by James Green
‘I see.’
‘Well I don’t, and neither does my editor. Why should the Spanish police be after you?’
‘I told you, Harry sent someone after me and I killed him. I didn’t mean to but I did.’
‘And that’s why they’re after you? No other reason?’
‘I don’t know of anything else.’
‘Then why are they taking it so gently, gently? If you topped a guy in Spain why not put out an arrest warrant?’
‘The bloke broke into the house I was staying at. I heard him and was ready for him. He got a knife in me but I still broke his neck.’
‘I see. You’re a very violent man, Jimmy, I’ll have to remember that. So what happened?’
‘I was interviewed by the police and they decided it was self-defence. It looks like they may have had second thoughts.’
‘Sure it’s just that? Nothing else?’
‘No, nothing else.’
But he could see she didn’t believe him. Why didn’t she believe him? Whatever it was she decided to change the subject.
‘All right, now explain to me about the window cleaners.’
You’re bloody good, thought Jimmy, but you’re not perfect, and I think you’ve just made a bad mistake. But he decided that, like Rosa, it was best left alone, for the moment.
Chapter Twenty-five
There was a decent service from Leamington to London Marylebone but Jimmy insisted on going back through Coventry. He said he wanted another pint of Pedigree at the Rocket. Rosa didn’t like it but agreed. It wasn’t worth arguing over. When they got there the Rocket was busier so they sat outside on a small patio where three wooden tables were set behind railings out overlooking the railway lines. The station was quite close, down to their left. Jimmy had a pint. Rosa passed on another drink and sat while he drank slowly. Finally she decided she might as well get something out of the delay.
‘I still don’t see it about the window cleaners.’
‘I told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘Window cleaners get paid.’
‘Cash in hand, that gives us nothing.’
‘No, it’s a contract.’
‘So they’re on a contract, where does that get us?’
‘The Acme lot in Leamington are sub-contracted. While we were waiting for a train at Leamington station I phoned them.’
‘I didn’t see you do that.’
‘You were in the toilet.’
‘Hiding things from me now?’
‘They were very co-operative and told me that the window cleaning contract for number thirty-two Copthorne Terrace had been given them by Universal Building Maintenance, a Coventry firm. They gave me the number and I phoned them and, surprise, surprise, Henderson-Kenwright were also clients.’
‘Great. So now you know who cleans Henderson’s windows. Is that progress?’
‘It might be.’ Jimmy looked at his watch and stood up. ‘I’m going to see Dredge.’
‘Why? You’ll miss the next train.’
‘I’ll tell him he’s not going to get any award.’
‘He never was.’
‘I know, but it will give me an excuse to ask him about his windows.’
Rosa gave a shrug. If he was determined to go they might as well be on their way.
‘OK, let’s go and break the bad news.’
‘No, you stay here.’
He didn’t mean it to come out like an order but it did and she noticed.
‘Why?’
‘Because it doesn’t need two. Just me making a courtesy call.’
Rosa didn’t like it and this time she wanted to argue.
‘Very clever. In and out and, oh, by the way who looks after your windows? You sure you don’t need me to ask the question properly?’
Jimmy could see she wanted to be there when he talked to Dredge but he wanted her to stay put.
‘I’ll think of something.’
She still didn’t like it but she decided not to push it. She could see Jimmy didn’t want her along.
‘OK, Jimmy, have it your own way, you’ve got us where we are now so I suppose you know what you’re doing. I’ll stay here and have a drink and when you’re through I’ll meet you down on the station.’
Jimmy walked through the pub and out onto the main road, but instead of turning right towards the Ring-road underpass he walked left until he could see down the side of the pub. Rosa was at the table on her mobile and talking hard and somehow he didn’t think it was to any editor.Jimmy turned and set off to Henderson-Kenwright’s offices.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Dredge, it didn’t work out. Apparently Harry Mercer isn’t anything special as a writer. In fact he’s a dead loss so far as I can see. If he was any good, pulled in serious money, I suppose you would have noticed it in the accounts so maybe it’s not such a big surprise.’
‘I see, oh well, easy come easy go and, as you say, if there had been any serious money going through Tate and Wiston’s books I’m sure it would have been noticed here. We don’t get many celebrities.’
‘And apart from Mercer, Tate and Wiston aren’t exactly an exciting outfit. Not if appearances are anything to go by.’
‘What you see is what you get. They keep going and turn in a small but steady profit.’
‘Maybe Mr Henderson bought them as an investment?’
‘An investment?’
‘Property. The firm may not be much, but maybe the property is?’
‘Mr Henderson doesn’t own their property. The offices are rented. Commercial property of that sort, flats, small offices, is not a good investment. Capital can be better employed elsewhere.’
‘But this place, he owns this? Mr Jardene told me it’s a family firm.’
‘The family did own it but these days the sensible thing to do is sell the property then lease it back.’
‘Sorry, why is that the clever thing?’ Dredge liked to talk, to show how smart he was, so Jimmy let him talk.
‘That way, the capital value of the property is released and can be invested and the occupier is relieved of all maintenance charges. If the roof blew off it wouldn’t be our responsibility to put it back on.’
‘I see.’ Jimmy thought about taking it further, trying to get the name of the company that Henderson had sold the property to, but decided that was a step too far. He stood up. ‘Well, sorry again that things didn’t work out but you’ve been most helpful.’
‘Not at all, it’s a pity of course but there you are. If nothing else it provided a nice variation to an otherwise rather dull routine.’
Jimmy left Dredge’s office and walked out into the street. He looked at the park, the way back to the station. But he stood, thinking. He had the feeling he was getting close now.
The publisher was a good front for Harry but it wasn’t really any use to launder cash from the porn racket because the accounts went through Dredge’s office and big money would have been noticed and looked into. But a property company sounded like the sort of outfit who could move big sums about without too much bother and somewhere there was a company that owned Henderson-Kenwright’s property. Could he winkle out the name of the property company from the maintenance outfit? Harry had his cover as a writer, if he and Henderson owned a property company they had the other half of what they wanted, a way to clean their money. Then a thought struck him, a name popped into his head. Maybe he didn’t need to ask Universal after all, maybe he had already been told the name of the company. What he needed now was a newsagents and a phone book. He turned away from the park and headed in the opposite direction from the station towards what looked like the city centre.
Jimmy sat in a pub. On the table beside his pint there was a copy of the paper Rosa said she worked for and a copy of the local Thompson’s Directory. Jimmy looked at the open Thompson’s and made a call.
‘Universal Building Maintenance? Yes, my name is Parker, I’m from Iberian Property Holdings, I would like to query your last invoice con
cerning one of our properties which you service in Coventry.’ He waited while he got transferred. If his guess was right he was almost home and dry. ‘Hello, yes, Parker from Iberian Property Holdings, I have a query about your last invoice for the Henderson-Kenwright window cleaning contract. Thank you.’ He took a drink from his pint, closed the directory and pulled the paper to him. ‘You’ve got it on the screen?’ Bingo! ‘Good. Can you confirm the amount? Thank you, that’s fine, there’s no problem after all, a mistake at this end. Goodbye.’
Iberian Property Holdings, they owned the house Jarvis rented in Santander, and now he knew they also owned Henderson-Kenwright’s offices. It had to be Henderson and Harry. And they were based in Gibraltar so not subject to any UK oversight. Very neat. Jimmy opened the paper, found a number and made another call.
‘I want to speak to one of your journalists, a Rosa Sikora.’ There was a pause. ‘You sure, no one of that name. I know she’s journalist somewhere on a London paper and I need to contact her. The National Union of Journalists? Thank you, I’ll try them, do you have a number? Great, thanks.’ He dialled again. ‘Hello, I’m trying to contact one of your members, a Rosa Sikora, it’s in relation to a story she was researching but I’ve mislaid her contact details. Yes I’ll wait.’ He waited. ‘No member of that name? No, it’s not Joseph Sikora, she’s definitely not a man. OK, thanks.’
Jimmy put away his phone. Well, whatever Rosa did for a living she wasn’t a working journalist; that, or her name wasn’t Rosa Sikora. Either way it was bad news but not altogether such a big surprise. She’d played the part well, but from the beginning there’d been nothing solid to back up her being a reporter, no editor to talk to him about the story, no background work through colleagues. And why didn’t she know Harry’s books were no good and sales almost non-existent? A few calls would have given her that. Unless of course she already knew. And wasn’t it nice that she could suddenly drop everything and go swanning off with him simply because he asked her to?
He thought about the phone call she’d got after their meeting with Jardene.
From the way she behaved when she’d told him the Spanish police wanted to talk to him he was sure she’d known about the bloke with the broken neck, but she didn’t know how the police had reacted or what they might want. Whoever called her was pushing her to get information. What had she actually contributed? Where Harry and Jarvis did time together and the idea for interviewing Dredge. Other than that, she’d been a fellow traveller in a position to keep a close eye on everything he did and see where he was going.
So, who would think it worthwhile to get George to put a minder alongside him? He went back to Harry. Harry was part of the set-up, but he wasn’t bright; vicious, but never bright. Henderson was bright enough, but not brave enough. He’d never have the bottle to begin a criminal career no matter how much it might make him. Jarvis didn’t count, he was just the writer. So there had to be someone else, and it could be that someone who put Rosa beside him. The porn thing had to have a London end. Harry didn’t have the brains but he had plenty of friends who had all the brains, the bottle and the money to get the racket going. And Harry would have told London about my turning up in Spain out of nowhere which meant that when I arrived and put the word out through George that I wanted a journalist, somebody saw to it I got Rosa. Whoever gave Rosa to George was the London end. That was who she’d been talking to when she’d told me it was her editor, and that was who she was talking to after I left her at the Rocket.
Jimmy decided it was time to see George again.
He ignored what was left of his pint. He hadn’t drunk much of it but it wasn’t a very good pint, it wasn’t very well kept. He’d only bought it so he could ask for the Thompsons and sit at a table while he made his calls. He looked up one more number then stood up and took the Directory back to the bar and left the pub. He stood outside and called the taxi firm whose number he had got from the Directory.
‘How much for a cab from Coventry to Leicester. OK, pick me up as soon as you can, I’m outside the Black Bull pub in the city centre. It’s just round … You know where it is? How long? Good.’
He put away the phone. Rosa would be getting worried now, but she wouldn’t risk another visit to Dredge. She’d wait until she was sure he’d gone and then head on back to London. Jimmy stood and waited. Ten minutes later a minicab pulled up. Jimmy opened the door.
‘Leicester?’
The driver nodded. Jimmy got in and the cab pulled away.
At the station Rosa, as Jimmy thought, was indeed worried and was back on the phone.
‘He’s been gone too long, he must have tumbled me somehow. How should I know? I just did as I was told. I tagged along, let him lead and followed where he went. Now he knows the publisher is a front for Harry and he’s got the name of the service outfit that looks after Henderson-Kenwright’s office so he’ll probably get to the property company in Gibraltar. I told you, he’s good, he’ll get all the way. He’s put Mercer, Jarvis and Henderson together, and he’s probably got enough as it stands for the Spanish police to give the whole thing a good going over and you don’t want that, do you?’ Rosa listened. ‘Hang on. If you want him stopped he’s got to be stopped quickly and that means here in the UK, and that sort of work isn’t my side of things. I’m supposed to be brains not muscle.’ She listened. ‘All right, I’ll wait and see if he comes back but I doubt he will. Your best bet is to get him in London, if he goes back to London.’
Rosa put her phone away just as another London-bound train pulled in. She stood and watched as passengers got off and passengers got on. The train pulled out, the platform cleared of arrivals but began to fill up almost at once with others making their way wherever they were going at the end of the working day. But Jimmy wasn’t one of them.
No, thought Rosa, there was no way he’s coming back. Somehow he’s tumbled what was going on. If he went straight back to London there was still a chance to nail him. But only if he went back to the Hind, and Rosa didn’t believe he’d be such a mug as to go back to the Hind, not if he’d worked it out that it was George who’d palmed her off onto him. And she was pretty sure he’d worked that bit out all right.
She gave herself a small smile, a bit of her hoped he’d make it. He had something about him, not much, but something. Maybe she really would have given him a freebie if they’d worked together for much longer. Yes, he was different somehow, had something about him.
Jimmy sat in the back of the cab watching the motorway pass by. George had set him up. What did that mean? Was it a favour or had there been pressure? Or was it just money? He gave up. George had the answer so he’d have to wait until he could ask him, ask him nicely. Harry? The whole thing was too clever for Harry. Harry recruited Jarvis in Leicester gaol, but he must have been told to be on the look-out for a suitable candidate to have moved so quickly when Jarvis turned up, if what Carter the Leicester screw said was right, which it probably was. And Henderson? Well if Henderson was already into porn he was a cherry ready to pick, he wouldn’t have had any choice. He was probably blackmailed into it. But none of that got him anywhere further. What about the other end, where the product got made? The bloke who had knifed him in Spain had had a Romanian passport, a false one, but he had probably come from that part of the world. No, he had been prepared to go as exotic as Leamington Spa but sod anywhere else, and definitely sod bloody Romania.
He looked at his watch; he had been on the road almost three-quarters of an hour. Soon he would be in Leicester, but by now Rosa would have contacted London. He thought about his plan, the one he’d worked out on the way back from Tate and Wiston. It wasn’t a good plan but if it worked he’d get what he wanted and maybe get out alive. No, it definitely wasn’t a good plan but there was no other and there was no point in running. Running wasn’t a plan, it was just running. He knew, he’d tried it. Everything depended on who it was in London that was behind the racket. He hoped it really was somebody with a few brains and not some bloo
dy hooligan. Someone with brains might see what he was up to, someone like George. But if George was linked into it he’d be on the edges somewhere, that was always where George felt comfortable, picking up tasty bits of the action but never getting caught in the frame.
The cab passed some signs for the M1 going north and south, and then came to a big roundabout. The driver passed the slip-road for the M1, went under the motorway and came out the other side on the outskirts of Leicester. Not long now, soon he’d be at the station and he could make his call. Then he’d be on his way to London. He thought about Rosa. She’d be on her way to London as well by now. He’d liked Rosa, he didn’t think he would, but he did. She was sharp and clever and good at her job. She had something about her. If she’d been serious about that freebie maybe he’d have taken it.
Jimmy’s mind ran on. Funny really, sex had never mattered that much between him and Bernie, just something they did when he felt like it. It had been different with Suarez, not just something they did because he felt like it. Different. What was happening to him in his old age? Never looked at another woman for all his married life and now what? Hop into bed with any young thing that fancies him? Why was it different now, and why didn’t he think of it as a sin? But sex and sin took a back seat when Jimmy saw a direction sign for the station. He leaned forward.
‘Make it the station.’
The driver nodded and they went on. He needed to get ready to make his call. A lot depended on that call, not least his life.
Chapter Twenty-six
‘Hello, George.’
George tried to keep the surprise out of his voice but failed.
‘Hello, Jimmy, where are you?’
‘Oh, round and about.’
‘In London?’
‘Maybe. I’m somewhere, it doesn’t matter where. Tell me, George, how much did you get?’
