by J. D. Weston
He wasn’t aware if he closed the car door or not. He didn’t give it a second thought. He just ran to the front door and jammed his finger on the doorbell.
Then came the wait.
The road was quiet. Only a single car passed. He stepped over the shrubs and peered through the front window. There was movement out in the back, in the garden, but he couldn’t make it out. He knocked on the glass but caught nobody’s attention and stepped back to the front door. He rattled the letterbox and slammed his hand on the little window as hard as he dared without breaking it. It was when he bent to look through the letter box that the door opened and Alison stood there, her face a dark cloud of thunder.
“What the bloody hell-”
“Where is she?”
Myers looked past her to the kitchen and saw a few people huddled around the back door. There was a gentle murmur of voices and a woman laughed.
“Matthew, what are you doing here? You can’t just turn up.”
“Is she home?”
“Yes. I think so-”
“Get her.”
“Matthew-”
“Alison, just go get her.”
“No, this is ridiculous. You can’t just turn up, Matthew. We have guests. You know what today is, don’t you?”
“I need to see her,” said Myers, and then called up the stairs. “Harriet?”
One of the men peered through from the garden.
“Matthew, go home.”
The man’s curiosity got the better of him. He moved into the kitchen, sensing something was wrong.
“Alison? Is everything okay?”
She turned to answer him, and Myers saw his opportunity. He pushed past her and ran up the stairs, ignoring Alison’s objections. He heard her following, but he had reached the top of the stairs and saw Harriet’s bedroom door was closed.
He knocked once and waited. He closed his eyes and did the closest thing to praying he had done since he was a child.
There was no response.
Alison reached the top of the stairs behind him.
“This is enough,” she scalded, her voice hushed but seething. “You have absolutely no right-”
He pushed the door open.
“Matthew?”
The tension in his body that had built since he first saw the bag in the evidence room fell from him and his knees buckled with the relief. He held onto the door and sighed.
Harriet looked up from her bed. She was propped up with her pillows, a magazine resting on her knees. She saw him, screwed her face up in confusion, then removed her earphones.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Honey, I tried to stop him.”
Myers could say nothing. He wanted to go to her and hold her like he did when she was just a young, sweet child. But those days were gone.
“You can’t just come in here. Mum, tell him.”
“I tried, sweetheart. He barged in.”
“Is everything okay?” said the man’s voice, who had followed Alison up the stairs.
“Yes, Matthew is just leaving,” said Alison. “He just wanted to ruin my birthday, that’s all.”
Her birthday.
He sighed again.
“Dad? What’s going on?”
He clung to the door frame and let the voices around him, the questions and the tempers, flare and fade.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I thought…”
He paused and gave consideration to what he was about to say. Then decided against it.
“The bag, Harriet. Where’s the bag?”
“What bag?”
“Matthew, you need to start talking.”
“The bag you had this morning. The Louis Vuitton bag.”
“What Louis Vuitton bag? She doesn’t have a Louis Vuitton bag,” said Alison, but her voice was distant. A distraction.
“The bag, Harriet,” said Myers.
Harriet glanced at her mother then succumbed to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to deny it. She had never been a dishonest girl. A fighter, yes. Bad tempered, definitely. But a liar, no. Not his Harriet.
She reached for it from the floor and placed it on the bed.
“Harriet, where did you get that?” Again, Alison’s questions were superfluous to the moment.
Myers stepped forward and opened it.
“No, Dad, you can’t.”
He tipped the contents onto the bed. Some chewing gum, a small bag of makeup, a little packet of travel tissues, and a book.
“Matthew, if you don’t explain yourself, I’m going to have to call the police.”
“Where did you get the bag, Harriet?”
“I told you, I got it from-”
“Honestly, Harriet, this is serious.”
Her expression changed when she saw the grave look on his face.
“A friend of mine gave them to us. They’re not real and I don’t think they’re stolen, Dad.”
“Where did the bags come from?”
“I don’t know. She just had them.”
In the corner of the room, wedged between the wall and the wardrobe, was a large shopping bag full of smaller bags. It was typical of teenage girls to keep the bags from shopping trips. Something to do with having people know they bought from a particular shop.
“Did it come in a bag?”
Harriet nodded. She threw the magazine down and pushed herself off the bed, then rifled through the larger bag and began pulling smaller ones out.
“This one, I think,” she said, and offered it to him. “Honest, Dad, I don’t think they’re stolen.”
Myers held the bag. It was A3 size and good quality. It had strong, rope handles that were knotted inside and on the side of the bag was printed the name of the distributor.
And a ripple of change took place as he recognised the name.
Chapter Thirty
The business card stated Regency Bags Limited as the company the man had worked for. The card design was stylish and, if anything, appeared a little too gaudy.
The address on the sign for Old Ford Industrial Park in Bow, East London, was anything but gaudy. It was much like any other unit on any other industrial estate. A forklift rattled around ferrying pallets and boxes, driven by an Asian man, and there were two more Asian men working close to the doorway.
The panniers and back box on the motorcycle gave the impression Harvey was a courier looking for an address. It was a good cover to make use of. Harvey rolled past the unit then an old, dented van that bore no signwriting. It was parked behind some pallets forty yards from the unit. He parked his bike two hundred metres away and walked back to the van. A few scraps of paperwork on the messy dashboard bore the same company logos as the business card: a pair of snakes wrapped around a quill.
He knocked once on the side of the van and waited for a response. But there was no reply. He checked the men hadn’t seen or heard him and he tried the side door on the off-chance. If the door was unlocked, the chances of the van being full were slim. It was not the sort of area a man with any sense would leave a van unlocked.
It clicked open.
Watching through the side window of the van, Harvey slid the door open, letting the sunlight fill the dark space.
It had been a long shot and was worth trying but, as expected, the van was virtually empty. There was a pile of flattened cardboard boxes with the Regency Bags Limited logo printed on the side. He was about to close the door when, beyond the cardboard, something caught his eye. Tied to the rear pillar was a length of old rope that to any other man would appear harmless and normal. Most van drivers carried rope to tie down cargo.
But most van drivers wouldn’t have a length of rope with two wrist loops set twelve inches apart inside, and the body work of other vans were rarely dented from the inside out.
Harvey studied the rope from afar and a sequence of events began to form in his imagination. The loops were too small for Julios’ hands to pass through, but Donny’s would have
fit just fine. He considered the thought. There was no way any sane man would untie Julios for any reason other than to set him free, which meant that they had untied Donny, knowing he was too weak and pathetic to give them any trouble, and they had kept Julios tied up because they feared him. The thought also supported Harvey’s theory on the number of men he was up against. If there were any more than four of five men, they would have kept both prisoners tied up.
He considered Julios in that space liked a caged animal and he ran his finger along the dents in the van’s bodywork. Julios’ large boots kicking out at everything and anything.
He watched the men for a while, and over the course of five to ten minutes, he was able to ascertain a clear hierarchy within the Regency Bags Limited workforce. The man on the forklift was the eldest of the three men, but the man in charge was the eldest of the two in the doorway. He barked orders in what Harvey imagined to be Punjabi but could just as easily have been Urdu or some other variation. Language wasn’t Harvey’s strong point, but he had a keen eye and sharp reactions, which made up for any flaws in his communication skills.
All three of the men wore a loose form of kurta, a long-sleeve shirt that hung below the waist with loose matching bottoms. On their feet, they wore sandals. It was the type of workplace where health and safety officers would run their pens dry with red crosses and reports, but the Old Ford Industrial Park in Bow was not the type of place a health and safety executive would venture alone.
Within that same square mile, Harvey could name half a dozen yardies who would crush an old junker with no questions asked and without even looking in the boot. The old warehouses that ran alongside the canal were rarely used for anything above board. It was just one of those places that uniforms turned a blind eye to. It was safe to say that the Old Ford Industrial Park was a great place for Regency Bags Limited to get away with whatever it tried to do.
It was also safe to say that there were more than three men in the unit. The flash Mercedes saloon and the brand-new Toyota were pricey toys more suited to executives than men who ran workshop floors and drove forklifts.
Harvey peered across the forecourt, which was littered with boxes and pallets, and into the sliding shutter doors. It was dark inside and he could see little except for rows and rows of boxes stacked as high as the ceiling. A mezzanine floor ran around the edge of the inside and Harvey heard footsteps walk across it. A door opened and a man’s shape appeared in the light, then disappeared when the door closed.
Even from a distance, Harvey could see the man was not a manual worker. His hair was slicked to one side with grease and he wore a kurta like an ankle-length shirt.
It was a safe gamble that the man wearing the kurta drove the Mercedes, leaving the manual workers to drive the Toyota and the van.
Harvey reached through the van to the front passenger door and unlocked it. Then, keeping his eyes on the three workers, he opened the passenger door, leaned in, and released the handbrake. It took a little persuasion to start the van rolling, but it rolled and gained momentum on the shallow incline.
Harvey waited behind the pallets.
Three, two, one.
“Ruko, ruko,” one of the men called, then the other two joined in. Their sandals slapped on the concrete and they passed Harvey together with all the grace of three lead donkeys in the Grand National. They pushed and shoved and shouted for the van to stop and didn’t look back.
Harvey strolled into the unit. He pulled the sliding shutter closed and locked it, fished his knife from inside his jacket, then stood in silence. If the man in the mezzanine office had heard the others, he would be out in less than a minute.
He wasn’t. Harvey moved on. There were rows and rows of boxes piled high in what seemed like no order at all. Among the dirty smell of old dust, Harvey could smell the leather bags. It reminded him of John’s office. All it needed was a crystal decanter full of brandy and a tumbler set on a silver tray and he could have been at home.
He glanced up at the office and all around. There was no way even five men could have manhandled Julios up the stairs, conscious or unconscious. There was only one other door downstairs. It was in the far corner of the space and there was a pathway of worn floor paint indicating it was used with some regularity.
Harvey had timed it well. He pushed open the door just as the men outside began to bang on the shutter doors. There was shouting in the main room behind him. In a few moments, they would burst through the door. Harvey had a few seconds to search for Julios and Donny.
The thing with warehouses is that, large as they are, there are usually very few places to hide. Businesses need large open spaces.
The back room was small, and the breeze block walls were lined with shelves.
There was no exit and there was no sign of Donny or Julios.
He listened at the door. The space beyond was silent. There were no footsteps or men’s voices. He placed the flat of his hand against the wood and pressed his ear to the door.
There was nothing.
Then there was everything.
The door came crashing inward, forcing Harvey back. He fell against the shelves and as he picked himself up, the youngest two men rushed inside while the man in charge shouted orders that Harvey did not understand.
They cornered Harvey, edging closer with arms ready to grip and lash out, and the youngest, a lean and tall man who seemed yet to grow into his body, edged closer. Harvey pulled a small box from the shelf and threw it at him, then another. The man in charge rushed in and he and Harvey fell to the floor in a grappling mass of arms and legs. He was strong for his size and he pinned Harvey down, forcing his face onto the hard concrete with the palm of his sweaty hand.
Harvey reached up, flailing for something to hit him with, but found nothing. He gripped the metal shelves to haul himself up and felt them topple then settle.
The man on top of him shouted something to his younger friend, who kneeled and rummaged through Harvey’s pockets.
Then the shouting began. Through the man’s fingers, Harvey saw the youngest holding the business card he had found in the BMW. They shouted at him, but Harvey didn’t understand. The man on top released his hand and bent, so that his face was inches from Harvey’s. The smell of spiced food and foul breath turned Harvey’s stomach.
The man growled an unfathomable, spite-filled curse with his lip curled like the hood of a cobra, and Harvey pulled. He pulled with everything he had on the upright of the steel shelves. They swayed, and the youngest man shouted. Harvey pulled harder, rocking the tall shelves, and the man on top hit him with everything he had.
But it wasn’t enough.
The shelves toppled and seemed to hang on the very edge of their balance. The man on top forced Harvey’s face back to the floor, but the move only strengthened Harvey’s resolve. He pulled one last time, using the man’s weight against him.
And there was a silence.
The man’s eyes widened in disbelief. Boxes fell from the very top, crashing onto the floor around them. The youngest of the men tried to run but the shelves had already gained momentum. They crashed into his skull with a sickening thud and he was out cold before the weight of the shelves crushed him.
Boxes fell all around, glass smashed, and the men called out in fear.
The man on top of Harvey was ripped from where he knelt, and his body lay twisted beneath the mass of steel. He groaned as the chaos settled, his fingers outstretched, reaching for the business card that lay on the floor.
Harvey was balled in the void of the first shelf. If he had been lying just a few inches to his right, the shelves would have crushed his skull.
He lay there in silence, his eyes closed, and he felt the space around him, taking the moment to consider his options and to think of Julios and Donny. The thought was enough to spur him on.
He pulled himself up and stepped out of the mess and debris, leaving the two men pinned by the weight of the shelves.
At the door, he looked back at
them and wondered when and where they saw Julios and Donny last. He wondered what secrets they held. But they spoke no English. Any attempts to force them to talk would be futile. He was about to leave when he gave the room a final look.
He remembered the sound of broken glass when the shelves fell. A pool of amber liquid had collected on the screed floor and was making its way toward a small, circular drain.
Harvey kicked a box and broken glass rattled. He tore it open and emptied the ruined contents on the floor. Glass fell and liquid dripped, but as the sodden box crumpled in Harvey’s hands, a slip of blue, dot-matrix paper fell to his feet.
Chapter Thirty-One
There were fewer stares when Myers returned to the office, but more smirks and hushed laughter. It was reassuring to see that, for once, Carver wasn’t leading the cruel jokes. Myers wouldn’t rise to it.
Nothing mattered.
He threw his light jacket over the back of his chair and plopped down with a sigh. He let his head fall back and tried to focus on something useful.
But nothing seemed important.
There was nothing more important than Harriet. It was plain and simple. The wife of a villain had been shot and, as Carver had said, that was the life they led. Even if they didn’t deserve it, sooner or later, they would end up doing something to deserve it.
Jennifer Standing was alive. Faisal Hussein was dead. Who cared who killed him? He deserved it too.
The girl whose death had upset Carver, well, that wasn’t his case. It was sad, but there was a separation there. It wasn’t his responsibility to close the case. Not anymore. He glanced across the office at Carver, who seemed to take long bouts of staring between writing a report and making notes, or whatever he was doing.
And the hidden laughter and snide comments from the rest of the team?
They can go to hell.
Most importantly of all, Harriet was alive. It hadn’t been her bag in the evidence room, and she was safe at home with Alison and a bunch of other people.
It was just a ripple.
