East of the City (40 page)

‘Tubs,’ I whispered breathlessly. ‘Tubs, you fat bastard.’

I sprinted now, my legs jarring with each step. And I thought, This is it, I’m done.

And then I heard a car coming after me. My lungs were giving out, I slowed, they’d get me anyway. So at last I stopped and bent over. I rested my hands on my hips, trying to breathe. The car screeched to a halt beside me. I put my hands behind my head, stood up straight, gasping for air. Fielding was going to tear me to bits.

‘Oi!’ Tubs shouted, ‘Comin’ or stayin’?’

He pushed open the rear door. I dived in, cursing. The door slammed, the Mercedes lurched forward, and I stayed where I’d landed, face down on the floor.

When I could finally breathe again, I got to wondering how that bastard Mehmet knew I was a wanted man. There was a pain in my chest; I heaved myself onto the seat and looked back through the rear window. To one side of the terminal, a plane lifted off. A kind of hollow feeling spread through me then, an aching emptiness. I hadn’t said one word of what I’d meant to say to Lee. She was going to marry some guy, put me behind her. And why? Because I hadn't stepped up and taken a chance.

'F
riday,’ Tubs said.

We’d stopped at the lights just before the entrance to the Stow, people were walking across the road in front of us. Young blokes with their girlfriends, the girls done up to the nines, ready for the big night out. Behind them some old codgers, the kind that had been going to the track for the past thirty years. Friday night at the dogs, and half the East End was converging on the place where we’d been hoping to have a quiet word with Eddie Pike.

Tubs turned to me. ‘You still wanna do this?’

‘Just park,’ I told him. ‘We’ll work something out.’

While Tubs paid the parking attendant I covered my face with the grubby old Panama hat I’d found on the floor, and leant back in the seat like I was sleeping. When I felt the car moving up the ramp, I pushed back the brim. ‘Tubs, when Sebastian used to come down the Gallon—’

‘Yeah?’

‘Didn’t he bring that book of his sometimes? You know, he used to write some insurance, didn’t he? That blue book he had. Like with Nev. Sebastian did the insurance on Nev’s betting shops.’

‘Ahha.’ Tubs parked. He pulled on the handbrake, then faced me.

I said, ‘Mum and Dad’s house. How much do you reckon it was worth?’ Tubs’s face was blank, then you could see him gradually cotton on.

‘A hundred and twenty grand?’ I asked.

‘About,’ Tubs said. ‘That’s gotta be it, Ian. Your old man insured the house with Sebastian. Three hundred to one. Four hundred quid premium and a hundred and twenty-grand payout.' He banged the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Christ, that’s it.’

I stared straight ahead. ‘Except for the bit,’ I said, ‘where Dad torched the house he’d just insured.’

Tubs reminded me about those two dogs, Lucky Lip and Jeremiah. ‘Do as you’re done by. You can’t blame your old man for that.’

Mulling it over, I found Tubs was right. If Sebastian really had got Pike to nobble those two dogs, the hundred grand Dad had dropped to him wasn’t a normal loss, it was theft. By insuring his own house then torching it, Dad had simply returned the favour. And now I understood why he’d died in the fire too. It wasn’t just for Mum’s sake, so she didn’t think it was suicide, but so the insurance people didn’t think it was suicide either. He’d done it to make the insurance policy stick. Arsonists, as every underwriter knows, do not get drunk and lie down in the flames.

But if that was it, my old man’s final plan had gone horribly wrong, not just with Mum, but with the insurance as well. Sitting in the car now, I squeezed my hands over my eyes. Dad. Jesus Christ, it just wouldn’t have crossed his mind that Sebastian would do anything else but pay up. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that someone like Sebastian, with smart offices in the·City, might welch on a bet. I let my hands fall. Mum and Dad died for nothing. And they died for nothing because even when Dad tried to sink to Sebastian’s level, he was too damn honest for the game.

When I reached for the doorhandle, Tubs grabbed my arm.

‘Hey, the furniture you seen at Aston’s place. The gear Pike nicked. There was a desk, yeah?’

‘Yeah. There was a desk. I told you, I tried it, it was locked.’

‘Locked.’

‘What’s the big deal?’

‘Locked like maybe there was papers in it no-one was meant to see?’

‘Tubs, it was from Ward’s home. Not his office.’

‘Right,’ Tubs said giving my arm a shake. ‘And that blue book he had. Where’s he going to keep that? In his office?’

Tubs was talking about Sebastian’s deal with my old man, but after a second’s thought I felt a sudden jolt. The policies Angela had written, and even the reinsurance deals, was it possible there was a paper record at Sebastian’s end? Paperwork that would make it clear why someone wanted, or needed, him dead? I groaned. Days ago I’d been leaning on that desk up in Doug Aston’s attic, maybe the answer to all my problems. And I’d just turned and walked away.

Letting go my arm, Tubs said, ‘Light-fingers Eddie Pike maybe done us a favour.’

A car parked beside us. While the couple got out I held a hand up to that side of my face. When they were gone, Tubs suggested I stayed in the car while he went to ind Eddie, but there really didn’t seem much point to that. The other night at the Mortlake house, and then the scene at the airport, I knew that I couldn’t keep the run-and-hide game up forever. I was going to get caught sooner or later, and all that mattered now was to get hold of Pike — and maybe that desk — before it happened.

Pushing open my door, I said, ‘Let’s go.’

We went into the main enclosure, the crowd was building up fast, some of them going upstairs to the main stand, others around the front to the rails. Stuffing his racecard in his pocket, Tubs led me to one of the bars down below.

‘Storage rooms out back,’ he said. 'That’s where Doug’s lad said they dumped the gear.'

He had a quick word to the barman, one of his mates,and the bloke let us through. There was a pile of beer kegs, a woman running a mop over the floor, and another one loading glasses into a washer. They looked at us but didn’t say anything. Tubs nodded to the door at the back. We went on through that one, and as the door closed behind us, the noise died.

In that room there was nothing but an old commercial oven, it had been ripped out of somewhere, and now it sat there with pipes and wiring hanging out of it, waiting for the final trip to the dump. Definitely not something of Sebastian’s. Tubs went across and tried the rear door. It was locked.

‘Where do the stairs go?’ I asked, pointing to the far corner.

He shrugged, like, Who knows? and we went on up. Upstairs a long corridor opened out in front of us, it seemed to run along the back of the stand. I tried the first door off the corridor. A cupboard. Tubs tried the second door. ‘Bog,’ he said.

We walked further along. When Doug Aston first told us where Eddie had disappeared to, I’d thought, That’s crazy. But now it made a weird kind of sense. Even guys like Tubs, who’d been coming to the Stow for donkey’s years, didn’t know what went on back here. The bar and restaurant staff, they came and went pretty regularly, and if anyone saw furniture being lugged down this corridor they wouldn’t have batted an eye.

There was a banging and crashing behind one door, I opened it a crack and peeped in. The kitchens. And on through the kitchen you could see out to the serving counter in the main stand. I let the door fall closed, but as it did I caught a glimpse of someone out there. I pushed the door open again.

‘What is it?’ Tubs whispered.

I pulled my head back. ‘Out at the food counter,’ I said. ‘To the left.’

Tubs peered through for a moment. ‘Katy,’ he said, turning to me. ‘She could help us.’

‘Forget it, Tubs.’

He looked again, then asked, ‘Who’s the bloke she’s got with her?’

Leaning over Tubs’s shoulder I had another look myself, I hadn’t seen any bloke. I did this time. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is Bill Tyler.’

Tubs caught the tone in my voice. ‘Not one of your favourites?’

‘Apart from him being about twenty years too old for her?’

Tubs let the door fall to. We went further along, poking our heads round more doors down the corridor, but we came up dry. Eddie Pike, and the desk, were elsewhere. Tubs suggested we split up so we could cover the stadium faster. He slipped a mobile into my pocket, saying, ‘You cover the Pop.’ The Pop, the Popular Enclosure, the cheap seats on the other side of the track. ‘Any sign of Pike, or the desk, buzz me. I’ll do the same.’

Telling him not to approach Pike without calling me first, I jogged back along the corridor and down the stairs. In the room behind the bar, the dishwasher was rattling away, steam pouring out of it. As I edged by it, some instinct made me look ahead through the cloud of steam and out into the bar. I stopped. Cautiously I eased myself to the right, getting a clearer view through the door. No mistake, it was them, Fielding and his sidekick. They were looking around the faces in the bar. But after a few seconds, Fielding turned his back and stalked out, his young offsider hard on his heels.

‘Fuck,’ I said.

‘Language,’ said the middle-aged barmaid, coming in from the bar with a tray of empty glasses. She put down the tray, jerking her head back. ‘The two coppers not friends of yours?’

'No.'

‘You’re with Tubs?’

I nodded.

‘Wait here,’ she said, then she went out to the bar and across to the door Fielding had disappeared through. She looked left and right, then beckoned me out. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t really have time to think. I went out through the bar, and as I stepped by the barmaid, she said, ‘They went left.’

I turned right, and she said, ‘And tell Tubs he owes Mary one.’

Hurrying out of the stadium, I called Tubs on the mobile. When I told him that Fielding and the offsider had arrived, he said, ‘How the fuck?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Tubs. They’re here. I don’t know, maybe it’s not me they’re after. Could be they’ve got some tip-off on Pike.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Christ, Tubs, it just doesn’t matter.’ I chopped my hand in the air. ‘Listen, stop looking for Pike. If Fielding sees you charging around, he’ll be all over you like a rash.’

‘So I sit on my hands?’

‘Go down and have a bet. See your mates. If Fielding finds you, you’re just here for the dogs.’

‘What about you?’

‘Just do like I say, okay?' I was halfway between the main stand and the Pop. If I’d turned I would have seen the crowd in the main stand, one of them Tubs, but I kept walking. Beside me a bunch of kids clambered over the metal play-gym and swings. Tubs hadn’t answered. ‘Okay, Tubs?’

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘But you find Pike, you call me.’

If I found Pike there was no way I was going to risk Tubs leading Fielding right to us. ‘Right,’ I said, then I dropped the mobile in my pocket.

At the gate into the Pop, a gawky teenager stopped me to sign the corner of my programme so that I could cross back into the Main Enclosure later without double-paying. Years ago that gawky teenager had been me, the first paid job I ever had. Watching him now as he signed, I felt a stab in the pit of my stomach. His glance ran right past me, and on to the bloke waiting behind.

Passing into the enclosure, I scrolled the programme in my hands. Somewhere in the recent past, it seemed, I’d crossed an invisible threshold. Life had closed in around me, I’d taken some knocks that weren’t going to heal. I guess it had just occurred to me that however this whole disaster ended, I’d been damaged — at Lloyd’s, probably beyond repair.

Climbing the steps onto the terraces now, I felt heavy. Whatever happened, whether I lost my flat and my job, whether Fielding got me banged up in gaol or not, whatever happened, I was damaged goods. At the top of the stairs I turned and looked down to the track. The dogs were being paraded for the next race, the punters over here in the Pop studying their form guides carefully. Poor men with a tenner apiece in the kick to see them through the night. Mug punters with worries. And me. Here where I spent my childhood. I glanced across at the gawky teenager on the gate, and over to the kids on the swings. At thirty-three years of age the inevitable had happened. My future wasn’t necessarily going to be better than the past, blind hope wouldn’t always beat the odds. I wasn’t young any more.

I looked down at my watch. Lee Chan, by now, was in Dublin.

A hand clasped my shoulder, my heart jumped into my throat. But when I spun round, it was Nev. I grabbed his arm.

‘Easy up.’ He tried to push my hands away. ‘Guilty conscience or what?’ he said.

 I led him up into the enclosed part of the stand.

‘I’m in strife, Nev.’

‘You’re breakin’ my fuckin’ arm.’

His arm felt like a twig. When I let go, he worked his arm up and down. Mumbling an apology, I explained that I had Fielding on my case.

‘That shit?’ he said, rubbing his elbow ‘Still?’

Still, I said wearily. Looking round, I asked Nev if he’d keep a watch out for Fielding while I did a lap of the Pop.

He said, ‘You’re still looking for Pike?’

I lifted my head, yes.

‘You find Pike, you hand him over to Fielding?'

‘I find Pike,’ I said, ‘and I strangle him.’

‘He’s not here.’

I looked at Nev.

‘Not here in the stand,’ he said, gesturing around. Then he slipped the binoculars from around his neck, handed them to me, pointing to the rear of the track. Just then the hare went zinging past, the dogs broke from the traps. On the terraces below us, the punters got to their feet.

‘What am I looking at?’ I asked, peering through the binoculars.

‘The extension,’ Nev said, ‘behind the old kennels.’

I raised the binoculars slightly. Back there, behind the kennels where the dogs were mustered before each race, beyond the light from the track, I could just make out a couple of concrete mixers. A pile of sand, and a portable hut.

‘Builders,’ Nev told me. ‘Been at it two months. They knock off Fridays at six, back Monday mornin’.’