Palmer heaved himself from his desk and dragged a smoke trail over to the panoramic window, did his God bit watching over his warehouse. You could see he was proud of his view the way City types love the strip of river they get with their corner office. He sucked on his weed for thirty seconds like I wasn’t there, contemplating his empire.
‘We’re bidding for a haulage contract,’ he said finally. ‘The tender closes at the end of next week.’ He did a ninety and strolled along the other glass to watch his crew down in the maintenance bays. He was talking to the glass but his voice had an edge that said I’d better be listening.
‘The client is a clothing wholesaler relocating from Birmingham. They’re opening a warehouse here in Wembley. They run their own logistics but they don’t own their fleet. They wet-lease thirty units to cover their European and UK distribution.’
‘Wet-lease?’ I said. The thing sounded like some kind of rainy-day service.
Palmer left his window and orbited back to his desk. He sat down and stubbed the cigarette in a steel ashtray. He looked at me and decided I really didn’t know what wet-leasing was. He leaned forward to educate me.
‘We supply the trucks, maintenance, drivers and fuel. The client pays a retainer and a straight mileage charge. He says where we go and when, controls the schedule. It’s the most efficient way for some businesses to run their logistics. More flexible than owning a fleet. Cheaper than paying ad hoc haulage.’
He stabbed a finger in the direction of the haulage world beyond the panoramic window. ‘For a number of reasons,’ he said, ‘we need to land that contract.’
‘A number of reasons?’
‘A number of reasons,’ he confirmed.
‘How many trucks do you operate?’ I asked.
‘We run fifty container trailers. A few bulk carriers and vans. Our main business is container.’
‘So this contract would cover most of your fleet.’
‘For two years,’ he said.
‘That would be a good contract.’
He gave me a kind of smile. I had it.
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘The problem,’ he said, ‘is that we have to win the contract.’
He stayed silent, watched me take this in. I was wondering how much of HP Logistics had been built on legitimate operations. I recognised Palmer’s type.
‘What,’ I asked again, ‘can we do to help?’
He waited a moment, like he was deciding whether to bring me in or kick me out. Decided to go with the risk.
‘There are three firms bidding,’ he said, ‘including us. The way the client works is they contract to the second-lowest bidder. They don’t want to pay high prices but it’s essential to avoid the vendor who’s under-bidding. He’s the one who will let you down when he can’t deliver.’
Seemed logical.
‘In this particular case,’ he said, ‘we believe that all three bids will meet the key operating requirements. So the selection will come down to price.’
‘The second lowest,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘The middle of the three gets the job,’ he said.
‘So,’ I said, ‘ideally speaking HP Logistics would be the middle bidder.’
Palmer’s expression switched to surprise, as if he’d only just thought of that one. Then he sat forward and dropped his fist gently on the desk. The smile came back. I’d got it again.
‘We need to be the middle bidder,’ he said. ‘Funny how simple life is.’
I thought about this.
‘So what you need,’ I extrapolated, ‘are your competitors’ prices. Before you put in your own bid.’
The smile held. We were moving together on this.
‘And you want Eagle Eye to get that information,’ I concluded.
Palmer’s smile broadened. He raised his palms. Simple as that. ‘I need you to get that information,’ he said, ‘fast. I want those bids on my desk by this weekend.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘we burglarise these competitors and steal the information.’
Palmer’s smile chilled. I sensed disillusionment stirring. A creeping suspicion that he’d gone with the wrong risk.
‘We don’t steal anything,’ he said. ‘I just want you to copy the key figures and get them to me. So we can finalise our bid.’
I had it. A little break-in at his competitors’ offices. Find out what their tender prices are. Quietly. So no one knows that HP Logistics’ bid is rigged. And for this discreet operation Palmer was offering three times Eagle Eye’s going rates. There was only one fly in the ointment.
‘Rigging bids is illegal, Mr Palmer.’
Palmer’s face transitioned to certainty. His instinct had been right. He’d gone against his gut feeling and gambled wrong. His expression was granite.
‘Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little in this business,’ he said quietly.
I gave this some consideration then explained Eagle Eye’s policy.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Palmer,’ I said. ‘We don’t do illegal stuff.’
Palmer watched me. His expression remained stony but a fuse was lit. Suddenly he leaned forward like he wanted to come over the desk.
‘Illegal?’ he hissed. ‘Am I hearing you right? Are you shitting me?’
We continued to lock stares while he tried to figure out just how big a blunder he’d made.
‘Since when did legal come into it?' he said. ‘All you guys play behind the rule book.’
‘Not Eagle Eye,’ I said.
Palmer watched me a moment then threw out a laugh like a Volvo backfiring. He pointed a fat finger.
‘So you’re Flynn,’ he said. ‘The ex-filth. I knew it the moment you walked in. Smelled it a mile off.’ He rocked back in his seat and shook his head. ‘Half the private dicks in this city are Met failures,’ he said, ‘but not many of them have the gall to squeal about legalities. Coppers are the most bent people I know.’
‘You don’t know me,’ I pointed out.
I wasn’t smiling myself. Maybe the sound of the triple-fee bubble popping had spoiled my mood. I’d known the bubble was going to burst but that didn’t make it easier. At least as commissioning interviews went this was short and sweet, because I was through.
I slid off the swivel chair and wheeled it back to the wall. Palmer waited until I reached the door.
‘Sure I know you,’ he yelled. ‘I did my homework. I made sure I knew what kind of a fuck-up I’d be hiring. And I found it was the worst kind. The high flyer who thinks he’s God right up to the day they cut his strings. How does it feel, Flynn? King of the rubbish dump.’ I heard him getting up from his desk behind me.
‘You’re as bent as any copper I ever met,’ he said. ‘But my information said that your agency was the best. Name your price. I’ll pay it. Only don’t give me pious, Flynn. Pious gives me acid. I never met an ex-filth yet who didn’t have his price!’
I had the door open. I should have walked out. I shouldn’t have been listening to any of this. Instead I turned back and wheeled the swivel chair out from the wall again.
Palmer laughed and slapped his desk.
I picked the swivel up. The thing weighed an absolute ton. You get hernias that way. I saw Palmer’s eyes pop as I heaved my shoulders and launched the chair. It went through the panoramic window as if it was paper, showering glass down onto the bays. Palmer was charging round his desk like a scalded walrus, but his tonnage was against him. By the time he’d got half way across the room I was out of the door and down the stairs.
It looked like Harold’s acid tablets were going to take a hit today.
CHAPTER six
My business acumen had shaved forty-five minutes off my schedule, which meant that the North Circular was still moving when I exited the depot. I drove north-east and took the Golders Green turn-off.
&nb
sp; The Slater home was a two-storey Spanish villa facing woods in a cul-de-sac south of the golf course. Ten-foot hedgerows hemmed the roads in like the avenues of a maze, testifying to the area’s premium on privacy. Luckily the Slaters preferred their wealth to be visible. Their house stood open to the road behind a fir-shaded lawn circled by a curving driveway that serviced triple garage doors. There was nothing parked. No sign of life. I spotted an ivy-covered substation set into the trees fifty yards back along the lane. Fibre optics were going down in the area and a ten-foot cable drum on the station parking area gave me cover. I reversed the Frogeye alongside the drum and settled in with a view of the house.
The lane was quiet. Ditto the Slater house. I tuned in to LBC and listened to two hours of regurgitated headlines and traffic nightmares. Sometimes you learn just by waiting and watching. Sometimes you get nothing. In two hours only three vehicles passed me, heading for properties further in. One was a Porsche with a forty-something woman at the wheel. The two others were high spec Mercs that whispered by as the light faded. I glimpsed shirt-sleeved execs behind tinted windscreens.
Around seven o’clock thick cloud drifted over the trees behind me and killed the last of the light. In response, the glass around the Slaters’ front door lit up. Someone was home. But the rest of the house stayed dark. I waited another fifteen minutes and decided to call it a day. I’d evaporated two and a half hours of Gina Redding’s money without even dipping my toe. Looked like we’d been lumbered with the quietest family in the city.
Just as I reached for the choke another car came up the lane and passed in a silent rush. A light metallic Lexus, its driver invisible. Fifty yards on the Lexus turned into the Slaters’ driveway and swung round in front of the garage. When the driver got out the light and distance worked against detail but I got an impression of a tall, casually-dressed man. No business suit. No briefcase.
The man was expected. The house door opened before he reached it and a woman’s figure held it while he entered.
No embrace. No welcome home. The man strode past without any sign he’d seen her. The door closed and the show was over. Maybe affection was not the Slater family strong point. Assuming these were the Slaters.
On a hunch I flipped the radio to a music station and waited another thirty minutes.
Bad hunch. The guy didn’t reappear. The house looked like it was settled in for the night. The family were probably sat around EastEnders, or maybe Father was helping Rebecca with her studies while Mother worked at her embroidery. Blissfully unaware that they had London’s hottest detective sitting on their doorstep.
Life is spooky.
At seven thirty I gunned the engine and left them to it.
I reviewed what I’d achieved. Distilled it down to having avoided the rush hour. Not something to trivialise. I headed towards Cricklewood, killed the radio and slotted in a Gil Evans tape. Added my own rendition to the opening of ‘Little Wing’. Drops of rain hit the windscreen. Drizzle turned into a downpour. I pulled in for petrol on the Edgware Road. The rain sparkled like crystal beyond the fluorescents as I pumped unleaded and watched the traffic, listened to the breath of the city hissing on wet tarmac. I was back in Battersea by eight twenty and Lady Luck combined with the Frogeye’s dimensions to get me a parking space outside my apartment. When I climbed the stairs I detected more luck. An aroma of fried chicken and paprika was emanating from my doorway. I wasn’t expecting visitors. Maybe my fairy godmother had dropped in. I hoped she’d cooled the beer.
Instead I found Arabel in the kitchen. I’d known it wasn’t my fairy godmother. That old crone had left home when I was six and hadn’t shown her sorry backside since. Luckily, Arabel’s backside made a spectacular substitute. I walked up behind her and got reacquainted with it to the extent possible when the owner is holding a frying pan that’s erupting like Vesuvius.
‘Nice surprise,’ I stated. Arabel turned her head too quickly and caught my eyes on the pan instead of her. Pushed her rear against me in what was meant as a fend-off but had the opposite effect.
‘Hey, babe,’ she yelled, ‘you’re gonna be wearing this chicken.’
I wasn’t sure what she was offering but I backed off. She returned the pan to the gas and turned to fend me off some more. When we got our lips unglued she gave me a big ‘Wow’. And that smile.
Wow!
‘Thought you were working,’ I said.
‘Someone asked a favour. Swapped for an early next week.’ Her skin was golden in the kitchen spots. The gold comes from mixing Anglo-Saxon and West Indian. I don’t know what mix had produced her brown-speckled eyes. They were pure Caribbean warmth – the thing I loved most as long as I kept a weather-eye for the tropical storms. Arabel got my arms untangled from her body, changed her mind and tangled them back. Her eyes were closed. Mine stayed on the frying pan. When Arabel realised that the saliva she was drowning in had nothing to do with her she broke the clinch, told me to go freshen up.
‘You nearly missed the feast, Flynn,’ she said. ‘Stir-fry doesn’t reheat.’
Flynn.
It’s what she calls me. Nothing impersonal - Arabel just comes from a generation that likes their names backwards. I wondered about age again. I’d never considered thirties old until my encounter with Miss Prissy-Pants this morning. But when I thought about it I realised that Arabel was halfway back to Miss P-P’s age. Made me wonder why a twenty-seven-year-old was cooking my dinner. Then I looked at Arabel and I knew why she had my front door key. A man has no way of defending himself against a girl like that. I swear I’d tried.
I showered and scurried back to the aroma of paprika and cayenne mixing with hot chilli. Arabel served the chicken on a green salad with a homemade dressing that was heavy on honey. We sat at the table overlooking the street and a basket of wholemeal rolls emptied fast between us.
We talked about things and swigged Grolsch to cool the chilli. I told Arabel about my missing girl. She was all ears – still found private investigation romantic even though her instinct must have been screaming that this was not a good profession in a guy. While she listened she attacked her chicken like she was on the run between shifts. With Arabel meals were a metaphor for life. Take what’s offered before the plate gets snatched. She finished ahead of me and sat back with her Grolsch. Came back to the missing girl.
‘You think there really is something funny going on?’ she asked.
‘There’s always something funny going on,’ I said. ‘The longer you do this job the more you realise that there’s no one leads a simple life.’
‘Some people must.’
‘No one I ever met.’
‘What about us?’
I gave her incredulous.
‘Relatively,’ she said.
‘Relatively,’ I agreed. ‘But we’re probably the only people we know who aren’t trailing skeletons around in their closet.’
Arabel’s eyebrows raised. ‘How do you know I’ve got no skelingtons, babe?’
‘Your skeletons would have left years ago,’ I said, ‘to save wear and tear on their bones.’
She threw me a look.
‘So how about you, Flynn? How do I know you’ve no boneyards? Since you never tell me anything.’
I stopped with my fork in mid-air. Looked at her.
Good point.
‘You don’t know,’ I said softly.
She watched me with those eyes, letting the point smoulder.
‘I just wonder sometimes,’ she said.
I broke the stare first. ‘My skeletons are buried,’ I told her. ‘Six feet under. Better leave them in peace.’
I concentrated on clearing my plate but she was still watching.
‘Sometimes it’s better to know, Flynn. Even the bad stuff.’
‘That’s what my clients say. Till they hear the bad stuff.’
I downed the Grolsch to so
use the spices. The chillies gave the beer an edge. Brought out the sweetness of the fermentation and sent the liquid down my throat like a spring stream.
‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t recognise my own skeletons if they came knocking on the door.’
I reached under the table and gave the wood a good loud rap. Arabel jumped a mile and spilled her beer, cursed me. Ended up laughing but her eyes were darting. She cursed me some more and swigged the rest of her Grolsch to steady her nerves.
‘What’s your guess?’ she said. ‘Has the girl run away? Is she in danger? Is the family hiding something?’
‘Any of those,’ I said. ‘Or all. Or nothing. Who knows?’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Sounds like you’ve almost closed the case.’
‘The biggest part of closing a case is knowing how to open it,’ I said. ‘Head off in the right direction and you’re as good as home. You just listen and watch, tug a few lines and see which tug back.’
The trouble was that the tugging usually started with inside information. This time I was outside, looking at a family who had declared that there was no problem. Maybe there wasn’t. Just Sadie Bannister’s overactive imagination and the fears of a lonely pensioner. Leaving us to disprove a negative. Arabel asked the question that I’d been asking.
‘How you gonna start?’
‘I’ll figure something,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’
Tomorrow would bring inspiration. Of that I was sure.
CHAPTER seven
I was up before six and went out in the dark to run three laps of the park. As I pushed myself hard along the river the needles of rain that stabbed my face told me that this must be healthy. In the investigation business it pays to keep ahead of the ageing process – or ahead of the self-destruct process, in my case. If I ever relaxed, I knew that the gremlin that grinned at me from the other end of my lifestyle see-saw would come scampering across and devour me.
Behind Closed Doors Page 4