‘Who are you?’ said a belligerent male voice over the intercom.
‘Police,’ I said, holding my warrant card up to one of the cameras. Tina did the same with the other one. ‘We’re here to see Nicholas Tyndall.’
‘You got an appointment?’ grunted the bloke on the other end, in a way that told us he knew we hadn’t.
‘We don’t need an appointment,’ I told him. ‘Let us in, please.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Well, have a look round and make sure, because if he isn’t we’ll swamp this whole borough looking for him, and if we can’t find him then we’ll assume he’s hiding from us and we’ll come back here with territorial support officers, knock down this nice big door, issue you with a search warrant and rip this place apart from top to bottom. All right?’
The intercom clicked, and we were left standing there for what felt like a long time. Neither of us spoke, not when it was probable that whatever we said would be listened to. We didn’t even look at each other. Simply stood there.
After about two minutes, I went to press the intercom again when I heard the sound of feet clumping heavily down stairs. We stepped back from the door, and I experienced a momentary spurt of adrenalin as someone on the other side released the locks and pulled back the bolts. Then the door came open quickly and I was looking up at the smiling face of Nicholas Tyndalclass="underline" six feet four and sixteen stone of murderous charm.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said in a booming but not unfriendly voice, pulling on a black puffa jacket and stepping outside.
Before I had time to reply, he shut the door, slid between us and started down the steps. Tina and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows and I shrugged, turning to follow him.
‘Slow down, Mr Tyndall,’ I said as we got to the bottom of the steps. ‘Anyone would think you were running away from something.’
He stopped and waited for us, the smile sitting easily on his face. Tyndall looked like a man who smiled a lot. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy really: early thirties, tall, well built, with clearly defined patrician features and smooth coffee skin. He was completely bald, but the style fitted him so well that it was obvious he was hairless by choice rather than fate. Today, he was dressed casually in Levi’s, khaki Timberlands and a white T-shirt under the jacket. He could have been a clothes model for a company like Gap. Everything looked brand new, including him.
‘What can I do for you, then?’ he asked.
‘I think you know why we’re here,’ said Tina sharply, keen to show she wasn’t intimidated by Tyndall’s reputation.
The grin grew wider as he sized her up. ‘Do I look like Mystic Meg? I can’t read minds, otherwise I’d have been outside waiting for you when you turned up. You’re going to have to give me a clue.’
‘We need you to come down to the station and make a statement,’ I told him.
As we caught him up, he turned and began walking steadily down the road, careful to avoid a young mother pushing her two young kids in a twin buggy. She smiled at him and glared at us.
‘About what?’
‘About what you know regarding the events at Heathrow on Wednesday.’
‘I don’t know nothing about them.’
‘We’ll be the judges of that,’ I said, grabbing him by the arm and slowing him up. It was quite an effort, and probably not the safest move in the world, but it had to be done. You start kow-towing to the big boys and you never stop. ‘We need you to accompany us down the station.’
His eyes fell to where my hand was on his jacket, and then came back to me. The expression in them was dark and cold, and even if I hadn’t known his reputation I would have been able to tell that, for all his smiles and friendly greetings, this was a very dangerous and ruthless man. ‘I don’t like people I don’t know trying to manhandle me,’ he said, his tone threatening.
I held his gaze, but let my hand drop. ‘I want you to take this conversation seriously, Mr Tyndall. We’re not going to chase round after you begging for your co-operation, we’re demanding it. Three close associates of yours were involved in trying to rob a drug deal that ended in six deaths, and since it’s well known that they don’t even so much as breathe without your say-so, it’s a fair bet to assume you organized it.’
‘Prove it.’ The classic career thug’s riposte.
‘We intend to, but first we want you to come down the station.’
‘I ain’t got time at the moment. You want to talk to me, you talk here. Otherwise, contact my lawyer.’
‘All right, then. When was the last time you saw Ashley Grant? Otherwise known as Strangleman.’
Tyndall looked as if he was going to answer me with a wisecrack, then obviously thought better of it. ‘A few days back. Monday, I think it was.’
‘Whereabouts did you see him?’
‘At the Turnham social club,’ he answered, referring to his organization’s unofficial HQ off the Holloway Road. ‘I play pool down there sometimes.’
‘Yes, we know,’ said Tina, pulling out her notebook. ‘Quite a lot, apparently.’
‘Listen, I don’t think I want to carry on with this conversation any more. I don’t like your attitude. Either of you. You want to speak to me, I want my lawyer present.’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘If you really have got nothing to do with this, then it’ll look a lot better if you co-operate, won’t it? And lawyers and co-operation aren’t two words that normally go together. So talk to us now.’
‘I’ve got nothing to say. I saw Strangleman Monday. I know him and so I spoke to him about this and that, but he’s not that close to me no more, whatever you lot might think. I don’t trust him, and I think he feels the same way about me. We used to do a bit of work together but not any more. He never mentioned nothing about a robbery.’
‘Where do you think he could have got the information from?’
Tyndall gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Fuck knows. I ain’t got a clue, and that’s the truth.’
‘Do you know a Robert O’Brien?’ asked Tina.
‘I know of him, yeah. Most people round these parts do.’
‘Have you ever met with him for any reason?’
He shook his head with a humourless smile. ‘Somehow I don’t think so.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, he’s the last bloke in the world I’d want to meet up with.’
‘Why?’
Tyndall sighed loudly, again stepping aside as an older lady in her sixties walked past on the pavement with a collie. She didn’t give him quite such a pleasant look as the young mother, but hurried past head down, as if fearful he’d catch her eye. Perhaps she’d been the owner of the labrador whose head had ended up in the Asian family’s kitchen.
‘Why? I’ll tell you why. Because when he used to hang round with that fucking nutter Krys Holtz they had a run-in with one of my cousins. Rene Phillips. Remember him?’ We both shook our heads. ‘He was a doorman at a club in Holborn. One night he kicked out Danny Fitzgerald, another member of Krys Holtz’s little crew, because Fitzgerald was being pissed and lairy and upsetting some of the clientele. But the thing is, Fitzgerald didn’t want to go, so him and Rene had a bit of a tear-up, and Rene won. None of the other doormen would get involved because they knew who Fitzgerald was, but Rene didn’t scare easy. None of my family do.’ He gave us both a look as he said this, and once again I forced myself to hold his gaze. ‘Anyway, a couple of days later, Rene was leaving his flat when he got a tap on his head with an iron bar. The next thing he knows he’s woken up bound hand and foot in Krys Holtz’s workshop. You must have heard of that?’ I nodded. So did Tina. All the area’s coppers had heard of Krys Holtz’s infamous workshop. ‘They were all there. Krys, Fitzgerald, Mick Noble and Slim Robbie O’Brien. And by the time they’d finished with him he was walking with a permanent limp, had all his fingers broken and part of his ear missing, and needed plastic surgery to get rid of the burns on his face.