(2005) Rat Run (24 page)

What if they're directed by a man who understands the acquisition of explosives, detonators, who understands our capability of electronic surveillance and how we can make mobile phones dance to our tune?

Then we're in trouble. That's the nightmare that gets me to my desk before half seven, and I don't leave that desk before ten in the evening - a group of foot-soldiers we've never heard of, a recruiter we haven't identified, and they're controlled by a man whose safety is worth dying for.'

'Who is that man?'

'Don't you know, Freddie? I'd have assumed you did.'

The cell block seemed to close round him. He could smell the food, the toilets, the sweat of the guards in their protective vests. The corridor lights shone down dully on Dennis's face. Suddenly Gaunt was cold and bile rose in his throat. He choked it out. 'That would be a co-ordinator?'

'If you knew, why did you bother to trek over here?

He comes in, organizes at a level of quality, then is well gone before the "blessed strike". They accounted for all of the Madrid train crowd, except the co-ordinator. The co-ordinator is your jewel, Freddie. If a co-ordinator had had his hands on that lot...' Dennis waved expansively towards the cell doors ' . . . they wouldn't be here, and we'd have been shafted - good and proper.'

'Thank you.'

Halfway up the stairs, going towards clean air and clean light, he turned and caught Gaunt's sleeve. 'If you get the whisper that your man's coming near, you'll tell me, won't you? Give me chapter on it and verse - or it's explosion time and fucking catastrophe.

You will?'

'If I get the whisper. If ...'

Outside, Gaunt sat in his car for a full ten minutes.

His hands shook and he waited for them to calm.

Nothing in his life - Cold War warrior, Iraq war warrior, organized-crime war warrior - had prepared him for what he had seen, young men who were pitiful in defeat and slumped in cells, and for what he had heard. He thought of Dennis, pompous and point-scoring, hurrying to Thames House each morning before the throb of the capital city beat on the masses, and the nightmare that engulfed him.

He drove away through the blocks and past the guns. The image of the co-ordinator, free and running loose, stayed with him all the way to his desk, and the hideous problem: if the Prague trail went cold, where to bloody look for him.

The policeman watched Timo Rahman with the closeness of a hunting fox.

He was Johan Konig. It was the start of the second week of his attachment to the Organized Crime Division. He had come from Berlin, seconded as assistant deputy commander. On bogus credentials he sat in on the meeting. Probably his presence in the offices of the Special Investigation Unit of the Revenue - and the deception used to put him there -

violated Rahman's human rights. He was forty-seven, short and barrel-chested, and his hair had thinned.

Inside the close circle of men and women in Berlin with whom he had worked, Konig had achieved a reputation as a detective of stubborn persistence.

What had brought him from Berlin to Hamburg was this target: a true prize.

Rahman had not spoken since the meeting had

begun. On his side of the wide, shiny table, the Albanian was flanked by three accountants who talked for him. Konig was at the end of a line of four Revenue men. Carafes of water and glasses, not used, stood in front of each team with bundles of files. The meeting had been called, so the notification to Rahman's accountants had stated, to discuss routine general matters. Each question from the Revenue men was directed to Rahman personally, and each answer came back from whichever accountant covered that particular issue.

The man fascinated Konig, who spoke fluent

Albanian. He had been on the anti-corruption team of the International Police Task Force sent to Pristina in Kosovo. He had learned there of the ruthless qualities of Kosovar Albanians, their endemic criminality, cruelty, secretiveness and power. His transfer from Berlin to a city where he was unknown was for the express purpose of bringing the
pate
before the courts and convicting him. Konig was intrigued by his target's bearing - for the first half-hour of the meeting he had thought Rahman's demeanour was almost of indifference.

Indifference? Few men, when their investments, property portfolios and interest on deposits ran to millions of euros a year and they were examined by a Revenue team working only on special investigations, displayed indifference.

The man's skill impressed him too. The file Konig had read stated that Rahman spoke good German and read it well. But each time a question was asked him in that language he gave no sign of understanding.

That was clever. He looked blankly at his accountants, left them to answer.

Formidable.

Rahman, as Konig knew it, dominated the sex, narcotics and human-trafficking trades in the city. He controlled them. He was the leader of the wealthiest
fis
in western Europe. He had the power to kill, corrupt and intimidate, yet he appeared to be a humble businessman with no ambition other than, through his accountants, to pay his dues in taxes.

Konig thought it the performance of a master.

The Revenue men on his side of the table did not know Konig's position. He had been introduced to them as an investigator from Berlin's tax unit; he was there for experience, they had been told, on an exchange visit. He had no need to intervene, was as quiet as the target he watched. Always, if it were possible, Konig wanted to see a target - close up - to watch his hand movements and see if his fingers fidgeted, sense whether he was nervous and note if sweat came to his neck. Did the tongue flick over his lips to moisten them? Did he shift in the chair? Was he too friendly and agreeable, or too hostile? To gaze into the eyes . . . The meeting would soon be over. Konig had not looked long into the eyes.

Had not dared to.

There were Russian gangs in Berlin, Polish
mafiya,
the cold little bastards from Vietnam who ran the cigarette trade, pimps from all over eastern Europe, and Albanians. He would have looked into any of the eyes confronting him across an interview table in the interrogation block and not been fazed. An experienced police officer, twenty-nine years of service behind him, a spell at Wiesbaden with Intelligence, and time in New York on secondment, he had never before failed to look deep into the eyes of a target.

Something in the eyes of Timo Rahman - and he could not have explained it - unsettled him. He would have thought himself without fear. He found that each time Rahman glanced along the length of the table and at the men opposite him, he looked away. Never before.

His mind had drifted. Sunlight made zebra stripes on the table from the blinds, sharp lines, formed patterns on Rahman's face. The man scratched his head, then looked down at his watch.

Indifference? Johan Konig understood.

Preoccupation. Wants to be somewhere else, handling another situation.

Extraordinary . . . Timo Rahman, with his

accountants, was having his wealth dissected by a body of the Revenue endowed with sanctions and his mind was elsewhere. What could be more important than the business at the table? Every minute he had sat in the room now seemed to Konig to be justified. A weightier problem exercised the
pate ..
. From problems came mistakes. The policeman felt his

confidence surge. He looked into the eyes.

Chilled, bright, the eyes met his. He did not look away. He held the Albanian's glance. That was a victory. The meeting broke up. The Revenue men, at the door, shook hands with the accountants in turn, and with Timo Rahman. Konig stayed at the table. A problem he could learn about, a mistake he could exploit.

As the door closed on them, he tilted back his chair to gaze at the ceiling and wondered what, or who, would explain it.

* * *

As Malachy finished his meal - a meat pie, boiled potatoes and beans - then wiped the plate with bread, he heard them coming along the walkway

There was a deathly hush on the Amersham that day and the sounds drifted to him clearly

Wheels squeaking, a heavy footstep, shuffled shoes approached, then passed his door and stopped. He gulped the last of the bread and listened. Keys turned and there was the scrape of the barricade gate opening.

A big voice, familiar. 'Home now, Millie, where you should be. Dawn'll get you to bed and then you rest.'

The next door shut and the gate clanged to. A moment of quiet, then a rap on his own door. 'Heh, Malachy, you there? You there, man?'

He pulled down the bolt and turned the key. The great bulk of Ivanhoe Manners filled the doorway.

'I was by here. Seemed right to call on you. I do driving for the hospital when I have the time - you know, a day off. Brought Millie Johnson home, and her friend. She's in a wheelchair for the moment, but she's strong in spirit. Her guts, they should be an example to those who lock themselves away.' He stared keenly at Malachy. 'Are you going to leave me standing here?'

Malachy stood aside. 'Whatever you want.'

'I want to see how you are. Are you standing on your own feet, or are you leaning, or are you on the floor?'

'I'm managing,' Malachy said softly.

'Are you ready to move on?'

'I don't know.'

'You got work, you looking for work?'

Malachy shook his head, then hung it.

'There's work out there for those who look for it.

With work you could pay a proper rent, and free up the unit. Eight months here, right? I've a queue that needs units. You tell me, Malachy, what's happening on the Amersham, what gives?'

He saw the social worker gaze around him. He would not notice anything different from the day he had been brought here - same table, same chairs, same TV and settee, same carpet - would not know that through a door and under the bed, in the bag with the vagrant's clothes, were the last of the tape and the rope and a plastic toy. But Ivanhoe Manners missed little.

'You done well on the shoes. That's good polishing.

They're the right shoes to wear if you go for a job. They show purpose, like you're climbing back. I asked, what gives on the Amersham? Police don't know, and we don't know.'

Malachy shrugged, like he avoided events beyond his bolted and locked front door.

'I'm asking, Malachy. Three of the High Fly Boys strung upside down off a roof and their authority finished, that's happening. A class-A dealer roped to a post, that's happening. I have this gigantic and massive confusion, man. Help me.'

'I don't think I can.'

'You please yourself . . . I don't support what happened to the boys or the dealer, no sympathy for it from me. A gesture, but it's the way to anarchy. Where did the spark for it come from?'

'Nothing for me to say that would help you.'

The big man went back to the door, opened it, and his smile beamed white teeth at Malachy. 'Get on the road, man. You done your time here. Get walking in those fancy shoes. You need your life back, and sitting like a cat in a cage won't do it for you. Do it soon. Each day you're here - whatever was in your past - that's a wasted day. I'm offering advice and it's meant kindly.

You should feed off that little woman's courage. Get living again.'

'Thank you for calling by - I'll go when I'm ready.'

He closed the door after the social worker, locked it and pushed up the bolt.

The train rattled across country on a slow, stopping line.

In a few days the clocks would go forward and the evenings would stay brighter. Dusk hovered over the carriages and the track, and weak pinpricks of light marked remote homes set among the grey of the fields, hedges and woodlands. It was a complicated journey for Malachy, the longest he had made since coming to London: one leg from the Amersham estate to Victoria, by bus, the next on a fast train south to Redhill and the last on the line that stopped every-where, at Marlpit Hill, Penshurst, Paddock Wood, Mardon and Headcorn. His journey was nearly

complete.

The carriages were filled with schoolchildren, their bags and noise, with shop workers and shoppers, with the first of the office commuters to get away from their desks. He wore the old clothes and his shoes were caked with mud from a litter-strewn garden in the play area. He stood in the rocking space between two of the carriages - he smelt and knew it. His woollen hat was low on his head and the collar of his coat was turned up to mask his face. As passengers passed him, to board the train or get off it, they hurried by because of the smell that came from the plastic bag gripped in his fist. He never put the bag down but kept it tight against his leg. Malachy knew that at every station there were cameras, and that cameras were now routinely fitted inside train compartments. An old world returned to him: he recalled lectures from long ago. Care ruled him, and he had regained a long-lost cunning. His ticket, expensive but not wasted money, was for Folkestone, far beyond his destination; it would act as a confusion if his route was traced. The clatter of the train soothed him and the map given him and memorized, then destroyed, was loose in his mind. In a few minutes, as dusk fell, he would reach the stop they had chosen.

There had been money with the map. Without it he would not have been able to buy the ticket and fill the canister in the bag that smelt.

The train had begun to slow and a remote voice announced the approach of the next station, Pluckley.

Now the lights, set back among bare trees and behind cut hedges, shone more fiercely.

In his mind, with the map, was the quiet rasp of the voice from the darkened interior of the car, from a face he could not see.

'You've done better than I thought you would, a hell of a sight better. Nothing more is asked of you. All I can do is tell you what's at the next stage upwards of the pyramid. You hit the bottom level, the pushers, but they're just low-life scum. Above them is the dealer and you took him out and he won't be back, but he's only a vile little creature. It's your decision.

Who feeds the dealer so that he can sell to the pushers? You may say, and you've the right to, that you went far enough . . . Trouble is, what I'm thinking, all you've done is disrupt temporarily the trade on the Amersham, and that may not be enough to help you where you want to be. Up the ladder, right? You want to be able to look in a mirror, see your face and not cringe in disgust - am I there? Are the dealer and the pushers sufficient to get you as high up the ladder as you need to be if the mirror's showing you your face?