? Bryant & May on the Loose ?
41
Haywire
Maddox Cavendish took off his tie, rolled it up and put it in his pocket. He opened his collar, trying not to look like an executive. The afternoon was cold, but he was sweating. He drank half a pint of beer in each bar he visited. After the fourth, he had built up enough courage to start conversations.
In the Ruby Lounge he met a former boxer who offered to sell him amphetamines. Wandering in the gloomy depths of the Big Chill House he was offered drugs and a woman for the night. It took nerve to enter the Flying Scotsman, considered by many to be the worst pub in London. He stood in a crowd of overweight skinheads watching as a bony crack-addled girl performed a dead-eyed bump-and-grind on the tiny raised stage. The more coins that were thrown into her pint pot, the more she took off. How desperate did a man have to be, Cavendish wondered, to strip a drug addict? This was not his world. He belonged in the Thames Valley, where the houses were lost behind hedges and every family had three cars. How had he been reduced to this?
Think of what will happen if you don’t do it, he told himself, you’ll be unemployable.
He struck up conversations and got strange looks. Finally, in one of the more brightly lit and respectable bars, a pub called the Golden Lion, he found what he had been looking for. Seated on a tiny verandah with the smokers, he joined a promising conversation and realised that he was talking to a burglar with a string of convictions. The boy’s name was Mac. He was pale and ratty, with a scrawny tattooed neck and faux-Russian gang tattoos entwined over both arms. This was no good – Cavendish wanted someone who did not look guilty and would not get caught – but at least the subject was raised. Soon they were joined by others who boasted of TWOCing neighbourhood cars. ‘Taking Without Owner’s Consent’ had to be explained to him, but a few minutes and several beers later, Mac had agreed to introduce him to a man who had never been caught, even though Mac was sure he was insane and deserved to be locked up.
Mac gave Cavendish a joint, which was mixed with dark rolling tobacco and nearly choked him, and after Mac held several sly conversations on his cell phone, they went off to the Thornhill Arms, to meet up with Mr Fox.
Cavendish felt the skin on his neck tingle as Mr Fox entered the pub. He was small-boned, sandy-haired, pale and inconsequential, and yet there was something terrifying about him. He nodded politely as he was introduced to Cavendish, but there was no life in his deep black eyes, nothing at all except the hungry prospect of taking something from another. He commanded the space; the others fell silent out of respect. Cavendish skipped the small talk. There was no point in wasting time. He explained what he wanted, but was careful to play down the importance of the item to be stolen from Delaney’s apartment. He did not want Mr Fox to understand its value.
Mr Fox listened to the proposal as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if it was almost beneath his attention. Then he nodded imperceptibly and asked for half the money up front.
“No,” said Cavendish. “You get it when you deliver.”
Mr Fox rose to his feet. He seemed to have grown in stature somehow. Mac was clearly annoyed. “You got to pay him,” the burglar whined.
“One third up front,” Cavendish offered.
Mr Fox hovered for a moment, and for a terrifying instant Cavendish feared he might lash out at him, but then he sat back down, grudgingly indicating that they had a deal.
Cavendish withdrew the cash from his personal account, knowing it was better not to involve the company. Nothing happened the next day. He sat at his desk, shuffling papers, biting his nails. Sammi, his assistant, kept looking at him strangely. When the phone finally rang, Cavendish found himself talking to Mac.
“Meet me back at the pub tonight, same as last time.” The line went dead.
Mac was skittering about at the bar, manically chewing gum, drinking beer, nervously tapping skull-ringed hands on the counter. The moment he saw Cavendish in the mirror he spun around. “You didn’t say nothing about him coming back from work early, didja?”
“Where’s Mr Fox?” Cavendish asked, sensing trouble. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened. Your pal came back and caught him in the act. So Mr Fox had to deal with it.”
“Where’s my package?”
“Don’t know, mate. Don’t know anything. He never met you and you never met him, all right? ”
“We had a deal. I gave him money – ”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t try to scam me, you little weasel,” Cavendish hissed. “Who the hell do you think you’re dealing with?”
“It ain’t me. Mr Fox knows where you work. It’s him you have to worry about now. He’s nuts; he’ll do anything. You screwed him around. He’s got nothing to lose. Nothing.”
Cavendish thought of Mr Fox’s frozen dark eyes and the truth began to dawn on him. “Oh God, Delaney’s dead,” he realised. He could see bony fingers digging into the construction worker’s windpipe.
“Just get the rest of the money by tomorrow, all right?” Mac shoved past him and stormed out of the pub.
? Bryant & May on the Loose ?
42
Mad Day Out
Before they left for the night, the PCU staff assembled at the front of the second floor in what had become the briefing room, simply because it was the room with the most floorboards. The last two hours of the evening had brought some leads, but hardly the breakthrough they had been hoping for.
“Okay, everyone present and correct?” asked May. “The good news is that we’ve managed to locate Mr Porter’s granddaughter, Ellen. She lives just a few streets away, in Tiber Gardens. The bad news is that she doesn’t know anything about a property deed. Looks like Delaney didn’t have time to track her down. No-one’s been in contact with her.”
“But the deed wasn’t in Delaney’s apartment,” said Bryant. “So where on earth did it go?” He noticed that Jack Renfield had appeared in the doorway. “Ah, Mr Renfield, glad to have you back amongst us. Where did you disappear to?”
“I decided to follow up one of your leads,” Renfield explained. “You kept banging on about the St Pancras Old Church, pagans and such, so I went there and had a very interesting talk with the grave digger. Seems you missed an obvious connection with one of the suspects.”
“I did?” Bryant sat forward, intrigued. “And what did I miss, pray tell?”
“You missed the Mad Day Out.” Renfield looked around the room.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Beatles. Seems the old vicar remembers it well. In 1968, The Beatles were photographed all over
