‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She broke into a nervous laugh. ‘The look on their faces.’ It was one of those laughs which can easily turn to sobbing. ‘I was scared, Michael, and I was behind the bloody gun!’
An elderly lady was wheeling her shopping-trolley past us. She smiled a greeting, the way some old people do.
‘Keep your voice down,’ I cautioned. Bel quickly took my meaning.
‘Sorry.’
‘Look, Bel, I don’t want to stick around London any longer than I need to. That’s why I used the gun. I can’t hang around being pleasant and polite and waiting for answers. I need them fast.’
She was nodding. ‘Understood.’ She turned at last to the house. ‘God, it’s ugly.’
‘Let’s make this short and sweet,’ I said, heading for the front door.
The expansive front garden had been concreted over some time before, but weeds and grass were pushing their way through. There were huge cracks and swells in the concrete, doubtless caused by the roots of several mature trees nearby. A car sat on the concrete, covered by a black tarpaulin which itself now sported a covering of wet leaves, moss and bits of rubbish. It was sitting so low to the ground, it either had flat tyres or none at all. Past it, a dozen steps led to the front door, rotten at its base. There was an intercom next to the door, complete with buzzers for eight flats. Only three had names attached. None of them was Shattuck. I pressed one anyway. There was no reply. I pressed another, then another. Still no reply. Bel placed her hand against the door and gave it the slightest push. It swung inwards.
‘Shall we?’ she said.
There was a lot of mail in the entrance hall, along with litter which had blown in over time, and an untidy mouldering heap of free newssheets. Someone had left a bicycle frame against the wall. There was no sign of any wheels.
Some mail sat on an upturned cardboard box. Most of the letters were for Scotty Shattuck, some identifying his address as Flat 5. I checked the postmarks. They went back almost a week.
‘Doesn’t look good,’ I said.
We climbed the creaking stairs, hearing no sounds from the other flats, and encountering not a soul. Flat 5 was three storeys up, near what had to be the top of the house, though the stairs kept winding. The door was cheap and newish, a wooden frame with thin panelling over it. A single Yale had been fitted. The door had no handles or nameplate. There were scrapes on the jamb near the lock.
‘Looks like someone kicked the old door in.’
‘Maybe he locked himself out.’
‘Maybe. Since when he’s had this new one fitted, but hasn’t got round to adding decent locks yet.’
‘That’s handy,’ said Bel. She pulled a small kit of tools from her pocket. ‘I brought this along, thought it might be useful.’
She got to work on the Yale. It took her less than a minute to open it. Not fast, but quieter than a burst from the MP5.
‘I knew there was some reason I wanted you with me,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘My dad taught me how to do it years ago. We only had one front-door key back then. He said this would save him having to get one cut for me.’
‘That sounds like Max all right.’
Bel put away her lockpicker’s kit and we entered Scotty Shattuck’s flat. You could tell straight away he hadn’t been there for some time. The place felt lifeless. It was a bachelor pad, sloppily decorated with nude mags, beer cans and empty containers from Indian takeaways. There was one chair, separated by a footstool from the TV and video. In the only bedroom, the bedclothes were messed up. The magazines here were a mix of middling porn and specialist titles for arms collectors and users. A few empty cartridge cases had been lined up like ornaments on the mantelpiece. Mirror tiles had been fixed to the ceiling above the bed.
‘Ugh,’ said Bel.
The room was dark, its walls lined with large cork tiles to which Shattuck had pinned pictures from his magazine collection. Women and guns. Sometimes he’d cut carefully around the guns and Sellotaped them on to the women so it looked like the nude models were carrying them.
‘Ugh,’ Bel said again.
I started opening drawers. What was I looking for? I didn’t think I’d find a forwarding address, but I might find something. I’d know it when I found it.
What I found were packets of photographs. I sat on the bed and went through them. They were mostly of Scotty and his colleagues in action: firstly in what I took to be the Falklands, then later in what might have been Yugoslavia. The soldiers were fully kitted, but you could tell Scotty was regular army in the Falklands, and mercenary by the time of Sarajevo. In the later shots, he wore camouflage greens, but no markings. His smiling colleagues looked like nice guys to do business with. They liked to wear green vests, showing off biceps and triceps and bulging chests. Actually, most of them were going to seed, showing beer guts and fat faces. They lacked that numb disciplined look you see in the regular army.
I knew Scotty from Max’s description. I knew him, too, because he was in a few photos by himself. He was dressed in civvies, and photographed at ease. These photos were taken by the sea, and on some parkland. Probably they’d been taken by a girlfriend. Scotty flexed his muscles for her, posing at his best. Bel took one look at him.
‘Ugh,’ she said.
He didn’t look that bad. He had a long drooping moustache which Max hadn’t mentioned, so had probably been shorn off. He was square-jawed and wavy-haired, his shape not quite squat, but definitely not tall enough for his girth. I stuck one of the photos in my pocket — it showed Shattuck with some girlfriend — and put the rest back in the drawer.
‘Anything else?’ I asked Bel, who’d been roaming.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
There was a squeal of braking tyres outside. No uncommon sound in London, but I went to the window and peered out anyway. A car had stopped outside the house. It was an old Jaguar with a purple paint job. The driver was still wearing his white work-out vest. He probably had his towel with him too. There was somebody else in the passenger seat, and Chuck was fuming in the back.
‘Time to go,’ I told Bel. She didn’t hang around. I’d seen a back door on the ground floor, and just hoped we’d have time to make it that far. I took out the MP5 as we descended, but held it beneath my coat. Either Chuck and his men were so incensed at the way they’d been treated that their pride had compelled them to follow us or else they were making a rational move. If the latter, then they had to be tooled up. If the former, I’d be in for a beating anyway.
And I’d always tried to avoid contact sports.
We were in luck. They were sitting it out in the car, waiting for us to emerge. The back door was locked by means of a bolt top and bottom, easily undone. I pulled the door open and we found ourselves in a garden so overgrown it hardly justified the term. We waded through it to the side fence and clambered over into the rear car park of the hotel. The MP5 jabbed my gut as I climbed the fence. I double-checked that its safety was still on.
From the car park, we climbed over a low brick wall on to a piece of waste ground. Past this, we found ourselves emerging from behind a public toilet on to a completely different road, busy with traffic and pedestrians. A bus had pulled up at its stop, so we jumped aboard. We didn’t know where it was going, and the driver who was waiting to be paid didn’t seem about to tell us, so I reached into my pocket for some coins.
‘Two to the end of the line,’ I told him.
Then we climbed to the top deck and took the empty back seat. A purple Jag would be easy to spot if it tried following us, but it didn’t.
‘I wonder how long they’ll sit there?’ Bel asked.
I told her I couldn’t care less.