Private London

Chapter 54

Gary Webster had the word Mechanic written in the job section of his out-of-date passport.

He also had a medium-sized bodywork and repair shop in Marylebone not far from the thrust and bustle of the High Street that would stand testimony to the truth of it. Certainly as far as the taxman was concerned that was how he made his money. Crash repairs, bodywork, paint jobs, brake and wheel replacements.

In reality, though, he had a number of other profitable sidelines from which he derived his main income. None of them legal.

He was sitting in his local, The Prince Regent – what he called a proper Victorian boozer – on Marylebone High Street, drinking a pint of Abbot Ale when I walked in and went up to him. I sat on the stool next to his.

‘Dan,’ he said, gesturing to the barmaid, and holding out his hand for me to shake. I waved his hand away.

Gary Webster had a grip like a Russian arm-wrestler overloaded on steroids. He was a good three inches shorter than me and a good few inches off the chest too. I’m a forty-four long and he was about a thirty-eight, I reckoned. But his forearms were like legs of pork and I hadn’t shaken hands with him since he’d left the fifth form and gone to work with his dad. Not because I hadn’t seen him, but because I didn’t want my hand mangled.

I slapped him on the shoulder instead and took the bottle of Corona the barmaid had brought across for me. It wasn’t the first time I had been in that particular pub.

‘How’s business?’ he asked.

I waggled my hand in a banking-aeroplane movement. ‘I’ve had better days,’ I said.

‘Why you contacted your old pal, I guess?’

I nodded in agreement. ‘Why I got in touch.’ I took a long pull on the Corona.

‘So… this is calling for something outside the legitimate range of your normal operations?’ He took a pull of his pint.

‘Again, your guess would be correct,’ I concurred.

‘What do you need?’

‘Same as last time.’

He smiled sardonically. ‘Nothing for Tonto?’

He was referring to Sam. They didn’t get on. ‘Sam doesn’t touch them – you know that.’

‘Yeah, I know that. Wuss.’

‘Say that to his face.’

Gary grinned. ‘I would if I could reach that high.’

I drained the Corona and he did likewise with two deep swallows of his ale.

‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff. It looks like pond water.’

He stood up and slapped my shoulder. ‘It’s the canonical ale, Dan. Puts lead in your pencil – and might in your mitre.’

We took Gary’s car. Nothing too flash on the outside: an oldish Mercedes saloon. A three-litre S320 about fourteen years old – you could probably pick one up for under a grand.

You wouldn’t get one like this, though. Gary had tweaked it a little. Putting the kind of muscle under the bonnet that can get you from nought to sixty in the time it takes a patrol cop to switch on his siren, and out of sight before he’s made it into third gear. It wasn’t registered to him and he never made the mistake of boy-racering it through town. Time would come when its secret powers would be needed and when that time came he would make a nice little earner out of it.

Gary always drew a line between business and pleasure. That was what marked the difference between the professionals and the amateurs in his game.

You could feel the sheer power of the engine, though, even as it purred in low gear through Marylebone High Street. But it was muscle of a very different kind that had brought me to see Gary Webster.

The killing kind.