Scorpian Rising E-Book

Anthony Frewin

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 321

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Sidney Blattner is probably the most successful organised crime figure in London, but things are coming unstuck. Who would dare to execute his innocent brother down in Margate, and why? When Blattner attends the funeral, his chauffeur disappears, forcing Sid and his two minders to flee the seaside resort ignominiously in a Transit van... Sidney calls in as many favours as he can to find out what is going on down in Margate but without success. Two of his aides, sent down to investigate, turn up murdered. There are plenty of questions, but no answers. Will Vince, the sharpest member of Sid's firm, have any better luck when he arrives in the fading seaside town, or are he and Sidney about to meet their nemesis?

Leseprobe

Sidney Blattner is probably the most successful organised crime figure in London, but things are coming unstuck. Who would dare to execute his innocent brother down in Margate, and why?

When Blattner attends the funeral, his chauffeur disappears, forcing Sid and his two minders to flee the seaside resort ignominiously in a Transit van…

Sidney calls in as many favours as he can to find out what is going on down in Margate but without success. Two of his aides, sent down to investigate, turn up murdered. There are plenty of questions, but no answers.

Will Vince, the sharpest member of Sid’s firm, have any better luck when he arrives in the fading seaside town, or are he and Sidney about to meet their nemesis?

About the Author

Anthony Frewin was born in London and lives in Hertfordshire. He was assistant film director to Stanley Kubrick for over 20 years. He has written three novels published by No Exit Press, London Blues, Sixty-Three Closure and this one Scorpian Rising.

Anthony Frewin

SCORPIAN RISING

A Seaside Noir

And there is an aspect of the sign of SCORPIO, spur’d & driven by Evil, that answers Viciousness with Viciousness & which the passage of TIME but does seldom commute.

– THE ROYAL & AUTHENTICK MERLIN (1835)

NO EXIT PRESS

www.noexit.co.uk

For Eileen Gallagher and Mike Hodges

Contents

PraiseAbout the AuthorTitle PageDedication1: Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid2: Respects and Disrespects3: The Walls Have Hearsay4: Colour Me Gone5: Keep Your Margate Joys…6: On the Bean7: Shadowlands, Dreamlands8: Hornin’ In, and Some9: Conclusion Riff10: L’EnvoiCopyright

1: Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid

THE LARGE MERCEDES saloon with smoked glass windows pulled out of the racecourse and headed back to London. It was a good Thursday because Sidney Blattner who was sitting in the back, flanked by his two aides, Vince and young Leo, had cleaned up on the horses and was now some £60,000 better off than when he awoke this morning in the arms of Barbara, one of his mistresses, down in St George’s Square, behind Victoria Station. A good Thursday all right, but it wouldn’t be for long. Today things would, in a phrase much favoured by Sid but usually applied to others, start to come unstuck.

Not just unstuck.

But, to use the medial emphatic also favoured by Sid, un-fucking-stuck.

Sid Blattner was sixty-two years of age and a very successful London criminal. For some years now he had been going into legitimate ventures with the cash that had cascaded in from protection rackets, drugs, girls, gambling and all the rest of the bent ventures gallimaufry. He knew where he was going and he thought he knew how he was going to get there. He was always like that – organised, methodical, wily. And he considered himself untouchable because he had linked himself with so many figures in public life that to bring him down you would have to bring them down too.

The whole house of cards in other words.

And nobody was going to risk that.

Good insurance.

Luck, however, had played a larger part in Sid’s life than most people realised, least of all Sid himself who, like most successful men, refused to acknowledge its existence in any way as a contributing factor.

Today, that luck was running out and Sid’s life was to begin unravelling, but as the Merc crossed Chelsea Bridge he was as unaware of this turn in his fortune as he was of the fate of the horse that won him the £60,000 – it died of a heart attack immediately after the race, having been injected with a little too much of the old go-fast syrup.

Yeah, £60,000 better off. Not bad, not bad at all, Sid thought to himself. Well pleased.

‘Nothing like a good gamble!’ says Sid, voicing his inner thoughts.

‘Hardly a gamble…when you know what the result’s gonna be,’ noted Vince.

‘That don’t reduce the sporting element. Anything could go wrong. It’s still a gamble no matter what anyone says,’ Sid replied.

‘Yeah, it’s still a gamble,’ echoed Leo and then, as an afterthought, in deep philosophical mode, ‘but then life’s a gamble itself, ain’t it?’

‘You, Leo, my old son, have never spoken a truer word,’ replied Sid.

Leo smiled and said, ‘You’ve got to say it as it is.’

Vince gazed out at the Thames and thought to himself, these two sound like characters out of a daytime TV soap opera, they really do. Then Vince’s eye returned to the Thames and he thought that the flowing waters here could take him down to the estuary and the sea and the sea could take him up the east coast to Wells…Wells-next-the-Sea, to give it its full name. The water here is connected with the water there. Just one boat trip and he’d be there. One day he would do it, quit London for good, and sooner rather than later, he hoped.

He had promised himself he would do it before his fortieth birthday. And that only left him eighteen months. Not long at all.

Sid knocked back the glass of champagne and fanned some of the cash. He loved the feel of it. Truly he did. There was something about the physical texture of it that made him excited – generally excited to begin with, then sexually excited. It got him going and it did right now. He’d pop over and see Barbara again, give her one. Yeah. Give her a right seeing to. Right now.

Yeah, he could do with a bit of her.

Her eyes burned like 1000-watt bulbs whenever he turned up with a fistful of Jack Dash. She’s a turbo-driven slut when there’s cash about. I’ll have some of her, thought Sid, right now.

Sid told Harry the Chauffeur to make for St George’s Square.

Leo asked, ‘You going to see your Barbara?’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Sid. ‘I can drop you two off at the underground or you can sit it out in the car…suit yourselves on this one.’

‘We’re not going there, guv,’ said Vince softly.

‘Why’s that, then, son?’ demanded Sid.

Vince replied, ‘Because there’s a problem.’

‘A problem? You know I try and run this organisation without problems? You know that.’

‘Right, guv. But we got one this time. And he’s called Brian Spinks.’

‘Oh, yeah…that toe-rag!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Vince, it should be like a symphony, shouldn’t it?’

‘A symphony, Sid. Yes.’

‘We all do our little bit as instructed in harmony and on time and we make music. But when we don’t, there’s discord and no music.’

‘Couldn’t express it better myself,’ said Vince as he yawned and thought to himself, how many times have I heard that little bit of phraseology from Sid? I’d be a rich man if I had a couple of pennies for every time I’ve heard that fly out of his mouth.

After a pause Sid banged his fist into the open palm of his other hand and hissed, ‘I knew that Brian Spinks was a wrong un.

I told you so, thought Vince to himself. I told you so, but you never bothered to listen.

And a symphony, indeed!

Vince had been working for Sid for some fifteen years now, ever since he came out of the army. Too long to stay in one job, particularly one like this, thought Vince. He was getting stale and he knew it. The glamour had worn pretty thin. Working for Sid had cost him his marriage and he didn’t want it to cost him anything else.

He’d accepted Sid’s original offer and had intended only staying a few months until he got on his feet. But he was still here all these years later and going nowhere fast or, as his girlfriend put it, going nowhere slow.

The job back then had been a big step up for a working-class kid from Drury Lane, but where had it got him?

Brian Spinks’ common law wife was pushed in the stomach as she opened the door of the basement flat in Kentish Town, then she was punched in the face as the lad himself, Brian, was bundled out and up the steps and into the back of a grimy van that sped off up Leighton Road.

By the time the van reached York Way Brian was trussed up, thin hemp rope cutting into his wrists and ankles. And the blindfold wasn’t contributing to his well-being either.

This was not the way Brian had envisaged spending the rest of his thirtieth birthday. No, he and June were going out to get a couple of videos and some Chinese take-away and have a quiet evening in. He didn’t expect this.

‘What’s it all about?’ cried Brian who had recognised his abductors. ‘What’ve I done then?’

Phil the Enforcer stubbed out his cigarette on Brian’s neck and said, ‘You’ve upset Symphony Sid, you have. That’s enough…ain’t it?’

Brian’s screams were buried beneath the siren of a passing police car sent to investigate an attempted hold-up in an Indian corner shop somewhere on the Caledonian Road.

The Merc headed east along the Embankment.

‘There’s always some little toe-rag like Spinks who just ain’t satisfied. There always is, isn’t there?’ declared Sid.

Leo murmured agreement.

‘Shit for brains,’ added Vince, still thinking of Wells and the sea.

The van drove through the gates of the scrap-metal yard that somewhat grandiosely declared itself to passers-by in Dalston Junction as being ALBION NON-FERROUS METALS [1947] LTD. Once inside the vehicle pulled up by the docking bay and Phil and his two helpers, Kenny the Driver and Slim, picked up Spinks, manhandled him on to a sack-barrow and wheeled him over to the lift and up to the first floor.

‘I ain’t done nothing,’ shouted Brian prior to Kenny the Driver kicking him in the ribs.

‘You’re a transgressor, mate,’ said Phil. ‘Know that? A fuckin’ transgressor.’

The Merc pulled into the scrap-yard and Vince got out first, looked around and then signalled to Sid and Leo that it was OK for them to get out too. They then hurried across to the docking bay and into the lift.

Sid opened the door of what used to be the chairman’s office and nodded to the three droogs who silently greeted him.

‘Well done, lads,’ said Sid as he went over to Spinks who was now naked and spread-eagled with his face against the wall, his arms and wrists tied severely to Harlan No. 3 wall-anchors.

Spinks looks over his shoulder and says, ‘Hello, Mr B. They’ve got it wrong, they have.’

‘We’ve got nothing wrong,’ spits Sid. ‘You’ve not only been doing a bit of freelance work without a licence from me, you’ve also been skimming the two clubs!’

‘What me? Not me, Mr B!’

‘Yes, you. And Vince here reckons we’re down about ten grand because of your unprincipled greed…so you’re going to have to be chastised. Understand? Phil here is going to dish out a bit of medicine.’

Phil cracks a bull-whip in the air. The crack echoes throughout the room and down the passage that now echoes also with the footfalls of Harry the Chauffeur as he runs to the end office, his face red and flustered.

‘What is it?’ says Sid, turning to Harry and irritated by the interruption.

Harry gets his breath back and says, ‘Telephone in the car, boss. Very important. It’s the wife.’

Sid looks at Harry and then at Vince and then Sid walks out the room with Vince following him as the first of many lashes bites into Spinks’ back.

Miriam Blattner was sitting on the leather sofa with a telephonein one hand and a Marlboro cigarette in the other, her bright red, false fingernails glistening in the light from the angled wall-mounting behind her. Her feet were on the reproduction Louis Quinze-style coffee table and her mind was on the projected Miami holiday she was going to take later in the week with her sister (married to a ne’er-do-well on the fringes of the schmatte industry, a shlemiel according to Sid who would have a bath and forget to wash his face).

‘Sid? No, I’m fine…I just got a call from the police…I don’t know…the Kent police, down in Margate…yes…it’s Lionel…he’s dead…I got the name and number here. Call him…some police constable. Found dead this morning…I was in the middle of something…couldn’t get all the details. You phone them.’

Sid lit a cheroot and paced up and down the yard as Vince sat in the car and called the police down in Margate.

Sid couldn’t understand it. How could Lionel be dead? A bit overweight perhaps but always in good health. Never a day’s illness in his life. Strong as an ox. Stronger. Perhaps it wasn’t his health? Perhaps he was in a car crash? Fell off a ladder. Got food poisoning or something? But dead? Not Lionel. No, never. He couldn’t be…dead. Not his brother.

Vince returned the car-phone to its cradle, got out the car and looked around. Sid was over the far side of the yard leaning against a wheel-less 2.8 litre Ford Granada puffing on the cheroot like it was the last one he’d ever have.

Sid ain’t prepared for this, thought Vince. He’s prepared for just about everything, but he ain’t prepared for this. None of us is.

Sid looked up at the approaching Vince. ‘What’s the strength of it then?’

Vince was silent. He stared at Sid and then lit up a cigarette and gazed across the yard.

‘Come on, I ain’t got all day. What happened down there?’ Sid demanded.

Down there, thought Vince, who knows what went on? But something did. Old Lionel, as straight as Sid is bent. Not an enemy in the world. Never left home, helped their mum run the corner newsagent’s, nursed her through her terminal illness, carried on running the shop, never married. Poor old Lionel. The most exciting thing he ever did was fill out the coupons for the football pools. Who’d have ever thought Sid and him were brothers?

But this was serious, deadly serious. Either that or a chronic case of mistaken identity.

No, there was a smell to this. An uncomfortable odour.

Sid screamed, ‘Are you going to tell me or am I gonna have to phone those fucking swedes myself?!’

‘This is going to be a big shock for you, Sid. A big one.’

‘It is, is it?’

‘It is.’

‘What then?’

‘Lionel was found on the beach…’

‘Yeah?’

‘On the beach – bound up.’

‘Bound up?’

‘And not only that – executed.’

‘Executed?’

‘Yeah. A bullet through his forehead at point blank range.’

Sid slumped against the car. ‘This can’t be true! He never did anyone any harm…ever!’

‘I think we better be going now,’ said Vince as he put his arm around Sid and led him back to the car in silence.

Harry the Chauffeur turned off Totteridge Lane and through the automatic gates (with heraldic lions on each pillar high above the security fencing) and pulled to a near-silent halt at the front of Sidiam, Sid’s twelve-bedroom architect-designedDallas-style house, the name of which came from a partial conjunction of his and his wife’s names (behind Sid’s back the lads always referred to the house as Miridney).

Vince helped Sid out the car. Miriam wasn’t at home to offer her comfort as she’d gone to some designer dress evening in Hendon, but the barely English-speaking Filipino couple were there with the roast beef, Sid’s favourite dish when he wasn’t in mourning, when he wasn’t grieving, when he wasn’t in a right two-and-eight.

Sid grabbed a half-bottle of brandy and knocked it back in half-a-dozen swigs and then he fell on the bed and passed out.

Vince checked out the house and the grounds and then went to the spare bedroom at the top of the stairs. If anything were to happen tonight he’d be the first to know.

But nothing did.

Lionel’s execution was enough.

The next morning, at around eleven o’clock, Sid slouched into the breakfast room in his silk dressing gown and Moroccan slippers. Vince looked up from the Sun and his big fry-up and said, ‘How you feeling, guv?’

Sid sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette and said, ‘All shook up, I am.’

‘Yeah, understandable.’

‘Mrs B, sir, gone to work-out club,’ said Maria the Filipino housekeeper.

‘Yeah,’ said Sid in reply, ‘and you got a strawberry milkshake, Maria?’

‘Si, sir,’ she replied.

‘There’s a bit here in the Sun,’ says Vince, pushing the tabloid across the large circular table.

Sid glances at it and says, ‘I can’t concentrate. What’s it say?’

‘No more than we know already. Says Lionel was well respected and that.’

‘Any mention of me?’

‘Yeah, they just say you’re his brother, that you’re a prominent London businessman.’

‘That all?’

‘Yeah. Nothing else.’

‘Who we got in Fleet Street who’d know what the Old Bill down there is up to?’

‘Wallace Slade’s the guy for this,’ murmurs Vince as he wipes the plate with a slice of white bread.

‘Yeah, good old Wally. He owes us, don’t he?’

‘Sure does.’

‘I want him at the club this evening. And I want him with information.’

‘Information. Got you, guv. And there’s somebody else I can try too.’

‘Good.’

Vince pushed open the door of the Grape Tree wine bar and through the smoke saw good old Wally at the bar regaling a couple of young reporters with, no doubt, half-invented stories about his great days of crime reporting chasing after the Messinas or the Krays or the Richardsons or whoever. That’s all he ever rabbited on about.

‘Hello, Wally,’ says Vince.

‘Vincent, dear boy. What a pleasant surprise to see you here. You must try this Haut-Brion. You simply must!’

Vince whispers in his ear, ‘No time right now, Wally. I want a word with you outside.’

‘Outside?’

‘Right. And now, if you please.’

‘Gentlemen, you must excuse me for a moment. Duty calls!’

Vince hated Wally’s upper-class accent almost as much as he hated Wally’s bow-ties and decorative waistcoats. In fact he hated Wally – period. How this wanker could ever end up being a chief crime correspondent was beyond Vince’s ken. Indeed, it was beyond most people’s ken.

Once outside Wally says, ‘A bit of a rude interruption, old man. Know what I mean? Just not on coming in like that. Not on at all.’

Vince ignored Wally’s remark and asked him if he had heard about Sid’s brother. He had. Did he know anything more? No, he didn’t.

‘Well, in that case, Wal, you’re gonna find out more, aren’t you? And Sid wants you around the club at six. OK?’

‘Steady on, old man. I’m at a crime correspondents’ dinner tonight.’

‘Not any more you’re not. You are at the club.’

‘This happened down in Kent, in Margate. It’s not the Met down there. I’ve got no contacts.’

‘You better start developing them then, eh?’

‘I can’t just pick up the phone and —’

‘Do what you have to do. Sid wants information and he wants it tonight. You understand?’

‘I hardly think….’

Wally’s voice trailed off as Vince stepped out on to the road and hailed a cab.

The cab pulled up opposite the main entrance to New Scotland Yard. Vince looked out the window and across. A tall, distinguished figure in a white raincoat emerged from the main entrance, glanced in Vince’s direction, and hurriedly walked across the road to the cab. Vince opened the door for him. This was Chief-Superintendent Lucksford.

The Chief-Super said, ‘This is a bit out of order. Calling me up like this.’

‘Needs must…when the devil drives,’ says Vince in reply and then, leaning forward to the cabby, ‘Take us round the block.’

The cabby waves an assent as Vince slides the window behind him shut.

‘I take it this is about Sid’s brother?’ says Lucksford.

‘Hole in one. What you heard?’

‘Only what I’ve read in the papers. Nothing more.’

‘Sid wants the full story. He wants to know what’s going on. He wants all the detail, and now.’

‘They’re Kent, not the Met. They’re a different breed of men downthere.’

Down there. Everybody talks about Margate being downthere. Christ, Vince thought to himself, Margate’s only sixty-odd miles out of London on the coast. They all talk about it like it’s another country.

‘What can I tell you, Chief-Super? Sid wants the inside track and he wants it tonight. Try not to disappoint him.’

Lucksford sighed.

Vince smiled at him and said, ‘Sid’s been a good mate to you, Brian. Hasn’t he? He don’t often ask you for a favour, eh?’

‘I’ll try not to let him down,’ replied the Chief-Super.

After the Chief-Super was dropped off at a discreet distance from his offices the cabby headed to Sid’s casino off Curzon Street. Vince was sitting in the back of the cab a worried man. Lionel’s murder – correction, Lionel’s execution – was a bit too much. This really couldn’t be a case of mistaken identity, not down there. Not down there…in Margate of all places. That half-asleep, dead-and-alive, cheap seaside resort. No. Punch-ups between drunks at closing time and the odd slashing between spotty youths fighting over the favours of some blonde-from-a-bottle Sharon were the limit of it. Nobody was trussed up and shot in the head down there. Nobody. Ever.

But Lionel was.

He certainly fucking was.

Could Lionel have been involved in something we didn’t know about? No. No way. Vince had known Lionel as long as he had known Sid, over twenty years. There were no dark secrets in Lionel’s life. The guy was as you saw him.

Wasn’t he?

Lionel ran the newsagent’s after his mother died, and what else? Not much else at all. Kept to himself and went bowling sometimes with the geriatric set. The highlight of his week was probably reading the obits in the JewishChronicle. That was it. A quiet, introspective guy. End of story.

Vince had an uncomfortable feeling that this was merely the start of —

No, it couldn’t be….

He hoped he was wrong.

Of course he was.

Crazy even thinking that.

The accountants and lawyers gathered up their papers and shuffled out of the boardroom some three floors above Sid’s Velvet Casino and Sporting Club.

Sid lit a cheroot and walked over to the window. He pressed his face against the glass of a pane on the far right and squinted down past Curzon Street. ‘If you stand here like this you can just make out Hyde Park.’

‘Fancy that,’ replies Vince.

‘Yeah.’

Sid returned to the boardroom table and poured himself another coffee from the silver pot. ‘You want some, Vince?’

‘I got some. Thanks.’

‘I’ll tell you – whatever else they might say about this operation any place I run does bloody good coffee. None of that catering shit.’

‘The best,’ observes Vince, ‘and how did the meeting go?’

‘Pretty good. The Bournemouth casino is on time and the take-over of the amusement park in Great Yarmouth seems certain. But I told them, the massed ranks of the Royal Institute of Grey Suits, that we’ve got to set up some new laundering schemes. The money from the skims and the odd licensed operation and so on is mounting up faster than we can deal with it. It’s getting embarrassing.’

Vince could tell by the nineteen-to-the-dozen way Sid was talking that he was doing everything to stop himself thinking about Lionel. This was Sid’s way whenever some tragedy struck – keep busy, immerse yourself in work, don’t stop talking. It was the same when his mother died. The same when Miriam was involved in the car crash and the surgeons didn’t know whether she would live or die. The same when Lionel went in for that operation last year….

Yeah, it was the same.

But facts have to be faced.

‘Wally boy’s downstairs,’ volunteered Vince.

‘Let’s have him up then,’ Sid said brusquely.

Vince reached over to the phone and dialled a couple of numbers and said OK to whoever answered it.

‘Leo’ll be up with him in a jiff.’

Sid puffed on his cheroot and said, ‘We’re going to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to do it fast. You understand?’

‘We’ll get it sorted,’ said Vince, but there was little confidence in his voice.

Sid walked over to the window and again peered up and down the street while Vince finished his coffee. There was an eerie quietness up here above the street. Right bang in the centre of London, but not a sound. It was an eerier silence, Vince thought, because things are not as they should be. Something was badly wrong, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

The doors opened and Wally marches in puffing on a cigar. Vince could smell the liquor on him at this distance. Leo indicated to Wally to sit down at the head of the table and then closed the double doors.

‘My deepest sympathies to you at this time,’ gushes Wally as he takes a seat. Sid turns from the window and nods at Wally and then looks at Vince. Vince takes his cue and says, ‘Right, Wally, old boy. What you got?’

‘Not an awful lot, old man. Frightfully difficult getting information from that quarter, you know.’

Sid has turned his back on the room. He’s looking out the window again, probably keeping an eye on Hyde Park, but he’s still listening.

Vince taps his fingers on the table and says quietly, patiently, ‘We’re all listening.’

‘Your late brother was found on the beach at Margate yesterday morning, about 7 a.m., by two unemployed seasonal workers who were going beach-combing or something. They alerted the police.’

‘And?’ says Sid. Not allowing Wally to take a breath.

‘And…uh…they phoned the police right away. The police were there within minutes and they made an ID. Your brother had his wallet on him with a driving licence and some cash-and-carry card with a photograph. The ID was also confirmed by a couple of constables who knew him and a Mrs Spooner who worked for him in the shop. He’d been shot in the forehead at virtually point blank range with a .45 pistol. He had about £300 in fifties and twenties on him. They hadn’t taken that.’

Sid turned to Vince and said, ‘It wasn’t a robbery then.’

Vince nodded his head in agreement and thought, did we ever think it was?

Sid’s getting impatient: ‘What else?’

Wally drains the last drops of brandy from his hip flask and wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Mrs Spooner was the last person to see him alive, it appears. She left the shop at about 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday evening. He locked up and, presumably, went upstairs to the flat. Nobody saw anything – at the shop, at the beach, anywhere. Least nobody’s come forward yet.’

Vince wanted to know what, if anything, the police had discovered at the shop or in the flat? And had there been any sign of a struggle or what?

‘They went through the shop and the flat with a fine-tooth comb. Didn’t find anything. Nothing. No signs of forced entry, nothing taken, no evidence of a struggle. Not a dickie-bird, old chap.’

‘They got anything on where he was or what he was doing after the shop closed and before he was found in the morning?’ asked Vince.

‘Not yet. They’re still checking it all out,’ replied Wally.

Sid asked if they had any hunches, any leads?

‘None that I’m aware of. It’s completely baffling them down there. Total puzzlement,’ Wally confessed.

‘Mmmmh,’ Vince sighed.

Sid turned again and thanked Wally. ‘Leo here is going to give you some chips to play with downstairs, but behave yourself. Understand?’

Wally said in that greasy upper-class accent of his, ‘I always do when I’m on your premises, Sid!’

‘And make sure you do,’ said Sid. ‘And I want you to keep a strong watching brief on this. Anything you hear – anything at all – I want you giving us a bell right away. Got that?’

‘Certainly, I will,’ said Wally as Leo eased him through the doors and out the room.

When the doors had closed and the footsteps fallen away Sid whispered, ‘Hear that, a .45 in the head?’

‘We’re dealing with someone or something that means business,’ cautioned Vince.

‘This is going to turn out to be some bad case of mistaken identity,’ said Sid who was now shaking and looked as white as the stuff that used to arrive from South America in Jiffy bags addressed to Maria Aitken.

Mistaken identity, eh?

Vince wasn’t so sure.

‘So what you got, Brian?’ asked Sid as Lucksford sat down in one of the leather armchairs in the downstairs office.

‘A bit of a thirst right now to tell you the truth,’ replied the Chief-Super.

‘Glass of Laphroaig?’ asked Vince.

‘That would do nicely, Vince,’ said Lucksford as he helped himself to one of Sid’s cheroots from the cabinet on the desk.

Sid lit a cheroot and put his feet up on the desk. ‘We had old Wally here earlier. Got a bit of background from him, but not much. Not much at all really. What do you know?’

‘I probably can’t add much to what he said. It’s early days yet in the investigation. They’re still walking around in circles down there scratching their arses and hoping they’ll stumble across something – thank you, Vince – so we’ll have to wait and see what comes up, Sid.’

Sid wanted to know if they had made a connection with him yet?

Lucksford sipped the Scotch and thought for a moment. ‘No, they haven’t and there’s no reason why they should. They know you’re his brother, but they don’t know who you are…and there’s no reason why they should.’

‘What about the CRO?’ asked Vince.

‘There’s nothing in Criminal Records on you, Sid, apart from a couple of incidents of adolescent thievery. Nothing else.’

Sid wanted to know about the Organised Crime records.

‘There’s just the unsubstantiated stuff and the stuff from the odd grass that the collators have put together over the years, but the file is pretty moribund. Anyway, if the Margate lads had wanted to see the file I’d know about it. The application would go through my office.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Sid mumbled.

Vince was curious about the investigation. ‘They got any theories yet? Any hunches?’

‘As I said,’ confided Lucksford, ‘it’s early days. They thought to begin with it might be robbery.’

Sid interrupted the Chief-Super, ‘They didn’t take the cash he had on him.’

‘I know,’ continued Lucksford, ‘but it could have been. They might have been disturbed. Unlikely, but you don’t know what went on. They’ve also considered it being a case of mistaken identity, but I think we can rule that out.’

‘Why can we rule that out?’ demanded Sid.

Lucksford looked at Vince and then back at Sid and said, ‘Because, Sid, whoever did this was a professional, and those guys by and large make sure they get the right person. That’s what they’re paid to do. They can’t afford to go around making mistakes.’

‘Brian’s got a point there, Sid,’ added Vince.

Sid swung his feet off the walnut desk and paced up and down chomping on his cheroot, then he turned to Lucksford and said, ‘You’re telling me my brother was taken out by a professional hit man?’

‘I’m not saying he was taken out by a professional hit man, I’m just saying whoever did it was someone who is used to this kind of work, someone with a hardened criminal background, that’s all. It’s obvious.’

Sid was digesting this when Vince asked if there were any other theories?

‘They’ve got to keep an open mind. Another possible motive is revenge.’

‘Revenge for what?’ shouted Sid.

‘They don’t know. They’re just keeping their options open,’ said Lucksford.

Sid waved his cheroot and said quietly, ‘Lionel never did anything wrong, never did anything that would result in this!’

‘I know, but the Old Bill down there don’t know that, do they?’

‘That’s true, Sid,’ added Vince.

‘We’ve just got to wait and see what happens with the investigation,’ said Lucksford as he drained the cut-glass tumbler of the Islay malt. ‘Just got to wait and see. There’s nothing else we can do.’

Vince’s Jaguar kept well within the speed limit as it proceeded up through Camden Town in the early hours of the morning. Somewhere far off there was a roll of thunder and then a flash of lightning.

‘It’s gonna rain,’ said Sid who was sitting in the passenger seat.

‘A hard rain’s gonna fall,’ noted Vince.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. It’s from a song, isn’t it?’

‘No song I know,’ stated Sid as he heaved the butt of his cheroot out the window.

Vince ignored the remark and said, ‘We’ll have you home before it starts pouring down, I hope.’

‘Look, Vince, how about you staying up at the house tonight…perhaps a couple of days? I can rest a bit easier knowing you’re about, you know?’

‘Sure. Sid. If that’s what you want.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I want.’

Sid and Vince enter the breakfast room at Sidiam and Sid tells Vince he’s going to make them both the best nightcap he knows – Tia Maria in decaff coffee. ‘You’ll sleep like a judge.’

‘Sounds OK by me.’

Vince presses the remote TV controller and channel hops the TV stations while Sid prepares the coffees.

‘Who,’ says Sid as he puts the two cups down on the table, ‘have we got to fear? Just supposing this was a revenge killing or whatever aimedatme? Who?’

‘Who we got to fear?’ muses Vince as he sips the nightcap. ‘Well, we’ve got, ultimately, the police, the judiciary, HM Customs, the VAT man, the Establishment, all the right-thinking citizens.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t go in for revenge killings, do they?’

‘Let’s hope they don’t.’

‘So who does that leave?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out. All our enemies are either dead, compromised, or on our side now. I can’t think of anyone who would pull this kind of stunt.’

‘What about the Walker boys over in West London?’

‘They’re a vicious lot, but not stupid. They wouldn’t do anything to rock the boat. They do their stuff and we do ours, you know?’

‘Perhaps they’re getting greedy? Think they can take over the whole show, know what I mean?’

‘No way,’ comforted Vince, ‘they’ve got too much to lose.’

‘So who’ve we got then?’

‘There’s nobody I can think of, Sid. The only person I’d put in the frame would be Simon Gould, but he’s no longer with us.’

‘No, he’s keeping the crabs and mussels company down Clacton way, or what’s left of him is. We took care of that one, didn’t we? Eh? We took care of him!’

‘Had to. A real threat to the fabric.’

‘A right upper-class prick.’

‘It could be,’ says Vince as he finishes the coffee, ‘that this is 100 per cent absolutely nothing to do with you. We still don’t know.’

Vince didn’t really believe that and neither did Sid.

Sid lay awake in bed as the storm broke and the rain cascaded down the windows. Who was out there who would do this to him? Who? Things had been quiet since…since Simon Gould – Sid could scarcely bring himself to say his name even now – since Simon Gould was sorted some ten years ago. He was a real threat for a couple of days, but Sid and the firm soon put paid to him and his mates. All of them. Put paid to them in spades.

Who else? Who else was a threat?

Peter Bell. He tried it on, didn’t he? Didn’t know what hit him, he didn’t. Standing outside the Star Tavern in Belgravia carrying on and boasting and telling all those assholes that Sid was washed up? Standing there plotting his next move and then they pulled up and wound the windows down on the limo and pumped him full of more lead than the old shot tower on the South Bank had ever seen. That was a day to remember for Sid.

Tony Campisini. Now there was a little toe-rag of the first order, thought Sid. Tried to stir up some trouble with the South London lot and then play us off against each other and act as a double agent and then step in when it was all over! Huh! Phil wired up his Aston Martin over in Highbury and when Campisini turned on the ignition up it went. And him too, in a million pieces! Nothing of him left to bury. Somewhere Sid still had the video Phil shot of the explosion. Perhaps he’d dig it out and play it again? That would cheer him up.

Dennis the Dealer. There’s another one. All those favours Sid did him and how did he repay him, eh? Got too greedy. Was going to murder Sid with the help of those two Italian geezers. Yes, murder Sid. Then take over the operation. Huh! Cyril gives the firm the word it’s going to happen and Sid organises some dawn raids and then they’ve nabbed the three of them and before they know what’s going on they’re being fed into the furnace at a smelting works down Stratford way.

But that Simon Gould….

Sid was grooming him to be his number two, wasn’t he? Treated him like a son. Had no secrets from him. Well, hardly any. He was going to run the operation so Sid could take early retirement – not that he’d ever really retire – and there was nothing Sid wouldn’t do for him….

Turns out he was schmoozing the Gambiatti brothers from New Jersey behind Sid’s back. Telling them Sid was past it and didn’t have long to go and that he didn’t command any loyalty or respect in London any more. And they almost believed him. Then he kidnaps Eric the Accountant and tortures him with a blow-torch for information on the hidden bank accounts and then he murders Joey and Del and tells me they’ve left the country and that’s just for starters. He’s stockpiling guns next and planning the coup and there he was sitting next to Sid each day and Sid doesn’t suspect anything and Sid is wondering why he doesn’t get calls back from New Jersey any more and why it looks like the American muscle and wherewithal ain’t supporting him any more? And then, at the last fucking minute, the very last fucking minute before it all goes up, Phil walks in with this list of telephone numbers Simon has been dialling from his flat in Hyde Park Square and Sid sees he’s been calling New Jersey night and day, talking to the Gambiatti brothers.

Phil said he has a nose for real villainy and he didn’t think it was all kosher with our Simon but he needed proof before he said anything so he gets this list of numbers from some contact he’s got in the telephone company and hands it over to Sid. At the last fucking minute!