Robert Young - Gatecrasher

She held him there for a long time and he couldn’t tell for sure but it felt as if she might be crying. Nervously, uncertainly, Campbell put his arms around her back and turned in the chair. She moved her legs so they were between his and pressed herself closer to him and his arms reached as far around her as they would go, one at her waist, the other snaking up around her shoulder. He closed his eyes as they leant against each other.

And the name came back to him again. Ben Wishart.

Tuesday. 6pm.

Drennan had been sitting at home that morning after a restless night throughout which the image of Tyler’s dead vacant eyes staring upwards at nothing had haunted him. Drennan stepping over his body. Stepping into the road dazed, looking for his car, trying to decide whether to call someone, what he would say to them. Fighting panic.

He still had blood over him from the scuffle with the tall wiry man upstairs who had jumped him. Skinny but tough the man had proved a real problem and they had wrestled on the floor of that dank bedroom for long seconds, struggling desperately until Drennan had pushed the long snout of his gun into the man’s abdomen and pumped two rounds into him.

It had been as if someone had set a small bomb off inside his body and as he had drawn himself up out of the tangle on the floor to stand he could see what he had done to the man’s insides as they slipped out of his back. Only the detached unreality he had felt had saved him from vomiting at the stench of all that blood and the man’s relaxing bowels.

He remembered feeling very little at the sight of the knife handle pointing up at him from Tylers red chest like an accusation. Guilt certainly that it was his fault somehow, fear at what would happen now. But remorse? Grief for his fallen colleague? Drennan had only been worried, as he carried Tyler’s body to his car, that he didn’t feel these things. That perhaps he lacked something vital.

The one thing he was missing of course was the memory stick and as mystified as he still was about what he had walked into the night before, Gresham was insistent that he still had it and that the time had now come to make the exchange.

Drennan agreed. He suspected that Gresham had somehow managed to lose the stick after seeing Campbell in that house with men that had no obvious connections with Gresham. All the same he seemed pretty confident that he had it now and that he now wanted shot of it.

Perhaps one of his gang had run his mouth off and put one of Gresham’s rivals on the scent. That seemed a reasonable possibility and it seemed as though whatever they had tried, Drennan and Tyler had put paid to it since all the men in the house were now dead and Campbell and the girl had vanished again.

With Gresham now demanding his money, it seemed that the attempt of the man he had shot to get in on the deal had prompted Gresham to speed things up. With Drennan equally keen to get his hands on the memory stick, where it would be safer than with that useless rabble, he had readily agreed to meet with him that coming Thursday. His boss would sanction the payment now, eager to regain some grip on a situation that had threatened to spin out of control. With Gresham paid off and out of the way and the stick safe there remained only Campbell, who seemed more interested in running than fighting and that suited him fine. Maybe he would show up again soon, in which case they would take their chance to silence him when it presented itself. But maybe they would never hear from him again.

Drennan hoped so because so far he’d been nothing but trouble.

Wednesday. 6pm.

Andrew Griffin dipped his chin down into the woollen scarf he wore and hurried his pace but he felt unsettled enough by this meeting already to be too bothered about the temperature. He was both intrigued and agitated by what he was going to hear.

The neutral location suggested something clandestine, but as he trotted up the steps and into the lobby of the hotel he felt more comfortable in the anonymity that it might provide than in using a more public location. He could never have done this in the company offices.

He gave his name at reception and waited with a polite smile whilst the attractive blond girl behind the desk tapped a keyboard and watched a screen.

‘Five one four,’ she said and handed him a keycard.

Griffin thanked her and walked to the lift trying to remain composed, trying to fight the rising unease. He had no idea what he would be told or asked. Was there more to discover that he did not yet know or had he found out everything about his predecessors?

Griffin was nervous that things seemed to have gone quiet since the break-in. Though that did mean at least that nothing bad had yet happened that might threaten him or his company, neither did it rule such things out. He would rather have something tangible to deal with, a challenge to tackle. Waiting was pure frustration for Griffin but now perhaps he was finally going to find something out.

He hit the button for the fifth floor and loosened his coat and scarf. Already he was getting warm.

Wednesday. 6.15pm.

Campbell sat in the chair near the window and watched the evening gather over London. He wore a navy suit, the only one he owned that was tailored. It was an indulgence but he had decided to spend a little of his bonus a year before on getting a tailored suit so he could look good in important meetings and at the summer wedding of his boss.

In a clean, crisp white shirt and red silk tie Campbell had looked at himself in the mirror and was surprised at the little boost of confidence that it gave him. A simple thing but effective to look well-dressed and professional. Campbell wanted to make an instant impression and jeans and a sweatshirt was not the first thing he wanted the other man to notice about him. The black eye he could not hide but he could at least take the focus from it.

After a moment Campbell stood again, conscious that he might be creasing the suit or the shirt beneath, scared that the slightest detail might wreck his carefully laid plans. He was unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. He knew that his wait was almost over now but it did not ease his tension.

He ran through what he would say again, rehearsed his opening line quietly to himself but every time he spoke it was different; now strong and confident, now nervous and pleading, now challenging and with an edge of aggression. The wealth of information that he had taken in over the past two weeks and in the previous twenty-four hours fought for priority in his mind. Facts and figures were piled on top of each other and he was starting to feel that he didn’t know which was most important, what might be irrelevant. He worried that in his haste he would simply spew out the information in a stream rather than building the coherent and definite argument that he wanted to present.

He looked for a moment at the mini bar in the corner, wondered whether a stiff drink might bolster his shaking nerves but thought better of it. He needed a clear head and the smell of alcohol on his breath would hardly help his credibility.

There was subdued noise from beyond the hotel suite and the sounds of other guests opening and closing doors, of a television turned up too high in the next room. Campbell heard voices in the corridor which caught his attention although he was not expecting more than one person. Perhaps his guest had not come alone, he thought with alarm, but the voices passed and it was quiet again.

Campbell was not expecting a knock at the door — had in fact left instructions at the front desk to avoid that — but it came nonetheless. Campbell froze. He was here.

This was the door. Griffin looked along the corridor as two suited gentlemen talking noisily appeared and hurried past him toward the elevators.