by Howard Marks
Walter looked a little deflated. Maybe he was hoping it was a social visit. But his expression told her what she was asking would not be a problem. For a few minutes they talked about the past until the talk ran out on them.
Then Cat asked a question. ‘Remember Martin who came with me in the old days.’ Walter nodded. ‘He kept up at all?’
‘He came in now and again, like you all do, when you want something, or when you’re in trouble.’
Cat nodded and smiled. Half of the screw-up kids in Cardiff had passed through Walter’s dojo at one time or another. Walter could remember them all, their habits, bad and good, their birthdays even. ‘He was some big-shot games designer. Then his wife died. He came here to tell me that.’
‘He wanted your sympathy.’
‘Course. He was worrying about his daughter, he got all precious about her when his wife died. Said he was taking her out of the city, out to the sticks where she’d be safer.’
‘He lost it then, after his wife died?’
‘A bit, maybe. Got stuck in his gloom,’ said Walter.
She couldn’t picture someone as delicate as Martin looking after a young girl alone. She imagined it must have been a strain for him.
‘Then he called a few days ago,’ Walter said. ‘He sounded in a right state. Said he needed your numbers. Something about his daughter going missing.’
‘You gave them to him?’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Knew you two used to be close.’
She had told him never to give them out, but she wasn’t going to call him on it. He had done the right thing. Cat said nothing, waited.
‘She used to come by here when they lived in Cardiff, so he was just checking for her. I phoned around. Nobody had seen her.’ He paused. ‘Fancy a pot?’
Walter eyed his antique stoneware tea service, sitting delicately among the filth of his office like a nun in a flea market.
‘Genmaicha. Always was your favourite,’ he said.
She told him she didn’t have time, and left with keys to a Passat on EU plates. He told her it was on dealer’s insurance, everything kosher, and the papers were in the glovebox. She’d take him for sushi as a thank-you when she got back.
‘You must know him quite well, then,’ said Thomas as she pointed over the road at the Passat.
‘Yes.’ Cat didn’t answer further. What was Walter to her? A martial arts instructor, for sure. He had been that once, and still was in some way. But he was more than that. Had been from the first. A wise presence whenever her life seemed most certain to go off the rails. He had been that once too. The obvious thing would be to call him a father figure, only paternal relationships are messier than that.
They left the Mondeo at Walter’s and she drove the first leg to Swindon fast while Thomas slept some more of it off beside her. She tracked Chill FM then slotted quiet tracks from Koop and Ghostland.
‘What the fuck is this?’ was the first thing Thomas said when he woke.
She didn’t bother telling him. ‘Prefer MOR AOR, would you?’
‘What?’
‘Middle of the road, adult-orientated rock. Huey Lewis. REO Speedwagon. Nickleback. Classic Top Gear sounds.’
‘Better than this shit,’ he said, wafting a hand towards the stereo. ‘Sounds like a load of depressed aliens.’
‘That’s not a bad description,’ Cat said, smiling.
When Thomas took his turn at the wheel he rifled her bag and put in Neil Young. That was probably the only thing she had that they both could handle. ‘Needle and the Damage Done’.
At the end of the motorway they hit the tail of the rushhour, and at the Chiswick roundabout Cat took the wheel again. She had been biting her nails. She was going into the past again, this time not her friendship with Martin, but back to London, where she had run when Rhys, her first big love, had left her. She had not been so different to a lot of people who flee there to dissolve and remake themselves in its carnival of chances. And she had remade herself in London, enough to keep living, enough so that her heart had only walked with a limp.
She took the exit before Brentford. They had reached the mixed area of suburban streets and warehousing where the only connection to Evans and the Mandrax they had, Hywel Small, had his last known address. She knew they were pissing up a dark alley, but it was the only alley they had.
They pulled up a street short of Small’s close. Thomas’s anti-perspirant and the smell of his service-station coffee were getting to her, so she walked down to an open car park below the houses and did some breathing exercises from the Hatha. Thomas watched her from the car, wound down the window, called out, ‘Fucking Gandhi.’
The breathing exercise helped a bit, but the air felt metallic and stale. What did she expect, it was London air. She waved Thomas out of the car, and he walked, chest first, straight over. She’d noticed that the end of the car park gave a clearer view up to Small’s house. Thomas came alongside her, pointed at the two stone dragons either side of the entrance to Small’s driveway. ‘At least he’s still a patriot,’ he said.
Cat made no comment, looked at the two late-model SUVs outside the garage. ‘The door’s been reinforced, Thomas.’
‘And the windows.’
A delivery moped with a square carry box behind the seat was pulling in to Small’s drive as another moped was just leaving.
‘Busy, busy,’ said Thomas.
The arriving rider pushed a temperature-controlled pack through the letterbox then hurriedly rode off. Cat saw a dart of light as an upper window opened, probably a bedroom, saw a man lean out, survey the driveway as he smoked a large joint. He was in boxers and his hair was dishevelled, as if he had just got up. Behind him Cat glimpsed a poster of a Welsh dragon puffing smoke.
The whole set-up looked two-bit and this pissed Cat off. She knew the mopeds were not a good sign. They were suitable for local drops within a radius of a few miles. A dealer running a national Mandrax roll-out wouldn’t use them. Cat felt a wave of depression trying to push its way through her headache.
Thomas moved back towards the car and Cat followed. They snugged in, watched another moped followed by a larger Parcelforce bike arrive in convoy. Both riders waited by the letterbox, their intercoms crackling. They waited with their hands by the aperture of the letter box. Someone inside was pushing packets out to them without opening the door.
‘Doubt he’s our man,’ Thomas said, grimacing.
Cat pursed her lips, frowned. She knew this amount of traffic spelled a slack approach. Small probably wouldn’t be taking these kinds of risks if he was holding real inventory.
‘You can never tell with dealers, though, Thomas, some are born fuckwits. He could be sitting on a hundred kilos in there and still dealing like a child.’
‘Could be, Price, but I doubt it.’
Heavy reggae leaked from the front of the house as the bikes pulled away. She could see from Thomas’s expression that he regretted coming. Small might as well have stuck an ad in the Yellow Pages saying he was a dealer the way he was carrying on. Thomas was checking the other houses in the close for signs of a Met stake-out. He was sweating, his collar crumpled and stain-ringed. A few minutes later a larger Parcelforce bike returned and the courier went through the same routine at the letter box.
The previous packets had all been about A3 size and bulky, grass she reckoned. But this time, it looked smaller. That didn’t mean much but she knew they were wasting their time staring at the door. Likely the same routine would continue all day and night. If they wanted any kind of progress they had to see where the packets were going.
She woke the car, followed the Parcelforce bike, staying a couple of cars behind. ‘The size of the pack he took,’ she said, ‘it’s smaller. Samples maybe.’
Thomas didn’t look convinced. The bike continued along the North Circular and took the Golders Green exit. As they took the hill up to Hampstead, Cat glimpsed a chunky darkness in her rear-view, glanced again to see it was gone. Just another
car on a busy road, she told herself, but this did not lessen the sense she had of being followed. Her head muzzed up to an ache. ‘Make me a roll-up,’ she asked Thomas, but he ignored her. His rapid blinking said he thought they were on a fool’s errand.
At the top of Hampstead Hill, the Parcelforce bike made a circuit of the ponds. The biker was either lost or checking for tails. Cat carried on over to upper Heath Street. She listened for the drone of the bike and lost it momentarily, then it was back. She cut down the side of the heath after it. The bike drone began to falter. She saw it right-hook into a pleasant chestnut-tree-lined lane. She followed. The bike was moving slowly, then it stopped. Cat pulled up five cars short, tucked in out of sight.
For the first time they got a clear look at the man. The box on the back of his bike bore the characteristic red and white logo of Parcelforce. It looked genuine. His helmet with its air-filter gave him the appearance of an insect. He moved quickly across the road, bounced on the balls of his feet like an athlete preparing for the starting block.
Cat leaned across to take a closer look, shading her eyes and covering her face at the same time. ‘That bike looks a bit tasty for Parcelforce?’
Thomas sat back in his seat, looked across at her, said nothing.
‘One of their guys moonlighting, you reckon? Or Small and co parasiting their system?’
Thomas flexed his lips non-committally and Cat took out her phone, called up Google, found Parcelforce’s website. It offered information listing the courier company’s services, coverage and prices. She typed ‘database of couriers’ into the search box. The results page showed: ‘There are no matches for your search’.
The redelivery section of the site featured a shot of a courier with a package standing next to a van, smiling as if he loved his job. He wore a high-vis orange tabard – he loved his tabard too – but his uniform underneath was similar to that of the biker.
Zoning in on the logo on the van on her phone, Cat then stared at the logo on the delivery box of the bike in front of her. She looked back at the screen. She pulled her head back, blinked. The curve of the stylised white globe on the Parcelforce website was clear, the lines of longitude and latitude sharp. The lines on the bike’s logo seemed indistinguishable. The Parcelforce wording on the website’s logo also had firm, clean lines. The letters on the logo on the bike’s delivery box had been arranged identically, but the outline was not quite as clear. It lacked the straight edges seen on the website. She narrowed her eyes, it probably meant nothing.
She passed the phone to Thomas, pointed at the screen. ‘Have a look at the lettering.’
Thomas looked, then across the road to the bike. It was beginning to rain again.
‘The official logo is sharp. The lettering on the bike is a little fuzzier. Most people wouldn’t notice the difference.’
Thomas still didn’t look convinced.
Cat took the phone back, logged into the DVLA database, keyed in the bike’s registration number. There were two recorded keepers for the vehicle, Parcelforce originally and now a company called All Solutions Ltd. She saved the page, called up Company House’s open-source database. All Solutions Ltd was newly formed, hadn’t yet filed accounts. She scanned the names and addresses of the director and company secretary. The addresses were in Bayswater, an area that she knew for its rooming houses and residential hotels. The names – Mike Martin, Paul Johnson – looked generic. Fake. None of these details would get them anywhere.
Cat tapped the screen. ‘That reg is one of a fleet sold at auction last year.’
‘You’d think Parcelforce would have taken the liveries off before they pass them through?’
‘My guess is whoever bought it copied in the logo again. Probably scanned it off the web and copied it. Maybe the scanning is why the focus isn’t quite all there.’
Cat scoped the street through the quickening rain. The houses were imposing Georgian and Victorian piles, most of which had been redeveloped from flats into houses, or had never been divided. Each property opened directly onto the street, although one or two were partially concealed behind hedges. They looked much like houses in any other inner-London suburb. But she knew that in this postcode they cost many times what an average person earned in their lifetime. The rich stuck together, paid over the odds to exclude the others. The street was quiet. Most of the owners would work long hours in the City, or else they’d be musicians and actors, still sleeping off a night in the clubs.
The biker was on the move. He’d climbed off his seat carrying a package. As he made his way across the street they could see the package was wrapped in midnight blue paper with silver stars. It looked innocuous, could be any birthday or wedding present, bought online, company-wrapped and couriered to cover up the embarrassment of a forgetful giver. The rider was heading for a white-painted house, a Meccano of scaffolding covering most of its front, raw stone walls visible on each side.
Behind the scaffolding, the rooms either side of the door appeared to jut forward, framing a Cape Dutch pediment. It was a seven-figure house maybe, and had just changed hands if the scaffolding and skip sat outside it told the usual story.
Cat watched the delivery rider make his way round the front. He went down a passageway along the side, disappeared. Cat and Thomas waited, neither spoke. After a couple of minutes the driver reappeared. Strangely, he was still clutching the parcel, its dark wrapping and silver stars clearly visible despite the now-sheeting rain. In fact, the parcel was all too visible. The rider was not even trying to shield it from the rain, holding it in plain sight.
Cat turned to Thomas. ‘Looks like he’s been unable to make the delivery, but my guess is he’s made a switch.’
Thomas did not look surprised. ‘It’s a nice spot for a drop. Nobody around in the day. Local residents loaded, a lot of courier deliveries from their online shopping. He fits right in.’
They watched the driver reach his bike, begin to do his paperwork. They looked at the house: all was quiet. The view into the front room was limited, obscured by scaffolding. Little furniture was visible. Cat found the land registry site to check on the owners, keyed in the street address. She paid the small access fee with her debit card. The house was owned by a company registered in Panama. Cat punched the name into Google. It was mentioned on several sites with names like Overseas Property Dreams and seemed to be an international investment shell.
She showed the reference to Thomas. ‘These places get bought and sold as tax vehicles. My bet is whoever owns this place doesn’t know what it’s being used for.’
He nodded. ‘They’re hardly going to use an address traceable back to themselves.’
The courier kicked his bike into life, made a U-turn then headed away. Cat slid out of her seat, winced slightly as she straightened up on the pavement. She had been so intent on the chase she’d forgotten her withdrawal. But now she noticed that all her limbs ached, the stress had brought the symptoms on again with a vengeance.
She stepped back into the cover of a spreading beech tree, glanced up and down the road. But there was nothing; the street was quiet still. About five houses down a silver Merc reversed onto the road, drove right past. Its driver, a middle-aged woman, studiously ignored them.
Cat leaned into the car and patted Thomas’s arm. ‘Buzz me if anyone enters. I’m going in.’
She made her way across the road to the house. With the withdrawal aches came thoughts of Martin. Images of their old friendship, the blood-stained T-shirt. Every step she took across the Hampstead street was guided by that blood. Suddenly everything felt clear and stark. The gusting wet brought with it the smell of damp foliage from the Heath, the sound of a large dog barking. Underlying everything was the habitual London undertone of traffic, a sound that she guessed wouldn’t be audible to a local, but that was agitating her now as though her head was stuck inside a hive.
She pushed on, entered the passageway that the delivery rider had taken. The high house wall cut out much of the light. The
looming scaffolding gave it a weird, mechanical appearance. The plastic tarpaulins snapped and cracked in the wind, making her head hurt.
A slatted gate stopped her progress. She looked closely. There was a slight gap between gate and post. Cat teased a key into the gap, ran it up and down, found a catch and lifted it, pushed the gate open.
Beyond it was a small yard, empty apart from a green garden refuse bin. More scaffolding on the back of the house. Always the same with big London houses: you pay ten million and get a prison yard for a garden. She glanced around. There was no obvious drop-off. Cat lifted the lid of the bin, the smell of decaying vegetation filling the air. She sneezed, then looked again. At the back of the bin was a rectangular box, built into the container. It held only a pair of rusted secateurs. Nothing for it, she’d have to go fishing. She dipped her hand into the decaying grass beneath, could feel only slime and grit. She pushed down deeper, felt a hard object. She moved more of the grass aside and saw a package, lifted it out.
The pristine wrapping paper was now splattered with decaying compost. She opened it carefully without tearing the paper. Inside was a box, filled with used notes. She didn’t count, but there looked to be about thirty thousand, mostly in twenties. She put everything back as she had found it, made her way out through the gate.
Just outside the house she stopped, had the sense of someone watching her. She glanced around, expecting to see a face. But there was nothing. The windows around her were now empty, if they hadn’t been before.
Several streets away a child screamed, broke off into laughter. There was the faint buzz of a motorbike, a distant grinding on a gear change. She listened to its progress until she could hear it no more. She glanced up the street, saw a corner shop. Outside the shop were the usual hoardings advertising the lottery and that day’s Evening Standard. Beyond that another street rose steeply, towering above the neighbourhood. She recognised the incline of its house fronts. Had she staked it out when she was in London? Or attended a private party there working undercover? She’d definitely seen the street before.