To Fight For (12 page)

I noticed Eddie looking at the girls, probably wondering, like I had, if they were plain-clothes. Then he flicked his gaze over to me, and a sly glimmer came into his sly eyes.

Maybe I'd given something away, a slip, a flicker of expression.

‘I have a thing for redheads,' he said. ‘Their bodies are more sensitive. Did you know that, Joe? Must be their skin. You touch them and they melt.'

I had to wonder why he was telling me. I didn't care, and he knew it.

The girls had noticed him now. He flashed them his handsome, movie-star smile. They went for him straight away.

He leaned towards them.

‘I'm Eddie,' he said.

The woman with pale blue eyes blushed and smiled. When she did that, her eyes got even lighter so that they were the blue of a clear summer evening sky.

‘What're your names?' Eddie said.

‘Karen,' said the one with pale eyes. She spoke in a Scots accent. Glaswegian, I thought. The other girl had an English accent, posh, smooth. She said her name was Vicky. Eddie told them he'd always liked redheads.

‘Maybe it's a black thing,' he was saying. ‘We get bored of brunettes, and blondes are a bit too common these days. It's not often you see a proper redhead. Now I'm looking at two of them.'

They watched him, wide-eyed, as if he was doing some magic trick. He did that to women, and he knew it. He said, ‘My friend here's just got out of the nick, and he hasn't seen a woman for a while, so we were wondering if you'd like to join us.'

Then, as one, they looked at me, and their smiles fell away, and their sparkling eyes dulled, and all that was left was a kind of fear. I couldn't blame them for that. I knew what I looked like to people. I knew what I did to them. I wasn't the kind who could be ignored. Maybe that was my curse. I felt it, though. Somewhere inside, I felt a stab of pain.

The one with curly hair looked at her watch.

‘Well …' she said, looking at her friend for support.

‘We have to go,' the other one said. ‘We only came in for a moment.'

They hadn't even ordered.

As they were walking out, Eddie turned back to me, that slyness dancing in his eyes.

‘You've got a way with the birds, Joe. I never seen two women scarper so fast.'

Now I understood what he was doing. It was another of his games. He was putting me down a bit, letting me know what power he had, what I didn't have.

I tried to pretend I didn't care about all that. I had a gun, I told myself. Fuck the rest.

But that was a lie. I did care, and I couldn't understand why. Maybe it was just that I missed being with Brenda. Maybe it was that simple.

But Eddie had made a mistake. Wanting Brenda only reminded me that she was gone. And for that, people would suffer. For that, I'd make the whole fucking world suffer.

‘Happy now?' I said.

‘I got rid of 'em, didn't I?'

‘Yeah.'

I was tired of all his shit. My head was starting to wander again. I needed it clear. I needed to know what this was really about. Things were happening in the background that I was missing. Eddie was toying with me, I knew that much. I said, ‘You still haven't told me what you want? Is it the DVD?'

He leaned back in his seat.

‘We want it, sure. You know that. But I don't think you're gonna give it to us.'

‘Right.'

He sighed, and his sigh said I was being dumb. I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was being childish.

‘Why do you want it?' he said.

‘I could ask you the same thing. You know what's on it.'

There it was again, that flicker in his jaw. He was angry about this, whatever he pretended. On one hand, he worked for Dunham, and he was loyal, I had to admit that. Fuck, I even respected it. But Dunham had given protection to Paget. And now Dunham wanted a DVD of some rich cunt with a child so that he could use it for his own means.

I think that bothered Eddie. I didn't get that. Eddie was too smart to let his conscience be affected by that sort of thing – that was, if he had a conscience, which I doubted.

‘Vic wants it,' he said. ‘And he wants Glazer too.'

‘What do you know about Glazer?'

‘Paget told us everything, so don't think you've got a lead on us there. Vic wants that film, Joe. That's all that matters.'

‘Fuck Dunham. And fuck you.'

That made Eddie smile, but it was a weak smile, as if, privately, he agreed with me. He bent forward and took a sip of coffee.

‘Who's the man in the film?' I said.

He didn't even bother answering that one. He just put his coffee down. That was all the answer I'd expected.

‘The girl in the film,' I said, and saw Eddie's jaw tighten again, ‘she's about the same age as Dunham's daughter.'

I don't know why I said that. It didn't make any difference, and I knew it. But, still, I'd said it. Eddie didn't speak for a moment. He gazed at his coffee. He wasn't stirring it now. He was past those games.

‘We saw an opportunity to exploit a situation,' he said to the coffee. ‘It's the business we're in. Don't get sentimental about these things. But you want Glazer. Why?'

‘He was part of it. Maybe the worst part. If he hadn't grassed her up to Marriot, she might be alive.'

‘Leave Glazer and maybe I can get Vic to leave you.'

‘No good.'

‘So you want it all neat and tidy and done up in a fucking bow.'

‘I want blood.'

‘Why, Joe? What does it matter? It's only business. You of all people should know that.'

‘It's not business to me. It's personal.'

He leaned back again, a satisfied look on his face, as if he'd solved it all, proved something important.

‘Personal. Yeah. That's the problem, isn't it? Since when did you start caring about things, Joe? About people?'

I didn't know what to say to that. He was watching me. I had the feeling he was trying to see how far I'd go, how much strength I had left, whether I was the same man he'd known for years.

After a while, he reached forward and drank some coffee.

‘How's things, Joe?' he said, putting the mug back. ‘How's Browne?'

Right then I knew Eddie knew exactly what had happened to Browne. He'd never given a shit about Browne. He wasn't important, and Eddie didn't have curiosity for things that weren't important.

It was Dunham who'd sent Roy Buck. It must've been.

‘He got hit,' I said. ‘By a bloody train.'

‘Oh?'

I watched him closely.

‘Roy Buck,' I said. ‘Remember him?'

‘The Reaper?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I remember.'

‘He was at Browne's place.'

‘What did he want?'

I shrugged and kept watching Eddie.

He looked right back at me. He didn't twitch a muscle, didn't flicker. That amused glint was missing from his eyes. And I knew I was right. The bastard knew all about Buck.

What was more, he was letting me know he knew.

There was something wrong with that, though.

Eddie was subtle and smart, and, sure, sending Buck was the kind of thing he'd do. He knew there was some-thing fucked up about Buck, that he'd break bones without thinking anything of it. And he knew that I'd know what Buck was capable of – Christ, he'd done it to me, hadn't he?

But Eddie also knew me well enough to know I wasn't scared of Buck, or anyone for that matter.

‘I'll keep the DVD. I'll take my chances with Buck.'

‘I might agree with you, but Vic won't. You know that. He'll come after you. And if he can't get you …'

He frowned.

‘You'll let Buck loose on Browne.'

‘Me?' he said.

‘Do you think I care that much about Browne?' I said.

‘I don't think anything. However, didn't we just establish that you did care for people?' He shook his head, smiling. ‘Shit, Joe. You almost got me there. You want him, don't you? The bloke in the film.'

‘I don't know who he is.'

‘No, but you're going to try and find out. You're gonna get him yourself, aren't you? You won't. You won't even get close. You're not big enough, Joe. I'm right, aren't I? Is that what you want? His blood too?'

‘I want everybody's blood.'

‘Yeah. But it'll cost you. Blood for blood. Can you accept that?'

As he was saying all that, something else came into my mind. I thought back to the encounter with Buck. Had he been waiting for me to turn up? Was that the whole point of it, that it was a show of strength, a threat? Was that why he hadn't asked Browne any questions?

‘Go to this place,' Eddie must've told him. ‘Wait till the old man's alone and throw him around. The other man will come back. Leave when he does.'

But here was the problem: Dunham wouldn't have bothered with that shit. He would've wanted me taken somewhere and tortured or killed.

Instead of that, Eddie must've decided to try another way, a more subtle method. But he'd overplayed his hand, had been too subtle, had outsmarted himself. He was telling me he knew about Buck, sure, but he was telling me in his roundabout way, meaning he wasn't telling me at all, only hinting at it, but knowing that I'd get the hint.

But I now knew that Eddie must've done that by himself, as a warning to me. And all that told me there was a split in the Dunham camp – or, rather, that Eddie wasn't happy with how things were going.

And letting me know that was his mistake.

Still, something wasn't right.

‘If Dunham wants me so bad,' I said, ‘he wouldn't let me leave London.'

‘I told you, I could persuade him.'

‘How? After what I did, why would he give me a chance?'

‘He's a reasonable man. He's a businessman.'

‘Bollocks. You're smart, Eddie. He's all emotion. You said it yourself, he's like me: full of rage. He'd want me dead. You know that.'

Eddie shifted in his seat.

‘Yeah, well, that's a funny thing,' he said, not looking like he thought it was funny at all. ‘You saved his daughter. He feels he owes you, so he's agreed to give you a chance to leave town. If you do that, he'll let you live.'

Saved his daughter? What the fuck was Eddie on about? Dunham had Paget stashed at his house and I found him there and killed him. What had Dunham's daughter got to do with that?

I remembered finding Paget, there in Dunham's huge country pad. I remembered his pale mask-face in the dark room, as it hovered, and the blade he had at the girl's throat, and her mother's scream. After that it was blood and mayhem and the two of us went at each other like madmen. Fuck, we were mad with blood-lust, each fighting beyond our strength, fighting to the death.

He might've won that fight if it hadn't been for Dunham's wife. She was slim and young and about as close to a wisp of mist as any woman I'd ever known, but when Paget had threatened her daughter, she became ice, and as mad with the blood as the rest of us. My hand had been swollen, my gun empty and lying somewhere on the floor. Paget's blade was stuck in my good arm and I had a busted rib from one of his rounds. I was finished and I knew it and the only thing I cared about was that I'd failed Brenda, failed to feed the hunger for vengeance that bubbled inside me.

Then, at the moment when I should've been dead, Dunham's wife handed me my empty gun and I took it and smashed Paget's skull to a pulp. I suppose, in her eyes, it might have seemed like I'd saved her daughter.

As I was remembering that, something clicked in my mind.

It was that time Eddie and Dunham had tried to misdirect me, that first time I'd gone to Dunham's house when I'd been led there by Eddie. They'd taken me to the very place where they had Paget holed up and asked me if I knew where he was. That was Eddie's idea; another of his fucking subtleties.

Anyway, Dunham's wife had been there, reading a book or something. What now made that buzzing in my mind was the way Eddie had looked at her as we'd passed, and the way she'd ignored him, and the pain I saw on Eddie's face.

That was one of the things that tipped me to Paget's hiding there. I could see that she was angry with Eddie, and that it hurt him. In itself, it was nothing. But …

‘It's not you, is it?' I said. ‘The reason you're here. The offer to let me live if I leave London. It's not Dunham, and it's not you.'

‘I'm making the offer. I told you that.'

‘Yes. But when I asked if you were here off your own bat, you said you were here unofficially.'

‘So?'

‘It's not the same thing.'

‘What are you getting at?'

‘I'm getting at what the fuck you're up to.'

He sighed and leaned his elbows on the table. I heard chatter now from the old couple. The woman was talking about going to see her sister at the weekend and the bloke wanted to watch some football game on the telly.

The light flickered. The DJ on the radio talked about the pointless shit DJs talk about.

‘It's her,' I said. ‘That's why you're here. It's Dunham's wife.'

‘Leave it, Joe,' he said quietly, looking down at the table top. ‘There's stuff going on that's way above your head.'

‘Dunham doesn't know you're here. He doesn't know you've made me this offer. He wouldn't give a fuck if I'd saved his daughter or not. He wants my guts, he'll try and get them. But his wife … if she thought I'd saved her daughter, she'd want to stop her husband killing me.'

‘Leave it.'

‘You're taking a risk, Eddie. Why would you do that?'

Now his gaze shot up, pinning me.

‘Leave her out of it.'

His eyes blazed and I saw him for the killer he was.

‘So I was right,' I said. ‘Since when did you start caring about things, Eddie? About people?'