Personal

Little Joey was the giant. No question about it. His photo was cropped a whole inch longer than the others. He was listed as six feet eleven, and twenty-two stone, which as far as I understood foreign weights and measures came out to exactly three hundred and eight pounds. He was their enforcer. Again MI5 was scrupulous about mentioning the lack of proof or convictions, but Little Joey’s swift rise to parity with men old enough to be his father could only be explained by extreme efficiency. He was in MI5’s books for eleven certain homicides, and too many beatings to count. Grievous bodily harm was the legal phrase used, which seemed appropriate.

Casey Nice said, ‘Why do they call him little?’

‘Because they’re British,’ I said. ‘They’re into irony. If they called him Big Joey, he’d be a dwarf.’

She scrolled onward, but the document ended right there. Little Joey was the last item. I said, ‘We need more than this. We need the spear carriers, and locations, and addresses. You better get back to O’Day.’

‘Now?’

‘Sooner the better. Data is king. And get what he has about the Serbians in the West.’

‘Why?’

‘We need guns. Elephant guns, for preference, having seen Little Joey in action. And I doubt if the Romford Boys will be keen to sell us any. So we need to make contact elsewhere.’

‘We don’t have time for all of that now. This hotel is paying protection money, almost certainly. And we can be sure right about now the Romford Boys are starting to call around for information.’

I nodded. ‘OK, finish your pizza and we’ll move right along.’

‘I lost my appetite. We should get going immediately.’

She closed the document and swiped her phone back to its home screen, as if to underline her point.

I said, ‘Where do you want to go?’

She said, ‘We can’t go back to our own hotel. They were there once already. That’s the first place they’ll look.’

‘Your stuff is there.’

She didn’t reply.

I said, ‘We could risk five minutes. In and out, real quick, to get it.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Can you live without it?’

‘You don’t have stuff.’

‘I’m used to it.’

‘Maybe I could get used to it too. The Sherlock Homeless method. I mean, how bad can it be? We could stop by somewhere and I could get a toothbrush.’

I said, ‘You never put on clean clothes in the morning. That’s about the worst of it.’

‘Right now that sounds better than the alternative.’

‘And no pyjamas.’

‘I can live with that.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll head downtown. The centre of London. The Ritz, maybe. Or the Savoy. We’ve got plenty of money, thanks to them. And they won’t have eyes in places like that.’

‘How do we get there? We can’t call a cab.’

‘We’ll take the bus,’ I said. ‘I doubt if the London transportation system is paying protection money.’

So we left the room, with nothing in our hands, and we dumped the key at the desk, and we let ourselves out into the night.

THIRTY

THERE WERE BIG red buses running both ways on the road outside, and we elected to go south, aiming to change at the next big crossroads and head west for the centre. All our money was in big bills, which we figured wouldn’t be welcome on a bus, so we ducked into a convenience store and bought travel cards named after bivalve molluscs. Then we located the nearest bus stop and hung back in the shadows until we saw what we wanted lumbering through the traffic towards us. It was after seven in the evening, and I was tired, and Nice looked completely done in. She hadn’t slept in about a day and a half.

The outer hinterland of London felt vast, and the bus was slow, so we took a chance and got out again back in Barking, where we knew we could get the subway, which we figured would be faster. We checked the map at the station and used the District Line, which had a stop at a place called St James’s Park, which sounded like it might be near some fancy places. Which it was. We came up into the night air and saw signs to Westminster Abbey in one direction and Buckingham Palace in the other. And there was a big hotel right across the street. Five stars. Not the Ritz, not the Savoy, but a shiny international chain that looked adequate in every respect.