A Matter of Blood Read Free Page A

block in Newham that he finally edged the Audi out past a bus and pulled into Denman Street. The narrow street just off the Piccadilly end of Shaftesbury Avenue was a tiny vein almost lost in the heart of the city, but as with most things, appearances were deceptive. He left his car in the cramped and ridiculously overpriced NCP car park and walked the few steps in the cooling air to the discreet entrance to Money-penny’s, one of Artie Mullins’ nightclubs, and checked his watch again. He was still late.
    Cass pushed the button by the door and then looked up at the small camera attached almost invisibly at the corner of the building. A moment later the buzzer sounded and he was inside, jogging down the stairs to the basement bar. Below the street it could be any time of day or night, and there was something about that which appealed to Cass. Time stood still away from the hustle and bustle of the city and the rise and fall of the sun, and that allowed a sense of freedom, even if it was only a short-lived flight of the imagination.
    ‘You’re late.’ Arthur - Artie to his friends - Mullins sat at the long bar, sipping beer from a tall glass. ‘If it was any other fucker I might think they weren’t coming.’ He grinned, one gold cap flashing against the tarred brown of the rest of his teeth. ‘Not you though, Jones. I think you’d collect even if some bastard had taken your kneecaps out.’ He stood up and pulled out a second stool. ‘Beer?’
    Cass nodded and sat down. ‘Sorry. It’s been one of those days.’
    ‘Aren’t they all?’ Like most of London’s hard men, Artie had spent a lot of time body-building in gyms in the past and his thickset frame looked out of place behind the slick modern bar. As he bent over Cass could make out the start of a paunch under his polo shirt. Cass wasn’t fooled by it. Artie might be pushing sixty, with his gym days well behind him, but he was still one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. Cass liked him, though. He couldn’t help himself.
    Artie pulled a bottle of Beck’s from the row of illuminated fridges beneath the mirrored back bar and popped the lid off before handing it across. ‘Here you go. Same as normal.’
    ‘Thanks.’ Cass left the thick brown manila envelope on the marble surface. He wouldn’t bother counting it - Artie Mullins was no mug. He wouldn’t rip off the police.
    ‘It’s a funny old world we’re in, isn’t it?’ Artie’s face cracked into a grin that sent a shockwave of wrinkles across his leathered face. It was the same comment he always made on pick-up days, and as usual Cass couldn’t think of an answer. He clinked his bottle with Artie’s and took a long swallow. It was a funny world. There was no denying that.
    Back in 2011, as the government realised that there was no way the country could financially sustain itself, the real no-holds-barred cutbacks began. They didn’t even bother trying to dress them up. The NHS virtually disappeared for all except the chosen few sectors of society. No state pensions for anyone over forty-five - and those that were already paying out were to be cut back to the minimum. Police pay became performance-related: the more arrests that led to convictions, the more you got paid. Although still running in principle, in reality that initiative worked for about a week, because the gap between arrest and conviction was often months, even years, and the paperwork took forever to fill in and keep track of.
    They all still claimed it when they could, because of course arrests and convictions were still being made, but then someone came up with a more reliable way of getting paid. The police chiefs sitting in their ivory towers and dreaming up these half-arsed schemes chose to ignore the fact that it was much easier for the rank and file to take their performance-related pay in cash from men like Arthur ‘Artie’ Mullins, a tax-free cash bonus for simply not arresting certain people; in