By this time, things had moved on as far as what Charlie Swags had said to me was concerned. My reading of him turned out to be right. I knew a bit more about this than I said earlier. And it all added up to Charlie walking in looking like things had just taken a turn for the worse. And he walked into The Minstrel.
Now knowing Charlie as I do, I know his moods – whether he’s pissed off because things haven’t gone as planned or if there’s something personal in it. And that’s what this had come down to.
Drake – that fucker who owned the garage I was telling you about – had decided not to sell, and he was putting it about that he’d made a fool out of the ‘Great’ Charlie Swags. Which was a load of bollocks. It was simply a deal that had fallen through and Charlie would’ve seen it like that if Drake hadn’t gone mouthing off. Since Charlie was nodding towards the table in the corner, where we got down to the bones of it, it was more than obvious that as he was running it by me, he was looking for something with an edge to it that’d make Drake sell.
So I sat back, gave it some thought, downed a whiskey, nodded to the barman for another round – including a swig for Charlie’s two heavies on their high stools – waited till it was brought over, Charlie tipping away at Irish Mist …
‘Drake married, Charlie?’
‘He is.’
‘Other women?’
‘We’re all fond of a bit of skirt, Red.’
‘Kids?’
‘Daughter.’
‘How old?’
‘Fuck knows. Eleven, twelve …’
‘Hit him there.’
‘With what?’
‘What do men fear above all other things when it comes to sex, Charlie?’
‘Not being able to get it up any more?’
‘What else?’
‘Ah …’
Charlie never sees the angles. Even at this stage, when he’d become like one of those guys you read about in the Sundays – ‘Crime Boss Guilty of All Sorts of Crap’ – he still never sees the angles. Not that he’d ever been in the Sundays, though Chilly Winters had been refusing promotion for years trying to put him in them. Winters was still carrying a grudge over his daughter. He’d found out after she was taken that Charlie was behind it. And Winters knows, more so then than now, that where Charlie went, I went. He blames me too. No proof though. You’d think he’d wise up. In order to beat us, he has to catch us. If he doesn’t catch us, that’s a reflection on his abilities, a failing on his side. He should look at it like that.
‘Y’know that new girl Ted Lyle has working for him, Charlie? She was at a hen party one night in the Carmine Club, wore a dress no bigger than a pillowcase. Long blonde hair, no tits, small enough to go down on a guy standing up; very young looking. Gemma Small.’
‘Didn’t she used to work for you?’
He’d had his eye on her. Charlie likes them young. ‘She’s into electrolysis.’
‘What’s that – some kinda vibrator?’
‘No muff.’
‘So?’
‘Scams are about perception, Charlie. What people perceive to be the truth, not the truth itself. Set her up as a tourist in that hotel you said Drake drinks in. Nice and easy does it; she’s not to rush. See what happens. Maybe he’ll bite, maybe he won’t. If he does, it’s up to her room with a hidden camera on the go. I’ll set it up, all part of the service.’ I had surveillance gear, the kind top-notch private investigators use, with built-in phones, microphones, speakers, ‘always-on’ broadband access, VCR jacks, camera lenses the size of tie pins, the works. I call them surveillance ‘laptops’, mainly because they’re portable, but they’re much more than the ones you’d buy in the shops and about twice the size. ‘If my guess is right, a little thing like Gemma without the pubic hair will come across on screen as a minor. Send Drake a copy, then ring him up and reduce your offer. When he scoffs, ask him what kind of videos his daughter and her schoolmates like to watch. That’ll tell him you’re the one who sent it.’
The kid element gave it the edge he was looking for.
‘God bless you, Red.’
‘No problem.’
‘How the fuck do you come up with these scams so fast?’
‘You know me, Charlie – always like to have one ready in case of a quick getaway. I’m also a genius.’
Genius, my bollocks. I’m no smarter than the next guy. I just take everything from experience. When I was a kid, I saw two lads with a Christian Brother. They were both about the same age, but one had pubic hair and the other one didn’t. The one without it looked a lot more like a minor because of it. That was probably my first lesson on how things look based on how you present them. If you’d shaved the lad with it, he too would’ve looked like a minor. Your basic everyday logic. That’s the lesson I took from it anyway. When I saw Gemma, it came back to me.
I saw the upshot of this, incidentally, when Ted Lyle’d recorded it onto one of my surveillance laptops. Gemma had a doll’s mouth. When she went down on
