The Business Of Dying

I laughed, but there was no humour in it. 'We're going now,' I told him. 'My car or yours?'

He sighed, then looked at me as if he still couldn't quite believe I was doing this. I looked back at him in a way that convinced him I was.

'We'll take mine, then,' he said. 'It's out the back.'

He went and locked up the front of the shop properly, then the two of us exited the rear door, fighting our way through the boxes of crap, unsafe electrical goods, and stolen property that made up the vast bulk of his inventory. The back door emerged into a tiny potholed car park containing two cars that looked like they were just about ready for the knacker's yard. We got into the slightly more respectable of the two – a rusty red Nissan which had probably looked quite flash and sporty back in the mid-1980s – and drove slowly out into the street.

The mid-afternoon traffic was heavier than usual due to an accident on Commercial Road backing things up and it took three quarters of an hour to make a journey that wasn't much the wrong side of a mile. We didn't speak a lot on the way. Runnion did ask a few probing questions about who it was who'd provoked my ire and whether I was going to kill or simply wound them, but I told him to keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the road, and after a while he got the message. I felt strangely detached from the whole thing. I was doing everything instinctively without any real thought as to the possible consequences. Nothing really seemed to matter. I had a plan, and if it succeeded I would be pleased, but if it failed, then so be it. I might even end up dead, yet, sitting there in the choking traffic, even that thought held no fear. And the funny thing was, it wasn't such a bad feeling to have. It felt almost liberating to know that this world, so often wrought with pressures and tensions, was no longer of real importance. Life for me had come down to a set of tasks that I would either complete or not complete. It was as simple as that.

The lock-up was one of a row on a narrow back road off Great Eastern Street. Runnion parked up on the pavement directly outside, and we got out together. There weren't many people about – a few City types taking shortcuts, the odd courier – and you wouldn't have thought you were only a couple of hundred yards from one of the largest financial districts in the world.

I stayed close to Runnion, keeping my hand in my coat pocket with the gun. 'Don't get any ideas about running,' I told him as he opened the lockup. He didn't say anything, and stepped inside. I followed him in, trying not to look too conspicuous, and pulled the shutter down behind me as he switched on the light.

Unlike his shop, the lock-up was remarkably tidy. There were boxes piled up on both sides but there was space to move about in the middle. At the far end, under a pile of tarpaulin, was a wooden strongbox which Runnion had to unlock. From inside it, he removed a large holdall which he put on the floor.

'Pick it up,' I told him. 'We're going back to your house.'

'What?' He looked at me, aghast. 'What for?'

'Because I want to take my time choosing and this isn't the place to do that.'

He started to argue, but I pulled the shutter back up and waited for him to walk out. He put the holdall on the back seat, secured the lock-up, and we were on our way again.

Runnion lived in a row of reasonably well-kept terraced houses in Holloway. I'd raided it once with Malik and a couple of uniforms looking for stolen property, which, predictably, we hadn't found, but I remembered it being quite a homely place. That had been about a year ago now and he'd been married at the time to a surprisingly pleasant wife who'd even offered us a cup of tea as we rummaged through their possessions, which is something of a rarity. She'd left him now and I kept enough tabs on him to know that he lived on his own.

Because we were moving away from Commercial Road, it took a lot less time to get to his house, even though the traffic was still heavy. We went inside in silence and sat down in his sitting room. There were a couple of dirty plates on the floor and various other bits and pieces of rubbish. Nothing like as tidy or as homely as I remembered it.

I motioned for him to sit down. He thanked me sarcastically, putting the holdall down on the floor between us. He was a lot cockier now than he had been, a result no doubt of the fact that he was getting used to the situation.

'Do you mind if I smoke?' I said, lighting a cigarette without offering him one. He shook his head and mumbled something, lighting one for himself. I sat back in my seat and took the gun out of my pocket. 'OK, show me what you've got in there.' He unzipped the bag and gingerly took out a shabby-looking.22 pistol. 'That's no use to me,' I told him. 'Keep going.' He put the.22 on the carpet and reached back into the bag like a miserable Santa, emerging this time with a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. I shook my head, and he carried on. Next up was more in tune with what I wanted: a newish-looking MAC 10 sub machine pistol. There was no magazine in it, but after a quick rummage around Runnion came up with two taped together. 'I'll have that one,' I told him, and he put it to one side.

He pulled out a further three weapons – all handguns – and told me that was all he'd got.

I smiled. 'Well, it's not bad for a man who likes to keep away from weapons.' Still holding on to my own gun, I gave each of them a brief inspection and settled for a short-barrelled Browning. 'Have you got ammo for this?' I asked him.

'Should have,' he said, and once again began a search of the bag, bringing out a couple of mint-condition boxes of 9mm bullets which he put with the MAC 10 and the revolver.

I took a long drag on my cigarette and watched him carefully as he put everything else back in the holdall. When he'd finished, I stood up and picked up my newly acquired weapons. I put the MAC 10 in the pocket of my raincoat, along with the magazines, and stubbed my cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. I picked up the Browning and inspected it again, removing the magazine, checking the bullets.

'You haven't got a silencer for this, have you?' I asked.

'No, I fucking haven't,' he said, remaining seated.

'Well, I hope when it comes down to it, it works.'

'I'm sure it will.'

I released the safety and pulled the trigger.

It did.

35

'I've been hearing some funny rumours today, Dennis.'

'Oh yeah?' I leaned back against the phone-box glass and took a drink from the can of Coke I was holding. All part of the new diet. 'What sort of rumours?'

'That you're involved in a lot of serious shit. That the police are looking for you with a view to questioning you about some very nasty crimes indeed. Possibly even murder.'

I whistled through my teeth. 'Serious allegations. Where did you hear them from?'

'Are they true?'

'Behave. You've known me for close to ten years. Do you really think I'd be involved in murder?'

'And I've been in journalism for close to thirty years and one thing I've learned is that people are never what they seem. Everyone's got skeletons in their closets, even the vicar's wife. And some of them are pretty fucking grim.'

'I've got skeletons, Roy, but they don't include murder. Now, have you got the information we were talking about?'

'I'm concerned, Dennis. I don't want any of this coming back to me.'

'It won't. Don't worry.'

'That's easy for you to say.'

'What do you mean, easy? I'm the one who's on the run. Look, I promise all you'll get out of it is a fucking decent story.'

'When? You keep telling me this, but so far I haven't got a thing to go on and I've put my neck on the line for you.'

I sighed and thought about it for a moment. 'It's Thursday now. You'll have your story by tomorrow.'

'I'd better have.'

'You will. So what's the address then?'

'What are you going to do to him?'

'I need to ask him some questions. That's all. He can solve a puzzle for me.'