When You Are Mine(71)

‘Why does it involve the head of security?’

Finbar shrugs, playing dumb. I pinch the skin on his wrist, like I did when I was a child and demanding that he produce the tickling spider from his pocket.

‘Ow!’ He rubs the redness.

‘Tell me or I’m going straight back upstairs.’

‘We’re concerned that Eddie might be vulnerable.’

‘How?’

‘There are people – cunties all of them – who may use this time to make a move against our whatnots …’

‘Businesses?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Other property developers?’

‘Yeah. Right. Law of the whatsit, you know.’

‘Jungle?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Are you saying he’s in danger?’

‘No, no, no, yeah, maybe. Better to be safe than sorry, as our dear old dad used to say.’

‘He died in prison.’

‘That’s what I mean – you can’t trust anyone these days.’

‘Are you talking about a turf war?’

He shrugs non-committally. ‘No harm in taking precautions, eh?’

We are downstairs in the foyer. Finbar points to a café. The tables are set far enough apart for our conversation to be private, but he makes sure to sit with his back to the wall, where he can keep an eye on the main doors. Force of habit.

‘What’s the real reason?’ I ask.

He sighs and leans forward.

‘Some Grub Street hack took a swim in the Thames using bricks as floaties. They’re trying to pin it on us.’

‘Dylan Holstein?’

Finbar’s eyes are no longer hooded.

‘You know him?’

‘I was there when the police found his body.’

There is a beat of confusion as Finbar remembers what I used to do as a day job – and a night job.

‘Maybe we should … leave this be,’ he says, less certain now.

‘No. Talk to me. Did you ever meet Dylan Holstein?’

‘Nah. Never.’

‘But you know his name?’

‘He’d been stirring up trouble about Hope Island; how Eddie got the planning whatsit through the council.’

‘By bribing three councillors.’

Finbar looks at me blankly. ‘Not my area.’

‘Who does the bribing in the family?’

‘Gimme a break, Phil.’ He sighs, wishing we hadn’t started.

‘Go on.’

‘Holstein was writing these stories, but Eddie wasn’t concerned. Fake news, you know. Lot of it around these days. But then Holstein turns up dead and the rozzers start pointing the finger at us. Tapping our phones. Following our cars. They dragged Eddie out of bed the morning after his birthday, and searched the place.’

‘Did they find anything?’

‘Nuffin’ to find,’ he snaps. ‘But the OIC is the ambitious type, you know. Trying to make a name for hisself.’

‘Are you suggesting he might fabricate evidence?’

‘Been known to happen.’

It’s a throwaway line, which might have annoyed me once, until a broken light on my Fiat and the wiping of footage on my body camera.

‘Who killed Dylan Holstein?’

‘How would I fuckin’ know?’

‘Was it Daddy?’

‘Get off!’

‘Would you tell me?’

Finbar lumbers to his feet, his face twisted in misery. ‘I know you’re one of ’em, Phil, and you may think you’re better than the rest of us, but we never closed the door. Eddie kept a light burning in his window, hoping you’d come home.’

He turns to leave.

‘I have a question,’ I say, girding myself.

‘I’m done talkin’.’

‘If I needed some legal advice, where should I go?’

He pauses. Turns. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘I’m asking for a friend.’

Finbar pulls out his wallet and jots down the name of a legal chambers and phone number on a torn beer coaster.

‘Tell them you’re Eddie McCarthy’s daughter.’





39


An appointment is arranged for the following day in a pub at Spitalfields, which is hardly a good sign. I am picturing some overweight Rumpole-like solicitor with a port-coloured nose, whose expertise is drawing up dodgy insurance claims, or post-dating wills.

When I arrive at the Ten Bells, Uncle Clifton jumps to his feet and bows slightly from the waist. I kiss his unshaven cheeks and am instantly a little girl again, saying goodnight to my uncles before going off to bed. Poker night was every Wednesday; four men around our kitchen table, smoking cigars and drinking Scotch. I would fall asleep listening to them laughing and my mother telling them to be quiet.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

‘Making the introductions.’

‘But I arranged the meeting.’

‘And I’m not going to interfere.’

Clifton is wearing his usual attire, baggy jeans and a Gunners shirt. He has a cowlick that makes parting his hair an impossible task. The clockwise whorl lies in the opposite direction to whichever way he wants to comb it, unless he puts the parting so close to his right ear that he looks like Adolf Hitler.