Читать книгу The Graveyard Shift - Jack Higgins - Страница 7

Chapter 1

Fog drifted up from the Thames, pushed by an early morning wind, yellow and menacing, wrapping the city in its yellow shroud, and when the duty officer at Wandsworth opened the judas gate and motioned the half dozen waiting men through, they stepped into an alien world.

Ben Garvald was last in line, a big, dangerous-looking man, massive shoulders swelling under the cheap raincoat. He hesitated, pulling up his collar, and the duty officer gave him a quick push.

‘Don’t want to leave us, eh?’

Garvald turned and looked at him calmly.

‘What do you think, you pig?’

The officer took an involuntary step back and flushed. ‘I think you always did have too much bloody lip, Garvald. Now get moving.’

Garvald stepped outside and the gate clicked into place with a finality that was strangely comforting. He started to walk down towards the main road, passing a line of parked cars and the man behind the wheel of the old blue van on the end turned to his companion and nodded.

Garvald paused on the corner, watching the early morning traffic move in a slow line through the fog, judged his moment and crossed quickly to the small café on the other side.

Two of the others were there before him, standing at the counter while a washed-out blonde with sleep in her eyes stood at the urn and made fresh tea in a metal pot.

Garvald sat on a stool and waited, looking out through the window. After a while, the blue van cut across the line of traffic through the fog and pulled in at the kerb. Two men got out and entered the café. One of them was small and badly in need of a shave. The other was at least six feet tall with a hard, rawboned face and big hands.

He leaned against the counter and when the girl turned to Garvald from serving the others, cut in quickly in a soft Irish voice:

‘Two teas, me dear.’

He challenged Garvald to say something, a slight, mocking smile on his mouth, arrogantly sure of himself. The big man refused to be drawn and looked into the fog again as rain spattered against the window.

The Irishman paid for his teas and joined his companion, at a corner table and the small man glanced furtively across at Garvald.

‘What do you think, Terry?’

‘Maybe he was hot stuff about a thousand years ago, but they’ve squeezed him dry in there.’ The Irishman grinned. ‘This is going to be the softest touch we’ve had in a long, long time.’

The girl behind the counter yawned as she filled a cup for Garvald and watched him out of the corner of her eye. She was used to men like him. Almost every morning someone crossed the road from the place opposite and they all had the same look. But there was something different about this one. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

She pushed the cup of tea across and brushed the long hair back from her face. ‘Anything else?’

‘What have you got?’

His eyes were as grey as woodsmoke on an autumn day and there was strength there, a restless, animal force that was almost physical and she was aware of her body reacting to it.

‘At this time in the morning? You’re all the same, you men.’

‘What do you expect? It’s been a long time.’

He pushed a coin across the counter. ‘Give me a packet of fags. Not tipped. I want to taste them.’

He lit a cigarette and offered the girl one, the two men in the corner watching him in the mirror. Garvald ignored them and gave her a light.

‘Been up there long, then?’ she said, blowing out smoke expertly.

‘Long enough.’ He looked out of the window. ‘I expect I’ll find a few changes.’

‘Everything’s changed these days,’ she agreed.

Garvald grinned and when he reached out, running his fingers through her hair, she was suddenly breathless. ‘Some things stay the same.’

And then she was afraid and her mouth turned dry and she seemed utterly helpless, caught in some inexorable current. He leaned across the counter quickly and kissed her full on the mouth.

‘See you some time.’

He slid off the stool and with incredible speed for such a big man, was out through the door and moving away.

The two men in the corner went after him fast, but when they reached the pavement, he had already disappeared into the fog. The Irishman ran forward, and a moment later caught sight of Garvald walking briskly along. He turned a corner into a narrow side street and the Irishman grinned and nudged the small man with his elbow.

‘He’s really asking for it, this one.’

They turned the corner and walked along the uneven pavement between decaying Victorian houses fringed with iron railings. The Irishman paused, pulling the other man to a halt, and listened, but the only sound was the roar of the early morning traffic from the main road, strangely muted by the fog.

A frown creased his face and he took an anxious step forward. Behind him, Garvald moved up the steps from the area in which he had been waiting, swung the small man round and raised a knee into his groin.

He sagged to the pavement with a gasp of agony and the Irishman turned round. Garvald stood on the other side of the writhing body, hands in the pockets of his raincoat, a slight smile on his face.

‘Looking for somebody?’

The Irishman moved in fast, great hands reaching out to destroy, but they only fastened on thin air and his feet were kicked expertly from beneath him.

He thudded against the wet flagstones and scrambled to his feet cursing. In the same moment, Garvald seized his right wrist with both hands, twisting it round and up, locking the man’s shoulder as in a vice.

The Irishman gave a cry of agony as the muscle started to tear. Still keeping that terrible hold in position, Garvald ran him head-first into the railings.

The small man was being sick into the gutter and now he got to his feet and leaned against the railings, an expression of horror on his face. Garvald stepped over the Irishman and moved a little closer and the small man felt such fear as he had never known before move inside him.

‘For Christ’s sake, no! Leave me alone!’ he gabbled.

‘That’s better,’ Garvald said. ‘That’s a lot better. Who sicked you on to me?’

‘A bloke called Rosco – Sam Rosco. He and Terry did some bird together at the Ville a couple of years back. He wrote to Terry last week from this dump up North where he lives. Said you were bad news. That nobody wanted you back.’

‘And you were supposed to convince me?’ Garvald said pleasantly. ‘How much was it worth to pass the message along?’

The small man moistened his lips. ‘A century – between us,’ he added hastily.

Garvald dropped to one knee beside the Irishman and turned him over, whistling a strangely sad little tune in a minor key as he searched him. He located a wallet and took out a wad of five-pound notes.

‘This it?’

‘That’s right. Terry hadn’t divvied-up yet.’

Garvald counted the money quickly, then slipped it into his inside breast pocket. ‘Now that’s what I call a very satisfying morning’s work.’

The small man crouched beside the Irishman. He touched his face gingerly and recoiled in alarm. ‘Holy Mother, you’ve smashed his jaw.’

‘You’d better find him a doctor then, hadn’t you?’ Garvald said and turned away.

He vanished into the fog and the sound of his whistling hung on the air for a moment, then faded eerily. The small man stayed there, crouched beside the Irishman, the rain soaking through the ­shoulders of his cheap coat.

It was the tune – that damned tune.

He couldn’t seem to get the sound of it out of his head and for some reason he could never ­satisfactorily explain afterwards, he started to cry, helplessly like a small child.