Mossy darts behind the sofa, cowering, starting to cry again in his fear, but it's only Skinny. There's a figure behind him, locking the gate, but now Skinny's standing on his own in the room. His eyes are bright, he isn't smiling, but he hasn't got that sad look on his face any more. The other person moves off down the little hallway and when they've gone Skinny comes forward and kneels on the sofa.
'What?' hisses Mossy. 'What is it?'
'Do you have a friend?'
'A friend?'
'Someone who needs money too?'
'What're you talking about?'
'Uncle. He say maybe you have a friend who can come instead. And then you can go free.'
Mossy stares at him. 'What?'
'Someone to come here in your place. Someone to have his hands cut off.'
'You mean if I do that he won't cut my hands off?'
'That's right.'
Mossy lets out his breath. He's having trouble keeping up with this. 'You mean,' he says, looking intently at Skinny, because now, more than ever, he needs the truth from this person, 'you mean the moment someone else turns up I can go?'
'Yes. You can go.'
Mossy eyes Skinny. His heart is thumping now. He's trying to think fast because he knows this is his chance. There are people all over Bristol he'd like to see with their hands cut off — some he'd cut off himself given half a chance — but none of them are stupid enough to get themselves into the position he's in right now.
But then he realizes there is one person: one person nasty and stupid. In fact, dopey as shit. Jonah. Jonah Dundas from the Hopewell estate. He raises his eyes to Skinny, a smile twitching at his mouth, because he's just about to save himself by sacrificing someone else.
And, to tell the truth, it feels good.
18
15 May
At seven a.m. the following day the big IDENT1 computer, having kicked up five comparisons, had whittled the prints from the severed hand down to one person: Ian Mallows. A twenty-two-year-old drug addict from the Knowle West housing estate. By the time the good residents of Knowle West had started breakfast and looked out of their windows the place was crawling with uniformed cops: nine of Avon and Somerset's finest, knocking on doors.
Caffery, feeling the effects of last night's scrumpy, was standing in the doorway of the Community Contact van in his shirtsleeves. He was tired and his back ached. But he knew the case was squeezing a little, a bit less ragged round the edges, and he had an idea that if he stepped on it they might even get the crucial evidence by the end of the day — the rest of Mallows's body. Or even Mallows alive, if the CSM was right. He had a DS interviewing Ian Mallows's probation officer, and some of the support unit had forced an entry into Mallows's flat, but it was empty and the CSM was doing a forensic search of that now. The other officers were crawling over the estate, each waving a picture of Ian Mallows, and the same comment had come up over and over. 'Ask BM. BM knows everyone round here. Ask BM.' And, from looking casually around the estate, from the squat brick buildings to the skanky bits of grass covered with dog shit, within five minutes Caffery could see exactly who 'BM' was.
He was standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs, his hands in his pockets, one foot up against the wall, dog-tags jangling round his neck. He was wearing a grey hoodie under a black blazer-type jacket and his face was white, sort of upper-class English, with a Roman nose and slightly pink cheeks that looked as if he might have got them on the rugby pitches at Harrow. But close up you could see he was a Knowle West boy right to the core: it was the way his eyes kept going from side to side, the way his body was already soft and spreading, the tops of his thighs rubbing together.
'Wha'?' said BM, when Caffery approached, warrant card extended between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. He pushed himself away from the wall and eyed it suspiciously. 'What's going on?'
'Got a minute, son?'
'No. No, I haven't.'
'Suit yourself.' Caffery put the card back into his pocket. He pulled up his collar and stood for a moment, contemplating the stairwell with graffiti and water running down the walls. BM glared at him, waiting for him to speak, waiting for him either to go or to start a row. But Caffery didn't. He coughed loudly, smiled at the lad, then went back to gazing up the stairwell, as if they were two people standing at a bus stop, waiting for the same thing. As if he had all the time in the world and could wait for ever if he wanted to, and maybe had the most patience of the two of them. Somewhere in his head he really didn't care if BM spoke to him or not.
Since last night all he'd been able to think about was what the Walking Man could tell him. Still, he thought, he had to concentrate: he still had a duty to the sorry drug-prowling drop-out who'd got his hands cut off.
BM took his own hands out of his pockets, sucked his teeth at Caffery, the way the Jamaicans used to in Deptford, and swung himself on to the stairs, heading up.
'BM,' Caffery said calmly. 'Used to know someone called BM in London. D'you know how he got that name?'
On the stairs BM hesitated. Caffery could see the dirty bottoms of his Ice Cream Reeboks. 'He got that name because he was someone's Bag Man. BM. Bag Man. Don't suppose that's how you got your name. Or should I be asking your probation officer?'
There was a silence. Somewhere a television was playing the theme to This Morning. After a moment or two BM crouched and put his face through the railings. 'Don't have a probation officer,' he hissed. 'Haven't got a record.'
'Do you want one?'
There was another long silence. Then BM sat down. There was the sound of him breathing, then of him surreptitiously taking a baggie from his pocket and squeezing it under someone's front door. Caffery heard it, noted where the door was, but didn't move. The thing was to let BM keep face. After a few moments his trainers squeaked as he came back down the stairs, hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.
'What?' he said sullenly. 'What you going to do?'
Caffery showed him the photograph. BM rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, stepping from side to side in his Reeboks. 'That's Mossy. Innit? Where's 'e to, then? Got himself in the nick, has he?'
'He's missing.'
'And you think maybe I took him?'
Caffery put the photograph back in his pocket. 'Someone cut his hands off. They used a hacksaw; sort of thing you could pick up in a hardware shop at the end of the road. Probably killed him, but we don't know for sure because his body never turned up.'
BM lost all the pink in his schoolboy cheeks. He sat down suddenly on the bottom step, his feet planted wide. For a moment his hand wavered, as if he was trying to reach the banister for some support, but Caffery was watching so he stopped himself and shakily rested his elbows on his knees. 'All right there, son?'
'That's what he meant,' he muttered. 'That's what he meant.' A little line of perspiration beaded his lip. 'Ages ago he said something to me. He was in the agonies when he said it and I just thought it was him going crazy, you know, saying stupid shit.'
'What did he say?'
'Said he'd met someone. He'd been at one of those charity dry-out places, places that're supposed to get you off the gear but don't. Everyone just hangs around reckoning they're going to meet someone and score.'
'You remember which one?'
'Could have been any in about a hundred.
They're all over the place. The only one it wasn't was the Knowle West one. I can tell you that straight away, because no one on the estate who's still using would show their face there.'