Crusher (9 page)

“I’m glad you were there when my boy needed you,” said McGovern. “And I’m grateful. But I’d really like to know how you got in, and what you’re after.”

“I walked up to the front gate with an armful of branches,” I said. “I was hoping the guy on the entryphone would think I was with the gardeners. And he did.”

McGovern shook his head, chuckled quietly. He turned and looked at James.

“I’ll have a word,” said James.

“More than a word,” said McGovern. “What am I paying those pricks for?”

James said nothing.

“Anyway, Finn, you’ve got balls. You a boxer?” He jerked his chin at me.

“I’ve done a bit,” I said.

“I can always tell. Any good?”

“I get by,” I said.

I was trying not to babble or sound nervous, and now I worried about going too far the other way. But McGovern didn’t seem displeased with my terse responses. He sat back, stretching a beefy arm across the back of his sofa.

“Let’s get to the point, all right? What were you doing wandering around my house? I mean, you weren’t here to rob the place. You don’t look that stupid.”

“I need a job.”

“A job?”

For the first time McGovern looked surprised. I was kind of surprised myself. I’d had no idea what I was going to say to McGovern if I met him, but without consciously figuring it out I’d become convinced that direct questions would get me nowhere. It was a lucky break—for me—that I’d found his son drowning, and I had to press home my advantage, make the most of the favour he owed me, right now. Accusing him to his face of having my dad killed would just piss him off and squander whatever goodwill I’d earned. If I could just get on the inside, get closer to people who worked for him, maybe I could work my way towards the truth. Besides, I really did need a job, and it was tough enough to find one without being a dyslexic, freshly-fired dropout.

“Do I look like the bloody DSS? Or your parole officer?” I wasn’t sure if McGovern was amused by my cheek, and I couldn’t tell from looking at James, whose sneer never seemed to leave his face.

“I don’t mean anything heavy, or dodgy, you know, Mr. McGovern. But I heard you owned some restaurants, nightclubs, that sort of thing, and … I’ve worked in catering.”

“What, as a chef?”

“More front-of-house sort of thing.”

“Where?”

My face was burning now. “Max Snax, near Kew Bridge.”

“You what? Fried fucking chicken? Hear that—kid thinks I’m fucking Colonel Sanders.”

This was directed at James, whose smirk had blossomed into shoulder-shaking laughter, unsuccessfully stifled by his hand over his mouth. McGovern looked amused, but vaguely insulted too.

“Mr. McGovern, I’m sorry, I’m pretty desperate. I’ll do anything, wash dishes, scrub out bogs—I just need the work. My dad died …” Now I was blinking. Ashamed at myself for pleading with a psychopathic criminal for the privilege of cleaning out his toilets. Pleading for sympathy from the man who might well have had my father killed. Why the fuck hadn’t I just asked McGovern straight out to tell me the truth?
Because he’d have lied to you
, said the voice in my head,
and then he might well have killed you too
.

“I don’t have much money,” I went on. “I can’t read that well, and I have … form. For dealing.” That sparked his interest, I noticed.

“Grass?”

“Cocaine.” I didn’t mention I’d got busted almost before I started. “Somebody— I heard you had, you
know, fingers in lots of pies. I thought if I could get in to see you, face to face, you might give me some credit just for … having the bottle.”

McGovern looked thoughtful. “When did he die? Your old man?”

I looked right at him. “Two days ago. Someone broke into our house, hit him over the head. Took his laptop, and all the notes for the story he was writing.”

I looked over at James. He was looking at me, his face as neutral and unreadable as that of his boss. McGovern was rocking his jaw from side to side, thinking.

“That’s a shame,” said McGovern. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

“Thanks.”

He looked at James. “What about the Iron Bridge?”

I’d heard of the Iron Bridge—who hadn’t? A seriously upmarket restaurant in Pimlico, right on the river, facing Battersea Power Station. It had had its own cookery series on TV a few years back, and its plain-speaking Geordie chef, Chris Eccles, was still a minor celebrity. McGovern had shares in that place? But James was wrinkling his nose.

“Na,” he said. “Matey likes his staff to look like supermodels.”

“Give him a bell,” said McGovern. James said nothing. “It’s the least we can do for our boy Finn,” went on
McGovern, and there was something so fake about his kindness that for the first time I felt chilled. He leaned forward again, fixed me with his blue-grey stare. “I’m a silent investor over there. I don’t tell Chris Eccles how to run his kitchen, but if I ask nicely he’ll find you something. Give James here your mobile number, he’ll call you in a day or two, tell you where to go, who to talk to, all right?”

That was my cue. I recited my number to James, who tapped it into his phone, then I got up, clutching the plastic bag.

“Thanks, Mr. McGovern. I’m really grateful. And I’m sorry about, you know, trespassing.”

“Don’t let me see you round here again. And you keep this to yourself, OK? I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry climbing over my gates looking for work.”

“Won’t say a word, I promise.” I shot him a big cheesy grin, but McGovern didn’t see it. He had taken out his wallet. Now he tugged out a few fifty-pound notes, folded them in his fingers and offered them to me.

“Please, Mr. McGovern, I can’t, there’s no need.”

“Fuck off, you already said you’re broke. This will keep you going till we sort you something out.” He stuffed the notes into the right-hand pocket of the tracksuit jacket.

“Thanks,” I said. “And I’ll bring the tracksuit back.”

“Forget it, it’s a gift. In fact, it looks better on you than it would have on me.”

I headed for the door. “I hope little Kelly will be all right.”

“He’ll be fine. Can’t say the same for Stephan, though.”

“Stephan?”

McGovern was grinning broadly. “Security. He was doing the front gates today. James is going to send him on a … what do you call it? Refresher course.”

I didn’t want to think about the re-education Stephan had in store for him. But I figured that anyone who worked for the Guvnor would know the consequences of screwing up. And then I realized that “anyone” would soon include me.

“Terry will drive you home.” The huge minder stepped forward.

“That’s all right, I’ll take the Tube,” I said.

“Terry’s my driver. He’ll drop you right at your door. I insist.” Of course, McGovern wanted to know where I lived. Did that mean he didn’t know already? He held out his hand again. “So long, Finn, and best of luck, yeah?”

“Thanks, Guvnor.”

I wasn’t sure McGovern actually cared for that nickname,
but maybe he didn’t hear. He had already turned away to talk to James, and my view of them was blocked by the mountain that was Terry. I took the hint, gathered up my soggy clothes, stuffed them into the plastic bag and followed Terry meekly towards the carport.

Terry drove me home in one of those four-wheel-drive tanks wealthy London mums use to shuttle their kids about, protected from the riff-raff by two tonnes of steel and leather and tinted glass. The ride was so smooth and silent Terry could have run over a motorbike without my noticing, I thought. Maybe he already had. I was perched in the back while the driver’s seat creaked under his massive bulk. He drove without a word, not cursing the traffic, not looking at me in the rear-view mirror, not listening to music or any radio station. I glanced at the rear of his massive shaved head, wondering how much he overheard about his boss’s business. A hands-free headset plugged into his ear flashed a blue light every few seconds. I would have thought a car this flash would have a hands-free phone system built in.

Shit. My phone
.

It had been in the pocket of my jeans when I jumped into the pool. Groping the plastic bag on the seat beside me I could feel that it still was, along with my wallet and my London travel card. The soaking wouldn’t
have affected them, but when I dug the mobile out of the pocket of my sodden jeans, it was clear dunking it in McGovern’s pool had done it no good at all. It was seriously dead. It wasn’t a case of bunging it in the airing cupboard and hoping for the best, either—I could see a bubble of air sliding about under the screen. It might come in handy as a spirit level, but that was about it.

“Number eighteen, yeah?” said Terry, as he turned into my road.

“Yes, thanks. Two thirds of the way down, on the left.”

Our street was so narrow that delivery vans and minicabs would usually bump up on the kerb to let other traffic squeeze past, but Terry didn’t bother with that. He pulled up, blocking the road, and sat with the engine running while I fumbled with the handle, heaved the door open and abseiled down to pavement level. “Thanks for the lift,” I said, and was rewarded by a tiny nod. I shut the door, but he didn’t drive off immediately. The front passenger windows were only lightly tinted, and I could feel him watching me as I turned away, walked up the short path, produced my keys—still cold and wet—and opened my front door. Still he didn’t move. When I stepped inside and shut the door behind
me I finally heard the faint smooth purr of the vehicle speeding away down the street.

The cardboard box full of the stuff Prendergast had returned was still sitting on the living-room chair, and the bowl I’d eaten breakfast out of was still sitting beside it, the cereal dried onto the sides like papier mâché. It used to drive Dad bonkers when I left my crockery sitting out, though he often did the same himself, as I liked pointing out to him.

After a little rooting around in the box I found what I was looking for—Dad’s ancient mobile phone with its tiny monochrome screen. Dad had never been able to afford a modern flash one, and claimed he didn’t want one anyway. He said he never could see the point of a handset that ran out of juice in one day when his old one easily lasted a week. Or did, that is, when he bothered to charge it, every month or so. He had left it charging when he went out to the pub that last night, though I’d told him often enough there was no point in having a mobile if he didn’t take it with him. I quickly checked the last few numbers he’d called and that had called him, knowing the police would have done the same. Just as I expected, the last ten incoming calls were from me, some of them months ago, and all the calls he’d made were to our landline here at the house. No leads there.

When I opened the back of my dead phone, yet more water dribbled out of it. I chucked the battery, pulled out the SIM card, wiped it dry-ish on my tracksuit jacket, slid the SIM into my dad’s phone and held down the “on” button. After a few seconds the handset flickered into life, farting a tinny little fanfare. It was a rubbish phone, and it wasn’t going to impress any fashion victims or gadget freaks, but it would have to do for now.

As I stomped upstairs to change out of McGovern’s tracksuit there was a beep-beep from the phone and the screen flashed up a voicemail icon. Someone had tried to call me earlier, presumably while I was dripping onto the Guvnor’s shag pile carpet. I didn’t recognize the sender’s number, but it was local. I dialled my voicemail and listened.

“Mr. Maguire, this is Detective Sergeant Amobi from CID.” His deep, calm voice made him sound more like a priest than a cop. “I called round to your house earlier, but you weren’t in. I wanted to let you know that the inquest into your father’s death will be held at Fulham Coroner’s Court tomorrow morning at eleven a.m. As you were the one who found the body, you will be expected to attend and to testify.

“If you can’t make it, the inquest will probably be adjourned until you can, and that might mean a delay
in your father’s body being released for burial. I’m sorry about the short notice, and for doing this over the phone rather than in person. I’ll keep trying to reach you. If you get this message, I’d really appreciate it if you would call me back, here at the station, or on my mobile.” He recited his number, and rang off.

Amobi sounded straight enough, but he wasn’t running the investigation into Dad’s murder—that prick Prendergast was. I would have liked to tell someone what I’d found out—about that “German journalist” at the Weaver’s Arms that night, for one thing. CID had the means to contact that German newspaper—the
Zeitung
or whatever it was called—and find out if Hans was for real, and if he was, what Dad had said to him about the Guvnor. But according to Dad’s drinking buddies the cops already knew about Hans and weren’t interested. Maybe that was them playing their cards close to their chest, and in fact they really were looking, but I doubted it. Prendergast had already made up his mind.

Maybe I should take a lawyer along to this inquest … or maybe that would suggest I had something to hide. Screw it, I thought, I wouldn’t know where to find a decent lawyer at such short notice, even supposing I could afford one. I recalled the lazy, clueless jobs-worth who had pretended to defend me on the dealing charge years ago, and I figured that if it came to the
worst I could do a better job myself. But I was going to attend the inquest all the same. I wanted to get Dad’s body back, not leave him lying naked in some industrial fridge for months. I called the number back and got put through to a bored-sounding detective who told me Amobi was out of the office and took a message.

The next morning I changed my clothes about three times, trying at first to look smart, then thinking I looked too much like The Defendant. I fretted, wondering if it even mattered how I dressed for an inquest, until I ran out of time, grabbed the blazer Dad had found for me in a charity shop last Christmas, pulled it on over a cleanish white shirt and jeans, and ran for the bus.

I arrived just in time, which spared me a wait on a plastic chair with the miserable-looking punters I glimpsed drifting around the corridors like souls in limbo. The uniformed woman on the front desk sent me straight to a shiny, over-lit room with rows of functional wooden benches facing a raised platform where the coroner sat, a silver-haired, sharp-faced woman in her fifties with half-moon glasses. The bloke in a suit sitting directly below her was the court clerk, I guessed. After standing for a quick muttered conference with the coroner he called out my dad’s name.