The Lost Testament

42

About seventy yards down the street from the main entrance to an Ealing Broadway apartment block, a lone man sat in a nondescript saloon car, the radio playing softly in the background. His eyes were fixed on the front door of the block, and lying on the passenger seat beside him was a rather grainy photograph showing the face of an elegant-looking woman with long blonde hair. The man had been stationed there for almost two hours, studying everyone who either went into or came out of the building, but so far he had seen nobody who resembled his target.

However, the picture he was using was a few years old, and was an enlargement of a much smaller image, which would make a positive identification even more difficult. The lighting around the entrance lobby of the apartment building was less than ideal, and he was so far away that using binoculars — he had a very compact but powerful set — was essential. And he knew that making a positive identification of any woman could be difficult because, unlike men, women often changed their style of hair and make-up, and that could change their appearance dramatically.

But despite all these factors, when two people approached the lobby of the building hand in hand, and the external security light flared into life, he identified the woman. He watched as she opened the door, inputting a series of numbers into the external security keypad, and held the binoculars to his eyes until she and her companion had vanished inside the building.

Only when they were no longer visible did he drop the binoculars onto the passenger seat of the car and pick up his mobile. He dialled a number from memory. In his business, he never used stored telephone numbers because if the phone was lost or stolen those numbers could compromise both him and the people he had called. His menu system was also set up so that the phone never kept a record of calls made and received. He made sure his own number was never disclosed to the people he called, and was changed on a weekly basis.

The call was answered on the fourth ring.

‘Yes?’ the quiet voice said.

‘It’s Jeff,’ the man replied. ‘I’m outside the building and she’s just come back. But she’s not alone. There’s a man with her.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Big guy, dark hair. He’s certainly over six feet tall and heavily built — muscle, not fat. He looks as if he could be quite handy in a scrap.’

There was a short pause while the man at the other end of the line digested this piece of unwelcome information.

‘That complicates things,’ he said. ‘I had hoped she would be alone tonight. Do nothing for the moment. Wait there and see if he leaves. If he does, you can carry on as planned.’

The man in the car shrugged.

‘You’re paying the bill,’ he said, ‘so it’s your call, but I can handle him, no problem. Get the job done in half an hour.’

‘Definitely not. You only go in if the man leaves the building. Understood?’

‘Got it. So do you want me to stay here all night?’

‘If this man hasn’t come out again by, say, one in the morning, I think we can assume that he’s staying the night. If he does that, you can try tomorrow night instead. And remember, this has to look like a burglary gone bad.’

‘I know what you want done and how to do it. Don’t you worry.’