To Die For (11 page)

I passed number twenty-eight without looking at it and turned the corner. In the clear night the icy concrete gave a ring to my footsteps, as if I was walking on solid iron. They could hear me well enough and they’d pay attention if I stopped. I carried on walking for another fifty yards, and heard the slam of the car door. After another minute or so, I stopped and backtracked.

This street was much like the other: rows of terraced houses, cars parked solidly. The one difference was a small off-licence opposite Moore’s business place. Graffiti-covered metal shutters hid the windows.

I looked at Moore’s house, silent, dark and impenetrable. Asking Moore for information was no good. I knew that, I’d known it all along, but now I had to admit it was a fucking stupid idea. If Moore was suspicious, as he should be, he’d close up entirely. He might even call Cole, not wanting to tread on any toes.

I was making one mistake after another – doing the job with Beckett without checking it through, killing Kendall, blundering from place to place without stopping to work things out. It was time for me to start acting smart.

I walked over and scoped out the off-licence. There was a space along one side leading to a rear door where deliveries would be made. If I stood a few feet along this alley, I’d be in darkness, shielded from the street light by the bulk of the building. From here, too, I had a good view of this other entrance to Moore’s place, and I was safely hidden from Cole’s men. If those two had stood watch, as they should have done, they’d have had the whole of Moore’s place covered: one opposite and along from the house; one here, where I was standing. But Martin hadn’t told them about this other entrance and, besides, it was a cold night and Cole’s men weren’t in the mood for standing outside indefinitely. A person could come and go from Moore’s place on this street without being seen by the two in the car.

I still had Kendall’s mobile phone in my pocket and I used it to call King again. When he’d finished swearing at me, I told him what I wanted him to do. He called back a couple of minutes later.

‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘Can I get some fucking sleep now?’

I pulled my coat tighter around me and stepped back into the alley. I put my hands in the coat pockets, placed my feet evenly and fixed my eyes on Moore’s place. I was perfectly balanced, ready to move quickly in either direction. I settled down for a long wait.

I’d done this many times over the years, one way or another – bodyguard duty, casing a place, sentry duty. I always liked it. I liked the darkness, the silence of the night. I could let my mind go blank, let the world slip away. I could live, for a while anyway, in nothingness. The darkness around me was like a blanket to me. It was comfortable.

But as I waited, the silence seemed to slide into my guts, the darkness sank in on me and closed around. I took a deep breath. In everyday life, there was so much clutter that you got used to it. Silence, stillness, these were foreign things. It seemed to me a long time since I’d felt the peace of nothingness. Had I ever? I fixed my eyes again on the building opposite and shook my head to clear it. I was tired, and I ached from the earlier beating I’d taken, and I couldn’t keep my mind concentrated. Images flitted through my head. I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists and tried to block out the thoughts.

Still I stood immobile, my eyes unwavering, dead to see, if anyone could have seen them, not flickering, not moving, not blinking. The cold bit into me. I ignored it. The sound, far away, of traffic carried through the still, thin air, and droned. I smelled the woollen mustiness of my coat.

My mind began to wander again, slinking back like a dog to its own vomit. I saw Kendall’s wife flop over, her white flesh wobbling. I saw my dad, too drunk to stand upright but still able to smash my mother’s face with a right hook.

How much time now had passed? A few minutes? Half an hour?

I tried to blank my mind, shake out the thoughts, but they buzzed around and caught.

And then I was on a hill and the air was biting cold and the fog was all around me and I was alone. The boy stared at me, his eyes sunken, his cheeks hollowed so that it looked as if he’d been dead for many days, but he’d died just a few hours earlier. I knew this. I’d killed him. And he lay there, with eyelids lowered so that, if it weren’t for his mouth, he would have had a sleepy mask. But it was that mouth, that rictus grin with the lips pulled back, the teeth bared in a mocking snarl, that I couldn’t stop looking at. It drew me in and held me. It was just the two of us, me in the foxhole, wet and frozen stiff, gripping my SLR with hands that I could no longer bend, and the boy a dozen feet away, staring at me, laughing at me.

Maybe it was the blow to my head. Or maybe I’d fallen asleep for an instant and had dreamed. That happens. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that boy for a long time. There was a time when I’d thought of nothing else. I call him a boy, but I was probably younger than he was when I killed him. I got older. He didn’t. That was all there was to it.

A light came on in Moore’s place. Someone had made a phone call. The light was good. It gave me something to focus on. After another few minutes, I saw a figure, a man, far off to my left, coming towards me.

The man was tall and thin and, in the neon glow of the street lights, he had a sickly white face. He looked, from a distance, to be old, bony and bent, but as he came closer, I could see that he was young, early twenties at most. Despite the cold, he was wearing a thin canvas jacket in which he’d planted his hands. He walked with his head down, shuffling along with the look of someone going to do a job he hated. He looked dopey and might’ve had a hit of something already. I watched him turn into Moore’s place. He knocked, waited, said something to the door. The door opened and he went in. Within the minute he was out, shuffling back the way he’d come. All of this was out of sight of Cole’s men. My luck was in there. I waited for the light in Moore’s place to go out, then I left the shadows.

I waited until he walked by a small park. He hadn’t heard my footsteps. He didn’t turn until I was upon him and by then it was too late. He let out a sort of gasp as I grabbed him and hurled him over the low wall and into the park. He tried to defend himself, but his arms were like twigs and, besides, he had no strength. He gave up quickly, curling into a ball.

‘I ain’t got nothing.’

I hoisted him up. He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out some notes and coins.

‘Here. It’s all I got.’

I smacked the money aside.

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘What?’

I raised my hand.

‘No, wait. Derek, okay? Derek Lewis. Do I owe you money or something? I thought I was clear now.’

‘You know a man called Waylon?’

He bent down to retrieve his money. He kept his eyes on me.

‘Um, Waylon? That his last name?’

I took a step forward and kicked out with the flat of my foot. I caught him on the side. He landed heavily, sprawled on the floor with a face full of dirt. I took another step forward. He rolled over, holding up his hands.

‘Okay. Yeah. I know him.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Up the road. Half-mile.’

‘You live alone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Call Waylon, get him to meet you at your place.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

‘What am I gonna tell him?’

‘Tell him you’ve got a load of smack and you want to share it around.’

‘He won’t believe me.’

‘He’ll come.’

Lewis lived in a bedsit on the ground floor of a small grey block. The place was a mess of empty beer cans, used takeaway packaging, dirty laundry, magazines, newspapers. It smelled like he did – stale. I took his mobile phone, unplugged the landline from the wall, and threw them in the toilet bowl. He complained about that for a second or two, then gave up.

He was fidgety and kept walking around, glancing at me, worried, probably, that he was getting caught up in whatever I had going with Waylon. I told him to sit down. He found a clean spot on the sofa and sat and looked at me through sleepy eyes. I told him if he behaved there’d be a reward, so long as he didn’t open his mouth afterwards. I hadn’t made my mind up what to do with him yet.

We waited half an hour, me by the door, Lewis falling asleep on the sofa. When the bell rang, I slapped him a couple of times and took him to the door, keeping my gun in the small of his back. He looked through the spyhole and opened the door without a word. A young black man walked in and said, ‘How much you got?’

Then he saw me and said, ‘Shit.’ Then he saw my gun and said, ‘Shit,’ again, only with more conviction.

I pushed him into the bedsit and closed the door.

‘The fuck, Del?’

‘What could I do, man? He wanted to see you. Look at him.’

I told Lewis to go and lock himself in the bathroom.

Waylon was a little older than Lewis, and a little shorter, but just as thin. He had his hair in an afro, and there was something like a goatee on his chin. He wore a baggy green T-shirt and baggy blue jeans. They didn’t help his appearance.

‘What do you want with me?’

I gave him a short punch to the diaphragm. He doubled over and hit the floor, gasping for breath. After a while, he was sick. He’d pissed himself. I waited until he could sit up and told him I wanted to find Walsh.

‘If you tell me you don’t know where he is, I’ll hit you again, harder. Tell me where he is and you get a grand.’

‘Dalston. House there.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Called me yesterday. Said he wanted some stuff, said for me to bring it over.’

‘You took it over?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Anyone else there?’

‘I dunno. He wouldn’t let me get past the front door. I say how come you invite me over and then don’t let me in? He say he’s got friends in, they wouldn’t like me hanging around. All a bit paranoiac, you ask me.’

Paranoiac. They had reason to be.

I made him describe the place. I was going to take him with me and if the place didn’t pan out like he’d said, I’d get heavy.

‘What you gonna do to Walsh?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Walsh, he’s a friend of mine.’

‘Right.’

‘You won’t tell him, right? That I told you?’

‘No.’

I let him clean himself up. He borrowed some clothes from Lewis. They fitted better than his own. Lewis didn’t seem bothered by Waylon’s trouble, which suggested he wouldn’t go running to Moore. As we were leaving, he said, ‘Um, hey, man. You said there was something in it for me?’

‘You got some smack on you, right?’

‘Huh?’

‘You had a call from Moore, or one of Moore’s people, to make a delivery tonight.’

‘Uh...’

‘Keep the smack for yourself.’

He hesitated. He wanted it, but he didn’t want to cross Moore.

‘Can’t do that, man. There’s someone waiting for this stuff. If I don’t get it there, I got Moore on my back, and I definitely don’t need that right now.’

‘The call came from a friend of mine. He doesn’t want it.’

‘Really? You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Who pays for it?’

I fished out a bundle of notes and tossed them to him.

‘Give the money to Moore. If he asks, say you never saw the man before. Say he was in town one night and someone had given him Moore’s number.’

‘Right. Won’t tell Moore.’

‘Take some shit now.’

‘I don’t need any now. I had some.’

‘Take it now.’

‘Okay, all right.’

I waited long enough to see that he’d taken a hit, then I pushed Waylon out through the door and walked him back to my car. We headed for Dalston.

The roads were clear, only a few cars, taxis. I drove fast, watching the slick black road heading towards me.

Waylon sat beside me, sulking. He wouldn’t speak and kept staring at his hands, which were folded in his lap. Every now and then he’d shift in his seat and look over at me. He probably wondered if he was going to walk away from this.

I was keyed up now and could feel the strain in my neck muscles, in the backs of my arms. It wasn’t like the tension I felt before a job, or even before a fight. This was different. This was more like dread. Something was bad and I was in the middle of it and I kept seeing that white, mask-like face of Kenny Paget, and I kept thinking of Cole, out there, waiting. I kept thinking of what I had, which wasn’t much, and what I could lose, which was my reputation, which was everything. Most of all, I thought of Brenda, and I didn’t know why. It was a feeling I had, a cold, dark, empty feeling. It was that hole opening up.

It was one of those three-storey Victorian terraced affairs, part of a row of twenty or so that stood like a cliff opposite a small square. They were firm buildings, deep and tall. Lights were on in the ground-floor front room of the house Waylon pointed out. The curtains were drawn and there were no gaps that I could see through.

I gave Waylon the money and told him if he said anything to anyone I’d cut his bollocks off. He believed me.

I walked around the block. The rows of houses were solid all the way around, except for several places where there were alleys or driveways. Even with these access points, I would have to cross a dozen gardens to get to the back of the house.

So, I could go in through the front door, or I could get access to the rear garden. The garden option meant first getting access to the garden that backed on to it, and that would mean going through the house of that garden.

I sat for a while in my car and thought things through. Then I reached over to my bag, pulled out the Smith and Wesson .38 and checked that the chamber was full. I attached the silencers to both the .38 and the Makarov. Fuck subtlety.

I was going in blind. Was Beckett alone? Was he there at all? Were Walsh and Jenson with him? Were they expecting me?

I took off my coat and hat and dumped them on the passenger seat. I got out of the car and crossed the road, keeping my eyes on the front door. I moved quickly. I kicked the iron gate to one side and raised the .38 and emptied it into the lock area. The gun coughed, the rounds hit the wood like fast hammer blows. I dropped the .38 into my pocket and charged the door, hitting it shoulder-first, smashing the lock apart. The door splintered with a crackling screech, flew open, crashed into the wall and rebounded back behind me. I had the automatic in my hand now, and I was steaming. I burst into the front room, gun raised, saw Beckett in one chair, the other two on a sofa. I let go with the gun, firing three rounds into Beckett, the gun kicking in my hand, feeling good, feeling like revenge, each round tearing into Beckett’s body, taking with it my fury. I spun around to let the gun loose on the other two, to destroy them. But even as I was turning, I knew it was all wrong. My finger tightened on the trigger. And stopped.