Red Notice

27

A hundred metres ahead, between the red-brick bunker of the British Library and the Gothic pinnacles of the Renaissance Hotel, Laszlo could see the rush-hour traffic building up along Euston Road. Closer to him, a line of black taxis waited for trade, their idling diesel engines adding to the smog hanging in the still, cool air. Laszlo hung on his heels for a moment, eyeing the CCTV cameras over the station entrance. Then he stepped back into the shadow of a doorway.

He took out his mobile phone, inserted a fresh SIM card and sent a brief text. No more than a minute later he heard the ping of a response. He glanced down at the incoming message:

Clear sailing — will let you know if you get compromised.

Only now would he walk towards the great arched and glazed roof of St Pancras, knowing that if he was spotted and flagged up to all departments of security this country had to bear down on him, someone was covering his back and would warn him, just as they had done in Hampstead the day before.

Keeping his pace measured, he entered the Victorian brick and twenty-first-century glass monolith through the northern entrance and walked straight through the concourse, past the domestic platforms, the shops and cafés, following the signs to the toilets.

A cleaner, in almost identical grey overalls to the ones Laszlo was wearing, was mopping the floor beside the urinals. The grey plastic cart holding his materials stood at the end of the row of washbasins, and the yellow ‘Male Cleaner in Washroom’ cone stood proudly in the middle of the walkway. Laszlo moved to the far basin and watched the cleaner’s reflection as he pushed open the end cubicle and began mopping inside it.

Whatever he was singing to himself, it was in Polish. But the cleaner obviously liked his job. Eventually he emerged and returned to his trolley.

Laszlo approached him with a smile to match the song. ‘Excuse me — the disabled toilet, it’s a terrible mess. Can you come?’

He led the obliging Pole towards the larger, radar-controlled disabled doors and stopped by the nearest. The Pole mumbled to himself and reached for the key fob beside the ID card that hung from a red nylon lanyard around his neck. The fluorescent light glinted off a very shiny wedding ring on his left hand. The door clicked open. Laszlo stood aside to let him in, then followed.

Laszlo gave the man no time to ask, ‘What mess?’ He closed the door behind him, locked it and, with the full force of his hurtling body, grabbed the cleaner’s head and rammed it against the wall.

There was a dull thud as his skull made contact with the brickwork. He staggered, his hands scrabbling to protect himself. Laszlo grabbed the hair at the nape of his neck, pounded the man’s forehead on the edge of the washbasin, then lowered him to the ground, knelt astride him and wrung out what was left of the newlywed’s life.

He unclipped his victim’s lanyard, rinsed two spots of blood off his overalls, then exited the toilet. Locking the door from the outside with an Allen key, he fished an ‘Out of Order’ sign from the cleaning cart and hung it on the handle.

Laszlo tossed his glasses into the rubbish in the cart as he pushed it back into the concourse.

He headed for the Eurostar terminal. Armed police and extra security personnel were on patrol wherever he looked, but he steered a careful course as far from them and the CCTV cameras as possible. With his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, his head down and his gaze fixed on the cleaning cart, he avoided eye contact with the passengers scurrying around him.

As he moved towards International Departures, he brushed past a strikingly beautiful, dark-haired girl talking French into a mobile, who had collected her ticket from the self-service machine, stopped to buy gifts from a clothes shop, and was now wheeling her bag towards the security gates, a Starbucks coffee in her free hand.

Laszlo stopped his rubbish cart next to the bins, just short of Security and beneath a sign listing the items forbidden on Eurostar trains –

explosives, replica or toy guns, ice axes, butane gas, lighter fuel, fireworks, knives, scissors, household cutlery and hypodermic syringes.

Under the pretext of emptying the bin, Laszlo sorted swiftly through its contents. He picked up a discarded grooming kit, containing a razor, hairbrush and comb. The razor held only a small fixed blade, but it would have to do. Then he saw the corner of a box protruding from a Harrods bag: a set of kitchen knives, discarded before passing through Security by a passenger who was evidently too dumb to realize they would not be allowed on the train and too rich to worry about throwing them away. Laszlo flipped open the box and tested the edge of one of the blades with his thumb. It was razor sharp.

He dropped the box back into his cart and moved on. He felt more at ease now that he had a weapon. A blade wouldn’t save him if he were compromised, but it would allow him to go down fighting. He’d take as many with him as he could.

Laszlo didn’t worry about dying. He never had. Death was the only certainty in life. The only questions were where, when and how. Infirm and in prison wasn’t the way to end things: he’d be defiant to the last.

He pushed his cart towards the security screens reserved for Eurostar personnel and utility workers. The lens of a CCTV camera glinted high on the wall ahead. He kicked a piece of crumpled paper ahead of him, then stooped to pick it up. Keeping his head down and his face obscured, he appeared to scan the floor for other debris, his gaze also taking in the harassed security guards beside the X-ray machines and the streams of passengers shuffling through the security gates in their stockinged feet.

Laszlo chose his moment. He pushed his cart through, holding up his ID for inspection. No one paid him the slightest attention. The more menial the employee, the more invisible he became. Laszlo glanced at the departures board and headed towards the lift to the platforms. The pretty French girl pulled her case towards the escalators.

As the lift ascended, Laszlo opened the box of kitchen knives, palmed the longest and slipped it inside his sleeve. The doors opened and he squeezed past a group of Japanese tourists posing for photographs in front of the bronze sculpture of an embracing couple. The wheels of the cart rattled along the platform towards the Paris train.

He walked past the guard standing at the entrance to Coach Eight — the man was too busy running an appreciative eye over the French girl as she boarded to acknowledge his presence. Laszlo parked the cart in the centre of the platform and made for Coach Seven instead. A Eurostar attendant stepped down to intercept him. ‘You’re too late, mate. We’re boarding. All cleaning personnel should be off the train by now.’

Laszlo shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ve left my supplies in the toilet. If I don’t get them back I’ll be sacked. I’ll only be a moment.’

The attendant hesitated. ‘Oh, all right — but be quick about it, for heaven’s sake. We’re due to depart in five minutes.’

Laszlo gave him a grateful smile and stepped up into the carriage. He went straight to the Disabled toilet and locked the door behind him. He took off his cap, stripped off his overalls and dumped them in the rubbish bin. He washed his face and hands and checked his reflection in the mirror. Satisfied, he nodded to himself. The man staring back at him looked like just another anonymous business executive on his way to Paris.