No Mortal Thing: A Thriller by Gerald Seymour

House: the ‘fight’ and the ‘visit’. They had been the Immortals: they had worked from a big room in the Investigation Unit, which housed two teams. All were perpetually exhausted from the long hours they put in and were watched over by a legion of bureaucrats, who had no comprehension of the traumas of front-line work. A mood had snapped and a fist fight had broken out. Grown men, mostly middle-aged, belting each other when the newly installed director of investigations had walked in. Shock horror. But, as someone had pointed out breathlessly, ‘You can’t put lions on the street and expect kittens in the office.’ He loved that one, told it most weeks. But Carlo was no longer a lion, and no longer on the street. He did kitten work now.
    What he would most have liked in his life was the unpredictable: getting up in the morning and not knowing what would have hit him by the evening, the raw excitement and the fear of falling short.
    He drove towards Felixstowe Docks – and maybe a seizure, another that was not worth him getting into.
     
    The young man came out, sauntered across the pavement and held up a wad of notes so that the goon who had stayed outside could see that the pizzo had been paid. They waited for the other. Perhaps he’d gone to the toilet. The money had gone into a pocket and the two embraced. The pizzeria man was at the far side of the door and Jago thought he was crying – the back of his hand went twice over his eyes. He didn’t know what to do so he did nothing.
     
    ‘Bent by name and bent by nature.’ He rather liked that, thought of it as a compliment because it meant they were talking about him.
    He was Bentley Horrocks. In many files of the organisations tasked with combating crime barons, his age was listed as fifty-one. His address was given as a seven-bedroom mansion, south of Meopham in Kent. His wife was down as Angela, but he referred to her as ‘Angel’, and he had two daughters in private education. A mistress, Tracey, was installed at Canada Wharf. He visited her every Tuesday and on occasional Fridays. The files encompassed his dealings in property development in south-east London, reclamation of wasteground, scrap-metal clearance – also extortion, Class-A importation, money-laundering and other ‘interests’ in Peckham and Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey, south of the river. He had been subject to four heavyweight investigations and, each time, had seen them off.
    He walked in the grounds of his property, circling in the centre of a wide lawn, with Jack – around the same age but not his equal. Both men, on that wet, windy morning, wore anoraks, with scarves covering their lower faces. Bent assumed that he was continuously under police surveillance and even here, with no sign of watchers or cameras, he reckoned they’d want to video the movement of his mouth, then run the tapes for lip-readers to interpret. He had made a science of caution, and was a free man.
    ‘Can’t stand still,’ was one of Bent’s maxims.
    Jack usually answered, ‘Too right, Bent. Just can’t stand still.’
    A dilemma faced him. Should he keep climbing the increasingly fragile ladder, or stay at the level he was at? A big force inside the United Kingdom, a man who could ‘melt’ hard guys with his stare . . .
    ‘It’s when you’re weak, when you’re not moving forward . . .’
    ‘Spot on, Bent. Weak when you’re not going forward . . .’
    Jack told him about the pattern of flights they would use, what passports through which airport, and when they were due to arrive at their destination. A big step, beyond any comfort zone he was familiar with.
    ‘What sort of place is it?’
    Jack answered, obsequious, an accountant who took care of detail and was not consulted on strategy. ‘A good place for you, Bent. Not like the shit here, but on a different level. Where you should be, Bent. Where the big money is and the big players, Bent. When you’re there, you’ve left this