Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Two days later the dealers were back, and everything carried on like it had done before, only this time Lackman received a severe beating for his troubles and was forced to retreat to his bedroom on a permanent basis while the dealers lorded over the rest.

Finally, Lackman could take no more and complained to the police again. The same story then played out. A few days later armed officers raided the place (although this time they were delayed by a series of deadbolts screwed into the front and back doors, giving the dealers time to get rid of some of the contraband) and further arrests were made. This time, Tyndall’s associate wasn’t in the house, having decided that he would let a guy below him run things there. That guy, way down the criminal food chain, was the only one to face charges relating to the crack cocaine found, and because the quantities recovered were so small he escaped with a fine and a suspended sentence.

Tony Lackman wasn’t so lucky. Three weeks later his naked body was found on wasteground a few hundred yards from his home. His hands and feet were tied and he’d been shot in the back of the head. The police, in an effort to gain public co-operation, stated that he’d been tortured before his death. What was never made public, however, was the fact that he’d also been castrated and that his eyes had been gouged out.

It had been a warning from Nicholas Tyndall to the whole community: do not defy me. And it had worked as well. Nobody was ever convicted of the crime, even though the names of the killers were widely known, and Tyndall continued to control a number of crackhouses in the area (albeit in a hands-off capacity) until he moved on to bigger, more lucrative crimes, safe in the knowledge that his reputation for violence had been suitably enhanced and that no-one would ever be daft enough to testify against him.

I don’t like men like Nicholas Tyndall. Their very existence offends me, and one of the reasons I’m a copper is so that I can do my bit to bring them down.

But for the moment, Tyndall remained scot-free, wealthy and powerful, living in a palatial semi-detached villa on a quiet, leafy Islington avenue just off the Canonbury Road, no more than half a mile from where Slim Robbie O’Brien had been murdered. It had originally been three spacious flats, but when Tyndall moved in he’d decided that he wanted a bit more privacy and had made it known in no uncertain terms to the owners of the other two apartments that it was about time they moved, in the process selling their properties to him. The young couple living on the ground floor did exactly that; the Asian family in the basement needed a bit more persuading, but after having a brick thrown through their window, followed seconds later by the freshly severed head of somebody else’s pet labrador, they’d come to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour and had sold at a heavily discounted price.

The problem these days is that gangsters, whether they be small-time drug dealers with guns and attitude or wannabe urban godfathers like Nicholas Tyndall, have no qualms about using serious violence and the threat of it to get what they want, because they know that neither the judicial system nor the police service have the wherewithal or the powers to protect those who speak out against them. It’s something the Met and the government are supposedly trying to address, but sometimes, when you’re operating at the coalface, it’s difficult to get too optimistic. In the meantime, the advantage lies with the bad guys, and they didn’t come much badder than Tyndall.

I was a little nervous about going to see him, and I got the impression Tina was too, although she wasn’t the sort to admit as much. Although neither of us had met him before, we’d heard from reliable sources that he was canny enough not to pick fights with the Law. It’s a lot harder (although not impossible) to intimidate police officers, so I felt reasonably confident that we weren’t walking straight into the lion’s mouth. However, with someone who can order the castration and blinding of an innocent householder for the sin of wanting to be left in peace, you can never be too sure.

It was 11.20 a.m. and cloudy when we walked up the steps to the imposing front door of Tyndall’s house and banged on the knocker. Two separate CCTV cameras stared down on us from either side of the entrance portal and there were steel joins on the door’s hinges that looked like they’d been added recently to reinforce it from attack. There were also bars on all the ground-floor and basement windows, which made me wonder what the neighbours must have thought — not that I could picture any of them complaining. A sign on the door said ‘No Salesmen or Beggars’ in big black writing.

‘Who are you?’ said a belligerent male voice over the intercom.

‘Police,’ I said, holding my warrant card up to one of the cameras. Tina did the same with the other one. ‘We’re here to see Nicholas Tyndall.’

‘You got an appointment?’ grunted the bloke on the other end, in a way that told us he knew we hadn’t.

‘We don’t need an appointment,’ I told him. ‘Let us in, please.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Well, have a look round and make sure, because if he isn’t we’ll swamp this whole borough looking for him, and if we can’t find him then we’ll assume he’s hiding from us and we’ll come back here with territorial support officers, knock down this nice big door, issue you with a search warrant and rip this place apart from top to bottom. All right?’

The intercom clicked, and we were left standing there for what felt like a long time. Neither of us spoke, not when it was probable that whatever we said would be listened to. We didn’t even look at each other. Simply stood there.

After about two minutes, I went to press the intercom again when I heard the sound of feet clumping heavily down stairs. We stepped back from the door, and I experienced a momentary spurt of adrenalin as someone on the other side released the locks and pulled back the bolts. Then the door came open quickly and I was looking up at the smiling face of Nicholas Tyndall: six feet four and sixteen stone of murderous charm.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said in a booming but not unfriendly voice, pulling on a black puffa jacket and stepping outside.

Before I had time to reply, he shut the door, slid between us and started down the steps. Tina and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows and I shrugged, turning to follow him.

‘Slow down, Mr Tyndall,’ I said as we got to the bottom of the steps. ‘Anyone would think you were running away from something.’

He stopped and waited for us, the smile sitting easily on his face. Tyndall looked like a man who smiled a lot. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy really: early thirties, tall, well built, with clearly defined patrician features and smooth coffee skin. He was completely bald, but the style fitted him so well that it was obvious he was hairless by choice rather than fate. Today, he was dressed casually in Levi’s, khaki Timberlands and a white T-shirt under the jacket. He could have been a clothes model for a company like Gap. Everything looked brand new, including him.

‘What can I do for you, then?’ he asked.

‘I think you know why we’re here,’ said Tina sharply, keen to show she wasn’t intimidated by Tyndall’s reputation.

The grin grew wider as he sized her up. ‘Do I look like Mystic Meg? I can’t read minds, otherwise I’d have been outside waiting for you when you turned up. You’re going to have to give me a clue.’

‘We need you to come down to the station and make a statement,’ I told him.

As we caught him up, he turned and began walking steadily down the road, careful to avoid a young mother pushing her two young kids in a twin buggy. She smiled at him and glared at us.