‘Have you seen him here before?’
‘No, sir, can’t say I have. Seen the type, though.’
‘Type?’
‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes slid down Michael’s face to his smart suit and back again. ‘Ex-army, if you know what I mean.’ His expression seemed to imply it was unlikely, and therefore a distinction Michael would never warrant, no matter how smartly he dressed.
Michael ignored it, wondering what kind of subtle signs Palmer gave off which displayed his background. He turned the book round again and read across the page. ‘It says he was visiting Stairwell Management. What do they do?’
‘They’re on the sixth floor, sir. Don’t really know much about them.’ His tone suggested that whatever they did, it was unlikely to be entirely legitimate. ‘The appointment was with a Mr Gillivray,’ he added helpfully, hoping it would make up for the fact that the name was illegible and he should have checked it before allowing them up.
‘A police matter?’
‘I doubt it, sir. They didn’t look like police to me — none of the local ones, anyway.’
Michael nodded, then looked up sharply. ‘They?’
‘That’s right, sir. There was a young lady. He filled in the book for her and they went up together.’
Michael looked again at the book. The line beneath the one Palmer had filled in was in the same handwriting. Another illegible scribble, but it confirmed Palmer had brought someone with him. Then he remembered the woman in the lift. Attractive enough, young, blonde, well-dressed… but beyond that, a woman. If he’d given it any thought at the time, he would have assumed she was merely an office worker leaving the building for some reason. Only that wasn’t the case. So who was she? Girlfriend, wife or colleague?
Whatever. They had been here for a reason and, unless they had laid a careful blind to fool him and Radnor, that reason appeared to lie up on the sixth floor. He nodded to the security guard and took the stairs back to the first floor at an easy trot, his mind processing questions and possibilities. His instincts told him Palmer’s presence in the building had been a coincidence. He and Radnor had been very careful so far, keeping their heads below anybody’s radar, the way they had been trained by their respective employers. But instincts could sometimes prove faulty. He decided it might pay to look into the people who called themselves Stairwell Management, to see what could have brought Palmer and his friend to this particular building. Whatever the Stairwell people were into, they had drawn the attention of an investigator. And that was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
Riley spent the morning filling in background details on Trevor Creeley, the NHS manager with the dubious funeral service connections. She wasn’t sure if he was stupid, sloppy or simply arrogant, but a drive-by of his home on the north-westerly edges of rural Essex showed a man who was living more than extremely well. From the background notes Donald had sent her, Creeley came from humble beginnings, with no record of family or inherited wealth. Yet he lived in a smart, opulent detached house set in two acres of prime land, with trimmings which included a paddock with two ponies, a large, new summer-house in the rear garden, a swimming pool and a Porsche driven by his apparently shopaholic wife.
At lunchtime, Riley was parked just along the road from Creeley’s workplace. When she saw a late-model executive Jaguar nose out of the car park, she slotted in behind, leaving two vehicles between them. It was soon apparent that Creeley was heading home. He drove fast and with a level of aggression that spoke of a bad morning or a barely-concealed lack of tolerance towards other drivers bordering on the suicidal.
Enquiries at the local village shop had added gossip about two daughters at an expensive boarding school, exotic holidays and weekends away, with the description of a coastal villa in Portugal thrown in for colour. Even allowing for local petty jealousies and rumour, it was an impressive portfolio. Riley would have to check out the facts anyway, along with Creeley’s credit ratings, but even this low-level study revealed a man living well above the salary of a National Health Service employee.
She checked her map. It was too late to start on the fruit pickers assignment. Their base was in Huntingdon, giving their teams easy access to work sites in Kent, East Anglia and the east Midlands. But clocking the people involved would necessitate an early morning start to identify the various faces, and she guessed she would need Palmer to help with that one. According to Donald’s information, the gang masters who brought in the foreign workers each year were deeply suspicious and possessed of an acute radar for signs of anyone taking too close an interest in their operations.
She headed for home, trying Palmer’s number on the way. It might be worth getting together with him before their dinner date, so he could make a start on getting close to the Huntingdon site. She had no doubts that it would be difficult penetrating the gang’s operation, but if anyone could find a way in, it would be Palmer.
Chapter 5
Palmer yawned and slid down in his car seat, jockeying for a more comfortable position as he watched the office block. He winced and retrieved his mobile, which was digging into his hip, checked it was still switched off and dropped it on the passenger seat. Next to it lay a barely-touched flask of coffee and the insipid remains of a chicken sandwich bought from a passing snack wagon an hour ago. It was as much to help break the monotony of a lengthy surveillance session as any desire to eat. In any case, drinking while on any kind of stake-out usually led to the need for regular exits from the car, which meant running the risk of being spotted by your target, or worse, having them disappear while you were otherwise engaged.
Seeing the familiar face in the lift the previous day had unsettled Palmer more than he cared to admit. Having shrugged it off after leaving the building, dismissing it as one of those odd coincidences in life, he’d found the image returning with the persistence of a nagging toothache. He felt bad about not confiding in Riley, because she deserved better. They had become close while working together, and while there were not many people Palmer had learned to trust over the years, Riley was high on the list. Indeed, she had once saved his life at considerable risk to her own, and that was something he could never repay. But until he could come up with something solid to show it wasn’t just a figment of his imagination, he decided to keep it to himself. Time enough to tell her when he was certain.
Lounging at his desk with his feet up the previous evening, he had cast his mind back over the years, shuffling through his mental filing system of faces and names, searching for a hint of where he might have seen the man before. To help his thought processes, he reached for a notepad and doodled.
Three cigarettes and a coffee headache later, he sat bolt upright, spilling ash down his front. His trawl through the mental archives had unleashed a leaden feeling in his stomach, followed by a flurry of images that began to unravel as the memories grew clearer. He stared down at the notepad, on which he’d made some random jottings. If he was right, and his memory wasn’t playing tricks, this went even further back than he’d thought. He shook his head. This was insane. But even as he thought it, he knew there was no mistake. Germany, 1989.
He lit another cigarette and mulled it over. The older man’s face belonged to a time when Palmer had been a young and inexperienced member of the RMP, on his first posting to Germany. Assigned to a forward base close by the East-West border, Palmer had been hooked up with a veteran, Sergeant Reg Paris, where he was expected to settle in quickly and start learning on the job. Fortunately, Paris had been a good teacher, because the learning curve had proven a lot steeper than either of them had imagined.
Several mornings into the posting, a coded phone call had come in to the base security post. It was very early, still almost dark and with the cold bite of winter hanging in the air. There had been a fatal shooting along the border, the caller had coolly informed them: a runner had been spotted crossing to the west, and failed to stop when ordered by the Eeast German border guards. Now his body was lying just inside West Germa
n territory and needed to be retrieved. Reg Paris had been sour-faced with scepticism; it happened every now and then, when some poor soul made an attempt to escape to the affluent and free West and tried to run the gauntlet of mines, dogs and security alarms. They failed more often than not, and the civil police usually dealt with the tragic results. But this one was different. The caller was asking for RMP backup, and quoting an authorisation code with which there was no arguing. Minutes later, Palmer and Sergeant Paris had buckled up and were driving out to secure the scene.
Two days later, Reg Paris was dead, the victim of a freak autobahn accident which had reduced his pool car to a tangled mess of crushed metal. And with him, seen climbing into the car by Palmer himself, had been the man he had just seen in the lift in Harrow.
But that was impossible.
He adjusted his thinking, reverting to cool logic. Once you took out all the variable explanations of a problem, he reminded himself coolly, you were left with either an absurdity which took you nowhere, or alongside it and most likely well hidden, the only possible explanation. The trick was spotting the difference.
He decided to go back to basics, which meant, when in doubt, re-visit what you know. Since he could hardly return to the scene of the car crash, it left him with examining the most recent information he possessed, which was visual. Taking another look at the man he had seen might at least confirm that he wasn’t imagining things.
Now, from his position in the shade of a generous elm tree, and with the freshness of a new day to help him, Palmer had an uninterrupted view of the rear of the office building. It included a private parking area with space for a dozen vehicles, a narrow loading bay with double doors, and two rubbish skips. There had been little movement in the area so far, save for the occasional arrival or departure of cars, postal deliveries and a sandwich vendor, and the irregular appearance of a figure in a dark uniform and blue shirt, walking unhurriedly around the site, checking the doors and windows and pausing for a cigarette break. Palmer recognised the security desk man from their earlier visit. He was replaced later by another man of similar appearance, who moved in the same measured, purposeful manner. Neither gave the impression of being particularly zealous in their routine, but Palmer doubted they would miss much between them.
He checked his mirror for signs of a traffic warden or a roving community support officer. He had discreetly fed the meter, but there was always a risk that an eagle-eyed resident might have noticed his presence and phoned it in. Arguing with a uniform about his right to use a parking space for longer than the allotted time was hardly guaranteed to help in discovering more about the men on the first floor of the office building down the street.
The loading bay doors opened and a figure in a dark suit appeared, carrying an armload of packaging material. Palmer felt a prickle of interest. It was the youngest of the three men he had seen in the lift.
The man walked to the edge of the bay and threw the packaging into the nearest skip. Brushing off his hands, he stood looking around as if taking in the fresh air.
Palmer froze, recognising the signals. It was the slow, careful scan of someone acutely aware of his surroundings, ticking off visual checkpoints in his mind. For a brief second, Palmer was sure the man was looking right at him, and felt a momentary chill of apprehension when the eyes appeared to dwell just a fraction too long on his location. But the young man turned away and, moments later, disappeared inside, closing the door behind him. Palmer allowed himself to breath again.
A cab swung into view at the end of the street and turned into the parking area. It was a cream Mercedes with a small pennant flapping from the radio aerial. On the roof was a white plastic pyramid with the words WHITE TOWER in black lettering. Private hire. Minutes later, a slim figure appeared at the rear door of the building, clutching a briefcase in one hand and the front of his lightweight coat in the other as a gust of wind threatened to snatch it away. The tanned skin looked even darker as the man scowled, and Palmer felt a renewed shock of recognition.
He hadn’t been mistaken.
The man turned and climbed into the cab, slamming the door behind him, and the vehicle drove out of the car park and turned down the street in Palmer’s direction.
He stayed where he was, his mind in free-fall, trying to work out the inexplicable. Just in time, as the cab approached, he remembered to snatch up his mobile and clamp it to his ear, hoping this small subterfuge and the dappled shadow of the tree would be all the camouflage he needed. He watched in his wing mirror as the cab disappeared down the street, before dropping his mobile on the seat beside him. Then he turned the ignition and drove away in the opposite direction, deliberately taking an easy pace. If his memory and instincts were correct, it was possible the man’s younger colleague might even now be watching from an office window to check vehicle movements in the area. A car pulling out and sitting on the older man’s tail would be noticed immediately; a vehicle moving the other way would not merit the same attention.
The moment he hit the end of the street, which was in a blind spot from the office building, Palmer floored the accelerator. He had an imprint of the street layout in his mind, and if he followed a simple box system, he should be able to catch up with the cab. As long as he didn’t run head-on into it or remain on its tail for too long, there was every chance he might find out more about the man he was after.
As he turned a corner onto a main through-road, he saw the cab ahead of him, pulling out of a side road, the triangle on the roof just visible. He settled in behind it three cars back, the pennant on the cab’s aerial a helpful marker in the shifting jumble of traffic.
The journey was shorter than he’d expected. After little more than a mile, the cab stopped outside Kenton underground station. Palmer hung back, watching as the man left the cab and disappeared into the station without looking back. He automatically noted the man’s gait and build, adding to the picture he already had, and wondered why he had chosen to come to this particular stop, when he could have walked from the office block to Harrow-on-the Hill station in two minutes. Maybe he didn’t like walking. Or maybe he was going somewhere specific to this station.
He gave it ten minutes, watching the entrance in case the man re-emerged, then called it a day and headed west.
Back at his office, he consulted his new Rolodex, finding comfort in the spin and clatter of the cards. He had begun filling it in a few days ago, starting with immediate and current acquaintances, like Riley and Donald Brask, then gradually trawling wider to include occasional and past contacts, people he might need to call sometime. He stopped at a name he had discovered in an old diary and almost rejected, then decided at the last minute to leave in. He hadn’t been sure that he would ever need to call on the Frankfurt offices of an international enquiries agency, but his work occasionally took him down some strange paths. Maybe the truth in that was about to be proven most aptly. He picked up the phone.
Five minutes later, he had a name and another phone number belonging to a man in a private office in a town called Schweinfurt, one hundred kilometres to the east of Frankfurt. He hoped the subscriber’s English was better than Palmer’s German, otherwise he was in for a hard time.
While he waited for the number to answer, he checked his watch. Six-fifteen. After this he would go home and grab an early night. He had a busy day tomorrow. He lit a fresh cigarette. Riley would have given him a hard time for smoking too much, but it helped him think. And thinking right now was all he had. Because unless there had been some astounding advances in medical science recently, dead men simply could not come back to life.
Chapter 6
As the rush-hour traffic leaving London’s westerly sprawl slowed to a trickle, a large saloon pulled into the kerb before a row of shops and offices in Uxbridge. The driver cut the engine and waited, eyes on the interior mirror, finger gently tapping out a rhythm on the wheel. The passenger in the rear was holding a mobile phone and keying in a number. After six rings an answer machine cut
in, and a tinny voice asked the caller to leave a message.
The passenger switched off her phone and peered out of the window, then gave a brief nod to indicate all was clear. The driver slid out from behind the wheel and clicked the door shut. As he walked across the pavement, he rolled his shoulders to ease his muscles, cramped after an hour spent in the confines of the car.
The driver’s name was Szulu. He was tall and slim, with strong shoulders and powerful hands. A ring of shiny dreadlocks framed an ebony face and grey eyes. He walked with a loose-limbed grace, and this, coupled with an air of strength, meant he was often treated with caution among those who didn’t know him. The one thing Szulu was not accustomed to was acting as an errand boy, which was what he felt right now. But he needed the money to settle some outstanding debts. Failure to pay very soon meant he would receive a visit from men who knew little of his reputation and would care even less if they did.
He approached a single wooden door set between two anonymous glass-fronted commercial premises. Beyond these on one side was a dry-cleaning shop, which was still open, and on the other a bookmaker, which was not. He pushed open the door, which needed a paint job, he noticed, and stepped into a gloomy apology for a hallway, with just enough room for a hard chair and an empty waste bin. The air smelled damp. A narrow stairway covered in curling carpet tiles led upwards to a glass-panelled door at the top. A box of rubbish teetered on one of the middle treads, a clutch of yellowed newspapers spilling out from a gash in the side. Szulu listened, head cocked to one side. All he could hear was the hum of an occasional vehicle outside and the sound of a radio from somewhere nearby. He flexed his shoulders again and willed himself not to look back at the car; he didn’t need an imperious flap of the passenger’s hand urging him to get on with it; he’d had enough of that already and it did nothing to make him feel any better about himself.
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