their reaction I made sure they knew my name and I always used my loudest voice. Drunks have big ears.
I made a particular point of buttonholing Fast Larry when he slid into the George on night three. The lads were as startled as Larry was when I called him over to our corner of the snug.
“Let me buy you a drink, Fast Larry.”
He looked at me like I was dispensing hemlock. “I’m fine, Danny. You want to place a bet?”
“Sit down. I want a word in that shell-like of yours.” I ignored his protests and made the boys move over so that he could sit by me. He was twitching like a diviner’s rod, his eyes rolling everywhere except near mine.
“I want to talk to Pauli Gambatti.”
Fast Larry’s eyes stopped swivelling and he looked at me. “You’re fucking mad, Danny. Why d’you want to get your balls cut off?”
“I’m mad all right. Mad as could be. It’s his balls I’m after unless he has a cast iron alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the disappearance of a dear friend of mine.”
Fast Larry’s eyes were whirling again. “This bint of yours?”
“How do you know about that?” I asked sharply.
He shrugged. “It’s in the paper.” He tapped his shiny jacket pocket.
“Show me!”
He drew out a distressed copy of today’s Racing Mirror rolled inside a copy of the Trumpet. He disentangled them and laid the Trumpet out on the table, trying to flatten its folds in the pools of beer.
“Give me that!” I grabbed it from him. Her photo was on the front page. TOP REPORTER MISSING! was the headline, and underneath glowing words of praise and speculation about a gangland kidnap. Fearless reporter Eve Copeland abducted by very men she’d named and shamed. I read it twice. It said nothing I didn’t know, except they were offering a reward for news of her. I prayed someone was already phoning in to collect. In the meantime…
“Fast Larry, I want you to get a message to your mate, Gambatti. Tell I’m coming after him, and I’ll wreck his whole bloody organisation just like I wrecked his team at the warehouse job. Got that? Now bugger off and tell him.”
Fast looked at me pityingly for a long moment then got up, refolding his papers like a bad example of origami. “You’re round the twist, Danny McRae. Fucking doolally.”
The lads thought so too when I explained my plan.
A couple of days later my madness paid dividends. Of a sort. I walked into my office, wiping my forehead from the heat and the climb, and found a man sitting at my desk with a gun trained on my belly button.
I didn’t think he was going to kill me. Not right away. In my experience, if someone sets out to shoot you, they just do it; they don’t hang around and discuss it. That only happens in movies when they want the killer to reveal why he stole the falcon. And killers don’t usually sit in your chair with their feet on your desk, drinking beer from a bottle. Your beer. They wait behind the door and shoot you from behind. Much smarter and safer. For the killer.
But that didn’t mean that this guy wouldn’t kill me; it just wasn’t the first thing that was going to happen. I stuffed my sweat-stained hankie in my trouser pocket. My jacket was over my arm – the hottest day of the year, they reckoned – and I reached out and hung it on the coat rack behind the door. I turned and waited for him to get round to telling me why he was here and why the gun.
Though I had an idea.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
“In a shit hole like this?”
He waved the gun round my room. I wasn’t hurt or offended. No one would mistake the offices of Finders Keepers for a palace. But then why would you need fancy dйcor if most of your work took place on the street? And my customers weren’t the sort to be impressed with pictures on the walls or Persian carpets; they wanted results, fast, and as cheaply as possible.
“It may not be what you’re used to, pal, but it works for me. And unless this is a takeover bid, that’s what matters.”
I walked towards my desk as nonchalantly as a man can with a gun on him. I did it smoothly, no rush, hands well in sight, holding his eyes and smiling my best I’m-harmless-don’t-kill-me smile. I gingerly pulled the chair back – the one in front of my desk for clients – and sat down slowly in it. I sized him up. He was the heavy type, dark suit tight round his thick shoulders and biceps. The hand was steady and experienced holding the gun – a familiar gun, a Beretta M1935.
Out of Gambatti’s armoury. The goon’s face had been roughened by better men than me. And his eyes wouldn’t have looked out of place on a fishmonger’s slab.
“They said you’d be a funny guy. I don’t like smart arses.”
“Then maybe you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“An’ I don’t like what you did to my pals.”
“Then don’t get in my way.”
He rubbed his face wondering if he could get away with killing me and saying it was an accident. “The boss wants to see you.”
“Oh, and which boss would that be?”
“Mr Gambatti. Pauli Gambatti.”
“You see that thing on the desk?” I pointed at my phone. “Doesn’t Pauli have one? All he had to do was lift the other end and ask me to drop by.”
“In your own sweet time. And it’s Mister Gambatti to you.”
“Can we put the gun away? I get the message. Tell Pauli I’ll come by tomorrow.”
The muscle sighed. “You’re not getting the message. Mr Gambatti wants you now.”
“I’d planned to have a beer first.”
“Too bad, jock. It’s drunk.” Muscles picked up the bottle that I’d been keeping cool in a basin of water and drained the last mouthful. He burped and slammed the empty down on my desk. “Now you’ve got no excuses.”
“Put the gun away and I’ll get my coat.” I waited.
He wiped his lips and reluctantly lowered the weapon. London was flooded with souvenirs brought back by our boys. He gazed at it briefly, sorry it hadn’t been used, and slid it inside his jacket. A fancy holster under his arm. James Cagney had a lot to answer for.
“Let’s go.”
“I hope you’ve got a car. My feet…”
“It’s waiting. Let’s go. And no fucking tricks.”
I had no intention of attempting tricks, not with a gun in my side and a second muscleman driving. Especially when the driver turned round and showed me his face. The eyes were still black and blue and the nose looked as though it had gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. He grinned at me, not in a friendly way.
We cut down the Old Kent Road and then picked up Jamaica Road. Once through the Rotherhithe Tunnel we were in the badlands of Stepney. Everywhere we drove I could see how they’d taken a hammering. Goering sent his planes into the docks night after night, and it showed. Wide areas flattened and cleared. Plenty of football pitches. England should have a fine team in about twenty years.
“Here. Put this on.” The thug beside me had drawn a thin scarf out of his pocket and was holding it out to me.
“I’m not cold. It’s summer.”
“I told you I don’t like smart arses! Put the fucking blindfold round your fucking eyes!” This time he backed up his request with the Beretta jammed into the side of my head.
“This isn’t the bloody pictures, you know. Who am I going to tell?”
He pulled the gun back an inch then jabbed it into my ear. It hurt. And at that distance he wasn’t going to miss. I stopped arguing and tied the scarf round my head. He made me slouch down in my seat so that no passing copper would think it funny and pull us over. We drove for another five minutes, past a railway line, twice. I gave up trying to map our route in my head. At last we came into a yard; the traffic sound got cut off and our own exhaust note bounced back at us.
My door was opened and I was hauled out still unseeing.
I heard big doors creaking open and was shoved forward. I sensed we were inside a big enclosed space. A
