Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

“You keep turning up where people die,” the sergeant said. “Looks like unlucky coincidence.”

  “Is that what you’re charging me with?” Belsey asked.

  “Want to know what we’re charging you with?” Herring said.

  “Impress me.”

  “Conspiracy to rob, conspiracy to defraud, perverting the course of justice and attempted murder.”

  “Attempted murder of who?”

  “Charlotte Kelson.”

  “For Christ’s sake.”

  “Would you like to nominate a solicitor?” the sergeant asked.

  “Or how about you just try and explain yourself.” Herring stared at him.

  “I’ve got no comment,” Belsey said.

  “Any comments about this?”

  They prodded the newspaper across to him: Charlotte’s criticism of the mighty Chief Superintendent Northwood. Belsey scanned the desk under the pretence of studying the story—regulation-issue Styrofoam, no cutlery. The only solid objects were the tape recorder and the desk lamp.

  The constable admired Charlotte Kelson’s byline.

  “She’s nice. Did you get a shag for this?”

  “Twat.”

  The ginger thug came over and clapped him on the ear. So they were going to keep on playing roughhouse. That was West End Central for you. Belsey looked again at the desk lamp. They had the same make at Hampstead.

  “I asked you a question,” the thug said.

  “Would I fuck you?” Belsey said. “Was that the question?”

  “You’re a disgrace.”

  “You’re a credit to the police,” Belsey said. He could hear keys jangling. Which one of them had keys? The ginger PC had a chain from his pocket to his belt. Belsey brought a hand up to his face and felt the mess. “Can I get a tissue from my jacket?” he said. They grunted. Belsey found a clump of tissues and dabbed at the blood.

  “You’ve forgotten something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t read me my rights.” They smiled at this. Belsey stopped dabbing. He put his hands in his lap. He wrapped the bloody tissues around his right hand.

  The sergeant drawled laconically: “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be used in evidence. Has that been understood?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t you think you should cuff me?”

  “Come on, Nick,” Herring said.

  “Cuff me.”

  The constable moved towards Belsey. Belsey popped the bulb, smashed it on the desk and jumped up, elbowing the constable hard in the face. He got a hand in the man’s hair and wrenched his head back, fitting the jagged stem into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

  Herring and the sergeant froze. Belsey pulled the head back farther so everyone had a good view of the shards. The constable gurgled. Belsey pushed the base deeper until he stopped struggling. There was a smell of burning skin.

  “Back off or I rip his throat out,” Belsey said.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Herring said.

  Belsey moved the constable backwards towards the door. He kicked the handle and continued out, down the corridor, dragging his hostage.

  “Open the back,” Belsey shouted as he approached the desk. Blood was dripping off his elbow. He passed through the exit door out to the parking lot.

  Belsey dropped the constable hard, so that he was winded. He unclipped the keys from his chain. The car key had a Mazda logo on the ring. There was one black Mazda MX–5 in the parking lot. Belsey got inside the car, fired the engine and drove it through the barrier.

  He checked the rearview when he was on Chandos Way and saw their faces. His hand on the steering wheel was caked in blood.

  Four hundred and fifty minutes.

  57

  He raced it to Hampstead, stopping to wash the blood off at a drinking fountain on Heath Street. There’d be an All Ports warning out in ten or fifteen minutes: to airports, ferry ports, international train stations. The borders were closing in. He had a couple of hours before the system fully connected. They would put out a bulletin with his name on, including calls to every patrol unit, but that didn’t mean the stations would know until the next start of shift meeting. He was counting on circulation lag, and got it.

  PC Craig Marshall on the front desk nodded.

  “Nick.”

  “Craig.”

  “How’s things?”

  “Ticking over.”

  Belsey went up to the second floor, past the Community Support office, to the room they used for evidence storage. PC Drakeley, on guard duty outside, signed his name in the book.

  “All well, guv?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  Belsey walked in, opened the safe, removed ten grams of ketamine and a Sig Sauer P220 handgun. He stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. He couldn’t find any money. There were bullets for the Sig in a separate cabinet at the side. He emptied them all into his pockets and walked out.

  “Have a good one, Nick.”

  “See you around.”

  Up to the CID office, which was empty. So this was it, he thought—a silent good-bye. He picked up a phone on Rosen’s desk and called Duzgun.

  “It’s Jack Steel. Is my order ready for collection?”

  “It’s ready. Do you have the money?”

  “I’m getting it now.”

  Belsey called Emmanuel Gilman and it rang ten times, then went to voice mail.

  “You’re in luck,” Belsey said. “I’ve got something for you. I need seven hundred in cash and that’s a bargain.”

  Halfway down the stairs he bumped into Trapping: gangly, grinning.

  “Nick.”

  “Rob. Have to run.”

  “I got a name for the assault on Thursday,” Trapping said.

  “Good work, Rob.”

  “Everything on the Halifax job is on your desk. Patrick Dent’s given five alibis so far. The CPS called—”

  “I’m in a bit of a rush right now.”

  Trapping frowned. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m good. I’ve got to run, though.”

  “Can you sign the forms?”

  “Sure.”

  Belsey went back up and signed them. He gave Trapping a wink and touched his arm. What did he want to say? Good-bye. Do not embrace the idea of being a policeman. Manage your expectations. Remember to move.

  He ditched the Mazda in Camden, and stole an old Citroën estate from behind the market. It had a baseball cap under the passenger seat. He put the cap on, pulled it low and started driving. King’s Cross, east on City Road, Commercial Road, into Docklands. At a red light he leaned down and loaded the gun. He breathed in the smell of polish and cordite. He put it back in his jacket and continued weaving between the office blocks of Canary Wharf.

  There was no answer on Gilman’s intercom. Belsey followed another occupant into the building. He went up to the top floor. Gilman’s door was open. He took the gun out.

  “Emmanuel?”

  Silence is different with a gun in your hand. It seemed brittle. Blood had reached the living-room doorway and seeped into the hall.

  Gilman lay face up in the living room with the AK on his chest. His mobile lay a few inches from his right hand. The body hadn’t fully stiffened. Belsey removed Gilman’s socks and put them on his hands. He tried not to look at the fund manager’s head. He picked up the mobile and played the message.

  “You’re in luck,” he heard himself say. He wiped the message and put the mobile back.

  Belsey flushed the drugs and took all the cash in the protein powder tub. It felt like close to a grand. He was halfway out of the door when he stopped and took a last look at the bleak tableau. The screen of the mobile phone was still lit. He went back and picked it up. One message remained, undeleted. He played it.

  “Emmanuel, it’s not good.” A man with an East Coast American accent. “I made so
me inquiries and he hasn’t been in London for a couple of years. The hotel says Devereux’s been on the island six months. He’s not investing in anything and doesn’t know the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium. His lawyers flew over the day before yesterday and they’re ready to sit on anyone who says otherwise. He’s in a wheelchair, Emmanuel. He’s devoting himself to environmental charities: marine conservation, coral reefs. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to . . .”

  Belsey counted the money in the lift on the way down and it came to nine hundred and sixty.

  He tore north through east London, through Hackney to Green Lanes. Old men crowded the front room of Duzgun’s social club watching a TV mounted high in one corner: LONDON SNIPER PANIC. It was rolling news now. Reports kept cutting back to a computer-generated map with four crosses for four crime scenes: Starbucks, St. Clement’s, Cavendish Square, The Bishops Avenue.

  “Here.” Belsey slipped twenty pounds to an aproned man. “Is Hasan around?”

  He was nodded through the doorway into the back room. It hadn’t changed. The fat man was behind his table. The passport was on the table, with the licence inside it, jutting out.

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” Belsey said. He placed the seven hundred on the table and picked the passport up. It was UK, backdated a couple of months, which was a nice touch. He checked the driver’s licence and the passport photo and moved the holograms under the light. They were fine. There were whole factory towns in northern China devoted to producing black-market holograms. One day he’d like to go to those places. It was one of the best fakes he’d seen.

  “Good job. Thanks.” He was on his way out when Duzgun said, “Sit down.”

  “I can’t stop.”

  “I have something that might be of interest to you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Work.”

  “Work?”

  “If you want to work,” he said. “I can get you good work, minimum wage.”

  “I’m not looking for work at the moment,” Belsey said. “Thank you.”

  “Good employer.”

  “I’m fine,” Belsey said. “Maybe another time.”

  He stashed the Citroën at the back of Smith Square, close to the river, with the gun and baseball cap in the glove compartment, put his jacket on with the Kilgo Vesser architectural plans inside it, then walked up Millbank to Parliament. Westminster was extra jumpy, snipers on the mind. He could see endless protection officers: stopping vehicles, keeping tourists moving along. A gathering of protesters was being shaken down, scattering pictures of burnt children and Palestinian flags. The Palace of Westminster loomed over them, lit for effect and vaguely monstrous. Its yellow stonework dripped down over the scene. It kept the tourists distracted. Belsey showed his police ID to the officer on St. Stephen’s Gate and went inside, into St. Stephen’s Chapel. He sat for a moment in the musty lobby area admiring his new passport. He bent it, ground it beneath his heel, roughed it up a little. Then he walked back to the entrance and saw Kovar beyond the gates.

  “Max,” Belsey called. He wanted him to get the full effect. Kovar looked up. Belsey stepped out of Parliament, thanking the police guard. He grabbed Kovar’s hand with both of his own. “Treasury on a Sunday,” he said. “There are places I’d rather be. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Can we walk?”

  “I hope you haven’t had to cut anything short.”

  “It’s sewn up. Now they just need to drink the champagne. Alexei’s got them swooning. He’s a dangerous man.”

  Belsey led Kovar across the front of Parliament onto Millbank.

  “So you have the information on Project Boudicca?”

  “Sure,” Belsey said. “But I’ve been having second thoughts as to whether this is fair on you, Max. The sort of money being thrown around is distasteful. Once people know something like this is a sure thing, they go crazy. Now we’ve got the Treasury on board, and we’re putting up another ten mil of our own. Mr. D says this kind of project is the future. What can I say to him? He’s never lost money before and I’m not the man to turn around and tell him now might be different. But a casino on Hampstead Heath . . .”

  “A casino on Hampstead Heath?”

  The limo was right where it was meant to be, waiting beside the entrance to Victoria Tower Gardens. They’d even sent the same driver.

  “Evening, sir.”

  “Here we are,” Belsey said. “Would you get in? It will be more convenient.” He opened the car door for Kovar. They got in. There were four rows of seats, turned to form two booths, each with a shiny black table, a rack of cocktail glasses and its own minibar. They slid into the back booth.

  “I hate these things,” Belsey said. “But they’re useful if you want to work. Alexei calls it his portable office.” He pulled the crumpled plans from his jacket and spread them across the table: a map of the new-look Heath and a design for the central structure itself, in aerial and cross section. They hung over the sides of the table and across the men’s laps. “There it is. Project Boudicca.” He let Kovar drink it in. “The mayor’s desperate for it, the City’s desperate for it. We’ve got tax breaks that make me blush. Now people are talking about Hackney Marshes, Clapham Common. I’m thinking, is this real?” Belsey fixed them both a brandy. Kovar pored over the plans. He couldn’t contain a smile. “If it’s the start, then it’s just the start,” Belsey said. “The beginning of the start.” He checked the window. Two men in paint-flecked overalls watched them from beside the park railings. “Let’s go round the block,” Belsey said to the driver.

  They joined the traffic and Belsey thought one of the men might have lifted something to his mouth. Keep calm, he thought. When you’re on the black, close the game.

  “In Pennsylvania—did you see what we did there? I personally made half a million in the first month after I invested. With this we were hoping for sixty percent market share. It’s looking more like eighty. It’s printing money. It makes me sick.”

  They approached Buckingham Palace and stopped as a crowd of tourists crossed the road, cameras flashing in the darkness. The driver hit the horn.

  “Tell me,” Belsey said. “Why do these people come here and take photographs?”

  “I’ve never understood,” Kovar muttered.

  “It’s because they don’t have anything better to do. They’ve finished shopping, their show’s not until eight. Why do people go to see the Mona Lisa when they’re in Paris? They have no idea what else to do. That’s what Mr. D knows. London’s a resort town now.”

  “Yes.”

  “By 2030 there will be fifteen Las Vegases, spread all over the world. God willing, London will be one of them.”

  “I expect so.”

  Belsey watched the rearview mirror. “How long’s that Mondeo been behind us?” he asked the driver.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  It was hard spotting tail techniques in London traffic. The Mondeo was making late turns; one man driving, one passenger in the back.

  “Make a left here,” Belsey said to the driver. “Don’t signal.”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Turn here. Don’t signal.”

  “The road’s closed.”

  “That’s why I want you to do it.”

  They swerved around the Queen Victoria memorial, cutting up a lot of angry drivers, and turned onto Constitution Hill.

  “Now keep going to Hyde Park Corner. Put some speed on it.”

  “Is there a problem?” Kovar tore himself away from the plans as the limousine accelerated.

  “No, no problem. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s impressive,” Kovar said.

  At the Hyde Park Corner roundabout Belsey told the driver to go round twice. It seemed they’d lost the Mondeo.

  “I’ve got a good feeling about you,” Belsey said, sliding low in his seat. “That’s rare for me. There are people I want you to meet now: the IT boys, the MPs. I told Devereux how I feel. We’re men of instinct.”

&n
bsp; “I can cover whatever Hong Kong Gaming were covering.”

  “That’s a thirty percent stake.”

  “It won’t be a problem.”

  They were on Park Lane, beside the monument to Animals Killed in War, when a silver Skoda Octavia pulled up beside them, two men, making a point of not looking at the limo, but not looking at anything else either.

  “Take us back to Parliament Square,” Belsey said.

  “What happens next?” Kovar said.

  “Well, we’re at Stansted in three hours. Mr. D wants you to come over to St. Petersburg in the next few days, thrash out the fine details. But I know he’d hate to go home empty-handed. I said I could pick up your gift at Stansted.”

  “Stansted?” Kovar looked uncertain.

  “Is that a problem?”

  Steer it home, Belsey thought. All the dots had been connected, all the boxes ticked. He needed the payoff. He could see Kovar thinking.

  He could see the Skoda close behind them as they ran lights back towards Whitehall. It was a police surveillance unit, he was sure now. The Skoda Octavia was popular for discreet jobs—unadventurous looks, high performance. The Yard owned a few. Belsey made a mental note of its registration.

  “Is the airport the best place?” Kovar said.

  “It’s the only one that works. It’ll be secure—we’ll make sure of that. I need you to bring the gift to Stansted for quarter to eleven tonight and I’ll see to the rest. Ten forty-five on the dot, in front of the main terminal building. I’ll be there to collect it.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “It’s possible. You’ll do it.”

  “OK. I’ll get out here.”

  “Stop here,” Belsey told the driver.

  Kovar shook his hand and climbed out. Belsey watched him cross the road, back towards Parliament.

  “Hold on one second,” he said to the driver.

  There were two men outside Westminster Abbey, one of them talking on a radio handset. They watched Kovar cross the road and continue down Millbank where he hailed a cab. Then the men climbed into a black hatchback, swung a violent U-turn and began to follow.

  58

  Belsey used the phone in the limo and called the Coordinating and Tasking Office. The Tasking Office made sure police didn’t end up crashing one another’s operations. He ran a check on the Skoda Octavia using his colleague Derek Rosen’s ID code. It came back SCD10: Covert Unit.