“Did you pay him?” Ricky asked.
Ewan looked at him as if he were a heckler. He ignored his question altogether; no ad libs in this performance. “I called Natalie immediately, to warn her. Her first reaction was to declare that Anna was fired. I asked her not to do that; it could only have raised questions. I said that I would pay him what he asked, in the hope that it would be his last demand … a hope more than an expectation, I admit. Natalie wouldn’t hear of it. She’s a very powerful woman and formidable when she’s angered. She told me that her uncle had a business relationship with David’s firm. She said that she would speak to Torrent and that he would take care of the matter.
“I trusted her to do that. I heard no more from David; and then I heard of his death. When I did, I assumed that Alison had indeed killed him. I haven’t heard from Natalie since then either. When all this blew up we decided that we should cool things, for a while at least, although really, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all over.”
He sighed, heavily, loud enough to be heard in the back stalls. “So that’s the story, Oz. I will tell that to the police, happily, but I will expect from them, and from you, a little discretion.”
“You’ll take what you fucking get,” I told him, cheerfully. “So Natalie thought that Uncle James could lean on David and that would be it. But what she didn’t know was that he was effectively out of the firm, and that Torrent had no leverage over him at all.”
“So he got really heavy,” said Ricky. “He took care of the problem in the old-fashioned way. But who?” He sighed. “Ah fuck, who cares. With luck, Natalie Morgan will back up Mr. Capperauld’s story, and Alison’ll be off the hook. Maybe she can tell the police who did the dirty work for her uncle.”
“And will she tell them why he was killed, do you think?”
He looked at me. So did Ewan. So did Alison. “Well?” I demanded. “So Torrent has criminal connections and he puts a contract out on the two of them? The business gets done, and he pays the money. So who killed him, and why? Did he welsh on payment?”
“Unlikely,” said Ricky. “People like that want paid in advance.”
“Okay, why knock him off? Also, if it was a straightforward contract job, why go to all that trouble to frame Alison? Come on, man, what’s wrong with this picture?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I take your point. So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the person Torrent told to take care of the problem was someone he knew. Let’s suppose that after the second killing, Torrent panicked; he became a threat to the killer himself, so he had to go. So who was that close to Torrent?”
“Natalie?”
“No. If she was going to do them both herself, why tell her uncle at all?”
“Maybe he found out?”
“No!” Ewan shouted; at last, there was some spontaneity in his performance. “Natalie did not do those things.”
“How do you know?” I asked him.
“Could Susie do such a thing?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
“How do you know?”
He had me. “I just do, that’s all.”
“Very well. Trust me on this in the same way. It wasn’t her.”
“In that case,” Ricky murmured, ‘who?”
“There’s only one person left to ask,” I told him. “Natalie.” And then I paused. “There’s only one person left who knows about this … or so the killer thinks.”
“Oh Jesus!” Ewan moaned.
“Do you have her phone number?”
“No. I had, but I tore it up when I stopped seeing her.”
“I have,” said Alison. She picked up the shoulder bag that she had dropped on the kitchen floor and dug out a personal organiser. She flicked through it, stopped, then read out, “Natalie Morgan, home; 2613641.”
I put the kitchen phone on to speaker mode and dialled, carefully. The number didn’t ring out at all; instead it went straight on to the answering service. Natalie had a personalised message; “Hi, this is Nat,” her chocolate voice announced to all of us in the kitchen. “I’m either out, on the bog, or on the phone. Please leave a message.”
I pointed at Ewan. He nodded, and moved closer to the phone. “Natalie,” he said, ‘it’s me. I need to speak to you urgently, please call my mobile.”
I clicked the line shut. “The answer phone picked up right away,” Alison pointed out. “That means she’s either on another call…”
I gave her both raised eyebrows.
‘.. . or the phone’s off the hook.”
“Where does she live?” asked Ricky.
“Ravelston,” Ewan answered. “Near Mary Erskine’s School, in a flat; it’s a top floor like this, but I can’t remember the number. I never even knew it; I never wrote to her, or even noticed it on the door when I was there. The police will know.”
“The first thing the police will do,” Ross barked, ‘is come here and arrest us. Come on, you’re taking us there. Make sure your mobile’s on, just in case Natalie calls back.”
Fifty-Two.
Four of us headed for the door; Ewan, Ricky, Glen Oliver and me. Okay. I could have stayed behind, but no way was I going to, not after everything.
“You can’t leave me here,” Alison wailed.
“Too right we can.” I told her. “If you get frightened, get in beside Liam.”
The lift was getting close, when a thought came to me from nowhere. “Hold on a minute,” I said and went back inside.
“Alison,” I asked her, ‘those calls you had, the one that got you out the night David was killed and the one that took you to the Torrent building last Friday; can you remember anything about the caller?”
“No. The voice was indistinct both times; I had trouble hearing what was being said.”
“It was a man, though?”
“I can’t even tell you that for certain.”
“Okay’ I headed back to the other three. Ewan was holding the door. The script was done; we were on to the impromptu stuff now, and he had stage fright, bad.
Glen drove us out of the city centre and towards Ravelston Dykes. It was dry but cloudy; there was no moon to compete with the orange glow from the street lights. Ewan gave directions from the front passenger street; eventually he called for a right turn; the lighting was less bright off the main road but still we could see in front of us the dim outline of a block of flats. “That’s it ahead,” the actor whispered… though I couldn’t think why he did. Maybe he didn’t want the audience to hear.
“I know that building,” Ricky exclaimed. “It’s got good security; I know that because we renewed it two years ago, and we look after it on a contract. Every flat’s alarmed and there are video cameras on all floors.”
“My building’s supposed to have good security too,” I grumbled. “Only it doesn’t.”
“Should I call her again?” Ewan asked.
I nodded and handed him the number; I’d noted it on a piece of kitchen roll. I watched, as he waited. “Answering service again,” he announced at last. “But the phone seems to be back on the hook. Maybe she’s asleep,” he added, hopefully.
Sure, “Ricky grunted.
Oliver drew the car up a hundred yards away from the block. I tapped Ricky on the shoulder and motioned him to get out and follow me. He looked puzzled, a little annoyed even, but he did it. I had a good reason; I didn’t want Glen to hear what I was going to say.
“I want to ask you something,” I told him, in a whisper not unlike Ewan’s stage version. “Suppose you were Torrent, and you had a problem that you wanted to go away. We’ve already considered underworld contacts. So who else would you ask?”
“My lawyer, I suppose.”
“Not that sort of problem; you can’t interdict a blackmailer, for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay, so who, then?”
“How about your security officer?”
He gaped at me and his eyes widened. “Hey wait a minute! He never said a word to me.
”
“No, but do you handle all your accounts in person? Don’t you ever delegate?”
“Of course. Every client has someone in charge.”
“So who ran Torrent?”
He sucked in a long breath; it sounded like a moan of foreboding. “Mandy O’Farrell, but…”
“Tell me, honestly. Have you ever suspected that Mandy might have given Torrent a bit of extra service?”
“Not that way. She’s protective of her clients, but that’s all.”
“How protective?”
“Aw, come on, Oz,” Ricky protested.
“Yes, come on. Suppose Torrent told Mandy about the problem, and told her no more than that he wanted it to go away? Suppose she took it to extremes? Capperauld dies, and Alison’s arrested, fine. But then Anna’s murdered, right in his office. He knows the connection and so does Natalie, but it can’t be her, because they’re off to
Gleneagles when it happens. No one else knows, though, other than Mandy.”
He shook his head, in firm denial. “No.”
“What was the first thing Torrent did after Anna’s death? He tried to distance himself from your firm, that’s what. He fired you, to put space between him and Mandy. That scared her; she saw herself being dropped in it. Where was she last night, when Torrent was killed?”
“In Glasgow, minding Susie.”
“No, she fucking wasn’t! Susie was with me, getting Ewan’s autograph on her menu. Mandy was off watch, in Edinburgh.”
Ross looked up at the penthouse. “Okay, so where is she now?”
“There’s one good way to find out.” I took out my phone and keyed in Susie’s mobile number. It took her a few seconds to answer; when she did she was pissed off. “Sorry, love,” I said, ‘but it’s important. Is Mandy with you?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked me, wearily. “You know she’s not. She’s gone back to Edinburgh. She told me that they’d found the stalker. You mean they haven’t?” She sighed with exasperation. “Ah who cares! Good night.” The phone went silent.
So Mandy said they’d found the stalker. Where did she hear that? I wondered. Only three of us knew about that. I hadn’t told her, Liam hadn’t, and I was damn sure Mike Dylan hadn’t either.
I looked back at Ross. “We may have a problem.”
He nodded towards the building. “You’re wrong,” he said, ‘but best get up there.”
Fifty-three.
Ewan wanted to come with us, but that idea got short shrift; he was emotionally involved up there. Also, given the outside chance that things might get a bit physical, he was too valuable for us to run the risk of him getting hurt. There was a third consideration. What we were about to do was probably illegal; I was pushing my own luck, and as Miles’s friend I just couldn’t let his star be part of it.
Ricky wasn’t even keen on letting me go with him and Glen, but I squashed that notion. “You need me up there, pal,” I told him. “I’m your independent witness; I’m not an employee of Ross Security.”
Ewan still couldn’t recall the number of Natalie’s apartment, but when we got to the door that turned out not to be a problem; her name was on a label next to the top buzzer, number 10a.
Ricky pressed it. There was no sound. “We should have heard that feed back from the other end,” he said. “That’s funny.”
“No it’s bloody not! How do we get in?”
“With difficulty, if no one will open up for us. Of course if I’d known we were coming here, I could have brought a pass key.”
It had been a bad news day all round, so I tried one more. “Which of your operatives is responsible for this?” I asked him. Glen Oliver was on his other side; I spoke quietly, hoping that he didn’t hear.
I could see his face fall. “Mandy O’Farrell,” he whispered.
“Terrific. Now tell me this. Suppose we get the hubcap lever from Glen’s car and use it to jimmy the lock on the door, what happens?”
“An alarm goes off.”
I stood back and looked at the entrance; there was a single door, half-glazed, with glass panels on either side. “Suppose we break one of those panels? Are they alarmed?”
“No, but the glass is toughened.”
“So am I.” I looked around. The communal gardens around the block had a rockery in one corner. I walked across and looked at the big stones, embedded in the ground. I tried one; it was set firm, but eventually I managed to work it loose. It was heavy, but after all the gym work I’d been doing it was no problem.
I carried it across to the doorway. “Give me your jacket, Glen,” I said. He was wearing a big black leather jerkin. He nodded and slipped it off. I laid it on the ground, put the stone on top and zipped it up around it. Then I took the arms, tied them together and picked it up. I swung it experimentally, a few times. The boulder stayed in place; I had myself a club.
The glass panel wasn’t just strong, it was laminated; two toughened layers with a clear plastic lining between them. I hit the panel three heavy swinging blows; each one made a thumping noise, but there as no smashing of glass. After the third whack, the panel was hanging loosely; it was opaque now, with shattered crystals clinging to the lining, and there was no way I was going to be able to club through that.
Glen Oliver may be a man of few, indeed, of no words, but he can rise to the occasion. He reached into his trouser pocket and produced the biggest Swiss Army knife I have ever seen… more like a Swiss Army bayonet, in fact… and handed it to me. I folded out the main blade, which was so sharp I could have shaved with it, and sliced through the laminate, side to side, top to bottom.
I had been working as quickly as I could, and as quietly, in the circumstances, in the hope that there were no insomniacs in the flats above us. It seemed, as we stepped inside through our newly made door, that we’d got lucky.
“Let’s walk up,” said Ricky.
“Don’t be daft,” I told him. “What’s wrong with the lift?”
“You might hear the mechanism from the penthouse.”
“In that case, we run up.” I led the way towards the stairway.
There were ten storeys in the block; ground, one to nine, and then the top floor. Ricky was breathing hard when we got to the top, but Glen and I still had our wind left.
There were two apartments on the penthouse floor, one on either side of the stairway door; number 10a was on the right. Ricky moved towards it, but I signalled him to stop. I unholstered my cellphone and dialled Natalie’s number yet again. We could hear it ring inside, eight times, until the message clicked in. I hit the red button but it played itself out.
“Maybe she’s a really deep sleeper,” Ross muttered. “Maybe she is on the bog.”
“Maybe she should try Immodium,” I suggested.
I looked at him in the green landing light. “Are we going in, or what?”
He nodded. “Glen,” he said, ‘your moment has come.”
“Try ringing the bell just once?” I suggested.
“What’s another fucking door? Glen.”
Ewan’s minder stepped forward, raised his right leg and opened Natalie Morgan’s apartment with a single kick.
The night breeze met us as we stepped inside. I looked across the open-plan living room and saw wide glass doors, leading to a west-facing terrace. They were open. There was something piled on the tiled floor outside, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
The flat was absolutely silent; we stood there, unwilling to switch on a light, looking around us for the prospective horrors that had drawn us there.
And then in a door to the left, a figure appeared. All we could see was a silhouette; around medium height, slim, wearing a one-piece, head-to-foot garment strikingly similar to that I had seen worn by the SAS extras in the McEwan Hall. I’d seen Mandy in the dark before; naked, or clothed like this, the shape was the same.
A whisper came from Ricky. “Glen.” The minder and the black figure moved towards each other. He carried himself loosely, a b
it like a wrestler, looking to restrain, then detain.
He never had a chance. The figure seemed to leap straight off the ground, then hit him with a left-footed jab to the midriff, and a right-footed kick behind the ear. Oliver moaned quietly, and sagged to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Ross started to moved forward, but I held him back. “You block the door,” I told him. “There’s a fire extinguisher on the landing outside. If this character gets past me, put it to good use.”
The figure stood there, waiting for another of us to have a go. I obliged, by inching forward; in the dim light I could see teeth gleaming in the centre of the tunic’s black balaclava-type helmet. I edged sideways, round Oliver’s motionless form, until I bumped into a wooden-framed swivel chair, positioned in the middle of the room.
“Okay, Mandy,” I said quietly. “Round two.” I feinted a move with my left foot. She bought it and launched into a spinning, right-footed counter-kick. I ducked under it, and as I did, grabbed the chair one-handed, and threw it at her. Its wooden edge caught her flush on the knee-cap. She almost fell, but recovered her balance. Too late though;
I had closed in by then. I whipped the feet from under her with the Russian leg sweep that Liam had taught me, and followed up as she went down, driving my knee hard into the midsection of the black tunic. It was all over then, but I had seen and experienced enough to take no chances, so I hit her, once, hard, with my right fist in the middle of the forehead. I could see her eyes now; they glazed over as she went out, cold.
“Find a light, Ricky,” I shouted, as I pushed myself up from the motionless figure and headed for the door through which she had come. I fumbled for a switch on the inside of the door but found none. Then for the first time I became aware of a soft splashing sound. It was a bathroom; I found the switch on the outside and flicked it on.
I didn’t see Natalie Morgan at first, but I heard her quickly enough. He bath was a big old Victorian thing, big enough to accommodate a five-a-side football team. She was in it… on her own.
Poisoned Cherries Page 26
