“I don’t think you’re hearing me right, Billy,” he growls. “I told you what I want. Now, if you ain’t got it, we’ll have to see if we have better luck extracting it from your auntie.”
“He came in a nice car, Mr Sneddon,” says The Knife, his voice a reedy whisper, like wind through a graveyard. “It looks like one of those new BMW 7 Series.”
Uh-oh, I think. Not my pride and joy. But, oh dear, The Crim’s craggy, reddened face is already brightening. It is a most unpleasant sight. “Now that’s what I like to hear,” he says. “And it’ll cover the cost of your cousin’s misdemeanours, no problem.”
I shake my head, knowing I’m going to have to nip this one in the bud pretty sharpish. “That car belongs to me, Jim, and it’s not for sale. I bought it with the proceeds of my last fight.”
“I remember that last fight. Against Trevor ‘The Gibbon’ Hutton. I had a bet on it. Cost me five grand when you knocked him down in the eighth.” His expression suddenly darkens at the memory, as if this is somehow my fault.
“Well, you know how hard I had to work for it then, don’t you?” I tell him, making a final stand. “I’m not giving it up, no way.”
The Crim nods once to The Knife and I feel the touch of cold metal in the curve of skin behind my ear.
My heart sinks, especially as I still owe fifteen grand to the finance company. I love that car.
Although I feel like bursting into tears, I keep my cool. “You’ve changed your weapon, Johann,” I say calmly, inclining my head a little in his direction.
“A gun’s less messy,” The Crim replies, answering for him. He puts out a hand. “Now, unless you want The Knife here to be clearing the contents of your head off the tarpaulin, you’d better give me the keys.”
So, pride and joy or not, I have no choice but to hand them over.
The Crim thinks he’s doing me a favour by driving me home. Instead, it is akin to twisting the knife in a dying man.
“This really is a sweet piece of machinery,” he tells me as we sail smoothly through the wet night streets of the city, the tyres easily holding the slick surface of the tarmac. As if I don’t already know this. “Ah, this is what it’s all about,” he adds, sliding his filthy paws all over the steering wheel, and reclining in the Nasca leather seat. And he’s right, too. There’s nothing like the freedom of the open road, coupled with all the comforts the 21st Century has to offer; it’s like driving in your own front room. The problem is it’s now The Crim’s front room. And it’s his music too: a Back to the Seventies CD he picked up from his office, which is blaring out track after track of retro rubbish.
As we drive, a Range Rover containing The Knife and The Gang inside brings up the rear. The Crim tells me he never likes travelling in the same car as his two bodyguards. He strokes the car’s panel and tells me that they’re Neanderthals who don’t appreciate the finer things in life, although quite how Tiger Feet by Mud fits into this category is beyond me. He tells me all this, even though I am hugely uninterested, and when he drops me off, he even gives me a pat on the shoulder and requests that I punch Kevin for him, next time I see the treacherous bastard.
I tell him that I will, meaning it, and clamber lonely and humiliated from the car as the Range Rover pulls up behind us. The Knife is driving and he gives me a triumphant little smirk. The Gang just stares with bored contempt, like he’s viewing a side order of green vegetables. Then both cars pull away, and I’m left alone.
I used to be a handy middleweight boxer. I never troubled the top division but in a career spanning nine years and twenty-seven professional fights (seventeen wins, two draws and eight losses, before you ask), I managed to save up enough money to invest in property. I own a flat in Hackney outright, and I put down fifty percent on a house in Putney last year, which I’ve been doing up ever since.
But my main job these days is as a doorman. I don’t need the cash particularly, but it’s easy work. The place is called Stallions, not that there’s much of the stallion about any of the clientèle. They’re mainly middle-aged men with plenty of money. It’s billed as a gentleman’s establishment but, to be honest, it’s more of a high-class brothel with a bit of card-playing and drinking thrown in.
Two hours after being dropped off by Jim The Crim, I arrive at the door of the club in Piccadilly, freshly showered and dressed in a dickie bow and suit, having had to get a taxi all the way down here. Needless to say, I’m not in a good mood, but I’m on floor-duty tonight, which is some compensation.
The club itself is a lavish split-level room with cavernous ceilings, and was obviously kitted out by someone who liked the colour burgundy. It’s busy tonight, with all the tables taken, and the girls outnumbering the clients by less than two to one, which is rare. How it works is this: you pay an annual fee of several grand to be a member, but you don’t have to sleep with any of the women. You can just come and drink and play cards if you want to, but most people indulge in the more carnal pursuits. There are private rooms upstairs to which you take your chosen girl. You pay her cash, usually along the lines of £200 an hour, and then pay a separate room fee to the management which equates to the same amount. It’s pricey, but these are men without money worries and ladies with very generous looks.
As I pass the small, central dance-floor, I’m greeted by several of the girls. They wink and blow me kisses, and one – Chanya from Thailand – brushes against me like a cat as I pass, her expression inviting. But I know it’s only a bit of fun. She doesn’t want me. Like all the girls here, she’s after a ticket out, and someone of my standing simply hasn’t got the resources to provide that.
Still, the attention puts me in a better mood, and this lasts as long as it takes to round the dance-floor and take the three steps to the upper level. Because it’s then I spot the man who is my current nemesis, none other than The Crim himself.
This is a surprise. I’ve not seen The Crim in here before. He’s sitting at a corner booth talking animatedly to one of our regulars, the right honourable Stephen Humphrey MP, a former junior defence minister, who always seems to have plenty of money. There’s some skulduggery afoot, I’ve no doubt about that, and I wonder what it might be.
I watch them from a distance for a full minute as they hatch whatever evil plot they’re hatching, and I think they make a right pair. The Crim is a big lumpy ox of a man with looks to match, while the MP is tall and dapper, with every pore of his Savile Row besuited form oozing expensive education. He sports a quite magnificent head of richly curled, silver-white hair that makes him look like Julius Caesar on steroids. To be honest, I’ve heard it’s a very expensive rug, but then you hear a lot of intimate details in a place like this, not all of them pleasant, or true.
I’m not so bothered about all that at the moment, though. What I am bothered about is getting my BMW back, since it was taken from me under duress, as I think you’ll agree. Clearly, if The Crim’s here then so is the car. And what’s more I’ve got my spare keys on me. I’m taking a risk by repossessing it, of course, because The Crim is definitely not a man to cross, but I can’t bring myself to do nothing when I know that it’s probably in the underground car park, only yards away.
I take a look round for The Gang and The Knife, but they’re nowhere to be seen.
However, when I look back at the Crim’s booth, I see that one of the girls, Vanya, a tall, statuesque blonde from Slovakia with an icy smile and a model’s poise, has approached the table, and is leaning over talking to Humphrey. The Crim meanwhile is surreptitiously peeking down the top of her cleavage, and trying without success to be all nonchalant about it.
As I watch, The Crim reaches into his pocket and pulls out what look suspiciously like my car keys. With a reluctant expression, he hands them over, not to Humphrey, but to Vanya, and she gives the big ox an enthusiastic peck on the cheek. What the hell’s going on here, I wonder, as the politician gets up and the two men shake hands?