Birdman

Maddox shook his head. 'They won't have it. These personnel people are tight as arseholes.'

'Let me try.'

Maddox lowered the raincoat and turned his face to the sky, his eyes screwed up against the rain. When he looked down his face was composed. 'OK. You win. You can have Essex, if you want him, and you've got four days from Monday to come up with something.'

'Four days?'

'Four days.'

'But—'

'But what? You'll find the time. And you don't skip a single team meeting and if I need to pull you off I'll do it at a moment's notice. Anything else?'

'Yes.'

'What?'

'You still coming to our party, sir?'

'Ask me when I'm not pissed off with you.'

12

The girl in the back of his GTI was wearing a lime-green spandex miniskirt and platform sandals. Her hair, cut bluntly at jaw level, had one gold-sprayed chunk in it. She was dark-eyed, coffee-skinned, and Gemini knew Africa was somewhere in her bloodline.

She'd approached him in the Dog and Bell last night, before the trouble, before the police, and asked him to meet her tonight at the north side of the Blackwall tunnel to drive her to Croom's Hill. She had some business there. At the time he'd thought nothing of it, but since the pub raid this afternoon he'd been nervous.

Gemini was no more than a wannabe Yardie, born in Deptford; in spite of his walk and talk the closest he'd ever been to Spanish Town Road was the Bounty rum his aunts brought to London each visit. Dog — his main contact — knew this and played on it, using Gemini to shift stuff that was too white for his own tastes: Es, microdots, scag. Last week it was sixty grams of 'Special K': Ketalar, horse anaesthetic. Gemini, disgusted and shamed, had no choice but to move it for him, and now it looked like one of those girls the cops were asking about had blabbed. Or — the thought made his blood run cold — what if one of them had gotten ill on something he'd sold them? The wash should have been as pure as morning. But as for the scag — everyone in Deptford expected local scag to be a cut deck. But cut with what? Baby laxative? Dried milk? Ammonia? Or something even deadlier. If that had happened it wouldn't be just the police Gemini had to worry about — the public would turn it into a witch hunt and then the ranks would want to know who had put them in the spotlight.

And now it crossed his mind that the girl in his car might be a set-up. He kept her in his rear-view mirror as he drove. They'd passed St Dunstan's when she leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

'I heard in the pub maybe you could help me.'

'Yeah?'

'Like rock or H or something.'

He studied her in the mirror. Whatever the police were on to, he couldn't afford to shy away from a deal. It was life blood.

'There's somewhere here,' he said eventually, and flicked the indicator, turning the red GTI into a cul-de-sac. It had stopped raining mid-afternoon. Ahead he could see the four towers of the London Transport power station against the orange sky, and a column of smoke rising from the damp allotments next to the railway. He cut the engine. The girl smoked silently, gazing out of the window with cool disinterest. He was sure — had to be sure — she wasn't a cop. He swung around in his seat, hugging the head rest with his right arm. 'So what can I help you wid?'

She didn't look at him, just went on staring out of the window. 'What you got?'

'I ain't stupid, know what I'm saying. From where the Bill are crawling around me, you know, I decide I ain't going to put my feet straight in no trap.'

'I want H. Heroin, horse, smack… whatever the fuck you call it. Drugs, OK? I ain't no cop.'

Gemini relaxed a little. 'OK OK. I got a bit. Me mostly into rocks, draw, know what I'm saying.'

'One wrap.'

'One?'

'Yeah. More's waiting for me.'

He'd been hoping for something higher, but his grin didn't falter. 'OK, sweet, sweet. That's a tenner.'

'And then let's go.'

'OK. OK.' From the pocket of his blue Helly Hensen sou'wester he flipped a little folded envelope into his palm. Holding the wad between his middle and forefingers, he extended his hand between the seats. She better not drop anything, he thought. At the end of the night he was going straight down to Creek Road and getting his car cleaned inside and out. He'd heard that the Bill had techniques that could vacuum the car out and detect the smallest grain of gear.

The girl checked it, rewrapped the package and paid him. 'Let's go.'

Gemini jammed the car into reverse. 'Croom's Hill?'

'Yeah. Blackheath end.'

On the heath they stopped for pedestrian lights.

'Do a right here, and then you can drop me.'

'You live up here?'

'My friend does.'

'Is it?' He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, and stared at her in the mirror. He'd dropped a couple of the girls up here in the last few months and they'd all said the same thing. Maybe there was a punter up here. 'Who your friend then, girl?'

'Just a friend.' She looked out of the window and went on smoking. She had a little mole above the top left-hand corner of her mouth.

'I drop some of dem girls up here before.'

'Did you?' She wasn't interested.

'Coupla white girls.'

'Is it?'

The lights changed. Gemini pulled off to the right, liking the way the car felt. 'She went in one o' dem big houses. Know what I'm saying?' He grinned at her in the mirror but she ignored him.

'You can stop here.'

Gemini pulled the car into the kerb, and put it into neutral. 'Four quid.'

She got out of the car, slamming the door. Dropping a fiver through the two-inch gap of opened window.

'And hey—'

'Yeah?' He looked up, grinning.

'You should stop with the Yardie shit.' She held a delicately extended finger in the air, her eyebrows arched sarcastically. 'Cos, y'know, you sound a real prick, yeah?'

She turned away. Gemini picked up the note from his lap and watched her legs flash away in the twilight. He wasn't offended.

'You got a sweet nigger's arse under that skirt, girl,' he whispered, still grinning. 'Someone's going to get a piece tonight.'

She turned down the twist in Croom's Hill and Gemini let the car drift forward a few feet. But she had disappeared. He waited a few moments, to see if she'd appear from behind the curve in the road, but she didn't. Mosquitoes circled lazily under the security lights of a brick-walled house — the road remained empty. Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shaking his head, Gemini cranked up Shabba Ranks and headed back down to east Greenwich.

It wasn't till he got back to the pub that he remembered the last time he'd seen that Shellene girl the cops had been asking about. Last week. Last Monday. After the blow job he'd dropped her in exactly the same place.

13

The house:

A rambling Regency villa, set back from the road within a walled garden, overlooked by a stooping crowd of cedars. Once it had been owned by a wealthy patron of the Bloomsbury Group, who had commissioned trompe l'oeils, grisaille murals. There was even a 200-square-foot orangery rumoured to be a Lutyens. The last visitors to this place, if asked to recall, would have remembered gardens on a far grander scale than was usual for most town homes. One could disappear in one of the many hived-off areas, and lose track amongst the topiary and espaliered plums. White Pascali roses bloomed over trellised arbours, bees flew in straight lines down corridors of yew, searching out pyracantha and fuchsia.

But now there were blankets of rotting leaves piling up against the walls and, partially hidden near the garage entrance, lay the skeletonized remains of a dog, trapped there since last summer. The curtains remained closed during the daytime. The cleaner, because of the trouble, had been sacked months ago and gradually areas of the house had become unfit to live in. Harteveld moved through those parts at night only, shuffling along through the mess. But during the day the heavy oak door which led to that part of the house was locked. He couldn't risk unexpected visitors accidentally seeing his things. His belongings—