The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

by Riches, Marnie

  But he was crossing over now, apparently coming her way. Closer and closer.

  George stepped back into a doorway, put her hood up and watched this tall, swaggering figure making short shrift of something greasy in an almost-translucent paper bag.

  She swallowed hard, seeing her ex-lover at close quarters for the first time in six years. Boy band good looks. Shaven headed. Plucked eyebrows. Still the same. He’d hardly aged.

  Danny Spencer. No more than four metres away. Danny. The man who can. The man with a plan. The man she had betrayed, and who had put word out on the street that one day he would come for her and that that day would be her last.

  CHAPTER 42

  London, South Bank, at the same time

  The tick, tick of time running out syncopated perfectly with the steady, loping beat of Piet’s heart. So unlike the paralysing panic when despair first came knocking; when he had opened the door to an event horizon beyond which all hope and light would inexorably disappear. But his heartbeat was unhurried now, after all that had happened. Only dead calm and focus remained.

  Focus.

  From his vantage point some way behind his quarry, he checked the cracked face of his watch yet again. Precision timing was needed to pull this off.

  Over the Millennium Bridge they walked, battered by almost-horizontal sleet, the churning waters of the Thames swollen beneath them, carrying the first of the glass-roofed tourist cruisers upstream, like foolhardy salmon. The brutalist tower of the Tate Modern art gallery loomed before him, a judgemental index finger on an unforgiving fist of a building pointing skywards to God. Always watching. Never caring. To his left and right workers trudged past this ragged, unremarkable man, knowing only that it was an ordinary day full of work and woe and domestic disappointment, unaware that the dark, foreboding Tate tower stood sentry over two men – a man with nothing, about to kill; a man with everything, about to die.

  The gun felt heavy in the pocket of Piet’s sodden overcoat, freezing in his hand as the chill wind bit through the fabric. Silently, he prayed that his aim would be true and that just for those moments where he put a bullet in the head of Gordon Bloom his shaking body would be still. That he had not died from exposure was a miracle, but he had no doubt that without proper treatment he would be dead inside a week from infection in any case. At least, if it was his fate to depart this hateful world early, he would take this black-hearted bastard with him to hell.

  Gabi’s research had been detailed. Gordon Bloom was to meet one of his criminal underlings on the South Bank path that runs beneath the Millennium Bridge at 9.30 a.m. He had attended a typical City breakfast meeting at the Worshipful Company of Something or Other, near St. Paul’s at 8 a.m., which meant, given his habits, the proximity of the two venues and parking restrictions, he would probably walk, rather than take his car. Once the underling left, he would be vulnerable.

  Bypassing Bloom, who stood by the barrier at the river’s edge,as though he were merely taking in the view of St. Paul’s dome on the far side, Piet continued several paces in the direction of the gallery entrance. He sought the cover that the bridge’s ramp afforded him. In the shadows, he would not be seen by security cameras buzzing overhead in that very public place. Recording every move, every word, every expression. At a glance, he was just another rough-sleeper. Caught on camera, however, at the side of a revered entrepreneur and peer of the realm, his would be an instantly recognisable face. Mindful of this, he pulled on the hood of a fleece he had liberated from somebody’s long-forgotten, snow-bound washing line, thawed out and dried over a fire some other rough-sleepers had started in an oil barrel.

  9.30 a.m. arrived, bringing with it promptly a jogger in full winter gear – thermal leggings, hat, wind-cheetah. Nothing out of the ordinary, even in the sleet. The paths that ran along the Thames on either side were always studded with lycra-clad fitness fanatics, pounding through their commute to work in return for tight abs and admirable cholesterol levels. At first, Piet was not even certain that this jogger was Bloom’s associate. But when the man stopped by the rail and started to stretch his hamstrings out – when his lips started to move, even though he and Bloom were standing a metre apart, not looking at each other – Piet knew that Bloom’s criminal rendezvous was taking place.

  The exchange took only ten minutes. An almost-imperceptible nod from Bloom designating a satisfactory conclusion.

  The jogger moved off towards Southwark Bridge, loping quickly out of sight. Bloom was alone.

  Game on.

  Bloom checked his watch, made a short call, then started to walk towards him.

  Emerged from his hiding place, Piet gripped the gun in his pocket. Bloom was getting closer and closer; Piet would finally get a good look at the Bloom plc demi-legend. The buzz cut hair. The prosthetic eye. With a subtly different shaped nose now, his face was hard to recognise from the three-year-old photos that had sat on Dobkin’s laptop. But it was him, alright. The King of the Shitheap. The lynchpin in the devil’s own conglomerate. The Duke.

  Piet felt momentarily as though ticking time had frozen; as though the sleet hung motionless in the air; as though this was the turning point of a life which had once been full and grounded but which was now empty and anchorless. Now, he was hurtling through the hostile vacuum of space – a lone astronaut in a flimsy capsule fashioned from grief and anger. Heads, you make it home alive. Tails, you burn up on re-entry. Just keep flipping the coin.

  ‘Don’t make a sound or I’ll shoot,’ he said, pressing the barrel into Bloom’s cashmere-clad back, just over the kidney sweet spot. He frisked him with one deft hand and withdrew a pistol from his breast pocket, wedging it into his own waistband. ‘Keep walking.’

  Jagged breathing in. Jagged breathing out. A cold sweat breaking out in already-drenched clothing.

  Bloom stiffened but continued to look straight ahead with his good eye.

  ‘Walk!’ Piet steeled himself to keep the adrenalin out of his voice, lest his captive took it for fear. Prayed he didn’t look as ill as he felt. Focus.

  ‘You want money—’ Bloom said.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ He pressed the gun harder into the man’s bulk. Was anybody looking? No. Too wrapped up in their own lives. ‘Come with me if you want to live.’

  Bloom turned around abruptly and looked at Piet through his sole, operational eye with a directness that made him flinch. ‘I know who you are,’ Bloom whispered, a smile playing on his lips. The filler on his front incisor that covered the hole where a diamond stud had once sat was just visible.

  ‘Then you’ll know why I’ve come for you,’ Piet said.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you, you tin-pot scribbler of shitty suburban hovels. I’ll see your body concreted into the foundations of the next city skyscraper to go up before you’ll get me.’

  Piet considered Bloom’s words. His cool demeanour. His apparent lack of fear. It was as if he’d been expecting the ambush and had already planned for it. He looked around furtively, wondering if Bloom’s muscle was about to appear. His heartbeat quickened, his composure all but gone. But nobody did come forward. And a light, white dusting of powder around Bloom’s left, dripping nostril told Piet exactly from where Bloom’s confidence flowed forth.

  ‘Move!’ he said, pushing the gun further into Bloom’s back. ‘Round the back of the gallery.’

  Together they marched diagonally across the busy concourse in front of the Tate. Heading away from the South Bank down Holland Street, where they shuffled along an icy pavement past glittering modern office blocks to their right. Nobody looked at them askance. Londoners with their heads and umbrellas bent against the flurry of sleet were the most inattentive citizens in the world. Thankfully.

  Bloom neither attempted to speak nor escape. On they stumbled. Nearly there, now. To the white Transit van in the parking bay, with its engine running. A small figure, dressed in black, just visible in the driver’s seat.

  Piet slid back the door to the loading area with his free
hand. ‘Get in!’ he said, praying his teeth wouldn’t start clacking.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Bloom asked.

  ‘I ask the fucking questions. Get in and kneel down, you piece of shit!’ He slid the door shut. A makeshift light he had rigged came on. He grabbed Bloom’s manicured hands roughly and strapped them together at his back with electrical cable ties. Then he banged on the steel wall that separated the loading area from the cab. The van pulled away.

  As his temperature soared silently going over the plan in his head became more difficult. He shivered, and every joint, muscle and fibre of his body ached. He strapped the billionaire’s mouth with duct tape and remembered what Gabi had told him: ‘We get him in. We sit him down. We get every shred of information out of him that we can. We do not kill him until we’ve done that! Don’t forget it!’

  This was the first time they had actually been together in the same space for weeks. It had felt strange. Where physically and emotionally she was a wreck, intellectually Gabi was still the nerve-centre of their operation: the brain telling him – the body – how best to execute this mission. Researching his next target and emailing over the details, like a brief from MI5. He had taken his orders from her dutifully and stepped up to become the alpha male she hadn’t chosen but had always secretly hankered after.

  Sitting on the floor next to him at 2 a.m. in the doorway of a closed minimart, encasing his feverish hand inside her skinny cold fingers, Piet had remembered, however, that they were looking for their children. Not playing some ridiculous spy game. And that she was not just a tangle of electronic impulses and words pinged from one library computer to his email account, picked up on another. She was his wife, made from flesh and blood; the woman he still loved.

  ‘I won’t forget,’ he had said. ‘We have to find Lucy and Josh. That’s all that’s left.’

  Sitting in the back of that van, staring at the man who orchestrated an elaborate puppet show for gargantuan profit, jerking the strings of traffickers, paedophiles, pornographers, drug dealers, junkies and abducted children as he made them dance a gruesome jig across lost continents, he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to remember.

  The van came to a halt. The acoustics outside had changed, more muffled now, as though they had pulled into a cavern. The driver got out of the cab, making the vehicle lurch slightly.

  Bloom cocked his head in the murk, observing his kidnapper coolly with one functioning eye, making Piet feel as though this might be a flat calm harbinger for the deadliest of storms.

  ‘We’re here,’ Piet said. ‘Up you get.’

  Grabbing Bloom under the arms, Piet hoisted him to his feet. Dead weight. The door slid to the side, revealing the diminutive figure and stern, drawn face of Gabi. A dank railway arch beyond. Strip-lighting flickering on and off overhead. The drip-dripping of moisture coming from who knew where? Giant wooden doors, rotten at the bottom and missing chunks, like decaying teeth. The place reeked intensely of damp that stung in the nostrils, but it was perfect for their purposes. Better still, Piet had discovered on the local Borough town-planning website that the entire row had been condemned, ensuring nobody would disturb them today.

  ‘Sit on the chair in the middle,’ he said, pointing to a low wooden seat he had liberated from a derelict school.

  Bloom complied. Good eye darting everywhere.

  Gabi stuffed the van’s keys into the pocket of her hoodie. Stepped forward and ripped the duct tape from his mouth.

  ‘Thanks for dropping by, Lord Bloom,’ she said. Her hoarse voice sounded hollow in that place. ‘Or should I call you the Duke?’

  ‘Gabi Deenen,’ Bloom said, scrutinising her slowly. He leaned back in his small seat, as though it was a minor throne, legs splayed wide. ‘Long time, no see. You’re quite the celebrity these days. Could do with getting your roots done, though.’ He tutted. ‘Very shoddy for a PR woman like you. You used to be quite shaggable.’

  ‘Where are my children, you evil bastard?’ she asked.

  Piet held the gun with both hands, aimed at Bloom’s head. ‘Answer my wife! Where are Lucy and Josh?’ he shouted.

  No response from Bloom, however. He merely chuckled malevolently, following the line of the filthy vaulted ceiling with that staring orb, appraising every inch of the murky space until his gaze came to rest on a large object in the corner. His brow furrowed as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.

  When his face contorted into an alarmed grimace, Piet knew he’d worked it out.

  Sitting in a chair in that dark corner, wearing a potato sack over her head, was the body of a woman, wearing a batik print skirt and Doc Marten boots.

  CHAPTER 43

  London, later

  ‘But the hospital sent this appointment through. It’s the only date they got. You promised me. You said you was gonna come with me.’ Letitia’s voice was thick with guilt-trip melodrama and indignation on the end of the phone.

  ‘I’m cutting you off, Letitia,’ George whispered, eyes on Danny, some two hundred yards further up the road. Walking from Russell Square towards Euston. She had tailed him successfully all the way from Greenwich. Now where the hell was he going? ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘He’s telling me about my pulmonaries, you heartless cow! Don’t you want to know if your mum’s dying?’

  ‘Get Leroy to go.’

  ‘Ha fucking ha. Is that meant to be some kind of dig at me? Cos if it is and you think—’

  Pressing the button to end the call felt good. Cathartic. Then, almost immediately, despite her best intentions, George felt a prize shit. But this was no time to get entangled in her fucked up relationship with Letitia. She was busy with Danny, who was hanging a left into Gordon Square, strutting in step with some shady-looking arsehole she had seen him meet in the Hare & Tortoise noodle bar in the ugly concrete temple to middle-class consumerist woe, the Brunswick Centre. His companion had a tough, brutish face, not softened by the severity of his cornrows. He was wearing ghettofabulous designer gear: flash baggy jeans with various zips, appliqué and patches; a Puffa jacket, two sizes too big, judging by the shoulders – looked as though it was made from leather. It must have cost him a couple of grand, at least. He hadn’t taken it off in the noodle bar. Probably thought someone might nick it from the back of his chair. Wanker.

  The two men strode on ahead. Purposeful. Suddenly more puffed up. Shoulders wide. Starting to look to their left and right, as though something was on the brink of going down.

  Now, George found herself only metres behind two dangerous psychopaths, who had started to dawdle. The large dome of UCL’s main building was not visible beyond the neighbouring rooftops, obscured as it was by the bare-branched tangle of frosty trees in the little private park that serviced the surrounding houses. But she knew it was there. With a sharp prickle of dread that lanced along her spine, she realised where Danny had led them. The surrounding Georgian townhouses were all occupied by lecturers at the college. Had Danny come for Dobkin? Was Danny somehow embroiled in this mess of paedophile rings, trafficked Roma children and Jack Frost?

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  The guy with the cornrows reached inside his coat and kept his hand there. He leaned up against the park’s iron railings further down. Danny, chewing on a toothpick, looking furtively up at the second floor of one of the houses. Checking his watch he nudging his compatriot and nodded, two fingers in the air. What the fuck did that mean? Two minutes? Started to peer into the rear window of a red estate car.

  No time to connect the dots.

  I’ve got to warn Dobkin. What’s his number?

  Retreating to the cover offered by a BMW, parked in one of the bays that ran alongside the park, George looked for Dobkin’s name in her phone. She was certain they had exchanged numbers after he had ambushed her and then eccentrically taken her for coffee. But it wasn’t there. Checking her email inbox, she looked for the last angry missive he had sent before their meeting. Buried beneath an avalanche of other corresponden
ce.

  Too slow. Too late.

  A loud crack. Shattering glass. A car alarm ringing shrilly across the square. Danny, standing beside the red car, deftly concealing a crowbar inside his parka. The two men edged several metres away from the noise. Eyes on the house. Hoods up.

  The door opened. And there he was, right on cue. Shambolic and puzzled-looking in the doorway. Dobkin. White-man-book-junkie’s pallor. Same balding dark hair and overgrown goatee. Same heavy-framed glasses. Now, wearing a cardigan and cords. Running over to the red car, fob in hand.

  But there, waiting in the wings, was Danny’s associate, pulling something from his coat. Car alarm still honked. Diverse alarums.

  George stood uncertainly in the midst of this theatre of certain tragedy. Split-second pondering: fight or flight. Fight. Poised to run to Dobkin’s aid.

  But the gun had emerged: a black, semi-automatic bringer of death at the end of cornrows’ large hand.

  A thunderclap, ricocheting around her.

  One bullet finding its home in the middle of Dobkin’s forehead. Even from her vantage point at the end of the street, George’s sight was keen enough to register the black spot in the pallid skin. The end of a brilliant mind.

  Dobkin crumpled to the ground like the last falling leaf of winter.

  ‘Jesus!’ George said, eyes wide, phone in hand, watching the madness unfold.

  Dobkin lay sprawled in the street, beyond her help now. Students and academics started to stream out of the surrounding buildings to witness first-hand the fate that had befallen one of their number. Bewildered screaming from the girls. Confusion abounded. The scratching of heads. A profusion of mobile phones – their owners uselessly dialling for an ambulance or pointlessly filming the dead body of poor Professor Dobkin. Police sirens starting up in the distance, getting closer, moment by moment.

  But George had no time to ponder her academic rival’s fate. Danny and cornrows were walking briskly towards her. Only metres away on her side of the road, for god’s sake! Making herself as small as possible behind the bumper of the parked car, praying she would not be discovered, she eavesdropped on the men’s now-audible conversation.