Peter Turnbull - Deep Cover

‘Yes. . Miss. . er, Gail, yes, I follow.’

Gail Bowling turned to Curtis Yates and said, ‘Give her an Adam.’ Curtis Yates obediently stood and took a twenty pound note from his wallet and handed it to Yewdall.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and thought that she had been presented with a useful insight into the Yates firm. He is not the boss, despite all that is said and claimed — The King of Kilburn, indeed. Some king taking orders like that.

‘That’ll get you to East Ham and then back to Kilburn.’

‘I go home?’

‘Straight home, like a good girl.’

‘Yes, Gail.’

‘Just take it to that address. Ring the doorbell, hand it to whoever opens the door and then turn on your pretty heels and get your tail back to Kilburn.’

The journey from Curtis Yates’s home in Virginia Water to the underground station in Richmond was passed in silence. Yewdall kept her eyes straight ahead as the windscreen wipers swept slowly back and forth. ‘Rusher’ Boyd halted outside the tube station and waited for Yewdall to leave the car.

‘East Ham?’ Yewdall said. Rusher nodded once without looking at her. Yewdall closed the door and walked into the booking office and asked for a ticket to East Ham.

‘Right across town, dearie.’ The woman behind the glass screen spoke in a chirpy manner as she printed the ticket and scooped up the twenty pound note Yewdall had tended. ‘Don’t get many wanting to go that far.’ The pink ticket slid across the surface of the counter and was followed rapidly by the change she was due. ‘Not that far, no we don’t.’

Yewdall scooped up the change and did not reply.

The man left the small terraced house on Rutland Street and glanced up at the evening sky, and thought how fortunate that the weather had remained dry, as had been forecast. He let his overcoat hang open and walked to the corner of Waterloo Road, where he turned right and bought a pint carton of milk from the twenty-four hour Asian shop, before returning to Rutland Street. He did not walk up the street, but went past it and took the next parallel road, turned right at the top and turned right again into Rutland Street, thus having walked round the block. Satisfied he was not being followed, and seeing no sign of the yellow BMW, he crossed to where the car had been parked, and in the light of the softly glowing street lamps he carefully picked up six cigarette butts and dropped them into the plastic carrier bag he had been given to carry the carton of milk. He crossed the road again and entered the house. He took the milk from the plastic bag and placed it in the fridge, and then carefully folded the bag containing the six cigarette butts and placed them in a large padded envelope to await their collection. He telephoned the number in London to report the acquisition of the cigarette butts, and then settled down to watch the ten o’clock news before retiring for the night.

Job done.

Penny Yewdall left the underground train at East Ham and walked to the booking hall and to the ticket counter therein. Able to see only the blue shirt and tie of the ticket vendor she asked him the directions to Chaucer Road, East Ham.

‘Chaucer,’ the man spoke with a warm East London accent, ‘that’s among the poets, sweetheart. . all the poets, Shelley, Byron. Turn right as you leave the station, up the old High Street. . Chaucer is between Wordsworth and Tennyson.’

Penny Yewdall, having thanked the torso, left the underground station and turned right as directed and into a cold, windy, rainy night. She crossed Plashet Grove and carried on up High Street North, and turned left beyond a low-rise block of inter-war flats and into Chaucer Road, which revealed itself to be a tree-lined late-Victorian terraced development. She went to number twenty-two, conveniently close to High Street North. She walked from the pavement the few feet to the front door, and seeing only a black metal knocker rather than a doorbell, she took hold of it and rapped twice. The door was opened quickly and aggressively by a large West Indian male of, she guessed, about thirty-five years. He eyed her with hostility.

‘I have to deliver this package,’ she said, holding her ground.

‘From? Who from, girl?’ The man’s attitude was hostile, aggressive, forceful.

‘Gail. . a woman called Gail Bowling.’

The man’s face softened into a brief smile. ‘Where did she give it to you?’

‘At her home in Virginia Water.’

‘Anyone else there?’

‘A man called Curtis, Curtis Yates.’

‘OK. Who drove you from her house to the tube station?’

‘A geezer called Rusher — don’t know any other name for him.’

‘Rusher.’ The man smiled broadly. ‘Alright, girl, you can give me the parcel.’ He extended a meaty paw, took it from her and shut the door without a further word.

‘You’re welcome,’ Yewdall said to the closed door. She turned and retraced her steps to the East Ham underground station and bought a ticket to Kilburn. The errand she had run was clearly a test, but the address was one that could be fed to her handler when it was safe for her to do so — she had to assume she was being watched. She passed a vacant telephone kiosk — it would, she thought, be utter folly, crass stupidity, to enter it and phone her handler. What gofer does that? As she walked she began to glimpse the appeal of undercover work. Penny Yewdall had never seen herself as being an adrenalin junkie, but, but. . life seemed suddenly so much more real, more immediate somehow — the I-know-something-that-you-do-not mentality provided her with an unexpected sense of power and a sense of control, so different from the strange detached attitude of mind she had found herself developing when she had been sitting on the steps at Piccadilly underground station begging for spare change. Throughout the rocking, rattling journey home, she had the strange and unsettling sense of being watched. She was definitely a gofer on a trial run, so no phone calls, no postcards sent to the photographic studio in Finchley. But the address, 22 Chaucer Road, East Ham, she committed to memory; that, and the fact that it was Gail Bowling who seemed to wear the trousers in the firm, not Curtis Yates.

‘You got my prints by false pretences.’ Gail Bowling glared at Vicary. Her indignation was manifest.

‘No. . no I didn’t, I just asked you to look at an E-FIT.’

‘So as to get my fingerprints.’

Harry Vicary shrugged. ‘We can’t use them to prosecute you.’

‘Good, because I am going straight. I did a few stupid things when I was younger but those days are over. I’ve turned the corner. . put all that behind me.’

‘So, working for Curtis Yates is putting all that behind you is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’ She sniffed. ‘I work for a removal company.’

‘A removal company which is owned by one of the biggest and slipperiest crooks in the metropolitan area. . and you are working for him, so perhaps you can see our interest?’

‘Frankly, I can’t.’

‘Well, whether or not you can, we’ve only brought you in for a little chat. . just you. . off the record; in case you want to talk to us.’

‘About what? The weather. . damn miserable this rain but it’s still mild for the time of year don’t you think?’

‘About turning Queen’s evidence against Curtis Yates.’

‘What!’ Gail Bowling gasped. ‘And you really think that I am in a position to do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you think I would do that.’

‘We talked to Clive Sherwin yesterday.’

Gail Bowling scowled but remained silent.

‘We made him the same offer.’

‘What did he say?’

‘So you do know him?’

‘I might.’

‘Well, to say he was uncooperative would be putting it mildly. He told us what we could do with our offer.’