Rat Run

Chapter Nine

Voices from the darkness of the parking bay, his and the one from the masked mouth inside the car.

'You did well, you don't have to do more.'

'You don't know what I have to do.'

'You've been as far as you can go.'

'Wrong. You cannot understand.'

'I know about you, read it in files. I have the picture of it.'

'Wrong. Paper doesn't tell it.'

'Three strikes, all well done. It's enough.'

'Wrong. Doesn't purge it.'

'The next step is too far, Malachy. It's what I'm telling you, too bloody far.'

'Wrong. Nothing's too far if you've been where I have.'

'Walk away. You've done all that was asked of you, and some. Forget it.'

The darkness of the parking bay swamped him and around him was the new quiet of the Amersham. In the afternoon he had heard the same voice, now muffled by a face covering, then by a thin adjoining wall. He had unlocked his door, closed it after him, gone fast down the steps and waited at the bottom of the stairwell. He'd heard, faint and far above him,

'You look after yourself, Millie, you take care. I'll see you.' He had waited. The heavy shoes had clipped down the steps and when the detective had stepped off the last, Malachy had stood in front of him. 'Call me, please call me,' Malachy had said, and the detective had walked by him, no response on his face, as if nothing had been said. He had gone to his car and had not looked back, and Malachy had climbed the steps, put the bolt back, turned the key and waited.

Three rings late in the night, then silence, then three more rings pealing in the room.

'What is the next level?'

'The next level, pal, would put you way out of your depth. For sure, you'd sink.'

'I sank once.'

'At the next level, they kill. Last one was dumped over a cliff, went down into the sea, but he didn't drown… Was dead already, tortured and then dead.

Late on his payments – only this isn't being late on a credit agreement for a living-room suite and getting a rap from the finance company. The repossession order is a sentence of death. Every bone in his body was broken, and that was before he went over the cliff.

Scrub it out of your head.'

'When I sank I hadn't the courage to end it. They took everything from me. Any self-respect and I'd have put myself away. They didn't leave me anything.'

'I helped you, Malachy. Don't look for more.'

'A dealer feeds the pushers. A supplier feeds a dealer. Who's next up the ladder?'

'We know who the corpse over the cliff defaulted on.

Know who killed him, having tortured him. I know, my inspector knows, my superintendent knows.'

'Who feeds the supplier?'

'We know the name, but we don't know where to look for evidence. What I said, forget it. It's big league, beyond your reach. Be satisfied.'

'I'm going up your pyramid. Who sold to George Wright?'

'Tell me, old friend, what is it you need to lose?'

'Disgust, what you can't imagine, shame. All of them queuing up to belt me…'

'Just self-pity, like a jerk-off.'

'You weren't there – you only read it in the file.'

'Then tell me, Malachy, what it is you need to get?'

'Ability to live, to walk, to laugh. Something of that.

You started me, put the ladder there. Don't take it from me. Please, I'm asking you – who sells to the supplier? It's not to do with Millie Johnson, it's for myself… please.'

From deep in the car there was a long, hissed sigh.

A ballpoint clicked. He heard the scribbled writing. A sheet was torn off a pad. Through the open top of the window a gloved hand passed the scrap of paper. He took it. A thin torchbeam shone on the scrap. He read a name and an address. Then the gloved hand snatched back the paper and the torchbeam was cut, replaced by the flash of a cigarette lighter and a little guttering flame.

'It's big boys' league. The importer sells to the supplier. Malachy, you watch yourself. Don't do anything if you haven't looked it over good and proper.

Take time.'

'Thank you.'

'Was it that bad, what was done to you?'

'It was bad.'

14 January 2004

When the sun was up, past eight, Dogsy limped to the lorry.

Fran, his friend, who was going to ride shotgun, reached down from the back to give him a hand up. Dogsy milked the moment, all his weight on his right boot and none on his bandaged left foot, and let out a little groan, not stifled, as he came on board.

He settled at the tail end of the bench, opposite Fran.

Inside the lorry, under the canvas, it would get to be rotten hot on the journey, but by the tailgate there would be air. He stretched out his left foot. Fran made a play of kicking it and Dogsy gave him a finger. The dust swirled, and the convoy moved off from Bravo.

It was because of personal hygiene that Dogsy had a seat on the lorry, and a bandaged left foot. The previous night, the stink of his boots had caused enough aggravation for them to be chucked out of the room where 2 Section of Salamanca platoon slept. In the morning, when they'd dressed for the lift operation, he'd gone in his socks, cursing, to retrieve them, and had stepped on a feckin' scorpion.

Little bugger had a bloody great sting in its tail. Dogsy had missed the lift: the corporal medic had bandaged him, and he had the ride back to Battalion and a look-over from the medical officer.

They had armour, Warriors, in front and behind for fire power. No chopper available. The lorry whined for power and the personnel carrier behind them gave a sort of comfort. It was a feckin' awful road back to Battalion – a sniper alley, and RPG-missile alley, a buried-bomb-at-the-end-of-a-control-wire alley. But the heat, feckin' awful, calmed him.

It was the smell, worse than his feckin' boots would have been. He looked inside the lorry. 'You know what, Fran?

One of them's shat himself.'

'Which one?'

He looked up the line of men, five of them, on the bench opposite, beyond Fran. Each had his ankles roped to the bench stanchions, wrists manacled behind them, and each was blindfolded with sticking tape. How would Dogsy decide which of them had fouled himself? He leaned forward so that he could check the men on his bench. Four more men with ropes, manacles and tape blindfolds – and another. At the lorry's bulkhead, up against the driver's cab, without restraints, was an officer.

'Hey, Fran, is that him?' he whispered.

'What you say, Dogsy? You got to shout. What?'

He did. 'Is that the Rupert?' he yelled.

'That's him.'

'The Rupert that Baz said was feckin'yellow?'

'Bottled out. That's him, Dogsy.'

'How could a guy do that, Fran – an officer?'

'Couldn't hack it. The section had a good fight, used up juice like no tomorrow, did slots, but the Rupert didn't stay around to see it.'

'What'll they do to him?'

'God knows… Who cares? I don't, you shouldn't.'

He stared up the swaying length of the lorry. They had been shouting questions, yelling answers. The officer's head shook against the bulkhead and he did not seem to feel pain, as if he was in deep sleep, and his body moved with the lorry's lurch when the wheels hit potholes… Poor bastard.

Not that, to Fran, Dogsy would have uttered sympathy for the man called a coward. He looked away, back at the nose of the following Warrior. •k**

Polly did lunch with Ludvik. She had booked the table at the restaurant over the Vltava from the embassy. It would not come cheap but would be on expenses, authorized by Justin Braithwaite. 'I want to take you out and show you my thanks, up close and personal, for the co-operation and professionalism at Kostecna,' she'd said, when she'd rung him – and, like an afterthought, 'Oh, by the by, something that's been hanging around on my desk for weeks. I'm sure it's not important, but I've a phone number. I need to know whose it is, what they do. Got a pencil?' She'd let him order – grilled carp and salad, after local soup, and fine beer. She'd waited, made small-talk, rolled her eyes at him and played at being fascinated by what he said.

During the salad, he'd let his knee nudge her thigh.

When she'd struggled to fillet the carp, he had leaned across the table, head close, hands near hers, to work the flesh expertly off the bone. Too much looking earnestly into the eyes around which she'd smeared the makeup. Thought he was in with a chance, didn't he? Thought the afternoon might end up at his apartment or hers, hadn't he? Then coffee, strong. It was what she had done with Dominic, end up at his flat, when she'd had a day off and the Foreign and Commonwealth wouldn't miss him, and they'd taken a bottle with them to bed… but that was all long gone.

She left it late, then slid in the question. 'That number, any luck?'

First, she was told what she knew – wasn't bloody stupid: the number was at Ostrava, near the Polish border.

'Oh, did you find whose it was? The office dumped me with it last month.'

She was given a name. She had her pencil out of her bag and scribbled what she was told on the back of a torn-open envelope, which she thought was an indication of the matter's minimal importance. Gaunt's favourite mantra was about trust: don't. His second favourite was about sharing intelligence with an ally: never, if it can be avoided. If it could not be avoided it should be economical in the extreme. He reached across the table, almost shyly, but far enough for his fingertips to brush against her hand, holding the envelope.

She smiled, in what she thought was a warm, caring way, then shrugged. 'Don't know why the office wanted i t… God, some of the work I get loaded with is dross. Anyway, what does he do in Ostrava?'

The man with that telephone number ran a factory producing furniture for export to Germany and was a subsidiary of a larger conglomerate.

'Riveting stuff. You'd have thought, in this day and age, that my people had better things to do with their time. Whose conglomerate?'

The furniture factory was a small part of the empire owned by Timo Rahman…

'Never heard of him.'

'A multi-millionaire from Hamburg, an Albanian.'

'OK, OK, we don't have to overwhelm my people – that'll do for them. I'll get a commendation for it… Tell me, is carp better grilled, like ours, or fried, or just put in the oven? What would your mother do?'

She paid, insisted. The bill would just about wipe away Justin Braithwaite's entertainment allowance for the week. Short rations, there'd be, in the Service's annexe.

On the pavement, his hand touched hers, then slipped into the crook of her arm.

'That was really nice, and we'll do it again,' Polly said. 'I'd have loved to spend the afternoon in a couple of churches, with you to guide me, but that's for another day Must get back. See you soon, I hope.'

'Gloria, have you ever been to Hamburg?' he shouted.

'Twice, Mr Gaunt, just the twice. I liked it, rather a civilized city.'

He had his hands together as if in prayer, fingers under his nostrils and thumbs against his mouth.

Gloria would have come to the door behind him, would be leaning against the jamb. She would allow his thought processes, without interruption, to stutter out, as if that were part of her duties.

'Perhaps "civilized", yes. Quality prostitutes, quality bankers, quality scenic views. Bravo, Hamburg. But it's where it all started, isn't it? While we were faffing over Baghdad, pushed by those bloody politicians, the eye was off the ball – our eye, the German eye and the American eye. Saddam's legacy – don't you know, Gloria? – was to be the fox that led the trail away from the den, where the vixen was and the bloody cubs.'

'Quite apposite, Mr Gaunt,' she said drily, but she would never be impertinent. 'You should use that allusion in a report.'

'Eye off the ball and not seeing the supreme target.

In Hamburg.'

'It wasn't just you, Mr Gaunt. There was an AQ desk.'

'Everybody's eye off the ball. While we were wet-ting ourselves waiting for the next download of satellite imagery from some God-forsaken heap of sand in Iraq, the threat was incubated in Hamburg.

What was the name of that wretched place?'

'Harburg, across the Elbe river.'

'And the name of that wretched street?'

'Marienstrasse, Mr Gaunt.'

'And the spores are still in the bloody pavements of your "civilized" city. It's where they were, where that horrendous plot was hatched, nine/eleven, where war was declared, the ultimate attack – and we knew nothing. Now, little Wilco sends her signal… A man resists torture – and his interrogators were well trained – to protect a notepad on which a telephone number was written. I'm getting there, Gloria. The telephone number is that of a factory that exports furniture. To where? To bloody "civilized" Hamburg.

Hamburg again.'

'Do you not think, Mr Gaunt, that you should rest for an hour or two?'

'God, and wouldn't it be easy if we had some proper equipment to turn on them – a squadron of tanks, a battery of artillery, a brigade of paratroops I can deploy against them? Then I'm laughing. But this is a city that is "civilized". Hamburg is where they plot, plan, then launch from. Once a month I go to a lecture where an academic tells me I have to get into the mind of an enemy. How? I am white-skinned, middle-aged, middle-class, a little Englander. I have no chance… '

'Should I make more coffee?'

'… no bloody chance.' He waved at the pictures she had Sellotaped to the wall. 'Half my age, without possessions, with faith, without conscience, with the ability to justify strapping bloody "martyrs' belts" round foot-soldiers' stomachs. Only a fool suggests I can understand him.'

'You're digging this weekend. That will be good for you.'

'So wise, Gloria, always so wise. You filed it, remember, the commentary from Moskovskly Komsomolets at the time of that obscenity of the school siege: "Why are they always ahead of us? Why are they winning? Because they are at war, and we are just at work. It is time to realize that we, too, are at war." I believe I quote correctly.'

'Don't you think, Mr Gaunt, you ought to have another coffee?'

'I'd like, thank you, a gallon of coffee.' He intoned,

' "They are at war, and we are just at work." And I'd like some tanks on Hamburg's streets.'

At a minor Customs post, north of the Czech town of Liberec and south of the Polish town of Zgorzelec, two officials slept and one staggered sleepily from the hut as the old saloon car, headlights bright, approached.

Because of the telex from Prague received at the hut two days before, the solitary Customs man gestured with his hand for the car to slow. It stopped under a high light. He motioned to the driver to wind down his window and the rock music blasted out – what his own kids played. There were five inside, two girls and three youths. The telex had said that Arabs should be checked, but had listed no name; nor had a photograph been faxed to the post. He asked for the passports. Two of the boys, flaxen-haired, languidly offered him their papers – Polish. The girls, one red-head and the other with a mauve streak, had Czech documentation. The fifth passport was from the back of the car. A man, early thirties maybe older and maybe younger, was sandwiched between the girls and gave him the German passport. He shone his torch into the interior, let the beam light on darker skin. He held the opened pages under the high light.

German citizenship. Date of birth, 1974. Place of birth listed as Colombo in Sri Lanka… Not an Arab.

Sourly, he gave the passport back through the window. Somebody's daughters, from Liberec,

Jablonec or Ceska Lipa, out for the night – without modesty but no doubt with condoms – with Polish boys and an Asian. Could have been his girls. These were new freedoms.

He stamped back to the hut. It had not said on the telex that an Arab might have hitched a lift, joined a car filled with youngsters, to cross the frontier. The Customs official had no reason to be suspicious of the German passport-holder crushed between the girls in the back of the car. Nor did he have reason to suspect that, when the car reached Zgorzelec, and parked at the back of the discotheque hall, the man would sidle into the night, away from the booming noise, and head for the railway station. He poured himself some soup from his flask and returned to his magazine.

'You have to believe it, Father, he will come.' The Bear had said it to him.

'What did the television say?' Timo asked him. 'Tell me again.'

'A siege in the Old Quarter of Prague. A man of the Russian mafiya finally killed by the police. Lies, of course.'

'But not a lie that one was killed.'

'One only, the television said. The lies were that he was Russian, a member of the mafiya. Father, they would lie on that.'

'If one was dead, which of them would it be?'

'Not the principal. Father, he will come.' The great paw of the Bear had settled on Timo's shoulder, and had squeezed reassurance.

'Call Enver. He should send the mouseboy here.'

He sat now with Alicia in the gymnasium of the school in Blankenese, sensing her nervousness. He could acknowledge that, through all the hours since he had met the young man from the warehouse in the Hammerbrook district – Regret cargo load 1824 has not been forwarded – he had given her little attention, his mind clouded by the import of what he had been told.

If he had not had the confidence of the Bear to stiffen him, Timo would not have been at the school that evening.

For good work in year nine and year seven, imitation parchment scrolls were to be presented to the best students. His girls were among them. They, with the rest of the favoured students of their classes, were at the front. He and Alicia sat with the comfort and wealth of the elite of Blankenese's community She had worried about what she should wear, what jewellery she should display, what cosmetics, what shoes were suitable. Before the Bear had spoken to him, he had ignored her concerns. Afterwards, he had gone through the wardrobes of dresses with her, had unlocked the safe with her jewellery and chosen for her, and the shoes, and he had pointed to the lipstick she should use. Timo Rahman was the pate of Hamburg, but he needed a man of brutish strength and limited intellect to soften nagging anxiety.

Their younger girl stepped forward, climbed the steps to the stage, had her hand shaken, was given the scroll, and Timo jagged a glance sideways and saw love for her daughter light Alicia's eyes – but the woman, the wife of the pate of the city, did not know whether she should clap, whether she should cheer.

They were peasants of the mountains. He did what no other father, whose son or daughter had gone forward, had done. Timo stood. His arms were above his head and his hands thundered together in applause.

He pulled Alicia to her feet. At that moment he cared not a fuck what other parents, the best of Blankenese, thought of them.

Last summer, with Alicia, the girls, the Bear and Alicia's aunt, he had flown to Tirana and then they had travelled in a fleet of Mercedes limousines along the rutted, broken roads to the north, guarded by the guns of his clan. On the fourth day of the vacation at the villa he had built above Shkodra, he had sent the women and girls to visit Alicia's family in their village. Watched only by the Bear, he had negotiated with those men who had travelled to meet him.

Matters of mutual co-operation. Intense men, they had stared around them with naked disapproval at the lavish trappings of the villa, had demanded prayer breaks, but had come with proposals. They had talked of transportation and safe addresses, the movement of weapons and the production of international travel documents: areas where he was strong and they were weak, or where he was weak and they were stronger. They had left, driven away by his people, before the return of the women and girls. Four days later, when his wife, her aunt and his daughters had travelled to see the site of his newest villa, where the foundations were already dug, the men had returned. The talk had been of money, what he would be paid and what would be demanded of him. At the end of that second day, Timo Rahman had shaken their hands and seen the fire in their eyes. By the shaking of hands he had pledged his word with the strength of the Canun, written down centuries before by Lek Dukagjeni, and their guarantee was on the word of their faith. He had gone into a world that was a clouded sky to him – right or wrong, with sense or idiocy – and he had made the deal. Now a man came – the Bear promised him. His elder girl went up the steps.

He stood again, pulled Alicia up. They were peasants from the mountains. He had come to

Hamburg with holes in his shoes, tears in the knees of his trousers and money to sustain him for a week.

Alicia wriggled free of his grip, and sat, her face flushed red with embarrassment. He saw the sneers, the little titters of amusement his enthusiasm made, and clapped harder.

A dosser stood under the street-light at the junction of Bevin Close and the main road, a woollen cap pulled down on his forehead and his coat collar up. Only a little of his face was visible to Davey, orange-coloured from the light, but what he could see of it was unshaven. The light caught his eyes, flashed on them.

The dosser stared up the length of Bevin Close and his attention seemed to be far down it, where the cul-de-sac opened out and gave room for vehicles to turn, to the semi-detached houses where Ricky lived.

Davey was careful, which was what Ricky paid him to be. He had been in the garage alongside his house to check the alarm on the car, then to satisfy himself that the sensors covering the garage interior were blinking red and alive. He was paid well to be careful of Ricky's security. When Davey turned from the garage, the dosser still stood there.

Then the man moved.

A little frown of surprise flicked at Davey's forehead.

No longer at the junction of the main road and the cul-de-sac, the dosser now walked in a slow, rolling stride down the pavement on the opposite side to his garage and came into Bevin Close. Didn't stop, didn't look around him, went on as if he knew where to go.

Davey heard the shout from inside: his meal was on the table. He called back that he would be a moment, not long. He was now on the step and there was the scent of cooked food from the kitchen, but he hesitated.

The voice bit behind him: 'Come on, Davey, or it'll be cold.'

'Be a second, just a second.'

He saw the dosser stop in front of a door and peer past the gate and up the little pathway, as if he looked for a number, then briskly head on. He was supposed to know of everything that moved on Bevin Close. It was his work to maintain a constant watch for Crime Squad surveillance and the Criminal Intelligence Service's bugs. He knew every delivery van that called regularly, and the faces of relations who came often to visit. There had never before been a dosser in the cul-de-sac. If it had not been for his. blood link to Ricky Capel, Davey would have been small-time – perhaps a thief and dreaming of one big pay-out job, perhaps a mini-cab driver doing eighty hours a week. One day, and he had no idea of how far away it was, he would be able to buy an apartment or a little villa on the Spanish coast, with a patio and a pool. Or, one day, if he was not always careful, he would be in the Central Criminal Court hearing a judge slag him off and send him down. The dosser had slowed, was outside number eight, Ricky's place, and seemed to stare inside. Joanne – God, he didn't know why – never pulled the curtains after dark.

'You coming or not?'

'Just a moment.'

He went out through his own gate and started to stride to the corner junction. He looked both ways, raked over what was parked there, and saw nothing that alarmed him. Then he swung back and headed down Bevin Close. He recognized all the cars parked on the kerb, either side of those numbers that did not have garages. The figure of the dosser was lit by the brightness spilling out from the window. He was confused, could admit it. Benji and Charlie had the brains, did the thinking, but they all depended on Davey's nose for danger. A dosser had no call to be in the cul-de-sac. If the dosser was some fancy caper from the Crime Squad or the Criminal Intelligence Service he would have back-up in a van or a car close by, and there was no vehicle that fitted on the main road or in Bevin Close. So what the hell was he doing there?

The shout carried in the evening to him. 'You please yourself. It's in the oven, I'm starting.'

He yelled, not over his shoulder but ahead: 'Hey, you. What's the game? What do you want?'

The dosser didn't turn. If he'd been Crime Squad or Intelligence, he would now – challenged – be lifting his arm or ducking his head sideways and speaking urgently into his wrist microphone or the one on his collar. But the dosser just stared ahead at the window where the curtains weren't drawn.

'Hey, I'm talking to you – what you doing?'

No movement, no motion. Davey started to run. He could see the torn dank clothes of the dosser. He was panting, didn't do much running. He'd used to box in Peckham, super middle-weight, but that was way back. No call for him to run once he'd joined up with Ricky Capel. He came up behind the dosser, and the smells of the man were in his nose, but he hadn't turned – like it didn't matter that Davey had come down, fast, the length of the close and had yelled at him. That he was Ricky's man, his enforcer, was known through Lewisham, Peckham, Camberwell and Catford: in a pub he was bought drinks, in the betting shop he was allowed without fuss to the queue's front, in the street people moved out of his way. Davey was never ignored. He had stature as Ricky Capel's minder. He came up behind the dosser.

'Don't you bloody listen? I was speaking to you.

What's your business?'

The shoulders, sagging, stayed in his face. Davey was a short-fuse man. The nearest place where dossers hung out, where they begged or slept or drank, was the underpass at Elephant and Castle, but that was up past Rotherhithe and over the Old Kent Road, not here. He grabbed the shoulder. No resistance. The stink seemed to billow over him. Davey boiled. He had the man's coat in his fist and swung his body round to face him. There was no fight in the man, but no fear. Davey was used to fear, inflicting it.

Used to men cowering from him, cringing away.

'Who are you? What you doing?'

Not a quiver from the lips. Davey did not know whether it was dumb insolence or dumb stupidity. If the dosser had shown the fear then he might have frogmarched him up the length of Bevin Close and kicked his arse back on to the main road's pavement, and watched him go, then gone inside to get the supper out of the oven. The eyes stared back into his.

Was the man mental? One of those Care in the Community people? Didn't seem that way to Davey.

No madness in the eyes.

He was not sure if the eyes laughed at him. They were bright and big and close. The dosser's hand reached up, not to strike but to release Davey's grip on the shoulder; like it shouldn't have been there. The hand tried to prise the shoulder free and the weight of the dosser's body was against him, as if the man had done the business that had brought him to Bevin Close and was now ready to leave… No bloody way.

There was another rattle of questions in his throat – waste of time asking them. He used a knee into the groin, hard. The dosser was going down and Davey was shouting, couldn't hear himself, as he put in the southpaw short hook to the chin. The dosser was down. Davey readied himself for the kick to the head.

'What we got here, Davey boy?'

His breath coming in spurts, he looked up. Ricky leaned casually on the closed front gate, had a good shirt on as if he was dressing to go out and had been interrupted. The shape, like a rag bundle and like the men under the cardboard at the underpass by

Elephant and Castle, lay in front of him.

'Some bloody vagrant scum, Ricky. Outside your house. Looking at it. I've asked him what he was doing, who he was, why… Didn't get an answer.

Didn't get nothing. I belted him, Ricky.'

'Did you?'

'I don't reckon he's Crime Squad, just some loony that needed teaching.'

'You reckon.'

'Teaching respect.'

'Maybe you haven't taught him well enough.'

There was that quietness in Ricky's voice. It marked times when Davey knew better than to speak further.

He came through the gate and looked down at the dosser. The eyes in the head on the pavement were unwavering and steady. If he had been on the ground and Ricky's shoes had come close, Davey would have wrapped his arms round his head and curled up the better to protect himself; it was what men did when they were to be kicked, he'd seen it too many times to remember. The head jerked back from the impact of Ricky's shoe.

The cry was urgent: 'Don't be a bloody fool, Ricky.'

Mikey was out of his house, stumbling – like he was half-cut – towards them, and put himself between Ricky and the man on the ground, then turned on his son and pushed him away.

'What do you want – the bloody police down here?'

Ricky said, 'There's no call for the police, Dad.

Didn't you see? He fell over. Probably pissed up. He fell over and hit his head. You weren't looking, Dad.

You got to know what you're talking about when you call your son a bloody fool. Isn't that right, Dad?'

'If you say so, Ricky.'

'I say so, Dad… Get rid of him, Davey. We don't want people like that in our close. I'm surprised you let him get this far.'

Davey shivered – always did when criticized by Ricky Capel. It was big of Mikey, and not usual, to stand against his son and call him a bloody fool.

Davey wouldn't have done it, wouldn't ever. He pulled the dosser up by the shoulders of his overcoat, then dragged and half carried him away up the length of Bevin Close. It was only when he reached the junction with the main road, stood the dosser up and pushed him towards the line of steel-shuttered shopfronts that Davey realized what the smells were.

Above the stink of the clothes was the stench of petrol.

One more thing he didn't understand.

He saw the man shamble away, lean on a lamp post and grip it for support, then move on. Davey went to rescue his meal from the oven.

Still damp from the shower, he was as sleek as the Ferrari Spider towards which he walked.

As a regular visitor he received an obligatory ducked bow of respect from the doorman who watched over entry and exit at the block. The mouseboy, as his uncle called him, might come once a week to Chelsea Harbour or once in two weeks, but Enver Rahman came three times a week. It was the great laugh between him and Maria that the besotted mouseboy had no idea that she was serviced three times more often, minimum, by him. There was a slight weight in his jacket pocket and he carried the video-cassette in his hand. She did not grunt, did not fake it, for Enver.

There was always a tip, peeled from his wallet, of a twenty-pound note for the doorman, gratefully received. By now, the note would have been slipped into an inner pocket.

Enver was late for the meeting. It did not concern him. He strode into the evening air and saw people back away from the Ferrari. Always it attracted attention, which he liked.

Of course, as the nephew of Timo Rahman, Enver was expected to succeed. He had. He owned nine brothels spread through north Haringey, Soho and the area behind King's Cross railway station. They were for the ordinary girls with flat chests, gross hips or dirty complexions; they were paid a hundred pounds an hour by clients and were given five for themselves.

Special girls, booked by telephone from hall porters' desks, were driven by Enver's people to the better hotels and they were paid two hundred pounds an hour, non-negotiable, and were allowed five to slide into their purses. His girls, from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, worked seven days a week and the money cascaded into his lap. If the girls broke the rules, Enver had men to beat them – beat them so they were unable to work, unpresentable, for a week.

He drove across the city. It was his habit never to exceed the speed limit, never to crash a red light, never to overtake across a double white line – never to give a policeman, racked with envy, the chance to wave down the Ferrari Spider.

More for fun and less for cash, Enver oversaw – and took the major cut – from kidnapping. Most he liked what they called the 'bomb burst'. An Albanian, in Brent, Colindale or Green Lanes, would have opened up a small business – a plumber, a carpenter, a bespoke shirt-maker. Taken into a car, his mobile phone would be lifted from his pocket. The 'bomb burst' was to ring every stored number and demand a hundred pounds within an hour from each number, and let them hear the screams of the man. The 'bomb burst' could make a thousand pounds in an hour… It was fun, entertainment, for Enver, as was the second way. Snatch a man as he came home at the end of his day's work, back to Brent, Colindale or Green Lanes, drive him the rest of the way, and keep him in the car as the door was banged at his home. Let his family see him in the car, and his terror. A thousand pounds to be collected in an hour, or two thousand, or the man would be taken to Epping Forest and killed. They always paid. It amused him to see the panic on the faces of others… Useful also. The 'bomb bursts' and the lifts were a way for him to evaluate the determination of potential recruits. Albanians and Kosovar Albanians, without money, picked out from the lines of immigrants at Lunar House, were desperate to prove themselves reliable. From kidnaps he could choose them, find the ones with skill. More money spilled into his lap and victims, like the girls in the brothels, would never talk to the police.

He travelled along the embankment, then took a bridge over the river.

The money from his lap went out of the country in suitcases and in vehicle hideaways to be driven home to Albania where he already had a villa – decently smaller – near to the older one built by his uncle. More money went to bureau-de-change outlets for changing into high-value euro notes. More went into the casino in which he had an interest, for laundering, and into three Albanian cafes of which he was part-owner; he paid tax from the casino and the cafes and made the money legitimate. A little was paid to Ricky Capel, at extortionate rates, to reward him for brokering the transport that brought in new girls. He thought the mouseboy rated him as a fool for paying too much

… and with the money, as a bonus, was the constant offer of muscle to enforce Capel's own dealings. He allowed himself to be rated as a fool because that was what his uncle, Timo Rahman, had ordered.

He had rung that evening, on his mobile, from Maria's bed, and asked for the meeting. The video-cassette was locked in the glove compartment. He hooted, long enough for a barman to come out of the pub. He said his Ferrari Spider was to be watched.

Enver walked into the pub, and slipped the slight weight from his pocket into the palm of his hand.

The mouseboy and the mouseboy's wife were sitting at a far table, away from the drinkers. It amused him to see her. Plump, pasty, if she had been his she would have worked in a brothel and not been one of the special girls for businessmen in hotels.

The mouseboy looked down at his watch and the frown slashed his forehead, then noticed Enver's arrival. He was an hour late. The mouseboy half stood and the woman turned to face him. Enver saw the bruise on her cheek and the cake of cosmetics over it.

He apologized, as if he were just a humble immigrant from Albania in the presence of a man of stature.

'I am grateful you could meet me, Ricky.'

'You were lucky I was free – I'm not often free.'

'And again I regret my lateness, unavoidable business.'

He thought the bruise on her cheek had come from a hard blow.

'So, what is it that couldn't wait? I mean, I'm out with Joanne.'

'I had a call from Timo, from my uncle.'

'So?'

'Timo Rahman requests your company in Hamburg

– to discuss a matter of mutual interest.'

'When?'

'Within two days or three, that is what my uncle requests.'

'I don't think I can do that. I've a heavy diary.

Maybe in a week or two.'

He leaned forward. The wife watched him. She would have known that Enver Rahman, associate of her husband, ran brothels in north Haringey, Soho and behind King's Cross. She would have realized that he had noted the bruise on her face. She watched him and he thought she loathed him. Enver took the mouseboy's hand, opened it, laid it against his own palm. The hand snapped shut on the gold chain. It had been on the bed – the clasp had broken open while the girl had grunted and faked.

'Maybe I can rework my diary. I've never been to Germany.'

'I will book the tickets and I will accompany you.

The day after tomorrow.'

Ricky Capel's fist was clenched tight. 'Yes, I can do that. It will be good to meet your uncle.'

'My uncle will hope that he has not inconvenienced your diary, Ricky. He will be most grateful to you. My apologies, Mrs Capel, for disturbing the enjoyment of your evening. I will ring you, Ricky, with the flight.'

He gave a last subservient smile, that of a lesser man, and worked his way out through the tables and past the drinkers. Outside, he tipped the barman another of his twenty-pound notes for watching the car, and drove away.

Late, near to midnight, the Anneliese Royal docked. A poor catch. Hardly enough in the fish room, boxed in ice, to pay for the engine's diesel, and little enough for his son and for the boy's wage. For himself, there would be no money.

Skilfully, Harry nudged the beam trawler alongside the floodlit quay. Beyond the harbour the bars of the east-coast port town were chucking out. When his boat was unloaded and he walked towards the gate, if he met other skippers he would be asked how his catch had gone. For an answer he would shrug and shake his head. If the Anneliese Royal had been bought with a bank loan or a mortgage, had not been given to him, he would have gone to the wall with what the catch paid him. He would have been another swamped by the quotas, the lack of fish, the cost of diesel and the wages bill. But Ricky Capel had given him the trawler and often enough there were packages to be hooked up from buoys off the German and Dutch coasts, and Harry Rogers survived as a fraud. The ropes were made fast and the boy had started to put the few boxes on the conveyor-belt.

Harry said to Billy, 'Can't see any point hanging about this dump, not with the weather turning. No sense being here. I fancy home, going down west, till the storms are blown out.'

'You been in a war, Chief?'

'I'm fine, thank you.'

'I don't wish to interfere, but you don't look all right, Chief.'

'Very fine – never been better.'

'Have you been robbed?'

There was, and Malachy recognized it, genuine concern in her voice. It was an effort for him but he turned to the woman driver, took the change and the ticket that she dropped into the tray. Through the glass that protected her he saw the way she squinted at him.

He grimaced, which hurt his chin. 'I don't have anything to steal.'

'You should get them washed, those cuts.' She engaged the gears. 'Right now, get yourself a seat. On the night bus we go like the wind.'

He clung to the pole, steadied himself as she pulled away from the stop, then lurched for the nearest seat.

He heard her voice behind him: 'Him what done that to you, did he get pain?'

'Not yet.'

She giggled raucously, then accelerated, and Malachy slumped down. The bus raced through empty streets, took him home to the Amersham.

Bruised and bloodied, he felt the first welling of respect for himself, after so long. Like he had climbed a ladder or scaled the terraced wall of the pyramid. He was too tired, too battered, to know how Ricky Capel would 'get pain', but he promised it.