Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2) (13 page)

July 7, 1992. Four years into hard time as category-A prisoners at Belmarsh prison at Thamesmead, Southeast London, brought more bad news for the Nelson clan when their youngest brother Richard died from a heart defect. Bernard still paid regular visits to his remaining four siblings. It was common knowledge that the authorities bugged the meeting rooms, even for serving prisoners, so conversations were guarded. Nicky had become so paranoid that he covered his mouth with his hand as he spoke, in case of covert filming. He was also becoming increasingly angry about his sun-tanned brother’s reluctance to give them any clues as to how ‘the family was doing’.

So it was that Nicky sat glaring at brother Bernard in the semi-privacy of the Belmarsh meeting room.

‘The family is good, Charles,’ Bernard insisted, with a fixed smile.

‘How big are the boys now?’ Nicky asked, his fingers playing over his mouth. ‘Grown a lot, have they?’

‘Slowly, yes. Can’t rush these things.’

‘Some must be shooting up.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry.’

Nicky was far from reassured. If everything was fine, why wouldn’t his brother look him in the eyes?

‘Don’t fuck with me, Bernie. You fuck us, brother or no, you’re fucking dog’s meat.’

‘Nicky, this place is making you paranoid. I said the family is OK. I have high hopes they will all grow up into fine young men. Short of smuggling in financial printouts up my jacksie what more can I say? You have my word, bruv.’

Nicky grunted. Bernard sighed inwardly. He’d got away with it again, but he knew the time was nearing when his brothers would get a release date and then he knew the shit would hit the fan. Bernard the Brains had been entrusted with half a million pounds. But instead of it doubling in value, as might reasonably have been expected, the pot had dipped to under a quarter of a mill. Sure, he could explain big losses in stocks and shares, and throw in a few porkies about bum property deals, but to offer his remaining four brothers a five-way split of £250K after they had served ten, maybe twelve years was tantamount to signing his own death warrant. ‘Brother or no.’

Bernard hated these prison visits. Belmarsh was a hostile, claustrophobic environment. Being there had given him a rotten headache as always, which Nicky’s suspicions had done nothing to improve. As a reward for his suffering, he allowed himself a long weekend break in Malaga, where he sought solace in the only way he knew how: with three grams of the finest Peruvian cocaine a day and the company of two stunning señoritas. Only this time it didn’t work. All the agg had gone straight to his groin. There would be no double-entry book-keeping today – he couldn’t get a perk-on. So he handed over £2,000 in pesetas just to watch the girls entertain each other.

Driven by depression, Bernard retreated to his favourite gangsters’ hang-out, Ricky’s Bar in Fuengirola. There were more wanted faces in this drinking hole than in all the rest of Spain put together. Where better to meet the kind of men who could stem his losses and turn what was left of his seed money into big blossoming oak trees of profit? The answer to his problems was obvious: cocaine. If Bernard invested heavily enough in a major drug deal and delivered the sweet stuff to the UK, his outlay would be repaid five times over pretty much overnight. Bernard had all the right connections in Spain and knew plenty of big-buy customers in London, mostly in the City and the diamond trade. Not only was this the obvious solution, it was the only one that could work well enough to drag him out of the shit he was immersed in, smelling sweetly of roses.

It took Bernard six months to convert most of his assets into cash and smuggle the lot into Spain. His £150K investment had a guaranteed return of £800K, and three other investors each stumped up the same amount. They were all trusted men, known families from the south of England. The deal was easy. You paid £10K for a kilo of 88-per cent pure Colombian flake, which would then be cut eventually to about 15-per cent purity. The profit was all yours. Nothing could go wrong.

Half the money was paid up front and Bernard and his co-investors returned to England to await delivery. They waited in vain. It was the last he ever saw of his money and the South Americans – ‘the fucking lizards!’ – he had been counting on. There was only one thing to do. He wrote a letter to his father, Buck, and hightailed it to Spain. In a feeble, half-hearted attempt to placate his brothers, he left £100,000 in cash for them in a suit-carrier, which he left hanging in the bedroom of his Dockside flat. Bernard knew it was tantamount to signing his own death warrant – ‘Brother or no’ – but what else could he do?

When Nicky heard the news it took six prison officers to subdue him. David, who was already ‘shot to pieces’ because he couldn’t do time, also embarked on a mad rampage. Georgie provoked a fight that sparked a mini-riot. Charles, who was in Parkhurst, Isle Of Wight, took it like a stab in the heart. He didn’t say a word. He just shut his eyes and lowered his head.

All the bad feeling filtered back to Bernard, enhanced and exaggerated as oral accounts always are. Bernie the Brains knew there would be no forgiving, no family reunions. Money would be laid down to find him in Spain, and he had no intention of being found there by the time his brothers had served their bird. After a restful year he slipped quietly back into England via Stanstead Airport. Bernard had cleaned up his act, relatively speaking. He was on just one gram of Charlie a week now. Chickenfeed. Cautious to the point of paranoia, he steered well clear of North London and rented a small flat in Hornchurch, Essex, where he vowed to build up a business from scratch. At a singles night at the Epping Forest Country Club, Bernard Nelson met a lovely divorcee who enjoyed sex as much as he did. Her name was Dawn. Dawn Grogan.

J
anuary 1, 2003. Kara Tyler was counting the days for her decree nisi to come through. She had moved back in with her parents in Dullingham. Harry, that selfish bastard, had never owned up to his infidelity, but his grubby legovers hadn’t hurt her nearly as much as the underhand way her ex-to-be had slipped back into undercover work. They’d had a blissful few months together as a real family but her parents agreed that ‘irresponsible’ Harry was never going to change. The self-absorbed swine had barely made any effort to see the kids since they had split up and that was nigh on a year ago. But never mind. She was fit again, she was working, she had resident baby-sitters … it wouldn’t take her long to find them a new daddy; one with a regular nine-to-five job and eyes that didn’t wander.

Harry had thrown himself back into the hurly-burly of UC operations and loved every adrenalin-charged minute of it. He had been seeing more and more of Dawn in a no-commitment, highly carnal kind of way that suited them both. This morning was the fourth on the trot that he had woken up in her bed. His Harry Tyler side, the Jekyll to Harry Dean’s Hyde, had always been much more of a buzz but now the pull of it had become an addiction. And since dark seeds of doubt and disillusionment had been sewed over the Blackman case, Harry Dean had allowed Harry Tyler to bend the rules he had once lived by. He hadn’t planned it, but when an op had taken him to Guernsey in the summer of 2002, on a whim he opened a bank account there and started to salt away cash. Later, when a recovered kilo of class-A Peruvian cocaine was unaccountably unaccounted for, Harry casually off-load it to a Maltese mob for a handsome tickle. He didn’t feel bad about it. Why should he? He was still taking out the bad guys with ruthless efficiency but as far as he could see there was no one in the police hierarchy he could fully trust; so why not provide himself with a private pension? It was just insurance for the future. Just in case. He was the same guy but different. It was as if Bruce Banner had decided it was actually cool to be the Hulk.

February 1, 2002. Harry stepped out of the shower, dried himself down and dived under the duvet, putting his arm around his woman. This was Dawn’s bed, in Dawn’s house, but the woman who turned round to face him was not his first wife but his second.

‘I want you, Harry,’ Kara said. ‘I want you to fuck me hard.’ Harry’s body responded immediately to her desire as he trailed a hungry tongue from her breasts to her clitoris, gently darting and flicking, lapping and kissing. Kara moaned and writhed in response, her fingernails digging deep into his shoulders.

‘So, this is what you get up to when I’m out.’ Dawn’s words hung heavy in the air.

Harry spun round, his face aghast. ‘Dawn, I …’

‘I’m not angry, Harry,’ she said, unbuttoning her blouse. ‘I just hope you’ve got enough there for both of us.’

‘Let me help you with that,’ said Kara, unzipping Dawn’s skirt and pulling it down to the floor. Dawn stepped out of her panties and joined them in the bed, her hand seeking out Harry’s straining erection. Kara unhooked her bra and smothered the back of her neck in kisses.

‘I’ll ride him first,’ said Dawn sternly. ‘After all, he is mine now.’

She straddled him, sitting upright above his groin, thrusting her pelvis backwards and forwards, harder and faster as Kara stroked his balls with her nails. They came simultaneously. There was a seismic quality to Harry’s orgasm. He felt drained.

‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’

Startled, Harry stared at the suited man who had materialised at the end of the bed. Who the f …?

‘Bernard!’ gasped Dawn.

‘Bernard?’ said Harry.

‘And these are my brothers,’ said the man, who was suddenly joined by four heavy-set lookalikes, each of them leering and laughing.

‘Make them go away!’ screamed Kara.

Harry leaped out of the bed, his fists clenched. The four began to tug at their necks, tearing away the skin on their faces to reveal snapping alligator jaws.

‘LIZARDS!’ shouted Bernard, diving towards the open window. ‘They’re all fucking LIZARDS!’ He threw himself out. Kara screamed. Dawn screamed. Harry was being shaken …

‘Are you OK, Harry?’

‘Uh, what? Yeah …’

‘You just sat bolt upright in bed shouting gibberish.’

‘Sorry, Dawn, bad dream.’

Harry took a moment to gather his senses. Mercifully Dawn was the only one in bed with him. Where the fuck had that come from?

Dawn was lying next to him with the bedside light on reading
Porno
by Irvine Welsh. He’d bought it for her to make a change from Martina Cole novels, saying it was ‘mildly racy’ but knowing it was full of filth that he hoped might be turning her on right this minute. She put the book down and looked at him.

‘You’ve been a bit strange even by your standards lately,’ she said. ‘Quiet in the daytime and unsettled at night. You got something on your mind?’

Harry decided against telling the truth – too freaky! – and played the sympathy card instead.

‘That fucking letter I got from Kara yesterday, calling me a psychopath. That’s enough to rattle anyone.’

Dawn laughed. ‘I make her right. You look at the symptoms and tell me you aren’t one. A psychopath doesn’t feel guilt, lacks emotion, is self-destructive and can’t empathise with other people.’

‘What are you on about? Of course I empathise with people. I couldn’t do me job if I couldn’t do that.’

‘You get on with people, granted, but only to serve your own purposes, Harry. It’s superficial. You befriend people to turn them over.’

‘Can I turn you over?’

‘No. You are one of the most single-minded, self-absorbed people I have ever met, which I suppose makes you good at your job but hell to be married to. What about those kids of yours, why don’t you have them here?’

‘What good would that do them? I don’t work regular hours, it’d be mucking with their minds to only see ’em once in a blue moon. They’ll have a step-dad soon enough, I know what Kara’s like.’

‘Convenient.’

‘Realistic.’

‘Callous, selfish, inhuman.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘The truth hurts, eh, Harry?’

‘What about your Bernard?’ said Harry, who’d had enough of being on the defensive. ‘Have you heard from him at all since we … y’know?’

‘I thought we’d agreed not to discuss him.’

‘Yeah, but I’m just curious as to why he stopped coming round here out of the blue like that.’

‘No, I haven’t heard from him.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘A few days before you lurched up, lagging and blagging.’

‘And shagging. How was he then?’

‘Strange,’ she said slowly. ‘I saw him on the mobile in the back garden. He looked ill, ashen faced. When he came in he didn’t say a word. I asked what was up and he looked like he was going to be sick. He didn’t answer so I asked again. He said he had a problem and had to go out. He didn’t come home again that night and wouldn’t answer the mobile. I went to work the next day and when I got home there was a note saying he’d taken all his things and gone.’

Harry sat up. ‘What did it say?’ he asked.

‘Just that a problem he had buried years ago was coming back to haunt him and he had to get away for my sake as much as for his. He said he was sorry and that he loved me. He said he couldn’t explain and that for my own safety he wouldn’t be in touch. That was it. I cried for a week. Then late at night the doorbell rang. I knew it was Bernard. I opened the door and there you were, silly pissed.’

‘So it wasn’t a completely rotten month then.’

Dawn said nothing.

‘Do you think the lizard men have got him, or something more mundane like he was married and the missus had tracked him down? You said he had a few bob.’

‘He seemed to. He had nice clothes, all designer stuff. He bought me those Dolce & Gabbana trousers I love. He could have been married, I suppose. He was always very quiet, never spoke much about his past. I never met any of his family. I know he’d lived on and off in Spain but really that was it. Bernard was very guarded.’

‘Villain?’

‘Why is it that everyone is a villain to you?’

‘Come on, love, obviously there was something not right. Did he work?’

‘No, not really. Lived off his savings.’

‘You said his family were hounds?’

‘So he said, but he wasn’t.’

‘Did anyone know you as a couple? Did he take you to meet anyone who struck you as mildly villainous?’

‘We went up the Tavern a few times, he knew some heavy-looking blokes there but we didn’t socialise with them.’

‘Did they know you were together and living in South Ockendon?’

‘Yeah, but we never said where, I don’t think.’

‘And he wasn’t on the voters’ register as living here.’

‘When the bloody hell did you check that?’

‘That’s how I knew where to find you.’

‘And there was me thinking Cupid had given you a lift here in his gilded chariot.’

They laughed. ‘He didn’t want to draw attention to himself,’ Dawn went on. ‘So he wouldn’t go on the register. And you know what else was odd? His mail came with different surnames.’

‘What names?’

‘I thought he was Kelly, then I saw B Tindall on another letter and once, when I overheard him on his mobile, I heard someone say, “How are you, Mr Nelson?” So I honestly haven’t got a clue. I never saw a passport or a driving licence.’

‘Sounds like a fraudster to me.’

‘Well, whatever, he treated me all right and, anyway, I’m over him now so it doesn’t matter any more. If he walked in this house tomorrow I’d send him packing ’cos I’ve got you again now …’

‘And once you’ve had the best, why mess with the rest?’

‘Big head.’

‘And not just the head either.’

‘You even exaggerate the size of that. It’s not that big, you know, Harry. It’s just … comfortable.’ She paused. ‘You know what else was odd?’

‘What?’

‘He even went through the photo albums and took all the pictures with him in them with him.’

Harry mused. ‘English?’

‘Londoner.’

‘White?’

‘Of course.’

‘Big dick?’

Dawn hit him round the head with
Porno
.

‘Don’t do that. Irvine wouldn’t approve.’

‘No, he’d want me to tie you down, inject you with “skag” before lubricating the book with my own vaginal juices and shoving it firmly up your arse. I can’t believe you have got me reading something so disgusting.’

‘And I can’t believe it hasn’t made you horny.’

‘Who says it hasn’t?’

She sank into his arms and that was the rest of the morning taken care of.

February 4, 2002. Monday morning; Harry travelled by rail to Chichester to meet with a DI Taylor. He had memorised the surnames Dawn had mentioned and would get them checked out when this new job was done. Better safe than sorry. David Taylor was a young fresh-faced detective from the new school. He’d been a uniform constable, uniform sergeant, had passed his inspector’s exams and someone had whispered that it would be good for his CV to be a detective. He was pleasant enough and certainly keen but he was greener than the Hulk with septicaemia. Rumour had it that Taylor’s briefcase, which he always carried, contained a ‘What To Do Next’ case scenario book covering every tick-box eventuality. When Harry was a young recruit, these were all things that a good DI knew instinctively through their grounding in the job. Now it was all storybooks.

Taylor and his Detective Sergeant, Ray Machin, picked Harry up and drove him to a nearby country pub, The Lamb in Birdham, a few miles from the city centre. All he knew about the operation was that it involved Portsmouth. Taylor got a round in. Harry, who all because of one throwaway remark about ‘love handles’ from Dawn, was trying out the Atkins diet, asked for a vodka and Diet Coke and a beef roll; then he sat scooping the meat out as the other two men sipped pints; light and bitter for Machin, lager top for Taylor.

‘So, are we going to war then?’ asked Machin.

‘You can count on it,’ said Harry.

‘Do you think the West has got a case?’ asked Taylor.

‘I can’t see it. Saddam’s evil, but what’s he got to do with Bin Laden?’

‘It’s all about oil and Israel,’ said Ray Machin. ‘I agree, I can’t see the link to Iraq. Everything about al-Qaeda points to a Saudi connection.’

‘Palestine is the real problem,’ nodded Harry. ‘Saddam is just the fall guy. OK, he’s a tyrant, but so is Mugabe, and Kim Il Sung and the Red Chinese – and they’re the boys with nukes. We can take out Saddam in weeks, but what bothers me is, how will that play in the Muslim world? Will it create another generation of fucked-up suicide bombers?’

David Taylor shook his head. ‘Our intelligence people must know something we don’t. Colin Powell said the other night that we don’t know what toxic chemicals are in Iraq.’

Harry laughed. ‘Blimey, Dave, we don’t know what toxic chemicals are in Liam Gallagher.’

Ray Machin grinned. ‘Eyes up,’ he said. ‘Here’s our man.’

Harry looked up and saw a grey-bearded man in a roll-up pullover walking in.

‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘It’s Captain Birdseye.’

Machin went to the bar and bought the newcomer a pint. After a brief chat, they came back to the table.

‘Harry, this is Frank. He’s got a yacht moored up the road at Chichester harbour.’

The old sea dog gripped Harry’s hand like a vice. Machin patted him on the back.

‘Tell Harry what you know; he’s the top undercover man I told you about.’

As Frank began to speak it became apparent that he had both a stammer and a squint. Harry squeezed his thumb to keep a straight face.

‘Wha-wha-wha-what do you know about b-b-boats, Harry?’

‘Jodie Marsh is welcome to come on mine.’

Frank laughed.

‘V-v-very good, sir. I meant d-d-do you know how to s-s-sail?’

‘No, mate.’

Fuck me, thought Harry, this could take all night. Still, with a bit of luck they’d still have time to play snap for money.