The Boardman Files

by Gus Ross

  I must admit I had no idea how he knew this, or in fact that he had stopped to remove number one tracker. I thought we had left the farmhouse in a bit of a rush, but it just goes to show what you can miss when you have nearly been tortured.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “If I can’t find it in the next minute then we dump her and get ourselves another.”

  I really wanted to tell him that I was pretty sure most of the local car showrooms would be closed at this time of night, but held that thought between my ears. True to his word though, we were in and off in almost no time at all in another vehicle; a particularly smelly old BMW that had been parked some hundred yards or so up the street. There were remains of old pizza boxes in the back, various assortments of sweet wrappers strewn all over the place, at least three empty plastic coke bottles, the small kind, and an overflowing ashtray that looked like it belonged to Dot Cotton. I tried hard to imagine what kind of low life cretin would actually drive around in this garbage bin on wheels and then decided to simply jettison the majority of the offending material from the passenger window.

  “Hoi. Give it a rest; you can’t go chucking stuff out like that.”

  For a brief moment I thought I had come across an ecologically friendly professional killer, but that rather odd thought combination was quickly thwarted.

  “Stop it before you bring attention to us.”

  Sternie was right of course, but thankfully I had already removed most of the offending material and, given our propensity for leaving dead bodies lying around, I reckoned a run in with the Wombles was the least of our worries. Come to think of it, I think the Wombles re-used the litter rather than told you off for depositing it recklessly from moving cars, but who cared. My random thought coping mechanism was clearly in overdrive and that suited me fine. It was only later that the thought occurred to me that driving around in a stolen car was more likely to draw attention to us than anything else, but by then the moment was gone.

  The second dot on the screen belonging to John McDade had now also come to a halt and he knew that could only mean one thing. He slammed the laptop shut and swore out loud, but no one heard him.

  The thing about any handler, whether the subjects were dogs or hit men, was knowing exactly what to do when one of them got off the leash. But now he had one who was not just off the leash; this one had chewed its masters face off, jumped the fence and was taking the fast train out of town, only he now had no idea where out of town was. And then his mobile rang again.

  Within minutes of the third and final call of the evening to John McDade, another mobile phone was ringing, only this time it was Big Macs. He was still in his office, despite the time. It was not unusual for him to work this late, although he didn’t care for it and reckoned most of his VP workaholics, who lived off of four hours sleep a night and clocked up in excess of seventy hours a week, were either sad, pathetic people with no other talent in life, or were married to particularly ugly partners they would rather not go home to. His wife was a looker and there was no way he would rather be in the office at this time of night, unless there was something important on the agenda. And things didn’t get much more important than they were right now.

  He had the information he required but he had loose ends all over the place and Big Mac did not like loose ends. His backup plan had not been required, which just helped prove to him how useless the Brits were, and Charlie for that matter, and he therefore had no further need for ‘Dave Richards’. It should have been a simple disposal but the voice on the other end of the mobile had soon cleared up that misconception. He rang off and started to pace the floor of his office; he did his best thinking on the move and he would need to think fast.

  He had fully intended using ‘Dave Richards’ as bait if required, or at least to understand the likely whereabouts of his ‘missing’ wife had his interception not succeeded, but of course it had.

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly as he thought about that one; not knowing your wife in detail could have serious repercussions for a man, he had seen that too many times in the past. Sometimes the skeletons in the closet were harmless old bags of dry bones that often rattled around a bit but did little else, but sometimes they had just enough life left in them to tear your little world apart, if you were not careful that was.

  Of course he was careful; his good lady had been subject to the full vetting service and there was no way she would spring the type of surprise ‘Dave Richards’ would experience when he finally came face to face with his wife’s little secret. But then of course ‘Dave’ was now meant to be one big step closer to being his very own set of bones. Only Mac was now very aware that that part of the plan had been compromised.

  He continued to pace the floor and kicked out at the inoffensive small steel bin the sat to the side of his desk; it took the full brunt of his disgust, flying across the room before coming to rest in a scattering of crumpled paper. The thought that good old ‘Dave’ had not even been required just made it all the worse, and if there had been a second bin in the room it would have been trying its best to keep a low profile.

  And there it was. Amidst all his rage and fury, he had figured it out. ‘Dave’ was meant to have been his pawn in the game, the innocuous little piece that is sometimes hardly noticed, but has the potential to have quite an impact if required. But clearly he was now someone else’s, and that someone else had been following the same thought process as himself when it came to locating ‘Dave’s’ beloved. But the real sting in the tail was that now he knew that one of his team had double crossed him, and that meant they were either on the Brits payroll, or had a piggy bank full of roubles.

  John McDade had already despatched a cleanup team to the location of the muddy tracker at Swithins’ farm and the text message he had just received, confirming the death of Steve Alexander, meant that Stern Anderson was the one playing for the other side. The suburban bloodbath that Sternie had most likely left behind would be one of those ‘situations’ that would be left to plod to clean up; it would no doubt be crawling with them already, but they would find nothing to go on. There would be the usual noise in the press and speculation about drugs and turf-wars etc, but ultimately it would be just another of those unexplained gangland killings. Nothing to trace back to him or his employer, not even the tracker on the A4, that would be expertly removed right under the noses of plod before they had even linked the car to the killings, but that was little consolation.

  John McDade was now contemplating how best to explain the Stern Alexander debacle to his employers. His employers, of course, had already figured out that part, albeit they would not know, nor care at this point, which one of the operatives had gone AWOL.

  McDade stepped from the small coffee house and took in a deep breath of the night air. It was fast approaching midnight and there was a definite sharp edge to it, the coldness almost masking that dank city taste that was all too prevalent in London.

  He swung his laptop bag onto his shoulder, tucked his chin down into the collar of his jacket and started to walk. He would not go far before being unceremoniously bundled into the back of a rather plain looking saloon car.

  Soon, John McDade would be one less loose end for Big Mac to worry about.

  Chapter 11: Ulyana Lyalyushkin.

  Alex Boardman threw his trendy new phone across the room, but in the direction of a sofa that had far too many cushions on it to be really comfortable. It was a controlled show of frustration; he did not really want any damage to come to it; phones these days were far too valuable to be without, and he really needed his now. But she was not answering his calls, had not been answering for two or three days now and he was beginning to get worried.

  Boardman was one of those annoyingly handsome blokes; he looked as good in a suit as he did in a pair of old jogging pants and a tee shirt. He stood around six feet tall, with an athletic build (that equally annoyingly was more to do with his genes than any rigorous gym routine), and had a short cro
p of thick dark hair. Despite his looks, he had never been much of a ladies’ man; had his head stuck in a book too often to really have the time. Of course there had been the occasional dalliance, some he had enjoyed more than others, but no one had really managed to get under his skin; no one that was until now. He retrieved his phone and rang her number again, still no answer.

  He looked at his watch, she would have to wait, he had a meeting across town in thirty minutes that he could not afford to be late for. He threw on his favourite tweed jacket (apparently high fashion these days), and left his flat, looking more like a male model than the brilliant scientist he was.

  Yip, Alex Boardman was one of those guys I could easily have taken an instant dislike to; and that was without knowing that he had been knobbing my wife.

  “Wake up man.”

  I awoke to a rather large hand on my shoulder shaking me from the land of nod. I was quite enjoying it there; there were no bad guys chasing me and no dead bodies, in fact I had just finished having a nice cup of tea with Great Uncle Bulgaria before being so rudely awakened. And now reality was creeping its way back into my skull (no, that was an understatement, it was kicking and screaming its way to the front of my brain and forcing out any remnants of pleasantness from my dream), and the stale smell of filth from the trusty, stolen BMW was invading my nostrils with an equal lack of welcome.

  Clearly we had decided to spend the night in our 1 star car, rather than the latest ‘safe house’, and by the look of the struggling light outside, and the rather annoying chirping and tweeting sound from somewhere high above, it must just have been about dawn.

  “Good sleep?”

  “Not sure I would call it that”, I said still bleary and wishing like crazy that I did have some of Great Uncle Bulgaria’s brew to hand. “I thought you had somewhere in mind?”

  “Decided it would be safer to park up for the night rather than risk it.”

  Sternie seemed like the kind of man who could easily go without sleep for days if required; there was an inherent toughness about him, no doubt trained into him from an early age, I reckoned he had not slept a wink that night. My reckoning was indeed pretty much spot on; Sternie had spent the night contemplating his next move and had merely stole ten minutes of sleep, but it was all he required.

  “So what now? Are we off to see the wizard, or do we have some bad guys to chase out of town?” I was trying to sound like some wisecrack sidekick that you see in those really bad American cop shows. Judging by the look that Sternie had just passed my way I think my shot at wize-crackery had missed the target by quite a margin and was currently somewhere in row Z.

  “Food. I don’t know about you, but I need to eat.”

  “That sounds like the best idea yet.”

  We, (Sternie), had parked up for the night in one of those industrial estates, you know the ones where the heart has been ripped out of them and there are more derelict sites than occupied ones, and the words ‘To Let’ seem to be everywhere you look. We were in one of those little offshoots from the road that don’t seem to go anywhere and I presume were either intended for the next phase of development (if it ever came), or to provide the travelling salesman with a spot to stop and eat his cheeseburger, take a piss, and make some calls. I also presumed they would make a pretty good spot for those that liked dogging or indulging in some of life’s seedier activities.

  Either way it had served quite a different purpose for us and I was already imagining that we could not be far from one of those greasy spoon burger vans that fried everything and sold coffee that looked like tar and tasted much worse. One of the downsides of imaging food, especially when you are hungry enough to eat your own arm, is that you can practically taste it, and that suddenly makes you twice as hungry. My stomach groaned in protest.

  Sternie had already turned the key and the stinky BMW spluttered to life, no doubt in the same way that its sixty a day (judging by the ashtray I had previously emptied out of the window), owner would have. We were off and it was not long before we found the quality eating establishment I had been imagining.

  It was just gone six thirty, but clearly there was an early shift coming in, or a late one coming out of one of the industrial units, and this van was frying up a storm. One exceptional fried egg roll, one bacon roll laced with far too much ‘Tommy K’, and a large polystyrene cup of oil later, and I was feeling brand new.

  Fortunately I had cleaned myself up a bit back in the suburban love-nest, and Mr Burger man paid me no more attention than his average customer. In fact he would have struggled to pick me out of a line up thirty minutes later.

  Sternie had also gone for the fried egg special, a good chunk of which was currently negotiating its way down his angular chin, and just as gravity was about to send it crotch-ward, he swiped it away with one of his large mitts. He polished off the remains of the roll and then let out a satisfied belch. My feeling of ‘brand newness’ had been quickly replaced by the searing pain of toothache.

  I had always had what I liked to call ‘council’ teeth (more metal than enamel, and sadly lacking the straight capped whiteness of practically all of the people on tv), and they were prone to that screeching, over sensitive, reaction to hot drinks, that at times was unbearable. I put my hand up to the side of my face and winced but it made no difference.

  At around about the same time Pug was putting brush to tooth in his bathroom, but his mind was somewhere else. He had been up most of the night trying to figure out who would have wanted Buckfield dead; there were always grudges, it came with the territory, but his little cop shop was hardly downtown LA. Still it was all he had to go on; he would trawl through his partner’s caseload from the last few years and see if he could find anything. It was not his crime to solve, but he had a lot of respect for Buckfield and he would do all he could to make sure the scumbags behind his death were brought to justice.

  Approximately two hours later, and keeping the link involving teeth going about as far as possible, a certain Mr Stanley ‘The Knife’ Osram was being identified from a set of dental records by a particularly zealous forensic dentist. And it would not be long before the same name would appear on the LCD screen of Sergeant Pug.

  She had finally changed her mind and settled on the London Metropole Hotel; sometimes it was easier to disappear in a place full of people than in some quiet little boutique hotel or seedy B&B.

  She paid the taxi driver, giving him just enough tip to be reasonable, but not enough for him to remember her by (although clearly the fact that she was rather beautiful would have meant Mr Cab Driver would remember her even if she had given him a handful of buttons), and walked through the revolving doors into the foyer.

  She had checked in without any fuss, presenting the credit card of a Miss Ava Longford (an alias that she had personally created in case of such emergencies, as opposed to the many ‘provided’ to her), and would spend a rather nervous, and mainly sleepless, night in her bog standard executive room. She was pretty sure she had successfully shaken those that were tailing her, but had nonetheless switched taxi on three separate occasions before arriving at the Met.

  It was approximately 9 am and now she was riding her way down to the ground floor on one of the many lifts that all seemed to be heading downwards; it would not be safe to stay any longer.

  The lift was jammed with bodies; a lady with a particularly nicely cut suit that in another world she would have chosen herself, at least one gentleman who had clearly travelled without his deodorant, and what she would describe as an array of the usual predictable suspects for a hotel such as this.

  The lift gave the obligatory ding and everybody spilled out onto the ground floor in an organised rush.

  The London Met is one of those hotels that midweek is overflowing with fat middle aged blokes in suits, business types hustling and bustling, and where every available seat and table combination comes complete with a group of people huddled round a laptop. As she stepped from the lift, she was happy to see how bu
sy it was. To her left was one of those little coffee franchises with the obligatory queue of suits; the smell was heavenly, but she did not have the time to stop.

  There was a gaggle of chairs and tables and bodies directly in front of her that she navigated round rather than through. At one particular table, sipping an oversized latte, sat Charles Hanson looking as relaxed as a man in an armchair, rather than one perched on a deliberately uncomfortable metal contraption. He spoke into his hands free phone mic’ as she passed him, taking more than a few seconds to look her up and down as he did so. Two of Hanson’s team, who were milling near the bank of checkout desks, now knew exactly what they were looking for.

  Call it a hunch, or perhaps years of training, but Eva Richards had spotted them almost before they had spotted her. She could not be certain whose side they were on (she was no longer sure which side she was on), but she was more than sure that none of the players in this game were going to provide her with a wide armed warm welcome.

  She slowed her pace just slightly as she approached the revolving door exit; partly to ensure she was indeed being followed and partly to ensure she would reach the exit just ahead of a group of Japanese tourists who had been yapping away excitedly about which fabulous London landmark they should visit today and generally clogging up the foyer, but who were now en route to the exit doors.

  Just as it looked like they would all stumble into each other she made her dash and burst from the hotel. The spill over from rush hour (more like rush hours), meant there were still taxis and people and traffic everywhere, although to be fair London was always like that. Still it gave her a fighting chance to get away.

  The two burly CIA operatives tried desperately to negotiate their way through the Japanese tourist contingent without much success; eventually at least two would be knocked aside and one rather expensive camera would be broken. She turned immediately right and, thankful for her choice of shoes, started to sprint down the side street that ran the length of the Metropole.