Stealing People

by Wilson, Robert

  ‘She used public transport every time except on the last day, when she ordered a cab to go to Islington.’

  ‘No street name?’

  ‘Just Islington.’

  ‘Can you remember the cab driver?’

  ‘He was a regular,’ said the doorman, nodding.

  ‘I’d like to talk to him,’ said Mercy. ‘What about Mr Jensen?’

  ‘We chatted about football. He was a Chelsea fan. I ordered him cabs most days. He went twice to Wilton Place, and to a restaurant called Moro in Exmouth Market on the tenth of January at around eight p.m.’

  ‘And on his last night?’

  ‘He gave me a tenner, didn’t ask for a cab. He just walked up to the Strand, turned left and that was the last I saw of him.’

  ‘Find me that cab driver,’ said Mercy. ‘And someone who can give me a physical description of Walden Garfinkle. What about room service? Once Mr Jensen had left, the daughter probably ordered up room service rather than sit in the dining room on her own.’

  The receptionist tapped into the computer, looked at the bill and made a call. The doorman left to find the cab driver. A few minutes later a young oriental woman from room service came into the office. She spoke perfect English with an accent that made Mercy think she’d learnt it from the BBC World Service. She remembered delivering food to the Jensens’ suite on three consecutive evenings. She’d been struck by the tension in the room and how lonely Jensen’s daughter seemed to be.

  ‘I didn’t exactly feel sorry for her because she seemed too strong for that and too rich, being in a three thousand pound a night room. I thought it might be a lover problem. I’ve seen plenty of that in my time. Bust-ups, coming-togethers, disappointments, even fights with punching and biting. I talked to her as I laid out her food. Nothing special, just to see if she wanted any contact.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘She made a pass at me. More than a pass. She asked me if I wanted to go to bed with her. And I told her I wasn’t that way inclined.’

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘She shrugged as if I’d turned down an offer of a Coca-Cola or something, like it was nothing,’ said the young woman. ‘The strange thing about it, for such a beautiful woman, was her approach. It was very masculine. She sat there playing with her phone, legs slightly apart, elbows on knees, and said: “Fancy a fuck?” I remember being confused by her.’

  ‘Were you nervous when you delivered food to her again?’

  ‘No. Like I said, it was nothing to her. I wasn’t interested. No problem. We just talked for a bit … that’s all. She told me her dad had left a few days ago without telling her where he was going.’

  ‘Was she worried about him?’ asked Mercy. ‘Did she talk about her father at all?’

  ‘She was tense, but maybe from waiting for her phone to ring. She never let it go. I asked her what her father did and she just said he was a businessman. She gave me the impression that he’d disappeared before. She said he was probably chasing skirt.’

  ‘Did you get her name?’

  ‘Yes, it was Siobhan.’

  Boxer was on his way back to his flat in Belsize Park. As he came out of the tube he had a message from Glider to call him.

  ‘Got a lead for you, haven’t I,’ said Glider. ‘But don’t get your hopes up, it’s not cast iron.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’ve gone back through my old records to see what business I put Marcus’s way and tried to find somebody in that lot who Marcus might still trust if he got a call from them promising decent returns.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very exciting.’

  ‘I checked them out ’n’ all,’ said Glider. ‘And they’re still active doing a lot of cigarettes to pubs. Thousands of pounds’ worth. And they’re south of the river. Bermondsey. That’s right next to Walworth.’

  ‘Let’s have it, then.’

  ‘His name’s Harvey Cox and he operates out of a warehouse off the Old Kent Road at the end of Latona Road, not far from South Bermondsey railway station. And you can use my name as long as you’re not going to kill anybody. You’ll have to find your own way in. Your best bet is to find a need for some cigarettes or maybe a supply. Lots of them.’

  Glider gave him a number and hung up. Boxer called, gave his name and Glider as contact. He asked to speak to Harvey Cox. The voice on the other end said he’d call him back in five. It took ten.

  ‘Cox,’ he said. ‘You Boxer?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘What you got?’ asked Cox. ‘Buying or selling?’

  ‘Buying,’ said Boxer, who reckoned this was the best way to meet Cox face to face in his warehouse in Bermondsey.

  ‘What you looking for?’

  ‘Five hundred cartons a month.’

  ‘We can do that.’

  ‘I’d like to come and see you.’

  ‘We deliver.’

  ‘I prefer face to face. I want to see your set-up.’

  ‘Glider’s name is normally good enough, my friend.’

  ‘He said he hasn’t done much business with you, and not in that line. I need to see that your operation is … functioning.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s functioning,’ said Cox, flat with irony. ‘All right, you know where we are. We’ll be expecting you. You could bring the first instalment. What sort of time?’

  ‘Between five and six?’ said Boxer. ‘Money?’

  ‘The money is one fifty a pack.’

  They haggled to £1.25.

  ‘Make sure you get here before six,’ said Cox. ‘We let the dogs out after that.’

  They hung up. Boxer opened the safe behind the Italian painting and took out £7,000. He went into the kitchen and lifted the floorboards at the back of one of the units and extracted his lightweight Belgian-made FN57 semi-automatic pistol and loaded it.

  ‘You going to come with me this time?’ asked Siobhan, consulting her mobile phone.

  ‘Where?’ asked Amy.

  ‘They don’t say. They just said get going, instructions to follow.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I imagine they’ve got news of my father or they wouldn’t be calling me out.’

  ‘So it’s the same people you met before, your father’s network?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll be meeting the same person but it will be someone from the network.’

  ‘I’ll have to call my dad.’

  ‘Get on with it then,’ said Siobhan. ‘When these people say jump, you jump.’

  Amy went into the bedroom, called her father, who was just going into the tube.

  ‘Stay put,’ said Boxer. ‘Don’t go with her. That’s not for you.’

  ‘What about you, why don’t you go?’

  ‘I’m on something else at the moment and there’s a time limit.’

  ‘So let me go?’

  ‘You’re not trained, Amy. You’re dealing with professionals here. Even Siobhan has been trained. You won’t know what to look for.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The signs that things are going wrong, not unfolding as they should do.’

  ‘Why don’t I follow her?’

  ‘You won’t get anywhere near. They’ll lose you on the first street corner if they’re any good,’ said Boxer. ‘You stay in the flat, let Siobhan do her thing. I’ll talk to you later. I’ve got to go now.’

  He hung up. Amy went back to Siobhan, who had her coat on ready to go.

  ‘Huh!’ said Siobhan. ‘Daddy’s little girl’s going to do what she’s told. Sit on the sofa and look at your nice little goody two-shoes.’

  ‘I was thinking I’d follow you.’

  ‘I’ll have to tell them you’re coming or they’ll see you and cut you out like a limping wildebeest.’

  Silence.

  ‘See ya later,’ said Siobhan, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

  ‘All right, I’ll come,’ said Amy.

  Siobhan punc
hed a text into her phone.

  ‘We’ll have to wait now, see if we’ve got permission.’

  At five o’clock, Alyshia D’Cruz was ringing on the doorbell of her mother’s house and not getting any answer. She called Isabel on her mobile and frowned as she heard it ringing in the house. Then she got worried, remembering her mother’s tiredness, the news of the pregnancy. The long flight back from Mumbai even in business class had been hard for her; maybe she’d picked something up in India. She couldn’t stop herself from doing what everybody did in these situations: she dropped to her haunches and looked through the letter box, thinking she’d have to find a way into the house, regretting that she’d given her key back to her mother.

  The hall light was out but the light above the stairs was on and that meant she could see her mother lying on the granite tiles, her feet still up on the last steps. Alyshia fell back in shock at the sight. She called an ambulance sitting there on the hard, cold pavement, and then took off for the estate office, thinking it might close and she needed to get a key to the house.

  The woman in the estate office caught her mood immediately. The look of horror on Alyshia’s face transmitted everything. The woman dropped her handbag and, with the words ‘unconscious’, ‘pregnant’ and ‘ambulance’ resounding in her head, found the spare key to Isabel’s house. They tottered on heels too high for urgency past the parking area and the perfunctory gardens. Sirens whooped in the distance. A strange wind gusted around the courtyard in front of the house buffeting them, making them unsteady on their feet and lifting the woman’s flared skirt, which Alyshia knocked back down.

  Only the Yale key was necessary. The woman fell through the door as Alyshia barged past her, stepping out of her heels and throwing herself down the hallway, landing on her knees and skidding over the granite tiles.

  The woman shouted that she would go to the front gates and open them so that the ambulance could get as close as possible. Alyshia didn’t hear her as she came to a halt at her mother’s crumpled shoulder and was seized with panic as to what to do. Should she move her? It was clear she’d fallen down the stairs. She could see the bruise, broken skin and blood on the side of her forehead. Had she damaged her neck in the fall?

  Vital signs, check for vital signs. Isabel’s hand was flung over her head and Alyshia grabbed the wrist, which was still warm, and tried to find a pulse. She saw the speckle of blood on the back of her mother’s hand and got her head down on the tiles and saw more blood around her mouth and leaking out in a string of mucus to the floor. She reached over and opened an eyelid, remembering something about pupils reacting to light being another indication. The eye stared sightlessly into the sparkling tiles.

  The loud whoop of a siren made Alyshia start. Blue lights flickered on the walls. Paramedics in fluorescent jackets came crashing through the gardens, one with a bag over his shoulder and an oxygen tank while the other dragged a wheeled stretcher.

  ‘Stand back, love,’ the first one said.

  Alyshia rolled away helplessly and sat hugging her knees, propped up against the wall, looking at the paramedic’s shoulders and back as he rapidly assessed the body, applied oxygen. The other paramedic pulled the trolley in.

  ‘Anything we need to know, love?’ he asked Alyshia.

  ‘She’s five to six months pregnant, late forties, high blood pressure and she’s just flown back from Mumbai,’ said Alyshia, on automatic. ‘There’s blood coming from her mouth and the back of her hand is speckled with it as if she’s coughed.’

  ‘What does that sound like to you, Dave?’

  ‘Pulmonary embolism,’ said Dave. ‘Let’s get her out of here. We spend time immobilising her neck, she’ll be DOA.’

  ‘DOA?’ asked Alyshia.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do everything we can.’

  ‘Call ahead and prep them for an emergency C-section,’ said Dave. ‘There’s life …’

  They had her on the trolley and were lifting her out through the door in less than a minute. Alyshia followed, pulling the door to and taking the spare keys with her. She got into the back of the ambulance. The siren whooped once and the ambulance reversed out into the street. She asked where they were going.

  ‘Chelsea and Westminster.’

  Alyshia called Boxer. No answer. She left a message. ‘This is Alyshia. Call me urgently. Mum’s had a fall. I’m in an ambulance on the way to the Chelsea and Westminster. It’s 17.23.’ She called her partner, Deepak, told him the terrible news. He said he was on his way. She called her father, who immediately tried to divert the ambulance to an even better hospital.

  ‘That your old man?’ asked Dave. ‘What’s he on?’

  ‘He doesn’t like things out of his control,’ said Alyshia.

  ‘She’ll get the best care … probably in the world,’ said Dave. ‘This is what the NHS is really good at. Dire emergency. Life or death.’

  ‘Is that what this is?’ she said, panicking.

  ‘First thing we got to do is get the baby out. Everything that should be keeping your mum alive is going to the baby. We get the baby out and the anticoagulants in to disperse the pulmonary embolism and there’s a chance, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it’s touch and go.’

  Alyshia clamped her hands to the sides of her head.

  ‘I’m not … I’m not ready for this.’

  ‘Nobody is ever ready for this,’ said Dave, ‘except us. The good news is she’s still going. She didn’t break her neck and we didn’t damage her by moving her so quickly. And they’re all ready for her at the hospital. Hang on to that, love.’

  The ambulance was driving at a terrifying speed for central London. The sirens whooped as the blue lights slashed through the night. The front lights blasted out, driving into the traffic like a snowplough, parting the cars. Alyshia and Dave hung on as the body of the ambulance rocked back and forth, the driver working the steering wheel with furious energy. They pulled into the A&E bay of the Chelsea and Westminster and there was a whole platoon of people waiting. The trolley was unloaded and Isabel was swept into the hospital, drip held high, oxygen bottle by her side, but the clear mask over her nose and mouth was barely fogged.

  15

  17.30, 16 January 2014

  South Bermondsey station, London

  Boxer had turned his mobile phone off in the tube. He was preparing himself and didn’t want any interruptions in what was going to be a very difficult negotiation with Harvey Cox.

  He found the warehouse at the end of Latona Road. The dogs were still in their cage: two Rottweilers, each around eighty kilos. They barked savagely at him as he walked past. A door to an office by the large warehouse opened and a young black guy beckoned him in.

  ‘I’s Jarrod,’ he said, and asked Boxer to put his case on the desk and to stand with his arms out and legs apart. He frisked him for weapons and went to take hold of the case.

  ‘That’s my money in there,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ll take care of it until Harvey and I have done the deal.’

  ‘Thought you done that over the phone.’

  ‘Nothing’s done until I’ve seen the set-up and we’ve shaken hands on it,’ said Boxer, and beckoned the case from the young man’s grasp.

  Jarrod weighed it as he handed it over, told Boxer to follow. Boxer was glad the FN57 in the secret compartment in the bottom of the case was an especially lightweight gun. Even fully loaded it was well under a kilo.

  He was interested to meet Harvey Cox. He’d detected some kind of an accent when they spoke on the phone and he wondered if he might be a Jamaican. As it was, there were two men in the room, one a tall, rail-thin black man and the other a heavily built white guy with close-cropped grey hair and a matching goatee. He turned away from the window as Boxer entered and held out his hand.

  ‘Harvey Cox,’ he said. ‘And this is my partner Delroy Pink.’

  The black man made no move, just nodded. He had the look of someone who’d done people harm. Harvey looked as if he’d ordered it.r />
  ‘I thought you might be Jamaicans from your accent,’ said Boxer.

  ‘We’re Bahamians. Black as they come, white as they come,’ said Cox, pointing at Pink and then himself.

  ‘Glider didn’t tell me much about you, just said that he’d done business with you over eighteen months ago,’ said Boxer. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming to take a look.’

  ‘From our side, too,’ said Cox. ‘Glider just said you were cool, no more ’n that.’

  ‘Your man still searched me for weapons.’

  ‘He search everybody, no matter what,’ said Cox. ‘What’s your business?’

  ‘I sell cigarettes in market towns in the south of England,’ said Boxer, keeping it vague, not wanting to give them anything that could be checked out. ‘I lost a supplier. I need someone to keep the flow going. You?’

  ‘We mostly import American brands through suppliers in Dubai. Occasionally we buy locally if we get peaks in demand,’ said Cox. ‘We only deal in real brands, no fakes, no Chinese rubbish.’

  ‘It’s a big warehouse for cigarettes.’

  ‘I have a collection of wartime motor vehicles that I rent out to production companies for movies and commercials.’

  ‘Who was the supplier you lost?’ asked Pink.

  Both men looked at him. One of Pink’s eyes was bloodshot.

  ‘Somebody in Bristol with a connection in the Canaries,’ said Boxer.

  ‘You want delivery outside London, you gonna have to pay extra,’ said Pink. ‘It’s free only inside the M25. You get me? You wanna take a look at the goods … make sure they’re to your liking?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Boxer, picking up his case.

  They left Cox in the office and walked through the dimly lit building, past dust-sheeted cars, trucks, some British, others American, until they came to a Sherman tank.

  ‘What’s this all about, Delroy?’

  ‘Man crazy about war movies is all,’ said Pink, opening a door beyond the tank. ‘The Sherman’s for him. He don’t rent that out.’