Read Max Wolfe 02.5 - Fresh Blood for Free Online Page B

bright lights of the Leafy Lane Retirement Community.
    ‘He’s not my SIO,’ I said. ‘Do you know DCI Flashman?’
    ‘We’ve met.’ An ironic little smile. ‘Our paths have crossed. But I was away when he was coming through the ranks at New Scotland Yard.’
    ‘Away? When you were doing your long stretch for removing a man’s tongue?’
    ‘The evidence was circumstantial,’ he said, still resentful after half a lifetime. Then he shrugged. ‘It was over for us.’ A philosophical sigh. ‘Me and my brother Danny. The Richardsons. Reggie and Ronnie. Them days. They just wanted to put us away. Any excuse to bang us up for twenty or thirty years.’
    ‘Like Al Capone and his tax evasion?’
    ‘Yeah – like that.’
    ‘Forgive me if I don’t get too sentimental about the good old days when everyone could leave their doors open when they were having a good old knees-up.’
    He chuckled. ‘Where you from, DC Wolfe?’
    ‘I’m from here,’ I said. ‘Just like you. What do you want, Mr Warboys?’
    ‘Flashman thought – maybe still thinks – that Alfie Bloom did Vic Masters. Doesn’t he?’
    ‘It crossed his mind.’
    Paul Warboys shook his head.
    ‘Alfie didn’t do Vic. He didn’t have it in him. Not any more. Because it leaves you – that killer instinct. They were done old men, Alfie and Vic. Alcohol, cigarettes and hard time – it ages you. They were both born on VE Day, did you know that? The day that Nazi Germany jacked it in. But their wars were over. Oh, if someone tried to mug them for their pensions they would have broke bones. No doubt about it. But they were not going to go out and kill anyone. I know they had their beef. And their bloody stupid memoirs didn’t help. But you don’t take anyone’s life when you’re that close to death. These are not the killing years. These are the dying years.’
    I waited.
    ‘You know why I’m telling you this?’ he said.
    ‘I’m guessing that you want whoever killed Vic Masters to be arrested for murder.’
    Suddenly there was a fury in his blue eyes, and I saw the violence that could give the order to remove a man’s tongue.
    ‘I’m not a grass,’ he said, his leathery face twisting with rage. Then he laughed. ‘Scared?’ he smiled.
    I smiled back at him.
    ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘You?’
    He laughed.
    ‘Scared of what? You? The law? I’m a respectable old man. I have a nice life in Majorca half the year and the other half in Brentwood. Lovely gaffs in both places. And I’ve changed. And a man does change as he gets older. I got a degree in prison. Change – real change – it is a possibility. Will you give me that, detective?’
    I shrugged. ‘Sure,’ I said.
    ‘But I never liked a grass. That’s why that grassing lawyer lost his filthy tongue. Still don’t. But times have changed. There’s a lack of respect for everything in this country. For our history. For our values. For the older generation. Vic Masters – who I knew for a lifetime – was a victim of all that. The lack of respect. And it’s a diabolical liberty, Detective Wolfe.’ He looked closer at my face. ‘You’re a boxing fan,’ he said. ‘I can tell. You’ve done a bit of sparring, haven’t you? Nobody’s born with a nose like yours, are they? No offence meant.’
    ‘None taken.’
    I remembered that those old gangland faces were a generation of boys who boxed as naturally as kicking around a ball. Reggie and Ronnie Kray, Charlie and Eddie Richardson, Paul and Danny Warboys – most of the black and white photographs of their boyhood pictured them grinning in boxing kit, their skinny little ration-book frames hunched in a fighting stance.
    ‘There’s a gym in Whitechapel called Shadwell Amateur Boxing Club,’ Warboys said. ‘Shadwell ABC. It’s above a pub called the Saucy Leper. Heard of it, have you?’
    ‘I’ve heard of the Saucy Leper. A few people got shot in the face there, didn’t they? Back in the good old days when you could leave your