Court said, “I don’t know anything about Charlie Jones. Don’t care. Kent sent me.”
He saw a flash of surprise in the bartender’s face, but before he said anything, Court heard a voice just behind his left ear.
“Kent, you say?”
He turned to find a thick man in his fifties with horrifying teeth inches from his face. He said, “Kent hasn’t turned up. You know anything about that?”
Court replied, “Take me to Jones and I’ll tell him.”
Just then a short fiftyish man in a tweed jacket and a black driving cap entered the bar bracketed by a pair of large goons. He took his hat off, nodded seriously to a pair of men sitting near the entrance, then strode up to the bar.
He’d only made it a few steps before he locked eyes with Gentry. He slowed an instant, glanced around, then continued forward.
The man behind Court said, “Charlie, this bloke says Kent sent him here to talk to you.”
The man raised a single eyebrow. “Did he now?”
Court started to stand from the stool to shake the man’s hand, but a strong arm clasped his shoulder and held him where he sat.
Court nodded. “He did.”
“When did this happen?”
“This morning.” After a pause, “Right before he was killed.”
It was clear to Court that Jones knew Kent was dead, but some of the other men in the room turned to him in surprise.
Jones sat down at the bar, facing the bartender. A steel mug with some sort of cocktail in it appeared, and the man in the tweed coat took a slow drink. Without looking he said, “Where you from, friend?”
“Southampton,” Court responded, and then he held his breath. He’d heard Kent mentioning the city as being the home of one of his team members. If the different men on the crew really did not know one another, he took it as likely that the boss of one of the men wouldn’t know the other individual players, either.
Charlie Jones sipped his drink, as if in thought.
Finally he asked, “You were there, this morning?”
“I was. At Ternhill. Kent took charge when Mickey and Martin went down, and then he brought us all the way to the old hospital.”
“Don’t know Mickey. Don’t know Martin. I know Kent.” And then, “Keep on.”
“We handed over the prisoner to the Russians, and they flew him out, but there was a bloke in the hospital watchin’ us. We chased him out to the highway, but he shot up my car and blew up the other. Kent was in the other. He didn’t make it.”
He felt certain no one had made it out of either of the two vehicles, but there would be no way Jones could know this for sure.
“Why did Kent send you here?”
“He was ragin’, same as me. Someone got a lot of blokes killed today, sent us in with bad information. We were overmatched, outgunned, we had no bleedin’ preparation for what we went up against. He told me he was going to find out who set this up and burn them for it. He said if he went down and I made it, that I should come to you and you’d tell me who hired him for the job.”
“Southampton, you say? I take it you work for Tony Palace.”
Court didn’t miss a beat. “His son, Reggie.” Court had looked into the Southampton underworld before arriving at the pub, expecting to be questioned about the leadership of the organization he claimed to work for. He’d found that their largest criminal firm was ostensibly run by an eighty-year-old gangster named Tony Palace but in fact had been taken over by his forty-five-year-old son, Reggie.
Court thought he was selling himself well but knew he had to remain sharp and not let his guard down for an instant.
Jones said, “Reggie ain’t his dad, is he?”
“No, sir. He’s a right bastard. With all the coke he does he’s fucking useless most of the time. Can’t be bothered about real problems, even if it throws his own men into danger.”
Court had read that the man had been arrested for cocaine possession more than once. The rest of it he was winging. He’d spent most of two decades freestyling his way through background stories, and he was damn good at it.
Jones said, “I know Reggie Palace. How about I call him right now, make sure you are who you’re sayin’ you are?”
Court shrugged. “He’ll just tell me to get me arse back down to Southampton, won’t he? That’s not