East of the City (22 page)

When Katy shouted again I backed out of the study, trying to keep him in view. Katy was standing in front of her bedroom door.

She said to me, ‘He can’t go in my room.’

‘He can, Katy. Let them get on with it. The sooner they’re done, the sooner they’ll be gone.’ I coaxed her away from the door. The offsider went in and started his search.

‘What’s happening?' Katy whispered. From where she was seeing it, Fielding and his mate had arrived out of the blue, intent on stamping their grubby boots right through our lives. Seeing it, in fact, pretty much how it was. ‘What do they want, Ian?’

I told her I’d explain the whole thing later. 

Then we heard the cupboards opening in her room, she darted past me and gave that bloke a bollocking. I left her to it. Back in my study Fielding was by the bookcase, one hand resting on the videotapes, looking around. The tapes of the fires, real-life and documentaries. I went rigid.

‘Finished?’

His hand dropped; half a dozen videos hit the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he said, shoving past me.

Out in the lounge again, he pointed along the rear corridor. ‘What’s down there?’

‘The bathroom.'

He noticed the football sitting by the TV. He took three steps and kicked hard, the ball smacked into the wall, ricocheted off the ceiling, and careered down the rear corridor, stuttering from wall to wall. Miraculously, nothing broke. Then Fielding dropped into the sofa, picking up the remote. ‘The way I remember it, you and Eddie Pike used to be chums.’

‘You’ve got a bad memory.'

‘Yeah? Then how about you and that little Paki settin’ fire to the school. Bad memory there too?’ He was talking about Sanjay Patel. One school holiday me and Sanjay, both about thirteen at the time, put on an unofficial barbecue with our mates in the school grounds. Fielding was one of the cops who sprung us. Now he turned the remote over in his hand, I felt the hairs prickle up my neck. My tape of Sebastian’s house going up in flames, it was in the machine, rewound and ready to play.

Don’t, I thought. Please don’t press the button.

He said, ‘Funny how things work out, ay? Like you. Start out as a toe-rag and wind up in a place like this. But you just can’t help yourself. It’s like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Someone pisses you off, you go back to type.’

‘Unlike you?'

‘If I put you away, they'll promote me.’

Keep him talking, I thought. While he’s talking he won’t press the button.

I said, ‘So you’re going to stitch me up for what, enhanced pension rights?’

‘Yeah. Kinda rags to riches. Same as you, only when your story’s over it’s gonna read like a kinda rags to riches to rags kinda thing.’ He tapped the remote on the cushion beside him. ‘Remember Jebby Maguire.’

Jebby, I hadn’t seen him since he’d been carted off to Borstal at the age of fifteen.

‘What about him?’

‘Got done for assault and battery last month. Be a bit a company for you down in Dartmoor.’ The remote turned over in his hand. ‘All together, just like old times.’ He ran through some more names, guys I hadn’t thought about in years, not since school. Breaking and entering seemed to be the common thread. I tried to keep my eyes off the remote. ‘Yeah, petty crime except for Maguire and you.’ Fielding dropped the remote onto the cushion. ‘And now that Maguire’s been sorted—’

‘Give it a rest.’

Fielding’s offsider came into the lounge. When Fielding asked if he’d found anything the bloke shook his head. Katy came out and yanked the bedroom door shut behind her. And the way she looked at them, Christ, she was angry.

‘Me and your brother here,’ Fielding said to her, ‘we were just talkin’ about the old times. Ian and me, we go way back. Back to when he was rippin’ off punters at the Stow. Bob Collier.’ He pointed at Katy. ‘Your old man too? Or just the same old lady?’

For a second I thought Katy was going to tear his eyes out. I gave her a warning look. She went to the sofa and sat down on the far end to Fielding. Reoccupying her own territory.

‘If you’re staying for tea,’ she said, ‘we can send out for bananas.’

‘Don’t piss me off, girl. Ask your brother here where that gets you.’

Katy tucked her legs up under her, making herself comfortable, making as if Fielding and his mate weren’t there. And then she leant across and picked up the remote.

‘Katy,’ I said, my heart in my mouth, ‘weren’t you going out?’

‘No,’ she said, then she hit the button. The TV came on, a wildlife programme.

‘Do you mind,’ I asked Fielding sarcastically, ‘if I start tidying up now?’

‘Your flat,’ he said.

I put the coffee table upright. Then I slid it back into place between the sofa and the TV. But after that I was stuck. I couldn’t tell Katy to turn the damn TV off, and I couldn’t just snatch the remote out of her hand. Too obvious. I knelt and picked up the scattered magazines.

‘You don’t have a cleaner?’ Fielding said. ‘Man in your position?'

I told him any more visits from him and I’d get one in full time. He started to laugh, but Katy then said, ‘Just for the smell,’ and his laughter stopped.

He pointed at the TV. He told her to turn it off.

She tossed the remote down on the sofa cushions, petulant, letting him know she wasn’t taking his orders. He reached over and picked the thing up. Then without turning round to face his offsider, Fielding said, ‘You see these people, Mac? They don’t think they’re like you and me. The rules aren’t for them, not the Colliers. They get their hands on some money, sit back and think they can give us the finger.' He went on talking, facing me now, not even thinking about it as he pointed the remote at the TV and hit Play. My gut heaved. ‘Did I tell you how they got their start? Their old man was a bookie down the dogs, drove a Jag while the hard workin’ punters used to walk to the track. Yeah. Big Bob. Wasn’t he just the biggest bullshittin’ prick, I tell you -’

But he didn’t get a chance to tell us anything, because that’s when Katy went for him. She launched herself from her end of the sofa and landed on him, clawing his face. He put up his arms, shielding himself, and I grabbed Katy around the waist, hauling her off. My other hand snatched at the remote, but I missed it. She elbowed me in the gut, wriggling like mad, desperate to get at him again.

‘Bitch,’ he was saying now. ‘Bitch, the fuckin’ bitch.’

Katy gave him an earful, still struggling against me.

Then the offsider broke in, saying, ‘Sir?’

Fielding spun, furious. The offsider pointed, and at last Fielding focused on the TV. For a moment I really couldn’t breathe. Fielding’s face slowly changed. He’d dropped the remote when Katy flew at him, but now he grabbed it again and turned up the volume.

Katy stopped fighting me. She craned around to see the screen.

‘Oh,’ Fielding said after a few moments. ‘Oh, would you look at that.’

I didn’t have to look, I’d already watched the tape a dozen times. I let go of Katy, stepped over to the armchair and sat down. Fielding leant forward, elbows on his knees, drinking it all in. The offsider and Katy stood stock still, like they were transixed by the flames. Finally the news announcer mentioned that the owner of the house, Sebastian Ward, was a senior figure in the London insurance market. With that, the screen turned to hissing snow.

Fielding hit the Stop button. He glanced over to the study, those videotapes he’d knocked to the floor were visible through the open door. Then he looked at me. I don’t know if it was inspiration or plodding cop thoroughness, but without a word he went and picked up half a dozen tapes and brought them back. Then one by one, viewing maybe a minute of each, he put them through the machine. Nobody spoke as we watched the fires raging.

It was awful.

When the last tape stopped, Fielding looked at me again, shaking his head.

‘Oh my,’ he said. The look on my face seemed to give him a real thrill. ‘Oh my, oh my, oh my.’

W
hen the doorbell rang it woke both of us. We met in our dressing gowns, out in the hall. Katy told me not to answer it, but I did. It was Tubs.

‘Come down,’ he said. ‘I think I found somethin’ you’ll like.’

Katy groaned and then she went stumbling bleary-eyed back to her bed. I looked at my watch. Twelve midnight.

‘I don’t think so, Tubs.’

His voice went quiet. ‘Is Katy there?'

‘She’s in bed, Tubs. Why aren’t you?’

A pause, then he said, ‘I’ve found Pike.'

I rested my forehead against the wall. I was in serious trouble, I knew that. When Fielding and his mate took all my tapes with them, Fielding told me I should expect a call soon. He said maybe I should start thinking about a lawyer. The worst part was it wasn’t a joke; somehow this business had got bigger than I think even Fielding expected, taken on a life of its own. It might have started out as an opportunity to cause me grief, but now it was turning into a real case, I’d seen that in Fielding’s eyes when I’d shown him the door.

Lying awake in bed, tossing and turning, I’d told myself that it was ridiculous. All circumstantial evidence, I’d told myself. Then I’d realized I didn’t even know what that meant. I decided, for once in my life, to take Fielding’s advice. In the morning, before court, I’d go and see Clive.

Lifting my forehead from the wall, it occurred to me that maybe I should call Clive immediately. But Tubs wouldn’t have liked that. He looked at things just like my father had, lawyers weren’t much better than police.

Hitting the intercom, I said, ‘Give me five minutes.’

‘She jumped him?’ Tubs said. He was laughing.

‘It wasn’t funny. I had to pull her off before she ripped his eyes out.’

'Why?'

‘Fielding said Dad was a prick.’

‘No, I mean why’d you pull her off him?’

He had his eyes on the road, we were headed northeast, out Chingford way, to where Tubs reckoned Eddie Pike was holed up.

‘This isn’t like the old days, Tubs. Not with Fielding.'

‘Same bastard he always was.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘The same, but with clout.'

Tubs drove with an elbow resting on the armrest between us, the heater humming quietly. The car was an old Mercedes with plenty of legroom, and plenty of gutroom under the steering wheel too. Tubs’d had it for about as long as I could remember. When she was a kid, Katy used to bounce around on the back seat like it was a trampoline.

Now we drove out through the old haunts, north of the Gallon and up past the Stow, and suddenly we were passing the Apollo Bingo Hall. The neon lights were off` but you could make out the name from the streetlights. My head turned, watching it go by. Mum used to go there every Wednesday night, week in, week out, year after year. When I got my licence I’d drop her off sometimes on my way to the pub. Usually she’d give Dad and me our tea of a Wednesday night, drop Katy of with Tubs’s mum, then go. Around ten she’d come home and if you asked how it went, she’d say, We had a bit of a laugh. And then she’d go upstairs, taking Katy to bed.

A bit of a laugh, one night a week, and the rest of the time looking after Dad and Katy and me, as if our lives were the only ones that counted. Selfish of us, but if you’d asked her she wouldn’t have said so. And then dying how she did, going in after Dad. If it had been Katy or me in there, she'd have come after us too. Every time I thought about that, it made me feel small. I pushed in a tape. Buddy Holly. I tried to turn it off, but Tubs told me to leave it. He tapped the armrest to the beat.

‘So where’s Pike hiding?’ I asked him again.

Tubs told me to keep my shirt on. Somewhere I knew, he said.

After a while the street lights thinned out and we were in that territory that isn’t town any more, but not country either. Tubs turned down a road with a Dead End sign, cruising slowly. We passed a freight depot and further on a row of small sheds and a house. All the lights in the house were off.

Tubs flicked off his headlights then stopped the car. We sat there, our eyes adjusting to the dark.

‘He’s here?’

‘Be down the back.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Fuck me,’ Tubs said. When I faced him he was gazing at me, mouth open a little. ‘When you dumped your old man you really did put everythin’ behind you, ay? You ever think about us at all?’

‘I didn’t dump Dad. And I don’t need a lecture.’ I opened the door.

‘Ian.’

I looked back.

‘Quietly,’ he said.

I got out and closed the door quietly. Tubs did the same, then came round to my side of the car with a torch. There was a big sign up ahead to the left. Tubs pointed the torch, flicked it on. Aston Kennels, the sign said. The torch went out, we were in darkness again.

‘Know it now?’ Tubs asked softly.

‘Doug Aston’s place?'

‘The very same.’

Doug Aston, one of the big Stow trainers. Successful, but his dogs had a reputation for not always trying. Dad used to take me out to diiferent kennels most Sundays, the day the owners generally came round to check on their dogs. He’d chat to the trainers and the owners, keeping up with the goss. We’d spend more time at the bigger kennels, and that meant we spent a lot of Sunday mornings out at Doug Aston’s. But until Tubs had shone his torch at the sign, I hadn’t even recognized the place. God, the amount of my life I’d put behind me.

Now Tubs signalled me on with his torch, we went down the side-lane. He whispered over his shoulder, telling me how Doug Aston was away on holiday. ‘But I hear he’s got short-term help. Remember the shack behind the kennels?'

I made a sound, yes.

‘Ten quid Pike’s there,’ Tubs said.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He turned.

‘Tubs, am I trespassing on someone’s property in the middle of the night just on the off-chance?'

After a moment he said, ‘Yeah.’ His head went up and down. ‘Yeah, that’s what you’re doin’. You know why? Because you asked me to help you find this pillock, that’s why. You asked me. If you wanna go home, just say so, because this isn’t my idea of a good time. Now, do you wanna go home?’

'Course I don’t.’

He turned and went on down towards the kennels. Half a minute later, when he heard me following, he whispered back. ‘Hey, Ian.’