Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

My very best to the Prof. I knew I could rely on him to toss a pebble in the pond, sending out ripples enough to make a maelstrom. An ordinary workman would just have secured the package and been done with it. Only a genius on the level of a Buonaparte could turn a simple task into the prompt for turmoil raised across a whole continent.

Please convey the thanks of another colonel. Being Chief of Secret Police in ‘one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map’ was not a career with a future. The Elphbergs were intent on retiring him, but now – I fancy he’ll be kept on with an increase in salary.

I expect you to retain the last figure for sentimental reasons, and I remain, dear Colonel Moran, very truly yours,

IRENE ADLER

I flipped through several more entirely innocent tourist photographs of picturesque Ruritania, until – at the bottom of the stack – I beheld the full face of the American Nightingale. In this final, studio-posed photograph she wore the low-cut bodice she’d affected on her visit to Conduit Street, somewhat loosened and lowered, though – dash it! – artistic fogging around the edges of the portrait prevented complete immodesty. Through the fog was scrawled her spidery autograph, ‘as ever, Irene’. Even thus frozen, she looked like the sort who would be much improved by a ‘Basher’ Moran Special. I gulped the brandy, and chewed my moustache for a few moments, contemplating this turn of events.

Behind me, a door opened.

I swivelled in the chair. Moriarty looked at me, eyes shining – he had thought it through, and was unhappy. When the professor was unhappy, other creatures – animals, children, even full-grown men – tended to learn of it in extreme and uncomfortable manners.

‘Moriarty,’ I began, ‘I’m afraid we’ve been stung.’

I held up Irene’s photograph.

He spat out a word.

And that was how a great shambles broke out in Belgravia, shaking the far-off kingdom of Ruritania, and how the worst plans of Professor Moriarty were exploited by a woman’s treachery. When he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always as that hitch.

They smash through my front door at three in the morning. Two of them, dressed in black. The first – Patrick – is carrying a council kerbstone he probably found lying around somewhere, and which he uses to tap the lock out of the frame. He uses his other hand to turn on the lights and throw a small side-table along the hall. He does things like that to show how big and strong he is. People rarely argue with him.

The second man is tall, slim and black as night, with shiny dreadlocks hanging around his shoulders. He has a blowtorch in one hand and a Bic lighter in the other. Hooper. He strides cat-like to the foot of my bed and thumbs the lighter. The flame snaps the blowtorch into a steady, icy-blue tongue of fire which hisses like a dragon in the silence. I can feel the heat from six feet away. Hooper smiles.

I hope it’s a social call. Hooper is so far off the wall even the Yardies threw him out for being too violent. Now here he is in my bedroom.

‘I suppose knocking’s too fucking much to ask?’ I say. I don’t know these two all that well, but I’ve heard it’s best not to back down too quick. They respect that, for some insane reason.

Patrick drops the kerbstone on the bed and jerks a massive thumb towards the door.

‘The Chairman wants to see you.’

‘It’s three in the morning,’ I point out.

The flame comes nearer as Hooper advances round the bed.

‘I’ll get dressed.’

I hop around looking for socks and stuff while Patrick watches and Hooper plays the flame of his toy across a glass-fronted picture of a Paris street scene. It was a present from a former girlfriend who thought I needed cultural improvement. For some reason she thought I was artistically bland. She didn’t last long after that, but the picture stayed. I like it, actually. Very…moody.

The glass pops and cracks while I pull on my shoes, and I figure I’ll get Hooper back for that. One day when he isn’t looking.

‘What does he want?’ I ask conversationally, as we drive west towards The Chairman’s office. We’re in a black Toyota Land Cruiser, which is inappropriate for the city, but Patrick needs a big vehicle otherwise he’d have nowhere to keep his collection of kerbstones.

‘He’s got a job for you.’ Hooper turns round in the passenger seat and stares at me. ‘Gainful employment.’ The words come out slow and singsong, and a gold tooth glints in his mouth, reflecting the streetlights. I reckon he’s pissed I didn’t put up a fight.

‘I’ve already got a job,’ I tell him. I do, too. I deliver things for people. Small packages, mostly; papers, diskettes, certificates, contracts, that sort of thing. Anything small, light and of high-value importance. You want it there, I’m your man. Guaranteed. Not drugs, though. I don’t touch drugs. I’m old-fashioned about wanting to keep my freedom.

Hooper sneers. ‘Courier shit, man? Don’t make me laugh. That’s for pussies.’

I debate shoving Hooper’s gold tooth down his throat, but decide it will keep. Patrick would probably take a spare kerbstone out of his top pocket and cuff me with it.

Instead I sit back and ignore them both, and consider what I’m about to get into.

The Chairman – if he has a real name nobody uses it – is a fat slug who runs a business and criminal empire said to stretch across half Europe. Some say he’s Dutch, and was kicked out of Rotterdam because he gave the local crims a bad name. He set himself up in London instead and proceeded to knock out every other syndicate in the place, allowing only a tiny network of small-time gangs to remain. It was a clever move; in return for letting them be, he allows them to tender for doing his dirty work. He has a small group of direct employees, three people like Hooper and Patrick, to protect his back from anyone who thinks he might be easy meat but other than that, he believes in lean and mean. Especially mean.

Like I say, clever move. He controls the whole criminal shebang, while letting some of the dumber members think they’re important. It’s a franchise, only the penalties for infringing the rules are more permanent.

I’ve done a couple of jobs for The Chairman before, but only out of desperation. They were simple fetch and carry assignments, the main risk being if I failed to deliver. I didn’t enjoy them because I didn’t feel clean afterwards, and the last time he’d called, which was about a month ago, I’d declined. Politely.

I wish I had Malcolm with me.

Malcolm’s my little brother. I use the word little only in the age sense; he’s three years younger than me, but way, way bigger. He caught our grandfather’s bit of the gene pool, while I’ve been blessed with Grandma’s. Granddad – a rough, tough stevedore back in the days when they still had them – was apparently a shade under six-ten, with shoulders and hands to match, while Grandma was normal.

At six-eight, and weighing in at seventeen stone, Malcolm can pick me up with one hand. He’s also good-looking, with twin rows of pearly-white teeth, naturally swarthy skin and eyes which can bore right through you. Apparently it works wonders with the girls and means he never gets to go home alone.

The downside is, he’s disturbingly honest and has never been known to tell a lie or get in a fight. At school he was left well alone from an early age, especially when they saw how much he could lift with one hand. And if anyone gave me grief, all I had to do was mention his name and I got swift apologies and a promise of immunity from the scummies who liked to prey on smaller kids for their lunch money. Not great for my self-esteem, but if you went to the sort of school I went to, you used whatever means you had to keep afloat, even if it was your kid brother.