Wayne was startled from uneasy slumber by the buzz of the mobile phone at his bedside. He grabbed it and answered. "Dad? What you want? It's fucking four in the morning..."
"Shut up and listen," said David. "Got a little job for you. Consider it a test. Yeah? I need you to get over here now."
"Where?" said Wayne, sitting up in bed. "Stadium?"
"No. The apartment. Get over here, and don't let anyone see you."
Wayne was uneasy. "Why? What's going on?"
"Just do what I tell you. Got a mess over here that needs cleaning up."
Clearly, David was not going to get any more specific over the phone. Wayne ended the call and heaved himself out of bed. He got dressed in the dark and lumbered down the stairs. As he stepped out into the murky dawn, he had no idea what was waiting for him.
He decided to take the Mercedes, knowing it was the most discreet of all his cars. He looked and felt like shit, but he was awake enough to drive. As he eased the Mercedes out of the gated driveway and onto the road, however, he wasn't at his most observant. Otherwise, he would have spotted the small Fiat lurking in a shadowed driveway farther along the street. He would have seen the Fiat's lights suddenly flare in the darkness. He would have seen it in his rearview mirror as it followed him.
Inspector Edwards was not a "good cop" by any stretch of the imagination, but he possessed a certain skill for surveillance. Perhaps it was his nondescript appearance that made him oddly prone to going unnoticed. He had been keeping an eye on Wayne Carter for the last few days, watching the house from the farmland opposite.
He did not know precisely what he expected to witness, but what little investigative instinct he had was telling him that there was something a little off about Wayne Carter. And Edwards knew that if he was in a position to tell Carter Senior who the mole in his organisation was, he might just be able to buy his way into the bossman's affections. Wayne was his prime suspect. He didn't have a line on the lad's phone, but he'd been shadowing him for the last few days, and there was certainly something secretive about his behaviour. A cause for concern.
Now he followed Wayne into central London and was somewhat nonplussed to find himself outside David Carter's illustrious apartment building. He parked the Fiat and lit himself a cig as Wayne loped towards the foyer.
*
"Jesus Christ!"
"Keep your bloody voice down, will you? Felicia's trying to sleep next door."
"But Jesus Christ, Dad! What have you done?"
"Just taking care of business. Had to be done. You'll learn that when the time comes. But here's a test for you. Bit of father-son bonding, if you like. There's a tarpaulin in the other room. Fetch it, will you?"
"Haven't you got anyone else who can clean this mess up for you?"
"Oh, plenty of people. But this is a bit of a 'sensitive' one. George had friends in high places. So I don't want to run the risk of the story getting out. That's why I'm keeping it in the family. Because this stays between you and me, understand? You never breathe a word of what you see here, okay?"
And all at once, Wayne realised that this was a means of proving his loyalty. Because if anyone got even so much as an inkling of what had happened to George McMinn, David would know who had told them. Wayne nodded and obediently went to fetch the tarp.
*
Wayne wanted to puke. He had seen this kind of stuff plenty of times before, but had never gotten so up close and personal with a fresh corpse. The smell of it. The feel of it as he heaved it out of the chair and dragged it across the carpet. He'd never had the stomach for this kind of stuff. But he couldn't let his dad know just how repulsive he found this aspect of the job. So he swallowed his pride – and a mouthful of bile – and got on with it.
The worst part was that he had known George McMinn ever since he was a little kid. In the early days, before David Carter was top dog, McMinn had been a kind of benevolent uncle; rather like Max Linley. Uncle George always gave him a five-pound note when he popped round to talk business with Dad. That's what Wayne was thinking about as he hauled the old man's corpse into the bathroom, bundled it headfirst into the bath and got to work.
Time was of the essence, so he would have to make do without the ideal tools for this particular task. Instead of a power saw, he had an electric steak knife. It took him all night, but he got it done. His dad supplied him with a roll of brown paper and some string, which he put to good use. Soon George McMinn was just a bundle of parcels that you might find under a Christmas tree.
When it was done, the bathroom was awash with blood – and so was Wayne himself. Coated in it like a baby fresh from the womb. "Almost a shame to clean it off," said David, playfully slapping his son on the back. "You know, pink is Felicia's favourite colour." Wayne couldn't bring himself to laugh. The work was not yet done. Next he scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, scouring every surface till the blood began to fade. "Don't worry too much," David reassured him. "I'll get some lads with chemicals to give the place a going-over tomorrow."
Next, Wayne showered. He stood naked under the torrent of water, and turned the heat all the way up. He wanted to scour the very flesh from his bones. Not just to erase every trace of what he had done, but to erase himself, as well. He felt both sickness and shame. He scrubbed himself with soap until he was raw and (on the surface, at least) clean. David had left a fresh set of clothes for him, and he slipped them on and stepped out of the room, still towelling his hair.
David was waiting at the kitchen island with a pot of black coffee. "You did good, kid," he said. The sun was rising behind him, giving him a kind of halo. "Drink some of the black stuff, then we can take the bits down to your car."
"What? You mean I've got to get rid of him, too?"
"Well, what did you think? That I was going to say a few magic words and make him vanish?"
Wayne sighed and took the mug of steaming coffee. He downed it, letting it scorch his palate and throat. The pain felt good. Almost like expiation.
When the last of George McMinn had been loaded into the boot of Wayne's car, David waved him off with a cheery smile, like a sick parody of a parent sending his kid off to school. Wayne lit a cigarette and puffed thoughtfully as he drove. He didn't notice the Fiat in his rear view mirror.
He drove aimlessly for an hour or two, trying to forget about the grotesque cargo weighing down the back of his car. It was early morning – not yet rush hour – when he decided he'd better do something about it. His first thought was the river. Good old Father Thames swallowed mealier stuff than this all the time. But it was too easy. Too traceable. If someone caught him in the act, it would not be too easy to explain.
Before long, he came up with an idea. He headed back out towards his home, but stopped off at a garden centre en route. There he bought himself a shovel, attracting a few amused glances from football fans. Wayne Carter, taking up landscape gardening! Then he drove out into the countryside and made the first of several stops in a layby. Marching out to the centre of an isolated field, swinging the shovel with one hand and clutching a parcel under the other arm, he knew this was going to take a while.
*
Inspector Edwards hung back, making sure that the Fiat was tucked behind a hedge, out of Wayne's line of sight. Of course he didn't need to be a genius to work out what was in those parcels Wayne was burying at intervals throughout the countryside. All Edwards wondered was who the poor bastard was.
So, Wayne was fully entrenched in the family business. He was his father's son after all. Did that mean that he wasn't the traitor? Of course not. Wayne Carter could quite easily be playing both sides off against each other. But was he really clever enough for that? Maybe not. Or maybe so. Edwards couldn't decide. He needed more data. He needed to watch, and to wait a little longer.
*
Meanwhile, across town, Max Linley woke early in his pleasant, utilitarian townhouse and studied himself in the mirror. He looked and felt ancient. His tracksuit days were over. But he found himself infused with a fresh sense of purpose. Until now, all his energy and effort had gone into providing for his son and his grandchildren. Now they were gone – all taken from him in a single swoop. So what did he have left? Only one thing: Mile End. The club was his life. It was his reason for living. And after last night's rendezvous with George McMinn, he realised with a kind of dreamlike elation that in fact the club had been his one true love all along. The way he had nurtured his family, his frugality – it had all been in service of the club. Maybe it was his grief that had done this to his brain, but he found that he had tunnel vision. The club, the club, the club. There was nothing else.
As he dressed in his finest Savile Row business suit, he felt as though things were at long last falling into place. It was almost as if the directorship of Mile End was a sort of ancient rite that was finally being enacted. The harmony of the universe was about to be restored. He had been gathering momentum for a long, long time and now he was finally ready to claim what was rightfully his.
The partners were converging on Mile End stadium. Various men in suits, stepping from taxis and striding toward the main entrance of the business suite with an air of palpable authority. They had come from all over the world: the US, South America (of course), Australia, Asia...
These were the men whose money David Carter had "spunked up the wall" on Silvertown. He was in their debt, and their patience was wearing thin. It took a seismic shift to drag these men away from their quiet, anonymous lives, so the fact that they had all arrived in the UK in the last few hours was a key indicator of how seriously they were taking these latest events. There were arms dealers, cartel kingpins, and all manner of traffickers, pornographers, murderers.
Each one of these men had built a career on the bones and bodies of other people. They were all ruthless, cold-blooded killers. But their interest in Mile End had been primarily "hands-off" until now. The meeting had been set up by Max – it was a coup d'etat. A sweeping gesture to seize power.
The partners exchanged muted greetings and filed into the boardroom. Rochelle was on hand to provide refreshments. To the untrained eye, it might have been any other ordinary business meeting. But each man here had blood on his hands. The seat at the head of the table – that which was typically occupied by the director of the club – was vacant. But the seat at the other end of the table – the one which had been reserved for George McMinn – was also vacant. The partners murmured among themselves. The whole thing was most irregular, and they did not like having their time wasted. But George McMinn was their ringleader; their senior partner. He was the one who had convinced them to invest their time and money in David Carter to begin with, all those years ago. And if George McMinn wanted a change in leadership, they were ready to listen.
