(2005) Rat Run (22 page)

Two days ago, three boys of a gang that pushes drugs were attacked and hung upside down from a roof, which was good, but today was better.'

'So, what was the big joke today, Dawn? And do hurry it up if this floor's to be done.'

'Yes, Miss. Of course, Miss. Today would make a dead man laugh, I promise you. On the estate, the dealer is untouchable. Everybody is frightened of him. Jason Penney. We all know his name. The police, who we never see, are alone in not knowing his name.

I don't know where he lives but we know his name -

don't speak it, I am afraid if I say it, but know the name. This morning I came out of my block to go to the bus - I am not going to be late - and I hear the sirens. The Amersham now is filled with police. I follow the sirens. I see Jason Penney. It is very funny, Miss . . . Jason Penney is tied to a lamp post, tied at his ankles with tape and his arms are behind him and round the lamp post and the wrists are tied. He has this cloth in his mouth and cannot shout and there is more tape over his eyes. It is better, Miss, more funny

. . . Also tied to the lamp post, with rope, is his dog.

The dog is a brute. The dog strains to attack the policemen who want to come close to free Jason Penney. The dog does not understand - it will not allow them to be near. None of the police will approach the dog. They are on their radios. He has been there all night, with his dog, and his woman will not telephone the police because he deals heroin and cocaine, and the neighbours, all old people, will not telephone because that involves them. He wants to be freed, Jason Penney does, because he has been there all night and he needs to pee. But the dog keeps the police back. He has to piss. It's all down his leg, steaming. I promise, you can see the steam because the morning is cold. Everybody there, watching, is laughing at Jason Penney. Nobody before, nobody would laugh at him. We are all laughing. The police bring an officer with a gun. It is the Amersham, not Baghdad. Because of the dog they have a gun, and the dog will have to be shot. I would not have complained but this woman pushed to the front. She works at the Dogs' Home, at Battersea. I clean the offices here, she cleans the pens there. She said the dog must not be shot, must be put to sleep.'

'Tranquillized, Dawn, that's the word

tranquillized.'

'Yes, Miss, put to sleep. Everyone now is shouting at the police that the dog must not be killed. We wait some more. Jason Penney, he cannot wait, he pisses again in his trouser. Another man comes and he shoots at the dog with a dart, but that is not enough.

The dog is too powerful for one dart. Another is used.

Then we have to stay back until the dog is asleep.

Only when it is snoring, like a man with beer, do the police go forward. What I then heard - because Jason Penney is finished, cannot make fear any more and we have laughed at him - a woman who knows took the police to a place in the children's play area where the drugs are stored, and the police took them. It is what I heard. What I know, the police cut the wrist binding and put handcuffs on him. He will never come back. Nor will his woman and his baby. We are rid of them.'

'I have to say, Dawn, that vigilantism can be ugly and is dangerous.'

'No, Miss, you do not live on the Amersham. You do not know how rare it is for us to laugh. I promise you, Miss, if you had seen the steam on his trouser leg then you would have laughed, however wrong it was.

I am happy . . . '

She squeezed the last of the water off her mop and it dripped back into the bucket, and from the high windows above the landing the sunlight glistened on the tiles.

'I think it will be dry, Miss, when the gentlemen and the ladies come.'

The trawler rode the light swell, made seven knots, and pulled the net behind it on the North Sea's bed.

The speed Harry made with the
Anneliese Royal
was enough to keep the mouth of the net open. The radar had shown him that fish were there but he could not know till the net was retrieved what he would find in the 'cod end', the pouch where the catch was trapped.

Billy was out at the stern watching for the drag on the tackle that would tell them they had snagged an obstruction. He had the boy, Paul, with him in the wheel-house and he talked of what he loved.

'All done by sail by men who knew the sea and had the skills handed down to them. A hundred years ago those men were lucky to make a wage of twenty shillings a week, a pound of our money a week.

Brixham men were the finest in all England, could handle the deep hull and the long keel in any weather, brilliant men - and they fought. Fought so bad when they muscled in on the Newlyn fishing port that there were pitched battle riots there and the Royal Navy sent a destroyer to make peace. In 1896, imagine it, a destroyer with four-inch guns sent to break the fighting. Now, look, I've every device science can make to take me where I'm going and show me where the fish are. A hundred years back, under sail with a sloop rig, they had only their experience to guide them. No radar, no GPS. They were fishing right round the waters of the UK - Channel, North Sea, Atlantic, Irish Sea, the Western Approaches - and the skippers knew where they were from a lead line because there were no charts. They'd smear tallow - that's grease from sheep fat - on the lead at the end of the line, and the length of line out would tell the skipper the depth and when the line came in there were scraps of the sea bed stuck in the tallow, and they'd recognize it.

They could "taste" the bottom from the tallow and know where they were. They was brilliant men -

and the sea was filled with fish, like they were shoulder to shoulder, belly to back. They were the best.'

Harry sat in his swing chair and sipped the coffee the boy had brought him, and the boy lounged back against the chart table. He thought the boy was interested. He heard the clump of boots and saw Billy at the open wheel-house door.

'It was Brixham men, in 1837, who sailed right up the Channel, right out into the North Sea, and they were going for the Dogger Bank between Tynemouth and the Danish coast, and they found the Silver Pits, just south of the Bank. No lie, in one haul of the trawl, one boat brought in two thousand and forty pairs of flatfish, sole . . . They were pioneers, wonderful men.'

'And we're crap. Right, Dad?' Billy chuckled. 'Any chance of some work getting done?'

The boy followed his father away, back to the stern.

Soon the trawl would be over and the diesels would turn the capstans to drag the nets in, and they would spill the catch down into the fish room - no bloody way would there be 2040 pairs of sole, not even if the whole of Lowestoft's fleet was out, but it was Harry's dream that he would find an old boat and work it back to seaworthiness and, if he were blessed, the boy would help him sail her . . . if Ricky Capel freed him.

If he were ever freer than the catch, struggling and thrashing, in the cod end of the trawl.

The morning sunlight splashed through the windscreen. Ricky sat in the front passenger seat and was driven over Tower Bridge into the City of London. He looked away from his cousins and down on the river-boats, on the column of barges being towed

downstream and the pleasure-craft with tourists on the open deck. There'd come a time, Ricky reckoned, when the cousins outgrew their usefulness to him.

Like old shoes, old socks, too holed and too worn.

What then? That was his problem: he did not know. In the future, for another day . . . Right now, they headed for the narrow streets of the City. Charlie reckoned the City might be a step too far, but acknowledged the market-place there. Benji had identified the hole, then had seemed to back off and shelve his enthusiasm. Davey hadn't an opinion on it.

Three guys had gone down in the Crown Court in south London. Twelve years, nine years and eight years. 'Dumb/ Ricky had said. 'Bloody mad.' Charlie had murmured that the Assets Recovery Agency was now looking for the profits the trio had made from a trade of seven million a year turnover and that was big bread, and Benji had stated the obvious: cocaine in the City was good money and there was a vacuum in the market-place. 'Fucking idiots,' Ricky had called them. 'Fucking idiots to flash their money.' Davey's job: the car had been swept that morning for bugs, was in a secure garage each night. It was an ordinary saloon that attracted no attention. Inside the car they could talk.

Turning in his seat, smiling the baby grin at Benji, Ricky asked, 'You going to fight me on it?'

'You'll do what's best, Ricky. It's off our territory.

What I'm saying . . . '

'Go on, say it.'

'We don't have people here. It's not our place.'

'Big bucks. What's your take on it, Charlie?'

'The wankers want cocaine, can't sit in front of their little screens and press the tits without it. We know that. We know also that they're mega-rich, can't spend it fast enough. But unless they're dosed up, they don't perform and get ditched. Against that, we've no organization up here, we don't know people. We don't know the suppliers and we don't know the dealers - we don't know who to trust.'

'It's just to have a look,' Ricky said softly, and still smiled, but his eyes played the menace they'd recognize. 'Just to get a feel.'

He rarely came into the City. He would have

needed Charlie to tell him how many millions he had invested - after laundering - in bonds, shares and trusts that were handled behind the Monument, in Cheapside, Leadenhall Street or Cornhill. His face was pressed against the window. He watched the ones Charlie called the 'wankers', young men striding the pavements, or loitering outside for a cigarette, or carrying sandwiches and coffee beakers from the fast-food counters. Some of them, a few - dosed up on snorted cocaine - might have taken responsibility for seeing those bonds, shares, trusts grow. Other than the apartment in Chelsea Harbour, he had no use for the money Charlie washed for him. To spend it was to flash it, to flash it was to be a 'fucking idiot', to be a fucking idiot was to go down in a Crown Court for a dozen years. What was it for?

It bothered him. Late at night, Joanne's back to him, looking at the bloody ceiling, hearing the goddamn clock chime downstairs, it turned in his mind. What was it for? He was the clever boy who'd never been lifted, never pushed himself up the snouts of the Crime Squad or the Criminal Intelligence Service, lived like a bloody virgin with his legs crossed in Bevin Close. He didn't do yachts down in the South of France, didn't do private jets to the Mediterranean, didn't do big charity bashes with celebrities and camera flashlights . . . and didn't do time. Every move he made was weighed; each place he spoke his mind was swept for bugs. No mates to be with like his grandfather had had, or like Mikey, with his friends from inside . . . Percy had never had power; neither had Mikey. Ricky had power.

They went past banks, the old buildings used by the traders, the new towers for the insurance people, the wine bars they filled during the lunch hour and for binge-drinking after work, the sandwich outlets at which they snatched their lunch, the subways they poured from in the mornings and dived into in the evenings. For an hour they drove. Davey let the traffic hold them, was not impatient when they were

blocked by delivery vans. The cousins all kept their peace. Ricky swallowed the sights, absorbed them.

He thought - and it frustrated him, but he did not share it - that risk ruled him . . . just a local boy and happy to do a patch of south London. No flair, no balls. Safe and comfortable. Around him there was a market, bigger than anything he'd ever gone for, of cocaine addiction, and the market was holed because three 'fucking idiots' had gone down. 'Don't try to run till you've learned to walk,' Charlie always said.

They were up by Aldgate and turning into Jewry Street. Davey had taken him on two full City circuits.

Ricky said, 'I've seen enough. God, what a bloody awful place. This is how it'll be. Start at the bottom and test it. I'd say a sandwich bar. Put a new man -

better, a new woman - into a sandwich bar, just one of those holes in the wall, and sell out of it. Don't touch any of the dealers or the suppliers who are already there. Set up from scratch. A new man or a new woman who is a cut-out. Get some kid from the north, wherever, someone who's not known or doesn't know us, to act as courier - take the stuff in and bring the cash out. Wrap it round with cut-outs. Let it run for a year, then maybe it's another sandwich bar. There's a hole to be filled and we're going to fill it. You OK, guys?'

Benji said quietly, 'One thing, Ricky. What about the Scrubs? What about gaol delivery? The Scrubs or the City? I mean, you can only take on so much new stuff. Which comes first?'

'Both of them. They both come first.'

They all nodded with enthusiasm.

'Spot on, Ricky,' Benji said.

Polly ducked her head to the policeman. That gesture, and she was a master of it - humble and requiring help - always opened doors for her. Ludvik was supposed to have phoned ahead, had promised he would, and she had told him, with true sincerity creasing her face, that all she wanted was a few minutes'

poking time around the cafe: 'You know, Ludvik, only to get a sense of where we're at. I wouldn't want to waste your time, and I'm better on my own.'

For a moment the policeman hesitated. If the phone call had been made - it probably had not - the officer guarding the cafe's front door had not been warned to expect her. Her ducked head, a glimpse of her knee below her skirt, her smile and the flash of her diplomatic card were sufficient for him to stand aside.

Excellent . . . She had dreaded delay, a radio trans-mission to a senior officer, a senior officer speaking to a lord high panjandrum, and her left to kick her heels.

The Czechs of the BIS could share with her, but she would not reciprocate. The cafe's door was splintered at the lock where it had been battered open. If she had been delayed, explanations would have been

demanded of her, and she had no intention of offering them.

She went inside, and pointedly pulled the door shut behind her. She wanted no witnesses.