The Push (El Gardener Book 2)

by Natalie Edwards

  “Mr Soames,” the man continued, reaching into his back pocket for his handcuffs, “you’re under arrest on suspicion of kidnapping and false imprisonment. You do not have to say anything, but it may hurt your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.”

  Chapter 30

  Embarcadero, San Francisco

  September 1997

  To properly appreciate the dynamic that had underpinned Ruby and Sita’s professional relationship for so many years, El had learned, you had to understand this: Ruby sometimes overreached.

  Not often - certainly not often enough for it to be a problem. She was a planner, a strategist; she thought things through. But occasionally, however intricate her planning, she’d miscalculate: underestimate a mark, or overestimate the capabilities of a colleague, or fail to notice a crack in the foundations of a con that might bring the whole house tumbling down.

  And Sita - Sita liked to spread her bets.

  She wasn’t as meticulous as Ruby; was more inclined to impromptu decision-making and seizing opportunities as and when they presented themselves. But she believed very firmly in contingency measures; in, as she’d reminded El as recently as the Marchant job, not putting all her eggs in one basket.

  Which meant that, when Ruby did occasionally overreach, Sita would almost always have an extra card up her sleeve to help them capture the pot.

  The card, in this case, had very literally fallen into her lap.

  They’d been in San Francisco for less than a day when she first saw him, snapping pictures of her and El and Rose as the three of them stretched their legs along the waterfront, an absurd orange baseball cap covering the shining - and, she imagined, easily sunburned - surface of his head and an equally ludicrous Hawaiian shirt swaddling his upper body like a mu-mu. It was very nearly endearing, she’d thought, how sure he’d seemed that he’d go undetected; that if any of them did register his presence, he’d appear to them as innocuous as any other starry-eyed, pink-skinned tourist gobbling chilli dogs and fighting off marauding seagulls on Fisherman’s Wharf.

  She hadn’t confronted him then, nor mentioned to either girl that he was there and what his presence might signify. Rather, she’d made a mental note to keep an eye on him - to track his movements and divine from them some indication of what he was up to before challenging him outright.

  The confrontation, such as it was, had happened less than two days later, scarcely a block from the home they’d rented by the national park.

  He’d been following her that afternoon; perhaps, she’d thought, because the others had sensibly elected to shelter indoors from the unexpected heat that seemed to have engulfed the city since their arrival. She’d led him to a - thankfully well air-conditioned - Japanese supermarket wedged between a synagogue and a hardware store on Lake Street; lingered a few minutes by the edamame and then, when he lowered his head to check his camera, had dashed outside through the fire door, leaving him inside to scratch his newly-shaven chin in confusion.

  When he made his own exit, she was waiting for him outside, half-hidden by a pillar. She’d… perhaps not quite leapt out at him, but the effect had been much the same as if she had: he’d jumped several inches in the air, ending up virtually on top of her and almost knocking her to the ground.

  “Gerald, darling,” she asked, when he’d adjusted his clothes and modulated his terror, “is it too much to enquire what exactly it is you’re doing here?”

  She’d met Gerry Adler in much the same manner she’d come to know so many of her police contacts: through work.

  It was the early ‘80s, and she’d been in the latter stages of a not especially lucrative but enormously satisfying talent agent scam on an aspiring film actor down in Wimbledon - an arrogant, supercilious boy whose narcissism far outstripped his only moderate good looks, and whose father, unbeknown to her at the time, served as the go-to solicitor and consigliere of an organised crime boss masterminding a heroin-smuggling enterprise from his Limehouse base.

  In the course of a Met investigation that saw the younger, trimmer Gerry go undercover as a demanding new client of the consigliere, their paths had crossed - specifically at a garden party celebrating the son’s ‘discovery’ by a major Hollywood producer. She’d spotted him immediately for what he was, his sharp suit and coconut-oiled side-parting not disguising the innately rumpled look that characterised every policeman she’d ever known, though it had taken him somewhat longer to identify her as something other than that which she purported to be - and, when he had, to assure her that, providing she abandoned the con immediately and did nothing to interfere with his own operation, he had nothing to gain by unmasking her.

  When their paths crossed for a second time the following year, while she and Ruby were mid-way through offloading Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott onto a Filipino dignitary Gerry had been assigned to for the duration of his stay in London, she wondered whether fate might have had a hand in it - she was, after all, between husbands at the time, with no steady partners to speak of, and the younger Gerry wasn’t so terribly unappealing.

  When it happened for a third time, though, at an Easter festival hosted by the Ghanaian High Commission in Belgravia, she suspected that not fate but Gerry himself was responsible; when he began to throw decidedly doe-eyed looks her way over a platter of artisanal pastries, her suspicions were confirmed.

  Although perhaps, she’d thought then, fate was trying to tell her something. Were there not certain advantages for a woman such as herself, after all, in capturing the affections of an officer of the law, particularly one whose star appeared to be rising within the Met?

  The friendship that developed between them thereafter, somewhat one-sided though it was, had distinct benefits for both parties - Gerry enjoying the pleasure of Sita’s company from time to time, as she saw fit to bestow it upon him, and Sita establishing a channel of communication with the British police that would long outlast any physical relationship between them.

  Pursuing her across continents for no other reason than to watch her, however, seemed to her a bridge too far, even for a man as devoted as Gerry.

  “Bloody hell, woman,” he panted, clutching at his chest through the polyester shirt, “are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “I’m not at all sorry. And I ask again: what are you doing here, and why are you following me?”

  He was reluctant to tell her, at first; perhaps in the spirit of protecting his dented pride, and perhaps because he was still inclined, despite all evidence to the contrary, to believe himself the kind of man who wouldn’t just release confidential operational details to decidedly un-law-abiding members of the public at the drop of a hat.

  But he did tell her, of course. And what he told her was… eye-opening.

  He’d been back undercover for the better part of the year, assigned to a washed-up pop singer out in Essex who’d taken to topping up the royalties from his music by buying and selling high-end motors that passed through his hands by less than savoury (and more importantly for Gerry’s purposes, less than legal) means.

  The singer, a Gary Hartwood, had begun more recently to dabble in extortion - snapping up vehicles from unwitting sellers for the lowest price they’d accept, claiming a week or so after the sale that the odometer of this Bentley or that Aston had been manually altered and then threatening with violence any vendor resistant to the prospect of returning the money Hartwood had paid them. Most were too frightened of the promised retribution to refuse, and many chose to cut their losses altogether once they’d made the transfer - leaving Hartwood with the cars they’d ‘sold’ him, as well as the cash he’d ostensibly paid them to begin with.

  It had been working very well for him, Gerry had observed, until Dexter Redfearn had turned up with his Jag.

  He hadn’t known for sure who the bloke was, when he’d first come out to Hartwood’s gaff in Saffron Walden. There’d been something familiar about him, for sure, something about the w
ide, knowing grin and the glint in his eye that reminded Gerry of someone, though he hadn’t put his finger on who that someone was until a bit of backroom nosing around had thrown up the name of the lad’s mum: Sita’s mate Ruby. Her best mate.

  From there on in, his interest in Redfearn Jr. and his Jag - previously strictly professional - had turned that bit more personal.

  He’d tracked the bloke down to a posh-looking flat in West Hampstead he apparently shared with his mum and brother, and to a more run-down office up near Temple Bar. He’d kept eyes on both for a while, juggling the Hartwood operation with surveillance of the flat and office where he could - waiting for Hartwood to pull his signature move on Redfearn, and curious as hell about how the older Redfearn and Sita herself would react when he did.

  Except that he’d noticed, while he was watching them, that someone else had eyes on them too: a young lad, tall and skinny and so fair he looked like he’d hardly even need to use a razor, peering out at the Redfearn flat through a pair of binoculars from the driving seat of a Transit van.

  He’d considered telling Sita there and then that there was someone on the Redfearns’ case - then decided against it, reasoning that it might be more sensible to wait a bit, to draw the lad out and see what exactly it was that he wanted.

  He hadn’t been there the day Michael Redfearn had been stabbed - had been up in Baldock with Hartwood, negotiating the purchase of an Alpine GTA - but had gathered from the subsequent comings and goings at the flat that something had gone on in his absence.

  He had been there, though, the night the young lad went after Sita - had followed him from West Hampstead to her apartment in South Ken, and had been all set to burst out of his Audi and take the little shit down with his baton when Sita had stuck a wrist lock on him and then launched a pointed toe, with a precision of movement that elicited in Gerry a peculiar combination of fear and arousal, straight into the bastard’s bollocks.

  He’d kept an even closer eye on Redfearn Jr. and the women, after that - spending nigh-on every night parked up in South Ken or West Hampstead, ready to slap a hand on their stalker’s shoulder the second he took another step out of line, but secure in the knowledge that if anyone could take care of herself, it was Sita.

  When he saw her and Ruby Redfearn and the younger ones in their gang nip into a luxury travel agency on Cromwell Road, his curiosity was piqued; when he saw the knife-happy blond bastard walk into same travel agency not long after, red flags started waving and didn’t stop. A flash of his warrant card and a few questions to the booking agent later, and he had a flight destination for them both. The same destination, no less: San Francisco.

  The Hartwood job was his operation, and he’d had the foresight to line up another UC to step in for him, if he ever needed to back away. He’d pled a family emergency to the Guv, one that had to be dealt with there and then; the old man hadn’t been happy, hadn’t been happy at all, but Gerry had got his way.

  And with barely time to pack his suntan lotion and his passport, he was off to the airport, bound for Los Angeles and, one short layover later, for San Francisco International.

  “To recap, then,” Sita said, steering Gerry through the doors of the tea-room opposite the hardware store with a prod to the back. “You’ve been watching us for months, without declaring yourself. You’ve witnessed the young man you described not only stalking us, as you put it, but physically attacking me, with a weapon no less - again, without making your presence known. You’ve tailed us across the ocean, once again without informing me - or indeed any one of us - that you planned to do so. And now, having been rumbled in the midst of this entirely unethical - not to say positively sinister - surveillance mission, you mean to tell me that we may, in fact, remain in danger from my attacker? Gingseng Green, please,” she added, addressing the startled-looking girl who’d appeared at their table with an order pad. “And my friend will have a pot of the genmaicha, if he ever closes his mouth sufficiently to allow it passage through his gullet.”

  “You’re missing the point,” he said, when the girl had gone, no less startled for having taken their order. “I’ve seen enough to know you’re up to something, you and your girls. But that boy, the one who’s been keeping tabs on you - my gut says he’s up to something, too. Something that might end badly for the lot of you.”

  “I can assure you,” she told him, affronted, “that things are very much under control. While I will confess to not knowing exactly who’s been following us, I was certainly aware that we were being followed. And why, moreover, this was so.”

  “And if he comes after you again, the boy? Kick him where it hurts again, will you?”

  “He won’t. My understanding is that he’s here in a purely observational capacity. To make sure none of us deviate from the… well, let’s say instructions we’ve been issued."

  The girl returned to the table, placing cups, spoons and a pair of teapots onto the tablecloth before scrambling, very quickly, away.

  “Instructions? Christ almighty, Sita - what have you got yourself caught up in? Since when do any of your lot take instructions?”

  “It’s under control,” she repeated, coldly.

  “Bollocks is it. What’s happened?”

  She sighed, and stirred her tea. Then, wondering how long it would be before she began to regret it, offered as much of an outline of their present situation as felt prudent - omitting certain salient details around past cons, decades-long miscarriages of justice and, particularly, recent unlawful killings in which she may or may not have participated.

  “So, he’s got you dancing for him, this Soames?” Gerry asked, when she was finished. “He’s blackmailing you into going after this Wainwright bloke for him?”

  “So it appears.”

  “And the boy, the one who’s after you…?”

  “His son, or so we believe. It’s rather difficult to know for certain, but the evidence certainly points that way.”

  “And you’re telling me you’ve got it all under control?”

  His scepticism riled her; goaded her into revealing more than she intended.

  “We have an endgame in place,” she told him. “You need not concern yourself with my welfare.”

  He took a long, graceless slurp from his own cup.

  “This endgame,” he said slowly, sounding out each syllable. “It finishes with your man Soames back inside for the kidnapping, does it?”

  In fact, it didn’t: the con, as they’d envisaged it before leaving London, would conclude with the tables turned, the threat Soames posed neutralised and his hold on them destroyed, but they’d yet to decide on whether an anonymous tip-off thereafter to the Met or the North Yorkshire Police regarding a forty year old cold case would yield much beyond rolled eyes and insincere promises to look into the matter. Sita had privately weighed the benefits of a word in the ear of one of her more senior contacts on the force - but had dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it had struck her. She’d pulled on that particular page of her little black book with more frequency than she’d have liked, in recent months. And dropping hints about a decades-old child-snatching, in another jurisdiction no less, would very likely raise questions she was disinclined to answer, even among the most trusted of her uniformed acquaintances.

  “Certainly,” she lied.

  He actually scoffed, which riled her further.

  “That’s a no, then, is it?” he said.

  She stared at him, eyebrows raised witheringly - a gesture that, were he not so absolutely convinced of the rightness of his position, might have reduced him to flustered apologies.

  “Fine,” she said irritably, when he failed to react as she’d anticipated. “No, it does not.”

  “Because you thought it’d be too old for anyone to bother taking it further, this kidnapping, if you reported him for it?”

  She gave a small, tight-lipped nod.

  And he’d beamed at her - a delighted, self-satisfied Cheshire Cat smirk that was virtually an invit
ation to reach across the table and slap him. Beamed at her, and winked.

  “In that case,” he said, “I’d say it’s a bloody good thing you’ve got an interested copper in your corner, wouldn’t you?”

  Chapter 31

  Herne Bay, Kent

  October 1997

  “Kidnapping?” Soames said - doing, El thought, a remarkable approximation of outraged bafflement. “What are you talking about, kidnapping? And what’s she doing with you?”

  He pointed one bony finger towards Karen, who responded with a who, me? shrug of her shoulders.

  “I can’t say that I know her, sir,” Gerry answered. “Nor any of these other ladies here. But as to the charges: I can tell you that they relate to the taking in 1955 of Ingrid Wainwright, also known as Lois Soames.”

  “Lois Soames is my wife,” Soames said, oxygen deprivation reducing what would have been a roar to a muted half-shout.

  “So I understand, sir. Are you able to stand, or do I need to call in one of my officers to help you to the car?”

  “You did this, didn’t you?” Soames cried, turning to El and Sita. “You sicced your… pet here on me?”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, sir,” Gerry told him - still rigidly polite, but something like a warning now entering his voice. “Stand up, please, if you can.”

  Soames pulled the mask to his face and sucked. The air seemed to soothe him; to change him. When he next spoke, he was calmer; a different, and far more reasonable man.

  “Since you’re here, Detective - or is it Sergeant? I’m never sure about police ranks.”

  “Detective Inspector,” Gerry replied impassively.

  “Of course. As I say: since you’re here, Detective Inspector, I wonder if it might be worth us having a small chat about another case I believe your colleagues are investigating? A more recent case. It’s possible I have information they may be interested in hearing.”