“Brilliant, got you. Mr Belem?”
Adam turned. “Mmm?” he said, in a neutral voice.
“Sign and print here, please.”
Adam signed and printed ‘P. Belem’ and was handed a registered envelope with the crest of Bethnal & Bow NHS Trust on one corner.
“Have a good one, Mr Belem,” the postman said and wandered off along the walkway.
Adam unlocked the door and went back into his flat.
34
IT HAD TAKEN NEARLY a week to find Mohammed, much to Jonjo’s intense frustration. The guy seemed to be living at about five addresses and he had been obliged to pay serious money to Bozzy and his cohorts to track him down.
They caught up with him eventually in a terraced house in Bethnal Green, lodging with an uncle. Jonjo decided that this next encounter would run more smoothly without Bozzy being present so he drove alone to Bethnal Green and parked up some twenty yards or so from Mohammed’s temporary residence. Jonjo watched him come and go — with cousins and friends — before he finally left the house alone and headed for his Primera, presumably to start minicabbing and earn some money. Jonjo followed him for only a couple of minutes, Mohammed abruptly pulling up the Primera at the kerb — hazard lights flashing in the afternoon’s sunshine — and running into a twenty-four-hour supermarket to buy something. Jonjo double-parked his taxi so that it was impossible for Mohammed to drive away and settled down to wait.
There was a brisk rap on the window.
“‘Scuse me, mate. But you’ve parked—”
Flinging the door open abruptly, Jonjo knocked Mohammed to the ground. He helped him up, dusted off his denim jacket. Mohammed recognised him at once.
“Listen, man, no way you can—”
“Step into my office, Mo.”
They sat in the back of Jonjo’s taxi, Mohammed on the jump seat, Jonjo sprawled grandly at ease, opposite. The doors were locked.
“I got a big family,” Mohammed said. “Uncles, brothers, cousins — anything happen to me, they know Bozzy. He’s dead meat, yeah?”
“So do us all a big favour.” Jonjo leant forward and placed his hand on Mohammed’s knee to quell its spasmodic jumping. “I want to give you money, Mohammed — not hurt you.” He counted out £200 and handed them over. “Take it.”
Mohammed did. “Why?”
“Because you’re going to tell me who else was in your car that night you took the mini to Chelsea. And then you’re going to show me where I can find that person who was with you. And then I’ll give you another £300.” Jonjo reached into his jacket and produced his big folded wad of notes.
“I was on me own, man.”
“No, you weren’t. You said the mim went into the patch of waste ground to get his raincoat — while you sat in the car.”
“Yeah, right — so what?”
“So why didn’t he do a runner if you were sitting in the car like a muppet?”
“Ah—‘cause I’d threatened him, like. Said I break his fucking leg if he don’t not pay me.”
“He must have been shit-scared.”
“He was. That why he do what I say him.”
“So you trusted him. You just sat in the car and waited, trusting him to bring you his raincoat.”
“Ah…Yeah.”
Jonjo wrested back the £200.
“Even the most fucking useless, thick-as-shit, minicab driver in the world wouldn’t do that. If you sat in the car who went with Kindred?” Jonjo waved the notes in front of Mohammed’s face. Mohammed looked at the money and licked his lips. His knee started jumping again.
“It was someone called Mhouse.”
“A man called ‘Mouse’?”
“Woman.”
Jonjo’s face registered no surprise at this information, even though he was very surprised. “Do you know where she lives?”
“Yeah.”
“Take me there and you get the rest of your money.”
♦
Jonjo waited until it had grown dark before he went back to The Shaft. He climbed the stairs and walked quickly along the walkway to Flat L. In his pocket he had a small thick jemmy that he wedged in the door-frame above the lock and threw his full weight on it, levering at the same time, hearing the screws that held the lock ease and give under the pressure, the wood splintering. He slid the jemmy to the top and bottom of the door — no bolts. He paused, looked around to see that no one was looking, and with one powerful kick of his mason’s boots blasted the door open. He stepped in quickly, swinging the door shut behind him and stood still in the entryway. There was no noise — the flat was empty. There was a light burning in the kitchen and he walked quietly into the sitting room and saw a TV, cushions, two chairs. In the kitchen he noted the power cable and the rubber water pipe coming through the window and allowed himself a small righteous sneer of taxpayer’s disgust. These people will steal the bread from your mouth, he thought to himself. What kind of a world—
“Hello.”
Jonjo turned, very slowly, to see a small boy with curly hair, wearing a stained T — shirt that fell to his knees, standing in the doorway to a bedroom.
“Hello, little fella. Don’t worry, I’m a friend. Where’s your mum?”
“She working.”
“She asked me to get something for her.”
He moved past the boy into the bedroom — mattress on the floor, dirty sheets, wardrobe, a few cardboard boxes. He opened the wardrobe and rummaged through the clothes hanging inside, reaching into the back recesses to see what might have been stashed there. He pulled out shoes, a plastic bag full of sex toys, dildoes. The chemical smell of cheap perfume made his eyes smart. Then he pulled out a heavier box — no, a briefcase. He knew it well — solid locks, polished leather, brass trim at the corners. He clicked it open, empty. But this was Kindred’s — pieces were beginning to fit together and he felt his excitement rise. The little boy was looking at him sleepily but curiously, leaning against the door-frame, scratching his thigh.
“Whose is this?”
“My mum’s.”
Jonjo checked the other room — a bare mattress, bare floorboards, more boxes filled with crap. The state some people lived in — disgusting. He strode to the door, briefcase in his hand.
“Cheerio, mate.”
“You a friend of John?” the little boy said.
Jonjo stopped, turned. “Who’s John?”
“He live here but he gone now. You tell him to come back — say Ly-on want him to come back.”
“Does Mummy know John?”
“Yeah. She like John very too much. Green, green peas.”
“Whatever.” Jonjo patted him on the head, said good night and closed the door as best he could behind him.
♦
Bozzy was waiting by the trashed playground. He pointed to the briefcase in Jonjo’s hand.
“Where you get that?”
“The Mouse-woman. Kindred’s been living there.”
“Fuck me. All this time?”
“Yeah. Where does she work?”
Bozzy grinned. “Work? She’s tugging sad bastards down Cherry Garden Pier.”
“She’s a gas-cooker?…” This confused Jonjo — what was Kindred doing living with a whore? “You sure?”
“Do dogs lick their bollocks? Twenty quid a go, mate. Thirty, no condom. Very high class, know what I mean?” He chuckled to himself.
“How do I get to Cherry Garden Pier?”
35
THE RIVER WAS BEAUTIFUL tonight, she thought, and very high, right up. It was the moving blackness, the beginning of the turn, the great mass of water beginning its journey back to the sea: the black river flowing strongly and the reflected lights on its moving surface staying still. Mhouse saw the power and the entrancement — not that she would have articulated it that way — but the river distracted her and she dwelt on it for a while before she remembered how fucking pissed off she was.