Public Enemy Number Two

WAPPINGLIES

It’s funny how often the River Thames seems to feature in my life. Once, I was locked up beside it and almost drowned in it. The next time you take a pleasure boat down from Charing Cross pier, look out for a kid dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater floating facedown in the dirty water. It’ll probably be me.

The river took us all the way to Wapping. It’s just as well the tide was going in our direction or we’d have been out of London via Windsor and on our way to Wales. Even so it was quite a journey. Under Vauxhall Bridge and down past the Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the National Theatre. Then around the corner and on past Traitor’s Gate and the Tower of London, the redeveloped St. Katharine’s Dock, and almost as far as the Isle of Dogs.

This was East London, the heart of Johnny’s criminal empire. And looking at it in the cold half-light of the early morning, he was welcome to it.

Everything was gray: the sky, the water, the broken hulks of the old barges moored along the banks. The south side of the river was long and flat, punctuated by a tangle of cranes here, a gas pile there, in the distance a forlorn church steeple.

We moored on the north side at a jetty between two warehouses. There was nobody around. There had probably been nobody in those warehouses for fifty years. A derelict houseboat stood firm a few yards away, tied to the bank and somehow resisting the chop and swell of the Thames water. Shivering, we pulled ourselves out of the broken people mover and stood on damp—if not quite dry—land.

“Where do we go now?” I asked.

“Home,” Ma Powers said. Her lips were set in a frigid scowl. Either it was the cold or she didn’t like me. Possibly both.

“East London,” I muttered. “I’d have thought that was the first place the police would expect us to go.”

“Sure.” Johnny slapped me on the back. “So it’s the last place they’ll come looking.”

With Tim bringing up the rear, we hurried off the jetty and between the warehouses to Wapping High Street. And if this was the high street, I’d hate to see what the low street looked like. It was a spiderweb of rusting metal with cranes and scaffolding everywhere. Half the buildings had fallen down. Half of them had only been half built. It was hard to tell which was which. A patchwork of corrugated iron filled in the gaps, old posters clinging on with tattered fingers. There were no pavements. You couldn’t see where the road ended and the gutter began.

We passed through the wreckage and reached another road running off at a right angle. There was a barrier across it with a big sign in red and white: ROAD CLOSED. It was blocked by a slanting wall of scaffolding holding up a row of dirty, decrepit houses. We stopped beside the fourth house. Ma Powers fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a set of keys. She turned one in the lock and we went in. We were home.

Johnny Powers needed somewhere to hole up for a while and he’d chosen a real hole. The house was three stories high, only the third story had collapsed in on itself. The ground floor was one big room with a couch, a table and chairs, a TV set, and an open-plan kitchen. It had been a closed-plan kitchen until the dividing wall had fallen over. Two doors led out—one to a toilet, the other to a bedroom. There were two more bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. You could see the bath through a hole in the ceiling.

“Home sweet home,” I muttered.

“It’s safe,” Ma Powers said.

“Safe?” I tapped the mantelpiece. A chunk of it fell off. “You could have fooled me.”

“The police won’t come looking for us here,” Johnny said. “That’s what Ma means.”

“What about the neighbors?”

“There are no neighbors,” Ma Powers growled. “All the houses are condemned.”

“Yeah—and sentenced and executed, too,” I said.

Johnny turned to his mother and smiled. “Ya made it real nice, Ma,” he purred.

I suppose she had done her best to make it comfortable. There were fresh flowers on the table and homemade cushions on the couch. A circular rug lay on the floor, a few pictures hung on the walls, and she’d covered the windows with net curtains. But it was like rearranging the cutlery after the Titanic had gone down. The whole place was a disaster. Dry rot, rising damp, termites, mold . . . the building would have given a surveyor a field day. Sneeze, and a field would be all that was left.

The door to the bedroom opened and another guy walked in. He was about the same age as Johnny, thin and with so much acne you could have struck a match on him. This had to be Nails Nathan. He was biting them even as he walked in. In fact, he’d bitten them so far down that he’d started on the fingers. Another few months and they’d have to rechristen him Knuckles Nathan.

“So you made it, Johnny,” he said, smiling nervously and blinking.

“Sure I made it.” Johnny advanced on him. “But no thanks to you, ya sap.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” Nails was whining now. He ran his teeth down the side of his thumb and bit at his wrist. “I was sick. I couldn’t drive.” He paused hopefully. “But I fixed the car up for you. I did that.”

“You did good, kid.” Johnny gave him a friendly punch in the stomach. Nails doubled up. “Now fix us some breakfast. And make sure the coffee’s good and strong.”

Tim had been watching all this standing beside the front door. He hadn’t said a word, which was probably the best thing he could have done. But now he sort of staggered forward and sat down heavily at the table. So heavily that another chunk fell off the mantelpiece.

“I don’t believe this,” he said.

“Who is this guy, Johnny boy?” Ma Powers demanded. She was propping up the machine gun in the corner like it was a walking stick and she’d just come back from an amble in the park. “I met him at the airport like ya told me, but I couldn’t get no sense outta him. He went on . . . something about plane spotting.”

Johnny laughed and began to roll himself a cigarette. “Ma,” he said, “ya ain’t met my friend Nick Diamond. He saved my life back in the slammer. That’s his big brother Tim.”

“Tim?” Ma Powers looked at him suspiciously. “What do you do for a living, Tim?”

“I’m a private investigator,” Tim said.

There was a long silence. Nails Nathan dropped a plate. Johnny stared. Right then you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Right then I could have cut Tim with a knife. Why did he have to go and tell them that? Why couldn’t he say he was a certified public accountant or a postman or a brain surgeon or something? Snape had told me that Johnny Powers hated policemen. I somehow guessed he wasn’t exactly wild about detectives either.

“A private investigator?” he repeated, narrowing his eyes.

“That’s right,” I cut in quick before anyone could say another word. “Tim investigates”—Nails had turned on a tap to fill the kettle and it was still running—“water! He’s a private investigator of water.”

“What is there to investigate about water?” Ma Powers demanded.

“All sorts of things,” I said. “The amount of chlorine. The bacteria. The . . . um . . . the H.”

“The H?”

“Yeah—you know. Water is H₂O. Tim has to make sure there’s enough H. He works for the Thames Water Authority.”

“Okay.” Ma Powers shook her head slowly. “Maybe that explains why he’s such a drip.”

The ice had been broken—or at least, the water. Nails laid the table and we sat down to a breakfast of bacon sandwiches, strong coffee, shredded wheat, and grapefruit yogurt. The last two had been suggested by Ma Powers. Without the machine gun she was just like anyone’s mother. I think I preferred her with it.

“Ya don’t look so good, Johnny boy,” she said. “Did ya eat proper food in prison?”

“Sure, Ma . . .”

“Plenny of fruit? Here—have some grapefruit yogurt.”

“I’m okay, Ma . . .”

“Do ya want Mummy to get ya some sugar?”

“Ma . . .”

“Yogurt’s good for you, Johnny,” Nails chipped in, spooning out some of his own.

He should have kept his mouth shut. Johnny suddenly picked up his plastic container and slammed it into Nathan’s face, crumpling it against his cheek. Grapefruit yogurt dripped over his chin and onto his shirt. Ma Powers raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Tim sighed and reached for the shredded wheat. He wasn’t looking too good. I guess his nerves were pretty shredded, too.

But at least Johnny cheered up a few minutes later when he finished his coffee and turned on the television. Breakfast TV had just started and the first thing he saw was his own face, a police mug shot taken a few months before.

“. . . a daring escape from Strangeday Hall late last night. Powers, who was serving fifteen years for armed robbery, is described by the police as unpredictable and extremely dangerous. The public is warned not to approach him.”

The picture flickered off to be replaced by the newscaster. He was looking out of the screen with tired eyes, trying not to yawn.

“Accompanying Powers in the breakout was a thirteen-year-old known as Nicholas Diamond . . .”

And there I was suddenly on TV. It was the same photograph that had appeared in all the newspapers. Young, innocent, smiling . . . you couldn’t believe all the things the newscaster was saying about me.

“Diamond, arrested only a month ago following the brutal Woburn Carbuncle robbery, is described as violent and ruthless. In fact, if Johnny Powers is Public Enemy Number One, Diamond must now be considered Public Enemy Number Two.

“Police are still looking for Tim Diamond, Nicholas’s elder brother, who may be able to help them with their inquiries.”

Johnny switched off the set.

“They’re looking for me!” Tim moaned. He was staring at the blank screen as if the newscaster was about to climb out and grab him.

“Of course they’re looking for ya.” Johnny grinned at me. “Public Enemy Number Two! Ya moved up in the charts pretty quick—eh, kid?”

“Yeah.” I tried to look delighted. It wasn’t easy. “What happens next, Johnny?”

“Right now ya get some sleep. I reckon we could all do with some shut-eye. Isn’t that right, Ma?”

“That’s right, Johnny boy.”

“Meantime, Nails can go out and get the rest of the boys together. I’ll see them at four. So, Nails . . . ya better get a box of cupcakes or something.”

“Sure thing, Johnny.”

“Good.” Johnny patted me on the shoulder. “Public Enemy Number Two? I like that, kid. It suits ya.”

At last Tim and I were alone.

We were sharing a bedroom on the second floor. It was about as comfortable as the living room. There were two single beds leaning unsteadily toward each other, a chair with three legs, and a wardrobe minus the door. The window looked out onto a construction site behind the house, only there was so much dirt on the glass you could barely see anything.

For a long time neither of us said anything. Tim looked exhausted. His face was streaked with dust and his hair was standing on end.

“How could you do it, Nick?” he said at last. “My own brother! First the robbery . . . and then this. I mean . . . this Johnny Flowers. He’s insanely criminal. I mean, he’s criminally insane. And his mother! How could you do it? I’m wanted by the police! When they find me it’ll be the end. They’ll lock me up. I’ll never find the Purple Peacock. I won’t ever get another job. They’ll probably give me twenty years, Nick. Twenty years! That’s not to be sneezed at . . .” He pounded his fist into the pillow. Dust rose in a cloud and he sneezed loudly.

“Listen,” I said. “I didn’t do it, Tim. I never stole the carbuncle.”

“But, Nick. The judge—”

“I was framed, Tim. I didn’t know it at the time—although maybe I should have guessed . . .”

Slowly I explained everything that had happened. The visit from Snape and Boyle, the Fence, Woburn Abbey, Johnny Powers. Then I explained it again using words with fewer syllables. It took me about twenty minutes and all the time Tim sat there, grasping the mattress.

I wasn’t sure he’d grasped anything else. But when I finally stopped he stared at me and scratched his head.

“You mean . . . you didn’t do it?” he said.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Tim.”

“And the only people who know are Snape and Boyle? But Snape and Boyle . . .”

“Yeah. They bought it.”

“They bought the carbuncle?”

“No. They crashed. They’re dead.”

“So what do we do now?”

I stood up and went over to the door. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I suppose the only thing we can do is try to track down this Fence that everyone wants. If the police ever catch up with us, it might be something to bargain with. But in the meantime . . .” I swung around on Tim. “You’ve got to convince Johnny and Ma Powers that you’re a real crook. If they ever find out you’re a private eye, it’ll be curtains for us.”

Tim glanced at the window “This place could do with some curtains,” he said.

“They’ll kill us, Tim! I mean really kill us. You’ve got to think like a gangster. Act like a gangster. Be a gangster. And you’ve got to start now.”

Tim got to his feet and straightened his shoulders, drawing his hands across his chest. He gave me an ugly sneer and threw back his head. “I’m Al Capone,” he growled.

“Al Ka-seltzer more like,” I muttered, but I don’t think he heard me.

I left him there and went into the bathroom. I meant to wash up before I turned in. And that was where I had my first big break of the day. I’d turned on the tap and watched it cough out a trickle of brown sludge when I heard a door open underneath me. Quickly I turned it off again. I’ve mentioned that you could see the bath from the living room through a hole in the ceiling. Well, the same hole allowed me to eavesdrop on a conversation between Ma Powers and her son. And they thought they were alone.

“Your headache gone, Johnny boy?” she was saying.

“Yeah, Ma. Ya made it better for me.”

“Ya gonna be okay when the gang gets here?”

“I’m gonna be just fine.”

“Ya gotta show them who’s boss around here, Johnny boy. With Big Ed trying to move in on you—”

“I got plans for Big Ed, Ma.”

I knelt down and peeped through the hole. From that angle I could just make out the back of Johnny’s head. Ma Powers was somewhere out of my vision. That was just as well. If I couldn’t see her, she couldn’t see me.

“First we’re gonna do a raid,” Johnny went on. “Something really big . . . ya know, to put myself back on the map. Maybe the Bank of England or the Crown Jewels. I don’t know. Then I’m gonna go gunning for Big Ed.”

“Ya’ll need guns, Johnny.”

“Sure, Ma. That’s why I’m gonna see the Fence later today—before the meeting.”

My ears pricked up at that. It seemed almost too good to be true. And what Ma Powers said next was even better.

“So ya’re going to Penelope?” she asked.

“That’s right. I’ll buy enough guns to start a war.”

“Then ya’d better get some sleep, Johnny. I don’t want my boy starting no war with bags under his eyes.”

“Ya’re good to me, Ma.”

“I love ya, Johnny.”

They went back into the bedroom after that and I heard no more. But as I straightened up and went back into my own bedroom, I was feeling better than I’d felt in a long, long time. Snape and Boyle might be dead. I might be wanted by the police. But at last I knew something about the Fence.

He wasn’t a man. He was a woman. And the woman’s name was Penelope.