No Sleep for the Dead

Chapter 4

The following morning, Michael approached the security desk. As a tenant, he could ask whoever was on duty anything he chose, and he asked to see the visitor’s log from the previous day.

The security man shrugged and slid it across the desk. He wasn’t overly polite, but Michael appeared not to notice.

He had spent the morning checking on the man Radnor knew as Frank Palmer. Getting his address had been easy, but the details had been sparse, which was what he’d expected from a former military man. If Palmer the civilian had much of a life, it wasn’t evident by following any of the normal signposts. He earned a living as a private investigator and security consultant but spent little; he belonged to no organisations that advertised the fact, and so far had either avoided breaking the law or had friends well placed enough to erase any records. To Michael, the latter made perfect sense, because in his experience it was the norm to use one’s position for advantage, whatever the circumstances. Among neighbours where he lived, Palmer was rumoured to have a relationship with a young woman in uniform — assumed to be police — but that was something Michael decided not to pursue. Taking too close an interest in members of the police was best left alone for now.

In all, he had unearthed sufficient information to know that they were not dealing with some seedy amateur, and that the man had been well trained by the British military, ending his career in the Special Investigations Branch. This alone, according to Radnor, made him a potential threat.

Even so, Michael’s own brand of logic told him that if Palmer was all that special, he would not be pursuing his line of business on the margins, scraping a living from what appeared to him to be little more than odd jobs. Still, better to be sure. He ran his eyes up the page for the previous day until he came to the approximate time entry he was after. There was no Frank Palmer listed, nor anything resembling such a name. But then he hadn’t expected it. Just a vague scrawl which could have been anything. He looked at the security man and spun the book round so he could read the name.

‘This visitor. Do you remember him?’

The security man looked down at the name and appeared to give it some thought. There had been relatively little traffic over the past twenty-four hours, and each face was still fresh in his mind. ‘Yes, sir. Is there a problem?’

‘Have you seen him here before?’

‘No, sir, can’t say I have. Seen the type, though.’

‘Type?’

‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes slid down Michael’s face to his smart suit and back again. ‘Ex-army, if you know what I mean.’ His expression seemed to imply it was unlikely, and therefore a distinction Michael would never warrant, no matter how smartly he dressed.

Michael ignored it, wondering what kind of subtle signs Palmer gave off which displayed his background. He turned the book round again and read across the page. ‘It says he was visiting Stairwell Management. What do they do?’

‘They’re on the sixth floor, sir. Don’t really know much about them.’ His tone suggested that whatever they did, it was unlikely to be entirely legitimate. ‘The appointment was with a Mr Gillivray,’ he added helpfully, hoping it would make up for the fact that the name was illegible and he should have checked it before allowing them up.

‘A police matter?’

‘I doubt it, sir. They didn’t look like police to me — none of the local ones, anyway.’

Michael nodded, then looked up sharply. ‘They?’

‘That’s right, sir. There was a young lady. He filled in the book for her and they went up together.’

Michael looked again at the book. The line beneath the one Palmer had filled in was in the same handwriting. Another illegible scribble, but it confirmed Palmer had brought someone with him. Then he remembered the woman in the lift. Attractive enough, young, blonde, well-dressed… but beyond that, a woman. If he’d given it any thought at the time, he would have assumed she was merely an office worker leaving the building for some reason. Only that wasn’t the case. So who was she? Girlfriend, wife or colleague?

Whatever. They had been here for a reason and, unless they had laid a careful blind to fool him and Radnor, that reason appeared to lie up on the sixth floor. He nodded to the security guard and took the stairs back to the first floor at an easy trot, his mind processing questions and possibilities. His instincts told him Palmer’s presence in the building had been a coincidence. He and Radnor had been very careful so far, keeping their heads below anybody’s radar, the way they had been trained by their respective employers. But instincts could sometimes prove faulty. He decided it might pay to look into the people who called themselves Stairwell Management, to see what could have brought Palmer and his friend to this particular building. Whatever the Stairwell people were into, they had drawn the attention of an investigator. And that was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

Riley spent the morning filling in background details on Trevor Creeley, the NHS manager with the dubious funeral service connections. She wasn’t sure if he was stupid, sloppy or simply arrogant, but a drive-by of his home on the north-westerly edges of rural Essex showed a man who was living more than extremely well. From the background notes Donald had sent her, Creeley came from humble beginnings, with no record of family or inherited wealth. Yet he lived in a smart, opulent detached house set in two acres of prime land, with trimmings which included a paddock with two ponies, a large, new summer-house in the rear garden, a swimming pool and a Porsche driven by his apparently shopaholic wife.

At lunchtime, Riley was parked just along the road from Creeley’s workplace. When she saw a late-model executive Jaguar nose out of the car park, she slotted in behind, leaving two vehicles between them. It was soon apparent that Creeley was heading home. He drove fast and with a level of aggression that spoke of a bad morning or a barely-concealed lack of tolerance towards other drivers bordering on the suicidal.

Enquiries at the local village shop had added gossip about two daughters at an expensive boarding school, exotic holidays and weekends away, with the description of a coastal villa in Portugal thrown in for colour. Even allowing for local petty jealousies and rumour, it was an impressive portfolio. Riley would have to check out the facts anyway, along with Creeley’s credit ratings, but even this low-level study revealed a man living well above the salary of a National Health Service employee.

She checked her map. It was too late to start on the fruit pickers assignment. Their base was in Huntingdon, giving their teams easy access to work sites in Kent, East Anglia and the east Midlands. But clocking the people involved would necessitate an early morning start to identify the various faces, and she guessed she would need Palmer to help with that one. According to Donald’s information, the gang masters who brought in the foreign workers each year were deeply suspicious and possessed of an acute radar for signs of anyone taking too close an interest in their operations.

She headed for home, trying Palmer’s number on the way. It might be worth getting together with him before their dinner date, so he could make a start on getting close to the Huntingdon site. She had no doubts that it would be difficult penetrating the gang’s operation, but if anyone could find a way in, it would be Palmer.