‘I thought I looked quite good.’
‘I’m sure you did, but I’d better take over on that side from now on. Did they show you any suitable properties?’
‘There were two I liked the look of. One’ll be empty next week, the other’s empty now. Both farmhouses. I said I’d get back to them but I wanted to run the details past you first. See if there was one you preferred.’
‘All right, I’ll come over and get the stuff off you, and then I’d better do the booking. I’ll need some of that money back.’
‘No problem. Come over now.’ Elaine pulled a face. It looked like she wasn’t finished with me yet. Much more of this and I was going to have to find some bromide to stick in her tea.
‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ he said.
‘One last thing,’ I said, ‘before you go. The tools we’re going to need for the job …’
‘I’ve got enough. Don’t worry about that.’
‘I’ll see you in an hour, then.’
I rang off and forced myself to smile at Elaine. I was trying to take in the news that I was now a suspect for a murder. One more reason, I reckoned, to make sure everything went to plan with the Holtz snatch.
She sat up in the bed and lit a cigarette. ‘So, things moving along then, are they?’ she asked.
‘Everything’s going peachy,’ I said, but there must have been something in my tone.
‘But?’
What is it about women? They can always see through your lies. I gave her a quick rundown of our conversation, mentioning about the police being on to me.
‘What are you going to do about it?’
I shrugged. ‘Not a lot I can do, really. It’s a pain having them on my back, but if I keep my wits about me, then that’s all it’ll be. Not enough to mess up any of the plans.’
‘It’s suspicion of murder, Max, not unpaid parking tickets, so they’re going to be making an effort to find you.’
I nodded. She was right. ‘I’ll be careful, don’t worry.’
She took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling. ‘What are you going to do when this is all over?’
‘I’m going to get out of the country for a while. I know a bloke who puts together perfect-quality fake passports, and I’ll have money as well, so I’ll be able to survive. Anyway, everything’ll die down in a few months. I mean, they haven’t got any other evidence against me on the Fowler thing, and they’re never going to find the body, not if the Holtzes have done their bit, so it’ll end up gathering dust in the unsolveds. I’ll just come back in a while and tell them it was nothing to do with me.’
‘What about me, though?’ she asked.
I thought about that one for a moment. ‘Do you want to come with me? We’ll both have cash, and there’s nothing keeping you here any more.’ I might have only known Elaine for a few days but sometimes you can just tell when they’re right for you. My mum and dad had got engaged after only two weeks, so whirlwind romances obviously ran in the family. They’d lasted close to five years, too. Not that I fancied getting hitched just yet.
‘Do you want me to?’ she asked, her expression serious. I knew then that she felt the same way. Sometimes, with her, it had been difficult to tell. She could be a bit distant on occasion, to be honest with you, and it had made me wonder more than once whether I was maybe outstaying my welcome.
I nodded. ‘Yeah. I do.’
‘Have you got anywhere in mind?’
‘As long as it’s not Sierra Leone, I don’t much care.’
She smiled. ‘How about Bermuda? I’ve always fancied going there.’
I shrugged, thinking that whoever said money didn’t buy happiness was badly fucking mistaken. ‘Sure, Bermuda it is.’
‘Let’s have a little celebration, then. Fancy a beer?’
Life doesn’t get much better than that, does it? A beautiful naked woman with a devil tattooed on her shapely rear offering to go and get you a nice, cool lager while you lounge idly on her bed.
‘Yeah, I’d love one,’ I said, getting myself comfortable and lighting a cigarette of my own.
I watched as she breezed out of the bedroom, thinking that this time in a week I’d either be the happiest man on earth, or dead. And if I was dead, none of it was going to matter anyway. High stakes, yes, but then that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s what made it all the more exciting. I remembered a phrase someone had quoted to me when I was out in Africa. It was something a French general had said to his men back in the nineteenth century when they were defending a town from the British. ‘The enemy have vastly superior numbers. They are coming at us from three sides. Soon their encirclement will be complete. Our right flank is collapsing, casualties are high, our forces are in retreat. Situation perfect. Attack.’ And that’s the thing. Half the joy is facing superior odds and winning. I might have thought I wanted the quiet life, but in the end, like all true soldiers, I longed for that old call to arms. Even better when there was a pot of gold at the end of it that would set me up for ever.
When Elaine returned with the beers, I had a grin on my face the size of China.
Friday, nine days ago
Gallan
I was in court all Friday afternoon giving evidence in the case of a child molester. He’d been accused of abusing young boys at the swimming club he helped run for inner-city kids with limited access to leisure facilities. It was something I’d worked on months before but, as everyone knows, the wheels of justice turn incredibly slowly. The defence barrister gave me as hard a time as possible in the stand, taking full advantage of the fact that forensic evidence was limited and that most of the case against his client rested solely on the words of children, several with learning difficulties, who could easily be lying. But I’m no pushover and I held my ground firmly and with barely concealed contempt for the man in front of me. The defendant already had three previous convictions for exactly this type of offence — not that the jury were aware of that — so, as far as I could see, the defence barrister had to be pretty damned sure the man he was defending was guilty. In which case, he was helping to put a dangerous man back on the street so that he could continue to prey on the kind of people least able to stop him. You can couch it how you want it, spout all this bullshit about everyone being entitled to a proper defence, but it was still wrong. As far as I was concerned, to put the rights of someone who abused children for his own enjoyment above those of the same children to live their lives free from these kinds of assaults was probably the single most perverted aspect of the British justice system, and one of the few things that made me doubt my own role in upholding the law. That well-educated, supposedly respectable men and women were paid sums of money vastly out of proportion to their talent to help keep this situation going, and from the public purse as well, only served to spawn that doubt.
The best way to combat this, however, is to beat them at their own game, and in that particular battle I knew I’d done just that, constantly staring my enemy down and using just the right levels of sarcasm in my answers to make him look foolish in front of the jury. It was a small victory — after all, the lawyer still went home with a nice fat sum of money for his efforts, if you can call them that — but it was a victory nonetheless, and I felt confident that a conviction was on the cards which, ultimately, was the most important thing.
So I was in good cheer when I escaped at just after five (the wheels of justice are not only incredibly slow but also work, with rare exceptions, to office hours) and took the DLR south of the river to pick up my daughter for the weekend. I hadn’t seen her in close to a month, so I was looking forward to it, and so it seemed was she, still being of the age where she can appreciate her dad’s company. We travelled back by Tube and I took her to the Pizza Express on Upper Street for an evening meal during which I caught up with everything in her life: school, fashion, friends, boyfriends, all that hair-raising stuff that makes you think kids grow up far too fast these days, while at the same time being careful to avoid the topic of her mother and the boyfriend. She mentioned him once, telling me about some clothes he’d bought her, but I changed the subject. I really didn’t want to hear about him. In the early days after I’d left, Rachel would ask me when I was going back home, and would say how much she missed me. She’d tell me how much she disliked Carrier and how he could never take my place, and it used to break
