‘Yes. So?’ Riley felt her gut react. If Richard or his ‘principals’ knew she had been to see the Egyptian-born entrepreneur, there was only one way they could have found out. She had been followed.
Pechov.
At the admission, Varley’s expression underwent a change. A flicker of disappointment crossed his face. ‘That’s unfortunate. It would have been better if you hadn’t done that.’
‘Why? I told you when we first met that I do my own research. And speaking to the subject of a profile piece comes pretty high on the list, don’t you think? No ethical journalist takes someone else’s notes as gospel – and certainly not with a man like him. What’s the problem? More importantly, how do these ‘principals’ of yours know I’ve seen him?’
Varley shifted in his chair. ‘It came to their notice. How is not important.’
‘It is to me. Were they watching him? Were you?’ She desperately wanted to ask him if they had been keeping her under observation, but it might be best not to let them think she harboured suspicions in that area. If he thought she was merely a working reporter trying to hang on to an assignment, he might say more than he’d intended.
He ignored the question. ‘By going to see him, and possibly alerting him to the fact that a story is circulating, you’ve made the whole project more…difficult, don’t you see?’
Riley wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but opted to play dumb. ‘But I haven’t submitted my copy yet. How do you know what line I’m going to take? If it’s his Batnev bid you’re worried about, it’s already public knowledge. Al-Bashir is hardly a wallflower when it comes to his business intentions. The man’s desperate for recognition.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Varley’s tone took on an almost desperate note. ‘Now he knows what’s happening, he’ll have time to prepare… to hide anything he doesn’t want aired in public.’
Riley very nearly blurted out that copies of the magazine currently being prepared for mailing would soon blow that hope out of the water, but she managed to control herself. And there had been no actual mention in the editorial tease of any scandal attached to Al-Bashir’s wife. So what was the real problem?
Fortunately, Varley unwittingly supplied the answer.
‘It’s a question of timing,’ he continued seriously. ‘Too soon and Al-Bashir can brush off bad news. His PR people can work on his backers and supporters, and convince them that everything’s peachy. Too late and… well, that’s even worse…’ His voice tailed off as if he had suddenly realised what he was saying.
Riley suddenly saw what he was driving at. She recalled what he had said at their last meeting, about how if Al-Bashir failed or pulled out right on the wire, it could drag everyone else down, too.
‘But either way, he still wins,’ she said. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want him to win!’
‘Riley, you don’t understand. We’re just a journal – we’re right in the middle, here. We need your copy to go in urgently. We’re simply trying to avoid being the cause of any problems, that’s all.’
‘That’s easy: delay the piece until after the bidding.’
‘We can’t. It’s too late.’
‘Why? What’s the deadline?’
‘It’s very close. There have been…delays, and now we need to move along on this.’ He gave an unconvincing smile.
‘What sort of delays?’
‘I can’t go into that. I know I should have mentioned this before, and I’m sorry. I thought you’d be able to put the piece together very quickly from the data we provided. There’s a lot riding on it.’
Riley nodded and stood up. She so wanted to believe him. ‘So you said.’ Then an unbidden, unwanted thought squirmed slowly to the surface. Something she suspected Palmer had been thinking about all along. ‘Richard, who else was on this project before you contacted me?’
His expression gave nothing away. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Who gathered the material on Al-Bashir… the stuff about his wife?’
For the first time, Varley seemed unable to meet her eye. ‘Various people. Researchers…freelances – we went to several sources.’ He stood up and moved alongside her, his aftershave lingering in the air. ‘Are we okay on this?’ The way he was looking at her was different, almost nervous, and she wondered how much he had riding on this business.
‘I’ll call you,’ she said. He was crowding her too close and she needed time to think. ‘Let me have until tomorrow.’
Varley nodded, but with obvious reluctance. ‘The hotel where we first met? How about noon?’
‘If you wish.’
He nodded and walked out. It was only when Riley closed the front door behind him that she realised she’d been holding her stomach and felt sick with tension.
Palmer appeared a few minutes later, brushing dust off his sleeves. Riley suspected he’d slipped out of the landing window and shimmied onto the wall below to check the street. One look at his face and she knew.
‘He wasn’t alone.’
‘No. There was a black four-wheel drive at the end of the street, with two men inside. Sorry.’
Riley didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
‘I did not expect this.’ The man known as Grigori stared through the window from the fourth floor of Pantile House. Another day was dying on its feet. He tapped a thumb on the plastic sill. The dull tattoo lasted a full fifteen seconds. ‘She has to be convinced. There is much riding on it.’
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Radko, ‘it would be better to find someone else.’
‘We don’t have time to find another reporter with her credentials. She was the third, remember?’ Grigori’s words were savage with impatience. ‘If we continue this way, there will be no unattached credible reporters left for us to use. You think there is a bank of them, just waiting for you to work your way through like those sweets that idiot Pechov is always eating? We must have her name on that page.’ He drummed his fist on the woodwork in time to the words. ‘We’ve tried money; what else is there?’
‘She’s a loner. She has nobody we can use as leverage. It’s the down side of why we chose her – like the others.’
Grigori nodded. ‘That reminds me – what of the woman friend of Bellamy’s? The one whose details Pechov discovered in her apartment? Have you dealt with her? Bellamy may have talked to her about us.’
Radko looked defensive. ‘It was no good. I went to the address, but the house was empty, the milk cancelled.’ At his boss’s look of incomprehension, he explained quickly, ‘Over here, milk is still delivered to many houses, especially in rural areas. When people go away, they leave a note to cancel deliveries.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘It was cancelled until further notice.’
Grigori gave a huff of irritation. A pigeon had flown. And they didn’t have time to go looking for it. ‘That is unfortunate. You should have gone sooner.’
The matter of blame was clear, and Radko shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.
‘We still have the Gavin woman.’ Grigori reached down and switched on the desk lamp, throwing a green-tinged glow across the room. ‘Since gentle persuasion isn’t working, we must try other means.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Everyone has someone,’ Grigori insisted, ‘or something. Friends, family, a neighbour, even… there’s always a weak point.’ He looked bleakly at Radko, his meaning challenging. ‘I suggest you get out there and find out what Riley Gavin’s weak point is.’
*******
32
Ray Szulu stifled a yawn and watched as a dull glow appeared in the fourth floor window of Pantile House. There were few other lights on, and he’d watched a steady stream of personnel drifting out of the main door and disappearing along the pavement or climbing into their cars.
He’d had no trouble following the men from Lancaster gate. After waiting outside the hotel, which Palmer had told him was the start point, he’d latched on to them when they came out and climbed into th
e big 4WD. The vehicle was easy to track, even among all the other Chelsea tractors around town, and sitting a steady hundred yards back in heavy traffic had been a simple task.
The tall one - the man Palmer had referred to as Varley – had come out first with another man in tow, and they’d been joined by two more. The security goons, Szulu decided. Palmer was right: they’d stood out like bouncers at a primary school picnic.
After Palmer’s crack about the Russian mafia, Szulu had been in two minds about telling him where he could stick his job. He’d heard enough about their ruthlessness and didn’t need that kind of grief. He knew the Russians were all over London like a rash these days; he’d driven enough of their women and kids around to know they’d made it their home from home. But how many were gangsters and how many were ordinary people, he had no idea. He’d heard a figure of 400,000 expatriates in town, but that could have been headline hype, tossed out to sell a few more papers.
In the end, he’d decided that working for Palmer and Gavin was better than sitting at home waiting for Ayso to call, so he’d gone round to a friend who ran a garage and told him what he needed.
‘You doin’ what?’ Steadman was a wizened Rasta in his late sixties, for whom nature had traded in his dreads for a bald head. He was a dealer in used cars and bikes across south London. He’d listened to what Szulu told him and shook his head in dismay. ‘You daft, man, you know that? You followin’ people you don’ even know what they do? What you gonna do if they see you, huh? You considered that if this private dee-tective want them followed, they completely innocent men?’ He huffed out his cheeks and wiped his hands on a filthy rag. ‘You growin’ dafter every day, Ray. That bullet hole in your arm you so proud of, it must have let in too much fresh air and let out any brains you had.’
Szulu sighed. As usual, Steadman was being an old woman, seeing danger behind every simple act. ‘It’s nothing like that, Stead. I figured it out, see. What’s the most common sight in London? Tell me that.’
Steadman scowled. ‘Traffic wardens – they like fleas on a dog.’
‘Nah, not them. Transport.’
‘Taxis, then. Or buses. Don’t tell me you want to borrow a Routemaster – ‘cos you fresh out of luck, my friend. I sold the last two yesterday.’
‘No, nothing like that, bro. Scooters. There’s hundreds everywhere. Nobody sees them no more, they so common. Even those city boys are ridin’ them. It’s the new thing.’ He jerked his chin towards two scooters standing in the far corner of Steadman’s yard. They were bruised and scuffed with dirt, but just what he had in mind. ‘One of them would do. They’ll never see me coming. I’ll bring it back, no problem.’
Steadman looked across at the bikes, then sighed in defeat and waved him away. ‘Go, man. Take the Super 9 – the black one. It was a trade-in and I haven’t done the papers on it yet.’ He waved an oily finger in Szulu’s face. ‘But you bring it back without scrapes or record of wrongdoing, you hear? Else I come after you with a baseball bat. An’ let me tell you, your hex-military friend, no matter how rough and tough he is, he won’t be able to stop me.’
Szulu grinned and clapped the old man on the shoulder. He reckoned he could stand the humiliation of riding a scooter around town for a while. As long as he wasn’t spotted by anyone who knew him. ‘Great, Stead. Thanks, man. Hey, you don’t have a bone dome to go with it, do you? And it needs to be big to go over the dreads, y’know?’
As soon as the men had parked outside Pantile House, Szulu had phoned Palmer and given him an update. Then he’d asked what was going on.
Palmer had kept it short, explaining that the men were using the building illegally, probably with the connivance of the supervisor.
‘Stay with them,’ he’d told Szulu. ‘They might be there a while. If they leave, follow them and let me know. And stay out of sight.’
Szulu had rung off and chained the scooter to a convenient lamp-post, then gone in search of a doorway where he could sit and keep an eye on the place. He’d settled on an empty shop. The porch was jammed with rubbish and old newspapers, and smelled like an old cat, but it was dry enough for his purposes and suitable for hiding in without attracting attention.
He’d been puzzled when the men had parked the 4WD at a meter on the street, when there was a perfectly good car park at the rear of the building. When he’d taken a walk round the block half an hour later, he’d seen why: a CCTV camera up on the wall of the building was covering the car park. If it was working, it would record every vehicle entering or leaving. Out on the main street, the nearest camera was pointed at a busy junction and rarely moved. He figured the men were paranoid and thought they might need a quick getaway. Szulu knew all about quick getaways; sometimes they worked, other times they went pear-shaped over a bus-pass holder with a bad hip and a supermarket trolley.
On one of his other recces, he caught a glimpse of a face up on the fourth floor. It was too far away to be certain, but he thought it was one of the security goons. Later, one of the men came out to feed the meter. Szulu stood up, shaking off his stiffness and ambling along the pavement towards him. There was something he wanted to try out.
Palmer had mentioned earlier that the men appeared to have a weak spot: they seemed oblivious to certain types of people.
‘You mean black people, right?’ Szulu had been unsurprised. ‘Most whites are, man. We the invisible ones, didn’t you know that? We don’t exist.’
Palmer had given him one of his looks, and Szulu had quickly dropped the aggrieved minority act. Now, striding along the street, he kept his head down but a watchful eye on the man at the meter. Time to see if Palmer knew his beans or not. He loosened his shoulders, bouncing off his left foot and singing to himself as if he was out for a stroll, tugging loosely at one of his dreads. It was an act, meant to convince himself that he wasn’t about to run into seven kinds of hell like the sort of grief Riley Gavin and her ex-soldier friend had put him through the last time they’d met. He shivered at the memory, hoping Palmer had told the truth about Mitcheson on the other side of the Atlantic. Best worry, he told himself, about the gunman you know rather than the Russian hard-face you didn’t.
Fifty yards ahead of him, the man at the meter was digging in his pockets for change. His jacket was pulled tight across enormous shoulders, like a prize fighter.
Szulu eased by, humming softly. He was invisible, he reminded himself. No way he can see me. The man glanced up as Szulu’s shadow, thrown by a street light, fell across the pavement, then looked away again. Szulu shivered. It was just like Palmer had said: the man had clocked him, but he hadn’t seen him. Weird.
When he thought about it, he felt almost insulted.
He continued for a hundred yards and turned to cross the street. The man in the suit was returning to the building, his pace unhurried.
Szulu stopped at the next corner. It was good to change positions every now and then. Break the routine. He took out his mobile, intending to call Palmer with the car number.
Just then someone stepped up behind and prodded him in the back.
*******
33
Szulu spun round. It was Palmer.
‘Jesus, man - what are you doing?’ Szulu thought his chest was going to explode. ‘How do you do that creepy shit?’ He was annoyed at having had the former MP sneak up on him so easily when he was supposed to have all his wits about him. He hadn’t heard a sound. The guy wasn’t normal.
‘You’ve got a guilty conscience,’ Palmer chided him cheerfully, and peered round the corner towards Pantile House. ‘What’s happening out there?’
Szulu told him.
‘Where’s your car?’ Palmer scanned the street.
‘I used something else.’ Now Palmer was here, he suddenly didn’t feel like bragging about using a scooter for a surveillance job.
‘Like what? A bicycle? You must have legs of steel.’
‘A scooter, all right? I borrowed a scooter.’ Szulu was angry at letting out the information
so easily. But Palmer merely lifted an eyebrow.
‘Really? That’s neat. Who the hell ever looks at a scooter?’
Szulu smirked. ‘That’s what I thought. Say, you still haven’t told me what this is all about. You were kidding, about them blokes being Russian Mafia, right?’ He smiled hopefully, but was disappointed when Palmer shook his head.
‘Maybe not Mafia, but something close.’ Palmer felt in his jacket pocket and took out a small pair of binoculars. He looked around the street, settling on a building across from Pantile House. ‘See that place across there?’
Szulu nodded. He’d walked past it not long agearlier. The ground floor housed a travel agency and a print shop. The structure was old and of dull, red brick, falling behind its neighbours like a tired old horse with every new building project in the area and making it look more and more out of place. He bet it was on someone’s list for demolition. ‘Sure. What about it?’
‘If we can get inside, we’ll have a nice view of the fourth floor.’ He glanced at Szulu. ‘Keep watch while I go find a way in. If they make a move while I’m over there, ring me.’
With that, he slipped out of the doorway and made his way across the road, disappearing into the shadows behind the shops. Seconds later, Szulu heard a whistle and followed, keeping one eye on Pantile House. The light was still on.
He arrived at the rear of the building and found Palmer waiting, holding a door open.
‘Christ, how did you do that?’ Szulu was impressed; he knew one or two guys who could open doors in a couple of minutes. But that was after checking it out first, not walking straight up to it like Palmer had done.
‘Easy when you know how,’ Palmer replied, and closed the door softly behind them.
NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer) Page 16