No Kiss For The Devil

33

Szulu spun round. It was Palmer.

‘Jesus, man — what are you doing?’ Szulu thought his chest was going to explode. ‘How do you do that creepy shit?’ He was annoyed at having had the former MP sneak up on him so easily when he was supposed to have all his wits about him. He hadn’t heard a sound. The guy wasn’t normal.

‘You’ve got a guilty conscience,’ Palmer chided him cheerfully, and peered round the corner towards Pantile House. ‘What’s happening out there?’

Szulu told him.

‘Where’s your car?’ Palmer scanned the street.

‘I used something else.’ Now Palmer was here, he suddenly didn’t feel like bragging about using a scooter for a surveillance job.

‘Like what? A bicycle? You must have legs of steel.’

‘A scooter, all right? I borrowed a scooter.’ Szulu was angry at letting out the information so easily. But Palmer merely lifted an eyebrow.

‘Really? That’s neat. Who the hell ever looks at a scooter?’

Szulu smirked. ‘That’s what I thought. Say, you still haven’t told me what this is all about. You were kidding, about them blokes being Russian Mafia, right?’ He smiled hopefully, but was disappointed when Palmer shook his head.

‘Maybe not Mafia, but something close.’ Palmer felt in his jacket pocket and took out a small pair of binoculars. He looked around the street, settling on a building across from Pantile House. ‘See that place across there?’

Szulu nodded. He’d walked past it not long agearlier. The ground floor housed a travel agency and a print shop. The structure was old and of dull, red brick, falling behind its neighbours like a tired old horse with every new building project in the area and making it look more and more out of place. He bet it was on someone’s list for demolition. ‘Sure. What about it?’

‘If we can get inside, we’ll have a nice view of the fourth floor.’ He glanced at Szulu. ‘Keep watch while I go find a way in. If they make a move while I’m over there, ring me.’

With that, he slipped out of the doorway and made his way across the road, disappearing into the shadows behind the shops. Seconds later, Szulu heard a whistle and followed, keeping one eye on Pantile House. The light was still on.

He arrived at the rear of the building and found Palmer waiting, holding a door open.

‘Christ, how did you do that?’ Szulu was impressed; he knew one or two guys who could open doors in a couple of minutes. But that was after checking it out first, not walking straight up to it like Palmer had done.

‘Easy when you know how,’ Palmer replied, and closed the door softly behind them.

‘In this dump, maybe. No way would you get through my locks that quick.’

The sideways look Palmer gave him made Szulu instantly uncomfortable. ‘What makes you think I haven’t already?’ he said. Then he turned and led the way up a ratty set of stairs covered in mildewed paper and fallen plaster, leaving Szulu with his mouth open.

While the front of the building housed the shops, the rest seemed to have been abandoned to the elements and a slow, relentless decay. The treads were gritty and sounded hollow beneath their feet, and Palmer hoped the shopkeepers below were concentrating on cashing up and not listening for sounds of intruders overhead.

He stopped on the third floor. This was as high as the main floors went, but from the doorway across the street, he’d noticed small attic windows sunk into the roof. There had to be another staircase somewhere, narrower than the main one and probably accessible through a single door. He found it at the end of the landing, nearly invisible behind a layer of ancient wallpaper and grime. A small number 13 in grubby plastic had been tacked to the door. Hoping it wouldn’t be unlucky for them, he tugged it open.

A wave of damp, mouldy air hit them as they climbed a short flight of stairs into an open space with a ceiling angled downwards from the apex. Two attic windows looked out over the street, with another one at the far end of the room.

Palmer checked this last one. They were in luck: they had an unobstructed view of Pantile House, barely eighty yards away.

The room they were in was long and narrow, probably a servant’s quarters many years ago. It was stripped bare, the rough wooden floor echoing with creaks and groans as the two men shifted their weight.

‘Is this safe?’ Szulu whispered, testing the boards. ‘This place is rotten as old grapefruit.’

‘It’ll do fine,’ Palmer assured him, studying the building across the way through the binoculars. ‘Just breathe in and don’t do any break-dancing.’

He located the fourth floor and immediately saw Varley. He was standing at the desk, talking on a mobile phone. The glow of the desk lamp threw his shadow across the room, highlighting the strong features and athletic build. A second man was standing nearby. Smaller and balding, he had a pale, almost anaemic look. He was staring at the floor, waiting for Varley to finish his call.

Palmer lowered the binoculars to scan the building at ground level. Two men were walking around the outside. They looked solid and determined, and as they passed beneath the soft glow of a street lamp, he recognised the two security men from the hotel at Lancaster Gate.

‘How many did you say left the hotel?’

‘Four,’ said Szulu. ‘Why?’

Palmer shook his head. He’d have felt easier if he’d known where the third man was — the one who had checked the 4WD. He shook off his disquiet; maybe they had a rota system and it was his night off.

Szulu moved up alongside him, breathing nervously.

‘What you said about this thing,’ he murmured softly, as if the men across the way might hear him. ‘You said it was personal, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So what did they do, these guys?’ He nodded towards the light on the fourth floor. ‘It was something serious?’

Palmer didn’t respond for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Somebody murdered a friend of mine. I can’t prove it was the men over there. But if they didn’t, they might know who did.’

‘Man, that’s bad.’ Bad for the men across the way, Palmer’s tone suggested. ‘Who was she, this friend — someone special?’

‘You could say that. They tied her up, snapped her neck and dumped her body in a ditch.’ The words dropped into the silent room like slivers of ice, and Szulu felt the hairs move on the back of his neck.

‘And you’re going after them.’

‘That’s the general idea.’ Palmer turned and looked at Szulu with a frown.

‘What?’ Szulu stepped back a pace. ‘What’s up?’

‘You said ‘she’.’

‘So?’

‘Did I say my friend was a woman?’

Szulu looked away, unable to meet Palmer’s gaze. ‘Man, the way you talkin’ right now, you didn’t have to.’

For once, the cat was being halfway amenable. It had allowed Riley to scoop it up and hold it while she stared into the street outside, watching as car and foot traffic gradually dwindled with the passing evening. Late commuters looking for a parking space, shoppers with carrier bags hurrying home from the supermarket, and even an early drunk — a short, squat man in a tight suit — holding up a lamp post across the way.

Riley wondered where Palmer was. She could have done with his steadying presence here. Maybe she would have to make do with the cat, purring like a small tractor and enjoying the rare occasion of shared comfort.

She still couldn’t explain why she had shied away from telling Varley that she no longer wanted the Al-Bashir job, especially now she was certain that she wasn’t the first person to have been hired to do it. That brought dark, unwelcome thoughts about who that might have been. But she wasn’t ready to face them just yet. For now, all she knew was that on a professional level, going ahead with the assignment based on unverified information would rightfully incur Al-Bashir’s anger. And that could be dangerous.

As she turned away from the window, the drunk in the street below let go of his lamp post and lurched away into the darkness. As he did so, his face turned up to Riley’s window and gave it a last, searching look.