Patrick drops the kerbstone on the bed and jerks a massive thumb towards the door.
‘The Chairman wants to see you.’
‘It’s three in the morning,’ I point out.
The flame comes nearer as Hooper advances round the bed.
‘I’ll get dressed.’
I hop around looking for socks and stuff while Patrick watches and Hooper plays the flame of his toy across a glass-fronted picture of a Paris street scene. It was a present from a former girlfriend who thought I needed cultural improvement. For some reason she thought I was artistically bland. She didn’t last long after that, but the picture stayed. I like it, actually. Very…moody.
The glass pops and cracks while I pull on my shoes, and I figure I’ll get Hooper back for that. One day when he isn’t looking.
‘What does he want?’ I ask conversationally, as we drive west towards The Chairman’s office. We’re in a black Toyota Land Cruiser, which is inappropriate for the city, but Patrick needs a big vehicle otherwise he’d have nowhere to keep his collection of kerbstones.
‘He’s got a job for you.’ Hooper turns round in the passenger seat and stares at me. ‘Gainful employment.’ The words come out slow and singsong, and a gold tooth glints in his mouth, reflecting the streetlights. I reckon he’s pissed I didn’t put up a fight.
‘I’ve already got a job,’ I tell him. I do, too. I deliver things for people. Small packages, mostly; papers, diskettes, certificates, contracts, that sort of thing. Anything small, light and of high-value importance. You want it there, I’m your man. Guaranteed. Not drugs, though. I don’t touch drugs. I’m old-fashioned about wanting to keep my freedom.
Hooper sneers. ‘Courier shit, man? Don’t make me laugh. That’s for pussies.’
I debate shoving Hooper’s gold tooth down his throat, but decide it will keep. Patrick would probably take a spare kerbstone out of his top pocket and cuff me with it.
Instead I sit back and ignore them both, and consider what I’m about to get into.
The Chairman – if he has a real name nobody uses it – is a fat slug who runs a business and criminal empire said to stretch across half Europe. Some say he’s Dutch, and was kicked out of Rotterdam because he gave the local crims a bad name. He set himself up in London instead and proceeded to knock out every other syndicate in the place, allowing only a tiny network of small-time gangs to remain. It was a clever move; in return for letting them be, he allows them to tender for doing his dirty work. He has a small group of direct employees, three people like Hooper and Patrick, to protect his back from anyone who thinks he might be easy meat but other than that, he believes in lean and mean. Especially mean.
Like I say, clever move. He controls the whole criminal shebang, while letting some of the dumber members think they’re important. It’s a franchise, only the penalties for infringing the rules are more permanent.
I’ve done a couple of jobs for The Chairman before, but only out of desperation. They were simple fetch and carry assignments, the main risk being if I failed to deliver. I didn’t enjoy them because I didn’t feel clean afterwards, and the last time he’d called, which was about a month ago, I’d declined. Politely.
I wish I had Malcolm with me.
Malcolm’s my little brother. I use the word little only in the age sense; he’s three years younger than me, but way, way bigger. He caught our grandfather’s bit of the gene pool, while I’ve been blessed with Grandma’s. Granddad – a rough, tough stevedore back in the days when they still had them – was apparently a shade under six-ten, with shoulders and hands to match, while Grandma was normal.
At six-eight, and weighing in at seventeen stone, Malcolm can pick me up with one hand. He’s also good-looking, with twin rows of pearly-white teeth, naturally swarthy skin and eyes which can bore right through you. Apparently it works wonders with the girls and means he never gets to go home alone.
The downside is, he’s disturbingly honest and has never been known to tell a lie or get in a fight. At school he was left well alone from an early age, especially when they saw how much he could lift with one hand. And if anyone gave me grief, all I had to do was mention his name and I got swift apologies and a promise of immunity from the scummies who liked to prey on smaller kids for their lunch money. Not great for my self-esteem, but if you went to the sort of school I went to, you used whatever means you had to keep afloat, even if it was your kid brother.
As the Americans say, go figure.
The Chairman’s office is in a smart, glass-fronted block in the West End, rubbing shoulders with a team of showbiz lawyers on one side and a well-known film company on the other. Like many top crims, The Chairman believes respectability comes from who you know, not what you do.
We troop upstairs with me sandwiched in the middle, through a set of armoured glass doors into a plush foyer with carpets like a grass savannah. An office at one end has the lights on and the door open.
‘Ah, there you are, Stephen,’ The Chairman says, like we’re old buddies. His English is faultless. He’s studying some spreadsheets under a desk-lamp and hitting the keyboard of a Compaq with quick fingers like the accountant he’s rumoured to have been before he went sly. ‘Sit down. Coffee?’
The offer and the first name familiarity are all part of the game of being in charge. Patrick pours me a coffee from a jug in one corner and hands me a cup. It looks like a thimble in his hand.
‘I’d prefer to be home in bed,’ I say tiredly. ‘Without the kerbstone for company.’
The Chairman looks up from his figures and seeks out Patrick with a look of reproof. ‘Say what? Have you been using those things again? Patrick, didn’t I tell you, there are people you don’t need them for. Mr Connelly, here, is one of them.’ He shakes his head like you would with a small child. ‘You’d better get the door repaired.’
‘OK,’ Patrick mutters, totally unconcerned. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘No, you’ll do it now. Wake someone.’ He says it nice and soft, while tapping away on the keyboard once more, but there’s suddenly a chill in the air.
Patrick lumbers out, leaving Hooper to watch over me.
‘How’s that’s nice brother of yours?’ The Chairman sits back and smiles. Like he cares. If he ever met Malcolm, it must have been by accident.
‘He’s fine,’ I say, and wonder where this is leading. Malcolm doesn’t approve of my life, other than agreeing to the occasional meal round my flat when he’s up in London. He thinks all criminals should be locked up, sometimes me included. It’s not that I do anything overtly illegal, but he thinks anyone who doesn’t use Her Majesty’s Post Office to send letters and stuff must be pulling some serious strokes, and by association, I’m tainted by their guilt.
‘Good. And your Auntie Ellen. How’s her husband – is he any better?’
Now I’m seriously worried. Nobody knows about Auntie Ellen or Uncle Howard, for the simple reason that they live down in Devon and I don’t talk about them. A nicer pair of old folks you’ll never meet and I owe them a lot. They were instrumental in our upbringing after our parents died when Malcolm and I were kids.
‘Say again?’
‘Oh, come now.’ The Chairman picks up a photo from his desk and shows it to me. It’s a shot of a familiar white-haired old lady in her garden, innocently pruning her roses. In the background, made fuzzy by the distance but still recognisable, is the gangly figure of Uncle Howard. I can’t see what he’s doing but it looks like he’s talking to himself. He does a lot of that, bless him. Early Alzheimer’s, according to the doctors. ‘I know all about your family, Stephen. Your aunt and your loopy uncle. I make it my business, you know that. It gives me leverage. If I need it.’
The last four words are uttered with meaning, and there’s no misunderstanding; he needs leverage now. It’s still in me to try, though.