“I wonder what she sees in Prince?” Millington asked.
Sharon smiled. “Perhaps our Gary’s got hidden charms.”
“Like the guy in The Full Monty,” Ben Fowles suggested. “Whips off his Y-fronts and there’s this thud as the end of his dick hits the ground.”
“The woman,” Resnick said, “maybe she’s the one responsible for Prince finding a little more ambition? Moving himself up in the world?”
“Guns,” Sharon said. “It’s possible. For some women there’s something very sexy about guns.”
Fowles laughed. “Tell us about it, Sharon.”
“In your dreams.”
“One other thing,” Naylor said. “He’s got this lock-up garage, near his mum’s place in Sneinton. Still uses it, as far as I can tell.”
“Be nice to get a look around inside,” Millington said wistfully.
Resnick scraped back his chair as he rose to his feet. “Bit more patience, Graham, maybe we will. I’ll have a word with the boss, see if he can’t stir up a warrant.”
Coming up out of the underground into Brixton, Evan thought, was like stepping out into another country. Not simply the preponderance of black faces, he was used enough to that where his mother lived, after all; here, the air, the whole atmosphere, were different. In Dalston, no matter how many there were, black or Asian, it was as if they were living, cuckoo-like, on sufferance in a white world. But here, these people with their dreadlocks and multicolored woolen hats and that lazy, strutting way they walked, no, they owned this place, these streets. And Evan, blinking to readjust his eyes after traveling below ground, he was the stranger in a foreign land.
“Hey, man!” And there was Wesley pushing through the crowd, grinning, holding out his hand.
First time in his life Evan had known Wesley pleased to see him. Half a dozen calls it had taken before the man would agree to meet him at all.
“How you doin’? Okay? No problem gettin’ here?”
Evan nodded, fine, fine.
“Di’n’t forget your passport, right?” Wesley laughing at Evan’s discomfort. “Come on.” Nodding his head up toward the Ritzy cinema at the foot of Brixton Hill. “Let’s get something to eat. Famished, yeah?”
Evan followed Wesley along the broad pavement and into one of the entrances to the covered market.
“Where we going, anyway?”
“Franco’s. Best pizza in town. Best pizza anywhere.” And he laughed again. “What? You think all we eat is jerk chicken and sweet potato? Curried goat? Anyway, look around, you’ll feel at home.”
There was a line of tables clustered close together out front, all occupied. Most of the customers were white, youngish, casually dressed, sitting there with acres of newsprint spread out before them.
“Yuppie types,” Wesley said. “Think it’s cool, hang outside Franco’s, watch the world go by. We’ll go inside, quieter there.”
They took a table near the back and Wesley ordered a Coke, Evan a beer. The menu was long and seemed to include every pizza topping Evan had heard of and several he hadn’t thought possible.
“So,” Wesley said, “what’s up?”
Evan shrugged, temporarily lost for words.
“Something’s bugging you, the way you was on the phone.”
“No, it’s just …”
“Just this Michael Preston shit, right?”
“I suppose so, I …”
“Listen, man, if it’s what happened to me, getting cut an’ all, okay, I was plenty mad at you at the time, but I’m through that now. It’s cool. Nothing to reproach yourself for, okay? Evan, okay?”
Evan nodded uncertainly. “Yeh, okay.”
“Good. Now let’s order us some food, I’m starvin’.”
Evan played safe with the basic pizza, ham, mozzarella cheese, and tomato; Wesley tucking into aubergine, anchovy, and pepperoni sausage.
“How is it, anyway?” Evan asked between mouthfuls. “Where he cut you? Still giving you any pain or what?”
Wesley shook his head as he chewed. “Once in a while, maybe. Just, you know, a little niggle. But, hey, like I told you, you got to quit worryin’ ’bout it.”
“I just feel guilty, that’s all.”
“Weren’t none of your fault, man. Well, not exactly none of your fault, but, you know, what’s done’s done. That crazy fucker, Preston, he’s the one to blame, he’s the one cut me, right? An’ he sunnin’ hisself right now on some beach in Spain or Greece, stickin’ his finger up at the world. You think he care about us, spare us a second thought? Okay, so you don’t waste your mind on him. Forget him, right? Get on with your life.”
“This inquiry …”
“Inquiry be fine. Stay cool, chill out. You see.”
Evan cut off another strip of pizza-every bit as good as Wesley’d said it would be, no more contented evenings in Pizza Hut after this-and washed it down with a swig of beer.
“What it is, Wesley,” he said, leaning forward a little, lowering his voice, “all this stuff about him buying false papers, getting on some flight abroad, I don’t believe none of it.”
Wesley laid down his knife and fork and looked at him, curious.
“I reckon that’s all bollocks. A blind.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know how come, just a feeling. But I can’t, you know, shake it. I think he’s still there, where we took him.”
“What?” Laughing. “Camped out in some field alongside the motorway?”
Evan shook his head. “Back in the city.”
“Easiest way to get caught, he’d know that better’n anyone.”
“Maybe,” Evan said, not really meaning it. “Anyhow, I reckon I might take a trip up there, you know. Look around.”
“Look around?” Wesley echoed, amazed. “What the hell for?”
Evan cut away a piece more pizza. “See if I can’t find him.”
Wesley staring at him now, open-mouthed. “Find him, you sayin’? Find him? Evan, man, you crazy or what? You think the police didn’t try to find him? You think you can do somethin’ they can’t?”
“No.” Evan shaking his head. “I don’t think they give a monkey’s about Michael Preston. I don’t think they care.”
“And you do?”
“Yes, what’s wrong with that? My responsibility, right? You said yourself, down to me more than you. So, okay, I’ll find him.”
Wesley laughing except that it wasn’t funny, it was pathetic, that’s what it was. Evan as Batman, the Lone Ranger.
“What? What’s the big joke?”
“You, you’re the joke. You think you are, some kind of vigilante?”
Evan looked back at him and didn’t say anything.
“Suppose you do find him, right, what then?”
“Bring him back.”
“You …” Wesley pointing at him with his knife. “You a little soft in the head, you know that, don’t you?”
“Okay,” Evan said. “Okay.” He was this close to standing up and walking out of there. “I wish I’d never said anything, right? You made your point. Now I don’t want to hear any more about it. Okay? Yeh, Wesley, okay?”
Wesley rattled the last of the ice cubes round in his glass, sucked on the slice of lemon, lifted up a sliver of anchovy between forefinger and thumb, and deposited it on his tongue. “Evan,” he said a few moments later. “You are one crazy fucker, you know that, don’t you?”
What Evan knew was what his father had taught him, if you want to earn respect in this world, you have to be responsible for your own actions; and if you want to be able to respect yourself, you have to acknowledge your mistakes and then do everything in your power to set them right.
Fowles was standing pretty much to attention in front of Resnick’s desk, hands clasped behind him. The list of Gold Standard employees lay between them.
“Tell me again how you got hold of this,” Resnick said.