Alex Howard - Time to Die

Well, lekh tizdayen, Zev and Reuben. Lekh tizdayen, Dr Cohen, and lekh tizdayen, Shapiro Institute, and lekh tizdayen, Mr Dunlop. She almost giggled at herself. She never swore usually.

Celia Westermann checked she had left no trace of her recent activities on the computer system. She was as thorough as she was unappreciated. Then she went downstairs to fetch the coffee cups from Cohen’s office. She was a tidy woman.

The address that Enver had for Mehmet and his family was in a depressed-looking street just off White Hart Lane, where a rough area of Wood Green shades into a slightly rougher area of Tottenham. It was the kind of place he had grown up in. The kind of place where you joined a gang to get girls, money, respect, to avoid getting targeted and, perhaps most importantly, to fit in with the others. Peer pressure is huge when you’re young. It’s also one of the peculiarities of life in a city, particularly when you live on or near an estate, that there’s an almost village-like sense of agoraphobia. Enver still knew grown men he’d been at school with who had hardly ever ventured out of Tottenham, more specifically their area of Tottenham. Turkish kids don’t stray into Greek Tottenham and vice versa. They’d re-created the kind of no-go areas their Cypriot parents had moved to Britain to avoid.

The afternoon was sunny for once; it had been a grey, cold, wet spring and the May sunshine transformed even this North London road into somewhere almost pleasant.

Hanlon parked her Audi A3 with practised skill and the two of them got out of the car. A group of youths eyed them curiously. In this kind of neighbourhood strangers were few and far between. You didn’t visit unless you had to. Hanlon’s car itself stood out from the others parked by the kerb. We might as well have come in a marked police car, thought Enver. That’s the only time anyone round here sees a roadworthy vehicle, if it’s the Old Bill, a drug dealer or social workers. He wondered if the car would be intact when they returned, or if it would be keyed or otherwise damaged. They should have brought a uniform to look after it.

It was these kinds of streets that had made Enver a boxer. He had been a quiet, pudgy child and he had never really fitted in with the other Turkish kids. He used to think it was because, like Mehmet, his parents were Turkish, although from Rize province, not Cappadocia, and the other kids were from North Cypriot backgrounds. Now he was older, much older, he thought it was probably nothing to do with that, he just didn’t join gangs. He wasn’t that kind of person. Because he lacked the protection, the security, of being in a gang, he signed up for boxing classes that were held by the ABA in the local church hall. It was there he discovered he had a talent for it.

How far he would have got he would never know. He’d had a good amateur record and when injury stopped him, he’d had eight pro fights, winning all of them. It was a promising start. He had been known more as a puncher than a boxer, that’s to say he was ponderous in the ring but one good blow from Enver could, and did, end fights. ‘Iron Hand’ was the right fighting name for him.

He looked at Hanlon and thought that in her dark jeans, training shoes and black bomber jacket, she maybe looked more like a female bouncer from one of Tottenham’s tougher clubs than a police officer. To his annoyance, he was still acutely aware of her body under her tight-fitting, expensive-looking shirt. Less controversially, he was also acutely aware of his own body. He could feel his stomach pressing against his belt. He was wearing a cheap, dark blue suit, made of a slightly shiny, cheap fabric, and a garish patterned tie. And I suppose I could be the fat, Turkish club owner, not a very successful one at that. Some dive in King’s Cross. All I lack is the cheap aftershave and the two-tone shoes and maybe a gold tooth and some Samsun cigarettes.

There was a parade of three shops in the street between the houses. The kind of shops you find in a place like this — a Bargain Booze, a Pakistani grocer and a newsagent. There was a tough-looking, battered pub at the end of the road. Mehmet’s address was above the newsagent. They went round the back, into the service lane behind the shops, with overflowing green plastic wheelie bins and piles of stacked-up empty boxes and plastic crates. There was a strong smell of rotting food and urine. Between a couple of the shuttered and graffitied back doors to the retail premises there was a flight of metal stairs that gave access to the roof above the shops where the flats were.

Hanlon led the way, almost floating up the stairs, while Enver, his knees protesting, panted up after her. The stairs seemed interminable. Over a low parapet the roof spread out in front of them, left and right like a terrace. Facing them were the backs of the flats, each with its own door. Outside the middle flat, sitting leaning forward on an old plastic chair, was a scrawny white-haired pensioner in a string vest, once white, now a piss-coloured yellow, and stained, grey baggy trousers, smoking a cigarette. Faded blue and green marks, old tattoos long since blurred, discoloured the slack skin on his thin arms. A smell of cabbage and old, rancid fat was exhaled by the open doorway. He screwed his face up inquisitively as Enver and Hanlon appeared over the parapet and stood framed against the skyline.

‘You’re with the Environmental Health as well? Cos your mates left half an hour ago.’ The old man hawked phlegm and spat a large green gob of mucus offensively close to Enver’s shoe. His tone was aggressive and unpleasant.

He and Hanlon exchanged a quick, worried glance. Hanlon wordlessly strode to the far left door.

‘We’re police,’ said Enver, producing his warrant card. The old man spat again. He was unimpressed.

‘Screaming and shaartin’, jabbering away in their facking lingo. Paki Turk bastards, coming over here. They should be arrested. Forrin bastards.’ The pensioner’s red-rimmed, rheumy eyes were full of hate. ‘Taking our jobs!’

Enver shook his head and went to join Hanlon. Her face was devoid of expression, stonier than ever. Hanlon tried the door, locked, on its latch. She shrugged and rang the bell. They listened to its buzz. It had that mournful sound that a bell makes in an empty house. A bell that there is no one to hear. They looked at each other. They both knew nobody would answer.

The pensioner filled them in on events, like a solo, senile, Greek chorus. ‘Three big bin bags they took away, the caarncil done. Oh, they can find the money for the effnics.’ He repeated the word for emphasis. ‘The effnics, for the gippos, what abart the whites, that’s what I say. Bet it was food what they was hoarding. Attracts the rats, hoarding does.’ The old man smacked his lips on the word ‘hoarding’ as if it gave him pleasure. He overemphasized the ‘h’, Hoarding, for emphasis. ‘Facking forrin hoarders. Oi, you, I’m talking to you.’ He pointed a shaking finger at them. ‘No bleeding respect. Not these days.’

With no warning, in one fluid motion that Enver guessed took under a second, Hanlon drew her right knee up to her chest, pivoted on her left leg and lashed out with her right foot. There was a very loud crash and the door flew open.

Hanlon, followed by Enver, strode in. Enver remained by the door as Hanlon moved carefully through the flat, touching nothing, anxious not to contaminate what they both felt would be a crime scene. It took less than a minute to ascertain the flat — one bedroom, lounge, kitchen, bathroom — was empty. It was as they had suspected, as they feared. The small galley kitchen was a wreck. There was smashed crockery and cutlery on the floor to the right of the sink. On the work surface a jar of instant coffee had smashed, milk and soft drink bottles lay on their sides. There were other food items on the floor too, stepped on and squashed on to the cheap linoleum. The kitchen was directly in line to the door. Hanlon guessed that Mehmet had answered the door and then been slammed backwards into the kitchen where the struggle had taken place. She could imagine it happening, the door opening and the attacker’s shoulder thudding into the body of the unsuspecting man. It’s how she would have done it.