One more thing he didn't understand.
He saw the man shamble away, lean on a lamp post and grip it for support, then move on. Davey went to rescue his meal from the oven.
Still damp from the shower, he was as sleek as the Ferrari Spider towards which he walked.
As a regular visitor he received an obligatory ducked bow of respect from the doorman who watched over entry and exit at the block. The mouseboy, as his uncle called him, might come once a week to Chelsea Harbour or once in two weeks, but Enver Rahman came three times a week. It was the great laugh between him and Maria that the besotted mouseboy had no idea that she was serviced three times more often, minimum, by him. There was a slight weight in his jacket pocket and he carried the video-cassette in his hand. She did not grunt, did not fake it, for Enver.
There was always a tip, peeled from his wallet, of a twenty-pound note for the doorman, gratefully received. By now, the note would have been slipped into an inner pocket.
Enver was late for the meeting. It did not concern him. He strode into the evening air and saw people back away from the Ferrari. Always it attracted attention, which he liked.
Of course, as the nephew of Timo Rahman, Enver was expected to succeed. He had. He owned nine brothels spread through north Haringey, Soho and the area behind King's Cross railway station. They were for the ordinary girls with flat chests, gross hips or dirty complexions; they were paid a hundred pounds an hour by clients and were given five for themselves.
Special girls, booked by telephone from hall porters' desks, were driven by Enver's people to the better hotels and they were paid two hundred pounds an hour, non-negotiable, and were allowed five to slide into their purses. His girls, from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, worked seven days a week and the money cascaded into his lap. If the girls broke the rules, Enver had men to beat them – beat them so they were unable to work, unpresentable, for a week.
He drove across the city. It was his habit never to exceed the speed limit, never to crash a red light, never to overtake across a double white line – never to give a policeman, racked with envy, the chance to wave down the Ferrari Spider.
More for fun and less for cash, Enver oversaw – and took the major cut – from kidnapping. Most he liked what they called the 'bomb burst'. An Albanian, in Brent, Colindale or Green Lanes, would have opened up a small business – a plumber, a carpenter, a bespoke shirt-maker. Taken into a car, his mobile phone would be lifted from his pocket. The 'bomb burst' was to ring every stored number and demand a hundred pounds within an hour from each number, and let them hear the screams of the man. The 'bomb burst' could make a thousand pounds in an hour… It was fun, entertainment, for Enver, as was the second way. Snatch a man as he came home at the end of his day's work, back to Brent, Colindale or Green Lanes, drive him the rest of the way, and keep him in the car as the door was banged at his home. Let his family see him in the car, and his terror. A thousand pounds to be collected in an hour, or two thousand, or the man would be taken to Epping Forest and killed. They always paid. It amused him to see the panic on the faces of others… Useful also. The 'bomb bursts' and the lifts were a way for him to evaluate the determination of potential recruits. Albanians and Kosovar Albanians, without money, picked out from the lines of immigrants at Lunar House, were desperate to prove themselves reliable. From kidnaps he could choose them, find the ones with skill. More money spilled into his lap and victims, like the girls in the brothels, would never talk to the police.
He travelled along the embankment, then took a bridge over the river.
The money from his lap went out of the country in suitcases and in vehicle hideaways to be driven home to Albania where he already had a villa – decently smaller – near to the older one built by his uncle. More money went to bureau-de-change outlets for changing into high-value euro notes. More went into the casino in which he had an interest, for laundering, and into three Albanian cafes of which he was part-owner; he paid tax from the casino and the cafes and made the money legitimate. A little was paid to Ricky Capel, at extortionate rates, to reward him for brokering the transport that brought in new girls. He thought the mouseboy rated him as a fool for paying too much
… and with the money, as a bonus, was the constant offer of muscle to enforce Capel's own dealings. He allowed himself to be rated as a fool because that was what his uncle, Timo Rahman, had ordered.
He had rung that evening, on his mobile, from Maria's bed, and asked for the meeting. The video-cassette was locked in the glove compartment. He hooted, long enough for a barman to come out of the pub. He said his Ferrari Spider was to be watched.
Enver walked into the pub, and slipped the slight weight from his pocket into the palm of his hand.
The mouseboy and the mouseboy's wife were sitting at a far table, away from the drinkers. It amused him to see her. Plump, pasty, if she had been his she would have worked in a brothel and not been one of the special girls for businessmen in hotels.
The mouseboy looked down at his watch and the frown slashed his forehead, then noticed Enver's arrival. He was an hour late. The mouseboy half stood and the woman turned to face him. Enver saw the bruise on her cheek and the cake of cosmetics over it.
He apologized, as if he were just a humble immigrant from Albania in the presence of a man of stature.
'I am grateful you could meet me, Ricky.'
'You were lucky I was free – I'm not often free.'
'And again I regret my lateness, unavoidable business.'
He thought the bruise on her cheek had come from a hard blow.
'So, what is it that couldn't wait? I mean, I'm out with Joanne.'
'I had a call from Timo, from my uncle.'
'So?'
'Timo Rahman requests your company in Hamburg
– to discuss a matter of mutual interest.'
'When?'
'Within two days or three, that is what my uncle requests.'
'I don't think I can do that. I've a heavy diary.
Maybe in a week or two.'
He leaned forward. The wife watched him. She would have known that Enver Rahman, associate of her husband, ran brothels in north Haringey, Soho and behind King's Cross. She would have realized that he had noted the bruise on her face. She watched him and he thought she loathed him. Enver took the mouseboy's hand, opened it, laid it against his own palm. The hand snapped shut on the gold chain. It had been on the bed – the clasp had broken open while the girl had grunted and faked.
'Maybe I can rework my diary. I've never been to Germany.'
'I will book the tickets and I will accompany you.
The day after tomorrow.'
Ricky Capel's fist was clenched tight. 'Yes, I can do that. It will be good to meet your uncle.'
'My uncle will hope that he has not inconvenienced your diary, Ricky. He will be most grateful to you. My apologies, Mrs Capel, for disturbing the enjoyment of your evening. I will ring you, Ricky, with the flight.'
He gave a last subservient smile, that of a lesser man, and worked his way out through the tables and past the drinkers. Outside, he tipped the barman another of his twenty-pound notes for watching the car, and drove away.
Late, near to midnight, the Anneliese Royal docked. A poor catch. Hardly enough in the fish room, boxed in ice, to pay for the engine's diesel, and little enough for his son and for the boy's wage. For himself, there would be no money.
Skilfully, Harry nudged the beam trawler alongside the floodlit quay. Beyond the harbour the bars of the east-coast port town were chucking out. When his boat was unloaded and he walked towards the gate, if he met other skippers he would be asked how his catch had gone. For an answer he would shrug and shake his head. If the Anneliese Royal had been bought with a bank loan or a mortgage, had not been given to him, he would have gone to the wall with what the catch paid him. He would have been another swamped by the quotas, the lack of fish, the cost of diesel and the wages bill. But Ricky Capel had given him the trawler and often enough there were packages to be hooked up from buoys off the German and Dutch coasts, and Harry Rogers survived as a fraud. The ropes were made fast and the boy had started to put the few boxes on the conveyor-belt.
