Lucy chattered away as we walked back to Ferndene Road, but I found it difficult to follow what she was saying. I was thinking about the Devil and how to get to him before he killed again. He’d made it clear that he’d changed his name. Of course, that could have been a lie to put me off his trail, but I didn’t think so. He’d shown how careful he was at planning and carrying out his crimes. It wasn’t hard to believe that he had covered himself by assuming another identity. How did you go about doing that? I wasn’t sure. The old crime-novel staple was obtaining a replacement birth certificate for someone of similar age who had died young. But I had the feeling that was less secure than it used to be now that records were computerized. In which case, it came down to the standard solution to all problems. Money. The Devil didn’t seem to work, or he could afford to hire sidekicks. Was he rich? If so, how had he got there from being a fatherless teenager in Bethnal Green? People who had wealth were often in the public eye, one way or another.
“-and then I fainted.”
“What, sweetie?”
Lucy was smiling at me. “I said, and then I fainted.”
“What?” I stopped walking and squatted down beside her. “When?”
“Silly daddy,” she said, squealing with laughter. “I got you, I got you. I could see you weren’t listening.”
I grabbed her round the waist, feeling how delicate and vulnerable her body was. “Very funny. What do you want for tea?”
She stared at me. “We already talked about that. You said I could have sausages.”
I nodded, trying to hide my confusion. “Ha, got you back,” I said, tickling her.
She pushed me off, giggling, and we completed the walk.
Jesus. I was even starting to lose it in front of my daughter. There was going to be a reckoning for the bastard who was doing this to me.
The Hereward in Greenwich was one of the roughest pubs in the area. Its regulars wanted it that way. They were never disturbed by tourists who’d been to the Cutty Sark or the Maritime Museum, by the rich kids who’d bought flats in the Georgian houses or even by slumming students from Goldsmith’s. The Hereward had a seriously bad reputation and the police hardly ever organized raids. It was frequented by the local lowlife, encouraged by an ex-con landlord who had his fingers in numerous illegal pies.
The three men watching the pub knew all that. One of them had been inside a few times, dressed in raggedyarsed jeans and a porkpie hat. He’d been taken for a hardman and left alone with his drink. The regulars weren’t stupid. He was indeed as hard as they came.
“Target has exited,” Rommel said from the corner opposite. Now he was dressed in a leather bomber jacket, a woolen cap over his short hair and dark glasses shading his eyes. He spoke into a hands-free microphone and watched as a thirty-year-old man with dirty shoulder-length dreadlocks stumbled down the steps.
His two colleagues were in a pale blue Orion with a hundred-and-thirty-thousand miles on the clock. They’d picked it up from a dealer in Neasden, who asked no questions when they paid cash and gave what he was sure were a false name and address.
“Okay,” said the man in the passenger seat. “We’ve got him.” He pulled on gloves and nodded to the driver. Both of them were wearing black woolen hats and sunglasses. “Let’s go, Geronimo.”
The car moved forward smoothly, then ground to a halt five yards in front of the skinny man in dirty jeans and denim jacket. He was clearly the worse for several drinks, his gait unsteady.
“Oy-” he gasped, as he was grabbed from behind by the Orion’s passenger. That was all he managed. A hand tightened over his mouth and he was thrown into the backseat.
Meanwhile Rommel had crossed the road quickly. He went up to the double doors of the Hereward, taking from inside his jacket a half-meter steel bar which he slid through the handles in case anyone had seen what had happened. He smiled when he felt the door shudder. As they’d suspected, their man had friends who watched his back.
He ran to the car and got in beside the driver, who pulled out in front of a bus and drove rapidly away.
From the rear seat, Wolfe looked back for several minutes. “Okay, we’re clear. Take channel one.” They’d worked out several escape routes in case of pursuit, but it seemed his team had been too good for the opposition, as he’d suspected it would be. He turned to the quivering figure beside him. His hands had been cuffed behind his back and a strip of duct tape stuck over his mouth.
“Easy as nicking ice cream from a kid,” said Rommel, grinning.
“You’ll be wondering what’s going on, Terry,” Wolfe said, his voice low. “Here’s a clue. Jimmy Tanner.”
The captive’s acne-scarred face turned even paler.
“You’re going to tell us everything you know about him and all the people he spoke to in that shithole.” His tone was menacing now. “Or I’ll rip your balls off one by one and one and put them in a toad-in-the-hole.” He smiled. “Which you’ll eat for your tea.”
Terence Smail, alcoholic, small-time drug dealer and pimp, looked like he was about to throw up. When he failed to do that, he fainted.
Sara was working late at the paper, so I was on my own that evening. I sent the chapter I’d written to the Devil’s last e-mail address and waited for a reply. None came. Jesus, was he in the middle of slaughtering someone else who had done him harm? I went on to the Internet and did a search for “changing your identity.” There were dozens of sites offering new names and documents for fees ranging from paltry (for photocopied fake documents) to very expensive (supposedly for “the real thing”-these people had no sense of irony). I wondered if he’d used one of them. I doubted it. He’d have gone for a more secure way. He wouldn’t have been able to trust that his changed identity was safe on the Web. I was sure he’d have found another method. Maybe he had criminal connections. East End gangsters? I didn’t want to get involved with them, and, anyway, he’d find out soon enough if someone was snooping around. I couldn’t risk it.
But what was the alternative? Wait for the next victim to appear on the news?
I couldn’t come up with anything else, so I drank half a bottle of single malt and passed out in front of the television.
10
Karen Oaten stormed down the corridor to the VCCT office, her cheeks red and her heart pounding. She had just spent a very uncomfortable half hour with the assistant commissioner. He had set the team up as his personal fiefdom, dispensing with the normal chain of command. He wanted to know how it was that the newspapers had found out about Father Prendegast’s previous identity before the Met. It was a good question, one to which she would also like an answer.
“Simmons!” she shouted as she banged open the door. “Pavlou! My office.” She glanced round at John Turner, who was trying to hide behind his computer. “You, too, Taff.”
The chief inspector slammed the door when her three subordinates were inside. She didn’t bother dropping the blind. She wanted the rest of the team to see what was about to happen.
“Right, you useless tossers,” she said, glaring at Simmons and Pavlou. “I’ve just had my arse chewed up and spat out by the AC. That means I’m now looking for arses for my own lunch.”
“Excuse me, guv,” D.S. Paul Pavlou said politely. He was half-Cypriot, his face permanently covered by a thick layer of black stubble. “We-”
“Shut it, you piece of shit!” Oaten yelled. “I’ll tell you when you can open your kebab-stinking mouth.” Her eyes moved on to Morry Simmons. He was pasty-faced and in his forties, a permanent detective sergeant who was only on the team because one of the other chief inspectors owed him a favor. “Try me, Simmons, just try me.”
He showed no sign of wanting to speak.
“Right,” Oaten said, glancing at Turner. “The last I heard, you two were investigating the victim’s past. You now have permission to explain to me why you screwed up.”