No Kiss For The Devil

12

Palmer sat at his desk and picked up the large brown envelope. It was bulky but light. He soon saw why. Ripping it open, he tipped out a miscellaneous collection of sheets from spiral notepads, sales receipts from various shops, discarded sheets of A4 plain paper, a holiday postcard showing a slice of blue sea and a rocky coastline, and even a couple of envelopes addressed to Helen at her London home. Mrs Demelzer hadn’t been kidding when she said she’d put in everything she could find.

Among the papers were two or three stands of blonde hair. Palmer placed them gently back in the envelope. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought he detected a faint hint of Helen’s perfume, too. He breathed deeply, forcing himself to relax and concentrate on the papers.

Most of it was, as Mrs Demelzer had said, jottings and doodles, random notes, some scribbled through and illegible, others circled or underlined. Exclamation marks and stars appeared regularly, but their placing had more to do, he guessed, with points Helen might have been reacting to in conversations rather than relating to any specific words on the paper.

There were several phone numbers. He made a list of them for checking later. He did the same with names, although they were sufficiently vague or common to make identifying the owners all but impossible without Helen’s address book, Blackberry or computer records.

His doorbell rang, followed by footsteps on the stairs. He continued reading, surprised to see his own name written along one edge of a page torn from a spiral notebook. It was followed by the words ‘send photo’ underlined twice in a heavy hand and the word 4th. There was no indication as to when the note had been written, nor to whom the photo was to be sent, although he had a good idea. Was it a photo taken of either of them while they were together? If so, he couldn’t recall one, or why she should have chosen to send it now, after all this time.

He checked through the pile again. There was nothing. He stared at the wall on the other side of the office. Maybe it was at his flat. If it had been sent there any time in the last week, he wouldn’t have seen it. He made a mental note to check the box later, vaguely aware that someone was standing in the office doorway.

‘Palmer?’ It was Riley, her face flushed from the stairs. She was carrying two large polystyrene mugs of coffee. ‘What’s up? You look like you swallowed a frog.’

Palmer swung his legs out from behind the desk and stood up. He took one of the mugs and nodded at the desk. ‘Take a look at that, will you? See if anything strikes you as significant. How did the meeting go?’

Riley sat down, prising the lid off her mug. ‘It was okay. I’ve got a job if I want it. Are you going to tell me how you got on in rural Basingstoke?’

‘Later. Trawl through that lot first, would you? I need an objective eye.’ He wandered round the desk and stood at the window, staring down at the street and sipping his coffee.

Riley did as he asked, carefully studying each item without comment. When she had finished, she sat back. ‘How did you get this?’

Palmer told her about his visit to Mrs Demelzer. ‘Helen asked her to send it to me. That’s all I know.’

Riley nodded and sipped her coffee. ‘Most of it’s meaningless, I’d say,’ she surmised. ‘Stuff she was working on, people she was talking to, memos to self… I’ve got scribbles like this all over — even on my bathroom wall. Except this.’ She leaned forward and tapped a finger on the piece of paper bearing his name. ‘Looks like someone was thinking about you recently. Could the fourth be a date?’

‘No idea. Possibly. But there’s no photo anywhere. I checked.’

‘There’s a postcard.’

Palmer picked it up and read the handwriting on the back. It was addressed to Mrs Demelzer and was the usual inconsequential stuff people write when on holiday to those back home. The date on the frank mark was 17, although he couldn’t read the month. He shook his head and dropped it among the other papers. ‘Mrs D must have dropped it in by accident.’

‘Could Helen have sent something to your flat?’

‘Maybe. I haven’t had time to check.’ It was the first indication he’d given that Helen had known where he lived.

‘What could it have been — a shot of you two over dinner?’

‘Hardly.’ Palmer stared into the distance. ‘We didn’t exactly get round to photos.’

‘Well, whatever it was, she must have thought it was important.’ She ran a finger through the mess on his desk. ‘Believe me, women don’t send ex-boyfriends the dross from their bedrooms. Not unless they’re trying to make some obscure point. Did she have your email address?’

‘I don’t know. Probably.’

Riley reached beneath his desk and switched on his computer. ‘It could have been a shot she took of something, or maybe she scanned it in from a hard copy.’ She sat back to wait for the machine to boot up, then studied the icons on the screen to call up the email. ‘Christ, Palmer, you make it so easy for people to access your PC. Don’t you have any passwords?’

‘You know me,’ he said dryly. ‘I’m an open book.’ He stood behind Riley to watch his inbox fill up. It was mostly Spam, dozens of them. He ran his eyes down as Riley scrolled through the list.

She stopped the cursor on an untitled message with an attachment. It was dated five days ago. The sender tag was Hellsbells.

‘That’s her,’ Palmer breathed. He recalled them laughing over her email name, which she thought summed her up fairly well. There was no message, just the attachment. Riley clicked on it and waited for it to open. The screen flickered and they were looking at a photo of an office building.

‘That’s romantic.’ Riley glanced up at him. ‘Does it look familiar?’

‘Never seen it before.’ Palmer was puzzled. It was a standard glass-and-concrete panel building, maybe seven floors high, with a pale facia and a sloping canopy over the entrance doors. A couple of trees stood in circular beds set into a block-paving forecourt, with metal bollards to prevent vehicles parking too close to the glass frontage. It could have been any building from Aberdeen to Zanzibar: functional, unremarkable and built by numbers.

He tried to think what significance an office building might have held for him and Helen. Clearly she had thought it had some relevance. But nothing came to mind. Why was there no accompanying message?

Riley voiced his thoughts. ‘Would you send anyone a photo of a building without at least a word of explanation to go with it?’

‘No. Unless they were expecting it.’

‘And you obviously weren’t.’

‘No.’ He sighed, frustrated by the lack of clear answers as to what had happened in Helen’s life over the past few days. Yet surely this must have held some special meaning, otherwise she wouldn’t have been trying to contact him.

‘Unless,’ said Riley sombrely, ‘she couldn’t add a message in the normal way.’ She right-clicked the mouse button and a box appeared marked ‘Properties’. She studied it for a moment, then said, ‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think this photo came from a mobile phone camera. Did she have one?’

‘Yes. She got it just before I met her. I’m sure it had a camera. It did everything but make coffee.’

Riley gave him a sideways look, and Palmer knew what she was thinking. He had a basic brick of a model which did nothing but make and receive calls, and which Riley had once commented was heavy enough to double as a cosh if he needed one.

‘It’s called progress, Palmer. I’m surprised you haven’t got one. In your line of work, you’d find it useful, taking snaps of adulterers in their frillies.’ She moved the cursor and the picture became larger as she zoomed in. A couple of clicks and the area above the entrance moved into the frame. ‘Got you,’ she breathed, and moved the cursor to a faint outline of a sign above the doors. It read: Pantile House.

Riley opened Google and typed in the name of the building. It came up with ten pages of hits. Many were of buildings with the name Pantile all over the country, including several commercial properties.

‘This could take some time,’ she warned him, after several false starts. ‘We’ll be dead lucky to get a match on the Internet. It could be anywhere — or be one of these buildings from a different angle.’ She tapped her fingernail on the desk. ‘On the other hand, I know someone with access to a commercial property database. Fancy a trip into the city?’

‘Couldn’t we email them the photo?’ Palmer checked his watch. ‘We don’t have much time.’

‘Don’t worry. The person I’m thinking of works unsocial hours. And he owes me a favour.’ She picked up her mobile and checked her directory. ‘Won’t be a second.’

Palmer walked over to the door, impatient to be going. If there was even the faintest of trails, he wanted to follow it, no matter where it led. ‘Suits me. What else are we going to do?’

A door slammed, the noise intruding over the muted hum of home-going traffic along the Euston Road. It was followed by a faint burst of laughter, the sounds echoing up through the empty fourth floor.

The man named Grigori gave a start. He didn’t enjoy having to use this place. But he was obsessive about not leaving a paper trail, which was why he couldn’t risk hiring a facility legitimately. Contracts and invoices left a footprint, and remaining invisible in this city for the time being was essential. He was here on someone else’s territory, and if he made a mistake, he knew his presence would be compromised. It was one of the reasons he had a variety of names and identities at his fingertips. The man he was specifically trying to avoid was not one to let an opportunity slip by without taking drastic action.

He stood up and stared out of the window. It didn’t help that he did not altogether trust the building’s supervisor, Goricz, who had arranged access to this empty office. The Serbian immigrant had promised that the lease was frozen pending legal complications, and that nobody would disturb them. But he had dealt with people like Goricz before. If they sold their services to one person for a few paltry pounds, they could just as easily do it to another. It was the nature of the beast.

The office door opened and his assistant, Radko, slipped inside.

‘Well?’ Grigori switched on the desk lamp.

‘I checked the briefcase again. There were some notes, which I burned, and a cellphone. I have someone checking the call log through the service provider. The woman called several numbers over the last few days, one of them more than once.’ He shrugged. ‘Could be a friend we don’t know about — setting up a date, perhaps.’

Grigori nodded. ‘Maybe. When will we know for certain?’

‘That we are still safe? A few hours — tomorrow at the latest. Even then, there’s no guarantee that she didn’t talk about what she was doing.’

‘I know. Let us hope she did not. If Al-Bashir even sniffs we are here, he will know why.’ He stared hard at Radko, eyes bleak. ‘He has men he can call on. And I know he will not hesitate to use them.’ He checked his watch. ‘I want to leave in half an hour.’

Radko nodded. ‘I’ll tell the others to be ready.’