Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘You know how to contact the others at risk from the Albanian?’

  ‘I have phone numbers here.’ He tapped his chest. ‘In my wallet.’

  ‘I’m going the long way round now. Sit up, keep your eyes open and tell me if you see anything suspicious. Right?’

  He licked his lips like a scolded dog. ‘Right. Where are we going again?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  It was closer to eight by the time I was satisfied there was no tail and, for the third time, I found myself travelling up to a grand house on The Bishops Avenue.

  I pulled up in front of the door and there he was, my favourite butler, complete with little bow of recognition.

  ‘Jesus. That’s some fucking safe house,’ Tom said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  The Asparovs were on their yacht down in Monaco, but when I told him I needed that favour he had promised me, the boss had made sure Elliott knew to expect me. There was only Elliott, a housekeeper and three security guards in residence. The latter took turns looking at multiple CCTV screens, finger on the buzzer connected to an instant-response private security company. That was what made it a safe house.

  Elliott walked down the steps and opened the door for Tom, who had apparently been welded to his seat. ‘Do you have any luggage, sir?’

  I was already out. ‘Elliott, you can drop the formalities. Someone set fire to all his clothes.’

  An arch of an eyebrow at the impertinence.

  ‘Can you show him the ropes. And the panic room?’

  Elliott nodded and stood aside as Tom stepped out.

  ‘Elliott, Mr Asparov said I could take another car. This one might be compromised.’ I didn’t want to be pulled for having liquid glass on my number plate. But it meant I got to the Asparovs with minimal chance of anyone recording my progress.

  ‘Of course. He requested the least conspicuous model.’

  Actually that was me. ‘Good.’

  ‘And he asked me to give you this.’ I held out my hand and he tossed the phone across the top of the VW. ‘It is keyed to his private cellphone. Plus it is Bluetoothed to all the vehicles and it will operate the outer gates here as well as any garage doors.’

  ‘And the car?’

  He pointed to a concrete block at the far side of the house with a steel door. ‘Take the car elevator down to level three. Garage level. You can leave your . . .’ He gave a look that suggested I had turned up with a shopping trolley full of all my worldly possessions ‘. . . Volkswagen around the back.’

  ‘Car elevator?’ asked Tom.

  I got in and started the engine. ‘You’re not in Kansas now, Tom. Shut the door. Oh, and Elliott?’

  Elliott bent at the waist so he could see me. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘I know it was you who tipped off Mr Asparov about Bojan and his little games. Thanks.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, ma’am,’ he said, and it sounded like he meant it.

  Oligarchs tend not to buy understated cars, it defeats the purpose. Asparov’s vehicle collection – the usual Lambos, Ferraris and Bentleys – was housed in a circular Ferris Wheel-type system, a rotating garage that seemed not much smaller than the London Eye to me. A button spun the entire periphery until the car you desired was on the ground and you drove it off the steel pan it sat on. Then you simply edged straight into the car elevator. The lift had sensors that detected when there was a vehicle inside and automatically closed the doors and started its ascent.

  My new car had already been driven off its metal platform and was sitting in front of the elevator, keyless fob on the dashboard. So it was that, fifteen minutes after arriving, I was driving out through the gates in the most anonymous car in the collection, a Porsche Cayman. If it hadn’t been the colour of a startled tangerine, I might even have blended in with the local traffic. Still, it meant that Freddie had no trouble picking me up and swinging out onto my tail.

  I put her number into the Asparov phone and tried the Bluetooth on the Porsche. It worked perfectly. ‘Hiya. Can you hang back and see if anyone is playing silly buggers?’ I asked. ‘Try not to lose me, though.’

  ‘If I do, I’ll just look for the glow in the sky. You think he negotiated a discount for that colour?’

  ‘Money is colour-blind,’ I said. ‘I’m going along the A1 for a while, see what happens.’

  ‘Everything else OK?’

  I put my foot down and the Cayman displayed an admirable keenness as it accelerated away. ‘With a bit of luck.’

  And the kindness of strangers.

  The Sharif household still had the atmosphere of a powder keg, but I ignored it. Whatever was going down had nothing to do with what I told them over coffee in the conservatory.

  Sharif softened his bear-with-a-sore-head approach long enough to quiz me.

  ‘So you think this man was taking photographs of Nuzha?’

  ‘I suspect, that’s all. I said he was taking photographs. It might not have been of her.’

  ‘Then who?’ Mrs Sharif asked.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You?’ Mr Sharif made it sound offensive; as if it was inconceivable anyone would want to catch me on film. Looking as I did that morning, he might have had a point.

  ‘Look, a friend of mine has run into some trouble. It is possible they were trying to ID me. Some East Europeans. There is also . . . well, my ex-husband might be behind it. I just don’t know. But what I am saying is that a PPO must never become part of the problem. There is a chance I am. Then again, it might be Nuzha they are interested in.’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t discussed this with Ben Harris, but he had his finder’s fee and he’d get a percentage of my wages no matter what happened. ‘I should stay away, temporarily at least. I can get you someone else to look after Nuzha from Monday onwards. Perhaps a friend of mine called . . .’ I gulped back her nickname. ‘Judith Flint. But meantime, put Ali and the team on Orange status. He’ll know what that means.’

  ‘So you won’t drive me to Pilates?’

  ‘Oh, fuck your Pilates,’ interjected Sharif. ‘I want you here. With Nuzha, till we sort this and your bloody family out.’ He stood, leaned over me and wagged a finger in my face. ‘What kind of trouble are you in with these East Europeans, young lady?’

  ‘I’m not sure I am in trouble, not yet. As I said, a friend might be. I just want to play it safe.’

  ‘Safe? You were employed to keep us safe. Not bring threat to this household. If you have put my family in danger with whatever is going on with you, you will rue the day you ever heard the name Sharif!’

  He left with much slamming of doors and I heard him shout for Ali.

  A silence settled over the room, broken only by the calls of the green parrots outside. For the second time that day I wished I had a pistol. I hate those birds.

  ‘Mrs Sharif, can I ask you a question?’

  ‘If you wish,’ she said haughtily.

  I watched her pick up her cup and sip her coffee. With the spring sun slanting through the windows onto her face she looked older than usual. I could see how she might be looking down a gun barrel at forty.

  ‘What happened in Dubai?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, either something happened or someone has swapped your husband for an alien.’

  ‘Business, that’s all.’

  I stood and walked over to the glass doors of the conservatory. A white cat prowling across the lawn froze and looked at me defiantly, padded off and shat in the middle of the lawn. Another critic. I turned back. ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘Family business. Nobody ever believes this, but having money, lots of money, is a burden. It sets you apart forever, creates jealousy and a sense of . . . entitlement in others. We have a very large family, between us. Here there is just Nuzha. We can pretend we are a compact unit. Over there . . . it’s like trying to . . . What’s the expression? Herd cats.’

  ‘I’m sorry a
bout Pilates. Perhaps you could drive yourself.’

  She gave a thin smile. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Not because of the driving, I am perfectly capable.’ Don’t I know it. ‘But Mr Sharif has spoken. Oh, I know you think he is a liberal, Western man. But scratch the surface.’ She mimed running a thumb down skin. ‘Tradition runs deep. And after losing his son, the thought of anything happening to his daughter . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘So I won’t be disobeying him. At least not on this occasion.’

  There was a twinkle in her eye when she said it and this was probably the window to ask her who it was she met when she went off in that BMW X1, but I let it drift by. I had a way of finding out that wouldn’t involve accusations of spying and betrayal.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  I spoke with a confidence I didn’t feel. ‘Get to the bottom of this. And whoever is doing whatever it is they are doing, stop them.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  By early afternoon I had relaxed a little. Tom was secure at the Asparovs’. Nobody could track him there. Jess was safe. She had been picked up by Laura from Chrissie’s with a hundred pounds to go shopping for new clothes. That was the surprise, or so I claimed on the phone. She didn’t question it. I didn’t want her going back to the flat. So after a spree in Top Shop and River Island, Laura had deposited her with Nina, who had promised to keep her close.

  After I had briefed her, Nina wrote a story to post on the NewsX anonymous blog about the possible link between several deaths and an arson attack on a boat in London. Tom would kill me, but Nina was able to tip off the police about the post she had ‘stumbled’ across – and let them think they had joined the dots – without us coming out into the open. It meant they would track down and possibly protect the remaining members of the unit who, even if they didn’t take Tom seriously, might well believe the police. Would Tom see the story? I doubted that he had ever used the Guardian website. One thing Nina had discovered in her trawling was Tom’s real name, but I let it pass. Names aren’t that important.

  My phone peeped and I checked it and added some more time to the BMW X1’s parking. I didn’t want it towed away. We were sitting a good hundred metres from it, in our own parking bay. Using the key One-Eyed Jack had cut me from the diagnostics theft, I had driven the X1 and left it outside the mosque as bait. Freddie had followed in the Cayman with me, alert for any hangers-on. Now we were in the Porsche watching our lure. She used the time to bring me up to speed on Matt.

  ‘No visible means of support, granted, but he eats at places like Kitty Fisher’s and the Typing Room.’

  ‘Who with?’ I wondered if he had looked up any of our old friends.

  ‘A variety of people. Men, women, his girlfriend.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’ Despite myself I sounded like an aggrieved wife.

  ‘Well, I assume so. She’s popped up a couple of times.’

  ‘You have pictures?’

  ‘Not great, mostly phone ones.’ She held up the screen to show me a fuzzy image of Matt, taken across a street. ‘I’ll send you a couple off the Canon taken with a decent zoom.’

  ‘What’s your instinct? Is he straight?’

  She let out a long breath. ‘That’s a nice place he’s got. Rented. But three thousand a month they go for.’

  I whistled.

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ I asked Freddie.

  She looked disappointed. ‘What makes you think I’m holding something back?’

  ‘The way you’re squirming. Either you’ve left your vibrating butt plug in or you have more to tell on Matt.’

  ‘Damn. You know everything.’ She began to put her hand down the rear of her jeans. ‘If I can just reach the switch . . .’

  ‘Freddie!’

  ‘OK.’ She settled back down in the seat. ‘He’s had a vasectomy.’

  I think she enjoyed the way my jaw hinged open. ‘What? When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then how’d you find out?’

  ‘The National Insurance number you gave me. Access to health records. He’s tried to have it reversed. Went private for the vasectomy, but NHS to have his dangly tubes stitched back up.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Didn’t work, though. Still a seedless orange.’

  ‘How did you get all this?’

  ‘Cost me three hundred quid.’

  ‘I said I’d pay.’

  ‘I know. But the sad thing is, time was I could have got all that and more for the price of a blowjob.’

  ‘The bottom’s dropped out of the blowjob market, so I heard. Ten a penny these days.’

  ‘So it’s not just that I am losing my allure.’ She pouted her lips.

  ‘Well, that too.’

  The punch on the arm was harder than really necessary.

  A vasectomy? Well, I could see how that might appeal in the days when he was busy screwing his way around the clubs of the Balearics. And then the reversal attempt? A sudden realisation that there would be no more kids. Jess would be his last shot at genetic continuity. I supposed that explained why – after facing up to mortality with the death of his father – he had bowled back into our lives. I almost felt sorry for the little prick.

  ‘Now, tell me again why we are sitting staring at this BMW.’

  So I did, everything I knew about the Sharifs. From Partition, through the brickfields of Pakistan, the clothing empire, the dead son, their talented daughter, and the problems they were having now. Freddie brought up pictures of the family, agreeing about how attractive the mother was, and even locating one of the dead boy, a fiercely handsome yet delicately featured lad, who had inherited his ammi’s eyes. It was taken on a snow-flecked mountainside, the day before the earthquake struck. Just as I had finished the background briefing Nina called me. ‘The package has arrived safely,’ she said conspiratorially.

  ‘Stop it, you sound like a drug dealer.’ Whatever could have made that pop into my mind?

  ‘Jess is here,’ she corrected. ‘You want a word?’

  ‘Sure. Hello, darling.’

  ‘Hello, Mum. You should see what I got . . .’ I didn’t really listen to the details, just relished the girlish excitement in her voice. It was only towards the end she thought to ask: ‘Mum, when can I go back home?’

  ‘Soon. Not just yet.’

  ‘But why can’t I? What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Help Nina around the house. Love you lots.’

  I hung up before she could say anything else. It was only a matter of time before she realised her favourite shoes were back at the flat and we simply had to go and get them. I’d cross that bridge later.

  ‘We’re up,’ said Freddie, snapping my attention back to the job in hand. ‘POI.’

  Person of Interest. I watched as a figure wandered across the street, bent down and peered inside the BMW, cupping their hand against the glass to cut the reflection. The POI then stood up straight and scanned the street, the face set in an expression of puzzlement.

  ‘Mrs Sharif didn’t phone to cancel then,’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t like to use them. These days phones have a way of biting you in the arse. Call history, itemised billing. Hold on . . .’ Freddie had a monocular to her eye and was watching the POI pad back across towards the mosque. ‘Not going in the mosque. Heading next door.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘You got the address from the sat nav, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know postcodes aren’t unique to one building.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I snapped.

  ‘And anyway, if that mosque was originally a garage, it would share the code with the house next door. Which, by the look of those doorbells, are flats.’

  I let that implication sink in. No mosque visits might mean there were no Muslim terrorists involved with Mrs Sharif, or vice versa. And by the look of it . . .

  But Freddie was ahead of me by leaps
and bounds. ‘You check out the eyes?’ She gave my arm a gentler punch and smiled. ‘At least we know what happened to the son.’

  Just to the east of the bandstand on Parliament Hill Fields is a white obelisk. Not very tall, it has no inscription on it whatsoever. Yet there it stands, a monument to . . . something. I had heard it called The Pillar of Free Speech and it was mooted to be a gathering place for modern-day pagans. There were none of those about that I could see, but it made for a convenient landmark for a meeting with a spy. After all, aren’t they supposed to be protecting free speech and the British way of life? Which included the right to call yourself a pagan without having a limb chopped off. Or your head.

  I saw Swincoe as I entered the park. Or at least I saw his tomato-coloured trousers, the sort that only posh men can get away with, mainly because they don’t give a shit what anybody else thinks. He also had on a Barbour jacket and a tweedy trilby. He looked like he’d been scooped up from the races by flying saucer and dropped in London. Then it struck me. It was Saturday. This was his idea of weekend clothes.

  There was a fresh wind whipping at me as I reached the stone, and I pulled the hair off my face. ‘When do we get to do Waterloo Bridge?’

  ‘That’s for the big boys and girls. Are you OK? You look—’

  ‘Like shit. I know.’

  ‘A little tired was the only observation I was going to make.’

  I was closer to the truth. I looked like someone had been practising Japanese calligraphy under my eyes and my skin had taken on a dry, granular quality. Furthermore, I was well aware that my energy levels were low. I could feel my concentration drifting. As Paul used to say after a double shift, I was like a V-12 running on ten cylinders.

  ‘Aren’t we conspicuous up here?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I think those trousers are.’ I did a 360. I spotted young Lawrence and his famous haircut, walking a dog near the bandstand. I wondered if it was his or if it was an MI5 employee. There were joggers, mothers with buggies, tennis players and several men with trousers almost as vivid as Swincoe’s. Maybe he was right. Nobody gave us a second glance.

  ‘We can have a coffee over there.’ He pointed to the single-storey café between the bandstand and tennis courts.