Jay? Did Smolensky have a family? Lev couldn’t see it somehow. No wedding ring. No warmth. Very little in the way of any discernible humanity. He doubted the stresses of being a provider and fatherhood in general were the Fish Man’s chosen topics of small-talk.
Asaf took a sandwich out of the pocket of his coat. Started to eat hungrily. It smelled meaty. Lev’s stomach growled. Since the business with Jay and the money and confronting his lost cause of a mother, he hadn’t really been eating.
‘What you got there?’ he asked, gazing wistfully at the snack.
‘Ham.’ Asaf wiped butter from his beard. Chewed noisily.
‘But you’re an Orthodox Jew.’
‘I’m Israeli,’ he said, spitting as he spoke. ‘Ex-Mossad. Know what that is?’
Lev shook his head, still staring at the doorstep of a sandwich.
‘The hardest military men in the world. Like the US Marines but with bigger bollocks. I’m a highly trained operative. Don’t be fooled by the hat and the peyes.’ He flicked his ringletted sidelocks. ‘This Hassidic bullshit is just a cover. I’m hiding in plain sight. Nobody suspects a part-time fishmonger to be an executioner.’
Suddenly, Lev didn’t find the sandwich appetising in the slightest. He kept visualising Suspicious Sid, with his insides leaking all over the concrete floor in that car park. He hadn’t seen the body personally, but he’d heard tell how gruesome the scene had been from a few of the lads dealing over in Bury and Radcliffe. How the hell had he ended up rubbing shoulders with the likes of a psychotic murderer on a daily basis? Somehow he doubted Smolensky sat as he did during a rare evening off, wondering how he could get the hell out of this life of class A crime with its high stakes of category A prison or violent death.
‘I’m a damned good fishmonger though.’ Asaf raised an eyebrow, chewing away contemplatively.
When Tariq and Jonny started to bring boxes downstairs, Lev was relieved. There weren’t as many as he had anticipated.
‘Is that it?’ he asked, wishing he could pocket some of those plastic money bags full of twenties.
Jonny gesticulated towards Tariq’s box. ‘There’s a money counter in there. Get it out and start stacking the twenties.’
‘Where was all this?’ Lev asked, tugging the cash out of the stubborn plastic envelopes.
‘Mind your own business, son,’ Tariq said.
Sweat beaded on Lev’s forehead as he fed sheaf after sheaf of notes into the machine. The cloying, greasy smell of cash in his nostrils. The sense that he was being tested and that every pair of eyes in the room were on him. He felt dizzy. Overwhelmed. The words were on the tip of his tongue – Can I have a loan of £150,000 for my dying son, please? – but he knew this was neither the right time nor the place to ask. Especially with the Fish Man breathing down his neck.
Finally, Asaf belched. ‘I’m going for a slash,’ he said, tipping his homburg hat back like a confused cowboy.
With the others on sentry duty in the loading bay, there were just Lev, Jonny and Tariq left. Now was his moment.
‘I know this is a bad time to ask, right,’ Lev began. ‘But I’ve got this personal … issue. I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up, like.’
Tariq looked quizzically at him. Jonny did not tear his gaze from the whirr of the money in the machine.
‘Go on,’ Tariq said. ‘Spit it out.’
Relief of sorts flooded him with warmth. Lev opened his mouth, poised to issue forth about all that had gone on with his boy; outlining how British surgeons couldn’t operate; delivering a heart-rending appeal for a sum of money that was surely a piss in the ocean for men like Tariq and Jonny.
‘Well, you see, it’s proper bullshit, right? My son’s been diagnosed with this—’
A deafening clang, followed by multiple footsteps, stemmed the confessional tide. Damn it! It was Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber from the loading bay. Panting. Clearly agitated.
‘It’s the copper!’ Nasim half shouted, half whispered.
‘You sure?’ Asaf asked.
‘Dumpy white bloke with glasses and a buzz cut?’
‘That’s him,’ Tariq said. His Adam’s apple was pinging in his throat like a bagatelle ball.
‘Well, he’s in the loading bay, shining a torch in the car.’
Jonny’s eyebrows knitted together. He flashed a desperate look at Tariq, who was suddenly glassy-eyed and silent. Stalked prey in the night-time.
‘Get the money out of here!’ Tariq finally said, tearing a black bin liner from a fresh roll and opening it up. He started to pile the cash into the sack. Motioned that Lev should follow suit. ‘Quickly.’
Knocking on the shutters sounded impossibly loud inside the empty factory. Insistent rapping with knuckles that denoted the impatience of a confident man. Possibly with a warrant.
‘What we gonna do?’ Lev asked, sweeping uncounted twenties and fifties into the bin liner, seeing Jay’s operation and life disappearing along with the money.
Jonny snatched the bulging sack from him. Stuffed another pile into a Home Bargains carrier bag until only the counting machine remained.
‘We’ll have to let him in. What choice do we have?’ He thrust the money into Asaf’s arms. ‘Take the gelt up to the ladies on the second floor. Lock yourself in a cubicle. Don’t come out until I say. Okay?’
‘Act natural,’ Tariq told Lev. ‘We were just stopping by to check everything was okay because I had a call from someone, saying the alarm had gone off. Right?’
For a man of sub-ordinary stature, Ellis James walked with a degree of swagger. He reminded Lev of a psychopathic PE teacher who had given him a hard time at school. Had the manic look of a man who was on the hunt for something that was always just out of reach.
‘Evening, gents,’ Ellis said. Hands thrust into his raincoat pockets.
‘Detective,’ Jonny said, sitting legs akimbo on a worker’s high stool. Arms folded. Owning the place, as was his right. All of the jubilation after the gallery meet had gone now. His tone was prickly, almost combative, though a wry smile remained on his face along with a sheen of sweat. ‘Funny time to come shopping for fancy goods. Can I interest you in a nice handbag for the wife? Bit of jewellery, perhaps?’
Ellis James approached Lev and stood closer than he was comfortable with. The copper only reached collarbone height on him. But Lev could smell his breath. Sickly sweet, with a lingering hint of farts, as though he had been eating doughnuts and drinking coffee in the Mondeo. The classic stereotype of a cop on a stakeout. Lev took a step backwards.
‘Leviticus Bell,’ he said, staring up at the zig-zag bolt of lightning shaved into Lev’s scalp. ‘I’ve had you in my station. I remember your mugshot.’
Play it cool, Lev. Don’t get on his wrong side. Think of Jay. If you get your
