When they were out in the stairwell, he turned and said quietly, ‘For a place that’s been empty for ages, the desk is completely dust-free, but the phone isn’t. There’s a reading lamp in one of the drawers, and the inside felt warm, although it could have been my imagination. But the nearest wall socket switch is in the ‘on’ position and there’s no dust on that, either. The others are all off and haven’t been touched for a long time.’ He opened his hand. He was holding a toffee wrapper with a small dab of brown, sticky substance at one end. ‘This was on the floor near the door. The toffee’s still moist.’
‘A supervisor with a sweet tooth?’
But even as Riley said it, she recalled the man’s words just before they had entered the lift: ‘Nobody has been in there for weeks – including me.’
*********
15
By nine the following morning, refreshed by a few hours sleep, Riley had completed researching what she could find of Helen Bellamy’s life. There was almost nothing of a personal nature.
A schools reunion site yielded some names from a meeting a year ago, but nothing recent. Helen’s professional record, which was spread across a wide range of business topics, showed a varied and regular pattern of work, although strangely, nothing for the last six weeks. But that, she decided, could be because Helen may have been working for publications without a web presence, and therefore with no electronic link to the Internet. She had worked for a number of small but solid magazines and newspapers, and was clearly building up to a more prestigious future when she had met her untimely death.
She had belonged to one or two journalism or writing-related support groups, but they were also woefully thin on detail. Riley’s conclusion was that Helen Bellamy had been a very private person, and had left almost nothing of a footprint, unless it was with people who had known her well. People like Frank Palmer, who appeared to have known precious little.
For a change of pace and atmosphere, she turned her focus on the background, work and minutiae of ‘Kim’ Al-Bashir, retailer, multi-millionaire, investor and speculator.
Originally named Muammar, after his grandfather, Al-Bashir had decided shortly after arriving in England to call himself Kim – a fact which had earned him the early, taunting tag of ‘Johnny English’ both from the press and his enemies. Al-Bashir seemed to have developed the knack of courting the former when it suited him, and evidently had no shortage of the latter. Rumour suggested that these enemies stretched from his birthplace in Egypt to the corridors of Whitehall in London, many of them the trampled human casualties from numerous business dealings and his ruthless desire to rise to the top.
Al-Bashir’s biggest problem seemed to be his belief that, having bought a large amount of London property during the ‘eighties, including a chain of household department stores with a flagship address and branches all over the country, he should have been riding high in the nation’s consciousness and hearts, loved and respected by all.
Sadly for him, this had not happened. As if in compensation, he had surrounded himself with a small army of security men, and the stories of how he dealt with perceived enemies were numerous. He had been investigated many times, some of his men had been charged with assault or intimidation, but nothing had stuck, confirming the belief among many in the press that, in spite of his claims to the contrary, he had friends in high places.
Yet when it came down to basics, all Riley managed to find was that Al-Bashir - rich, powerful and seemingly paranoid - was no worse than many other rich, powerful businessmen. He had more money than most and, if rumour in the city was true, backers with unlimited resources to help fund his various business ventures. But in that he was hardly unique.
One of those ventures, verified in the on-line city pages of the nationals, concerned Al-Bashir’s desire to become a leading player in the telecoms market. He had bid for a share of an imminent release of licences across Central and Eastern Europe, effectively seeking to supply, equip and run the entire cellular network across a vast land base. According to the Financial Times, Al-Bashir already had a share in the huge new Batnev satellite system which, once hooked up, would control a substantial amount of mobile phone and wireless connections. It was rumoured that the low cost of the new system would allow him to mop up subscribers across an even wider area, including parts of the Middle East and even sections of the hugely profitable European subscriber base, where subscribers were no longer troubled by brand loyalty.
Riley turned to the folder Varley had given her. She had deliberately left this to one side until she had formed opinions based on her own research. Much of it merely confirmed what she had already discovered, probably culled from the same public domain sources. Al-Bashir, it said, was after some very big fish indeed, and could, if successful, change the face of a large part of the communications world across Eastern Europe.
A note on a single sheet of paper in the file caught Riley’s eye. Folded in on itself, it was snagged between two other documents. There was no indication where the information had come from or where it was supposed to fit. Although typed, it read almost like an afterthought.
Apart from the established providers (already bidding), there could be other obstacles in Al-Bashir’s way. These amount to a number of previously unidentified wealthy individuals or equal-interest groups with a strong desire to keep control of the market in local hands while taking advantage of the enormous potential offered. Although largely resident abroad, these émigrés (oligarchs?) still command substantial resources and considerable influence in the region from local (state) up to national level, in some cases capable of outstripping bids from the more impoverished national treasuries. Singly or as a group, they should not be discounted.
Oligarchs. Riley sat back. That word again. Coincidence? It must be. She forged on, her thoughts drifting to whether Al-Bashir had considered how unpopular his bid was going to make him if he succeeded. Commercial enemies were one thing and to be expected. But consumer resentment of one man’s grandiose schemes was something else entirely, and very unpredictable. If he had thought it through, he was evidently unconcerned by it.
Reading further, she found other disturbing questions coming to the surface. They concerned Asiyah, Al-Bashir’s young and beautiful - but rarely seen - wife. A gifted musician and artist from a traditional Alexandrian family, she had walked into his store one day, and by the time she was ready to leave, Al-Bashir had proposed.
Some of the press speculation and reports included mention of Asiyah’s alleged taste for the high life, free of the restrictions of her family and homeland. But why not? She was the wife of a wealthy man who clearly liked to indulge her. There were reports that he was protective of her, some suggesting to a degree beyond the merely reasonable. One of Al-Bashir’s security men had been dismissed for allegedly looking at Asiyah too openly, while another had been sacked, subsequently accusing Al-Bashir of having him beaten up for disagreeing with Asiyah over a question of her personal safety.
Yet again, nothing startling, given the kind of life these people led. Mildly eccentric behaviour came with the territory. But press reports fed eagerly on the mundane, turning it as if by magic into something else, coloured and re-packaged for public consumption.
It was only when Riley was well over halfway through Varley’s notes that she found the personal detail began to outstrip the commercial. Wading through documents similar to the ones she had discovered, she found additional allegations which, if true, meant Asiyah Al-Bashir wasn’t just merely extravagant, but unfaithful, too. If the allegations were false, they were opening up the publishers of the magazine – and by implication, anyone putting their name to them – to legal action. And funded by Al-Bashir’s vengeful millions, that would mean personal and professional ruin. But what if they were true?
She read through an impressive looking report prepared by a high-level security company, looking for weaknesses in the detail. Asiyah, it was stated, had formed a secret liaison with a non-Egyptian natio
nal. She had been followed to several meetings in London, Paris and Athens, where compromising photographs had been taken. From the angle of some of the photos, Riley could only surmise that the photographer had been standing on a balcony right outside the woman’s hotel room, and that Asiyah was criminally careless when it came to drawing the curtains.
It was bad enough that Asiyah’s lover was allegedly Israeli – heinous indeed for the wife of a staunchly proud Egyptian. But there was worse to come – at least, from Al-Bashir’s point of view.
His wife’s alleged lover was another woman.
********
16
‘You said nobody would come… that we would remain undisturbed here. You guaranteed it!’
Grigori’s eyes were flat and grey like the early morning sky outside, his voice dulled with anger. Emotion had brought an unusual level of colour to his cheeks, but it was not a good sign. He stared for several seconds at the two men before him with all the friendliness of a snake, waiting for an answer. ‘Well?’
‘We don’t know why they came, boss. It was not a scheduled visit.’ His assistant, Radko, was the spokesman, which was his job.
The man beside him, named Pechov, squat as a dumpster and blank-eyed, seemed impervious to the vitriolic atmosphere. He had the disinterest of a junior employee, and chewed rhythmically on a toffee. He remained silent, which was his job.
‘How, not scheduled? You said the supervisor, Goricz, would warn you. Yet suddenly, last night, two people come up here and ask to look around. Did we not pay him enough?’ He leaned forward over the desk strewn with the papers he’d been working on. ‘Or perhaps you did not frighten him enough? What happened – is he taking money from someone else?’
‘No, boss. I don’t think so. It was a genuine visit. Two people – a man and a woman – came with an agent to view the empty floor. It was short notice, Goricz said, and he couldn’t turn them away. They were from out of town, and couldn’t see the place any other time. They went in, looked round, then left.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders and gave a soothing smile. ‘It was nothing, I promise.’
‘You promise?’ Grigori’s words were coated with sarcasm, wiping the smile from his assistant’s face. ‘Like you promised the Bellamy woman would be dealt with properly? Like you promised we would remain secure in this building? Like you guaranteed the German woman would do what we wanted?’
‘The German was not my fault.’ Radko’s face went pale beneath his tan, his eyes flinty with resentment at being taken to task in front of Pechov. But he remained polite, wary. ‘She was not my choice. As for Bellamy, she is already forgotten. The police have found nothing and nor will they. Her place has been cleared, her briefcase and work records destroyed.’ He paused for a moment, before adding softly, ‘As for Goricz, I will deal with him.’
‘No. You won’t,’ Grigori countered quickly. ‘If anything happens to Goricz, it will only draw attention to this building – and we still need it for a while yet.’ He looked his assistant in the eye and said deliberately, ‘But once we are finished here, I do not expect the Serb or his family to see another day. Understand?’
‘All of them?’ Radko exchanged an appalled look with the silent Pechov. ‘But here, in London? It would be a huge risk-’
‘All of them! If you cannot do it, then I will find somebody who can.’ The statement hung in the air between them, the meaning chillingly clear.
Without another word, Grigori flicked a dismissive hand and turned to the papers on the desk before him as if the men did not exist.
He forced himself to remain calm. He was disturbed by what had just happened. Was Radko beginning to show signs of weakness? He hoped not, for that was something he could not allow. A weak link threatened them all, and would be seen by others as a challenge to his authority.
Several miles away, across London, Ray Szulu drummed his fingers on his mobile and waited. It was gone nine am. He was usually up and out earlier than this, but there had been no call yet, and he was still in his skivvies. He was waiting for Ayso, the controller and manager of the mini-cab firm, to give him some work. The limousine company had nothing, he’d already checked that, so here he was again, worrying about earning some money from short drives and wondering if his moans about Ayso’s pig-ugly accent had somehow got back to the man. It would be just like him to make Szulu squirm and wait for a job out of spite.
‘Hey, Raymond. You comin’ back to bed? I’m getting cold!’ The girl’s voice cut through from the bedroom of Szulu’s one-bed flat in what she probably thought was a sexy, seductive tone. All it did was set Szulu’s teeth on edge.
When he’d first started talking to her yesterday evening in a club in Hammersmith, her voice had sounded husky and alluring, muffled slightly by the driving bass line of the music and the constant hubbub of talk and laughter. And when she’d run her fingertips across his bullet scar, mention of which he’d dropped casually into the conversation the way he always did, because the ladies just ached to know they were talking to a real, live, wounded man who’d seen some action, she’d sounded positively honey-toned and had fluttered her eyelashes as if they were powered by Duracell.
But once outside and on the way back to his place, with her hanging on his arm – his wounded left arm – her voice had turned out to be sharp enough to stop the traffic.
He fingered the slight indentation in his upper arm. It wasn’t hurting this morning. Not that he’d admit that to her, of course. As far as the ladies were concerned, the pain was always there, a reminder of how close he’d come to leaving this life and moving onto the next. As usual, he always skirted round what had happened to the man who’d shot him and dwelt on himself. After all, he was still here, wasn’t he?
‘Raymond – you comin’ or what?’
Szulu dropped the mobile and made his way back to bed. Work or not, screechy voice or not, he had a reputation to uphold. Another job would come along sooner or later. Until then, there were other comforts.
Small blessings, as his ma used to say about all of life’s ups and downs. Small blessings.
********
17
‘Mr Palmer? DI Craig Pell.’ The detective walked into Palmer’s Uxbridge office, leaving a uniformed officer hovering at the top of the stairs. It was just after eleven and the morning street noise had died to a rumble.
Palmer swung his feet down from his open desk drawer and stood up. He’d left a message for Pell earlier, and the man had called back to say he would drop by for a ‘chat’. The speed with which he had done so and the presence of uniformed back-up weren’t necessarily significant, but neither was it a good sign.
He offered Pell coffee, but the policeman declined and sat down heavily on one of the hard chairs, thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets. The man’s face was all planes and angles, and Palmer guessed he would be the same mentally. A tough cop, he judged, and young for his rank. It meant he was good at his job.
‘You say you knew Helen Bellamy,’ Pell began without preamble. ‘Would you care to describe how and when?’
Palmer sat down and related how he had met Helen when he was hired by a businessman she happened to be profiling at the time for a trade journal. Palmer was doing a security assessment on the man’s factory, and had bumped into her in the company car park. They had exchanged telephone numbers, and from there it had progressed through dinner to more dates, and into what had been a very pleasant relationship, even it hadn’t been long-lasting.
‘Really? Why’s that?’
Palmer shrugged, aware that Pell was looking for clues as to how well he and Helen had known each other. ‘Work, mostly. Helen was trying to make a name for herself; I was away a lot. At the time, it didn’t suit either of us to try for anything more than that.’ He heard the words and thought how bland and casual it must sound, as if their relationship hadn’t been worth more effort.
‘At the time?’
‘Looking back is easy. We did what we did.’
‘So it
was just fun?’
Palmer felt his face harden. ‘Come again?’ His words fell softly into the room, and Pell shifted uncomfortably and looked away. For a moment, the creak of the chair and the shuffling feet of the officer on the landing were the only sounds.
‘Sorry – that didn’t come out the way I meant it.’ Pell admitted. He seemed genuinely embarrassed. ‘Do you regret the relationship not being more than it was?’
Palmer breathed easily and tried to ignore the not-so-subtle meaning behind the question. ‘I regret lots of thing,’ he said evenly. ‘I regret not having been able to help her, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can’t change the circumstances.’
‘So you last saw her… when?’
‘Several months ago. I’d have to check, if you want me to be more specific. But I don’t see how it would help with your investigation.’
Pell nodded slowly. ‘So you wouldn’t know what she might have been working on recently?’
‘No. She specialised in commercial and business matters, that’s all I can tell you.’
‘Fair enough. You were in the Military Police, is that right?’
‘Yes.’ Palmer guessed that the moment he had rung and left a message, Pell would have had someone trawling through the records. It would have been negligent not to. And Pell was coming across as anything but slow to join all the primary dots.
‘So you know a bit about procedure.’
‘I know you have to eliminate everybody, yes.’
‘What made you come forward?’
Palmer shrugged. ‘You’d have come across my name eventually.’
NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer) Page 8
