Free Ammunition by Ken Bruen Page A

woman.’
    Porter debated just letting go, see what would happen, maybe the No 9 bus was due and would do them all a favour.
    He finally got Brant in the car and put the vehicle in gear, burned rubber out of there.
    First thing, Brant lit a cigarette, despite the decals all over the dash, commanding no SMOKING, PLEASE !
    Brant said:
    ‘I hear you saved my life.’
    Porter was stunned, of all the things he expected from the sergeant, this had never entered his radar, he shrugged, said:
    ‘More reflex than anything else.’
    If he was expecting gratitude, it wasn’t coming. Brant asked:
    ‘You figure I owe you now?’
    There was a real granite edge to his words, that Mick attitude spilling all over his intonation. Porter said:
    ‘The Chinese believe if you save a person, you’re responsible for them from then on.’
    He knew it sounded like a crock.
    Brant stubbed his cig out on the carpet of the car, Porter nearly hit him and Brant said:
    ‘I don’t like to owe anybody, you hear me?’
    Porter felt he finally, in all their tangled relationship, gotten a slight upper hand but he’d have to tread real carefully. Brant would bite at the very moment you least expected. He said:
    ‘I might be on to the guy who ordered the hit.’
    Then he ran through the names he’d jotted down, Brant listened with total concentration.
    A focused Brant was a very dangerous animal.
    He said:
    ‘Swing the car round.’
    Porter, surprised, went:
    ‘What?’
    ‘You deaf, turn the fucking thing around, let’s go see the Clapham Rapist’s brother, Rodney, is it?’
    Porter swung round, a U-turn in the middle of heavy traffic, followed by howls of car horns. Brant put out his middle finger to all. Porter asked:
    ‘Shouldn’t we get some more evidence before we confront him?’
    Brant snorted:
    ‘Fuck that, I’ll know if he’s the cunt.’
    Thesheer vehemence of his words and the obscenity Porter loathed made him swerve dangerously but he reined in, pulled the car back on track, said:
    ‘He lives in Mayfair.’
    Brant was shaking his head, said:
    ‘No good, let’s go to his office, do the whole cop heavy deal, let his colleagues see who he is.’
    Porter was very uneasy, intimidation, though he used it, never sat easily, and he tried:
    ‘But what if he’s innocent?’
    Brant laughed, an ugly cackle, said:
    ‘Then he’s nothing to worry about, has he?’
    Porter was nearing the city, the smell of money in the air, the bombings had dented the traders… sure… but not for long… money recovers faster than anything else on the planet.
    Ask Donald Trump.
    Brant leaned over, turned on the radio, and, of course, didn’t ask:
    ‘You kidding?’
    The song playing was ‘First Cut Is the Deepest’ and to Porter’s amazement, Brant listened intently, and… looked like he was suffering, then he snapped the radio off, asked:
    ‘Know who wrote that song?’
    Without hesitation, Porter said:
    ‘Rod Stewart?’
    Brant was delighted, said:
    ‘Everybody thinks that. Bet you twenty quid it wasn’t.’
    Porter was so relieved to see him come out of the suffering mode that he agreed to the wager and asked:
    ‘So, who do you think wrote it?’
    Brant was lighting another cig and Porter would have sold his soul for a drag, Brant exhaled, said:
    ‘I don’t think, I know who did.’
    Porter found a space near Rodney Lewis’s office, prodded:
    ‘Yeah, so is it like a secret or do we have a bet?’
    Brant laughed, said:
    ‘Fucking money from a baby, money for old rope… it was Cat Stevens.’
    Porter felt he already had the twenty in his wallet… Cat Stevens … yeah, right.

Friends say I’m putting a brave face on it—Bollocks—This is far and away the most stimulating, fascinating thing that’s ever happened to me.
     
—Jonathan King, songwriter, impresario, DJ,… jailed for buggery
     

15
     
    THE BUILDING HOUSING Rodney Lewis’s office was impressive in that English mode. Let you know in an understated fashion that here be