To Die For (21 page)

So we carried on, like inmates in some kind of suburban refuge, each one of us more fucked up than the rest, each one relying on the others, needing them to get through another damned day without crashing and burning, without self-destructing. And, somehow, it worked. It was like Browne always said about my scars, ‘It’s the scar tissue that’s holding you together, Joe,’ he’d say. Well, we were scarred all over the place, and maybe it was that that kept us in one piece. So, we carried on. What else could we do? Life is carrying on. The world turns; we keep breathing. Or not. That’s it. There’s nothing more.

And we might have continued like that, the three of us. I might have forgotten about Cole and Beckett and the rest of them. We might have been like that forever.

But one morning I woke with a start. It was dark again. It always seemed to be dark lately. Something had clicked in my mind. It had been there for days, worming its way in. It was to do with what I’d said to Browne earlier about the money I had on me. I’d told him to take cash from the envelope because that was my old money, safe to use. The other money was the stuff that had been planted in my flat. I’d told Browne not to touch that because it was traceable.

And that didn’t make sense.

I phoned Eddie at Dunham’s club and told him I needed to see him.

‘I wouldn’t come around here, if I were you,’ he said. ‘Cole’s been putting out feelers. He’s already approached us. He knows you and I go back. Might be that I’m being watched.’

‘Can you get out without being followed?’

‘There are ways. Say, the cafe – same as before.’

‘One hour.’

I put the receiver down and looked up and saw Browne standing there watching me. He didn’t say anything, just watched me and shook his head slowly. He turned and walked away.

We sat at the same table as before, each with a cup of coffee. Maybe the same coffee. It was gone midnight. There were more people here this time, a dozen or so, but the tables near us were empty.

This time Eddie was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t armed.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘It was something you told me. You said the money stolen from Cole’s place was untraceable.’

‘What about it?’

‘You know that for sure?’

‘No. But it has to be. Why would Cole arrange a robbery of that amount and risk it being traced?’

‘He could have laundered it.’

‘He could have, but why take the risk? Any other party you involve increases the chances of getting caught. And if he laundered it, he’d have to settle for half the amount he stole.’

‘Maybe he only needs half a million.’

‘No. Not if the Albanians are offering to Cole what they offered to us. I checked with Vic. It was a straight mill.’

‘Maybe Cole had the other half already.’

‘Not from what I hear. He’s in debt.’

‘Right.’

A couple of builders walked in. Eddie turned to look at them. They took a table at the far end of the cafe.

‘Why do you want to know?’ Eddie said, turning back.

‘Those two men in my flat, the ones who tried to plant the money on me.’

Eddie was quiet for a while. A light flickered over our table and made the sound of a fly dying. Then, nodding, Eddie said, ‘I see your point. That money in your flat had to be traceable, had to tie you in to the robbery, otherwise why plant it? But if they were using traceable currency, that would mean that the whole million was traceable – which wouldn’t make sense.’

Eddie was looking at some sugar on the table. I was looking at Eddie looking at the sugar.

‘Dunham owns a casino, right?’ I said.

He looked up at me, leaned forward, elbows on the table.

‘Yeah.’

‘What happens if you have a bad night? If someone wins big?’

‘We pay them by cheque, wire transfer maybe.’

‘Always?’

‘Not always,’ Eddie said slowly. ‘If they come to the table with cash, they can insist on a cash payment. It’s their right. We wouldn’t recommend it, of course, but once they’re out of our door, we don’t have responsibility for what happens to them. Some of our clients come from Middle Eastern embassies, companies, that sort of thing. They’re often forbidden to gamble, so if they win, they want it in cash. Some want it in cash for other reasons.’

‘So you keep large sums of money on site? Aside from anything you take on the floor?’

‘Yeah. We have a contingency amount in the vault.’

‘And this comes from a bank?’

‘Yeah. Sure.’

‘What’s the procedure with the serial numbers?’

‘We note the first and last numbers in each stack.’

‘Why?’

‘We have to. Insurance policy insists on it.’

‘But after a good night, you’d have lots of cash from the casino floor. Maybe a million or more.’

‘More.’

‘If someone knocked off your place, what money would they steal?’

He was quiet for a moment, thinking.

‘If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t touch the contingency money. Too hot. They’d take the floor cash.’

‘Beckett and Cole would know what they were doing.’

‘Yeah. Which means that robbery was a huge cock-up and they stole the wrong money.’

‘There’s another possibility,’ I said. ‘They took the floor money and only a part of the traceable money from the contingency pile.’

‘Why?’

‘The traceable money was taken so they could spread it around my flat and tie me in with the robbery.’

The woman who’d waited on us came over with her pad and a pen.

‘Can I get you gents anything to eat?’

Eddie, looking at me intently, shook his head. The woman sighed and wandered off.

‘Okay,’ Eddie said. ‘They nicked the traceable cash only to set you up. That makes sense. But how does that help? It tells you they’ve set you up. You knew that already.’

‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘The night of the robbery, I heard Beckett outline the plan. They intercepted the money after it had been boxed for the security company. He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to fix the currency.’

‘So what? Cole fixed it so that Beckett had inside info. Joe, you already know all this. Cole tells Beckett about the timings, the procedure, the security codes. You said yourself that this man Warren was a decoy, that Beckett already had all the information he needed because Cole had given it to him. Then Cole has a man in the casino that night to make sure things go smooth.’

‘That’s the problem. Cole wouldn’t have arranged for Beckett to take traceable cash. Beckett had to do that on his own.’

Eddie sat back and nodded, very slowly.

‘I see what you mean.’

‘Cole is after me for the money, so he doesn’t know that I was set up, so he doesn’t know about the traceable cash.’

‘I get it,’ he said. ‘There were two inside men. One there on Cole’s part, making sure things are smooth with Beckett. The other working with Beckett, with access to the casino’s own cash, framing you for the robbery and stealing from Cole.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Or maybe it’s the same man,’ Eddie said. ‘Maybe whoever Cole had assigned to assist Beckett was working with Beckett to double-cross Cole and set you up.’

‘No, too obvious. Cole would suspect him straightaway. It has to be someone else. Someone Cole doesn’t know is involved in the robbery.’

‘The third man. The one who took out Beckett in Dalston.’

‘Yeah.’

Eddie picked up a spoon and stirred his coffee. He didn’t intend to drink it, he just wanted something to do. He dropped the spoon.

‘So, the question to ask is – who would be in a position to fix the money, knowing the robbery was about to happen?’

‘No. The question to ask is – who could do that and be willing to screw Cole?’

‘That’s a good question. I can think of a few who’d want to screw Cole. Including me. As for who could arrange the fix, I wouldn’t know.’

‘Warren is the casino under-manager,’ I said. ‘Who’s the manager?’

‘Pat Garner. But John Thurber is Cole’s business manager, and he would oversee the operations.’

‘And Bill Wilkins is still Cole’s number two?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Anyone else you can think of?’

‘Not offhand. But that’s a pretty good list.’

We sat quietly for a while, mulling over those few names.

I didn’t know anything about Garner, and I only knew a bit about Thurber. From what I could remember, he was posh, one of those smart criminals who liked to earn his money from crime then spend his weekends at the golf club, drinking with the chief constable.

Wilkins I remembered from way back.

Eddie said, ‘You know what you’re gonna do?’

‘Find the money, kill whoever took it, give it back to Cole minus my end.’

‘That easy, huh?’

‘No. What do you know about Garner?’

‘Not much. He would’ve known the routine and where the contingency cash was stored. I haven’t heard anything against him, but you never know.’

‘Where’d he come from?’

‘Huh?’

‘Where did Cole hire him from? I don’t remember ever hearing his name from before.’

‘Far as I know, he was hired by Cole for his experience in running casinos or something. Nothing untoward.’

‘He might be bent.’

‘He might be. He might be lots of things. He might have been coerced. That being the case, you would need to know who’d coerced him.’

‘Yeah. What about Thurber?’

‘Capable of it. Shifty and smart. Well educated. But I don’t think so.’

‘Why?’

‘Too discreet. Too smooth, polished. Know what I mean?’

‘No.’

Eddie smiled and shook his head.

‘Sometimes I think you’re pulling all our plonkers, Joe. Know that? You act like you couldn’t spell your own name if somebody wrote it down for you. Look, way I see it, whoever’s behind this is trying to seriously fuck Cole. That would take someone without fear, or someone ruthless, or greedy, or just plain fucking stupid. Thurber isn’t any of those things. He’s cautious.’

‘And Wilkins? Is he any of those things?’

Eddie frowned and leaned forward and looked down at his coffee.

‘He might be,’ he said to the coffee. ‘He’s ambitious, anyway. He started out in north London. Went in with Cole a few years back.’

I’d known a few people who’d done jobs for Wilkins, but that had been a long time ago. For a while, it looked like he was going to be pretty big, but now he was working for Cole. That struck me as odd.

‘Why?’

‘Something to do with smuggling. Cole was into this and that, beginning to make a name for himself. Wilkins brought connections in with him and became Cole’s number two. He has a reputation, though. In short, a bastard.’

He looked up from his coffee.

‘You know, I still can’t remember what they called you back then.’

When I got back, Browne was face down on the sofa, dribbling on to a cushion. Half his body dangled over the sofa edge; another inch and he’d be on the floor. I pushed him back on.

The girl was in the kitchen, lit only by the light coming through from the hallway. She was slouched at the table, her head resting on her arms. Her braided hair fell around her like a dark waterfall, lying in twisted silken cords on the tabletop.

She was asleep, her body rising and falling evenly. Her hand twitched and she murmured something. I didn’t want to wake her. I watched her, though. Where had she come from? Why was she here? I didn’t know a damned thing about her. How old was she, for fuck’s sake? Older than she should’ve been, anyway.

I looked at her hands. How the hell could those hands even hold a gun?

I realized she was watching me, her eyes wide and bright in the dark room. She hadn’t moved and, resting there, her face turned to me like that, she looked not like a child at all, but like someone tired of it all. I’d seen that look before.

I tried to think of something to say to her. Nothing came to me. I wondered why I was trying. I gave up and walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of milk. I didn’t want the milk, but I drank it.

‘Did you see the men who killed Beckett and the others?’ I said, my back towards her.

‘No, sir.’

I hadn’t expected her to answer me. I stayed as I was, with my back to her.

‘What did you hear?’

She didn’t answer.

‘You hear the shots? A struggle?’

‘No.’ She said it softly, like a whisper.

‘What happened?’

‘I hid.’

I turned to face her. She was sitting up now, her hands still on the table in front of her.

‘Why did you hide?’

‘I was scared.’

She didn’t see anything; she didn’t hear anything. But she was scared enough to hide. That didn’t make sense.

She stared at the table. She sat stiffly, as if she was being interrogated. And yet she could have left. That meant she wanted to talk. Did she want to talk about Dalston?

‘The men who did the killing,’ I said, ‘I think they used silencers. You know what silencers are? It means the guns don’t make much noise. There was no struggle. They didn’t break in. If you didn’t see them, how did you know to hide? Was it something else? Did you hear an argument? Did you hear threats made?’

She shook her head, her eyes not moving from the table. She was shrinking into herself, staring out at everything with fear. I’d seen that in the Falklands, on both sides. Young men, boys really, faced death and violence, and realized for the first time that it wasn’t like in the films, that it was real and squalid and indifferent, and that morality congealed about it. They would sit there, those boys, their faces white and fixed, their minds turned inwards, a kind of self-defence mechanism. There was a danger the girl was going that way, closing up. If I wanted to get anything from her, I’d have to be careful. I’d have to be subtle.

‘Your parents are dead?’ I said.

She looked at her hands.

‘Who do you live with?’ I said. ‘Who do you know? Where’s your family?’

She still didn’t say anything. She still looked at her hands. Whatever it was that had happened to her, it had been bad. She was too small to be hurt that bad. I realized that she was speaking, mumbling really. I grabbed a mug from the side, took the bottle of milk over to the table and poured her some. She drank. I sat down opposite her. I had to know what she knew; now was as good a time as any. When she finished drinking the milk, she put the mug down and wiped her mouth with her hand.