Shredder (19 page)

Interesting. It was probably Amobi's people who'd been keeping the pub under surveillance. They must have witnessed the arson attack, and done nothing to prevent it. It fitted with what Amobi had said.

“I have some information the Guvnor needs,” I said. Old Eric looked at me, an ancient toothless rottweiler patrolling a derelict bomb site, growling at anyone who stopped to look.

“What information?” he said.

I sighed. I felt sorry for the mean old bastard, but not sorry enough to waste my time giving him the message and hoping he remembered it long enough to pass it on. I guessed he wanted to feel important, especially now that he had to spend his days on a
bench in the street instead of his regular stool at the bar; but I wasn't a social worker who'd come round to cheer him up. Sooner or later, I suspected, he'd pick a fight with someone and open their face with his razor, just to get nicked. Then he could spend his last days enjoying the routine and food and company that prison offered.

“You have a number for him?” I said.

“I have a number for somebody who does,” said Eric. He didn't seem to mind me going over his head; the fight had gone out of him, and he just wanted to be useful.

“Could you call them?” I didn't say please: it would have sounded patronizing.

Eric pulled a bony fist from the right-hand pocket of his coat—it held nothing but a crumpled tissue—and rooted around inside his cardigan a while. Eventually he fished out a mobile phone just like the one my dad used to have, the sort that could go a week on one charge. Fumbling inside his clothing some more, he produced a pair of glasses, then spent so long putting them on his face I started to wonder if he'd forgotten how. He muttered numbers under his breath as he stabbed out eleven digits and raised the handset to his ancient hairy ear.

Twenty minutes later I was in a black taxi, heading northeast to some corner of Essex I'd never visited before. The meter wasn't running. It might have been the same driver who had picked us up in Trafalgar Square after the shoot-out, but I didn't get a good look at his face, then or now. I was surprised how easy this had been; McGovern had trusted me enough to let me go, yes, but a lot had happened since then—thirty-six hours earlier I'd been psyching myself up to kill him.

The taxi pulled up to the curb in what appeared to be an industrial estate, and the driver waited wordlessly, not even turning his head. I took the hint and climbed out, and as soon as I'd shut the door the taxi wheeled round in a tight circle and sped away.

I stood there squinting in the sun for a few minutes until another car drew up—a minivan with darkened windows—and the rear passenger door slid open. Before I could even register who was inside, another black hood was pulled over my head.

Half an hour later, when the hood was pulled off, I wondered where I was. Obviously somewhere still on the outskirts of London, but this sprawling building looked more like a university campus or an office
complex built in the 1970s than someone's home. It was all square angles of pale concrete and floor-to-ceiling windows, like an expensive architectural experiment, but one that had been abandoned a decade ago. There were clumps of grass bursting out of the roof, and the extensive grounds were shaggy and overgrown: ornamental shrubs were bunched up so close they were strangling each other, and five-meter rose trees that had once been bushes were exploding with blooms and trailing long thorny suckers like living razor wire. It reminded me of the unkempt garden in front of Zoe's student house, except this one was a few hundred times bigger, and Zoe's didn't have several pairs of thickset blokes in leather jackets strolling round the perimeter, smoking.

Two heavies were waiting for me as I climbed out of the people carrier. Both wore leather car coats; one had long greasy hair and an earring, and the other no hair at all—just tears tattooed on his face. The bloke in the van with me, the one who'd pulled the hood off my head, I'd seen before: one of the Guvnor's junior thugs abruptly promoted after Martin and Gary got shot. He took my arm as if he meant to lead me into the building.

“No,” said Longhair. “Get back in the van.”

There was a brief staring match, and the younger bloke lost. He climbed back into the people carrier, slid the door shut, and it reversed away down the drive. The heavy who'd spoken looked at me and flicked his head upwards.

“Raise your hands,” he said.

His bald-headed companion frisked me, quickly but efficiently, then stood back and nodded.

“Move,” said Longhair. Interesting, I thought. The Russians are supplying the Guvnor's muscle now? I was pretty sure they were Russian—this heavy sounded like McGovern's friend Dimitri. I remembered my father telling me how the Russians didn't have a word for “the” and didn't seem to need one. Dad had found this fascinating, God knew why—I'd barely been listening. The men patrolling the grounds, they were Russian too, from the look of them—not that they were wearing furry hats or swigging bottles of vodka, but their clothes and haircuts seemed twenty years out of date, as if they got their fashion inspiration from twentieth-century mafia movies. Longhair and Baldy smelled like chain-smokers who liked lots of tar in their tobacco.

Before me and my escort had reached the front steps, the barrel-like figure of Steve McGovern
emerged from the gloomy interior. He too looked gloomy, and tense. I could imagine his problem: he had been second in the pecking order until the Russian reinforcements arrived, and suddenly a whole lot of foreigners he barely knew were senior to him. When he looked at me the loudmouthed cockiness I'd encountered when we first met had gone, but so had the humility and directness he'd shown last time.

“Why'd you come back?” he said.

“I've got some information your dad might find useful,” I said.

“Tell me,” said Steve, “and I'll decide if it's useful or not.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I've come all this way, I might as well tell him myself.”

Steve shook his head, glanced around at the Russian heavies patrolling the garden, then at Longhair and Baldy, who were standing behind me, slightly bored, waiting for this conversation to end.

“Finn,” said Steve, “you only got away last time because I put in a good word for you. That's all changed now. The stakes are way higher. Tell me what you know and you might just get out of here in one piece.”

It was a tempting offer, but somehow I knew the Guvnor would give me more credit than Steve, and I was going to need all the help I could get. The info I had was slim at best—McGovern might already have found the second mole, for all I knew—but he owed me, more than his son did. If I had only one punch left to throw I had to make it count.

“If he's busy, I can wait,” I said.

Steve shook his head in irritation—
Stupid jerk
, his look said—and he stood aside. Longhair and Baldy stepped forward, forcing me onwards into the house, riding a wave of stale tobacco smell. Steve trailed after us.

The building's interior had polished concrete floors, doors of polished wood, and empty white shelves; the look was chic and minimal, or bleak and brutal, depending on your point of view. My escort steered me towards a flight of mahogany steps mounted on a single central pillar, leading up to a platform with a long glass partition obscured by vertical window blinds. Maybe that look had been trendy back in the 1970s, but now the decor seemed shabby and sad. I tried the polished steel handle of the central glass door; it was open.

Steve followed me in and nodded at our escort to
get lost. Longhair hesitated, as if he and Baldy had been planning to leave anyway but didn't want to look like they answered to him. Then he decided he didn't care how it looked, and headed back downstairs.

Inside I found McGovern in jeans and an open-necked shirt, muttering into a mobile phone. The room was laid out like an office, with slender furniture of chrome and white Formica, cold abstract paintings on the walls, a white rug on the polished concrete floor and a leather sofa that might have been white once but was now way, way off-white.

“Well, get a message to him and tell him to call me,” McGovern was saying. “I don't care if he's got the NSA, the FBI and the Salvation Army listening to his calls. He can use his initiative.”

There was a huge map of the UK stuck to the wall behind him. This was a war room, I realized. But where were all the generals?

“Right. Goodbye,” said the Guvnor. He hung up and turned, and his icy gray stare drilled into me. I could smell the adrenaline pumping through his system, but somehow he remained calm and focused, like a boxer working out how to take on three opponents at once. At that moment he looked capable
of it. For an instant I wished I'd blurted out my message to Steve and done a runner.

“Still trying to reach Dennis?” said Steve.

His father's cold glare flickered from me to him. “Wanker's playing hard to get. Wouldn't be the first time he'd sat on the fence.”

“We can manage without him,” said Steve. “Karakurt won't know what hit him.”

“Not the point,” said his father.

“Karakurt?” I said.

“The Turk's real name,” said Steve.

“You sure about that this time?” I said, and immediately I wanted to kick myself. I'd just wanted to make conversation, but it had come out as snide.

McGovern looked at me, considering whether to reply or have someone throw me down those hardwood stairs on my face. “My friend Dimitri used to be KGB,” he said at last. “He has contacts all over the old Soviet Union, right down to Turkmenistan and all them other Stans. Yeah, the intel's good. So what's this you've got for me?”

I thought, If he's got the bloody KGB working for him, he won't need me.

“After I left you that time,” I said, “the Turk—Karakurt—grabbed my girlfriend. Held her hostage.”

“What for?” said Steve. He'd moved round from behind me, trying to insert himself into the conversation, closer to the man in charge.

“He wanted me to do a job for him,” I said.

“What sort of job?” said Steve.

“What do you sodding think?” said McGovern, with more than a hint of contempt. “He wanted Finn to whack me.” Steve's eyes widened, and he reached around to the small of his back. “And don't start waving that bloody shooter about, they've already frisked him.”

Sheepishly Steve returned his pistol to its hiding place.

“I got her out anyway,” I said.

“How'd you manage that?” said McGovern with a flicker of genuine curiosity.

“There was a riot. Somebody set fire to their building. When they all ran for it, I grabbed her.”

McGovern grinned hugely, and I got the impression he hadn't laughed in a long time. “You jammy little sod,” he said. “Why aren't you working for me?”

“My girlfriend overheard someone calling the Turk,” I went on quickly, before he had time to volunteer me. “To tell him Richard was dead, that I'd killed him.”

“Christ!” said Steve.

“It must have been someone on your crew,” I said. “No one else would have known, would they?”

“Who?” said Steve.

“I have no way of knowing,” I said. “I thought maybe you could find out.”

Steve snorted. “How, exactly?”

“I don't know,” I said, trying not to flounder. “Check your people's phones? She said the call came in at seven….”

McGovern seemed lost in thought, like he was running through the potential candidates in his head. Steve just seemed disgusted and angry. “That's it?” he said. “All this fuss,
this
is the inside gen you have? There were twenty-four people in that house, you expect us to check all their phones? How do you know they weren't using a burner, like Richard?”

It was a good question. Why the hell had I dived back into this snakepit with so little to protect me? “Zoe—my girlfriend—said it sounded like a friend of his…like the Turk had been really close to Richard, though it didn't make any sense—I don't know if that…” I trailed off. I had nothing left to say, and the more I talked the more of an idiot I sounded.

McGovern was rubbing his forehead, as if a thousand
black thoughts were swirling in his head. Steve was doing exactly the same, mirroring his dad—I didn't know if he was doing it consciously or not, but in his case it looked less like deep thought and more like panic.

“Dammit,” said McGovern calmly. He glanced at his son. “You called someone around then, around seven.”

“Me? No I never.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said McGovern. “I came in when you was on the phone.”

“Oh yeah,” said Steve. “That was Richard's mum, I told you. We owed her that much.”

“Right,” said McGovern. “You said.”

There was a short silence. McGovern's cold gaze rested on Steve, who chewed his lip nervously.

“She won't have said anything, though,” Steve blurted. “She knows the drill.”

“Right,” said his father again. “So if I called her, this minute, she'd back you up, would she?”

“What?” Steve looked offended. “Course she would. She's getting on a bit, but—”

“Fine. Lend us your phone,” said McGovern.

Steve stared at him, and so did I. Was the Guvnor really implying what I thought he was? Shaking his
head in disgusted disbelief, Steve reached into his pocket. Except he didn't go for his phone—his hand slipped round to the small of his back. His father strode forward, grabbed Steve's right hand with his left behind Steve's back, and Steve's throat with his right. Steve wheezed and started to choke, while I just stood there, uselessly, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and who I should help.

The two men were standing face to face, inches from each other. Steve's left hand flailed; it tugged at McGovern's wrist, then clawed at and scratched at his face, but McGovern shook him off like a midge. Steve's right hand, pinned behind his back, was gripping his gun, I realized. His face was turning deeper scarlet by the second, but McGovern's face was deathly calm and pale, like he was holding a puppy down in a bucket of water.