Chronicle: The Grey Umbrella — A Source Named Marlon

Marlon Wills entered Nigel's life two and a half years ago under circumstances neither of them much cared to revisit in detail: Nigel had been climbing down from a rooftop after a less than successful attempt to intercept a courier carrying stolen phone parts, and Marlon had been standing below and, in his fright, dropped an entire box of contraband chargers on the pavement — which, by a strange irony, was precisely how they came to meet.

Since then, Marlon had gone from small-time reseller to Nigel's chief — and, in fact, only — informant in this part of London: a man who knew everyone, heard everything, and, crucially, knew how to keep his mouth shut about what he saw, provided that silence was compensated promptly and in cash.

Their meetings always took place in the same spot — the back yard of a dry cleaner's shut for renovations that had never reopened in eighteen months, which made it the perfect meeting place precisely because nobody but the two of them ever went there — and always followed the same ritual: Marlon brought two takeaway coffees, one of which invariably went untouched, because Nigel didn't drink coffee after six in the evening, and Marlon forgot this fact anew every single time.

"Right, so," Marlon said, holding out the doomed second cup, which Nigel, as usual, didn't take. "Grimshaw. Bartholomew Grimshaw. Manages buildings all over the area — yours, three more on the neighbouring streets — and from the paperwork I got a look at, through a bloke I know at a building firm, the numbers don't add up. By about forty per cent."

"Forty per cent," Nigel repeated. "That's not an accounting error. That's a system."

"Exactly what I wanted to say, only in fancier words," Marlon took a sip of his own coffee and grimaced, because coffee he'd bought himself an hour ago had gone cold enough that even he, for all his lack of discernment, couldn't call it pleasant. "And here's the other thing. Grimshaw's not moving the money himself. He's got two or three lads who go round to residents who start kicking up a fuss. Persuade them to be more reasonable."

"I met one of those lads yesterday, on Hanbury Street," Nigel said drily, raising his bandaged wrist. "Three of them, actually."

Marlon whistled, eyeing the bandage with the mix of admiration and moral disapproval that was his signature response to the consequences of other people's heroics. "How'd they come off?"

"Worse than me."

"Well, that's something, at least."

Nigel leaned against the dry cleaner's wall, flexing his wrist and turning over what he'd just heard. Forty per cent wasn't just a greedy manager pocketing a bit extra off the top of contractor fees. It was a system, built carefully enough to require protection, and that protection, judging by last night's experience, was willing to use physical force against unhappy residents.

"I need names," he said. "Real ones. Not just 'B.G.' on a phone."

"Working on it," Marlon dug into his jacket pocket and produced a crumpled scrap of paper, covered in handwriting that only Marlon himself, and possibly a few specially trained cryptographers, could reliably decipher. "For now, here's what I've got: Grimshaw's office is registered on Upper Street, but he doesn't meet people there. He meets them in the back room of a pub called the Jolly Milkman, Tuesday evenings. Same table by the window, every time."

"Tuesdays," Nigel repeated, and something clicked quietly in the back of his mind, connecting a piece of the puzzle he hadn't consciously been assembling until now. Tuesday — the same day, according to Dave, his hallway floorboard creaked well past midnight, because that was exactly the night Nigel retrieved the notebook from under it after each night's outing. The coincidence in their schedules was starting to accumulate a meaning he would very much have preferred to avoid.

"Listen," Marlon said, lowering his voice, though there wasn't another living soul in the yard besides the two of them, "there's one more thing, and you're not going to like it. Sounds like Grimshaw's got his own source inside the building. Someone feeding him info on which residents are asking questions, poking around the estimates. Dunno who. But knowing you, you've probably got a nosy neighbour of your own — warn him. Gently."

Nigel said nothing for longer than he should have, and Marlon, who'd known him long enough to read those pauses as reliably as a police report, narrowed his eyes.

"You've already got a neighbour like that, haven't you?"

"I have," Nigel admitted with a sigh that carried in equal measure irritation, worry, and something distantly resembling fondness. "And he's getting rather closer to the truth than is good for him, as it happens."

"Then get him to stop," Marlon said seriously, dropping, for the first time in the whole conversation, his usual glibness. "Grimshaw isn't playing around. People who ask too many questions about his accounts have a funny habit of suddenly deciding to move house. Or not deciding, and just quietly vanishing from the building's paperwork, and nobody asks about it, because everyone's too scared to ask anything further."

Nigel nodded, tucking the crumpled scrap of paper away in the same inner pocket already holding the stolen phone from the night before.

"Thanks, Marlon."

"Don't thank me," he waved a hand, raising his long-cold coffee in a mock toast. "Just sort this out faster than your neighbour sorts you out. From the sound of his questions, you haven't got much time left."