chico realises what’s happened between us, he won’t take it lying down.’

There were two things about Archibald Pike, apart from the obvious one, that even the most unobservant members of his crew couldn’t miss. The first was the constant motion, the second was the constant noise. And these were secondary, but necessary, to the one thing that needed no observational skills at all, which was Pike’s colossally evident hyper-obesity.

When Pike was given the news that the morning security shift had turned up at eight o’clock to find two dead bodies in the old refrigeration unit, the viewing panel shattered, the girl gone and a total absence of Skin and Dan, a frightening stillness settled. There was no more reaching out, rustling in, chewing over, brushing down, dabbing off or sucking up. The two fingers he’d just licked stayed in front of his livid lips and his eyes, deeply encased in the fat of his face, looked out with the wariness of a gazelle that had just caught the horrible catty whiff of a cheetah on the plain. Even the subterranean gurgling of his digestive system was momentarily paralysed. Radio 2 was playing Roxy Music’s ‘Do The Strand’, which seemed such an unlikely exhortation that Pike’s right-hand man, Kevin, turned it off. The silence buzzed for a further thirty seconds before Pike swallowed, which kick-started his peristalsis, and the incessant business of food passing through his system recommenced.

‘Am I to understand from this,’ said Pike, in his high-pitched, almost falsetto voice, ‘that Skin and Dan shot these two blokes and ran off with the girl?’

‘Nothing’s confirmed yet,’ said Kevin. ‘But we’re assuming that if it had been an outside job, we’d have found Skin and Dan dead on the floor ’n’ all. So we’re working on the assumption that it was an inside job.’

‘And what work
are
you doing?’ said Pike, not looking him in the eye, blinking, and expecting a very good answer.

‘I’ve got the whole crew out looking for them,’ said Kevin. ‘I told you Skin was trouble. Plays it dumb, but he’s looking and thinking all the time.’

‘And Dan?’ said Pike. ‘What about Dan? I can’t see him getting involved in that sort of stuff. Doesn’t have it in him. He’s a nurse. Thinks things through. Doesn’t take risks. And who’s going to give me my insulin injections now?’

Kevin said nothing. He’d never liked Dan. Didn’t trust him. He wasn’t from London. He spoke with a nancy’s accent. He had qualifications. He had a full head of hair. He was probably a poof. One of those things was normally enough for Kevin to stove your ribs in. All together, they made him murderous. Only Dan’s special nurse/patient relationship with Pike had protected him from Kevin’s boot. Now, though, Kevin was greatly looking forward to finding Dan and taking him down into the basement for some Tudor England re-enactments, involving a red hot poker.

‘Where are the two dead bodies?’ asked Pike. ‘What’s been done about them?’

‘Nothing yet.’

‘Clear the warehouse. Clear everything out immediately. Clean it. Wipe it down. Don’t stop until it shines. When does their next shift start?’

‘Not until ten,’ said Kevin. ‘There’s blood soaked into the concrete floor.’

‘Chip it out. I don’t want anything left.’

‘And the bodies?’

‘Bring them here. Put them in the freezers downstairs.’

The doorman came in, looked at Pike and Kevin, saw the messiness of the air between them.

‘This a good time?’

‘For what?’ said Kevin.

‘Bethnal Green are at the door,’ he said. ‘They’re calling themselves a deputation from Joe Shearing, seeking clarification on an incident in Grange Road on Sunday night.’

‘What the fuck are they on?’ said Kevin.

‘They’re old school, are Bethnal,’ said Pike, sighing and reaching for a huge bag of Kettle Chips. ‘When it rains, it fucking pours.’

He reached for his pint glass of milk, found it empty and rattled it on the tabletop. The doorman filled it from the fridge. Pike drank down half of it and stopped. His mouth came away with a white moustache. He’d had an idea; the doorman could see it come on in his head. Pike’s cheeks flushed, which was what happened when he was inspired.

‘Send them in,’ he said, wiping his moustache away with the sleeve of his England tracksuit top.

The doorman came back with the two men. The smaller, greyhaired one was dapper in a camel coat and a brown pin-stripe suit, white shirt, red tie and a chocolate coloured trilby in his hands. His companion was huge, with a heavy, melancholy face under dark hair, and eyebrows and ear hair that needed to be trained, but with pliers. He was wearing a heavy blue coat that looked pre-war and made his shoulders sag with its weight. He didn’t speak and smiled only once, to reveal a graveyard of discoloured teeth in diseased gums, with an ox tongue nestling behind.

Before the dapper one could even introduce himself and state his business, Pike started up, breasts juddering, so that the ENGLAND emblazoned across his chest trembled.

‘You’re
seeking clarification?’ he said, and pointed with his pudgy fingers to his own chest.
‘We're
seeking clarification. Don’t know what the bloody hell’s got into those two. Gone rogue, that’s what. Brains frazzled by drugs. Sent them down to Grange Road to pay Jack his second five grand, they shoot him and some other bloke and walk off with the money. Don’t tell us. No, no. We only heard it on the radio. Haven’t seen them since. Just heard from Kevin here, they done another two in Deptford and run off with
our
merchandise. Don’t know what it is about the youth today. The recession killed something in their noggins.’

‘They’re not that young,’ said Kevin.

‘We’re looking for them now,’ said Pike, killing Kevin with a knife thrower’s aim. ‘We find them and we’ll give you your clarification just as soon as we’ve got ours. Kevin will make them dance the quick-step on hot coals.’

‘Why don’t you give us their names,’ said the dapper one. ‘Maybe we can help.’

‘Not sure that would be much help to you,’ said Kevin. ‘One’s called Skin, the other, Dan.’

‘Haven’t we got their full names somewhere?’ said Pike.

‘I’ll just check them up on their P45s,’ said Kevin drily.

‘Where are they from?’ asked the dapper one.

‘Your neck of the woods,’ said Kevin. ‘Stepney. Skin’s born and bred. The other’s an out-of-towner.’

‘They have a vehicle?’

‘A white transit van.’

‘Got a reg for it?’

‘Call Beadle’s Garage,’ said Kevin. ‘They had the MOT done there last month.’

The doorman disappeared. The four men exchanged awkwardness around the room.

‘You find them before us, we’d like to have first crack,’ said Kevin. ‘We’re very concerned about the merchandise they’ve run off with.’

The dapper one looked at his hang-dog companion, who didn’t appear to react, but must have done.

‘We’d like to be present at the interrogation,’ he said.

The doorman came back with the registration number of the van.

‘Your best chance is with Skin,’ said Kevin. ‘Shaved head, baby face, blue eyes, spiderweb tattoo up his neck and right cheek. Can’t miss him. The other one looks like a poof and talks la-di-da.’

‘He was a nurse,’ said Pike, almost wistful.

The two men nodded and left.

‘What are we going to do with those bodies from the warehouse?’ said Kevin. ‘We can’t keep them in the freezers for ever.’

Silence, while Pike worked his way through two Chelsea buns, licked the stickiness from his fingers and thumb.

‘Pike?’

‘I’m thinking,’ said Pike.

‘We have to get the girl back.’

‘Stop telling me shit I already know,’ said Pike. ‘Who turned the radio off?’

Pike’s face screwed up like a spoilt child. He rattled his glass for more milk. The radio came back on playing ‘Somewhere They Can’t Find Me’ by Simon and Garfunkel.

8.15 A.M., TUESDAY 13TH MARCH 2012

Thames House, Millbank, London SW1

Martin Fox and DCS Peter Makepeace had just been issued their security passes and were heading up to the third floor, accompanied by a uniformed officer. They moved in silence, minds too full of what was going to come out of the meeting, which Makepeace’s call to MI5 had provoked and which, to their surprise, had been anticipated.

They were ushered into a boardroom with more people than they’d been expecting. Titles, names and departments flashed past: Joint Intelligence Committee, Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, MI5 and MI6. But the two key personalities conducting the meeting were Joyce Hunter of MI5 and Simon Deacon of MI6.

‘Just so no one’s in any doubt as to why we’re here, a quick intro,’ said Joyce Hunter, running her hand through her short dark hair, looking around the table with her green eyes, no makeup, no jewellery apart from her wedding ring. ‘Martin Fox and Detective Chief Superintendent Makepeace contacted us last night, concerned at possible links Mr D’Cruz might have to international terrorist organisations.

‘Mr D’Cruz revealed that he’d worked for a gold smuggling gang operating between Dubai and India in the 1980s. He also declared that he was in a powerful position to aid terrorist organisations with intentions to attack the UK. He insists he does not help them, but is concerned that his obduracy could be seen as obstructive.

‘The kidnap of his daughter, therefore, could be an attempt by a terrorist organisation to pressurise him into assisting them. Simon.’

‘Last night, during a follow-up enquiry on an ex-employee of Mr D’Cruz, named Deepak Mistry, my agent was shot dead in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai for reasons unknown. The Indian police say that our agent was caught in crossfire between two rival gangs. One of these gangs’ leaders happens to be Anwar Masood, who supplies “an alternative security apparatus” for Mr D’Cruz. While the other gang was, nominally, headed up by a Hindu called Chhota Tambe, who is known for his antipathy to the Muslims.

‘It’s also been revealed that both Anwar Masood and Chhota Tambe belonged to the old gold smuggling gang called D-Company which Mr D’Cruz worked for between Dubai and Bombay. This gang was run by the Muslim boss of bosses, Dawood Ibrahim.’