Personal

THIRTY-TWO

For a second I took the snick of the lock to be normal, somehow consistent with the whole cloak-and-dagger drama-queen bullshit we had seen since the beginning, starting with the gnome behind the pawn-shop counter. Exaggerated lock-and-key precautions at the warehouse end of the operation might be seen as authentic, by some buyers, and maybe exciting, somehow suggestive of other locks and keys, perhaps to whole storerooms stacked with boxes, each one full of weapons still dewy with oil.

Then in the second second I dismissed that theory, because it was a lock too far. At that point we were still equal parties to a negotiation, both sides on best behaviour, properly wary and sceptical, for sure, like buying a used car, but at least polite.

No one locks customers in a room. Not so early in the game.

Therefore the third second was spent understanding something was seriously wrong, a familiar chill stabbing my face and my neck and my chest, and then I was glancing at Casey Nice, which upped the stakes, because she was glancing back at me, and then I was mentally listing the factors we had to deal with, purely on autopilot in the back of my brain, walls, a door, a window, four guys outside, and then in the fourth second the who and the why hit me, which made the whole thing worse.

Because as far as the Serbians were concerned, we were customers, nothing more. Just possibly conceivably some kind of a weird student-exchange programme whereby FBI agents from America were moonlighting in London, maybe with London coppers doing the same thing in New York or LA or Chicago. But probably not. So we were customers, no different than a junkie talking to one of their dealers, or a john hiring one of their hookers. And customers get service, not a locked door. Or an enterprise goes out of business, pretty damn quick.

So why? Only two possibilities. The first of which I hashed through during the fifth second. Maybe the Romford Boys were in such a state they had put out a general alert, like a price on our heads, with descriptions, all across the network. Maybe Charlie White had a red telephone on his desk, like in the Oval Office, for pride-swallowing calls between bosses. Maybe on this occasion he was willing to take help from anyone who would sell it.

Or, during the sixth second, the second possibility, which was right there in O’Day’s own words, at the conference after the aborted barbecue dinner. A Serbian outfit in the west of London, and an old-fashioned English gang in the east. Karel Libor was a thorn in both their sides, according to MI5.

In both their sides. Which might make this whole thing a co-production. A joint venture. An alliance, just for the duration. A one-time truce. Shared aims, shared benefits, shared duties, shared information. Kott and Carson completely safe, the whole of London covered, from east to west, like the District Line. What would that cost? A steady hand and a steady eye and a .50-calibre round, obviously, but money too, probably. A lot of money. Again, O’Day’s own words. These people are throwing money around. They’re not looking for value. They’re looking for easy solutions, and they have the budget to make them happen.

But whichever, hired hands or co-equal partners, they had locked us in for a purpose. And that purpose was to keep us there, ahead of some kind of an upcoming predetermined event. Which would almost certainly be the arrival of a third party. The claimant. The vested interest. The prisoner escort. Little Joey, for sure, mob-handed, with a whole crowd of guys at his back. He would come in his Bentley, and there would be other cars, more Jaguars maybe, and at least one plain black van.

For us.

Not good.

Nice said, ‘We walked right into it, didn’t we?’

I said, ‘We’ve got some time.’

‘How much?’

‘Not sure. But London is big and traffic is slow and we’re all the way on the other side of town. They’ve got to get a little convoy together. That’s ten minutes, right there, even if they’re all on the ball. Then they’ll have to loop all the way north in a big wide circle, or come all the way through the centre of the city. The East End, Westminster, Paddington. Could be we have an hour. Or more than an hour. Could be we have nearer to ninety minutes.’

‘To do what?’

‘Whatever needs doing.’

‘Can you kick down the door?’

The door was a stout wooden item, hardened with age, well fitted in its frame.

‘I could from the outside,’ I said. ‘Probably. But not from the inside.’

‘Can we break the window?’

The window was not a Victorian original. It was a 1930s pattern, I thought, a replacement, enhanced by the benefits of science. Low maintenance, because it was made of aluminium or some kind of galvanized metal. Which was evidently strong enough to support large panes of glass, for extra daylight. Large enough panes for an average person to climb out. The glass looked perfectly normal. I said, ‘I think we’re going to have to break it, yes.’

‘Where does it lead?’ She answered her own question by peering out, close up, nose against the glass, left and right. There was nothing ahead except a blank brick wall. She said, ‘It’s an alley. Fairly long and narrow. I think it’s closed off at both ends. We’d be trapped in it. Unless we could get in some other building’s back window. And then out their front door.’

I said, ‘Don’t worry about all that now.’

‘So when should I worry about it?’

‘First we wait. Five minutes. We could be wrong. Maybe it was just an excess of enthusiasm. Maybe he’ll come back with a price.’

We waited. Five minutes. The guy didn’t come back with a price. On the other side of the door the workshop was quiet. There was no automotive maintenance under way. Which was a situation I had misinterpreted completely. I thought the grease monkeys had been sent away so the gun deal would stay private. But it was our capture that was supposed to stay private.

Missed clues, missed connections, risks gone bad.

My failures.

Dominique Kohl.

I said, ‘We need a complete inventory of this room.’

Casey Nice said, ‘What are we looking for?’

‘Everything. When we know what we’ve got, we’ll decide how to use it.’

We didn’t have much. In terms of large items easily visible, we had three armchairs, a desk, and a desk chair. The armchairs were the kind of thing you might have seen thirty years before in a corporate waiting area. Danish, possibly, or Swedish. Stubby wooden legs, under a simple upholstered shape, with knobby fabric gone flat and greasy with wear. The desk was even older. It was made of oak, in a traditional shape and style, with a kneehole drawer and three more in either pedestal, the bottom pair deep enough for files. The desk chair looked like a dining chair. Or a kitchen chair. No castors, no arms, no reclining mechanism. No lumbar support, no ergonomics. Just four sturdy legs, and a hard seat with a vague butt-shaped moulding carved into it, and a straight back.

No phone, no desk light, nothing on the walls, no knives and forks left over after hasty working lunches. No electrical cords, no phone chargers, no letter openers, no paperweights. The desk’s kneehole drawer held three forgotten paperclips, all dull with age, and a lone shaving from a sharpened pencil, and dust and grit trapped in the corners, and nothing else. Five of the six other drawers were similarly barren, but the deep drawer on the left had a sweater in it, a malodorous old item maybe dumped one warm day and never retrieved. It was off-white wool, with thin denim panels applied at the shoulders and the elbows. Its size was medium, and its manufacturer was someone I had never heard of.

We stood back.

Casey Nice said, ‘What were you hoping to find?’

I said, ‘An armoured division would have been nice. Failing that, a couple of Heckler and Koch MP5s with a dozen spare magazines would have been convenient. Or even a book of matches would have been useful.’

‘We’ve got nothing.’

‘We’ve got what we’ve got.’

‘What are we going to do?’

So I told her what, and we rehearsed it carefully, over and over again, and then we started doing it.