Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

‘I know that name,’ Norman Potting said. ‘Ewan Preece. Little bastard. Nicked him years ago for stealing cars. Used to be one of the Moulsecoomb troublemakers when he was younger.’

‘Know anything about him now, Norman?’ Grace asked. ‘Where he might be? Why would anyone go over the wall with just three weeks left?’

‘I know the people to ask, chief.’

Grace made an action note. ‘OK, good. If you can follow that up. I spoke to a senior officer at Ford just before this meeting, Lisa Setterington. She told me Preece has been as good as gold in Ford. He’s applied himself, learning the plastering trade. She says she knows him well and feels it’s out of character for him to have done this.’

‘Out of character for a villain like Preece?’ Potting snorted. ‘I remember him when he was fifteen. I was doing community policing then. He had a formal warning for being mixed up with a bunch of kids who’d been nicked for joyriding. I felt sorry for him and got him lined up for a job at the timber people, Wenban-Smith, but he never turned up for his interview. I stopped him one night a few weeks later, him and two others, and asked why he’d not gone. He gave me a story about his family getting evicted from their council house.’ Potting nodded his head. ‘It’s not easy to be evicted from a council house if you’ve got young kids – his parents were scumbags. He never had a chance. But I thought maybe he was a decent kid and I felt sorry for him. I bet him a tenner that he’d be in jail by his sixteenth birthday. He took the bet.’

Bella Moy was staring at him incredulously. ‘Your own money?’

Potting nodded. ‘I knew it was a safe bet. He was banged up six months later for vehicle theft. Doesn’t surprise me how he’s ended up.’ He nodded again, wistfully.

‘So did he pay you?’ David Howes asked.

‘Ha-ha!’ Potting replied.

Nick Nicholl suddenly interjected, ‘Boss, might it be a good idea to get the word spread around Ford about the reward. It’s likely someone in there will know what Preece was up to. All prisoners know each other’s business.’

‘Good point,’ Grace said. ‘You should go over there, Norman. See if any of the prisoners will talk to you.’

‘I’ll do that, chief. I know where to start looking in Brighton as well. A bloke like Ewan Preece isn’t capable of hiding for long.’

‘Especially,’ Grace said, ‘when there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar price tag on finding him.’

Tooth was up at dawn, as he was every morning, before the heat of the sun became too intense. He was running his regular ten-mile circuit up in the arid hills close to his home, dressed in his singlet, shorts and trainers, with his associate loping along at his side.

When he arrived back home, ninety minutes later, he worked out with his weights in the gym in the small, air-conditioned spare room, while Yossarian waited patiently for his breakfast. Then he went through his martial arts routine. Sometimes, when he had been behind enemy lines, using a gun wasn’t practical. Tooth was fine with his bare hands. He preferred them to using knives. You could hurt people a lot more with your bare hands, if you knew where to squeeze. You could pop their eardrums, their eyeballs or their testicles. You really could give them a lot of pain before you killed them. And you didn’t leave a trail of blood.

He practised his movements in the gym. In particular he worked his hand muscles, slamming the punchbag with his hand weights attached, then worked on his squeezes. He might be small, but he could crush a brick into dust with either his right or his left hand.

When he had finished in the gym, he showered, poured some biscuits into his associate’s bowl, opened a tin of dog food and scooped that in, then set it down out on the balcony. A few minutes later he joined Yossarian and had his own breakfast. He drank energy powder mixed with water, staring out at the flat surface of Turtle Bay Cove and the boats moored alongside the pontoon below the Shark Bite Sports Bar, reading today’s New York Times on his Kindle.

It was a fine day, as it was most days here, and the shipping forecast was good. In a while he and Yossarian would head out to sea on Long Shot , switch on the side-scan sonar and start hunting fish. Whatever he caught, he would share with his associate. They were in this shitty life together and they took care of each other.

One time, a few months ago, a local scumbag had gone into his apartment when he’d been out shopping. It wouldn’t have been hard, because he left the patio doors open on to the ground-floor terrace and garden in case Yossarian, who liked to lie asleep in the shade indoors, needed to go out to relieve himself. The only way Tooth knew that anyone had been in was from the four severed fingers leaking blood on to the floor tiles, close to the dining table. His associate had done his job.

Before they went fishing, Tooth had a job to do. A ritual, every morning after his birthday. Life was simple: you should take care of the things that took care of you. He took care of his associate and he took care of his Colt revolver.

He removed it from the locked cabinet now, laid it on newspaper and began to dismantle it. He liked the feel of the cold metal. Liked to see the barrel, the trigger, the frame, hammer, sights and trigger guard all laid out in front of him. He liked the knowledge that this inanimate, beautifully engineered machine made the decision for him about when he lived and when he died. It was a good feeling to abdicate all responsibility.

He tipped the can of gun oil on to a piece of rag and wiped along the barrel. He liked the smell of the oil the way some folk, he imagined, liked the smell of a fine wine. He’d seen wine experts on television talk about hints of cedar, cigar, pepper and cinnamon, or about gooseberries, and citrus. This oil had a metallic tang to it, a hint of linseed, copper and rotting apples. It was every bit as fine to him as the finest wine.

He’d spent so much time alone, in enemy territory, with his rifle and his handgun. The smell of the weapons, and of the oil that kept them running smoothly, was more potent to him than the smell of the most beautiful woman on earth. It was the one smell in all the world he could trust.

Suddenly his phone rang.

He looked down at the black Nokia on the table beside him. The number was displayed. A New York State number, but not one he recognized. He killed the call, then waited for some moments, composing his thoughts.

Only one person knew how to contact him. That man had the number of his current pay-as-you-go phone. Tooth had five such phones in his safe. He would only ever take one call on a phone, then he would destroy it. It was a precaution that had served him well. The man, who was an underboss with a New York crime family, understood Tooth and, in turn, Tooth trusted him.

He removed the SIM card from the phone, then held it in the flame of his cigarette lighter until it had melted beyond recovery. Then he removed another phone from the safe, ensured that it was set to withhold the caller’s number and dialled.

‘Yep?’ said the male voice the other end, answering almost immediately.

‘You just called.’

‘I’m told you can help me.’

‘You know my terms?’

‘They’re fine. How soon could we meet? Tonight?’

Tooth did a quick calculation of flight times. He knew the flights out of here to Miami and the times of the connecting flights to most capitals that concerned him. And he could always be ready in one hour.

‘The guy who gave you this number, he’ll give you another number. Call me on that at 6 p.m. and give me the address.’ Then Tooth hung up.

He phoned the cleaning lady who took care of Yossarian when he was away. Then he added a few items to his go-bag and ordered a taxi. While he waited for it to arrive he chatted to his associate and gave him an extra big biscuit in the shape of a bone.