Stegs had always been a lucky sod, particularly where survival was concerned, but that wasn’t the whole story. He was also a planner, organizing for every eventuality. Which was why he’d decided to try to incriminate Vokes as well — a particularly naughty thing to do, when you think about it, killing him and then besmirching his Christian memory — but nevertheless something that acted as another useful layer of protection.
Having found out that Vokes and his colleagues from Acton CID were going to raid a local gun dealer, he’d asked Tyndall for help, and had got him to persuade, through threat of serious violence, a small-time pimp who owed him a lot of money to fire the gun that was going to be used in the Slim Robbie hit. The pimp would be let off the money he owed, but should the police ever come calling he was to tell them that he’d rented the gun from the Acton dealer and had given it back before the raid. It might cost him a couple of years inside but, as Tyndall himself had pointed out, the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
And, aside from the odd complication such as the use of Trevor Murk for the Slim Robbie hit, plus Tino’s fatal bout of foolishness, the whole thing had worked like a dream. Stegs had made plenty of money and, thanks to his unique ability to double-cross pretty much everyone he dealt with, had completely fucked things up for Vamen, and that bastard Flanagan as well, by phoning Malik to warn him of the impending assassination attempt on Merriweather.
Stegs couldn’t deny it; he’d always been a bit of a bad lot. Back at school, he’d even managed to get Barry Growler expelled by setting fire to the chemistry block one night and leaving Growler’s scarf (which he’d stolen that day) at the scene, before phoning the police anonymously and posing, surprisingly successfully, as a householder to report the sighting of a youth matching the Growlster’s description running away from the fire.
Treacherous to the last, that was old Stegs. But he was still the one left standing when the rest of them had fallen by the wayside.
To his left, the sea shimmered invitingly; above him, the sky was a deep, unbroken azure; attractive, scantily clad women strolled this way and that. You would have had to say, whatever your views on the world, that it was a good day to be alive.
Vokes, in one of his more crusading moments while posing as Obi Wan, had told Stegs that those with good in their hearts always win through in the end. And that those who harbour evil thoughts and commit evil deeds will always pay the price for their sins.
But then Vokes Vokerman had always been full of shit. It’s nothing to do with good or evil, never has been.
When you work the crime trade, it all boils down to how well you play the game.