Shredder (8 page)

How many seconds had passed? Ten? Twenty? Someone behind me was shouting instructions—“Get down, stay down—!” and when I looked over my shoulder the two foot-patrol cops I'd seen earlier were headed towards us, one stooped, babbling into his lapel radio, the other with his baton extended in one fist and a Taser in the other. Who the hell brings a Taser to a gun battle? I thought, and I was about to yell at him to follow his own advice and get down when from the south of the square, out of the traffic, came a long rattling clatter of shots so close together they were almost a buzz. The copper with the Taser fell to his knees, then to his side, and lay there, writhing, his yells of pain mingling with the screams of the crowd.

While the second copper dashed over to help
his colleague I scrabbled for cover behind one of the stumpy granite bollards, and peered round it long enough to see a tall skinny man in a hoodie and sweats approaching from the south clutching a machine pistol. He was switching magazines as he came striding over towards us, implacable and so utterly focused he was oblivious to the screams and the distant sirens and the blaring car horns—and to the roaring engine of the Range Rover that had mounted the curb behind him. He didn't see it accelerate towards him before it slammed hard into his back, tossing him into the air over the hood to tumble down out of sight beyond.

The driver slammed on the brakes, his door flew open, and Terry clambered out. I'd never seen him move so fast, but he took no evasive action at all—maybe he knew he was so huge it would be impossible to conceal himself, or maybe he reckoned he could absorb a few bullets before he had to slow down. I was half expecting to hear another rifle shot, but nothing came, and when I glanced at the eastern skyline the bulge I'd spotted before had gone. Terry walked right past me, stepping over the bawling, hysterical bodies all about, grabbed McGovern and hauled him to his feet. There was blood running
from the Guvnor's ear and he was so groggy he could barely walk. For an instant I thought he'd been hit, but no—the impact of that last bullet on the table had stunned him. As I watched them stagger towards the waiting Range Rover I realized this was my chance to run, to get the hell away from the Guvnor and the Turk and this bloody insanity. I could hear the shriek of sirens heading up from Whitehall—armed response units were on the way. All I had to do to be safe was lie down.

I didn't see where it came from or who threw it; I just saw it skittering along the paving slabs—a grenade, spinning round like a bottle at a drunken teenage party, rolling to a halt right in the path of Terry and the Guvnor, three paces away from me. I covered the three paces in half a second and booted the grenade hard, aiming for a gap in the traffic. It flew off like a bullet under the Range Rover, and it must have been right under the petrol tank when it blew, because an instant later the whole car leaped into the air, consumed in a fireball, and the scorching blast blew me clean off my feet. My ears were ringing, I was half blinded, and there were shards of broken glass in my hair and mouth, but someone was hauling me by the collar, dragging me stumbling forward
through the smoke and the heat and the screaming, before throwing me down on a hard rubbery surface…the floor of a cab, I realized, as it lurched into motion, toppling me onto my side. I lay there, barely conscious, too weak to do anything but curl up into a ball and cough, as I felt myself speeding away.

“It was a massacre,” said McGovern. “We had our asses handed to us.”

Someone had given me a cold bottle of beer. I threw my head back and chugged half of it down in a few gulps, as thirsty as if I'd been lost in a desert for a month. I'd just about stopped shaking from the adrenaline rush, but my throat was still raw, and every so often a crumb of windscreen glass would fall out of my hair. I suspected my face was blackened with smoke, but I hadn't looked in a mirror yet. I wasn't even sure I still had eyelashes.

We were back in the Guvnor's borrowed mansion, sitting around the musty lounge, which smelled of mothballs—what was left, anyway, of the crew that had set out that morning. Martin was dead, we all knew. Gary was reported to be in intensive care with a punctured lung and two cops stationed outside his
door waiting for him to come round. Two other guys I hadn't known about, sent out in advance as scouts, were missing, presumed dead. New faces had filled the room now—second-string hoods abruptly promoted, most of them trying hard to conceal their shell shock. The Guvnor, their invincible, untouchable Guvnor, was apparently neither invincible nor untouchable.

The black taxi Terry had thrown me into had been arranged as an emergency backup—an inconspicuous getaway vehicle. It had driven away at speed from the chaos, mounting the pavement twice to get round cars that had slewed to a halt in the road from panic or to make way for all the emergency vehicles that were converging on Trafalgar Square from every direction. I'd been dimly aware of the driver shouting at someone—a copper who tried to flag him down, I think—that he had to get his badly wounded passengers to hospital and couldn't wait for an ambulance. Of course, he hadn't gone near any hospital; a few minutes later he'd pulled up in a back street, and Terry had hauled me out by the arm and pushed me towards a people-carrier with tinted windows sitting on a double yellow line with its engine running. I was racked with coughing from the
smoke I'd inhaled, and my eyeballs felt scorched, but I managed to glance around; we were in the city of London somewhere, it looked like, on a side street lined on both sides with scaffolding sheathed in plastic…. Of course—no CCTV coverage here.

Terry had folded himself in with us and the minivan had headed east, past St. Paul's and the Tower of London. Every few seconds another cop car—every cop car in London, it felt like—would come screaming past us, blue lights blazing, heading for the West End. The three of us—McGovern, Terry and me—stared out the windows in silence, and slowly the ringing in my ears subsided. There was no talk now of putting a hood over my head; me knowing the location of the Guvnor's base was the least of his problems, and I was too shaken to trace our route anyway. I glimpsed signs on the motorway and the roundabout junction where we came off, but I couldn't have read them if I'd tried.

And now the postmortem was starting.

“We were set up,” said the Guvnor's son. “Had to be.”

When I looked up Junior was staring hard at me. It was pretty obvious he wanted to blame me for the bloody rout in Trafalgar Square, but I said nothing—partly
because my throat still felt like sandpaper and partly because anything I said would sound as if I was making excuses. But then, it had been Steve's decision to bring me to meet his dad, so he was guilty by association. He had to shout and point the finger to take the heat off himself, especially as he had stayed back here, safely out of the line of fire.

“Whose bloody idea was Trafalgar Square anyway?” said Junior. Still staring at me.

“Mine,” said McGovern. He was clutching a beer too, though not drinking it, and looking out through the french doors at the monotonous green expanse of the golf course next door. I could see him replaying the events in his head—that phone call to the Turk, the encounter in the square—and analyzing them, to figure out where he'd gone wrong and what to do next. And I could see Steve didn't give a toss about analysis or strategy—he wanted revenge, the more brutal, the better.

“You sure about that?” I croaked, looking at McGovern. I was ignoring Steve; nothing I could have said would have changed his mind. The Guvnor came out of his reverie to stare at me coldly. “Maybe the Turk wanted you to think the location was your idea,” I went on. “I told you, you think
you're playing him, he's playing you. He made sure the café umbrellas were vandalized so Kemal could get a clear shot.”

“Who the hell is Kemal?” said Junior.

“I think he was the one up on the roof with the sniper rifle,” I said. “I knew he had to be there somewhere.”

Steve's face twisted in furious disgust. Reaching into his jacket, he strode over to where I sat, pulled out a sleek pistol and pointed it at my head. “You knew what was going to happen, didn't you? You're working for him, you little shit.”

I could have slapped it out of his hand but I didn't move, partly because I was knackered and aching, but mostly because I reckoned it was stupid macho bluster—if he hadn't shot me straight away he wasn't going to. I was beginning to downgrade my opinion of Steve; he was doing a good impression of a panicking idiot.

“Leave it,” growled McGovern.

I stared up at Steve, whose face was burning now. He lowered the pistol and tucked it away again, but reluctantly, as if he was overriding his instincts with a massive effort of will.

“Finn warned us about the Turk. And his fixer,
Kemal. And I didn't listen,” said McGovern. “We got a good kicking, and we deserved to. If it wasn't for Finn I wouldn't be standing here.”

He was right: I'd saved his life in that shootout, twice. Mostly by accident, it was true—I'd been trying to save myself—but I wasn't about to admit that and squander any advantage it had won me. And then I found myself wondering: was it really accidental, what I did? When I dived to the ground, why had I dived onto McGovern? If I'd let him get killed this war would be over by now and I could go home. I remembered that uniformed copper, that idiot who'd waded into a shootout armed only with a nightstick and a Taser. Why the hell hadn't I tried to save
him
?

“We have to hit these wogs back, hard,” said Junior to his dad.

“For Christ's sake,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“What?” snapped Junior. “You want to fix up another meeting?”

“It's not about hitting the Turk hard,” I said. “It's about hitting him where it hurts. It's about using your head.” When I heard myself talking I clammed up. Why the hell was I telling him his job?

Steve went pale with fury, but the Guvnor actually laughed. “Enough,” he said. “Today was my fault. I got lazy and I got complacent. It's not going to happen again.” He finally turned from the window. “Right, I want intel—proper intel this time, not just the frigging headlines, and I want it double-checked. I need to know everything: who Pirbal's friends are, where he operates, how he makes his money, who works for him, where his family lives.” He looked at his son. “Talk to McKenzie, and Pete, and our people at the Border Agency.”

“We shouldn't be discussing this in front of him,” said Steve, nodding at me, but McGovern ignored him.

“I'm going to ring round, let our friends know the score, call in some favors,” he continued.

And let them know you're still alive and still in business, I thought.

“We're going to shut down Pirbal's businesses and take out everyone who works for him. Then we're going to find his family, his mum and his dad and his brothers and sisters, and we're going to skin them and mince them and feed them to pigs, right in front of him.”

He said it without relish, without rancor—a
simple statement of intent that everyone there knew he meant literally, and meant to fulfill. There were no cheers from his fresh young crew, just quiet smirks of anticipation at the fun and games ahead. Of course, this was exactly the sort of thing these guys had signed up for. “Any questions?” said McGovern.

“What about…our guests?” said Steve. He meant the Russians, I assumed. It was a good question; if McGovern had wanted to make an impression on them, he had—but not the one he'd intended.

“What about them?”

“What do we tell them about today? They'll have seen all that shit on the telly.”

“They're Russian,” said McGovern. “They don't believe anything they see on telly. I'll sort them out. Anyone else?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can I go home now?”

Everyone in the room, not just Junior, turned to scowl at me.

“You wanted me to finger the Turk. I did,” I told McGovern. “I'm finished here.”

“Unbelievable,” said Steve. “He's actually volunteering to get whacked.”

“I helped out today,” I went on, “but I'm not going to fight for you, and I'm not going to kill anyone.”
I nearly added “Sorry,” but stopped myself just in time.

“Nah, I don't think so,” said McGovern. “Fact is, after today, you're with us—like it or not. You might not think so, but that prick Pirbal does. And that African copper from SOCA you've been cozying up to.”

I stared, trying not to react, but even not reacting was a giveaway. That morning my faith in the Guvnor had been shaken, as it had been for everyone else here. I'd temporarily forgotten how connected he was, how his influence had rotted SOCA and the Met police from within like a cancer. Pirbal might be smart, I saw now, but McGovern was older, with more experience, more allies, more influence and more muscle. The Turk had hurt the Guvnor, but he hadn't taken him out, and that had been a big mistake. This war had barely begun.

“Don't worry, you won't have to fight,” McGovern went on. “You can't drive and you can't shoot, so you're no use to us anyway. What I need right now is a babysitter. Richard?”

One of the new faces stepped forward, a face I'd seen before—the slim, handsome heavy in the designer suit who'd hung out with Victoria the night
before, slipping his pirate DVD into her entertainment center. “Take Finn up to the house in Maida Vale,” said McGovern. “The two of you can help look after Cherry and the kids till this is sorted. There's a team up there already, but from now on we're taking nothing for granted.”

“Got it,” said Richard. “Let's go.” He flicked his head at me as if I was his trained German shepherd. I didn't want to stick around, but I took my time getting up all the same.

“And, Richard,” said McGovern. “You're on duty, all right? So no shagging the nanny.”

Richard grinned.

I liked McGovern's kids, but I'd never done any babysitting. Even if I'd volunteered, none of my neighbors would have hired a convicted drug dealer to read their precious darlings bedtime stories, especially one who couldn't read. I could have played computer games with them, I suppose, like I did that afternoon with Kelly, slouched on a beanbag in his playroom in front of an enormous plasma screen. His mother had banned him from playing war games, shoot-'em-ups or LA hoodlum simulators—I suppose she thought he'd get enough of that when he was older—so we spent a lot of time racing virtual
go-karts and breeding candy-colored virtual monsters. That was fine by me; after seeing Martin lose half his head that morning, playing at urban warfare wouldn't exactly have been escapism.

Months ago, when I'd decided to ask McGovern if he'd had my dad murdered, I'd headed up to North London and sneaked through the Guvnor's gates to find this place: a huge glitzy palace with deep-pile white carpets and TVs the size of tennis courts in every room. At the time I'd wondered why McGovern needed so many rooms for one small family and their nanny, but now I knew. The house was a fully serviced fortress with its own power supply and a panic room with a solid steel door. The extra bedrooms were for the private retinue who'd move in at times like this. For all I knew, there were escape tunnels out of the basement and a hidden arsenal of rocket launchers, but I wasn't encouraged to go exploring.

When Kelly and I got bored with gaming we went for a swim in the Guvnor's pool, the same one where I'd found Kelly drowning, back in the spring. He'd taken lessons since then, and both he and his sister Bonnie could easily swim a length underwater. Even so, they were constantly watched by Victoria.

McGovern didn't need me to babysit, that much
was clear; in fact,
I
was the one being supervised. With Richard and the half-dozen other heavies patrolling the house and grounds, I'd never get a chance to scale the three-meter walls surrounding the mansion. I couldn't even use Kelly's games console to send an email to Amobi—it had no Internet connection. There was no landline to the house either, presumably because it would have been way too easy for the authorities to bug. I kept an eye open for any mobiles lying about, but nobody ever left theirs unattended. The Guvnor might have been grateful to me for saving his life, but not so grateful that he trusted me.

I wasn't sure if there was any point in contacting Amobi anyhow: there was nothing I could tell him he hadn't already found out. Late on that first night, after the kids had finally gone to bed, I caught the TV news. The fiasco in Trafalgar Square was the second item: one man had been shot dead, another man plus a copper injured by gunfire, and twelve people had been hurt in the stampede. The official line was that a drug deal had gone wrong; Martin's blurry grinning face flashed up, seated in a pub that looked very much like the Horsemonger, while the reporter listed his previous convictions for cocaine smuggling and grievous bodily harm. The second
victim—I presumed that was Gary—was still in intensive care, to be interviewed by detectives when he recovered. The copper they described as “critical but stable,” whatever that meant. There was no mention at all of the Guvnor, I noticed, or of any gangland war. Amobi and the NCA must have known the real cause—why were they keeping it quiet?