To Fight For (11 page)

What Brenda did was about the bravest thing I ever heard of. But she hated herself for it. That's what she was talking to Browne about, that time – the need to forget, the need to hide from something with booze. The need to hide from herself.

Two things about all that were having this knock-on effect. Firstly, the man in the film. Whoever he was, Dunham wanted him in his control, which meant he wanted the DVD as blackmail. That meant the bloke in the film was someone important, powerful, useful to Dunham.

Secondly, there were copies about. I had one, which Brenda had left me, and which I'd only recently found. Dunham knew I had that copy. That made me a target. But Paget must've had a copy too, to get protection from Dunham. I couldn't believe that Paget would be able to bluff Dunham if he hadn't had a copy. My guess was that he'd hidden it somewhere and had made a sample copy to show Dunham, enough that he got what he wanted, which was Dunham's protection from me. Paget's copy was lost, then.

That hadn't worked out too well for him. So, if I had the only copy, Dunham wanted it from me. So too did Compton and his mob, who were after Glazer as part of their anti-corruption fight. Compton had told me that if I wanted justice for Brenda's death, I'd hand over something to put Glazer away. I didn't give a fuck about their justice.

But, of course, I probably wasn't the only one to have a copy. Glazer might've had one.

When I felt up to it, I left the house and took a tour of the block, my hand on my Makarov the whole time, my eyes darting this way and that. When I saw a man walking a dog, I stopped and watched him until he was out of sight. Then I watched some more to make sure he didn't come back. When a car went by, I made a note of the make and number plate.

It was a clear morning, bright and cold with that biting air that cuts through your skin. It felt good. It felt clean. The sky was blue for once. Sounds carried on the crisp air and, as if the air was seeping into me, my thoughts started to untangle themselves.

A thought occurred to me: how did Paget find out the DVD was important to someone like Dunham? Certainly, Dunham hadn't known, so it must've been Paget who told him. But how had
he
found out? If he and Marriot had known how important their blackmail target was, they'd have used the film a long time ago.

I tried to work that out but gave up. It didn't seem important.

I'd just come back as Browne was crawling down the stairs. He was wearing blue pyjamas and a red dressing gown. The pyjamas were ten sizes too big. The dressing gown had holes and stains.

‘Morning,' he said. ‘Still alive, I see. Good, good. I mean, you are alive, aren't you? Sometimes it's hard to tell.'

He shuffled past me, his slippers half on, his dressing gown half off, his hair all over the place. He went to the mat by the front door and picked up
The Times
, folded it and put it under his arm. I started up the stairs and stopped and turned and looked at the newspaper.

‘Since when do you have that delivered?' I said.

Browne looked at the paper beneath his arm, and then at me.

‘I don't,' he said. ‘Not since you came here.'

He unfolded the newspaper. A piece of white card fell out. He stooped to pick it up, read it to himself.

‘It's for you,' he said, holding the card out to me.

He folded his paper up again and shuffled off to the kitchen.

The note read: ‘Meet me at the usual place. E.'

It was quiet in the cafe. The breakfast trade had gone and now there were only a few punters plus the waitress, who was behind the counter putting cakes into that glass display thing they have. I guessed there was someone back in the kitchen, too.

Anyway, I hadn't seen anyone hanging about outside, and the bunch in here seemed harmless enough.

There was an old couple, silent and slow. The woman, her lunch finished, sipped her tea and stared at the floor while the man wiped bread through what was left of his egg and ketchup.

There was a young bloke, dressed in an army jacket that must've been twenty years older than he was. A tattoo snaked up his neck. He was reading a book, the plate of spaghetti in front of him getting cold.

Then there was the middle-aged bloke in a pinstriped suit and bright shiny brogues who sat and picked at a Danish pastry while he tapped away at a laptop. He was the odd one out in a place like this. He was overweight, and his suit was tight and I couldn't see any bulges anywhere. His hands were clean, his face was soft. He clocked me looking at him and his eyes widened a bit and he looked quickly back at his computer. I figured he was just what he seemed; a businessman with time on his hands and a hunger for pastries.

Eddie Lane sat at a table over the far side, in the corner, his back to the wall. There was nobody on the nearby tables. I strolled over and sat.

He was busy stirring his coffee, keeping me waiting. I let him play his game.

Eddie was Vic Dunham's right hand, and more. He was smooth and black and handsome and smart and very, very deadly.

The last time I saw Eddie and Dunham was just before I went over to Dunham's house and killed Paget and started their war with Cole.

‘Hey, Joe,' he said to the coffee.

‘What do you want?'

He stopped moving the spoon and looked at me, that amused gleam in his eyes.

‘I want us all to be happy.'

‘Right.'

Above us, the strip light flickered and made a sputtering noise.

I glanced around again, unsure of myself, of Eddie, of everything. It was like I was in some play; everyone knew their parts – everyone except me.

The old man had finished mopping up his egg yolk and now was slurping his tea. The old bird opposite watched him over the rim of her mug. How many times had she watched him eat, drink? What was it like, to be with someone for decades? To watch them grow old? I hadn't heard them speak yet.

‘Are you tooled up?' Eddie said.

‘Yes.'

He nodded and went back to stirring his coffee. The waitress had noticed me now and came plodding over, as slowly as she could. Her feet made a sticking noise each time they left the vinyl-tiled floor. It sounded the same as the flickering light, only slower. It didn't seem real, none of it did.

When the waitress finally made it to our table, she took a pad out of her pocket and held a pen over it.

‘Something to eat?' she said to me.

‘No.'

‘Drink?'

‘Tea.'

She didn't bother to write that down.

‘You got a radio here?' Eddie said to her.

She looked at him as if he'd accused her of gobbing in his coffee.

‘Yeah,' she said defensively.

‘Put it on, will you?'

She plodded back the way she'd come, even more slowly, as if the sticky tiles were gradually dragging her down.

We waited, Eddie and me. He stirred his coffee. I watched him stir his coffee. We listened to the flickering light, and to the clanking of plates from the kitchen and the clinking of knives and forks on ceramic.

Eddie finally had enough of stirring his coffee. He tossed the spoon down.

‘You think Bobby Cole's gonna save you?' he said, watching the waitress fade away.

‘No.'

Now he moved his eyes back to me.

‘Well, you're right about that. Cole won't last much longer. We've got him, Joe. Vic's got him.'

‘You think I care about Cole?'

‘No. I just think you'd better not get on Cole's side.'

‘I don't have sides.'

‘Don't you?'

The radio came on. Static-filled music came from a tinny speaker. It was good enough to cover our voices.

‘So, you're gonna wait it out at Browne's for everything to cool off. Or wait for something to happen, maybe?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Fuck's sake, Joe. You're a stubborn cunt, know that? There's a war going on and you're in the middle.'

‘You haven't told me what you want.'

‘I want you to leave, go away, lie low for a while.'

‘Is this a warning?'

‘It's a friendly word.'

‘When did you start becoming friendly?'

That made him smile.

‘I'm always friendly, Joe. Aren't we friends?'

‘You're nobody's friend, Eddie. Neither am I.'

‘You're paranoid.'

I told him to fuck off. He smiled even more.

‘Don't be like that.'

The waitress came back with a mug of tea. She dropped it in front of me and threw some packets of sugar and a spoon onto the table. Then she scribbled the bill out and put it down between us.

She looked at Eddie, and at Eddie's coffee. When she was happy she'd made the point that people like us were a waste of her valuable time, she strolled back to her cakes.

‘How should I be?' I said to Eddie.

‘You should be smart. Leave London.'

‘Why?'

‘You're dead here, even if you live, which you won't.'

Now it was my turn to stir. I picked up a couple of sachets of sugar and tore them open and poured the sugar into my tea, nice and slowly, one grain at a time. When I'd done that, I stirred. Let Eddie fucking wait.

What I didn't understand was this act of his, this friendly warning. He didn't give a shit about me, or anyone. Everything he did had a reason. Finding that reason was the tough part.

I stirred. Eddie waited, knowing what I was doing. My spoon clinked the mug. The tea whirled round and round, like my head, like my fucking life.

I could hear the sound of the traffic outside, whirring by, going around like the tea in my mug. I could smell frying fat and coffee and plastic.

I stopped stirring, put the spoon down. The tea carried on spinning. The light kept on flickering.

The old bloke spoke at last. He said, ‘You want something else? Jean?'

She didn't answer him. Turning to look, I saw them side-on. The old fellow was looking at the woman, waiting for an answer. She still had the mug up to her lips, but she wasn't drinking from it. She just looked at the bloke over the rim. He gave up and went back to his bread.

There was something strange in that and my hackles rose. Everything here was weird, and I thought again that I was stuck in some play not knowing what I was supposed to do.

I tried to ignore that feeling. I turned my attention back to my tea.

‘I'm staying,' I said to Eddie, watching as the brown liquid slid round and round so slowly now that it was barely moving at all.

‘Leave London, Joe. While you still can.'

‘Why would you care?'

‘Call it a favour. Because we go back.'

‘Nice of you.'

‘Fine. You're not important, that's why. You're a sideshow, but Vic wants you out and he's as stubborn as you and while he's hell-bent on getting you, he's losing sight of the bigger picture.'

‘So you're here off your own bat.'

‘I'm here unofficially, yes.'

‘What would Dunham say to that?'

I saw his jaw muscle flicker. The gleam in his eyes dimmed a bit.

‘Don't push it. Like I said, I'm doing you a favour. I'm the fucking gift horse.'

‘If I'm just a sideshow, why does Dunham want me?'

‘Because you made him look stupid, weak. You know he can't have that. He has to destroy you, Joe. No choice.'

‘He's had plenty of time.'

‘I've managed to hold him off.'

‘Then why don't you kill me now? Have done with it, take my head back to Dunham. And don't give me that bollocks about us being friends.'

When he didn't say anything to that, I said, ‘It's the film, isn't it? That's why you haven't killed me yet? You want a copy. I've got one.'

Two girls came into the cafe then and sat down at the table next to us. My skin prickled. They were both young, both had that Celtic thing going on, the white skin, the red-blonde hair.

Eddie picked up his spoon and started stirring his coffee again. One day maybe he'd drink the fucking stuff.

One of the girls had a slim, athletic figure. She had freckles on her arms and a long white neck. Her pale blue eyes seemed paler beneath the narrow arched eyebrows. Her hair was long and straight, and the colour of honey. She had a band of flowers tattooed around her wrist, as if they were her hopes and dreams and she carried them where she could see them, remember them now and then.

The other girl had curves, all in the right places. She was a redhead too, only it was darker and curly, like gold thread that had rusted. Her eyes were large and a kind of blue-green-grey, the colour changing as she moved her head. And they were soft eyes which looked as if, sometimes, they'd melt away and take her some place quiet.

When they'd first sat down, I'd thought they might be law, but I could see they weren't. They didn't have the core of decay that the police always carry with them. Even the best undercover coppers can't hide that rot, that disease that infects them, as if their soul had gangrene.

No, these girls were too clean for that. They'd just straggled in and taken a seat without thinking. They were too innocent to notice what others could see; the danger that lived with people like Eddie and me, the threat, the murder in our blood.

So we said nothing for a while, me and Eddie. He stirred his coffee, gazing at the table top as if he was just waiting for a friend. I watched Eddie and scanned the cafe, making sure nobody was looking at us too closely. I could hear the girls at the next table as they chattered. They talked about clothes and music and men, laughing now and then, teasing each other.

My mind started to wander, and I thought about Brenda and me, sitting, as we sometimes used to, in a cafe like this, me probably stirring my tea while Brenda nattered about clothes or music or whatever, teasing me, as she used to do.

And for a moment – just a moment – I wanted to be at that table with those girls, just so that I could sit there and listen to them, just so that I could be normal for a while, unknown, unknowing, another mug who worked five days out of seven for forty years, and then retired and died. I wanted to be with those girls and be normal for a while, and be ignored. Sometimes that was all I wanted; to be ignored.