A Good Day To Die Read online

  They weren’t looking too good. I was in woodland. A wall of pine trees rose up on either side of the muddy track that the car – a silver four-wheel drive, the same one from outside the café – had come down. I could make out the sound of an aircraft flying unseen through the unbroken white cloud, miles overhead, but there was no hum of nearby traffic. Moustache continued to rub his right eye, but still held on to the baseball bat. Assailant number three, shorter and thinner than his friend, with more hair, was smiling and swinging his bat jauntily. Number one, Scarface, was on his knees a few feet to my right, head in his hands. ‘Fucking bastard,’ I heard him hiss. I guessed he’d be out of the equation for another five minutes or so, by which time I’d have either escaped or been battered back into oblivion. At the moment, it looked like the latter.

  I shut my eyes, then opened them again, focusing on the two men coming towards me. My vision began to clear at what some might argue was exactly the wrong time.

  ‘How’s yer head?’ asked number three in a thick Glaswegian accent. ‘Must be hurting.’

  ‘It’s going to be hurting a fuck of a lot more in a minute,’ said Moustache, gripping his bat as if he was getting ready to hit an almighty home run. His accent was East London, and he was still blinking aggressively against the effects of the gel.

  They stopped on either side of me, looking down. ‘You’re harder than we give ye credit for,’ said number three. ‘But nae hard enough, ah’m afraid. Now shut yer eyes and we’ll make it quick.’ He lifted his bat, as did his colleague. ‘That’ll do you nae good, son,’ he added, motioning to what he thought was the empty CS gel canister in my hand as I raised it slowly.

  From somewhere off to the left, I heard a noise in the trees. Something running, getting closer. Then a man’s voice, calling out, ‘Tex, get back here!’ The voice was still some distance away but the dog was a lot nearer. Perhaps he’d heard the commotion and was coming to investigate. If he had, I was grateful. I’d always liked dogs.

  ‘Whattae fuck?’ cursed the Scotsman, looking towards the trees.

  Still lying on my back, I squeezed the button on the second canister and the gel shot upwards and straight into the face of Moustache, who I’d identified as the most immediate threat. He jumped back, but his muffled curses suggested I’d got him this time. I swung my arm round, still depressing the button, and more gel hit the Scotsman.

  But he’d had that one second to react while I took out his colleague, and he used it to jump back out of the way. As the spray sputtered and died all too quickly, he came back fast, striking out with the baseball bat. The blow caught me on the arm as I tried to protect myself, then connected with the fleshy area between my neck and my chin, some of the force at least taken out of it. It hurt – it hurt a lot – but nothing was broken.

  He stepped back, his face determined rather than angry, making me think that he in fact was the most dangerous of the three, and raised the weapon above his head for a better shot. But at that moment Tex, who was a young Alsatian, came bounding out of the trees, wagging his tail, and jumped up at my attacker. I don’t think he was performing a Rin-Tin-Tin-style rescue; more that he thought what was happening was a game, and wanted to join in.

  The effect was the same, though. The Scotsman panicked, kicked out at the dog, knocking him backwards, then went for him with the baseball bat, managing a glancing blow to Tex’s side as the dog dodged out of the way. This only served to make Tex angry, and he began barking wildly and trying to find an opening in which he could extract a bit of canine payback. The Scotsman tried to keep an eye on me and deal with the dog at the same time, but by attempting to do both he was managing neither. I grabbed Moustache’s baseball bat, and although the Scotsman saw me do it, he had to fend off Tex, who’d managed to get his teeth round the end of his bat and was now involved in a tug of war over it.

  I’m a lot fitter than I used to be, but I’d taken something of a beating that morning and my head was still banging away, so when I came at my opponent and hit him across the shoulderblades with the bat I’d liberated, I don’t think I did anything like the same damage I’d done to his friends with the CS gel, even though I had a clean shot.

  The Scotsman lost his footing, but righted himself quickly and proceeded to kick the dog very hard in the throat. This time, the connection was far better and Tex went over on his back. Ignoring me, he made the most of his advantage and landed a sickening blow with the bat on the animal’s head and I knew that this was the end of Tex’s resistance.

  ‘My dog! What the hell are you doing to my dog?’

  Tex’s owner stood by the track, ten yards away, his hair and clothes wet from walking through the undergrowth, the shock on his face as all-consuming as that of any crime victim I’d seen. He was a big man, a couple of stone overweight, and on the wrong side of middle age. He had the look of the long-term office worker about him, and I knew he wasn’t going to be able to offer much in the way of assistance, bar calling for help, which was the last thing I needed. He also looked like he was about to break down and cry. His eyes were watery behind the thick-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Get ta fuck, old man!’ snapped the Scotsman, already turning back to me with the air of someone keen to complete unfinished business.

  Which was when I summoned the last of what strength I had, leaned back with the bat as if ready to hit my own home run, and smacked him round the side of the head.

  It still wasn’t the best of blows, but at least I managed to daze him. He fell to one knee, clutching his head with one hand, but still holding on to his weapon with the other.

  I went to whack him again, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the first guy I’d sprayed getting to his feet, his eyes now uncovered. He was pretty stocky as well, with the scar giving him the sort of face that you could imagine appearing on the cover of a book about pub brawls. He didn’t look very happy either.

  He turned in my direction and took a step forward, starting to say something less than complimentary, so I threw the bat straight at him and scored a direct hit right between the eyes.

  ‘You fucker!’ he yelped, stumbling backwards into a pothole on the track and losing his footing.

  At that moment, Tex’s owner howled an obscenity of his own and charged down the Scotsman like an ageing buffalo, grabbing him in an all-enveloping bear-hug that appeared highly effective. ‘You’re not getting away with this!’ I heard him shout as he wrestled with the other man, using his ample weight in an attempt to smother him. He was crying too – loud, violent sobs – and I suddenly felt very sorry for him.

  But this wasn’t the moment for expressing sympathy. It was time for me to make a move, since this was a battle I was never going to win. Shouting to the owner to get out of here himself before the others recovered, and adding the immortal lines, ‘It’s too late for the dog! Save yourself!’ I ran over to the four-wheel drive, slamming the boot shut. I hoped that the assault I’d launched from it a few minutes earlier had surprised the driver enough that he’d left the keys in the ignition.

  He had.

  I jumped inside and started the engine, slamming it into first and accelerating away. In the rear-view mirror, I saw that Tex’s owner still had the upper hand, but that Scarface had now recovered and was going over to assist his mate. He also had the bat I’d chucked at him in his hand. Tex meanwhile lay motionless in the middle of the track, in the same position he’d fallen in.

  I cursed. It wasn’t my problem. The owner should have run while he’d had the chance. Why take on men like that, however upset you are? In the end, you’ve got to be pragmatic. Retreat when the odds are against you. But the guy was still an innocent who’d done nothing wrong, and if I left him there God knows what would happen. I was a copper for a long time – getting close to twenty years – and even if for a lot of that time I hadn’t been a particularly nice one, I still didn’t like to see an obvious injustice being committed when there was something I could do about it. I felt sick and I felt exhausted, but it
didn’t stop me from looking for a space to turn round.

  I’d driven about a hundred yards when there was a break in the trees to my left. I changed down to second, swung the wheel and mounted the bank before reversing straight back into a tree on the other side of the track. Turning the wheel as far as it would go, I just managed to manoeuvre the vehicle round, and then I was heading back in the direction of the fight. I’d been gone no more than twenty seconds.

  I was in third gear and coming fast when I rounded the corner and saw Scarface standing in the middle of the track, bat above his head, ready to strike. Beneath him, the Scotsman was now sitting astride the dog-owner, pummelling him with his fists. The dog-owner’s arms were in front of his face as he tried to protect himself, and his feet were only inches from the prone dog’s head.

  Scarface looked up when he heard the engine and he blinked rapidly as his reddened eyes tried to focus. He shouldn’t have bothered. If he’d had any sense he’d have used the time to get out of the way. Instead, for me it was third time lucky. First the CS gel; then the bat; now the car, which put bluntly was more like a tank.

  I hit him head-on and he flew over the bonnet and banged against the windscreen with a satisfying thud. He seemed to hold that position for a second, and then I slammed on the brakes and he rolled off the front, leaving a dirty stain of blood on the glass. I didn’t bother flicking on the wipers. Instead, I flung open the driver’s side door so that it was fully extended, and shoved the car into reverse.

  The Scotsman was just getting off his victim to make a break for it. However, he’d also taken a bit of a beating so wasn’t as quick as he should have been, and was only three quarters upright when the edge of the door struck him full in the face. The momentum sent him crashing over backwards with a pained yelp not unlike the one Tex had made when he’d been hit. I turned the wheel slightly, only just managing to avoid hitting the dog-owner’s feet, before coming to a halt again.

  It was a pretty grim scene. Scarface lay slumped on his side, about ten yards up the track from Tex. Moustache was still writhing on the floor with his hands over his eyes. The Scotsman was on his back, arms outstretched, a huge gash running vertically down his face. He was conscious, but no danger to anyone. And the dog-owner, his face bloodied too, was sitting upright, his glasses broken, looking across in shock at his dog’s body.

  Still, I thought, putting the car back into first, it could have been worse. He might be traumatized now, but one day he’d tell this story to his grandchildren. And embellish it too, no doubt.

  Without warning, my vision blurred again as I experienced a sudden wave of nausea, and I had to swallow hard to stop myself from vomiting. It took some seconds for the nausea to pass and the blurring to clear. Then, keeping my head low so he wouldn’t get a decent description of me, I touched the accelerator and moved away, trying not to hit Tex but not bothering to avoid Scarface, who I drove straight over. His mug would fit even better on the cover of a book about pub brawls now.

  Harsh, perhaps, but when you make your living breaking the heads of people you don’t know, you shouldn’t expect a rash of Get Well Soon cards.

  11

  The place where they’d taken me was an isolated wood just off the M25 near Hemel Hempstead, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that this was where they’d planned to kill me and dump my corpse. My opinion was bolstered by the discovery of a brand-new loaded .45 revolver in the 4x4’s glove compartment, which presumably was intended to finish me off, once they’d beaten the shit out of me. I’d been lucky that Tex and his owner had shown up, but the fact remained that Les Pope evidently wanted me out of the way very badly indeed, and was prepared to go to some extreme lengths to make sure he succeeded.

  It took me well over an hour to get back into central London, and the whole way I was paranoid that someone would spot the streaks of blood on the bonnet and call the cops. But maybe bloodstained cars are more common in England these days, because no one did. I parked up on a back-street in Bayswater, put the gun in my pocket (there were no spare bullets), and used a handkerchief to wipe the steering wheel, door handles and car keys clean of prints. I left the keys in the ignition and made a note of the number plate and the vehicle’s make and model, before walking slowly and wearily back to the hotel, my head still thrumming away.

  It was one-fifteen p.m. when I reached my room and locked the door behind me. Knowing I was going to have to do it sooner or later, I stumbled into the bathroom and stared at myself in the grimy round mirror above the sink. I looked a mess. A yellowish bruise had formed on my jawline where I’d been struck by the Scotsman’s baseball bat, and there was a second bruise like a particularly enthusiastic lovebite on my neck, while several cuts and unidentified marks dotted my face. My eyes had taken on the dull, watery look you often get in the mugshots of the more unhealthy and badly nourished criminals, and even my hair looked dishevelled, sticking up in clumps on top and at the back where the blood from the initial blows with the lead piping had dried. I hadn’t been expecting a pretty sight, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  Having little difficulty pulling myself away from the mirror, I took a long shower and felt the back of my head as I washed my hair. The lump was big, not quite golf-ball sized but enough to make me wonder whether I might have been optimistic concluding I wasn’t concussed. My eyesight was back to normal, but the headache was showing little sign of abating.

  When I’d finished in the shower, I knew I had to sleep. The thought unnerved me. If I was concussed, then there was always the possibility that I might not wake up again. There were also a lot of questions that needed answering. So far, I hadn’t even got started on my investigation and already I’d come very close to getting killed. It would be a lot easier simply to give up and catch the plane back the following morning. To be honest, at that point I was tempted. I’m no masochist – I don’t enjoy having the shit kicked out of me by people I’ve never met before – and I’m not suicidal either. I’d got my payback on the men who’d attacked me, and when they thought about me in the future, it would be with trepidation. I owed Pope, true, but sometimes you’ve simply got to let go. Tex’s owner had made the mistake of charging headlong into danger because he’d got emotional, and if I hadn’t been there, things would have ended up a lot worse for him. Who’d be there to help me if things went wrong?

  But I’m stubborn. When I make up my mind to do something, I do it. Sometimes I have doubts about things – I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t – but I never let them stand in the way of a course of action. I’m not sure if that’s a good trait to have or not, but it’s irrelevant really. Like I’d told Tomboy, I’ve got it, and that’s that. And it was the reason why there was no way I was taking the easy option now. Not until I’d brought down Pope, and whoever it was who was hiding behind him. I was just going to have to be a lot more careful, that was all.

  The mobile rang. It was on the bedside table and I picked it up, guessing it would be Tomboy finding out how I was getting on. But the screen was once again showing no number.

  Which meant it was Mr Pope.

  ‘Hello, Mr Kane,’ he said as I picked up. ‘I’m sorry about what happened earlier, but I wanted to make sure you got the message fully. London’s a very dangerous place. It’s best you leave it.’ There was nothing threatening in his words. Rather, his tone was sympathetic, that of a trusted friend dispensing advice.

  ‘I am planning on leaving,’ I said, my headache suddenly getting worse. My stomach was grumbling too. All in all, I was a very unhappy man.

  ‘I wanted to make sure you knew how serious we were about you getting on the plane.’

  ‘Well, you certainly got your message across, but somehow I don’t think I was meant to be getting on it at all.’ I didn’t mention that I had the gun.

  ‘It was a warning, Kane. If we’d wanted you dead, you’d have been taken out the moment you stepped inside the café. But next time I’ll use someone better than those idiots this m
orning. I underestimated you there. And overestimated them. I won’t make either mistake again.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I won’t be making any mistakes again, either.’

  ‘I hope that means you’re going to be on tomorrow’s flight. This time I guarantee that nothing’ll happen to you en route.’

  ‘That’s very reassuring, but I’m beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that you might not be a man of your word. I’ll make my own plans, Mr Pope, and the first you’ll hear of them is when I tap you on the shoulder one dark night. Then perhaps we’ll talk again.’

  The laughter down the other end of the phone was frighteningly genuine.

  ‘Pope?’ he said, still laughing. ‘Who the fuck is Pope?’

  And he hung up, leaving me staring at the bedroom wall, thinking that I had one hell of a lot of catching up to do.

  12

  I slept for three hours that afternoon and when I woke up I felt like shit and my stomach’s growling had reached dangerous proportions. Rising thickheaded but still alive, I grabbed myself a large drink of water from the tap, got dressed and headed out to look for something to eat. Darkness had fallen and the streets were cold.

  There was a Burger King fifty yards down the road, and since I hadn’t had one in a good long while, I went in and ordered a large Whopper meal with Diet Coke from a man who looked remarkably like a Filipino, although I didn’t bother asking him if he was or not.

  I ate in the upstairs area, the only person in there, and finished the food in about two minutes flat. It wasn’t that it was especially good, just that I was very very hungry. While I sat at the table slurping away at my Diet Coke, I pulled a crumpled newspaper article from my pocket.

  The article was written by someone called Emma Neilson, billed as the Investigating Crime Reporter for the North London Echo. It was dated 3 November, just over a month earlier, and concerned the fact that one week after the double murder of former Islington police officer DCI Asif Malik, thirty-one, and Islington resident and convicted street robber Jason Khan, twenty-two, in a Clerkenwell café, the police seemed no nearer to solving the case. The article went on to suggest that DCI Malik, one of the National Crime Squad’s newest and most talented ethnic-minority officers, had been tipped for rapid promotion within the ranks, and could possibly have become the Met’s Chief Constable one day, which might have been taking journalistic licence a little too far. Malik had been an extremely good copper, there was no doubt about it, but even so he’d been a long way from the top of the pile.