Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Bernard Stanbury hadn’t been answering his phone, so she’d left a message for him before heading up to Harrow to show the e-fit of the O’Brien suspect to the witnesses in the pub car park shooting. Unfortunately, a long time had passed and none of them could say one way or another whether the picture was of the man they’d seen leaving the scene of the earlier murder. Another dead-end, and a time-consuming one too, and still Stanbury hadn’t called back. She’d thought about phoning John and finding out what he thought of this new cloud of suspicion circling round Stegs, but decided to leave it until she had something more. He was busy enough as it was, chasing after Robert Panner, and he’d said he’d phone her when he had a chance. She didn’t even bother wondering whether Panner could have been the shooter. At the moment, all she was interested in was the pursuit of the leads she was generating. And the man who appeared to be in the middle of them all.

And this had been what had brought her to the PCA offices that afternoon, knowing that Stegs would be there for his interview. She wasn’t meant to be tailing him, and would almost certainly have got her arse kicked if her superiors had known about it, but sometimes you had no choice but to follow your instincts.

Stegs’s cab continued along the Embankment, but as the traffic became heavier and more black cabs appeared out of the side streets, Tina was forced to concentrate on his vehicle in particular, not trusting the driver to do the job for her. She could see him sneaking peeks at the pretty young tourists walking along the banks of the Thames, enjoying the first of the spring sunshine.

As they came up to Blackfriars Bridge, Stegs’s cab swung sharply into the left-hand lane heading up towards the Farringdon Road. They were three or four vehicles behind it, but the driver was more on the ball than Tina had given him credit for, and he glided smoothly across without breaking pace. The lights were green and the cabs went straight through, turning north in the direction of Holborn.

‘Let him get a couple of cars ahead,’ she said, leaning forward and wondering why she was speaking so quietly. ‘I don’t want to make it too obvious we’re following him.’

The driver grunted an acknowledgement and fell back a few yards, letting another cab get between them. Traffic on the Farringdon Road was heavy, but still moving. After about five minutes, Stegs’s cab turned left into Cross Street, and by the time they’d made the turning themselves it had come to a halt outside an office block. Stegs was already outside, paying the driver.

‘Go straight past,’ she hissed. ‘Quickly.’

‘I want to get my money for this, you know,’ he moaned, but did as he was told, driving on without changing speed. ‘I want to help out the police, course I do, but I ain’t a charity. If I was I wouldn’t be working here, I can tell you.’ He guffawed again.

Tina ignored him and turned round in her seat, watching as Stegs turned away from the cab and started up a side street, moving at a jog.

‘All right, stop,’ she demanded.

He did a deliberate emergency stop, taking advantage of the lack of traffic to teach her what he hoped was a lesson. It didn’t work. Expecting it, she grabbed the handle by the seat and held on tightly, before thrusting a tenner through the hatch.

‘Change and receipt, please,’ she said, thinking that London’s black cabs were as far from a charity as you could possibly get. Much closer to unarmed robbers. He dawdled, so she told him to hurry up or she’d take his number and report him, and he got the message.

She jumped out of the cab and walked quickly down to the spot where Stegs had got out of the cab. She was intrigued. They were a long way from his patch. It could be something completely innocent that explained his presence here — a girlfriend, or a mate he was seeing — but she still felt a flush of excitement.

When she reached the street he’d turned into a good minute and a half earlier, it was empty. Completely. It was narrow and cobbled, made up of oldish grey-brick buildings that looked to be the offices of small businesses. She hung back and waited a few moments, just to make sure he didn’t suddenly reappear, then started to walk up on the left-hand side, checking the nameplates on the doors of the buildings. They were mainly run-of-the-mill companies: graphic designers, specialist printers, photographers, that sort of thing. Halfway up there was an olde-worlde-style wine bar of the kind you get in the financial district, with stone floors, sawdust, bangers and mash, and a wine list to die for. Everything traditional except the astronomical prices. The windows were tinted but the interior was just about visible if you looked hard enough. She did. It was empty, but then again it was close to three o’clock, a dead time of day round these parts.

When she came to the T-junction at the top of the street, she stopped, lit a cigarette, then turned left and started along it, just in case he’d come this far up. Again, nothing stood out. She crossed the street and came back the other way, still not uncovering anything out of the ordinary in any of the signs. By the time she’d got back to the top of the street she’d first come up, Tina was beginning to feel disheartened. Was she reading too much into his movements?

She walked back down on the other side in the direction of the main road, trying to remain as casual as possible, but knowing that she stood out. She might have been in the middle of a city of ten million people but these backstreets were as eerily quiet as they always were, and she was the only person on this particular one.

She stopped. Suddenly. Her eyes fixed on the plate outside a modern tinted-glass door that looked like it was an inch thick. Carroll, Reed and Foster Solicitors. Melvyn Carroll. It had to be him. A smile spread across her face. Bingo.

Then, through the door, she spotted someone’s legs coming down the stairs just inside. They were clad in khaki chinos and brogues, and she knew immediately it was Stegs.

‘Shit!’

Cursing, she turned and sprinted ten yards before slowing to a casual walk as she heard the door open and close again, hoping he didn’t recognize her from the back. She kept walking, and turned into the main road, heading in the direction the taxi had dropped her. She couldn’t hear any footsteps behind but kept going for another minute, before finally risking a look over her shoulder.

He was nowhere to be seen.

She breathed a sigh of relief, then broke a long-standing habit by lighting a cigarette less than five minutes after she’d put out her last one.

This was very interesting. Melvyn Carroll was one of the most crooked lawyers in London, which was saying one hell of a lot. More importantly, he acted as counsel for a number of organized crime figures, and for a long time had been the Holtz family brief. As far as Tina was aware, he was also involved in the defence of senior Holtz crimelord Neil Vamen in his upcoming trial. That Stegs was corrupt, she knew. That he’d fed information to the Holtzes in the past, she was sure. And now it seemed he was working for Neil Vamen.

‘I’m on to you, Mr Jenner,’ she whispered, pleased with her day’s work. ‘And this time you’re not getting out of it.’

Stegs cursed himself as he watched Tina Boyd. He’d recognized her the minute he’d come out of Carroll’s. It was the way her arse waggled effortlessly as she walked, plus he remembered the cream trouser suit. She’d been wearing it the day he first met her. He was observant like that. Particularly with good-looking women, and ones who dressed well. You wouldn’t have caught Boyd in a sock-and-clog combination. He’d followed her down to the bottom of the road, then crossed it, heading away from her, before stopping in the doorway of a forlorn-looking antique shop and watching her as she continued up the road. She’d turned round and lit a cigarette, and he’d got his confirmation, as if he’d needed it. Then, after a few seconds, she looked at her watch, took a couple of rapid puffs on the cigarette, and hailed a passing cab.