Adrian Magson - No Kiss For The Devil

Riley nodded and stood up. She so wanted to believe him. ‘So you said.’ Then an unbidden, unwanted thought squirmed slowly to the surface. Something she suspected Palmer had been thinking about all along. ‘Richard, who else was on this project before you contacted me?’

His expression gave nothing away. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Who gathered the material on Al-Bashir… the stuff about his wife?’

For the first time, Varley seemed unable to meet her eye. ‘Various people. Researchers…freelances — we went to several sources.’ He stood up and moved alongside her, his aftershave lingering in the air. ‘Are we okay on this?’ The way he was looking at her was different, almost nervous, and she wondered how much he had riding on this business.

‘I’ll call you,’ she said. He was crowding her too close and she needed time to think. ‘Let me have until tomorrow.’

Varley nodded, but with obvious reluctance. ‘The hotel where we first met? How about noon?’

‘If you wish.’

He nodded and walked out. It was only when Riley closed the front door behind him that she realised she’d been holding her stomach and felt sick with tension.

Palmer appeared a few minutes later, brushing dust off his sleeves. Riley suspected he’d slipped out of the landing window and shimmied onto the wall below to check the street. One look at his face and she knew.

‘He wasn’t alone.’

‘No. There was a black four-wheel drive at the end of the street, with two men inside. Sorry.’

Riley didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

‘I did not expect this.’ The man known as Grigori stared through the window from the fourth floor of Pantile House. Another day was dying on its feet. He tapped a thumb on the plastic sill. The dull tattoo lasted a full fifteen seconds. ‘She has to be convinced. There is much riding on it.’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Radko, ‘it would be better to find someone else.’

‘We don’t have time to find another reporter with her credentials. She was the third, remember?’ Grigori’s words were savage with impatience. ‘If we continue this way, there will be no unattached credible reporters left for us to use. You think there is a bank of them, just waiting for you to work your way through like those sweets that idiot Pechov is always eating? We must have her name on that page.’ He drummed his fist on the woodwork in time to the words. ‘We’ve tried money; what else is there?’

‘She’s a loner. She has nobody we can use as leverage. It’s the down side of why we chose her — like the others.’

Grigori nodded. ‘That reminds me — what of the woman friend of Bellamy’s? The one whose details Pechov discovered in her apartment? Have you dealt with her? Bellamy may have talked to her about us.’

Radko looked defensive. ‘It was no good. I went to the address, but the house was empty, the milk cancelled.’ At his boss’s look of incomprehension, he explained quickly, ‘Over here, milk is still delivered to many houses, especially in rural areas. When people go away, they leave a note to cancel deliveries.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘It was cancelled until further notice.’

Grigori gave a huff of irritation. A pigeon had flown. And they didn’t have time to go looking for it. ‘That is unfortunate. You should have gone sooner.’

The matter of blame was clear, and Radko shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.

‘We still have the Gavin woman.’ Grigori reached down and switched on the desk lamp, throwing a green-tinged glow across the room. ‘Since gentle persuasion isn’t working, we must try other means.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘Everyone has someone,’ Grigori insisted, ‘or something. Friends, family, a neighbour, even… there’s always a weak point.’ He looked bleakly at Radko, his meaning challenging. ‘I suggest you get out there and find out what Riley Gavin’s weak point is.’

Ray Szulu stifled a yawn and watched as a dull glow appeared in the fourth floor window of Pantile House. There were few other lights on, and he’d watched a steady stream of personnel drifting out of the main door and disappearing along the pavement or climbing into their cars.

He’d had no trouble following the men from Lancaster gate. After waiting outside the hotel, which Palmer had told him was the start point, he’d latched on to them when they came out and climbed into the big 4WD. The vehicle was easy to track, even among all the other Chelsea tractors around town, and sitting a steady hundred yards back in heavy traffic had been a simple task.

The tall one — the man Palmer had referred to as Varley — had come out first with another man in tow, and they’d been joined by two more. The security goons, Szulu decided. Palmer was right: they’d stood out like bouncers at a primary school picnic.

After Palmer’s crack about the Russian mafia, Szulu had been in two minds about telling him where he could stick his job. He’d heard enough about their ruthlessness and didn’t need that kind of grief. He knew the Russians were all over London like a rash these days; he’d driven enough of their women and kids around to know they’d made it their home from home. But how many were gangsters and how many were ordinary people, he had no idea. He’d heard a figure of 400,000 expatriates in town, but that could have been headline hype, tossed out to sell a few more papers.

In the end, he’d decided that working for Palmer and Gavin was better than sitting at home waiting for Ayso to call, so he’d gone round to a friend who ran a garage and told him what he needed.

‘You doin’ what?’ Steadman was a wizened Rasta in his late sixties, for whom nature had traded in his dreads for a bald head. He was a dealer in used cars and bikes across south London. He’d listened to what Szulu told him and shook his head in dismay. ‘You daft, man, you know that? You followin’ people you don’ even know what they do? What you gonna do if they see you, huh? You considered that if this private dee-tective want them followed, they completely innocent men?’ He huffed out his cheeks and wiped his hands on a filthy rag. ‘You growin’ dafter every day, Ray. That bullet hole in your arm you so proud of, it must have let in too much fresh air and let out any brains you had.’

Szulu sighed. As usual, Steadman was being an old woman, seeing danger behind every simple act. ‘It’s nothing like that, Stead. I figured it out, see. What’s the most common sight in London? Tell me that.’

Steadman scowled. ‘Traffic wardens — they like fleas on a dog.’

‘Nah, not them. Transport.’

‘Taxis, then. Or buses. Don’t tell me you want to borrow a Routemaster — ‘cos you fresh out of luck, my friend. I sold the last two yesterday.’

‘No, nothing like that, bro. Scooters. There’s hundreds everywhere. Nobody sees them no more, they so common. Even those city boys are ridin’ them. It’s the new thing.’ He jerked his chin towards two scooters standing in the far corner of Steadman’s yard. They were bruised and scuffed with dirt, but just what he had in mind. ‘One of them would do. They’ll never see me coming. I’ll bring it back, no problem.’

Steadman looked across at the bikes, then sighed in defeat and waved him away. ‘Go, man. Take the Super 9 — the black one. It was a trade-in and I haven’t done the papers on it yet.’ He waved an oily finger in Szulu’s face. ‘But you bring it back without scrapes or record of wrongdoing, you hear? Else I come after you with a baseball bat. An’ let me tell you, your hex-military friend, no matter how rough and tough he is, he won’t be able to stop me.’

Szulu grinned and clapped the old man on the shoulder. He reckoned he could stand the humiliation of riding a scooter around town for a while. As long as he wasn’t spotted by anyone who knew him. ‘Great, Stead. Thanks, man. Hey, you don’t have a bone dome to go with it, do you? And it needs to be big to go over the dreads, y’know?’