‘C’mon in.’
We went inside. The place had simple laminated flooring and plain white walls. The fifty-year-old office furniture looked dated against the space’s modern, clean lines.
Stores sat behind a long office desk. A computer took up one side while a tower of file trays took up the other. Instead of a phone, a neat line of six mobiles sat by his right hand. Front and centre on the desk sat a receipt spike. It was the old-fashioned kind with a wooden base and stiletto-like spike sticking out of it.
‘Take a seat, gents. Mi casa es su casa. I picked up a little bit of Spanish since I bought a villa in the Canaries in the nineties. It’s a gorgeous part of the world, but hot as fuck in the summer. It’s great for when this country goes through five months of winter. So is this your lad, Steve?’
Stores’ fake affability failed to win me over and didn’t put a scratch on the casehardened shell Steve had put up.
‘He’s my grandson.’
‘Your boy died, didn’t he? I remember now. That’s how we met — it was over your boy.’
Steve was a statue.
‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Aidy,’ I answered.
‘You follow in the family business?’
‘I race.’
‘Good for you. I like legacies.’
‘I’m sure you’re busy, Eddie. We just have a few questions for you,’ Steve said.
Stores’ smile remained in place, but his gaze hardened.
‘You want to know about Andrew Gates. Is that right?’ Stores said to me.
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve got our reasons,’ Steve said, ‘and we’d like those reasons to remain private.’
Stores dropped the weight of his gaze on Steve. Steve’s lack of reaction seemed to satisfy him and he nodded to himself. ‘Understood. I can’t say I like the prick, so nothing leaves this room. You have my word on it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Andrew Gates was in your line of work, wasn’t he?’
Stores’ grin intensified until he exposed two rows of expensive dentistry that looked out of place on his melon-sized head. ‘I like your tact, son, but we don’t need to be polite. I’m a loan shark, and so was Andrew. We got started at the same time, back in the early eighties. With two-plus million unemployed, it was a good time to be in the lending business.’
‘He moved into the property business, though,’ I said.
‘Kind of. Andy got lucky in eighty-nine when his dad pegged out. His old man didn’t approve of what he did, but he left him a share of the house. Eighty-nine was at the end of the Thatcher boom years when house prices were at their peak. He bought out his mum, sold the house and used the cash to stick a zero on the end of the amounts he sharked.’
It was interesting that, to Stores, a death constituted luck.
‘From there, Andy started lending to small businesses and as the interest payment grew, he took slices of the businesses, usually in the form of property. Before these fuckers knew what was happening, Andy owned the whole shooting match, leaving them out in the cold. That’s how he got into the property business. Not my kind of thing, though. Property is like shifting sand. One minute it’s up, the next, it’s down. I stick with money. That doesn’t change. I like to keep things on a smaller and more personal level. Don’t I, Steve?’
The jibe bounced off Steve, but I saw the cracks appearing. A vein at his temple pulsed. It was time to end this before it hurt Steve any more than it had already.
‘So Andrew doesn’t shark anymore?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. When you conduct your business with a baseball bat over a few hundred, you’re a loan shark. When you use lawyers for a couple of million, you’re a corporate raider. It’s all about the packaging.’
It was an interesting philosophical outlook. ‘What about business ventures? Does Andrew have any sidelines?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know — drugs, illegal exports, prostitution. You tell me.’
At this point, I was open to anything that would explain what was going on.
‘He’s a money man, son, not Don-fucking-Corleone. Andy is like me. He likes things simple and without complication. He stuck to sharking. I know he didn’t like drugs. He once hammered one of his blokes who did a little dealing on the side.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Nah.’
‘What about enemies?’
‘When you’ve fucked over as many people as Andy and I have, all you have are enemies.’
Stores shot me a wink. I couldn’t make out if his bravado was an act to make Steve squirm or if he honestly thought he was a loveable rogue.
‘Someone killed Andrew’s brother two weeks ago. Do you think that could be in retaliation for something he did?’
‘You’ve seen too many movies, Aidy. We don’t cut the noses off our debtor’s faces to spite our own. Dead clients don’t pay. We only provide motivation.’ Stores picked up the dangerous-looking receipt spike.
Steve went rigid.
‘I’m old fashioned. All my money has a hole in it because I make my punters put it on this nail. And when they don’t pay, I make them put something else on the nail.’
Stores bounced his palm on the top of the spike.
Steve jumped up from his chair. ‘Thanks for your time, Eddie. I think we’ve got everything we need.’
I chased after Steve. When he reached for the doorknob, I saw the scar that marred the palm of his left hand. The pencil-wide disfigurement had been there for as long as I could remember. Steve yanked the door open and was gone.
Stores belted out an ugly laugh. He rounded his desk and sidled up to me.
‘Today’s been a bit of a revelation for you, hasn’t it, son?’
‘Yeah and you’ve had your fun.’
Stores slapped me on the back. It felt like a shovel striking my spine. ‘You’ve got balls, just like Steve.’
I bit back the urge to tell Stores to go fuck himself. I was here for something bigger than a petty thug. ‘You liked your cash on the nail trick. What was Andy’s way of keeping his punters in line for failure to pay?
‘Knives. Andrew liked to cut his delinquent payers.’ Stores drew a line across his forearm with his finger. ‘He’d cut you every time you were late. He called them stripes. Only bad payers earned their stripes.’
I knew where I’d seen those stripes.
Lap Twenty-Three
I called Gates as soon as I was outside and free of Eddie Stores’ corruption. As the phone rang, I watched my grandfather storm back to his Capri. His head was down and his fists balled. I’d never seen Steve angry from shame. The sight only served to boil me up inside.
The clamour of kids shrieking and laughing spilled down the phone line when Gates answered. ‘Morning, Aidy,’ he said over the din.
‘We need to talk. Now.’
‘I’m a little tied up with business at the moment. I’ll call you later.’
‘Not acceptable. I said now.’
Gates chuckled. ‘That can’t happen if I don’t tell you where I am.’
‘You lied to me. Where are you? Don’t make me track you down.’
The cocky note went out of Gates’ voice. ‘What have you found out?’
‘Not over the phone.’
‘OK,’ he said and gave me an address in Watford before ending the call.
I found Steve in the passenger seat with the keys dangling from the ignition. ‘You drive,’ he said.
I didn’t argue or ask him if he was OK. He wasn’t. It couldn’t have been easy for him to reveal a side of himself he’d kept secret from Nan and me.
‘I need to talk to Gates,’ I said.
‘You need me?’
‘No. I’ll be OK.’
I drove Steve back to Archway and left him to his work.
Again, I was meeting Gates alone on his turf. I was sure the address he gave me would be another secluded spot where he had the upper hand, but I was wrong. It turned out to be the home of a kids’ community and play centre called Open Gates. The place looked to be a converted business unit with the car park turned into a play centre. Banners plastered the side of the building claiming ‘Grand Opening’ and ‘Welcome’. Dozens of cars lined the street, including the mayor’s Bentley, forcing me to park on the next street.