January Window

34

After a miserable night I was up early to visit Silvertown Dock before driving on to Hangman’s Wood. It was a very cold morning and I was a little worried about Terence Shelley who we’d locked up in the maintenance area, the same one where Zarco had been found dead. Even in a policeman’s coat and uniform he would have spent a very uncomfortable Sunday night in the open air, handcuffed to a twenty-kilogram kettlebell. But if he had I doubt he could have felt as bad as I did after the events of the previous night. I hadn’t felt as bad as this since my first night in the nick.

On the way I listened to the news on the car radio. Ronan Reilly had been released on bail, which was the clearest indication yet that the police did not suspect him of murder. It seemed that plain-clothes police had arrived at his house in Highgate hoping to question the MOTD pundit about Zarco’s death and found a party in progress; mistaking the police for other guests, an unnamed female had admitted them to the house. Apparently it was Reilly’s birthday, which might have been why he’d decided to celebrate with several prostitutes and a quantity of cocaine; this was probably also the reason why he’d decided to climb over the wall of the back garden and run away, in the hope of denying any knowledge of what was happening in his house. I felt almost sorry for Reilly because if there’s one thing the BBC doesn’t like — even on grown-up programmes like MOTD — it’s pundits who use prostitutes and cocaine. Does anyone remember Frank Bough? I rest my case. But I still smiled as I tried to imagine how Zarco would have greeted the morning news. Zarco would have loved it.

Toyah called and left a message for me to call her back; she sounded like she still hadn’t been to bed. Death is like that. It stops you from sleeping, which, even when everything is rosy, can seem a little too close for comfort to being dead. I was feeling too sour to speak to her; too sour and more than a bit sorry for myself. But I was trying to get over my troubles; just about the last thing Zarco had said to me before I left my flat that morning was to pull myself together.

‘Come on, Scott,’ he said as I’d stared at Jonathan Yeo’s uncanny portrait of the Portuguese manager now hanging on the wall of my study. I’d been online to look at some of the other portraits Yeo had painted and thought the one of Zarco was as good if not better than the picture he’d done of a rather haunted-looking Tony Blair. ‘You’ll get over it, just like Sonja said you will. You had some good times, you and her. That’s the way to look at it. And don’t hold it against her. What she said was right. Football is football and nothing else matters very much; not to guys like you and me. That’s why we’re in the game, right? If we cared about anything else we’d be lawyers and bankers and fuck knows what. Me, I should have your troubles. Don’t you think I’d like to be around to have a nice girl like that dump me? Sure I would. And we both know you’ll get another soon enough. Handsome guy like you. Fact is you probably already know the girl you’re going to sleep with next. That’s how it works. Never forget, always replace — that’s what my father used to tell me when a girl gave me the sack. It’s good advice. Sure you loved her and maybe she loved you, like she said, but in six weeks you’ll wonder why the hell you ever cared. Besides, you’ve got other fish to fry right now. Find out who killed me and why, Scott. Find my killer. I didn’t deserve what happened to me, no more than you deserved to be dumped by Sonja. So, please take control of the game yourself and don’t just leave it to other people, like the police. For them this is just another job. Please, Scott, for me and for Toyah, you must discover who killed me, okay? Really, I won’t have any peace until you do this for me.’

When I arrived at the dock there was a police boat parked by the marina and several divers bobbing up and down in the Thames. I didn’t envy them but I did wonder what they were looking for.

Maurice had already released our burglar and brought him back to my office where, still handcuffed, he was warming up with a cup of tea. Steam was emerging from the cauldron of his manacled hands, which were still trembling with cold, and he seemed to be as grateful for the heat from the mug as he was for the hot drink inside him. Secretly I was relieved that the man looked none the worse for wear but, for the sake of appearances, I decided to play the hard guy. I’d seen enough real hard men in Wandsworth to carry this off without any self-consciousness.

‘So, you didn’t freeze to death after all,’ I said. ‘Maybe now you’ll talk to us, you stupid cunt.’

He sipped his mug of tea and nodded his alacrity. Cold had turned his nose the shape and colour of a tomato and had it not been for the gun he’d been carrying I might have felt sorry for him. In Wandsworth some of the old lags had always said that you should never carry a gun unless you’re prepared to use it.

‘Because if you don’t start talking you can spend the rest of the fucking day where you already spent the night. Freezing your nuts off outside.’

‘You’ll really let me go if I tell you?’ he asked.

‘You have my word. You can even keep the money you were paid. I’m assuming the two grand in fifties was your fee.’

‘What about my gun?’

‘Would you have used it?’

‘Just for show. Made a noise if necessary. I’d use blanks but you can’t get them; there’s just no call for them these days.’

‘That’s a comforting thought,’ said Maurice.

‘You can have the gun back, too,’ I said. ‘But not the bullets. We’ll hang onto those, just in case you come back here with an attitude.’

‘Fair enough, guvnor.’

‘But don’t dick us around with any lies. My girlfriend dumped me last night and I’m not in the mood to be patient.’

He finished his tea, replaced the mug on my desk and shook his head. ‘I should have known better than to rob someone from me own fucking club. S’right. I’m a City fan meself. So I had my doubts, yeah? It felt unlucky. Any other London club — the Yids, the Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, the Hammers — I’d have been laughing to do a job there. But not City.’

‘More facts, less fart,’ I said.

‘I’m just saying I didn’t want this job, that’s all. It felt unlucky. But the guy who paid me to do the job — an Italian bloke, called Paolo Gentile — he was paying good money.’

‘Gentile. It figures.’

‘Anyway, he told me to collect a package that was in suite 123. I was on my way there when you spotted me.’

‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘I already searched that suite from top to bottom and found nothing.’

‘Yeah, but did you check the fridge? Inside the freezer cabinet?’

‘No.’

‘That’s where it is, apparently. The package I was supposed to grab. Job couldn’t have been simpler, you’d have thought. A quick in and out. But it’s always the easy ones you fuck up, not the jobs that require some planning.’

‘Whose idea was the Plod uniform?’ asked Maurice.

‘Mine. The Italian bloke said the place would be swarming with law ’cos of Zarco’s murder, so I thought I’d be all right dressed like this. Blend in, like. I thought no one would face down a copper. Not even another copper. Rented it off a mate who’s a real rozzer, in Teddington, I did. Cost me two hundred quid. Never gave a thought to the fucking cap badge until you mentioned it.’

‘Blimey,’ said Maurice. ‘The old Bill these days is getting to be like Berman’s and Nathan’s.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then what?’

‘There’s a FedEx box in my car, with a waybill already filled out for an address in Italy and everything. Business documents, it says. That’s what I was told, anyway. I was to put the package from the freezer in the box and take it to the FedEx office in Dartford first thing this morning. Unit 14, Newton’s Court. Apparently they open at 7.30 a.m. It was all on account so I wouldn’t have to pay anything.’

‘How did you get the job?’

‘On the phone. Friend of a friend.’

‘And you spoke to Gentile? On the phone?’

‘S’right. He was in Milan, he said. It wasn’t even stealing, he said. It was him what put the package there in the first place.’

‘What about the key to the box? How did you get that?’

‘From Mr Gentile’s offices in Kingston. Really that was the only part of the job that involved any breaking and entering. I had to get in there on Sunday morning and collect the key from his office drawer. And two grand in fifties that was in the cash box. Straight up, guv, that’s the God’s truth. All of it, I swear.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Wait here with my friend.’