The Push (El Gardener Book 2)

by Natalie Edwards

  Hartwood’s wet, pink nose would twitch at this last revelation; his cupidity, if Ruby was any sort of judge, well and truly piqued.

  “Interesting,” he’d say, taking in Di Salvo and the bodyguard - the female bodyguard, no less - who seemed to be glued to her side. “Very interesting.”

  “I’m not sure we know each other well enough for you to call me anything at all,” El said, surveying Hartwood now not with disinterest but with the displeasure of a woman plagued by an unseen mosquito in a dark hotel room.

  Hartwood pressed on, undeterred.

  “I heard you might be looking for a new set of wheels,” he said. “Something a bit… special.”

  Chapter 5

  Kingston, London

  July 1997

  If El had harboured any expectations about how or where a young, very rich and very technologically literate thief might live, Karen’s home would have bulldozed right through them.

  It was a bungalow, that would have been the first surprise: a ‘60s one-storey, neat and squat, the kind of brown brick L-shape El instinctively associated with elderly widows. The suburban street on which it sat was beige and sedate; its front garden was well tended, planted with roses and hydrangeas and soundtracked by susurrating honeybees and the beat of butterfly wings.

  Further down the driveway, she saw net curtains - the nicotine-ivory backdrop for a set of ornamental hedgehogs arranged in size order in the front window. Two further hedgehogs, one large and one small, sat on either side of the doorstep - the hog and its hoglet guarding the frosted glass door with identical ceramic smiles. Above them, mounted on the brickwork, a rustic sign invited visitors to Bless This House With Friendship & Laughter.

  The only possible occupant, El thought, was a little old lady - on a fixed income now, and not as mobile as she used to be, but still house-proud enough to prune the bushes once a week and run a Hoover round the carpet. If she concentrated, she could see the old dear’s plastic rain scarf and pinafore; smell the carbolic soap and tuberose on her hands and neck.

  It was a good trick; a hell of a good trick.

  She approached the step with care, mindful of the hedgehogs, and rang the doorbell.

  Inside, the bungalow delivered everything its outside promised: floral patterns on the walls and furniture, lace doilies on the sideboard, tasselled lampshades and off-white stucco on the ceiling.

  “You’ve definitely got a theme going,” El remarked.

  “More reliable than a burglar alarm, this is,” Karen told her, waving a hand at the wallpaper, the worn shag carpet. “You can pick just about any lock, hack into just about any system, but there’s no better security than looking like you’ve got nothing worth robbing to begin with. Trust me on this - I know whereof I speak.”

  She pushed through the beaded drapes separating the hallway from the kitchen and beckoned El through; El followed, the rustling beads slapping down on her head as she squeezed between them.

  Inside was what would have been the second surprise: there was someone in the kitchen already, filling up a plastic kettle at the tiny sink. He was Karen’s age or thereabouts, white and carroty and thin to the point of scrawny, the bones of his freckled arms and collarbone poking out from the sleeves and neck of his baggy t-shirt. A pair of wire-framed glasses covered most of the top half of his face; the top of his right hand was scarred and stitched, the veined skin stretched to accommodate a slim rectangular slab of… something, something green and glowing and embedded in the flesh below.

  “It’s an implant,” Karen said, catching her staring. “Rare-earth magnet with a couple of LEDs strung ‘round it. Fucking stupid idea, if you ask me, but he seems to like it.”

  The boy looked up from his task.

  “No-one’s asking you to get one,” he said - his voice mild, softly Scottish.

  “Wants to be an android when he grows up, don’t you Fergus? A little cyborg Pinocchio.”

  Fergus raised one disapproving eyebrow at her, and returned to filling his kettle.

  “I didn’t realise you lived with someone,” El said, saving her questions about the implant for another place, another time.

  “You never asked,” said Karen.

  “She likes to keep me quiet,” Fergus interjected, switching off the tap and flicking the kettle on to boil. “Can’t think why. You’re El, I’m guessing?”

  El was caught off-guard; the idea of Karen having not just a live-in boyfriend but a live-in boyfriend who knew who El was somehow antithetical to the mental image of the lone, maverick tech wizard she’d inadvertently cultivated. And raised a follow-up concern, altogether more worrying: if the boyfriend knew who she was, did he also know what she did? What she was right now doing, with Karen?

  “That’s me,” she said, warily.

  “Don’t worry about Fergus,” Karen said, apparently picking up on her need for reassurance. “If there’s one thing he does well, it’s keep his mouth shut.”

  “It’s my best feature,” he agreed.

  “And he’s got his own secrets, haven’t you?”

  “They pale in comparison to yours,” he said, setting two chipped cups of coffee down on the countertop. “I’ve put milk in both,” he added to El. “Hope that’s alright. There’s sugar and sweetener in the cupboard if you need it. I’m off out, so you’ve got privacy for whatever dark deed it is you’re plotting.”

  He kissed Karen lightly on the cheek, gave El a strange half-wave and disappeared through the drapes in a jangle of beads.

  “And don’t get arrested!” he shouted to Karen as he opened the front door and then closed it behind him, releasing the scent of foliage and the low hum of insects into the bungalow.

  If Karen was embarrassed, she wasn’t letting it show.

  “Shall we take these downstairs?” she said, picking up the cups. “There’s something I wanna show you before we get going.”

  The first time they’d done a job together, El had pictured Karen’s workshop as something like a Batcave: a shadowy, subterranean lair replete with computer monitors and futuristic hardware, complex tools laid out on titanium desktops and mechanical components of unknown origin suspended from its pitch-black walls.

  The subterranean part, at least, had been accurate.

  They’d accessed the basement level that housed the workshop via a hidden passageway - concealed, to El’s amusement, in the pantry Karen, and presumably Fergus, used to stockpile dried pasta, tinned tomatoes and wilted back-issues of Kerrang! magazine. Karen had pressed a thumb against what had looked to El like a speck of dirt on one shelf, and the back wall had separated into two, splitting down the middle to reveal another room behind it, well lit but barely the size of a wardrobe - and in that room a flight of stairs, leading downwards.

  The workshop itself was vast and suitably cavernous, bigger by far than the bungalow above - but artificially bright and air-conditioned and well-organised, the drills and soldering irons mounted on an oblong rack and a line of elaborate-looking locks and slim silver lock-picks laid out on a tool bench next to them. There were only two screens, twinned with a pair of boxy grey consoles and a set of matching keyboards. Each computer had its own desk and padded swivel chair, giving the workshop the overall appearance of an extravagantly large two-person office. The office, perhaps - if the tilt-top drafting board in the centre of the room was any indication - of a newly-qualified architect, or a particularly fastidious carpenter.

  Spread across the drafting board was something that looked from a distance like a blueprint: straight edges and intricate, mathematical whorls inked in black on a sheet of white A1 paper.

  Karen went straight to it, urging El to join her.

  It wasn’t a blueprint but a map, El saw as she moved closer: an aerial overview of a house and grounds, heavily annotated in navy biro.

  “Have a look at this,” Karen said, tapping the paper. “A good look. And tell me what you see.”

  An hour later, they were on the road to Essex - Karen, now appr
opriately suited and booted, piloting the Phantom down the motorway at a more cautious speed than El would have predicted, had she allowed herself to presuppose.

  Twice they missed the turning into Lambswool Hall, creeping back and forth along endless identikit hedgerows and acres of unoccupied greenfield at five miles an hour in search of the right dirt road, the right point of entry. When the narrow, winding track they were looking for presented itself, they spun right, letting the Phantom’s wheels carve a deeper groove in the tyre marks already scored into the sun-baked mud until they reached the entrance to the estate: a black filigreed gate, ten feet high and set into stone pillars that were half as high again, the cataracted eye of a security camera peering out at them from the stonework.

  “See what I mean?” Karen said, as the gate opened automatically for them. “You buy a place like this, you’re asking to get robbed.”

  The grounds inside were better tended, the grass mown to a uniform two inches. Buildings passed them on both sides as the Phantom crunched a path through the gravel trail that led to the main house: stables, a carriage house, a tall outhouse packed with casks and barrels and brewing kettles, and finally, abutted by a small asphalt racetrack that seemed to El more suitable for go-karts than sports cars, a vast barn-like structure that could have comfortably accommodated a passenger plane.

  That’ll be the hangar, she thought; the place he keeps his collection.

  Hartwood, and only Hartwood, was waiting outside it.

  “I thought Dexter said he’d have someone with him,” said Karen quietly. “His business manager, or whatever.”

  “He did,” El replied.

  The Phantom drew to a halt perhaps six inches from Hartwood’s feet. He leapt back in alarm, swiping at his shoes as if they were on fire.

  Karen adjusted her earpiece, unfastened her seat belt and, with no regard whatsoever for Hartwood’s moment of panic, unlocked the driver’s side and padded around to the rear of the car.

  The left suicide door in the back swung open.

  And taking her cue, El stepped out onto the gravel.

  “Not bad,” she said, surveying the contents of the hangar with a connoisseur’s eye. “Not bad at all.”

  Hartwood tipped her an unctuous smile that she guessed was intended to be charming.

  “Like what you see, do you?” he said.

  He ran a caressing hand over the vehicle closest to him - a cream Lincoln Roadster with more than a whiff of ‘30s Hollywood about it.

  Another one for Ruby, El thought. She and Sita’d have a field day in here.

  Brushing past him with barely a downward glance at the Lincoln, she traced a slow circuit around the Porsches and Ferraris, Maybachs and Lamborghinis that formed a three-deep girdle around the hangar’s centrepiece: the high, lean Bugatti Royale, still mounted on its raised podium.

  Every now and then, to gauge his reaction, she passed her own hand over the roof of a GT or a millimetre above the passenger door of a convertible. Sure enough, though he tried to hide it, he winced at every touch; no doubt, she thought, visualising the grease stains she’d be leaving on the paintwork, the industrial polish he’d need to employ to remove them.

  When she’d done a full lap, Karen treading silently but imposingly in her wake, she circled inwards, to the second ring of cars. Which was where she saw the Jaguar: Dexter’s E-Type.

  She gave it a cursory once-over, scarcely more than she’d given the others - enough to suggest interest, but nothing like enough to demonstrate intent. Then moved on, and further inwards, until she reached the Royale.

  She paused beside it; laid one splayed, proprietorial palm on the bonnet.

  He grimaced, she assumed involuntarily, at the violation.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “You winding me up?” he said, very nearly choking on the words. “If you know what that is, then you know I ain’t selling.”

  She stared at him, long and cold - Angela Di Salvo’s displeasure inscribed in her narrowed lips, her widened pupils, her corrugating forehead.

  “My mistake,” she said, with the same cool detachment El imagined she might use on anyone reckless enough to cross her, in the seconds before she ordered the men on her crew to deal with them. “I thought I was here to buy a car.”

  She raised one finger in the air.

  “Jax,” she added to Karen, her gaze still fixed on Hartwood, “get the Rolls running, would you? We’re leaving.”

  Hartwood froze, and she saw on his face what Dexter must have seen, the day he sold the Jaguar: the instinctive urge to tell her to go fuck herself, wrestling with - and pinned swiftly down to the mat by - the terror of what she might do to him if he dared. There was something else there too, she thought, something more mercenary: the pre-emptive fear of a lucrative deal lost, of a cash cow driven out of the cattle pen before any milk could be extracted.

  His voice, if not his body language, turned placatory.

  “Hey, hey,” he said. “No need to be like that. I ain’t saying no, no, am I? It’s only the Royale I’m talking about. All the rest,” he gestured around to the other cars in the hangar, “all this lot - it’s all on the table. Even the Buick over there.”

  He indicated a hulking but perfectly preserved ‘40s saloon in the outermost circle, its proportions suggesting a machine built to a fractionally larger scale than the sleeker and more streamlined numbers that surrounded it on either side.

  Angela Di Salvo, El thought - Angela Di Salvo who kept her purchases strictly European, Angela Di Salvo who’d never dream of driving American - would find the offer nothing less than a slap in the face.

  “That?” she said, with a contempt she almost felt herself on Di Salvo’s behalf. “What would I want with that? The only other thing here I’d even consider is that E-Type.”

  She pointed to Dexter’s Jaguar.

  Hartwood brightened.

  “Good choice, good choice,” he said, glossing over her tone in favour of the one clause that might lead the exchange to something approaching a profitable end. “I’m a big fan of that one myself. Lovely bit of equipment, innit? Iconic. And it handles like a dream, I’ll tell you that. Like a dream. Fifty grand and it’s yours.”

  She took a moment to ponder Dexter’s inevitable reaction to the E-Type’s new price tag, as Angela Di Salvo reflected on its costs and benefits.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s a nice looking set of wheels, and I’ve always been partial to an XK6 engine. But they’re ten a penny at the shows, E-Types. Especially the Series 1s. That one there - I’d give you twenty for it, max.”

  Hartwood sagged, his shoulders drooping as he saw the cash cow gallop away from him and into a neighbouring pasture.

  “‘Course,” El added, “if the Royale were for sale… that’d be a different story. There’s not much I wouldn’t pay for a work of art like that.”

  “It went for five and a half mil at auction,” said Hartwood quickly - seeing, she thought, one last chance to lure the cow back to the meadow. “And that was ten years back.”

  “At the Albert Hall,” she replied. “I know. I was there.”

  “It’d be more than that now. Inflation and that. You’d get seven for it these days, easy.”

  “We’ll have to agree to differ on that one. And I can’t say exactly how you managed to get your hands on it, but I think we both know it weren’t legit enough for you to take it back to auction. Not one of the big houses’d touch it, as is. Now, me - I’m less fussy. So what do you say we split the difference? I’ll give you six for it. Cash.”

  The long, sharp intake of breath that followed made her worry for his blood oxygen supply.

  “Cash?” he whispered, every ragged syllable sounding as if it had been wrenched from his lungs by a fist. “Six mil, cash?”

  She smiled - a dark, predatory baring of the canines.

  “You think I’m not good for it?” she asked.

  His tiny cogs were turning; she could almost see
them grinding, almost hear him replaying what Len Wolf had told him out in Stroud.

  A safety deposit place.

  £90m taken, and not a penny of it found.

  And now she was back.

  “When?” he asked.

  “That a yes?” she said, still smiling. “Tomorrow. I’d say today, but I need to have a quick chat with my brief first. Get him to… free up a few of my assets.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Early as you like. I’ve never been much for lie-ins. You get things ready for me this end, and me and Jax’ll bring you your money. Easy as.”

  His pink face was purple now. Globules of sweat mingled with the gel at his hairline.

  “Get things ready?” he repeated, his mouth hanging open.

  “The service book,” she said slowly, visibly amazed that something as precious as the Royale could have ever ended up in the possession of someone as dim witted at the man in front of her. “I assume you haven’t got the right registration papers, and I won’t be asking for them, but I’ll need to see some sort of proof you’ve been looking after it properly, keeping it maintained. That I can take it on the road without the engine dropping out the bottom.”

  He nodded dumbly.

  “And another thing,” she added, as an afterthought. “Throw in delivery for the twenty grand, and I’ll take that Jag of yours as well. The Phantom does the job, but it’s not exactly agile. Call me greedy, but I quite fancy a new little runaround.”

  Chapter 6

  Saffron Walden, Essex

  July 1997

  When Ruby and Sita mentioned climbing, El had baulked; had seen herself clinging to a plate-glass skyscraper by her fingertips, night-dew forming on her ski-mask as her toes sought purchase on the impossibly smooth surface of the wall beneath her.