“You think they’ll try something there?”
“Maybe. She’ll be wide open until we get her somewhere secure. If she’s there any length of time, we’ll need to operate a rota system to keep an eye on her.” She looked at Gina. “You OK with that?”
“Suits me. If it’s like most A&E departments, we’ll have our work cut out.” She flicked aside her jacket and produced a small semi-automatic pistol and checked the magazine. It fitted neatly into her hand without the bulk of a normal handgun, and she seemed quite at ease with the feel of the weapon.
“What the hell is that?” Vaslik queried. “A toy?”
“It’s a Glock Twenty-Six.” Ruth answered for her. “I didn’t know the Met used them.”
“They don’t.” Gina slipped the gun back into a polymer holster at her side. “It’s a private thing. You really think the kidnappers might make a go for her?”
Ruth shrugged. “On what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t bet against it. That business near the supermarket was too organised for merely keeping an eye on her; they were ready to pick her up. And Clarisse happening along was part of it. They knew Nancy had gone out and were scouting the terrain.”
Nobody argued. There was no point.
The game was closing in.
twenty-six
While Ruth parked the car and called in a progress report to Aston, Gina and Vaslik made their way inside. She caught up with them at the emergency reception, where they were directed to a small waiting area close to where Nancy was being assessed. A nurse came and spoke briefly to Gina to ask how long Nancy had been underwater and what medications she was on, then disappeared after telling them that they would be kept informed.
Ruth called Aston again and asked for their consultant to be informed, so that he could find out what was going on.
“This is going to blow their minds,” she told the others. “It’s way too public for the board’s liking.” Unlike some crisis management companies, the Cruxys board of directors had always operated in the background, avoiding publicity and shunning any kind of limelight. The motivation was simple: if their staff and operatives became public material, they could no longer guarantee being able to work in secret. And for most of their clients, that would make them a danger, as known faces drew the media like moths to a flame.
When the consultant bustled in, resplendent in a grey suit and pocket handkerchief, he spoke briefly to Gina before disappearing in search of an authority figure he could bully. He returned a few minutes later with good news.
“She’s responding to treatment,” he assured them. “She has bruising to the back of her head where she hit the bath, but no obvious signs of concussion. She remembers feeling dizzy and was probably overcome by running the bath too hot.”
“So she’ll be all right?” Ruth pressed him. “Can we take her home?”
The look he gave her was larded with irritation. He lowered his voice as a nurse hurried by. “Miss Gonzales, I do have an idea of what Mrs. Hardman is going through. She’s under immense stress and the continued pressure of not knowing what has happened to her daughter is weighing heavily on her mind. I gather there was some kind of incident earlier today—she mentioned something about a woman caller and a man following her in the street. She felt threatened. Is it true?”
“Yes, we think so.” Ruth swore silently. In spite of her fragile condition, Nancy must have picked up on the possible snatch team near the supermarket and blabbed to the consultant. Coupled with the mysterious Clarisse turning up, it was no wonder she was freaking out. She wondered how many others had heard. “You know we can’t talk about it,” she said firmly. The doctor might be on a retainer with Cruxys, but that didn’t mean he could be party to everything that was going on. “There are things happening in her life, yes; but she’s also seeing shadows where there are none. We all are,” she added for good measure.
He appeared somewhat mollified. “Very well. I’ll take your word for it. I’ve asked for her to be kept in overnight so that more tests can be carried out in the morning. All being well, you can take her home then. But only if they pass her as fit enough.”
“Can we see her?” asked Gina. When he looked doubtful, she added, “It might make her feel safer if she saw us all here.”
His mouth gave a curl. “Of course. But only for a few minutes—and I suggest you don’t allow the staff to know what’s going on. These places are notoriously leaky with information; if there’s a sniff of what she’s going through the press and police will be around here in droves.”
After speaking briefly to a drowsy Nancy and assuring her that she was safe and that they were watching over her, Ruth and Vaslik left Gina on watch and returned to the house to get her some fresh clothing for the morning. The journey gave Ruth a chance to ask Vaslik a question.
“Why are you armed, Slik? Bit early in the assignment, isn’t it?”
“It’s a habit I find tough to break,” he answered briefly. “Aren’t you?”
“No. Believe it or not, we don’t all carry guns and nor are we routinely allowed to.”
“But you could if you wanted.”
“I suppose so. But we’d be on our own if we got caught.” She looked at him. “They did explain that to you, didn’t they—that the gun laws here are a tiny bit tougher than in the US?”
“Sure, they told me. I’ll keep it under wraps, I promise.”
“Good. Because if you shoot anybody, I won’t be able to protect you—and nor will Cruxys.” She was tempted to enquire where he’d got the weapon but knew she’d probably receive the same vague answer Gina had given.
She pulled onto the kerb in front of the house and killed the engine. She wanted to ask about the missing napkin, but decided against it. Now was not the time. Instead, she stepped out of the car and led the way across the drive and opened the front door.
Once inside, they both froze.
Something was different.
Vaslik pushed past Ruth, drawing his gun and listening. He motioned for her to check the living room while he did the same upstairs. This was the most hazardous task in house clearance, as Ruth knew. Going up open stairs towards a potential threat left the upper body wide open and vulnerable; you had to move fast but quietly as you cleared the top steps, while checking both ways for a potential assailant. Along with all the doors to use as cover, it gave any intruder the advantage.
On the other hand, she reminded herself, Slik had a weapon and had probably done this kind of thing many times before.
She heard his footsteps moving lightly up the treads as she moved through to the living room. Empty. Next was the kitchen, also bare save for the flickering of the CCTV monitors covering the front, sides and rear. Nothing of interest there.
She moved across the hallway to the study. The door was wide open. She couldn’t recall if that was how it had been left, but stepped inside and listened.
Nothing.
She stepped back into the hallway and heard movement above her. “Slik?”
He was coming down the stairs, tucking this gun away and shaking his head. “Nobody home but us bears.”
“But there has been, right? Or am I imagining things?”
He shook his head. “If you are, so am I.” They had both sensed it the moment they stepped through the front door: somebody had been inside the house while they had been at the hospital. It wasn’t a specific smell, nor were there any visual signs; but they were experienced enough to have picked up the signals as surely as if the visitor had left a calling card on the hall table. Yet it didn’t appear that anything had been disturbed or stolen.
So why?
Vaslik seemed to have one answer. He raised a hand to warn Ruth to stay still, then knelt by the study door and scrubbed at a minute trace of white powder on the carpet against the skirting board. He ran his fingers up the wall immediately above it, to a framed print o
f a desert scene. When he carefully pulled the frame away from the wall, Ruth saw a slim biscuit the size of a ten pence piece stuck to the back.
Vaslik turned to her and made a circular motion with his finger at the veiling and walls, then a zipping motion across his mouth and tapped his ear.
Ruth stared. She didn’t want to believe it, but he was right.
He was talking about bugs.
Somebody had been inside and placed listening devices inside the house.
It took Vaslik an hour to scour the building, taking great care not to disturb anything until he was certain. One by one he discovered four similar devices. They were small, slim and easily concealed; one behind a photo frame in the living room, another in the kitchen above a cupboard, a third in the study close to the filing cabinet and one in Nancy’s room.
He took them down and wrapped them carefully in a towel, and placed the bundle in the airing cupboard. Then he beckoned Ruth into the kitchen and turned on the kettle.
“It won’t be all of them,” he warned her quietly, once the kettle was making a satisfactory level of noise to mask conversation. “All I got was the ones they wanted us to find. There will be others but much better concealed.”
“Won’t they get suspicious when they don’t hear us talking?”
“They’ll hear plenty—but only what we want them to hear.”
“Still, they’ll know you found some of the bugs.”
“Of course. But they’ll keep listening because that’s the way the game is played.”
“Game?” She gave him a cynical look. “Is that what this is?”
“Sure. Spies spying on spies; it’s the same the world over. You trick the opposition into thinking they know what you’re doing, but you always have a plan B.”
“And their plan B is to have more bugs that we don’t know about.”
“That’s right—unless we bring in some electronic counter-measures and sweep the house. Then everybody’s back to square one and it starts all over.”
“Jesus, what a waste of time. Did you recognise the equipment?”
“You mean where it’s from?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not really my scene. Electronic surveillance is a huge business; there are many different devices made and sold all over the world. I know the FBI and Secret Service use bugs from a variety of sources, as do your own intelligence agencies here, probably. And nobody uses bugs that can be traced back home, anyway; it’s too big a giveaway.”
Ruth didn’t say anything. This whole affair was taking on a much bigger significance than a simple kidnapping—if a kidnapping could ever be referred to as simple. From the snatch of a small child, it seemed to have blossomed into something more and more complex, with ever more questions and fewer answers.
“I wish I knew what the hell was going on here,” she muttered. “This thing’s beginning to drive me nuts.”
twenty-seven
It was halfway through the next morning before Nancy was discharged from hospital after undergoing a battery of tests. They were all clear, but the duty doctor had recommended bed rest and no excitement, and agreed that she would be better at home in familiar surroundings rather than in a busy ward. If he had any questions about the presence of three people who were clearly not family members, he was discreet enough not to ask.
Gina shepherded Nancy upstairs into her bedroom and made sure she was settled, then closed the door and joined the others downstairs.
“She’s groggy,” she reported, entering the kitchen. The kettle was roaring, the button held down by Vaslik to prevent it switching off. “Thankfully she’ll be out for a while and I can crash.” She helped herself to coffee and checked the CCTV monitors, then gave a questioning look at Vaslik and Ruth. They had warned her about the bugs they’d found, and that others might be present. “So what do we do? Act like we didn’t find them or go outside each time we need to talk?”
“Act normally,” Vaslik suggested quietly. “They know we’re here now, so there’s no point pretending. They’ll also know we’ve found some of the bugs. What we don’t want to do is let them in on everything we know.”
“Jesus, how much is that?”
“Not a lot, yet,” said Ruth. “But Slik’s right: they don’t know what we’ve discovered yet. If we can keep them guessing, they might make a mistake.”
“So we wait for them to make the next move?”
“Pretty much—at least, outwardly. It’s all we can do.”
“That sounds like you have a plan.”
“Maybe I do.” She had been thinking about what other avenues they could explore instead of sitting on their hands and letting the kidnappers dictate the game; any link they could follow up that might lead to the people behind the abduction. Since Michael Hardman seemed to be beyond anybody’s immediate reach, it left few options to work on. But there was one they hadn’t yet touched on.
Tiggi Sgornik. The nanny.
The house Tiggi had given as her address was in the middle of a Victorian terrace on a quiet street fronting a large cemetery. A low and rusted iron gate made a show of shielding two wheelie bins in a tight front yard with broken paving, and mismatched curtains and a peeling fascia showed the presence of renters, not residents.
Ruth drove past without stopping and hung a left at the end of the street and stopped. They were between two rows of houses at a point where the gardens at the back of each row butted up against each other. Some of the buildings had been extended into the gardens, giving a lot more room inside than a first look might indicate.
“How many residents, I wonder?” she pondered.
Vaslik assessed the size of the properties. “I’m not familiar with these places, but at a guess, could be anything up to a dozen.”
She agreed. From what Nancy had said the house sounded like a base for a shifting population of visitors and transients from the homeland, ever changing, staying for a short while to fuel up and find another job before moving on. The same pattern could be found almost anywhere in London, the only difference being language and colour, each drawn to their own like magnets.
They left the car and walked round to the front door. The street was quiet, the row of houses silent and uniformly neat and uncommunicative. There was no sound coming from behind the door. Sleeping off late shifts, probably.
Vaslik leaned on the bell-push.
A movement behind coloured glass. The door swung back to reveal a dishevelled youth of about eighteen in tracksuit pants and a T-shirt, scratching his chest.
“Yeah, what?” Even in two words, his accent came out as if he were chewing on ground glass.
“Is Tiggi in?” Ruth tried to ignore the smell of over-heated and humid air drifting around the youth’s shoulders like sour gas. With it came the smell of spices. A voice called out from the depths of the building but he didn’t respond, busy trying to process the question and formulate a reply.
“Who wants her?” he said finally, eyes flicking coolly from Ruth to Vaslik. They stayed longer on the American, assessing the clothes and face, apparently not liking what they saw.
Wrong answer, thought Ruth. You’re no great actor. Now we know we’ve got the right place. “She didn’t turn up for work. We’re worried about her.”
The gears ground slowly for a few seconds, then the youth said, “She not here anymore.” He began to close the door.
Vaslik’s hand shot out and stopped it. The youth pushed harder but it was no contest.
“Hey—you can not do this—”
“Too late. We’re in.” Vaslik moved him aside without effort, pinning him against the wall with his forearm. The youth struggled but got nowhere.
Ruth checked the surroundings. They were in a narrow hallway running the length of the house, with a stairway to their left and two doors opening to the right. The atmosphere was close and dark
, not helped by dark wallpaper and a scrubby brown carpet. A low hum of music was coming from the first door, which was either a living room or doubling as a spare bedroom, and voices rumbled from the end of the hallway, followed by a burst of laughter.
Vaslik said something to the youth. He spoke quietly and quickly, their faces no more than six inches apart. Ruth didn’t understand a word but the threat was as clear as a bell.
Whatever he’d said had an immediate impact on the youth. He stopped struggling and went quite still. Only his eyes continued moving like marbles in a pinball machine.
Vaslik dropped his hand, allowing the youth to go free, and stepped back.
They followed the youth to the back of the house, and found three men in a large kitchen area. Two, dressed in jeans and tracksuit tops, were drinking coffee. They looked tired, their faces drawn and unshaven. The third, a large man with a bald head and hands like clamps, was stirring something in a large pot on the stove. It smelled of tomatoes and onions, and spices Ruth couldn’t place. The place was surprisingly tidy and clean, and clearly somebody had control over what happened in this room at least.
The two coffee drinkers froze before putting down their mugs, while the cook stopped stirring and raised his chin in query at the newcomers.
“Who is this?” His voice was another surprise; it was soft, the accent obvious but the words precise, as if he had practiced his speech with great care.
The youth said something and all three men stared at Vaslik, who smiled without comment. Then the cook said something to the youth, who turned and left the room, throwing a quick sneer at Vaslik as he went.
“Care to fill me in?” Ruth murmured. She could feel the atmosphere in the room like a heavy fog, and wondered how long it would be before one of these men made a run for the door. He wouldn’t get very far; the back door was blocked by a dustbin, which left the only way out down the hallway to the front. She figured they could already bid goodbye to the youth, who’d been given a head start.
The Locker Page 14
