by G I Tulloch
He strolled towards her, hands in pockets, the smile never leaving his lips. She tensed, anticipating an attack of some sort. He stopped within three feet and took his hands out of his pockets before stepping towards her.
"Miss Trent," he said quietly, "you can run but you can't hide."
He reached out a hand towards her but before he could touch her, a foot travelling as fast as she could propel it, caught him in the groin, causing him to double over involuntarily before she took the edge of her hand and hit him behind the ear. He slumped to the ground
She was disappointed that he wasn't unconscious but satisfied that he was definitely out of it for a while. She rubbed her hand and then shook it to dull the pain.
"Every father should encourage his daughter to take up a martial art of some sort," she declared to the still prone figure.
She walked away, increasing her pace. Pedestrian traffic thinned out as she turned off the main thoroughfare. Now her feeling of pursuit disappeared but she found herself turning around every few seconds to scan the street anyway. Several times she nearly tripped before she was brought to a halt once again by the mobile phone. She felt the anger rise up in her again only to subside when Adam's name appeared in the display.
"Adam!"
Adam's voice was unusually abrupt to the point of rudeness. "Bel. Where the hell are you?"
She caught the urgency in his voice. "What do you mean? I'm on Moorgate heading back to Bartletts."
"Don't go anywhere near Bartletts. Come round to my office now. Don't stop for anyone. Don't speak to anyone, do you understand?"
"No. Wait, what's going on Adam?" She was aware now of desperation creeping into her voice, something she normally detested.
"I don't have time to argue. I'll explain when you get here but for the moment you're in real danger so just do it." And with that he hung up.
She stared at the phone. He wasn't kidding she decided. Adam definitely had some explaining to do.
Chapter 10
Adam put his office phone down but without hesitation dialled another number and drummed his fingers on the desk waiting for the reply. Eventually the other end picked up.
"Adam?"
Adam leant forward to the phone. "Mitch. I need cover."
"No problem." The accent was unmistakable now. Thick Glasgow. "When?"
"Now. Until I say stop."
"Done."
Now Adam felt that he could afford to sit back and allow himself a sigh of relief as he ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes.
He and Anna had made the remainder of the journey into London in comparative silence; Anna now resigned to getting no more information from him.
Down the A12 into the East End, through Leytonstone, Hackney, down through Bow to pick up the A13 and into Whitechapel along Commercial Road. He tried to convince her to come back to the flat for protection until things calmed down.
She declined. "I guess the dangerous place to be is with you. You draw too much heat for my liking. I'll take my chances back at work thank you very much."
He turned into the Minories and stopped on a double yellow line outside the First National building.
"Call me. We need to arrange to retrieve your bags from the cottage."
"I'll do that." She hesitated and turned to smile as she got out. "Don't worry brother, I'm not letting you go." And with that she was gone. Adam surprised himself with his response, he was pleased.
But now he had to think. Someone who knew his past was willing to threaten him in order to prevent his involvement in John Bartlett's affairs. That much was obvious. But what was John hiding and why? He put to one side the reference to Fran's death. For the moment any thought that she might have been involved was more than he could cope with. Where did Granger Bartlett's death fit in and why was it a threat? The more he thought about it the more he was convinced it was key simply because it didn't make sense.
He needed to see John Bartlett on his own and get to the bottom of what was troubling him. Strangely he was convinced that it wasn't primarily to do with a dead man on a ship.
He was about to phone Bartletts to get hold of John when Bel strode into the office and sat purposefully in his visitor's chair. He put the phone down gently. Something told him to keep his mouth shut .
Bel took a deep breath.
"Lennox. I've been followed. I've received threatening phone calls. I've been told to drop everything I'm doing. My boss hasn't turned up for work, in fact he hasn't turned up anywhere. So what the hell is going on?"
So he told her. Everything, including, after some thought, the phone call reference to herself and Fran. He didn't feel it necessary to fill her in on the details of Anna's proposed expression of gratitude.
Bel ordinarily had a good complexion. Correction. Ordinarily she had a great complexion. But the colour drained out of it briefly as she sat quietly for a moment to digest his story.
"Adam. What the hell has it got to do with Fran?"
"I don't know. It may have nothing to do with her but I mean to find out."
"Who is this Anna woman?"
Adam hesitated, as much surprised at the question as anything. "She only got involved because she was with me at the time. I couldn't leave her there and I couldn't stay."
Bel raised an eyebrow, just the one. "And you believe her story, she just happens to be in the ditch as you drive along."
Adam shrugged. "I have no reason not to believe her," he replied, and then paused to check he had put in the right number of negatives.
There was then a long pause whilst they both disbelieved each other, silently.
"So do you think there is a real danger?" she asked. "Say, on a score of one to ten."
"What?" replied Adam. "Where one is what, a bump on the head with a blunt object and ten is what, assassination?"
Bel nodded sagely. "Something like that."
"They went to some lengths to frighten us but they made sure I wasn't harmed. I reckon the gunshots were designed to miss. After all it's not as if we've been personally attacked is it?" Bel chose to maintain silence whilst Adam continued. "I take their threat seriously though."
He got up and moved over to a water boiler in the hallway outside the office. "Tea, Trent?"
"Sure Lennox." She let her eyes wander round the office. It had been a while since her last visit. Things had changed, for the better she thought. They had re-painted, some of the old furniture had gone, and they'd obviously persuaded Clare not to play Radio 2 in office hours.
"Just how seriously do you take it?" she called through the open doorway.
Adam came back with the tea. "I've called Mitch."
Bel shuddered inwardly. Mitch was ex-SAS and Adam had got to know him when he was living rough on the streets. He was generally dirty to Bel's eyes but above all extremely dangerous. Bel knew he had killed men in cold blood and she wasn't at all convinced that his moral code put him on the side of the angels. However, he did owe his life to Adam after an attempted overdose and had sworn to protect Adam at all costs. As long as he was on your side you could breathe easy. If he wasn't.....
"It's not as bad as all that then?" The sarcasm was heavy enough that it slid off the seat and hit the floor with a loud metaphorical thud.
"I'm not taking any chances."
Bel shifted in her seat. "What are you going to do next?"
"I don't know yet. I need to talk to Gerry. There are a lot of things I don't understand. And I need to talk to John."
Bel took the mug of tea but shook her head meaningfully. "Missed the boat there Lennox. John's missing. Can't be found anywhere."
Adam's face was a picture of frustration. "What do you mean? He's done a runner? You think he's gone into hiding?"
"I don't know, but he hasn't been seen by anyone today. The police still want to interview him again."
"Shit. I'm sure he's involved in this. Do you know why he came over from Holland on that freighter?"
"No but the more I think
about it the more I'm sure that he planned to do it."
Adam stopped absently fiddling with a paper-clip. "Why? He seemed to imply that it was a spur of the moment thing."
Bel fingered her ear when she was thinking, a gesture that Adam was noticing more and more. "He didn't buy a return ticket to Rotterdam."
"So he always intended to come back on the 'Hermes'?"
"Something like that."
Adam considered it for a moment. John Bartlett goes to Holland intending to return on the Hermes. Whilst he's on the ship a man dies, possibly murdered. As soon as Adam and Bel get involved they receive threats to their lives. So what on earth did John find on the ship? And who was the dead man?
He badly needed to speak to John again, the world was becoming an unstable place.
Chapter 11
The man in the bed stirred restlessly, causing the man in the chair to rise to his feet hastily. He pushed aside the mosquito net, and watched the old man's face as he checked his pulse for the umpteenth time that night. The old man opened his eyes.
"I'm not dead yet damn you." There was surprising strength in his voice compared to his apparent physical condition. Sweat ran down his forehead plastering thinning hair to his scalp on the way. His eyes didn't quite focus as he scanned around him.
Cane furniture was scattered around the room in a haphazard sort of fashion. The walls showed evidence of once having had paint on them but now they had a distempered sort of look that would soon peel away to a jigsaw puzzle of flaking colour. The windows, shuttered but uncurtained, allowed a hint of the city lights of Bangkok to occasionally break through the trees outside the window. The wet season had brought the humidity and the discomfort to a high that even the archaic air conditioning didn't seem to temper. When the electricity failed, which it regularly did, you could bathe in your own sweat. Both men had been there long enough get be used to it and still they resented it.
He gazed across the room to a clock that his eyes couldn't read. "What's the time?"
His attendant didn't need to look. "It's half past two".
The old man didn't appear to hear.
"You shouldn't have come Frank. I told you to stay at home."
Frank smiled. "My home's with you. Always has been". He didn't point out that that was twenty six years ago.
It brought a lop-sided smile to the old man's face. "You're a bad liar but a very good friend Frank. I'll make it up to you, you see if I don't."
Frank's smile was becoming a fixture but it didn't seem to worry him.
Their conversation was a slow one punctuated by long silences. At four o'clock just when he thought that the old man had drifted off again there was a movement from the bed.
"Any news from England yet Frank."
"I haven't heard anything today except that the Stock Exchange is fighting off yet another take-over bid." Frank knew it wasn't the sort of news he was looking for but they wouldn't neglect ties with the old country. "I'll phone them later and see if I can get the football scores."
That brought a brief smile from the bed but obvious pain dampened it almost immediately and the sadness in the eyes returned. With some effort he spoke again and the measured intonation implied this was no ad lib speech.
"I've killed too many in my time Frank. Hurt too many. Didn't want to but couldn't stop it. I didn't have any option." Shortness of breath overcame him for a few moments. "I took the only way out Frank. Tried to do the honourable thing in the end, but I don't know if it was right. Was it right Frank?" He didn't wait for a response as if eager to get this confession out of the way. "I don't know. I had to make a decision and they were after me. They knew. That's why I had to kill Granger Bartlett, you realise that don't you?"
The effort was becoming too great now and he seemed to succumb to the fatigue as his eyes closed and his breathing eased.
Frank rose from the bed and moved through into the other room of the three-bedroomed apartment. Years ago they had had a villa with a dozen rooms but things had got harder and now the end seemed in sight.
He picked up the phone, hesitated in order to confirm that there was a dialling tone and dialled the UK number.
Response at the other end was quick as if the call was expected.
"Frank?" The voice, middle aged male with a vague Yorkshire accent was bright and chirpy. Too chirpy for Frank.
"Yes, it's me. He's not too good today. I think he's slowly sliding downhill. He's accepted it but he won't give in easily."
"How much longer do you think it'll be. Do you think I should come out?"
"No , not yet but it could be soon. Any news from London that I can pass on to him? He's always asking."
Chirpy hesitated. "There's nothing worth talking about at the moment but I'm expecting an update soon, within the next day or two."
"Find out what you can. It seems to put his mind at rest."
They exchanged parting sentiments and Frank hung up. He debated whether it was actually worth going to bed and in the end decided against it. There was cleaning to do and the fridge was in need of replenishing before food got scarce again.
He could ring Bartletts tomorrow if necessary.
Chapter 12
Gerry returned to the office having made peace with the photographer, arranged a new photo shoot with Stan Hollis and bought the elephant a bun. He was having a good day.
Once they had moved out of the office into the comfort of Adam's flat he changed all that by bringing Gerry up to speed with the days events.
"Strewth. I turn my back and you're both up to no good."
Adam nodded and bowed. "Thank you for that Gerry. Constructive criticism is always welcome in the face of adversity. You are a succour to our souls."
"Pardon me?"
"You're a great help, I don't think."
Gerry adopted his favourite stance of mortified injustice, hand on chest.
"Of course the same cannot be said of you, O Great One, who picks up dodgy hitch-hikers and attracts the sort of clientele who blow up cars at the drop of a hat." He bowed in mock deference before striding out, Thespian style, in high dudgeon, to get himself a cup of coffee.
It must be pointed out that 'flat' was a very understated term for Adam's home from home. An estate agent would have described it as 'extensive apartments being an exclusive conversion in luxury style from traditional London buildings of character'.
The two floors above the office had been gutted and Adam had re-built the shell into large open plan spacious rooms. An internal front door could be accessed directly from the street up a staircase to an internal lobby, or via a spiral staircase directly into the office below. The front door opened straight into the living area where the original laundry windows had been replaced with vast double glazed units giving a view over the roof tops of East London. A central open brick fireplace broke up the endless expanse of floor into lounging and dining areas. You would have been forgiven for believing that Adam suffered from claustrophobia.
A sweeping open-tread staircase rose out of the dining area. To the right of the stairs, half obscured, was a study and then finally the kitchen, separated from the rest by a broad island breakfast bar that you could play table tennis on at a push. The second floor was disappointingly conventional with three large double bedrooms, all en-suite, although the floor to ceiling windows added a certain je ne c'est quoi, or so the architect maintained at any rate. Adam was just glad that they'd abolished the 'window tax' in the last century.
The odd shape of the original building resulted in lots of nooks and crannies, and strange alcoves, which visitors always seemed compelled to explore at the first available opportunity.
Currently they were in the living room with the fire lit, not that it gave much heat but it looked warm, and Gerry liked it. He stood with his back to it and warmed himself whilst observing Adam slouched in an armchair.
"So how did they know your mobile number?"
Adam looked up from the mail he had been leafing through and aft
er a brief hesitation, shrugged. "Any number of ways to get hold of a mobile number."
"What? In the twelve hours or so between this thing blowing up, if you'll pardon the pun, and your car going west?"
Adam hesitated, unwilling to concede the point. "It could be done."
"Or you were shopped by someone who already knew the number."
Adam considered the thought as he got up to stir the fire into life and throw on another log. A spider ran off across the carpet to avoid being incinerated, thereby proving that the logs were real at any rate.
"Gerry you're scaring me. Change the subject."
Gerry raised an eyebrow, shrugged his shoulders and re-addressed himself to his favourite subject.
"'Begging your Pardon' romped home three lengths clear."
Adam stopped poking the fire. "Excuse me?"
"2.30 at Kempton Park. Trouble was it was favourite at 6 to 4 on. Hardly worth the effort."
"Such is life Gerry. Such is life." Adam couldn't suppress a smile. He looked across the room where Bel was almost asleep on a couch the other side of the fire.
He lowered his voice. "Gerry. What can you remember of Granger Bartlett's death?"
"Granger's? Not much. He wasn't my side of town if you know what I mean. It made quite a stir at the time I remember." Gerry looked at Adam whilst helping himself to a Scotch and handing Adam a Coke. Here was a ritual that had happened before. "You think it's tied in somehow?"
Adam accepted the Coke and pulled the ring. "Gut feeling tells me it's central but I don't know why yet."
"I could sniff around, call in a favour or two, get someone to search the archives. See what we can come up with."
"That would be good but I need some quick answers. Something tells me that these characters aren't going to take no for an answer."
Gerry stopped mid mouthful. "You think there's a real danger then?"
"Yes. Don't tell Bel but my guess is these people have killed at least once if not more and if Granger's death wasn't an accident then I guess it's more blood on their hands."