After leaving the Met, Marvin had started Taylor Security Services – TSS – as an all-round security firm: installing alarms, protecting buildings, providing bouncers to nightclubs and so on. However, he quickly realized that the only area where there was any real money to be made was in close protection for SHNWIs. Super High Net Worth Individuals were now something approaching 90 per cent of TSS’s business. Over the last few years, he had seen it alclass="underline" the actor’s daughter who wanted protection from her abusive, A-list father; the politician who paid a retainer of two grand a week so that a TSS operative would take his latest mistress shopping at Westfield on demand; the footballer who thought having a bodyguard would help him pull in West End nightclubs.
They were as nothing, however, compared to his latest clients. This trio was easily amongst the weirdest customers he’d ever had. Two foreigners and a Brit under self-imposed house arrest for almost a week now; too scared to come out of their building, only answering their front door for regular takeaways and deliveries from the local off-licence. What precisely they were scared of, he didn’t know. The dynamics of their relationship Marvin couldn’t quite fathom either. The woman was clearly in charge – she was the one paying the bills – but the English bloke? Was he her boyfriend, or just some lackey? And where did the boy – presumably her son – fit in?
Not that the details really mattered. Marvin had gotten the gig through an old Met contact and he was genuinely grateful for it. Stuffing the food packaging into a small plastic bag, he glanced at his watch. A long, boring night stretched ahead of him. Normally, he would delegate night-shift duties but when there was a no-show, like this evening, he had to fill the gap. All too often, guys just wouldn’t turn up for their shift. The people-management side of things routinely drove him mad. The young guys he worked with seemed to have no sense of responsibility. ‘Maybe I should have stayed on the Force,’ he muttered to himself, as he reached over for a battered copy of World Football magazine from the back seat and began flicking through it.
Engrossed in a feature about Liam Brady’s time at Juventus in the 1980s, he scowled when the walkie-talkie radio sitting on the dashboard cackled into life.
‘All clear.’
Letting the magazine fall into his lap, Marvin picked up the radio and hit the call button. ‘Another tough night on the front line, huh?’
‘Yeah. Christ, this is sooo fucking boring.’
‘Think of the money, McGilroy,’ Marvin told him.
‘Yeah, but still.’ James McGilroy was a thickset Irishman who had done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan with the British Army. By comparison, the mean streets of Knightsbridge could be rather tedious. The only civilian he’d seen in the last hour was a woman in a burqa who had politely crossed the street to ignore him as she headed home, a Harrods plastic bag in each hand. ‘This is a strange gig, boss.’
Marvin liked it when the boys called him ‘boss’; it made him feel that he knew what he was doing, that he was the brains of the operation. ‘They’re all strange,’ he observed. ‘At least this one pays well.’
McGilroy grunted.
‘Where’s Kelvin?’ Kelvin Douglas, McGilroy’s buddy, was another ex-squaddie.
‘Taking a piss.’
‘OK.’ Marvin signed off. ‘Keep ’em peeled.’ Tossing the radio on to the passenger seat, he returned to his magazine.
‘How’s Taylor?’ Looking vaguely pleased with himself, Kelvin Douglas appeared from round the back of a dumpster, zipping up his flies.
‘He’s OK,’ McGilroy mumbled. ‘Not all that happy at having to be out with us tonight, no doubt, but he’ll live.’
‘Well, Chris said he had a hot date tonight with Annie, what do you expect?’
‘I suppose.’ Chris Goddard, the third member of their team, had been seeing his nursery teacher girlfriend for almost a year. ‘But you would have thought the novelty would have worn off by now.’
‘Apparently not.’ Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, Douglas retrieved an outsized roll-up. ‘Fancy a toke?’ he asked, gesturing towards the low wall that ran along the back of the flats.
McGilroy frowned. ‘Not on duty.’
‘Come on,’ Douglas grinned, ‘it’s not like we’re in Nahr-e Saraj, is it?’
‘No,’ McGilroy agreed. ‘I suppose not.’
‘God. That seems like a lifetime ago, now.’
‘I needed a smoke in bloody Helmand,’ McGilroy reflected. ‘But what I really fancy right now is a nice beer.’
‘Good shout.’ Douglas gestured towards the end of the alley with his thumb, as if he was trying to hitchhike, searching out an imaginary ride. ‘There’s an offie just down the road.’
‘Regardless of the circumstances, that really would be taking the mickey.’ McGilroy ran his hand over the grip of his Glock. The MP5s were safely locked up in TSS’s offices, but even the handgun made him nervous. He understood that they were only to reassure the clients – Marvin liked to call it his USP for the high-end market – and the woman in the flat above them was clearly paying through the nose for armed protection. But it still felt wrong. Their handguns were unloaded but it was still totally illegal to be carrying a concealed weapon on a London street; possession of a firearm and ammunition was in clear breach of the standing orders familiar to every British soldier and fundamentally was contrary to the law of the land.
In his head, McGilroy ran through the list of crimes he could be charged with: possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life; possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life; possession of a prohibited firearm; possession of ammunition for a Section 1 Firearm without a certificate. If they got caught, jail was inevitable. He remembered the case of a guy in Cardiff – a regular family guy – who had brought back a pistol from his tour in Afghanistan and kept it in his sock drawer as a souvenir. A judge had given him two years in jail. McGilroy seemed to remember that the sentence had been overturned on appeal, but only after a right palaver. If it came to it, he and Kelvin wouldn’t be so lucky.
Marvin Taylor liked to imply that he had it all covered; if necessary, he could call in a few favours from old colleagues to make any charges go away. But that was highly doubtful. McGilroy liked Marvin, but he knew a bullshit story when he heard it. ‘Ah, well,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘you’ve made your bed. You signed up for this gig. No point in blaming the boss if it goes tits up.’ He watched Douglas amble over to the wall, sit down and light up his spliff. Inhaling deeply, he began coughing.
‘Good stuff?’ McGilroy asked.
‘Not bad.’ Kelvin extended his arm, offering up the spliff.
McGilroy hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kelvin continued, taking another quick puff, ‘it’s going to be another quiet night. You know it and I know it. The clients are safe and sound upstairs. Marv is probably having a kip in the van. Anyway, we’re entitled to a five-minute break, aren’t we?’
* * *
The dope – a none too shabby Moroccan black – was pleasant enough but had little effect when it came to making McGilroy feel relaxed. Sitting on the wall felt like slacking off, and slacking off had always made him nervous, even when he was a young kid. On the other hand, the thought of walking aimlessly round the block for the next six-and-a-half hours did not appeal much either. The night before, McGilroy calculated that he had made 279 circuits of the building, moving at the slowest walking pace he could manage. It felt like being a rat in a lab experiment.
In the alley, shielded from prying eyes on the street, the two men finished the joint and fell into a rambling conversation that exhausted the usual topics – girls, guns and booze – before getting on to the subject of darts. Kelvin was opining on the relative merits of Phil Taylor and someone called Barney, when McGilroy sensed a movement off to his left. Slowly turning his head, he felt something cold brush against his cheek. At the edge of his vision, he could just make out the silhouette of a silencer. Oh, shit, he thought, stifling a nervous giggle, Marv is not going to be pleased.