The German Numbers Woman (33 page)

‘I know,' Waistcoat said, ‘but we're motoring a long way this time, and I'm not telling you where it'll be yet, because of security.'

A belligerent murmur came from George Cleaver. Over six feet tall, wary and erect, in his conventional three-piece suit, with a gold watch chain leading into a waistcoat pocket, he always stood by the door of whatever room he was in, as if ready to jump clear at a sudden inrush of police. He spoke little, but when he did those nearby listened, especially at sea when they wanted to know where they were, because he was known as the best Atlantic navigator in the trade. ‘We aren't a bunch of school kids.'

‘Nor old women, either,' Scuddilaw said. ‘We don't just want to know where we're going the day we get on board.'

Cannister, an ex-trawlerman who, Richard smiled, seemed to have polished his earring, and shampooed his ponytailed hair to come to the meeting, backed him up.

‘All right, then,' Waistcoat said. ‘I know I can rely on you lot as far as security is concerned. But I'm only not telling you yet in case there's a change of plan. I don't expect there will be, but you never know. All I do know, though, is that none of you will be disappointed. When this trip's behind you, you'll all be plenty satisfied.'

Since Richard had been told a fortnight ago he wasn't much concerned whether the others knew or not where they were going, but he didn't want to openly announce that security had already been cracked by a blind man at his wireless. He must wait for an opportunity, meanwhile hearing Waistcoat say they would be crewing for him on a pleasure cruise, but that the boat on the return trip would be packed with four hundred kilos of cocaine in watertight kitbags which, Richard reckoned, would be worth something like forty million on the UK market. If they were caught with such an amount they would never walk on daisies again, but if they brought it off the pay could only be called retirement money – though it was hard to imagine any of them getting out of the game. They would go on for more, and more, and still more, not solely out of greed, but because buccaneering was in their blood.

‘It may be,' Waistcoat was saying, ‘that we'll be shorthanded on such a big boat, so I might ask Oswald Beck if he can spare a couple of weeks from his posh pub, see if he can't tear himself away from them ivory-handled beer pumps, and his barmaid with the big tits.'

Hard not to laugh, or be seen not to. ‘He won't come,' Cannister said. ‘I called there for a pint last week. The bastard made me pay for it.'

‘He's gone soft,' Paul Cinnakle said. He paused in filing his nails, a man whose clothes almost matched Waistcoat's expensive style. Richard had heard him scornful of those who in their gear could mix freely and unnoticed among people on the street – at least they could these days, with so many weirdoes about. Maybe for such an attitude Waistcoat sometimes seemed suspicious of Cinnakle, though he had no reason not to trust such a proficient engine man, unless he regarded him as being after his job, or at least that he would like to give it a try, though Richard knew there wasn't a hope of him coming to within a sniffing distance of a skipper's aftershave.

‘That's for me to decide,' Waistcoat responded, his look as if to say: ‘And don't you forget it. In any case, it's no business of yours, fuck-face.' He came over to Richard, who held out his glass for a refill. ‘You look like you've got something on your plate.'

The others were talking among themselves, as if no longer interested in the trip. ‘No, I'm all right.'

‘Any comments on the arrangements?'

‘They seem fine to me. We've been through them often enough.' He drank, more to be sociable than for the quality: Waistcoat's posh wine merchant had filled the bottles with acidy plonk, and stuck fancy labels on them. ‘I'd prefer a word with you afterwards, Chief, if that's in order.'

‘With you it always is. Anything serious?'

‘Could be important, though I expect it'll be all right.' Might as well let him have an indication, though the momentary shade on Waistcoat's face showed that he suspected something disagreeable. A man who had pulled himself out of the mire to become more than a millionaire was alive to every nuance. The only thing in his life was a controlled drive for the visible yet unattainable object, not seen by anyone else but to their cost if they knowingly – or unknowingly for that matter – stood in his way. So he kept ahead of others with an energy common in those who had dragged themselves from the lowest of the low, the sort who thrived on the versatility of his malice (which was as close to evil, in Waistcoat's case, as a person of limited intellectual ability could get) and also luck, as well as a certain off-hand skill when dealing with someone more powerful in the game.

‘I'm dying to hear about it, so I'll get rid of this lot,' which he soon did, for there was no one who wasn't glad to go. ‘All right, the show's over – but finish your wine first, if you like.'

Richard's problem was how to begin.

‘Sit down,' Waistcoat said. ‘The hoi-polloi's gone to the steak house, so tell me what's on your mind.'

He pulled his chair close. ‘You know I've been sending in wireless signals over the years, from various places?'

‘You've been well paid, haven't you?'

‘It's not that.'

‘What the fuck is it, then?'

‘I struck up an acquaintance a few months ago with another chap, who does the same thing as me. He just listens, but does nothing with what he gets. Out of interest, you might say. It was a chance meeting, and just as well it took place. I kept tabs on him, got to know everything he pulled off the air.'

‘Yeh, well, so what?'

‘He didn't only get Interpol and such things. He heard small boats, yacht traffic, people chatting to one another. He also got Russian planes on the eastern runs, and much else. In short, he's cracked our whole operation. He knows we're going to the Azores, and has a good idea of the date. He also knows why we're going. He's more than clever at putting two and two together. I'm sure nobody else could have done it. But he's priceless, and we've got to take him into account.'

Waistcoat's complexion was far from rubicund at the best of times, but this revelation downed it a notch or two towards the wedding-cake colours of his interior decoration. He unpeeled a cigar, twitched flame out of his lighter. ‘Does he know your line of work?'

He'd been expecting the question, though not so early on. ‘No chance. He hasn't a clue. I know more than anybody how to hide such things.'

‘I'm sure you do.'

Richard would take no side from him, chief or not. ‘Yes, you can bank on that.'

‘Well, who is he?'

‘An ex-RAF chap. He lives on the south coast. He's the best wireless operator I've ever come across.'

‘Apart from yourself.'

‘You could say that.'

‘Even better, by the sound of it. But what are we going to do with him?'

‘There's no chance of him giving us away.'

‘You mean he wants paying off?'

‘We could kill him,' Richard said quietly.

‘You keep your suggestions to yourself.'

It was a reasonable one, but good to dispose of before the notion came to Waistcoat. ‘I may be able to come up with something helpful.' Calmness was the only way to keep Waistcoat from your or anybody else's throat.

‘That'll be the day.' He snapped the cigar in two and prepared to light another. ‘The whole fucking trip jeopardised. It's all set up, and there's no way out. I can't credit it. You're the bringer of bad news.'

Richard lit a cigarette, glad to note that his fingers were steady. ‘He'd be a first rate hand on the boat.'

‘What are you trying to tell me?'

‘I'm not suggesting anything, but there's going to be a lot for me to do at the wireless, and standing watches as well. Precautions are going to be necessary, and I'll have more than a job on. I can't attend to everything.'

‘Does he have a sheet?'

‘Clean as laundered snow.'

‘Would he be willing?'

‘He put it to me himself, but I had to turn him down.'

‘Stupid bastard. Always keep people on the hook.'

‘How was I to know? I couldn't give him any sort of go-ahead, not without talking to you first. But he'd be willing, I know. I could soon win him back, talk him round. Wouldn't cost you, either. So much a day maybe, and a bit of bonus when we got back.'

Waistcoat appeared to think, unusual when with someone else, afraid the workings of his face would show too much. He looked beyond Richard, into the wall, as if seeing to the horizon beyond; much as he must have done to while away the days in his prisons of the past, hoping his endless animal stare would burn through concrete. There was no disturbing him. Leave him alone, let time and the information take its toll. Don't offer a way out but rather allow his brain to grow its own ideas, the more the better, and whatever he comes up with, imagine the choice is his – if you're happy for your judgment to be based on his apparent cunning.

If Richard's mind could be compared to the circuit diagram of a radio set (as unfortunately so could Howard's, which had started all the trouble) you could base Waistcoat's on the cruder mechanism of a one-armed bandit. A radio set, though more complex, could throw you half across the room with shock if you made a mistake while powering it to the mains. A one-armed bandit might fall and crush your foot after a too-enthusiastic pull at the handle, but at least there might be a river of money in its wake. As a piece of engineering it was far simpler, and more old fashioned, less useful from a worldly view than a high-powered multiband radio.

‘I'll have to leave it to you,' was all Waistcoat could say. ‘But you say he's all right?'

It was the moment to faint, or run screaming from what looked like becoming the ruination of his life, but an inborne sense of destiny, which he in no way liked, forced him to say: ‘I've never known a man more like one of us who isn't in it already.'

‘That's all right, then.' Waistcoat seemed almost happy, as Richard had to be, but he added: ‘It's your skin as well as mine. If I didn't know you were one-hundred-per-cent reliable I'd see him myself beforehand, but we're too close to the day, and I've still got a lot to do.'

The glint in his eyes never died. Even when he slept their piercing tipped beadiness was live under the lizard lids, burning into his dreams, the eyes of a killer, and whoever they were turned on in anger knew the threat they posed, and felt lucky to walk out of the door unharmed. Richard wondered whether he had been born with such malevolent eyes or they had developed out of a lifetime of circumstance. One thing he knew: Waistcoat had a villainous soul, and Richard wondered about the state of his own in that he recognised it so clearly.

Driving through the rush hour of south east London, in fits and starts from one set of traffic lights to another, and jammed in a queue to get through New Cross, he surmised from what he knew that Waistcoat had been a south London youth, brought up in the sharp brutality of its ways. He had been through the hardest time any kid could, was maybe one of seven or eight, with the old man on and off in prison, at which times his mother would go on the game to make ends meet, and savage treatment she got for it when the man came out.

He pictured Waistcoat bright and innocent in appearance, but eternally on the lookout for anything of use or value, holding back from outright muggery through fear of retribution at the copshop if caught. Even so, he was kicked around by his parents when they were together, so knew what violence was all about, until he learned to avoid such trouble. At the age of eleven or twelve, when his father stood up to boot him, he took out a flick-knife lifted that afternoon from a stall in Bermondsey – and was never threatened again. Whatever tolerant softness had been in his eyes – and it could only have been enough to cajole, wheedle or deceive – faded on knowing he had to be in charge of himself before he could control others.

Thus Borstal was a better school, where he absorbed the rules quicker than any of his intake. To know something was better than not to know, or to pretend not to know; and promised an easier time than if you were ignorant or resentful. To be more aware than others was an advantage. The more you knew the better. Those who ran the place had power, and if you didn't try to break yourself against it they made life easier for you because then they didn't have to work so hard, and a better time was had by all.

In any case, in the phrase of the time, he had never had it so good. Such assurance of food on the dot, clothes and a roof made it a doddle to tolerate a place where he could look after himself with no trouble. Not that he liked the screws or the governor. He didn't have to. He wanted to get out as soon as they would let him go, and meanwhile learned new ways of thieving, though not so useful because how come those who gloated over them had got caught? They were only useful in pointing the way to tricks that would be more successful.

In prison – where Richard had met such characters during his fortunately brief incarceration – Waistcoat would have learned many things that were more profitable. He made connections, got into the real world and found advancement on going free but, even then, had to come back a few times before falling in to the drugs trade. In twenty years he had become rich, changed his name, appearance and accent (as far as he could) and certainly his style of living, which had helped him not to get caught so often.

Traffic smoothed its way more freely beyond Sidcup, but he held back from driving too fast. Keep your distance, sideways as well as to the front and back. A scarlet biscuit tin on the starboard bow overtook, came on as if pulling a wall of rain with it. The wipers conducting like a metronome, he lit a cigarette. Shit's creek without a paddle would be paradise compared to the Howard connection. Hard to know how serious the old bat was about getting on board, though he seemed determined enough. He hoped so, because if he backed out the best to be expected would be driving an ice-cream van for the rest of his active life with half his fingers missing.