Take the A-Train (19 page)

‘Are you Sharman?’

I nodded.

‘We’ve been waiting for you. She’s told me all about you. Funny, I expected someone younger.’

I ignored the veiled insult. ‘Is she here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

I stood there on the doorstep like a milk bottle. ‘Come on in then,’ the man said, wheeling himself back and allowing the door to open a little wider. ‘All the heat’s getting out.’

I edged through the gap and shut the door behind me, standing awkwardly in the narrow hall. It was warm and smelt of furniture polish and clean laundry. The inside of the house was tiny and neat. A hallway ran from front to back, with two doors to the left, three to the right. At the end of the hall was a half glass door leading to the back garden.

‘I’m Stan,’ he said. ‘Her dad.’ I shook his hand. It was like holding a handful of hinged steel tightly wrapped in warm leather.

‘She talks about you too,’ I said.

‘Nothing good, I hope.’ He dropped my hand and spun the chair round on its axis. ‘She’s in there,’ he said, pointing to the second door on the left. ‘Go on in.’

I did as I was told. Fiona was sitting in an armchair by a tiny open grate that glowed hot with smokeless fuel. She was wearing jeans and a sweater, and her hair was tied back in bunches. She looked up, then looked again. ‘Nick,
at last
. I’ve been out of my mind. Where have you been?’

‘Around,’ I said.

‘The police are at your flat. They’re looking for you.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘It’s been on the news and in this morning’s papers.’ She gestured to a pile of newsprint on the floor. It looked like she’d bought the shop.

‘Let’s have a look,’ I said.

She passed me the top paper. It was the
Express
, not my usual choice of reading matter, but this wasn’t a usual day.

‘Get him some tea, Fiona,’ said Stan. ‘He looks like he could use a cup.’ Obediently she left the room. I reminded myself to ask him how he did it. I could hear her clattering about in the kitchen whilst I looked at the paper. I sat down in the armchair she had vacated, and moved it so that my bad leg got the benefit of the heat.

The story was on page four. It wasn’t very big, only two people died after all. There had been an earthquake in China over the weekend, 25,000 deceased and still counting. My little epic was very small beer compared to that.

Police are today searching for Nicholas Sharman (38), an ex-Metropolitan police officer and private detective, in connection with a bizarre double murder in South London on Saturday night. The body of Lawrence Taylor (42) and an unidentified woman were found in a flat in Kennington early on Sunday morning after an anonymous telephone call to Scotland Yard. Police entered the flat and found the pair who had apparently been tortured before being killed. Taylor, an officer in the Department of Customs & Excise, lived in Eastleigh, near Southampton with his wife Veronica (36). She was not available for comment at their luxury £250,000 detached house last night.

It is believed that Taylor was the officer in charge of a store of contraband drugs, and reports that a large, although yet unspecified, amount of drugs are missing from the store were denied by senior customs officials today.

Sharman, a shadowy figure with known drug and underworld connections, has been linked to a number of spectacular crimes in the past few years, including the deaths of music business moguls Charles and Steven Diva and the strange case of media supremo Sir Robert Pike’s bogus daughter.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: “Sharman is well known in the area and we expect to interview him within the next twenty-four hours. However, anyone with any knowledge of his whereabouts should contact us immediately.”

All that meant was the Scotland Yard spokesman didn’t know where I was or what the fuck was going on, except I was on the ‘Most Wanted’ list. But at least the news item told me who the mysterious Lawrence Taylor was, or rather had been, a customs man in charge of the evidence cupboard. It was like a replay of my life and I felt chilled to the bone. It was all dropping into place, one piece after another. I riffled through the other papers. They all said much the same in slightly different words.

As I finished, Fiona came back balancing a tray with three mugs, a teapot, a jug of milk, a pot of sugar and a couple of spoons on it.

I took my tea and she said, ‘Come on Sharman for Christ’s sake, what’s happening?’

‘They got my age wrong,’ I said.

‘Be serious.’

So I was, and I told them. Everything since I’d dropped Fiona off two nights previously. Everything including what I’d found at the flat in Kennington, and as I told them about that I smelt cooking meat again and put the tea down and lit a cigarette.

‘Why didn’t you come straight here?’ demanded Fiona.

‘I got away on a bus, and it wasn’t going in this direction.’

‘A bus, eh?’ said Stan. ‘Desperado.’

Fiona flashed him a dirty look. ‘So where have you been?’ she asked.

‘At a friend’s.’

‘What friend?’

‘Just a friend. Does it matter?’

It obviously did, but what could I do?

‘Doesn’t your
friend
have a television? How come you didn’t know that you were all over the news? Were you too busy?’

‘I slept the clock round,’ I said. ‘I was dead. And, no, as a matter of fact she doesn’t have a television.’

‘She, I knew it!’ said Fiona, and threw herself down in a two-seater sofa, her face as black as thunder.

Shit, I thought.

Her father looked from her to me and back, and pulled a face. That was when I started to like him. I pulled a face back. He propelled his wheelchair towards me and helped himself to one of my cigarettes. ‘Why do you think this character Taylor telephoned you?’ he asked.

‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Maybe he got an attack of the guilts and wanted to come clean. I’m not the police. Perhaps he thought he could talk to me and I’d help him. Maybe he had a gun at his head and whoever was holding it wanted me too. But I promise I’ll find out.’

‘So you think he was supplying Watkins with cocaine that had already been confiscated and that he liberated from the store he was in charge of?’

‘I think he was supplying, full stop,’ I said. ‘And it’s pretty obvious that Teddy was making the pickup, but Emerald knew nothing about it. I still believe that. If he knew, he wouldn’t be in Brixton now. He’d be long gone. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why Teddy left the dope there when Emerald had been tipped off about the bust, and Teddy knew the lock-up was on the Bill’s hit list.’

‘Maybe he didn’t,’ said Stan.

‘Come again?’

‘Maybe Taylor was making a delivery and Teddy got cold feet waiting, knowing the fuzz were on the way.’

‘That’s it, Stan,’ I said. ‘Of course. And Taylor didn’t know what was happening and left the stuff, and the law found it.’

‘But who tipped off the law in the first place?’ asked Stan.

My head was beginning to hurt. ‘Christ knows,’ I said. ‘That’s another thing I intend to find out.’

‘Go to the police then,’ said Fiona, her sulks forgotten.

‘Talk sense,’ I said. ‘You read what it said in the paper. My name’s right in the frame for this one. They’ve already got Emerald banged up on remand. They’d love to have me there too, and on a double murder charge. You didn’t see those people. Whoever did it was a psycho. I will go to the police, but not until I’ve got all the answers to the questions they’re going to ask me, and can prove that it’s Teddy and whoever’s behind him that they really want.’

‘You don’t think he’s doing it on his own?’ asked Stan.

I shook my head. ‘Whatever he is, he’s not capable of doing what was done on Saturday night, and certainly not alone. I’ll lay money that he’d never been to that flat before he went in with me.’

‘Tell the police that,’ said Fiona.

‘They won’t believe me, and he could be anywhere by now. This is my old game, why I left the force in the first place.
Déjà vu
, if you like. There’s a couple of detectives I know who’ll lose the key if I turn myself in now. I’m seriously fucked, and the only one who can get me out of it is me.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to go looking for them, starting with Jack Dark. At least I’ve got an address for him. He’s dirty that man, very dirty. Whatever those two in Kennington were up to, they didn’t deserve to end up the way they did. Someone wants me to carry the can for it, and I won’t. I think Dark’s the man, or knows who is.’

‘I’m going with you,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Yes, you’re not going to vanish on me again. The only woman friend you’re going to be with is me.’

I looked at her father. He shrugged. He knew her better than I did. ‘I’d go with you myself if it wasn’t for these damn things,’ he said, and slapped one of his dead legs.

I gave in, I was past arguing. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But we’ll need a car.’

‘There’s mine,’ she said. ‘I went and got it yesterday. I had to dig it out. That’s when I saw the police at your place. It’s parked around the corner under the bridge, out of the way.’

‘Do behave, Fiona,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t even got a bloody roof, and it’s freezing out and we’re going to Essex. God knows what the weather’s like there. What we really need is a four-wheel drive. Teddy’s little motor would have been ideal.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘It was full of snow when I got it. I never thought of that.’

I looked towards the heavens. ‘I’ll get you one,’ said Stan.

‘Do what?’

‘I’ll get you one. I’ve got a mate.’

I looked from him to Fiona, who nodded. ‘Go on then,’ I said.

He wheeled over to the table that held the phone, and punched out a number. He whispered something, listened, whispered again and put the receiver down. ‘It’ll be here in an hour,’ he said.

‘A straight car,’ I said.

‘Sure.’

‘With four-wheel drive?’

‘Sure.’

‘Just like that, nothing to pay?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll need a weapon too.’

‘I’ll get you one.’

‘You’ve got a mate?’

‘Better than that,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t in the service of Queen and country for nothing.’ He pushed himself over to the corner of the room and pulled back the carpet to reveal a metal door, fitted flush with the concrete floor. He took a set of keys from his shirt pocket, bent over the arm of his chair and used what looked like a Chubb to open the lock. He turned the key both ways then pulled. The door opened smoothly on counter weights, up and across to give maximum space below. Stan reached in and pulled out a stripped down, single-barrelled, pistol-gripped shotgun from the recess. ‘Winchester twelve gauge,’ he said. ‘Magnum. I’ll give you a lend of this, if you can handle it.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘Got a sling or something for it?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘Fine.’

Stan reached in again and took out a small pine box. He snapped the brass catch on the front and opened it. On purple velvet lay the blued steel of a small calibre automatic, well used but clean and oiled.

He tossed it to Fiona who caught it expertly and checked the clip. ‘Keep it handy, love,’ said Stan. ‘And remember what I taught you.’

‘Ammunition?’ I asked.

Stan bent down again. He reached into the hole and came out with a cardboard box. He fished out a shotgun shell and flipped it in my direction. I caught it and shook it close by my ear. The red cardboard tube sounded like it was full of marbles. I looked at Stan.

‘Ball bearings,’ he said. ‘A dozen or so to a load. A couple of those will take the side off a Transit van.’

‘How many does this thing hold?’ I asked.

‘Five.’

‘That’ll do.’

He counted out four more shells and brought them to me. I lined them up on the arm of my chair, like little soldiers waiting to go into battle, then cleared the action of the gun. It sounded sweet and true and I checked that the barrel was clear. I dry fired a few times and the pull was good and clean. When I was happy I loaded it. Each of the five shells slid home with a satisfying snick.

‘I’m going to wash up the dishes,’ said Stan, and expertly gathered up the dirty mugs and balanced the tray on his knee and left the room. Fiona came over and perched on my knee and ground her backside into my crotch. ‘Did you sleep with someone else?’

‘I cannot tell a lie – no,’ I lied. Well, I didn’t really. I hadn’t known what I was doing. And apparently I couldn’t anyway, according to Wanda. At least that was how I justified it to myself.

‘Come with me then,’ she whispered in my ear.

‘Where?’

‘In the other room.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask questions, just come with me.’

I followed her and she took me across the hall into a small bedroom. It was colder in there and smelt of her perfume. ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘You’re dim sometimes, Sharman, you know that?’ she said, and pulled her sweater over her head and undid her blue jeans and let them fall and kicked them away. Underneath she was wearing plain white cotton underwear. Nothing fancy or particularly sexy but it got to me. She was wearing thick white socks too. And it could have been comical, but it wasn’t. If you want to know it was as erotic as hell. She saw me looking and put her hand on the wall for support, lifting first one foot and then the other to peel the socks off. I tugged off my shirt and went to her in the chilly room. I kissed her and held her hot little body close to mine. The curtains were half drawn and the snow outside reflected the light on to the solid planes of her body and lit and shaded her skin with its glow.

Her mouth smelled of tea and cigarettes and I licked her lips with my tongue. We staggered and fell on to the narrow bed. I pushed her bra up above her breasts and bit at her nipples. She sighed long and hard and I pushed her pants over her hips and down until she could kick them free. She pulled at my trousers and I pushed them and my shorts off together. I remembered my socks too. I mounted her on the narrow bed. She was soft and wet against my hardness. She came almost immediately. I did too.