‘Got you,’ said Riley with a smile and a roll of her eyes. ‘So, Mike, huh? Is he anyone I should get to know?’
Vicky looked dubious, then shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you — he’s got a dangerous look, like I said. But suit yourself. He came up and said someone had dinged an Audi, and was it one of ours. I called Doug and he came charging out to see what it was about. That was a surprise, because he didn’t normally come out to casual callers. Maybe it was because his baby was hurt.’
‘Sounds like he was gutted.’
‘Yeah, well… boys and their toys, right? They had a chat right here. I didn’t hang around to see what happened, though, because it was going home time.’
Riley suddenly felt all her alarm bells ringing. ‘So you left before they did?’
‘Yeah. In fact, the others had gone by then, too, and it was time for me to go, so I asked Doug to lock up. He said he would, but he was just going downstairs with Mike to look at his car, so I left. It’s not like I’m paid to hang around here after hours just so they can entertain each other, is it?’
‘Right. Do the police know that they were here together?’
‘I suppose. I’ve no idea. I never said anything, if that’s what you mean. You don’t think…?’ Her eyes widened again. ‘But it was only a car ding, that was all. I mean, even if he found out who did it and faced them, nobody gets that mad over a scrape, do they?’ By her expression, she clearly thought it was out of the question, but now the idea was firmly in her mind, she began to look concerned.
‘This guy Mike,’ said Riley, before the young woman panicked and threw a wobbly. ‘Which office does he work in?’
‘On the first floor. Azim-something or other. I never really noticed. I mean, I never use the stairs, so why would I? You don’t really think he could have done it, do you?’
Riley shook her head. ‘No, of course not. Why would he? It wasn’t him who damaged the car. Must have been someone else.’ Seconds later, she was walking towards the lift, her chest thumping with excitement.
When she got back to the car, Palmer was slumped in his seat, eyes closed.
‘Wakey, wakey, Boy Wonder,’ she said, slamming the door behind her, and stared at him until he showed some interest. He sat up and opened his eyes, then looked at her triumphant smile with a knowing expression.
‘You’ve been bonding with that receptionist, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Go on, tell me what you found.’
‘Simple,’ said Riley. ‘Have you ever seen Michael drive a car?’
‘Nope.’
‘Minicabs, right? They arrive at the rear door. Every time.’
‘For both of them — Radnor and Michael.’ He stuck his thumbs under his collar and made like a barrister delivering a crushing argument. ‘Which leads me to suppose, yer ‘onour, that they either don’t drive, don’t choose to or don’t actually possess cars. Why?’
She related what the receptionist had told her about the prang in the car park, and Palmer sat up straighter, eyes alight with interest.
‘Odd,’ he muttered at last. ‘If he doesn’t drive, why should he be wandering around the car park? Unless he made up the prang. Clever, though: something so innocuous, nobody would give it a second thought. He must have gone up there the day after we saw them in the lift.’
‘Right,’ agreed Riley. ‘After speaking to Nobby, he’d have wanted to check out Gillivray’s company to see what we were doing in the building. All he needed was a reason to go up and see him.’
‘And it had to be something that would get Gillivray out of his office without being suspicious. He’d have been on permanent alert for raids by the Inland Revenue or the police, but prangs happen every day in car parks. Michael left it until nobody else was about so he could take his time. I guess he knew what he was going to do before he went up there. Shows he’s prepared to take risks, though. Either that or he’s a loose cannon.’ He drummed his fingers on his knee. ‘We need to have a chat with Charlie.’
‘We can’t forget Lottie,’ Riley said as she drove them south. It was a subject they had both avoided, but they couldn’t entirely ignore the possibility that the old woman might still have designs on them, ill-health or not. As they knew from experience, Lottie Grossman was resourceful under pressure, and possessed a long and vengeful memory.
‘Yeah, I know.’ Palmer stared through the window at a large truck trying to negotiate a narrow gap between two cars, with much wheezing of air brakes and millimetres to spare. ‘Having her around is like having a scorpion in the bottom of your bed.’
‘What do you think she can do? From what Szulu said, she sounds as if she’s in a bad way.’
‘Do you want to risk it? The biggest danger with her is, she could change tack. Szulu we’d recognise — but if she sent someone else… like this Ragga or his men, we’d never see it coming. We could ask Szulu. He’d know.’
‘True. But he might not want to tell us.’
‘He will if I threaten to poke him in the arm.’
Riley dug in her pocket and handed him the slip of paper with Lottie Grossman’s hotel number. ‘Or we could ring Lottie direct.’
Palmer dialled the number and waited while the receptionist checked her computer for Mrs Fraser. When she came back, the message was brief. ‘Sorry, sir. Mrs Fraser checked out without paying. Do you know of her whereabouts?’
Palmer hung up without answering. They had nothing else to do until they went to see Cecile Wachter tomorrow. He told Riley to head for Isleworth.
Chapter 30
The house where Szulu lived looked quiet. At Palmer’s suggestion, they waited a few minutes, watching the area for familiar faces. There was no sign of the car Palmer had seen, but that didn’t mean Szulu was out.
When Palmer was satisfied they were unobserved, they got out and approached the front door. Riley pressed the button against 3A.
The response was instantaneous. A sash window above their heads slammed up and a voice shouted, ‘Yeah?’. Riley went to step back, but Palmer put his hand on her arm and shook his head. They would wait for him to come down.
Eventually, footsteps pounded down the stairs and the front door was flung open, Szulu already voicing his annoyance. ‘…the matter, you can’t hear me calling you?’ He stopped dead when he recognised Riley and Palmer. He looked drawn and tired, and was dressed in jeans and a cutaway T-shirt, revealing a bandage covering his upper left arm. Whoever had fixed it had done a neat job.
‘‘Hi. How’s the arm?’ said Palmer cheerfully. ‘Bet it smarts, doesn’t it? Don’t mind if we come in.’ He stepped forward, driving Szulu back inside until the driver was backed up against the stairway.
‘Hey — what do you want, man?’ Szulu protested, although without any real fight. ‘Fuck you hassling me for?’
‘So call the police.’ Palmer encouraged him to turn and go upstairs, and he obediently led them into a flat on the first floor. A sofa, two armchairs and several large cushions gave the impression of comfort, but the overall effect was spoiled by a scattering of clothes, CDs, empty beer bottles and fast-food cartons. A battered CD player dwarfed by a tall music rack was thumping a steady beat into the room, setting up a faint buzz from a half-empty glass containing a brownish liquid and some ice cubes on a nearby coffee table.
‘Should you be drinking on top of pills?’ Riley asked, flicking through his music rack. She didn’t recognise the names, but if the lurid covers were any guide, mood music it wasn’t.
‘Pills?’ He flicked his eyes towards Palmer, who was standing by the door, then looked back at Riley. ‘What are you — my mother?’
‘Don’t tell me the doctor who fixed your arm didn’t give you some pain killers.’
‘Yeah, of course.’ He shrugged as if it was no big deal, then walked over to the window and stared out, scanning the street. ‘So where’s the other guy? He waiting to come up here and shoot me in my other arm?’
‘Relax,’ said Riley. ‘He’s gone.’
Sz
ulu grunted. ‘So what do you want?’
‘Where’s Lottie?’ Palmer leaned back against the door and yawned, seemingly bored.
‘How the hell would I know?’ Szulu picked up a slim remote and turned up the music a couple of levels, making the glass on the coffee table vibrate even more. Then he stood and stared in turn at them both, defiant.
Palmer came away from the door and walked over to the CD player. He turned up the volume until the glass began to dance across the coffee table. He picked it up just before it tipped off the edge, sniffed it and put it down again. Bourbon on ice. The beat was now bouncing off the walls, and in the depths of the house, somebody shouted in protest. Riley nudged aside a pile of clothes and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She said nothing, carefully studying her fingernails.
Szulu scowled and pressed the remote to reduce the volume, only for Palmer to reach down and hike it back up. ‘Hey — what the fuck you playing at, man?’
‘It’ll drown out your screams,’ Palmer replied coldly. He picked up a cheap plastic pen from a sideboard and nodded at Szulu’s bandaged arm. ‘Imagine how it will feel when I stick this in the hole and poke it about a bit. What’s the bet it’ll sting a bit?’
Szulu seemed to lose some colour and backed away, shaking his head. Clearly, the idea of suffering even more pain was enough to cut through his natural inclination to resist, and he held up his hands to ward Palmer off.
‘Hold on… there’s no need to get rough, man. I’m done with that.’ When he saw Palmer wasn’t going to attack him, he reached down and picked up his drink and took a hefty swallow, the ice cubes rattling against the glass. This time, when he reached for the remote and turned down the music, Palmer didn’t move. ‘She had another attack. We were by the river — near Runnymede. She asked me to take her for a drive, see. Said she was sick of the hotel. Then she told me to stop. We were in Egham by then, down a side street somewhere. It was quiet, peaceful. She offered me a wad of money to finish it with you two.’
‘Finish it?’
‘Yeah. You know.’ He blinked and seemed to shrink away, plainly not wanting to say the words. ‘I told her straight away I wasn’t going to do that. Said I didn’t want nothing more to do with all it. It’s gone too far.’
‘I can’t imagine Lottie taking that too well,’ said Riley. ‘She was a stickler for loyalty.’
Szulu shrugged. ‘She hardly said anything. In fact,’ he paused, then went on, ‘I suggested she get Ragga’s boys to do it. Sorry, but I couldn’t think of nothing else. She said she couldn’t do that because she’d stolen something from Ragga’s desk when she went to see him a couple of days ago.’
‘Oh, boy,’ sighed Palmer. ‘She never misses a trick, does she? What did she take?’
‘Information. Lists of bank accounts and stuff. She reckoned it would be worth something to someone, detail like that.’ He shook his head. ‘Man, I thought I was going to piss myself. Stealing from the Ragga? You don’t do that, not if you want to live. And worse was, she was going to take me down with her!’
‘What then?’ Riley said, sitting forward.
‘Then I noticed she was looking strange… like she’d suddenly got drunk or something. There was this stuff coming out of her mouth, like spit, only thicker. It was horrible. I was about to take her to hospital, but…’
‘But what?’
‘Ragga Pearl turned up.’
‘Just like that?’ Palmer looked sceptical. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Runnymede or Egham was quite his patch. You sure you didn’t call him up and tell him where you were?’
Szulu looked insulted. ‘Why would I do that? With me ‘n Ragga, you think I’m crazed?’
‘Because it would have got him off your back; a favour for a favour. Are you saying you didn’t think about it… of maybe bugging out and leaving her?’ The expression on Palmer’s face was stone cold. Then he shrugged. ‘Not that I’d have blamed you.’
‘What happened?’ asked Riley, ‘when Ragga and his men arrived?’
‘They took her,’ said Szulu. ‘Right there in the middle of that street. It was cold, man. They lifted her out of the car like a baby, and put her in one of theirs. Then Ragga told me to walk away and forget I ever laid eyes on her. He said the debt was paid and we were all clear. Man, when I heard that, I did what he told me.’ He shrugged, and had the good grace to look sombre. ‘That was the last I saw of her. You’d have to ask the Ragga what happened to her next, though.’
Riley nodded. ‘Don’t worry. We intend to. And that’s where you come in.’
Chapter 31
‘You two are paddling in some very deep waters, you know that?’ Charlie studied his pint then squinted at Riley and Palmer in turn. They were in a pub off St Martin’s Lane, where Charlie had suggested they meet. He had done some digging around in the vast boiler house that was the security department pool of information, and agreed to share what he could.
‘Adventurous, that’s us,’ said Palmer cheerfully. ‘How deep is deep?’
‘Well, that place in Harrow, where you might or might not have chucked some conman out of a six-storey window, and where you’ve been playing silly buggers with other persons named or unnamed? It’s been red-flagged, that’s how deep.’ He sipped his drink, pulling a face. ‘Try as in over your heads and likely to sink.’
‘Red flagged? What does that mean?’ Riley knew a lot of the official jargon, culled from years of brushing up against the police. But the world of security departments was an unknown quantity to her, and there was always some new terminology waiting to be discovered.
‘It means,’ explained Charlie, ‘that somebody’s keeping it under surveillance. The flag is to warn other agencies to tread carefully in the area, so as not to compromise any ongoing operation.’ He looked at Palmer with raised eyebrows. ‘Am I right?’
Palmer’s nod confirmed it, but he said nothing.
‘I checked with a mate,’ Charlie continued, ‘but all she could tell me was that the flag was issued on a Home Office security docket. There was no department designation that she could find, but that’s not unusual.’
‘She?’ Palmer grinned happily, sensing his friend’s slip of the tongue. ‘Well, well, you old dog. Nice, is she?’
‘Behave yourself.’ Charlie scowled back at him, but he blushed nonetheless and concentrated on his pint.
‘So it could be anyone watching the place,’ said Riley. ‘That’s a pity.’
‘It could be anybody with the right operational clearance, from Revenue and Customs — bloody unstoppable since they teamed up, I can tell you — to MOD… and maybe one or two little Embankment ferrets we mere mortals know absolutely nothing about.’ Charlie went on to explain that there were various sub-branches within MI5 and MI6, neither of whom were quick to disclose all of their departments to each other, let alone anyone else. These sub-branches were often created to deal with specific problems, then disbanded when no longer needed, their personnel re-assigned to normal duties.
‘And you can’t tell who they’re watching?’ queried Riley, twirling her glass on a beer-soaked mat. She didn’t want to push Charlie’s friendship with Palmer too far, but she sensed he needed to be guided towards disclosing any information that could help them, rather than giving it out too freely. Palmer was sitting back with his eyes on the yellowed ceiling of the bar, content to let her lead the way with the questions.
‘No idea. Not listed. But if I was laying odds, I’d say it was your feller Radnor, or maybe his east European partner in crime. There’s no-one else in the building with the right profile, as far as I can tell.’ He gave Palmer a twisted smile. ‘At least, not since Frank tossed Gillivray out of the window. Allegedly.’
Palmer rode the jibe with forbearance. ‘Very allegedly. Presumably Six must know Radnor’s there, though?’
‘MI6?’ said Riley.
‘Yes. They must keep tabs on their former employees.’
‘If he is former.’ Charlie looked wary. ‘I can’t tell tha
t, either, so don’t ask. All I know is, it appears he left MI6 several years ago and went private, but nobody knows where. He seems to have dropped out of sight before re-emerging in London. My guess is, they either think — or know — he’s up to something, which is why they’re keeping the place under observation. He wouldn’t be the first spook who hopped the reservation and went freelance. People like Radnor are hardly trained for the pipe and slippers option once their time is up. They’ve got too much invested in a different kind of lifestyle. It looks like he chose to go bent.’
Riley frowned. ‘So these watchers will have recorded our visits, then?’
‘Probably. Time in, time out, faces, feet, the lot. But don’t panic yet; it’ll take time to process all the faces. But you can be sure you’ll show up sooner or later. Bad pennies.’ He finished off his beer and looked cheerfully at Riley. ‘No offence to you, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Purely by chance, after your call the other day while Frank, here, was taking in the delights of the German hinterland, I stumbled on some info about Radnor’s little mate, Michael. If it’s the same bloke, and I think it is, he’s got himself a small file in one of Five’s archives. His name’s Mikhail Rubinov, aged thirty-eight. He was a junior officer in one of the Soviet security departments. Not KGB as was, but close enough to make him interesting. He did some work in Afghanistan — undefined, as you’d expect, although that could mean he was just some low-level junior spook — then he was assigned to a trade directorate in Berlin about five years ago. That was where he came to the notice of the watchers over there, which automatically got him a file. I think he got bored, because he jumped ship after a few months and re-surfaced in Switzerland on the open job market. He’s had his fingers in various enterprises ever since — mostly bent, like currency scams.’
‘He might have known Radnor in East Germany, then,’ Riley guessed.
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