Gatecrasher

by Robert Young

  'Listen to your daughter George,' Campbell said, returning the steady gaze. He had seen and heard the gratitude from Angie as she had spoken to them and to the other men in the car and now she had spoken up for him against her father.

  Gresham's face was burning deep red now and sweat was beading on his brow. He gripped Campbell's sweater tighter in his hands pulled him away from the wall and then slammed him back against it.

  'You owe me George,' Campbell shouted, even as the wind was knocked out of him. Gresham paused and his grip eased just a tiny amount. He bent close to Campbell's ear as he bowed his head and tried to get his breath.

  'What?' he hissed.

  Coughing, Campbell said, 'You owe me. You owe me for her.'

  Gresham said nothing for a second and Campbell, suddenly enraged, reached up and tore Gresham's hands away from him, shoved the bigger man back from him violently.

  'Come on George. You were screwed! You had no idea where she was or how to get her back,' Campbell shouted. 'Those two were sat outside doing nothing. I got her out of that house George. Ask her what happened. Go on. I went back in there and got her out with me.'

  Gresham stayed silent, part of him amazed at the younger man's behaviour, part of him thinking reluctantly that perhaps he had a point. He turned and looked at Angie who stayed silent but whose eyes gave Gresham the answer that Campbell wanted.

  'You guys have no clue what this is about. Nothing. You know why you stole that data? Who it was for?' Campbell looked around the room. He saw hard angry eyes looking back at him but no answers. He shook his head. 'Not a clue.'

  'Who gives a damn?' Gresham said suddenly. 'Who the hell are you anyway? Who cares why and who for? They're paying me sunshine. Paying cash which I need.'

  Campbell was shaking his head. 'Not anymore.'

  'Come again?' Slater finally broke his silence. 'George, we've heard enough of this haven't we?'

  Campbell was still shaking his head but he was looking Gresham right in the eye again, level, confident. 'You don't. You don't have a debt. This guy, Walker? He's dead George. I saw some bloke sticking a gun into his chest.'

  Gresham returned the stare, his eyes daring Campbell to even consider lying to him.

  'I saw the gun shoved into his ribs as we were running down the hall. They were fighting in the room and I saw the other guy with his gun on top of your man Walker. And I heard the shots. Two.'

  'You see him get shot?'

  Campbell hesitated. 'It was half a second after I turned my head George, a tenth of a second. He's dead.'

  Gresham turned his head slowly to look at Slater. Both men stared silently at each other for a long moment. Though they said nothing, Campbell sensed that they might actually believe him.

  'So what then? You trying to tell me you're keeping the memory stick?' Gresham said turning back to him.

  'You owe me one for Angie George. You owe me a favour.'

  'My favour will be to not give you a proper belting and stop him from tearing your head off.' Gresham said jabbing a finger in Slater's direction.

  'No George,' said Campbell, staring over Gresham's shoulder. 'No, you can do me a little job.'

  'Are you completely mad son?'

  He looked back at George Gresham and smiled.

  'Hear me out. Just give me ten minutes.'

  'This better be really good.'

  'She goes home. OK?' Campbell pointed at Sarah. 'She's got nothing to do with this and you lot have got no gripe with her. Take her home. Just me and you George. Ten minutes and I promise you, it will be worth it. We'll be all square. Just me and you.'

  Gresham stared at him for a long time, intent and thoughtful. He waved away a protest from Slater and then turned to Warren. 'Do it. Take her home.'

  Sarah looked frightened and turned to Campbell but he shook his head and looked her in the eye. 'It's alright. I'll be fine. They won't do anything. Not while we still have the stick.'

  Warren stood and opened the door for Sarah who walked nervously through. Angie stood as well. 'I'll come along too if it makes you feel better. Jules is a pussycat anyway but still?' Sarah seemed to appreciate the presence of the other woman and they all left the room.

  'Keith stays. You convince us both.'

  So Campbell explained it all to them; how they were being used, why and by whom. He told them what he had learned since Cooper had landed bleeding on his kitchen floor and they listened intently, surprised and enthralled at Campbell's tale. He told them how they would get paid twice over. How Drennan, or whoever else it was they had contact with, would pay them their money, that they could make much more for themselves on top of this, and exactly how they would do it.

  Campbell told them all that he knew exactly what he was going to do next, exactly how this would all end.

  IV

  58

  Tuesday. 12pm.

  The first thing to do, Gresham knew, would be to call Walker. They would have to find out for sure if what Campbell was saying were true.

  Had George not been so anxious himself, he might have noticed the sweat on Campbell's brow as he dialled the gangster's number. It would not be unusual of course to get one of Walker's men on the line instead given the late hour and the fact that as one of the capital's foremost violent criminals, he might be attending to some other important business. Even so, Gresham was no more reassured by the fact that no-one answered Walker's phone, despite what that signified and despite the fact that after what had gone on earlier that night at Walker's safe house, Gresham was probably the first person that Walker would have called on.

  They had no more joy when they instead tried to call Drennan.

  Soon Gresham concluded that if Campbell was wrong and Walker was still alive then they would know soon enough when he got in touch again. After losing Campbell and Angie Walker would surely not just shrug and accept defeat.

  The hour was not so much late now as it was early. It would be starting to grow light soon and Gresham was, like all of them, exhausted.

  Campbell would sleep here it was decided, in Gresham's spare room and Slater would be on the floor next to him, just to discourage any further thoughts of escape, which was far from his mind as it was.

  Given the conversations they'd had, the things that Campbell had told them and the danger they all faced, Campbell felt almost safer here with these men, hard and cruel though they were, than had he headed off alone into the night once again. He was asleep as soon as he had phoned Sarah to check that she was OK; Warren had taken her to her sister's place where she was safe and happy. The moment that he lay on the bed he was sleeping and Slater followed him into tired oblivion soon after.

  The morning came sooner than anybody wanted but Gresham finally heard the news that they were all so desperate to hear. Not from Walker though, whose phone still went unanswered, nor from Drennan, whose phone was evidently now switched off.

  Warren it was who called them. He had gone home himself to get sleep after dropping Sarah off and on awaking the next morning it was one of the first things that he heard. Everyone was talking about it on the street, what had happened last night. A bust by the police gone wrong, or a turf hit by one of his gangland rivals. One idea even had it that an Eastern European group, who were expanding from people trafficking and prostitution into drugs and racketeering, was responsible. Whatever the speculation was, they all agreed on one thing. Frankie Walker was dead.

  With that phone call Campbell had his freedom but accepted it almost reluctantly. Here, beneath the umbrella of protection provided by Gresham and his men, Campbell had felt momentarily secure. This most unlikely of alliances gave him a group of ruthless and hardened bodyguards with a vested interest in his safety.

  Even so, if they were to put Campbell's plan into effect, he and Sarah needed to return to their homes and their lives and the fear and uncertainty that was part of the deal.

  Gresham instructed Warren to watch them. He would take Campbell home and remain contactable at all times, on
protection and surveillance detail. In this way Campbell and Sarah felt a little safer and more confident and Gresham got to make sure that they did what they said they would. On past experience he had little reason to trust Campbell but the things he said about his accidental involvement and his wish to be free of the danger and threat that dogged him Gresham knew to be true. The deal that he had proposed was good enough to take a chance. Warren was insurance and that kept everyone happy.

  By midday, Campbell was heading across London again, to his home in the west of the city. Slater and Gresham sat down and began to make plans. They would have to move, quickly and carefully. It would have to be tonight and this time, there could be no mistakes.

  59

  Tuesday. 5pm.

  Once or twice at University and occasionally at work Campbell had found himself giving presentations. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't like to be the centre of attention too much and his nerves and obvious discomfort had often let him down when faced with a crowd of expectant people.

  He knew that he wouldn't have to do that tomorrow, but the preparation was the same, the reading and re-reading, the notes he kept scribbling as he tried to absorb the information so he could reel it off without reading it. He needed facts and figures in his head; he needed to know what it was he would be talking about. It was this parallel that made him uneasy because it invoked memories of what normally followed; standing up to speak, all eyes on him, the dry mouth, the quick pulse, the pressure. Tomorrow, he knew at least that his would be an audience of one. But what an audience.

  He was beginning to feel that he was soon to hit the wall; that what he was reading now was not going in anymore. His brain had reached its capacity and he couldn't force himself to absorb anything else. He probably knew enough now and he wondered as he sat there, surrounded by paperwork and the humming PC in his flat, how much he would need to say and how much was already known.

  Campbell was nervous. He would have to make an instant impression. There would not be any long introductions where he could build a damning and convincing picture or put forth his claim, no visual aids or overhead projections, no PowerPoint. He would live or die in those opening seconds and he would need to have the other man listening from the off, to get him into the position that Campbell needed him. Campbell knew that the other man wielded immense power and influence and if he got it wrong the implications were grave and unthinkable.

  But as much as he tried to formulate that clear, decisive argument, other details clouded in on his thinking, and one more than most. A name: Ben Wishart. One he knew that he knew but when or how he'd heard it, he couldn't pin down. Wishart's name popped up here and there in the research he'd been so submerged in as did others. Though it were no surprise that other people might have become involved, inadvertently or otherwise, along the way, this name wormed its way into his thoughts the more he tried to dismiss it.

  Sarah walked into the room and he looked up. She wore jeans and a fitted t-shirt with a Superman S emblazoned across the front. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail and she wore no make-up. Having come over to see him immediately on his return, she had retired exhausted and had been sleeping for the last hour leaving Campbell to his reading and his peaking sense of isolation and impending confrontation. She rubbed at her eyes and Campbell wondered that she might not be better going back to sleep.

  'How you doing?' she asked.

  'Headache. Losing the plot,' he replied. 'You?'

  'Better for the sleep.'

  She stood there in the door for a long moment. Campbell had hardly spoken to her since he had negotiated her safety the night before.

  On arriving that afternoon she had looked tired, fraught and had told him that she had slept badly at her sister's flat. Yes, she had been safe there and out of the way, where no one might think to look, but she knew nothing of what was happening all the same and she had worried. She knew nothing of how he might be faring.

  As she stood in the doorway running her hands over her tired face he felt as if he should be apologising for everything, that he should be begging for her not to hate him for what he had involved her in. He remembered that desperate sprint through the cold wet night, leaving her hiding frightened in the trees. He saw Walker touching her, leering at her. He remembered the look in her eye as he was led from the dark squalid room, leaving her behind in a cold and threatening place that she had not seen before and with people she did not know.

  'Danny,' Sarah said looking at him. He realised he had been staring at her as his thoughts wandered.

  'Yes?'

  'Thank you. Thank you for coming back for me.'

  'What? Don't be silly.' It was the last thing he had been expecting.

  'Really. I know you think you're responsible but I do make my own decisions, for better or worse. You didn't have to do what you did.'

  Campbell remembered his clumsy flight down that dingy corridor, racing back toward her and Angie. He had been trying to escape from the gunman as much as anything. Had he any clear plan to rescue them? Any idea where he would go had Walker or Drennan followed him? All he could really remember was a fierce and driven determination to get to her.

  'I really didn't do much you know.'

  Sarah smiled at him and then walked across the room. Campbell felt something in his throat tighten and he swallowed as she drew near.

  Without a word Sarah's arms reached around his neck where he sat and she pulled him toward her, squeezing him to her chest and bending down to kiss the top of his head.

  She held him there for a long time and he couldn't tell for sure but it felt as if she might be crying. Nervously, uncertainly, Campbell put his arms around her back and turned in the chair. She moved her legs so they were between his and pressed herself closer to him and his arms reached as far around her as they would go, one at her waist, the other snaking up around her shoulder. He closed his eyes as they leant against each other.

  And the name came back to him again. Ben Wishart.

  60

  Tuesday. 6pm.

  Drennan had been sitting at home that morning after a restless night throughout which the image of Walker's dead vacant eyes staring upwards at nothing had haunted him. Drennan stepping over his body. Stepping into the road dazed, looking for his car, trying to decide whether to call someone, what he would say to them. Fighting panic.

  He still had blood over him from the scuffle with Walker. Skinny but tough the man had proved a real problem and they had wrestled on the floor of that dank bedroom for long seconds, struggling desperately until Drennan had pushed the long snout of his gun into the man's abdomen and pumped two rounds into him.

  It had been as if someone had set a small bomb off inside his body and as he had drawn himself up out of the tangle on the floor to stand he could see what he had done to the man's insides as they slipped out of his back. Only the detached unreality he had felt had saved him from vomiting at the stench of all that blood and the man's relaxing bowels.

  He remembered feeling very little at the sight of the two bodies at the foot of the stairs. He had killed before, but only once and in the line of duty. This was different. He was way outside his operational capacity and it had taken this mess for him to register the scale of the risks he had taken. Three men dead at his hand. No innocents to be sure, but dead all the same and for little more than being in his way when he had decided to kick the door in and take it upon himself to play the decisive secret agent. He tried to locate guilt or remorse at the death he had dealt, but could not. He worried only that he felt none, and that perhaps he was missing something vital.

  The one thing he was missing of course was the memory stick and as mystified as he still was about what he had walked into the night before, Gresham was insistent that he still had it and that the time had now come to make the exchange.

  Drennan agreed. He suspected that Gresham had somehow managed to lose the stick after seeing Campbell in that house with men that had no obvious connections with Gresham. All the
same he seemed pretty confident that he had it now and that he now wanted shot of it.

  Perhaps one of his gang had run his mouth off and put one of Gresham's rivals on the scent. That seemed a reasonable possibility and it seemed as though whatever they had tried, Drennan and Tyler had put paid to it since all the men in the house were now dead and Campbell and the girl had vanished again.

  With Gresham now demanding his money, it seemed that the attempt of the man he had shot to get in on the deal had prompted Gresham to speed things up. With Drennan equally keen to get his hands on the memory stick, where it would be safer than with that useless rabble, he had readily agreed to meet with him that coming Thursday and get everything finished.

  His boss would sanction the payment now, eager to regain some grip on a situation that had threatened to spin out of control. With Gresham paid off and out of the way and the memory stick safe in their possession there remained only Campbell, who seemed more interested in running than fighting and that suited him fine. Maybe he would show up again soon, in which case they would take their chance to silence him when it presented itself. But maybe they would never hear from him again.

  Drennan hoped so because so far he'd been nothing but trouble.

  61

  Wednesday. 6pm.

  Andrew Griffin dipped his chin down into the woollen scarf he wore and hurried his pace but he felt unsettled enough by this meeting already to be too bothered about the temperature. He was both intrigued and agitated by what he was going to hear.

  The neutral location suggested something clandestine, but as he trotted up the steps and into the lobby of the hotel he felt more comfortable in the anonymity that it might provide than in using a more public location. He could never have done this in the company offices.

  He gave his name at reception and waited with a polite smile whilst the attractive blond girl behind the desk tapped a keyboard and watched a screen.

  'Five one four,' she said and handed him a keycard.