‘You’re my mate, no question, even if you’re a fag, but how I work is, I do something for you, you owe me, got it?’
Porter Nash nodded; he got it.
Big time.
25
Falls and Andrews were called to a domestic. The husband had been beating on the wife for two hours. The disturbance was at a block of flats in Meadow Road. Falls cautioned:
‘Follow my lead on this, these can get nasty very fast.’
Andrews nodded but Falls was uneasy about the gung-ho expression she was wearing. She emphasised:
‘I’m serious, watch the woman.’
‘Isn’t she the one who got beaten?’
‘Yes, but if you decide to cuff hubby, they suddenly have a change of heart.’
Falls banged on the door and it was opened by a small boy; he looked petrified.
Andrews asked:
‘Can we come in?’
‘Dunno.’
‘We’ll just be a minute.’
‘But Dad is beating on Mum and he doesn’t like to be bothered.’
Falls moved him outside, said:
‘You wait here, we’ll only be a minute.’
They ventured slowly in, the sound of a woman crying in their ears. Turned into a sitting room, a scene of chaos. A TV had a hole in the screen and every stick of furniture was smashed. A woman was huddled in the corner, weeping. They heard the toilet flush and then the man appeared, zipping up his flies. He was small, about five four, dressed in a raggedy T-shirt, dirty jeans and barefoot. He was wiping his mouth and seemed unfazed by them, asked:
‘What you cunts want?’
Falls walked over and turned as if to address Andrews, used her elbow to hit him in the stomach. He went down with a whimper. Andrews was about to speak when the woman launched and landed on her back, sinking her teeth into Andrews’ neck. The joint screaming and howling would have put a banshee to shame.
Falls marched over and pulled her baton, lashed the woman on the skull. You get a biter, you can’t fuck around; it’s not the time for negotiation. Let the stick do the therapy.
The woman fell off like a downed Man-U prima donna. Andrews, in shock, was sobbing. The man on the floor began to sit up so Falls gave him a tap to the side of the head and finished his song.
She got out her radio, shouted:
‘We’ve got an officer down, two perps in need of aid and SEND SOME FUCKING BACK-UP!’
She moved into the kitchen, spotted an open bottle of scotch, brought it out, tilted it to Andrews’ neck, and poured. If Andrews had howled before, it was nothing to the cry of anguish she gave now. Falls tried not to think of Rosie, her best friend, who’d been bitten by a junkie and after Aids testing, took her own life.
The booze revived Andrews and she managed to complain:
‘What were you thinking, that hurt more than the bite?’
Falls was seriously angry, pulled Andrews round, said:
‘What did I tell you? What the fuck did I tell you? Not to turn your back on a woman in a disturbance… and what do you do?… You turn your friggin’ back… Do you know how serious a bite can be? Do you have any bloody idea of how that can go, you stupid bitch?…You think I can afford to lose another partner?’
And realised she was shaking Andrews so violently that the WPC was returning to shock mode. She let go and grabbed the bottle. Took a huge wallop. The guy on the floor opened an eye, asked:
‘Could I maybe get a snort of that?’
26
Brant had to get a new snitch. Despite the new technology — DNA testing, computer databases, profiling, door-to-door enquiries — nothing could touch the informer for results. It was the very lifeblood of the deal. Brant had a shocking record with them. Not that they didn’t pay dividends; on the contrary, they had helped break many a case but the fatalities were massive.
His last two had, respectively, been kebabed and drowned in a toilet. Word was out that if you talked to him, you ended up dead and in horrible fashion. Plus, the villains were an added peril; they heard you were talking to him, sayonara sucker.
Alcazar was a well-known character around the watering holes of south-east London. Known as Caz, he had a history of hanging paper, dealing in dodgy traveller’s cheques and his latest venture — the cyber-cafe racket — had done very nicely for a brief time. But that had gone belly up and a stint with hot cellphones hadn’t lasted.
His history was the stuff of legend. Various times, he was from Puerto Rico, South America, Honduras, Nicaragua. What made him stand out from the herd was that he’d never done time. Brushing as close to the line as he did, it was a bloody miracle he’d never been sent down. And people liked him, he had a way of ingratiating himself to everybody. He was short, with coal-black hair, pitted skin and the body of a dancer. Hooded eyes that some hooker, in a bout of absinthe, termed ‘smouldering’.
The boy could dance, no argument. A woman will forgive a rogue for most things if he can do that. Flamenco, Salsa, the Margarena, he had all the moves. Jiving, that old neglected classic, he could do to perfection. You want to make a woman laugh with delight, get her to jive, and if she’s delighted, bed is already made. He could swing a woman halfway round the floor, with a perilous edge of almost losing her and therein is the art, to bring it right to the precipice and hold on. A joy to behold, it was most fascinating to observe men as he did his thing. They sneered and muttered ‘faggot’, wishing with every fibre of their being that they could have the balls to dance like that.
The streets being the danger they were, Caz had to have some protection. A lot of irate husbands eyed him. His weapon of choice was the stiletto, much forgotten since the appearance of the Stanley knife and, of course, the obsequious baseball bat. In the heyday of the Teddy Boys — was there ever a more fun time? — you packed a flick-knife along with the Brylcream. A cold fascination in the way you hit that little button and the blade snapped out like the worst kind of lethal news.
Caz had the sex and danger to a fine craft. Got the woman to the bed, slipped out the stiletto and snapped the bra-strap with the steel, then said:
‘You want me to hit another button?’
Did they ever — and often.
Caz could move with ease in almost any company, which made him an ideal snitch; it would have also helped in an Inland Revenue career. Brant found him in a Mexican place, late in the afternoon, asked:
‘You know me?’
Caz tried to raise his famous smile, failed, said:
‘Senor Brant, of course. You are legend, is not so, amigo?’
Brant signalled to the waitress who was dressed in flamenco gear, with the name tag, ‘Rosalita’. She sashayed over, lisped:
‘Si, senor?’
She was from Peckham.
Brant looked at Caz, asked:
‘What’s good?’
‘San Miguel and the enchilada is muy bueno.’
