by Rod Reynolds
The Range Rover was idling on a double yellow when he came out of the main entrance. As he passed the railings separating his development from the road, the rear door nearest the kerb was opened from the inside. Dalton was sitting on the back seat in a navy suit and red tie. He stared at Stringer, saying nothing and making no invitation to join him – the same tough-guy act he’d adopted from day one. Stringer walked over and climbed inside, the car moving off as soon as he closed the door behind him.
Dalton started to say something but Stringer spoke over him. ‘I told you to wait for my call.’
‘I did. And we heard nothing, so here I am. What did Tan say?’
Decision time. His lies, their lies. Stringer glanced out the window, watching the Tesco Express over the road as they passed. ‘He didn’t show.’ He looked back to Dalton to catch his reaction.
‘You missed him?’
He shook his head, slowly. ‘He didn’t show.’
Dalton silently mouthed the words. ‘Thirty grand for “He didn’t show”? So, what, you just packed up and went home to bed?’
Stringer leaned forward. ‘Do I look like I’ve been to bed lately?’
Dalton leaned forward too. ‘Yesterday you said it was just admin. That was your word.’
There was no guile in the man’s eyes, no sense he was holding cards back; for all the world, it looked like he was in the dark. But that didn’t mean Suslov was. ‘I need to see the boss.’
‘What for?’
‘Tan didn’t show and he didn’t go home. There’s…’
‘So you did manage to do something then? Christ.’ He ran his hand over his mouth. ‘Where is he?’
‘I’ll discuss it with Mr Suslov.’
‘That’s the very last thing you want. I promise you.’
‘I’ll decide that.’
‘Fuck you. You said admin. You implied it was done. You wasted twenty-four hours.’
Stringer braced his hands on his legs. ‘Sit me down with him.’ So I can look him in the face. ‘Is he in the country?’
‘Andriy travels frequently.’
Stringer stared at him, getting it. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I’m not his PA. I don’t need minute-by-minute updates on his movements.’
‘Well, find him and get me half an hour of his time.’
‘And what are you going to say to him? “He didn’t show, sorry”?’
‘I want to explain I did my job. And I want my money.’
‘Are you fucking insane?’ Dalton reached forward and tapped the driver’s seat. ‘Pull over, please.’ He looked back to Stringer. ‘You’re deluded if you think he’s going to hand over a single penny. If you had any sense, you’d pray he’s on the other side of the world until you’ve got some answers.’
The car came to a stop and Stringer popped his door. As he climbed out, he turned around to lean inside again. ‘I don’t give a fuck who he is. I get paid.’
CHAPTER 12
Lydia woke up in the same position she’d fallen asleep. It was past four in the afternoon. Her ribs and shoulder ached, and she wondered if she’d moved at all while she slept.
A breeze rustled the blinds, a soft metallic sound as they scraped against the wall. Her purse was on the bedside table. She rolled onto her back and picked it up, holding it above her face to unzip it for the second time that day.
Not a single thing missing. A tenner, a fiver, and at least five more in coins. Her driving licence was tucked away behind the credit cards, her address there for anyone to find. The same question that was plaguing her before she’d passed out still lingered: had someone found it and done the Good Samaritan thing by returning it? What were the chances of anyone travelling from London Bridge all the way to Tottenham Hale to return a purse – and so fast? At best, they’d hand it in to a police station.
So this had to be a message. Some wanker with a subtlety bypass. Who nonetheless had her listening out for sounds in the quiet flat. All she could hear was the traffic noise on the street and the scraping of the blinds.
She climbed out of bed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She turned her laptop on and went to the kitchen to get a drink. Chloe’s door was ajar but she wasn’t in there. Lydia poked her head inside; her blinds were open and the bed was made so she must’ve been and gone at some point. She tried to think the last time she’d seen her flatmate – Wednesday? Tuesday?
In the kitchen she filled a glass of water at the tap and flicked the kettle on. Opening the cupboard for coffee, all she found was an empty jar of Nescafé. She shuffled the cups around on the shelf to get to the other jar, but there were no teabags either. She let the cupboard door swing shut and left the kettle boiling.
Back in the bedroom, the laptop was open on the login screen. She tapped in her password and waited for it to come to life, her fingers straying to a pile of paperclips in the desk drawer, unconsciously searching for something to do in one of those moments when she’d normally reach for her phone.
She clicked the icons for her inbox and her browser, ready to jump on whichever loaded first. The Writing folder on the desktop taunted her as she waited. Unopened in months, it held the start of the novel she’d taken a break from and never gone back to, and the outline of the non-fiction book she’d planned to write, detailing her investigation into Goddard and the property scandal. After the Examiner dropped the story, she’d channelled her anger that way, determined that all that work wouldn’t go to waste. The legals were dicey, but that wasn’t what killed it – in the end she’d simply run out of steam. Now it sat there, a reminder of her true failure: a story left to die because she couldn’t get it over the line.
Chrome opened before her inbox, so she jumped onto BBC News and skimmed it. The Brexit negotiations dominated. She clicked through to BBC London, a subsection that couldn’t run enough stories about the Tube. Still she saw nothing about the attack.
It did not add up. You couldn’t suffocate a man on the Tube and no one notice. If TfL knew about it, someone there would’ve leaked it to the press.
When she was working the Goddard story, she’d burrowed so deep into the rabbit hole that there were times she saw shadow connections everywhere. A document that referenced contact with a then-member of the cabinet; a tangential link to the CEO of an investment bank; meetings with a secretive American financier. The suggestion that the scheme went beyond just the developers and the politicians who enabled it, a hint of wider corruption. A team of ten might’ve been able to trace every branching stream to its source, given the luxury of time; with neither to play with, her imagination had started running crazy in the gaps. What if the same thing was happening now?
But the bag-snatch. The mystery caller…
She toggled to her inbox to send the email to Stephen about her phone. As she thought through how to word it, she stopped, staring at the screen. Something wasn’t right.
She couldn’t pin it down. Something about the way her inbox looked, the shape of the email list on the monitor…
The video. She scrolled down quickly, looking for Tammy’s original email. There was nothing there.
The Costa was where he stood out the least on that shitty stretch of high street, so Stringer took up residence at a window table and watched Lydia Wright’s flat. A forty-something white man in a suit was conspicuous enough there, but it would’ve been worse in the Turkish café a few doors down, or the pub filled with football fans. The aircon that had it cooled like a fridge was an added bonus.
Her flat was above a Ladbrokes. He’d seen her at the first-floor sash window a handful of times, and no one else had come or gone in the hour he’d been watching. He had her phones in front of him on the table, but couldn’t get into the emails on either anymore. The password change was expected, but it still left him feeling blind when it kicked in. He weighed how much longer he could afford to hold; sitting alone in that flat, out of sight, she could be doing anything.
He switched to looking for mention of Jamie or A
licia Tan, but neither had made the news yet, the one high point in a day that was plumbing new depths all the time. He drank some of his coffee, not even tepid now, caffeine’s diminishing returns making him nauseated.
A glint from Wright’s flat made him look over. The sash window jerked shut from the inside. And a few seconds later, the front door opened and she appeared. She was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, and had a canvas bag over her shoulder that looked empty. She locked the door and turned right, headed in the direction of the shops.
He stood up to sink the dregs of his coffee and went outside. She was twenty metres ahead of him, the high street a long straight road that was busy enough with people to make following her as easy as blending in.
He stepped off the kerb to cross onto the same side as her, waiting for a car to pass. As he did, a man approached her door and rang the bell. Stringer froze on the spot, watching. The man rang again, holding the buzzer down, and when there was no answer, he checked both ways along the street and then seemed to do something with the lock. The door popped open and the man slipped inside.
Stringer weaved through the traffic and hesitated. Wright was in the distance now, almost gone from sight. He fought his indecision. The clothes, the bag – a supermarket trip maybe. A waste of time if he ended up trailing her around Tesco. But the guy at the door – what were the explanations there? A flatmate wouldn’t ring the bell, probably not a boyfriend either. The landlord? Unlikely. Which made the stranger a big fucking question mark. He leaned against Ladbrokes’ window.
Five minutes went by. Stringer went back to the other side of the street and stood at the bus stop. He gave it a couple more minutes, eyes on the window upstairs, no sign of movement. He ran through the possibilities in his head, the one that worried him becoming more pressing with every second that passed: that the man inside was waiting for Wright to come back.
The other side of the road was a long run of commercial premises with flats above, but there was a break three doors down, between a Middle Eastern supermarket and a pawn shop. He crossed over once more and turned down the side street. It reeked of rotting fruit, fetid and cloying in the heat, the smell coming from a large dumpster pressed up against the right-hand side. He followed the alley to where it opened out into a small courtyard lined with lockups. There were cars crammed bumper to bumper, the space being used as a makeshift car park for a dozen or so cars.
He could see the back of Wright’s flat. He slipped between two of the cars and used the bonnet of a Ford Focus as a step to get a handhold on the roof of one of the lockups. He hauled himself up and got to his feet, brushing crumbling felt from his hands and trousers. The courtyard was overlooked by the back of a council block; anyone looking out would see him. He ran along in a crouch until he was by her window and could peer inside.
He was looking into an empty kitchen. A kettle on the side, a bowl and two mugs on the counter next to the sink. A red tea towel hanging from a rail on the cooker. White walls and Ikea cupboards – standard landlord kit-out. He listened but couldn’t hear anything from inside.
He looked around to check he hadn’t attracted attention from the council block, but there were dozens of windows, too many to inspect. He faced front again and tried lifting Wright’s window, but the sash wouldn’t budge. He paused a second, then took his phone out and used it to tap on the glass.
Nothing happened. He tapped again, harder.
The sound of movement this time. Faint, but there. The kitchen door was open but from his acute angle he couldn’t see beyond it. He inched sideways to get a better look…
A face appeared in the doorway. White man, brown hair, black T-shirt. He froze just long enough. Stringer flicked his thumb to snatch a picture.
The man bolted.
Stringer scrabbled back across the lockup roof, feeling the felt bowing under him. He made it back to where he’d climbed up and got a grip on the edge, lowering himself until he could drop to the ground. His ankle gave as he landed and he buckled against a car. He righted himself.
Someone hit him in the side of the face, sending him sprawling. Not a fist, heavier. His vision blacked out, came back blurred.
Lying on the ground, he heard footsteps, someone running off down the alley.
CHAPTER 13
Premier Dental’s sign was blue lettering on a white background, like a cheap knockoff of Bupa’s corporate branding. Lydia could see why they were trying to piggyback on some credibility; on one side of the practice was an off licence, on the other, a kebab shop with half its sign missing. Finchley Central Tube was just around the corner, and Lydia had walked up from there, wondering how East and North Finchley could be such a contrast to this rundown stretch of Ballards Lane.
She had to buzz an intercom to get inside the door from the street, and it led straight to a staircase. The Listerine smell got stronger as she climbed; at the top, it opened out onto a small reception office and waiting area, the white walls lined with sleek posters for cosmetic dentistry treatments. There were perfect white smiles everywhere she looked, the hard sell hard to avoid.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
She set her bag in front of her on the counter. ‘I’m looking for Paulina Dobriska.’
‘Is she one of the dentists?’ The woman on the other side of the desk rolled the tracker wheel on her mouse, studying her screen. ‘I can’t see her name.’
Lydia glanced at the back wall, a metal plaque showing the names of the dentists that worked there. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’
‘Sorry, I don’t … I’m a temp, I don’t know everyone here yet. Can you spell the surname?’
‘When did they bring you in?’
The woman looked up. ‘Saturday. It was chaos because—’
‘Their receptionist hadn’t turned up?’
She nodded.
‘Is her name Paulina?’
‘Oh – is that who you’re looking for?’
‘Could you check for me?’
The woman looked at the door to one of the treatment rooms. ‘I can ask one of the nurses, hold on.’
‘Thank you.’
She knocked and disappeared through the door, then came back with a nurse in a white uniform. She came and stood on the same side of the counter as Lydia. ‘You’re looking for Paulina?’
Lydia nodded. ‘That’s right. She’s off work?’
‘Her brother called in on Friday to say she’s unwell. Sorry, who are you?’
‘Have you heard from her since?’
‘No, not that I know of. Maybe Mr Henshall has. Look, sorry but who…?’
‘It’s for a story I’m working on. I’m a journalist.’
‘A story?’
‘How long’s she been working here?’
The nurse looked at the ceiling thinking about it. ‘A couple of years.’
Lydia gathered her bag straps together. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’
The nurse glanced away, a guilty look crossing her face. ‘I didn’t speak to her brother, so…’
‘What’s the best number to get hold of her on?’
‘We can’t give that out … can we?’ She looked at the receptionist, who turned rabbit in the headlights.
‘Please,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m sure she’s okay, but I just want to check for myself.’
‘What do you mean “okay”?’
‘To be honest – I’m not really sure, that’s why I need to talk to her.’
‘Is something wrong? I never thought to check. I just assumed.’
‘No, I totally understand. But if you could…’
The nurse hesitated, her hand poised above the counter. ‘Look, I’ll phone her. If she wants to speak to you she can.’
‘Perfect.’
She went around into the office and picked up the phone, touching the temp on the shoulder and gesturing to the computer. ‘Can I…?’ She leaned over and took the mouse.
A patient came up the stairs and over to the desk, and L
ydia slid out of her way, watching the nurse drift to the back of the office with the phone to her ear. She turned away when she started speaking, immediate enough that Lydia assumed it’d gone to voicemail. She couldn’t make out what she was saying. The nurse hung up and came back over. ‘I’ve left her a message. If she’s not well maybe she’s not up to talking.’
Lydia looped her bag over her shoulder. ‘Yeah, maybe.’ She pulled out a business card and passed it to the nurse. ‘If you hear from her, would you let me know? Or ask her to call me?’
The nurse took it and looked up sharply when she saw the Examiner logo. ‘Seriously, what’s going on?’
Stringer watched Lydia Wright come out of the dental practice and put his phone away. He’d looked the place up online while she was inside. There was nothing on its website to indicate why she might’ve gone there – but she was in and out in a few minutes, and that meant it wasn’t for a checkup.
His face ached where he’d been hit the day before. Professional pride told him he deserved it. Not reckoning on a backup man was a glaring oversight; it could’ve got him killed. No illusions, no excuses. Almost worse was that he couldn’t understand what he was doing up there in the first place. Keeping the journalist out of harm’s way served his own purposes, but caution was the start and end of everything. He’d left himself exposed, and with that one mistake he’d given up so much ground: they knew what he looked like and who he was watching. And that fact became even more dangerous if they were working for Suslov. It’d be near impossible to deny knowledge of the video if Suslov had tracked its path as far as Lydia Wright and caught Stringer right outside her flat in the process.
Wright turned off the main road towards the station and he followed after her. Finchley Central was at the bottom of a short street that sloped to an end at the car-park barrier next to the station itself. It was a low-slung yellow brick building with baskets of pink and red flowers hanging down its front. It looked like a disused stationhouse from a sleepy village, not a Tube stop in zone four. A throwback to a smaller London, when the area around him was still fields. Hard to believe that was in his grandparents’ lifetime.