Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill Page B

stinking rich that did not involve the use of a hammer. Though the implement had changed, the principle was one he was very familiar with. Human need and greed left people vulnerable. Looking west out of the East End into the City he saw a feeding frenzy that made his own localized pickings seem very Lenten fare. And so began the moves, both geographical and commercial, that were to turn him into a financial giant.
    But changes of direction can be dangerous.
    It was Fleur who had pointed out to him the paradox that going completely legit left him much more exposed than staying completely bent. The movement from crookedness to cleanliness meant abandoning a lot of old associates whose faces and attitudes were at odds with the new glossy picture of himself and his activities he was preparing for the world. The trick was to make sure that, as new doors opened before him, the old doors were firmly locked and double barred behind. Fortunately he’d always tidied up as he went along and those who knew enough to do him active harm were few and far between. Now once more he scrutinized them very carefully and those he had any doubts about got visited by his long-time associate and enforcer, Milton Slingsby.
    No one knew more about The Man’s affairs than Fleur Delay. Her record should have made her invulnerable. But the trouble was that her professional usefulness had more or less come to an end. Her talent for manipulative accountancy had been invaluable in the days when his main financial enemies were local tax inspectors and VAT men, and she had been helpful during the early moves into legitimate areas of speculation. But as Goldie prospered, he had turned more and more to the specialized tax accountants without whom a man could sink without trace in the mazy morass of the modern markets. In their company she was like an abacus among computers, but an abacus whose database was very computer-like. While she did not believe she was in imminent danger of a visit from Sling, she knew that Goldie valued people in proportion to their usefulness, and to have dangerous knowledge but no positive function was potentially a fatal combination.
    As Vince’s release date approached, she saw a way to solve both her problems.
    The key was Milton Slingsby.
    Sling’s great merit was total loyalty. Whatever Goldie told him to do, he did. But he was nearly ten years older than Goldie and his early years in the boxing ring, where he was renowned for blocking his opponents’ punches with his head, were starting to take their toll. With Goldie by his side telling him what to do he could function as well as ever. But now the new respectable Goldie wanted to be as far away as possible from the kind of thing he usually told Sling to do.
    So Fleur brought up the subject of her brother with The Man, not as
her
problem, but as
his
opportunity. Vince, she averred, would do the heavy work. She would do the planning, guaranteeing speed, discretion, and absolutely no lines back to The Man.
    To employ someone like Vince Delay directly wasn’t an option for Goldie. Such men were by their very nature likely to prove as unreliable as the unreliables they were seeing off. But the prospect of having someone as heavy as Vince under the control of someone he still trusted as implicitly as Fleur was not unattractive.
    He agreed to a trial run. Three days later the designated target fell while out walking his dog and cracked his skull against a fence post with fatal results.
    That had been thirteen years ago and up till now neither party had had occasion to complain about the arrangement. Rapidly the Delays’ reputation for reliability and discretion drew in offers from elsewhere, some of which Fleur accepted, though as a Gidman pensioner, she had sufficient income to permit her to be choosy. But on the increasingly rare occasions The Man put work their way, she dropped everything else and came running.
    It was important to please The Man, partly for pride,