Trust (3 page)

So it was Dean who always put himself at the center of things. Dean who took those responsibilities to heart. Since their old man had been banged up in Wandsworth, the Bailey Boys had taken on the family business, and Dean took that responsibility more seriously than any of them.

And he wasn’t scared to defend what was his, by whatever means necessary.

So when he was having a quiet ten in the Old Duchess, making a bit of chat with cousin Sadie behind the bar and catching up on the footie gossip on his phone, and that girl waltzed in asking for Eddie Bailey, well...

He moved in, flashed her the smile, gave her a bit of the old banter.

She tried the streetwise act, but couldn’t really pull it off. Sleeveless hoodie over her leather jacket, carefully arranged so a few tattoos peeped out around the collar. Ripped jeans and unlaced trainers, the kind you only get one of three ways: nick them, drug money, or Mummy and Daddy buy them for you. Or a fourth way, if it was all just an act and she’d been sent here by someone. Her accent was all mixed up rough Thames English with a bit of that fake Jamaican patois the kids liked to put on, but none of it could disguise the educated tone.

Dean was used to reading people – he had to be – and he didn’t buy it. She was fake, through and through.

And she came out with this cock and bull story about coming here as a kid. Sure, she came up with a few details, like the way the kids would always end up in the back room while their folks stayed out here to talk business, but most of it consisted of no more than hazy generalities. She couldn’t remember the people. She didn’t remember him, and he most certainly didn’t remember her.

He didn’t swallow it at all. Particularly with things how they were at the moment.

So what was her game?

Was she really some innocent posh kid down in the East End on the strength of a few shaky memories? Or was she some kind of informer?

Well if she was, he’d root her out.

He knew how to deal with informers.

Coming in here, spinning a few lies, trying to find him out.

Two could play at that game, and up to now it had been an unusually slow day. Might as well have a bit of fun.

So Dean Bailey turned on that smile, leaned in towards her, and said, “You fancy a bit of a tour? Old times’ sake? Stir a few memories? I’ve got my motor right outside.”

§

He drove a BMW convertible, low to the ground, its engine a soft purr.

“So how much do you remember, then? Apart from the Duchess.”

He glanced across as she shrugged, taking her in again. For all her fakery, this wasn’t a bad way to pass a bit of time. He’d had far less attractive passengers in this car. Far less willing ones, too.

She peered around as he eased out of the parking lot behind the pub. “I don’t know,” she said, in that mixed up accent. “Sunny days. Narrow terraced streets. Playing football between the cars. Sitting high up on the walls and trying to talk Cockney.”

He nodded and smiled as she gave her picturebook impression of the old East End.

Round the corner from the Duchess was another row of shops: a takeaway, a newsagent, an off-license, a betting shop. As they drove past, Dean gestured towards them. “They’re ours,” he said, casually.

At the end of the row there was what looked like an old pub with the sign ‘Brownie’s Billiards’ over the door. “That’s ours, too.”

“What do you mean they’re yours?” She remembered Gran saying Eddie Bailey owned half of London, but she hadn’t taken it literally.

“We look after them,” Dean said. “We own some of them, but mostly we protect them, if you know what I mean. This has been Bailey territory for generations.”

“So you’re just keeping up the family tradition?” She seemed vaguely amused.

He nodded again. “We protect this place. This way of life.”

“You sound like the National Trust.”

He caught her eye and she stopped smirking.

His phone went then, a subtle buzz in his inside chest pocket. He was always careful to keep it set to silent – there are times when a perky ring-tone is just wrong, not to mention dangerous.

He drew the phone from his pocket, one hand on the wheel. Waved with his phone in his hand towards a row of houses, older this time, probably Victorian. “You’d recognize that if you did come here as a kid,” he said. “That’s where me and my brothers grew up.” Then, thumbing his phone, he raised it to his ear and said, “Reuben. What can I do?”

“What do you mean, if I
did
come here as a kid?” Jess said, but he held a hand up to silence her, leaving the BMW to steer itself for a moment.

Into the phone, he said, “What do mean, ‘trouble’? I thought you told me we had everything sorted?”

The voice at the other end started to repeat what he’d already said: “Not trouble, Deano, just saying you need to tread careful, know what I’m saying? These guys don’t mess about.”

“Reuben, Reuben,” said Dean, smiling at his passenger as he spoke. “Listen to me, son. How long have you known me and my brothers? How long did you know my old man? If there’s anybody who doesn’t mess about...”

He let it hang, waited a second or two, then cut the call.

“Sorry about that,” he said to Jess. “Didn’t mean to cut you off. Just a bit of business, you know?” Then smoothly, as if they hadn’t been interrupted, he went on, “Yeah, that place. That’s where we grew up. You remember it?”

She hesitated, then nodded, said, “I guess.” And that only confirmed it: he hadn’t grown up there; it was the same as any other anonymous row of houses. But he’d fed her specifics and she’d just agreed. She really should have known better than to try to bluff him like that. Best to say nothing at all than try to wing it.

“So what do you do, when you say you protect these businesses? You make it sound like some old-school protection racket or something.”

And now she was starting to probe.

Dean smiled and tried not to feel so insulted that they’d sent in someone as poorly prepared as this.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Turning right at the next junction they came to another pub, but this one was a burnt-out ruin. Every window was empty of glass, black stains spread up the walls and half of the roof had collapsed into the building.

Dean pulled up and paused a few seconds for her to take it all in.

“Dougie Flowers used to be the landlord here,” he said. “Decided a couple of weeks ago he didn’t want our protection. Now he doesn’t have anything to be the landlord of when he gets out of the Royal London.”

She stared at him, and again he gave her a few seconds before he flashed her his smile, came over all innocent, and said, “No! It’s not what you think. We didn’t do that. Dougie’s been a friend of the family for years. Used to have the Old Duchess before my uncle took it on. We’d have protected him even after he stopped paying us.”

“So what happened?”

“The landscape here’s changing all the time,” Dean said. “Dougie decided he’d be better off getting in with some of the new guys, the East Europeans. There’s no halfway with them: he had to cut off all his old connections. But then he had no protection when things went wrong.” In response to her look he went on: “I don’t know. He must have rubbed someone up the wrong way. Missed a payment, maybe. There’s no finesse about these people. No class.”

She raised an eyebrow. Was she laughing at him again? And why did he care? Why did those little looks get under his skin like that?

He realized he’d been lulled into trying to impress her. Showing off – as if she was just another bit of skirt to chase. He shrugged, turned the wheel, and pulled out again.

“So what’re you going to do?” he asked, as they cruised past a small, leafy park by the house where he
had
grown up as a kid. “You going to go back and break the news to your gran?”

“Hey, I
do
recognize this,” she said, pointing towards the park. “We used to come here, I think.”

He glanced across, wondering if he should reassess her. Probably not: the best liars were always sure to get at least a few details right, if only to blind you to all the stuff they got wrong.

In answer to his question, she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I can’t bear the thought of breaking her heart. Might be best just to leave it as a little sliver of hope to hang onto, you know? Let her daydream about her Eddie if she wants to, so long as it doesn’t hurt her or Granddad.”

It was easy to play along. Far easier than calling her out on the lies, even though the one thing he liked the least about all this was that she was doing this. Playing on the family connection. The Conran thing.

He’d worked it out now, who she was pretending to be. Jack Conran had been close to Dean’s grandfather, way back. Had saved his life more than once – so there would have been plenty of favors to be owed when Jack had stolen Eddie’s girl, if that part of the story was in any way true.

A part of his brain was starting to believe her: maybe she was just some stupid girl, wandering in at precisely the wrong time, way out of her depth.

One thing he was sure of: as soon as he’d got rid of her he was going to make a few calls, have her checked out. That was one thing his father had drummed into him: never leave any loose ends, any unanswered questions.

He pulled up now, twisted towards her in his seat, and said, “You should just walk away from this, darling. Get back onto your train or your car or however you got here, and leave all this behind.”

“You trying to get rid of me?” There was a spark in her look then, a hint of defiance. He’d seen it before: only comfortable kids from comfortable backgrounds had the luxury to rebel on principle.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “You’ve come down here, you’ve dug around and you’ve got your answers. Maybe it’s best you just leave before you get drawn in too deep.”

There was something in her look, though.

She wasn’t going to swallow that. She wasn’t used to being bossed around.

He waited for her sharp response but it never came.

Instead, her eyes had opened wide, her lips parted just a little – all in a split second – and then she raised her arms across her chest defensively.

A loud thud shook the car, then tiny fragments of security glass showered in across Dean as his side window erupted.

Instinct kicked in. He spread his arms and swooped across, shielding Jess with his body.

Another brief instant as they clung together and he was aware of her form enfolded in his, the hardness of her shoulders and skull, the way her body melted against him, the smell of her – a fresh, citrus scent – and then he turned, one arm up across his face as he peered out into the sunlight.

And, squinting, all he saw was the muzzle of a Glock 26 pointing directly at him.

I couldn’t work Dean Bailey out.

It was easy to dismiss him as all front, and I’d done exactly that at first.

Smooth. Smart. Quick-witted. Easy charm. Sure of himself.

And definitely trying to impress me.

I hadn’t expected that, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d played on that kind of response. I would never claim to be any kind of cover-girl beauty, but I looked after myself and I knew I had the kind of looks some men weren’t going to object to.

If he wanted to show off, I was okay with that.

So I sat in a car that probably cost as much as a small flat in my home town and let him drive me round his little bit of London turf.

He talked casually about the family’s protection racket, and I was reminded again of films I’d seen about London crime families from the 1960s. He was doing his best to come across as a bit of a wide boy, as East End as pie and mash or jellied eels.

It was easy to see him as something of a caricature, and several times I had to resist throwing in bitchy little jokes like my National Trust comment.

But then, when he said, “You’d recognize that if you did come here as a kid,” I was thrown. What did he mean by that? Didn’t he even believe me?

Just as I challenged him over that, he took a phone call and simply lifted a hand off the wheel and held it up to silence me.

And I stopped talking.

I don’t know how he packed so much casual command into that gesture. I don’t normally do what I’m told.

Scrub that. I’m
never
likely to do what I’m told.

After the call, he asked me if I remembered the house he’d pointed out. I stared, but wasn’t sure, but I was still thrown by his accusation. I nodded, said, “I guess,” and wondered if that was the right answer. Why was I suddenly second-guessing myself? It was as if I was just confirming his doubts, whatever I did.

The burnt-out pub threw me a short time later. It suddenly seemed to make things real. If even half of what he said was the truth then I really shouldn’t be in the car with a gangster like Dean Bailey.

Later, we drove past a small park and some more old memories came back: playing there, chasing in and out of some of the houses nearby. I said this out loud but he didn’t seem to care. I think he’d already made his mind up about me and I felt frustrated: angry to be judged, not to have any say in things.

Then he pulled over to the side of the road, turned to stare at me, suddenly very intense, and said I should just walk away: I’d got my answers, I didn’t have any more reason to stay here.

Again, he could have been a character from one of those films. The gentleman villain, simultaneously chivalrous and threatening.

And just as I was trying to work out whether to crumple like a delicate flower before him, or tell him exactly where to stuff his patronizing bossiness, the window just past his shoulder frosted then collapsed inward and I saw a hand, the grip of a pistol pulling away and turning to aim at Dean.

I froze, and for a moment that drew itself out Dean stared at me, as if searching my features.

Then everything was a blur as he threw himself at me, covering me, shielding me. Stubble scraped against my cheek, and I was stupidly aware of the sunglasses flying away from their perch on top of his head. His body was hard, taut, forcing me back into my seat, and then he pulled away, turned and peered outside.