No Kiss For The Devil

32

Ray Szulu stifled a yawn and watched as a dull glow appeared in the fourth floor window of Pantile House. There were few other lights on, and he’d watched a steady stream of personnel drifting out of the main door and disappearing along the pavement or climbing into their cars.

He’d had no trouble following the men from Lancaster gate. After waiting outside the hotel, which Palmer had told him was the start point, he’d latched on to them when they came out and climbed into the big 4WD. The vehicle was easy to track, even among all the other Chelsea tractors around town, and sitting a steady hundred yards back in heavy traffic had been a simple task.

The tall one — the man Palmer had referred to as Varley — had come out first with another man in tow, and they’d been joined by two more. The security goons, Szulu decided. Palmer was right: they’d stood out like bouncers at a primary school picnic.

After Palmer’s crack about the Russian mafia, Szulu had been in two minds about telling him where he could stick his job. He’d heard enough about their ruthlessness and didn’t need that kind of grief. He knew the Russians were all over London like a rash these days; he’d driven enough of their women and kids around to know they’d made it their home from home. But how many were gangsters and how many were ordinary people, he had no idea. He’d heard a figure of 400,000 expatriates in town, but that could have been headline hype, tossed out to sell a few more papers.

In the end, he’d decided that working for Palmer and Gavin was better than sitting at home waiting for Ayso to call, so he’d gone round to a friend who ran a garage and told him what he needed.

‘You doin’ what?’ Steadman was a wizened Rasta in his late sixties, for whom nature had traded in his dreads for a bald head. He was a dealer in used cars and bikes across south London. He’d listened to what Szulu told him and shook his head in dismay. ‘You daft, man, you know that? You followin’ people you don’ even know what they do? What you gonna do if they see you, huh? You considered that if this private dee-tective want them followed, they completely innocent men?’ He huffed out his cheeks and wiped his hands on a filthy rag. ‘You growin’ dafter every day, Ray. That bullet hole in your arm you so proud of, it must have let in too much fresh air and let out any brains you had.’

Szulu sighed. As usual, Steadman was being an old woman, seeing danger behind every simple act. ‘It’s nothing like that, Stead. I figured it out, see. What’s the most common sight in London? Tell me that.’

Steadman scowled. ‘Traffic wardens — they like fleas on a dog.’

‘Nah, not them. Transport.’

‘Taxis, then. Or buses. Don’t tell me you want to borrow a Routemaster — ‘cos you fresh out of luck, my friend. I sold the last two yesterday.’

‘No, nothing like that, bro. Scooters. There’s hundreds everywhere. Nobody sees them no more, they so common. Even those city boys are ridin’ them. It’s the new thing.’ He jerked his chin towards two scooters standing in the far corner of Steadman’s yard. They were bruised and scuffed with dirt, but just what he had in mind. ‘One of them would do. They’ll never see me coming. I’ll bring it back, no problem.’

Steadman looked across at the bikes, then sighed in defeat and waved him away. ‘Go, man. Take the Super 9 — the black one. It was a trade-in and I haven’t done the papers on it yet.’ He waved an oily finger in Szulu’s face. ‘But you bring it back without scrapes or record of wrongdoing, you hear? Else I come after you with a baseball bat. An’ let me tell you, your hex-military friend, no matter how rough and tough he is, he won’t be able to stop me.’

Szulu grinned and clapped the old man on the shoulder. He reckoned he could stand the humiliation of riding a scooter around town for a while. As long as he wasn’t spotted by anyone who knew him. ‘Great, Stead. Thanks, man. Hey, you don’t have a bone dome to go with it, do you? And it needs to be big to go over the dreads, y’know?’

As soon as the men had parked outside Pantile House, Szulu had phoned Palmer and given him an update. Then he’d asked what was going on.

Palmer had kept it short, explaining that the men were using the building illegally, probably with the connivance of the supervisor.

‘Stay with them,’ he’d told Szulu. ‘They might be there a while. If they leave, follow them and let me know. And stay out of sight.’

Szulu had rung off and chained the scooter to a convenient lamp-post, then gone in search of a doorway where he could sit and keep an eye on the place. He’d settled on an empty shop. The porch was jammed with rubbish and old newspapers, and smelled like an old cat, but it was dry enough for his purposes and suitable for hiding in without attracting attention.

He’d been puzzled when the men had parked the 4WD at a meter on the street, when there was a perfectly good car park at the rear of the building. When he’d taken a walk round the block half an hour later, he’d seen why: a CCTV camera up on the wall of the building was covering the car park. If it was working, it would record every vehicle entering or leaving. Out on the main street, the nearest camera was pointed at a busy junction and rarely moved. He figured the men were paranoid and thought they might need a quick getaway. Szulu knew all about quick getaways; sometimes they worked, other times they went pear-shaped over a bus-pass holder with a bad hip and a supermarket trolley.

On one of his other recces, he caught a glimpse of a face up on the fourth floor. It was too far away to be certain, but he thought it was one of the security goons. Later, one of the men came out to feed the meter. Szulu stood up, shaking off his stiffness and ambling along the pavement towards him. There was something he wanted to try out.

Palmer had mentioned earlier that the men appeared to have a weak spot: they seemed oblivious to certain types of people.

‘You mean black people, right?’ Szulu had been unsurprised. ‘Most whites are, man. We the invisible ones, didn’t you know that? We don’t exist.’

Palmer had given him one of his looks, and Szulu had quickly dropped the aggrieved minority act. Now, striding along the street, he kept his head down but a watchful eye on the man at the meter. Time to see if Palmer knew his beans or not. He loosened his shoulders, bouncing off his left foot and singing to himself as if he was out for a stroll, tugging loosely at one of his dreads. It was an act, meant to convince himself that he wasn’t about to run into seven kinds of hell like the sort of grief Riley Gavin and her ex-soldier friend had put him through the last time they’d met. He shivered at the memory, hoping Palmer had told the truth about Mitcheson on the other side of the Atlantic. Best worry, he told himself, about the gunman you know rather than the Russian hard-face you didn’t.

Fifty yards ahead of him, the man at the meter was digging in his pockets for change. His jacket was pulled tight across enormous shoulders, like a prize fighter.

Szulu eased by, humming softly. He was invisible, he reminded himself. No way he can see me. The man glanced up as Szulu’s shadow, thrown by a street light, fell across the pavement, then looked away again. Szulu shivered. It was just like Palmer had said: the man had clocked him, but he hadn’t seen him. Weird.

When he thought about it, he felt almost insulted.

He continued for a hundred yards and turned to cross the street. The man in the suit was returning to the building, his pace unhurried.

Szulu stopped at the next corner. It was good to change positions every now and then. Break the routine. He took out his mobile, intending to call Palmer with the car number.

Just then someone stepped up behind and prodded him in the back.