Corpse in Waiting (27 page)

‘We have a problem.'

‘Quite.'

We ordered our breakfast and then I said, ‘I know he has a criminal record.'

‘Yes, as long as your arm, under different aliases and in different countries.'

‘I can't understand why he's bothering himself with what would appear to be taking over Alexandra's business.'

‘It's the contacts he'd be after. And people like him have their dirty fingers in so many pies, employing so many bit players who are terrified of them that it becomes almost impossible to trace crime back to the man at the top. Like Martino Capelli, only worse.'

‘I take it then that Special Branch is already working on this.'

‘Any number of branches are.'

‘Are there undercover people inside the house?'

‘According to Greenway, no – too risky. I shall take these plans to Mike.'

‘What about the couple of top cops?'

‘Being watched – and due for retirement.'

‘Which makes it stalemate as far as we're concerned.'

‘We could go and have a look at the place.'

SEVENTEEN

S
hackled, as it were, by different protocols to those of MI5 we could only pause outside a pair of magnificent gates, one corner of the house just visible down a curving drive as it was screened by trees. One of several such, fairly new, properties, it was situated near the entrance of one of the public, but gated, roads that run through Windsor Great Park.

‘Nothing to see,' I murmured.

‘But someone's just driven either in or out,' Patrick said.

‘How d'you know?'

‘The gates were a few inches from shutting as we came round that last bend.'

His mobile rang and he handed it to me to answer.

‘Sorry to bother you at the weekend,' said Alan Kilmartin's voice. ‘But I've just had a another weird call from Alexandra and I thought I'd mention it to your husband first as you said he was working on it.'

I asked him to hang on, relayed the message to Patrick and he pulled off the road on to a woodland track. I could gather little from what was said as he mostly listened and spoke little. After the call ended he sat pensively, staring at nothing through the windscreen.

‘Well?' I ventured after half a minute or so.

‘He's had this call, similar to last time, with Alex saying she's managed to get to a phone and giving the impression she's being held somewhere against her will. As before, the call was cut short but this time she screamed before the line went dead. I'd better let Greenway know so he can organize a trace.'

The Commander said he would immediately do so and was sufficiently fired up to ask us to meet him at a local country house hotel in Englefield Green. (We discovered at a much later date that he lived in north Ascot.) He was wearing what my father would have described as ‘best gardening togs' and had bits of leaves in his hair which made me think that his wife was probably away from home.

‘I hope you appreciate I wouldn't be taking the weekend off if this case was my sole responsibility, which it isn't,' he began by saying. ‘But . . .' He left the rest unsaid, gazing over what was before him. Then, ‘I'd like to talk to this architect . . .' He glanced up questioningly.

‘Alan Kilmartin,' I said. ‘He used to go out with Alexandra Nightingale, who's been making these phone calls.' I gave him his phone number which he noted down.

‘There being a possibility that Descallier's involved with the people trafficking cases we've been working on is new,' Greenway said, still perusing the drawings. ‘So my instinct is to act. But I do have to respect what other outfits have been working on for some time even though they've been at it, in my view, for far too long. When this finally does get blown apart there's going to be a lot of what the farmers call muck flying around and a couple of our beloved political masters are going to lose their jobs. I think that's the main reason for the delay. I shall send these off to the other departments involved to demonstrate that I'm sharing intelligence but how, or if, they'll be used is anyone's guess.'

‘Do we know what this man looks like?' I asked. ‘I forgot to ask Alan about that.'

‘I've seen a mugshot,' Greenway answered. ‘But it was taken some years ago. He's of medium height and build, greyish sort of complexion, pale blue eyes, light brown thinning hair, no visible scars. An ordinary-looking bloke, really.'

The trace came back very quickly, an old warehouse on a wharf at Deptford.

‘But how does such a place still have landlines?' Patrick said impatiently, Greenway having imparted the news.

‘I was just about to elaborate,' he was told. ‘Presumably, it doesn't. The building's due to be converted to upmarket apartments, starting Monday, tomorrow, and the call was actually made from a Portakabin office hired by the developers. We won't know any more until someone's been round there.'

This he organized and there was another wait.

‘I simply can't believe that Alexandra's in danger,' I said quietly to Patrick when we were on our second pot of coffee. ‘Two calls almost the same is too much of a coincidence.'

Patrick merely grunted. Me, right from the beginning I had thought it a whole barrel of stinking red herrings, the work of a spiteful woman all too keen to get her revenge on one man who had dumped her and another who had given her a piece of his mind and made her pay the bill. I was about to risk pointing this out but Greenway spoke first.

‘Think of the scorn of the media if we raided the place to look for trafficked women and found nothing,' he said slowly, head back, eyes seemingly studying the ceiling.

‘What, this house?' Patrick said, gesturing towards the drawings. ‘Bloody hell! You don't think they're actually being kept there now, do you?'

‘Not necessarily. But if this woman . . . she is the one who has the hots for you, isn't she?'

‘So it would appear,' Patrick said stiffly.

‘Forgive me for asking but have you told her where to get off?'

‘I have.'

‘It fits. What revenge, eh?'

A few minutes later Greenway had a call with the information that the Portakabin at Deptford had not been locked and there were no signs that anything had been disturbed. The phone was being examined for fingerprints but even though it had only recently been installed was greasy, as someone put it, “As if a bloke was eating fish and chips with his fingers while using it.” The warehouse itself was still being searched.

‘That's it,' he said. ‘We can't do any more right now.' He surveyed the pair of us. ‘You know what I'm going to say right now, don't you?'

Patrick said, ‘You're about to forbid me on pain of death from going anywhere near Descallier's place.'

‘D'you reckon you could get a few bugs in there?' said the Commander with a crafty grin.

‘If I know anything about Special Branch there's probably a ton of them planted already. And what's this about not messing around with any other departments' scenarios?'

‘Cold feet?'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘What would you do if you were still head of your own outfit at MI5?'

‘I had almost complete freedom then.'

‘I'm aware of that.'

‘And licence to kill.'

‘I know that too.'

‘But you haven't thought through the implications. If there was strong evidence that this character was keeping women prisoner on the premises I'd have gone in there and if I met resistance from any number of gun-toting minders, henchmen, whatever, I'd have started a small but useful war.'

Greenway looked at me as if for verification but before I could utter a word, said, ‘There isn't strong evidence.'

‘Then we stay out.'

‘Good,' Greenway said, getting to his feet. ‘Just testing.'

Patrick took a deep breath and let it go very slowly.

An hour later, when we were having a light lunch, the Commander received a report on the search of the warehouse. Women's clothing had been found on the top floor and one enterprising soul was of the opinion that although obviously old and creased, the garments were actually clean. With permission, whoever it was intended to call at all the nearest charity shops as soon as they opened the following morning to try to discover if they might have been the source.

‘The clothing you found at Boyles House had been worn, hadn't it?' Greenway asked us.

I told him, yes, filthy.

‘Do we know what condition the stuff was in at the building in Woolwich?'

‘Not yet.'

‘This has every appearance of being a hoax,' Greenway muttered. He glared at Patrick. ‘Has this female the kind of mentality to do something along these lines?'

‘Frankly, yes,' Patrick replied. ‘But it doesn't mean that she's a willing player. There's more to this than a hoax. For a start there's the irrefutable evidence that a car registered to Romano Descallier has been following Ingrid and the driver might be responsible for tampering with her brakes. I have to say in using such a potentially traceable vehicle they took a huge risk which perhaps demonstrates how arrogant, or stupid, or both, the man is. As we already know Descallier was a client of Alexandra Nightingale and a room she was ostensibly using as an office – it wasn't – at Boyles House had another, concealed, room at the rear where people had obviously been imprisoned.'

‘She could be working with this man.'

‘Or had her business forcibly taken over.'

‘Where does she live?'

‘In a studio flat in Bayswater. DCI Carrick and I went there but there was no one in.'

‘You broke in?' I enquired, keeping my cool, all this being very new news to me.

‘I felt it important to do so. We used the fire escape and I got in through a window,' Patrick said impassively as though answering an enquiry from the Commander. ‘Carrick stayed outside as was right and proper. I fully expected to find her there and that her first call to Kilmartin was a trick. She wasn't at home. I did a quick search for any evidence that might point to where she could be but found nothing. There was only one message on her phone; from a woman friend wondering when they could meet and have coffee together.'

‘Wasn't she supposed to be house-hunting in Bath?' Greenway said.

‘She was, and looking for a business premises of some kind.'

‘Stefan, or Steven, was,' I corrected.

‘He could still have been controlling her. Her recent behaviour's suggested she was either drinking too much, which we witnessed, or taking drugs. That might be the control they have over her.'

The memory came into my mind of Alexandra marching into the hotel foyer, eyes flashing, furious. Could the glitter in her eyes have been real tears and not just anger? Could her demeanour be put down to being on a knife-edge, on the verge of breakdown? I resolved to give her the benefit of the doubt until the real story emerged.

‘We can do nothing more right now,' Greenway said. ‘I'll see you in the morning.'

He left.

I looked at Patrick and Patrick looked at me.

‘Well?' I said.

‘He's left the plans behind.'

‘So I see.'

‘I'm desperate to get inside that place.'

‘There will be very sophisticated alarm systems, far more sensitive and modern than anything you encountered at MI5.'

‘You think I didn't do any training when I joined SOCA?'

‘You mean they showed you how to deal with such things?'

‘SOCA didn't. Private training, a refresher course. From a bloke who served under me, now puts 'em in and owed me a favour. He gave me a gizmo.'

‘A sort of remote control, you mean.'

‘Umm.'

‘That was something else you didn't tell me about.'

‘There was not a lot of point in telling you I'd been to Alex's flat as I drew a blank. If there'd been some kind of result I would have shared it with you.'

Sometimes you just have to let things pass.

The pair of us remained sitting there. Then Patrick said, ‘I ought to stick to what I told Greenway – despite him leaving these drawings behind as a heavy hint.'

‘So do I.'

‘I'd prefer to go through Alex's flat much more thoroughly before making any more moves.'

As a precaution Patrick had driven down a boggy forest track at speed, plastering half the vehicle in mud, including the number plates. Just outside the car park of the country house hotel we were waved down by the obviously eagle-eyed crew of an area car: to have an obscured registration plate is, strictly speaking, illegal. Patrick showed them his ID and they became interested and extremely friendly.

‘Know anything about that house on the corner by the gate into the park, the one next to where one of her Majesty's trees has recently been blown down?' Patrick asked casually.

‘Only that we're supposed to keep an eye out for people hanging around nearby,' one of the men replied. ‘Some big noise or other lives there. He probably plays golf with the Chief Constable.'

His colleague nudged him warningly.

‘Oh, don't worry about me,' Patrick said. ‘Just drifting around.'

‘It's only because the top of the tree took out a section of their boundary fence,' said the same man with the air of someone who knows better. ‘I keep meaning to walk down to see if they've had it fixed yet.'

‘When did this happen?'