'It's just to have a look,' Ricky said softly, and still smiled, but his eyes played the menace they'd recognize. 'Just to get a feel.'
He rarely came into the City. He would have needed Charlie to tell him how many millions he had invested – after laundering – in bonds, shares and trusts that were handled behind the Monument, in Cheapside, Leadenhall Street or Cornhill. His face was pressed against the window. He watched the ones Charlie called the 'wankers', young men striding the pavements, or loitering outside for a cigarette, or carrying sandwiches and coffee beakers from the fast-food counters. Some of them, a few – dosed up on snorted cocaine – might have taken responsibility for seeing those bonds, shares, trusts grow. Other than the apartment in Chelsea Harbour, he had no use for the money Charlie washed for him. To spend it was to flash it, to flash it was to be a 'fucking idiot', to be a fucking idiot was to go down in a Crown Court for a dozen years. What was it for?
It bothered him. Late at night, Joanne's back to him, looking at the bloody ceiling, hearing the goddamn clock chime downstairs, it turned in his mind. What was it for? He was the clever boy who'd never been lifted, never pushed himself up the snouts of the Crime Squad or the Criminal Intelligence Service, lived like a bloody virgin with his legs crossed in Bevin Close. He didn't do yachts down in the South of France, didn't do private jets to the Mediterranean, didn't do big charity bashes with celebrities and camera flashlights… and didn't do time. Every move he made was weighed; each place he spoke his mind was swept for bugs. No mates to be with like his grandfather had had, or like Mikey, with his friends from inside… Percy had never had power; neither had Mikey. Ricky had power.
They went past banks, the old buildings used by the traders, the new towers for the insurance people, the wine bars they filled during the lunch hour and for binge-drinking after work, the sandwich outlets at which they snatched their lunch, the subways they poured from in the mornings and dived into in the evenings. For an hour they drove. Davey let the traffic hold them, was not impatient when they were blocked by delivery vans. The cousins all kept their peace. Ricky swallowed the sights, absorbed them.
He thought – and it frustrated him, but he did not share it – that risk ruled him… just a local boy and happy to do a patch of south London. No flair, no balls. Safe and comfortable. Around him there was a market, bigger than anything he'd ever gone for, of cocaine addiction, and the market was holed because three 'fucking idiots' had gone down. 'Don't try to run till you've learned to walk,' Charlie always said.
They were up by Aldgate and turning into Jewry Street. Davey had taken him on two full City circuits.
Ricky said, 'I've seen enough. God, what a bloody awful place. This is how it'll be. Start at the bottom and test it. I'd say a sandwich bar. Put a new man – better, a new woman – into a sandwich bar, just one of those holes in the wall, and sell out of it. Don't touch any of the dealers or the suppliers who are already there. Set up from scratch. A new man or a new woman who is a cut-out. Get some kid from the north, wherever, someone who's not known or doesn't know us, to act as courier – take the stuff in and bring the cash out. Wrap it round with cut-outs. Let it run for a year, then maybe it's another sandwich bar. There's a hole to be filled and we're going to fill it. You OK, guys?'
Benji said quietly, 'One thing, Ricky. What about the Scrubs? What about gaol delivery? The Scrubs or the City? I mean, you can only take on so much new stuff. Which comes first?'
'Both of them. They both come first.'
They all nodded with enthusiasm.
'Spot on, Ricky,' Benji said.
Polly ducked her head to the policeman. That gesture, and she was a master of it – humble and requiring help – always opened doors for her. Ludvik was supposed to have phoned ahead, had promised he would, and she had told him, with true sincerity creasing her face, that all she wanted was a few minutes' poking time around the cafe: 'You know, Ludvik, only to get a sense of where we're at. I wouldn't want to waste your time, and I'm better on my own.'
For a moment the policeman hesitated. If the phone call had been made – it probably had not – the officer guarding the cafe's front door had not been warned to expect her. Her ducked head, a glimpse of her knee below her skirt, her smile and the flash of her diplomatic card were sufficient for him to stand aside.
Excellent… She had dreaded delay, a radio trans-mission to a senior officer, a senior officer speaking to a lord high panjandrum, and her left to kick her heels.
The Czechs of the BIS could share with her, but she would not reciprocate. The cafe's door was splintered at the lock where it had been battered open. If she had been delayed, explanations would have been demanded of her, and she had no intention of offering them.
She went inside, and pointedly pulled the door shut behind her. She wanted no witnesses.
In that basement cell, where the cafe's owner had been beaten, where nothing of value had been recorded on the interrogation tape, only Polly Wilkins had registered the spots of white paint on the man's hands. Had it not been for the black-and-white images of his crumpled body and bruised knuckles, she might not have seen them. In the cell, when she'd held the hands, the spots had been more indistinct, but they were there.
Chaos in the cafe bar. Every table turned over, most of the chairs broken, a carpet of smashed cups, plates and glasses, and the chrome coffee machines split open. She thought it pure vandalism – and unnecessary, stupid. If a forensics team had followed inside the men who had broken down the door they would have found nothing, everything contaminated.
She looked around her. Pictures of mountains hung askew on the walls or had been ripped off their hooks and lay smashed on the floor. Posters for last year's rock concerts in Albania were shredded. Photographs of a football team survived behind the bar counter; she noted them. It was all about detail, not about the most that could be broken, ripped, smashed, shredded. Her flat shoes crunched glass and china as she went through the cafe bar to the back. Every door of the ovens left open, every pot and every pan dropped, every cupboard searched through and the contents scattered. When she cabled Gaunt, when she had something to signal him, there would be one tetchy paragraph about the need for a new item on the courses for the BIS: search procedures and good housekeeping. The walls in the kitchen were lime green, but dumped out from under the sink was a small tin of paint: white. She moved on. She had seen from the street, before she had used her little-girl-lost eye-flutter on the policeman, that there was a side door beside the cafe entrance with two bells. Above the cafe were three floors. Simple to deduce. The floor immediately above was part of the cafe's premises; the two top floors were separate.
She climbed the stairs, difficult because the carpet had been pulled from its nails. There was a living room, a bathroom and a bedroom. More devastation.
From the landing she glanced briefly into the living room, but the walls were pink. Yellow-painted walls in the bedroom, of no interest to her. The bathroom had white walls. A picture of the sequence played in her mind. A dishcloth hung out above an alley behind Kostecna. A man comes, perhaps the cafe owner himself, and notes it. Inside the cafe, time racing, a frantic effort to hide evidence. A stash point is made, filled, hidden. She roved over the toilet, the stained old basin, the shower cubicle with the collapsed screen, then saw the fractured mirror, and the smear of new paint at its side.
She put her fingers behind the weakened fastenings of the mirror and heaved. It came away and plaster spattered from the screw holes.