'I know exactly what I've got here, Tomboy,' I told him, 'but you know my situation and why I've got to do something about it. I'm going to be taking my half of the cash from the contract. When I've finished in London-'
'If you finish – that's what you've got to think about, mate. You might never come back. I told you about Pope. He knows some dodgy people. Don't mess with him. Honestly. No good'll come of it.'
'When I've finished in London, I'll bring back what remains of my share and pump it straight back into the business. But I don't know how much I'm going to need.'
'You ain't listening to me.'
'I am, but I've already thought everything through. And you know me. I'm stubborn.'
'Too fucking stubborn.'
'That's as maybe, but it's the way it is. I'm booked on the Friday flight out of Manila. I'll be back as soon as I can. It may be days, it could be weeks. I'll keep you posted.'
Tomboy sighed loudly, then shook his head again. 'Be very careful. I know you like to think you're a tough guy, and in a lot of ways you are, but there are tougher ones out there, and I'd hate you to run into them.'
I nodded. 'Thanks for the advice. It's appreciated.'
He started to say something else, but stopped himself. Eventually, he just wished me good luck.
I told him I hoped I didn't need it.
But of course I knew that I would. Part Two
INTO THE VIOLENT CITY
8
The wind hit me with an icy slap as I stepped out of the Terminal Three building at Heathrow, hopelessly underdressed in a light jacket and shirt. It was seven o'clock on a bitter Friday night in early December, and a few yards away, beyond the panels sheltering the entrance from the worst of what nature had to offer, a driving rain fell through the darkness amidst the crawling traffic.
England in winter. What the hell had I been thinking of, coming back here? On the plane over, I'd found it difficult to keep a lid on my excitement at the prospect of returning home after such a long time away, even though my business here was hardly pleasure. Now, however, the enthusiasm was dropping as fast as my body heat as I stood outside in temperatures hovering only just above freezing, looking every inch the ill-prepared foreign tourist. I needed to get into the warmth, and fast. An announcement in the terminal had informed everyone that the Heathrow Express to London was currently out of service due to an incident at Hounslow, which probably meant some selfish bastard had jumped under a train, so I joined the queue of shivering, bedraggled travellers at the taxi rank, feeling vaguely paranoid that I might run into someone who knew me from the past, but confident that my disguise was working. No one had questioned me at immigration. I'd given the guy my passport, held in the name of Mr Marcus Kane; he'd taken one brief look at it and me, and that had been that. Not even a second glance. I was back.
It took ten minutes before my turn came, and I was fading fast as I got into the back of the black cab and asked the driver to take me to Paddington. He pulled away without saying anything and headed for the M4, jostling for position on the overcrowded Heathrow sliproad.
The traffic was as horrific as the weather. All three lanes heading into London were moving at no more than ten miles per hour, with plenty of stopping and starting, with the occasional angry honk of frustration drifting through the wind and rain. It was the same going the other way, maybe even worse, since the bulk of the vehicles were escaping the city, not entering it. I'd forgotten how overcrowded the south-east of England was. In the Philippines, outside the maelstrom of Manila and southern Luzon, the pace is slow, and what roads there are are generally empty. Here, it's as if the whole population's on the move, fighting each other for that most precious of commodities: space. We hadn't gone two miles before I decided that, whatever happened here, I'd be heading back to the Philippines afterwards. I'd needed to come back, if only to see what I was missing; but having seen it, I was quickly realizing that it wasn't a lot.
The cab driver was like a lot of cab drivers. Having broken the ice by asking me where I'd come from and got an answer (I told him Singapore, hoping it sounded boring enough that he wouldn't want to ask anything more about it), he took my answer as an invitation to talk, and quickly regaled me with his views on immigration (too much), taxes (too high) and crime (rampant). This last bit interested me a little, because I hadn't heard much recently about crime levels in the UK. I got the big stories, but not the overall picture. The driver told me it had gone through the roof since Labour had been returned to power, especially crimes of violence. 'I'll tell you, mate, you're twice as likely to get mugged in London than New York these days. Probably more. If you ain't been here for a while, you want to watch yourself, I'm telling you.'
I told him I would, and allowed myself a little smile. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but where crime was concerned I remember the cab drivers saying exactly the same thing in the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties. They said it in Manila too. Maybe crime was rampant, but who could honestly remember a time when it wasn't?
Eventually our crawling, rain-splattered progress sapped even the cabbie's strength, and he lapsed into a bored silence while I stared out of the window and into the dark, wondering how I was going to get my investigation started. It wasn't as if I was a police officer any more, so I had no resources I could call upon for help. But I did have several key advantages. I knew who I was looking for, and I wasn't working within the constraints of the law. One thing that had always bugged me when I'd been a copper was knowing that the bad guys consistently had the upper hand. We not only had to find them, but we also had to gather huge amounts of evidence to bolster our case, even when we knew damn well that they were guilty. As often as not – particularly when a criminal knew what he was doing – those huge amounts of evidence simply weren't available, and our suspect walked free. Slippery Billy West was a case in point.
I had no doubt that Les Pope would also be a very difficult individual to pin down, from a copper's point of view, because as a lawyer he'd know how to work the system. With me, though, things would be different. I wasn't afraid to hurt him if he didn't help me. I might well hurt him, even if he did. But I had to be careful. Locating him wouldn't be hard, but it was important I played things just right. I wanted to find out who else was involved in Malik's murder without alerting anyone to what I was doing, and without getting Tomboy in trouble. It wouldn't be easy. But then I'd known that when I decided to come back.
The journey to Paddington took the best part of an hour and cost me almost sixty quid. Sixty quid would have got me from Manila to Malaysia and back again with a Filipino cab driver. It made me wonder what had happened to the low inflation they've been banging on about for so long.
I got the driver to drop me at the station, just in case my face ever appeared on TV and he remembered me, and paid him using three twenties. I then stood by his window waiting for the one pound twenty change, thinking there was no way I was going to tip him for a service that had cost so much, even though the bastard was giving me a look that said one pound twenty was the least he expected for so kindly transporting me from A to B. He continued to give me the look until I told him that I'd start charging for my own wasted time unless he hurried up. Reluctantly, he fished the coins out of his pocket and slapped them into my open hand. 'Tight ass,' I heard the cheeky bastard mutter.