To Die For Read online

  I finished the omelette and tea and sat for a while, not thinking of anything. All I had to do was wait for Kendall to tell me where and when to collect the money.

  I’d met Kendall eight years back. I’d been fighting a bloke called Hadley. He was nothing special, and I should’ve had him on the canvas inside of three. He moved well, though, and I realized too late that he was after a TKO. He was quicker than me, and younger, and I couldn’t keep up with his punches. By the fifth, my left eye had closed up and I spent so much time covering it I forgot about the right, and Hadley, who was orthodox, was making a good show of being a southpaw. He connected with my right eye a few times and opened it up. I had to get in close and jam him up, but with the left closing and blood in my right, I was swinging blind. If I could’ve connected, I’d have flattened him, but I couldn’t find the fucker and finally I got counted out.

  I climbed from the ring and was led into the changing rooms where Browne did a quick patch-up job, gave me a handful of pills and told me I’d probably have headaches for a week or so; told me I’d have to quit soon or risk permanent brain damage.

  ‘I’m serious, Joe,’ he said.

  I nodded. I’d heard it all before.

  I had a quick shower, switching the water from hot to ice-cold, trying to soothe the aches and wash some of the dullness out of my head, and when I came out, a small fidgety man in a camel-hair coat and tailor-made suit was pacing up and down, smoking a cheroot. He had dark hair, greased back and greying at the temples, and olive skin. He moved like a young man, full of pent-up energy, but his face was without flesh and the hollow, shadowed cheeks and deep-set dark eyes made him look old and sick, and his constant movements made me think that if he stopped for a moment he’d realize he couldn’t go on.

  When he saw me, he crushed the cheroot underfoot. He looked me up and down, nodding to himself.

  ‘I seen you fight a coupla times.’

  I grabbed a towel and started drying myself. My head hurt. My head always hurt. It was just one of those things. I didn’t need someone to make it worse.

  ‘You got a great left,’ he said. ‘I never seen a jab with so much behind it. And you can take punishment, I’ll give you that.’ He hesitated, looked down at his crushed cheroot like it was an old friend he’d lost. ‘But you’re old.’

  Everyone was telling me that. The doctors, the other fighters, the crowds.

  ‘You’re too slow for these kids,’ he said. ‘They’re running all over you.’ He held out his hand. I looked at it. It was small and sweaty. ‘My name’s Kendall. Dave Kendall. Ever heard of me?’

  I hadn’t heard of him, but didn’t say so. When he got tired of holding his hand in the air he pulled it in and used it to scratch his ear.

  ‘I used to fight. Crystal Kendall. Crystal on account of my glass jaw.’

  I still hadn’t heard of him.

  He glanced at his watch. It was an expensive watch. Or maybe it was a good fake. He looked like the kind of person who’d try and con someone with a dodgy watch. Maybe he’d got confused and sold it to himself.

  ‘Look, I gotta get over to Deptford in a coupla hours, but I’m free till then. Fancy a pint?’

  I was waiting for the pitch. I was bored of him. He smelled of hair oil and cheroots. He moved too much.

  ‘Don’t talk much, do you?’ he said. ‘That’s all right. I don’t need a talker. Look, I’m not trying to con you or nothing.’

  I started dressing. Kendall backed away from the lockers, giving me room. He scratched his ear again.

  ‘Look, you’re getting seven shades of shit knocked out of you, what, once, twice a week? How long you gonna be able to do that? How would you like another job?’

  He pulled a cheroot from a pack in his coat pocket. He lit it, blew out some smoke and said, ‘A decent fucking job.’

  I sat down. My head throbbed. My eyes stung. My ribs were trying to unhinge themselves and run away. Even my hair hurt.

  Eight years later and he seemed to have kept his promise. A decent job, decent money. Easy. All I had to do was wait for him to call.

  I didn’t own a phone. There was a newsagent a couple of doors along and the owner there, bloke called Akram, would take the call for me. He’d come up with a message, then I’d go see Kendall or phone him back from a public phone. Akram was also my landlord. He owned three buildings along the road. I had an arrangement with him: he paid all the bills and I gave him the cash. Nothing was in my name. Recently, I’d moved flats to a smaller, single-bedroom place. I’d done this because some of Akram’s old relatives had come over from Pakistan, and Akram, who was paying their living costs, wanted them to live as cheaply as possible and because his old grandmother couldn’t manage stairs so well.

  The attic flat needed updating, as estate agents would say. The putty around the edges of the single-pane windows was cracked and falling away, and cold air leaked in. In summer, the flat would probably be hot. In February it was fucking cold. The previous owner – an old man who smoked roll-ups and wheezed more each day climbing the four flights of stairs – had never had money to spend on things like a new cooker or a coat of paint. It didn’t matter. The flat was far away from other people, which was fine by me. I didn’t plan on holding many dinner parties.

  I sat in all day Monday. Nobody called.

  On Tuesday, I went to my local gym, an old-fashioned boxing place called Murray’s which smelled of sweat and menthol and rubbing oil. I was on nodding terms with the punters there, but I hardly ever talked to them. Sometimes one of the old-timers would have a word about boxing, but that was about it. I stood by myself, pounding the heavy bag, trying to ignore the glances I got from the others, the change in mood. There was less banter when I was there, less joking, as if the air had changed, become thicker, heavier.

  On my way back from the gym, I stopped at Akram’s to see if there was a message for me. The shop was long and narrow, with discoloured yellow and white vinyl floor tiles, and a layer of dust and filth in the unused corners. One wall had racks of magazines from floor to ceiling, and newspapers bundled along the floor. Along the other wall were shelves of groceries, sweets, crisps, drinks. Stuff like that.

  Akram always wore the same beige-striped shirt and brown trousers, and never seemed to realize they were too small for him. He was always behind his counter, always sweating behind his thick black beard, always worried about something and apologetic, always surrounded by women, or so it seemed. The shop was always open and always staffed by Akram or his sisters or his mother. His wife spent her life at the back, behind the bead curtain, where she cooked spicy food and listened to a London-Asian radio station. She never came out, as far as I could tell, but she would call out to Akram in her sharp voice, getting him to do some task or other.

  When I walked in, an old Asian woman in a purple sari was ranting at Akram. She jabbered away and he, palms towards her, shook his head and tried to answer. Akram’s wife called out something and Akram sighed. The old woman saw me and flinched. Akram said something, pointing at me. The old woman muttered a reply and shuffled off, keeping her eyes to the ground. Akram smiled and lowered his arms.

  ‘My grandmother,’ he said. ‘She thinks everyone here is trying to rob her or rape her. She wants to go back to Pakistan.’

  ‘She should go back,’ Akram’s wife’s voice said.

  There were no messages for me. I left them to it.

  On Wednesday, I went to my local library. The young assistant was at the front desk, busy cataloguing or whatever they do there. I’d said hello to her once and since then she’d avoided my eye, busying herself, like now, with some job that needed her to look down or up or anywhere else. I walked past her. Maybe I’d said hello too aggressively.

  Mostly, I read history. I wanted to see how the great figures had risen, how the great crimes had been carried out. You got to see what people were up to, what their angle was, how they disguised their self-interest, how they fooled and bullied others into following. You go
t to see where the con was, how the winners had got it right, how the losers had got it wrong. Wars, especially, interested me. Like boxing, they were the end of things, human nature at its most basic.

  I spent the rest of Wednesday reading about how people in history had fucked up, and in that time I’d heard nothing, and that was strange. Usually, Kendall would at least call and tell me when to expect the money or the reason for the delay. I didn’t mind waiting, but three days after a job with no word wasn’t right.

  And there was something else. I was waiting to hear about another job that was supposed to go off in a week or so. I didn’t need the money so much now, but I’d still agreed to do the job. I had a reputation for being reliable and I had to keep that. It was the most valuable thing I had. The job was a jeweller’s over in Brent Cross. The outfit was local, from Tottenham – Nathan King and his crew. King, I knew. We’d worked together a couple of times. He was a neat operator. He’d found me in Murray’s gym and had asked me to do the job.

  ‘Quick in and out,’ he’d said. ‘But we need to go mid-afternoon, and it’s a big place. We could use some crowd control.’

  That had been a couple of weeks ago and by now King should have fixed it up with Kendall who would’ve waited until the casino job had been done before confirming.

  On Thursday, I decided to give Kendall a call.

  I went down from my top-floor flat and along to Akram’s. He was handing change to an old woman who muttered complaints about her missing free scratch card. After she’d shuffled off, I bought a phonecard and went out to use the phone box on the corner. I called Kendall’s number. I got his answerphone and hung up and went over to a greasy spoon called Sam’s. I tried Kendall an hour later. There was still no answer. I left a message this time, telling him to call me at Sam’s.

  I sat in the greasy spoon as the day slid into muddy dusk. I stirred my tea and looked out of the plate-glass window, through the pockmarks of dust and dirt, and watched the people trudge past, watched the world trudge past. My head wasn’t hurting, my thoughts were clear, and a question snagged in my mind:

  Why me?

  I’d done the job because it was just a job, and I was just a lump who wasn’t in on the planning, who only did the heavy stuff and took a small cut. But all I’d had to do was frighten Warren, knock him around a bit, and then sit with the woman for a few hours. Beckett had had his usual crew, and the job, from what I could see, had been easy enough. Simpson could have leaned on Warren. Why did they need me for that? And why did they need anyone to sit with the woman? If she was tied up and Warren was sure that she was in danger, they could have left her by herself. The house was detached: nobody would hear. Better still, they could have taken her to some isolated place and left her there.

  It was dark now and the drizzle hovered and drifted on the cold air. The traffic, the sky, the buildings seemed sluggish and the few people who tramped along the road held their heads down, their coats huddled about them.

  I walked a couple of blocks to the multi-storey car park where I kept my old Vauxhall Carlton on a long-term parking permit. I checked I had enough petrol in the tank and drove off on a trawl of places across north London.

  The third place I tried was a pub called the Earl of Roxburghe in Enfield. Everyone called it the Roxie. Kendall was in a booth when I got there, seated by himself with a glass of vodka-tonic. He sipped the drink, stirred the ice cubes with a finger and sipped it again, putting it down carefully on the table. When he looked up and saw me standing above him he smiled broadly. He pulled a cheroot from a pack on the table, lit it and took a deep drag. He blew the smoke out and said, ‘I was gonna call. Been busy. You all right?’ I nodded. ‘Good. Good.’

  He made to draw on his cheroot again, and noticed the no-smoking sign fastened to the window beside him.

  ‘Shit.’ He dropped the cheroot to the floor and stamped it out. ‘I hate this fucking no-smoking bollocks. Sit down.’

  He wore a nice suit, but he made it look cheap. I took the seat opposite and waited. He looked at the vodka-tonic in front of him and pushed it with his finger, like he’d forgotten what the drink was for.

  ‘Heard you were looking for me,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  I waited. He went to light another cheroot, remembered the sign and cursed, flinging the pack away.

  I knew that I should try and be subtle. People responded better to that kind of thing, I’d learned. The trouble was, I’d never really known what that meant. Being what they called subtle seemed to me like a waste of time. All it meant was you spent too long talking around a subject. I tried to think how I should be subtle and then gave up and said, ‘Where’s my money?’

  Kendall took a gulp of his drink, then, while still swallowing, shook his head. After that performance, he said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Haven’t I always got you your money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Course I have. So what’s the fucking problem? There’s a bit of a delay. Nothing to worry about.’

  He was taking the long way around saying that he didn’t have my money. Maybe he was being subtle.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I dunno. Beckett’s gone. I can’t find the cunt.’

  ‘What about the others? Walsh, Jenson.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach them. Look, I know Beckett. He’s all right. If he’s taking his time, it’s for a reason. Maybe he’s having trouble cleaning it or something.’

  He tapped the tabletop with a stained index finger, just to make sure it was made of wood.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you out of my own pocket. I mean, I fixed the job up, right? I’ll get it off Beckett later. Okay?’

  Right then I knew something was wrong. It was like Kendall to stall if there was a delay, sure, but handing over his own money? Forget about it.

  ‘I’ll bring it over later,’ he was saying. ‘You still at that Paki’s place? Tottenham High Road, right?’

  ‘I moved.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He’d stopped tapping the tabletop.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Upstairs. Number fifteen.’

  ‘Well, I’ll bring it later. Hey, you ain’t got a drink.’

  He stood up.

  ‘I’m not thirsty.’

  He hesitated. He didn’t seem to want to sit down again.

  ‘I gotta have a slash,’ he said. ‘Wait here, okay?’

  He swayed towards the back of the pub. He’d had a few more drinks than I’d realized. While I waited, I thought.

  It was possible Kendall was worried Beckett had been caught, or had got into trouble and would grass him up. Possible, but not likely. Kendall wasn’t important enough to worry about and he sure as shit didn’t give a damn if I got caught. Could he think that Beckett had done a bunk with the cash? Again, possible but unlikely. He would lose the cut from my end, but it wasn’t so much that he would care about it.

  I turned and scanned the pub. It was almost eight o’clock, still too early for the main custom. There were a few men in the place, no women. Mostly the men were in groups of two or three, but one man was alone at the far end of the bar, as far from me as possible. It occurred to me then that Kendall had taken the very end booth and was seated with his back to the wall so that everyone in the pub was in his sight. He’d also sat on the bench at the end nearest the aisle, preventing me from sitting next to him. The man at the bar was big, with a thick upper body and developed arms. He had a tall, slim glass of clear liquid in front of him. There was ice in the glass. It might have been lemonade or gin and tonic or vodka. It might have been water. Whatever it was, he wasn’t drinking it. He had his elbows rested on the counter and, with one hand, he held the glass and tilted it every now and then so that he could look down into it.

  Kendall came back to the booth. He was sweating more now. Trying to be subtle, I said, ‘Haven’t heard from Nathan King.’

  He didn’t say anything to that.

  I said, ‘You got any work for m
e?’

  ‘No, Joe. Nothing. There’s nothing much happening at the moment.’

  He was back to looking at the table.

  I stood up and almost felt the relief slide off him.

  ‘You don’t want a drink?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  Kendall was scared. More than that, he was scared of me. Someone had called him up and told him I was out looking for him, or he’d heard it on his answering machine. Then he’d found a nice safe public place to sit and wait, and a nice friendly bodyguard to watch his back.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kendall was saying. ‘The money.’

  I left the pub, got into my car and drove a hundred yards up the road. Then I waited, watching the pub entrance in the rear-view mirror. Kendall and the other bloke came out after a couple of minutes. They stood in the light of the pub’s windows and exchanged a few words, and then they parted. Kendall went to his car and drove off. I followed him. After a minute or so, I knew he was going home. I eased back and let him leave me behind.

  3

  He lived in a detached mock-Tudor place in Palmer’s Green. It was bland enough to give him businessman-like cred, big enough to let him see his money. He’d never invited me over, had never, in fact, told me where he lived. I’d decided one day to find out. Just in case.

  When he opened the door, he said, ‘Urgh.’

  I barged through, shoving him backwards. I kicked the door shut and guided him through the house. He tried to pull his arm free.

  ‘What the fuck you doing?’ he said.

  The living room was large and full of old-looking furniture, hunting prints, those Staffordshire figures, stuff like that. There was a white shag rug, two thickly padded leather sofas, a dining-table set. Kendall’s wife must have thought her husband was a stockbroker or something. I let go of his arm.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he said, rubbing his biceps. ‘I told you I’d bring the money.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  He sat at the small dining table.

  ‘I’m sitting. Happy?’