by AD Davies
“You saw what I did to your, heh, ‘men’ back there. That’s nothing. My own people know where I am, and they do not take kindly to small-time gangsta-wannabes beating up on their boss.”
“Your … ‘people’?”
“My people.”
“If I’m a James Bond baddie, guess that makes you Moses.”
“Now that’s a better comeback,” I said.
“I’m ek-static you approve. But you really are misinformed about the dynamic of this situation. You think I’m some gangsta-punk-wannabe, and you say you got some badass people backing you up. If that was true, I’d be impressed and you’d be walkin’ outa here in about thirty seconds. But let’s talk about your … ‘people’. These would be…” He lifted an iPad from his desk, tapped a couple of icons. “Park Avenue Investigations, right? Those the people you mean?”
Did you see what I did there? Adam … “Park” … plus “Avenue.” Known as PAI to those in the business, it was basically a play on words whilst sounding prestigious to clients from all over the world. Park Avenue. Cool, huh?
“That’s right,” I said.
“The same people consulting with Herman Yorrick Solicitors on how to delete you from the board. How to dissolve your majority interest an’ kick you the out on the street? Those your ‘people’?”
He handed me the iPad and let me whizz through a couple of screens. Emails, contracts with Roger Gorman’s signature, counter-signed by Sylvia Thorne, Gorman’s right-hand pit-bull. They dated back a couple of months. Clearly, Roger wasn’t satisfied with taking over the running of my business. He wanted me gone completely. Herman Yorrick specialized in negotiating people out of contracts that were otherwise cast-iron, and had consulted psychiatrists about my “erratic behavior.” I was the person with legal responsibility over my shareholders’ cash and I’d spent two years surfing, snowboarding and skydiving around the country. If proven mentally incompetent, Roger Gorman could, eventually, force me to sell my shares at current market value. So far, the responses from three psychiatrists insisted upon a full consult with me in person before passing judgment. They were waiting on a fourth psychiatrist. An email between Herman Yorrick himself and Roger Gorman suggested it would be fourth-time-lucky if some form of “bonus” were awarded for “a speedy turnaround.” I’m pretty sure I knew what that meant.
I handed the iPad back to Benson.
“So,” he said, “you still think they’re gonna back you up with ninjas or some shit?”
“The chairman wants me out,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean my staff won’t follow my instructions.”
He dabbed the screen and showed me more emails. I didn’t read them, so he narrated.
“You got a meetin’ with the head honcho today, so I’m guessin’ that’s to get help locatin’ my li’l burglar girl.”
“How the hell…?”
“Because I ain’t who you think I am, you dick. I got resources. I got connections can get me CCTV from places the cops need a warrant for. I got hackers can bust through your state-of-the-art firewalls in a couple a’ hours, and I got people who’ll turn you inside out prison-style and dump you in the canal for fun—won’t even want payin’. You think those minimum wage gorillas were all I gotta offer?”
“I suppose not.”
“Now…” He calmed himself and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I could break you in half and leave your pieces in a park to traumatize some kids or dog-walker. That’s what I was gonna do soon as Mikey clocked you comin’ in the front door. Thing is, I like solutions. I’m a lateral thinker. Businessman. For real.” He leaned forward on his desk, so his eyes looked out from under his brow. “So I got a proposal. My sources supplied me with pictures of my li’l burglar girl at Leeds-Bradford airport holdin’ hands with that prick of a bouncer. Headin’ to Paris. Romantic bastards.”
“And you’re sharing this with me because…?”
For a moment I thought he was going to look away. For that same moment, I detected a weakness, a crack in his façade. He was taking a big risk with what came next.
He said, “We got a few internal issues right now, and since you in a heap a’ trouble … you are gonna work for me.”
I forced a neutral expression.
He said, “I want Sarah found, I want Gareth found, I want my money, and—”
“I meant to ask, there’s some speculation about the actual amount—”
He threw the iPad at the wall, smashing it to pieces. “DO NOT INTERRUPT ME AGAIN!”
I shut my mouth and sat completely still.
He continued as if the tantrum never occurred. “I want Sarah and Gareth found, I want my money found, and I want you to bring them all to me within one week of you leaving this office.”
“You can’t expect me to—”
“A week. That’s seven days, and I’m bein’ generous. Folk down in Paris with fingers in a lotta pastries, they can’t find her. And I know these guys are thorough. Lord of the Frogging underworld’s helpin’ me out.”
“Did you say Lord of the Frogging under—”
“I got the trains covered, I got the planes covered. Watchin’ CCTV in both places for weeks. Very reliable. Car rental and police reports too. Can’t cross the border on her fake passport, ’cause silly bitches used the same guy as some of my less … official dancers.” I thought he was going to chuckle like a proper villain but he didn’t. “Now she’s called Thandy Gallway. Gareth became Mark Gallway. So if they ain’t in Paris, they’re walkin’ around France on foot.”
“Or on coaches, or hitchhiking or maybe they slipped past your people.”
“Nobody slips past my people.”
“France is huge. You think I can—”
“It’s what you do, detective-man. You track folks anywhere they go. Logic plus technology. Sherlock Holmes in board shorts.”
I needed time to think. Questions are always good. Questions that poke or stoke the ego are best. “You’re well-connected enough to get into airport security…”
He nodded, satisfied.
“Why do you need some lowly investigator like me?”
After a pause, he said, “Our people’re gettin’ watched. Lotta chatter lately. Law closin’ down a lotta places. Not mine, but friends a’ mine.”
“With the same side line in exploiting desperate women? Twenty-first century slavers?”
He pressed his lips together, holding in another outburst. “Those girls pay off their debt a lot quicker through me, through the wages I pay them, than the ugly hags pickin’ fruit out in some farmer’s field.”
“You’re doing a public service.”
“Damn right,” he said. “A service that’s none of your business.”
“Gareth sourced his and Sarah’s passports through your broker. They’d get new ones in Paris.”
“No forger does work there without my guy knowin’ who they are, and we got ’em all tapped.”
I shook my head. “No one—especially some criminal—no one holds complete power over a city, no matter how much they think they do.”
“Not complete,” Benson admitted. “But the top dogs know the top freelancers. Forgers ain’t common these days. It’s a specialty. Understand? They ain’t tapped up no one who can get ’em outta that country. You know I’m tellin’ the truth. That’s why I’m puttin’ you on this case instead of that Gruffalo-lookin’ guy.”
I didn’t know what a “Gruffalo” was, but I guessed it was big and hairy. I said, “They’re guilty of a theft. Why get the police to black-out an investigation?”
“I told you already, we got law movin’ in on some of our smaller operations. Somethin’s leakin’, and I ain’t taking the chance it’ll lead to me.” Benson selected an A4 envelope from his desk drawer and slid it to me. “And before you think of it, you go near even the shadow of the damn Foreign Office, and bad things will happen.”
I removed two photos. One was taken at Harry’s house through a window while he and Jayne dined on a
Chinese takeaway. The other was of me leaving my apartment on my way here.
“We been watchin’ Harry, makin’ sure he don’t come back round here. Didn’t want him stumblin’ across Sarah and my money and doin’ somethin’ legit with it. Then you show up in town, so we gotta look into you too. Pretty tight with these old folks, huh?”
A couple of hours, maybe a couple of days if he intercepted Harry’s planning with Caroline, but that’s all it took him to acquire free reign inside Park Avenue Investigations, as well as digging up chunks of my personal history.
I said, “If your insurance paid out, how come you’re so desperate to get Sarah back?”
“Look at me, Mr. Park. Look at me.”
I looked at him. He clearly knew the silence made me want to speak, to fill the gap. An old interrogator’s trick, neat and effective when your quarry isn’t aware of it.
Finally, he said, “You’re an investigator. Tell me. Am I the sort of prick who lets people get away with disrespecting me like that?” He didn’t need an answer. “You gonna find Mr. and Mrs. Gallway, and you gonna find my money, and anythin’ else in their possession, and you will bring it all to me by next Friday. Let’s be all dramatic and say … midnight.”
“Anything else in their possession,” I said.
The camera.
The SD card.
Benson and Gareth arguing.
If they even hung onto it.
I said, “Let’s talk about that.”
“No, let’s not, you clever arsehole. You still think you got a choice? Let’s try somethin’ else. Mikey!”
The steel door opened. Lily stood there, stiff and pale, her skin patchy, her physique now that of a sparrow. Red marks curled round both arms where she’d been held too firmly. Someone shoved her from behind. She stumbled in and fell to her knees, then crumpled onto her front, as if awaiting a further blow. After a beat, she sobbed. She was in her baby doll nightie, her underwear not yet replaced.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re really doing this?”
Mikey closed the door and placed his hand on the top of her head. Made her look up at me through tear-streaked mascara.
Benson said, “We’ll swap her for the money, and for Sarah and Gareth. You fail, she dies—badly—and your pal Harry will be implicated. And it will stick.”
At some point, I’d got to my feet. Balled my fists too, some primitive hangover in the genes.
I said, “Let her go.”
“Let who go?” Mikey swung his boot into her back and she yelped like a dog. “Her?”
A jolt of fiery sickness spiked through me. I threw a chair and followed it in, but Mikey stepped away from my kick at his knee. I feigned a throat-grab so he’d focus on that, but he shimmied aside, grabbed my wrist, and used my momentum to swing me onto my back.
He let me up and I switched disciplines and blazed into him with flurry of knees and elbows, most of which he blocked with ease, or shrugged off like I’d never even hit him.
“Mikey,” Benson said. “This ain’t a disco.”
Mikey thrust a tight fist into the base of my sternum. It blew all the air out of my diaphragm and it felt like my heart had burst. Unable to breathe, I dropped to the floor and readied myself for what would surely be a serious beating. But it didn’t come.
Benson knelt next to Lily and helped her up into the chair I threw. “Sorry, Lily, but talk to bad folks like him and look what happens.”
She sniffed and nodded.
Benson seemed almost tender as he stroked her knee. “Mr. Park here is forcing me to do things I don’t wanna. But don’t worry. We’ll get you some clothes, patch you up. You go home, you wait. We’ll come by, see how you are, we’ll treat you good. Until next Friday. If Mr. Park don’t come back with what I want, I’m sorry, but…” Benson’s hand crept higher up Lily’s leg, the inside of her thigh.
“Okay,” I said, which hurt to say.
“Okay?” Benson said.
I managed, “I’ll do it.”
“You hear that, Lily? He’ll do it. Now what do you say to Mr. Park?”
Her voice cracked, barely audible. “Th- thank you…”
Benson stood beside Mikey, both looking down on me. Benson pointed to the door. “Now get your arse out, and go do your job.”
Chapter Five
I’m not sure how I got out onto the street. There were corridors. There was the flesh-and-neon-orange blur of Blazing Seas and the curious faces of the dancers as a couple of new disposable security guys “encouraged” me toward the exit. I sat in a bus shelter a few meters up the road and tried to coax my breathing back to its regular rhythm.
When I did finally negotiate the winding streets past office buildings and coffee shops and fashion boutiques, and into the lobby of Park Avenue Investigations, it was like tension physically dissolving around me. We occupied the top floor of a ten-story office block five minutes’ walk from my apartment, and as the lift doors clunked shut behind me, I was suddenly … safe. I hadn’t registered feeling unsafe before, but that trembling in my legs ended, and although my hands still shook, it was with less intensity, and all that remained was an ache in my stomach and chest.
When I last checked there were forty-two employees, eight board members—of which I was one—and a healthy bank balance. Now, the clinically-white lobby had seen an art-deco refurbishment and photo portraits adorned one wall displaying ten board members, but that was a little deceptive since I wasn’t among them. Roger Gorman’s photo was larger than the others by a good six inches and positioned above them, creating a swish-looking organizational chart.
My pass granted me access before the receptionist saw me, so I slinked off into the marble-laden gents and unbuttoned my shirt to examine my torso in the bathroom mirror. A bruise had already bloomed into a dirty purple smudge.
My training had been disciplined, and that supposedly made me disciplined, and it had made me the favorite in rare violent scenarios even when I was out-muscled. Mikey was utterly controlled, though. Never on the back foot. I went at him with Krav Maga, and with a Muay Thai assault furious enough to down a horse, and he waved me off like I was a snappy Yorkshire terrier. I’d pegged him as bodyguard to a small-time crook with big ambitions, and so underestimated both him and his boss.
Clearly, Gareth Delingpole had too.
I tidied myself up and returned to the lobby, but as I was about to announce myself to the receptionist, Roger Gorman blew in through a pair of frosted-glass doors. Although he appeared tanned in the photo, his skin color in real-life was close to mahogany, and when he grinned the falsest grin in the world, I wasn’t sure whether it was a trick of the light or if his white teeth actually glowed.
“Adam!” He extended one hand and shook mine vigorously, while his other slapped my shoulder.
“Roger,” I said. “Good to see you.”
We stood in silence until Roger let out a short, nervous guff of laughter and swung his arm to the side. “Right this way.”
The man trying to certify me mentally incompetent led me into the heart of my former empire, teeth front and center all the way. The corridors hadn’t seen the extensive renovation of the outer shell, but they’d received a lick or two of paint, and some of the artwork had been upgraded from poncy to downright ugly.
Passing the accounts section, he said, “It’s all in good hands, Adam. Thirteen percent spike on last year.”
“Thirteen percent spike in what? Profit, or the number of people your clients’ products have murdered?”
Another guff of laughter from Roger, then, “Always one with a joke, Adam.”
“Always,” I said.
Once we were past the gopher cubicles, his smile dropped. “And they’re our clients. Mine and yours. They don’t have to be, though.”
When I didn’t reply, Roger reinstated his lite-brite rigor smile and led me around a corner to where the carpets were deeper, and into a large room that could have been a conference space but, with the Rolls-Royce-
sized desk and tall chair, I guessed it was Roger’s new office. A rug featuring some oriental design spanned three-quarters of the floor, featuring dotted indentations to suggest the room was, indeed, occasionally used for meetings. The nearest wall doubled as a cupboard and grooves along the ceiling indicated something could slide out, most likely tables, with the chairs currently hidden alongside.
“Been a while,” he said as he gestured to the slightly lower seat opposite his. When not entertaining a high-powered get-together, Gorman would enjoy an uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling view of Leeds, and for miles up the River Aire.
I took up position facing the window, hands clasped behind my back. “I need access to the Deep Detect System.”
He joined me, talking to my reflection. “DDS? The software you called evil?”
“The software I designed and still own.”
“Actually, Adam, the company owns it.”
“Still keep it all on site?”
“I’m hardly going to trust possession of such a thing to an outside company, am I?”
When Gorman ousted me, one of the first things he did was dissolve all our cloud backup accounts to bring them in-house. Separate servers, independent power and generator fail-safes, with a state-of-the-art CO2 fire-extinguisher system in place of water. Nothing left to chance in the paranoia of a guilty man.
I said, “If it’s on site, it shouldn’t take too long to sign me in.”
“You know our rates,” he said. “If you have a client, sign them up.”
“She can’t afford your rates.”
He turned from the reflection and faced me properly. “Our rates,” he said.
“I’ll send you the details when I have them.” I concentrated on the view, dulled through the tinted glass. “I expect the results within—”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. “The software is the property of Park Avenue Investigations. Park Avenue Investigations has shareholders. DDS costs a lot of money to run.” He leaned closer until I faced him. “If it’s so important, how come you don’t stump up the cash? Not given it all to some Oopma-Loompa tribe, have you?”