A Good day to die

3

Two days after the meeting at Tina's Sunset Restaurant, I drove the potholed road from Sabang to Puerta Galera, a gun in my pocket and a lot on my mind.

East Brucal Street's a quiet and surprisingly leafy little road about fifty yards long and dotted with mango trees, just off Puerta Galera's raucous main drag. The Hotel California, halfway down it, is a small, two-storey establishment with an open-air restaurant on its second floor that fits in nicely with the surroundings. It's owned by an ex-Vietnam War veteran who's not the sort of man you'd want to get in an argument with, but who was quite friendly with Tomboy and could be trusted not to take too much notice of who was passing through his establishment. At three hundred pesos a night for a double room with bathroom, it's a good-value place to stay. Particularly so for Billy Warren, as his one night there had already been paid for in cash by Tomboy.

It was two thirty on a hot, sunny Friday afternoon and the street was quiet. A couple of cars were parked up but there didn't seem to be anyone around. I pulled up ten yards past the front of the hotel, outside a collection of rusty corrugated-iron sheets that had somehow been fashioned into a shop selling house plants, and dialled the mobile number I'd been given.

Warren answered after five rings. 'Hello?' The tone was neutral, a little rough around the edges, and not betraying any nerves.

'My name's Mick Kane,' I told him without preamble. 'I've been told to deliver something to you, and to give you certain instructions. I'm outside, just up the street in a blue Land Rover. Can you come down?'

'I've never seen a blue Land Rover before,' he informed me helpfully.

'Well, now's your chance. You can even have a drive in it if you want. There's a bar at the Ponderosa golf club. It's fifteen minutes up the road. It'll be quiet up there this time of day, so we can talk.'

'So, you want to take me for a drive, do you?' His tone was suspicious, but there was something mocking in it too, as if he was letting me know he knew my motives. 'Here I am all on my lonesome in a fleapit of a country where, according to the BBC, life is dirt fucking cheap, and I've just been invited to get in a car with a man I've never met before, but who's apparently got a load of money for me, and go for a country jaunt?'

'Listen, I don't mind how we do it,' I told him. 'My job's to give you the case I'm carrying and provide you with a few instructions to help you on your way. You can just come out and grab it if you want. It makes no difference. I just fancied a drink, that's all.'

'Has it got aircon, this place? I'm not going anywhere without aircon. Not in this heat.'

'Of course it has,' I lied. 'And it's got nice views, too. You'll like it.'

'We'll see,' he said enigmatically and hung up.

This guy fancied himself, no question; and he wanted me to know he was no fool. I've met plenty of men like him before. Men who are sure they know the score on everything; who are streetwise enough that they can smell trouble a mile off. But everyone's got a weakness. It's just a matter of knowing where to look.

Five minutes passed, and I was just about to phone the cheeky sod again to see what the hell he was playing at when he emerged from the hotel entrance, dressed in a white, short-sleeved cotton shirt and jeans. He made his way straight to the car without looking around, which meant that he'd been watching it from his hotel room. Fair enough. I'd have done the same in his position.

He was medium height, early forties, with short dark hair and a thick moustache that followed the curves of his mouth and didn't look right on him at all. He had a muscular build that suggested he worked out regularly, and his face was fairly nondescript in so far as nothing actually stood out, except perhaps that it belonged to a man who knew how to handle himself.

I couldn't help but smile as I watched him approach in the rear-view mirror. So the man I'd once known as Billy West had changed his name – or part of it, anyway. I hadn't seen him in maybe ten years, but he didn't look much different than he had done then. Except for the 'tache. This was a new edition, and presumably part of his disguise. Because there was no way Slippery Billy West wasn't on the run. The man had spent a lifetime struggling to extricate himself from the jaws of justice, and with more than a little success too, especially where his dealings with me were concerned.

I'd first come across him back in London around 1991, when my colleagues and I in CID had put him under surveillance on suspicion of gun-running. He was an ex-soldier who'd served in the Falklands conflict and Northern Ireland, and who'd ended up being court-martialled when he and a fellow squaddie had held up an army payroll truck at gunpoint and relieved it of its contents. That was the only time, as far as I was aware, that he'd ever spent any time behind bars. Our surveillance of him for the gun-running lasted close to a month, and when we nicked him and raided the lock-up he was using for his business, we recovered three handguns and an AK-47 assault rifle. But in court, Slippery claimed to know nothing about the weapons, and used as his defence the fact that he wasn't the only keyholder to the premises, which was true. Two of his cousins, both of whom did work for him now and again, were indeed keyholders, and in the end it came down to the fact that it couldn't be proved beyond doubt that he was the one the guns belonged to, particularly as there were no prints on any of them. So he'd been acquitted.

I had the same trouble with him again a couple of years later when, acting on intelligence, I'd led a raid on his flat in King's Cross in the hunt for a significant quantity of cocaine. Unfortunately, the bastard had reinforced not only the front door but the bathroom door too, for a reason that quickly became apparent. We'd managed to batter down the front door after much effort, but by the time we'd got inside he'd already made it to the bathroom, along with his stash. I'll always remember the frustration I felt as we tried to force open the second reinforced door before he flushed the whole stash down the toilet. What was worse, we could hear him doing it. And he was whistling a jaunty tune at the same time, as if the sound of us trying to break into his place was the most natural thing in the world. After about five good heaves with the Enforcer, we'd finally got the door open, only to find old Slippery sitting comfortably on the throne with his trousers round his ankles, a recent copy of the Sun in his hands. He even managed a loud fart to add to the authenticity of his situation, before greeting me with a cheery 'Morning, DS Milne, I wondered what that noise was.' Which was him all over. As cocky as they come.

All that was left of the suspected half-kilo of cocaine he'd been in possession of were five plastic bags each containing trace amounts of the drug, which turned out to be enough to warrant only a two-hundred-pound fine.

Three weeks later, the guy who'd supplied us with the information that led to the raid, a former business associate of Slippery's named Karl Nash, was found dead in his Islington townhouse. At first his death was thought to have been due to a heroin overdose, but further investigation revealed that he'd been asphyxiated. There was, of course, an obvious suspect. Nash and Slippery had fallen out very publicly, but although Slippery was arrested and questioned in connection with the murder, there was insufficient evidence to proceed.

I think even he realized at this point that he was living on borrowed time, and shortly after that he'd quietly disappeared from the scene, and I hadn't clapped eyes on him since. Until now, that was. I wondered whether he'd recognize me or not. After all, we'd spent plenty of less than quality time in each other's company.

As he came by the side of the car I saw him glance casually at the back seat, just to check there wasn't anyone sat waiting there to garrotte him, before opening the door and getting inside.

'Mick Kane,' I said, putting out a hand.

He shook it with a softer grip than I'd been expecting and looked me in the eye. 'Billy Warren.'

For a couple of seconds there was nothing, and he even started to turn away, but then he looked at me again.

'What is it?' I asked him.

A slow and deliberate grin spread across his face. 'Fuck me, it can't be. Dennis Milne. Christ, you've changed a bit. Have you been having a bit of a nip and tuck, you vain bugger?'

So much for my disguise. 'I could hardly have announced my real name, could I?' I said, not bothering to deny his claim.

'Too right. I'd never have come down here. I wouldn't know whether you were going to nick me or shoot me.' He shook his head, still grinning. 'Blimey, it's a small world, innit? And full of surprises, too. Who'd have thought the copper who spent so much time trying to put me behind bars because he said I was a – what were your exact words, Dennis? – a lowlife bastard who's going to get what's coming to him, I think it was… Who'd have thought the copper who called me that would turn out to be a mass murderer?' His expression was full of mockery, but then it turned serious and his grey eyes hardened. 'You ain't gonna try and shoot me now, are you, Dennis? You have actually come with the money?'

'Unlike you, Slippery, I've got morals. I've only ever killed people who deserved it, and when I've had good reason.'

'What about them customs officers?'

'They were a mistake, and not one I'm ever going to repeat. I'm happy here. I don't need to complicate things by going back to that old game.' I turned the key in the ignition, put the Land Rover in gear, and pulled out into the road.

He was still watching me and I sensed a tension in him. He obviously wasn't entirely convinced. 'I bet you've always thought I deserved it,' he said.

'I did,' I told him. 'And I still do. But then again, when I came here this afternoon I didn't expect to be running into you. It's what you might call an interesting surprise.'

'Fair do's,' he said, and pulled a pack of Marlboro Reds from his pocket. He flashed it in my direction. 'Want one?'

'No, I quit. A while back now.'

'So, where's the case?'

'In the boot. You don't drive round the Philippines with cases full of money on your passenger seat. Not unless you want to lose them.'

He nodded, accepting the explanation, and we pulled out of East Brucal and turned right into the chaos of Concepcion Street, the noisy, fume-filled and dusty thoroughfare that was the heart of Puerta Galera. The traffic was heavy as usual, and the pot-holed road filled with all manner of exotic vehicles: hulking, multicoloured buses known as jeepneys that had people hanging precariously from every square inch of space; tiny mopeds with covered sidecars that often contained three generations of one family; battered old American Buicks and Fords; brand-new 500 and 1,000cc motorbikes ridden by bare-chested, helmetless and most definitely uninsured Europeans with their Filipina girlfriends on the back. The whole lot of them blasting on their horns as if their masculinity depended on it, and none of them going any faster than the choking pedestrians walking along the sides of the road.

Slippery lit one of the Marlboros with a match and opened the window, letting in a fiery waft of pollution. He chucked the match out and immediately shut the window again. 'Christ,' he said, taking a long drag. 'Is it always like this?'

'Always like what?'

He waved his arm expansively. 'Like this. You know, hot, smelly and noisy.'

'You get used to it,' I told him, wondering at the same time if he actually would, or whether I'd deny him the opportunity. He'd been right when he'd suggested I thought he deserved to die. I think he probably did. He was almost certainly a killer himself, with few redeeming features and not even the first semblance of a conscience. But if there was a way of avoiding a murder and still getting our money, I was keen to take it. And no one, apart from Slippery and me, would ever know the truth.

'So how long have you been out here for now, Dennis?' he asked, puffing on the smoke again. 'The whole time since you disappeared?'

'Pretty much.'

'You know, I couldn't believe it when I read about what you'd done. I really couldn't. You always struck me as one of the good guys. You were obviously a very decent liar.'

I knew the bastard was baiting me, but I ignored it. 'I couldn't even begin to compete with you in the bullshitter stakes, Slippery. I reckon the only time you ever told me the truth was when you spoke to confirm your name, and you've even managed to change that now. Or half of it, at least. What happened? Didn't you think you'd be able to remember it if you changed the first part as well?'

'I always keep it simple, Dennis. There's no point trying to confuse things.' His voice was even, but there was an underlying irritation in it. I'd obviously annoyed him a little, which suited me fine. 'And what's this fucking Slippery business?'

'Don't you remember? It was the name we used to have for you in CID. Slippery Billy West. On account of your ability to wriggle out of every situation we put you in.'

He snorted loudly and derisively. 'What? And you ain't a wriggler? How many people did you kill? Six? Seven? And here you are with a nice suntan, living the life of Reilly. You've wriggled just as well as I ever did, mate, and don't pretend otherwise.'

The car fell silent as we crawled through the traffic past the turn-off to the harbour, before finally speeding up as we came out the other side of Puerta Galera. The road here was relatively new, the best in the north of the island, and I'd soon passed all the crawling jeepneys and built up a half-decent head of speed. The sea appeared to our right through a coconut-palm grove – a brilliant, cerulean blue – but almost immediately the view was obscured by a ragged huddle of tin and wood squatters' shacks that had sprung up by the side of the road. In the Philippines, you're only ever one step away from abject poverty.

'So,' I said eventually. 'You know why I had to come here. What about you? What are you running from this time?'

He opened the window and chucked out his cigarette butt. The air outside was clearer and fresher now that the traffic had thinned. He didn't answer for a while and I thought that maybe I'd upset him, but then he sighed loudly. 'Something I should never have got involved in,' he said at last and he sounded like he meant it.

'Isn't that always the way?'

'I'm normally a good judge of these things,' he said, which is something I would probably have agreed with, 'but I fucked up this time.'

'What happened?'

He turned and looked at me carefully. I think he was trying to work out whether it was something he wanted to tell the man who, for a short time at least, had been his nemesis. I got the feeling that his instincts were erring on the side of caution, but that he also wanted to talk about it to someone he knew. Criminals love to tell people about their crimes but in general it's not very practical for them to do so, so when they're in the presence of other criminals (and I suppose to Slippery I was one), they tend to let rip.

'I did a job for a bloke. Your sort of job. A hit.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah. I got approached by someone I knew to take out a bloke in London. The pay being offered was ten grand and I needed the money. It was a rush job, though. That's why I should have turned it down. I didn't have time to put him under surveillance, find out about him, or anything like that. I was told I had twenty-four hours to put him in the ground. That was it. So I told them I needed fifteen grand for a job like that, we did a bit of negotiation and I settled for twelve.'

He sat back in his seat and drummed his middle and index fingers against the side of his face in a rapid and irritatingly noisy tattoo. I suddenly remembered it as a habit of his from the past. He used to do it during interrogations, usually when he was mulling something over.

'The problem was,' he continued, 'I didn't have a clue how I was going to do it, and I didn't have time to come up with any sort of proper plan. I reckoned I was going to have to knock on his door, hope it was him who opened it, and let him have it there and then. The client said he wouldn't be armed, so it should have been no problem. Anyway, I drove down to the victim's place the next night and I was waiting outside in my car, just checking everything out and psyching myself up to make my move, when I got a call on my mobile. It was the client again. He told me that our man was at home, but was about to go out to an all-night cafe in Clerkenwell to meet someone. If he got there and met the other bloke, then I had to take out both of them.'

He sighed. 'And that was my second mistake. Rather than just say I was outside the target's house and ready to pop him there and then, I sniffed the chance to make some more cash. The client sounded really worried, like he was getting desperate, so I told him it would cost more to do two. Twenty grand in all. He was pissed off, but, like I explained to him, it meant a bigger risk for me, and so he went for it. He hung up, and then a couple of seconds later the target came walking out of his place, and I just watched him go when I could have taken him out.'

I couldn't believe Slippery's stupidity, especially after telling me the importance of keeping things simple. He was no master criminal, but he'd always been pretty good at covering his tracks, so to make a sloppy and extremely risky decision in order to pocket a few more quid showed what I'd long suspected: that his successes against the forces of law and order had finally made him think he was untouchable.

'And it fucked up?'

'Well, that's the thing. Not at the time, no. I got the directions to the cafe and went straight down there. Then I just walked in with a crash helmet on, spotted the target chatting to the geezer he was meeting, and went straight over. They were the only customers in the place and they were so deep in conversation that they didn't see me until it was too late. I pulled my shooter, and that was that. Two bullets in each of them, then head shots just to make sure. Only one witness, the bloke behind the counter, and he did the right thing and kept his mouth shut and his hands in the air. I reckon the whole thing took about ten seconds.'

'So what went wrong?'

He shrugged and started the old finger tattoo again. 'This is it, I don't know. The whole thing happened a few weeks back, and there was a bit of a hoo-hah in the papers because one of them was a copper. I didn't know that, of course. I'd never have touched him if I'd known he was Old Bill.'

'That's nice to know.'

'Not 'cause I respect them, but because it's too much hassle. Anyway, I got paid the full amount and I didn't hear nothing more about it until a couple of days ago, when I got a phone call out of the blue from the client saying I had to get out of the country, and fast. I asked him why, and he said he had information that the coppers investigating the murders were on to me. He didn't say how they'd got so close, but he was pretty convincing. Course I wasn't keen on upping sticks, but when he told me that he had a false passport and a ticket to the Philippines, and that someone would meet me there with ten grand to get me settled, I decided he had to be serious and that it was probably an idea to take him up on his offer. And that's it. The rest you know.'

'And who was your client?'

He gave me a look that bordered on the suspicious. 'Don't you know?'

'I'm here on behalf of someone called Pope. He supplied us with the money to give to you.'

'He's the one I did the job for. The client. Les Pope.'

Les Pope, I had to admit, was a man with access to supremely good intelligence. A year ago, he'd been so many steps ahead of Richard Blacklip that he'd been able to lead me right to his hotel room. Now, he was far enough inside a major police investigation to tip off the prime suspect and get him out of the country.

It was then that I made my decision. 'I'm going to be honest with you now, Slippery.'

'Call me Billy, please.'

'All right, Billy. The fact is, you're in a lot of trouble.'

'What do you mean?'

'Pope wants you dead, and he's hired me through a mutual acquaintance to make sure you get that way.' He started to shift in his seat and I had a feeling that he might try and go for me, so I kept talking, still staring at the road ahead. 'Now listen, I've got no intention of hurting you. Like I told you before, I'm out of that game now, and if we play this right, you can walk away in one piece and completely off the hook, and I can still get my money.'

'How are you going to manage that?' he demanded, his eyes boring into the side of my face.

'Because Pope doesn't just want you dead, he wants you to disappear off the face of the earth as well, which means we've got scope for faking your demise.'

'He's going to want evidence that you've done the job, though.'

'Of course he is. He's a criminal, so he's not going to trust me, but there's an easy way round that. He wants photographic evidence that you've been killed. If you look in the glove compartment, you'll see a Coke bottle filled with fresh rooster blood, which looks exactly like its human equivalent.'

'Lovely.'

'It pays to make the effort, Billy, as well you know. There's also a small jar of black paint that we'll use to mark the entry wounds of the bullets. All you have to do is lie on the ground, act dead while I pour the contents of these two bottles over your abdomen and do a bit of a paint job so it looks realistic, and then I'll stand back and take a couple of snapshots. They'll get sent back to Pope, he'll be happy with a job well done, I'll get paid, and that'll be that. You head down south and live quietly and anonymously, because with the British police and presumably Interpol after your blood for two murders, it's in your interests to lie as low as possible, and I'll never mention your name again.'

'How do I know you ain't gonna kill me anyway?'

I slowed down as a jeepney in front of me stopped to pick up passengers by the side of the road. 'If you're a shooter then you should know better than anybody that your best weapon is the art of surprise. I've just told you exactly what I've been hired to do. Now why would I bother saying anything if I still intended to kill you?'

He thought about that one for a few seconds, then opened the glove compartment. Seeing the blood-filled Coke bottle and the paint, he shut it again and lit another cigarette. At the same time, I overtook the stationary jeepney. 'That bastard,' he said, taking a drag. 'I knew I should never have trusted him. And the ten grand in the boot?'

'Behave. It doesn't exist. Be thankful that you've still got your life. So, are you in agreement with my plan? It's a lot better thought out than the one you used for your little job.'

'You want me to lie in the dirt and have chicken blood splashed all over me while you do a David Bailey?'

'That's about the size of it.'

'It doesn't seem like I've got much choice, does it?'

'No,' I said. 'I don't think it does.'

He emitted a loud sound of consent that sounded like someone impersonating a fart.

'I'll take that as a yes, shall I?'

'All right,' he grunted. 'Let's do it.'