tomorrow is not enough - chapter one

7/31/2019 Tomorrow Is Not Enough - Chapter One

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LONDON

I

THE BLOODY FUR TRADE

London is not an all-night city. It wakes at six oclock with the Billingsgate bell, goes

home when the West End shops close at 5.30pm, and when the pubs turn out at eleven it is

safely tucked up in bed. By midnight the buses and the Underground have stopped running,

leaving the night to the heavy lorries that clatter into town down the centre of deserted streets at

speeds well over the limit so that the drivers can sleep before the markets start all over again.

At 3.00am. the blue canvas back Thames Trader 40 rumbled down Whitechapel Road at a

steady twenty miles an hour, indicated and turned towards Commercial Road. The driver was

being very careful. He didnt want to attract the attention of the police.

On both sides loomed old brick warehouses with painted signs on the doors: Kaufman,

furriers, Levenson & Son, Bresslaw since 1910. Less than five miles away in

Knightsbridge thousands of pounds were spent by fashionable people, unaware that their fur

coats, stoles and hats had started life here as musky-smelling pelts from Canada, Alaska and

Siberia.

The lorry mounted the pavement and pulled up outside A. Gold, Furs. Two men in blue

overalls jumped out. One clambered up over the bull-nosed bonnet and onto the roof of the

cab. He took a can of shaving foam out of his pocket and sprayed it into the red alarm bell on

the wall. The other opened the back doors of the lorry and slid out two six-foot scaffolding

planks. It looked like a military operation.

Crime in London is controlled by two gangs, one to the north of the River Thames and the

other to the south. From protection to pornography to prostitution to gambling the tentacles

of these gangs reach far. No raid or racket is planned without their approval. This rule is

enforced with the shotgun, razor and cosh.

This raid was being carried out by three ex-military men. The driver was a major, late of the

Corps of Royal Engineers, cashiered for conduct unbecoming an officer. He was caught withhis hand in the mess fund trying to make good his gambling losses. The man on the roof had


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been a sergeant, and a sapper was handling the planks. They had both done their time in the

glasshouse for using supply lines to smuggle cannabis into the country. Then they had been

discharged dishonourably and the whole thing hushed up.

They were being permitted to carry out the raid for a forty-sixty split of the proceeds, but

since they had to fence them through the gang, it would probably be much less. The majors

share would be barely enough to cover his gambling debts, which meant he would soon have to

organise another raid. In the end, he would wind up in prison or with both his legs broken.

The sergeant jumped down and helped with the planks. Then the sapper banged on the side

of the lorry and the major grated the gears into reverse and backed up to the warehouse. The

two men wedged the planks between the doors of the warehouse and the bumper of the lorry

while the major watched in the wing mirror. Then he eased his foot down on the accelerator.

The growl of the six cylinder engine seemed to fill the night. The doors began to creak and the

planks bowed under the strain.

There was a splintering crash as the padlock and hasp ripped free, bolts tore through the door

frame and the doors burst open, slamming back on their hinges. The planks fell with a clatter

onto the pavement and the lorry roared backwards into the loading bay. The major slammed on

the brakes and killed the engine.

As the echoes died away and silence returned to the street, the men froze and strained their

ears for the shrill of a policemans whistle or the clanging of a bell, but all they heard was the

dull rattle of the alarm in its cocoon of shaving foam.

The major wound down the window.

Come on, you two, he ordered. Get a bloody move on.

The sergeant dragged the planks inside while the sapper pushed the doors shut, jamming the

screws back into their ruptured holes and smearing a mixture of sump oil, dirt and axle grease

over the tears in the wood to hide the whiteness. He glanced nervously up and down the street,

then ducked into the darkness of a nearby doorway. He was the lookout. It was his job to warn

the others if he saw or heard anything by whistling the Royal Engineer Corps song Hurrah for

the CRE. And he had a length of lead pipe up his sleeve if anyone got too curious.

He checked his watch. The luminous hands said five minutes past three. In exactly eighteen

minutes the policeman on his beat would swing by on patrol. Christ, he could do with a

cigarette! But the majors orders had been quite clear no smoking. No glow from a cigarette


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or the flaring of a match to attract attention. He shivered and hunched his shoulders against the

cold and pulled his watch cap down over his ears, trying to keep warm, without stamping his

feet.

A barge hooted mournfully out on the Thames. An ambulance clanged on its way to St.

Barts. Overhead the turbofan engines BOAC Boeing 707 whined as it began its descent to

London Airport. He checked his watch again. It read 3.07. Only two minutes! It felt like ten.

He hated doing guard duty. The time just crawled by. He leaned out and looked up and down

the street again. It was as empty as it had been the last time he looked. The sodium arc lamps

spilled pools of ugly orange-coloured light into an inky black night that turned violet at the

edges asdawn crept back into the city.

Dawn was the armys time, the major had said. The moment the bugles blared and the

barrack-block doors banged and the component parts of the army gathered back together again.

And the traditional time for a surprise attack.

He glanced down at his watch again. It said 3.17. My God! Ten minutes had gone by! What

was the matter with the damn thing? He shook it and held it to his ear. It ticked reassuringly.

He peered at the second hand. It was still sweeping slowly round. What thebloody hell were

they doing in there? Any second now the police would be here and then it would be shrilling

police whistles and the clanging of patrol car bells.

Suddenly the doors banged open and the Trader reversed out in a cloud blue diesel fumes.

The sapper darted from his hiding place, pushed the doors shut and scrambled under the canvas

flap of the still-moving lorry. He fell into a soft pile of musky-smelling furs. The

unsycnchromeshed gears ground into first and the major drove west down the Whitechapel

Road.

They rumbled down narrow streets, cut with black shadows from the warehouses, onto

sodium-lit roads that marked the poorer districts of London from those with the more expensive

white electric bulbs, past all-night buses and eight-wheeler tankers ground and across the

Albert Bridge, lit up with a string of pearl-like white bulbs, into Battersea. The familiar

silhouette of the four tower-like chimneys of the Battersea Power Station rose up on their left in

the frail dawn light.

The streets around the Stewarts Lane Train Depot were deserted as the major stopped the

lorry in front of one of the business premises located under brick railway arches. The sergeant

climbed down, unpadlocked the warped and peeling wooden doors and the major drove in. The


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doors were slammed shut and bolted and fluorescent strip lights hanging on ten-foot chains

buzzed and flickered into life.

As the major killed the Traders six cylinder engine, the sapper jumped out, unhooked the

backboard and threw back the canvas flaps. In the cold harsh light piles of mink, fox and sable

glistened. He whistled. Theyd done it! There must be thirty grands worth here. After they

had paid off the North London gang, his cut would be about two thousand pounds. Hed buy a

car, a big American car, and a flat in Chelsea. A penthouse flat. And women lots of women.

The sound of raised voices brought him back to reality. It was the majors clipped tones

demanding to know what the hell was going on. There was a noise like a loud cough and the

sound of a dull weight hitting the floor. An oath from the sergeant, another cough and a thud.

The sapper flattened himself against the lorry. Something was going on. He heard brass

cartridge cases tinkle onto the concrete floor and the acrid smell of cordite caught at his

nostrils. He sneaked a look round the side of the lorry and saw the major and the sergeant were

sprawled on the floor.

The sapper had seen enough death in Malaysia to know they were finished. Standing over

the bodies were three Chinese dressed in dark business suits. The looked like businessmen, but

their business was violence and death. In their hands were automatics with ugly sausage-

shaped silencers and they had fanned out to give themselves a clear field of fire.

He ducked back and felt something cold and hard press against the back of his neck. He

started to raise his hands slowly and tried to speak, but his mouth was suddenly very dry.

Everything became very still and quiet and the muzzle at his neck seemed as large as a cannon.

He heard the metallic click of the trigger being pulled and that was the last thing he ever heard.

The bullet severed his spine and tore out his throat. He collapsed like a puppet with cut

strings and he was dead before he hit the floor.

Hissing with distaste, the Chinaman stepped over the bloodied corpse and joined the others.

Orders were given in a sing-song falsetto. Two of them got into the Traders cab and the other

two opened the doors. The lorry grumbled into life and reversed out. It swung round without

stopping and trundled away. The other two pushed the garage doors shut and got into a

battered brown Austin Cambridge parked outside. They drove sedately away, following the

lorry. The muffled hum of the traffic signalled that the rush hour was just beginning.


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tomorrow is not enough - chapter one

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