Stalkers

Chapter 28

Pat McCulkin was a familiar figure on his home turf of Deptford. But those who knew him would have been surprised to see him walking along Creek Road at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. As usual, he cut a grumpy figure: he was sixty, with thinning grey hair, and a leathery, shrew-like face. Rings dangled from both his ears and tattoos covered most of his scrawny body, though at present, as he wore a flat cap and shabby raincoat, these only showed on his neck and hands. Even so, they gave him a less than wholesome appearance. It might only be six o’clock, but as he walked sullenly towards Greenwich, he lit what was already his third cigarette of the morning.

Of course, when he got there, the person he was supposed to be meeting — who’d already annoyed him by calling him at home at God knows what hour — was not present. McCulkin stood alone on a bleak stretch of riverside esplanade. There were no other pedestrians around. There wasn’t even much traffic on the road. Behind him, the Thames sloshed against the hull of the Cutty Sark, the onetime tea clipper now turned museum ship. McCulkin glanced up. The sky was overcast and it was unusually cool for August.

He swore under his breath, coughed, hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it on the pavement. And to his surprise, a phone began to ring.

He took out his mobile. No call was registering on it. Puzzled, he pivoted around, finally focusing on a waste bin attached to the post of a traffic sign. He wandered over and glanced down. A folded copy of that day’s Guardian had been left on top of the trash. The trilling of the phone continued; it was emanating from inside the newspaper.

McCulkin glanced furtively around — still no one was in sight. He opened the paper and found the phone. It was red in colour and looked new. He picked it up and answered.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m watching you, so don’t try anything stupid.’ It was Mark Heckenburg again.

‘What’s all this bullshit?’ McCulkin asked.

‘Don’t talk, just listen. Go straight through the foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs. No questions, no pissing about. Go now. If I see any sign that someone’s following you, you’re in big trouble.’

McCulkin pocketed the phone alongside his own and set off as instructed.

The Greenwich foot tunnel was accessible via a spiral stair that descended from under a glazed dome standing only a few yards from the Cutty Sark. It was forty-five feet down and, in essence, a steel pipe that ran beneath the river, though internally it was concreted and tiled. McCulkin had never liked it much, always regarding it as a mugger’s paradise. There were no hidden places where someone could jump out. It was a straight walk from one end to the other, but that didn’t mean some street punk couldn’t suddenly come down and confront you when you were hidden from the world above. He scurried across, glancing behind him several times, not just worried about muggers but curious about whom it was Heckenburg expected to be following him, and not a little concerned by it.

At the other end, he emerged in the shadow of Canary Wharf tower and the numerous other skyscrapers that surrounded it. The Isle of Dogs had changed a lot since McCulkin was a lad. In those days, it had been a tangle of wharfs and cranes, studded here and there with blocks of scruffy flats where some of London’s poorest residents had eked out a meagre existence. The glittering glass monoliths it now bristled with seemed somehow wrong for the famously deprived borough of Tower Hamlets, though he supposed it was progress of a sort.

The phone rang again. He answered.

‘The greasy spoon on East Ferry Road,’ Heckenburg said. ‘Make it quick.’

McCulkin walked doggedly along the old dockland road. The aforesaid greasy spoon, a small cafe with steamy windows, loomed into view. He glanced inside. There were a number of men, mainly van and lorry driver types, already in there eating breakfast, but there was no one McCulkin recognised.

A hand tapped his shoulder. He spun around.

Heckenburg was there. He was in casuals rather than his customary rumpled suit, while his face was puffy and cut in several places, as though he’d recently been in a car crash. He subjected McCulkin to a quick but thorough body search, before stepping back and saying: ‘You’ve not heard what’s going on, then? I mean with me?’

‘Am I supposed to have?’

Heck was pleased. That meant they were keeping it need to know. ‘Thanks Gemma, I owe you one. Okay, let’s walk.’

They headed north, keeping a brisk pace.

‘What about Charlie Finnegan?’ Heck asked. Finnegan — a DC in the Serial Crimes Unit, wasn’t someone Heck got on with easily, but he was McCulkin’s other official ‘handler’. ‘Has he said anything to you about me?’

McCulkin shrugged. ‘Haven’t spoken to him for about three weeks.’

Heck nodded, again pleased.

‘What’s all the cloak and dagger stuff?’

‘Tell you in a minute.’

Heck glanced behind them several times, and took one or two detours down deserted side streets, before finally ushering his guest into another tearoom, this one attached to Mudchute DLR station.

‘I need some help,’ he said, as they nursed cups of coffee and faced each other across a table. ‘Trouble is it’s got to be off the clock.’

McCulkin pulled a face. ‘You mean I don’t get paid?’

‘You’ll get paid. It just won’t necessarily come from the grass fund. If I have to, I’ll cough up from my own pocket.’

‘Sounds a bit irregular.’

‘All you need to know is that I’m in deep cover, and that, whoever asks — whoever — you haven’t seen or spoken to me.’

‘That include your lot?’

‘Especially my lot.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this.’

‘It’s just another job. No different from any of the others you’ve done.’

McCulkin sipped thoughtfully at his coffee, before replying: ‘What do you need?’

‘Anything you’ve got, or can find, on the Nice Guys.’

‘Never heard of them.’ McCulkin sipped his coffee again.

Heck knew immediately that he was lying. It wasn’t just McCulkin’s body language — the coffee, which was tepid and rather foul, was subconsciously being used as a shield — it was in his face too, which remained blank but had paled a little. McCulkin had also been way too quick to deny knowledge. His normal form would be curiosity. If he genuinely hadn’t heard about a firm with a cryptic name like ‘the Nice Guys’, he’d almost certainly want to know more, yet he’d asked no questions at all.

Heck was discomforted. Pat McCulkin was his main South London informant, and one of the best in the capital; he’d produced leads that had led to convictions for numerous serious offences. This was a mystery, and another mystery was something Heck didn’t need. So he cut to the chase.

‘You’re a lying little git!’

‘Whoa …’ McCulkin looked taken aback.

‘You think I’m on work experience here? Don’t jerk me around, Pat!’

McCulkin got to his feet. ‘I’m not getting up at this time of the morning to-’

‘Sit the fuck down!’ Heck shouted, his voice a whipcrack. It was so loud that the girl behind the counter looked around, startled.

Unnerved to see such fury in a man who was usually so affable, McCulkin did as he was told.

‘This is a non-negotiable situation,’ Heck said, quieter but with the same intensity. ‘I need to know who the Nice Guys are, and I need to know where they are. Right now.’

‘I’ve never heard of any Nice Guys.’

‘Don’t gimme that crap.’

‘You’re not listening to me!’ McCulkin hissed. ‘I don’t know who they are, and that’s my last word on the matter.’

‘Yeah?’ Heck smiled dangerously. ‘Well here’s mine — you’ve had a contract with the National Crime Group for several years now, haven’t you? You’ve done very well out of us. In fact, you’ve made yourself quite wealthy at the expense of your fellow criminals. Maybe it’s time the word got out.’

McCulkin swallowed; working his wet, thin lips together.

‘Poor reward for your services, I know,’ Heck added. ‘But all good things come to an end.’

‘You’re breaching the rules doing this,’ McCulkin replied.

‘That should give you an idea how serious I am.’

‘You do not fuck around with the Nice Guys Club.’

‘So you do know them?’

‘I’ve heard of them. But only like I’ve heard of Jack and the Beanstalk or Jason and the Argonauts. It’s legend, a myth.’

‘Why are you frightened of them then?’

‘I’m not frightened, it’s just …’

‘What?’

McCulkin laced his tattooed, nicotine-stained fingers in a tight, tense ball. ‘There are red flags all over this, Mr Heckenburg. Any time it comes up in conversation, it’s like “you don’t talk about this”, or “do not even go there”.’

‘That’s Halloween stuff, Pat. It’s designed to stop people asking questions.’

‘Look, these people are bad news.’

‘And I’m not?’ Heck leaned forward. ‘These bastards are going to find out different. Now you tell me every single thing you know.’

‘You really going to spread it that I’m a snitch?’

‘Just watch me.’

McCulkin clawed at his brow, which was suddenly glazed with sweat. He looked tortured by indecision, which impressed Heck no end. Among other tough outfits, McCulkin had once grassed on a team of blaggers who’d been doing banks and post offices across southern England and had killed at least twice, and on a car-ringing operation that had involved the import into London of high-end motors stolen from all over the UK. If he wasn’t frightened of firms like these, just what level of threat did the Nice Guys pose?

‘What do you think is going to happen?’ Heck asked him. ‘Nothing will come back to you. It never does.’

McCulkin shook his head. ‘You’d better keep Finnegan out of this, because he’s got a gob on him when he’s pissed.’

‘At present there are only two people on earth know about it — me and you. And that’s the way I’d like to keep it.’

McCulkin took his cap off, ran a hand through his greasy hair. ‘Look, I don’t know ’em, myself. But I know someone who might.’

‘Who?’

‘No names. Not at this stage. But I can set up a meet with him.’

‘Okay. The sooner the better.’

‘This afternoon?’

Heck nodded. He indicated the red phone that McCulkin had found in the waste bin. It was one of the pair that Ballamara had provided the previous night. ‘Use this phone to call. Don’t call me on any number except the one I rang you from earlier.’

McCulkin nodded worriedly. Before he left the tearoom, he glanced back. ‘You’ve started playing dirty, Mr Heckenburg. That isn’t like you.’

‘We all reach our breaking point, Pat.’

‘Well I’m glad you’ve reached yours when you have. From what I’ve heard about the Nice — about these people, you’re going to have to play it even dirtier.’