Free The Face (Harry Tyler Book 1) by Garry Bushell Page B

open to abuse, but largely it worked. The bad guys got captured, even if it was for the wrong job. As Shaw always said, he’d never put an innocent man in prison – and most villains accepted it. They wiped their mouths and took what was coming to them. But not now. Now to hear the liberals tell it, it was the cops who were the bad guys. The world was turned upside down and Gary Shaw was fucked if he wanted to go into work on Monday morning.

     
     
    Detective Sgt Michael French took another look over his shoulder before he walked into the Blackheath & Newbridge Working Men’s Club. It was 12 noon on Sunday, and no one was about. He signed in.
    “Where’s yer snooker room, mate?” he asked.
    “One flight up,” the man on the door with the hare lip replied.
    French had only agreed to see the Bakers if the meet was “well off the plot … I mean,” he’d said, “right now you’ve got a hundred pairs of eyes watching the Ned round the clock.”
    Johnny Too and Pyro Joey had made the journey out to SE3 separately. Joey drove himself out to the M25 and back into London on the A20. Johnny took a mini-cab to Waterloo, cut across to Waterloo East, jumped on a train down to New Cross and took a black taxi from there, watching his back the whole way. It would have taken Batman to keep up with him, but it was Fatman he was going to see. They were the only people playing snooker when French arrived.
    “Michael,” Johnny Too smiled. “Delighted to see you. Drink?”
    French nodded. Joey poured him a large malt. French grabbed the glass in his podgy fingers and downed it in one.
    “I was gonna say meet at the Dome,” Johnny said, grinning. “We’d be the only fuckers there.”
    The smile vanished abruptly from his face. He leaned close in to the detective. “Now,” he said sharply. “What the fuck was all that about?”
    “Johnny, my life, it was as big a shock to me as it was to you.”
    Pyro Joe scowled.
    “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t even hear a whisper?” Johnny said.
    “Not a dicky bird, John.” French felt perspiration form on his temples.
    Johnny Too turned to his brother. “Perhaps we’re not paying him enough to keep his ears clean and keen.” He turned back to French, picking up a pool cue and smacking it against his open palm.
    “How much wages have you had off the firm this year?”
    “More than enough, John,” French said.
    “And how much of my cocaine has gone up that big fat Filth bugle of yourn?”
    “Johnny, I swear, there wasn’t a word about the raid up front,” French protested. “No one in the nick knew about it until the last minute.”
    “And phones don’t work?”
    “It was impossible for me to put a call in.”
    Pyro Joe snapped the pool cue in two. “It just ain’t fucking good enough, Michael.”
    “So what happens next?” growled Joey. “Are your mob gonna wanna know again?”
    “No way,” French answered quickly. “I mean, the top brass are shitting themselves now. Word is someone senior is gonna have to take early retirement over this one and the smart money is on Hitchcock. Believe me, you ain’t gonna have no more ag in the immediate future. Oh, they’re watching ya, but no one is gonna move against you unless they can get you hands on, bang to rights and you, of course, are too smart.”
    “Well said, Michael,” Johnny Too smiled. “Y’know, I can almost believe you. You’re like fucking Prozac in human form. Give him another sherbet, Joe. Let’s have a toast, to bent Old Bill. God love ’em, cos no other fucker does. C’mon, Michael, drink. Fill yer fucking helmet, son.”
     
     
    Gordon Hitchcock felt nervous, like he was a schoolboy being sent to the headmaster. How was the Chief Super going to be? Monday morning “prayers” with the uniform Chief Superintendent was a three books down the back of the trousers job. He knew that everyone above and below him in rank wanted him to cop it big time over the raid that that