Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,55

on because there was more he needed to know.

‘Trudie would come to the club and hang around the biggest wallets till one of them took her home. If it was a quiet night and she got no takers, she’d wait around for me to finish work and we’d take a bottle of something up into Arnie’s office. He had a great big leather sofa, but she liked me to shag her on his overpriced, antique, French-polished, poncey fucking desk. It was his pride and joy ‒ he’d say, “Don’t touch my desk with your filthy hands.” And I’d think, “I ain’t, bruv, but Trudie Nunn’s been all over it with her filthy arse!” Ha! He had no idea! God, I ain’t thought about Trudie Nunn in years.’ And with that image in his mind, Tony grabbed his groin and left his hand there until the memory passed. ‘What a bleedin’ shame she’s dead. A visit from good old Trudie would go down a treat right now.’

If looks could kill, Tony would have fallen stone dead right there in front of all the prison guards. As Tony grinned his horrific psychopathic grin, Jack glanced down at his own hands in his lap – his fists clenched tight and his knuckles white. He was filled with a simmering rage that he’d never felt before.

‘And Jimmy Nunn . . .’ Tony went on, oblivious to what was going on in Jack’s mind. ‘The last time I heard Jimmy’s name mentioned was in connection to that armed raid on a security van in the Strand underpass. That was one of Harry Rawlins’ fuck-ups.’ He bellowed laughing. ‘Harry bloomin’ Rawlins! I’d never seen my brother so overjoyed to see someone put six feet under. He spent a fucking fortune on the wreath.’ Tony mimed the size of it with his hands, then went on to explain how every criminal in London had felt the same way as Arnie did. ‘Harry Rawlins was the only man who could put the wind up my brother. He’d never been arrested for so much as a parking ticket but, Jesus Christ, he was like an octopus with tentacles in everyone’s business. There was nothing that man didn’t know about the criminal world, and that’s what made him so dangerous. If you’d ever worked for the son of a bitch, you’d never be safe again.’

Jack really wanted to hear more about Jimmy, but Tony seemed determined to continue talking about himself and Arnie.

‘My brother was a bit of an art expert ‒ fenced loads of paintings for Harry over the years. That was his mistake. Like I just said, once you was involved with Harry, he had you by the balls. ’Cos if he went down, so did you. I never met the man personally, on account of him always doing business with the organ grinder and not the monkey – that’s what he called me, the cheeky bastard. A “monkey”. Fuck him! The newspapers made out Harry’s funeral as being half of London paying their respects . . . It wasn’t. They were making fucking sure the bastard was dead. Criminals and coppers. And we were all wrong!’

In a flash, Jack’s mind leapt from the hatred he felt for Tony to an overdue penny finally dropping . . . If Harry Rawlins was shot to death by his wife in the autumn of 1985 ‒ who did Tony and half of London watch being buried approximately nine months earlier?

Tony was still talking ‒ having a whale of a time ‒ but at least he was back on topic now.

‘Jimmy Nunn was a fucking nobody who did what he was paid to and then kept his head down, spending his cut on women and cars till the next job came along. So, I’ll tell you something for nothing, DC whatever-you-said-your-name-was ‒ if Jimmy’s still got his head down after, what, thirty-somefink years, then he took one hell of a cut from his last job.’

‘You think he’s got his feet up somewhere?’

‘If there’s one thing Jimmy Nunn was good at, it was running away. He was there for a good time, not a long time . . . as they say. He’d do a caper, then disappear. He’d do a bird, then disappear. I mean, if Trudie was mine – full-time I mean – I wouldn’t have left her.’

Jack noted Tony’s last comment about Jimmy Nunn probably being on the run with a load of cash. But, as he stared at Tony, he could also see the very second