Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s my impression of Stanbury, the man who reported it stolen. There’s something not right about him. First of all, he didn’t phone me back. Then, when I called him again, he became very furtive and sketchy on the details. Apparently the card was taken during a burglary while he was away for the weekend, but he couldn’t tell me what else had been stolen. It seemed to me he was hiding something.’

‘Like what?’ asked Malik.

‘I got the idea that perhaps the card hadn’t been stolen,’ she said, turning in his direction. ‘Or maybe that it had been stolen, but that he knew full well who’d stolen it.’

‘You think someone paid him so they could use it while he was away?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I checked with the credit card company and the spending on it started on the evening he left for the long weekend and stopped abruptly three days later, two hours before he informed them it had been stolen. There was no other attempt to spend money on it. It sounds very fishy to me.’

‘But all it shows is that maybe your man Stanbury isn’t the most honest in the world,’ I said. ‘Even if he can tell us who was actually using it, that person’s unlikely to be the killer, is he?’

‘I’d like the chance to follow it up though, that’s all.’

‘Well, you’ve done pretty well today, Tina,’ Flanagan told her, ‘so I’m not going to stand in your way. We’ve got another meeting at eight-thirty tomorrow morning which I’d like everyone to attend. Go and see him after that.’

Tina nodded, and the meeting broke up. I looked at my watch. Quarter past seven. Time to head home. We left Flanagan sitting in his office looking as if all the troubles of the world were on his shoulders, and it made me think that perhaps running high-profile murder cases wasn’t the best career role to aspire to, not if you wanted to live a long and healthy life. After we’d said goodbye to Malik, I told Tina that I was going to buy her a bottle of decent champagne, and she asked me why.

‘Because Flanagan may not have shown much enthusiasm for all the hard work you’ve put in, but you deserve it.’

‘He’s right, though. We’re still a long way from a result.’

‘Bullshit. We’re getting close. And when we crack this case, it’ll be down to a lead that you uncovered, I’d put money on that.’

She smiled. ‘You reckon?’

‘Definitely. Now, let’s go and get this champagne. And keep our fingers crossed that Robert Panner shows up.’

Robert ‘Pretty Boy’ Panner was none too pleased with the way Dora Hayes was acting. She was getting way too fucking lippy, telling him she didn’t need him now that she’d found a better job, working for those bastard Kosovans from the Hallfield estate. She’d told Panner that they let her keep more of her money, looked after her better and had unlimited access to crack and smack, both of which Dora liked to indulge in. She now operated at the southern end of the Bishops Bridge Road on the other side of Paddington station to the patch off Praed Street where she’d earned money for Panner, and the way the bitch was acting was making it very difficult for him. How was he meant to keep his other girls in line when one of them was so fucking out of order and, worse still, getting away with it? It seemed he was losing them all over the place at the moment. Dora had already set the bastards on him as a warning, and he’d been lucky to escape relatively unscathed the previous day. The next time, she said, they’d kill him. She was living with one of the greasy bastards now. It made him sick the way they took the piss. You help the bastards out by liberating their country and they repay you by coming en masse to yours, taking over your business and acting like they owned the fucking place. Well, they were going to get a shock tonight. Pretty Boy Panner didn’t like people stealing his business, and he didn’t sit back and take it like a bitch either. He got payback.

He parked his battered old BMW 3 Series, a poor man’s pimpmobile, over on Gloucester Terrace, just down the road from Royal Oak station and only a few hundred yards from Dora’s new patch. He hadn’t seen her on his drive down the Bishops Bridge Road, and hoped that she was somewhere with a trick and therefore back soon. He didn’t fancy waiting around half the night. He’d come here the previous evening, keen to get things sorted before the rebellion spread to the other two girls he looked after, but she hadn’t been working. Tonight had better be his lucky night. If it wasn’t, he’d cut the bitch to pieces when he finally caught up with her.

The evening was cool and dry, a result of the clear skies. It was even possible to see the odd star among the dull orange glow of the city’s lights, but Panner wasn’t interested in star-gazing. He was here for one reason, and one reason only. Payback. Justice. And to sort out his livelihood. Even though that was three.

He moved on to the street proper, keeping to the shadows, knowing that he was taking a big risk showing himself on the street with the Old Bill after him, but knowing too that he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. It was 11.15 and traffic was sparse. He spotted a couple of skinny bitches in halter tops and mini-skirts outside the building across the road, but didn’t recognize either of them. He kept walking and watching, playing with the razor in his pocket, thinking about what he was going to do to the bitch when he got his hands on her. Make her squeal a bit, and beg for mercy. Let her see the blade, give her a few seconds to ponder what was about to happen, then slash, cut that acned fucking face right across, and listen to her scream. You take my fucking livelihood, I take yours. That’s the law of the street. An eye for an eye.

When he got up to Westbourne Terrace, he turned round and walked slowly back the way he’d come. A car — it looked like a Jaguar — pulled up alongside the two bitches. There was a bit of banter as they talked cash, then one of them got in and the Jag pulled away, heading over the Bishops Bridge.

He kept walking up to the bridge, then turned round again. Another car was coming towards him in the opposite direction. A silver Lexus. Sweet. It pulled to a halt, double-parked, about thirty or forty yards away, and the passenger door opened.

A bitch in a fake fur coat and red micro-dress got out. It was a bitch he knew well. It was Dora. A smile like the devil’s slithered across Panner’s face and he felt himself go hard. She was laughing now and saying her goodbyes, a wad of cash in her hand. She’d done well here. A trick who liked to pay. He bet she’d be feeling real good now, well pleased with herself. Totally unsuspecting. Stupid bitch. Stupid fucking double-crossing bitch. He was going to enjoy this.

The trick’s car pulled away, the driver oblivious to Panner’s presence as he turned right towards Paddington station, the remnants of a smile on his face. Dora, meanwhile, stood on the pavement, putting the money in her red handbag, giving the occasional suspicious glance in the direction of the bitch on the other side of the street, the one whose mate had got in the Jag.

He was twenty yards away and closing. Walking casually but trying to keep in the shadows of the doorways to avoid attracting her attention. The razor slid out of his pocket, and he opened it, his forefinger stroking the blade. It had a beautiful carved bone handle and was his pride and joy, taken from the unconscious body of a pimp he’d had a run-in with years before. He carried it everywhere, loving the way the blade shone in the darkness, revelling in the fear it infected the girls with whenever he held it up for them to see. And Dora was about to taste the pain it could inflict, the price for being stupid and selfish enough to defy him.