The carriages were filled with schoolchildren, their bags and noise, with shop workers and shoppers, with the first of the office commuters to get away from their desks. He wore the old clothes and his shoes were caked with mud from a litter-strewn garden in the play area. He stood in the rocking space between two of the carriages – he smelt and knew it. His woollen hat was low on his head and the collar of his coat was turned up to mask his face. As passengers passed him, to board the train or get off it, they hurried by because of the smell that came from the plastic bag gripped in his fist. He never put the bag down but kept it tight against his leg. Malachy knew that at every station there were cameras, and that cameras were now routinely fitted inside train compartments. An old world returned to him: he recalled lectures from long ago. Care ruled him, and he had regained a long-lost cunning. His ticket, expensive but not wasted money, was for Folkestone, far beyond his destination; it would act as a confusion if his route was traced. The clatter of the train soothed him and the map given him and memorized, then destroyed, was loose in his mind. In a few minutes, as dusk fell, he would reach the stop they had chosen.
There had been money with the map. Without it he would not have been able to buy the ticket and fill the canister in the bag that smelt.
The train had begun to slow and a remote voice announced the approach of the next station, Pluckley.
Now the lights, set back among bare trees and behind cut hedges, shone more fiercely.
In his mind, with the map, was the quiet rasp of the voice from the darkened interior of the car, from a face he could not see.
'You've done better than I thought you would, a hell of a sight better. Nothing more is asked of you. All I can do is tell you what's at the next stage upwards of the pyramid. You hit the bottom level, the pushers, but they're just low-life scum. Above them is the dealer and you took him out and he won't be back, but he's only a vile little creature. It's your decision.
Who feeds the dealer so that he can sell to the pushers? You may say, and you've the right to, that you went far enough… Trouble is, what I'm thinking, all you've done is disrupt temporarily the trade on the Amersham, and that may not be enough to help you where you want to be. Up the ladder, right? You want to be able to look in a mirror, see your face and not cringe in disgust – am I there? Are the dealer and the pushers sufficient to get you as high up the ladder as you need to be if the mirror's showing you your face?
But, like I say, it's your decision. You can walk away, or you can ask the question and I'll answer it.'
The train jerked, slowed some more, shook as the brakes were applied, began to crawl. He pulled the wool hat lower and lifted the collar-flaps higher. Kids, shoppers and commuters gathered around him, but he turned away his face as their lips curled in disgust at the smell.
'I thought you would. You were right to ask the question – well done. It's an easy one to answer. It would put you right up the ladder, high up it, if that's where you want to be. Me, I can't do it. I work at a desk, I'm ring-fenced with regulations, I'm going through the motions – like the people round me, and the people above me. Yes, we look busy, we're good at that. We pump out the spin about the success of what we do, get it into glossy brochures, and when I go home at night I can honestly say to myself, total honesty, that I have achieved less than nothing.
They're cleverer than us, sharper and smarter. When my pension's ticking over nicely, building, why should I care? I saw Millie, got me? My aunt, my blood, and I saw her. You are on her doorstep and you are there and you are available.'
The train lurched to a stop. Others pushed past him and hurried off down the gloomy platform. With the wool hat down and the collar up, Malachy followed them. If a camera found and tracked him, he offered it little for identification.
'A dealer needs a supplier. That's the stage up the pyramid, a supplier. Way over the level of the Amersham. He's big, big, and ugly. He lives fat and well. You knock over a supplier and that will send a shockwave – not an earthquake, but a real good tremor. Shakes the room, swings the light, moves the furniture, brings the plaster down. That gets noticed
… I never met you here. People will swear on a Bible that I was never, late at night, in a parking bay, on the Amersham. We never talked. You are on your own and I will disown you, your word against mine. The word of a man labelled a coward against the word of a police officer with twenty-six years' service and not a blemish on his record. Sorry about that, but it's worth the reminder. How you do it is your business.
He's the supplier.'
Malachy came out of the station and down a street, then left the high lights and the memory of the map brought him to darkness and on to lanes hemmed in by hedges; his lustreless shoes splashed in puddles.
He stepped out. Occasionally cars swept by him, accelerating and spraying him as if he had no right to be there. The plastic bag, weighed down by the canister, thumped against his thigh. He remembered everything said to him, of him and overheard – what it had done to him, and what had been taken from him. He saw in front of him, clearer than the trees, hedges and homes up long, curving gravel drives, the ladder and the steps on it. He walked for nearly an hour before the twinkling lights of a remote building, set back from the lane, confirmed the map and showed him the supplier's home.
'Come on, girls. Hurry up, for God's sake. You're beautiful enough already. Move it, please.'
Laughter rang through the panelled hall and spilled from two of the bedrooms up the wide sweep of the stairs.
He needed laughter, had been short of it that day.
George Wright needed laughter and a good party to get him past the aggravation of the morning. The scumbag, Penney, off the Amersham up in south-east London, was a broken stick – taken out, humiliated on his patch and now in a police cell. The scumbag had just taken delivery and not paid up. Should have paid up that morning, with fifteen thousand in used notes.
All about cash-flow. The cash-flow of a dozen dealers, after George Wright had taken his cut, was needed to pay the importer. It was all tight – money in and money out – and when the money coming in was short there'd be a problem with the money o u t… and that was what was owed to the little bastard with the baby face, Ricky Capel.
He had a good coat, Armani, hitched on his shoulder, and the tie of Friends of Kent County Cricket Club loose at his throat, and he was waiting for his 'girls'.
The party was at Fortescue's place. There would be people there from all the villages between Hothfield and Bethersden. Fortescue always threw the best parties
– live music, caterers in from Royal Tunbridge Wells, and a cabaret turn down from London – and the cream came from the villages, commerce and the professions.
It was the mark of George Wright's acceptance into the community as a respected and admired businessman that he always received the embossed invitation to Fortescue's spring thrash, and the autumn one.
He had a reputation for success. Fortescue, and the others who sent invitations to the Wright family, believed he dealt in quality cars. Bread and butter, so they believed, was in the Mercedes top-of-the-range models or BMWs, and also in Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Morgans with no waiting time for delivery. The private-clinic consultants, legal senior partners, farmers with a thousand acres of prime land, the chief executive officers and their wives would have gone puce and needed resuscitation if they had known that their neighbour, friend and sometimes guest dealt in the class-A drugs they whinged about at parties. His trade and the source of his wealth were well hidden, tucked away under the floorboards of his office off the living room.
God, would they never come? 'Hurry up, girls, do me a favour, shift it.'