Belsey got another pint in and a short for himself. City tongues needed lubricating. Khan picked up his drink and seemed to consider it, but he was staring into space.
“A couple of weeks ago Emmanuel started getting very excited about Devereux. Said he had a tip-off. And his tips are electric.” Khan sipped. “Or at least they were. It’s immaterial now. I tried to call him yesterday and got a message saying they’d stopped trading.”
“They’d stopped?”
“They fire-saled, it’s all cash now. He got the staff in 6 a.m. on Tuesday and told them to sell everything. Said it was over. I heard they wrote off four billion, walked away with two and called it a day.”
“What was that about?”
“God knows.”
“But maybe you did some poking around for him. Maybe you phoned some of your precious contacts, asking about Boudicca. Maybe they were in Economic and Specialist Crime.”
“I made the usual calls. No one’s as friendly as they used to be. I thought it was meant to be about community policing these days.” He sighed. “The City needs help, Nick. One door closes and another door closes.”
“It’s not a ghost town yet.”
“It’s spookier by the day.” He drank. “You seem OK, though. You always seem OK.”
“I seem OK?”
“You seem lively. Have you got goodies?”
“Only ChestEze.”
“You don’t seem too wheezy to me.”
“God bless ChestEze.”
“You always seem to have things under control,” Khan said wistfully.
“Jesus Christ.” Belsey stared at the whisky in his glass. “So what was the tip-off Gilman had?”
“I don’t know. Why are you asking?”
“Alexei Devereux’s left a few bills unpaid.”
“He’s not the only one.” Khan downed his drink. Belsey considered his next move. Then he saw Buckingham walk in. His stomach turned.
“I was thinking of joining the police,” Khan said, oblivious to the new arrival.
“It’s a nice thing to think about.”
“Recession-proof.”
Buckingham sat at the bar, watching them in the back mirror, with a new expression of intent. Belsey studied the arms beside the body. Buckingham didn’t look like a man with a gun, but you could never tell.
“Do you know the guy watching us?” Belsey asked.
Khan glanced over, saw Buckingham staring and turned back.
“Never seen him before,” Khan said.
“He’s been tailing me since this morning. His name’s Pierce Buckingham.”
“He’s staring right at us.”
“He’s not a good tail. I’m going to leave. He’s going to follow me. Stay here. If anything happens give the Mail on Sunday a call. Ask for Charlotte Kelson.”
“You’ve gone downmarket.”
“Take care of yourself.”
Belsey stepped out of the bar and saw the man get up and start behind him. Belsey slipped down the side of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, around the blackened shell of the old market and then up to the Church of the Sepulchre. There was a packed service in Cantonese under way. He sat in the memorial garden; the tail stood by the gate. Belsey got up and found another gate to the street. He walked fast down Gresham Street, ducked into a wine bar and took a stool at the counter. Buckingham entered the bar a moment later.
He took a table directly behind Belsey, no drink, just staring with deadened eyes. The bulge didn’t look like weaponry. It looked like body armour.
Belsey walked out again and they continued beside the Bank of England. Belsey kept close to the dirty, windowless stone. It was like walking in the shadow of an immense tomb. He wasn’t running anymore. He stopped and watched the street behind him in the black glass of a Japanese restaurant and saw Buckingham waiting. Belsey lost his patience. The best way to throw a tail is to follow them. He turned round and walked towards him. Buckingham backed off. But he wasn’t running either. Belsey thought he saw the trace of a smile on the man’s face. Buckingham walked calmly into a side street, and then deeper into the rat run of passageways; Change Alley, Pope’s Head Alley. They continued like that, a few metres apart, across Cornhill, through the crowds of Old Broad Street to a drab, brown church abandoned beside London Wall. A dirty sign announced “All Hallows.” Buckingham pressed on a heavy, forbidding door and it opened an inch. He slipped inside.
Belsey followed, swiftly, before his prey had time to hide or prepare an ambush. It was dark in the church. What leaden light there was came from windows high above them. Dead leaves covered the floor. Buckingham continued to a pew at the front. He took a seat, staring up at a painting above the altar: a confusion of robed bodies before a blinding white light. Belsey sat in the row behind him, angled so he could see the man’s face.
“What do you want, Pierce?” Belsey said.
It was freezing. A smell of cedarwood and incense remained. Buckingham spoke with a steady voice.
“I want them to kill you before they kill me.” Buckingham stared at the altar. The dirty windows lit his wide eyes. He had a dusting of fair stubble, and grime on the collar of his white shirt. Someone who hadn’t been home for a while. Belsey saw the black Velcro fastenings of a bullet-proof Kevlar vest underneath his jacket. “I want to know why I’m going to die.”
“Any ideas?”
“Who are you?”
“Not whoever you think I am.”
“Where’s Alexei Devereux?” Buckingham asked.
“Dead.”
Buckingham absorbed this.
“Are you dead?” he asked. He wore that awful smile again. He still hadn’t turned. Now Belsey saw a folding knife in his hand: box-fresh, with a stubby black handle and a three-inch blade.
“Not yet,” Belsey said.
Buckingham laughed. “This won’t be over for you when I die.”
“When will it be over?” Belsey said. He kept an eye on the blade. It was held carelessly. The muscles weren’t tensed, and Belsey would be able to turn before it did damage. But it didn’t seem very friendly.
“I don’t know,” Buckingham said. “Maybe they’re saving you until last. I’ve told them you’re the one they want.”
“Who did you tell that to?”
“You won’t walk away. You know that. Whoever you are. When they get me, I want you to remember you’ll be next.”
Belsey took out the page of Al-Hayat and unfolded it. “What’s this, Pierce?”
Buckingham turned to look at the clipping. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not anymore.”
“You looked pretty happy about it.”
“Happy?” Buckingham said. “Yes.” His breath stank. He looked into Belsey’s eyes. “Who are you?”
“Tell me what Project Boudicca is,” Belsey said. Buckingham’s face creased with confusion and a terrible disbelief.
“Tell me who you are,” he whispered.
A motorbike choked to life outside. It was enough to startle Buckingham to his feet. He slashed wildly. Belsey backed out of reach as the blade cut through air. Then Buckingham was spinning on his heel and running out of the church, knocking a pew over, reaching through the darkness to the doors and crashing through them.
Belsey remained for a minute staring at the doors, waiting for a sound, waiting for a shot. When none came he stepped back down the aisle, through the dead leaves, into the cold diminishing daylight.
36
The CID office smelt of grease. Rosen had his nose in a bag of fried chicken. He put his meal down when he saw Belsey.
“So who’s Charlotte Kelson?” he asked. Belsey looked at his colleague while he formulated a response. He couldn’t read anything off the face.
“Just someone I had a thing with. It’s a bit awkward.” They had never discussed personal lives. Rosen had fielded a few calls for Belsey in his time. Once, late at the pub, Rosen asked where he got his hair cut. That was as per
sonal as it got: a fascinating glimpse, but no more.
“Why?” Belsey said.
“Listen to your answering machine.”
Belsey played his answering machine.
“Nick, this is Chris Starr from PS Security Consultancy. Been a while, I know. Got a favour to ask—a journalist, your neck of the woods—Charlotte Kelson. Looking for any previous, any gossip, run-ins, controversies, et cetera. You know the score. Give me a call and I’ve got a twenty-year-old malt with your name on.”
Belsey turned to Rosen. He was concentrating on his food again. Belsey could never tell if he was feigning oblivion.
“Did you get one of these messages?” Belsey said.
“Everyone got one.”
“Did you say anything?”
“No.”
PS Security provided a second income for a lot of talented detectives and a few senior uniforms as well. They did work for embassies, royalty, banks, Russian and American corporations and some high net individuals who wanted police without involving the police. It was run by Chris Starr, a former Flying Squad detective. According to one version of the story, Starr found a police officer’s salary was never going to support his love of Italian cars so went private. In another version he made a quiet exit from the force, sidestepping the Directorate of Professional Standards and half a dozen charges of perverting the course of justice. But he retained a valuable address book, and rumour suggested that it included Northwood and those in the chief’s circle of influence. Belsey had met Starr briefly at a Drugs Squad birthday party. Starr had been out of the force two years by then, and he looked the healthiest person there. He was only a few years older than Belsey. Starr came over to him late in the evening. “Got a minute?” His eyes shone. He led Belsey out to a parking lot with a yellow Alfa Romeo in it.
“Paid in cash,” he said, tapping the hood.
Belsey admired the car. He was expecting Starr to say that guns popped out of the indicators. Starr spent ten minutes detailing the specs, then squeezed Belsey’s shoulder and pressed a business card into his hand. PS Security.
“What’s the PS?” Belsey said.
“Private Security.”
“Private Security Security?”
“You’re sharp,” he said. “I’ve heard good things about you, Nick Belsey. If you ever fancy a change of scene, give me a call.”
Belsey always fancied a change of scene. He went into the office the next week, in a flash new block between Baker Street and the Edgware Road, and was taken around and told about pay packages and given a cigar. Starr showed off a room of gadgets: hidden microphones, bugs and location devices. He was proud of these and they were far superior to anything the police used. But the investigator was too smooth. The job, it seemed to Belsey, was panty-sniffing: divorce work and insurance claims; Starr himself was a bully and an egotist. A few months later PS were investigated for links with an Essex property developer wanted for attempted murder. Starr was providing him with protection and countersurveillance, and happened to be slipping lucrative work to the very police detectives investigating the developer in the first place. It was a tangled web. Eventually the case against Starr was dropped with a lot of winks and drinks all round, but then the case against the property developer was also dropped, so everyone must have had a smile on their face.
Belsey played the message again, wiped it and called Starr back.
“Chris, it’s Nick Belsey.”
“Nick, how’s tricks?”
“Tricky. How’s yours?”
“Getting by. You hear my message?”
“Charlotte Kelson.”
“It’s a journalist, Nick. Works on the Mail, lives up near Archway. Just wondering if you had anything on her.”
“I don’t think so. What’s it about?”
“She’s been getting nosy. But I think we’re getting something anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Paying her a visit this afternoon. You might want to tell Hampstead police not to get involved, just in case someone sees the break-in and reports it.”
“I’ll do that.”
Belsey called Charlotte’s mobile. No answer. He called her work extension and they said she was working from home. He ran downstairs and jumped into the station’s fast-response car, trying to catch his breath. He made Archway in seven minutes: lights, sirens and leaning on the horn. He killed the sirens a block away, double-parked.
All the curtains had been drawn in Charlotte’s home. The front door was a fraction open. That seemed a bad combination. Belsey stepped inside, slow and silent.
A corridor ran from the front door to a kitchen at the back. Halfway down was a beige-carpeted staircase. Charlotte lay at the top of the stairs. Her feet and hands had been bound behind her back and a strip of fabric stuffed into her mouth, but she was inching along the carpet to the top stair. She was struggling to breathe.
Belsey stepped silently up the stairs. Charlotte’s eyes widened. Belsey put a finger to his lips and undid the binds and took the fabric out of her mouth. Through a door at the end of the corridor he could see a man in a white balaclava going through filing cabinets.
Charlotte gasped for breath.
The intruder turned. Belsey launched himself towards him, landing a fist in his face. The man fell backwards into the study. He slipped a retractable baton from his pocket and swung. It glanced off Belsey’s shoulder. He swiped at Belsey’s arms and Belsey brought his right fist up, the impact snapping the man’s head back. He brought his forehead crashing into the bridge of the intruder’s nose. The man staggered. Belsey tried to get a grip on him but his right arm had gone numb. He threw a straight-arm punch with his left and caught the side of the intruder’s mouth. There was blood now, a streak across the front of the silk balaclava. Belsey tried to tear it off him but the man turned. Belsey grabbed his wrist and forced him halfway into a police hold, gripping him from the back, but the intruder knew police holds and wasn’t ready to give up the fight. He slammed Belsey repeatedly against the wall, knocking vases and ornaments off a shelf to the floor. Charlotte grabbed an award that had fallen, a lead fountain pen set into a heavy block of wood. She smashed it against the intruder’s head. He didn’t like that. He swore and turned, flailing. Belsey sensed he didn’t enjoy being outnumbered. Charlotte aimed another swing in the direction of his face. The intruder lost his footing and almost fell, before stumbling down the stairs towards the door.
“Let him go,” Belsey said.
“Let him go?”
Belsey watched the intruder jump into a blue Renault and drive off, still masked, grinding the gears.
“What the fuck was that?” Charlotte said.
“That was us winning. Are you OK?”
“Better than three minutes ago.”
They returned to the room where he’d interrupted the man. It was a study with a desk and shelves of files and reference books. Charlotte sat at the desk, still shaking. Belsey took her hands and checked her wrists where they’d been tied. Blood was returning. He released them.
“Should I call the police?” she said. Charlotte picked up her mobile, stared at it blankly, then put it down again on the desk. She ran her hands over her face and shut her eyes, then opened them.
“No,” Belsey said. “He’ll be on first-name terms with whoever turns up.”
“Why?”
“He’s a private investigator.”
Belsey went over to the filing cabinet the investigator had been so busy with.
“It’s not where many people keep their jewellery,” he said. He slid a cabinet drawer out. “What have you been doing to get them interested?”
“I’ve been told not to trust you.”
“Sure. There’s been a lot of stuff thrown in your direction—do you know what I mean? I think trusting me might be your least worst option right now.” She turned to face him. “This is your decision, Charlotte. You trust me or you don’t. Tell me about the person who phoned you with so much to say abo
ut my financial situation.”
“It was an anonymous call.”
“What did they say?”
“That you were bankrupt.”
“The same person who told you to go to the casino?”
“I think so.”
“What does he sound like?”
“Male, English. Middle-aged, or thereabouts.”
Belsey pushed the cabinet drawer shut.
“Listen, someone’s trying to tie us up in knots. The whole casino meeting was engineered to show us who was in control. They know we’re on to them. Me and you. We’re dangerous together because we’re close to figuring something out. So they’re playing games with us. I think they’re using us to block each other and to slow down the rest of the people they’ve pissed off. That’s not a very safe role for us. You might have to learn to trust me.”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s about them getting away with something. I think that something involves Milton Granby and the City of London. You said he was up to no good. What’s he doing?”
“I haven’t got the details yet. It’s a scheme to bring money back into his accounts, that’s all I know. You’re bleeding,” she said.
Charlotte led him to a bathroom. His lip was bleeding where the old cut had been reopened. He couldn’t lift his right arm very easily. He removed his shirt and inspected the damage. His right elbow had swollen. He cleaned himself up. He was more angry about the voice on the phone, fucking him over.
Charlotte sat on the edge of the bath watching him.
“Do you really think the Starbucks shooting is something to do with this?”
“I know it is. Jessica Holden was in a relationship with Alexei Devereux.”
Charlotte looked incredulous. “A schoolgirl?”
“Is that the surprising part?”
She was silent as he put his shirt back on. He could see her thinking. Finally she said: “Are you really part of a Ghost Squad?”
“Does it matter what I’m part of?” He splashed his face with water and leaned, dripping, over the sink. “We’re on to the same thing, and the same people are trying to get at us.” She passed him a towel. “What else have you found out about Devereux?” he said.
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