Answer: Since I was a child.
It was a public demolition. The man in the witness box was as good as any of the Sierra Quebec Golf team at surveillance and had been made to appear an un-reliable amateur in court. The cool reasonable politeness of Mister's QC dripped off the transcript
… Joey heard the door open but did not look up.
He scribbled his notes. An informant had retracted, fingerprints had gone missing, the star witness had fallen on his face. It had been the systematic and clinical destruction of three years' work.
There was a spluttered hacking cough behind him.
'Putting the world to rights?'
He recognized the hoarse, guttural voice of the senior investigation officer. Joey closed down the computer, took his time, then swivelled in his chair. 'I was looking for what we did wrong.. . '
'Bollocks… I tell you what you are, Cann, you're an arrogant little prick.'
'Am I?'
'An arrogant shite with an attitude, problem.'
'Is that right?'
Joey stared at him, his gaze unwavering. He saw the blotched face and the puffy bags under the man's eyes. He saw yesterday's shoes, scuffed and scraped, and a pair of suit trousers that had been thrown on the floor. The man's eyes blazed at him.
'We went to the pub last night – I don't know how many pubs we went to. Some of us threw up, some of us fell over – two pubs put us out. We had a kitty and a banker, fifty quid each, and we packed it in when the banker said he was skint. We stayed together till all the mini-cabs were lined up and ready to go. No one was left behind. We got home. We were a team, the whole of SQG, except you. You were too fucking superior to be a part of the team. "I was looking for what we did wrong." You think you're the only one who cared. You think you're the only one with the intelligence to know what went "wrong". This is a team game, Cann, and until you realize it you're going to stay an arrogant little shite without a friend in the world. We don't have heroes here, we don't bloody want crusaders. Some of the best investigators in the business were in this team, but they're not good enough for you, and you piss on them. I doubt you'll ever learn… Stupid bugger, we all care, we all gave three years of our lives to put Packer away. Go home, go and dig your bloody garden.'
'I don't have a garden.'
'Your bloody window-box, then.'
'I don't have a window-box.'
'Then why don't you just fuck right off out of here?'
He knew that the SIO had eight months until retirement. The man would have retired well if he had been able to boast gently that he had prosecuted and put away Albert William Packer, the Untouchable. Little doors would have opened on to the well-paid circuit of security consultancy. The SIO had had the big one within his grasp and he had let it go down the drain.
Joey stood, stretched, then went to the wall and carefully took down the photograph of Mister's arrest, prising it slowly away from the paintwork so that the corners weren't torn, then he rolled it up and put it into his bag.
The SIO lurched towards him and the fat finger, bright with last night's mahogany nicotine stains, stabbed at Joey's chest.
'You know why we hate heroes and crusaders, Cann? Why we root them out? Why? They put the safety of the team at risk. They miss the point of what we're trying to do. They're selfish and superior to colleagues. Any creep with a mission is not a team player. Fuck off, and when you've had some sleep, may be you should reflect on what to do about being too high, too mighty, to get pissed with the rest of us.
You've no future here.'
Joey walked out of the room and away down the corridor, his bag banging against his leg. He swiped his card at the door, stepped out onto the pavement, avoided the regular little clutch having their first cigarette of the day, and headed for the Underground station.
From Bank he could have taken a direct Northern line train south to Tooting Bee and his bed-sit, and he could have slept. Instead, he bought a ticket to go north on the Northern line to King's Cross, then to change for the Piccadilly line trains heading out into the suburbs.
Taking advice, good or bad, had never been an especial talent of Joey Cann.
He'd often had coffee in the wide, plant-strewn atrium, but it was the first time that Frank Williams had been into a room at the Holiday Inn. He'd brought two local policemen with him, reckoned it would be a good education for them to watch him at work, would give them a chance to learn basic policing exercises.
The bed was still made. The desk top was empty, except for the hotel's stationery pouch. He found two suits in the wardrobe where two more Italian shirts were hanging, with a pair of soft leather shoes underneath them. Beside the telephone there was a pad for note-taking, and he routinely tore off the top two pages and slipped them into a plastic sachet. He was looking for a passport, a briefcase, anything to put flesh on the occupier of the room, a family photograph; but he found nothing. Sunlight streamed into the room. If he had not been a policeman he would have felt that he intruded on privacy. He had already tried the Saraj, the Grand and the Motel Belveder, but none had a missing foreigner. It was the sort of basic police work that Frank Williams was good at. He was slow and thorough, and he made the local men wear the gloves with which he had provided them. Because they were young they were probably still honest, but they'd soon catch on. Another six months and they wouldn't have been down on the carpet, looking under the bed, or climbing on a chair to peer above the wardrobe, they'd have been out at a road-block, fining motorists, cash only and no receipts, for speeding or having defective lights. No passport, no briefcase, no wallet, no personal organizer, no cheque book or credit cards, no work papers, no mobile telephone, no tourist guides, but the room was held in the name of Duncan Dubbs, of 48 River Mansions, Narrow Street, London E14. The description of the room's occupier was a probable match to the battered face of the man from the river, and the certainty came quickly.
What sort of man, with what sort of business, left a hotel room sterilized of his work, background and personality? He was thinking about i t… He saw the flash from the sheen of the material and heard the raucous laugh from the younger of the local men – he had the bottom drawer of the chest open and was holding up a pair of underpants to be examined by the older one. Frank Williams reached out and snatched the underpants, checked the label and made the match. They were silk… Shitty enough to die far f rom home, he thought, but worse when your secrets became. 1 joke for strangers.
Mister was back.
For two men, at the top of his priority list, the news of the trial's collapse came too late for them to take flight. Neither had had time to board a plane to Miami, the Algarve, Spain or anywhere. One, during the eight months of Mister's imprisonment on remand, had defaulted on a payment in excess of three-quarters of a million pounds. The other, in Mister's absence, had muscled into the dealer network and imported his own Afghan-produced and Turkish-refined heroin.
To Mister, it was necessary to show that he was back.
The defaulter had been taken from his apartment, with his suitcase only half filled in a scramble of packing, too quickly for him to get to the Uzi submachine-gun kept for emergencies under a floor-board. That morning, he was in the intensive care unit of Charing Cross Hospital where a medical team struggled to keep him alive… The muscler lay on a bed in a similar unit at University College Hospital, festooned with monitoring wires and drip tubes.
When the Cards had come for him, in the small hours, at the drinking and snooker club he owned in Hackney, he had not known that his minders had flaked away from the front and rear doors.
Liberties had been taken while Mister was away. It had not been expected that he would regain his free dom without warning. It was not possible for Mister to retain his authority, his power, after eight months away, unless his strength was demonstrated. He had sent a message that night, twice.