The Untouchable (55 page)

When the woman who had searched the dining room, taking everything from the sideboard then replacing each plate and each glass just where they'd been, had met the heavy-bearded man, who'd gone through the sitting room with fine-tooth comb care, the Princess had been at the top of the stairs. The woman and the bearded man were in the hall below.

'You know what's funny about this place, sort of creepy, it's not lived-in. It's like a show house at the Ideal Home. There's nothing out of place - and there's not a book. Did you find one book here? I didn't. It gives you the shivers. Or it's like a hotel room, cleaned for the next guest.'

Then they'd seen her at the top of the stairs, and the Princess hadn't heard another word spoken among them, until they left.

They filed out. Years ago, Clarrie Hinds had said that you never showed anger to them, never flipped, never screamed, because they'd talk about that in the canteen at their late breakfast, and the word would have been passed to the scum, the informers, they paid. To have shouted at them, to have wept in a corner, would have demeaned her dignity, would have diminished Mister's self-respect. They took nothing with them.

'Thank you for your co-operation, Mrs Packer.'

The older man's match flashed in the dull light.

She didn't answer. The cars were starting up in the road. Usually, at her mother's home or at her own since she'd married Mister, when the police or the Church came with a warrant, searched and left empty-handed without evidence in a bag, there would be tight-lipped annoyance at the senior man's mouth. She didn't see anger, but there was a slow smile, which might have been contempt, or satisfaction. It was no big deal. She'd tell Mister about it when he was back, tomorrow or the day after. Their house rule, which she'd never broken, was that she did not call him when he was away. It would keep until his return. They were a partnership. In his strange, unshown way, her Mister loved his Princess.

He didn't crawl all over her, didn't touch her when they were out, didn't smarm her with compliments in front of strangers, but he loved her. It was returned.

The trust was between them. When he came back, she would tell Mister where they'd been, how they'd searched, what they'd looked like. He'd listen to her, never interrupting, and every detail of it would be stored away in his mind, his memory. When she'd finished, he'd say, 'Well done,' or 'That's good,' or, if he was expansive, 'You'd have thought they'd have better things to do . ..' and life would go on. She never looked to the future, didn't think about it. A long time ago, when they were first married and Mister was on the up, she'd feared he'd be found in a gutter, or in a fire-destroyed car, and that the uniformed Bill would come to escort her to a mortuary to look at his body.

She no longer harboured such a fear. He was untouchable now; as she joked with him, 'God wouldn't dare.' She didn't ask him what the future was, and didn't care.

As the cars drove off, she saw across the road that Leonora was hy her gate, in her bathrobe, and miming at her a charade game of filling a kettle and drinking a cup, but she shook her head, smiled - because it was no big deal and closed her door behind her.

One point confused her. There had been no warning. The night before his arrest, Mister had known they coming for him in the morning. She'd tell Mister that his network hadn't warned her . .. She went into the kitchen. She made hersell a collee and put bread in the toaster. She took the toast and the mug into the sitting room and switched on the television.

Her eyes roved from the set, from the mug and the plate, over the room. There was no sign that the Church had come mob-handed into the house, it was all strangely tidy and undisturbed. She was almost at the end of the traverse of her gaze over the watercolour paintings, the ornaments, the decanter and the glasses, the fireplace, when she saw the envelope.

It was propped up on a low table beside the chest where she kept her tapestry. She had not put a brown, large-size envelope on that table.

She wondered what they'd left behind.

She laid her cup and the plate on the footstool beside her chair, went to the table and picked up the envelope.

The flap was not sealed, was folded inside. There was no logo on it, nor any handwriting. She opened it and took out a wad of plate-size photographs.

Attached to the back of the top photograph was a stick-on message note. 'Room 329, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Phone: (00 387 32) 664 273.' She turned the photographs over. She looked.

Her eyes closed, she lashed out with her foot. The fluffy pink slipper kicked against the stool beside her chair. The toast went, margarine-and-marmalade side down onto the carpet, and the cup of coffee flew. The Princess ripped off the stick-on message note, marched into the kitchen and snatched up the telephone.

He had been dressing, his best suit, best shirt and best shoes and the phone had pealed beside the bed.

Mister held it away from his ear, and heard the rant.

'They're not my problem, they can come any time they want, once a week if they want, by appointment or without - you're my problem, Mister. Who is she? You are my problem. Who is she? Don't play dumb eith me, Mister, and don't bloody tell me,

''Oh, she's just nobody . . . Oh, she's just a friend, someone I met Oh, she's just a quick shag." Out in the bloody open, like you're some sort of kid out in the park Who is she? Lost your bloody voice, Mister? Did you lose your trousers, Mister? Have to be called "Mister", don't you? because that's about your bloody self-respect. What sort of self-respect is it to be out in the middle of the bloody day, cuddling and cow eyes, in front of the Church's camera? And, don't tell me, "I didn't see the camera, I didn't know they were there", you wouldn't have seen luck all except for her tits, you wouldn't have seen a camera if they'd poked you with it.

Bloody good laugh for the Church. I have sweated for you, Mister, I've been here when you've wanted me, I've covered your back, I've lived a bloody half-life -

and what do I get out of it? It's a bloody Crown copyright surveillance picture of you with a horn on hanging on to a bit of stuff young enough to be your bloody daughter if you were capable of making a daughter. I've trusted you, Mister, and now you've —'

He put the phone down on the cradle.

He finished dressing, chose a good tie, and checked himself in the mirror.

They were waiting for him in the lobby. How was he? He was fine, he was looking forward to a good day, he was top of the game.

Chapter Seventeen

Was it falling apart? He sat beside Atkins, who drove, with the Eagle behind him. They thought it was cracking, splintering, and were both silent, had been all the way from the city to Jablanica and the start of the gorge that held in the Neretva river. Nothing in Mister's life had ever fallen apart.

He was tired. He said wearily, softly, 'All right, Eagle, all right, Atkins, let me tell you how I see it, because' you're asking, and you've the right to, "Is it falling apart?" Fair question. Deserves a fair answer.

We've positive and negative, asset and debit. I'll go first on the negative, the debit . . . We are going to meet Marco Tardi of the Brusca family, and Nikki Gornikov from the vory v'zakone group, and Fuat Selcuk, who owns half of the west of Turkey. They are top-of-the-Ieague people, they're travellers, they reach across Europe and the Near East into Asia and as far as the States. I haven't met people like that before. I meet guys in London, and if the sun's shining and it's a good day I get as far as Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle, and if it's special I get as far as Glasgow. I deal with Yardies and Chinese and guys who call me Mister because they're scared shitless of me. I'm the biggest fish in a small puddle. I don't know how I'm going to be when I meet these people today. I don't know whether I'm going to fall on my face, if they're going to think I'm not worth bothering with.

It's new ground for me - am I up to it? That's a negative.'

They had left the Jablanicko Jezero lake behind them, where there were wooden restaurants, and fishermen as still as hermits who held their rods and stared at the blue-green depth of the water. Now they were in the gorge. The sun speared down into it.

The road was fast and dry, the snow-capped hills were left far back. They went past fields where tractors ploughed. They were three smartly dressed men on their way to a business meeting. His voice was gentle, without passion.

'Since we've been here we have been under continuing surveillance by the Church. It's not a big team, it may just be a one-man token show. I've done what I'd normally do. I've done the warning and the frighteners, and now I've beaten the crap out of him. I don't know whether he's still there, or isn't there .. . They'll have learned about the warehouse we chose, and about the charity lorry. Truth be told, every piece of detail we have put in place this week has been time wasted. That's debit.'

They all wore their best. Mister's suit was light grey. The Eagle wore formal charcoal, what he'd have taken from the wardrobe for a Law Society dinner in Guildford when he sought to impress, his tie discreet, foreign and silk, and he'd have spent time in his room cleaning his shoes before they'd left. Atkins had chosen tan slacks, a sports jacket and the regiment's tie. Mister talked, mused, as if the important audience was himself.

'And it's not just at this end that the Church is working the pressure. Atkins's address is done over, the Eagle's home is trashed and mine. I'm searched.

The Princess called me this morning. She knows better than that, and she unstitched the most basic rule we've got. I didn't have word of it before they came in, and I didn't have word they were doing yours, Atkins, and yours, Eagle. It's like they're stepping over a trip wire because they know it's there. And it can get worse. There was a picture taken of me when I went to a crappy little village where the Bosnia with Love stuff had been dumped. It's left with the Princess by the Church. It's that sort of moment, a pretty girl and me, and we're close. Christ, I don't get to meet girls like that. Nothing's bloody happened, not yet, but the picture makes it look like I'm kissing her. I've had my ears thrashed by the Princess. She can't handle it, she's bawling, and their recorders are turning on it Thai's the negatives. That's why the question's fair is it tailing apart?'

He couldn't see the Eagle, but heard him squirm in the seat behind. Atkins's eyes never left the road.

'Do I turn, cut my losses, and run?'

They were both silent. Neither had spoken since the journey had started. He thought they were both pathetic, but didn't show what he thought.

'It's a fair question, you're entitled to ask it.'

His voice held ils quiet.

' I've never run, haven't ever . . . When I was a kid at school, I didn't run. I used to get hell kicked out of me when I was making my patch. Bigger kids, stronger, older, kicked and punched me and I went home with blood on my face and teeth loose, and I went back each next morning, until the day when I could hand back the kicks and the fists. I ruled in that school. I ruled, had control. I would have been nothing if I had shown fear, just another tearaway, and been smacked down . . . When they put me out of school, when I was starting up my own patch - shopkeepers, businesses, fourteen years old and protecting them - people wanted me to cut my losses and run.

There was fist fights and knife fights, there was a petrol bomb thrown at me. I went after them. I was a kid, but I went after them in their pubs and in their pads, went after them until they backed off. I had to clear the competition out from Stoke Newington first, then from Islington and Holloway, then from Dalston and Hackney. There was good pickings and the competition didn't want me - it was shotguns and shooters . . . I went inside. I got two things out of Pentonville. I got respect but I had to fight for it, and with the respect came the contacts. The Mixer came from Pentonville, and the Cards, and the Cruncher, and the link to you, Eagle. If I hadn't stood the ground, hadn't fought, at the age I was, I'd just have ended up as another kid who was playtime for the old perverts . . . I came out. I went up to Green Lanes and I started buying, started dealing, started selling on.

More territory to move into, and bigger fights. I could have turned then. It was about will, about determination, about belief. If 1 hadn't had the will, if the determination had been short, then I'd have gone under. There was heavy money to be made and too many snouts in the trough, and only room in the trough for one, mine. I put men in hospital, but they didn't talk to the CID because they hadn't the guts to, and none of them came back for more. What I'm saying is that respect doesn't come easy, it's earned. I earned it. I sat in the top of the tree, because I didn't turn or run or q u i t . . . and the years go by. I am sitting in the top of that tree, and I am thinking. Where do I go, if I don't turn and run and quit? Only one place to go - find a bigger tree, climb it and get higher. Did anyone say it was easy? It wasn't easy in the school, not easy getting the shopkeepers to shell out in Stoke Newington, or to clear the territory in north London, wasn't easy in Pentonville, wasn't easy going up to Green Lanes. But I had the will . . . So, now I have problems.'

He eased back against the comfort of the seat. He despised them.

'What's a problem for? It's for solving. Problems are for low-life, they'll' not for Mister. I go on, I never backed from anything I wanted. I want this . .. Either of you, do you want to get out? Do you want to walk?

You going to stand at the side of the road and wait for a bus? Going to the airport? I don't hear you, Eagle.

You're not speaking, Alkins.'

He heard the shuffle of papers behind him, and thought the Eagle hid in them, and Atkins's eyes only left the road when he checked the mirror. They came out of the Neretva gorge.

'Well, that's that, then - maybe, because I think we're ahead of schedule, we can stop and get something to eat. Might be a long day.'

Mister closed his eyes and felt the sun beat on his face. He thought only of the meeting. Monika and the Princess were forgotten, and the Eagle and Atkins who were rubbish, and Cann who was a flea's bite. He was untouchable, and supreme, and the meeting would prove it.