Brute Force

46

'Catford Bridge station, mate. Near the old dog track.'

The minicab driver nodded as if he knew exactly where that was, and then got busy with his sat nav as we climbed into the back of the Espace. He was then far too busy talking football into a Bluetooth headset to pay us any further attention, let alone take time to admire our new baseball caps and anoraks.

Twenty minutes later, Lynn and I exchanged a glance as we crossed Vauxhall Bridge. Vauxhall Cross, the headquarters of MI6, was ahead of us on the South Bank. It looked like a beige and black pyramid with its top cut off, and large towers either side. There was even a terrace bar overlooking the river. It only needed a few swirls of neon and you'd swear you were in Las Vegas. I wondered if he had half a mind to stop the cab, run to the gate and throw himself on the mercy of his old employers.

I could see the cogs whirring in his head as he looked out of the window.

'Don't even think about it. If you did, you'd come out in a bin-liner. This is the only way, believe me.'

He turned and gave me a slightly sheepish expression.

South of the river, London got grimier and more down-on-its-luck by the mile. By the time we'd reached our destination, I was starting to feel as depressed as Lynn looked.

I had a look around while he paid the driver. We walked uphill from the railway station, and the wreck of the old dog track soon came into view.

We carried on past rows of not-so-good-looking thirties bay-windowed terraces. Some of the occupants had gone for the seventies pebbledash or Roman stone cladding upgrade. Others had opted for the fixed one-sheet double-glazing that no one can escape through when the house gets torched. They were all in need of an urgent visit from a window cleaner and net-curtain washer.

Coogan's street looked in even shittier state than the rest. The two-metre-wide stretch of mud at the front had been given over largely to brambles and dandelions. A couple of council recycling wheelie bins stood against a low wall, but most of his shit seemed to have been thrown from an upstairs window and missed. Most of the cars parked along the kerb looked like they should be up on bricks.

Brendan and Leena had been in the passport business since the seventies, after they'd had to do a runner from the Free State for forging welfare coupons. For the last six or seven years Nigerians buying multiple passports for their multiple mortgages on their multiple buy-to-lets were keeping them generously afloat, but people like me had been their mainstay in the eighties and nineties. I'd first met Brendan during the Struggles, Troubles or the War (what you called it depended on who you were). We used to be sent down to Lewisham to be fitted up with the appropriate documents. I'd used him many times since then at my own expense. He was the best.

I told Lynn to stay out of sight while I rang the doorbell. Brendan himself answered. His face didn't break into a big smile and he didn't throw his arms around me. He just rolled his eyes, tutted and ushered me in. Just how I liked it with the old fucker.

'I have a friend.'

'Would that be a friend with money?'

'Yes.'

'A welcome awaits.'

I waved Lynn over and we stepped across the PVC threshold and into Minging Central. The stench of rotting vegetables and old newspapers reminded me of a run-down corner-shop.

He led us into the sitting room. The red velour curtains were closed. A green three-piece was arranged around a small TV. A raincoat hung over the back of the nearest armchair. A small dark wood table with two chairs stood against one wall. The fireplace was decorated with green thirties tiles, and an equally ancient gas fire had been fitted into the grate. It was doing its asthmatic best to fug up proceedings.

'Glad to see you still don't go for the minimalist look . . .'

He wasn't biting; he never did.

'It would be the usual you're after, would it?'

'My friend here has lost his passport and we need to travel tomorrow.'

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. 'And for some reason you choose not to avail your fine upstanding selves of Her Majesty's Passport Office's new premium same-day service?'

'Sometimes the old ways are the best. My friend wants to get away from his wife, her divorce lawyer and the Child Support Agency. He'd prefer not to be traced . . .'

Brendan looked at Lynn and raised an eyebrow.

I grinned. 'Second time round, lucky bastard. Young, beautiful, but, as it turned out, a bit too fond of the Bolivian Marching Powder.'

Coogan laughed. 'The young ones can be just as big a nightmare as the old ones. That's why I stayed with the missus – even though I'm never short of offers.' He cackled to himself.

'Where is the lovely Mrs Coogan? Still making that ginger cake?'

'She does, she does, and no, we haven't any left. She's down at bingo, thank God. She'd be fussing all over you by now and giving you all my biscuits.'

'Could you at least bring yourself to part with two cups of tea?'

He cackled some more as he disappeared into a kitchen that, if the smell coming out of it was anything to go by, was the source of the Ebola outbreak I thought might have brought London to a standstill a few days ago.

The look on Lynn's face told me this was a totally different world for him. A few hours ago he was in his lovely farmhouse, inhaling the sea air and staring out over acres of glorious countryside. Now he was in this minging thirties terrace with this minging old man. He'd probably never seen anything like this in his life, except perhaps when he was delivering coal and food parcels to the family servants at Christmas.

Brendan reappeared with three steaming mugs and half a packet of HobNobs and led us upstairs with a deep sigh. 'Things are a lot more complicated these days, you have to understand. The days of just pressing the printer button are long gone. Welcome to the brave new world of biometrics.'

'That sounds like a posh way of saying your prices have gone up – again.'

He looked pained. 'That it would be, that it would be. Seventeen hundred pounds, in fact. Half now, half tomorrow morning, when you collect.'

'No VAT?'

'Oh, I don't like to bother those nice people at the Excise. They've got quite enough to worry about.'

'What about a discount for old times' sake? My friend has been mauled by lawyers. I told him it was twelve hundred.'

'Fifteen?'

'Done. It'll be in dollars again. Shall we say at 1.90?' I didn't want to spend the whole day rug-trading, but I had to go through the motions. I didn't want to disappoint him.

He turned just short of the landing and looked down at me. At last I got a full smile from him. It always took a while. 'I don't think that would be terribly helpful, do you? There would be complicated calculations and even some change involved. Let's say two dollars a pound. I'll lose some in commission when I exchange, don't forget. A businessman has to watch his margins.'