James Craig - Never Apologise, Never Explain

It all happened so quickly. No one on the platform seemed to notice. Not breaking his stride, Gori thought he caught a whiff of burning meat, as if you were passing a kebab shop, but quickly dismissed the idea. Doubtless it was just his imagination.

By the time it came to a halt the train was fully inside the station. The doors opened as normal and he heard the usual recorded message: Let passengers off the train first, please! Keeping a bored, vaguely annoyed look on his face, he allowed himself to be swallowed up by the disembarking travellers heading for the exit. Somewhere behind him an alarm sounded. This being London, however, no one paid it any heed. Everyone kept shuffling forward. A couple of Tube workers in luminous orange jackets appeared on the platform, their walkie-talkie radios cracking with static. Gori watched as they passed to his left, fighting their way through the crowd towards the driver.

It took maybe another minute for Gori to get off the platform and move into a tunnel that connected the different underground lines. Finally, the crowd began to thin and he was able to resume a normal walking pace. At the bottom of a set of escalators, he checked a copy of the Tube map and came to a decision as to where he wanted to go next. As luck would have it, he reached the Bakerloo Line just in time to jump on a train for Willesden Junction.

Barely ten minutes later, Matias stepped out of Edgware Road station. The sun was still strong and he felt thirsty. Ignoring the man selling the Big Issue outside the station entrance, he turned right, heading north. Entering the first pub he came to, he ordered a bottle of Heineken Export. When it arrived, he drank more than half of it in one go. It tasted good.

Who the fuck played darts, these days? Dominic Silver stood at the bar in the Endurance, watching Michael Hagger throw a trio of arrows towards random parts of the board, before sucking the head off his pint of fake German lager. Aside from Hagger’s darts companion, Silver counted seven other men in the bar, plus the bartender. They were exactly the type of men you might expect to find in a bar in the middle of the afternoon on a working day: slackers and rejects of various descriptions. Everyone was busy minding his own business; no one was going to cause any trouble.

After managing to stay below the radar for longer than anyone imagined possible, Michael Hagger had finally reverted to type and turned up in a place where he was likely to find himself in the most amount of trouble in the shortest amount of time. The Endurance was located on Berwick Street, at the top end of the fruit and vegetable market. The pub was popular with an eclectic mix of media professionals, stallholders and the occasional hooker working in one of the walk-up brothels on the opposite side of the street. It was one of Hagger’s favourite haunts, so Silver had made sure it was checked regularly as the hunt for him continued. When Hagger had turned up and settled in for a session, word had got back to Silver within the hour. Less than forty minutes later, his ‘assistant’, the ex-paratrooper Gideon Spanner, had parked the Range Rover outside, and they walked in.

Dominic took a sip from his glass of house rose and winced. It was a long way short of the Etienne de Loury Sancerre he kept at home, and he now wished that he’d stuck to mineral water. No matter.

He turned to Gideon: ‘Bring him over.’

‘Sure thing.’

Dominic sighed to himself as he watched a familiar mix of shock and resignation spread across Hagger’s face when Gideon tapped him on the shoulder. What did the idiot expect? The other player caught Gideon’s eye and quickly dropped his darts on a nearby table, before scuttling outside with his drink.

‘Dominic would like a word.’ Gideon signalled back towards the bar.

Hagger looked round. Raising his pint to both men, he took another sip. Then he put it down carefully on the table and leaned closer to Spanner. ‘Fuck off,’ he hissed.

Gideon put his hands on his hips. ‘No, Michael,’ he said, keeping his voice bureaucratic-conversational, ‘we will not fuck off. Please step over to the bar and talk to the man.’

Hagger threw back his shoulders to emphasise his physical advantage; he had a good couple of inches and quite a few pounds over the man in front of him. ‘Fuck off!’ he repeated, louder this time, before retrieving his pint and drinking deep.

Tutting to himself, Gideon stepped over to the table and picked up the three abandoned darts. ‘Last chance…’

Hagger kept on drinking. He was about two-thirds of the way through his pint when Gideon fired a dart at the floor.

‘Shit!’ Hagger did a little jump, spilling some of the pint over his T-shirt as the arrow wedged itself firmly in the wooden floor, only an inch from his left foot. He scowled at Gideon. ‘You could have hit me.’

‘I was trying to hit you,’ Gideon said, ‘but I’m shit at darts.’ Taking aim again, he swiftly sent a second arrow sinking deep into Michael Hagger’s right foot.

This time Hagger jumped higher, his face turning red. ‘Christ! You bastard!’ Grabbing the sole of his Converse trainers, he started hopping about.

‘That was a lucky one — or maybe I’m just getting better at it.’ Gideon lined up the third dart. Everyone else in the pub buried themselves deeper in their newspapers or stared harder at their betting slips.

‘Okay, okay.’ Hagger half-turned and slowly bounced in the direction of the bar like a drunken wallaby. Still holding the remainder of his pint to his chest, he made no effort to remove the arrow from his foot.

Gideon fired the last dart at the board, scoring a six. ‘Like I said,’ he mumbled to no one in particular, ‘I’m shit at darts.’

Having safely placed his pint on the bar, Hagger looked at Silver.

‘You’ve been hiding, Michael,’ Dominic said eventually.

Hagger shrugged. ‘Not really.’

‘Where’s the boy?’

‘Jake is my kid.’ Hagger looked at the glass but didn’t take a drink. ‘That’s my business.’

‘Not just your business,’ Dominic Silver said gently. He felt a wave of infinite patience sweep over him. He was dealing with an idiot here, but for once, he had plenty of time. He almost felt serene. Not being in a rush was the greatest luxury of all.

‘He’s my boy,’ Hagger said stubbornly.

‘Michael, you are never going to be Parent of the Year. You stole your kid from his mother. Even she could do a better job of looking after him than you — which is really saying something. The Metropolitan Police are looking for you — at least, they’re supposed to be. Your parental rights have been rescinded.’

‘Huh?’ This time Hagger reached for his glass.

‘Is Jake still alive?’

‘Yes!’

Dominic lowered his voice. ‘Let’s hope so, because if he’s not, or if he’s been damaged in any way, you are going to fucking die.’

Hagger took the threat in his stride. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

Dominic looked Hagger up and down once more and felt his wave of infinite patience retreat. While maintaining eye contact, he stomped one of his Timberlands down on the dart embedded in Hagger’s foot.

The glass slipped from Hagger’s hand, smashing on the floor. His face went white and he looked like he was going to vomit. ‘Oh, Jesus!’

Dominic signalled to Gideon, who was hovering on the periphery. ‘Put him in the car.’ Leaving the remainder of his glass of rose on the bar, he walked slowly out of the door.

It took almost twenty minutes for Carlyle to find his ‘private’ mobile, the one on which he’d programmed Monica Hartson’s number. Somehow, it was cunningly hidden under a pile of newspapers on the living-room floor. He had no recollection of leaving it there, but that was the way of these things: socks, keys, mobile phones — all designed to be regularly lost, and occasionally found. Letting out a small yelp of triumph at the phone’s reappearance, he pulled up Hartson’s number and hit the call button. After listening to it ring for what seemed like an eternity, he finally got a recorded message that simply said: This number is not available. Please try later. Goodbye.