The Evil And The Pure (21 page)

“You could always buy another club,” Clint suggested. “Millwall?”

“Those hooligans?” Dave snorted. “I want the team I’ve supported all my life, the team my grandfather supported. I want the super Spurs and I’m determined to have them.” Dave toyed with his glass. This was the delicate part. He had to be careful. “I think Phials is lying. I think he’s perfected the drug but is holding back the formula.”

Clint’s eyes widened. “To sell it to somebody else?”

“No. I think he’s afraid I’ll kill him.” Dave pushed his glass away then pulled it back. “When we start producing the drug, we’ll control the supply. We’ll be the only manufacturers, distributing it through contacts of our choosing. That’s why our foreign friends are prepared to shower me with so much cash up front, for exclusive national rights. It’s a complex beast, maybe the most intricate chemical compound anyone’s ever seen. It won’t be easy for others to decode its secrets, it’ll take months, maybe years. Eventually some clever fuck will find a way to copy it – they always do – but until that happens we can charge what we like. Which makes Phials something of a liability.”

“How so?” Clint
asked.

“If he escaped
, he could find a backer and go into opposition. The security at the lab is first rate but nothing’s foolproof. There’s only one way to make sure Phials doesn’t spill his secrets — kill him.”

Dav
e looked deep into Clint’s eyes and saw the cowardice there, the weakness, the reluctance to be associated with violence. He realised his cousin didn’t want to hear the truth, so he fed him a soothing lie instead. “Of course we wouldn’t do that – he’s too valuable to us, there’s no telling what he might come up with next – but Phials doesn’t trust us and there’s nothing we can do to convince him.”

“I could try,” Clint said. “Tell him you don’t mean him any harm. He might believe me.”

Dave shook his head. “Don’t even mention it. Just talking about it would drive him further into his shell.”

“Then what do you want me to do?” Clint asked, sure Dave wasn’t telling him all this just to pass the time.

Dave sniffed. “I think Phials cracked the formula a month or two ago – he’s slowed down during that time, not as manic as he was when he started working on the drug – but I can’t be certain. If I knew for definite, I could wring it out of him, send Big Sandy in, tighten the screws, get him to spill, make it sweet with him afterwards. But if I come down hard on him and he
hasn’t
developed the drug, I risk isolating him forever. He might never trust me again.”

“You want me to be a spy,” Clint said quietly, finally clicking to his cousin’s scheme. “Ask him about his work, try and trick the truth out of him.”

“That’s the long and the short of it,” Dave agreed. “I doubt he’ll say anything to you, but it might slip out when he’s high, while you’re chatting, if he thinks he has nothing to fear. If it does, and you report it to me, then – cousin – you’ll be part of the biggest drugs deal in history.”

“How much?” Clint croaked greedily. “How much for
me
?”

Dave shrugged. “How much do you need? A million?
Two?” He smiled and lifted his glass. “It’s yours for the asking once my buy-out of Spurs goes through.” Clinked his glass against Clint’s bottle. “
LeChayim.
”

“
LeChayim
,” Clint muttered weakly, returning the toast, staring ahead dazedly,
two million
ricocheting through his thoughts, head filling with dreams of Shula and America, loyalty to Phials not an issue — he’d sell out his own mother for that much.

november 200
0

FIFTEEN

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been six days since my last confession and these are my sins.”

Fr Sebastian listened impatiently while Mrs Brady reeled off a list of
sins
, including laughing at a rude joke, cursing twice, and falling asleep one night before she’d said her prayers. He asked if she was truly sorry. She was. He told her to say three Hail Mary’s and two Our Father’s, sent her away with God’s blessing, bored, nervous, horny.

H
e hadn’t seen or heard from Gawl in more than a fortnight. The priest didn’t know where the Scot was based. Didn’t dare ask around in case anyone connected him with the thug. He’d visited a few local pubs, hunting for Gawl, without any luck. Getting desperate — he’d come to rely on Gawl, needed his contacts, the safe brothels, the young girls. Fantasizing late at night. Masturbating over a stash of obscene magazines. Not enough. The priest’s perverse hunger increasing with every celibate hour that passed, Clint Smith’s drugs dulling his senses to the worst of the pain, but not entirely, drugs never enough to satisfy Fr Sebastian when the need was fierce inside him.

The door to the confessional opened. His hopes flared, as they did every time the door opened
, but then a shadow slipped in, too small. Hope dying, misery setting in, until the confessee spoke and he placed the voice — Tulip Tyne. His breath caught as she said, “Forgive me Father for I have sinned.” Tulip’s sins as predictable as Mrs Brady’s, but far darker and more intriguing for a man of Sebastian Parry’s persuasions.

He tried driving the dark thoughts from his mind as Tulip unburdene
d herself. This was the one line he had never crossed. He’d forced himself upon choirgirls in the past but he’d never taken advantage of his position as God’s Earthly confessor. But he’d rarely been this desperate before and never this isolated.

His heart
was beating so hard, he didn’t hear her when she finished confessing. Face pressed into his hands, willing his desires to pass, praying to God for strength. Tulip paused uncertainly, waiting for him to respond. Then, quietly, she said, “Fr Sebastian?”

He lowered his hands. His eyes opened. He sighed. “Sorry, my child.” Pulling himself up straight
, granting absolution, figuring,
I can always absolve her again, and if God hasn’t forgiven me for my previous sins, one more can’t hurt.

When Tulip left to make her peace with God, Fr Sebastian slipped out of the confessional and looked for Kevin Tyne. Spotted him near the back of the church
and started towards him. An elderly man shuffled to his feet and halted the priest. “Are you hearing confessions now, Father?”

“In a couple of minutes,” Fr Sebastian smiled, helped the gentleman back into his seat, hurried down the aisle, trying not to appear too anxious.

Kevin was brooding about work, sick of London Underground. Pondering his options. Quit and look for work as a temp? Go on night courses, brush up on his computer skills, wait for something decent to come his way? Main problem — whatever sort of job he landed, he’d have to be close to Tulip. Job satisfaction a very distant second behind his need to be within walking distance of his sister.

Kevin was s
urprised when Fr Sebastian slid in beside him. He braced himself for a lecture. But the priest didn’t say anything, just sat beside Kevin, looking like the world was about to end, breathing raggedly.

“Fr Sebastia
n? Are you OK?” Kevin concerned — the priest looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack.

Fr Sebastian glanced at him sideways, trembling. “This is a terrible world,” he croaked. “
We have so much to be ashamed of.” He stared at his fingers, dancing feverishly on his knees, and willed them together — if he could join them in prayer, perhaps he could beg God for the strength to deny himself this illicit, inhuman pleasure. But his hands remained apart and instead he stuttered the words of damnation. “Huh-huh-how much… fuh-for your suh-suh-suh-sister?”

Kevi
n stared at the priest, bemused. He thought it was a barbed query, the precursor to a condemning sermon. “That’s none of…” he began to retort. Stopped when he saw the priest’s eyes, full of wicked yearning. Realised what he was being asked. Shocked, he couldn’t respond.

“I’ll pay
whatever you ask,” Fr Sebastian snarled.

“She’s not a whore,” Kevin said numbly. “I don’t
rent her out.”

“I know.” Fr Sebastian smiled weakly. “I understand. You must watch. I accept th
at. I’ll play along. But please, how much?”

Kevin shook his head. “I can’t. Tulip wouldn’t
, not with a priest.”

“She does what you tell her.”

“It would ruin her.”

“No.” Fr Sebastian firm. “
We
are the ruined ones. Tulip is pure. The likes of you and I can sully her but we can’t ruin her.”

“I…” Kevin gulped, flashing on a picture of Tulip and the priest. Something new. A fresh taboo.
“Five hundred pounds.”

“I don’t have that much. But I can get it.” Fr Sebastian ready to pay whatever it took.

“Let me know when you’ve got the money,” Kevin said evenly.

“No!” Fr Sebastian grabbed Kevin’s wrist,
squeezed sharply. “I can’t wait. It must be now, this afternoon. I
need
…”

Kevin saw the desperation in the priest’s expression
and grew strong on it. “How much can you pay up front?”

“Two,
maybe two-fifty. I’ll have to check.”

“Get it. And another five hundred by the end of the week.” Fr Sebastian nodded eagerly, too horny to haggle. Rose to fetch the money. Kevin stopped him. “You know where we live?”

Fr Sebastian paused, then chuckled self-deprecatingly. “No.”

“Long Lane, in the Borough.”

“I don’t know it. Still new to the area. But I’m sure I can find it.”

Kevin smiled snidely. “I’m sure too.
Go get the money. I’ll have the address ready for you when you return.”

Scribbling
down the address while the priest hurried through the church to his home at the rear. Studying Tulip as she knelt and prayed, wondering how she’d react, deciding not to tell her until they left the church, maybe not until Fr Sebastian turned up on their doorstep. She couldn’t argue with him if she didn’t know about it in advance, and she’d be so stunned when the priest stepped in and dropped his pants, she’d probably accede without a murmur. Even so, he’d make sure she was high when Fr Sebastian arrived. Clint Smith’s finest. Take her as far as she’d ever been, make sure her moral barriers were at their lowest.

Guilt
wormed through Kevin’s mind – soiling his sister’s relationship with her priest, perhaps robbing her of her faith – but guilt was nothing new and had never held him in check before. Besides, it would be for the best if he could destroy her faith. One less place for her to turn if Kevin’s hold over her ever wavered, making her solely dependant on him, supplanting God and his priests as the only man in her world. Kevin her lover, her religion, her life, her all — as she was his.

SIXTEEN

Getting drunk. Fighting
furiously. He took a bad beating in West Ham, almost kicked to death by a group of skinheads he’d insulted, recovering in his bed for three days, surviving on water and cider, wishing he was dead.

How fucking jinxed was he! Of all the women Larry Drake c
ould have been making a move on, why did it have to be Dave Bushinsky’s niece? Gawl not worried about being connected to the rape – the Bush thought Drake did it, ran him down and killed him, end of story – just disgusted that he’d lost his meal ticket. It was typical of his current run of luck. Everything he touched turned to shit. Maybe London wasn’t right for him. Recalling his last stay, decades before, bumming around, petty jobs here and there, having to flee when he killed a woman, number three of eight, but one of only two he hadn’t planned. She’d wound him up and he’d snapped. Not like most of his kills, where he staked out his prey and targeted someone he had no connection to. He’d had to run like a dog, scared, vulnerable, directionless. Now here he was, back in London and suffering again. Maybe this city just didn’t like him. Might be better to get the hell out, try Cardiff or Dublin. Never did like the fucking English.

Slowly recovering from his beating. A wash, shave, crawling down to the café for some food, throwing up in the toilet before he finished, making himself eat everything on the plate, getting sick aga
in, buying bread, biscuits, jam and coffee in the 7-11 across the road, stumbling back to his flat, sleeping off the rest of the day, guzzling the food when he woke, keeping it down, feeling better, halfway human.