Incinerator (12 page)

She sighed, reached out and picked up the phone. “Which ones do you want me to trace?”

“You’ll know them when you see them.
Don’t switch it on in here—soon as it logs onto the network the cops will know, and they might come looking for it.”

“Why don’t you let them?” asked Zoe. “Get them to trace these messages.”

“They already tried, a few months back, and they got nowhere. Half the time the police can’t trace people who leave them a bloody name and address—they wouldn’t have a hope with a phone. Even if they did manage, it would take them months, and I don’t want to twiddle my thumbs that long.”

Zoe slipped the phone into her handbag, glancing around the room as if to check for concealed surveillance cameras. With good reason, I reflected. She picked up her cup but saw the last dregs of her coffee had gone cold and put it down again.

“Want another?” I said.

“No thanks,” she said, and checked her own phone for emails, though I guessed she was really checking out the time. “You called her Nicky,” she said.

“That’s her name,” I said.

“I mean, she doesn’t sound like your lawyer. She sounds more like a friend,” she said.

“She was,” I said. “She came to my mum’s funeral.”

“You told me nobody came to your mum’s funeral,” said Zoe, and she looked oddly upset.

“Hardly anybody. I didn’t really know her then.” And what the hell’s it got to do with you? I thought.

“Some friend. You never really did know her, did you?”

“Obviously not,” I admitted.

“I worry about you, Finn. You seem to put your trust in the wrong people.”

Like you
, I wanted to say.

“I’m learning,” I said.

“Who are you seeing these days?”

“No one in particular.” It was almost the truth. I’d met Susan maybe three times, and slept with her once, and even for me that hardly counted as commitment. But Zoe’s expression hardened as if I’d lied to her face, because I
had
lied to her face, and for a moment I thought she was going to take out Nicky’s phone and fling it back at me.

“And do you trust her? This woman you’re not seeing?”

“I don’t trust anybody,” I said. “That way I’m never disappointed.”

Zoe pushed back her chair. “I’ll talk to the head of my department, see if he can find out their IP,” she said. I must have looked mystified, because she explained, “Whoever sent these messages, they’ll have an IP address, an Internet address. They’ll probably have tried to hide it or fake it, but that can be cracked if you know how.”

“That would be great,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Zoe. “Was there anything else?”

“I’ll walk you to the station,” I said.

“I’m not headed that way,” said Zoe, but she didn’t say what way she was headed. Then she seemed to soften, as if she was ashamed of sounding so much like a sulky teen. “Thanks for the coffee, Finn. It was good to see you. Take care, yeah?”

She leaned down and kissed me, and her lips were soft and full, and gentler than Susan’s, and I felt a sudden pang of something, loss or regret. But feelings like that have never got me anywhere except in trouble.

“Cheers,” I said, and I let her go.

As I paid the bill I pondered whether I could afford a tip. I couldn’t, but I left one anyway. I emerged from the café, turned north and started to run.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why Susan had jumped me, I thought. She had been angry at Nicky for skipping town for ever without so much as a goodbye, and she’d wanted to get her rocks off, and I’d happened to be there. I wondered now if she’d got it out of her system or whether she’d be back for seconds. I kind of hoped she’d come back, and I kind of didn’t, because I knew that really it was Nicky I wanted. I’d wanted her for a long time, and Susan might be closer to my age but she didn’t have Nicky’s wit or her laugh or the turn of her head. Also, Nicky had my money. And she kept her nails shorter … Those welts in my back had stung in the shower and they were smarting now as I picked up speed and ran towards Kew Bridge.

A scrawny young mum shoving a stroller and dragging a fractious toddler along by the hand jerked back in alarm as the Merc convertible swerved towards her, bumped up
on the pavement ahead of her and shot into its off-street parking space. She glared at the driver like she intended to give him a steaming earful when he got out, but he didn’t get out, and she pushed her buggy on down the street, swearing under her breath.

Sherwood was still on the phone when he emerged, looking grim and lugging a slim leather attaché case that probably held nothing but a porn mag. When he saw me walking towards him from the door of his office where I’d been lurking he looked grimmer still and hesitated, maybe pondering whether he would be safer getting back into his car. Which was I more likely to dent, his bodywork or him? I’d expected Dean to be babysitting, since Sean was either still in prison or in plaster, but there was no sign of him. Little wonder Sherwood looked worried.

“We had an agreement, Mr. Sherwood,” I said. “How am I expected to make my repayments if those jerks on your staff drive away all my customers? Or is that part of the service too?”

“The agreement you proposed was predicated on your providing collateral,” said
Sherwood. I guessed he was lapsing into financial jargon because he was scared. “But you don’t own the title to that property.”

Interesting, I thought. Few people apart from Nicky would have known that. “Who told you?” I said.

Sherwood licked his lips. “I spoke to the sellers.”

That answer was plausible, although it didn’t sound like the truth.

“No, I don’t own the building,” I said. “So don’t bother sending any more goons around, unless you like visiting people in hospital.”

Sherwood clutched his briefcase in both hands like he planned to use it as a shield. “The contract your friend Delroy signed is still valid,” he said.

That was the point of trashing the gym—not to put the squeeze on me, but on Delroy. I was itching to stick Sherwood’s face through the windscreen of his flash car, but it wouldn’t help. Delroy needed a lawyer. Sod it, I thought, I can find another one—I’d get Vora out of retirement if I had to.

“You’re not getting Delroy’s house, you
prick,” I said. “Take him to court and see how far you get.”

“Well, I prefer to explore other avenues first,” he smirked. His eyes flicked over my shoulder, and when I turned to follow his look I saw a traffic warden patrolling the street nearby, casting sideways glances at us as if he could smell the adrenaline from across the road. Sherwood was probably hoping to goad me into taking a swing at him in front of a witness.

Leaning down close I kept my voice as soft and gentle as I could.

“You go anywhere near Delroy, and I’ll be exploring your avenues. With a broken bottle.”

His smirk got smirkier, and I decided to leave before I lost my temper and thumped him anyway. We both knew my threats were bluster. Delroy had signed a loan agreement, and I wasn’t in a good position to negotiate—I’d just have to wait till Sherwood’s representatives got in touch. Then I’d negotiate their teeth in.

But Sherwood would have a special goon fund for situations like this, I suspected, and
his money would generate infinite heavies coming at me in waves until it felt like I was trapped inside some urban combat video game with a dwindling supply of pound coins.

I’d been banged up in a young offenders’ institution when I was way too young, and even though I’d deserved to be there, it was a hellhole. That’s where I’d learned how two plastic knives taped together could make a blade hard enough to puncture a lung, that boiling tea with sugar in could scar someone’s face like napalm, and that if all else failed you could hang yourself with the plaited pages of a magazine. But back then what really kept me awake at night were the rumours that the place had been declared overcrowded, and that some of us would be transferred to Dalston Prison.

Dalston was an adult nick in North London, a decrepit Victorian cesspit that should have been shut down and demolished years ago but was always being reprieved. The politicians needed the cells because they were trying to show everyone how tough they were on crime, arm-twisting magistrates into locking
more and more people away for dodging their TV licence or carrying a pinch of blow. It was notorious for being run not by the management but by the prison guards, who on a whim would lock the prisoners in their cells for twenty-three hours a day, only opening the doors to cart away the corpses of lags who had topped themselves in despair.

As I entered HMP Dalston that afternoon and those black wooden gates and six-metre-high walls closed around me, it wasn’t the acrid tang of cheap bleach, the clammy overheated air, and the stench of sweat and fear and misery that made me tense. It was the smell of the fake ID burning a hole in my pocket. As I joined the queue for the security desk I could feel the palms of my hands tingling with perspiration.

A mate of mine—Jonah, far more bent and vicious than I ever was—had pulled this stunt years ago when he’d come to visit me. He wasn’t there to cheer me up—he was convinced I was hiding another stash of free drugs—and he’d proudly shown me the ID card, complete with photograph and official stamp, he’d used to get in. It had been issued by the Royal British
Archive, just across the river from our hunting grounds, and it looked totally kosher, because it was. The Archive staff would issue an ID card to anybody who claimed to be researching historical records for schoolwork, and it was easy to give them a fake name. I had gone there myself after seeing Zoe, and found the same system in place. Nobody checked that you were actually there to look up records or archives, or even that you could read, which was just as well for me.

The prison guard on the visitors’ admissions desk looked at the ID card, looked back at me, flipped the card over and peered at it, then handed it back. I very gently breathed a sigh of relief, but I wasn’t in the clear yet. He slid his finger down a clipboard until he found the name I’d used when I’d phoned the prison to arrange a visit. He ticked the column beside it with blue biro, promptly forgot I existed, and nodded at the next in line to approach his desk.

Then it was the security cordon. I’d left everything metal at home—watch, phone, coins, even my belt buckle. The prison provided lockers for your valuables, but you might as well have spread your stuff out on a table marked
with a notice reading
STEAL ME
. A bored guard who looked like he ate chips three times a day waved a metal detector in my general direction and nodded me through to the visiting area.

About two dozen tables were laid out in rows, and I was suddenly reminded of all the examination rooms I’d been in, and all the exams I’d so spectacularly failed. Here and there tetchy, fractious kids perched on the wooden chairs swinging their legs while Mum filled Dad in on what was happening at home, trying not to make life outside sound too interesting. I took the table as close to the prisoners’ entrance as I could manage; I wanted to see the guy I was visiting before he started looking around for the son he expected. He was not going to recognize me, and there was a real chance I wouldn’t recognize him either. The newspaper archives I’d found online were a few years old and his picture had been a standard full-on mugshot with no human expression. But I had only just sat down when a prisoner who looked very much like James Bisham entered. I immediately stood up again and called out, “Dad?”

Bisham saw me and hesitated. I beamed at
him with my broadest, warmest smile, and I saw doubt cross his face, then curiosity, and when he at last smiled cautiously and approached me I knew I had cleared that last hurdle. I held out a hand to shake before he reached the table, in case he thought I’d want to hug him or something. He gripped it firmly and shook, grinning broadly as if he was delighted to see me, when he didn’t know me from Adam. Out of the corner of my eye I’d been watching a prison guard watch us. Then I sensed his attention flick to two four-year-olds who had decided to chase each other up and down the rows.

“You’ve changed a lot, son,” said Bisham. “I’d hardly recognize you.” He pitched his voice low and kept his posture relaxed.

I pitched my voice even lower. “Mr. Bisham, my name’s Maguire,” I said. “Your wife told me you were banged up in here. I had to use Gabriel’s name to get in. I was hoping I could talk to you.”

“I’m listening.” He was curious, but distant too, and I knew I would have to tread carefully, because he could still drop me in the shit if he wanted to. It probably wouldn’t be very deep shit—impersonating a kid to visit his dad in
prison hardly counted as depraved and violent conduct—but the staff might accidentally scrape my face along a few brick walls before they threw me out, just for showing them up.

“A friend of mine left the country in a hurry,” I told Bisham, “because she was getting threatening messages, emails and texts and tweets. Your wife said she’d been getting a lot of messages like that too.”

Bisham rolled his eyes, but he smiled ruefully. He’d heard this stuff before, I could tell. “And she told you I’d sent them?” he said. “Yeah, everybody’s issued with an untraceable phone when they come in here, free unlimited calls and texts. It’s like a holiday camp.”

“I wondered if it was a well-meaning friend of yours,” I said.

“What friends?” he said. “I had all the same friends as her, until she screwed me over. Cleaned me out, had me banged up. You one of Gabriel’s mates or something?”

“Sort of,” I said.

Bisham nodded. “You’ve never met him, have you?”

“I have, actually,” I said. “He seems like a nice kid.”

“He was, before my wife got hold of him,” he said. “She’s why he never comes to see me.”

“I could try and get a message to him, if you like,” I said. Bisham blinked, and I sensed that he was almost tough enough to bear years of confinement, but losing touch with his son was really pulling his guts out. But then that’s how prison works.

“Not sure there’s any point, now,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe what that bitch has told him about me.”