The Locker

by Adrian Magson

  “Good. I’ll leave it to you to handle that.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Check out at the gym. Whoever left the card in the locker knew her routine, what she did and when. It had to be somebody who could watch her without appearing to. Ergo, inside job.”

  “Ergo. Latin for ‘therefore.’ Tell me, why do the English hold onto other languages so much?”

  “Because it makes us sound almost as smart as you Russians.”

  “I’m American, I told you.”

  “No, you’re not. Not really.”

  Thirty minutes later they were stepping through a security screen at the company offices in London’s Upper Grosvenor Street. The building was a stone’s throw from Park Lane and was immaculate and richly decorated, courtesy of a previous tenant who had gone bust. The expensive mouldings, discreet lighting and a quiet air of organised activity was a sharp contrast to the solid, even bland exterior and the uninformative steel plate next to the front step. Even the hum of the electronics which formed the core of the company’s world-wide communications network came and went as doors opened and closed and was no different to a hundred other organisations.

  Only the controlled intensity of some of the staff hurrying along corridors and the palpable air of tension in the air was an indication that all was not well.

  “What’s up?” said Ruth, as they made their way down to the Safeguard Incident Room. She nodded at two familiar figures hurrying up the stairs. Both carried heavy nylon grab-bags, and were members of Cruxys’s international response team. She guessed they were on their way out of the country, probably by jet from Northolt airfield. Both were former special forces and used in extreme situations. She didn’t envy them their jobs.

  They both pulled up chairs and sat down. In the background, two researchers were pulling together whiteboards ready to construct a time- and storyline, to which they would add from all available information as it came in, including the reports which Ruth and Vaslik were about to make.

  “We’ve lost two contract security guards and two more have gone missing at an oil installation attacked by extremists in Nigeria.” The speaker was Richard Aston, a lanky, skeletal figure in a pinstripe suit and regimental tie. He was Cruxys’s Operations Commander. A former Parachute Regiment colonel and one of the co-founders of the company, he was responsible for research, staffing and day-to-day assignments related to the company’s clients. He possessed a mind like a steel trap and hated inaction. Now, it seemed, he might have wished for a surfeit of the latter.

  “There’s been a lot of internet chatter about bombing threats,” he continued. “Most of it from groups thought to be on shoestring budgets and with little serious capability beyond lurid threats. But we shouldn’t ignore it. Something or someone has stirred them up and it could be linked to Boko Haram. If they’re involved, it’s not good news.”

  It certainly wasn’t. Boko Haram, as Ruth knew from official briefings and news reports, was an extremist organisation intent on building an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. They had long been suspected of having strong links with other groups in the area, such as Ansaru in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and even with al Qaeda. If a smaller, previously little-known organisation was suddenly in a position to carry out such attacks, it didn’t bode well for the region; other like-minded cells might be fired up and join in.

  “Are we exposed?” Strictly speaking it was nothing to do with her, but Aston seemed inclined to want to talk about it.

  “Potentially, yes. Everybody is focussed on known al Qaeda affiliates, but there are many more out there with similar intentions. Initially, it’s more work for us, but there comes a point where the big corporations will cut their losses and pull out.”

  “Initial reactions?” He looked at them in turn. “I know you’ve only come together for this assignment, but first thoughts will do for now.”

  “It looks real enough,” said Ruth. “Nancy Hardman’s distraught but hanging on. The husband sounds like a selfish do-gooder, off doing his righteous thing and leaving her to bring up the daughter. But until we know more about him, and until we hear what the kidnappers want, we can’t judge.”

  “Quite right—we can’t.”

  The voice came from the doorway. They all turned. The new arrival was a slim, almost ascetic looking figure in an immaculate grey suit and white shirt. Martyn Claas was a new board member. He had joined Cruxys from his base in Amsterdam, bringing with him the power and global financial reach of a conglomerate with its headquarters in the US. He had made it clear from the start that he intended to have a hands-on involvement with the company’s operations and his aim was unambiguous: to make Cruxys Solutions a world leader in the security and risk assessment field, and to increase profitability.

  Aston retained a neutral expression. He didn’t ask Claas to elaborate, but nodded towards a vacant chair and said, “You all know of each other? Good.” He glanced at Ruth and Vaslik. “Where were we?”

  Vaslik took up the baton. “I think the nanny’s part of it. Or dead.” He nodded at one of the whiteboards, where Tiggi Sgornik’s name had been added to the rapidly growing information on the Hardman family. There were no photos yet but they would come once Ruth downloaded the files from her computer.

  “May I ask why?” Claas again.

  Vaslik spread his hands on the table surface. “She’s the perfect insider. Her belongings have gone from the house, we believe the kidnapper or kidnappers knew how to get in from the back without being seen, and the Hardman woman’s missing cell phone battery was found in the nanny’s bedroom. She would also be familiar with Hardman’s timing at the gym, which seems to have been crucial for her finding the kidnap note.”

  “Why do you say dead?” Claas’s Dutch accent was noticeable but slight, with a faint American intonation.

  “Because in my experience, people like her don’t survive long. Insiders are bought or coerced, which means they never really fit in. This makes them weak links. Liabilities. If they can be turned once, they can be turned again. Here or New York, it makes no difference.” He spoke with conviction, his background one of the reasons he had been taken on by Cruxys.

  Claas looked faintly doubtful but said nothing. Aston kept his thoughts to himself, experienced enough to know that things rarely if ever turned out quite the way they first seemed.

  “What bothers me,” Ruth put in, “is the why and how. Why did Hardman take out a contract with Cruxys? He’s a freelance charity worker; you don’t get a more unlikely target for kidnapping than that—so the snatch can’t have been for ransom.”

  Aston nodded. “Agreed. And the how?”

  “How could he afford it? We’re not exactly cheap and the last time I looked we weren’t doing discounts. His wife says they don’t have private money, so we’re currently trying to find out what makes them a target.”

  Claas waved a hand, cutting in on his fellow board member. “Surely, how our clients fund their contracts with us is hardly your concern, Miss Gonzales.” He spoke reasonably but fixed Ruth with a dead-eyed stare that challenged any argument. “As long as they pay, that is all we need to know, don’t you think?”

  Ruth ignored the look; she was accustomed to having her say and throwing questions into the air like this was a way of getting the thinking process going. All the same, she was puzzled by his apparent opposition. Was profit his sole motive here?

  “It’s of concern,” she said, “if it has some bearing on the kidnap of his daughter. And that’s our main consideration at the moment, surely.” At his blank expression and the faint flush that came to his cheeks, she added quickly, “I should explain: if he’s got dirty money we could be looking at a nest of trouble. And Slik and I could be right in the middle of it. As could Gina Fraser—again.”

  “Fraser is fine,” Claas responded. “I reviewed her file when I arrived here. What happened to her
was unforeseeable, and I approved her return to duties. Do you have a problem with that?” The challenge was more obvious this time, his stare unyielding, and Ruth realised she was facing a boardroom bully who didn’t like giving way.

  She kept her reply calm but firm. “Actually, she’s not fully recovered—everybody knows that. What concerns me is that if there’s a problem she could be vulnerable.” As might the rest of us, she wanted to add, but didn’t. If Claas didn’t understand that, telling him here and now wasn’t going to make him any friendlier towards her.

  There was a lengthy silence, and she wondered if she’d overstepped the mark. But Aston intervened by flicking open a folder in front of him. “I asked for a payments summary of the Hardman file. He opened the contract and paid for three years up front, with future premiums to be paid by direct debit through a London bank. All pretty standard stuff.”

  “So nothing unusual, then,” said Claas. He was staring at Ruth like a dog studying a bone he desperately wanted to bite.

  “Indeed. Beyond that we don’t know where his money comes from.” He looked at Ruth. “You might want to check with accounts for a copy of the original contract, see if there’s anything in the margins.” He was referring to jotting and notations sometimes made by clients when signing up, including phone numbers, bank accounts, solicitors’ details and so on. He glanced at Claas, who seemed about to interrupt, and continued firmly, “He also lodged separate funds with us to cover any contingencies, as we ask all our clients to do.”

  Contingencies. It was Cruxys terminology for the main party of the contract being incapacitated or killed, the lodged funds being sufficient to cover the following year’s contract or to be refunded to the contractor’s family if not required.

  And, in extremis, to bury whoever was left.

  “We’ll have to dig,” he continued. “Unless and until she hears from the kidnappers, all we can do is find him, locate people who know the family. If there’s anything relevant in his past, it will be there somewhere.” He took a slip of paper from the folder and passed it to Vaslik. It held a street address in west London. “The address linked to the charity’s phone number.”

  Vaslik nodded and tucked it away. “I might not have very long to do this.”

  Claas looked at him. “Please explain?”

  “The snatch occurred just over six hours ago. Abductions-for-ransom mostly follow a pattern, from the taking of a valued asset followed by the first contact and demand, to negotiation.”

  “But you don’t know if there is a ransom.”

  “True. But the note, as vague as it is, points towards some kind of negotiating position: tell your husband. It implies that he will be faced with a demand.”

  “I see. How quickly then, overall?”

  “It could be from a few hours to several days depending on how secure the kidnappers feel about themselves to the strength of their desire to achieve their aims. Beyond that, we’re in unknown territory.” They all knew what he meant: that not all kidnappings came to a satisfactory conclusion, either through precipitate action on the part of the authorities or panic on the part of the criminals. Both often led to the death of the victim, as did a delayed response to their demands.

  And this one was already entering a dangerous phase.

  “Well,” muttered Claas, “let’s hope it does not go on too long.” He stood up and walked from the room, leaving behind a leaden silence.

  “As quickly as you can, I think,” Aston suggested softly, and nodded towards the two researchers, who were waiting for information. “But do it right. Let’s get as much background detail as we can and start digging for anything new.”

  Ruth handed her laptop to one of the researchers, to download the contents of the photo frame for the storyboards, then walked up to the admin and accounts department where all the client records were lodged. They had been forewarned by Aston and a folder was sitting on the department supervisor’s desk.

  “It’s a bit thin.” The supervisor’s name was Margie, who spoke with the gravelly voice of a confirmed smoker. She opened the folder and showed Ruth the original contract, signed by Michael Hardman and countersigned by the then contracts manager, who had since left. The initial payment was by cheque drawn on a bank in Kensington, with the client’s address shown as Finchley. The contract agreement was for three years, renewable automatically every twelve months thereafter unless cancelled by the client.

  “He believed in thinking ahead,” Ruth murmured. “What’s the usual sign-up period?”

  “Twenty-four months, but it’s flexible. If the client wants to make it several years and pays up front, we don’t argue. Some of them get posted for long periods to the back of beyond. If they cancel the contract because they no longer need it we make a pro-rata refund.”

  “Is this complete?” Ruth was looking at a list of five alpha-numerics, all in Greater London. They were the previous postcodes for the Hardmans’ addresses.

  But Margie dashed her hopes. “It would be if we had anything more to enter. As you can see, they’ve moved about a bit since the initial contract. That’s all we’ve got.” She turned to her monitor and entered the client contract reference. It brought up a record of the Finchley address, with a phone contact number followed by the postcodes on a series of change-of-address panels. The last full address listed was at the house now occupied by Nancy. “The contract began in Finchley, as you can see, but they moved and notified us each time of their new postcode, to keep the records active.” She sniffed. “Waste of time if you ask me. No good taking out a Safeguard contract if we don’t know where to find the client.”

  “Well, we knew this time,” Ruth said. “Perhaps they didn’t get on with their neighbours. You don’t keep the addresses, I suppose?”

  “Not beyond the first one, which we need for legal purposes. We try to delete old information as a matter of course, but we must have missed these postcodes. Not that they’ll be much use; they won’t show which house or flat they lived in.”

  Ruth took out her cell phone and dialled the phone number listed. Out of service.

  “We run regular data checks to update the client profile and contact details,” Margie added. “But if the client moves away and doesn’t tell us, there’s not much we can do. This one must have told us about the new addresses but not the contact number. I guess we didn’t need it until today.”

  Ruth decided to have Vaslik check the Finchley address. It was a long shot but maybe they’d get lucky and find somebody who had known the family and could give them some information on Michael Hardman.

  ten

  Fitness Plus turned out to be an upgraded, upbeat leisure centre and gym run by a private management company on behalf of the local authority. Constructed of red brick with a Scandinavian-style low pitch roof, it had a car park at the front and side with perhaps a dozen vehicles, and a large banner over the front entrance offering monthly and annual deals on fitness programmes for senior citizens and “early birds.”

  The aroma of scented air freshener hit Ruth the moment she walked through the entrance, accompanied by the throb of Latin dance music coming through the walls. Zumba, she guessed; she’d tried it once and hated every second.

  She walked past a water feature and a booth advertising fitness clothing, and approached the desk alongside a steel security gate equipped with a swipe-card reader.

  A young woman receptionist in a white coat was deep in conversation with a muscled youth in a uniform vest and stretch pants. She was leaning back so that he might appreciate her full chest, tantalisingly near-visible through the thin material, but he seemed unimpressed by what was on offer, and more concerned with plucking at a new tattoo on his forearm. It looked like a Smurf but it was hard to tell.

  “Can I help?” She flicked a reluctant inner switch and the young hunk moved away gracefully with a vague smile and disappeared down a short corridor, fle
xing his triceps as he passed another trainer coming out of an office.

  “I’d like to take a look around,” said Ruth. “I’m thinking of taking out membership.”

  “No problem. We have inductions twice a week, and the next one is tomorrow. Nine o’clock?” She reached for a pen, then paused as a phone rang in an alcove behind her. “Sorry—excuse me just one second.” She turned and disappeared, and Ruth heard her talking to someone about a cancelled booking.

  She looked longingly at the security gate. A quick jump and she could be over and gone in a split second. The Barbie doll in the white coat wouldn’t even notice.

  She came back. “Right, where was I? Oh, yes, all the facilities will be explained then and—”

  “I’d rather do it now. Just let me wander. I’ll find my way and I won’t steal anything, I promise.” She held up her Cruxys ID card. It looked sufficiently authoritative at a quick glance to convey the possibility that she could be official and therefore not to be messed with. It worked. The girl straightened up and pressed a button below the desk, and the steel gate swung back with an efficient click.

  “Help yourself. I can’t leave the desk, otherwise …” She shrugged, already looking beyond Ruth to a new arrival.

  Ruth thanked her and walked through, taking out her phone as she went. She called up the camera and began taking discreet shots, eyeing the cold lenses of CCTV cameras on the ceiling. She made a mental note to get Aston on the case; gaining access to any footage would take a bit more muscle than she possessed, and the Cruxys operations commander was known to have friends in high places.

  She reached a junction in the corridor and looked right. A strong tang of chlorine hung in the air and the sound of running water echoed along the walls. She turned left and walked along another corridor, this one lined down the right-hand side with steel lockers three high and a bank of vending machines stacked with cold drinks and snacks.