Rob closed the window and turned back to them again, laughing. ‘I’m sorry, boys, I’ve had some of the other, so I feel a bit free and easy tonight. I used to do that down the shopping centres in Peckham, you know, walking along with a pump-action. Window of a business that’s giving us gyp, bang! The glaziers used to love me back then. I’d take down the Neighbourhood Watch stickers, saying they no longer applied, and they never got put up again, because everyone was afraid of me. That was before your time, Blakey. It was just me. . it is just me in this city, invulnerable.’
Sefton spoke up again. ‘Yeah, boss? We sort of took that as read. So why are you going on about it finishing?’
Costain felt his teeth grind at yet another question. Questions broke the flow of the other bloke telling you something. They weren’t part of a normal chat. They just raised more questions. Sefton was Quill’s favourite, but the little shit was acting like a bloody amateur.
But Rob had suddenly started yelling at Mick, the driver. ‘Right here, quick, down here!’ And they were off down a slip road, the rest of the convoy blaring their horns and making other cars swerve out of their way as the convoy was forced to follow.
Costain glimpsed a gasometer and rows of neat little houses, some of them still with their Christmas lights up. They were somewhere in the Wembley area, he decided. He used to take his bike up here as a kid: these rows of homes all with their own little gardens, everything in the shadow of the stadium and the dirty great warehouse stores. Little people living here in the shadows of stuff. Rob was meanwhile giving directions to Mick, looking at a map on his phone, but keeping one hand cupped round it. Even now he didn’t want anyone seeing their destination.
They roared round a corner, past a square-built pub with a crowd of smokers outside who cheered without knowing what they were cheering. It was the first pub in three streets that hadn’t been boarded up. They took a left down a side street.
‘That one,’ Rob pointed. ‘Park up nice like. Don’t disturb the garden.’
The suburban street was fully lined with cars, so ‘nice’ meant double parking. A home owner came out, calling that he’d need to get his car out later, but Rob vaguely waved the gun at him and he went running back inside. That was how they were rolling tonight, then. Costain felt the others were up for it, into it, experiencing some action with the boss at last — not just serving as his drinking buddies now. Rob led his soldiers to the door of a house, and they formed up outside, ready to rock.
Rob rang the bell. And then twice more. He turned to them. ‘Could someone-?’
The soldiers came forward to help, the big Russian trying to do it with one kick. The door went down in three, and then they were rushing inside. Costain hung back, Sefton alongside him, ready to let any shooting start ahead of them.
But, inside, the gang were wheeling about through a bare and freezing lounge and heading into a kitchen with no fittings and with broken windows looking out to the rear. There was thin carpet and a front parlour space with paintwork yellowed from cigarette smoke. ‘Doesn’t look as if anyone lives here,’ said Mick. ‘Not even as a squat.’
‘I know what it looks like, Michael,’ said Rob. ‘Just search the place.’
So they turned out empty drawers lined with newspaper, and peered under what little furniture there was, the soldiers kicking about inside what looked like their nan’s house. Rob himself went upstairs, and Costain and Sefton — always at his shoulder — followed. Empty bedrooms. Nothing. ‘What are we looking for, then, boss?’ asked Sefton. Always the questions.
‘We’re making a noise,’ said Rob, raising his voice as if to address the ceiling. ‘Making it clear we’re here. Loads of us to choose from.’ He grabbed a shotgun and slammed the butt up into a trapdoor of what must be a loft, and the big lads helped him up inside it. But a few moments later he was back down again. ‘Get in there,’ he said, pointing, ‘and root around a bit.’ Costain studied Rob’s face as he marched past. He seemed to have come here with hope and then lost it.
Costain managed to investigate the back room downstairs on his own. Then he turned round to see that Sefton had entered. But nobody else. They could hear the sounds of the search continuing in every other room around them, carried out swiftly and offhand as every soldier wondered when he’d hear sirens approach to cut off their limited exit. Sefton closed the door behind him. ‘How do you want us to proceed, skip?’
‘As the tribunal will hear from the tape, I then asked the lead officer in the field to inform me of his plans. .’
Costain looked at Quill’s boy for a moment, then silently blew him a kiss. Sefton stared back at him — apparently astonished that Costain had somehow worked out that Sefton was just waiting for him to fail somehow, that he’d probably been already sending in carefully neutral reports that damned the lead UC only in the details. Quill hadn’t actually said that he’d backed up his version of events, had he? Costain was pleased to have finally got under Sefton’s skin. ‘I wouldn’t worry. You’ll be fine.’
‘So you don’t have any. . particular thing you’d like me to try on Toshack. . Sarge?’
There came a shout from Rob himself in another part of the house. ‘Right! Next address!’
Quill sat in the back of an unmarked BMW, heading back to Gipsy Hill at speed, with his detective sergeant, Harry Dobson, in the seat beside him, talking into his Airwave radio. ‘The helicopter used the opportunity of Toshack’s stop-off at that address in Wembley to refuel,’ he told Quill. ‘He’s now moving to resume surveillance by tracking the bug concealed on Sefton.’
‘Tell him, if he loses them, he’ll be flying Fisher Price.’
Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s about to, anyway, Jimmy. This is the last op, the service is getting cut and the crew are taking early retirement. Like with that Nagra you managed to get hold of when there was nothing else; we’re riding third-class here. So I’ll call him back with your message, shall I?’
‘Oh, piss off,’ said Quill. Harry had been with him since they’d been in uniform together. Quill liked having someone he could yell at but not have it matter.
‘You really giving Costain another chance?’
‘Nah, I was just trying to motivate the fucker. When this is over, he’s done. I’ll have him up on a charge, if I can. I do a bit of the necessary paperwork every lunchtime — gives me something to look forward to. If we’d had a better lead in there, or if Sefton had gone in first-’
‘Sefton’s a DC, Costain’s a DS, and Sefton has backed up every single thing that shifty bugger’s said about the Toshack firm. You just don’t like him ’cos you’ve got your own lines drawn in the sand-’
‘Laws, I like to call them. And where would we be without them? Where we are now, but a bit worse. He had eyes like frigging dinner plates, Harry. He knew I could see that, and all. When this lot falls apart, we’ll find there was info going the other way, knowingly or not, stuff that he’s been contributing to Toshack’s bloody twilight zone that we can’t get into. Bet you a fiver.’
‘Blimey, you are serious.’
‘Operation Goodfellow’s falling apart, and we’ve got this last shindig on triple time. It’s the last night of the Proms. When this goes under, Lofthouse won’t be able to fend them off no more. The axe’ll then come down, and undercover ops in London will end up being about some old dear telling a DCI what she heard down the bingo. It’s like Toshack threw us a few coins. There you go, lads, tip for being sodding useless. Now sling your hook.’
‘Bet Sarah’s enjoying it.’
‘Oh, yeah, Harry, she’s ecstatic. I think she’s visiting some distant cousin tonight. Maybe she’ll stay there.’