What he thought of most often, reflected on most frequently, was that he fitted no stereotype as a police officer in the city of Derby. Wouldn't have been in the force if he hadn't been a dog-handler. He had few ambitions and had never shown an interest in sitting the sergeants' examination; there were plenty who did and were fast-tracked towards it. In fact, nothing that was memorable or worth a commendation had ever intruded on his career. Most certainly, if he had not been a dog-handler, he would have resigned rather than face the bloody binge-drunk rioters in the city centre every weekend but he had been spared that since he had taken on Smack and now Midge. Wasn't in a hurry that morning, and after the news and the weather forecast, bloody awful, he caught up with last night's Evening Telegraph and the Ram's predicted line-up for the coming Saturday's match. Then he poured some more well-stewed tea.
Few slept well in the cells at HMP Belmarsh. Most woke early, at the clangs of unlocking doors, the rattle of chains and the stamp of boots. Some did not sleep at all and gazed at the ceiling bulb behind its cover or the glow through the barred window of the perimeter walls' arc-lights.
Ozzie Curtis had not slept.
He burned, and hatred was a fire in him.
Didn't reckon that Ollie had missed out on sleep. The dozy bastard relied on him, leaned on him and left the worrying — and hatred — to his elder brother.
He checked his watch, did so every five minutes, and thought it was about the time it would happen.
If it wasn't for the work and the planning — the hating and burning — that Ozzie put in, Ollie would have been running a stall most likely on the Columbia Road flower market; Ozzie had always split down the middle line, fifty-fifty, but had done the worrying. To show for Ozzie's worry, Ollie had a pad in Kent of the same value as his own, the same bloody investment income and the adjacent Spanish villa.
They were going down, both of them; with the jury in protection and the judge bloody poisoned against them, they were looking at long bird. They would be bloody old and bloody decrepit when — if — they emerged from a prison's gates, and they would be without authority.
The fire burned in him because the man with a beard, and his feet in bloody sandals, had taken their money, then grassed them up.
In his mind, flames burned.
Bright flames flickered, flared, then spread.
He looked again at his watch.
At that hour, in a distant suburb of east London, most households slept. Only a minimal few had been roused by alarm clocks and the automatic switching on of radios.
The few were those who had furthest to travel, those on the earliest shifts, those who were key-holders and had to open up factories, businesses and offices…and among the few who were about their trade before dawn were the three men in an old saloon car, with substituted number-plates, who had cursed at the stench of petrol and had not dared to light the chain of cigarettes on which they would normally have survived.
The car was parked beyond the end of the road, and the driver was left with it. He did not have to be told that he should keep the engine running. First out was the Nobbler, and in a gloved fist he carried a plastic supermarket bag tightly wrapped round a half-brick; The second man held the, source of the petrol stench: a fuel-filled milk bottle with a wad of old shirt rammed into its neck. He had in his pocket a snap-open Zippo lighter.
In the world of Benny Edwards, two options of persuasion existed. They were the choice of the carrot or the less welcome alternative of the stick. The choice was gone, and with it had disappeared his client's cash and a segment of his own reputation' of success: the alternative of the stick, however, remained. It was now of great importance to him — his hard-won reputation relied on his ability to deliver hung juries or acquittals. For the stick, given the chance, he would have gone along the route of a child's face slashed and disfigured with a razor-sharp blade, or a woman's legs hit by a car's bumper as she walked along a pavement. But Wright's daughter was not there, nor his wife, and the opportunity to send a message from either of them while they lingered in Accident and Emergency was not available. Early the previous afternoon the driver of the car, ducked down in his seat had watched as the child and the woman were hustled with their bags through the front door and the gate by uniformed and plain-clothes filth, and dumped without ceremony in the back of a police wagon. When they had sped out into the traffic stream their road had been blocked by a car with a blue lamp flashing on the roof and the chance of pursuit had not been there. But a message needed sending and could still be sent. A, message was the least of Ozzie Curtis's demands on Benny Edwards. He who pays the piper calls the tune: that was obvious to the Nobbler. A message would reach the bastard Wright, and he had been told of long arms and longer memories. There was a good chance that the stick, on fire, would dictate the bastard's decision in the jury room.
It was raining. The pavement shimmered under the street-lights. The two men, walking briskly, carrying the half-brick and the milk bottle, had hoods over their heads and scarves on the lower half of their faces. The Nobbler presumed that a junior filth would have been left inside the house — there was an unmarked car by the front gate, empty — and that a camera lens would have been mounted above the front door. Better to presume everything. They went past a closed van, with the logo of a window-cleaner on its side and ladders on the roof, and the house, the target, was now less than fifty paces ahead. The Nobbler quickened his stride, and the man behind him.
Benny Edwards was familiar with success. He would not have admitted to complacency, but success — and the enhancement of his reputation — came often enough. He backed his nous, his instinct, and it had been wrong, which had confused him. The money had been taken; the deal had been done; end of bloody story. What had gone wrong? When news had reached him — second-hand, via that callow shit-face of a solicitor — of the new security ring thrown round the jurors, he had gulped in astonishment, but his own people had seen the coach pull away from Snaresbrook and the windows had been covered with newspaper. Four days earlier, at home in his corner jacuzzi, soaking and relaxed, he would never have thought — not for a bloody moment — that Julian Wright, the bastard, would be the one to play the goddamn hero, take the money and piss all over a deal. The thought of it was beyond his comprehension. He had seen nothing in the man, or in the bloody demands, bank statements and credit-card sheets, that had rung warning bells. The bastard had been as pliable as a bloody wet turd. More important, he had left the Nobbler looking like an idiot and an incompetent, and that hurt.
'You ready for it?' Benny Edwards spoke from the side of his mouth.