by Huw Thomas
Cole pursed his lips. ‘Can’t you give me the name of your contact?’
Harrison smiled at the suggestion. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I don’t think so.’ He shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. The man’s told me what he can. He’s got nothing to hide. This is… his business. He doesn’t want anything messing that up. If he knew more, he’d tell me. If you speak to him, whether you offer him more money or try and put the fear of Christ into him, you’re not going to learn anything else.’
The other man exhaled with slow resignation. ‘Okay. Got to be grateful for small mercies, I suppose.’
Harrison nodded. ‘Something like that.’
Cole sat for a moment, his hands clenching and unclenching. ‘Not much to go on is it?’
‘No.’ Harrison leant back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘I guess it’s not. Four names and half a description of a van? Doesn’t add up to much.’
Cole sighed. He looked weary. As the days passed, the strain was starting to show. His sister was his only family and the thought of what may have happened to her was corrosive: an acid eating away at his emotions, his esteem and his control. He ran a hand slowly through the curls on his head; the fingernails that raked across his scalp ragged and bitten to shreds. He pushed himself away from the desk and went to stand up.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess I should say thanks. You’ve done what you can. More than I can say for some who claimed to be my friend.’
Harrison lent forwards again. ‘Hey, you’ve never done me any harm, Nelson. I’ve got every sympathy for you, I really have. I’ll do what I can. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know and if you want anything else just ask.’
Cole smiled briefly. ‘Thanks. Likewise.’
He stood and walked toward the door, his posture that of a fighter who had just taken a beating. The ex-dancer was about to open the door when Harrison suddenly slapped the desk in remembrance.
‘Oh. Nelson. One other thing.’
‘What’s that?’ Cole turned swiftly, his response quick.
Harrison held out a hand, an apologetic look on his face. ‘Sorry, nothing to do with your sister. Just something I found out. Wondered if you’d heard anything.’
Cole wandered a couple of paces back into the room, the interest fading from his features. ‘What’s that then?’
‘Isaiah Van Hulle. You know him?’
The redhead’s eyes narrowed and he stilled: his focus on Harrison suddenly sharp. ‘Van Hulle? What about him?’
Harrison noted the change in attitude but didn’t comment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I ran up against him in a business matter and decided to do a bit of digging: try to check him out a bit.’
Cole still had not moved and Harrison had the impression the other man had not blinked or drawn breath either. ‘And?’
‘Sit down again, Nelson.’ The councillor gave a cagey smile. ‘I wasn’t even sure whether you knew him. But something tells me the name Van Hulle is ringing a few bells. Something you want to tell me?’
Cole remained silent. He frowned at Harrison and then moved back to the desk. The redhead took hold of the back of the chair he had been sitting in a few moments before but remained standing. As he leant forwards and stared at Harrison, the councillor could not help noticing the veins standing out in his visitor’s neck and the tic that had appeared on his temple.
‘Nelson, please.’ He smiled with a slight unease. ‘Sit down, I’ll tell you what I can. Like I said, I’m on your side. If this has any connection with your sister, tell me for God’s sake.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘God knows I’m no friend of Van Hulle’s. Any enemy of his is a dear friend of mine.’
Cole blinked and gave a quick apologetic smile. He pulled the chair back out and sat down again. ‘Sorry, John, you took me by surprise, my friend.’ He nodded slowly and spread his hands. ‘It’s just there may be somethin’ that connects Van Hulle with this business. It’s no more than a rumour at the moment, which is why I didn’t say anythin’ to you. Fact is, I’d almost forgotten about it. But then you go and mention his name. But not connected you’re sayin’?’
Harrison smiled, not believing for an instant that Cole had forgotten anything relating to the matter. Wondering what else the redhead knew, he shrugged. ‘Not connected as far as I know.’
‘So what’s up?’
‘Well,’ said Harrison. ‘It’s all a bit odd. Background is: I’ve had a couple of run-ins recently. Legitimate business: some property deals I’m involved in.’
‘Legit eh?’
‘Well.’ Harrison grinned. ‘Let’s say they’ll be fine as long as no one checks the paperwork too carefully. Anyway, there are a couple of bits of property I’ve been trying to get my hands on: land that’s apparently on the market. But I keep running into little obstacles.’ He shrugged. ‘Now, I’ve been around a bit and you get used to the fact that things don’t always run as smoothly as you’d hope. But this is different. Someone’s been actively making life tricky, trying to block deals.’
Cole nodded. ‘Aimed at you in particular?’
Harrison shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Now, I’m not totally thick-skinned. I know Van Hulle can’t stand me. Stupid prick always acts polite. He couldn’t bring himself to actually be rude. But you can see it in his eyes; he looks at me as if I’m something he’s found under a stone. I’m sure that on the police authority he sometimes votes against me on a matter of principle. But I’m not sure this is personal. I’ve got a feeling he’s trying to protect these bits of land from anyone else. I presume he’s got plans for them but isn’t in a position to move at the moment so he’s trying to stop anyone else doing anything.’
Cole nodded, his expression giving nothing away. ‘So what’s unusual about that?’
Harrison smiled. ‘Nothing. That’s just the background. You see, it took me a while to work out who was behind my problems and, to be honest, I was going on a bit of a hunch when I pinned it on the Dutchman. But, a few things pointed at Van Hulle. So I decided to do a bit of digging.’
He chuckled to himself. ‘He always comes across as such a fucking holy man! He’s so dull and worthy I wanted to see if he had any skeletons in his cupboard. He’s not married and he always acts like some kind of martyr or saint. I was hoping I’d find out he was the kind who fiddled with boy scouts or something like that. Or went off to Thailand to have sex with underage girls.’ Harrison gave a slightly embarrassed grin. ‘You know the kind of thing.’
Cole’s shoulders twitched. ‘I know what you’re sayin’. And where you’re comin’ from. It’s the ones who act the holiest that are sometimes the really evil fuckers.’
‘Yeah, exactly,’ said Harrison. ‘Anyway, I got this guy to do some investigating. Started off local, trying to get a bit more of an idea of how our friend operates. Didn’t turn up much, although the Dutchman’s got a few business interests I wasn’t aware of previously. Most interesting one is Vigil Site Security.’
‘Vigil?’ Cole frowned. ‘I used them for a couple of my studios for a while. That was a while back though.’
‘Yeah?’ Harrison smiled. ‘Well Vigil belongs to the Dutchman. It’s not something I’ve ever heard him mention but Companies House has got him listed as the main man.’ The councillor gave a nasty grin. ‘As you might have gathered, I never trusted all his holier-than-thou talk. I mean, he goes on about his building firm and all the social housing and community projects he’s involved in as if he was doing it all out of the goodness of his heart. To listen to him, you’d think he was running a charity. But Vigil Security, they’re not exactly social enterprise are they?’
Cole snorted. ‘No. They were cheap but they weren’t much fuckin’ good. Some right shifty characters on their books too: most of them seemed to have hardly enough brain cells to rub together.’
‘Right.’ Harrison nodded. ‘But the interesting thing about Vigil is the number of jobs they’ve got looking after development sites. They’ve got contracts all over the cit
y and I reckon that’s why Van Hulle set them up.’
Cole’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ said Harrison. ‘Vigil work cheap; they’re always undercutting other security firms. Which means they get most of the contracts to look after the big redevelopment sites. They do the old Pine Mill Warehouses, the Kavanaugh Centre, Caledonia Barracks: loads of places. Plus they look after a lot of building sites, although never ones run by Van Hulle’s firm. There’s got to be some reason he’s running an outfit like that. I reckon he uses them to get information, find out what his rivals are up to, that kind of thing.’
Harrison leant back and grinned. ‘But Vigil isn’t the most interesting thing I turned up about Isaiah Van Hulle, not by a long chalk.’
Cole raised his eyebrows. ‘No?’
‘No. You see, as well as doing a bit of digging locally, it occurred to me it may be worth seeing if there was anything back home in Holland our Mr Van Hulle wanted to forget.’ He shrugged. ‘It could have been anything. To tell the truth, I just wanted to get on his case a bit. I wanted to be able to prove he wasn’t as holy as he made out. The idea wasn’t even necessarily to tell anyone else. Just so long as he knew that I knew he was a fake.’
Cole’s eyes closed briefly. ‘And?’
‘Well,’ said Harrison, reluctant to spoil the story by getting to the point. ‘I’ve got a friend based in Amsterdam I do some business with from time to time. He’s got some contacts and I asked him to see if he could dig up any background on Van Hulle. I thought if he was a bit dodgy, he might have a police record in Holland. Even if it was something he’d done as a kid. Or he’d got some girl pregnant and done a bunk. Even getting chucked out of school would have done.’
‘And?’ The impatience in Cole’s tone was more obvious this time.
Harrison smiled. ‘Thing is, our man doesn’t seem to exist.’
‘Huh?’
The councillor shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps the information we’ve got is wrong but something about Van Hulle’s past doesn’t add up.’ He gave a shark’s grin. ‘I haven’t put all the pieces together but there’s definitely something dodgy about our sainted Dutchman and I’ve got a suspicion it’s going to turn out to be better than I ever hoped.’ He chuckled. ‘I mean, you don’t fake your background unless you’ve got something bad to hide.’
Cole shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me there, John. What do you mean he doesn’t exist?’
‘There’s no such person as Isaiah Van Hulle.’
‘What?’
Harrison grinned. ‘Exactly what I said. There’s no such person as Isaiah Van Hulle. At least not according to the facts our Dutchman claims are true.’
‘Explain.’
‘Well.’ Harrison pulled a guilty face. ‘One way and another I managed to see a few bits of Van Hulle’s personal records. Date of birth, place of birth: that kind of thing. And, according to these papers: things he’s signed as being the truth; he’s supposed to come from a little place called Buren out on the Frisian Islands. Thing is, the Dutch are pretty good at keeping records. And the name Isaiah Van Hulle is conspicuous by its absence.’
Cole frowned. ‘Nothing?’
Harrison shook his head. ‘Not completely. You see: there was a family called Van Hulle lived there at the right time. But they only had one child and it wasn’t called Isaiah.’
‘That doesn’t prove much,’ said Cole. ‘He could have changed his name. Maybe Isaiah’s a nickname or somethin’ like that.’
Harrison smiled. ‘That was my thought too. But you see, this child was born on the right day. And it had the right initial. But it wasn’t called Isaiah, it was called Inge.’
Cole frowned. ‘Inge?’ he said slowly. ‘Isn’t that…?’
Harrison nodded. ‘Yep. Inge is a girl’s name and that’s what the authorities recorded the child as.’ He grinned. ‘So I reckon our Dutch friend isn’t who he claims. I reckon he’s done something pretty dodgy somewhere in the past. Which is why he’s left Holland. And, to cover his tracks, he’s taken someone else’s name. Trouble is, he made a mistake. Maybe he was in too much of a hurry or maybe someone sold him a false identity without checking it out properly. He’s taken a girl’s identity. Which proves he can’t be who he claims to be.’
Harrison laughed and leant back. He looked triumphant. ‘Now all I need to do is find out who he really is and what he’s done. Then I’ll have the bastard by the balls. And believe me, when I know what I need to know, I’ll squeeze them so tight I’ll make him scream.’
46. Road To Nowhere
Friday, 4.42pm:
The pink Rolls Royce eased through the late afternoon traffic and swung left, turning off The Parade into Ferdinand Street. Ignoring the flashing lights and angry horn of an oncoming bus, Cash pulled around a waiting taxi and swerved back over to the left without batting an eyelid.
‘So what are we looking for?’ he asked.
‘A turning somewhere up on the right,’ said Harper. ‘About halfway along, I think. St Bartholomew’s Yard.’
They missed it first time and only found the entrance on the way back by driving along at crawling speed. The opening was barely more than a narrow alleyway, sandwiched between a mobile phone shop and a pet-grooming parlour. Cash pulled a face.
‘This is going to be a squeeze.’
‘You could park out here.’
‘What? No, I can’t. Defeats the object. The whole point of having a car like this is being noticed when you arrive.’
Cash swung the Roller tight around a bollard on the corner outside the phone shop. The big car’s nearside wing mirror almost brushed the metal obstacle. Harper saw two women in the phone shop gawping at the pink monster gliding past them. On the driver’s side, a man came out of the opposite doorway clutching a freshly coiffed miniature poodle. The dog’s owner gave a little start as he spotted the vehicle and clutched the animal in an involuntary squeeze. The poodle yapped in protest, tight white curls framing its pointed teeth and mean little mouth.
Cash bared his own teeth in response. ‘What a revolting little creature.’
Now safely around the corner, the artist let the Rolls glide serenely into the narrow, dead-end road. The lane was only a couple of feet wider than the car. On either side ran high walls of grimy bricks. Now converted into offices, the buildings that lined the lane had been built in the eighteenth century as warehouses. Once used to hold slaves and other goods brought up from nearby river wharves, the walls bore two centuries’ worth of accumulated dirt that had never been cleaned off. With few windows breaking the lines of the walls, the result was an oppressive brick-built canyon with no room to turn.
At its far end was St Bartholomew’s Church. Founded by a sugar baron inspired to piety by the size of his fortune, it had been extended by a cabal of Victorian merchants who added their own faux-Gothic embellishments. For a couple of generations it was one of the most important churches in the city. Then, in 1943 it took a direct hit from a German incendiary bomb. The resulting fire left St Bartholomew’s a blackened shell with a dangerous crack in its tower. Despite many pledges of action, the ruins remained in their war-damaged state for another four decades. By then of little interest to the church authorities, the building was deconsecrated, crudely repaired and converted into a community centre. After a brief flurry of enthusiasm the community’s interest in using the damp, cold hall soon waned, particularly after the city council opened a new leisure centre less than a mile away. The project folded and there was no opposition when Van Hulle bought the building a few years ago and adapted it into offices for his growing social housing empire.
Cash sniffed as he drove up to the church. A small yard to the right contained a row of parking spaces and just enough room to turn around. The artist stopped his Rolls across the entrance to the parking area. He gestured at the vehicles he was blocking in. ‘Well, if he is here, he’s not going to drive off without talking to us.’
The entrance to the church was
through the southern transept. Just inside was one of the few areas of original stonework, an austere space that contained nothing to welcome visitors. In the crossing, where the four arms of the church met, was a small reception area. To the left, the body of the nave remained open plan but now packed with ranks of desks and filing cabinets rather than pews. In the far corner of the crossing a spiral staircase led up into the now-stabilised tower, through a hatch where bell ropes had once hung. A woman with a bovine face and uncompromising attitude sat sentry at a desk positioned beside the stairs.
Cash sauntered up to her with an airy smile. He perched on a corner of the desk, sitting on a pile of letters waiting for the post and swung round to face the unsmiling guardian. She took a deep breath, ready to release righteous indignation at this audacity.
Cash gave her a brilliant smile and winked. ‘Hi, gorgeous. Is the boss upstairs?’ He reached forwards and took hold of one of her hands, giving it a firm squeeze.
The woman jerked her fingers back and blinked. ‘I… Who…?’
The artist leant forwards. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said in confidential tones. ‘I tend to have this effect on people.’
‘I’m sorry but…’
‘When do you finish work?’
A flush crept up the woman’s neck. She was in her mid-forties and verging on overweight but could have been attractive if she tried smiling. Her mouth opened and gaped silently for a moment before she gathered her senses and tried to regain the hauteur cultivated over years of dealing with inconvenient people.
‘Excuse me,’ she began, ‘but I hardly think…’
Cash leant closer, his eyes fixed intently on hers. ‘Would you model for me?’
‘I…’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not…’
Cash sat up straight and reached into his jacket. A hint of disappointment appeared on the receptionist’s face as he moved away. But Cash kept his eyes on her as he pulled out a business card and handed it over. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s all perfectly respectable; I’m a professional artist.’
