by Graham Marks
Standing on the street, he gathered his thoughts. He knew next to nothing about this place, but what he did know was that the people who really had an area totally sussed were the postmen. Everyday they walked up and down each street, went past every door. If anyone could tell him where the squats were, the posties could.
His story was simple, almost a cliché, because simple was easy to tell, easy to understand, and much easier to believe than complicated. He was looking for his kid brother, who’d left home a year or so ago and come down to London from a village outside Wolverhampton. Usual thing, looking for excitement, looking for streets paved with gold, same old same old. A good kid, just a bit naive, you know?
The reason he was here was that their mum had fallen ill and it didn’t look good. She was likely going to die, and she knew it… wanted to see her boy one last time. Dean hadn’t laid it on too thick, just enough to do the job. Which it had.
His sob story had succeeded in getting him in contact with the shift foreman, who had been very sympathetic. Except Dean didn’t want sympathy, what he wanted was some addresses of squats in the local area where his ‘brother’ might be staying. Find the information he needed to get a move on. Get back out on the street.
But sometimes you had to wait. Be polite and listen.
Dean could do that, for a bit, although he had to work really hard at not looking at his watch as the man rabbited on and on about the state of the nation and how unappreciated postmen were. Finally, when he thought he’d given enough of his precious time, he stepped into a gap in the conversation.
‘I’m sorry, mate, but, you know, I’ve, um, I’ve things to do…’
The shift foreman checked the time himself, as if, somehow, they were working to a similar schedule. ‘Oh, right…’
‘Could I have the addresses?’ Dean pointed to the folded piece of paper in the man’s hand, the result of a straw poll he’d taken in the sorting office.
‘Yeah, sure…’ The foreman handed it over, slightly put out at being interrupted.
‘And thanks.’ Dean shook his hand, leaving a twenty-pound note in the man’s palm, and left.
There were half a dozen addresses on the list, which, looking at the A–Z street map, were spread out either side of the main road. Walking it was the only way to check out each place properly and he had no time to waste. The opposition, whichever bits of the law were also out there looking for these people, was not going to be that far – if at all – behind him. The clock was ticking, and if he wanted to be paid, he had to be first in the race.
He knew the law had pictures of the four people caught on camera in Bristol, but didn’t know how good the images would be. He knew they would, like him, be looking for the squat these people were living in, so they would both be playing the game by very similar rules. Except he had one advantage. He had a picture of the man in charge, and they didn’t. And the man in charge was the only one he cared about.
Nick Harvey had been at university in Birmingham with him; the way Harvey told it, both had been heavy-duty politicos in the student union. Right-on rabble-rousers, is how he’d described the two of them back then. Harvey’d said that he’d done it to get the girls, and as soon as his student days were over he’d ditched the left-wing crap and joined the dirty capitalists. Money, he’d realised, being a much better way of attracting the kind of women he liked than radical politics. And Dean wouldn’t argue with that.
Harvey’s friend had gone the other way, though, become even more extreme, but the two of them had, somehow, remained friends and remained in contact over the years. Harvey hadn’t explained why, and, frankly, Dean didn’t care.
It was just after eleven o’clock when Dean pushed open the door of the Vietnamese restaurant and asked if they were still serving. They were, and over the first food he’d had since early that morning, he listened to the comments he’d made on his tiny digital recorder and looked at the notes and sketches he’d made about each of the houses on his list.
Two were empty and boarded-up, which meant the bailiffs must’ve been in and regained the property for the owner. Of the others, there was a party going on at one and he’d actually managed to get in and have a poke around, straight as he looked, with his cover story. It wasn’t the place he was looking for, unsurprisingly.
And that left him with three houses needing a closer inspection, one of which he had really good feelings about. Something about the way every window at the front was heavily curtained, keeping the gazes of the curious at bay, drew him to it. He’d also checked the next road down. A top-floor flat, which should give him some kind of view of the rear of the target house, was for sale. He’d left a message on the estate agency’s answerphone service, saying he was a cash buyer, very interested in the property, and requesting a viewing as soon as possible. He would be there when they opened up tomorrow morning.
Dean wasn’t that tired, but he was going to be up with the milkman in the morning, checking the three houses out in daylight and before there was any activity. Finishing his meal, he paid his bill and left the restaurant. As he walked back to the bedsit he saw someone talking to a man running an all-night minimarket, leaning across the counter and showing him what looked like photographs. If this was one of the team looking for the same people he was, they were really going for it.
Dean frowned, frustrated that there was nothing else he could do right now, except wait until the morning. Which might be too late. Then he stopped and went into the shop, picking up a chocolate bar and standing behind the man with what he now saw were photos. He heard him ask the shop owner if he was sure he hadn’t seen any of the people, and watched the man shake his head.
‘Lost someone?’ Dean asked, as the questioner turned to go, putting a concerned look on his face.
The man, shorter than him by an inch or so, nodded and Dean could tell he was tired. ‘Yeah.’ The man held out four black and white pictures, which Dean took. ‘Seen any of these people round here?’
Dean examined each photo carefully, committing the faces of the older man, the two boys and the girl to memory; it was a skill he’d honed to perfection over the years. Then he looked up, giving the pictures back.
‘No, mate, sorry.’
27
Friday 18th August, Tunbridge Wells
Henry Garden sat in the armchair in front of the TV. He wasn’t paying any attention at all to what was happening on the screen. His mind was elsewhere, trying to deal with what he’d just read. He glanced over at the six-seater table behind him in the lounge-cum-dining room of his flat, at his laptop, open and still displaying the file he’d copied on to a USB flashdrive in the office. Dean Mayhew’s army record.
Garden stood up and went into the kitchen to pour himself another large glass of wine. He’d finished the first one without even knowing he was doing it. Coming back out he went over to the table and sat down in front of his computer, scrolling to the top of the document and reading it through again, hoping he might have made a mistake, misunderstood some highly relevant piece of information that would change everything. It was a vain hope. He hadn’t.
It was all there in black and white. Dean Mayhew was a dangerous and unstable man. Ex-SAS. Trained to kill, and seemingly very good at his job. His only problem was that he’d apparently found it almost impossible to differentiate between the theatre of war and life away from the combat zone. He was a complete wild card, as far as Garden could make out, and had been ‘let go’, Services No Longer Required, some five or six years previously. One violent incident too many. When Nick had introduced him to Mayhew, at the casino, he must only have been out for a year or so.
He was, according to his psych profile, a highly intelligent, if badly educated, man with sociopathic tendencies. Was that as bad as being psychopathic? For the life of him Garden couldn’t remember, and for one horrible moment he was catapulted back into a classroom at school. The room where his sadistic English teacher, Mr Bailey, had delighted in exposing any and all examples of
what he called ‘the rampant stupidity of this ghastly excuse for a generation’.
Garden reached behind him for his dictionary, pulling it off the shelf and opening it. This was, he thought, as he flicked through the delicate, petal-thin pages, one of the best reasons for living alone: everything was always exactly where you expected it to be.
Sociopath, he read, An individual with a personality disorder that manifests itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour, as well as a lack of conscience.
Nice. He flicked backwards and stopped at another page.
Psychopath, it said, A person suffering from a chronic mental disorder, with abnormal or violent behaviour.
From the Greek psyche, the soul, and pathos, meaning disease. Disease of the soul… it almost sounded tragic when put like that.
Not a lot to choose from there, then. Returning the book to where it belonged, Garden felt the cold aura of panic descend again, the sense that things were beginning to unravel uncontrollably and that it was all his fault. Which it was. Dean Mayhew was not a very nice person, and one to whom Garden had effectively handed the information he needed to find a group of people; people Nick Harvey wanted found and stopped. And the only reason you’d use a man like Mayhew was if you wanted them stopped permanently.
Garden was sure he could feel his heart pounding much too fast as he closed the file and shut down the laptop. He wished he could press an ‘undo’ button, like on his computer, so that he would never have met Nick Harvey, never have heard of AquiLAN. What was the man doing associating with aberrant dross like Mayhew anyway?
There was nothing intrinsically bad, or evil, with the idea of creating an anti-CCTV unit, which had been Nick’s original plan behind the idea of Omega Place. But there was a lot wrong with hiring a maniac like Mayhew to clear up the mess when your own creation refused to obey orders and started to threaten the status quo.
And even though Garden had known about the project right from the start there’d been nothing he, personally, could have done to put a stop to it. Harvey – a man whom he’d once heard described as having the morals of a horny wolverine – had him, figuratively speaking, hanging by his thumbs, his toes just touching the ground. There was nothing he could have done, not with Nick holding the substantial… really very substantial gambling IOUs over his head. And whatever other evidence the man now had of his continuing involvement.
The idea had seemed harmless enough, to begin with. Nick would use an old contact of his from university days to set up and run a fake, virtual anti-CCTV radical action group. This person, Garden had never met him, apparently knew all about agitprop and street protests and he would make Omega Place seem like the real thing, as well as an operation that appeared bigger than it actually was. Seem like the real thing, not actually be the real thing.
The plan had been for the group to operate in areas where AquiLAN had already got contracts in place, but wanted to expand the business possibilities. Omega Place’s antisocial activities, the perceived increase in vandalism and quasi-criminal behaviour – all reported in the local press – would give the impetus needed to persuade the public that more cameras were necessary. And councils that it was money well spent. A win-win situation all round.
Where had it all gone so wrong?
Garden knew he was kidding himself by asking the question. He knew precisely when it had all gone pear-shaped. When he’d had one of his good nights at the tables and had had too much to drink; he’d told Nick about the remotely piloted vehicle programme, and the next thing he knew the idiot had told the person running his covert operation and he’d put the information in print. The highly classified information.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, it seemed like Nick’s plan had backfired and his pet project wasn’t as under his control as he’d thought. From what Garden could work out, the man in charge had had another agenda and pulled a fast one by getting Nick to fund setting up Omega Place, then running off with it. The tail had started to wag the dog.
Never trust a radical…
28
Saturday 19th August, Kingsland Road
The sign in the window had stated, quite clearly, that the estate agency opened at 9.30 a.m. The first employee to make it in swanned up to the front door at about 9.52 a.m. Dean, a stickler for timekeeping, only just managed to keep his temper under control, his left hand holding his clenched right fist tightly behind his back so that he didn’t throttle the stupid little nancy boy or punch his lights right out.
As luck would have it, the flat had turned out to be a vacant possession and the agent had turned out to be an idle little sod, quite willing to hand over a set of keys, so Dean could show himself around. So here he was, in the small second bedroom, which gave him the best view on to the rear of his target house, with a cup of reasonable take-away coffee, a bacon and egg sandwich and a newspaper. And his digital camera. It was now set up on its tripod and pointing out of the open window, zoomed in on one of the back bedrooms – as good as a pair of binoculars. So far, nothing. No sign of any movement in any of the rooms. Maybe they’d had a late night.
Dean finished his breakfast, putting the paper bag the sandwich had come in inside the empty paper cup and dropping that into the small carrier bag he’d been given in the café. He checked his watch. 10.55. If someone didn’t get up soon he’d have to go round and knock on the bloody front door. He checked the LCD screen on the camera, switching to viewfinder mode, and then shifting the camera so it was looking at what he assumed might be the kitchen. He adjusted the zoom. Was that a movement, or just a reflection on the window pane? He fine-tuned the camera angle and concentrated on the image, hardly breathing, like he would if he was staring down the scope of a sniper rifle. Waiting for the shot.
It was movement. No doubt about it.
Lightly touching the shutter release to lock the focus on the back door, Dean left his finger hovering over the button. Waiting. Now something was happening and he was switched to active mode; now he didn’t mind the waiting because there was a purpose to it. He would soon know if he’d been right and this was the house he wanted. He was sure this was the place, trusted the instincts that had served him well all his professional life – when he didn’t let his bastard side ride roughshod over them.
The handle on the back door moved slightly… moved some more and then, finally, the door opened. A girl came out and Dean had framed her, checked the focus and fired off a couple of shots before he realised she didn’t match any of the pictures he’d been shown the night before. Dark, shoulder-length hair, oval face, slim. His view of her from this bedroom was at a similar angle to the shots taken from the CCTV footage that he’d seen, and she was definitely not the girl. That one’d been fair-haired. He took a pad out of his jacket pocket and checked the notes he’d written after getting back to the bedsit. Definitely fair-haired.
Had he got the wrong place? Always a possibility, because he really hadn’t a whole lot to go on with this situation. Dean closed out the negative thoughts and looked through the viewfinder at the open door. Was there someone else in there? Would they come outside as well? Back to the waiting game. He watched as the dark-haired girl went inside again. And waited some more, standing still as a cat about to pounce, feeling like a coiled spring. Powerful, but in control.
Someone, someone male, walked into shot… CLICK-CLICK-CLICK… and then out of shot. Followed almost immediately by someone else, also male, before he had time to look properly at who he’d just photographed… CLICK-CLICK-CLICK.
Quickly switching to viewing mode, Dean scanned the shots of the two people, two young men. Both very similar in build, age and appearance, both with close-cropped hair, both very like one of the pictures the man had shown him in the minimarket, although one had a squarer jaw than he remembered. Reselecting the shooting mode, Dean zoomed back out and panned the camera until he’d found the pair, one of whom now had his back to him. Either of them could be who he wanted. But, to be sure this really was the right place
, he needed to see another person, another possibly-maybe. Two maybes and he had somewhere worth properly checking out.
A couple of minutes later somebody else came out of the house. And this time there was no ‘maybe’ about it. This was definitely the older guy with the straggly hair and moustache, dressed pretty much as he had been in the picture; no need to check his notes this time. Bingo. The waiting was over and he could move forward to the next stage as this had to be the bolt hole where Orlando Welles was hiding.
Dean took a couple of pictures of the man as he talked to the two boys, shut the camera down and took it off the tripod. Putting everything away in his backpack, he picked up the carrier bag with his rubbish and checked he’d left nothing at all behind. He went over and closed the window and then left the flat.
29
Saturday 19th August, Kingsland Road
Everyone had slept in late, for some reason. And here it was, just after eleven o’clock and Sky had just come out to ask him and Tommy what they wanted for the brunch he was offering to make.
Tommy looked surprised. ‘Is there enough food in the house, man?’
‘There will be when you two guys go and get some in.’
Paul laughed, noticing the flash of light as the sun caught an upstairs window someone in a nearby house was closing. ‘Always a snag, isn’t there?’
‘No such thing as a free breakfast, right?’
‘Is there enough cash?’ Tommy yawned. ‘Or are we gonna have to use one of Rob’s dodgy credit cards?’
Sky dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a twenty-pound note. ‘I think I’ve got enough. A Jackson should do it.’
Tommy reached for the money. ‘If it wasn’t so late I’d get us all breakfast from McDonald’s for that much!’
Sky moved the note out of Tommy’s reach. ‘And I’d be pretty pissed if you did. I want eggs, free range, I want bacon, sausage – the thin kind – and I want OJ, that Greek bread with the sesame seeds on top, not the white sliced shit, and some tomatoes. We have butter and we have milk and we have coffee.’ He gave the money to Paul. ‘Go…’