The next day we stayed in bed until midday, and when we finally did rise, Leah made me take her back to the shop where we'd met. She wanted a picnic, so we bought salami, olives, stuffed peppers, ciabatta bread, Taleggio cheese and, of course, parma ham, and took it with us to Hampstead Heath, where we sat and ate it in the sunshine, washed down with a bottle of Chianti, before finally she said it was time to head back to her place in Richmond.
'I need to freshen up before tomorrow and get an early night,' she told me.
'Can I see you again?' I asked, and I knew that if she said no, I'd be heartbroken.
But she didn't. Of course she didn't.
If she had, then she'd still be alive.
Instead, she leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips. 'I'd love to.'
I drove her back to Richmond, and almost as soon as she'd said goodbye and walked away I felt that hollow emptiness all new lovers experience when they're forced to part, even if
it's only temporarily. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long for our next meeting. I called her the next morning from the BMW showroom I own, and we arranged to go out that evening.
And that was the beginning of a relationship that for the past three weeks had been growing progressively more serious. We might have lived a fair distance apart in travelling time, but we saw each other at least every other night, and in the last few days I'd been thinking that we were going places. I was in love. I wanted her to move in with me. I hadn't said as much - I was going to leave it another couple of weeks because I didn't want to scare her away - but I genuinely wanted to commit.
The last time I remember seeing Leah was early Wednesday morning when she left my house to go back to her family in Richmond, having arranged to meet friends that night. But at some point yesterday we must have seen each other, with fatal consequences. Where did we go? What did we do? And how the hell did we end up out here in the middle of the country, at the slaughterhouse where she met her bloody end?
The address I've been given is in a part of east London that has so far resisted the steady process of gentrification that's been a feature of so much of the East End since the late 1980s. The main drag is tired and litter-strewn with a windswept, forgotten feel about it. Running along both sides are cheap takeaways with bags of uncollected rubbish outside; discount shops offering all kinds of useless paraphernalia for under a pound; and, most common of all, empty, boarded-up units, blackened by smoke or covered in graffiti and fly posters. At one intersection there is even a roofless, jagged shell of a building that looks like it might have been bombed back in World War Two and is still
waiting for its turn to be repaired. The house I want is on a quiet residential road, lined with mature beech trees. It must have been quite a grand road once, but its tired-looking Georgian townhouses have long ago fallen into disrepair, their white paint now, for the most part, a dirty, stained grey.
I drive past number 33 - not much different from the others, with an ancient Ford Sierra taking up the tiny carport - and keep on going, watching for any suspicious activity, anything that may suggest that this is some sort of trap.
When you've been a soldier exposed to guerrilla warfare, especially the hate-filled maelstrom of Northern Ireland, you learn to be paranoid. You develop antennae that can spot trouble in a way ordinary civilians can't. They're twitching now, telling me that the street's too quiet, almost dead. I don't like it. The Glock feels comforting against the small of my back, as does the Kevlar vest I picked up from home on the way here. I bought it a year ago after another car dealer I know vaguely in Tottenham was shot in the leg while trying to stop a masked gang stealing his two prize Mercedes. I'd intended to wear it whenever I
was working late and on my own, but in the end it was never going to be practical, and even though I shelled out three hundred quid on it, it's been gathering dust ever since. Until now, that is.
I continue driving, keeping my eye on the rear-view mirror and the cars parked on either side of the road to see if they contain anyone who may be noting my presence. But there's nothing.
I find a parking spot in one of the adjoining roads several hundred yards away, between a battered old combi van and a skip that is overflowing with household junk, including, bizarrely, a huge African woodcarving of a long, narrow face that has a big crack running through it. The face seems to be giving me the evil eye, and I feel like telling him not to bother. The evil eye's been placed on me already.
It's just short of 12.15, and it's strange, but the fact that I'm on the move and at least temporarily in control of events again has helped to dissipate the grief and shock that almost incapacitated me earlier. I try to push thoughts of Leah from my mind. There'll be time to think of her later, when I'm alone and through this. But
for the moment I need to concentrate on survival.
There's a navy blue New York Yankees baseball cap on the seat next to me - something else I picked up from home - and I put it on now. There are bound to be council-run CCTV cameras monitoring this area, and I don't much want them getting a good look at me. I pull the brim low over my face and get out of the car. The space is metered so I put a couple of quid in, knowing that the last thing I need is to return to the car and find it clamped or, worse still, towed away. Once again, I wonder what it is I'm collecting. The most obvious thing would be drugs. I don't like to generalize too much, but it would fit with the area. It's going to have to be some truly high-grade gear though, given how much effort has been made, including committing a murder, simply to ensure that I come here to pick it up. And that's what makes me think it may be something else, something hugely valuable but also dangerous. Because whoever wants this case won't risk coming here himself. It also bolsters my earlier suspicion that I know the person or people I'm doing this for: they would know that, with my training and
experience only a little out of date, I have a better chance than most of emerging in one piece from a difficult situation.
As I walk back the way I've come, I pass a grimy-looking takeaway called Ace Fried Chicken. At least I assume it's Ace: the 'c' is missing on the garish orange sign, as is the 'h' in the Chicken. A gang of half a dozen teenagers, all wearing the delinquent's uniform of pulled-up hoodie and big trainers, congregate on the pavement outside. The day is hot and bright, the temperature probably close to eighty already, but these guys are protecting their IDs, which means they're probably up to no good. A couple of them are on mountain bikes, and they are laughing and fooling about as they devour their greasy fare. I catch the eye of one of them - probably no more than sixteen, but big for his age - and he appraises me from the shadows beneath the hood, a predator sizing up potential prey. I meet his gaze with blank disinterest and give it a long second before turning away, at the same time slowing my pace a little so he knows I'm not intimidated. Body language tells the people watching you everything. Keep your poise and your movements assured, and just the
right side of casual, and people will know you're not scared and will, almost without exception, leave you alone. This guy and his friends are no different. They ignore me, going back to their food and banter. There are plenty of easier victims out there.
I stop on the street outside number 33. All the windows are closed, and it looks deserted. As I approach the door, the honk of a car horn startles me. I turn round and see a short, wizened-looking white guy in the driver's seat of the ancient Sierra. He beckons me over with a bony arm.
I walk up and crouch down by the open car window.
'Who are you?' he asks in a voice that somehow manages to be high-pitched and gravelly at the same time, as if it belongs to a chain-smoking twelve-year-old. To add to the mix, the accent is pure 'cor blimey' cockney, making the end result a very strange sound.
'I'm Bone,' I answer, remembering that this is what I've been instructed to call myself. 'I'm here to pick up a briefcase.'
He looks me up and down carefully yet dispassionately through pale, bloodshot eyes. I
stare back at him, thinking he is one of the strangest-looking guys I've seen for a while. His face, partially obscured by long, lank, mousey hair that exposes blotches of pink scalp, is thin and deeply lined, yet somehow the end result gives the impression of agelessness. This guy could be anything between forty and sixty, although nothing about him looks well kept. He is dressed in a cheap brown suit that smells of mothballs, underneath which is a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt that was once black but has now turned the same off-grey pallor as his skin.
'You've come to the wrong place,' he tells me.
I notice then that he isn't sweating, even though a steady wave of cloying heat is emanating from the interior of the car.
'Are you going to tell me where the right one is, then?'
His eyes dart down. 'What's in the case?'
'Have you got the one I'm here to collect?' I ask him.
His face contorts into an unpleasant smile, revealing a plaque-stained jumble of teeth that come straight out of the 'before' posters on a dentist's wall. 'Is it the money?'
'Have you got the case I'm here to collect or not?'
He shakes his head ever so slowly. 'No,' he says at last, 'someone else has. I'll take you to him.'
I step out of the way as he opens the door and slowly climbs out.
'You got a name?' I ask him.
'You can call me Sellman,' he says, turning and beckoning for me to follow him.
At full height, he stands no more than five five, and when he starts walking I see that his right foot drags. All in all, he's not the finest figure of a man you're ever likely to see, but I spot the telltale bulge in the back of his suit that tells me he's armed, and I guess he's the kind of guy who enjoys being underestimated.
We walk up the street in silence while his eyes move back and forth, taking in everything. It is obvious that he trusts me as much as I trust him. Two Asian kids in Islamic clothes and prayer caps are coming down the pavement in our direction. They talk animatedly and ignore us as they pass, but Sellman's eyes still drift back to them, just to make sure they are nothing more than bona fide passers-by. 'You can't be too
careful,' he says, more to himself than me. I don't bother to reply.
After we've gone about fifty yards, we stop at a corner house that's in an even greater state of disrepair than the others. The paintwork is peeling away, and the ancient windows are hanging loose in their wooden frames. A dusty skip filled with household junk and bags of foul-smelling rubbish sits in the middle of the carport, while the area around it is unkempt and overgrown with weeds and stinging nettles.
'Here we are,' says Sellman, pulling a phone from his pocket and motioning me towards the house's decrepit front door. I watch as he speed-dials a number and starts speaking into the phone. He tells whoever is on the other end that we've arrived and that I've come alone, but as the door buzzes and he pushes it open, ushering me through, he checks the street one last time.
'This way,' he says, leading me through a dingy hallway with a huge burn mark splashed against one wall, and up two flights of uneven, carpetless stairs.
'Nice place you've got here,' I say as my boot catches a nail sticking out of the bare wood.
'It does the job we need it for,' he answers in that strange high-pitched voice of his.
The building has been split into separate apartments, both of which appear to be empty. At the top of the stairs, a narrow walkway leads to a single door. Sellman steps up to it, knocks on it three times, pauses, then knocks three more times. A second later comes the sound of two locks being released and the door slowly opens about six inches. An immense shaven head belonging to what appears to be a similarly immense body glowers at me over Sellman's shoulder from behind a thick metal chain, then the chain is released and the door opens just far enough for us to walk in.
Sellman steps to one side and I find myself in a large, cluttered living room. The blinds are pulled down on all the windows, and the only light is provided by a TV in the corner which is showing one of those daytime property programmes with the volume turned down so low it's almost mute. Three desk fans whirr away at different points round the room, but they do little to banish the stuffiness.
To my right stands the shaven-headed man who's just let us in. He must be six feet five and
isn't far off being of similar width. He's dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt and is carrying a gun in a shoulder holster, American cop-style. He glares at me. I ignore him.
To my immediate left stands Sellman, and then beyond him, in front of a partially open door that leads through to the rest of the apartment, is a third man. Intimidating without being particularly big, he watches me with a professional malevolence. He has shoulder-length brown hair, cut in a style I remember being popular with soccer hooligans circa 1985, and unpopular ever since then with pretty much anyone who cares about fashion, and is wearing a baggy purple suit and white shirt unbuttoned at least two buttons too far. A thick gold chain round his neck and thick tufts of chest hair poking out of the gap in the shirt top off his retro appearance, making him look like a gangster straight off the set of
Miami Vice
.
There's a fourth man at the end of the room. He's sitting behind a table facing the door, next to one of the fans, his face a silhouette in the near darkness. Straight off, I can tell that he's the boss, and he confirms this by snapping an
order for Sellman and his shaven-headed colleague to search me.