‘No problem at all. You’re on the central line. Get out at Bond Street and I’ll see you outside Selfridge’s at dead on six o’ clock.’
‘Fine. I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Me too.’
I think of that swaying walk and wonder if she’s cleared this with her fiancé. She doesn’t sound like someone with a fiancé. I take a final gulp of coffee and ring Novak’s number. Not working. I better get over there if I’m going to clear all this up quickly.
Having never done missing persons before, I’m not really sure how long all this is meant to take. Maybe that’s an advantage. Novak lives in Bloomsbury, of all places. Of course, he may not live there anymore, in which case I’ll have to use other methods to find him. I pay for my snack and walk over to Ealing Broadway tube yet again.
Just before I walk down the steps into the tube station, I stop suddenly and look in the window of a chemist’s. There was another snack bar right next to the one I just used, and I fancied that a middle-aged man sitting outside that one got up and left at exactly the same time that I did.
I walk off and glance briefly over my shoulder, but there’s no one there apart from a young woman pushing a pram and an old guy holding a paint-splattered ladder. Maybe I’m just paranoid from my secondary euphoria at Taylor’s house. Talking of which, I realise that I just ate two Danish pastries when I never usually order more than one.
I get off at Holborn just over half an hour later and once I’ve orientated myself, walk up towards The British Museum. Coptic Street, which is the address Taylor had for this guy Novak, is dingy and full of restaurants. It isn’t the sort of place where you’d expect someone to live if you know London, but then neither is Covent Garden.
I find the house I’m looking for sandwiched in between a couple of snack bars. There’s one of those old-fashioned shoe scrapers next to the front door and a brass plaque which reads ‘Firmheath Enterprises plc’. Well, it might be him and it might not. If I was a drug dealer-cum-white slave trader I probably wouldn’t put my actual name or details of my business on the door.
I press the buzzer and wait. It looks conspicuous to be standing in a road like this and several passers-by stare at me. This is a road you walk down on your way somewhere else, unless it’s lunchtime.
A minute passes and still nothing. I close my eyes and listen for any sounds coming from inside. This is difficult, as the clatter coming from the snack bars either side obliterates everything I’m trying to hear. I attempt to zone out the café noise and listen out for atypical sounds originating in the house.
All these buildings have four floors and for all I know whoever lives here occupies all of them. Maybe they’re at the top and are slowly making their way down. Maybe Firmheath Enterprises is long defunct. I can hear a faint mechanical noise like some sort of slow-moving machinery. Then I hear a dull thud which definitely comes from inside.
I press the buzzer once more. There’s a harder, sharper sound, then something like the thump you’d expect to hear from a self-closing door with powerful spring hinges. It’s barely discernible, but I can hear and feel someone walking slowly and quietly towards the front door. The reverberations tell me it’s a heavy person and almost certainly male. Well, whatever’s going on in here, I should know any second now.
The guy has the look of someone who’s not used to opening a front door to anybody and I start to wonder if I’m maybe the first person who’s ever pressed the buzzer here, or whether it’s the first time he’s ever opened a door, or both.
He’s got broad shoulders, muscular, hairy arms, a huge gut and is a little under six foot. Smells of lavender toilet cleaner and stale sweat, which is a combination I’ve always adored. His demeanour is not welcoming and he’s got an aggressive, smirking expression on his face, which I don’t like.
This is the sort of guy who’d come up and try to pick a fight with you in a pub car park after closing time when he was a) positive he held the advantage and b) had six mates with him. His hair is ginger and cut short and his pale eyebrows are angled at about forty-five degrees, giving a clownish look to his ignorant-looking fat face. I look into his eyes and decide that he’s stupid.
‘Fuck you want?’
London accent. He could be in his late thirties or early forties. His whole body is blocking the doorway; there’s no way I could sneak past him. It isn’t lavender toilet cleaner; it’s some sort of deodorant. Looking over his shoulder I can see a long, dim corridor. At the end of that corridor is the door that I heard close. It’s metal, strong looking, and has a modern chrome keypad above the handle; nothing that couldn’t be removed with a crowbar if you were motivated enough. There are no security cameras; at least none that I can see.
‘I want to talk to Emile Novak.’
He stares at me without comprehension, as if I’m speaking a foreign language. ‘You can’t see him without an appointment.’
‘OK. Can I make an appointment?’
‘No. Fuck off.’
His dim expression doesn’t change, but he sneers at me as he attempts to close the door in my face. I put a hand out to stop it and he looks perplexed. ‘Listen, mate. Get your hand off that fuckin’ door.’
‘Why?’
‘Or I’ll fuckin’ punch you in the face, that’s why.’
Oh good. I’ve found one of those men who are always looking for an excuse for violence. ‘It won’t take long. I just want to ask him something.’
‘You fuckin’ prick with your fuckin’ queer leather jacket. Fuck off.’
This is taking too long and I’m not even sure that Novak is in. My aggressive friend is nostril-breathing now and his mouth is a thin angry line. He opens it again.
‘I’m going to count to five and then I’m going to sort you out,’ he says, a twitch in his left eye making the left side of his face wobble like jelly.
He’s breathing more rapidly, looking at me with undisguised loathing. I can’t spend all day standing in the street, but I think the next time I say something he’s going to attack me and I don’t want that to happen. I also want to take this off the pavement and into the house, before we start to attract too much attention. I open my jacket so he can see my inside pocket and I take out my pen. The street is clear. There are three girls walking away from me about a hundred yards away and a guy with a limp on the other side of the road, who’s just turned into a tobacconist’s. Someone is shouting in Romanian in the snack bar to my right.
‘One,’ he says, smirking his head off. ‘Two.’
‘I’m just going to leave a message for him. Can you make sure he gets it?’
‘Three.’
He looks down dumbly at the pen. I flip it around in the air, catch it and ram the blunt end into the soft flesh under the curve of his jaw. As his head rocks back and he grimaces with pain, I knee him in the balls as hard as I can and strike him in the solar plexus with the ball of my hand. This all takes one second.
He falls back on his arse in the hallway and I step in and kick the door closed behind me.
I have to assume there are other people in here, so what I have to do next has to be done with the minimum of noise. My pen, by the way, is what’s known as a tactical pen, made from aircraft grade aluminium and used in the same way as you’d use a Kubotan, a small but effective martial arts weapon. Weighs a couple of ounces. Very handy and you can write with it, too.
He’s recovering, and trying to work out whether to hold his throat or his balls. While he’s thinking about this, I kick him in the jaw and kneel down to introduce myself, grabbing his shirt and holding the sharp, castellated end of the pen against the white of his eye. He looks pissed, as well he might. He also looks frightened.
‘We’re going to get up and you’re going to type the combination into that keypad on the door. If you don’t get it right the first time, or if you make a noise, my magic pen’s going straight through your eye and into the back of your skull. Understand?’
This would be impossible, of co
urse, but he seems convinced enough to go along with my plan. He nods and I drag him to his feet, pushing him over to the door, which I can see now is made from reinforced steel.
The suddenly, with a speed which surprises me, he pulls away from me and in the dimness I can see the flash of a knife and it’s a big fucker. Now where the hell did that come from? He’s grinning now, pleased with himself. I must be getting sloppy in my old age. It won’t happen again.
‘Cunt.’
He dances about a bit, waving the knife in all directions. I can tell he’s not a professional knife fighter, so that’s something, but it’s still a dangerous and risky thing to have to deal with. So far, everything’s been relatively quiet and I want it to stay that way. I avoid three or four badly aimed slices to my torso, face and neck and manage a straight punch to his face, breaking his nose. Now he’s going to get careless and angry, which is what I want.
He executes a straight thrust to my stomach, which I avoid by turning aside and grabbing his wrist, then using his forward momentum and speed to bend it back at an angle that’s so painful that it instantly floors him.
He grunts in pain as I kick the knife out of the way, but then he’s up again, crouching in a boxer’s stance. He takes two quick jabs at my face. The first one is wide, but the second almost makes contact; I dodge it and he punches a hole in the wall behind me. I can see him quickly looking for the knife, but it’s nowhere to be seen. If one of those punches makes contact, I’ll almost certainly be concussed, so I have to finish him off before he finishes me.
He has a sly look in his eyes now and attempts a feint, throwing a half-way punch with his left before launching a powerful right, which I block with the side of my arm, simultaneously hitting him in the centre of the face with a knife hand strike.
While he’s coping with that, I grab the fingers of his right hand in both of mine and wrench his hand hard to the left, breaking his wrist, slapping a hand across his mouth to stifle the scream of pain he produces as the ligaments rip.
I grab his hair and slam his head into the wall to calm him down, and then manipulate him over to the door once more.
‘Do it.’
He punches five numbers into the keypad with his left hand, his right now being useless. I make a mental note of those numbers; I don’t know when I may need them again. There’s a click and a green light appears. I arrange a meeting between his head and the wall once more, then hammer-fist the side of his neck twice for good measure. He drops to the floor, out cold.
I can hear the ambient café noise from both sides, but nothing more. I find the knife and drop it into one of my side pockets. It’s some sort of hunting knife, with a gut hook on the blade that would have torn my insides out had he managed to get it in me. He deserved that wrist-break just for being in possession of something as nasty as this. For a fraction of a second I wonder who he is, then decide that it doesn’t really matter. I open the door as slowly and as noiselessly as I can. It’s heavy, and about eight inches thick.
Right in front of me, there are about thirteen steps. Carpeted, which is good, as it’ll cut down the noise. I walk up slow and hear the door click shut behind me. When I reach the top, there’s a landing, a strong smell of chlorine and an unlocked door. I push the door open and step back, in case someone is waiting on the other side.
It’s as quiet as the grave and I can’t sense any presence, so I step inside and take a look. The chlorine smell comes from a small swimming pool. It’s about twelve feet long and five feet wide. Blue lights illuminate both sides under the water. The air in here is humid and there’s a slight smell of mould. No changing room and no way out apart from the door I came in by.
Across the landing is a small, old-fashioned lift with a rusty scissor gate. There’s another staircase, but it seems to be going in the wrong direction, so I have to assume for the moment that the lift is the only way to get to the upper floors of this place. That mechanical noise I heard while I was outside must have been this archaic piece of junk descending with my overweight, unworthy opponent on board.
I don’t waste any time wondering why a house would be built this way. I slide the lift doors open and get inside. If there’s anyone upstairs, they’ll be expecting my incapacitated friend, not me. Whatever’s up there, I’ll just have to face it.
There are two buttons inside the lift and both have peeling stickers next them. One button says ‘pool’, which I guess is where I am now, and the other says ‘office’. I close the doors and press the ‘office’ button. The lift creaks, groans in protest, shudders slightly and eventually begins a slow ascension.
Very quickly, the chlorine smell fades, and as the lift passes through dark, deserted and spooky floors two and three, it’s replaced by a thick, cloying smell of oranges. Oranges mixed with something else. Perhaps it’s musk or cypress; some ghastly cologne or other.
The lift reaches the fourth floor and stops. So this is ‘office’. There’s no one here to meet me, so I slide open the gate and step out onto the landing. I leave the gate open, so when the guy downstairs recovers, he won’t be able to use it. I hope that’s how it works, anyway. I presume there has to be another way up here, but I can’t see one and what the hell, I can’t be bothered with that at the moment.
This floor is quiet, isn’t dirty like the others and has a fairly new paisley carpet on the floor. To my right, there’s a garishly painted door – blue and white stripes – but it doesn’t seem to have any security locks attached. It’s also slightly ajar, which is either useful or scary, depending on your point of view and past experience.
Keeping in mind I have a vicious hunting knife in my jacket pocket, I walk up to the door and give it a hard shove. The orangey smell is stronger now and makes me feel slightly nauseous.
‘Jeremy? Who was it?’
‘It isn’t Jeremy. Jeremy’s currently indisposed.’
He’s in his late sixties or early seventies. Extremely overweight, sweaty and the proud owner of four chins. It looks as though he’s wearing makeup; not eye shadow or lipstick, just some sort of facial foundation that gives him a cadaverous demeanour which I’m sure isn’t intentional. It stops at the base of his neck and his natural puffy, white, veined skin takes over.
He has black-dyed, permed curly hair that reminds me of a Roman emperor. He lies propped up in a large, circular bed covered in a dark brown silk sheet. It doesn’t take a detective to notice that both his legs have been amputated about a foot down from the thigh. He waggles both stumps up and down excitedly. I’m glad he’s covered by the sheet. There is a pair of old-fashioned wooden crutches by the side of the bed.
Whoever he is, he isn’t startled or afraid. He’s confident and amused, as if he knows I’m standing over a trap door and he could operate the lever at any time. I look down at my feet, just to be sure.
‘My goodness me! A visitor! And so handsome! To what do I owe this pleasure?’
He has a thick, glutinous fat man’s voice which is already irritating to listen to.
‘Is there another way in here apart from this lift?’
‘There are some stairs at the back of the house. The door to them is on the ground floor, but it’s always locked. Jeremy has the key. I have to tell you – this is tremendously exciting, tremendously exciting.’
‘When he recovers and makes his way in here, you’ve got to tell him to stop whatever it is he’s going to try to do. Is that understood?’
‘Recovers? Whatever can you mean?’
I look around the room. Wherever that door is, it isn’t in here. The only one I can see leads to what has to be a kitchen. There’s a huge Bang & Olufsen stereo on a table to my right. There’s a silver turntable and three shelves of vinyl.
The place is decorated in classic style and I have to say it looks very smart. It’s all yellows, dark greens and terracotta. The wallpaper is William Morris with pale green leaves and white flowers twisting around pomegranates and lemons. Two prints on the wall with expensive frames, one a
dark Constable with a stag in the foreground and the other a possible Frederic Leighton. There’s a large, bronze bust next to the bed which looks like it may be an Egyptian woman. I wonder who cleans and maintains it. I guess it has to be Jeremy.
He sees me looking at the bronze bust.
‘Ah! I can see you’re wondering who that is.’ He points skywards, as if he’s going to begin a lecture. I hope he isn’t. ‘That is purportedly one of the daughters of Akhenaten. Her name was Ankh-en-pa-Aton and they say she became his last queen. Akhenaten, as I’m sure you’re aware, was married to Queen Nefertiti and was the father of Tutankhamun.
‘It is said that Akhenaten took quite a few of his daughters as wives, and even attempted to father children by them. Delightful, don’t you think? ‘He also counted his own sister as one of his consorts. It was a man’s world in those days, eh? His name meant ‘strong bull’ and he was certainly that, by the sound of things!’
I drag a pale gold leather chair over to the side of the bed and sit down. He waggles his stumps up and down again. It’s such a stupid-looking action that it’s hard not to laugh.
‘I take it you’re a regular visitor to The British Museum, Mr Novak.’
‘Ah! You know who I am. So this isn’t a random burglary or a deliciously brutal indoor mugging. Yes. It is my favourite place in the world. I get there when I can, when I can. Jeremy hates it, of course, as I’m sure you would guess if you were so inclined.’
He gives me a long, hard look which is meant to be sinister.
‘Well, this is a quandary we find ourselves in. I feel totally helpless and at your mercy. I can’t say it’s unexciting. That would be dishonest of me and I am an honest man, you see.’
‘I’m a private investigator. My name’s Daniel Beckett. I’d like to talk to you about Viola Raleigh.’
He raises his eyebrows in mock astonishment. ‘Now there’s a name to conjure with. Little Viola. Such cheekbones. Now what makes you think I can help you with her, Mr Beckett? I’m not sure that I really remember her that well. What did you do to Jeremy, may I ask? He’s not permanently damaged, is he?’
Kiss Me When I'm Dead Page 9
