‘I’m closed,’ was all she said.
I shrugged as if I was easy either way. ‘I’m not buying,’ I said.
‘Then fuck off.’ No rancour; nothing personal. But no give, either.
‘I’m just looking for someone you know. Dennis—’
‘I said fuck off.’ She put a warning finger in my face. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘Well, that’s true. My name’s Castor. Felix Castor. My friends call me Fix.’ I held out a hand, which she didn’t even look at. Instead she just got up and made to walk around the table, past me towards the bar. Having a good deal more tenacity than sense, I jumped up too and stepped into her way. She really wasn’t talclass="underline" her head was only on a level with my fourth rib.
She stopped. There was a silence, which started with her and then moved on out across the bar. Without turning around, I knew we’d just become a local centre of attention.
‘Sport,’ she said, in the same cold tone, ‘you really don’t want to do that.’
‘Maybe not,’ I conceded. ‘I really do want to meet Dennis Peace, though. Maybe you could tell him I’m looking for him. Felix Castor. He can get my number from Bourbon Bryant, or leave a message for me here.’
‘You’d better move aside now,’ was all Carla said.
I moved aside. She glanced up at me once: a hard, unreadable look. Then she went on past me to the bar, and there was a collective breathing out in a number of different keys.
Okay, so my intended charm offensive had fallen a little flat. Well, in terms of charm, anyway: I’d managed the offensive part well enough. Never mind. Bourbon had given me some food for thought, and some leads to follow: enough to be going on with for now.
The rain was coming down again heavily, and the slick black asphalt of Soho Square reflected the fragmented glitter of a few car headlights like shooting stars in a clear sky. It wasn’t cold, though: in fact it felt good after the canned air of the crypt-like bar. I didn’t even turn my coat collar up as I walked.
It was well after midnight now, and there weren’t many people around. Two heavy-set guys – one of them very, very tall – were talking in murmurs at the edge of the pavement: they stepped to either side to let me pass in between them, one of them flicking a cigarette away over his shoulder.
I’d left the car on the other side of the square, so the quickest way was right through the cramped little park area in the middle. I rounded the Tudor folly that used to be an ice-cream stand and the further gate came into view: it was closed, which wasn’t a good sign. A few more steps brought me level with it, and I gave it a tug. Nothing doing: they’d locked it for the night.
I turned around, to find the two men I’d walked past moments before now heading straight towards me. ‘Gate’s locked,’ I said, mildly. I wasn’t looking for trouble, and I didn’t automatically assume that they were: true, they were still heading towards me even though they knew now that there was no through road. But maybe they were hard of hearing: there’s an innocent explanation for most things if you keep an open mind.
‘Good,’ said the guy on the left, speaking from way back in his throat. He drew a knife from his belt in a smooth, practised motion. The one on the right, the bigger of the two, who had eyebrows so thick they looked like bottle brushes, smacked his fist into his palm. Oh well, I only said most things: I guess this was the exception that proved the rule.
They kept on coming. Over their shoulder I could see the street, which was empty in both directions: no help there. I braced myself to give them as much of a fight as I could – but they were both faster and slicker than I expected. They left the path and peeled off to either side of me, so that I couldn’t keep both of them in view at once. I backed away to avoid being sandwiched, but the locked gate was right behind me and two steps was all the backing room I had. I kept darting my stare back to the taller guy whenever he moved, because he looked like the business end of the partnership even though he hadn’t produced a weapon. That was all the opening the other guy needed: he did a standing jump, slamming into me hard and knocking my feet from under me.
I hit the gate with his shoulder still wedged against my chest, and he put all of his weight into it so that the breath hiccupped agonisingly out of my lungs. I slithered down onto the crazy paving in a dead slump, and they were both on me before I could get up. I twisted wildly, in the hope that the knife would get tangled up in the thick fabric of my coat or go in obliquely and miss all the many vital organs that nature sprinkles so liberally through our body cavities – but for some reason the blow didn’t come. I carried on thrashing, and the knife-man almost fell over his colleague as we bucked and writhed together on the cold, wet stones.
The knife-man cursed, and some stuff that must have fallen out of his pockets or maybe out of mine clanged against the fence, then clattered away across the rain-slick stone. I jabbed an elbow into his throat, but without much force – and there was enough muscle there to stop the blow from being anything more than a minor irritant. He punched me in the mouth a couple of times just to get my attention, then once more for the sheer fun of the thing: after which the one with the eyebrows hauled me to my feet, unresisting, his massive fist clamped on my throat. As I came up, though, my hand closed on a stubby metal cylinder that had fallen between my arm and my body. I brought it with me.
The big guy was even bigger than I’d realised. He lifted me clear of the ground, so that my own weight began to choke me even more effectively than his constricting fingers. His heavy-featured face leered into mine. He had a very wide mouth, with too many teeth in it.
‘Knock it off, Po. You’re killing him,’ the knife-man snapped. His voice was so deep and harsh, it sounded like he was spitting up razor blades.
‘I thought that was the idea,’ the big guy rumbled. With my throat clamped shut, I couldn’t inhale: as the tall man’s breath passed over me in a hot, fetid wave, I was able to appreciate the upside of that position.
‘Bring him down here. I’ll tell you when to fucking kill him.’
With a snarl, the taller man dropped his forearm an inch or so, letting my toes touch the ground.
Frowning in concentration, the knife-man judiciously adjusted the height of his colleague’s extended arm – a millimetre this way, a touch that – so that I’d be able to avoid choking myself so long as I didn’t actually try to move. It reminded me of a dentist adjusting his chair: I wished it hadn’t.
I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but he was an ugly son of a bitch. He didn’t exude the sheer physical menace his heavily-eyebrowed friend did, but there was something wrong with his face; with the proportions of it. The jaw was subtly too long, the eyes set too low. It was like a face that someone had got tired of halfway, screwed up and thrown away. And then this guy had fished it out of the basket and reused it.
‘So now we talk,’ he said at last, his voice the same broken-edged growl.
‘You . . . first . . .’ I mumbled thickly. The bastard had split my lip.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Me first. My name’s Zucker. My friend here is Po. And I’ve got sad news for you, Castor. My friend is not your friend. My friend wants to bite your throat out.’
‘Sorry . . . to hear it,’ I managed.
‘I’ll bet,’ he hissed, his mouth up close to my ear. His breath had a sour stink to it too. Why couldn’t I be intimidated by people with good personal hygiene?