The Killer

by Susan Wilkins

  For a moment she simply stared at him. ‘Me – become a police officer again?’

  ‘Nic, if there’s one thing I know about you it’s that you’ve never really stopped being a police officer. You’re the real deal. Anyone who knows the job can see that.’

  ‘You saying I should apply to Essex?’

  ‘Yeah. And with Stoneham’s recommendation, they’ll snap you up.’

  ‘What, now? With all these cuts?’

  ‘You’re an experienced DS. You’re value for money.’

  She took a large swallow of wine. ‘Tom, it’s too late for all that. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but—’

  ‘It’s never too late. You suffered a terrible tragedy. You needed time out to recover.’ Reaching across the table, he placed his hand over hers. ‘It’s time to get back in the saddle.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d even get through the medical panel.’

  ‘The secret is, when the shrink asks you a question don’t tell him to go fuck himself.’

  She grinned. ‘I can’t say I haven’t thought about getting back in.’

  ‘Come and talk to Stoneham. She’s riding high. She’s just got a great result. And you were instrumental in making that happen. There’ll never be a better time.’

  Her bag was beside her chair, resting against the table leg. The phone inside buzzed.

  She frowned. ‘Sorry, I need to see who that is. I’m waiting for a call from Eddie.’

  ‘It’s Sunday evening and you’re off duty.’

  ‘He’s doing a special job for me.’ Lifting her bag from the floor, she extracted the phone.

  ‘That’s another reason for becoming a police officer again. You wouldn’t have to work with sleazebags like him.’

  Nicci checked the phone. She did indeed have a missed call from Eddie. ‘He’s not so bad.’

  ‘I thought you said he’s done time for phone hacking?’

  ‘Can you excuse me a minute? I need to call him back.’ She got up. Rivlin shrugged. He had to suppress his annoyance.

  The foyer of the restaurant was busy and she looked in vain for a quiet corner. So she went outside, passing the gaggle of smokers in skimpy dresses and shirts, shivering in the autumn chill as they got their fix.

  Pacing the pavement, she returned Eddie’s call. He picked up straight away. ‘All right, boss?’

  ‘This had better be good.’

  ‘Oh, it is. Pudovkin uses that room quite a lot. Especially in the evenings.’

  ‘It’s a sort of library.’

  ‘Maybe he uses it to hide away from the wife and kids. Anyway, I got a voice clip to send you. I’ve edited it down.’

  ‘Are we going to need a translator?’

  ‘Not for this. They’re speaking English. The interesting thing is who he’s talking to.’

  ‘You recognize the voice?’

  ‘I think so. But let me send the clip.’

  ‘Okay.’ She ended the call and waited.

  It was a side street in Belgravia, lamp-lit but sombre. The pavements were slick with rain from a recent shower and the damp breeze was raw enough to make her hug her arms round her body for warmth.

  She wondered what the hell she was doing. A man, a gorgeous man she was rapidly falling for – smart, kind and undeniably sexy – was waiting for her in a posh restaurant. What’s more, he was offering her a way back in to the only job she’d ever cared about. Yet she was out here, hanging around in the street, waiting to receive an illegally obtained audio file from premises she herself had bugged. Would Rivlin think she was fit to be a police officer if he knew about this?

  The phone in her hand buzzed. She pressed play on the clip from Eddie and put the handset to her ear.

  The sound quality was good, considering the size of the listening device she’d planted.

  The first voice was definitely Pudovkin’s; precise English but with an obvious Russian accent. ‘I know from experience that most of them will try to launder funds through the Middle East. But then they will want to use it to buy property in London.’

  ‘And that’s where we’ll nail ’em.’ The second voice was home-grown. It could be South London, so Nicci immediately thought of Jerome. ‘The set-up we’re putting in place, in six months we’ll get access to all the key players.’ But the tone wasn’t quite as deep as Jerome’s. ‘Then we follow the links in the chain. We’ll have better quality intel than any of the security services, I guarantee it. Mass data harvesting – all they got is quantity.’

  The Russian chuckled. ‘When you think of the billions they spend on the technology.’

  ‘Without skilled interpretation, it’s useless. And trust me, boss, the Kremlin will recognize the value of what we’re offering them.’

  It was the trust me, boss. Recognition hit Nicci like a bombshell. The second voice belonged to her new colleague at SBA: Craig Naylor.

  69

  Eddie Lunt started his Monday morning early. He wanted to be sure he’d have the office to himself. Bugging colleagues was not a particularly ethical practice but he knew, from his time in the newspaper industry, that it wasn’t that unusual. If the technology was there, people would use it. Hiroshima had proved that, and Eddie didn’t believe human nature would change any time soon.

  He chatted to the cleaners and once they’d clocked off, he got to work. Using some of the devices he’d collected on Naylor’s instructions, he bugged the conference room, Blake’s office, the coffee station and the toilets. He knew from experience that a surprising number of people thought that the safest place to have a confidential conversation was in the bog. He used Naylor’s equipment because it was good quality, he had plenty of units and saw no reason to shell out for additional hardware. He didn’t think the ex-cop would miss them.

  Software was a different matter. Through a contact in the surveillance business, he’d obtained a specialized app that could manage input from up to fifty separate devices on one phone. He’d splashed out on a brand-new smartphone specifically for the purpose. Writing all this up on his expenses might be problematic, but he decided to worry about that later.

  Once the job was complete he popped out to get a bacon sandwich and a paper. It was still only seven a.m. so he put his feet up. The bugs were voice-activated; now that everything was in place he’d get immediate notification of any conversations taking place in the SBA locations and also Viktor Pudovkin’s library.

  He’d taken the added precaution of running phone trackers, not just on Blake’s phone but Nicci’s too. Earlier the previous week she’d instructed him to find Blake; with the tracker’s help, it had been a simple matter to establish that he was at home in Surrey. Eddie had driven down there on Friday, staked the place out and waited.

  The house was detached, a family home with a large double garage, fairly close to the centre of Reigate. Eddie had spent most of the day parked up down the road. Finally, shortly after three, Heather Blake left in her hatchback to collect the boys from school.

  This was the only window of opportunity Eddie was likely to get. Pulling into the drive, he’d parked and rung the doorbell. The boss answered. He didn’t seem particularly surprised.

  Blake was wearing an old rugby shirt and tracksuit pants. He looked pretty relaxed. Eddie was invited in and led to the kitchen, where Blake made him a cup of tea.

  ‘How long you been out there?’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘Most of the day.’

  ‘I noticed you about half eleven.’

  ‘Nicci was quite particular. She said she didn’t want to upset your wife.’

  Blake gave him a rueful grin. ‘So you’re here at Nicci’s behest?’

  ‘She’s worried, boss. We both are. Stuff’s clearly going on.’

  ‘You’re a biscuit man, aren’t you, Eddie?’ Blake produced a tin from the cupboard. ‘Few chocolate ones left, I think.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Eddie helped himself to two chocolate digestives.

  Blake sat down at the long pine table and re
sted his elbows. ‘Listen, mate. The situation is . . . well, fluid, at present.’

  ‘You mean Naylor’s trying to edge you out?’

  ‘Look, I can’t go into details. But I don’t want you to worry about your jobs.’

  ‘Nicci’s worried about you as much as anything.’

  He frowned. ‘She’s always been loyal, I know that.’

  ‘You know Naylor used to work for Viktor Pudovkin?’

  ‘The security industry’s not that big.’

  ‘And he’s been asking us to do stuff—’

  Blake folded his arms and smiled. There was a tension in him, even though he was trying to appear relaxed. ‘Go with the flow, that would be my advice.’

  Eddie had relayed this message to Nicci on the phone later the same day and her exasperation had been clear. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Go with the flow?’

  ‘Beats me, boss. I think he’s planning his own exit strategy and leaving us to get on with it.’

  ‘Excellent. So we’re on our own.’

  The notion that Nicci Armstrong regarded him as some sort of partner pleased Eddie. She’d always made it clear that she disapproved of him. But as they’d continued to work together, both had adapted. No one could accuse her of being nice to him, but that was probably a bridge too far for the ex-cop.

  From eight thirty onwards the SBA employees started to drift in and settle at their desks. Eddie kept a surreptitious eye on his second phone and watched the surveillance app do its work.

  At nine thirty Pascale took a call. Eddie earwigged; it was from Nicci. Although they’d never discussed it, after receiving Blake’s so-called advice, they’d both slipped into defence mode and avoided discussions on the phone. There was no way of telling whether or not they were being monitored, but it seemed an obvious precaution.

  Eddie gave Pascale his pixie grin. ‘What’s she up to this morning then? Still in bed?’ He knew from the tracker that she was already in another part of London.

  Pascale gave him a baleful look. ‘She’s gone to see Samir Naseer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He runs the cleaning contractors we use in a lot of the luxury blocks where we’ve got the security contract. A week or so ago there were complaints about Chelsea Wharf. Owner turned up, thought the place wasn’t clean enough. Nicci had to go and sort it out.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Why’s she letting you know?’ The question was partly to Pascale but also partly to himself.

  ‘She wanted me to make sure it was in the diary if Craig checked. Now he’s boss, I suppose she wants him to know she’s on the case.’ Turning from her VDU she glared at Eddie. ‘You could take a leaf out of her book instead of sitting there doing nothing.’

  Getting up from his desk, he gave her an affable smile. ‘How about I get you a nice cup of coffee?’

  She was tapping away on her keyboard again and didn’t look up. ‘No milk or sugar.’

  Wandering to the coffee station, Eddie took a covert glance at the tracker. Nicci was on the move but he could tell from the speed she must be on foot. The map located her close to the junction of Cheyne Walk and Lots Road. This made sense if the story about the cleaning contractor was true; she could be walking down to Chelsea Wharf. But would this really be her priority, or was it merely a cover for something else? Who was she meeting? Kaz Phelps maybe?

  He pinged her a brief text: Morning, boss. Any instructions?

  Pouring Pascale and himself a coffee, he waited for a reply. The door to Blake’s office – if it could still be called his office – stood open. There was no sign of Craig Naylor. Nicci had agreed with Eddie that it was Naylor’s voice on the audio clip. So if there was any remaining doubt that Naylor was still being employed by Viktor Pudovkin, that scuppered it.

  Eddie let his eye travel around the office and he felt a sense of nostalgia. Simon Blake had brought him into SBA very shortly after he set up the company. He remembered Nicci’s arrival and his struggle to make any headway with the chippy ex-cop. He’d seen the place grow. Personnel had gradually increased but the staff turnover wasn’t huge. It was a pleasant place to work and people had tended to stay.

  The problems SBA had suffered were, to Eddie’s mind, largely external. In a competitive industry, the investors had not been patient. It took time to build a business but their only focus was a quick return – they called it shareholder value, he called it greed. If Simon Blake had lost heart and sold out to the highest bidder, and if that highest bidder had turned out to be a Russian billionaire, Eddie wasn’t about to blame him for it. The final shape of the deal was probably still being negotiated, which would explain why Blake had gone to ground. In a few days, redundancy notices would be issued and they’d find out who was to go and who to stay. Eddie had seen it all before.

  He delivered Pascale’s coffee to her desk and got a curt thank you in return. Like many, she was dealing with the uncertainty and fear of losing her job by demonstrating how hard she could work. But that wasn’t Eddie’s way. He wasn’t the type to tug his forelock to the bosses. He checked his phone again: still no reply to his text from Nicci.

  Settling in his chair, he turned on the phone tracker. Blake was still at home. But the cursor marking Nicci’s position on the map was teetering on the edge of the river. He zoomed in to get a more accurate picture. It suggested she was standing on the end of Chelsea Harbour Pier. He wondered what she was doing there. Catching a riverboat? Having a quiet think?

  Then an odd thing happened: the signal flickered and disappeared. It could be a glitch in the system; these things weren’t 100 per cent reliable. She could’ve decided at that moment to switch the phone off and remove the SIM. Or she could’ve thrown it in the river.

  As Eddie tried to puzzle it out, a sense of deep foreboding slithered into his peripheral consciousness. Without warning or explanation, she’d vanished from the grid. Why? He could think of half a dozen plausible explanations. But he already knew none of them were true. Something had happened to the ex-cop and it wasn’t good.

  70

  Kaz and Irina had paid a flying visit to Yevgeny’s old house in Berkshire and collected three suitcases of clothes. It amused Kaz that, despite the circumstances, her girlfriend found it impossible to travel light. Thinking of Irina as her girlfriend, even if only in the privacy of her own mind, excited Kaz and lifted her spirits. It suggested a future and a permanence that she’d never really had in her life before. She could never have called Helen Warner her girlfriend. It had been made painfully clear to her that Helen didn’t want that.

  The house had obviously been searched by the police and it had an abandoned and desolate air. For Irina, it was full of painful remembrances. Clothes and personal items belonging to her brothers were still littered about. All this would need sorting out before the place could be sold. But Kaz put it on her mental list of things to do later. Now she had money and professionals she could hire to carry out these tasks for her, life was going to be so much more straightforward. She’d already acquired a car and a chauffeur to drive them wherever they needed to go. Money made a massive difference; anyone who denied that had never been without it.

  They’d returned to London and the apartment at Battersea Reach; Irina loved the place on sight, as Kaz knew she would. She’d installed Irina in her own room, plus en suite. She didn’t want to make any assumptions. If they slept together it had to be because Irina wanted it. Irina giggled with delight as soon as she saw the room and especially the walk-in closet, which could easily accommodate her heap of designer dresses.

  When Kaz looked in on her the next morning the Russian was curled up in a nest of pillows, fast asleep. Once again Kaz found her pale beauty stirring; the temptation to reach out and stroke her hair was almost overwhelming. But she held back, reminding herself that Irina had been through the mill; the shock and grief of Yevgeny’s murder had taken its toll. She was exhausted and, tiptoeing out, Kaz left her to sleep.

  Jonathan Sullivan arrived, as arra
nged, at eleven on the dot. Kaz made him coffee. Like all the kitchen appliances, the coffee maker was built in and slotted back into place behind the pristine high-gloss facade. They sat down at the round glass dining table and waited. Kaz had sent the car to collect her sister and Glynis, but she had no idea whether they’d actually turn up.

  At eleven thirty the concierge rang to say they’d arrived. Kaz went down to greet them. Natalie was busy strapping Finlay back in his buggy. It was Glynis who stepped forward to give Kaz a hug.

  Natalie scanned the lobby. She was wearing a surly expression, tinged with the determination not to be impressed. Kaz concluded that she was feeling awkward about their last meeting.

  Focusing on her nephew, Kaz squatted down beside the buggy and wiggled his pudgy fingers. ‘All right, buster? Think it’s about time you and me got to know each other.’

  The boy grinned. His dimples, the piercing blue eyes – there was no mistaking whose genes he carried. But Kaz had resolved to forget about that. This was Finlay, he was his own little person and, if Kaz had anything to do with it, he would grow up in a totally different environment to the one that had shaped Joey.

  Straightening up, she faced her sister. ‘Listen, Nat, there’s just one thing I wanna say. We’ve both had a shitty time since I can’t remember when. But today that changes.’

  ‘I told you before, I don’t want Joey’s money.’

  ‘Well, let’s go upstairs and talk about that.’

  As they entered the huge open-plan living area of the apartment, Sullivan stood up. Kaz made the introductions and then watched the skill with which the lawyer made himself agreeable to her sister.

  In the time that they’d sat waiting he’d explained to Kaz that Joey’s estate, if it could be called that, had been left, through a complex network of untraceable offshore trusts, to both sisters. They would need to agree a course of action and act together.

  Kaz made more coffee. She’d had the foresight to include juice for Finlay in the supermarket order that had been delivered that morning. Glynis took charge of the boy, wheeling him out onto the balcony in his buggy so the others could talk.