Uprising

Chapter Forty-Two London docks

1.15 p.m.

Alex had to retrace her steps three times up and down the quayside before she felt certain of what she was seeing.

She hadn’t quite known what she was going to find when she returned to the wharf where the Anica was moored: the place swarming with police and forensics teams, maybe, everything sealed off with crime scene tape, dozens of people running around talking on radios. Or maybe the vessel would be much as she’d last seen it the night before — a floating graveyard of dismembered corpses that might, just might, offer up some kind of clue about the vampire attackers who’d ambushed them here, maybe even a lead that could guide her all the way back to the mysterious Gabriel Stone. She knew that might be too much to hope for. Stone seemed like a guy who’d had a lot of practice in covering his tracks.

But she hadn’t expected to find this.

An empty space where the Anica had been just the previous night. The ship was just gone.

‘Who’s helping you, Stone?’ she asked herself out loud as she gazed at the vacant mooring. ‘How are you making all this happen?’

The rathouse pub that was Paulie Lomax’s and his cousin Vinnie’s watering hole of choice wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute walk from the dock. Alex stepped inside the door to be greeted by the surly stares of a bunch of severely nicotine-stained, tattooed, hard-drinking individuals. There were a couple of wolf whistles as she made her way up towards the bar and one of the card players in the corner yelled out something obscene. She wondered whether it would be witty and appropriate just to take out the

44 Smith and blow the top of his head off; maybe, but that wasn’t going to help with the business at hand. Without turning round, she gave him the finger instead. She ignored the whooping and cheering, and walked up to the bar.

In a London that was almost completely homogenised by the inexorable rise of the plastic middle class and the sterile health-and-safety culture that seemed to be taking hold everywhere, she almost relished the spit and sawdust, sweat and grime of a place like this. It reminded her of the old days. You just didn’t want to be a woman back then.

The guy behind the bar was battered and grizzled and looked like he’d served his time in the boxing ring and lost just about every fight he’d been in. He grinned wolfishly and leaned on the pitted wood as she approached.

‘All right, darling. What can I do you for?’

‘I’m looking for Paulie Lomax.’

The grin dropped. ‘Paulie Lomax?’

‘Guy they call Four-Finger. And his friend Vinnie. You know them?’

‘Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. One thing I do know, love, is that I don’t know you.’

‘Maybe you’ve heard of Rudi Bertolino?’ she said, returning his stare. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

The barman shrugged. ‘You need to talk to Cheap Eddie. Through there.’ He motioned at a door in the corner.

On the other side was a dingy corridor. It was lit by a naked bulb encrusted with last summer’s dead bluebottles. There was another door at the end of the passage, and she went through it without knocking. Inside the room, a morbidly obese guy of about sixty was sitting on a worn armchair, reading a rumpled copy of the Racing Times with a fat stogie clamped between his teeth. The room stank of stale cigar smoke. He didn’t glance up as the door creaked open.

‘Can’t you fuckin’ knock, Terry?’

‘No wonder they call you Cheap Eddie,’ Alex said as she walked in and shut the door behind her. ‘That thing smells like shit. Or is it you?’

A brindled pit bull stalked out from behind the fat man’s armchair, locked eyes on Alex and drew its lips back in a snarl. Alex calmly turned to meet its gaze, and it whimpered and drew away with its tail curled up tight between its legs.

Cheap Eddie stared at the cowering animal, then up at Alex. He plucked the cigar out of his mouth. ‘What’ve you done to my dog?’

‘Nothing yet.’

His bloodshot eyes bulged. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Someone who’ll go easy on you if I get the information I want.’

He scowled, then his stubbly face creased up into a laugh. ‘Oh yeah? And what information would that be, flowerpot?’

‘Like where I can find Four-Finger Paulie Lomax and his mate Vinnie.’

Eddie took a big puff of his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke at her. ‘Never heard of them.’

Alex didn’t blink at the billow of foul smoke around her face. ‘I don’t have time for smart guys, Eddie.’

‘I’m not sure I like your tone, sweetheart.’

‘Better get used to it,’ she said. She slipped the.44 out of its holster, took a step towards him. Grabbed him by the throat, yanked him towards her and stuffed the gun muzzle hard under his cheekbone. ‘I really hate repeating myself, Eddie.’

He struggled against her grip. Close on thirty stone of muscle and lard, lifted half out of his armchair, one-handed, by a woman a fraction his size, and he couldn’t budge her an inch. Beads of sweat formed on his brow.

‘Okay, okay. They was here a few nights ago. Haven’t seen ‘em since.’

‘See how well we’re getting on now? Who were they with?’

‘Bunch of foreigners. They were talking in the corner.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s all I remember.’

‘Sure?’ She cocked the gun.

Eddie went a shade paler. ‘Wait. Hold on. Later on, after closing time, I was stacking crates in the alley when I saw Paulie hanging about with this big black geezer and this woman.’

‘Good-looking woman with black hair?’

Eddie nodded. ‘Real corker. Looked like she stepped out of a lads’ mag.’

Alex thought hard. So Rudi Bertolino hadn’t betrayed her. He’d been used to feed her information that would lead her into a trap. But how had Stone’s people known he was her informant?

‘Where does Paulie live?’ she asked Cheap Eddie.

‘Harlesden somewhere.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that, Eddie.’

‘I don’t have the address, honest.’ He gulped. Sweat poured off his nose and through the white bristles over his upper lip. ‘But I can get it.’

Alex let him go, and he slumped back into his armchair, breathing hard. She holstered the revolver and grabbed his wrist and a ballpoint pen from his desk.

‘You call me on this number,’ she said as she wrote it across the back of his chubby hand. ‘I’d better hear from you, Eddie. And I’d better not find out you talked to anyone about our chat. Either way, I’ll be back here to finish it.’