Smoke and Mirrors (The Acer Sansom Novels Book 3)

by Oliver Tidy

  ‘Stand back,’ said Acer. He gave her a couple of seconds and finished the job the dying man had started.

  Dominique was cowering against the far wall shielding Zoe.

  ‘You’re both all right?’ said Acer.

  Dominique nodded. She was looking down at the dying man.

  Acer turned his attention back to him. Beads of sweat stood out on his face and he was shivering violently. The blood had spread to leave more of his shirt red than white and bloody spittle frothed at one corner of his mouth.

  Acer had only one question for the man. ‘Where is she?’

  The man continued with his rapid, shallow breathing. He said nothing. He was dying and he knew it. If Dominique and Zoe were not riveted to what was happening, he might have tried increasing the man’s suffering in a bid to find out what he needed to know. As he waited for inspiration the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped breathing.

  ‘Dominique, we’re leaving. Now. Get your shoes on.’

  ***

  90

  As they went past him Acer dismantled the man’s gun. He made it safe and jammed it down the back of his trousers. He put the silencer in his trouser pocket and followed them through.

  He looked into the corridor. It was still empty and quiet. It probably wouldn’t be for long.

  ‘We’ll take the stairs,’ he said.

  Poking out from the bottom of the trolley he noticed the assassin’s coat. He took it and folded it over his arm and over his pistol.

  After checking the stairwell was clear Acer went in front. Their hurried footsteps echoed down the empty space as they descended.

  At the bottom the females were both breathing heavily. There was a fire door at the end of the passage behind them. Acer went towards it. He saw it was alarmed.

  ‘As soon as we push through this an alarm is going to sound,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s behind it. Just follow me and keep close. OK?’

  It crossed his mind to trigger the alarm and wait for the hotel’s security to investigate, but that would mean police and explanations and delay. What he needed was to get them away and fast. Added to that, hotel security wouldn’t be armed and so they would be no match for any back-up the dead assassin had waiting for him.

  He still viewed mother and child as his responsibility. They were going with him.

  Dominique nodded. Acer pushed the door open. The high-pitched alarm trilled. Somewhere in the building someone would be checking CCTV and circuits.

  They burst out into a service compound. The rain was still falling. Acer got his bearings. A Transit van had reversed up to delivery doors ten metres in front of them. The driver was on his mobile phone and smoking. The side door of the panel van was fully open, revealing a cargo of fruit and vegetables.

  Acer hurried across and yanked open the driver’s door. He let the young man see the gun under the coat on his arm.

  ‘Out,’ said Acer.

  The young man stared wide-eyed at the business end of the barrel, dropped his phone and put his hands up.

  ‘Just get out,’ said Acer.

  The young man got out with his hands still in the air.

  Acer signalled Dominique and Zoe to get in the back.

  He slid the door shut after them and hopped up into the driver’s seat. The youth hadn’t moved. The cigarette smouldered from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Put your hands down and go and tell someone what’s happened,’ said Acer.

  He engaged first gear and accelerated away. A single-arm barrier was all that separated them from the outside world and it was raised. Acer shot past the little security gatehouse and into the street with a sound like tearing fabric as the tyres struggled to grip the wet tarmac.

  He knew this part of London well enough. He knew which signposts he needed.

  When they were around the bend in the road he eased off the accelerator.

  ‘All right in the back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold on then. Not far to go.’

  Dominique stuck her head through the gap between the headrests. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ***

  91

  Acer left the van two streets away, locked it up and they walked to his house. Gentle rain continued to fall.

  The small and overgrown front garden had needed attention before he went away. Left alone for six weeks, it resembled something of a jungle. They forced their way up the path pushing aside the greenery that had grown across and over it, getting an extra soaking for their efforts from the dripping foliage.

  The side gate was shut but not locked. The back garden was even worse than the front and Acer frowned. Susan had promised to organise someone to run a mower over it while he was away.

  Despite the state of the place and the memories, good, bad and horrendous that awaited him inside, he felt glad to be back on familiar territory.

  He retrieved the back door key from under the same stone urn that the previous owner, his ex-father-in-law, had used to hide his spare.

  ‘You’ll be safe here,’ he said. ‘I’ll call Crouch. He’ll organise a proper safe house and a guard.’

  ‘Weren’t we supposed to be safe in the hotel? We had a guard there.’

  ‘That wasn’t Crouch’s fault. I think Niki sent the man to kill you.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Niki is not who she led us to believe she is. Come on. I’ll tell you about it inside.’

  They went up the couple of back steps and Acer unlocked. He stood aside to let them in.

  Old and familiar smells still hung around despite the cleaning up and clearing out he’d done in the short time he’d lived there. They mixed with the stale air and the smell of something past its sell-by date. But he had no time for nostalgia or chores.

  He led them through the kitchen, across the hallway and into what used to be Gerald’s front room. It was almost bare now. It used to be cluttered with furniture and nick-nacks of a long and interesting life but Acer had disposed of most of it in a fit of dynamic industry while discharging his anger and despair at the loss of Eda.

  The chairs that he’d tied Bishop and Smith to while they spilled their guts about their crimes had gone. He didn’t want to be reminded of those two every time he came home to sit in front of the TV. An old settee, sagging and threadbare, was pushed up against the far wall. It was something to sit on. It was something to be replaced as soon as he’d finished the refurbishment and redecoration.

  He waved them to it.

  ‘Niki played us, all of us, for fools. She and Hassan, not their real names, by the way, are exactly the opposite of what they have been pretending to be.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I imagine so she could get into the UK for something. Something she wouldn’t have been able to do as herself.’ He shook his head at the way things had turned out.

  ‘What something?’

  ‘I have no idea. No one has any idea. She was with VEVAK, but apparently they kicked her and her brother out because they were too extreme. I don’t know. Maybe that’s all a load of crap to confuse the issue, too. Just more misinformation to muddy our water.’

  ‘And you think she sent that man to kill us in the hotel room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why? Why wait until we got here for that? And why not do it herself? She had plenty of opportunity and if, as you say, she was ex-VEVAK or still with them she would surely have experience of brutality and murder. We saw that for ourselves.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t want to get her hands dirty or draw immediate suspicion to herself. Crouch said something this morning. You know things about their operations that they can’t afford to have exposed. Maybe we weren’t supposed to get this far. Perhaps that’s why they had Zoe snatched off Arcadia: if it had gone to plan for them, we, or I, would have ended up back in the UK sooner or later with my poor little asylum seeker who couldn’t go home. And you could have been ‘persuaded’ to return to them
. They must have known that with my service connections and lack of any documents my return would bypass normal travel arrangements. But the real reason behind it all was to get her here, however they could.

  ‘They’ll be looking for her, now they know who she is. She can’t stay at liberty for long in this city with all the cameras and manpower after her.’

  Acer huffed out his deep and bitter disappointment. In the lull in the conversation he went through the pockets of the coat of the dead man. He found a mobile phone, some change, a string of beads and a wallet, which contained nothing but a little cash and an Oyster card.

  He found the phone number he had for Crouch’s department and, because he hadn’t had a landline installed in his new home, he used the dead man’s mobile to call it. He was put quickly through to Crouch.

  ‘Acer? Where are you? What’s happened?’

  Acer could understand from Crouch’s urgent tone that he knew about the hotel. ‘I didn’t go home. I got dropped off at the hotel. I wanted to say goodbye before they got swallowed up in the system. I walked in on an assassination. Your man was already dead.’

  ‘What about Mrs Hammond and the girl?’

  ‘They’re both fine and with me.’

  ‘Thank God. Where?’

  ‘My home. They should be safe here. As safe here as anywhere.’

  ‘She must have sent him.’

  ‘That’s what I think. I also think that what she’s here for must be very important for her not to have wanted to risk doing the dirty work herself. She’s not afraid to pull a trigger. I’ve seen her in action. She kills easily and without remorse.’

  ‘I have her file in front of me. It does not encourage optimism. Her parents were both killed in 1988 when their civilian airliner was mistaken for an Iranian fighter plane and shot down by an American warship in the Persian Gulf. Everyone on board died. She’s been hugely and very vocally anti-American all her adult life. Her name, and that of her brother, has been associated with a number of atrocities in the region involving US citizens and interests.’

  ‘So why would she be here? We’re not America.’

  ‘No. But they have interests here. And we’re certainly easier to get into.’

  ‘She’s here for something big. With her history and background she would know that she can’t remain at liberty here for long.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t intend to be here for long. We’ll find her. I just hope that it’s not too late.’

  ‘Will you let me know if you hear anything?’

  ‘Of course, Acer. You’re on the team, remember? Look after the Hammonds.’

  The line went dead.

  ***

  92

  Acer had been standing and walking. He perched on the arm of the sofa, thinking.

  Zoe said, ‘I heard Niki talking about Americans.’

  Both Dominique and Acer turned to stare at her.

  He said, ‘Pardon?’

  ‘She was talking on a phone in her cabin on Arcadia to someone about Americans.’

  ‘Sorry, Zoe: how do you know?’

  ‘I was listening.’

  ‘But she didn’t have a phone in her cabin.’

  ‘Yes, she did. I saw her talking on it.’

  He opened his mouth to say that she must be wrong and then closed it again when he realised she could be right. He had gone to Iran with a satellite phone. Maybe Niki had one. Maybe Niki had his if everything had been one great illusion.

  ‘She was talking in English?’

  ‘No, Persian.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I learned to speak it in the orphanage. I had friends there. They taught me Persian. I taught them English.’

  Acer’s heart rate was on the increase. ‘What did she say? Can you remember?’

  ‘I didn’t hear all of it. I shouldn’t have been listening. It’s not nice, is it?’

  Acer smiled encouragingly at her. ‘No, Zoe. It’s not nice.’

  ‘She doesn’t like Americans. I heard her say things about them that weren’t nice. Mummy says if I haven’t got anything nice to say I shouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘Mummy’s right.’ Acer flicked his gaze up to Dominique.

  ‘Niki said she’s going to heaven. She said she’s going to send America to hell.’

  Acer swallowed down what that did to his stomach. He felt something cold and clammy settle on his spine. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘She lied to you. In Dubai, she didn’t tell the taxi driver to keep going; she told him to stop.’

  He still had the dead man’s phone in his hand. He trawled through the contacts list but got nothing out of it. Then he looked at calls received and made. Only one call had been received that morning. Acer recognised the number. It was the number of the satellite phone he’d had in Iran.

  He called back for Crouch and was asked to hold.

  ‘Acer? Something occurred to you?’

  Acer explained what he had. ‘It’s just an idea, but it’s possible that when they took everything from me in Tehran’s airport they found the satellite phone and decided to use it. Zoe heard Niki using a phone in her cabin on Arcadia. It could have been my satellite phone. If she’s got it, can you trace her location?’

  ‘We lost the signal.’

  ‘Maybe it was turned it off?’

  ‘I’ll have it followed up.’

  ‘If you can find out where she is I want to bring her in.’

  There was a slight pause before Crouch said, ‘Leave it with me, Acer.’

  Acer paced. Then he remembered his guests. He said, ‘I’ve got nothing in. I told you before: you’re welcome to stay with me. There’s plenty of room. We’ll need to organise things. It’s up to you.’

  ‘What would the alternative be?’

  ‘Probably a safe house somewhere.’

  ‘We’d both rather be here if you’re sure you don’t mind. Just for now. Just until we can get settled.’

  Acer smiled with genuine warmth. ‘I’d love to have you both stay. For as long as you want. You know I’m going to search for my daughter?’

  Dominique nodded. ‘And as soon as we can we’re going to go and stay with my parents in France.’

  ‘That’s settled then. I need to call someone,’ he said. ‘She’s a good friend. I know she’d like to meet you.’

  Acer found Susan’s mobile number and rang her. He said he was back with company. She asked who and he told her. He made her understand that it was not information for gossip and she should forget about getting a story for her paper out of it. But he needed her help. He had no money, no credit cards, no food or drink in the house. It was something of an emergency and could she help out? She said she’d leave work, pick up some things and drive over. Acer thanked her and hung up.

  The phone rang. It was Crouch. ‘The satellite phone that was issued to you made a call this morning to the number you’re using now. The call was made from London. It also made calls that tie in with the route you took from Dubai. We didn’t keep tabs on it. We should have done.’

  ‘She’s using it,’ said Acer. ‘Can you locate her?’

  ‘Yes. We know where she is.’

  ‘Will you let me bring her in?’

  ‘Strictly speaking this isn’t our pigeon any more. We should leave this to five. But we lost her and that makes us look bad. Bringing her in would restore something of our credit rating. Besides, I’m not particularly fond of Platt. I’ll have you met by a couple of operatives at the address. Do you have transport?’

  Acer thought of his delivery van waiting two streets away. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have a weapon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll have the address forwarded to this number. Wait for the support. I’ll give them this number. I want her alive, Acer. Let’s not foul it up.’

  Acer turned his attention back to Dominique.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘And I’ll be a lot happier when she’s in custody. You don’t have to be nice
about it.’

  He grabbed the dead man’s coat, said goodbye and let himself out.

  A text message came through as he was walking to the van. He checked it to find the address Crouch had promised. He knew the borough. He’d find the street when he was there. When he was in the van a thought occurred to him. He called Crouch’s office, gave them the number plate of the van and asked that the police be warned off it.

  ***

  93

  He arrived in Brixton. The address he sought in Coldharbour Lane was not hard to find. An untidy collection of local businesses lined one side of the road. A long and ugly residential block shaped up behind an expanse of rubbish-strewn grassland opposite.

  He drove past and gave it a cursory look. He found a side street and tucked himself away. He turned off the engine, settled in for the call from Crouch’s men and imagined how things would play out. He checked both of his weapons.

  The phone rang on the seat next to him. He snatched it up and accepted the call, expecting Crouch’s men. He said, ‘Where are you?’

  A long horrible moment stretched out in which he realised his mistake. Niki said, ‘Is he dead?’

  Acer closed his eyes and silently cursed himself. He said, ‘Why Niki? What did they do to you? Don’t you think you hurt them enough?’

  The line went dead. Acer slung the phone onto the seat next to him, sat back and let the implications of his stupidity start crowding him for attention. Now she’d be on her guard and so would anyone else in the house with her. He thumped the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and wondered what he’d say to Crouch’s men when they arrived. To not tell them would be unthinkable.

  As he sat berating himself for his amateurishness and deliberating over how it would impact on things a figure hurried across his field of view, head down and heading in the direction of the main road. It wasn’t running, but it was moving with a definite purpose. From the black full-length Muslim costume ‘it’ was a she. She was wearing a full-face burkha. She also carried a distinctive backpack and had a familiar walk.