heavy. He probably thought that just knowing about this stuff would make him a target for the Old Bill. And it looks like it did … didn’t it?’
‘And you, Toady,’ Walking Stick said. ‘It’s made you a target too, hasn’t it? You had a chat with some officers from Greater Manchester Police this afternoon at Salford City Hospital, didn’t you?’
Ogburn shook his head feverishly. ‘They asked about Ron too – what he’s been up to and all that. What the fight in the boozer was about. I said nothing. I don’t grass people up, ever. I said I felt too rough to talk to them. The nurses showed ’em the door. Check at the hospital if you don’t believe me.’
There was a long silence, as if Ogburn’s captors were sharing unspoken thoughts. At last, Walking Stick said: ‘You sure you’re Ronnie’s only mate? He doesn’t have someone else he may have confided in. Girlfriend … boyfriend?’
‘He’s a fucking junkie as well as an alkie. No one’d go near him normally.’
‘So why’d they all jump to his defence back in that shithole you laughably call a boozer?’
‘Just the way we are in our neck of the woods.’ Ogburn tried to speak with pride, but was in too much agony. ‘Some bleeder comes shoving his arse around, we all go in …’
‘Even if it’s a copper?’
‘Especially if it’s a copper. We … we don’t like pigs, and don’t mind letting ’em know. We don’t give a shit. We look after our own …’
The kneeler chuckled. ‘I hope to Christ you never have to look after me. A job lot of you, and you got fucking leathered.’
‘It … it happens,’ Ogburn stammered. ‘Look … can I go back to hospital now? Please. I’ve told you everything I know about Ronnie. I’m not his mate. I’m the only one he talks to these days, and that’s only coz I’m the other side of the bar when he’s holding it up.’
‘Yes, well,’ Walking Stick said, ‘more the pity for you.’
‘Eh …?’
The kneeler picked up a heavy wooden lid which was roughly the same rectangular shape as the crate in which their prisoner lay. Ogburn screamed hysterically as the others closed in with hammers and nails, and the lid was slammed down on top of him.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he shrieked, hoping his voice could be heard above the deafening blows. ‘What the fuck is this? No, no no … please no, please no! Don’t bury me alive! Please, dear God no, please don’t fucking bury me alive …’
The hammering ceased, the lid now fixed firmly on the crate.
‘Relax, Toady,’ Walking Stick shouted down to him. ‘We’re not going to bury you alive.’
‘Oh thank God, thank God …’
‘Too much like hard work digging a grave. So we’re going to bury you in the Ship Canal instead.’
‘No! NO!’
But the muffled wail sounded for only a few seconds as they manhandled the heavy box across the disused dock, and then, with much grunting and sweating tipped it over the side. It broke the silt-black waters with a thunderous impact, and sank swiftly from view.
Pat McCulkin was a familiar figure on his home turf of Deptford. But those who knew him would have been surprised to see him walking along Creek Road at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. As usual, he cut a grumpy figure: he was sixty, with thinning grey hair, and a leathery, shrew-like face. Rings dangled from both his ears and tattoos covered most of his scrawny body, though at present, as he wore a flat cap and shabby raincoat, these only showed on his neck and hands. Even so, they gave him a less than wholesome appearance. It might only be six o’clock, but as he walked sullenly towards Greenwich, he lit what was already his third cigarette of the morning.
Of course, when he got there, the person he was supposed to be meeting – who’d already annoyed him by calling him at home at God knows what hour – was not present. McCulkin stood alone on a bleak stretch of riverside esplanade. There were no other pedestrians around. There wasn’t even much traffic on the road. Behind him, the Thames sloshed against the hull of the Cutty Sark, the onetime tea clipper now turned museum ship. McCulkin glanced up. The sky was overcast and it was unusually cool for August.
He swore under his breath, coughed, hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it on the pavement. And to his surprise, a phone began to ring.
He took out his mobile. No call was registering on it. Puzzled, he pivoted around, finally focusing on a waste bin attached to the post of a traffic sign. He wandered over and glanced down. A folded copy of that day’s Guardian had been left on top of the trash. The trilling of the phone continued; it was emanating from inside the newspaper.
McCulkin glanced furtively around – still no one was in sight. He opened the paper and found the phone. It was red in colour and looked new. He picked it up and answered.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m watching you, so don’t try anything stupid.’ It was Mark Heckenburg again.
‘What’s all this bullshit?’ McCulkin asked.
‘Don’t talk, just listen. Go straight through the foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs. No questions, no pissing about. Go now. If I see any sign that someone’s following you, you’re in big trouble.’
McCulkin pocketed the phone alongside his own and set off as instructed.
The Greenwich foot tunnel was accessible via a spiral stair that descended from under a glazed dome standing only a few yards from the Cutty Sark. It was forty-five feet down and, in essence, a steel pipe that ran beneath the river, though internally it was concreted and tiled. McCulkin had never liked it much, always regarding it as a mugger’s paradise. There were no hidden places where someone could jump out. It was a straight walk from one end to the other, but that didn’t mean some street punk couldn’t suddenly come down and confront you when you were hidden from the world above. He scurried across, glancing behind him several times, not just worried about muggers but curious about whom it was Heckenburg expected to be following him, and not a little concerned by it.
At the other end, he emerged in the shadow of Canary Wharf tower and the numerous other skyscrapers that surrounded it. The Isle of Dogs had changed a lot since McCulkin was a lad. In those days, it had been a tangle of wharfs and cranes, studded here and there with blocks of scruffy flats where some of London’s poorest residents had eked out a meagre existence. The glittering glass monoliths it now bristled with seemed somehow wrong for the famously deprived borough of Tower Hamlets, though he supposed it was progress of a sort.
The phone rang again. He answered.
‘The greasy spoon on East Ferry Road,’ Heckenburg said. ‘Make it quick.’
McCulkin walked doggedly along the old dockland road. The aforesaid greasy spoon, a small café with steamy windows, loomed into view. He glanced inside. There were a number of
