“One of ours?”
“One of ours.”
“Who set it up?”
“It’s tied to the sniper. Northwood thinks he knows how to catch him, and it involves tailing this target, Kovar.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Everyone’s in Vauxhall drawing up a plan. Rush job.”
Belsey punched the back of the passenger seat hard.
“Where did Northwood hear about Max Kovar?”
“Financial Development.”
“Philip Ridpath?”
“I don’t know which officer. Someone started talking about Kovar yesterday.”
Belsey cursed. Vauxhall meant Citadel Place, the headquarters of SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. He could make it in five minutes, but what was he going to do apart from get himself arrested?
“Which units is Northwood requesting?” Belsey said.
“Operational Support, Armed Response, CO19, Territorial. Leave’s been cancelled. He sees this as his last shot.”
Belsey slammed the phone down. They were calling up every unit in the south-east with guns and wheels. He lifted the phone again, called Ridpath’s office and got Midgley.
“He’s on his way out,” the officer yawned.
“Tell him it’s Nick Belsey. I’ve got something about tonight he needs to know.”
“Seriously, he’s going.”
“Tell him to take the surveillance off Max Kovar. This operation won’t work.”
“OK. I’ll pass that on. Thank you.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Maybe it’s private.”
“He’s going to SOCA.”
“What if he is?”
“Tell him to wait.”
“Tell him to wait?”
Belsey left the limo parked on Whitehall for any surveillance to watch and walked the four blocks to New Scotland Yard. He caught Ridpath as the inspector was leaving, clutching files to his chest, heading towards a taxi.
“Any luck with the CCTV?” Belsey said. “Sorry I ran. I had an appointment.”
Ridpath blanked him, continuing past.
“I need to talk to you about what you’re trying to do,” Belsey said.
“You’re a wanted man.”
So, Belsey thought, it had arrived.
“I’m being set up,” he said. “The whole thing’s bullshit. We’re both being played.”
“I don’t know what your situation is, but I think I can get the sniper. That’s what I care about right now.”
“The whole thing’s a fraud.”
“You were right about the Corporation of London. They’re selling off the Heath. The Hong Kong Gaming Consortium were coming in with Devereux but now Max Kovar is preparing to deliver his entry fee and take their place.”
“No one’s selling the Heath.”
They reached the taxi. Ridpath fixed him with a stare.
“Why’s Kovar been on the phone all day preparing to deliver what he calls ‘a gift’?”
Belsey felt the money, felt the longing for the money in his heart.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s for Devereux. Kovar thinks he’s delivering something to Devereux.”
“Kovar is a joke,” Belsey said. “He’s nothing to do with Alexei Devereux. Devereux’s sat on an island somewhere, saving marine life. Our Devereux, the one on The Bishops Avenue, was a fraud. This was a con man who used us as his props. The set-up was pure theatre: the petition, the rumours about Milton Granby, French companies competing for the contract. He almost walked off with a cool thirty-eight mil, leaving them to fight among themselves, except someone got a blade to his throat. It was going to be a perfect long con, played out over three weeks and closed down in less than an hour.”
Ridpath climbed into the taxi. Belsey went round to the other side and got in.
“Don’t start,” Ridpath said to the driver. “He’s not coming with us.”
“Yes I am.”
The driver started. They drove down Victoria Street onto Vauxhall Bridge Road.
“There’s still a murderer on the loose,” Ridpath said, looking straight ahead. Belsey sensed the terrible force of a small man given his day.
“Kovar has nothing to do with the sniper,” Belsey said.
“So who is Kovar meeting? Who is he delivering this gift to?”
“I don’t know.”
“He will lead the sniper. We follow Kovar and we get the sniper.”
“No.”
“It’s our best chance.”
“And you’re going to take him down in the next few hours? Wherever he ends up? That’s crazy. That’s inviting a bloodbath.”
“It’s now or never.”
“But none of it’s real,” Belsey said finally, quietly.
“Jessica Holden was real,” Ridpath said. He wouldn’t look at Belsey. “I will find whoever killed her.” They were at lights waiting to cross onto Vauxhall Bridge, with the stream of traffic endless and grey around them. Ridpath stared out. Belsey tried to see his face. The traffic lights turned amber and caught pain far back behind the inspector’s eyes. And it struck Belsey as odd. It looked like grief.
“Stop the car,” Belsey said.
59
He dodged traffic, weaving back to the pavement, ran along Horseferry Road and took a stack of empty cardboard boxes from outside a newsagent’s. A fluorescent vest hung over roadworks at the next junction and he took that as well. He was attracting a few stares now. He continued to New Scotland Yard.
An estate maintenance vehicle sat parked across the road from the main entrance. There would be plenty of flammable products in that. Belsey found a hubcap in the gutter and used it to smash the back window. He was right: the van was filled with various tins, plastic bottles, rags and tools. He took his Zippo and set light to the cardboard boxes then dropped them in. They smouldered with paper and clothing. For a moment there was just thick black smoke, then something went up with a roar. Thirty seconds later the vehicle was engulfed in flames. Guards ran out of the front of New Scotland Yard, then back in to raise the alarm. Belsey put the vest on.
“Everybody out,” he shouted, walking into reception. Police and civilians streamed out of the gates. He moved through them. “Evacuate the building,” he said, badge out. He ran up the stairs to the fourth floor, past Cheque Fraud and Computer Crime to the Financial Development Unit. Midgley was pulling his coat on. Belsey walked past, to Ridpath’s office, and tried the door. It was locked.
“Have you got keys to Inspector Ridpath’s office?” he asked.
“Yes. Have you got permission to enter?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so. Because maybe there’s pictures of you in there. You with someone else’s credit card.”
Belsey walked to the officer’s desk, took the drawers out and emptied them on the floor.
“What are you doing?” Midgley reached for the desk phone and Belsey punched him hard in the face so that he fell to the floor, out cold. He took Midgley’s keys and opened Ridpath’s office, went in and shut the door. CCTV images of himself with Devereux’s cards lay on top of a white envelope stamped “Camden Council.” Belsey pocketed them and searched the desk. Inside the top drawer was a dog-eared sheaf of photocopies: “Specialist Crime Directorate—UK Eyes Only: Pierce Buckingham.” It contained full intel reports on Buckingham for the last seven years, stapled to a printout from the Moscow Business Gazette website: Fortunately, Devereux has established bases in Paris, London and New York and would probably be welcome in any of them . . .
On top of the pile was a copy of an e-mail from Chris Starr: I appreciate your concern. Unfortunately, for reasons of security, I cannot disclose information regarding any equipment PS Security utilise in their operations . . . It was clipped to printouts from espionage websites, pages torn from catalogues of hidden cameras, miniature cameras, cameras in lighters and jewellery and fake cans of drink.
Belsey called P
S Security from Ridpath’s phone. Starr sounded tense.
“Nick? Where are you?”
“Where am I meant to be, Chris? The cells of West End Central?”
“What’s going on?”
“When exactly did Graham Dougsdale go missing?”
“Sunday, around 3 p.m.”
“He’s five-eleven, broad, balding.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s at St. Pancras Mortuary, tagged as Alexei Devereux. My condolences, Chris. Better luck next time.”
Belsey put the phone down. The fire alarm was still going. He checked the time on his fake Rolex. Two hours to get to the airport. Everything was in place and he was fucked by a tail team. Then he looked at the watch again.
Very flash. Do you even know what all those things do?
He saw the figure on CCTV moving through the house, searching the study, and then he saw the same silhouette standing over him at Ridpath’s, touching the blanket, after something. He lured me back there, Belsey thought. He was trying to take the watch.
Belsey stared at the watch face, the fake Rolex hands, the stars and buttons. He took it off. Then he pulled it apart.
The lens was a pinprick in the “o” of “Rolex.” The buttons operated the device. A third unscrewed to reveal a port for linking to a USB input.
It wasn’t Devereux’s watch. It was PS Security’s.
Belsey barged out, stepping over Midgley, down the stairs, out through the back of the Yard.
He searched for an Internet cafe. The first place he found with PC access was a convenience store that advertised laptop repairs and money transfers and had six monitors along one wall. It worked. The owner had a box of wires and adapter cables and the second one they tried connected the watch to a hard drive. There were a couple of people making long-distance video calls and a group of teenagers listening to ringtones. The watch attracted a crowd.
“How much does that cost?” the teenagers asked. They gathered around Belsey.
“Where did you get it?”
They stopped smiling when the images appeared on the monitor.
It was obviously surveillance, hurriedly taken from a variety of angles, none very close. They showed a middle-aged man and an eighteen-year-old girl in embraces, obscured by parked cars, spied through the window of a restaurant, leaving the restaurant and kissing.
The images were time-stamped to 2 p.m. last Sunday. The couple had then been tailed back to the house on The Bishops Avenue, photographed leaving it again an hour later, then Dougsdale made his way inside. There were photographs of the living room and the bedroom and finally the study. Then there were no more photographs.
Belsey clicked back to the kiss. The couple stood between the Porsche Cayenne and the front windows of an Italian restaurant. Villa Bianca. Ridpath held the girl’s coat and she had her face raised, eyes closed, both with their eyes closed, looking like they knew it was their last.
Belsey printed a copy. He found his flight details and checked in online, printed his boarding pass, then slit the lining of his jacket and slipped the watch inside.
60
Citadel Place had got its name for a reason, an ugly 1980s block on an armoured business park by the river, all black gates and caged turnstiles. Belsey approached with caution, glad for the area’s industrial gloom. Cars swept hurriedly in and out, past crumbling warehouses and rusting barbed wire. This evening they were parked up the street as well: marked and unmarked, all under the eyes of four security guards and fifteen cameras. Belsey recognised Northwood’s silver BMW from the driver waiting in the front.
They would be putting a plan together, huddled around a big table in the Operations Centre. They needed men moving to Stansted in the next thirty minutes. There was no way he could get into the place unnoticed. If anyone was going to have his picture up, ready to pounce, it would be the Serious Crime team.
He went to the pub.
The Rose occupied a corner at the riverside end of the street. There was a man behind the bar, stacking glasses, and one customer: a ten-year-old boy in a Chelsea kit putting someone’s money into the slot machine. A train passed over the adjacent bridge and the pub rattled.
“Evening,” Belsey said. He found a telephone beside the toilets and checked it for a dialling tone. The back seats were beside a window with a sight onto the entrance to Citadel Place. From the seats you could also see anyone entering the pub without being immediately noticeable yourself. A doorway in the corner led to the beer garden, which contained two wheelie bins, a parasol and empty kegs. Belsey went out. He climbed onto the kegs. On the other side of the wall was a row of storage spaces under the railway arch, leading back into the Lambeth housing estates. It was a getaway.
He bought a pint of Guinness and took a sip. Then he went to the phone and placed a call.
“Organised Crime Agency,” a man answered.
“I believe you’ve got people in a meeting at the moment,” Belsey said. “I need to speak to one of them quite urgently. His name’s Inspector Ridpath, from Financial Development. Could you put me through to the Operations Centre?”
“Who should I say it is?”
“A friend of Alexei Devereux.”
The voice disappeared for a moment, then came back.
“He’s not taking calls.”
Belsey swore under his breath. He thought about this. He tried to control a mounting frustration.
“Tell Inspector Ridpath it’s his snow tiger,” he said finally.
“His what?”
“Tell him. Say it’s his snow tiger. He’ll understand.”
The line went silent. Belsey thought they’d gone for good. Then a few seconds later he heard the faintest of clicks as a receiver was lifted.
“Yes?” Ridpath’s voice was absolutely still.
“Step outside the building,” Belsey said. He hung up. Belsey found the printout of the kiss and admired it. It was a fine shot. Dougsdale must have been sitting in a cafe on the other side of the street. Playing with his watch. The barman disappeared into the back. Belsey called the boy over from the slot machine.
“Want to make some money?” Belsey held up a twenty-pound note. “A man is about to come out of the offices across the road. Give him this.” He passed the print. “Tell him his friend is waiting for him here.” He reached into his pocket, got a tenner and handed it over. “Half up front. Half when you’ve given it to him.” The boy took the money and looked at it, then at Belsey. “Easiest money you’ll ever make. Yes or no?”
The boy took the picture and the tenner and walked out. Belsey watched the window. Ridpath stepped out of SOCA HQ. He stood alone on the street, looking up and down towards the blind end of the road and then the river. Then he saw the boy, the sheet in his hands. The boy gave him the picture and pointed at the pub. Ridpath looked at the pub, then at the picture.
Belsey settled away from the window. The young gambler returned and Belsey gave him his money. “Go spend it somewhere that’s not here.” The boy left quickly. Ridpath walked in a moment later.
He looked around, saw Belsey and walked over. For a moment they just stared at each other.
“You’re a cute bastard,” Belsey said, with awe.
“What do you want?”
“Stand them down.”
He could see the inspector thinking through his diminishing options. So, Belsey thought, here he was: the man who created the fiction I inhabited. The man who was prepared to destroy me. And yet he couldn’t help feeling a reluctant bond, as if they had shared an obsession.
“I can’t,” Ridpath said.
“Northwood can. He’s following whatever you tell him. Say you want to hold off for now. Say something’s not right.”
“I want justice.”
“You want justice? You got her killed.”
Ridpath threw himself at Belsey. He wasn’t a natural fighter. He ended up with a hand in Belsey’s face and one holding his collar. Belsey was ready to take it.
�
��I didn’t kill her,” the inspector said, eyes bulging. “You know that. You know who did.”
“Take the tails off Kovar,” Belsey said. “Let him get where he’s going, then do what you want. There is an alternative and it’s not pretty.”
Ridpath released Belsey. “When are you meeting him?”
“An hour.”
“You won’t do it.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Give me the camera.”
“Call it off. Tell them it’s switched to tomorrow morning.”
“It will make a complete fool of me.”
“So will the photos I have.”
Ridpath hesitated for a few seconds then backed away. Belsey watched him leave. He went to the window and saw the inspector cross the road to SOCA HQ and stop at the entrance. Ridpath stood there for another moment with his head bowed, then he showed his pass to the guard and walked in.
Fifty-eight minutes.
61
Belsey went over to Northwood’s BMW. The driver sat in the front, studying a manual on pursuit technique. Belsey knocked on the window and the driver jumped, then rolled the window down.
“Yes?”
“Is this Chief Superintendent Northwood’s car?”
“Yes.”
“He’s asked for his shoes. From the boot.”
“His what?”
“His shoes. In the boot.”
The man got out, frowning. He went to the back of the car. Belsey climbed in, started the engine and drove.
Everything was fine.
At ninety miles per hour he was out of central London in four minutes, past Bethnal Green in seven and onto the A12. He found a detachable police light on the passenger seat and stuck it on. He flicked the switch for the sirens.
A low suburbia peeled away. The woods of Romford flashed past. The boarded-up houses that flanked the route out of town were briefly beautiful in the sodium light, then they were gone.
Hollow Man Page 33