A taxi dropped Dave and Brad at Western Road Autos. More mechanics in dirty coveralls, but these guys knew Dave. When Dave had been a getaway driver, he used cut and shuts – illegal cars created by welding together the good halves of two written-off vehicles – provided by Western Autos. These days Western was purely legit, although the guys running it were not. And they still offered cut and shuts, albeit for sale only to rally and demolition enthusiasts.
They were there to collect a brown Mercedes Vito panel. Surgery had resulted in the removal of the partition between the cargo space and the cab, which suited them just fine. It could be traced to the garage, so they were to deliver it to a scrapyard once they were finished with it.
Standing outside the vehicle Brad asked: ‘Can you make your own way there? Something I want to take care of.’
‘There’ was the job Mick had given to Dave. He said sure, and got one of the mechanics, an old friend, to give him a lift home to collect his motorbike.
* * *
Brad cruised slowly past Ian’s house, seeking surveillance. And he found it. No attempt at secrecy, though. There was a patrol car parked near the house with two guys inside. They watched him drive past, and to hide his face he yawned and rubbed his chin.
Around the corner, he called Mick, to urge him to pull the cops from his house and hurry up arranging some kind of plan to erase his name from the investigation. But he didn’t get a word out.
‘I’m busy now,’ Mick answered, ‘call you later.’ Then he abruptly hung up.
Brad called Ian at work.
‘Hey up, Chopper,’ Ian answered. It sounded like a gangster’s nickname, but Ian had invented it. He thought Brad’s snoring sounded like a helicopter. His tone was the happy-to-hear-from-you kind, which was good. It meant the police hadn’t been to talk to him.
‘Just wanted to say love ya,’ Brad said. Ian repeated it, then asked how things were going with the job hunt. Brad replied that things were going well, and they agreed to watch a film tonight over pizza. That call done, worries alleviated, it was time to head to the church.
Sixty
Dave
Dave didn’t have any cop worries as he arrived home. But that was about to change. Instead of collecting his motorbike, he stared at it for a few seconds, ignition key in his hand. Thirty seconds later, he put the key in his pocket, mind made up.
He found Lucinda at the kitchen table, counting the money again. Used twenties. Not a big amount: 4,521 notes, to be exact. She had created equal-sized piles so that the cash filled the table. Then he noticed piles of ￡10 notes. She had wanted all the notes turned into tens or fives so the mass would be bigger. He had warned her that they couldn’t just waltz into a bank and change it. It had to be kept secret. Hell, it was going to be hard enough to try to use it to pay off half their mortgage. That problem still needed working on. Now she’d done this.
‘Did you do the church thing already?’ she asked, suspicious. Always suspicious. He ignored the question and tapped a pile of tens.
She flicked a hand, like royalty dispatching a beggar. ‘Just ￡500. Nobody’s calling the FBI about that. Why are you back? Is it done?’
‘I’ve got some time,’ he told her as he grabbed the kettle to make tea. It had been a stressful last evening and this morning, and all he wanted to do now was relax.
‘Will it be done when the church thing is done?’
‘Yeah. I mean, maybe the odd bit of housekeeping or whatever. Mick wants me to warn some guy not to talk to the cops. But we’re good. You want a tea?’
He grabbed a Typhoo teabag. This was real tea, not that flavoured or cold or herbal shit that some people drank.
‘“Warn some guy”? What do you mean?’
Milk in the cup first, despite what some said. That way you could choose exactly how full you wanted the cup while getting the correct amount of milk. ‘One of the guys Mick sent to that guy’s house to find Grafton’s wife.’
‘You said he was dead. You said you had to go burn his flat down.’
And don’t touch the teabag for fifteen seconds. Let the flavour diffuse into the water. ‘Yeah. Evidence. There were two guys.’
‘And?’
Now he stirred the teabag. Some squashed it against the side of the cup, but that was forcing flavour out, which was just wrong. ‘And nothing, really. The cops know someone else was with Król. Mick thinks Król might have told the guy what was going on, and the guy might tell the police when they find him. I doubt it. His kind tell the cops nothing. Hey, you want to watch that comedy at the pictures tonight? It’s on at—’
‘Shuttup about films a minute. This guy might talk to the cops, so Mick wants you to warn him not to? Why haven’t you?’
Twenty seconds of stirring, and the strength was just right. ‘It’s a waste of time. He won’t tell the police anything.’
‘But if he does? If he tells them that Mick wanted the house owner and Grafton’s wife, that opens up a can of worms, Dave. Might lead to us.’
And no sugar. If you needed sugar, you didn’t really like tea. ‘I doubt it. Just Mick being – Jesus!’
He jumped as Lucinda appeared beside him and knocked the kettle out of his grip as he was pouring. Boiling water splashed everywhere, including onto his hand.
She spun him around. ‘If he gave you a job to do, dickhead, it’s because it might ruin everything if you don’t do it. Are you stupid?’
Clutching his scalded hand, he opened his mouth to speak, but she got there first.
‘Don’t even think about arguing with me. You damn idiot. Get out there. Go fuck this guy up before he tells the cops and they come knocking on this door. I’m not going down or losing this house because you’re a lazy bastard.’
She slapped his arm to get him moving.
‘Get out there and don’t come back until it’s done.’
Sixty-One
Liz
A van painted to look like a blue sky turned into the autoyard, so Liz put down her coffee, thanked the man who’d made it for her, and left the reception area. She climbed into the passenger seat without a word and the van backed up. Not until the vehicle was heading southeast along Bow Common Lane did the driver say anything.
‘You employed the Rotten Rake, then?’
She saw him looking at her hands, which were in her lap. For the first time since she attacked Brad, she lifted them and peered at her nails. Blood was encrusted underneath and on the tips of her fingers.
‘Maybe the Ghastly Gnash, too?’
She was still looking at her nails, and remembering. Not the act of clawing at the man’s eyes in the dark train carriage, though. Years earlier, when Ron had shown her the technique. Part joke, given the name of the move, but deadly serious otherwise. Someone had tried to abduct her right out of the hairdresser’s and only the early return of her bodyguard had prevented it. After that, Ron taught her self-defence but not your typical kind. No karate moves or jiu-jitsu submissions because, in Ron’s world, those things didn’t work. In his world, attackers had knives and guns. So, he showed her how to fire a gun. But for the times when a man was close, grabbing her, and a gun was of no use? She was shown how to rake out a man’s eyes and bite out a man’s throat. Not things she would have ever wanted to be shown, of course, but Ron had insisted. She had prayed it would all be a waste of time.
‘I wasn’t kidnapped,’ she said. ‘It was—’
‘It was something else,’ he finished. ‘Enough said. Do you need medical care, and do you need food?’
‘Something else, yes. But what? Why wasn’t it enough to…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence as her eyes welled up. She wiped them, then fingered the side of that hand. The paw print tattoo, bringing her some comfort. Danny didn’t need to hear the remainder of her unfinished sentence to know what she meant. Why wasn’t it enough for these people to do what they had done? Why did they want to harm her, too?
‘You’re a witness,’ he said. ‘That’s why. They don’t want you talking to the police. Soon, hopefully, what you can tell the police won’t matter because they’ll already know.’
She nodded, understanding his message: once she was no longer a threat neither would they be. But that didn’t comfort her right now, with Ron freshly gone and the danger imminent.