Max Wolfe 02.5 - Fresh Blood by Tony Parsons Read Free Book Online

doors wide open because nobody owned anything worth nicking.’
    ‘Now the Saucy Leper’s a gastro pub and tourists take their selfies next to walls that still have blood stains. You should go to the boxing gym that’s above it.’
    ‘Why should I?’
    ‘Because Shadwell ABC was the last place that Vic Masters was seen alive. The next time anyone saw him was when you found him dead in a ditch on Hampstead Heath.’
    He tapped the blacked-out window and a uniformed driver slipped into the front seat.
    We were done.
    I went to get out of the car but Paul Warboys stopped me with a hand on the arm. How old was he? I could still feel the physical power of the man. One on one, I wouldn’t fancy my chances against him unless I got in first.
    ‘That’s not why I wanted to see you,’ he said.
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘I think you have a dog for me,’ he said.

8
Rescue Dog
    Shadwell ABC was an old-fashioned boxing gym.
    No changing room, no showers and no toilet – if you needed to answer the call of nature, you went down to the toilets in the pub below, the Saucy Leper, a cavernous boozer full of scarred mirrors and the cigarette stains of the last hundred years.
    At noon the day after I met Paul Warboys, there was only a handful of hardened drinkers in the Saucy Leper, but Shadwell ABC was jumping – white-collar office workers coming in from the City, small kids in this season’s West Ham shirts shadow boxing and some of those lean old faces that had been doing this training – pad work, heavy bag, speed bag, sit-ups, press-ups, planks, burpees and all the rest – all their lives.
    Shadwell ABC was an old-fashioned boxing gym in another way. It was a very friendly place. When I turned up with my kit bag and a pair of 14-ounce Lonsdale gloves, nobody looked at me twice when I did my stretching and then found myself a heavy bag. Boxing gyms are the friendliest places in the world. They have to be because you never know who you might be standing next to.
    I banged the heavy bag until I was soaked in sweat and then found myself an empty spot on the floor to do sit-ups. I noticed that among the framed posters on the wall – Ali v. Frazier in Manila, Lewis v. Tyson in Memphis, Mayweather v. Hatton in Las Vegas – there was a roll call of local champions – a hundred years of schoolboys who had won boxing honours in the red and white vest of Shadwell ABC. Their names were inscribed in gold letters on large wooden plaques. There was also a small display of photographs – faded colour photos from late in the last century, and sharp black and white portraits from much earlier. After I had forced out a hundred sit-ups, I got up from the floor to take a better look, feeling the pain in my back, neck and stomach muscles. And there he was – Vic Masters, born on the day the war ended in Europe, a kid who had grown up with bombsites as his playground, grinning back at me as if we shared a hilarious secret.
    An old man with a nose like squashed fruit shuffled a broom near my feet, one of those strangely placid characters that only seem to exist in boxing gyms.
    ‘Vic Masters trained here,’ I said.
    The man with the broom nodded. ‘Vic? Man and boy.’
    I looked around the gym. Although it abounded with youthful bodies – young women banging the pads, small boys and girls furiously shadow boxing, men in their twenties sparring hard in the ring – there were older faces too, moving at their own pace, swinging battered gloves into heavy bags, doing their stretching, holding on to their boxing as if it was life itself. I could see Vic in Shadwell ABC, even in his old age.
    ‘I’m Max,’ I said to the man with the broom.
    He nodded thoughtfully. I waited for a bit.
    ‘I’m Gary,’ he said in the end.
    ‘Did you see Vic in here before he died, Gary?’
    The man with the broom smiled gently. ‘You’re Old Bill, aren’t you?’ he said, not unkindly.
    I nodded. ‘Paul Warboys told me to look around down here.’
    ‘Paul