She braked hard, the tyres losing traction in the dust of the track. Before she could hit reverse gear, the doors of the Lexus opened and out stepped the two men from the villa. The man in the cream suit walked almost casually along the track towards her, while his minder took the other side. Neither man seemed in a hurry.
The minder was carrying a handgun.
Palmer was stunned. Ahead of him was a line of stationary traffic, temporarily held up by a broken-down truck that was being pushed out of the way by a group of building workers. At the tail of the queue he recognised the dusty seat that had been following Riley, but there was no sign of her or the Lexus. They must have turned off down a side road somewhere. He did a noisy three-point turn and retraced his route. This wasn’t looking good.
Half a minute later he noticed a turning between two building sites. He took it…then stood on the brakes when he saw a man waiting on the track ahead of him. Riley’s car was in the background, her silhouette at the wheel.
Riley sat very still with her hands on the wheel, while the man in the cream suit stopped by the car. Through the open window she could hear a cement mixer grinding nearby.
“You wish to buy my nice car?” the man said dryly in lightly-accented English. “Is that why you are following me?” He smiled genially, although with no real humour, and studied his fingernails. “My colleague has an excellent memory for faces. He remembers you from among the trees outside the Villa Almedina. Is he correct?”
Riley nodded. There seemed to be no point in denying it; the man was too sure of his facts.
“A sad business. You were fortunate it was not you that the dog attacked.” He brushed a speck of something from his sleeve, then looked up as another vehicle approached. In her mirror, Riley saw Palmer’s car come to a stop in a cloud of dust. The man flicked a finger at his colleague, who signalled with his gun for Palmer to stay put. Then the first man turned back to Riley. “What is your interest in this matter?”
Riley wondered what to tell him, then decided on the truth. It was as good as anything else in the absence of a downright and believable lie. “I’m a reporter,” she told him. “I’m investigating the deaths of some criminals in England. I followed the trail to this place.”
“Ah. Another reporter.” The man nodded. “Always looking for information to buy… or sell. Why have you come to Spain?”
“Because the Grossmans are the people I’m after.” She looked at him and added very deliberately: “I’m not interested in anyone else.”
The man smiled. “I am pleased to hear it. The Grossmans. Such vulgar people. They kill so… casually.” He shook his head. “So stupid. What will you do when you have gathered your facts and written your story?”
“I’ll publish it and they’ll probably be arrested.”
“Of course. And what of their associates?” His eyes were disturbingly intense, and Riley realised that what she said next could very well alter the rest of her life. Palmer’s, too.
“Like I said, I’m not interested in anyone else. Just the Grossmans.”
The man seemed to consider that for a moment, before nodding. “In that case, go home, young lady. Publish your story. But, a warning.” His eyes became suddenly more bleak than she could have believed possible. “If you talk of me or my colleagues, Miss Riley Gavin, I will arrange for something very unpleasant to happen to your friend, Mr Frank Palmer.” He smiled coldly. “Not tomorrow, not the day after. Maybe not for a long time. But one day. Now ask yourself, do you think you could live with that?” He turned on his heel and walked back to the Lexus.
Riley was stunned. She watched the Lexus purr past and disappear out onto the main road, and found her hands were shaking on the steering wheel. She fought to calm herself. He knew their names. But how?
Back at the villa, Ray Grossman sat slumped in his wheelchair and glared impotently at his wife. They were in the single bedroom where he spent increasing amounts of his time, and Lottie was looking down at him with stone-faced implacability.
“You stupid, stupid bloody cow!” Ray gasped, his breathing tortured and noisy. A small trickle of saliva had escaped from his mouth and was glistening on his chin. He struggled to lift one hand to beat on the arm of the wheelchair, a frail and fumbled tattoo of frustration. “How can… do this? Can’t… never get away with it. Why don’t… just listen to me… fer Christ’s sake?”
His wife struggled to hide a look of contempt, but it came out as a coldly patronising smile. It was as ugly as Ray Grossman had ever seen in his life, and he felt unbearably sad at the way things had turned out.
“You’re upsetting yourself,” Lottie said matter-of-factly. She could have been commenting on the state of the garden or the weather outside. Another cause for sadness, Grossman thought; any trace of true compassion had long since disappeared.
“Upset? Of course… upset, f’God’s sake!” Grossman breathed agonisingly, the pain in his chest increasing and choking off his words. “Don’t see, do you? You… you’re way out your league. These Moroccans’ll eat you up… spit you out.” He collapsed back against the seat and groped for the plastic mask hanging by his side. As he sucked in oxygen the blood stopped pounding in his head, the pain receded and his chest settled to a slower, rhythmic pattern. He closed his eyes, his thin lids fluttering.
Lottie watched him, unmoving.
When his breathing was back to normal, she stared down at her fingernails and said: “You never did listen to me, did you, Ray? I was always ready to fix you up after you’d had problems, or listen to you going on about the other two skimming off the top. But you never gave me credit for any ideas, did you? You always thought I was a brainless little slapper like all the other little tarts. Well, things have changed. You agreed to us taking control of the clubs… and you knew people would get hurt in the process.”
Her husband snatched away the mask, his eyes furious pinpoints of light. “I never said to kill them! Bleeding Jesus, Lottie — you’ve gone over the top!”
“Do me a favour,” she muttered contemptuously. “You may have been happy to sit by while McKee and Cage clean us out, but I wasn’t.”
“But we could have bought ‘em out!” he insisted. “They wanted out, anyway. And the other two were long past it.” He took another pull at the mask. “Same with Jerry Bignell… he’d have backed off in the end. You didn’t have to set McManus on him. Where is McManus, anyway — he’s never here when I want him.”
Lottie walked towards the door, then turned to look at her husband, her face cold and unyielding. “McManus is in England,” she said coldly. “Doing what he should have done a long time ago.”
“What? Who said he should do anything?”
“I sent him there, the same way I send him other places.” She gave him a pitying smile. “News update, Ray: McManus doesn’t take orders from you anymore. He answers to me from now on. All right?”
She closed the door behind her, and Ray Grossman, who had never done time in his life, suddenly knew what it felt like to be a prisoner.
In the front room, Lottie found Gary holding the phone in his hand.
“McManus, Mrs G,” he said. “The Gavin woman’s not been around for two or three days. Same with Palmer — his office has been shut tight. It must have been her the local police picked up down the road.”
“Has he done the other thing?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tell him to get back here fast. Where’s Mitcheson and the other two?”
“Outside checking the perimeter.”
Lottie looked at her watch. “Get them in here. I want to discuss tomorrow’s plan of action. And get onto our police captain… find out where that damned woman is staying.”
Riley powered up her laptop and logged on to check for emails, her mind still on what had happened earlier. The incident with the Moroccan had changed everything. She still wanted to find out who he was, but not at the risk of having Palmer’s life on her conscience. And if she was certain of anything,
it was that the man had meant every word he’d said.
“It was my fault,” Palmer had said, after the Lexus had gone and he’d gone to check Riley was okay. He’d been as stunned as she to discover the Moroccan knew their names.
“He said something about reporters buying and selling information,” she’d told him. “I think he was referring to Benson.”
“I agree. Benson was the only one who knew our names. He must have tried to make a deal with them.” He’d looked angry with himself. “I’m sorry — I got careless.”
“Forget it,” she’d replied. “You couldn’t have known. At least we know he doesn’t trust Lottie Grossman any further than he can throw her.” Then she’d told him about the Moroccan’s threat. “I really don’t think he was bluffing.”
Palmer had shrugged philosophically. “Maybe. Maybe not. Come on, let’s get back to the hotel.”
Riley turned to fleshing out and updating the notes she had made so far. The report was beginning to take shape and she needed to email something to Brask.
Palmer was on the balcony, blowing smoke-rings into the evening air. He was on his second brandy sour and looking loose after the shock confrontation with the Moroccans.
Riley stopped typing as her laptop beeped to indicate an incoming message, and stared at the screen in dismay. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Palmer got up and came inside.
She spun the screen towards him. It was a message from Donald Brask:
Hyatt called. Peter Willis and his wife missing. Luggage still at hotel and tickets unused. Suggest you watch your backs.
Donald
Riley felt sick at the idea that any harm had come to the couple. What if she had been responsible for their whereabouts being discovered? She said as much to Palmer.
“Forget it,” he said flatly. “They were hardly that well hidden. Don’t forget, the airline might have known where they were staying.”
Riley closed the laptop and stared into the distance. He was right. But this whole business was beginning to ripple outwards, pulling in more people and impacting on more lives as it went. The question was, who else was going to be touched by it?
“Where to now?” Palmer asked. “Back to London?”
Riley shook her head, now more resolved than ever. “Are you kidding? We haven’t caught them doing anything yet. We can’t prove they killed Bignell, nor that they’ve set up a deal to bring in anything more harmless than dried dates and camel hats.”
Palmer raised an eyebrow. “Now why don’t I like the sound of this?”
“Because,” Riley told him, “I need proof. And the only way to get that is through John Mitcheson.” She picked up her mobile and dialled his number.
Chapter 34
Breakfast at the Villa Almedina the following morning was a subdued affair. While Doug, Gary and Howie checked the villa’s perimeters and cleaned their weapons, Mitcheson, Lottie Grossman and McManus were on the patio. McManus had arrived earlier in the Cessna via Malaga, and was in a sour mood. His anger at not being able to find Riley Gavin was aimed openly at John Mitcheson.
“Seems to me she was tipped the wink,” he growled, ripping open a bread roll and spreading it thickly with red jam.
Mitcheson said nothing. There was little to be gained by having an argument with the man, and even Lottie Grossman seemed irritated by McManus’s constant sniping on the subject. She had also made it clear he no longer answered to her ailing husband. He had taken the news with ill grace, but said nothing. Even he must have known Ray Grossman was no longer capable of running things.
Mitcheson also knew that Lottie Grossman was capable of swinging suddenly and violently against himself, and he didn’t need that kind of aggravation just yet; she’d simply set McManus on him without warning.
What she said next, however, came as a shock.
“When you’ve finished your breakfast,” she told McManus pointedly, pushing a slip of folded paper across the table towards him, “that’s the hotel the Gavin woman gave when she was arrested. Go get her.”
“Where is it?” Mitcheson was alarmed but managed to keep his voice casual. He could feel the heat in his temples and wondered how he could stop this happening. McManus had only one way of dealing with a person, and it didn't involve much in the way of talk.
“You don’t need to know,” snapped Lottie. “He’s quite capable.”
McManus tucked the slip of paper into his breast pocket, flicking a snide smile at Mitcheson. “Easy-peasy,” he breathed. Coming from his lips, the childish comment seemed to take on an obscene tone Mitcheson had never known before.
“Find somewhere to keep her out of sight, then let us know you’ve got her, you understand?” Lottie instructed him. “And don’t do anything else. I don't want anything rebounding on us back here.”
“I can lose her for good if you want,” McManus countered. “Like Bignell.”
“No.” Lottie was adamant. “Bignell was a one-off. This isn’t our turf and now’s not the time to take chances. Just keep her out of our way until I decide what to do with her.”
“No problem.” He smiled nastily and looked pointedly at Mitcheson. “I’ll make sure she’s nice and comfortable, don’t you worry.”
“Why not bring her back here and talk to her?” suggested Mitcheson. He resisted the temptation to pick up a bread knife and drive it into the other man’s eye.
“Forget it.” Lottie pushed her cup away and impatiently brushed crumbs off her fingers. “Just neutralise her. Isn’t that the term you use?”
Mitcheson shrugged while McManus drained his coffee cup and left, wiping his mouth on his hand.
Lottie Grossman watched him go and turned to look at Mitcheson. “He’s an unpleasant, uncultured slob,” she said to him, “But he’s given years of good service to my husband. A bit like that Rottweiler the Moroccans killed.” She smiled thinly. “I don’t want you two busting each other’s balls all the time, do you understand me?”
He decided the safest way of getting through the day without throttling this old witch was to play along with her, so he nodded agreement and asked: “What’s on the cards for today?”
“Another meeting with Segassa. This time in Malaga — and with someone who can negotiate directly.” She smiled and patted Mitcheson’s hand, her earlier anger forgotten as though it had never occurred. “We don’t do middle-men anymore. Especially now they’ve seen what my men can do.”
Mitcheson felt a momentary irritation at how his men had suddenly become hers, but said nothing. He doubted Doug, Howie or Gary would care much who they reported to as long as they got paid. Where it might backfire was if this woman expected too much of them without realising the possible consequences. They were good but they weren’t fireproof.
“Where do you want it to happen?”
“I hear the Hotel Palacio’s good for meetings,” Lottie said.
Mitcheson glanced at her to see if there was any significance in her choice of words, but her head was angled so the sun reflected off her glasses, giving no hint of the expression in her eyes. He chose to believe it was just coincidence and nodded calmly.
“I’ve already had Gary arrange it,” Lottie continued, “for just after lunch. I want everyone there, but keep two of your men outside in reserve.” She looked at him. “I don’t trust those Moroccans, even in a public place.”
McManus watched them from inside the villa and scowled. His suspicions about Mitcheson were increasing all the time, not least fuelled by bitterness at his changing role in the Grossman organisation. There was a time when the only other person they included in their plans was himself. But that was in the days when Ray Grossman was in charge… when there was a proper respect for him. The sort of respect that meant he never had to pick up a bill, never had to fight for a parking space, never had to sit at home wondering what to do for entertainment.
Now this soldier boy and his mates had their feet under the table and his resentment and bitterness bubbled up lik
e a poison. His thoughts turned to the Gavin woman and what he would do when he found her. He knew Lottie would have his balls if he overstepped instructions, so he’d have to be careful. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a bit of fun. He recalled the photos he’d found in her flat. Ripe looking woman. Looked like she’d strip down well. Maybe fight a bit, too, if he was lucky.
The sooner he picked her up the better. First he had to think of somewhere to hold her, like Lottie wanted. Somewhere nobody would look. Then he could find a deep hole to put her in. Because that’s where she’d end up eventually, no matter what Lottie might be saying now. He knew a building site where they were sinking pilings for a block of flats, and right next to a place where he could hold her, too. Easy stuff. He grinned, proud of himself, and walked out of the room and along the corridor past the bedrooms. He paused at Ray Grossman’s door and looked in.
The nurse was in there giving the poor old bastard a wash-down. He could just see a bowl and a large tube of gel on the side of the bed. The sickly smell of roses filled the air. There was a grunting sound as the nurse struggled to move Grossman’s body and the slick noise of soap on skin. McManus swore silently to himself that he’d never go through that. What a scummy thing to endure, he thought. Like a baby. I’d sooner put a bullet through my skull.
He thought about making a call to the hotel where the Gavin woman was staying. Check she was in. Better than going out there and finding she’d already flown. As he passed Mitcheson’s room on the way to the hall, he spotted a mobile phone lying on the bed. The idea of using Mitcheson’s phone to track down the Gavin woman appealed to his sense of fairness.
He was about to dial when he noticed a message symbol flashing on the display. His in-built suspicions about the former soldier got the better of him. He punched the button and waited while the recorded voice went through its patter. There was a buzz of static and what sounded like a burst of distant laughter in the background, then a woman’s voice spoke.
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