To Kill For Read online

  ‘Give me the address.’

  ‘You gonna use your charms on her?’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  Cole watched me for a while and sipped his drink. He turned to one of the men behind me and said, ‘Carl, give it to him.’

  Carl, who looked about twelve, was sitting in a chair, legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed. He grinned at the private joke. He fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He held it out, still grinning. I walked over and snatched the piece of paper from his hand.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ Cole said. ‘I’ve flushed him out of one hiding place. He’s running out of friends.’

  I was about to ask him about the other man in the car, the stocky white bloke who’d got away. I stopped. Cole hadn’t mentioned him. Nobody had. I ran through the moment when Cole’s crew had hit me. Did they even know there was another bloke? I tested that idea by saying, ‘The bloke in the car, who was he?’

  Cole shrugged.

  Nobody said, ‘Which bloke?’ They didn’t know there’d been a second man. I’d have to find out about him. Behind me, a thin nasally voice said, ‘Who gives a fuck about him?’

  I turned and looked at the thin voice. Carl was smiling at me, a cocky look on his cocky little face.

  ‘If he’d known any more, he would have told me.’

  I noticed then, for an instant, a flash of irritation cross Cole’s face. It was the way Carl was taking credit for the job, I thought, that annoyed Cole. The ‘would have told me’ bit. The fact that Cole was tolerating him was interesting. Anyone else and he would have given him a bollocking. Maybe Cole was holding back because I was there. Maybe Carl was going to get a slap later.

  But there was something else wrong with this Carl. He didn’t fit into this crew. Cole’s other men were pros, but this one was more like a giddy amateur, experiencing it all in a heady rush. He was enjoying this more than anyone and I wondered what a wanker like him was doing working for Cole.

  ‘By the time we’d got rid of him, he was unconscious,’ Carl was saying. ‘Geezer was more red than black.’

  He seemed to want me to congratulate him. I turned back to Cole.

  ‘Eddie Lane came to see me,’ I said. ‘Tells me you’re bent on getting Paget, that you and Dunham had an agreement to fix the Albanians first and now you’re fucking it up. Wants me to get you to play ball.’

  ‘Fuck Dunham. And fuck Lane. And fuck you. I don’t answer to any of you lot.’

  ‘What’s this agreement with him about?’

  ‘It’s bollocks. Dunham’s losing it, getting old. He’s scared of these Albanians – fucking cowboys. He’s scared they’re gonna start on his turf after they’ve taken mine. Well, they ain’t fucking taken mine yet.’

  Headlights lit the room up. A car ground to a halt outside.

  ‘That’ll be Steve,’ someone said.

  ‘Show him in,’ Cole said. ‘Take him out back,’ he added, glancing at me.

  ‘And the law?’ I said. ‘You got them squared away?’

  ‘Fixed. We just gave them some info on the Albanians, blamed them for Marriot’s death. Few payments to senior coppers. Hey presto.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said.

  ‘Sure. If you’ve got the power.’

  He took a sip of his drink. It was a slow sip, as if he was thinking about things.

  ‘These Albanian cunts,’ he said. ‘Dunham’s idea. We combine forces, take them out and carve up their turf, divide their business. I don’t trust Dunham. Anyway, the Albanians can wait.’

  ‘You know what they’re into?’

  ‘I don’t plan on exploiting the kids and women they’ve smuggled in, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘If you did, I’d have to come after you too.’

  Carl laughed at that. Nobody else did. Cole was quiet for a while, studying me.

  ‘What do you think I am, Joe?’ he said. ‘I don’t do that kind of thing. I know they brought that girl into the country, the one you looked after.’

  ‘Kid,’ I said. ‘That was her name.’

  ‘Yeah. Kid. I’m not a fucking animal.’

  I didn’t think Cole was the type to get involved in that kind of thing. But I had to make my point. I said, ‘Got any ideas where Paget would go?’

  ‘Have I got any ideas, he asks me.’ He looked around the assembled mass and winked to his wife. ‘When I get an idea, you’ll read about it in the paper.’

  Carl got a kick out of that one. Cole enjoyed his wit for a moment, then he looked at me and his eyes went cold, became hooded.

  ‘Marriot and Paget ripped me off. They ripped off my money and they ripped off my junk. I don’t let people get away with that. You took out Marriot. Fine. Well that leaves Paget, and he’s still got my junk and I’m gonna get it and get him and nobody’s getting in my way.’

  ‘I want Paget.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, boy. I don’t give a shit what you want. The only reason you’re breathing is because you got my money back off Marriot. I owe you for that.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for you.’

  ‘Don’t get in my fucking way again,’ he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  One time, about three weeks before she was killed, Brenda said, ‘Have you got any ambition, Joe?’

  We’d been in her flat, sitting at that small Formica table she had, eating Chinese. It was late and she’d finished work. There was some kind of soft classical music on. It wasn’t my thing, but I think she thought it added to the atmosphere, so I let it go.

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything.’

  ‘Anything else, you mean.’

  She smiled and her eyes sparked to life and her face lit up. She looked a hundred years younger.

  ‘You got me,’ she said. ‘Well, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  She nodded and carried on eating for a while.

  ‘I have,’ she said. ‘Did I tell you? I’m saving up.’

  She had told me, but she’d forgotten. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

  ‘I want to be a beautician. I want to own me own place. A beauty parlour. They call them parlours. I wonder why. Isn’t that what they called a lounge in posh places?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I like the sound of that,’ she was saying. ‘What should I call it? I was thinking Brenda’s Parlour, but that’s got no ring, you know? I can’t think of anything that rhymes with parlour. Or Brenda.’

  ‘Big spender,’ I said.

  She laughed, but she was forcing it. Something was bothering her. She was trying too hard to be bright and happy.

  ‘If you want money,’ I said, ‘I can let you have some.’

  She touched my arm.

  ‘No, Joe. No. I don’t want any money.’

  ‘I’ve got plenty. You might as well do something with it.’

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

  ‘That’s sweet,’ she said.

  It wasn’t sweet. My money wasn’t doing anything. I just saved it up for the sake of it. I’d never known what to do with it. I’d never wanted a fast car or an expensive watch or any of that shit.

  ‘It’s not much to ask, is it?’ she said. ‘To be a beautician? That’s not much.’

  She wasn’t telling me, she was telling herself. Or trying to. I don’t think she was getting through.

  ‘You wanted to be a carpenter, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I remember you told me.’

  That was true, as far as it went. It was something I’d once enjoyed, when I was young, when I still thought there was a choice. Then, I’d thought I could use my hands to make something. Turned out I could use them better to pull things apart.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think I’m going to make it,’ she was saying. ‘You know? I mean, I think, Who are you kidding? Who do you think you are? I mean, look at me, Joe. Just some over the hill black tart. Who the bloody hell would want me to make them beautiful?’

&
nbsp; I said, ‘You’re not so bad.’

  When I looked at her, she was resting her fork on her plate and looking off into some middle-ground. She hadn’t heard me. She had that look, the one Kid had had sometimes. It made Brenda look like a child, lost, scared, trying not to show it. Kid had been a child, she had been lost and scared and hammered by the world. I suppose Brenda was a child too, in a way. She still had the sort of stupid dreams that children had, like wanting to be a beautician.

  I finished eating and went to make a cup of tea. When I came back, she’d given up with the meal and had gone to sit on the sofa. She had the window open, the curtains pulled back. A weak cold breeze wafted into the place and carried a far-off smell of wet air and diesel, and the sound of droning traffic. She was smoking and gazing at the darkness outside. In her hand was a glass of gin. It was a big glass and it was mostly full. I saw the bottle on the floor. I didn’t see any tonic.

  There was a glaze to her eyes, and I thought she’d been crying. I put the mugs of tea down on the table. She kept her eyes on the window. In a low, distant voice, she said, ‘I can’t stand it, Joe. Sometimes, I just can’t stand it. What they do.’

  I knew what she was talking about. Marriot did things with kids.

  ‘Get out, then. I’ve told you, do something else. Fuck Marriot. He gives you any grief, I’ll rip him apart.’

  She smiled vaguely, like she was humouring a child. But the smile wore away from her face, and her gaze was back into that middle distance again, between here and nowhere, between what she was and what she knew she could never be. I don’t know why she did that to herself. I’d told her enough times that life was a piece of shit. If she’d got used to that, she wouldn’t have been endlessly disappointed. But when I would say that to her, she would look at me with her thin smile and it would be like she was sorry for me, like I was the one suffering, and she was here to make everything all right.

  So she carried on with her suffering, and with her life, and with me. She was a romantic, I suppose, or an idealist or whatever. You can’t do much with people like that.

  Whatever she saw there, in that middle-land, she didn’t want me in on it. I think she thought she was protecting me. Maybe she was.

  It’s funny; Brenda thought she could protect me. Kid thought so too. And Browne. None of them could do anything for themselves except be victims, but they all thought they could protect a violent, war-torn monster like me. I say it’s funny. It’s not. It’s about as far from funny as you can get.

  ‘We could go somewhere,’ I said. ‘We can start again. Somewhere.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Joe. I can’t explain it. I have to carry on. Not for me, but…’

  There were tears coming down her face. She stubbed her cigarette out and took a long drink from the glass. She shook her head and wiped away the tears. She looked at me and forced a smile.

  ‘I’m being stupid,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some fresh air.’

  I should have listened to her. Things would’ve been different. She might’ve had six years more life, for one thing. We might still be together. Who knows, she might’ve got her beauty parlour.

  Anyway, I should have listened to her. I should have understood what she was telling me. I should have done lots of things. I should have killed Marriot and Paget back then, before they’d killed her, before they’d used Kid, before anything.

  I should have done those things.

  But I didn’t, and people were going to pay for that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When I found the place, it was starting to get light, if you could call it light. The sky was heavy and grey, and the dawn was no more than a strip of lighter grey against the black horizon.

  It was a post-war terraced house. The roof made of some kind of corrugated concrete. It must’ve seemed a good idea to someone once, someone who didn’t have to live here. There was a high hedge at the front of the small garden, and an overgrown lawn with children’s toys littered about. The toys must’ve been there for years. The plastics had weathered, the bright yellows and reds now weak and faded. Thick grass had grown around them so that it was like a graveyard, a monument to dead childhood.

  I pressed the doorbell and waited. After a while, a middle-aged woman opened up and looked out at me. She was wearing an apron and her sleeves were rolled up.

  ‘Are you the police?’ she said.

  They’d called the law, then. I didn’t want to be around when they came. I said, ‘No.’

  This baffled her. If I wasn’t law, what could I be? It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘Are you Paget’s old girlfriend?’

  ‘Who’s Paget?’

  We were going round in circles.

  ‘I want to speak to the woman who lives here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She closed the door. A few seconds later, it was opened again by a younger woman, thin and pale and with long lank blonde hair. The woman’s lip was split, the blood dried. Her right eye was swollen and had closed some.

  ‘Please,’ she said, murmuring the word feebly.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Please.’

  It was all she would say. We were back to the circles.

  ‘I’m not with the men who came earlier.’

  From inside the house, a woman’s voice called out.

  ‘Shut the door, Tina. Let the police sort it out.’

  The thin woman started to close the door and I had to put my hand on it and push it back.

  ‘You’re Kenny Paget’s ex-girlfriend?’ She head bobbed up and down a bit. ‘Your name’s Tina?’

  She had no energy, like she’d just woken up. It was shock, I thought. I wondered if she was concussed. Nobody had said anything about calling an ambulance.

  She had a long thin face and high cheekbones and large eyes, and her long lashes gave her eyes a soft look. I guessed her age to be around the mid-forties, but she might’ve been a used-up mid-thirties. She wore a beige dressing gown and blue nightgown.

  ‘The men who were here earlier, they wanted to know where Paget was. Is that right?’

  Another woman appeared then. This Tina must have called on a friend for help after Cole’s men had been, and that friend had called on another and they’d come over like a relief column. This one was short and stocky. She had a defiant look, but her mouth was closed tightly and I could see fear in her eyes. I guessed she’d been the one who’d called out just now. She took one look at me and said, ‘Fuck off.’

  I didn’t want to get heavy. I wanted information, and if I had to deal with a lot of hysterical women, I’d never get anywhere. At the same time, the law was on its way and I didn’t have time to piss about. I pushed my way into the house and closed the door. The hall was narrow, the ceiling low. I barely fit. Tina moved back a few paces, looking straight into my chest. She didn’t try to run, she didn’t reach for the phone on the wall or a weapon. She didn’t do much, except move backwards, her toes dragging on the carpet. The short woman lunged at me and pushed, trying to get me back.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she kept saying.

  It was a token effort, and we all knew it. She smelled of alcohol and when I knocked her aside she lost her balance and stumbled. I took hold of Tina and steered her through to a small back lounge. Here, too, there were some children’s toys and I saw photos of children, old faded photos and newer ones. I guessed that the woman’s children had grown up and had children of their own and that those toys in the front belonged to her grandchildren. Maybe she looked after the kids in the day. On top of the TV set was a framed photo of a bride and groom: Tina with another man. Both looked middle-aged in the picture.

  I said, ‘Where’s your husband?’

  ‘My… who?’

  I put her in a chair and she looked up at me with drowsy eyes. She said, ‘Who are you?’

  Her speech was slurred and her eyelids were falling down. I leaned forward and slapped her lightly on the
cheek. The short one tried to grab hold of my arm.

  ‘Leave her alone.’

  I pushed her off. Tina opened her eyes a little, but not much. The short one was about to attack me again when Apron stopped her.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Apron said.

  I walked into the bathroom and opened the cabinet. There was a load of medication, mostly antidepressants, benzodiazepines, that sort of thing. There was nothing in there that belonged to a man; no shaving foam, no razors, except a pink woman’s one. I saw a small white plastic bottle by the side of the sink next to a glass of water. The bottle was empty, but it had contained diazepam, in ten-milligram tablets. It had been prescribed to Christina Murray only a week earlier. It had contained thirty tablets.

  I took the empty bottle into the lounge. Apron and the short woman were sitting around, looking at Tina who was slumped in the seat, her head down. I grabbed hold of her and hoisted her up. I pinched her cheek, slapping her a little. It didn’t matter to me what she did to herself, but I wanted information. I held up the bottle. I said, ‘How many did you take?’

  Her eyes were barely open, and wouldn’t focus. Her head lolled to one side. I dropped her back onto the seat. I looked at the other women. They stared at me.

  ‘How many did she take?’

  Apron said, ‘They’re just aspirins.’

  ‘They’re diazepam. How many did she take?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I turned to the short one. She was quiet, pale with fear. She shook her head.

  Apron said, ‘There were only a couple in there.’

  ‘She’s had something to drink,’ the short one said. She turned to her friend. ‘I gave her some gin. I thought she needed it.’

  ‘There were only a couple in there,’ Apron said again.

  ‘How long have you both been here?’

  ‘An hour.’

  Cole’s men had been here two, three hours earlier.

  ‘What about before you got here?’

  ‘Shit,’ the short one said. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Did you call an ambulance after she’d been beaten?’

  They looked at each other. Neither of them had thought of it. Probably, they were used to violence, up to a point, and wouldn’t call an ambulance for anything short of a decapitation.