East of the City (6 page)

She shook her head. She said it wasn’t just that. ‘Ian, I got the impression from a lot of his answers that he wasn’t exactly
au fai
t with what was going on. He’s not stupid, is he?’

No, I said. Definitely not stupid. In fact he had the reputation of being a very bright guy. Ambitious too.

She looked down at the pedals going round. ‘Then I think he told a few lies. In court.'

‘About what?'

That, she said, was what she’d been hoping I might figure out. But I was only half-listening. My eyes kept drifting back to the dark ring of sweat on the neckline of her pink leotard. Lee Chan was going home.

‘Can you at least have a word with him?’ she said.

‘Lee, I was there in court. That’s just the way he is.’

Sweat beaded across her forehead and dripped on the floor. She finally started running, out of steam, the pedalling slowed, and she gulped in air.

‘Okay, Lee. If I see him I’ll have a word. Is that it?’

She nodded, breathless, and I went to the door. But it didn’t seem right, after all we’d shared, for her to announce she was leaving and me to just get up and amble out. How many times since our break-up had I reached for the phone and not called her? But then I had so much else to deal with, Mum and Dad dying, my sister falling to bits, all that. And I was hurt too, and bloody angry, after what I’d found out about Lee. The night after our ‘anniversary’ I went round to her place with her coat, the one she’d left behind in the restaurant. And what did I find? I found Lee on her second bottle of wine, sitting on the floor of her lounge, staring at a semi-circle of photos she’d arranged in front of her. They were Chinese men in suits, aged maybe from thirty up to fifty. Lee had scrawled NO across most of them, but on a couple I could clearly read the word POSSIBLE.

What’s this? I'd said, dropping the coat on a chair.

In answer Lee picked up a letter from another pile I hadn’t seen. It was a letter from her mother. Lee read it aloud. Deadpan. Basically it was a resumé of both the working and social life of a wealthy Chinese-American accountant, one who Lee’s mother seemed to think would make Lee a good husband. When Lee finished reading the letter she put it down by one of the photos, a guy in his mid-forties with specs. One of the possibles. Lee picked up another of her mother’s letters and started reading, but this time I cut her off.

When did you get these?

She waved her hand vaguely. I looked at the pile of letters; there must have been a dozen at least.

Lee, I said, feeling my temperature rising. While we’ve been going out, sleeping together, everything, you’ve had your mother chasing a husband for you?

Good ol’ Mom, she said.

She was drunk, and maybe I’d hurt her worse than I realized the night before, but that was it, I completely did my stack. And Lee didn’t just sit there and take it, she was up on her feet and giving as good as she got. It wasn’t long — ten minutes max — but in that ten minutes of hurled abuse we really did each other damage. Cheated and betrayed, they were about the two mildest accusations we smacked back and forth. Finally I turned and walked out her door saying, ‘That’s it, Lee. We're done,’ and she shouted, ‘Good.’ But Christ, it didn’t feel good, not to me anyway. Then within a week my parents were dead, and large parts of my life went on hold. Parts like Lee.

But now suddenly Lee was leaving. She was leaving, and if I didn’t speak up now our six-month stand-off would go permanent; it was just too sudden, I was already spinning with the K and R, Eddie Pike’s body, I couldn’t hold it all separate enough to be sure how I felt. So when I got to the gym door I turned round and faced her.

‘When are you leaving?'

She told me. A matter of days. She had a conference to go to in Dublin, she said she was flying straight on from there to San Fran. She said she’d still be working for Lloyd’s. Trying to make it sound like a joke, I said, ‘You can work for Lloyd’s here.'

She got off the bike and reached for her towel. ‘I’m engaged, Ian.’ Then she turned and looked straight at me. ‘My parents found a nice Chinese-American man for me. His name’s Wing Tan. He’s an engineer. I flew over there last month and saw him. Now I’m going back to marry him.’

My mouth opened. And then closed.

She said, ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?'

But what was there left to say? All the anger, what I’d felt that night of our break-up, it all flared in me again and burned. Lee Chan had gone and gotten herself engaged. I looked at her hard.

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

She made a sound in her throat, spun round, and disappeared into the change room, slamming the door.

T
ubs lived in Hackney with his mother. She must have been at least eighty, I hadn’t seen her for years, but when Allen gave me the all-clear to chase up any possible connection between Sebastian’s K & R and the dogs, that’s where I went, to Hackney. When I knocked on the terrace door there was movement inside and then silence. I knocked again, harder this time.

‘Mrs Laszlo?’ Nothing. ‘Mrs Laszlo, it’s Ian Collier, I’m looking for Tubs.’

There was a sound of creeping boards, then more silence. I raised my hand to knock again but before I could a frail voice said, ‘Who is it?’

She made me shout my mother’s name twice and even then the door only opened a crack. Slight, and wrinkled like a prune, she examined me carefully over the chain.

‘Mrs Laszlo, I’m looking for Tubs.’ She pursed her lips. ‘It’s quite important.'

She seemed to think about it. At last she nodded. ‘You’re the Collier boy, Ian.'

When I smiled she didn’t respond. ‘Mrs Laszlo—’

‘You went away,’ she said.

‘Look, is Tubs around? Is there any way I can get hold of him?’ Her face was expressionless, I wasn’t sure how much of this was getting through to her. ‘I phoned, no-one answered.'

‘Phoned who?’

‘Tubs.’

‘My Toby’s not here.’

She began to close the door but I set my knee against it and she stopped pushing. She didn’t seem frightened or even surprised. I gave it one last shot.

‘Here’s my card. Could you give it to him as soon as he gets in?’

She studied the card closely but didn’t take it. Finally she looked up at me. ‘You did go away, Sally told me.’

Sally was my mother. Mrs Laszlo was raving, but it gave me a cold jolt. I took my knee off the door, giving up, and as soon as I’d done that, her expression changed.

‘He’s at the Gallon,’ she said, and immediately the door banged shut.

Like Tubs’s house, the Gallon Club was a place I hadn’t been to in years. A lot of the shops had changed at street level, the old tailor had gone and there was a kebab house where the butcher’s used to be, but just along from there the green doorway to the Gallon hadn’t changed a bit. The brass plaque was still fixed to the left of the door too, and when I stepped in and started down the stairs the same smells wafted up from below. Cigars and beer and polish. I could have been ten years old again, following my old man down into the club for the first time.

At the foot of the stairs the room opened out to the right; there was a bar along the far wall. The barman was talking to a customer; he glanced over, took me in and kept talking. Around the tables there were a few more men, no women, and on a ledge up behind the barman a TV The TV was about the only change in the whole place, it used to be a radio up there. On the TV a pundit was giving his opinion on the lead-up races to the Cheltenham Gold Cup but no-one was watching.

Tubs was at one of the tables by the wall, his back turned to me, gassing to a fellow I didn’t recognize. I went over.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, craning round. ‘You know you look just like a bloke used to be a member here. Name of Ian Collier.’ He was surprised to see me, but pleased too, I think. He introduced me to his friend and pulled out a chair.

‘Tubs,’ I said, ‘can we have a word?’

He looked curious now. ‘Sure.’ He pulled a roll of tenners from his pocket, counted off seven and dropped them on the table. His friend scooped them up and left. I sat down, keeping my voice low. ‘The other night, you remember, that guy, Sebastian’s runner?'

Tubs nodded. ‘Pike.’

‘Eddie Pike. He’s dead.’ I waited for some reaction but Tubs just sat there. ‘He was in Sebastian’s house when it burned down. He burnt to death.’

Tubs’s gaze wandered to the bar. ‘You feel like a drink?'

‘The guy’s dead.'

He faced me again. "The cops’ve been out rattlin’ cages. It’s not news, Ian.’

I sat up. ‘When?’

‘Just now.’

I chewed that one over. I said, ‘Didn’t you think it was a bit strange?’

‘What, you askin’ about Pike, next thing he’s dead? Yeah, I thought it was strange.' He fixed me with a look, letting me know strange wasn’t quite the word. ‘You know what’s weirder?’ he said, tapping a fat finger on the table. ‘You bein’ here at the Gallon again.’ He stared at me, sad now and kind of accusing. ‘How many years?’

‘Tubs, I don’t need a trip down memory lane. I need some help.’

He pushed away from the table. ‘Orange juice, Coke or beer?’

While he was up at the bar I took a look around. The dark crimson wallpaper was peeling up near the ceiling, it had always been like that, and the new wall-lamps were just like the old ones, only without the fringe. At the other tables I vaguely recognized some of the faces; a couple of them even smiled and nodded in my direction. It gave me an odd feeling. Maybe it was just for my old man’s sake, but it seemed as if I was remembered. And how long was it since I’d last stepped in there? Ten years?

When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of it. Back then the Gallon Club seemed like the centre of the world, the height of glamour. My old man counted for something down there, I guess that was part of it. Him, Freddie Day, Nev Logan and the rest, all the bookies, they’d gather down the club on Monday nights, the week’s big event, the settle-up for the previous seven days. When a bookie doesn’t want to hold some bet he’s taken, he lays it off with another bookie, and later in the day that other bookie might lay some off back the other way. It’s just like the syndicates in the Room really, and it can mean that everybody ends up owing everybody. Some bookies keep accounts with other bookies they trust, it avoids tying up too much cash. That’s what my old man did, him and half a dozen others, and on Monday nights they’d go to the Gallon and settle up. The door upstairs was bolted and down by the bar they’d drag two tables together and sit around having a drink and a laugh, passing on track gossip, then the week’s books would come out, and the money. I’d sit over in the corner, sipping my Coke. Back then I thought the whole business was great.

I was so busy remembering the old days that I didn’t notice Fielding now till he was standing right over me.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Not gonna offer me a seat?’ He’d put on weight, and the grog had left little purple veins on his cheeks, but it was him all right. Fielding. One of the world's total bastards.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not.’

It was odd seeing him suddenly ten years older, and out of uniform. Maybe he’d been kicked out of the force, I thought, that might figure. I glanced over to the bar, but Tubs appeared to be staying put.

‘What’s with the suit?’ Fielding said.

I told him to get lost.

‘Worse manners than your old man,’ he commented, and then he just looked at me.

For a moment I thought he was going to offer his condolences, I’m not sure I could have stomached that. Fielding was not a nice cop. From the time he first set foot in Walthamstow he was trouble. He didn’t seem to like many people, but he really hated my old man. It was Dad who heard from someone over at White City that Fielding’s old man was once banged up in Brixton for theft. Dad didn’t waste the good news. He lined up everyone he knew at the track one night, got them all standing there on the terraces. When Fielding did his usual walk past the terraces at the end of the night, Dad conducted everyone like a choir. A couple of hundred voices chanting,‘Brix—ton! Brix-ton!’ The look on Fielding’s face as he cottoned-on was something they still talked about.

Now he said, ‘What brings you back here?’

‘Until you arrived, the company.'

‘Sir,’ a young bloke called, and Fielding turned.

Sir?

Fielding went over, they had a brief conversation, then they disappeared up the stairs.

Tubs came back from the bar. ‘Catchin’ up on old times?’

‘What’s his game?'

‘Same as yours,’ Tubs said. ‘Eddie Pike.’ He explained that Fielding had arrived half an hour before; it was the first time anyone had seen him in four or five years. Only now he wasn’t in uniform. Now he was a detective. I gazed up the stairs where Fielding had gone. A detective. Maybe that figured too.

‘Anyway,’ Tubs said, sliding my Coke across the table. ‘What kinda help you after? You in some kinda trouble?'

‘It’s for work. We need to know if Sebastian had acquaintances who might go in for arson. If he was in trouble himself somehow.’

‘You think he dug himself in a hole, got someone to burn him out of it?’ He saw me hesitate. ‘Well, am I right, or am I right?' he said.

‘It’s one possibility.'

He made a scoffing sound.

I’d been wondering just how much I’d have to tell him about the K and R, but now that he’d latched onto this other idea I saw that I wouldn’t have to mention kidnap at all. He could nose around just as easily thinking he was trying to pin an arson on Sebastian.

‘It has to be discreet, Tubs.’

‘How much was the place insured for?'

I plucked a figure out of the air. ‘Eight million.'

He smiled, his eyes disappearing. ‘Some fuckin’ house. Sebastian Ward, ay.’ He studied his beer. ‘Figure that one. Bloke has his arse hangin’ out; twenty years later he’s got a house worth eight million quid.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Yeah, not any more.' Tubs took a swig from his beer. ‘Anyway I can tell you for nothin, he hasn’t dropped that kinda money. Not at the dogs.’

‘He doesn’t have to have dropped it. He could’ve had other problems.'

‘Like what?'