Adrian Magson - No Kiss For The Devil

Riley was surprised. ‘I didn’t know she worked through you.’

‘She didn’t. She normally used a Brussels agency. But a couple of assignments came my way with her name attached, so I agreed to use her.’ He waddled through to his office, a large, converted sitting room full of computer equipment, printers, scanners and telephones, which formed the hub of his agency. He ran his fingers across a keyboard and gave a grunt of satisfaction as several lines of text appeared on the adjacent monitor. He moved the mouse and a printer hummed into life on a nearby shelf. He took out the single sheet of print and handed it to her. It contained the name and address of a business magazine publisher near Covent Garden. ‘The editor’s name is David Johnson. I’ll tell him you’re on the way. He owes me a couple of favours. It could be a dead end, but it might turn up something useful.’

‘What about Frank?’ Riley folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into her pocket. ‘I’d like to let him know about Helen before the police pile in on him.’

Donald agreed. ‘He’d rather hear about it from you than some faceless copper plodding through an address book. I’ll ring round, see if I can trace him. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.’

Riley left Donald’s Finchley house and drove straight towards the West End, joining an already growing stream of traffic. It was still early, but by the time she arrived at Covent Garden, the business community would be buzzing. She still had no clear plan in mind, no idea even as to why she was contemplating looking into this other than as part of her instincts as an investigative reporter. All she knew was, she needed to get the ball rolling. Whatever had happened to Helen Bellamy, she had to do more than stand by and wonder. She knew Palmer would feel the same.

Traffic soon reduced her progress to a crawl, and she reached down and hit the speed-dial key for Palmer’s mobile. A part of her was hoping he wouldn’t answer until she had some information about Helen’s last job from the editor she was going to see. Anything she could come up with might help, she tried to tell herself, no matter how vague. Anything that would give them some direction — some hint as to what had happened in Helen’s final hours.

She was almost disappointed when Palmer picked up on the second ring. She felt even worse when he drawled in a cheerful, mock-American accent down the line.

‘Frank Palmer. A man for all seasons. I have the talent if you have the money. How may I help you?’

‘You’re late.’ Alex Koutsatos, the proprietor of MailBox Services, a mail forwarding business, waited impatiently on the doorstep of his shop as a delivery driver heaved a large cardboard box out of his van and dumped it on the pavement. The van usually arrived at six am, before most of the surrounding businesses were open and Koutsatos still had the street more or less to himself. Now it was nearly nine and he was already anxious. Too many around here were interested in other people’s business. Deliveries often attracted attention, and attention was something he and his customers preferred to avoid.

‘Mains burst in Aldgate,’ the driver muttered shortly, and held out an electronic pad and stylus for a signature.

Koutsatos scribbled as directed and waved the driver away. He would have to leave the main splitting up of the parcel until this evening now, when it was quiet. Maybe even tomorrow. This was a bigger consignment than usual, and couldn’t be rushed.

Of mixed Armenian and Ukrainian parentage, Koutsatos had done many things in his life, most of them confined to the darker recesses of his memory. Born in a charity hospital in the northern Black Sea port of Odessa, his life had been at an all-time low and his prospects zero, when he had been shown how to gain entry to the UK. The papers, he had been assured, would pass the closest inspection — for a while. As he had discovered later, this was because the original owner, a predatory homosexual on holiday from Glasgow, was now buried in an unmarked grave in Tangiers.

In return for the freedom, independence and a home in London, Koutsatos had agreed to eventually assume a Greek name and to set up a mail forwarding shop in the capital. There was one major condition involved: he would be called on from time to time to assist in the movement of papers, parcels and, just occasionally, people.

Koutsatos dragged the box inside the shop. It was heavy and he was soon out of breath. Fortunately, there were no customers around. He had just enough time to check the contents and make sure the labels were included. He worked in silence, using a lethal-looking fisherman’s knife to slice through the heavy-duty tape and bindings. He found the packing list and made up five of the largest bundles, putting them to one side. These would be collected by a motorcycle courier for onward delivery to Heathrow. He never studied the contents of the packages, and had never queried — out loud, at least — why they were so important. But once, a careless slash of his knife had ripped into one of them, and he had disposed of the damaged item carefully in the yard behind the shop, in a small brazier.

Somehow, the idea that a few magazines could be so important had never ceased to amaze him.

Ray Szulu stood outside the Arrivals exit at Heathrow’s Terminal Four, holding a cardboard sign. He was engaged in a silent battle of wits with a security guard in a suit and a couple of armed policemen. He’d been hanging about for nearly an hour now, waiting on a delayed flight, and was getting annoyed. Being stared at by a couple of uniforms with guns wasn’t so much of a problem — he’d been there before many times — but the pushy suit’s attitude was getting him down.

‘You’ve got a double pick-up,’ his control had told him over the phone two hours earlier. ‘Outside Terminal Four, not inside, right? Don’t be late.’ The man’s Nigerian accent had rumbled over the airwaves like crushed concrete falling down a wooden chute, making it hard for Szulu to pick out every word. God knows, he thought sourly, what anyone else made of it. He’d just about caught the description and names of the two passengers, and the central London hotel they had to be taken to, before the call had ended. There was also no explanation as to why he had to wait outside, but he wasn’t about to waste time arguing. He suspected they had probably travelled here by car from somewhere else. If so, it was their business.

Szulu worked mostly as a part-time driver for a couple of west London cab firms. He drove limousines when he could get the work, mini-cabs when nothing else offered. And in between, he tried to stay out of trouble.

Right now, though, he was being stared at as if he was about to do something illegal. He knew the cops were only doing their job and protecting the masses, but why were they giving him the snake’s eyes? He wasn’t carrying anything suspicious, and he was dressed in a smart suit with a peaked cap, even if the dreadlocks hanging round his collar didn’t quite fit the image of a regular driver.

He sighed and took another turn along the pavement, skirting a bunch of inbound tourists waiting for their lift, and a straggly line of luggage trolleys abandoned by previous arrivals.

He passed the security guard, who was trying to look tough and failing, and caught sight of his own reflection in the glass doors behind him.

Szulu was tall, slim and walked with an athletic spring in his step and a roll to his shoulders. It was a gait he’d developed twenty years ago in his early teens, when strutting your stuff was more than just for show; it was survival. Back then, he’d been tall for his age, but skinny, and therefore still liable to be a target for the wrong sort of attention. So he’d done what all his contemporaries had done, and taken to looking tough. Most of the time it had worked, helped by having big, useful-looking hands and a hollow stare. Since then, he’d put on a few pounds and learned a few moves to back up the image.