“Spare a couple of minutes for a chat with old Vincey, yeah? Look at you: little scooter — voom, voom — all spruce and modern young bloke, suited up. Must be doing well, John.” Turpin linked arms with him and turned him round, heading back towards the bridge, where there was a wooden bench with a view of the Lister Hospital on the other side of the traffic lights at the wide crossroads. Adam sat down, feeling the saliva leave his mouth.
“What can I do for you, Vince?” he said.
“Somebody’s looking for you, mate. A right nasty customer. Big bloke with a deep cleft in his chin. Ugly bugger. He came to the church, asking about you.”
“Don’t know him,” Adam said, his heart weighing heavy suddenly, thinking: he’d traced me to the church — maybe that’s how he got on to Mhouse.
“He says you’re a good friend,” Turpin continued. “Says you’ve come into a bit of money. Says he’ll pay me two grand if I can find you.”
Adam thought: all I need to do is run away. I’m safe.
“But I don’t want to do that — if you don’t want me to,” Turpin said.
“I’d appreciate that, Vince.”
“Thing is, there’s no point in fobbing off old Vince Turpin with a load of bollocks and thinking you can just disappear.” Turpin smiled again. “Because when I saw you arrive on your smart new little scooter I took the trouble to write down the licence plate number. Committed it to memory.” He put his hand on Adam’s arm. “If I give that number to Ugly Bugger — who seems a capable bloke, ex-copper, I’d say — I reckon he could track you down in a jiffy.” Turpin now gripped Adam’s arm and pulled him close to his big seamed and folded face. “If Ugly Bugger will pay me two grand, something tells me you might pay me four to keep my mouth shut.”
“I haven’t got four grand.”
“I don’t want it all at once, John 1603. No, no. I’d blow it, spendthrift arsehole that I am. I want it bit by bit, once or twice a week, like a sort of retainer. A hundred here, two hundred there, keep old Vince ticking over, keep the Turpin head above water.” He paused. “Keep the Turpin lips zipped.”
“All right,” Adam said. “We can work something out, I’m sure.” All he could do at this juncture, Adam realised, was buy time. He could pay Turpin off over the next days and weeks while the Zembla-4 plan progressed. All he needed was time. He reached into his pocket for his wad of notes.
“I can give you £150, now,” he said, and began to count out the notes.
“Why don’t I just take the lot?” Turpin said, as his big hands swooped and grabbed the money. “Let’s meet here, again, same time, next Wednesday night.” He gave Adam his full smile, showing both rows of teeth. “No funny business, John. You can sell that scooter tomorrow — set it on fire and throw it in the river — but something tells me Ugly Bugger will still know how to find you.”
“OK,” Adam said, “I’ll be here, don’t worry.”
“Make it 200 quid, next time. Nice seeing you again, John.” He stood up, gave a brief wave and wandered off over the bridge towards the Battersea shore.
♦
Adam drove back to Stepney in thoughtful mood. Turpin was right, all that his pursuer — Ugly Bugger — required was the number plate of his scooter. There was, now, a paper and electronic trail that pointed the way directly from the scooter to Primo Belem and his Oystergate Buildings apartment, even if he dumped the scooter, resold it, even if he moved to a new address. There were tracks out there in the world, now, tracks that led to him for the first time. He’d have to change identity again, stop being Primo Belem — but how would he do that? Go underground once more?…Stay calm, Adam told himself, soon all this will be irrelevant: all he had to do was keep Turpin quiet and contented for a short period of time. He mustn’t be distracted from his key mission; he should just continue as if this unfortunate encounter had never occurred.
53
IVO, LORD REDCASTLE WONDERED IF THERE HAD BEEN SOME KIND of sign or omen that he had missed. He was also wondering if he was beginning to lose his grip. That guy who had rung him up about the T — shirts, for example — he hadn’t even asked his name. What kind of entrepreneur was he? Pathetic. And, worse still, he had invited this unknown, nameless man for a drink at his house to discuss the T — shirt crisis — to which, it went without saying, he hadn’t even bothered to turn up. Of course he had drunk a bloody mary and a half — no, practically a full bottle of wine at lunch. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been thinking straight. Anyway, the guy not showing up that night had been a real downer (and he had behaved appallingly to Smika, he admitted, and taken far too much cocaine in compensation, later that night — got totally pranged — trying to make everything seem better, and failing). He made no excuses for himself, though he was cross that he had bragged about it to Ingram at the restaurant, as if the T — shirt problem had been finally solved. Fool. Idiot fool.
And then, on succeeding days, had come the solicitors’ letters, three of them, horrible, stern missives listing his serial failings as human being and businessman and detailing his mounting debts to various creditors. More worrying — in a kind of disturbing existential way — had been the jpeg that Dimitrios had sent him. It showed a pyre often thousand of his sex-instructor T — shirts ablaze on a beach on Mykonos. He had always regarded Dimitrios as a pretty decent guy, almost a mate, even though he didn’t know him that well…But after this — Jesus, it was totally out of order. Beyond the bounds, etcetera.
What, however, to do about this latest communication?…It was only ten o’clock in the morning but Ivo felt he needed a drink so he opened a bottle of cold Chablis from the supply he kept in his fridge at the home office and called Sam at RedEntlnc at Earls Court.
“Any news on tracing that call?” he asked. He was hoping to find a number for the nameless man who had telephoned him about the T — shirts. He had not only not asked what his name was but he’d also neglected to find out how he could be contacted.
“We think we’ve got it,” Sam said.
“You did tell the police that it was obscene? Really obscene.”
“Absolutely — that’s why they were so helpful. They say it came from a payphone in Sloane Square.”
“Fuck. Thanks, Sam.”
Ivo took a large gulp of his Chablis — a great morning drink, he thought, light and very palatable — and picked up the piece of paper that, according to the evidence of his front-door CCTV camera, had been pushed through his letter-box at 7.47 that morning by a helmeted motorbike courier.
All the envelope had written on it was his name ‘IVO’ in capital letters, and inside was a sheet from Ingram’s personal memo pad — his name printed across the top — saying, written in biro, also in capital letters: “SELL YOUR C-D SHARES NOW. I WILL DENY EVERYTHING. I.”
The T was Ingram’s recognisable initial-signature — the two horizontal bars of the T widely separated from the vertical stroke. Unmistakable.
Let’s face it, Ivo said to himself, I’m fucking broke — or as broke as people like me ever become. The whole T — shirt fiasco⁄debacle had cost and would cost him tens of thousands. He had a small collapsing pyramid of unpaid bills on his desk. The rent of Smika’s gallery and the vernissage party had still to be settled. Not to mention Poppy and Toby’s school fees…
So, he thought, this instruction comes, hand-delivered…Maybe Ingram had sensed the crisis brewing when they had met that day at the restaurant and he was offering him this semi-anonymous lifeline with built-in deniability: “SELL YOUR C-D SHARES NOW…” Of course Ingram had to ensure he was distant from such a transaction: he couldn’t openly advocate this — it had to be done within the family, as it were. Fair enough, he could keep a secret as well as the next man. He would just run a quick check.