A photo higher up the wall had caught my eye. It was black and white, in a dark wood frame. Quite how I noticed it I still don't know, since it hardly stood out. A group of men on a golf course, posing in front of the clubhouse. Seven or eight of them standing in a row, smiling as they faced the camera. I looked again, closer this time, but there was no mistake. You don't forget the faces of men you've killed, and you don't forget the face of a man who's asked if you can supply him with a young girl to murder. When Les Pope had been setting up the execution of Richard Blacklip in a Manila hotel room a year ago, he'd claimed that he'd been acting on behalf of someone the target had abused as a child. That was what Tomboy had told me, anyway.
But here were Blacklip and Pope in a photo together, only one person between them.
I pulled it down from the wall, roughly removed the frame and folded the picture in half before shoving it into the back pocket of my jeans.
There was movement outside the window. Torchlight. Then a knock at the front door. It was time to go.
I retreated swiftly through the house and out the back door, not bothering to shut it behind me, then made straight for the leylandii at the back of the garden. I couldn't hear any movement behind me and I didn't look back.
Three minutes later I was through the hedge, across someone else's back garden and out onto a different street.
No one followed. 'I'm changing the time,' I told Les Pope when he picked up his phone. 'It's now six thirty. Same place.'
'Listen, I've got a better idea,' he said quickly.
'I bet you have. The problem is I'm not interested in hearing it. It's six thirty at the Cambridge Arms. And if you get a call from the people who manage your home alarm, don't worry. Nothing's been stolen and the place is as tidy as I found it. Your desk's very neatly kept, by the way.'
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he demanded, full of righteous indignation.
'You know exactly what I'm doing.'
'I'm not going to be blackmailed,' he blustered.
'What you're going to do is provide me with the information I want. Then I'm out of your hair. Six thirty. And don't try anything, or next time I visit your place I'll make sure you are in residence and then there really will be a mess.'
He started to answer but I wasn't interested in a debate so I flicked the phone off. It had been a productive call. Now I knew he was in town. Otherwise he'd have tried to put me off again.
I looked at my watch. Quarter to five. I was back on the North End Road and heading south. Plenty of time.
20
An hour and a half later, I was standing outside the entrance to a Spanish restaurant in the bright orange glow of the Charing Cross Road, a black 'I love London' cap pulled low over my face. It was raining steadily and the streets were quieter than usual. Across the road, the Cambridge Arms was busy with theatre-goers taking shelter from the inclement conditions. Pope had yet to arrive.
I stepped back under the restaurant's canopy and lit a cigarette to pass the time. It was my seventh of the day; I was counting. A couple in evening dress, sharing an umbrella that was too small for them both, hurried across the road and in the direction of Soho, dodging between the traffic. A bus appeared, slowing down and obscuring my view of them. When it sped up again, they were gone.
All the way here, I'd been thinking about one thing. What did Richard Blacklip, a small-time paedophile, have to do with Malik's death? Maybe nothing of course, but something about it didn't seem right. Blacklip had been arrested for abusing his daughter — I'd seen that from a newspaper clipping that Pope had sent Tomboy, as well as from trawling the Net. But he'd also known Pope, and had presumably trusted him enough to reveal that he was going to Manila. Whereas Pope, for whatever reason, had wanted him dead.
I dragged slowly on the smoke, conscious that water was dripping from the canopy above my head onto the cap and running slowly down my neck. Shifting my position so that I was no longer in the firing line, I looked back at the street and suddenly saw Les Pope no more than five feet away, hurrying past with another man. Neither of them noticed me. Instead, they turned and crossed the road, and as they reached the door of the pub, the man with Pope turned to say something to him and I saw the long cut running like a tribal marking down the middle of his face. It was the Scotsman from the previous morning's little incident. I figured that I still owed him. And owed Pope too, since he'd disobeyed all instructions by turning up accompanied.
I retreated into the shadows and watched as they disappeared inside, ten minutes early.
There was no desperate hurry so I finished my cigarette, then meandered across the road and took up position a few yards down from the front door. I knew Pope's number by heart now, so I pulled the mobile from my pocket and called it.
He answered to the sound of pub noise. 'Yes?'
'Change of venue, Mr Pope.'
'Look, what is this? I'm-'
'There's a pub called the Three Greyhounds just up the road from the Cambridge Arms, in Moor Street. It's safer there.'
'What do you mean, safer?'
'The Cambridge is under police surveillance. I assume you're there. Go out, turn right, then right again. Walk for thirty yards and you'll see it. Meet me in five minutes.'
I rang off immediately, counted to twenty, and moved over to the Cambridge's front door. Further down the street, I could see a group of students approaching, but they were still some way off and larking about in a manner that suggested they weren't likely to notice anything untoward.
The door opened and the Scotsman appeared, looking across the street to where I'd been standing until two minutes ago. He was probably on the hunt for the non-existent surveillance. I stepped forward and lifted the.45, smacking him on the bridge of the nose with the handle. It was a perfect shot, his nose breaking with an angry crunch. There was a second's delay and then twin waterfalls of blood came pouring out of his nostrils. I smacked him again on the top of the head before yanking him out of the way. He fell awkwardly on the pavement, moaning in pain and clutching what was left of his nose.
Pope appeared in the doorway. 'Oh dear,' he said with admirable understatement, and turned back to go inside.
But he was neither the speediest nor the most dexterous of individuals, and I'd grabbed him by the collar and pulled him backwards before he'd even made it round ninety degrees. I turned the gun in my hand and shoved the barrel into his ample midriff.
'Make a fuss and I'll put a bullet in your gut right here, right now. Understand?'
He mumbled something unintelligible and I could tell from his tone and body language that he understood all right. With a face like his, he definitely wasn't a lover but it didn't look like he was much of a fighter either. A typical defence lawyer, really. Good at making money. Good for nothing else.
I brought him away from the door and pulled him nice and close. Then took a brief look down at Scotsman. He was sitting up, but his hands and face were a bloody mess and his eyes didn't appear to be focusing properly, courtesy of the blow to the head. Now he'd have some idea what it felt like to get a whack when you weren't expecting it.
'Hey, what's going on?'
The accent was American.
A young couple in their late teens were approaching, the girl with far more confidence than the man. She looked a feisty sort, not afraid to intervene in disputes that weren't her own, which would have been an admirable trait on any other day but this.
The expression I fixed her with was one of utter mortification. 'Oh Jesus, I can't believe this. I'm sorry but please can you get out of the way? We're filming here.' I motioned towards an undefined spot across the road and she stepped back instinctively, out of the way of the imaginary camera. At the same time, I pushed the gun harder
