I looked at her. ‘And that’s all?’
‘One of the officers, he’s accused Patrick of offering him a bribe. It was all a misunderstanding, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Patrick wonders if you’d talk to him, the officer concerned.’
‘Straighten things out.’
‘Yes.’
‘Make him see the error of his ways.’
‘Look, Jimmy,’ she said, touching the back of her hand to my cheek, ‘you know I hate doing this, don’t you?’
No, I thought. No, I don’t.
‘Everything has a price,’ I said. ‘Even friendship. Friendship, especially. And tell Patrick, next time he wants something, to come and ask me himself.’
‘He’s afraid you’d turn him down.’
‘He’s right.’
When she lifted her face to mine I turned my head aside. ‘Don’t let your coffee get cold,’ I said.
Five minutes later she was gone. I sorted out Patrick’s little problem for him and found a way of letting him know if he stepped out of line again, I’d personally do my best to close him down. Whether either of us believed it, I was never sure. With or without my help, he went from rich to richer; Anna slipped off my radar and when she re- emerged, she was somewhere in Europe, nursing Val after his most recent spell in hospital, encouraging him to get back into playing. Later they got married, Val and Anna, or at least that’s what I heard. Some lives took unexpected turns. Not mine.
I stayed on in the Met for three years after my thirty and then retired; tried working for a couple of security firms, but somehow it never felt right. With my pension and the little I’d squirrelled away, I found I could manage pretty well without having to look for anything too regular. There was an investigation agency I did a little work for once in a while, nothing too serious, nothing heavy, and that was enough.
Patrick I bumped into occasionally if I went up west, greyer, more distinguished, handsomer than ever; in Soho once, close to the little Italian place where I’d spotted Anna with her bruised eye, he slid a hand into my pocket and when I felt where it had been there were two fifties, crisp and new.
‘What’s this for?’ I asked.
‘You look as though you need it,’ he said.
I threw the money back in his face and punched him in the mouth. Two of his minders had me spreadeagled on the pavement before he’d wiped the mean line of blood from his chin.
At Val’s funeral we barely spoke; acknowledged each other but little more. Anna looked gaunt and beautiful in black, a face like alabaster, tears I liked to think were real. A band played ‘Just Friends’, with a break of thirty- two bars in the middle where Val’s solo would have been. There was a wake at one of Patrick’s clubs afterwards, a free bar, and most of the mourners went on there, but I just went home and sat in my chair and thought about the three of us, Val, Patrick and myself, what forty years had brought us to, what we’d wanted then, what we’d done.
I scarcely thought about Anna at all.
Jack Kiley, that’s the investigator I was working for, kept throwing bits and pieces my way, nothing strenuous like I say, the occasional tail job, little more. I went into his office one day, a couple of rooms above a bookstore in Belsize Park, and there she sat, Anna, in the easy chair alongside his desk.
‘I believe you two know each other,’ Jack said.
Once I’d got over the raw surprise of seeing her, what took some adjusting to was how much she’d changed. I suppose I’d never imagined her growing old. But she had. Under her grey wool suit her body was noticeably thicker; her face was fuller, puffed and cross-hatched around the eyes, lined around the mouth. No Botox; no nip and tuck.
‘Hello, Jimmy,’ she said.
‘Anna’s got a little problem,’ Jack said. ‘She thinks you can make it go away.’ He pushed back from his desk. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk about it.’
The problem was a shipment of cocaine that should have made its way seamlessly from the Netherlands to Dublin via the UK. A street value of a million and a quarter pounds. Customs and Excise, working on a tip-off, had seized the drug on arrival, a clean bust marred only by the fact that the coke had been doctored down to a mockery of its original strength; a double-shot espresso from Caffe Nero would deliver as much of a charge to the system.
‘How in God’s name,’ I asked, ‘did you get involved in this?’
Anna lit a cigarette and wafted the smoke away from her face. ‘After Val died I went back to Amsterdam, where we’d been living. There was this guy — he’d been Val’s supplier…’
‘I thought Val had gone straight,’ I said.
‘There was this guy,’ Anna said again, ‘we — well, we got sort of close. It was a bad time for me. I needed…’ She glanced across and shook her head. ‘A girl’s got to live, Jimmy. All Val had left behind was debts. This guy, he offered me a roof over my head. But there was a price.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Even I was surprised how bitter that sounded.
‘People he did business with, he wanted me to speak for him, take meetings. I used to fly to Belfast, then, after a while, it was Dublin.’
‘You were a courier,’ I said. ‘A mule.’
‘No. I never carried the stuff myself. Once the deal was set up, I’d arrange shipments, make sure things ran smoothly.’
‘Patrick would be proud of you,’ I said.
‘Leave Patrick out of this,’ she said. ‘This has nothing to do with him.’
I levered myself up out of the seat; it wasn’t as easy as it used to be. ‘Nor me.’ I got as far as the door.
‘They think I double-crossed them,’ Anna said. ‘They think it was me tipped off Customs; they think I cut the coke and kept back the rest so I could sell it myself.’
‘And did you?’
She didn’t blink. ‘These people, Jimmy, they’ll kill me. To make an example. I have to convince them it wasn’t me; let them have back what they think’s their due.’
‘A little difficult if you didn’t take it in the first place.’
‘Will you help me, Jimmy, yes or no?’
‘Your pal in Amsterdam, what’s wrong with him?’
‘He says it’s my mess and I have to get myself out of it.’
‘Nice guy.’
She leaned towards me, trying for a look that once would have held me transfixed. ‘Jimmy, I’m asking. For old time’s sake.’
‘Which old time is that, Anna?’
She smiled. ‘The first time you met me, Jimmy, you remember that? Leicester Square?’
Like yesterday, I thought.
‘You ever think about that? You ever think what it would have been like if we’d been together? Really together?’
I shook my head.
‘We don’t always make the right choices,’ she said.
‘Get somebody else to help you,’ I said.
‘I don’t want somebody else.’
‘Anna, look at me, for fuck’s sake. What can I do? I’m an old man.’
‘You’re not old. What are you? Sixty-odd? These days sixty’s not old. Seventy-five. Eighty. That’s old.’
‘Tell that to my body, Anna. I’m carrying at least a stone more than I ought to; the tendon at the back of my left ankle gives me gyp if ever I run for a bus and my right hip hurts like hell whenever I climb a flight of stairs. Find someone else, anyone.’
