‘I thought it best not to air the dirty laundry in front of the help. Especially Ho’s dirty laundry. Trust me, you don’t want to know.’ He waved a hand at the visitor’s chair. ‘It’s fine, it was wiped down yesterday.’
‘What with?’
‘Suit yourself.’
Taverner remained standing, hands resting on the back of the chair. ‘Playing the national security card for the cops is one thing, Jackson, even though we both know your clearance is just marginally higher than Thomas the Tank Engine’s. But acting dumb for the Park’s another story.’
‘I’m not sure you’re allowed to say dumb any more. It offends the vocally impaired. Or idiots. I can’t remember which.’
‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘Yeah, I caught that vibe.’
‘You were there, at Ho’s house, at whatever time in the morning it was. Which means you knew there was something going on. But didn’t report it. Service Standing Order whatever the hell it is—’
‘Twenty-seven three,’ Lamb said.
‘If you say so.’
‘The three’s in brackets.’
‘I don’t care if it’s in fucking Sanskrit, it’s there for a reason. If you knew there was a hit on one of your team, the protocol’s clear. You report it upwards. In this case, to me.’
‘Ordinarily, I would have. But there were special circumstances.’
‘Which were?’
‘I couldn’t be arsed.’
She drummed her fingers against the chair briefly, then stopped. Not letting Lamb see your annoyance was a primary objective of any encounter with him. A bit like not letting a shark notice your blood in the water. ‘That’s not a special circumstance, Jackson,’ she assured him. ‘That’s your prevailing condition. And this time, it might just prove terminal.’
‘If you want to go to the mats, Diana, you let me know. Because I have so much dirt on you, I’ve started an allotment.’
‘I’m sure that’ll be a distraction in your forced retirement, but it certainly won’t save you. Not this time.’
He leaned back heavily in his chair and swung both feet onto his desk. ‘If I’m gonna be threatened I’m getting comfortable. You mind if I loosen my trousers?’
‘I’d prefer it if you changed them occasionally. Look. I’m aware there are … incidents in the past—’
Lamb ticked some of them off. ‘Attempted murder. Kidnapping. And I’m pretty sure treason’s in there somewhere.’
‘—which might allow you a certain amount of leverage when it comes to negotiating your position. But we’re way past that here. So before you start stroking yourself, there’s a couple of details you might want to consider.’
‘Always like to get the details straight before I start.’
‘The Met reported a burnt-out car two miles from the scene. No body in it, so maybe whoever took a high-dive through your boy’s window survived the fall. Or maybe his pals just took his corpse somewhere else, in which case I’m sure he’ll turn up in due course.’
Lamb yawned, and put his hand back down his trousers. ‘So somebody’s either dead or they’re not. This is high-class investigative work.’
‘And the bullets found at the scene have been subjected to forensic examination.’
‘Don’t stop. Nearly there.’
‘The weapon they came from’s a match for one used at Abbotsfield.’
Lamb froze.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Taverner. ‘For once, I think we agree.’
Zafar Jaffrey had to stop three times on his way to the Dewdrop café: twice to accept good wishes from members of the community; once to buy a Big Issue and to discuss with its seller the problems faced by the nearby homeless shelter, where younger clients were being targeted by drug dealers. Jaffrey took notes and did a lot of nodding. He was handsome, clean-shaven, his hair just straggly enough to show independence of spirit, and when off-camera favoured jeans and open-necked shirts; a light bomber jacket today, despite Ed Timms’s warning.
‘Really, Zaf, you can’t be too careful.’
‘So I can’t wear a bomber jacket. Are you serious?’
‘It’s a gift to the Dodie Gimballs of this world.’
But whatever he wore, whatever he said, the Dodie Gimballs of this world would attack him for it; a series of hostile discourtesies for which the Dodie Gimballs of the next would answer. Besides, he liked the jacket. He thought it took a couple of years off; pushed him the right side of forty.
Now, to the Big Issue seller – ‘It’s Macca, right?’ – he delivered promises of action, of investigation, and he’d already made one follow-up phone call before arriving at the Dewdrop; pushing through the door with a shoulder, hand raised in greeting to Tyson, who sat with a bucket-sized mug in front of him, his tattoo oddly out of synch with his formal wear: white shirt, grey suit, mathematically precise knot in a red tie. Face ink aside, he looked more the politician than Jaffrey himself, though that was, admittedly, a big aside.
His phone was back in his pocket. Tyson Bowman stood as he approached, and they hugged briefly, a one-armed embrace – ‘Tyson.’ ‘Boss.’ – then sat at opposite sides of the small table, its cloth the ubiquitous red-and-white squares pattern; its ornament a cutlery holder into which sachets of ketchup and brown sauce had also been stuffed. He remembered bringing Karim here, back in the day; his younger brother not yet the aspiring martyr, but already, in Zafar’s twenty-twenty hindsight, distancing himself from what had been, until then, the everyday: people drinking tea and sharing jokes, living ordinary, godless lives. Zafar felt then what he still felt now. That there were better ways of achieving your goals than wrapping yourself in a Semtex vest.
Be that as it may, Karim’s story was not yet over. And the country he’d grown to despise remained in desperate need of betterment.
Zafar said, ‘No problems, then?’
Tyson shook his head.
‘When will it all be ready?’
‘Couple of days.’ He rubbed two fingers against his thumb. ‘On payment.’
Close up, the aspiring pol disappeared. It wasn’t that Tyson looked a thug – though he’d been anointed as such during his first two assault hearings – and it wasn’t that he looked an aspiring terrorist, though having been radicalised during his second prison term, he’d served a third for possession of extremist literature. Nor was it the colour of his skin, the close-shaven head, or even, particularly, the face tattoo – a usually reliable hallmark of forthcoming violence. No, thought Zafar; it was the attitude bottled within that package; one suggesting that social interaction of any kind was unwelcome. Except with Zafar Jaffrey, who had reached out a helping hand when Tyson Bowman had been jobless, homeless and friendless. Zafar alone put a light in Bowman’s eyes; one he should, he knew, feel guilt at exploiting.
The waitress was hovering, pad at the ready. ‘Morning, Mr Jaffrey.’
‘Angela,’ he said. ‘Radiant as ever.’
‘You said that yesterday, Mr Jaffrey. You want to watch that. People’ll think you’re not sincere.’
He reached a hand out and touched hers. ‘People can think what they like, Angela. You’ll always be radiant to me.’
And now she smiled, and her sixty-something years fell away. ‘Will you still come here for breakfast when you’re mayor?’
‘While you’re serving, yes. But just coffee this morning, thank you.’
When she’d gone, he gave his full attention to Tyson. His bagman: a word not quite rinsed of its shadier connotations. But Tyson did, after all, carry bags on occasion.
His coffee arrived, and they talked of changes to the day’s schedule: one meeting cancelled, another brought forward. A five-minute slot on local radio would now happen in a van, not the studio, saving everyone concerned, van driver apart, thirty minutes. Each day was busier than the previous, but then the election was in three weeks. Jaffrey was an independent candidate, and though he had ‘disappointed’ the prime minister by refusing to adopt the party’s mantle – despite having been appointed to two select committees in recent years – the pair remained ‘close personal friends’, the PM’s oft-used tactic, when he couldn’t get popular figures to endorse him, being to endorse them instead, and hope something rubbed off. Jaffrey accepted this unsought chumminess in the same way he did the Opposition leader’s frequently mentioned ‘respect’: in politics, ticking the no-publicity box was not an option. Besides, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, neither of those worthies were deluded enough to imagine their own candidate had a snowball’s chance in helclass="underline" unless the polls were even more disastrously askew than last time, or the time before that, at the end of the month Zafar Jaffrey would assume the mayoralty of the West Midlands.