Just as she opened the door, a man appeared. She didn’t recognise him, but that wasn’t unusual; it was a big building, plenty of people used the car park.
He thanked her for opening the door with a quick nod of his head and held it for her, letting her pass before hopping inside himself.
And she knew, of course, that the correct protocol was to challenge him, ask to see his building pass or perhaps even establish that he knew the door code, but correct protocol was hardly ever followed, and after all, he was courteous, seemed businesslike and in a hurry, so she let him go and began to make her way across the concrete apron towards her Mercedes, parked on the other side of the low-ceilinged car park.
The air was thin and warm, but worse than that was the feeling down here, the tomblike sense of somehow being encased in concrete. She didn’t like it at the best of times and today, for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she felt more than usually nervous. Just a feeling she had, but an insistent one. A sense of something having changed. As though that thin, warm air had been displaced, its chemistry altered.
Something not right.
Or was it just her mind playing tricks on her? After all, having told Alex of her fears regarding the crime organisation run by Raymond Doyle in Derby, Tess had learned that Doyle had links to the recently deceased Sir Charles Norton. There had always been rumours about the Nortons and the level of their influence, so she’d asked a friend at GCHQ to investigate it for her.
‘I can’t help you,’ he’d told her at first.
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘I’mnotsure. Something to do with the security classification.’
‘Is that it, then?’
‘All I can suggest is that I have a friend who works at RAF Chicksands.’
‘What’s RAF Chicksands?’
‘Military intelligence. Johnny’s in human resources so in theory he has much higher-level security clearance than I do. This is a guy who’s on a team that can literally vet anybody.’
And so she had asked him to contact Johnny, all the while wondering why she was doing this. Was it for Alex? It wasn’t like she owed him anything, and in fact every sensible and settled-down fibre of her body told her that having anything further to do with Alex Abbott was very bad news indeed. He had all kinds of problems. He was a dangerous man. Dangerous literally and dangerous metaphorically.
And yet . . .
Johnny at RAF Chicksands would look into it, she was told. But a couple of days later her contact had been back in touch sounding somewhat discombobulated. ‘Who are these people?’
‘Um, I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘Well, no, I can’t. And nor can Johnny. According to him there are all kinds of clearances needed. Levels he didn’t even know existed. He says he’s leaving well alone and reckons you should, too.’
Which was enough to spook anyone.
She stopped, right there in the car park, halfway to her car, with something having occurred to her. The absence of something. The absence of a sound.
She swung about and sure enough, the door to the stairwell had not clicked shut. Either the mechanism was faulty or something on the other side was stopping it.
The man who had passed her? Had he remained there for some reason, preventing the door from shutting? From her position she could see that the door rested in the door frame, just not quite fully closing, although it was impossible to tell if there was anything – or anyone – on the other side.
Her mind went to something that Alex had told her once. Listen to your instinct. She swallowed. Her eyes went back to her car. Her keys were in her hand and she activated the clicker, although why, she wasn’t sure. The car unlocked with a comforting clunk. Sidelights came on. The internal light glowed. There was no sign of anybody there.
Or was there? Did she imagine it, or was there a movement in the shadows simultaneously accompanied by a shuffling sound? In the office it was occasionally joked that there were rats down here but somehow she didn’t think that was a rat.
Listen to your instinct.
Smartly, she turned, and although her first thought was to go back up the stairs into the sanctuary of her office, that door still had not shut, and so instead she headed quickly for a narrow pedestrian walkway to the left of the exit ramp, trotting up it fast towards the rectangle of daylight at the top.
She reached the street and was about to turn right to head for the main entrance to her building when she saw a man approaching her from that direction. Like the first guy she had encountered, he wore a smart single-breasted suit. Almost exactly the same kind of suit, in fact. Same build. Same look about him.
Their eyes met.
She was in danger. She knew it. She actually felt the adrenalin inside her as though it had been administered via hospital drip.
At the same time thinking of the number of things she’d watched where she was screaming at the screen, ‘Why doesn’t she just call the police?’
So she turned, quickly, jabbing out 999 on her phone.
‘Emergency services, which service do you require? Fire, police or ambulance?’
‘Police, please.’
‘Putting you through.’
Through to force control. ‘Police, how may I help you?’
‘I think I’m being followed.’
‘OK, let’s start with your name and your location.’
She went through it. She told them who she was and what she did, and if she exaggerated the extent of her criminal work, well, that was just to ensure that they took the threat seriously. She was asked to stop and wait for a squad car.
She glanced behind. The guy still there. ‘I’d prefer not to stop right now,’ she told the call handler. ‘Can I just keep on walking? Are you able to track me using my number?’
‘Yes. We can do that. We’ve got you. We can get a squad car to whatever is your current location.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ Something was happening on her phone. ‘I’ve got a call coming through,’ she told the call handler, and then saw who it was. ‘This might be something to do with what’s happening.’
‘OK, well, you should see a squad car soon.’
She took the incoming call. It was Alex.
‘Alex,’ she said.
‘Tess.’
And she’d never been so glad to hear his voice.
CHAPTER 47
Abbott, with the phone glued to his ear, was making his way along the corridors of the Travelodge and back to his room. He needed his laptop on which he’d copied the CD just prior to giving it to the courier. And he needed his Glock.
And finally, Tess answered.
‘Alex.’ The voice like nectar in his ear.
‘Tess,’ he said, still hurrying, reaching for the key card from inside his Diesels. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, I think I’m being followed.’
He stopped in the corridor, thinking, Oh God, what have I brought down upon her? What have I got her into?
‘Do you have any idea why?’ he asked her, even though he knew the reason. Still wanting it to be something else. An angry client maybe.
‘I was looking into the Doyles and because I was looking into the Doyles I got looking into the Nortons, and—’
‘I know, I know,’ he said, feeling immediately wretched. ‘What do you see?’
‘I called the police,’ she said with an almost distracted air. From the sound of her voice she was walking fast.
‘That’s good,’ he said, thinking, The police. Did he want Tess in the hands of the police? ‘But I need to know what you see.’
At the other end of the line she took stock. ‘OK, well, there was a guy in the car park. He was behaving a bit strangely. So rather than go to my car, I headed for the street. Up there, I saw another guy looking a bit like the first guy. It’s all too much of a coincidence. That’s why I called the police.’
‘Do you see him now?’
She glanced behind. The street was no
t busy but some way back she could see him. He was on his phone, just the same as she was, but not looking her way. Not for the first time in the last ten minutes or so she wondered if she were simply having an attack of the heebie-jeebies. ‘The guy’s still there, Alex,’ she told Abbott.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Just on his phone.’
‘But he’s still following?’
‘I mean, in the sense that he’s behind me, yes.’
‘They’ll have more than one man on you,’ he told her. ‘Look to your front, probably on the other side of the street. Look for either a guy by himself or in a pair.’
She did, and sure enough, across the road were two men, both in suits, one on his phone and the other . . .
Looking right at her.
Quickly averting his gaze.
‘Yes,’ she told Alex. ‘Two of them up ahead.’
‘OK, the chances are that they were planning to take you in the car park.’
‘Take me?’
‘We can assume that’s what they want to do. They’re not following you for any other reason.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said, and she heard the shake in her own voice. ‘Should I just approach a random stranger? Get him to help?’
‘No, because you’ll have to stop. If you stop then they’ll move in. They’ll have medical or law enforcement credentials and they’ll have you out from under the nose of the Samaritan before he even knows what’s happening.’
‘What if I go into a shop? A pub? A restaurant?’
‘Same. For now, until I say any different, just keep moving. If they break into a run then you do too. Head for a Tube station. If you see a police car in the meantime, flag it down. But listen, Tess. Only a uniform. Not a plainclothes copper with a badge. Just a uniform.’
That was her best chance, thought Abbott, still on the move himself. Get her in the back of a patrol car being her best bet. Get her in the system. Once she was in the system he could contact Cuckoo and get him to pull strings before they could reach her.
‘Don’t worry, Tess. We’ll get you out of this,’ he reassured her, but on the other end of the phone he wasn’t so sure. What’s more, he had his own problems. He came to the lifts, thought to himself, What would he do if he were them? He’d be covering the lifts, and switched direction.
He pulled open a door and took the stairs, came round a dogleg, and there stood a guy on the steps.
It was one of them. Same look. Abbott had taken him by surprise, but he recovered quickly and his hand whipped inside a black denim jacket to what Abbott could see was a shoulder holster, snatching out the sidearm. Abbott leaped up the three steps that separated them and went for the gun arm, twisting his body across it, jamming down on it and snatching the weapon from fingers rendered suddenly useless by pain, turning the guy’s own gun on him.
Down went the gunman, folding awkwardly to the steps, gunless and pathetic all of a sudden, his hands going up in wanton surrender. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he pleaded, but Abbott was in no mood to take chances; he put one in the guy’s leg, and then, as he screamed and writhed, reaching his hands to the wound, blood bubbling up from his trouser leg, did a quick frisk and found a walkie-talkie.
‘Who are you working for?’ he demanded to know.
The guy didn’t answer, too absorbed in his own pain. Abbott helped him with that. He pressed the suppressor into the wound. ‘Who are you working for? Is it Juliet Norton?’
The guy shook his head furiously. ‘No, no, I don’t know that name.’
‘Kilgore? Is it Kilgore?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s him.’
‘Then you work for Juliet Norton,’ Abbott told him. He left the guy writhing on the stairs – hopefully he’d black out – and dashed up the rest of the steps towards his floor.
‘Any sightings?’ he heard over the walkie-talkie. ‘I’m closing in on his room.’
Shit.
‘Alex,’ he heard from Tess, ‘are you still there?’
He cradled the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, checking the weapon he’d taken from the guy on the stairs. He had a full clip. He put one up the spout, checked the suppressor was secure and then stepped smartly out into the hotel corridor, swinging left and right.
The passageway yawned at him, empty, with at least two fire doors between him and his room.
Over the walkie-talkie he heard activity. ‘Back entrance clear. Front entrance clear. Ground floor clear.’
‘Receptionist says he was going to his room.’
‘Number three? Any sign?’
‘Negative.’
He adjusted the volume and spoke to Tess. ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ he told her, keeping his voice down and beginning to move along the corridor, gun held low, ready to either hide it or use it, depending on who might make an appearance. ‘What’s your sitrep?’
‘Still the same. One guy behind, two up front, one on either side of the road.’
‘Are they aware that you’re alert to their presence?’
‘Yes, I think so. Our eyes have met.’
‘OK. So they’ll know you’re calling for back-up.’
But, he thought, they don’t seem too bothered about it. The sort of not-bothered you might be if you thought yourself untouchable. And that’s significant. ‘What they’ll try to do next is box you in.’
‘Box me in? Oh, box me in before they snatch me.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Look out for a van. An SUV. Anything with blacked-out windows.’
‘Oh God, Alex.’
‘Don’t worry. If something like that draws up to the kerb, that’s when they’ll make their move. Start screaming. Stay as far away from the road as possible. In the meantime, have you got anything on you? Rape alarm? Pepper spray? Uzi 9mm? Anything like that?’
‘No, sorry, sorry.’ He was trying to put her at ease, but she still sounded on the verge of panic, as though her failure to be in possession of pepper spray might somehow prove a deciding factor.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘They’re useless anyway. Just a deterrent really. Do you have your car keys on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case get your keys out of the bag, hold them in your fist with the keys themselves poking out between your fingers, like knuckle dusters, do you see what I mean?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘OK, where are you now?’
‘Right now, I’m on Farringdon Road,’ she said.
Abbott had gone through the first of the two fire doors, was approaching the second. He could see his room door through the glass. Still, he had the corridor to himself.
The walkie-talkie crackled. ‘Number two. Report. Report. Nothing from number two.’
‘Number two located. He’s on the stairs. He’s bleeding out. We need to get an ambulance.’
‘No ambulance. We don’t have time. He knew the risks.’
‘Wait a minute. His walkie-talkie is missing.’
‘Number three, he must be on his way to you. Everybody else. Everybody else, converge on his room.’
‘Tess,’ said Abbott, ‘stay on the line. There’s something I have to do.’
He was coming up on his room now. The expected convergence hadn’t quite happened yet. But it would. He found his key card and very, very gently inserted it into the slot, trying to remember the sequence. At some point there was a bleep, but was it when the key card was first inserted or afterwards? Very, very gently in with the key card.
Bleep.
***
She didn’t like it. The fact that Alex was no longer there and talking to her. Even though he was miles away and physically unable to help, just having him on the line and being able to act as her eyes and ears had reassured her. And for a moment or so back there she’d almost found her predicament thrilling. Stupid woman.
She looked to her right and saw a side street, which she knew led up to Hatton Garden. It would be busier than her current location. Bu
sier being better in this case.
The only problem being that she had to take the side street.
Ahead of her the two men, both of whom had their backs to her. One was on his phone, or pretending to be; the other was simply walking with his hands in his pockets. He glanced quickly behind himself, most likely to check she was still there behind them. She pretended not to notice. Pretended to be absorbed in talking on her phone.
Now she did the same. She glanced behind to check if she was still being followed, thinking, Lone Suitman, are you there? and finding that . . .
No. He wasn’t. He was gone.
Gone.
He had been there. Now he wasn’t. OK. Try not to think about it. Try not to wonder too hard where Lone Suitman had gone and instead take advantage of his sudden absence. As quickly as the thought occurred to her, she turned hard right and began half-walking, half-running up the street that led up to Hatton Garden. A narrow one-way street on an incline, there were no other people beside her. Just Hatton Garden at the top, where pedestrians moved to and fro across the entrance to the street, people going about their late-afternoon business, the sight of it reassuring, like a prize, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All she had to do was reach it.
And then, at the top of the street, moving in from the junction with Hatton Garden was one of the guys. No, not just ‘one of’ the guys. It was ‘the’ guy – Lone Suitman. The guy who’d been following her. Well, at least she knew where he’d got to, she thought. He was on his phone, and she heard the words ‘here, she’s here, moving in’ and she knew that she’d made a terrible mistake.
In a panic, she swivelled around, about to reverse direction and return to the safety of the main road below, but there had appeared the other two men.
She looked back at the top of the cut-through where Lone Suitman had broken into a trot, was coming down towards her, quickly narrowing the gap between them.
‘Alex,’ she said into her phone. ‘Alex, can you hear me?’
***
Bleep.
Abbott reacted at once, flattening himself against the corridor wall. A third of a second later, three bullet holes stitched their way down the hotel-room door. He waited, waited, holding his nerve. From his phone he heard Tess calling him, ‘Alex, Alex, can you hear me?’ But said nothing, outwaiting the guy inside, the guy who would surely need to know whether any of his three shots had met their target.
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