STANDPOINT a gripping thriller full of suspense

by DEREK THOMPSON

  The espresso he bought from the coffee stand in the park didn’t taste so great, but its effects were undiminished; such were the restorative powers of premium caffeine. He needed a plan, fast. He sipped rhythmically and went through a list in his head.

  Point 1: Sir Peter Carroll had said they’d prefer that the package wasn’t opened. So who had the package now? Answer: Teresa. But he could hardly ring up every Intelligence office and ask if a Teresa worked there. But . . . he did know where she’d been — he could go back to the building where they’d interrogated Petrov. Someone there must be able to get hold of her. He took a bite of the muffin as a reward and held the sugary stodge in his mouth until it melted.

  Point 2: Get some time off work. He couldn’t be in two places at once. Christine would sign it off, and if she took issue with it he could always refer her to Sir Peter. He texted her to say he was coming in for a chat when he picked up his car. She responded immediately that she’d wait in for him.

  By the time he got to the park gate he breathed a little easier. At least he knew what his next steps were. One glance back told him that Buggy Woman and the Frisbee Kids were either holding position fantastically well or they were just innocent civilians. If there was such a thing anymore.

  Chapter 32

  Thomas felt safe among the crowds — buoyant amid a sea of tourists, shift-workers and pickpockets. True, the mass of CCTV cameras threw him a little if he thought about it too much, but he’d already reached his paranoia limit for the day.

  The next train was three minutes away so he grabbed a bench and tried to lose himself in the giant poster opposite. A suspiciously attractive couple beamed down on him, extolling the virtues of some European bank he’d never heard of. ‘Small savings and big decisions,’ they smiled. He mused on that; it was the big decisions that everyone was afraid of.

  The open plan office at Liverpool Street was deserted; no surprise, as it was the middle of the day. He’d harboured the tiniest of hopes that Karl would be around, but a lockdown meant restrictions on contact, movement and behaviour.

  Christine’s light was on and the door open, so he didn’t think twice about approaching. Inside, she and Bob were reading through files. They seemed to be looking for something.

  Thomas quickly stuffed the envelope of photographs inside his jacket and zipped it tight. He rapped on the door. Bob looked up, gave him a half nod of recognition and returned to his reading. Christine did the talking. “Hello Thomas, please come in. Bob and I are just finishing up.”

  Of course you are, he thought. He said nothing, watching from the door as they continued their synchronised folder stacking. Then he grabbed a seat in one corner, a good vantage point to see who was the most unsettled.

  Eventually, they took the hint and gave up on their search. Bob Peterson didn’t look happy about it though, which pleased Thomas no end.

  “Back in a mo,” Christine explained with a grin, “call of nature.”

  It was a little informal for Thomas’s liking. And judging by the look on Peterson’s face, he felt the same way. Thomas looked him over, trying not to appear like the aggrieved ex.

  “So,” Bob glanced at the top folder on the pile, “how’s Harwich?”

  That was all it took. The red mist that Karl used to joke about became a sunburst. Thomas leapt the distance between them, grabbed Peterson by the lapels and slammed him up against the door. A mountain of folders seemed to scurry for cover.

  “Fuck Harwich!” Thomas snarled, through a haze of rage. “When all this is over, I’m coming back for you.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” it took Peterson a moment to take it in. He started thrashing about, but Thomas had him pinned.

  It had been pure instinct, nothing more, and already he was wondering what was wrong with him. Peterson struggled a second time then, before Thomas even realised it was coming, his fist blasted through his arms with an upper cut. Thomas took it on the jaw and reeled backwards, dragging Peterson with him to the floor, only twisting at the last moment to try and cushion his fall.

  Peterson wasn’t going down without a fight. And there was a score to be settled. Juvenile? Definitely, but Thomas felt that Uncle Bob had it coming on two counts: one, playing away with Christine — no doubt in his mind at all now — and two, Peterson was somehow the starting point of all his troubles.

  * * *

  Christine opened the door to find the two of them locked in combat. The main punches had already been traded and now it was about who could rough who up the most. At first, she didn’t speak. Thomas was glad of that. It might have distracted him from his main intention of hammering the shit out of Peterson.

  “That’s enough!” she slammed the door. Then she pointed to two chairs in either corner of the room and they both complied.

  Thomas looked first at Peterson and then at the mess. And he couldn’t help smiling. He’d finally fulfilled a personal ambition and landed some punches on Peterson, even if he had taken a few knocks himself. His only regret was that he hadn’t drawn blood; maybe next time he’d staple Bob's ear.

  For a while there was silence. Christine bent down to retrieve some of the paperwork. She looked pained, which pained Thomas. Just because Peterson was an arsehole, it was no reason for her to suffer.

  He stood up; in all the excitement he’d almost forgotten what he came there for. “I need some compassionate leave — I’ll be on the mobile.” He spoke directly to Christine, ignoring Peterson altogether.

  Christine looked down at the floor and waved him away like he was too much to bear. He straightened his jacket as he walked out, patting the envelope as he closed the door behind him. He called Diane on his way out of the building.

  “It’s Thomas. I’m off work now . . . indefinitely, until this is sorted out. Nah, I’ll tell you face to face when I have more info.”

  “That’s good news, Thomas, because you’re going to be busy.”

  * * *

  He drove out beyond the North Circular, ditching the car at Hatch End. Best to assume the tracker was still working, like Karl said. He jumped a cab at the station — finding the old Telephone Exchange wasn’t difficult; there couldn’t be too many buildings that ugly.

  “Wait here,” he waved a £20 note under the cabbie’s nose.

  The car park was empty; gates locked. Nothing fancy, no barbed wire or anything to excite the interest of your average industrial burglar. He looked back at the cab, figured the driver was engrossed in his horses — or the £20 — and launched himself over.

  The place seemed deserted; even the conference centre sign was gone. A quick scout around the perimeter confirmed that the good guys — if that’s who they’d been — had left without a trace. Bollocks.

  The cabbie didn’t seem surprised to see him back so quickly. He folded his paper away and unlocked the passenger doors. Thomas was still catching his breath as he tumbled back on to the seat. “Any idea who owns this place?”

  “No, guvnor, it’s been shut for ages. We used to get quite a bit of trade there; you know, corporate knobs with their laptops and that. You, er, interested in buying it or something?”

  A chink of light in an otherwise shit day. “Well, not me,” Thomas went into bullshit mode. “A mate of mine is looking for office space round here. He’s small time with big ideas.” He raised his eyes in mock disdain.

  “As you’ll likely be a big tipper, I’ll tell you who the estate agent is when we get to the station.”

  Cheeky bastard. He checked his watch; still time to ring them. As soon as the driver had sodded off at the station to spend his big tip, Thomas dialled from a super-duper phone box. Funny how things changed; he almost missed the smell of piss and sweat. He leaned against the metal back-plate and sighed. He and Miranda had once shared a knee trembler in a phone box, after missing the night bus, one stormy night in Balham. No chance of anyone repeating that here unless they enjoyed the open air.

  “Yes, hello, I wonder if you can help me. An a
ssociate of mine recently rented a property in Larchall Road — the converted exchange building. I was supposed to meet them, but my flight was delayed and I was wondering . . .”

  Wow, stonewalled straight away. Karl had made this stuff look so easy. “You haven’t? Well no, what about . . . no, right . . . I see.” If only West Ham had as good a defence.

  The senior partner had handled all the arrangements and she was now on holiday in Canada. Hence: no names, no contacts and no yellow brick road.

  He got in the car and headed south, with only the radio for company. It was all going pear-shaped again. He had Diane and Sheryl pulling his strings from one side and Sir Peter the Bastard on the other side. Ping: small savings and big decisions. He’d seen that ad before, at Holloway Road tube. He’d even had a discussion about finances, in which Karl had revealed his own astute investment strategy: saving is for pussies.

  Thomas allowed himself the luxury of a smile. Now he had a way forward again, sort of. He could find his way to the Gun Club but would they let him in? He pulled over and stared at the A to Z intently, like an ugly man checking out the foreign bride catalogue. Nope, it wasn’t coming together at all. The only thing for it was to drive down to the tube station and retrace his steps.

  * * *

  The industrial estate was half full with cars. He remembered that Teresa had been driving a silver coupé the day Karl had bought Petrov’s red estate, but it could have been a hire car. And of course, he hadn’t made a habit of carrying his driving licence and passport around, so getting in might be a tad tricky. Three men got out of a BMW; for a second he thought he’d seen one of them before. But he could hardly wave and explain. They glanced in his direction and didn’t glance again. This was getting him nowhere.

  He walked up to the thick metal door with as much confidence as he could fake. The camera stared at him implacably. He pushed the intercom and said that he’d been there before and was looking for a member named Teresa. He let go of the button and waited. Nothing happened.

  He tried again, a different pitch — same basic facts and that he needed to speak to her urgently. He held up his SSU ID card, for good measure. Finally, he got a response: “You must have the wrong place.” Now he was getting seriously pissed off, and desperate. He hit the button again. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. If she’s there, I need to see her; she’ll know what it’s about. Be a good girl and stop fucking me around.”

  He did elicit an immediate response, but ‘if you don’t go away I’ll call the police’ wasn’t the one he hoped for. He took a breath. “Look, I’m sorry for behaving like a twat. But it’s really important and I have been here before, more than once — you can check your records against my ID and name. And I’ve got nowhere else to go so I’m just going to sit out here in my car and wait until she turns up - today, tomorrow, whenever. I’m not going to cause any trouble, and if you want to call the police, then you go right ahead.”

  He took a step back, raised a hand as if he was being sworn in on a jury, and backed away slowly to his car. Then he drove around the car park, clocking the security cameras on poles, and managed to find a space facing the door.

  Sunset came and went; evening crept upon him, a staring contest with a steel door that was only interrupted by the occasional visitor and an emergency piss in an old lemonade bottle. He tried the radio for a while, but it took the edge off his concentration. Even his survival ration granola bar — the only food he’d had all day — couldn’t lift his spirits.

  He figured he’d fucked his job now; he couldn’t see how Christine and Peterson would keep him on the team. In the unlikely event that Christine took his side, he’d given Peterson the ideal excuse to prise him out. Stupid, Thomas; really stupid. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and fantasised that he and Miranda were running over the North Yorkshire Moors.

  Tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap. Jesus! They must have called the police after all. He turned to the window, ready to surrender. Teresa was standing outside. He pushed the sealed piss bottle under the passenger seat before he lowered the window.

  “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  Okay, not the welcome he’d hoped for but he still felt like hugging her. “I was desperate. It’s become . . .” he searched for the right word. “. . . complicated.” Yeah, if complicated was another word for meltdown.

  “What’s the problem?” Teresa stopped short. “Have you been in a fight?”

  “Yeah, with Bob Peterson.” He figured she knew who Peterson was. Heck, maybe she’d always known. He passed over the photos in the envelope and waited for comment. Then he got tired of waiting and told her about Sir Peter Carroll. After all, what did he have to lose now? He was all out of friends on this.

  “You drive,” Teresa insisted. “We’ll go back to yours.”

  “What about the bug in my car?”

  She held up two fingers, like a victory salute. “Bugs, plural. That’s how I’m here. Karl’s been keeping an eye on you.”

  He couldn’t help, but smile. Karl: the wily little Celt.

  * * *

  It wasn’t difficult to understand what Karl might see in Teresa, apart from an air of mystery. She was very capable and clearly didn’t take any shit. Once inside the flat, she assumed control, drawing the curtains before she did a sweep of the living room using a hand-held detector. He left her to it, put the kettle on and dug something resurrectable out of the freezer — two portions.

  “Karl thinks very highly of you,” she carried on talking with her back to him. “But he’s worried you’ll do something rash about Miranda.”

  No mistake there. He’d already decided he would sort out whoever was involved — every last one of them. “So how did Karl send you to find me, exactly?”

  She snapped the portable shut and turned round. “Simple,” she tilted her head to one side. “He knows the OS ref of the indoor firing range and he tracked your car.”

  “What about the lockdown?”

  Her face was calm, as if she could say much but was choosing not to. “It only takes one text to me, on a throwaway mobile — T at CLUB.” She paused and folded her hands together. “Then smash the mobile and it’s like it never happened. You just have to make sure you don’t get caught.”

  He felt his mouth form into a wow. Karl had been covering his back after all. The kettle clicked, breaking the spell.

  “I’ll just sweep the other rooms, starting with the bathroom.”

  “Sure,” he nodded, waving a hand behind him. “It’s just off . . .”

  “I know where it is, Thomas; I remember from the last time I was here.”

  The wow expanded into a cavern. Of course, Karl had saved his bacon before, at the flat, when he’d had the good sense not to be there. Teresa must have been involved.

  He made the tea. “So what’s the deal with you and Karl?” his voice seemed to echo through the flat. There was no answer, but he felt sure that she’d heard him.

  * * *

  It was strange, eating dinner with another woman. Having another woman in the flat at all, come to that. Christine Gerrard, in her time, had never been a fan. She always seemed to treat the east of London like some sort of infection.

  The food settled him, helped his thoughts to fall into place. “Has the DSB been opened?” he hovered, mid-fork, waiting for her answer.

  “No, not yet. It’s sealed and there’s no tag inside — we X-rayed it.”

  He swallowed. “Have you made a decision — do I get it?”

  She made a smacking sound with her lips; he doubted it was the quality of the food. “It may contain vital information about the cartel . . .”

  He nearly countered that but he could see, by the way her eyes flickered, that she was still thinking it over.

  “. . . And can you afford to trust Sir Peter Carroll?”

  The room went very cold. Any optimism he’d been nurturing, including the comforting notion that a simple trade-off could be made, was dangling by a thread. Teresa wa
s right of course. How could he trust these bastards, when he knew what they were capable of — two corpses at the hospital, Petrov’s house torched, and counting.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas; it could be too valuable to lose,” she sounded like a bank manager, turning him down for a loan.

  Desperation wrote its own scripts. “What if we copied it first? You’d keep a copy and I return the original.” Okay, it was feeble, but at least it was a plan. It wasn’t as if they’d come up with a better option.

  “We know it’s a document box,” she backtracked, softening her voice. “The paper may be heat and light sensitive. Photocopying or scanning is just too risky.”

  “What about photography?”

  “I don’t know Thomas,” she flicked the hair from her face. “I don’t know. And besides, once we open the DSB, the seal is broken.”

  He tapped his chin. “I might be able to solve your problem.” Your problem, good one: reverse psychology for beginners.

  Teresa listened as he told her about the DSB he’d kept from Leeds. Maybe it wouldn’t be an identical match, but if it meant having something to exchange for Miranda and not, he’d take that gamble.

  “Now,” he gathered up the plates; “I’ve also got a couple of ideas about special paper.” No sense losing momentum while she was still malleable. “How about doing the photography in a darkroom?” He gestured out towards the hallway. “Or I can try one of my Internet buddies, see if they know anyone with a Starlight camera.”

  Buddies — that was stretching it a bit — a bunch of ultra-competitive snappers and geeks, who would tell you where to find equipment, as long as you knew what you wanted in the first place.

  He dumped the plates in the sink and fired up his laptop, waiting until he’d cleared the minefield of password and security protection before he brought Teresa screen-side.

  “Great for night shots,” he pulled up a couple of images from a folder. She didn’t respond, but that was fine — he was impressed enough for both of them. “Someone hired one for me once; back when I thought I’d be the next Andy Rouse.”