‘What happened after you left the club?’
‘H got into a cab and said she’d be in touch. I went to the Pit and played a few hands. The cops have checked all this out. Why d’you think they didn’t charge me?’
Judging by the pitch of Rocco’s voice, he was terrified. I didn’t think he was the type of person to hold information back when his personal safety was in question. My head was aching and I felt nauseous. What I needed most right then was three Paracetamol, a tumbler of Monarch and twelve hours’ sleep.
‘Let’s drop him off,’ I said to Farrelly. ‘He’s on the level.’
‘I totally am,’ said a relieved Rocco.
‘Only one way to find out for sure,’ Farrelly said.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
He shifted gear and put his foot down.
TWENTY-TWO
The rest of the journey was completed in silence, primarily because Farrelly threatened to shoot anyone who said anything. The gun was disturbing and surprising. Disturbing because, well, it was a gun; surprising as I’d never pegged Farrelly as the kind of person to carry one. Perhaps in his old age he felt the need for an equaliser.
We continued heading east down Commercial Street and then into Whitechapel Road. Five minutes later we arrived in Stepney, where Farrelly navigated through deserted streets until we reached a small industrial estate. He parked outside unit 28.
‘Don’t even think about tryna run,’ he said to Rocco.
Rocco nodded and Farrelly got out of the car. He undid a padlock that secured a control box and pressed a button. The steel security shutter rolled upwards. Farrelly beckoned us in. Rocco was so scared his legs could barely support him. There was more chance of him flying than running.
The lock-up was four or five times the size of a domestic garage. It had a damp metallic smell and was colder on the inside than on the outside. Farrelly switched on a panel of neon strip lights, after which the shutter descended until it crunched into the restraining bracket.
Had I been quizzed on the three most likely things a lock-up owned by Farrelly might contain, the list would have read as follows: Weapons. Bullion. Hostages.
Extend to ten, or even twenty, possibilities and they still wouldn’t have included what took up two-thirds of the surface of the concrete floor.
The track was laid out over a series of waist-high tables. Attending it were trees, buildings, bridges, a car park, a football stadium, a factory, and even a half-inflated gasometer. A six-carriage train waited in a station complete with three platforms and miniature signals. I could almost make out the annoyance on the faces of the passengers that the 3.15 to Waterloo was delayed again.
‘Jesus, it’s a toy train set,’ I said.
‘Model railway,’ Farrelly growled.
‘Is it yours?’
‘Course it fucking is.’
‘What I meant was do you actually, you know . . . ?’
‘Operate it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘No reason. How long did it take to put together?’
‘Ten years. Wired everything myself and made the buildings from scratch.’
‘Including the stadium?’ Farrelly nodded. Had he not been holding a loaded gun, I might have chucked him on the cheek as though he were an eight-year-old boy. Instead I went a different route. ‘Any chance we could see it in action? That would be good, wouldn’t it, Rocco?’
‘Er, yeah,’ Rocco said. ‘Terrific.’
Whenever Odeerie demoed some new piece of tech for me, it never failed to put him in a good mood. Hopefully the same would apply to Farrelly.
‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll send the loco round a coupla times.’
Laying his weapon next to an aluminium console, he flicked a series of switches and the locomotive chugged slowly to life. Shortly after leaving the station it entered a grass-covered tunnel and emerged six feet further down the track.
The engine picked up speed and passed a fire station that stood next to a scale model of a Burger King. The customers drinking in the beer garden of the Red Lion didn’t appear flummoxed by the train clattering two inches away from them; nor did the herd of Friesians grazing in the field next to a copse of mature oak trees.
After switching track by the Notley Road junction box, the train passed through a village of terraced houses, an esplanade of shops, a row of double yellow lines and an Ovaltine billboard. The carriages trundled past a branch of IKEA, underneath a footbridge, and then past a hospital outside which were a couple of ambulances. The train decelerated as it approached the station and pulled to a halt on platform 2.
‘Incredible.’ I said. ‘Absolutely incredible.’
‘Fucking genius!’ Rocco added.
‘Any chance you could take it round a different way?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe we could see one of the other engines in action . . .’
In sidings by the station were two other locomotives. If I could fully engage Farrelly’s inner geek, then perhaps he’d forget about giving Rocco a working over to find out the information he almost certainly didn’t have.
Farrelly stared at Rocco, who was grinning like a bastard. Then he transferred his gaze to the waiting model engines. Finally he looked in my direction.
‘Yeah, all right. But there’s something I need to do first.’
‘What’s that, Farrelly?’ I asked.
‘Torture that cunt,’ he said, nodding towards Rocco.
Farrelly took a steel-framed chair from a stack of three and instructed Rocco to sit. He used a roll of duct tape to secure his hands behind his back. Next he pulled an orange storage crate off a low-hanging shelf. First out was a car battery; then two leads emerged; finally a black metallic box with a couple of dials on the front. From it ran a thick black cord attached to a piece of tubular metal with a rubber grip. It looked like a pair of curling tongs.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Transformer.’
‘You’re not thinking of using it on him, are you?’
‘I’ll use it on you if you don’t shut the fuck up.’
‘He’s terrified. D’you not think, if he knew something, he’d tell us?’
‘How d’you know it’s not an act?’
‘Al Pacino couldn’t put that on,’ I said. Rocco was making a low keening noise and shivering like a man in a freezer. Farrelly had both leads secured by now.
‘This way, we make sure,’ he said.
He flicked a switch. One of the dials swung hard right and stayed there. He turned a knob to the right and the second pointer travelled a third of the way. Holding the probe in his right hand, he reached out with his left and tore Rocco’s shirt open.
‘You’re getting this whatever,’ he said, ‘just so you know what it’s like. Then I’m gonna ask you some questions. Lie and you get some more.’
‘Please don’t do this,’ Rocco begged.
‘It’s on half power,’ Farrelly told him, ‘but you’d best keep your tongue away from your teeth.’
He pressed the probe against the flabby sack of Rocco’s hairy abdomen. There was a whip-like crack and his body became rigid. After a couple of seconds, Farrelly removed the wand. It had left a brown scorch mark.