‘She saw us in Vito’s the other night. She knows I’m Kit Miller.’
‘Jesus.’ Rob half-turned in his seat and stared at Kit. ‘Listen, you got to stop this. You got to step away from this girl, right now. Or I tell you, Vittore and Fabio will rip your guts out and serve them up fried if they find out that you and her… You haven’t met up with her again since you’ve been back, have you? She been up here? You been jumping on her bones again?’
Kit nodded.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ Rob thumped his head against the leather headrest three times. ‘Kit, listen to me, for the love of God. This has got to stop.’
‘I know,’ said Kit.
‘Good. I’m glad you know.’
Kit sighed. He knew Rob was right. But still… he was going to see Bianca tonight, and Rob wouldn’t know a damned thing about it. He was sucking the last of the sweetness out of the situation before it all turned sour. Which it would; he knew that. The whole enterprise was doomed. There was no getting away from the fact.
‘So. What we doing now?’ asked Rob.
‘Ruby got an address for this Gabe Ward character.’
‘Where’d she get that?’
‘An old associate of Michael’s, she said.’
‘Right.’ Rob looked bemused. It wasn’t like Ruby, hanging around dodgy types. She’d made an exception for Michael, but then Michael Ward had been an exceptional man. ‘So…?’
‘I thought we’d pay the little tick a visit,’ said Kit.
69
‘There’s something the matter with Gabe,’ Sheila told Michael a week after Gabe’s return.
Michael looked at her. ‘What?’
‘Your son, Gabe,’ said Sheila with a sigh.
These Englishmen, they were so taciturn, so unfeeling. She was Italian by birth, she’d come over to England before the war. Her name had been Serafina then, but after her parents died she had adopted the more English-sounding name, Sheila. And she had met and married Michael, a well-to-do businessman, and they had a son.
Sheila was warmer, more intuitive than Michael – she was Italian, after all – and she loved her son Gabe with a passion. Oh, Sheila knew he was troubled, she knew that he had been getting on his father’s nerves, pushing the boundaries as young men liked to do, testing himself, challenging his father’s rule. All of which was perfectly natural. But none of it had gone down well with Michael.
‘What’s he up to now?’ asked Michael, putting the evening paper aside. It was all fucking trouble anyway. After the excitement of the Coronation, it was business as usuaclass="underline" doom and disasters and moans about the state of the economy. There were earthquakes and tidal waves in the Greek islands, the Ruskies were accelerating the arms race and the French were threatening a general strike.
Sheila was looking awkward.
‘What?’ asked Michael, watching her face. ‘What is it?’
‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you,’ she said.
‘Tell me what?’
‘You know he went away for a couple of weeks with a friend…?’
‘Jesus, what’s he been up to now?’ Michael was fed up with this. His son was not a son to be proud of. He cheated, he lied, he was into the most pathetic kinds of petty thievery and ran around getting girls into trouble, and he ought to know better. Michael had spent a lot of time over the past four or five years bailing Gabe out of silly situations, and he was sick of it. The boy was nineteen now, and Michael was wondering when the fuck the little idiot was going to grow up.
‘I shouldn’t tell you…’ said Sheila.
‘Well, you’ve told me half of it already, you may as well tell me the rest. What is it?’
Sheila’s eyes came back to his face. ‘He was with Tito,’ she said quickly, making rapid calm-down motions with her hands. ‘Now don’t get angry. Gabe’s really upset. Whatever Tito was up to, it wasn’t good. It’s knocked Gabe for six. But he won’t tell me about it.’
Michael felt his temper flare. He tossed the paper aside. ‘For fuck’s sake! I told him to stay away from Tito. Tito’s bad news, I warned him.’
‘Please don’t lose your temper. The boy’s badly shaken, and he won’t tell me what’s happened. Perhaps you could talk to him…?’
I’d rather throttle the little bastard, thought Michael, but he tried to cool down for Sheila’s sake. His private opinion was that Gabe was no good and never would be. But he’d never say as much to his wife.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said.
‘And no shouting?’
Michael almost smiled at that. ‘No shouting,’ he promised.
But that was before he heard the ghastly details about Gabe’s road trip with Tito.
70
Gabe Ward’s bedsit was out in Bermondsey, not too far from the Rotherhithe Tunnel. It was one of a big skyscraper block of flats near the vast sprawl of the river. The lift was out of order and there was graffiti scrawled all up the piss-stinking stairs. Kit and Rob trudged up to the sixth floor, along the draughty rubbish-strewn walkway, ducking here and there under washing lines and stepping over half-dead pot plants.
‘Fucking tip,’ commented Rob as they arrived at Gabe’s door.
‘Yeah,’ said Kit. Ward lived in a shit-hole. And it reminded Kit painfully of some of the God-awful dumps he’d stayed in as a child. Not happy memories.
Kit looked at the doorbell, which was hanging off, wires still attached. He knocked on the door. It was scratched at the bottom as if an animal had been trying to gain entry. It could have used a coat of paint. In fact the entire block could have been considerably improved if someone were to knock the damned thing down and start again, from scratch.
They could hear a TV going inside the flat. Then there was movement, near the door.
‘Who is it?’ It was a male voice, quavering with nerves.
‘Council maintenance,’ Kit replied. It sounded thin, on a Saturday, but what the hell.
The door opened, just a crack. A pair of wide bloodshot eyes in an unshaven face looked out at them. There was a chain on the door. Gabe took one look at Kit and Rob standing there and tried to shut the door again, but Rob was faster; he shouldered it, and the chain popped out of its moorings with a tired crunch.
Gabe fell back and now they could see he had a knife in his hand. Inside, the flat looked no better than the outside. There was a dirty old sofa, a carpet stained from years of use. The smell in here was rank, musty. There was a piece of brownish foil on the coffee table, and a spoon and the sickly scent of burning.
Druggie, thought Kit.
‘Don’t be silly. You’re going to hurt yourself with that,’ said Rob, grabbing the hand with the knife in it and smacking Gabe upside the jaw. Gabe went down hard. Rob took the knife off him and tucked it into his belt.
‘Who the hell are you?’ moaned Gabe, clutching his chin.
‘Oh, I think you know the answer to that. And just in case you don’t, listen up. I’m Kit Miller,’ said Kit, dragging Gabe back to his feet and slamming him hard against the wall beside the TV. He stared into Gabe’s eyes. ‘You got something you want to say to me?’
‘I… wha…?’ Gabe’s mouth was seeping blood where Rob had cuffed him. He looked bewildered, terrified.
‘Sorry would be a start. An apology for shoving your ugly mug in my sister’s face and trying to get my mother’s address off her. That wasn’t nice.’