‘The rich-man equivalent of mugger money?’
‘Something like that.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty million,’ said Drake.
Shelley looked from Bennett to Drake. ‘That’s why he asked for twenty million earlier. This conversation, when you told Bennett about it. Was Johnson involved?’
Drake nodded.
‘Figures.’
CHAPTER 52
CLARIDGE HAD LEFT. In charge was DI Phillips, who still didn’t seem to know how to handle Guy Drake and his men. Were they suspects or victims?
In the end, Phillips decided to hedge his bets and treat them like a mixture of both, which meant he was stuck playing good cop one minute, bad cop the next, so every now and then he’d ask them politely whether they’d heard from the kidnappers. No, they’d say, each man playing his part to perfection. Of course not. After which he’d accuse them of hiding something. And they’d say no we’re not.
By now Gurney had been clued in, but he stayed on the side-lines, and thank God for that, as far as Shelley was concerned. A couple of hours passed. Shelley and Bennett kept themselves away from the cops on the pretext of making tea or checking on Drake. All four of them were shooting each other anxious glances, waiting, waiting.
And then suddenly Drake sped past and flashed Shelley a significant look, Bennett not far behind. Shelley checked the cops were oblivious to the exodus and then followed them into the kitchen, gently closing the door and moving to stand with the others.
For a moment or so Drake merely held the vibrating phone, and Shelley wondered if he was even going to answer it, when abruptly he raised the handset to his ear. ‘Hello,’ he said simply, and Shelley was relieved at the lack of needle in his voice. Thankfully he’d remembered that a kidnapping situation was all about negotiation. Then, ‘Yes, this is Guy Drake speaking. Is this Dmitry?’ He held the phone away from his ear, putting it on speaker.
‘Yes, it is I, Dmitry,’ they heard. ‘The last time we spoke you were discourteous and disrespectful, but I think you will not make that mistake again, am I right?’
Drake reddened but remembered himself, cleared his throat, swallowed his pride and spoke: ‘No, I won’t make that mistake again.’
‘Good, and I trust your colleague Captain Shelley has kept you abreast of all the latest developments?’
‘He has.’
‘Good. A go-between is very useful, I think.’
‘I would like to talk to my wife,’ said Drake, and once again Shelley found himself breathing a sigh of relief. Drake was getting past Dmitry’s jibes, moving on to deal with the important matter impressed on him by Shelley: demanding proof of life.
‘Of course,’ said Dmitry. His voice went slightly distant. ‘Mrs Drake, please tell your husband how well you’re being treated.’
The next voice belonged to Susie: ‘Guy, I’m all right, they’re being good to me—’ She was cut short, as though the phone had been snatched away.
‘Sweetheart, honey, I love you,’ Drake was saying quickly. The words tumbled out of him. His eyes gleamed with tears. And for a moment, the space of a heartbeat, he looked like a lost child.
‘No, no, Mrs Drake,’ they heard as Dmitry returned to the call. ‘You can have this conversation another time, later tonight, maybe, when you are back home safe and sound, drinking tea and telling of your exciting day with those lovely Chechens, yes?’
‘What do you mean, tonight?’ asked Drake. His jaw clenched, chewing.
Shelley and Bennett exchanged a look. They wanted to do the exchange right away. Good news, thought Shelley. They could have got more, but were prepared to settle for £20 million in return for a quick and painless trade.
‘I am about to give you the details of an account,’ said Dmitry. ‘Transfer the money from your secret offshore account into that and, when it is done, I will deposit Mrs Drake at …’
Shelley was shaking his head. Drake looked at him, confused, in need of more detail.
‘Ah, you’re being coached,’ they heard Dmitry say. ‘It is Captain Shelley again, is it? Put him on, Mr Drake, so that he can tell me himself what he wants to say.’
Shelley took the phone. ‘There’ll be no money transfer until we see Susie. When she’s standing there in front of us, unharmed, and when we’re confident that you plan to honour the agreement. Only then are we pushing buttons, got it?’
There was a pause. ‘We are the ones with the hostage, Captain Shelley,’ said Dmitry, firmly but agreeably.
‘I’m not disputing that. And believe me, I’ve no intention of trying to double-cross you on this. Just that it makes no sense for us to pay up ahead of time. Don’t take us for fools, Dmitry, because if you do we might be tempted to act like fools. Be straight with us and you’ll get the same in return.’
Dmitry gave a short chortle. ‘Oh, he drives a hard bargain, and yet I find I have to agree. Let us all meet together and do our business.’
‘Tell me what I have to do,’ said Drake.
‘You do, of course, remember my studio. Not the studio in which your daughter Emma died, but the other one. The one that you burned to the ground. That one. We meet there at midnight tonight. Mr Drake, do you understand me so far? We will bring your wife, unharmed, to the meeting point, and you will bring the means of transferring the twenty million that you have in your ransom fund to me. When the transfer is made you may have your wife back in one piece. It really is that simple.
‘Now, I hardly need to tell you that this negotiation operates on trust. You trust me to bring your wife unharmed. I trust you to provide the money. Because I know that there are police there with you now, I have to insist that the person in charge of the handover comes alone.’
Shelley shook his head and did the slit-throat motion with his finger. Absolutely not. In response, Drake nodded that he’d got the point. ‘I want to bring one of my men,’ he told Dmitry.
Dmitry chuckled. ‘Mr Drake, I haven’t finished outlining my terms. And I’m afraid to say that one of these is that you, personally, will not be present at the handover.’
‘No, no,’ protested Drake, ‘Susie’s my wife. All this is down to me. I’m coming.’
‘No, Mr Drake,’ replied Dmitry almost wistfully, ‘for you it is all too personal. As you say yourself, it is your temper, your pride that has brought us to this unfortunate crossroads. Besides, your house is crawling with police, is it not? You have to remain where you are. This is the beauty of the plan. This whole transaction will take place under their noses.’
Yes. Shelley could see it. There were police at the house; no doubt there were cops keeping watch on the Chechens, too. Having handed over the money and collected Susie, she would have to be left somewhere and from there contact the police with a story about being dropped off. The cops might suspect collusion; they might think that an exchange had taken place. But with the Chechens and Guy Drake both under surveillance and no evidence of any withdrawal from Drake’s bank account they’d come to the conclusion that the Chechens had got cold feet and released Susie. Providing she was unharmed they were unlikely to continue the investigation with a great deal more enthusiasm. It was virtually end of story.
It was a good, maybe even great, plan. And of course it meant that the Chechens were less likely to feel the heat. Any heat at all.
Mostly, though, it was encouraging for what it suggested to Shelley, which was that the Chechens intended to keep up their end of the bargain. It was in their interests to make sure everything went smoothly.
For that reason Shelley allowed himself to believe this whole shitstorm could have a positive outcome, and instantly reversed his previous reluctance, indicating to Drake that he should accept the plan.
‘Good,’ said Dmitry, and Shelley thought he detected a note of genuine relief below all the bonhomie. ‘Then we shall see Mr Shelley tonight. Shortly after, you will be reunited with your wife, Mr Drake. We will consider your debt to us paid, and I myself will disregard the
insult you have given to me.
‘But let that be an end to it, do you hear me, Mr Drake? You have watched me demonstrate my power. Believe me, you do not want a second example. Good night, sweet dreams.’
CHAPTER 53
THEY HAD POSTED a round-the-clock guard in Lucy’s room, which was a good thing, of course. But it did mean that talking to her was difficult. In the end she and Shelley had a truncated and very one-sided telephone conversation during which he told her the plan for later.
He told her the ins and outs, the way he thought the plan would work and why it was engineered in such a way that he doubted the Chechens planned a double-cross. And when he’d finished she said ‘Okay’, but in a long-drawn-out fashion that suggested she might have her doubts – doubts they weren’t in any position to discuss. Maybe he was even somewhat grateful that the guard was present, because it meant she wasn’t able to quiz him on all that other stuff bubbling just below the surface: the loyalty, misplaced or not. The sense of duty. The guilt.
‘Just be careful,’ she told him, which he supposed was about as much as she could say without arousing the suspicions of her guard.
Drake did what Shelley had wanted him to do earlier, he took himself off to bed. A couple of hours after that, Shelley announced he was leaving.
‘Really? I thought you were on Mr Drake’s security team?’ said DI Phillips, who himself was preparing to depart for the night.
‘You thought wrong. I’m a consultant,’ said Shelley, ‘and I’ve got a wife in the hospital. Bennett will keep me informed of any developments regarding Susie Drake. Otherwise I’m needed in London.’
For a moment he wondered if Phillips was simply going to forbid him from leaving. He could picture the thoughts flashing through the other man’s head. Did he have any legal right to stop Shelley leaving? Was there any investigative justification for making him stay? Phillips, of course, knew that Shelley was friendly with Claridge and had the MI5 man’s trust, his seal of approval. No doubt all of this played a part in his decision. ‘All right, leave if you must. But don’t think about going too far, will you?’
Shelley briefly considered pressing the point – So what if I do? – then decided against. He made a show of saying goodbye to Bennett and Gurney and that was it. He put Guy Drake’s mansion, with its twisted metal gates and so many memories, to his back, and headed for home.
He had a job to do.
CHAPTER 54
ALTHOUGH GRANDFATHER LIKED to watch his films from the machine shop every now and then, in the afternoon he mostly preferred to watch soap operas, especially the Australian ones: Neighbours and Home and Away were his favourites.
Around him that afternoon there had been a great deal of activity. He’d heard talk of a snatch, some woman apparently. And dimly, amidst a general irritation at the constant noise that interrupted his viewing, he had wondered if his skills might be called upon.
It had been a long time since he’d worked on a woman. It would be good to get the chance. Still, he had no intention of broaching the subject with his idiot grandson Dmitry. That boy had no idea of the old ways. To him the camps and Gulag were something ripped from the history books, as distant and remote to him as Jack the Ripper was to the East Enders of London. Dmitry’s idea of the relationship between fear and power was vague and received. He could have no concept of terror’s potent hold because he had never experienced it for himself. Dmitry believed that his old grandfather and even his father were men out of time; to him their means of keeping order were an anachronism, embarrassing like coarse manners.
Neither did he know of the sheer pleasure one could experience by inflicting such intense pain. That in itself was a form of power. Grandfather saw how Dmitry and his ilk would react. Men who carried guns and used their fists with impunity, men of violence, would wince and pale when he produced his instruments. His art was too much even for them. He took them to places they’d rather not go, and doing that conferred upon him an even greater authority.
And of course they thought he was stupid because that’s what the young think. They couldn’t see past the trembling hands, defective hearing and battered eyesight. They interpreted a slowing of thought as a decline in intelligence. They paid lip service to the idea of experience, but that’s all it was because secretly they believed all their bright ideas were new ones.
Think of me as a dinosaur all you want, Dmitry, but this organisation was built upon the rusted blade of my saw. Relic I might be, totem I definitely am.
Later on, things began to calm down. There was less noise. Fewer folk coming and going. Once more Grandfather was able to concentrate on the television. He had increased the volume to a near-ear-splitting level as a form of protest, but now he reached for the control and returned it to its normal setting.
Still, he thought. It would have been interesting to make this woman’s acquaintance. What fun he might have had.
And so his spirits rose when one of the men came to him shortly after dark, entering the front room tentatively, as they all did, bowing and showing his respect, as they all did, and said, ‘I have been asked if you would to like to accompany me to the machine shop, Ded.’
Grandfather enjoyed the effect his smile had on these underlings. ‘Dmitry?’ he asked.
‘No, Ded. It is Mrs Kraviz who asks if you would come to the machine shop. She has a task she thinks you might enjoy. She has asked me to inform you that it is her gift to you, as a sign of respect.’
Now, this was a lot better, thought Grandfather. Dmitry’s wife Karen was a Londoner and spoke like cor blimey, guv’nor, but she had a toughness Grandfather admired.
Like most of them in the organisation, he detested the Regans and longed for the day the merger would become a takeover. But unlike his grandson he knew there were things they could learn from the old-fashioned gangsters. The Regans knew how to keep their house in order. The Regans had gone down the path that Dmitry wanted to take. They had seen the error of their ways. They had corrected their route.
‘Get my coat,’ he said, already looking forward to the task ahead. ‘Oh, and I will also need my instruments, I take it?’
‘Mrs Kraviz has asked me to tell you that your instruments are waiting for you,’ said the visitor.
‘Excellent,’ drawled Grandfather. ‘Excellent.’
CHAPTER 55
SHELLEY PUSHED THE curtain aside, looked out of his window and saw the car in the road. He pulled on a coat, went out and tapped on the car window. It slid down.
‘Hello, mate,’ he said.
The guy inside, a plain-clothes if ever Shelley had seen one, said, ‘All right, mate.’
‘What are you doing here, then?’ he asked. ‘In a quiet cul-de-sac like this.’
‘Waiting,’ said the cop defensively. ‘No law against it, is there?’
‘Well, you should know,’ jibed Shelley.
The guy blinked but said nothing.
‘For someone who lives on this street, is it, you’re waiting for?’ pressed Shelley.
The guy nodded.
‘I see. Well, you need a residents’ parking permit to stop here,’ Shelley told him primly. ‘If you don’t get one, I’m afraid I’m going to have to call the police.’
For a moment, he wondered if the guy was simply going to drop the charade. But, ‘Well, you’d best do that then,’ the driver replied.
‘Tell you what,’ said Shelley. ‘I’m just going to be in my room watching a box set on my laptop. There’s my car’ – he pointed at his Saab. ‘I won’t call the cops if you keep an eye on it for me.’
The surveillance guy clenched his jaw, looking even more severely pissed off than he had before. Satisfied that he’d done a good job of winding him up, Shelley disappeared back inside.
In the house, he moved quickly into the kitchen, minuscule compared to the Drakes’ snooker-hall-sized version, but home. There were lots of drawers in the kitchen, but only one that he and Lucy called ‘the kitchen drawer’, and he went to it n
ow, yanking it open and raking through the contents until he found what he wanted: a timer, the type you plug into a wall to control appliances.
Moving to the bedroom, he set the timer and switched on the light. It was the oldest trick in the book, the kind of thing used to deter burglars in 1982, but he was hoping it would satisfy Philip Marlowe outside.
Then, on the off-chance that his friend outside had the means of hacking into his Internet, he started something streaming on the iPlayer.
Now then. 10 p.m. That gave him two hours until the exchange. He dressed: jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt, bomber jacket. Into the waistband of his jeans he clipped the holster carrying his SIG then grabbed his phone and, lastly, the spare keys to Lucy’s Mini.
Next he returned downstairs, checked out the window and then, very quietly, let himself out the back door.
He stopped to listen, savouring the quiet – a low, humming, thrumming city kind of quiet – and then climbed the wall that separated their yard from the cemetery behind. He dropped onto the soft ground and made his way through gravestones silhouetted against the night like rotting teeth, until he reached the entrance gate, locked and chained.
The climb was short work. A second later he was in the street, satisfied nobody had seen him. He pulled his cap out of his pocket and fixed it on his head, feeling human again. He found a minicab, ‘Hampstead, please,’ and about forty minutes later he was dropped off at the health spa. There he saw the aftermath of Lucy’s gun battle: boarded-up windows, bullet holes in the car park surface pinpointed by forensic marker spray – and Lucy’s car.
He checked there was no one around, and that he hadn’t been followed, then opened up and climbed inside.
The scent of her stopped him for a moment. Lucy smell. And for a second he longed to be with her, sitting by her bedside or preferably at home with her, eating dinner or in front of the TV, even bloody ‘brainstorming’ to find new work if that was what she wanted.
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