Liz came downstairs half an hour later, freshly dressed in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Although her elegant dress was missing she was finally clean, damp hair in a bun on top of her head. And with red eyes, as if she’d been crying. Karl told her about his earlier chat with Katie, and the plan to hand themselves in to a police station close to her father’s house.
Liz had a mobile phone in her hand, which she waved. ‘I just spoke to Mr Gold. Bromley is only fifteen miles from here. Twenty-five minute drive.’
‘We’re going there? He’s not coming here? But we’re going to Pinner, right?’
She nodded. ‘Of course. Mr Gold will take our statements and arrange our surrender. He’ll be at home at five o’clock, after court. So, we have three and a half hours to wait.’
‘But we go to my wife’s dad’s house first? Before the police. I want to see her for the evening before I do it.’
‘Of course.’ She actually smiled. Maybe it was relief that all this would finally be over.
‘So that’s us sorted then,’ Danny said. ‘We’ve got a while. Grab a shower, mate. Liz, you must need some food.’
Karl took the hint and left the room. In the preceding half hour, Danny had given him a warning: do not talk about your wife in Liz’s presence. She’d lost her husband and shouldn’t have someone else’s relationship thrust in her face. Karl understood. He understood too that Liz was important to Danny and he wanted to protect her.
He stood under a hot shower for five minutes, needing to refresh his mind. The hot spray felt great, but everything else was wrong. It was wrong to step into another man’s bedroom, wrong to wear his clothing, and wrong to use his cutlery.
The food was good, though. Eggs on toast. Three plates on the table, with Danny and Liz waiting for him. Karl was surprised by how fast he attacked the food, and he noticed Liz eating with the same vigour. It reminded him that, bar a slice of toast, he hadn’t eaten all day. Even longer for Liz.
Danny used his phone while they ate, and he was the only one who spoke. Liz soaked up the information he imparted without looking away from her meal, as if none of it mattered to her. And it didn’t. Rumours of two injured police officers, a woman at the scene being questioned by police, and all of it tied to a heavy police presence at an industrial unit in Old Ford. Nothing about Liz’s husband, though: he was shielding her from that.
‘Nothing about McDevitt?’ Karl said.
‘Early doors yet,’ Danny said, putting away the phone. ‘Let’s just eat to get energy for tonight.’
They finished the meal in silence.
Seventy-Four
Mick
The Vito turned into a car park brimming with small trucks that had Gustafson Foods on their sides. Mick aimed the car towards the road and pointed a finger at a building about a hundred yards away. The curtains were drawn over the large front window and all was dark inside.
The businesses on their side of the street were housed in long structures of glass, metal and plastic, while across the road the buildings looked as if they had been born as homes: two storeys of brick, first-floor bay windows, single wooden front doors. The car parks ran right up to the front doors and windows, as if they had once been gardens. Behind both rows of buildings was agricultural land.
‘What now?’ Brad asked. The answer was: we wait.
And they did so in silence for half an hour, until Mick said: ‘You mentioned Fate the other day, right?’ He showed Brad his mobile phone and a Google Earth image of their location, which looked very green from 2,500 feet in the sky. ‘Check out this place for a showdown. London’s most rural borough, apparently. Fields, peace and quiet, no one around. Perfect. If this isn’t a sign of Fate then no such beast exists. This is meant to go our way. Just like before. This’ll go down the same way it did with Grafton.’
‘You mean she’ll run and be picked up on a back road and we’ll be hunting another guy all over again? Can’t wait.’
Brad felt Mick looking at him intently. He didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked much today, actually. And it included Mick’s refusal to mention Dave. The guy had run out on them, and even Brad, not half as paranoid as Mick, had wondered if his old friend was going to do something stupid, like talk to the cops. But Mick hadn’t mentioned him, never mind tried to call, or even asked Brad if he knew what was going on. He had sent a text message to someone on the drive here, but Brad doubted it had been Dave. So, he brought it up.
‘Think Dave got lost?’
‘No, you saw as well as I did that he bottled it and ran off.’
He sure did, but he wasn’t about to agree. He had to protect Dave, so said: ‘I thought he might have had something to do, that’s all. Thought he’d be here. He might still come.’
‘He won’t. I know. He’s not as loyal as these two.’
These two? Brad repeated in his mind, and then he understood.
Another van was cruising down the road, slowly, like something on the prowl. Brad, looking past Mick and out the passenger window, saw a handsome twenty-something guy with floppy blonde curls at the wheel, staring back. He looked like a surfer right out of a straight-to-video flick and totally fitted the ancient third generation Volkswagen Transporter.
He didn’t know this guy. But he now knew who Mick had texted earlier.
The driver got out and, beyond him, Brad saw a passenger, also in a boiler suit. A wide brute of a man. Compact, built for power. A guy designed for busting heads that his baby-faced partner couldn’t sweet talk.
Floppy put his face right up to Mick’s window, but Mick didn’t even look until the guy rapped the glass. He opened his door, forcing the guy to step back, and got out.
‘Stay here, Brad.’
The two men walked out of sight, behind the vans. Brad saw the brute glaring at him, like one bodyguard sizing up another. He glared right back. Neither guy backed down, and the game only ended when Mick and Floppy returned. Floppy got into his cheesy T3 with one of Mick’s bags. Mick got in and told Brad to get out.
‘You’re going with these guys on a job. Highly important. After this, I guarantee you’ll be free and clear.’
‘Who the fuck are this pair? And what job?’
‘You’ll know them quite well by the time you get to the job. And then you’ll know the answer to both your questions.’
‘I don’t work with guys I don’t know, Mick.’ He meant he didn’t trust them. But to camouflage that he added: ‘They could be fuck-ups, and I don’t like prison gruel.’
‘Fuck-ups they might be.’ He looked right into Brad’s eyes. ‘That’s why I need you there, Brad. Make sure it goes smoothly. Look, that young idiot is a guy I keep on the side. He was sixteen when I nabbed him for stealing computers. Let him go scot free, bit like you. Now we help each other, bit like me and you. Except maybe I’ve got something in the Loyalty Box to keep him motivated. He’s handy, but he hasn’t got your skills, and his brother there is brainless. I need you on this.’
For six years, ever since he’d made DCI, the Loyalty Box had been Mick’s leverage against the army of criminals he had under his spell, like Król, and his weapon against those he desired to stamp down, like Ramirez. Mick had found a jacket with blood on the sleeve, right where Rocker’s leaking nose would have gushed if he’d been choked by the wearer. Brad had watched Mick pull it from the laundry basket in the bathroom, just the two of them alone. Their eyes met. In that moment, staring at each other, they had come to a wordless understanding. Brad had said nothing as Mick held aloft the bloody jacket. Mick said nothing as he stuffed the item back into the laundry basket.
With any other man, he would have returned alone for the jacket, to rehome it in the Loyalty Box with other evidence lifted from crime scenes, where it would await the day it was called upon to ruin someone’s life. But here, in Brad, he’d sensed such action was not needed. A new, special partnership was being born.