The Borough

by Steve Dockray

CHAPTER THIRTY

  "They're still there," she said, coming back into the bathroom. "I don't know how long they've been watching, but I gave them a nice wave when I came in."

  Winner was lying in the bath, the hot water up to his chin. "I expect they'll stay there until we go out in the morning. They probably think I'm still out."

  "I'm not so sure. They don't seem to know about the back entrance to this place, so they didn't see you go out. They can't possibly have identified you, not the way you looked when you came out of the water. I expect they had their suspicions, but even if they had looked in the lobby they wouldn't have seen a trail of water. We might just have got away with it."

  "I hope you're right, but it's sure to have made them extra cautious."

  "How are you feeling now?"

  "Not too bad, actually. The clothes must have protected me a bit and this water thawed me out in no time. It was a stupid accident, but if I hadn't fallen in the river I might still have been stuck out in the freezing wind even now."

  "I'm glad I didn't know you were in the water. I just wouldn't have known what to do. I saw them arrive at the marina and then two of them left without staying very long, but I couldn't see what was going on because the tide was so low that everything was down below the level of the quayside. Are you sure you're all right? I felt sick when I saw the state you were in."

  "I expect I'll be a bit stiff. Anyway, it was worth it. We picked the perfect meeting to listen in on."

  "If you feel fit enough, maybe as soon as you're out of the bath you should run through everything you can remember, while it's still fresh in your mind."

  Winner sat up and pulled out the bath plug. "I'm fine. We'll add the information to the secure diskette, so that there aren't any more incriminating bits of paper lying round."

  Ten minutes later, after Winner had put on a warm sweatshirt and jogging pants and Sally had made two large mugs of cocoa, they sat in front of the computer, with Sally at the keyboard.

  From the kitchen came the sloshing sounds of the washing machine working on Winner's filthy clothes.

  For a full half hour Winner racked his brains to recall every last possible detail, not only of the conversations, but also descriptions of the people and the boat.

  "You were incredibly lucky," she said, when he finally dried up. "You could have spied on ten meetings and not learned a quarter of what you found out tonight."

  "We seem to be getting the full picture now," Winner agreed. "The man I pushed down the stairs at your house must be called Vale. The man Cavendish called Raymond sounds as if he's been recently appointed to run the building supplies business."

  "And we know there's a bribe or some sort of payoff with Farrier, the developer. What's more, it's going to be in cash."

  "That's still a bit mysterious. Cavendish asked Riggs to get some cash to him on the eighth of February. He wants it there so that he can show it to Farrier. Not give it to him, just show it. The ninth of February is the day the Council should approve the superstore. The ninth is also the date that Cavendish asked Raymond to help him out by washing a hundred thousand through the building supplies company. It was the way he said it, suggesting that getting rid of a hundred thousand would be a help, as if the cash involved was a much bigger amount in total."

  "I don't understand. Is this money the same money that Farrier is going to look at?"

  "If it is, then Farrier's going to see the money, but not get it personally. So why would he want to see it?"

  Sally frowned. "The only reason he would want to see it is to be sure it existed."

  "But we know that Cavendish has plans to funnel the cash back into his own businesses."

  "I can only think of one reason," Sally told him, after a bit of thought. "Cavendish wants to show the money to Farrier to prove that he has it. Then Farrier will do whatever it is that Cavendish wants, in anticipation of receiving the cash. Cavendish has no intention of giving him the cash."

  "That's right," Winner agreed. "And that leads on to two further possibilities. Either Cavendish thinks Farrier won't be able to do anything about being cheated out of his cash, because of the risk of incriminating himself, or Mr Farrier is due to meet with a nasty accident."

  "Would you sleep well at night, knowing that someone you had cheated out of a large sum of money was free to plot their revenge against you?"

  "I doesn't seem very likely."

  Sally stretched and yawned. "This sitting in cars on freezing quaysides is exhausting. I'm ready for bed. The question is, do we warn this Mr Farrier that he's in danger?"

  "I don't want to stop Cavendish from getting the cash together, but I couldn't stand by and see someone killed if I could have prevented it."

  "You're interested in the money then?"

  "I think I sense an opportunity in that area."

  "He could still be warned. It's just a question of timing." Sally saved the file onto the diskette and shut down the computer. "We'll have to think about it. We've got about three weeks."

  In the morning Winner's muscles ached a bit from the activities of the night before, but there didn't seem to be any other after effects. Toby arrived just after breakfast and they decided to have a day out in Petermere. Sally had already spotted a relief watcher sitting in his car down the road, and Winner concentrated on looking relaxed and comfortable as they walked out of the lobby to his own parked car.

  Sally glanced across as they drove past the watcher's car. He was already speaking into a mobile phone. She looked around at Toby, but he was plugged into his Walkman and wouldn't be able to hear. "I think you surprised them, coming out and looking quite normal. Do you think they'll follow us, or maybe try to take another look in the flat?"

  "They may just go home, now that they will have assumed that I was in the flat all the time. If they decide to break in again and manage to get past the locks, there's nothing to find. The clothes that I was wearing are all washed and dried and stacked up in the airing cupboard. The only casualty was my shoes, and I've got those with me to dispose of. If they follow us to Petermere they're going to have a very un-exciting time. The only thing I don't want them to see is me stuffing the soggy shoes into a waste bin."

  Winner watched carefully in the rear-view mirror as they drove out of Sharmouth, but the road was very quiet and it didn't look as if anyone was following. By the time they got to Petermere he was certain they were on their own. A pity really. He would have liked to have wasted their time with a boring day out watching others shop and lunch.

  In the car park he bought a long stay ticket and struck a bargain with Toby. If they took Toby ice skating, he would put up with some strolling round shops. Half an hour later Winner and Sally were leaning on the rails at the front of the spectators' viewing gallery as Toby started round the ice with a few tentative low speed laps. There were quite a few people on the rink, but Toby's blond hair was easy to spot.

  "He's quite good," said Sally. "I tried it once and I kept falling over all the time."

  "He's just getting back into the swing of it. He hasn't been for a while, unless Lorraine's taken him. He can go very fast when he's warmed up."

  "I'm not sure this was a good choice. It must be colder in here than outside."

  "It's a good place to check that we haven't been followed. I put the bag with the trainers just inside the changing room door when I took Toby in. They'll end up in lost property."

  Winner stood behind Sally and pulled his coat around in front of her, so that it almost met. She could soon feel his warmth filtering through.

  "What I don't understand," she said, "is why Cavendish is going to pay Farrier. You'd have thought that Farrier would be paying Cavendish to get a favourable planning permission."

  "It is odd," agreed Winner. "That sort of agreement would only involve smaller sums of money anyway. It must be more complex. Something to do with the land itself."

  "Do you think Cavendish owns the land?"

>   "How could we tell? On the boat Riggs described the companies on the list as Cavendish's companies, but we've come across no connection. If he can disguise the ownership of companies, then he's probably obscured the ownership of the land, if he does own it."

  "Perhaps that's the link between the cash and the ninth of February. The developers might not be prepared to pay the asking price until they know that the planning permission is in the bag. As soon as the Council has passed it, they'll sign."

  "And when they've signed, Farrier's supposed to get his payoff. It's a nice theory," said Winner, "but it still doesn't explain the need for a payoff."

  "Perhaps there's something wrong with the land, that only Cavendish and Farrier know anything about."

  "Maybe. The truth of the matter is that they're up to something, and we know where the money's going to be. It doesn't really matter exactly what the underlying deal is."

  The ice was getting rather crowded now, but Toby managed a simple jump without crashing into anyone. Winner left Sally at the rail for a few moments while he went to the vending machine to get them some coffees.

  "What's it going to be, then," she asked him, when he was back beside her. "A simple smash and grab raid, chez Cavendish, or perhaps we hijack the cash when it arrives?"

  "I think we ought to manage to come up with something more stylish. The last thing we want is for Cavendish to guess that it's us and come after us for revenge. We need to think of some diversions and smokescreens to confuse everything."

  "If we tip off Farrier at the last moment, Cavendish is going to have his hands kept full dealing with him. We might just have enough information to send the police an anonymous package of incriminating evidence at the same time. That would cause total confusion and keep Cavendish fully occupied."

  Winner smiled at the thought of a police raiding party trampling into Cavendish's house. They watched in silence for a while, sipping their coffee while the skaters went round and round. After a while they walked along the viewing gallery and took a short tour round the rest of the complex. A large window on one side of the main corridor looked down on the tropical lagoon swimming pool and they stopped to watch.

  "Fancy a swim?" Sally asked, with a mischievous grin.

  "Perhaps not today."

  Despite the warmth in the corridor, the scene made Winner shiver. It looked so incongruous seeing the swimmers in their brief costumes.

  "We'd better get back," Sally suggested. "Toby might be wondering where we are."

  "He's probably too busy showing off."

  They got back to the front of the viewing gallery just as Toby managed a perfect half turn in mid air. A few minutes later he tried a more adventurous jump, but was balked by the crush on the ice and was involved in a rather inelegant crash. Not long after, the hooter sounded to mark the end of the session, and Sally and Winner made their way down to the lobby to intercept Toby on the way out. Ten minutes went by before he limped out from the changing room.

  "Nothing broken, I hope?" Sally asked him.

  "Your legs get wobbly if you don't do it often enough. I must have been getting a bit tired and that stupid woman cut straight in front of me. I'm all right."

  They spent the next hour before lunch buying Winner a new pair of trainers, before going to McDonald's for burgers and hot chocolate. In the afternoon they strolled around the shops for a while, not looking for anything in particular, though Toby managed to steer them into a sports shop and persuade Winner to buy him a new jacket.

  They were a bit late leaving, so that it was nearly time for Lorraine to pick Toby up when they finally got back to the flat in Sharmouth. There was no sign of attempted entry at the front door and nobody sitting in any of the cars that were parked outside. A refreshingly ordinary day.