After a moment he heard bolts being thrown and the door opened six inches. A bleary, stoned face looked out.
“Give me money. I give it Bozzy.”
Jonjo smashed his gun, held flat, into this guy’s face and he went down with a yelp. Jonjo was through the door in a second, gun in both hands and put his big builder’s boot on the guy’s throat. His nose was broken, askew, and he was spitting blood, feebly.
“Relax. I’m not the police,” Jonjo said in a level voice, “as you can probably tell. I just want a word with Bozzy.”
The room was full of smoke and the strange smell of burnt rope hit Jonjo’s nostrils. He saw a couple of sagging filthy armchairs, three stained mattresses, some empty bottles and a litter of food wrappers and foil containers and, to his vague surprise, halved lemons, squeezed dry. Three other dazed young men were slowly rising to their feet.
“Lie down on the floor,”Jonjo said, pointing his gun at each of them. “Face down. Place your hands on the back of your heads. I just want a conversation with Bozzy, then I’ll fuck off.” He smiled as the young men lay down on the floor. He lifted his boot off the sniffler’s face and with a few prods of his toe encouraged him to turn over also. “So…Which one’s Bozzy?” Jonjo said.
“I am,” said a beefy guy with a hot, flushed face.
“You’d better be Bozzy, mate,”Jonjo said. “Otherwise you’re in deep shit.”
“I’m Bozzy. And you fuckin’ dead, man. I know you face, now. You dead.”
Then, swiftly, Jonjo kicked the other three prone young men very hard in the ribs with his steel toe-capped bricklayer’s boots, feeling ribs give way, stave, splinter, yield. The men shouted and rolled around in serious pain. Every time they coughed or sneezed for the next three months they’d remember this encounter, every time they crawled out of bed or reached for something they’d think of me, Jonjo acknowledged with satisfaction.
“Get out,”Jonjo said. “Now.”
They left slowly, stooped, carefully, clutching their sides like old men while Jonjo covered them with his gun. Then he bolted the door behind them and turned to Bozzy. From the pocket of his jeans he took two plastic cuffs and first bound Bozzy’s ankles and then attached Bozzy’s left wrist to his ankles before heaving him into a sitting position.
“This is very simple, Boz, me old mate,” Jonjo said, taking his knife out from its ankle scabbard. He grabbed hold of Bozzy’s free hand and very quickly cut the web of skin between Bozzy’s third and ring finger — just a nick, really, about a centimetre deep.
“Fuck!” Bozzy cried out.
Jonjo dropped his knife and grabbed the pair of fingers on either side of the gash and gripped them fiercely in both fists. Blood was dripping now, welling up from the small cut.
“We used to do this a lot in Afghanistan,” Jonjo said. “The Al-Qaeda guys say they’ll never talk but they always do.” He could see Bozzy looked blank. “You heard of Al-Qaeda?”
“No. Who they?”
“OK. They’re tough fuckers. One thousand per cent tougher than you. We did this to them to make them talk: cut between their fingers, then rip their hands in two, down to the wrist.” He tugged — Bozzy yelled. “It’s like tearing a rag or a sheet. Only the wrist bone stops it, but you ain’t got a hand any more — you’ve got a flipper. And they can’t fix it, no doctor can. If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll rip this hand in two. And, if you still don’t tell me, I’ll rip your other hand in two. Then you’ll be drinking beer through a straw for the rest of your life and someone will have to help you piss.”
“What you want to know?”
Jonjo smiled. “I’m betting, I’m having a wager with myself, that you jumped a guy last week on this estate. His name was Adam Kindred. You stole his phone and someone used it.”
“I stole ten phones last week, mate.”
“This one was different. You’d remember him.”
“We jack a lot of minis. I can’t not remember what mim is like another.”
“You would remember this one. Not your usual mim. What happened?”Jonjo tugged gently on Boz⁄y’s fingers.
“Yeah—agh! — yeah…We jumped him. Kicked him proper, took everything. Left him under the stairs. I thought he might of been fucked. But, when we come back, half an hour later. He gone.”
“Gone? Walked away?”
“We left him out cold, mate. Butcher meat.”
“Somebody must’ve helped him.”
“Prob’ly.”
“Where’s the phone?”
“I sold it.”
“Get it back. Who could have helped him?”
“Must of been someone in The Shaft. It was late, like. Only Shaft people round and about. That’s how I remember this mim. He was well lost.”
“Find out who helped him,” Jonjo said, letting go of Bozzy’s hand, picking up his knife and cutting the plastic cuffs from his tethered wrist and ankles. “Call me.” Jonjo gave him a piece of paper with his mobile number on it. “Call me in a week. I’ll give you a grand if you find the person who helped him. A grand — one thousand pounds.” He tossed a couple of £20 notes on the floor.
“If you don’t call me I’ll come back and get you. Cut off your head and send it to your crack-whore mother. Got it?”
“Flat, bruv. Well flat.”
Jonjo unbolted the door and strolled out into the night.
16
ADAM WALKED FROM CHELSEA to Southwark — across Chelsea Bridge to Battersea and then round the back of the power station and along the river, most of the way. He had his little street-map paperback but he still stopped people — poor people, like him — to ask directions. He was guided past Lambeth Palace and the National Theatre, along Bankside and under London Bridge to Southwark. Something was leading him there, some unconscious urge — he wasn’t sure if it was wise but somehow he felt obliged to do it. Perhaps it was because Mhouse — his rescuer and tormentor
— had suggested it. He felt that she had blurted out this potential sanctuary because, even as she attacked him, she recognised how needy and desperate he was. The scab on his forehead had finally fallen off, leaving only the faintest pink tracery of the trainer sole that had connected with his forehead. The time was right — he knew it was something he had to do.
In Southwark Street he asked a few people if they had heard of the Church of John Christ. He was corrected a few times—“You mean Jesus Christ”—and was twice directed to Southwark Cathedral. Eventually someone told him there was a strange kind of church hall off Tooley Street, down on the river by Unicorn Passage and so he headed that way, realising he was leaving Southwark for Bermondsey.
In Tooley Street there were small signs with arrows attached to drainpipes and traffic signs—“The Ch. of John Christ, straight on”
— and he went further east, along Jamaica Road, turning left and then right, following the signs and arrows before finally arriving at his destination — on the edge of the river, he saw.
It looked like an old nineteenth-century brick warehouse with large sliding wooden doors and no windows on the façade. Behind it he could see the brown river flowing by. Above the doors in bright plastic lettering — blue on white — was printed: ‘THE CHURCH OF JOHN CHRIST. Est. 1998’. And below that: ‘Archbishop the rev. YEMI THOMPSON-GBEHO. Pastor and Founder.’ And below that, again, the promises: ‘NO SIN ENDURES’ and ‘ALL SINS FORGIVEN’.
There was a smaller door set in the large sliding one and Adam knocked on this, waited a minute, knocked again, waited another minute and was walking away when a woman’s voice called after him, “Was that you, dear?”