‘I don’t fancy Romy’s chances to be honest,’ Alastair said, after a quick shake of the head. ‘Unless she was one of them all along, and playing you.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Well she is a journo. Those female journos… those stacked hacks from Grub Street, they can look after themselves at least. In dark alleys and anywhere else you care to name, I dare say.’
‘But that Irwin guy―’
‘You do not mess with these people, it’s as simple as that,’ Alastair hissed. ‘They’re snakes all right, of the worst genus. Exceedingly aggressive, and supremely venomous.’
‘I won’t argue with that. But you know it did occur to me―’
‘Black Mambas have nothing on these guys.’
‘What Romy said about the money’ Jon said. ‘It at least explains a lot.’
‘Assuming it’s true. But since the money really did turn up in your account… it does in fact sound like the best explanation. So. What have we got here. They want their money back one must assume. But they haven’t exactly included you in the transaction, so we can safely assume that offering it back to them… assuming you still can…’
Jon nodded.
‘… won’t do you any good.’
‘It won’t?’
‘Some might say that money,’ said Alastair, ‘is the only language these types understand, but I say… and their actions bear this out I would suggest… I say that nothing but blood will satisfy their thirst for blood. You simply know too much I’m afraid old chap. You’re in too deep.’
‘Deep is a fair description.’
‘No we have to find some other way of nipping this thing in the bud.’
‘Law in our own hands, that sort of thing?’
‘Quite,’ said Alastair in thoughtful mode. ‘Although a bit of a work in progress that one, I’m afraid. In the meantime, do you have some sort of plan? Where are you going to stay?’
‘I can hotel-hop. Courtesy of the money you lent me. I haven’t thanked you enough for that, by the way.’
‘Think nothing of it. I know you’re good for it, with that little stash of yours.’ Alastair sees the look on Jon’s face. ‘Just a little joke, lad, cheer up. But a plan, do you have a plan? I mean, was it wise coming back to London? Until something presents itself. It’s easier to lie low in the countryside, no CCTV etcetera, you could do a bunk, and head for… if Peacehaven’s not your cup of tea… you could head for somewhere no-one ever goes like… Wales.’
Jon was shaking his head. ‘I can’t just wait around hoping they won’t find me. I need to do something, be proactive.’
‘No point in just doing something for the sake of doing something. Look at what happened to Richard Nixon.’
‘I’ve got one lead. There is one thing I can usefully do. Find that redhead.’
‘The one who’s been following you? She could be the cause of all this!’
‘Something tells me she’s not. And anyway, it’s all I’ve got. I followed her, on Wednesday remember. In West Kensington. She went to that mannequin factory, Rootstein, so I might check that out.’
‘Rootstein,’ said Alastair, his face even more grave-looking than usual. ‘I don’t like it. Hell of a risk you’ll be taking.’
‘I can’t just do nothing. And I’ve supposedly got this mystery family out there, remember. If this woman’s right. A sister, and father… Sir Martin Nevers of all people, I really don’t know if I can believe it. But I suppose…’
Once again, at the mention of Nevers, Jon noticed Alastair wince.
‘Yes, well.’ Alastair had a pained look on his face. ‘There was something else. Bad news, as we all know, always travels in pairs.’
‘Only in pairs? Tell me.’
‘Well…’ Alastair began slowly, as if he were being asked to eat a plate of dead bees. ‘Of course we don’t know how reliable this Esmeralda is… or…’
‘Emerald.’
‘… or was… But Nevers is, um… very sadly… Nevers is… no more.’
‘Nevers is…?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘It happened yesterday. Heart attack, or that’s what it said in the paper, but if you believe that, you’d believe that I’m Mata bloody Hari.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Listen. It’s just as likely everything Emma told you was malarkey twaddle. She may very well have her own agenda. She may be with the Russians herself for that matter. Another cat rapist! The will you saw could have been faked, there’s just no way of knowing. Of course if you’re a beneficiary under the will… but that’s a thought for another time. Right now… we… that’s you, me, Bertie… we’ve somehow landed ourselves in a puzzle, or a chess game, where the players… no, each of the pieces… has its own, very different, objective. And the truth is the first casualty in that little game let me tell you.’
But Jon’s attention had wandered. He felt as though his life were passing before him like a dream. The two of them stared at the water bubbling up, or erupting, in vertical jets, out of the holes in the ground, leaping skywards and falling back again, and evoking, in Jon’s mind at least, lava – lava spurting, in great exploding globules, out of a magma lake – reminding him that here he was, at the heart of it all, in the deep vortex of the volcano.
Before they left – Alastair agreed, despite his earlier note of caution, to give Jon a lift to West Kensington in the “Muss Tan” – Alastair handed Jon another phone, and muttered something about the approaching storm. But the only thing that stuck in Jon’s mind later was Alastair’s comment about the short-sighted assassin who’d fired at Jon three days earlier: what kind of person wore a baseball cap with a suit?… or was that a suit with a baseball cap?
74. 51° 31' 54" N 0° 7' 27" W
(Kings Cross Station concourse, mezzanine level)
Fifteen minutes later
12.15pm British Summer Time (11:15 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Under the elegantly curved, geometrically patterned ceiling of the half-dome roof – which reminded her of the tiling on the Decagon – she watched him as he stood in front of the departures board, taking his time, presumably weighing up the options that were flashing up before his eyes. Might she be going to Newcastle? or Hull? or Cambridge? or Aberdeen? or Leeds? or Peterborough? or York perhaps? or what about Edinburgh? She tried to guess what he was thinking, based on the subtle movements of his head.
She was observing him from the comparative cover of a table at a Mexican restaurant on the mezzanine level, overlooking the concourse. She took the risk of sitting at the glassed-off edge, with a newspaper her only camouflage. At least she had the upper hand finally, and was the one doing the watching for a change. She could keep an eye on him for once.
The man in the dark grey suit and brown shoes looked familiar. But then everyone was starting to look familiar now and she was starting to not care. Which was deadly, she knew. You could never let your guard down. Ever.
And then, almost as soon as he’d started, the man appeared to give up. Looked at his watch, looked around – but not up, where she was sitting – and left the station.
Ishiko had just over half an hour before her train left. She already had her ticket, she’d leave her dash to the last minute, just in case he was still around, allowing him next to no chance to follow her unnoticed.
And after that, finally, she’d be able to relax, if only for the duration of the eight hour trip to Aberdeen.
There was an expression, ‘no rest for the wicked’. Was that her?
75. 51° 29' 26" N 0° 12' 19" W
(Beaumont Avenue, West Kensington)
12.25pm British Summer Time (11:25 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Alastair had just dropped Jon off around the corner in North End Road. A necessary precaution, given the forces they were up against, not to mention the fact that being driven in Alastair’s new car was like travelling in a large banana on wheels and just about as
conspicuous. Bertie had been in his usual nervous form (hiding away on the floor in the back, which from Jon’s perspective didn’t seem like such a bad idea, given the car they were in), and showed none of the enthusiasm for city driving tours that Alastair had spoken of. Jon had suggested Alastair not wait, and the idea had been met with absolutely no resistance.
So he was standing, once again, outside the Rootstein building in West Kensington, precisely where he’d stood three days earlier after following the woman in the green dress. The mannequin was still there, inside the glass door at the entrance. This time, no green dress, no redhead. This time though, he went in.
Inside, past the mannequin and next to a wall of framed photographs of models, was a small white desk, and behind that, a girl. With brown hair.
‘Hello.’ She greeted him with a big smile and an accent too, maybe French?
He explained that he was looking for someone, it was a bit embarrassing because he’d forgotten her name (‘must excuse the bloody Alzheimer’s’ he said with a smile), but she had red hair, was wearing a green dress, was so high, nice figure…
‘A lot of girls here has the nice figures as you can see.’ (She might have been Russian – accents had never been his strong suit.) She was indicating the photographs on the wall. He noticed she was a little on the plump side, and wondered whether his “nice figure” description had been a mistake, because her smile had all but disappeared. ‘But no,’ she added. ‘I hasn’t seen her.’
‘Three days ago? Perhaps you weren’t here?’
‘I was here. But I hasn’t seen her. Sorry.’
He cast an eye over the photographs on the wall. And then, yes, success, it was almost certainly her.
‘That’s her there,’ he said.
The photograph had a caption: Isla. Was that her name? He asked the receptionist.
‘Eess-la,’ she replied.
‘Sorry?’
‘You say her name Eess-la.’
‘Not Aye-la? OK. Iss-la. Ah yes. La Isla Bonita.’
The girl either had no idea what he was talking about (was anyone too young for Madonna, even in 2013?) or she was completely fed up with him, because she didn’t even nod. He soldiered on:
‘So anyway, her. This Isla, here. You know her name so I’m assuming you’ve must have seen her?’
‘Seen? I don’t know,’ the French/Russian girl said, before no doubt realising an ambivalent answer might lead to further cross-examination. ‘No. I heard her name but I don’t think I has seen her. She is maybe last year’s.’
She had to leave the room, and after one more ‘sorry’ she was gone. Jon looked at the photograph of “Isla” again. It showed her from the waist up, and naked, posing, with a mannequin beside her – her doppelgänger – being given what looked like some final touches by a bearded sculptor. As he admired the physical beauty of the object of his search , he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, at the end of the corridor off to his left, a woman with red hair flash past. It was only the merest of glimpses, but it looked like her. Was it? Had the girl on the front desk been just a little too dismissive?
As the receptionist was still not back, he took a few steps down the corridor and peered into the first room he came to. It was a room full of mannequins. And every one of them looked like this Isla, or her ‘copy’. Someone wasn’t telling him something.
And then the girl was back again, and he was in trouble. He knew there was a word for a person who was sexually attracted to statues, like Pygmalion (Pygmalionism?), and whatever it was, he assumed that the girl assumed that he was one of them.
‘I am sorry sir, you cannot go to there. Now we are closing, you must to leave please.’
He persisted – ‘Are you sure Isla wasn’t the model for those mannequins?’ / ‘Are you absolutely positive Isla hasn’t been here recently?’ – but no amount of rephrasing the question would induce the girl to give up any further information. He accepted defeat, said goodbye, and made his way out through the glass door. Just as he stepped out onto the pavement, he glanced up and immediately noticed a figure walking in his direction down Beaumont Avenue from North End Road.
He readily recognised the person, despite the fifty or so yards that separated them, with his crewcut and his sharply clicking black shoes: it was the human scorpion. Irwin.
76. 51° 29' 25" N 0° 12' 19" W
(Rootstein car park, West Kensington)
12.35pm British Summer Time (11:35 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
As soon as Jon recognised Irwin, he didn’t wait for him to return the favour. Next to the Rootstein building was a small parking lot for cars and it currently contained a black van, a black Audi SUV and a silver Mercedes, along with what looked to be either a large rusty building skip or a small rusty shipping container. He walked quickly into the parking lot and stood behind the skip, praying that Irwin hadn’t seen him.
So Irwin was alive. And Romy?
Jon kept his head down and pretended to use his phone, but all the while maintained a wary eye on the Rootstein entrance. He was sure that must have been where Irwin was going, the coincidence otherwise would have been too great. Wouldn’t it?
The sound of the clicking heels grew louder and then slowed. Stopped. He could now see Irwin standing outside the glass door and he inched further back around behind the skip. He watched as Irwin hesitated for a moment, then pulled out his phone, keyed in a number.
‘I’m here,’ he could hear him say gruffly. There was a pause, and then: ‘Outside. Hurry.’ Then Irwin put his phone away and swivelled on his heels, and took in the scene around him as if for the first time.
Jon quickly retreated even further so that he was completely out of sight, and stood with his back to the skip and waited, listening. He heard an impatient sigh, and some pacing, and an angrily muttered ‘what the fuck’. And then the sound of the glass door opening.
‘Come on.’ It was Irwin’s voice again. ‘We’re late.’
When he heard two pairs of footsteps begin to move off, he dared to steal a peek and it confirmed what he’d already guessed. Following Irwin with obvious reluctance was the redhead, Isla, today in jeans and a dark cotton jacket.
The decision to follow them was an easy one: after everything that had happened (to Romy, to Emerald, to him), he had to find out more, and this was simply his only lead – it was his lifeline to a saner existence, or at the very least, the chance of one. It was Saturday the twenty-sixth of October, it had been ten days since the fire, and enough was enough.
So he gave them a head start of forty or fifty yards, then stepped out from behind the skip and began following them back down Beaumont Avenue.
He had a clear view of them: they were walking briskly towards North End Road, with Irwin one pace in front, turning from time to time, motioning, irritably, for Isla to keep up, and to walk faster. Jon wondered how sore Irwin’s head was after Jon had ‘blendered’ it. It was only the day before, but he didn’t seem to be showing signs of injury. Tough nut.
Keeping his distance, he followed them to where he’d already suspected they were going – the tube station around the corner – and he watched them as they made their way down onto the eastbound platform. Unfortunately they’d just missed a train, and it wasn’t a busy station, so he had to hang back at the top of the stairs, which entailed an undignified (and risky) dash when the next train arrived, and some carriage-hopping to get close enough to keep an eye on them.
He was able to get within one carriage of them, and he managed to maintain a sightline between a blonde head and the shoulder of a biker’s jacket and straight on through the window at the end, into the adjoining carriage. Irwin and Isla were standing at an angle to each other, and not talking, as far as Jon could see.
He remembered something, now. It was something Emerald had told him: that Isla lived in one of Irwin’s apartments in Soho somewhere. He wondered if that was their destination.
They got off at Embankment and proceeded on foot,
with Jon just about managing to keep up, maintaining his regulation forty yard gap. Up Villiers Street, across the Strand, past Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, and through Leicester Square: the crowds provided him with good cover, although at the pace Irwin and Isla were moving, and the way London’s confusion of tourists always seemed to prevent any orderly pedestrian flow, it wasn’t easy, and he had been forced to roughly push past and shoulder-jolt a number of these itinerant rubbernecks, leaving in some places a trail of indignation behind him. Swap places then, he thought back at them.
They continued up Wardour Street and into the heart of Soho – always seedy, yet always semi-seriously so – and then they suddenly turned into a small side street. He knew he had to be careful at this point, but he sped up in case they vanished into a building before he turned the corner.
The street they’d turned into was Peter Street. On the corner was a burger restaurant, a good cover should he need a doorway to dash into. Using his phone as a camouflaging prop once more, he slowly turned the corner with his head down, as if texting. He was just in time to see Irwin and Isla disappear through a large black door – proclaiming in bright, white lettering 30A and nothing else – which slammed shut behind them.
Jon kept walking, taking it all in as he went past. The black door was located next to a Ramen bar but seemed unconnected with it. The street itself was narrow and dark, with remnants of sex shops and closed-up adult cinemas – a street in transition, it was fair to say. A quick glance upwards, above the door, suggested the four-level building of red brick (Leicester red clay, by the looks) was probably used mainly for offices, but possibly flats as well.
A little further on, and off to his right, he saw that the Berwick Street market was open for business – the fruit stalls lifted the area’s ambience, at least. Straight ahead, he could see a dead end in an amphitheatre of dilapidation and he made a mental note to avoid it.
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