by Roger Hurn
She nodded. ‘Thank you for being so frank, Ryan. I needed to know if these men were above the law and it seems as if they are.’
Something happened to the desolation in her eyes when she said this, but I didn’t dwell on it. I just wanted to say something – anything – that could lighten the mood. ‘Yes, but at least that bastard Sullivan got his just desserts.’
It was a feeble thing to say and absolutely no comfort at all but it was the best I could come up with.
Susan smiled. It was a smile so bleak it could have come direct from Siberia. ‘But he was just a puppet in this wretched business of the Church of the Dark Light. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I don’t think his death means much to anybody.’
‘He killed Zander,’ said Carly. ‘So I’m glad he’s dead.’
Susan sighed. ‘Yes, I’m forever grateful to Zander for saving you from those monsters, Carly. And I truly believe if he’d known what this Carmichael planned to do to my poor Angie he would’ve tried to save her too.’
‘You can bet on it, Sue,’ said Carly.
I wasn’t so sure but I kept my mouth shut. Carly had been pretty shaken up by everything that had happened down in the caves and she blamed herself for leading Zander on. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I told her that she was just doing her job and that Zander wasn’t exactly an innocent dupe in all of it, she just said I didn’t get it. And maybe I didn’t ‘cos, if I was her, I’d have been celebrating the fact that I was still alive. But then I’m a 30 year old professional cynic not a 19 year old girl who only thinks she’s street wise. There’s a difference.
While I was pondering why I’m such an insensitive bastard, Susan was thinking of others.
‘Look, I know my Angie’s body will never be recovered, but what about this boy Zander? Surely his parents will want to know what happened to him?’
I shifted uncomfortably on my chair. ‘Err … the guy from the Security Services…’
‘Crispian freaking Hunt’. Carly’s voice was corrosive with contempt.
‘Yes, Crispian. Well, he told me that the Security Services will leave Zander’s body by the bins on some sink estate and, when he’s found, he’ll be just another knife crime statistic and a case that the police will never solve.’
Carly stiffened and I could see she was about to let rip which wasn’t going to help the situation so I said quickly, ‘okay, so it’s not a very dignified ending for the guy, but at least his mother and father will have a body to bury.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s something,’ said Susan.
I nodded and said, ‘it will be some kind of closure.’ I sounded like some unctuous bloody vicar because it was a meaningless cliché and I knew it. And so did Susan.
‘I don’t think there ever really can be any closure when your child dies, Ryan. I read somewhere that the definition of happiness is to die before your children. I thought it was true when I read it – now I know it is.’
There was nothing I could say to that. But Carly came to the rescue.
‘Hey Sue, can I come and crash at your house for a few days? I need some R&R after what’s happened and my mum is a freaking nightmare. She’s always on my case and her new boyfriend is a right twat. But I reckon you and me could just hang out and chat or watch TV together or whatever. What do you think?’
Carly was so obviously playing the role of the Good Samaritan she should’ve worn a T shirt with Luke 10: 25-37 written on it in neon lettering, but it was kind of her and I think she really meant it. Susan leapt at the idea.
‘Oh, Carly, sweetheart, I’d love to have you come and stay. Thank you.’
Then she turned to me with an anxious look. ‘That’s if it’s all right with you, Ryan. Obviously I’ll pay for the cost of Carly’s wages while she’s with me because I won’t have you out of pocket.’
I waved her offer away.
‘Don’t worry about Ryan. He owes me some holiday anyway. Don’t you Ry?’
Seeing as how she’d only been working for me for a few weeks I certainly didn’t owe her any flaming holiday, but that wasn’t the point and Carly and I both knew it. I grinned at her. The kid had heart and brains as well as a smart mouth. I had the feeling that she was going to work out just fine as my associate. I already had the brains and the smart mouth, but I was seriously lacking in the kind heart department.
‘I’ll try to struggle on without her for a few days,’ I said. ‘Though, trust me Susan, you’ll be offering me folding money to take her back as soon as you have to spend time listening to her endlessly yakking on about flaming celebrities.’
While Carly was busy sorting stuff out on her desk, Susan wrote me out the cheque for our services. I did a double take when I saw the size of the bonus she’d added. I started to protest, but she silenced me by putting her finger to her lips and shaking her head. Her eyes were imploring me to accept it without making a fuss. For the first time since I’d started the agency I felt guilty about taking a client’s money. I couldn’t figure out why she was being so wildly generous. Oh, I knew she didn’t want me to be out of pocket over Carly but, for that kind of wonga, she could have hired Carly as an investigator for a year and got her to cook dinner and clean the house as well. But then smarter blokes than me have tried and failed to understand why women do what they do. So I took the cheque and put it away in a drawer before Carly became aware of what was going on between Susan and me.
Shortly after that the two of them left the office and I sat back and hoped to hell that Crispian had kept his word and persuaded Borzov to call off his attack dogs. If he hadn’t then at least Carly would be out of the firing line. Though I wondered if my death would upset her as much as Zander’s had done? Of course it would, I told myself. ‘Cos it would mean she’d have to find herself a proper job.
But thinking about stuff like that never gets you anywhere so I took myself off to the bank to pay in the cheque before Susan changed her mind.
Chapter Twenty
The fact that I was still walking around above ground and sucking in air three days later led me to think that good old Crispian had done exactly what it said on the tin and I could give up on my attempt to grow eyes in the back of my head. But I’d sent myself a memo to never bother high placed Russians with a taste for bizarre cults ever again. It seemed like a sensible move. Then the phone rang. It was Carly and she sounded completely panicked.
‘Ryan, you’ve got to do something. Susan’s taken my gun and she’s gone!’
I couldn’t believe that Carly had taken the gun to Susan’s house or that I’d been such a twat as to not insist she hand it over to me or give it back to Tyrone. But she had and I hadn’t.
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘I have no fucking idea!’ Carly was in full on screech mode. ‘Look, I told her I had the gun in case Borzov’s men came after us ‘cos no way do I trust that creep Crispian. But when I woke up this morning she was gone and so was the gun. She’s left me a letter saying she was so glad to have had the chance to get to know me and how grateful she was for everything we’d done to try and save Angie and that she was sorry for what she had to do and she hoped we’d understand and forgive her.’ Carly gulped in a breath. ‘What does she mean, Ryan? And what the fuck are we gonna do?’
‘Find her before she does something stupid,’ I snapped. But there was no point in bollocking Carly. I was the one to blame for not thinking things through.
‘And how are we gonna do that?’ Carly sounded really freaked out.
‘Well, she’s obviously taken the gun to go after Carmichael,’ I said. ‘So we’d better find out where he is and get there in time to stop Susan blowing his head off.’
‘Right! Great idea!’ Carly wasn’t being sarcastic, she was clutching at the straw I’d just thrown her. ‘And where is he?’
‘I’ll make a call and get back to you,’ I said.
I didn’t phone Rick Brayshaw, because I didn’t want anything traced back to me if things went belly up. Instea
d I put a call into a bloke I knew in the MDP. The guy owed me a major league favour from back in the day – which was fortunate as otherwise we’d have been up shit creek in a barbed-wire canoe without a paddle.
You see, the guys of the MDP or, to give them their proper title, the Ministry of Defence Police, are at daggers drawn with the DPG and vice versa. The powers that be think it’s a healthy rivalry but, trust me, it isn’t. It’s like Arsenal and Tottenham. Both teams are from North London, but the fans can’t stand each other. And that’s how it is with the DPG and the MDP.
Look, back in my day, if we DPG guys cocked up on our watch, the MDP blokes were the first to celebrate – and we did the same if they screwed up. And, from what I’ve heard, nothing’s changed. So, even though this was bad news for the security of the country, it was good news for me. My MDP pal would keep schtum about anything I asked him and, if something did happen to go bad on Rick Brayshaw’s watch, then he’d conveniently forget he ever spoke to me.
Anyway, the guy told me that Smart Alec was currently out of town but was due back in the City that evening to attend a fund raiser at the Mansion House for something called “Financiers for Freedom.” When I asked him what that was, he said it was the freedom for financiers to keep robbing the rest of us blind. Then he laughed like a drain. But when he told me that the whole shindig was being hosted by Yuri Borzov, I saw the three cherries light up in my brain and I knew I’d hit the jackpot.
‘Surprised you didn’t know about it,’ he said. ‘All the local news programmes were bigging it up on the telly last night. But then old Smart Alec is a right publicity hound.’
I rang off without mentioning that if Carly and I didn’t get to Susan first, then Alec Carmichael was going to be all over the national news programmes for all the wrong reasons.
I could have called Brayshaw and warned him, but I didn’t. I figured that now I knew the location and the event, Carly and I had plenty of time to track Susan down and make her see sense. I was wrong, but then I so often am.
Chapter Twenty-One
I met up with Carly at Charing Cross. She was looking frazzled, which wasn’t a good sign. I needed her fresh and alert so I sat her down in Bonaparte’s and ordered fresh orange juice, coffee and toasties while we did a swift brainstorm. The clock was ticking and we had to find Susan ASAP, but charging about like headless chickens wasn’t the way to do it. We needed a plan of action.
‘Okay kid,’ I said. ‘Susan must have chewed your ear off about Angie over the last couple of days, so I’m guessing she’ll have told you all about the places they went together while Angie was growing up.’
Carly gave a little shrug. ‘Yeah she did, but how does that help?’
‘Well, if she succeeds in blowing Carmichael to kingdom come this evening, then today’s going to be her last day of freedom for a very long time. So I reckon she’s going to use the time between now and then revisiting those places where she and Angie spent happy times together.’
‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ Carly nodded her head and I could tell that she already had a suggestion. ‘She’ll definitely go back to Angie’s primary school. She told me she loved it when the mums at the gate thought she was Angie’s real mum.’
‘Good call. But we’re too late for that. She’ll have been and gone. So where else did they go on a regular basis?’
Carly took her bottom lip between her teeth and thought some more. ‘There’s a play park just down the road from their house. They went there loads when Angie was tiny. Sue showed me all the pictures. But if she went there this morning she’d have gone by the time I cut through it on my way to the station.’
I smiled encouragingly. ‘This is good, hun. You’re narrowing it down. Now where did they go for special treats? You know like on birthdays or whatever?’
Carly blew air out through her lips. ‘Ooh …they always went to MacDonald’s and the movies for her birthday treat. So that’s no help. No hang on. Angie’s fave movie when she was a kid was Toy Story 2.’ Carly smiled a sad little smile. ‘Me and Sue watched it on DVD last night. So maybe if that’s playing in town somewhere Susan’s gone to see it?’
I didn’t think it was likely, but we checked out the cinema listings just to be on the safe side. It wasn’t on at any picture house so that was a dead end.
Suddenly Carly flicked her fingers in that annoying way teenagers do. ‘Hold up, Ry. I think I’ve got it. Every Sunday, if the weather was nice, they used to go up to the South Bank and walk along looking at the stalls and watching the skateboarders and stuff.’
I figured she was bang on the money with this so we raced over the Golden Jubilee Bridge and started combing the South Bank for any sign of Susan. It put me in mind of that old Madonna movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. But Carly had never heard of it and she wasn’t in the mood for talking about it either. I guess she had a point.
Anyway, although we covered every inch of ground from the Festival Hall to the Globe Theatre and back again we could find neither hide nor hair of Susan. I kept checking my watch willing it to slow down, but time waits for no man and it certainly wasn’t hanging around for me or Carly.
It was two o’clock when we got back to our starting point at the steps of the bridge.
‘Carly, I don’t want to pressurise you, but is there anywhere else you can think of where they used to go? Only we’re running out of time and options. If we don’t find her soon we’re going to have to tip off the police about what we think she’s planning to do.’
She glowered at me with anger blazing in her eyes. ‘No way are we grassing up Susan. If we can’t find her, then that’s karma OK. Carmichael can take his fucking chances.’
I wasn’t about to row with her in public because I knew she’d storm off and that wouldn’t help. Carly was the only person who might just know where Susan was right now so I kept my temper and said that was fine by me, but could she please concentrate and come up with something helpful PDQ?
Her forehead creased up as she cudgelled her brains. Then she nodded. ‘Yeah, I think I’ve got it. Angie was into dinosaurs when she was kid. Sue said they sometimes went to the Natural History Museum as a special treat.’ She looked at me hopefully. ‘So, what do you reckon? Is it worth a shot?’
‘Too bloody right it is.’ I grabbed her and planted a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Carly you are brilliant. Now come on. We need to get to South Kensington pronto.’
She gave me a funny look, but she didn’t seem to mind that I’d kissed her head. ‘Yeah, you can tell me I’m brilliant after we find her,’ was all she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We were running down Exhibition Road when we spotted Susan some way ahead on the other side of the street walking towards the museum. I yelled her name but she didn’t hear me over the noise of the traffic. We were about to dash over the road after her when a sleek black Mercedes pulled to a halt in front of us and a couple of blokes piled out. My heart hit the deck. I’d met these guys before. They were Yuri Borzov’s boys.
They didn’t stand on ceremony. ‘Get into the car both of you,’ snarled a bloke who looked like he tore the heads off people for fun. ‘Mr Borzov wishes to see you.’
I knew there was no point in arguing. These were the kind of guys who’d skipped joining their school’s debating society in favour of extra lessons in how to hurt people.
‘Better do as the man says, Carly,’ I said.
Her face darkened. ‘Fuck off,’ she spat.
The other goon grabbed her arm and expertly bundled her into the back seat before she knew what was going on. I held up my hands in surrender. ‘There’s no need for any rough stuff, fellas. We’re coming quietly.’
Carly was incandescent with fury, but she had the sense to keep her mouth shut during the drive. I was just glad that nobody had whacked me in the kidneys this time. And I couldn’t help but think the absence of hoods was also a good sign. I tried asking why Mr Borzov wanted to see us, but making conversation wasn’t on these
guys’ to do lists. I wondered how they’d found us but figured that maybe they’d had a tail on me since I left the office. I hadn’t been checking so it wouldn’t have been hard to do.
The goons took us to the Shard. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that Borzov was one of its first tenants. His offices were on the 24th level and the floor to ceiling windows gave stunning views across the river to the City and beyond.
Borzov was sitting at his desk. It had absolutely nothing on it – which spoke volumes. He nodded when he saw us and stood up and offered his hand to me. I shook it and then introduced him to Carly. He looked at her like an alpha predator eyeing up a particularly tasty item of prey. I was amazed he didn’t actually lick his lips. Instead he drew them back into what I guess he fondly imagined was a smile.
‘I’m delighted to meet you, my dear,’ he said smoothly. Then he turned to me. ‘You are a lucky man to have such a beautiful woman as your associate, Mr Kyd. But I fear her presence must distract you from your business, no?’
Carly smiled brightly but her voice was drenched in acid. ‘Oh Ryan hired me for my brains, and they’re even better than my looks.’ Her smile matched her voice. ‘Looks fade but brains last for a lifetime – as I’m sure you’ll agree Mr Borzov.’
Borzov’s mouth kept smiling but his eyes glittered like two chips of pale green ice.
‘Please call me Yuri, my dear. We’re all friends here.’
I was relieved to hear this. I didn’t think he’d be acting this way if he knew it was Carly and me who’d sunk his Church of the Dark Light operation. But he obviously wanted us for something; the only question was what?