And then it came to me, and I was puzzled because I wasn’t sure what the information meant. I’d questioned him at his home, and the reason was that Tony Franks had lived on the very same street on which thirteen-year-old paperboy Robert Jones had last been seen alive on a cold, dark February morning all those months ago.
Iversson
‘So you can’t tell me nothing about it?’ said Johnny, looking at me like he honestly thought I might suddenly change my mind.
‘Not at the moment.’ I pulled the cap low over my face, then climbed into the passenger side of the red Mercedes van that would be used to transport Krys Holtz the two miles from Heavenly Girls to the lock-up in Finchley Joe had rented the previous day where we’d be changing vehicles. Johnny got in the driver’s side and took the car out onto City Road.
‘I hope it’s nothing that’s going to get me in trouble, Max. I like a quiet life, you know.’
‘As do I, Johnny, which is something you should have thought about when your recommendation almost got me blown away.’
‘Give us a Scooby.’
‘A what?’
‘A Scooby Doo, clue. Just so I’ve got some idea. Is it something illegal?’
‘I’ve asked you to steal two vehicles, both of which are going to end up burnt out. What do you think?’
‘I think I’m fucking nervous.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘Where are we heading, then?’
‘A pick-up in Muswell Hill.’ I gave him the address and the main road it was off. ‘You know how to get there?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’ It was half ten and long dark. The streets were fairly quiet, it being a Monday night, and a light rain was falling. ‘So, I might not be needed after tonight, then?’
‘Not if all goes according to plan, but don’t bet on it. It might take a while.’
We didn’t speak for the rest of the journey. Johnny continued to look nervous and uncomfortable but he drove without losing concentration and within fifteen minutes we’d pulled up outside Joe’s place, a flat in a slightly worn-out-looking redbrick townhouse. I rang up to him on the mobile and a couple of minutes later Joe, Tugger Lewis and Mike Kalinski came out of the door. Tugger was dressed in a suit while Joe and Kalinski wore similar boiler suits to the ones Johnny and I were wearing, and both were carrying holdalls. Tugger came round to my door while the other two went straight to the back of the van and climbed inside. I stepped out and let him in. ‘Johnny, Tugger. Tugger, Johnny. You two are going to be spending some time together. Johnny, do whatever Tugger says.’
‘Hold on, Max. I thought-’
‘I’m going in the back. Less attention that way.’
I gave Johnny the address of Heavenly Girls, shut the passenger door, and got in the back with Joe and Kalinski. Joe gave a double knock on the interior panel separating the back from the front, and Johnny pulled away from the kerb.
Ten minutes later, the van parked up and I heard Tugger getting out to feed the meter. I looked at my watch. It was five to eleven.
An hour passed, and we sat there in relative silence, occasionally hearing Johnny’s muffled voice jabbering on about something in the front, and the odd bored-sounding reply from Tugger. Traffic on the road seemed quiet. Joe had watched the place the previous night and Krys hadn’t shown. It was anyone’s guess whether he’d come again this evening, but if he did we were prepared.
I watched Kalinski as he sat staring up at the van’s ceiling, chainsmoking Rothmans. To be honest, I didn’t much like him. He was too flash; a typical robber really. When I’d met him the previous night, he’d been dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, with gold cufflinks on his shirtsleeves and a thick gold Rolex any self-respecting mugger would have killed him for. I don’t like people who think they’re bigshots, and Kalinski definitely rated himself as one. Joe had told me that he’d claimed to have earned more than a million quid down the years through armed robbery and the investment of the proceeds in dope deals. He might well have done, but I didn’t like the way he thought it was worth boasting about. You could tell he thought he was better than us, sort of a cut above us riffraff who had to earn their livings by actually working, though fuck knows why. A thief and a dope peddler. He was hardly royalty, was he?
Still, as Joe had pointed out, he knew how to handle a gun, which meant he was less likely to use it. The last thing we needed was a shootout in the brothel. The whole thing had to be neat and professional. That way, as always, lay the route to success. And if he didn’t want to say much, then that was fine by me. Johnny more than made up for his brooding silence.
I sat back in the seat and relaxed, unaffected by the boredom of the wait. I’d learnt how to be patient a long time back. It was one of the first things you got used to in the army.
Another hour passed. Then two. Kalinski shuffled about, stretched, muttered the odd curse, and at one point told us a story about how he’d once been out with a Lady someone or other who had apparently liked nothing better than to have Kalinski dress up in a balaclava, complete with sawn-off shooter, and pound her from behind while calling her a dirty rich whore. Kalinski seemed to think this made him come across like a stud, but I thought that it would be a bit of an insult if some chick I was sleeping with asked me to put a mask over my face, although in Lady whateverhername-was’s case, I could see her point. Kalinski was not what you’d call a handsome sort. He had a face like a frog and pockmarked skin.
Neither I nor Joe reacted much to his story and, seeing that he hadn’t impressed us with his sexual forays into the upper classes, he settled back into sullen silence, which was just the way we liked it.
In the front, I heard Johnny say that he needed a mickey bliss, like some annoying fucking kid. Tugger, once he’d deciphered what he was trying to say, told him to piss in an empty bottle of mineral water, but Johnny said fuck that, he would wait. He didn’t sound too pleased.
At ten to three I heard a car pull up somewhere across the street and I tensed, stretching, hoping that this was it. But Tugger made no signal. Just another punter looking for an enjoyable end to the evening.
At three o’clock I heard the sound of Johnny finally succumbing to nature’s demand as he took a leak into the bottle, continuing for what seemed like an impressively long time.
At five past, I turned to Joe and said that we might as well call it a night. Kalinski grunted something in agreement, and Joe, who’d been half-asleep, nodded. I banged the interior wall four times. Thirty seconds later the engine was on, and Johnny was pulling away from the kerb.
I lit a cigarette and hoped we didn’t have to do this for too many more nights. But that, I suppose, is what warfare is all about. Hours, sometimes days, of long waiting, then a few stunning moments of adrenalin and excitement that are gone before you know it, but live on in the memory, etched with pride, for years afterwards.
Tuesday, five days ago
Gallan
I hadn’t been down that road since the investigation had wound down all those months ago. It was an attractive tree-lined street of large semi-detached whitewashed villas that meandered north of the Lower Holloway Road past the greenery of Highbury Fields. An oasis of calm in the midst of the bustling city. From where I stood now, looking down the incline in the direction of Clerkenwell, I could see the imposing spire of Union Chapel on Upper Street as it towered upwards above the trees that peppered the bottom of the park in the foreground. So often London’s residents and councils liked to tag the word ‘village’ onto the end of their middle-class ghettoes in a usually futile bid to create the illusion of community and push up the area’s property prices, but the description actually seemed to fit here. You could almost be in the middle of rural Gloucestershire. Even the traffic wasn’t that bad. It was a place that reeked of money.