The Dead

21

I just about managed to get the words out. I managed to say, ‘Thanks, that’s useful.’

‘Useful enough?’ he asked me, his eyes pleading.

‘You’ll want paying for it,’ I said. ‘I don’t have it on me but you’ll get some bunce. If you think of anything else to tell me then you’ve got my number.’

‘Champion,’ he said.

I kept the presence of mind to tell him who to see for his money. He seemed satisfied with that and shuffled away. I gave Palmer the nod so he knew it was all okay and I walked off too, crossing the bridge until I was on the Gateshead side. Palmer would follow me at a discreet distance, but he knew when to leave me alone.

I walked slowly up to the Baltic Mill. Normally, I like this lovingly-restored building, but today I barely glanced at it. I bought a ticket and walked inside, mooching around in there for a while, pretending to look at the paintings while I thought this through.

If it was news to me that my father might have done a job for Bobby Mahoney, it was an even bigger shock to hear he had taken all of the cash. If that was true, it was no wonder he had to leave the city in a hurry, but why hadn’t Bobby tracked him down if he stole from him? Why would he keep employing my mother afterwards, unless he thought my dad might come home for her one day and he would be waiting, keeping her close to him like that, so he could spring a trap? Shit, why would he ever trust me? Didn’t it worry him that I could be a chip off the old block? It didn’t make any sense.

I knew my father had left Newcastle on a train two years before I was born and now I knew why. I also knew he had managed to keep the contact with my mother going for more than four years before disappearing forever. I’d always thought he was a low-life who didn’t give a shit about my brother and me, but maybe his final disappearance was more sinister than I had realised. Did Bobby trick an address out of my ma, or did my father put his head above the parapet by stupidly coming home and Bobby finally reckoned with him. This wasn’t what I was expecting to find when I first started digging into my father’s life. That old guy had given me a hell of a lot to think about.

‘Have you considered my offer?’ asked Henry Baxter, as if his proposition was a perfectly reasonable one. We were back in the visiting area for another private audience, while the prison guard watched me nervously. Baxter’s nose was bruised and swollen where I’d punched him.

‘Yes.’ I felt sick inside having to eat humble pie in front of this twisted man.

‘And?’

‘I’ll do my best to get you out,’ I told him, ‘but only to get my money back. Just so we understand each other.’

He pondered this for a moment.

‘No apology, I note,’ he told me sniffily, as if he really thought I was going to say sorry for bloodying his nose, ‘but there is one final thing. It’s quite important actually.’

‘What is it?’

‘You don’t think I’m just going to walk out of court and go off with you and Kinane so you can torture me into giving you the passwords and account numbers you need, then kill me, do you? That’s not the way it’s going to work. You are going to let me go and when I have left the country, only then will I send you the information you need to access the …’

‘Not a chance. There’s no way I’m letting you leave the country, or even this city, without giving me access to the money. I want to see proof that we’ve retrieved it before I let you go. Then you can disappear forever for all I care.’

‘Then we have a problem, because I obviously don’t trust you to let me go. I suspect that once you have your money, you will allow Kinane to kill me.’

‘That’s a risk you’ll just have to learn to live with, if you want my help.’

‘No.’

‘Then you’ll stay here and rot.’

‘And you’ll lose five million pounds. How long will you be able to continue to pay your suppliers, or the men who work for you, with a hole that size in your accounts?’

‘Then we both have a problem.’

He went quiet for a moment, as if he was thinking it all through, then he said, ‘Are you a superstitious man, Blake?’

‘Not especially.’

‘But you’re a father and you care deeply about your daughter? I mean you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. Don’t look at me like that. I’m merely stating the obvious. If you wish me to leave the courtroom with you when this is over, to give you the information you require, then I need you to swear an oath.’

‘What kind of oath?’

‘I want you to swear that neither you, nor any of your men, will attempt to kill me or harm me in any way, that you will release me once you have the information you need and leave me to my own devices.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘And I want you to swear this on the life of your infant daughter Blake. If you are prepared to do that then we might just have a deal.’

I walked out of that nick feeling like I needed to take a long, hot shower. Is this what it’s like when you make a pact with the devil, I wondered?

There was one more thing that was troubling me.

I had absolutely no idea how to get Baxter off his murder charge.

None whatsoever.