The Evil And The Pure (43 page)

“But we could do it,” Kevin insisted, studying the glass in
the window and the yard out back. They could break the glass, drop to the ground, cross the yard, scale the wall, flee through the alley which he could see on the other side.

“Maybe,” Tulip agreed. “And maybe we could convince Dave Bushinsky that we’re innocent.” She put both hands on Kevin’s face, twisted his head around, locked gazes with him. “But what would happen next?”

“They’d come here, find Clint and the others, kill them.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“After what they did to us?” he snorted. “Do
you
care?”

Tulip hesitated. “Maybe not the others, but Fr Sebastian is being used like
we are. He doesn’t deserve to die.”

“He can take his chances,” Kevin snarled.

“What about us?” Tulip said. “Even if we can convince them we weren’t part of the plan, we still know about it.”

“So?”

“You don’t kill four men in a church without attracting attention. There’ll be public uproar if a priest is killed. An investigation. Dave Bushinsky won’t talk. His killers won’t talk. But you and I…”

“We won’t talk either,
” Kevin huffed.

Tulip smiled
thinly. “If you were Dave Bushinsky, would you take that chance or would you kill us along with the others, eliminating all the loose ends?”

Kevin
nodded slowly. “So what do we do?” he asked, ceding authority to her.

“For now we have to play along,” Tulip said
softly. “We’re safe here. Maybe we can escape later, with the aid of Fr Sebastian. If the three of us can get away, we could go to the police, seek help and shelter.”

Kevin stiffened automatically.
“There must be some other way.”

Tulip s
ighed. Even with their lives on the line he was desperate to maintain his hold over her. “There isn’t,” she said. “And bear in mind that you have more to lose than me.”

“What do you mean?” Kevin frowned.

“If I’m here to keep the boys happy, I have a use, so they’ll keep me alive. But you’re not part of the sex deal any more. They don’t need you, so what’s to stop them killing you?” She got up, left the room and wandered downstairs, leaving Kevin alone, frozen by the window, struck dumb.

Gawl was feeling caged-in. Phials passed the time getting high, while Clint and Fr Sebastian had fear to distract them. But Gawl was sober and irritable. He wanted to get drunk, go on a bender, celebrate — but he had to stay focused, keep everything together. Afraid if he got drunk and blacked out that Clint might crumble and he’d awake to an empty house, all the others slipping free while he was comatose. Sex with Tulip helped distract him, but only temporarily.

Gawl didn’t trust Phials
. He was all smiles around the chemist, pumping him full of coke and grass, letting him ramble on, throwing in occasional probing questions, piecing together a picture of the chemist which was far from promising.

Phi
als a junkie who’d cheated a series of employers, on the run from several death threats. He’d found refuge in London when he was at his lowest, locked away from the world by a sly Dave Bushinsky. Most of his
contacts
were men who would kill him or sell him out for the rewards which had been posted since he went into hiding. Phials spoke of operating undercover,
Mysterious Doctor X
, but that was bullshit. Enough people knew of the wonder drug he was working on to be able to link it to him if it appeared on the market. He’d be a marked man the minute he started to tout Baby P around.

The mega bucks deal devaluing hourly. Even if Phials was serious about trying to sell the formula for
fifty million – and Gawl didn’t think he was – how could he? The more Gawl picked at it, the more the knot unravelled.

Getting out of England
— how? He knew men who could provide them with fake passports, but the Bush would have posted a reward for information leading to their capture, and every one of those men would turn Gawl in for the cash.

Eve
n if they escaped to the States, the Bush surely had allies in America. Photographs and descriptions would have been circulated. People looking for them in all the major cities. Never able to rest easy. And that was before he factored in those who hated and were already hunting for Phials.

If they hid
safely, somewhere obscure, how would they negotiate a deal? And even if they weren’t in hiding, Gawl didn’t think they could pull off a coup this big. Too many sharks waiting to rip the novices to pieces.

And if, against all the impossibilities, they somehow negotiated a deal and got out of it a
live, with a shit-load of money, how to invest and protect it? You couldn’t just walk into a bank, dump millions of dollars in unmarked bills on the manager’s desk and ask to open an account.

Gawl still thought they could make money
from the chemist, but America was out. Fifty million dollars was out. They were cheap hoods. If they accepted their limits they might come out of this sweetly. If they set their sights higher, they’d come out of it dead.

By Saturday night Gawl had decided.
They had to sell Phials – or the formula –to the Bush. He reckoned they could demand a couple of million, more than enough to suit his needs and see him nicely through retirement. Once he’d settled for the more attainable dream, he was still left with a variety of problems, such as what to do about the Tynes and Fr Seb, where to go after the deal, how to stash his cut, but they would be relatively easy to solve. Three key hurdles —

How to betray Phials without him clicking to Gawl’s plan.

How to arrange the deal so he wouldn’t get burnt.

And Clint.

Clint wouldn’t go for this, no matter how Gawl laid it out. Gawl would have to find a way to drag him back to reality, remove the fifty million dollar option, leave him with no choice but to play along. If that didn’t work and Clint still resisted… Cheat him? Dump him? Kill him?

Gawl considered.

The hunt was hot. All the Bush’s resources dedicated towards finding Tony Phials and those who’d kidnapped him. Every airport and ferry in the UK covered, under guard twenty-four-seven. They’d collected footage from security cameras at most of the train stations in London, a team of men and women scrutinising the footage for traces of the fugitives. Men following EVERY train and bus route out of London, getting off at EVERY stop, quizzing guards, station personnel and taxi drivers. All of the Bush’s contacts in the country notified, a reward of a million for the safe return of Tony Phials, half a million each for the return dead or alive of Clint Smith, Gawl McCaskey, Kevin and Tulip Tyne. Photos of Phials, Clint, Kevin and Tulip e-mailed, faxed, posted or hand-delivered to every city and many of the bigger towns, teams of freelance operatives driving around, flashing photos, the Bush covering everyone’s travelling expenses.

The search was costing the Bush
a fortune — he didn’t care. His friends, family and troops thought he’d lost his marbles — he didn’t care. All that mattered was finding Phials and the fuckers who’d helped him. He’d go bankrupt before he gave up the chase, blow everything on it, throw away the hard work of a lifetime if necessary, not content to let this one go.

Then, on Sunday, December 17
th
, a phone call from one of the Bush’s moles at White Hart Lane. Alan Sugar was preparing a public announcement, declaring his intent to sell his controlling interest in Tottenham Hotspur. A deal likely to be agreed by the end of the week, a company called ENIC poised to buy him out. This was the Bush’s final chance to push a claim. Could he come up with an offer by the end of the day?

The Bush
at home when he received the call. Went wild. Thrashed the place. Alice and Shula fled. He stormed through the house, destroying anything he could lay his hands on, his bodyguards cowering outside. They phoned Big Sandy for his advice. He told them to let the Bush rage, keep out of his way, not to enter until summoned. They asked him to come and talk with the Bush. He laughed. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

The Bush stopped suddenly in the mid
dle of taking an axe to an oil painting by Modigliani which he’d bought years earlier for seventeen thousand pounds, worth over a hundred grand now. Stared at the ripped canvas, then at the axe. Dropped it. Sank to the floor. Moaned. One last burst of fury, this time mental — he’d put in an offer for Sugar’s shares even though he couldn’t afford it, gamble on finding Phials before he had to pay, maybe tell his global contacts that the drug was ready, con them into putting up the stake money, buy into the club and hole-up at White Hart Lane in the hope that they’d never find him there.

The madness passed. He
realised his plans were sunk. Spurs would never be his. Made a short apology to his dead grandfather. Set thoughts of the club behind him. Considered his recent actions. Smiled humourlessly at how much money he’d pissed away. Made a series of short calls, countermanding previous orders, freeing most of his people to return to their normal duties, drastically downscaling the search operation. Near the end of the calls he rang Big Sandy and told him to come a little later, he wanted to talk. Then he phoned Alice and tried explaining the situation to her — his most difficult task.

Big Sandy had been beating the streets since the break-out, grilling every friend and half-acquaintance of Smith and the Tynes. Not as gruelling as he thought it would be. Smith had dealt to lots of people but socialised with few of them, and the Tynes led quiet lives, hardly any friends to interview. Big Sandy found an address book in Tulip’s room and phoned or visited all the contacts in it, but most were school friends who hadn’t seen her since she left, and the couple who’d been in recent contact knew nothing of any break-out. They assumed she was at home, keeping her head down like usual.

Coming up blank on Smith and the Tynes, Big Sandy went hunting for Gawl McCaskey. No photos of
the Scot, though they’d compiled a number of sketches from people who’d known him. The sketches differed wildly. In some he was lean, in others stout. He had grey hair, white hair, black hair, he was bald. He was tall, all who knew him agreed, but accounts put him between six foot and six foot eight. His eyes were blue/green/brown, his nose bent to the left, the right or was squashed like a boxer’s. Everybody mentioned the missing upper half of his ear, but a few swore it was his right ear, not his left.

Big Sandy compiled a list of people outside London who’d known McCaskey in the past, getting names and phone numbers from Eyes Burton and others, phoning everyone he could, adding to his list whenever those he contacted passed on new name
s. McCaskey had travelled a lot and Big Sandy was soon logging calls to America, Australia, Europe, Russia. But the Scot had made no genuine friends that Big Sandy could find. Big Sandy told them about the reward and asked them to phone him if they heard from McCaskey. All said they would.

McCaskey troubled him. The man had all the substance of a ghost. He’d asked a lot of people if they had photos of h
im but nobody could find any. A few thought they might have old snaps lying around somewhere, and promised to look, but no comebacks yet. Prints had been taken from his apartment and were being checked against police records, but nobody had thought to do that until Thursday afternoon, by which time dozens of the Bush’s men had been in and out, smearing prints, leaving their own. It would be a long, difficult process to isolate McCaskey’s.

Big Sandy believed
that McCaskey was the key. Smith would never have had the guts to instigate this. There might be someone behind McCaskey, the brains of the outfit, sheltering the kidnappers and planning for the future, but McCaskey was the catalyst. Piecing it together — Clint and McCaskey started hanging out a few weeks before the break-out. Big Sandy didn’t know how they met, but they fell in together and bonded. When the Bush hit Phials with the ultimatum, Phials told Smith. Smith told McCaskey. McCaskey probably told someone with money and influence, who hit on the master plan of using a couple of amateurs to steal the Bush’s pharmaceutical prize cow. No link between Smith and Mr X, but there must be one between Mr X and McCaskey, most likely a guy the Scot once worked for. Trace McCaskey’s past acquaintances and maybe Big Sandy would stumble across the mystery brains of the break-out.

He was doing this – phoning, asking questions, gathering names – when the Bush summoned him. Glad to hear sanity in the Bush’s voice. He caught a cab. Noted the carnage when he entered – staff busy clea
ning up the mess – but said nothing. Found the Bush in the kitchen, brooding over a mug of coffee. “Sugar’s selling Spurs,” he said as if announcing a death. “My chance to buy the club has come and gone.”

Big Sandy took that in. “That mean you don’t care any more about getting Phials back alive? He’ll do dead?”

The Bush sighed. “No, I still want him alive. The money won’t please me as much as it would have, but I’ll find a use for it.” His expression hardened. “But it does mean I now want Clint alive too. I want to make him suffer. Personally.”