James Craig - Shoot to Kill

Carlyle leaned forward to read the caption next to the black-and-white drawing he’d been staring at vacantly for the last few moments. Struggling to get the text in focus, he stuck his hand inside his jacket pocket.

‘Shit!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ said Carlyle, cursing under his breath as he tried to remember where he had left his specs. The thought of three hundred quid being casually misplaced filled him with mortal terror but, try as he might, he couldn’t recall where he’d last seen them. Unable to do anything about it, he took a step closer to the picture and stuck his nose right in front of the description: A busy drying room in the opium factory in Patna, India, After W. S. Sherwill, lithograph, c. 1850 . It looked like a multi-storey car park with no cars in it. A handful of workers were placing what looked like row after row of footballs on the floor. The print shows one of the stages in the processing of opium at the factory in Patna, the centre of the British East India Company’s opium plantations in Bengal. The raw opium was formed into a ball about 3½ lb in weight and wrapped in poppy petals to protect it from damage. The balls were then dried on shelves and boxed into chests each containing 25-40 balls before shipping to China and Europe.

Dom appeared at his side. ‘They could make the text a bit bigger,’ he said. ‘I’ve left my reading glasses at home.’

Grunting in sympathy, Carlyle eased himself back into a standing position. He tapped Dom on the arm. ‘I always said you were a man out of time.’

Guessing what was coming, Silver indulged his friend. ‘Go on.’

Carlyle pointed at the print. ‘A hundred and fifty years ago, you could have been a respectable businessman.’

Dom grinned. ‘I am a respectable businessman.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Carlyle felt his stomach grumble. ‘There’s a café back at the entrance. I could do with something to eat.’

‘Me too. Let’s go.’

After a sandwich, Carlyle was feeling just a little bit less grumpy. Dom sipped his green tea and graciously acknowledged his friend’s belated willingness to resume polite discourse.

‘Not bad here, is it?’ They’d chosen a table in the corner by the window, well away from other people and from the browsers in the adjacent bookshop.

Carlyle made the effort to agree. ‘Very interesting.’

‘And this exhibition,’ Dom grinned, ‘well, it could have been put on especially for me.’

‘I suppose so.’ It was true enough. The show looked at the use of drugs through the ages, from the Ancient Egyptians through to the British Empire. It was a reminder that prohibition was not always the status quo. Carlyle looked at the blurb on a flyer for the exhibition which had been left on their table: it informed him that alcohol, coffee and tobacco had all been illegal in the past. And the use of psychoactive drugs dated back millennia.

‘I love coming to this museum,’ Dominic said. ‘It’s probably my favourite in the whole of London; a haven for the incurably curious.’

On autopilot, Carlyle lifted the demitasse to his mouth even though it was empty. ‘Quite.’

‘Sir Henry Wellcome was a fascinating guy. The son of an itinerant preacher, he helped create one of the first multinational pharmaceutical companies, funded medical research and was a great collector. He was a great philanthropist too.’

‘You sound jealous.’

‘I am,’ Dom shrugged, ‘I don’t mind admitting it. It’s an amazing story.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Carlyle. In his book, amazing stories were ten a penny, but he didn’t want to rain on Dom’s parade. His friend had a point and Carlyle felt a bit of a philistine. The Wellcome Collection, hidden behind an imposing façade of what looked like an office building, stood on the six-lane, smog-choked Euston Road, opposite the eponymous station. It was maybe ten minutes’ walk from his home in Covent Garden and Carlyle was loath to admit to Dom that this was his first-ever visit. He was even more loath to admit that he was quite chuffed at being introduced to such a gem on his doorstep. He would have to bring Helen and Alice.

‘So,’ he said, placing his cup back in its saucer, ‘what did you want to talk to me about?’

‘The Samurai,’ Dom beamed.

‘The Samurai?’

Dom explained about Eli Wallach and Tuco, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , and Forest Whitaker, in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and ‘the Samurai’.

Carlyle was puzzled. ‘So what’s his real fucking name?’ he asked quietly.

‘No idea,’ Dom replied. ‘I suppose he doesn’t really need one.’ Then he went on to explain about Alain Costello.

Carlyle poked a bony index finger in the direction of his friend. ‘You’ve got yourself into a really dodgy situation here.’

Dom ran a hand round the neck of his black T-shirt. It had a drawing of a guitar amplifier underneath the legend SAL’S TUBE AMP REPAIR . ‘That’s what Eva says.’

‘Well, guess what?’ Carlyle growled. ‘She’s right. This kid is going to jail for a long, long time. I hear that it’s going to be a fast-track trial. If I were him, I would just plead guilty and try to get the best deal I could.’

‘Tuco isn’t going to like that,’ Dom mused. ‘He wants his boy back in France.’

‘What can I say?’ Carlyle shrugged. ‘Life is a bummer, get used to it.’

Dom stared morosely into his tea cup.

‘There’s nothing I can do to help you on this one, Dominic,’ Carlyle added quietly.

‘I know.’

‘And even if I could, I wouldn’t.’

Spreading his hands in supplication, Silver smiled weakly. ‘Fair enough.’

‘This is too far over the line, even for me. There is a point where even pragmatism can be taken too far.’

Dom looked up, grinning despite himself. ‘And we’ve found it.’

‘Yes, we have,’ said Carlyle, exhaling deeply. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘The thing is, there are more opportunities than ever. After this Royal Oak thing, there’s a lot of unmet demand out there.’

‘Operation Eagle?’ Carlyle asked. The Met’s PR machine had been busy talking up the arrest of fifty-odd criminals accused of conspiracy to supply cocaine, money laundering and firearms offences, by forces under the command of the Special Intelligence Section (SIS). Their operation had been based out of Royal Oak Taxis, a black-cab repair garage under the Westway, the elevated motorway leading out of West London. Millions of pounds of drugs, smuggled across the Channel and up to London through Kent, moved through the specially fortified garage every month, with the cash being laundered through a nearby foreign exchange for a five per cent commission.

‘Yeah,’ Dom nodded.

‘Good result.’

Dom raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s all very well crowing that you’ve smashed a major Class-A supply network. How long do you think it will be until the next lot move in?’

‘Dunno. Six months?’

‘Six weeks, tops,’ Dom informed him. ‘The investigation has taken years. Cost millions. What’s the point? Everyone worked together well, ran professional operations, with next to no violence. The idea that you have dealt a huge blow to the UK Class-A drug industry is bollocks. It’s just basic capitalism – you can’t buck the market.’

Carlyle wasn’t in the mood for one of Dom’s rants on the stupidity of drugs policy. He might well be right – but so what? Nothing was going to change any time soon. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘think of it as just another wake-up call. The SIS guys have got time on their hands now. Stick your head back above the parapet and they may come after you.’

Dom looked at him suspiciously. ‘You gonna give them a tip-off?’