No Peace For The Wicked

Chapter 44

Riley shivered as a vicious wind cut across the top level of Terminal One car park at Heathrow, bringing a faint sting of rain on her cheeks. Dark clouds had brought the evening in earlier than usual, a brutal contrast to the heat and light of Spain.

She’d been hoping to go out to Rickmansworth to try to intercept Lottie Grossman’s plane, but in the end knew there was too high a risk of missing them. They would have already arrived and Palmer would be long gone by now, spirited away before he was spotted. On the off chance, she’d called the airfield and asked if the Grossman Cessna had returned, but the woman on the other end had been guarded about flight movements.

In the end, with daylight making it too risky to hang around a trading estate too long, she decided to wait at Heathrow for the Malaga flight to arrive and follow Mitcheson and the others to their destination. She was praying nothing would happen to Palmer until the group was together.

She checked her watch. Nearly time to go. She hurried down to the ground floor and found a quiet spot away from the noise. Brask answered on the first ring. As soon as Riley left the villa at Moharras, she’d called and told him what was happening. He had promised to get whatever official interest he could. Now he sounded less than hopeful.

“I’ve bent every ear I can, sweetie,” he said, “but there seems to be a marked reluctance to do anything. The only thing in our favour is there aren’t customs facilities at Rickmansworth to clear the body, so Grossman must be planning to just drop in and take a punt on getting it through without being spotted. However, that may be the official view — I don’t know what the uniformed pinheads may be planning on the quiet, of course. For all I know they may be getting together the massed ranks of the Metropolitan Police Band and Customs amp; Excise and descending on Heathrow and Rickmansworth even as we speak.”

“If they are, they’re being bloody quiet about it,” Riley replied. “The trouble is, I’m only guessing Mitcheson’s flight number, and all Rickmansworth would say was they weren’t expecting Grossman’s plane, anyway.”

Brask breathed sympathetically down the phone. “Well, there’s nothing more I can do. Sorry. The best I can offer is some muscle at the commercial place your friend Mitcheson mentioned. It’ll probably take Palmer and the others some time to get through formalities, so I doubt they’ll be out of the airport for a while yet.”

Riley shook her head. “Forget it. These men won’t think twice about cutting their losses; if they spot a bunch of security guards armed with nothing more lethal than fists and rubber torches, there’ll be a bloodbath.”

Brask said nothing and the line hummed with static. Riley hung up, feeling suddenly helpless and cut adrift, and wondering where Palmer was.

Frank Palmer was feeling sick. He was lying on a seat in the rear of a transit van that smelled of paint, and the constant bumping and swaying wasn’t helping. For some reason he couldn’t work out, his body felt as if it was on fire and perspiration was streaming down his face into his collar.

Unable to lift his head, all Palmer could see was the floor of the van a few inches away and the wooden legs of the bench seat he was lying on. The floor was scuffed and bare and showed signs of rough use. Movement showed a man’s leg and foot, but there was no conversation to show how many people were in the vehicle with him.

He tried to crane his head round to see more, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. His body wanted to lay down and go back to sleep, yet his instincts were screaming at him to get a grip and start running around before it was too late.

A hand grasped his chin and forced him upright, and he found himself staring through the front window of the vehicle at a busy motorway. It looked familiar and was obviously England, but his brain couldn’t yet make the right connections to tell him where he might be.

He was sitting behind the passenger seat and the driver was reaching back to examine him. Gary? Doug? Howie? It was Gary… he remembered the boyish face handing him a glass of orange to drink in the house. That was when he’d felt tired and fallen asleep. Spiked it, the bastard.

The van turned several times, and Palmer opened his eyes. He was lying down once more, dribbling onto the seat. He must have fallen asleep again. He got a vague impression of houses and shops, and he reasoned sluggishly that they were no longer on the motorway. Then the vehicle slowed and went over a bump, and he felt a strong hand tighten on his arm to stop him toppling off the seat. It seemed to release a surge of clarity into his brain, and his thoughts swam and became momentarily more lucid. He’d been drugged. Like a lemon in some cheap Portsmouth boozer. He shook his head, trying to brush away the fog and find clear air on the other side. Riley was going to be so pissed off at him for getting caught like this.

Then he remembered she’d been caught too, once. Only he and — what was that bloke’s name? — Mitcheson, had galloped to her rescue like knights in rusty armour-for-hire. But she hadn’t really needed rescuing, had she? She’d kicked seven kinds of piss out of that McManus bloke and would’ve chucked him down the hole if Mitcheson hadn’t got there and done it first. Or had he? Shite, he thought, I feel sick…

He held his breath and concentrated, remembering an airport — somewhere hot this time. He’d been lolling about on legs like spaghetti, feeling unbearably heavy and unable to control his movements. Somewhere along the way he recalled being sick down his front. No one had bothered cleaning him up, and when he’d tried wiping the mess off his chest, his hands had been slapped away. After a while he’d almost got used to the smell.

Along the way, under strong overhead lights, someone had asked if he was fit to travel. No, he’d wanted to shout out… I’m not fit. I’m sick and carrying more narcotics than a Boots delivery truck, for Christ’s sake..!

But nobody had been listening. He’d been manhandled up a set of narrow steps and strapped into a seat. Alongside him was a long metal box fixed by brackets and straps to the floor. He wondered who’d got the cheap seat. Then someone fed him some liquid through a straw and he was sick again. Soiled and uncomfortable, and with a vague sense of shame settling on him, he’d gone back to sleep, feeling the floor lifting beneath him and the pressure building in his ears.

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and huddled in on himself, eyes tight shut. That was better; the nausea was receding. Still bloody hot, though. Couldn’t figure out why. He was surprised to find he was no longer trussed up like a Norfolk turkey. He sighed and flexed his fingers in his pockets, remembering some distant lesson in a tin hut somewhere about examining extremities to gain awareness in times of disorientation. Jesus, he was so fucking disorientated, he couldn’t even recall what his extremities were. But the movement made him remember something more recent. It tugged at his consciousness and slipped away, a ghostly thought, then came back through the fog, gaining clarity. That other bloke, Mitcheson, had been helping load him into the Land Cruiser at the villa, and had pressed something into his pocket, like he didn’t want anyone to know. A going away present.

Palmer extended his fingers, feeling the cloth inside his pockets. He felt something hard and the memory came flooding back. It reminded him of the games he’d played with his sister a lifetime ago on cold, wet days when there was nothing else to do. They would take turns at putting their hands into a box and saying what was in there. Dead easy. Half the time he got it wrong — especially when she put in stupid girlish things like walnuts and hair-clips and pens. But not when it was his turn. Like tennis balls, a matchbox or the plastic frogmen he’d saved up and bought to play with in the bath.

Or the pruning knife his dad had given him on his twelfth birthday. The one with the wooden handle and curved blade.

His fingers slid along the familiar shape, and for a moment he wondered if his childhood memories were playing tricks. How could he have his old pruning knife in his pocket after all this time? He’d lost it years ago. Then the image burst through in another bubble of clarity, and he remembered. Good old Mitcheson. So you came through in the end? Only thing is, what the hell can I do with a pruning knife if I can’t stand up?