59 Minutes (27 page)

‘But he hasn’t phoned since Tuesday.’

‘Not a word.’

I looked at the clock and so did Rachel but she showed
no sign of moving.

‘Is your work far?’

‘Thirty yards. I rep in a car. A Blue Mondeo. My first
call isn’t until ten and it’s only a mile away. Fancy a cup of tea.’

I nodded and she vanished into the kitchen. I had no
idea why the change in attitude. Like Maria’s change of mind in
Spain
, women
seemed a mystery to me at the moment.

I got up and went to the window. The morning was
coming on strong and it looked like the sun was going to be a winner. I spotted
Rachel’s blue Mondeo and for a split second I saw a figure to the left of the
car before he disappeared round the corner.

On gut feel I stepped back from the window, counted to
thirty and stepped back again. The figure was there and, when I reappeared, he
bolted. I recognised him and my heart froze. It was one of the goon patrol. How
the hell did they find me here?

I did my party trick again and caught him out again.
Not the brightest light-bulb in the box. Rachel came back in with two mugs of
tea.

‘I need to go,’ I said.

‘Fuck me. One minute I’m throwing you out and you hang
around like a wet puppy. I make you a tea and you want to go. Where to - the
hostel?’

‘Rachel you don’t need me in your life. I’m trouble
and at the moment I’m more nonsense than I’m worth. I didn’t mean for you to
get mixed up in this. I just needed a bed for a night and your name popped into
my head.’

‘Get me mixed up in what. Are you telling me that
there’s more to you turning up than just looking for a bed?’

I dropped my head a little.

‘You don’t need to know.’

But she did. If the goon patrol really wanted me and I
did a runner they might decide to use Rachel as a ‘punch and tell’ machine to
find where I had gone.

‘There are two men after me. At least I think there
are two. There could be more.’

‘And?’

‘And one of them is standing at the corner of your
street doing a crap job of pretending he’s not there.’

She crossed to the window and looked out.

‘Black jacket and blue shirt with greasy hair?’

‘That’s him.’

‘You brought them to my house?’

‘Not deliberately. I didn’t know where I was going
last night.’

‘So they followed you.’

‘No. I checked. I made sure I wasn’t being followed
before I told the taxi driver where I was going.’

I told her the story of last night and she laughed.

‘And you didn’t think that they might check with the
local taxi firms for any pick ups?’

‘It ain’t that easy. They don’t just hand out that
sort of info to anyone. Plus I left from a strange address.’

‘Big is it? Eaglesham? Do they have a lot of taxi pick
ups at
two o’clock
on a Tuesday morning?’

‘But they would need to have an ‘in’ with the firm.’

‘Or they just lean on the controller. What would you
rather do? Give out a fare’s details or have your head caved in? Come on, you
did it all the time in the old days.’

She could be right. She was probably right.

‘So why not break in here and take care of me?’

‘Maybe they only just found out where you are. Maybe
they didn’t want a witness. I don’t know. Who are they?’

A good question. I really didn’t want to go into the
whole story but it looked like she was in this, one way or the other.

‘You know the French man that Martin said I was in
trouble with. Well I think they are working for him.’

‘And is Frenchie bad news?’

‘You have no idea.’

‘Brilliant. So now I’m in the crap with you. If you
fuck off do you think they are going to let me go freely about my business
without answering a few questions?’

I shook my head.

‘Genius. Fucking genius. I said you were bad news and
I was right on the money. Shit.’

She stubbed out the cigarette, gulped the hot tea as
if it was cold and lit another cigarette.

‘This is not fucking good. Do you think they will risk
coming in here?’

‘Maybe. After all they had no qualms about breaking
into Martin’s house last night. For all they knew he could have been at home.’

Rachel sat down at the window table and looked out and
said, ‘He’s still there.’

‘We need to go. He’s not that stupid that he doesn’t
know he’s been spotted. I take it we can get out the rear and through the back
green?’

‘Sure and then what? You piss off and I wait for a
knock. Good thinking, batman.’

‘Well we can’t stay here.’

‘Why not? We wait on them, I hand you over and I’m
home free. I would say that sounds about right for me.’

‘Dream on. They’re not going to lift me, or worse kill
me, and let you hang around to ID them. The French man is not stupid. Like it
or lump it we are in this together for a while.’

‘I’m not in anything with anyone.’

I said nothing and I saw resignation cross her face. I
had seen that look on a hundred people’s faces when they realised there was no
way out.

‘I have an idea,’ I said ‘I need time to sort this out.
If I can square it with the French man then you are off the hook. I just need
space to figure out how. Once I’m sorted then you are sorted.’

‘And if they catch us? Then what?’

‘You are no worse off than you are right now.’

She cracked another cigarette and stood up. I watched
her pace around the room and wished she would just get on with making the only
bloody decision that she had available.

She walked up to me.

‘OK. We leave and then you sort out your shit. If you
don’t then I’m going to take things into my own hands. Agreed?’

‘Agreed. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.’

‘We need my car. It’s the only transport I have and we
won’t get far on the bus.’

She paced some more.

‘I have an idea how to get to it without any
violence’.

Rachel had hidden talents and, as she told me what to
do, I smiled thinking that she would have made a fine addition to my team in
the old days.

She rummaged in the kitchen and packed some stuff
under her coat. We exited the house and made our way to the ground floor.
Rachel opened the door to the back green and slipped out of sight. I made for
the front close.

I emerged into a warm day. Nice day to die I thought.

The goon was standing at the corner and when he saw me
he stiffened. I walked towards him, but kept to the other side of the road.
Twenty yards along the pavement I stopped. He stared at me and then his mate
joined him. I walked another few feet and then a few more. They started to
cross the road and I stopped again.

When they were half way across I lifted my hand and,
with a flourish, flicked them a V. They went into overdrive and sprinted to the
pavement. I turned and showed them my heels. At Rachel’s close I dived in and
ran to the bottom of the stairs and stopped.

The goons barrelled in to the close and saw me. I put
leather to concrete and headed out the door to the back green and they
followed.

As I ran into the space behind the tenement I hung a
sharp left and dropped to the ground. A clothes rope was lying next to the wall
and I picked it up, hauling it towards me. With Rachel at the other end the
rope was pulled tight about two feet off the ground.

The goon patrol hit the rope at full speed and my palm
picked up a rope burn as the material was dragged through my hand. The men went
down and Rachel was up and heading for the door. I joined her, but one of the
goons was quick and reached out - grabbing my foot. I twisted but he held
tight. I shouted out and Rachel turned to see what was going on.

The second goon was trying to get to his feet. Rachel
ran back and, with a kick that Bruce Lee would have been proud to call his own,
she landed her heel on the first goon’s head. He screamed and let go of my
foot. I pulled myself through the door and Rachel followed me. She slammed the
door shut and turned the key that she had left in the lock. The sound of the
second goon hitting the door reverberated around the close and we ran.

Outside Rachel hit the remote on the car key ring and
we leapt in. She fired up the car and we were history.

‘Now where?’ she said.

‘
London
.’

‘What?’

‘
London
. I need to sort this and the only place I can do that
is
London
.’

‘I can’t go to
London
. I’ve got a job.’

‘And it won’t be much use if you’re a new addition to
Linn Crematorium.
London
it has to be.’

‘Fuck.’

It’s hard to think that you could spend six hours in a
car with someone and say so little but Rachel was the type of girl that could
do that and some.

We hit the outskirts of
London
just after rush hour and
I directed her to Fulham. I had someone I needed to see and I could only hope
they were still in their old house.

As we passed by the Albert Hall I had a change of mind
and told Rachel we should check into a hotel for the night. I needed to do a
little leg work before I took the next step.

We booked into one of the myriad of hotels that circle
the Albert Hall. It took me back to that first night in
London
. This
time I wasn’t sharing. Separate rooms of course.

Another day another dollar.

I’ve made a shed load of phone calls and I’m certain
my name is now around town. But I had no choice. If there was one person that
might know where Dupree was it was Giles - and the last time I had talked to
Giles he had screamed at me down the phone for my little jaunt into Silvertown.
Stepping on his toes had got him fired. But I knew he hadn’t vanished.

While in prison I met a small time con called Casper
Turner.
Casper
was a toe rag and had been caught robbing an old folks
home. Normally I would have ignored his type but I recognised the name from
London
and I
knew he had been tied up with Giles in some way. I caught up with him in the
exercise yard and he told me that Giles had retired back to his house in
Fulham.

When Giles got the bullet he was in his late fifties
and I knew he had more than enough cash to get by. I thought he might be dead
by now but the phone calls had revealed that he was very much alive, and still
living in Fulham. I had an address and it was time to pay a visit.

Rachel was still in silent mode and when I asked to borrow
her car it was like asking a kidney patient to lend their dialysis machine. But
she agreed.

London
was the
usual - busy and a pain in the arse. I wound my way towards Giles’s address.
Harrods slipped by and then
Stamford
Bridge
. There was a football game on tonight and the police
cones were already going out to limit parking.

I turned into the
North
End Rd.
The daily market was running,
the stalls lining the full length of the road on my right. I had no sat nav and
no A to Z but I knew Fulham well enough to get to Giles’s street.

Parking was a different game and even mid morning it
took me twenty minutes to find a space. Rachel’s car was two inches longer than
the gap but a bit of bumper to bumper action and I was in. I’d explain the
scratches if she noticed them.

Giles lives in a row of terraced houses. In the mid
eighties they had provided a surprisingly cheap accommodation option given
their proximity to the city centre.
Chelsea
, just up the road, was already awash with million
pound plus homes while you could still get a two bed flat for thirty five grand
not half a mile away.

I walked past Giles’s house and glanced at the
building. The curtains were open but it was hard to tell if there was anyone
home. I reached the bottom of the street and did a u-turn and gave one more fly
by. I u-turned again and this time walked up to the door.

It was a jet black affair with a large brass knocker
in the shape of a horse’s head. I tried to remember if Giles had been a horse
person, but there were no bells ringing. I pulled back the knocker and let it
drop. I repeated the exercise and waited.

I was about to knock again when I heard a noise from
behind the door. There was a spy-hole just above the horse’s head and I saw it
darken as someone looked out. Bolts were thrown and the door cracked open. A
head appeared.