So, thank you for your bloody consideration, but I am fucked. So, please, drive back where you came from.
Have you got that?'
'That is not helpful, George.'
'What is bloody helpful? I'd like to hear it.'
Charlie could hear the softness of Ricky's voice, and could hear the rising crescendo of George Wright's anger. Davey, behind Ricky, had his hands together behind his back – where they always were when he minded Ricky – but his fists were white-knuckled, clenched.
'I tell you what's helpful, George. You had, from me, stuff on trust. I give to you and you supply, and then you pay me. Now you tell me that the stuff is burned, and I ask myself, "How is George going to pay me what he owes me?" About a hundred grand, yes? Charlie's the one with the head for figures.
Maybe a bit over a hundred thousand that's owed me.
What would be helpful is knowing when you're going to pay me – today, tomorrow, or by the end of the week.'
'Whistle for it, Ricky.'
'Not helpful.'
'I got nothing left. Whistle down your arse for it.'
Ricky's voice was ever softer, his chuckle ever more shrill. 'You're a joker, George. You do a good turn, George. "I got nothing left" – that's funny, George. No building-society book? No deposit account? A little place down on the Algarve that you can raise a mortgage on? Very funny, George. By the end of the week, and that's really generous. What you say, George?'
'Fuck off's what I say.'
Ricky moved sideways. Charlie recognized the manoeuvre. Davey now had a clear sight of George Wright. Charlie knew what would happen, had seen it before.
Ricky said, 'You know how it is, George, if I'm too generous then word of it gets round. People who owe me money hear I'm a soft touch. I get promises for payment, next month or next year, because it's said that Ricky Capel's easy to blow over. "Can't pay this month because the missus has a headache." Might be
"Can't pay next month because the family's going on holiday." Could be "Can't pay this year because the price on the street's down." Or, if the word gets round,
"Can't pay ever because the chipper caught fire."
George, I won't have that word get round, but that's your problem.'
'What I said, get lost, get off my property. I got nothing.'
Charlie knew where it was going and could not argue with the reason for it. Maybe there was a little gesture against his thigh from Ricky, or maybe Davey just read him. If ever the authority of Ricky Capel was challenged successfully then he was dead in the water. And not only Ricky, all of them. All gone, if the word went out that Ricky was the soft touch. Charlie didn't do violence, or Benji, but Davey did. Davey closed on George Wright. He lost sight of the fat little man with the bald head and the sweat on it, lost the sight of him behind Davey's shoulders.
George Wright was felled. Davey stood over him, and the heavy steel-toecapped shoe pressed down on a sprawled-out shin.
Ricky said, 'Problem with a place like this, George, the problem with all the muck around – planks, furniture, beams, everything – is that you could fall over. You could fall over and break your leg. Be easy.
Of course, if you said – after you'd broken your leg – that you hadn't tripped up on the muck, if you said different, then you'd have to wonder where you'd hide, and where your Melanie and your Hannah would hide, come to think of i t… I'm very generous, by the end of the week.'
'Fuck off.'
A blur of movement, almost too fast for Charlie to follow. The shoe went up. He saw the flash of the steel on the toecap. It stamped down on the suit trousers halfway up the shin.
The scream ripped at Charlie, but Ricky didn't flinch.
The foot and ankle below the shin were bent at an idiot angle from the knee.
Ricky was walking away and Davey followed him.
It was two months since Charlie had eaten a meal with George Wright in a little bistro in Blackheath and the guy had been good company. It was a week since Benji had done the last drop-off to George Wright. He hadn't spoken up for him, and Benji beside him had not.
'Not yet, you will be… bastard, Ricky Capel… you will be… Your turn, see if it isn't coming… You know fuck all of nothing, but you will, when it's your turn… What do you think's happening? You got any idea? Big man, you know everything – wait till it's your turn and see what you know… I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn… '
'Come on, guys,' Ricky said.
He was walking past Charlie, standing and rooted.
Charlie caught Ricky's arm, held him.
George Wright, from the ground, yelled, 'Want to hear it, then, want to? Bloody funny, Ricky Capel, about a chip fire. I was a target! It was petrol – petrol through the window. The target was me. Three kids on the Amersham estate were found hung upside down off a roof – did you hear that? Fucking didn't, did you? You know nothing. They pushed. Next it's the dealer. The dealer sold to the kids on the Amersham. He was tied up to a lamp post, and now he's gone. You don't know where the Amersham is?
Too low for you, Ricky Capel… I sold to that dealer.
It's a line. Me to the dealer, the dealer to the pusher kids. I had petrol chucked in my home. Does the line go the other way? Think about it, Ricky bloody Capel.
Look over your shoulder.'
Ricky pulled himself clear of Charlie.
'Mad, isn't he? Crazy man. He'll come up with it, he'll pay.' The big smile breezed on his face. 'May have to go on sticks to the bank, but he'll pay.'
It was a joke between Charlie and Benji that Davey was plank thick. He could always see when something major exercised Davey's brain. Nothing of a flywheel, like a slow set of cogs turning without oil to help. Always frowned, always blinked, always seemed to rub the side of his face hard, before spewing it.
Davey said, 'Couldn't think of it, Ricky, what the stink was. The dosser down the close, outside your house. The dosser that was there, and his stink.'
Ricky was at the car. 'What you trying to say?'
Davey blurted it: 'The stink, it was petrol. On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.'
'Forget it,' Ricky said, and dropped into the car.
Charlie didn't. And he hardly listened as they drove through the Kent countryside back towards
Lewisham, and Ricky retold stories of his grandfather's war fought alongside the father of Timo Rahman whom he was flying to meet the next day, in Hamburg.
'I want to move her there. I really urge you to sanction Polly Wilkins going to Hamburg, as a matter of urgency.'
The assistant deputy director sat, so Gaunt paced. If the ADD had stood, Gaunt would have taken a chair.
Contrariness was a trusted weapon. His stride across the carpeted office was fast, intended to create an atmosphere of crisis. To wrongfoot the man was his aim. The supine beggar would buckle, he knew it.
'I can't say I'm happy… '
'It's what's necessary.'
'… and Fenwick in Berlin, he won't be happy.'
'I'm up to speed and Polly Wilkins is.'
'It's his territory, that's what Fenwick will say.'
Gaunt rapped his response: 'Rather than satisfying Fenwick's turf aspirations, it would be better to put in place, under my control, an officer who has the feel of him.'
No name, but two faces. Last thing before coming to the assistant deputy director, on high, he had sat in his desk chair and had tilted it back and made the request of Gloria that she describe the faces. She was expert at the task, and he believed he saw better into a man's soul when his eyes were closed and he listened as she portrayed him, the quarry: so much better, so much greater insight, than when he stared at a two-dimensional photograph. She had said, 'The hair is thick, dark and worn long, but it is not unkempt and is cared-for. In the centre the hair curls back, and I don't believe that is accidental, more of a style. There is a high forehead, clean and without the skin cracks of anxiety, that pushes up on either side where the hair recedes. The forehead is that of an intelligent man, not of a brute. The eyes are big. They are open, they do not evade; there are rings under them but that is from tiredness… more than rings, almost bags. I like the eyes. They persuade, but do not threaten.