the car’s stereo. Sped up, not stopping until he pulled into the builders’ yard.
Checking his watch, he saw that it was already gone midnight. Where the hell were the Boddlingtons? Under normal circumstances, being late to an O’Brien meet at the yard attracted a physical penalty. Usually trapping the miscreants’ hands in the jamb of the door. He was good at releasing the pressure before the fingers actually broke. A skill he would soon have no need of.
In the kitchenette at the back of the neat little office, he made himself a cup of redbush tea, using bags that he carried with him everywhere. Sat out front in the shop with the fluorescent lights blazing. Surrounded by builders’ merchandise. Tape measures. Brickies’ protective gloves. Overalls for asbestos workers. A broad-shouldered mannequin wearing very useful cargo trousers with in-built knee pads and an excellent quality tool belt. Conky eyed the utilitarian garb, thinking how, if he had chosen another path, he too, like so many of his brethren from across the Irish Sea, would be spending his back-breaking pre-retirement days on wet English building sites, toiling over fine brickwork or perhaps taking pride in a handsome slate roof. He might have a wife and children. Live in an over-developed bungalow in Saddleworth. Drive a white van during the week but a nearly new Range Rover at the weekend. Go on holiday to Torremolinos during the winter to ease the rheumatoid arthritis that would almost certainly be settling in by now. Too late to go back, however. He had chosen the path of the Loss Adjuster.
Waiting. The clock showed 00.13. He took out his copy of Conn Iggulden’s Lords of the Bow. It was the third time he had read the novelised series describing Genghis Khan’s life, but Conky liked to channel a little Genghis when a confrontation was afoot: marvelling at a chapter where the disciplined training regime of the Mongolian army was laid out in detail, he waited for that vicarious rush of adrenalin and pseudo-military pride to wash over him; expecting the sheer bloody-minded determination of Genghis himself, in the face of all adversity when his horsemen were woefully outnumbered by the enemy, to strengthen his own spine. Though the Mongolian Emperor would have little chance to inspire him tonight. Headlights at the builders’ yard gates, shining onto stacks of timber. Abandoning his book, he stood and watched a dark people carrier advance to the Portakabin shop. It parked out front. But there was only one man in the vehicle that he could see. The tall figure of Asaf Smolensky emerged, carrying a black sack.
‘Oh, shite. Not that nutter,’ Conky said under his breath. ‘He’s the kind of eejit keeps a shovel of shit on the table to keep the flies off the butter.’
A merry tinkle as the door to the shop opened. There he was – his opposite number, dressed in all his eccentric religious regalia, with those unhygienic ritual tassels hanging down his trousers and that ridiculous black satin coat. Conky had read enough about Judaism to know that the imitation Hassid who stood before him constituted nothing short of blasphemy.
‘Smolensky,’ he said, proffering his hand.
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