was as horrific as the weather. All three lanes heading into London were moving at no more than ten miles per hour, with plenty of stopping and starting, with the occasional angry honk of frustration drifting through the wind and rain. It was the same going the other way, maybe even worse, since the bulk of the vehicles were escaping the city, not entering it. I'd forgotten how overcrowded the south-east of England was. In the Philippines, outside the maelstrom of Manila and southern Luzon, the pace is slow, and what roadsthere are are generally empty. Here, it's as if the whole population's on the move, fighting each other for that most precious of commodities: space. We hadn't gone two miles before I decided that, whatever happened here, I'd be heading back to the Philippines afterwards. I'd needed to come back, if only to see what I was missing; but having seen it, I was quickly realizing that it wasn't a lot.
The cab driver was like a lot of cab drivers. Having broken the ice by asking me where I'd come from and got an answer (I told him Singapore, hoping it sounded boring enough that he wouldn't want to ask anything more about it), he took my answer as an invitation to talk, and quickly regaled me with his views on immigration (too much), taxes (too high) and crime (rampant). This last bit interested me a little, because I hadn't heard much recently about crime levels in the UK. I got the big stories, but not the overall picture. The driver told me it had gone through the roof since Labour had been returned to power, especially crimes of violence. 'I'll tell you, mate, you're twice as likely to get mugged in London than New York these days. Probably more. If you ain't been here for a while, you want to watch yourself, I'm telling you.'
I told him I would, and allowed myself a little smile. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but where crime was concerned I remember the cab drivers saying exactly the same thing in the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties. They said it in Manilatoo. Maybe crime was rampant, but who could honestly remember a time when it wasn't?
Eventually our crawling, rain-splattered progress sapped even the cabbie's strength, and he lapsed into a bored silence while I stared out of the window and into the dark, wondering how I was going to get my investigation started. It wasn't as if I was a police officer any more, so I had no resources I could call upon for help. But I did have several key advantages. I knew who I was looking for, and I wasn't working within the constraints of the law. One thing that had always bugged me when I'd been a copper was knowing that the bad guys consistently had the upper hand. We not only had to find them, but we also had to gather huge amounts of evidence to bolster our case, even when we knew damn well that they were guilty. As often as not - particularly when a criminal knew what he was doing - those huge amounts of evidence simply weren't available, and our suspect walked free. Slippery Billy West was a case in point.
I had no doubt that Les Pope would also be a very difficult individual to pin down, from a copper's point of view, because as a lawyer he'd know how to work the system. With me, though, things would be different. I wasn't afraid to hurt him if he didn't help me. I might well hurt him, even if he did. But I had to be careful. Locating him wouldn't be hard, but it was important I played things just right. I wanted to find out whoelse was involved in Malik's murder without alerting anyone to what I was doing, and without getting Tomboy in trouble. It wouldn't be easy. But then I'd known that when I decided to come back.
The journey to Paddington took the best part of an hour and cost me almost sixty quid. Sixty quid would have got me from Manila to Malaysia and back again with a Filipino cab driver. It made me wonder what had happened to the low inflation they've been banging on about for so long.
I got the driver to drop me at the station, just in
The cab driver was like a lot of cab drivers. Having broken the ice by asking me where I'd come from and got an answer (I told him Singapore, hoping it sounded boring enough that he wouldn't want to ask anything more about it), he took my answer as an invitation to talk, and quickly regaled me with his views on immigration (too much), taxes (too high) and crime (rampant). This last bit interested me a little, because I hadn't heard much recently about crime levels in the UK. I got the big stories, but not the overall picture. The driver told me it had gone through the roof since Labour had been returned to power, especially crimes of violence. 'I'll tell you, mate, you're twice as likely to get mugged in London than New York these days. Probably more. If you ain't been here for a while, you want to watch yourself, I'm telling you.'
I told him I would, and allowed myself a little smile. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but where crime was concerned I remember the cab drivers saying exactly the same thing in the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties. They said it in Manilatoo. Maybe crime was rampant, but who could honestly remember a time when it wasn't?
Eventually our crawling, rain-splattered progress sapped even the cabbie's strength, and he lapsed into a bored silence while I stared out of the window and into the dark, wondering how I was going to get my investigation started. It wasn't as if I was a police officer any more, so I had no resources I could call upon for help. But I did have several key advantages. I knew who I was looking for, and I wasn't working within the constraints of the law. One thing that had always bugged me when I'd been a copper was knowing that the bad guys consistently had the upper hand. We not only had to find them, but we also had to gather huge amounts of evidence to bolster our case, even when we knew damn well that they were guilty. As often as not - particularly when a criminal knew what he was doing - those huge amounts of evidence simply weren't available, and our suspect walked free. Slippery Billy West was a case in point.
I had no doubt that Les Pope would also be a very difficult individual to pin down, from a copper's point of view, because as a lawyer he'd know how to work the system. With me, though, things would be different. I wasn't afraid to hurt him if he didn't help me. I might well hurt him, even if he did. But I had to be careful. Locating him wouldn't be hard, but it was important I played things just right. I wanted to find out whoelse was involved in Malik's murder without alerting anyone to what I was doing, and without getting Tomboy in trouble. It wouldn't be easy. But then I'd known that when I decided to come back.
The journey to Paddington took the best part of an hour and cost me almost sixty quid. Sixty quid would have got me from Manila to Malaysia and back again with a Filipino cab driver. It made me wonder what had happened to the low inflation they've been banging on about for so long.
I got the driver to drop me at the station, just in
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