The Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  “You’re happy for prestigious clients to use pseudonyms.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Was there someone in charge of the Boudicca Society?”

  “The man in charge came in two hours before everyone else. The man who organised it. He came early and then left.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “No.”

  “What exactly did he organise?”

  “He needed a large table. I don’t know why. He asked for the biggest table we had.”

  “How large?”

  “About five yards by five. We had to use three of our largest tables pushed together.”

  “But you don’t know what for?”

  “A model of some kind, I imagine. We had to have the place emptied of our staff before it arrived.”

  “Show me any paperwork you have.”

  The man went through his files. He produced a booking form with the address for the abandoned AD Development office and a number that would get through to RingCentral. It also had the account number for Devereux’s overdrawn Barclays current account.

  “How does the parking work here?” Belsey asked.

  “Why?”

  “All this security must have required vehicles.”

  “You register. We have our own parking lot.”

  “Then you’ll have records for the vehicles. Let me see the plates, the permits.”

  “They didn’t park. They were dropped off. They didn’t want any records.”

  Belsey thought. He looked around the office, searching for his final piece.

  “The model, whatever sat on the table,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “What happened to it afterwards?”

  “It went back wherever it came from.”

  Belsey racked his brains. Where was the pickup for the delivery? Thirty-three Cavendish Square. He moved past the events manager to the phone on his desk. He called directory inquiries and asked for the office block reception. Eventually he got through to a sleepy-sounding security man.

  “I need the names of any companies in your building that deal with construction,” Belsey said.

  The security guard grunted. He looked through the building directory until he got to one. There was only one. They were called Kilgo Vesser Architectural Associates. No one was in their office that Sunday.

  51

  Belsey drove towards Cavendish Square, stopping at an electrical goods store to watch the news through the window. There was a shot of The Bishops Avenue, then it panned back to a BBC reporter. Beside him was Charlotte Kelson. He thrust a microphone in her direction. Belsey couldn’t hear what she was saying but it looked like she was laying claim to her scoop. A ticker flashed LIVE. Devereux’s home rose up behind her.

  It made Belsey uneasy. She had his name. One wrong word, even off camera, and they’d be onto him before he had a chance to disappear. He wanted her by his side.

  He pulled a U-turn and sped to Hampstead with the sirens on.

  Sky News had parked beside the gates to Kenwood House. The media throng began a few yards down The Bishops Avenue. Police tape started soon after. Inside it, forensics officers were carrying bulging evidence bags out of number 37. News cameras jostled for a shot of the house. Charlotte Kelson stood apart from the crowd, across the road, reading copy down her phone.

  Belsey screeched to a halt beside her.

  “Get in.”

  She stared at him, then at the Met squad car. It seemed to reassure her a little. He watched her weigh up the opportunity before speaking into the phone: “I’ll call you back.”

  “Tell them to hold the front page while you’re at it,” Belsey said. She put the phone away but didn’t move to the car.

  “They’re taking your holiday home apart, Nick.”

  “Want to see something?”

  “What?”

  “Project Boudicca.”

  She looked sceptical. “Where?”

  “Kilgo Vesser Architectural Associates. Get in.”

  She climbed in. Belsey breathed her perfume.

  “Keep an eye out for motorbikes,” he said. “If you see any behind us, tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like them.” Belsey put the blue lights on and drove towards Cavendish Square. “What have you got?”

  “Growing concerns about being in this car with you,” she said, putting on her seat belt.

  “I’m the only one who’s helped you on this. Remember that.”

  “But why have you helped me?”

  “Because you’re great in bed. Tell me what you’ve found.” He swerved down Fitzjohn’s Avenue, then weaved through the Swiss Cottage traffic.

  “I looked into this Pierce Buckingham character. He was a prime bastard, with a long, dark history to his name. He was last seen trying to extract Saudi funds from the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium. It was the gaming consortium that hired PS Security. I have this from a chief inspector on Buckingham’s murder inquiry. Buckingham thought he had a deal on with the Corporation of London, but they’re denying everything. Meanwhile, some disgruntled investor has leaked correspondence between Buckingham and Alexei Devereux regarding what they call the 1871 Act.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s only two significant acts passed in 1871 as far as I can tell. One was the American Civil Rights Act, the other was Victorian legislation that vested large parts of Hampstead in the Metropolitan Board of Works. My money’s on that one. The worrying bit is the caveat: the act guarantees to preserve the natural beauty of the area in perpetuity, and to see that any future owners preserve it too.”

  “What does Devereux say?”

  “He says it won’t be a problem. He has this on the authority of lawyers who work for Milton Granby, a firm called Charlton and Doubret who he claims had sent a confidential fax outlining loopholes.”

  “Have you spoken to them?”

  “They’re denying everything.”

  “Was the fax from this machine?” He told her Devereux’s fax number.

  “I think so.”

  “The lawyers are telling the truth for once. They didn’t send the fax.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “There was a meeting,” Belsey said. “And the people in the room wired through thirty-eight million at the end of it. That bit’s true.”

  “What was it for?”

  “I think we’re about to find out.”

  They slid down Portland Place, past expensive office space behind the department stores. Cavendish Square had a tidy Regency decorum apart from one glass-and-concrete colossus that dominated the south-east corner. Number 33. Revolving doors led into a smart reception with fake marble columns, sofas, a TV screen and security barriers before you got to the lifts. A guard slouched behind a glass-topped reception desk. Belsey checked the list of companies behind him: Kilgo Vesser were on the fifth floor.

  “Someone reported a break-in,” Belsey said. The guard sat up fast. Belsey showed his badge.

  “Where?”

  “Fifth floor. Kilgo Vesser. Someone smashed the door.”

  Now the guard looked unnerved. “I don’t think so.”

  “Stay here.”

  Belsey jumped the barrier. Charlotte followed. They took the stairs to the fifth floor. He found the door marked “Kilgo Vesser Architectural Associates,” picked up a steel pedal bin and rammed the lock until the wood splintered. Then he kicked it open. An alarm blasted. He walked in and turned the lights on.

  The architectural model took up the whole of the front office. The ponds gave it away. It took Belsey a moment to recognise the painstaking details of trees and sloping parkland, because a racetrack looped around what had been the North Heath and was now a casino complex. The central structure rose up from beneath g
round level like a long glass coffin, tiered on both sides, and beyond the track, to the west, was a new, artificial lake fringed by parking and a cinema. Tiny figures crowded the green space, some making for the casino, some walking dogs or setting out picnics and flying kites.

  “Oh wow,” Charlotte gasped.

  Belsey looked around the drawing boards and Macs and across crowded desks. He opened a drawer and tipped it onto the floor. Then he did another. He searched through rolls of plans and maps until he saw two relating to the casino design. He folded them into his jacket.

  “Let’s go.”

  They ran back downstairs, past the guard, to the empty street.

  “Where now?” Charlotte said.

  “I have to do something,” Belsey said. “I think you’ve got enough story here to be getting on with. I might need to run soon, though. To somewhere else.”

  “OK.”

  “Think you’ll be able to find me?”

  He held her hand and looked at her in the light from the reception. A red dot flickered like a firefly over her pale neck and up her cheek to her temple. Belsey thought it was from the guard so he looked behind him and the guard wasn’t there. He watched it. And then a wave of dread rushed through his body.

  “Get down,” he said, and the reception doors blew in.

  52

  Belsey covered her. They crawled to the parked cars and took shelter. He could feel blood on the palms of his hands. He didn’t think it was his own. Charlotte started screaming, which was a good sign. If you can scream you can live.

  The next shots hit the cars. Glass rained down. More screaming.

  He moved to see her face: no head wounds, blood spreading across her blouse.

  “Charlotte, listen to me. Where are you hit?”

  “My arm.”

  Belsey tore the sleeve. The bullet had taken a slice out of her left arm and grazed the torso. He took her scarf and balled it like a compress and fixed it to her body with the sleeves of her coat. They must have shot from an opposite building, he thought; the roof of one of the office blocks. He couldn’t see any movement.

  “I’m OK,” she said.

  “Press this against you. Don’t stand up. Don’t try to go anywhere.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re still alive.”

  He crawled to the reception.

  “Get an ambulance,” he said to the guard, who was flat on the floor. But just then an ambulance bike braked hard, a few yards away. The paramedic got off the bike with a first-aid case in his gloved hand.

  “She’s here,” Belsey said. Why hadn’t he taken his helmet off? This was what Belsey was thinking. What is he carrying on his back?

  He opened the case and took out a handgun and levelled it at Belsey’s face.

  Belsey moved in towards the man. The mistake is always to back off. He moved closer, turning, and the gunman panicked and fired. A window smashed. Belsey moved into the cover inside, drawing him away from Charlotte. The gunman had the Dragunov slung across his back. But he had come prepared for close-range executions as well. Belsey took a fire extinguisher off the wall. A bullet sparked off one of the pillars. He pulled the pin on the extinguisher. The gunman was close now, a few feet away. Belsey aimed at the tinted visor and sprayed.

  It worked. The gunman fired wildly, blinded, then backed out towards the road. Belsey aimed a kick at his kidneys and he went down but held on to the gun, desperately trying to wipe the foam off the visor. He got to his feet and raised the gun again. Belsey kicked it out of his hand. The man still wouldn’t run. He had the rifle, so what did he want? Belsey stood between him and the ambulance bike. He wants the bike, Belsey thought.

  Sirens approached. The gunman stiffened for a fraction of a second. He listened to the directions of the sirens and then ran in the opposite one, tearing his helmet off, but too late for Belsey to see his face.

  Belsey walked over to the bike. He’d stolen it with the key in because the ignition box was intact. The key wasn’t there now. The tail box was locked. Belsey found the assassin’s handgun by the kerb, a Browning BDM that had seen some action. He picked it up using a scrap of newspaper, aimed it at the lock on the bike’s tail box and fired. The box blew open. Belsey looked in the compartment and saw why the gunman was getting anxious. It contained a shirt and suit, spare ammunition, a conference badge on a length of ribbon and a swipe card for the Royal National Hotel.

  He checked Charlotte was OK. She was pale, but with enough fury remaining that she’d pull through. If the shots had attracted any attention, no one yet dared show their face. They would soon. Belsey returned to the bike and emptied the tail box. He stripped and wiped the blood off his face and hands with his shirt, then squeezed into the gunman’s clothes. He waited until he was sure the approaching sirens were real. But he didn’t want to be around when they arrived.

  “Do me a favour, Charlotte,” he said. “Don’t mention I was here.”

  She rolled her eyes. He gave her a kiss.

  53

  The Royal National was a sixteen-hundred-room hotel off Russell Square, a concrete maze of restaurants, corridors and migrant workers. It was a perfect hotel for an assassin. The gunman’s conference pass said “Ninth International HIV Research Conference” and gave the name Dr. Antoine Pelletier. Belsey hung it around his neck and turned it so the name was hidden. The hotel was musty, all 1970s wood and 1980s fabrics in a jaundiced, subterranean light. He walked past the reception to the lifts. You needed a swipe to work the lifts. The gunman’s hotel swipe card worked. The lift contained information about breakfast options and West End shows. Belsey took it to the first floor and back down to reception.

  The receptionist’s badge said “Tasha.”

  “Tasha, hello.”

  “Hello, sir. How can I help?”

  “There’s another delegate here, from the HIV conference,” Belsey said. “Dr. Pelletier. Could you tell him Dr. Steel is here?”

  “Hang on.” She spent twenty seconds scrolling down her computer screen, then lifted a receiver. Belsey watched her fingers. They dialled 561. She waited a moment.

  “I’m not getting an answer,” she said, without hanging up. Belsey checked his watch.

  “Maybe he’s gone already.”

  “Would you like me to keep trying?”

  “No, that’s fine. Is there a bathroom I can use?”

  She directed him past the lifts to the toilets. He walked past the lifts to the stairs and took the stairs to the fifth floor.

  Belsey found room 561 and knocked. No answer. He swiped the assassin’s hotel card in the lock and got a green light. Belsey kicked the door.

  The room was empty, bed made, three suit bags draped over a single chair. It smelt of stale smoke. There was a hotel ashtray and a box of surgical gloves beside the bed. The ashtray was the only object that looked used, although no butts had been left. The gloves suggested Belsey wasn’t going to find any prints very easily. He kicked the bathroom door open. It was spotless, with a cleaner’s seal on the toilet and the soaps still wrapped. Belsey searched the place. He turned the mattress, lifted the cistern. He lay down on the bed and stared at a very fine line on the ceiling, like a crack in the plaster, only it covered the edge of the ventilation grille. A hair. He stood on the bed and punched the grille and it fell out.

  In the metal duct above it was a telescopic sight, rifle cleaning kit, harness, a shopping bag containing tactical grips and a scope mount, and a key for the hotel safe deposit.

  Belsey took the key and a bag for sanitary waste and went back to reception. The safe-deposit boxes were stacked to one side of the desk. He sat outside the hotel’s Big Ben Pub waiting for Tasha to leave her post. A screen above the bar announced: MURDERED FINANCIER WAS “PLAYBOY FIXER.” Then: PUBLIC WARNED TO AVOID SQUARE MILE. The mayor was saying something to an assembled crowd. Then a ticker
started flashing BREAKING NEWS: NEW SHOOTING CENTRAL LONDON. They hadn’t got the cameras to the scene yet. Northwood appeared, and Belsey could just make out his words: “If these incidents are the work of one individual, and at the moment that’s a big if . . .”

  Tasha left her post, replaced by a tall man with a badge that said “Yakubu.” Belsey walked up.

  “Yakubu.”

  “Sir.”

  “Can I reset my morning call? I want it at nine tomorrow. Room 561.”

  “Of course.”

  “And breakfast in my room. The continental option.”

  “OK.” He made a note. “That’s done for you.”

  Belsey laid the safe-deposit key on the counter. “I’ll grab something from my box.”

  “Sure.”

  The only thing in the box was a Canadian passport in Dr. Pelletier’s name. Belsey took it by the edges and dropped it in the paper bag.

  54

  Every instinct, human and police, told him to put a name to the threat—the man who had killed Jessica, Buckingham, then tried to kill him and Charlotte. He was still surfing on adrenaline from his near-death experience. By his own estimation he had ten hours to put the bastard out of action one way or another. This was non-negotiable. Secondary, but only just: find seven hundred pounds for Duzgun and get a passport of his own. Book a flight. Then put the final touches to Kovar. That had to be done soon so that the speculator could get the money ready. He would say his good-byes to Charlotte, collect his winnings and take flight.

  The attacker’s passport gave the name Dr. Antoine Michel Pelletier, born 2 June 1976 in Quebec City. The face was that of a Caucasian male in his thirties, clean-shaven, pale skin, receding black hair and small eyes. Organised Crime Forensics took a clean print off the back and came up with another seven identities: seven men all with the same fingerprints, all with hits to their name.

  The Print Unit officer looked a little shaken when the results came through. He was young, not long out of training college.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “There’s nothing in the UK before, but I checked the Interpol database and there’s thirty-seven separate warrants.”