Free The Untouchable by Gerald Seymour Page B

turf sacred and cut down the legs of rivals. The days of security vans and factory payrolls, monitoring the competitors to rip off their trade, enforcing respect with the sawn-off shotguns and Magnum pistols, buying the first drinking clubs, the first bars and the first property in the marinas down on the south coast. He'd made the money, Cruncher had rinsed it, and the Eagle had kept him out of the courts. The best days, when he was on the rise to the top and rivals capitulated, were heady and exhilarating . . . Then the plateau.
    More than three years back he had realized he was going nowhere. No more raids and rip-offs because from the middle eighties, when Mister was in his early thirties, the trade had turned to importation, distribution and dealing. Heroin had made the serious money that Cruncher had laundered. Heroin from Afghanistan, imported into the country by the Turks from Green Lanes down the road from the North Circular, had brought in the big money, and the plateau had been reached when the competition had been wiped out. Mister ran the capital's supply, some that went to Birmingham, a bit of what went to Liverpool and Manchester, and most of what went to Newcastle. The only time since he had been on the plateau that he had been hands-on, in a car and taking a sack of stuff to a warehouse, he had been identified and lifted. He hadn't needed to be hands-on, but it was boredom that had put him in the car. In the best days he had been in sole control and Cruncher and the Eagle had fed off him; on the plateau there had been little for him to do but read the balance sheets that Cruncher presented to him, and authorize the contracts the Eagle prepared - he couldn't even spend the money because both chorused that yachts, villas, private jets and stakes in football clubs led to investigation and downfall. The week before his arrest, Cruncher had come to him with the plan for the deal, and the boredom had been stifled, killed, scraped out of his system.
    The mobile in his pocket warbled quietly. He snapped it on. He listened, then he said, 'I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about. You must have a wrong number.' He switched it off and pocketed it. It was what the Eagle told him he should always say when the Crime Squad man called him.
    There was a thin smile on his face. 'The guy who came tonight, he's been fired. He's finished. His time ran out at midnight. I'm still Target One, but his team's wound up.'
    Her fingers touched his face. 'You're the top man, you're untouchable. You're walking rings round them.'
    'Target One,' he mused, rolled it round his tongue.
    'And the Church team's finished . .. Can't do anything about it, not right now, but Cruncher's pad has to be clean.'
    Mister knew everything of Cruncher's life. He knew of Cruncher's three loves: rent-boys, luxury, and the handling of money. He tolerated the homo-sexuality, allowed the luxury and marvelled at the expertise in handling money. The police would be crawling through the terraced Docklands house. He had to hope that the records had been stored safely in the safety-deposit boxes of the small private banks, to which only he and Cruncher had the passwords and entry-code numbers. He didn't think that Cruncher, before he went away, would have left behind evidence that would incriminate him or - worse - lead to the sequestration of his assets.
    'So . . . ?'
    'I'm going to go with it,' Mister said. 'It's what I want.'
    'I'll make a coffee.'
    'Don't think I'm not sorry about Cruncher, but I feel good.'
    On the first train of the day that clattered down the tracks south from Glasgow a tall, elderly man with a stooping walk came back to his seat from the buffet car.
    His seat was in standard class. His rank in Customs
    & Excise entitled him to pullman or first-class travel, a full English breakfast in the restaurant, and compli-mentary newspapers. But it was his style that he claimed the minimum of available expenses. The habit was unsettling to his