Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

She knew that Brown had always seen himself as a kind of folk hero, a modern-day gunslinger who would maim and maybe even kill, but, in common with Sam the Man O’Donnell, whatever he did was strictly according to his own moral code. Like the good-guy gunfighters of the Old Wild West who would only kill in a fair duel and never shoot a man in the back, or so legend had it anyway, Brown would only administer what he saw as rough justice within the criminal world in which he moved. It was all business to him. He considered himself to be one of the last of a dying breed, the sort who looked after his own and harmed no one outside his own circle. And like the Krays and the O’Donnells, certainly Sam the Man, he saw himself as a kind of celebrity and could rarely resist an opportunity to talk to the press. He was certainly not afraid of media people. But Shifter Brown was the sort who would not admit to being afraid of anything.

Jo arranged to meet him at a good but unfashionable Soho restaurant. She did not particularly want to be seen in his presence. He arrived looking immaculate in an expensive dark suit, snowy white shirt and flamboyant multicoloured silk tie. Gold and diamonds flashed on his fingers and at his wrists. Shifter doubtless reckoned that he looked the business and in a way he did, even though there was more than a touch of the Del Boys about his appearance. He did not notice the way the other diners paused in their conversations as he passed them by, but then he wouldn’t.

It wasn’t just his great size, the broken nose, the weathered features, and the overly flash clothes and jewellery which marked Shifter as one apart. It was everything about him from the set of his jaw to the way he squared his broad shoulders and how his big, beefy hands hung at his sides almost like a shotgun carried loosely but cocked ready for use.

He beamed a greeting at her when he was ushered to her table and proceeded to be charm itself. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, darling,’ he told her. ‘I’ve always had you down for one of the good ’uns.’

Joanna smiled back as if flattered, but she wasn’t. She had met his sort before often enough. She knew perfectly well that he was another evil bastard, albeit with, like Sam O’Donnell, his own twisted morality.

He did have rough charm, though. And, by God, he was funny. Particularly if you were into seriously black humour. Which of course, as an old crime hack, Joanna was. He told her some wicked gangland stories, playing to the gallery. First there was the tale of legendary London gang boss, Charlie Richardson, hard as they come but famous for his devotion to his mum and love of animals, who had an adored but wayward pet monkey which his newly acquired mistress insisted he get rid of after it effectively destroyed her collection of Capo di Monte porcelain. “It’s that creature or me,” she said. Now Charlie wasn’t too sure which to choose at first but eventually he gets on to Mad Frankie — Frankie would always do anything for him, loved Charlie, did Frankie — and asks him if he’ll look after this bleeding monkey for a bit, and Frankie says OK boss and takes it home with him. Well, the monkey’s shaking and shivering all the time, and it’s just the way its nervous system is, but Mad Frankie doesn’t know that. He thinks, poor little bleeder, come all the way from Africa, it’s cold, innit? So he wraps it up in an electric blanket. Then the monkey goes and pees itself in fright and gets electrocuted.’

Shifter paused for effect. Jo began to giggle helplessly.

‘Well, Frankie gets together with the rest of the boys and they think up some yarn to tell Charlie about the sad demise of this blessed monkey, cos God knows what Charlie would’ve done if he’d thought Mad Frankie was to blame. Anyway, somehow or other they get Charlie to accept that it died of natural causes, but he’s gutted. Right gutted. He goes and fetches this monkey home to his house in Peckham and then he arranges a burial service for it in his back garden.

‘Well, he’s a man who commanded a lot of respect, Charlie. So you end up with about two dozen of the hardest nuts in the business all done up in their best whistles, black ties, the lot, standing in Charlie’s backyard doffing their hats at a funeral for a bleeding monkey.’ Shifter threw back his big head and roared with laughter. Jo laughed with him. Everybody in the restaurant stopped eating and drinking, turned and stared.

He really was a showman. And it was annoyingly difficult not to find him likeable. Joanna hated it when she liked villains. She had gone to Brazil once to interview Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs and she had felt much the same about him. The man had been a serial thief, widely believed to have been the unfeeling bastard who had casually smashed the innocent train driver viciously on the head, ruining and cruelly shortening his life. She had arrived in Rio de Janeiro determined to dislike Biggs intensely. But Ronnie had played the role of lovable rogue so well that she hadn’t been able to stop herself falling for it, at least up to a point, even though she knew only too well that a large part of it was just a carefully cultivated act. And it was much the same with Shifter Brown.

‘’Ere, I’ve got another funeral story,’ Shifter continued. ‘Well, it’s a wedding story, really, about Charlie and Mad Frankie again. When Charlie’s daughter got married they had this posh do down in Kent and the invitations said “Morning dress”. Well, poor old Frankie, he didn’t know any different, he thought it meant mourning dress, so he gets this undertaker suit, everything black, black tie, shiny black shoes, and when he turns up Charlie says: “Fuck me, Frankie, I thought you were a bleeding gangster kissogram.”’

Shifter grinned broadly, then his expression turned suddenly serious. ‘Whoops, sorry, Joey doll, I didn’t mean to use that language to you, girl, honest,’ he said.

Joey doll? That was a new one. Joanna wondered what Shifter would have made of the vernacular of an old-fashioned newspaper office. Not a lot, she didn’t think. He might be a gangland hit man but he still considered himself a gentleman.

Indeed. She made herself concentrate on what he did for a living. How he got his name. He shifted people. And, most particularly, what he might have done to Jimbo O’Donnell. Joanna was glad O’Donnell was dead. She was even glad that he had suffered such an appalling death. But it was bizarre to think that she was sitting in a smart restaurant with an engaging, immaculately dressed companion who had probably removed another man’s sexual organs and buried him while he was still alive.

‘You did him, didn’t you, Shifter?’ she asked eventually. ‘The cops know. It was a pro job. It had your mark all over it.’

Arthur Richard Brown held both his hands out towards her, palms upwards in a gesture of supplication. ‘Now would I? Would I do a horrible thing like that?’ He grinned. Gold fillings gleamed among large yellowing teeth. ‘I’m innocent, darling, upon my baby’s life, I am,’ he told her.

And then, just like Mike Fielding the very first time she ever met him, he winked broadly.

A month later Shifter Brown was rearrested. It was simple. The police found his Transit van which, although it had been washed and vacuumed and even given a new coat of paint of sorts, contained enough forensic evidence to prove that Jimbo O’Donnell had been transported in its rear compartment. Almost certainly under duress. The amateurish coat of paint had, in fact, contributed to Shifter’s downfall.

Tim Jones got the full story from the Yard. It seemed that a sharp-eyed young constable had spotted the signs of a cheap, hasty respray on the now red Transit. A thin film of red paint had strayed on to both rear and front bumpers, along the bottom of one of the side windows and even into a corner of the windscreen. The constable had fed the registration number into the PNC and found that it did not match the vehicle he had spotted. At the time there was a major car theft scam operating in the capital and the young officer had been told to watch out for vehicles that might have been stolen and, if he had the slightest suspicion, to do a check. With the diligence of a newcomer to the job, he had done so even though the battered Transit, which had obviously seen better days, was not the kind of vehicle professional car thieves would normally target. And certainly he had no idea whatsoever that he might have stumbled across something far more serious.