Davydov, and all the rest.”
The names meant nothing to me. Maybe one of them was the real name of the one Dean nicknamed ‘Putin’.
“We’ve got to move with the times, you understand what I’m saying?”
I listened, but a part of my mind was preoccupied with what he’d implied about my family, my parents.
“The way it all works isn’t much different to how it was fifty years ago. Back then it was the Krays and the Richardsons and the like. They ran things at the top, kings of their own patches. They ran their own rackets and scams, but they also kept the rest in line: all the petty thieves and street-corner gangs. None of them even dared to blink if the Krays didn’t want them to. Nowadays it’s the estates. Kids in expensive trainers and hoodies selling weed and meth and shit like that around the tower blocks. No-go areas for the likes of me. And just like the old days, they report up the chain.”
“To people like Dean.”
That smile again, the one that wasn’t really a smile.
“Oh, back in the day, yeah,” said Reuben. “Back when their old man, Ed, was running things, sure. He was proper old school. Kept all the low-lifes in line. Kept the streets about as safe as they were ever going to be. I reckon Eddie Bailey was the last of a dying breed, though. Now it’s the Russians and Ukrainians, a few Turks and Latvians. Dean and his brothers just don’t get it that the time’s long since past when they should have got out of all this. It’s a cut-throat business. Literally.”
At first I’d thought Reuben was rambling. Some kind of nostalgia thing, old times’ sake when he’d realized who I was.
But now I saw the look in his eyes.
There was nothing vague or unplanned in this monologue.
It was a calm, calculated threat that I was to pass on to Dean.
“You think he should get out?” I said. “You think he even can? ”
The policeman shrugged. “I reckon he’s going to have to get out of it one way or another. I tell you one thing, though: if you have any influence over him at all, you’ll try to get him to see the reality. The Bailey Boys are history. You saw how it was last night. Looking around that little gathering, who do you think were the people who own this place, and who were the ones who’d already lost it?”
§
DI Glover offered me a lift back. He pretty much insisted: he’d dragged me here without giving me any say in the matter, after all.
But I refused. I needed to clear my head. I had a map on my phone and the distinctive high-rise developments of Docklands ahead of me to guide my way. Maybe an hour walking on a crisp spring day through the East End of London would help.
So many thoughts in my head!
One thing was certain: my plan to find my Mini and quietly slip away was a non-starter now. Reuben Glover had made it clear enough he expected me to pass on his – threat, or warning, whatever it was – to Dean.
And there were too many questions in my mind.
My parents, my grandparents... If Reuben knew so much about them, then surely Dean must know more than he had admitted, too.
I knew nothing about their lives here, before they’d moved away from the city. I knew nothing about the money that had been used to start their property business – the business that I, in name at least, was now responsible for.
Was I, by inheritance, some kind of crimelord, too? Ridiculous as the thought was, I couldn’t let something like that lie.
Which meant I couldn’t leave.
Which in turn meant I would have to seek out Dean again, and that I couldn’t avoid the warnings Reuben had made about the Bailey Boys being out of their depth, that something nasty was going to happen soon.
With every step I took on that hour-long walk back to Poplar, I felt myself getting sucked deeper in. Dragged back down to something far more scary and dangerous even than the life I’d recently escaped, those eighteen lost months after the death of my parents.
And no matter how I looked at it, I
The names meant nothing to me. Maybe one of them was the real name of the one Dean nicknamed ‘Putin’.
“We’ve got to move with the times, you understand what I’m saying?”
I listened, but a part of my mind was preoccupied with what he’d implied about my family, my parents.
“The way it all works isn’t much different to how it was fifty years ago. Back then it was the Krays and the Richardsons and the like. They ran things at the top, kings of their own patches. They ran their own rackets and scams, but they also kept the rest in line: all the petty thieves and street-corner gangs. None of them even dared to blink if the Krays didn’t want them to. Nowadays it’s the estates. Kids in expensive trainers and hoodies selling weed and meth and shit like that around the tower blocks. No-go areas for the likes of me. And just like the old days, they report up the chain.”
“To people like Dean.”
That smile again, the one that wasn’t really a smile.
“Oh, back in the day, yeah,” said Reuben. “Back when their old man, Ed, was running things, sure. He was proper old school. Kept all the low-lifes in line. Kept the streets about as safe as they were ever going to be. I reckon Eddie Bailey was the last of a dying breed, though. Now it’s the Russians and Ukrainians, a few Turks and Latvians. Dean and his brothers just don’t get it that the time’s long since past when they should have got out of all this. It’s a cut-throat business. Literally.”
At first I’d thought Reuben was rambling. Some kind of nostalgia thing, old times’ sake when he’d realized who I was.
But now I saw the look in his eyes.
There was nothing vague or unplanned in this monologue.
It was a calm, calculated threat that I was to pass on to Dean.
“You think he should get out?” I said. “You think he even can? ”
The policeman shrugged. “I reckon he’s going to have to get out of it one way or another. I tell you one thing, though: if you have any influence over him at all, you’ll try to get him to see the reality. The Bailey Boys are history. You saw how it was last night. Looking around that little gathering, who do you think were the people who own this place, and who were the ones who’d already lost it?”
§
DI Glover offered me a lift back. He pretty much insisted: he’d dragged me here without giving me any say in the matter, after all.
But I refused. I needed to clear my head. I had a map on my phone and the distinctive high-rise developments of Docklands ahead of me to guide my way. Maybe an hour walking on a crisp spring day through the East End of London would help.
So many thoughts in my head!
One thing was certain: my plan to find my Mini and quietly slip away was a non-starter now. Reuben Glover had made it clear enough he expected me to pass on his – threat, or warning, whatever it was – to Dean.
And there were too many questions in my mind.
My parents, my grandparents... If Reuben knew so much about them, then surely Dean must know more than he had admitted, too.
I knew nothing about their lives here, before they’d moved away from the city. I knew nothing about the money that had been used to start their property business – the business that I, in name at least, was now responsible for.
Was I, by inheritance, some kind of crimelord, too? Ridiculous as the thought was, I couldn’t let something like that lie.
Which meant I couldn’t leave.
Which in turn meant I would have to seek out Dean again, and that I couldn’t avoid the warnings Reuben had made about the Bailey Boys being out of their depth, that something nasty was going to happen soon.
With every step I took on that hour-long walk back to Poplar, I felt myself getting sucked deeper in. Dragged back down to something far more scary and dangerous even than the life I’d recently escaped, those eighteen lost months after the death of my parents.
And no matter how I looked at it, I
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