Quantum of menace, p.3
Quantum of Menace, page 3
Back to Pete Napier.
His first task was to get a lay of the land, at least as far as the police investigation into Pete’s death went. Easier said than done.
Kathy Burnham.
Christ. You couldn’t make it up.
Why was he here? Why was he doing this?
Questions with no easy answers. Pete’s letter had set something in motion. Q had returned to Wickstone with a vague notion of reinvestigating his old friend’s death. But he hadn’t seen Pete in years. Why had the man’s death hit him so hard?
Because Pete had once been his best friend. And because the truth mattered. Because, in the world Q had come from, men – and women – died for the truth. Pete’s letter hinted at foreknowledge of his end. Had he killed himself? Q couldn’t believe that. That wasn’t the Pete he had known. Neither could he imagine Pete dying of ‘misadventure’. Not by drowning, at any rate. If you knew anything about Pete, you would know that.
Instincts were a terrible thing. You could never be sure that they weren’t leading you up the garden path.
But Q had spent too long relying on them to ignore them now.
And if he didn’t know the first thing about investigating a death, now was as good a time as any to learn. The basic principles were straightforward enough. Motive, means, opportunity. How hard could it be? ‘Honeypenny, can you get me the address for the police station where DCI Kathy Burnham is based?’
Moments later, Q was typing the information into his phone.
Bastard padded into the kitchen, flopped into his basket, doing his impression of the World’s Most Depressed Dog. Again.
Q set a water bowl below the animal’s nose, then picked up his own bowl and headed for the garden.
5
T
HE DAY HAD BEGUN BADLY.
Mortimer – Mort – had arrived at the Wickstone Library to find Dave Potts taking a chainsaw to the box hedge.
‘What are you doing?’
Dave pushed the safety goggles onto his head, wiped a sleeve over his brow, plastered with bits of chopped leaf. ‘What do you reckon?’
Mort looked at the topiary, mystified.
‘It’s Churchill,’ Dave elucidated. ‘God bless him.’
Mort turned his back on the man, wandered inside, up a flight of steps and into the sanctuary of his office.
Shrugging off his jacket, he hung it on the coat-rack. As he turned, he caught sight of his reflection in the Victorian mirror hung beside the bust of Marcus Terentius Varro.
No one could fault him on looking the part.
Bow tie. Tweed waistcoat. Crisp white shirt. A man had to keep up standards, after all. Seventy-eight was the new forty-eight.
Couldn’t do much about the hair. Or rather the absence of it. A neatly trimmed beard – still peppery – and piercing blue eyes completed the picture. Well, he thought they were piercing.
The thought of Pete Napier, the state of his body after it had been in the river, turned Mort away from the mirror.
You shouldn’t have lied to the police.
He put a foot on the thought, pushed it back down into the cellar of his subconscious.
Mort sat down at his desk and turned on his computer.
As usual, there were few emails in his inbox. After retiring from Oxford University’s Faculty of History he had settled into a new sort of life. A quiet life.
That had been twelve years ago. Twelve years of renegotiating his place in the world, his place in Wickstone.
Strange, the way the past drifted and flapped around you.
Like stories.
His story. Bella’s story.
Not every story had a happy ending.
And now Mort’s thoughts came, eventually, inevitably, to him.
Mort had heard he was back in town. But no contact had been initiated. Just as well.
Mort was spoiling for a fight.
Yes, indeed. If Major Boothroyd was stupid enough to turn up on Mort’s doorstep . . . God help him.
6
‘L
oved the good cop, bad cop vibe we had going there.’
Bob Lazarus pulled a packet of mints from his pocket. ‘Lot easier in the old days, of course, before the world turned into a steaming pile of wokery. I remember when you could just whack Mr Big over the head with a telephone directory. Bish. Bosh. Ten minutes later, he’d be singing like Beyoncé . . . That’s a joke. Obviously . . . So, what do we do now?’
Kathy, head over phone, checked her messages as she stalked ahead of him. ‘We do what we said we would. Arrest him. Shake him upside-down by the boots till his teeth rattle.’
‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just—’ A grimace. ‘The boy’s been through a lot.’
‘And that gives him a free pass, does it?’
‘I didn’t say that. It’s his mum I’m thinking about—’
Bob saw Kathy stutter to a halt. A man was standing beside their black BMW, seemingly waiting for them. Bob didn’t recognise him. Tall-ish, late forties, early fifties. Sandy haired, with a little grey at the temples. OK-looking, if you liked them a little on the constipated side. Beautifully tailored suit. Tie – with tie-pin. Fancy! He looked like an advert out of a clothing catalogue for the sort of posh gent whose head Bob Lazarus would have greatly enjoyed introducing to the bowl of the station loo.
Q tucked his hands into his pockets. Mainly because he didn’t know what else to do with them. He had tracked DCI Kathy Burnham down to the hospital by calling in at the town’s only police station, another recent addition to the local landscape. When Q had been young, the nearest police station had been a twenty-minute drive away in a neighbouring town.
Q had driven over, found her car and waited, bracing himself for the encounter to come.
But it was still a shock seeing her in the flesh.
Kathy stood there as if struck by lightning.
‘You,’ she breathed.
7
M
EDIUM TONY HAD PROBLEMS.
And they didn’t stem from his nickname.
Yes, the moniker had caused him a certain degree of aggro. All rebranding did. But it wasn’t as if he had had a choice. The Boss had decided that this was what Tony was going to be called and that was that. You didn’t argue with the Boss.
When the new outfit had come to town it was like one of those Wild West films. Not as much shooting in the high street, admittedly, but if you knew what was good for you, you kept your head down, drew the curtains and saved your complaints for the whisky glass.
When Tony – then known as Big Tony – had introduced himself to the Boss, the man’s brow had crunched into confusion. ‘But you are not big.’
‘Well. No.’
‘You should be called Short Tony. Or Small Tony.’
They had settled on Medium Tony.
Small Tony. Christ.
The call had come through earlier that morning. The Boss’s chief henchman. The one they called ‘Papa John’, with the look in his eye that suggested he had just finished smothering his grandmother with a pillow and was considering what to do for an encore.
Tony knew the type. Didn’t matter where they came from, they were all the same.
Callous. Soulless. Ruthless.
The man had spoken to Tony about the kid, Zakaria. The boy had made a pig’s ear of the Bentley job. Rammed the car into a church. Pete Napier’s car.
Zak was in hospital, talking to the cops. God only knew what he was saying. And about who. Or whom? Tony never knew which and didn’t much care.
Tony had warned Papa John about taking on someone that young.
But the kid had skills, and this lot had no compunction about recruiting the young. Younger the better. Get them out on the streets as soon as they could walk, slinging dope, running errands, ferrying guns around. And if they got caught – well, what could the law really do to a minor? As long as you kept them at arm’s length, they couldn’t tell the cops anything useful anyway.
But Zak was different. Zak was smart. Smarter than anyone Tony knew. A lot bloody smarter than him, for a start. The kid had revolutionised Tony’s chop shop operation. Absolute whizz with the tech stuff. Well, you had to be these days. Back in Tony’s day, you could steal a car with a twisted coat hanger. Now you needed a PhD to get into a bloody Škoda.
But Zak’s smarts also made him a liability. The kid knew way more than was good for him.
And now it was somehow Tony’s problem.
Tony was no fool. His education may have begun and ended in the garage, but he could smell what was in the wind. The new outfit were into some heavy shit. And Pete Napier had been up to his neck in it.
Tony remembered the man. Napier had come in a couple of times, to get his cars serviced. Always seemed distracted. Somewhere more important to be. No time to spare for a friendly word with the hired help.
Tony had a word for people like that. Arsehole.
But the man had been important to whatever Tony’s bosses had cooking in Wickstone.
Wheels within wheels.
Tony had a motto: Keep your head clean and your nose down.
But that was assuming you had a choice.
Papa John had been very clear.
Something had to be done about Zak.
So, no. Being called Medium Tony didn’t bother him.
That was the least of his worries.
8
‘S
O, THE PRODIGAL ARSE RETURNS.’
The pub was quiet. A background hum came from a handful of bleary-eyed barflies and a TV tuned to a soothing daytime soap that no one was watching.
The Knight Shift Inn. Q hadn’t been in the place for thirty years. The surroundings, as much as Kathy’s words, had momentarily thrown him. He remembered coming in here as a young man, a misguided attempt to find a home away from home. All he had found was another space where no one needed him.
The pub sat on the town square, the old wooden-framed guildhall to one side, and a row of charming civic buildings clad in grey ragstone on the other. In the centre of the square, a bronze knight wielded a long sword, the destrier beneath his bottom charging into the fray, hooves raised. Legend had it that The Unknown Knight had founded the village following his return from the Crusades.
Q noted that an attempt had been made to steer the pub upmarket. Esoteric libations in novelty glasses. A gastro vibe to the chalkboarded menu. Charcoal-infused pizza. Deconstructed ham sandwich, served on a shovel.
Q focused on DCI Kathy Burnham.
He had known this would be a mistake. But it wasn’t as if he had a choice. ‘Kathy, I—’
‘Don’t bother.’
Q’s mouth flapped. His insides churned. He met Kathy’s eyes, saw nothing but pitch-black hatred. He had never been good at this. Fathoming emotion. This was where science failed you. He knew that his colleagues at Q Branch had often thought of him as ‘dispassionate’, lacking in ‘people skills’. Which were what exactly? Q Branch hadn’t employed him to be a therapist. Or a babysitter.
He began again. ‘I didn’t come here to rake over the past. I came here for Pete.’ He dug into his pocket, took out the letter Pete Napier had sent him, folded it out onto the table.
Kathy’s eyes continued to flamethrower him. Q was sure his face was beginning to melt.
Eventually, she looked down, picked up the sheet. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘Pete sent it to me. It arrived a few weeks after his death. I think he knew he was in danger.’
‘Pete Napier died in an accident. Or, quite possibly, killed himself.’
‘What if it was neither?’
Kathy set down the letter. Her hand was shaking. Q suspected it wasn’t early onset Parkinson’s. ‘Are you telling me you tracked me down because of an investigation I headed up?’
‘Yes.’
Kathy was silent a long time. Her body language seemed calm, but her eyes were reading aloud from a different script. Her eyes were saying she wished she had a chainsaw.
‘I know this isn’t ideal,’ said Q. And the Oscar for Understatement of the Year goes to . . .
Kathy steepled her hands together. At that instant, she reminded him of one of Bond’s nemeses: Blofeld or Goldfinger. Or at least how Bond had described them. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want the case files. I want you to talk to me about the investigation.’
Her face went very still. A very nice face, he had to admit. A few lines of silver in otherwise still lustrous dark hair, swept back and kept tidy by a hair clip. Crow’s feet at the corners of her green eyes lent a quality of worldliness to her features. A shade to her skin that spoke of a wild Mediterranean gene somewhere in her ancestry.
Something unnameable tugged at his heart.
Kathy was still beautiful, both objectively and in a way only a first love could be.
‘Why, in the name of all that is holy, would I help you?’
Q took a deep breath. ‘Because a man is dead. Because that man was once my friend. Our friend.’
‘Let me get this straight. You rock up after thirty years and the only reason you’re here is because you want to pump me for information? Information that I legally cannot share with you?’
‘Yes. Though the second part doesn’t matter. I signed the Official Secrets Act when I joined . . . Well, you know.’
Kathy did know. Had heard it through the town grapevine. Small-town boy made good. You couldn’t keep it a secret, no matter the cloud he had left under. No matter that he had ripped out her heart, torn it to shreds then set fire to the pieces.
‘Q,’ she breathed, as if testing out the moniker.
‘Yes.’ He wanted to say more, but the words halted at his lips like reluctant parachutists sensing a distinct possibility of aerial bombardment down below.
Kathy continued to stare at him, then abruptly stood up. ‘I could use a drink. Guess who’s buying?’
9
Z
AK’S FATHER HAD ONCE TOLD him that mirrors didn’t lie.
You could fool other people, but you couldn’t fool a mirror.
Zak hated lying. When his father had been around, he had lectured him endlessly about a man’s worth being weighed by his integrity, his virtue and so forth. Zak’s grandfather – his father’s father – had been a judge in the old Syria, a man known for his vigorous application of these principles. OK, so perhaps he’d handed out a few more death sentences than might be considered cool in today’s climate, and he was a devil for a good stoning, but nobody was perfect.
Zak remembered him as a tall man, with enormous hands and a mane of white hair. Grandfather had believed in the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. And, preferably, beaten when not seen. Nothing instilled moral fibre more effectively than a big stick.
Zak’s father had wept bitterly when the old man had passed. It was the first time Zak had seen his father cry. It had shocked him. Men didn’t cry. That was the work of women and professional mourners. Like his Aunt Lilia, who had made a good living turning up at funerals and wailing the roof down. Proper top-notch ululating.
Aunt Lilia, another casualty of the war. Cut down in a half-bombed street in Raqqa by a sniper’s bullet. Zak’s father had warned his sister not to go there. But that was Aunt Lilia for you. Enterprising. A lot of work for a professional mourner in Raqqa, she had told Zaq. She wasn’t wrong about that. But you couldn’t wail at your own funeral.
His thoughts swung back to the visit from Bob Lazarus and Kathy Burnham.
The pigs were right about one thing— Actually, he couldn’t call them pigs as pigs were haram. His mother had told him it wasn’t very nice to call anyone pigs, even the cops.
They had him ‘bang to rights’. Another English phrase Zak had heard a lot recently. For instance, from Medium Tony, who ran the local chop shop. Zak had had no idea what a chop shop was until it had been explained to him. A garage engaged in dismembering or otherwise processing stolen cars. Tony had made it sound like a friendly butcher’s store back in Damascus.
Medium Tony worked for Zak’s . . . benefactor.
Zak wondered what his benefactor would think when they found out Zak had screwed up the Bentley gig.
The thought of letting down the benefactor filled him with dismay. And fear.
Zak owed the benefactor everything. The benefactor was the one who had recognised Zak’s capabilities and offered him a vision of a different future. One where Zak’s ‘very particular set of skills’ would be put to good use. Like Liam Neeson in Taken. Zak liked Liam Neeson. He particularly liked how Liam Neeson could punch people in the face whenever he felt like it.
In truth, it hadn’t taken much for the benefactor to convince Zak. The benefactor had told him that if Zak wanted respect in this country he needed money. If you had money, all your problems went away.
Pete Napier’s face bubbled to the front of his thoughts.
They said secrets died with you. Had Napier taken his secrets with him, down to the bottom of the river? Zak hoped so.
Could he lie to the police and get away with it? Was it wrong to use a dead man?
Probably. But Zak didn’t owe Napier anything. Yes, Napier had taken an interest in him. But that interest had been mercenary. As subsequent events had shown.
Napier had treated him as a project. The little immigrant boy from Syria with the dead dad and the mum struggling to stay afloat.
Thoughts of his mother stabbed at his conscience.
She didn’t get it. She still thought they could live like they’d lived in Syria. But they were nothing here. The bakery she had opened, with borrowed cash . . . How long would that last?
Zak felt in his pocket for the stone that he kept there. A stone from the deepest part of the Badiyah, the Syrian desert. A reminder of everything that had been lost. Everything to be regained.
Zak had to be the man of the house now.
He had to do whatever was needed to get them back home.
Back to Syria.
10
‘O
K. SAY I HUMOUR YOU. What do you think you’re going to achieve, raking over Pete’s death?’ Kathy picked up her beer. As a rule, she didn’t drink when on duty. But rules were meant to be broken and she couldn’t think of more fitting circumstances.
