Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2) (14 page)

Machin stepped in. ‘Shall I explain it, Frank? It’ll save a l-l-lot of time.’

The older man laughed at the piss-take. ‘G-g-go on then.’

‘Frank has got a friend, no, an acquaintance down at Southsea just outside Portsmouth, and the guy has been approached and asked if he knows someone who can run a package across from France. There would be a nice drink in it for the boatman.’

‘And?’ asked Harry.

‘And what?’

‘What’s the package?’

‘Oh, sorry, yes, well, that’s it. Frank asked the acquaintance and he said he thought it was sparklers.’

‘Why diamonds?’

Frank spoke. ‘Well, b-b-because the man who asked him was from S-s-s-south …’

‘Southampton?’

‘N-n-n-no. South Africa.’

‘So what was the urgency?’ asked Harry. ‘I was told by my people that it was on the hurry-up.’

‘Frank tells us he has to let his contact know by eleven am tomorrow,’ said David Taylor.

‘Well, I’ve got to tell you, boss, I ain’t gonna learn how to sail a boat overnight.’

‘No, obviously not,’ said Taylor. ‘Frank’s got a Contessa 32 and we’ll seek authority for him to use it with you as his crew member to go and collect whatever it is.’

‘I thought a Contessa was a bra,’ Harry wisecracked. ‘And there’s no way furry-face here is a 32.’

‘No,’ chuckled Frank. ‘It’s m-m-my yacht, just up the road a bit.’

Most undercover jobs excited Harry, but this one sounded like a pile of shit. He’d come expecting a major op, and was getting teamed up with Gareth Gates’s grandad on a fucking day trip to Calais. He felt almost insulted.

Harry looked at Taylor. ‘What more do we know?’ he asked coolly.

‘Well, the target is supposedly a captain in the South African police and the C of E has been getting reports that a South African has been trying to recruit small boat owners to run parcels across the water to here. Trouble is, it’s all a bit confused as to what they’re bringing over. Customs have heard variously that it’s tobacco, diamonds, drugs, guns – no one knows for sure.’

‘And of course we don’t know for certain if it’s the same South Efriken.’

‘Fair point.’

Taylor paused. ‘What do you think, Harry? You’re the expert.’

‘It needs a lot of research to progress it, but time is your enemy. You’ve very little intell on it, you don’t know what the commodity is, or who the players are. Excuse the pun, but it looks dead in the water to me. But I’ve not got anything else on the go, so if your lot are happy to pay for it I’ll give it a couple of days and then if it’s a non-runner we can sack it. How’s that sound?’

‘It works for me,’ said David Taylor. Machin nodded.

‘Right then,’ said Harry. ‘Where do I get me roll-neck pullover and clay-pipe?’

Taylor looked at him quizzically.

‘You know, to look the part. The sailor shoes, the Uncle Albert medals.’

‘Christ,’ said Frank. ‘This is going to be the f-f-f …’

‘Funniest?’ Harry asked.

‘No,’ laughed Ray Machin. ‘I think he’s trying to say the f-f-fucking longest two days of his l-l-life.’

Harry stayed the night in Chichester. It was pretty enough but dull. He ended up alone eating a T-bone steak – medium rare to taste the blood – and overcoming his craving for chips with a superhuman effort of will. Dr Atkins would shortly be added to Harry’s mental shit-list, along with chain theme pubs, actresses who call themselves ‘actors’, poncy waiters who recite the specials of the day and, less rationally, unfortunate people whose necks were wider than their ears.

The Portuguese waitress was a sweet thing, but he didn’t even bother to chat her up. The sooner he was out of this place the better. Besides, he was happy with Dawn. So happy he’d been plucking up the courage to ask her if she fancied making it legal again.

As Harry wandered back to his hotel for an early night, the very thought of her made him randy. He should be curling up in bed with Dawn, not killing time in this dead hole. Casually he rang her number on his mobile. No answer. He left a curt ‘Called, try you again later’ message but didn’t bother. The hotel didn’t have Sky, so he spent an hour listening to Whitmore on his portable CD player, while demolishing a bottle of Brouilly – permitted on Harry’s unorthodox interpretation of the Atkins rules. Just before he dozed off, Johnny Too came to mind. Where was he now, he wondered? Top dog in some category-A maximum security prison, that’s for sure, with evening classes and all the privileges. And no doubt having a better time of it than Tony Martin …

Dawn had been home but when Harry had rung she had just answered the front door. Three heavy-looking men in suits stood in front of her. A fourth, similarly dressed, sat in the driving seat of the car parked across her drive. Dawn didn’t know them, but there was something familiar about all three.

‘Hello, my dear,’ said the nearest man. ‘My name is Nick and these are two of my brothers. We’re looking for Bernard.’

Dawn took a step back. His gravelly voice was heavy with menace even when he tried to be charming. The guy was smiling but that wasn’t the face of a City gent, not with a nose that busted and cheeks so scarred.

‘He doesn’t live here any more. He’s long gone,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

The phone rang behind her, but Dawn didn’t want to walk away and leave the front door ajar.

‘Maybe that’s him now,’ Nick sneered.

‘No, I haven’t heard hide or hair from Bernard in almost a year. He took all his things and left without a word. Who are you?’

‘Where’s he gone to?’

‘Didn’t say. He just left a note saying he had problems and that was it.’

‘Yeah, that sounds like Bernie. That’s the kind of shit-arse thing he’d do, leave a note and fuck off.’

‘So, who are you?’

‘I’m his brother. We’re all his brothers, all four of us.’

‘Look – Nick, is it? Bernard jumped ship nearly a year ago. Even a bloodhound couldn’t find a sniff of him around this house. Why’s it taken you so long to turn up here?’

‘We were giving Her Majesty pleasure, as I’m sure our dear brother told you, and just to rub our noses in it the cancerous bastards wouldn’t let us all out on the same day. My dear brothers had to wait for me to join them before we came to pay our respects to Bernard together, as a family.’

‘I really can’t help you.’

‘You see, the thing is, Dawn, he called our father a few weeks ago, said he was doing well and he’s offered to pay us a little of the money back that he owes us. He told our dad he was living over this way but didn’t want to say where exactly. So where would he be now?’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t know.’

Nick reached into his jacket pocket and handed Dawn a small card with a mobile phone number written on it.

‘Now, be a good girl,’ he said, ‘and when he rings you tell him to ring me, Nicholas, on that number. Tell him we just want to chat.’

‘He won’t ring. I’ve got another guy in my life.’

‘Yes, we saw him leave this morning.’

Dawn felt an icy shiver of fear.
They
’
d been watching the house.

The expression of genial condescension on Nicky Nelson’s face morphed into an angry rictus grin. When he spoke his voice was heavy with controlled aggression.

‘Oh, and Dawn – it is Dawn, isn’t it? If you tell him and he doesn’t ring, tell him we’ll be back to see you. OK, beautiful? You can remember that, can’t you, darlin’?’

Dawn said nothing; she was frozen in fear. The three men turned and walked back to their car.

‘Nice little body,’ smirked David Nelson.

‘Yeah, really quite fuckable,’ Nicky opined loudly, oafishly grabbing his crotch.

Dawn slammed the door to the sound of their laughter and slammed the chain across. Harry, must ring Harry, she thought. She dashed to the phone and hit 1471. ‘The caller withheld his number’ came the automated reply. She didn’t have his mobile number – he never let her have it in case she rang while he was doing business and jeopardised his cover and her own safety. Dawn pressed her back against the wall and slid to the floor. She tried to blink the hallway into focus, but could see little through the haze of fear that her flood of tears did nothing to allay.

Harry woke up at 8.53am, feeling empty. He flicked on the hotel telly. Ri:se was on, Channel 4’s piss-poor substitute for
The Big Breakfast
. What was the colon for in Ri:se? Producing shit. When they started a feature on Victoria Beckham – the dachshund with tits, Harry called her – he zapped over to BBC1. But their
Breakfast
show was even worse, the snooze button on the alarm clock of morning TV. He flicked to ITV. Harry hadn’t watched
GMTV
since they’d got shot of Greavsie, and nothing he was seeing now was likely to change that.

Reluctantly he hauled himself out of bed and headed for the bath tub. Either his diet was making him lethargic or Chichester itself was sucking the life-force out of him. Maybe it was trying to make everyone within its city centre as lacklustre as it was. Twenty minutes later, feeling refreshed, he took delivery of his room-service bacon and eggs and started to flick through the
Sun
. He hated it when the words ‘Richard Littlejohn is on holiday’ appeared on page eleven, because there was fuck-all else to read in there. In the background some gobby tart with a Manchester accent was mouthing off about diets to Lorraine Kelly. Harry’s ears pricked up when she started to diss Atkins: ‘Your breath STINKS and you don’t get enough fibre so you’re CONSTIPATED!’ – tell me about it, Harry groaned – ‘It can also lead to CANCER of the colon and prostrate. You’re filling your body with saturated FATS, which are linked conclusively to HEART disease. You need vitamin supplements to compensate for the LACK of fruit and veg. Anyone on Atkins should be told that his diet is a health TIME BOMB …’ – she paused for comic effect – ‘But at least you’ll get buried in a size-five SHROUD …’

Hold on a mo, thought Harry. I know you. That’s Rachel! Rachel Freeman, the irritating know-it-all he’d trained with all those years ago. What was she doing on TV? ‘Some worrying facts there,’ twittered Lorraine Kelly. ‘Thank you health guru Rachel Morley …’ Morley? She must have married. So some poor bastard out there was walking round with a giant thumbprint on the back of his skull. Unless … she couldn’t be undercover, could she? Posing as a dietician to bust some serial-killing WeightWatcher rep? Harry laughed to himself as he switched over, making a mental note to find out as soon as this poxy job was over. Trust Rachel to be anti-Atkins. If Harry was for something, you knew full well she’d be against it. He wouldn’t want it any other way.

At 10.30am Harry stood inside the entrance of Chichester railway station speed-reading the rest of the morning’s papers and cursing the fact that not one single daily reflected the way he felt any more. Occasionally the
Mail
did, but that was so fucking sanctimonious … Outside a cab driver dozed in his car, waiting for his regular passenger on the Brighton train. There was no sign of Frank for fifteen minutes and then his clapped-out shit-heap of a diesel Sierra turned up, trailing clouds of blue-grey smoke. He beeped his horn, but Harry had already spotted him. He was hard to miss.

There was a pile of papers on Frank’s passenger seat, which Harry went to move.

‘You’ll get a spring up yer j-j-jacksy if you don’t sit on them,’ Frank advised.

Harry smiled weakly. This job just kept getting better …

The Sierra set off with a judder. The engine sounded like it had caught Frank’s stammer. As they turned into the main road, the old sea dog let rip an ear-splitting fart.

‘S-s-sorry, boy,’ he said, laughing.

Harry went to wind down the window but the winder had been broken off.

‘Th-that’s why I’m sorry, son.’

Now Frank was crying with laughter.

‘Fuck me, Frank, did a rat crawl up your arse and die? You’ve gotta leave that mackerel alone.’

Frank thought this was so funny he had to pull over before he could drive again. Harry used the opportunity to sling open the door and let some fresh air in.

‘So, who’s this fella we’re going to meet?’

‘George. Lives in South-South-Southsea.’

Harry bit his lip. The fewer questions he asked the easier this journey was going to be.

‘He’s a Sc-Sc-Scottish chap. Lovely wife, but no kids. You know why?’

‘No, why?’

‘He suffers from premature e-jock-ulation.’

Harry laughed politely. ‘Where we meeting him?’

‘A café.’

The café was old and dingy. The plates and mugs looked like leftovers from
Whisky Galore!
The food, in Frank’s words, was ‘not so much cordon bleu as cordoned off’
.

Then George arrived, tripping over the doorstep and stumbling into the caff narrowly missing the ‘Waitress Time Forgot’, who was carrying over their mugs of tea. The Jock had ruddy cheeks and bloodshot eyes. A proper drinker’s face. He gave the waitress a wink, clasped an arm around Frank’s shoulder and belched charmlessly. Harry caught the strong whiff of last night’s Bell’s on his breath. Strap up, he’s still pissed, he thought. Am I being mugged up here or what? There was no way this was a serious bit of work.

‘Harry, this is George,’ said Frank without a stutter. ‘’Scuse me, I need a lash.’

Harry turned to the waitress. ‘Full English and a coffee for George Clooney here please, sweetheart.’

George grinned stupidly. ‘Hello Harry,’ he said, slurring the words slightly. ‘I’m George.’

‘Yeah, Frank told me, remember? You were here.’

‘So, well, I’m sorry, I’m still a little hung over from the party last night.’

Harry looked at him squarely. He was in two minds as to whether he should just get up and walk out. There was no way this prat was involved with a firm of quality villains. Who could trust such a pisshead?

‘You should have said,’ Harry replied finally. ‘We could have met you last night and then we’d all have been shit-faced this morning.’

Frank lumbered back, doing up his fly buttons.