“You’re joking me.”
“Alas, no.”
Every suspicion stirred in her and came sharply alive.
“You sleeping in there,” she said. “You gone rabbit.”
“I’m…I’m in a bit of trouble. I’m hiding. Keeping out of sight.”
This made sense now — he was lying. “I don’t fucking believe you,” she said. “You scatter my head.”
“Honest. Look, I’ll show you if you like.”
He helped her over the fence and he followed — then Mhouse let him lead the way, pushing through bushes and ducking under branches as her eyes grew accustomed to the strange electric darkness, charged with the cold glow of the street lights from the Embankment. They came to a small clearing between three large bushes and the man — Adam — showed her his things: the sleeping bag, the groundsheet tent, his raincoat, his briefcase, his stove. Mhouse walked around behind him as he explained, her brain going — yeah, typical, my fucking lucky tonight, yeah?
He turned to her, spreading his hands and said, “Listen, believe me, if I had any money, you’d be welcome to—”
She punched him — two-fisted — in the gut and then kneed him in the balls. He went down with a high cracked-voice sigh, like a girl. She kicked him.
“You fucking gambling me, man. You fucking owe me.”
He kept groaning, holding his groin, as she went through his possessions: sleeping bag, saucepan, gas stove, folding spade. Nothing — homeless shit. She took the raincoat and the briefcase and stood over him, the folding spade in her right hand.
“You fucking gamble me, man, this is what you get.” She raised the spade.
Adam stopped moaning and shrank away from her. She thought about hitting him with the spade, do some real damage, but he had called her his Samaritan. And there was something about him — something nice — that she responded to. He was an animal and he needed help.
“You need help.”
“Yes. Yes, I do. You helped me. Please help me.”
“I help you one more time. I’m your Samaritan, man, though I can’t not fucking think why after what you done, how you scatter me.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
“You go to the Church of John Christ in Southwark. They help you.”
The man said, “You mean ‘Jesus’ Christ.”
She hit him on the leg with the spade and he cried out.
“John Christ, you wanker! John Christ. You say Mhouse sent you.”
She threw the spade at his head but he managed to duck and it glanced heavily off his shoulder. She spat at him and pushed her way through the bushes to the road, climbed the fence and jumped into the Primera beside Mohammed. He sped away.
“Nice Bumberry raincoat for you, Mo. Leather and golden briefcase for me.”
“Safe. Super safe, Mhouse,” Mohammed said. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, whatever. He was a wanker, he had no money. Homeless wanker. Let’s get back to The Shaft.”
10
EVEN THOUGH HE DROVE a taxi, a black London cab, his motor vehicle of choice — ubiquitous, unremarkable and there was no law against it — Jonjo liked to steer clear of other black-cab taxi-drivers, particularly when they were present in significant numbers. He wanted no impromptu solidarity, no leading questions. So he parked up some distance from City Airport and its long line of taxis waiting for their clients and walked a good half-mile to the neat little terminal building.
Inside, he took a tour around, checking the available exits. He was an hour early for his meeting — he was always an hour early, just in case, you never knew — and he rode up the escalator to the first floor and selected a seat in the corner of the cafeteria with a view of the escalator and the small concourse and settled down with his coffee and croissant and his newspaper and contentedly did the puzzle for half an hour before deciding that the time was right for some more vigilance.
Fifteen minutes before the appointed time for the rendezvous—10.00 a.m. — he saw his contact come in. He could spot them a mile off, other soldiers. He could go into a crowded pub and in three seconds could have picked out the men who were Tags or Blades, Crap Hats, Toms, Jocks, Squaddies, whatever they called themselves or each other. Funny that, he thought: like an instinct, like we give off a spoor, a smell. We’re like Jews and Scotchmen, Roman Catholics and Freemasons, ex-cons and gays. They spot each other, they know in seconds, split seconds.
Funny that — as if we’ve got some sign on us only visible to our kind.
He watched this young guy — thirty-something, short cropped fair hair, burly — come in and check the terminal as he had and then come up the escalator to the cafeteria. He stepped in and on his first sweep of the tables Jonjo knew he’d clocked him. He stayed bent over his puzzle: how many four-letter words could you make from the letters LFERTA? Tear, fart, leaf—
“Excuse me. Are you Bernard Montgomery?”
Jonjo looked up. “No.”
“Apologies.”
“I’m often mistaken for him.”
The young guy sat down.
“We got news,” he said.
“From our friends in the Met?”
“Yeah.”
“About bloody time.”
The young guy seemed edgy, on the tense side.
“Kindred’s phone has been used,” he said. “Few seconds.”
“Not by Kindred, obviously,”Jonjo said. “He’s not that daft.” He leant back, putting down his pen as the word ‘FERAL’ came into his head. Must remember that.
“No…It was used only once, in Rotherhithe — someone on an estate: the Shaftesbury Estate. Then they must’ve changed the sim-card.”
“Someone stupid, then.” Jonjo thought for a second. “So, his phone was stolen or he sold it. I suppose we don’t know who made the call.”
“No.”
“Lovely-jubbley. I’ll check it out.”Jonjo smiled. “I’ll need paying by the way. For the last job.”
The young guy pushed a thick envelope across the table. Jonjo scooped it up and stuffed it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. The young guy was staring at him intently.
“You’re Jonjo Case, ain’t you?”
Jonjo sighed. “You’re breaking all the rules, mate.”
“I knew it was you,” the young guy persisted. “You were a friend of Terry Eltherington.”
“Terrible Tel,” Jonjo reflected, bitterly. “Great shame. Fucking shame…”
“Yeah…My brother-in-law. I saw you in his photos.”
“Those cunting LEDs. How’s Jenny coping?”
“She killed herself. Couldn’t face it. Three days after the funeral.”
Jonjo took this news in, sadly, sagaciously: he remembered Jenny Eltherington — blonde, big, jolly girl. He nodded to himself: soldier’s wife — worst fate on earth.
“You must be Darren, then,” Jonjo said, stretching his hand across the table. “Blues and Royals.”
“That’s me.” They shook hands.
“Tel and I were in the Regiment, went through Hereford together. Fucking nutter, Tel.”
“I know. Yeah, he used to talk about you a lot: Jonjo this, Jonjo that…”
They were both quiet for a few seconds thinking about Terry Eltherington and his sudden violent death in Iraq, victim of an unusually powerful roadside bomb. Jonjo felt his neck stiffening and eased it side to side.
“What happened to you?” Darren said, indicating the now star-shaped but still livid scab on Jonjo’s forehead.
“You should see the other guy,”Jonjo chuckled, then said, “Anything you want to tell me, Darren? On the Q-T? Off the record?”
Darren looked grim for a moment. “This is as hot as I’ve ever seen it, Jonjo, believe me. Blazing hot. No idea why, but they’re going train-wreck.”