To Die For (29 page)

‘And Paget?’

‘Cole will find him. He’s probably got Cole’s smack. Now, let’s go.’

I stowed the Makarov.

‘I’m not finished,’ I said.

I pushed past him. I was in the corridor behind Marriot’s club. There were doors. I opened one and another. The third was locked. I kicked it open. She was on the floor, bent over a thin woman, her sister. There were bullet holes in the wall, and the woman. For all I knew, I’d killed her. When Kid looked at me, she had an empty expression like she didn’t know who I was, or didn’t care. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to give her life and protection. I don’t know what I wanted. I wanted her to give me something. I couldn’t stand straight. I held out my hand. She looked at it. I was dizzy and I was leaking blood again. I hit the floor hard. I didn’t know if I had it in me to get up. Not this time. I could feel what strength I had draining from me. I tried to move, tried to get to her. My body was lead. I think I passed out again.

I felt something cold on my cheek. I opened my eyes and saw something small and thin and dark. I saw a small girl, nothing more than bones and skin and huge eyes. She had the same expression Brenda used to have. I knew what it was, then. I knew what it meant, that look. I knew what Brenda used to feel. Kid put her hand on mine. She was soaked in blood.

Eddie watched us. He shook his head and said, ‘Jesus.’

I pushed myself to my feet and led Kid, or she led me, I can’t say.

Eddie stared at us, at me, his face blank for once. Whatever he saw, it no longer amused him.

“Fuck,” he said. “Now I remember what they called you. The Machine. That was it. The Killing Machine.”

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Read on for the first chapter of

REVENGE AND THE MACHINE

With Kid only just buried and the people that murdered Brenda still at large, Joe has only one thing on his mind: revenge.

We burned her on the Thursday. It was one of those dull March days. There was no sky, just wall to wall grey, no colour anywhere, no sun, no wind. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t anything. It couldn’t even be bothered to rain.

It didn’t matter.

We crawled along the Eastern Avenue and Blake Hall Road and past the Flats, and I watched people trudge by with their heads down and their hands in their pockets, pushing their children and pulling their shopping and dragging their lives about. The whole world was in mourning. I saw an old Sikh bloke by the side of the road. He watched us go by and bowed his head.

I could have carried the coffin in one arm, it was so small. Instead, four of us walked with it; me and Browne and Eddie and some bloke the funeral house laid on. Browne couldn’t walk straight.

The service was a rushed job and I had the feeling the vicar, or whatever he was, wanted to get to a wedding or christening or something, anything that was far away from a lump like me and an old drunk Scot and a black gangster and a small dead girl in a small brown coffin who’d never had a fucking chance. He gave us the usual such-a-tragedy spiel and mumbled a prayer or two. When he told us that she was safe now and in God’s arms I wanted to grab him by his clean white collar and drag him down to where she’d held her dead, blood-soaked sister and to where she’d been used as bait for a robber who’d liked kids, and I wanted to ask him where his fucking god was then. Eddie put a hand on my arm.

He said, “Take it easy, Joe.”

Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was. Probably not.

Browne wept through the whole thing. I couldn’t blame him for being drunk. He’d liked the girl. He’d thought he could help her. He’d thought he could help me. He couldn’t even help himself.

Cole came to the funeral. Some of his men were around, out of the way. They were tooled up and edgy, but Cole seemed okay. He and Eddie nodded to each other. Browne avoided him.

We went to a pub afterwards, me and Browne and Eddie. A couple of East European women came in. They told us they’d worked for Marriot and they were glad he was dead and they were sorry about the girl, even though they’d never known her name. Eddie bought them a drink and they cried a bit. While we were there, other people in the pub quieted their talking and avoided eye contact and dribbled out. A thug, an old drunk Scot, a black criminal and two prostitutes sitting in a bar. It sounded like the start of a joke.

Browne was still pissed but downed a few glasses of Scotch and managed to get pissed all over again and bawled some more which left Eddie as the one to do the talking, even though he’d hardly known her either. He tried, though, and said things like ‘She had you two at least’ and ‘He paid for it, Joe. Marriot. And Beckett too’ and stuff like that and all the time I sat there knowing I might’ve been the one who’d fired the round that killed her. It had been a blazing fight and my head wasn’t right and I’d let loose my old Makarov semi-auto and shot the place to shit. So, yes, I could have been the one.

Then Eddie bought another round and raised his glass and said,

“Here’s to Kid.”

And we all raised our glasses to a tiny dead African girl who was so thin I was scared of crushing her to death when I held her, and who looked at me wide-eyed and open-mouthed, like she was looking at something frightening, and who was named Kindness and who we called Kid.

I was staying at Browne’s. I was still weak and I’d fucked up my arm again when I’d charged into Marriot’s club and flattened the place and ripped through his men and killed the cunt as he’d tried to crawl away from me, blood trailing from his gut. So I needed to mend it, my arm.

Browne fussed over me like an old woman. In his eyes, I’d saved her. I can’t say if that’s true. Maybe it was more like she’d saved me. I don’t know. I didn’t tell him that I might’ve been the one who’d killed her.

So, Browne fussed over me and, in between being unconscious, kept checking my shoulder and my arm.

“This time let the bloody thing heal,” he’d say.

Cole sent some doctor round to help fix me up. The doctor was a specialist at something or other. Cole was trying to pay me back. Brown didn’t like it. Maybe he thought I was his patient, or maybe his ego was hurt. He cheered up when I told the other doctor to fuck off. I didn’t want a gaggle of them round me all the time.

The law had to be bought off, or shut up anyhow. Cole and Conway had clout and they saw to that. There was an understanding between the two of them. They were friends now, like Stalin and Hitler. They fixed it so that the blame went onto the Albanians who, like Eddie had said, were getting too big for their Albanian boots. There was a lot of stuff on the news about clampdowns on foreign gangs and the Albanians got mentioned. It suited Cole and Conway that everyone thought they were to blame. The Albanians had brought the girl into the country in the first place, and they’d worked with Marriot, and if Cole and Conway managed to wipe them out of existence, I, for one, wouldn’t mind. So it was all neat and tidy and everybody was happy because the Albanians had been officially declared the bad guys and one thing people like is to know who the bad guys are.

Paget was still out there, of course. He was another matter. I had to get him, for my reputation if nothing else. I knew he’d sliced Brenda up, six years back. Others knew. If I let it go, I’d lose face. I tried to tell myself that destroying Paget was just business, but I don’t think I believed that.

With Marriot and the others it had been different. I’d killed them because I’d had to. Marriot wanted revenge on me for what Brenda had done to him – grassing him up to the law – and I’d had to hit him before he hit me. Then, too, there was the money. He’d used me to get Cole’s robbery takings and I’d had to get it back because I’d been on the job and I had my reputation to keep clean. Yes, had to keep that reputation clean. It was all I had.

With Paget, it was something else. Paget was on the run and Cole was after him. I’d got Cole’s money back, but Paget still had a million quid’s worth of his heroin. I didn’t need to go looking for him; I could let Cole do that. But I wanted him, and I knew when I had him I’d tear him slowly apart. I’d murder him by inches, and murder it would be. I couldn’t lie to myself about that.

Eddie came round on the Monday. I was sitting watching some old film on TV, and Browne came back from answering the door and said,

“Eddie’s here. He’s got some other men with him.”

Right then I knew we were all back to business as normal.

“I told him he couldn’t bring them in,” Browne was saying.

He was thinking the same thing as me. He was fussing again, probably thought I couldn’t handle them. He was probably right. I was still weak.

Eddie came in and smiled. He sat down on the sofa next to me. Browne waited and watched us for a moment, unsure now where we all stood. That was how quickly it all changed.

“How about a cuppa?” Eddie said to him.

Browne glanced at me.

“Fine,” I said.

Browne trotted off to the kitchen. Me and Eddie watched the film for a while. It was an old war film. The Nazis were the bad guys now. Browne came back with a couple of mugs of tea. He lingered for a moment then shuffled off.

It was early afternoon, and getting dark. Sunlight hit the thin sky over London and spread out and carried on weakly through Browne’s net curtains and after all that, died a few inches from our feet. Eddie and I watched John Mills kill some more Nazis and we sipped our tea and it was all very cosy and I wondered what Eddie’s game was.

“How you feeling?” he said, watching the film.

“Fine.”

“You look half dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Any ideas what you’re going to do?”

“No.”

He tapped his fingers on the mug, watched the film.

“Cole’s having trouble finding Paget,” he said finally.

“Uh-huh.”

We were both so fucking casual.

“Vic wants Cole to help sort out the Albanians. Thing is, Cole’s got an itch about Paget, won’t do anything until he’s got that sorted.”

He waited for me to say something to that. When he got tired of waiting, he said,

“You got any ideas?”

“No.”

We sat there for a bit longer, watching the film, watching the day get darker. Finally he gave up with the tea and crumpet act and slid the mug onto the coffee table.

“Alright, Joe, I know you want Paget. I know you’re going to try for him.”

I wondered why he cared so much.

“Why would I do that?”

“Vengeance.”

“That’s a mug’s game.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“Right. So you’re not going to try and find him?”

“I’ll leave it to Cole.”

“Bollocks.”

I shrugged. What was he going to do? If I’d known where Paget was, I’d have been out killing him. Eddie knew that.

“Well, if you happen to suddenly get any ideas where he is, let me know, alright?”

“Yeah.”

After he’d gone, Browne reappeared and sat down. He had a glass of Scotch.

“Is he going to be trouble?” he said.

“Maybe.”

Bowker wasn’t at the snooker club, and he wasn’t at the pub they suggested. I went to his flat. After I’d banged on the door for a few minutes, a small fat lady opened up and stood unsteadily on swollen legs, her breathing raspy. It must’ve been an effort to get off her sofa and walk five yards to the door. She was all lumps and sags, and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke. When she saw me, she closed her dressing gown, as if she thought I might be tempted to rape her.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Jim Bowker.”

“Yeah? What for?”

“I want him. That’s all.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

She started to close the door. I put my hand on it and pushed it back.

“Where is he?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I never do.”

“Guess.”

She looked at me for a few seconds, pretending to herself that she had a choice.

I found him at a bookies’ in Hackney. I waited further up the street in the car that Cole had let me have. I didn’t want to go inside the bookies’ because these days they all had CCTVs. After half an hour, Bowker came out, lit up a cigarette and started walking slowly in my direction. I got out of the car and crossed the road.

When he saw me, he didn’t try to run or call for help. He must’ve heard what had happened to Marriot. He must’ve known I’d come for him. Maybe he thought my fight with Marriot was only to do with the Cole thing. But Bowker had set Paget onto me and Paget had tried to kill me and he damned well knew I knew that.

Maybe he just knew that running was pointless. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it out and stared at it. Then he looked up and watched as I walked towards him.

In the daylight, his yellow skin looked paler, his eyes darker, more sunken. He still had his thirty-year-old quiff, but it was too thin to be that black. He was wearing that shabby three-piece suit. He must’ve had it for twenty years. He was clinging on to some idea of past success, some memory of a decent score when he’d got himself down to Saville Row and blew a load on clobber. The suit was too big for him these days. It looked like his body was shrivelling up beneath it.

I took him by the arm and steered him along the road, between people who moved aside to avoid us. When we got to a pub, I pushed him through to the car park at the back. I had a look around. There was a brick wall along two parts of the car park, but the upper stories of a few buildings overlooked it. At the side, it had access to a residential street, but little traffic went past. It was okay, I wasn’t going to do anything serious. All this time, Bowker hadn’t said anything, hadn’t struggled.

I let him go and crowded him a bit and he pulled away from me and flattened himself against the pub wall. He tried to smile and said,