Chapter Two
Christmas was only a couple of hours away and, to mark the holiday, Seven had been decked in blue and white. Projectors in the ceiling made it look as if snowflakes were falling around the dancers, who were writhing together through the clouds of dry ice fog enveloping the floor.
The floor-to-ceiling windows of the manager’s office made up the wall overlooking the dancefloor. However, the view was lost on Jake. Are you down there?
The throngs were pressed so tight together, it was virtually impossible to tell one person from the next, but he could imagine her down there, writhing and gyrating to the beat against a faceless male, hot and eager…
His fingers twitched at the thought and he had to force down the impulse to reach for the sidearm hidden beneath his leather ? jacket. Though the P226 was his weapon of choice, the lighter, smaller, standard-issue Glock 17 was the more practical choice when it came to these messenger-boy jobs. Not only was it lighter and more easily concealed under a jacket, it's all-polymer design meant it was less likely to set off the basic security systems and metal detectors found in civilian recreational areas.
Get a grip, man. It was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. A slip of a girl, barely in her twenties. What had he expected? Marriage and happily ever after? Those were nothing but fantasies when you joined the Squad. Hell, if she hadn’t broken it off, he soon would have. For her sake, if not for his. She deserved better.
“Well, well, well…”
Shit! Jake had his hand in his jacket, thumb flipping the catch of the shoulder holster strap and his palm fastening round the textured grip of the Glock in the moment it took his head to whip back.
He relaxed slightly when he saw who was standing in the office’s door.
“When Mr Margrave said he was sending someone, I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be you, of all people, Jake Talbert.”
“I wasn’t his first choice,” Jake agreed, letting his hand fall to his side. At five feet six and shaped like a propped-up bag of suet in a black, handmade, three-piece suit, with a receding mop of hair more grey than black that curled at the sides and a pudgy face, Henry Yate was not what anyone would consider threatening. “But your message said it was urgent, and it’s Christmas Eve. The rest of the Flying Squad have plans, so here I am.”
Yate moved around the desk to sit back in the padded swivel chair with legs crossed and hands steepled in his lap. The pose was supposed to appear relaxed but only made his hands look like a bustle of fat little sausages. “I heard you weren’t about much these days. Word is, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for you.”
“They’ve had their moments.”
“I’ll say. Intimidating witnesses. Assaulting suspects. Not to mention beating that poor bugger half to death in a billiards hall. And in front of witnesses.” Pearly whites glinted as he fixed Jake with a smile that would likely curdle milk. “I heard you’re out of control. Something about a bird blowing you out, giving you the Dear John routine. So now you’re under investigation, chained to a desk. You know, in these times of civil unrest, it’s a real comfort to know those brave boys in blue take the time to remember their duty and professional integrity. If only all law enforcement took such time to protect us law-abiding citizens from the filth that walks our streets.”
“And here I thought you drove everywhere nowadays?”
Yate’s smile dropped. “Touché.”
“Well, I wouldn’t let my unpredictability and violent tendencies bother you,” Jake said with forced nonchalance as he walked around the desk to sit in the chair opposite the older man. These games were all part of the routine. “I had a bad break. I needed to vent, and that wanker in the hall decided to be a smart arse. So, we played a game of doctor.” He shrugged, leaning back and folding his arms. “He lost.”
“Yes, those clips on YouTube made that obvious. Shame they didn’t also show the firearm he allegedly had concealed on his person.”
“You know, the enquiry’s psychologist remarked on that too, but it’s hard to argue with evidence found on the scene.”
“Unless it’s a plant.”
There was an adequate response to that, but Jake had to force himself not to bite. Yate was little more than a two-bit snitch, a common rogue with several dodgy businesses who made it his business to have all twenty little sausage digits in every dirty, bent, and stolen pie in London, and an ear to the ground in all the right and wrong places. He was the owner and manager of Seven, but it was a smokescreen, a bit of cloak and dagger, something to look good on the self-assessment. Yate’s true business was information, and he didn’t discriminate. It was no secret he sold to both the villains and the law of London, but, because he never went too far and always threw both sides a bone, he was untouchable.
And the powers-that-be had decreed Jake must play this stupid fat fucker’s little games.
Yate went on. “Of course, your recent recommendation for the Saint George might have had something to do with that.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. Now, just how did you learn about that, you slimy bastard?
“D-notices aren’t what they used to be.” Yate grinned, apparently reading his thoughts. “Out of curiosity, you killed how many jihadists? Ten?”
“Six,” Jake snarled.
“Six,” Yate parroted, his smile broad and knowing. “Quite a bit of luck you had there. And at such an opportune time. Extraordinary. I bet that put those CID boys out of joint. All that effort they went through to conceal the Browning. They finally have your balls in a vice, then you go and pull a stunt like that and the Chief Constable himself tells them to put it-”
“Yate!” Though he did not raise his voice above a whisper, Jake’s tone was sharper than a razor. “I have better things to do than listen to you crow all night. Now, are you going to tell me what’s so important that I had to come over here on Christmas Eve, or do I have to drag you down to lockup for the night for wasting my time?”
Yate smiled, knowing he’d won this round. “Terry’s planning a score.”
“The People’s King? You do surprise me,” Jake said in a tone dripping with sarcasm. “You’ll have to do better than that. He’s legit, remember?”
“Yes, but all jobs still require his seal of approval. This is still his town,” Yate pointed out. “There isn’t a major heist goin’ down in the borough that hasn’t received his nod of approval.”
“That may be, but that amounts to conspiracy, at best, and it’s bloody hard to get a conspiracy conviction without rock-solid evidence.” Jake eased back into the chair. “Everyone knows Terry’s in it up to his neck. Half the MET is working to drag him down off his podium and the other half is in his pocket. I know that whenever I arrive on the scene, Terry has his fingers in it, then flaunts his immunity by building a new wing to the children’s hospital on the proceeds. But so long as every villain I drag in keeps swearing he’s the mastermind, I can’t touch him. And no one is going to stand up in the Old Bailey, point to Terry Daley, and go ‘that’s him, your honour. That’s the geeza’. Nobody’s that stupid. Not after what happened to Stanton’s kid.”
“After his fall he was drawn to the block, and there his bowels withdrawn, and he was divided into four parts,” Yate recited. “Such a terrible way to die. And so young. They say Terrance himself gave Mad Dog the order.” Suddenly, Yate’s small, watery rat-like eyes were fixed on Jake. Then, his smile suddenly mocking, he went on. “To prove his loyalty, he butchered his own son before the boy could give evidence against Daley. Then murdered his wife for protecting him. Now he’s on the run. Tell me, did they ever find his daughter?”
An icy hand settled around Jake’s heart at the mention of the Stanton girl.
He’d heard the stories of Terrance Daley’s playroom. It was an underworld myth. A fabrication. Probably cooked up by Daley himself to add terror to his infamy. Even so, there were some things it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Such a sweet girl,” Yate pressed. “The boy I can almost understand, but to think a father might knowingly hand his own innocent child over to tha-”
“Harry, I’m beginning to lose my rag with you.” Emphasising Yate’s Christian name with deadly purpose, Jake had to force himself to stay calm. “The Flying Squad was formed to tackle commercial armed and unarmed robberies. Not chase leads on escaped convicts playing truant. Mad Dog Jack Stanton is a murderer, a thug, and an extortionist. He demands money with menace and makes bodies disappear. He doesn’t get tilled to the nines and wave water pistols at cashiers’ heads.” He pushed up from the chair, braced his hands on the desk’s leather top and leant forward to look the other man square in the eye. “If you have information on where he might be hiding, I suggest you dial 999. Otherwise, unless you give me something tangible, you’ll be drinking your Christmas dinner through a straw in intensive care.”
There were tricks to a good threat. It was all about the perceived capability of violence. A man with his gun out but shaking like a fairy was just as likely to piss his pants as carry it through and the world could see it. But the smallest gesture, the right look, transformed a man into a monster. And from him, a good threat was deadlier than any muscle-bound gorilla with a shooter.
Deflating like a punctured balloon under the younger man’s cold blue glare, Yate pulled open a desk drawer and pulled out a pocket voice recorder that he placed on the leather top. Easing back into his seat, Jake eyed the device suspiciously before nodding. “Go on…”
Moving so quickly, he almost fell out of his seat. Yate pawed the device like a monkey trying to open a fiddly banana, his fingers thumbing the recorder until he finally managed to find the Play button. Someone had obviously prepared it in advance because no sooner had he depressed the trigger than Terrance Daley’s old, scratchy voice, heavily flavoured by the East End, spoke, caught in the midst of giving some oration that would have given dear old Adolf a turn.
“Shut it off,” Jake said after about twenty minutes. “Is this genuine?”
“Oh yes,” Yate confirmed, taking a long draw on his cigar before placing it on the ashtray and stopping the recording. He had fully regained his composure. “Terrance booked my back room for a little Christmas function for a few colleagues. So, I arranged for a few of these to be placed here and there shortly after he arrived. Very good at that sort of thing, are my girls.”
“Well, that’s very interesting, Harry. I’m very impressed. In fact, I’m just fucking astounded. You got Terry on tape. Talking with a lot of people who may or may not be villains, discussing a heist any criminal in Greater London will probably be discussing tonight, or his plans to move a bookcase, repaint his bathroom, kitchen, or Saint Paul’s bloody fucking cathedral. I mean…” Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is wrong with you? You fucking idiot. How could you be so fuckin’ stupid?”
Yate’s mouth gaped. “I-I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you don’t? Well, let me enlighten you, you tart. It’s shit, Yate. This. Is. Shit!” Jake pronounced the last three words with a deadly emphasis. “There are no names. No times, dates, not even a damn street address. He’s meticulous about avoiding saying anything that can link him to any crime, past or currently in the works. I can’t get a warrant based on this. I couldn’t even get planning permission. Will you wear a wire?”
“Me?” The older man visibly paled, horrified by the suggestion. “Good Lord, no. I’m not… I mean, I couldn’t. Daley would kill me. He’d throw me to his dogs.”
“You’re a lying, cheating pimp, Yate,” Jake growled. “Not only have you not given me probable cause, but by recording this and playing it for me, you’ve made it so that any case I try to start based on it will be thrown out for illegal tapping, invasion of privacy, and God knows what else his high-priced brief can dream up. He might even try to drag you up on charges. You want to take that chance? Because I assure you, Terrance will.”
Yate was suddenly so white he looked like he was about to be sick and his lip was practically trembling. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.” Rising out of his chair, Jake walked around the desk to stand in front of Yate and snatched the recorder from his chubby fingers. “You drag me over here again for this bullshit and I’ll hand this tape over to The People’s King myself.” He turned on his heel to leave.
“What? No… you can’t!”
“Watch me.”
The switch was concealed in the same drawer that Yate had stored the recorder. A panic button that, when triggered, activated the alarm in the office’s concealed side room. It only took a moment for Yate to trigger the switch and another for the door, disguised as a bookcase, to swing open.
They were dressed like twins in matching black suits and came sulking out like well-trained dogs. One going right. The other left. Circling.
The first minder was a monster of a man. An immense six-foot-five brute, more than twenty stone of muscle, with blond hair cropped short and a bushy tash under a nose that was squashed and crooked from numerous breaks.
The second was nearly as tall, but where his companion was all raw power, this one was lean and wiry, broad-chested but long-limbed and narrow-hipped, like a chimpanzee that had learned to walk upright. He had the face of a monkey to match with long dark hair, large round eyes, and a big toothy grin that Jake had the immediate urge to slap off his face.
“Well, look who it is, Pinky and Perky. What's the matter boys, CBeebies give you the axe?” Jake asked, stopping in the very centre of the room as both men came to a pause, one at his front and the other at his back. His mind raced, trying to put a name to a face, but he didn’t recognise either of them. Not from this manor. Now, why would the stupid fat bastard be getting out-of-town muscle?
“Is this fella giving you hassle, Mr Yate?” the monster asked in a deep, near unintelligible drawl that could only have come from the Welsh Valleys.
The other’s grin stretched almost ear to ear, making him look all the more like a primate. “Would you like us to escort him out for you sir?” No doubt there, a fucking Scouser! No wonder he looks like a monkey.
Yate was out of his chair and pointing frantically at Jake. “That… that recorder. It’s mine. I want it. Stop him!”
Yate, you really are a stupid, fat bastard. Jake shot the older man a cold, narrow-eyed look as he twisted, trying to keep both minders in view.
The Welshman stepped forward, hand outstretched. “I’m gonna have to take that from you.”
“This is police business,” Jake growled, twisting to face the bigger man. “You boys scuttle back to your cage before someone gets a slap.”
The Liverpudlian moved closer, cracking his knuckles. “Ha, would you get a load of this tosser. Old Bill? He’s as much Old Bill as me ma’s the Duchess of Cambridge. Oh, and didn’ that sound like hostility to you, Jones?”
“That it did. And we don’t like hostility, do we, Tim?” They both grinned; as if the very thought of a fight made them giddy. “Now, I don’t think you heard me. I’m afraid I must insist, mate. Or I’m going to take it.”
Jake’s gaze darted from Jones to Tim, and then back to the Welshman. Tim and Jones? More like Bill and bleedin’ Ben.
“Well, looks like you’re not giving me much choice…” He held the recorder up for them to see, then out as if about to pass it to Jones, only to pocket it. “Well, come and get it.”
They came at him as one.
Though Tim was the faster, it was Jones who reached Jake first, a titanic fist curling through the air. The punch should have hit him dead in the side of his head, just behind his ear, a blow almost certain to stun, if not knock out. Except, the smaller man side-stepped, so it passed by harmlessly, before sticking his foot out, tripping the big man, then slipping down and under Tim’s attack. That should have left the smaller of the two men open, but he had not devoted himself fully to the attack and his reflexes were good enough to check himself as he went, countering Jake’s riposte by twisting away, keeping his delicate flank out of the line of attack.
Jake didn’t wait. This was the more dangerous of the two, the faster and more controlled. He had to be put down hard and fast. Or he’d let the Welshman take the lead, using the bigger man as a shield whilst he attacked from all around. So, Jake came on hard, his first punch a winding jab to the throat, sending the Liverpudlian reeling. Jake followed with his second attack, a devastating phoenix fist to the solar-plexus that had the slightly bigger man doubling over, opening him up for a coup de grace.
And then it was over.
The punch slid past the ribs and into the liver with such a force that it had Tim crumpling to the floor like a sack of potatoes as Jake, his only means of support, slid away. The monkey grin was gone, replaced by a twisted grimace of agony as colour bled into his face and he writhed on the floor, desperately trying to draw in the breath to scream.
It took all of three moves to put the Liverpudlian down. Three moves. Three blows. Three moments.
Jones was just clambering back to his feet when Jake turned to him. Red-faced, the big Welshman’s eyes moved back and forth between Jake and the writhing heap on the floor. He wanted to attack but had been unnerved by his associate’s quick dispatch. Now his mind was working, weighing the odds.
Jake couldn’t help his grin. At barely seven metres squared, Yate’s office would never have been his first choice to fight such an uncommonly large man. Space and speed were vital when fighting stronger men. Should he trip over a piece of furniture or become entangled with the brute, he was as good as dead. But an unsure or angry foe was far more likely to make mistakes.
“Alright. Come on! Come on sheep shagger! Bah! Bah!” Jake mocked.
That did the trick.
Bellowing with what could have been an instinctive hatred that all Celts retain for their Saxon neighbours, Jones lunged. And Jake let him. Let him come in close. Let him close the gap, then parried the coming blow with a sweep of his arm that deflected Jones’s punch as Jake stepped in with one of his own, straight between the bigger man’s eyes. Bone knuckled bone as the Welshman’s charge drove him onto the blow, crushing the already crumpled cartilage in his nose so that it seemed to explode in crimson, before Jake’s follow-up kick sent him stumbling into the back of a leather sofa.
With a colossal hand pressed to the bloodied mess of his face, Jones glared back at Jake before his eyes darted sideways to an end table, upon which stood, well within arm’s reach, a foot-tall sculpture of the Venus de Milo. He sidestepped, hand outstretched.
“Don’t you bloody dare.” The Glock was in Jake’s hand, sights trained on the pulped ruin that had been the Welshman’s nose.
Jones froze. “Don… Don’t shoot.”
“Then don’t make me. Keep them up, yes, that’s it, above the shoulders.” Jake advanced forward slowly. “Now, Sunshine, I’m afraid this is either about to get very messy or go very, very…” The Paras could teach a man just about everything there was to know about blood and pain, but nothing ever really beat the classics. So, he settled for kneeing the bigger man in the balls. “Bad for you.”
Eyes rolling, Jones’s knees buckled, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious
“Not so big now, are you?” Grinning, Jake holstered the pistol and, without sparing a glance back at the Welshman, turned on his heel and stepped over the equally unconscious Tim.
Yate could barely contain himself. “Sergeant! Wait! No… Jimmy Dawson”
Jake paused, hand outstretched, to grasp the door handle. He threw a backward look across his shoulder. “What about him?”
“He was there. He’ll talk to you.”
“Dawson’s no grass.” Jake’s eyes narrowed.
“No. But he’s angry at Terry. Reckons Daley owes him because he kept his mouth shut and did his bird when some geezer from the regional crime squad offered him an early release from Brixton. In exchange for pointing the finger at Terry.”
“That’s all they offered?”
“Well, that and the arresting officer’s head on a plate.”
Jake barked with laughter. “Ha! I bet they bloody did. I knew it, the sneaky slags. So why would Jimmy talk to me and not them?”
“Why?” Yate looked as if the younger man had grown a second head. “Because if he talks to the regional boys, Terry will know it before the end of the hour. Angry or not, Daley scares the shit out of poor little Jimmy.”
“Just about every villain in London is terrified of Terry, and most of the coppers on the manor as well, it’s how the bastard stays on top. Get to the point.”
“Why you? Well, you’re the guy who put him in Brixton in the first place. He spent most of his sentence there in a wheelchair on your account. If you go to him, make him see reason, he’ll probably do whatever you want.”
“And if he declines?”
Harry shrugged. “Wheelchairs are still covered under the NHS.”
Jake laughed again, then reached back into his jacket, pulled out the recorder, and threw it to Yate. With hands clapping like a seal, the fat man just managed to catch the device. “Merry Christmas, Yate. I’ll be in touch.”