Stealing People (16 page)

Vital signs, check for vital signs. Isabel’s hand was flung over her head and Alyshia grabbed the wrist, which was still warm, and tried to find a pulse. She saw the speckle of blood on the back of her mother’s hand and got her head down on the tiles and saw more blood around her mouth and leaking out in a string of mucus to the floor. She reached over and opened an eyelid, remembering something about pupils reacting to light being another indication. The eye stared sightlessly into the sparkling tiles.

The loud whoop of a siren made Alyshia start. Blue lights flickered on the walls. Paramedics in fluorescent jackets came crashing through the gardens, one with a bag over his shoulder and an oxygen tank while the other dragged a wheeled stretcher.

‘Stand back, love,’ the first one said.

Alyshia rolled away helplessly and sat hugging her knees, propped up against the wall, looking at the paramedic’s shoulders and back as he rapidly assessed the body, applied oxygen. The other paramedic pulled the trolley in.

‘Anything we need to know, love?’ he asked Alyshia.

‘She’s five to six months pregnant, late forties, high blood pressure and she’s just flown back from Mumbai,’ said Alyshia, on automatic. ‘There’s blood coming from her mouth and the back of her hand is speckled with it as if she’s coughed.’

‘What does that sound like to you, Dave?’

‘Pulmonary embolism,’ said Dave. ‘Let’s get her out of here. We spend time immobilising her neck, she’ll be
DOA
.’

‘
DOA
?’ asked Alyshia.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll do everything we can.’

‘Call ahead and prep them for an emergency C-section,’ said Dave. ‘There’s life …’

They had her on the trolley and were lifting her out through the door in less than a minute. Alyshia followed, pulling the door to and taking the spare keys with her. She got into the back of the ambulance. The siren whooped once and the ambulance reversed out into the street. She asked where they were going.

‘Chelsea and Westminster.’

Alyshia called Boxer. No answer. She left a message. ‘This is Alyshia. Call me urgently. Mum’s had a fall. I’m in an ambulance on the way to the Chelsea and Westminster. It’s 17.23.’ She called her partner, Deepak, told him the terrible news. He said he was on his way. She called her father, who immediately tried to divert the ambulance to an even better hospital.

‘That your old man?’ asked Dave. ‘What’s he on?’

‘He doesn’t like things out of his control,’ said Alyshia.

‘She’ll get the best care … probably in the world,’ said Dave. ‘This is what the
NHS
is really good at. Dire emergency. Life or death.’

‘Is that what this is?’ she said, panicking.

‘First thing we got to do is get the baby out. Everything that should be keeping your mum alive is going to the baby. We get the baby out and the anticoagulants in to disperse the pulmonary embolism and there’s a chance, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it’s touch and go.’

Alyshia clamped her hands to the sides of her head.

‘I’m not … I’m not ready for this.’

‘Nobody is ever ready for this,’ said Dave, ‘except us. The good news is she’s still going. She didn’t break her neck and we didn’t damage her by moving her so quickly. And they’re all ready for her at the hospital. Hang on to that, love.’

The ambulance was driving at a terrifying speed for central London. The sirens whooped as the blue lights slashed through the night. The front lights blasted out, driving into the traffic like a snowplough, parting the cars. Alyshia and Dave hung on as the body of the ambulance rocked back and forth, the driver working the steering wheel with furious energy. They pulled into the A&E bay of the Chelsea and Westminster and there was a whole platoon of people waiting. The trolley was unloaded and Isabel was swept into the hospital, drip held high, oxygen bottle by her side, but the clear mask over her nose and mouth was barely fogged.

15

17.30, 16 January 2014

South Bermondsey station, London

Boxer had turned his mobile phone off in the tube. He was preparing himself and didn’t want any interruptions in what was going to be a very difficult negotiation with Harvey Cox.

He found the warehouse at the end of Latona Road. The dogs were still in their cage: two Rottweilers, each around eighty kilos. They barked savagely at him as he walked past. A door to an office by the large warehouse opened and a young black guy beckoned him in.

‘I’s Jarrod,’ he said, and asked Boxer to put his case on the desk and to stand with his arms out and legs apart. He frisked him for weapons and went to take hold of the case.

‘That’s
my
money in there,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ll take care of it until Harvey and I have done the deal.’

‘Thought you done that over the phone.’

‘Nothing’s done until I’ve seen the set-up and we’ve shaken hands on it,’ said Boxer, and beckoned the case from the young man’s grasp.

Jarrod weighed it as he handed it over, told Boxer to follow. Boxer was glad the FN57 in the secret compartment in the bottom of the case was an especially lightweight gun. Even fully loaded it was well under a kilo.

He was interested to meet Harvey Cox. He’d detected some kind of an accent when they spoke on the phone and he wondered if he might be a Jamaican. As it was, there were two men in the room, one a tall, rail-thin black man and the other a heavily built white guy with close-cropped grey hair and a matching goatee. He turned away from the window as Boxer entered and held out his hand.

‘Harvey Cox,’ he said. ‘And this is my partner Delroy Pink.’

The black man made no move, just nodded. He had the look of someone who’d done people harm. Harvey looked as if he’d ordered it.

‘I thought you might be Jamaicans from your accent,’ said Boxer.

‘We’re Bahamians. Black as they come, white as they come,’ said Cox, pointing at Pink and then himself.

‘Glider didn’t tell me much about you, just said that he’d done business with you over eighteen months ago,’ said Boxer. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming to take a look.’

‘From our side, too,’ said Cox. ‘Glider just said you were cool, no more ’n that.’

‘Your man still searched me for weapons.’

‘He search everybody, no matter what,’ said Cox. ‘What’s your business?’

‘I sell cigarettes in market towns in the south of England,’ said Boxer, keeping it vague, not wanting to give them anything that could be checked out. ‘I lost a supplier. I need someone to keep the flow going. You?’

‘We mostly import American brands through suppliers in Dubai. Occasionally we buy locally if we get peaks in demand,’ said Cox. ‘We only deal in real brands, no fakes, no Chinese rubbish.’

‘It’s a big warehouse for cigarettes.’

‘I have a collection of wartime motor vehicles that I rent out to production companies for movies and commercials.’

‘Who was the supplier you lost?’ asked Pink.

Both men looked at him. One of Pink’s eyes was bloodshot.

‘Somebody in Bristol with a connection in the Canaries,’ said Boxer.

‘You want delivery outside London, you gonna have to pay extra,’ said Pink. ‘It’s free only inside the M25. You get me? You wanna take a look at the goods … make sure they’re to your liking?’

‘Sure,’ said Boxer, picking up his case.

They left Cox in the office and walked through the dimly lit building, past dust-sheeted cars, trucks, some British, others American, until they came to a Sherman tank.

‘What’s this all about, Delroy?’

‘Man crazy about war movies is all,’ said Pink, opening a door beyond the tank. ‘The Sherman’s for him. He don’t rent that out.’

There was another twenty metres of warehouse space, which had been walled off, where the atmosphere was noticeably drier. There was a small forklift and the boxes were piled in three levels almost to the ceiling. They were stored by brand.

‘We keep the humidity under control,’ said Pink, pointing to machines around the room. ‘The place been insulated to fuck. We don’t send out no damp smokes, you get?’

‘Looks good.’

They went back to the office. Cox was at his desk, reading glasses on and smoking a strong-smelling cheroot. Pink took up his position leaning against the wall behind him. Boxer opened the small holdall with the money.

‘This is six thousand two hundred and fifty for the first five hundred cartons.’

‘You want delivery to Bristol, that gonna be another two hundred,’ said Pink.

‘I wanted to ask you about another London supplier I’d arranged to see,’ said Boxer. ‘We had the meeting all set up and then he disappeared. I wondered if you’d ever heard of Marcus Alleyne?’

‘We heard of him,’ said Pink. ‘Small dealer. Fencing other goods. Smokes just a part his business.’

‘You know what happened to him?’ asked Boxer, putting the money on the table.

‘Maybe he got picked up by the po-lice,’ said Pink.

Cox had turned to look at Pink as if he’d noticed some change in tone.

As Boxer reached in for the last pack of banknotes, he released the catch on the false bottom and retrieved the gun, which he pulled out of the bag and pointed at Pink. Cox stiffened in his chair.

‘Thought you too good to be true,’ said Pink.

‘I knew you weren’t,’ said Boxer. ‘Now look, Delroy, I’m not interested in anything except what happened to Marcus Alleyne. Clarify that and I’m out of here.’

‘You know what he’s talking about, Pink?’ asked Cox.

Pink nodded slowly and with eyes gone so dead that Boxer thought he might have had some kind of seizure. His instinct told him otherwise and he took three fast steps to one side of the office door, which slammed open. First thing across the threshold was a Walther P99 held in a black hand. Boxer gave the wrist an upward chop and the gun went off, putting a large hole in the ceiling before falling from the now paralysed hand. One step across and a sharp punch to the solar plexus and Jarrod went down. Boxer picked up the Walther P99 and pointed it at Pink and the FN57 at Cox. Jarrod crawled around on the floor in circles trying to persuade air back into his lungs.

Cox was rigid in his chair, hands flat on his desk, the cheroot still smoking, ears ringing.

‘You were saying, Pink,’ said Boxer.

Pink had come off the wall, eyes widening to visible whites, which was the closest he ever got to an expression of surprise.

Cox turned to him, suspicious, questioning.

‘You doing things behind my back, Pink?’

‘Just a little business on the side ’t’s all.’

‘Talk us through it,’ said Boxer.

‘I get a call from a woman called Jess. She running security for Glider. She offering me twenty-five thousand if I can deliver this Marcus Alleyne to a disused warehouse in Clapham. She telling me he’s a fence, does smokes. So I set up a deal where I buy a thousand cartons from him. I’s worried about him calling Glider to check. She telling me she’s using G’s old phone, said she’d set him straight.’

‘How did it work?’ asked Boxer.

‘I set up the deal with Marcus. We take delivery of the smokes. Jarrod here,’ said Pink, looking down at the floor, ‘he hit the man on the head with a
SAP
glove, take him out. We deliver him to the warehouse. Some white guy there make sure the man all right, paid us our money, we split.’

‘Tell me about the white guy.’

‘What’s there to tell? He white, shaved head, I mean to the skin, maybe six foot tall, looked like he could handle himself. London accent. Took Marcus away in a white van, didn’t catch the plates.’

‘Where’s the warehouse in Clapham?’

‘On the Clapham Road. Borg and Ranelli the name, can’t remember the number.’

Boxer looked at Jarrod still groaning on the floor. He leaned forward and hit him hard on the head with the butt of the Walther P99, knocked him right out.

‘Tell him that’s for hitting Marcus,’ he said. ‘He’s a friend of mine. Now I’m going to walk out of here and you’re never going to see me again unless I find that you called Jess. I hear that and I’ll be back and I won’t be alone and you’ll be out of the cigarette business for a long time. When I find Marcus, you’ll return his cigarettes to him plus ten grand. How’s that sound, Pink?’

Pink gave one of his imperceptible nods, wary of Boxer, like he was the bear in the room. Boxer packed his money back into the bag, with the FN57. He checked his watch.

‘Let’s take a walk, Pink,’ he said, and waved him forward with the Walther.

They went out of the office and into the reception area. Pink stood there waiting.

‘Keep going, Pink. You know where the door is.’

The rail-thin body started to shake. Boxer shoved him forward so that he hit the door, bounced off it, blood on his cheek.

‘Don’t like dogs, Pink?’ said Boxer. ‘Maybe you don’t feed them enough. Give them a nice bit of leg. Mind you, they’d come away hungry from your skinny arse. Now show me the way out.’

Pink shouldered past him, fierce with anger at having his cool exposed as fake. They went through another door and into the warehouse, worked their way through the cars to a steel door on the other side, which had four bolts and a heavy lock. Pink let him out into the cold night air.

‘Don’t let me down, Pink, or I’ll be back with a platoon of me,’ said Boxer, tucking the Walther P99 down the back of his trousers.

He found his way around the warehouse and back on to Latona
Road. He turned his mobile phone back on as he started to think about how he was going to deal with Jess, direct or through Glider.

He listened to his messages and started running.

‘You’re on,’ said Siobhan. ‘We have to leave our mobiles like I did the last time. They’re a nervous bunch.’

‘How do we know where to go?’

Siobhan shrugged, put hers on the table. Amy did the same, but underneath it she hid the screwed-up piece of paper with the mobile number on it that she’d found under the bed when Siobhan had disappeared the first time. They left the flat, heading for Upper Street and the Highbury & Islington tube. On the crowded pavement someone brushed past Siobhan, knocked her shoulder back. She was about to remonstrate until she found a mobile phone in her hand, which rang.

‘Cross the road, take a bus down to Angel.’

Off the bus they were told to head past the York pub and beyond some gardens, down some steps, to the towpath of the Regent’s Canal. They stumbled along in the pitch black with street lights high above them, cars occasionally flashing overhead. A lone figure looked down on them from a bridge. A dog walker on the other side of the canal flicked a cigarette into the water.

They came off the towpath and walked up to Canonbury in a big circle, almost back to Highbury & Islington until they were directed into a park - New River Walk. A path led them along a narrow river and it was as if they were no longer in London. A silence descended. Traffic disappeared. City life backed away. Beyond the park were large houses with extensive gardens in front of unpeopled streets. Yellow-lit living rooms revealed book-lined walls opposite expensive art and gilt-framed mirrors.

‘Where are we?’ asked Amy.

‘Hampshire,’ said Siobhan. ‘Let’s take a seat.’

They waited on a bench for the next instruction. Siobhan took Amy’s hand.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Amy.

‘Comforting you on your first mission.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, starting to tug her hand away, but Siobhan held on, pulled her in, kissed her.

Amy struggled. Siobhan hugged her tight and she was stronger. Amy gave up all resistance.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Siobhan. ‘You know you want to.’

Amy lashed out with a fist. Siobhan took the blow on the side of the head just as her mobile went off. She took the call, glaring.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked the voice.

‘Lovers’ tiff,’ said Siobhan.

‘Well stop it,’ said the voice. ‘You’re drawing attention to yourselves. Now walk up the river, cross the gardens and wait on the road for a cab to pick you up.’

Siobhan cut the phone, nodded to Amy, who was ranting.

‘Calm down, drama queen,’ said Siobhan. ‘Let’s move it.’

They crossed the river, came out on the other side of the park. A cab pulled up and they got in. Amy rammed herself into the corner, feet up ready to kick out.

‘You were so keen before,’ said Siobhan. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t like being attacked.’

‘I get horny when I’m on edge.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Whatever,’ said Siobhan and stared out the window.

She leaned over to the intercom and asked the driver if he had anything to tell them.

‘Told me to drop you at Clissold Park. That’s it.’

The cab turned on to the Essex Road and headed north, dropping them at the corner of a very flat, huge dark open space where only the occasional jogging trainers beneath fluorescent jackets were visible in the gloom. They crossed the park taking the diagonal tarmac path. Some lads came off the steps of a building in the middle where a board advertised afternoon teas, followed them, muttering low words, until Siobhan stopped and turned.

‘Can I help you boys?’ she asked.

‘I reckon you could,’ said one.

‘Don’t be shy then,’ said Siobhan. ‘Just come out and ask for it.’

Low, shifting laughter from the three men.

‘Let’s go,’ said Amy.

‘No,’ said Siobhan. ‘I want to know what they’re after. I’m sure I can help.’

‘Walking alone in a park, two girls, mean only one thing,’ said one of the men.

‘And what’s that?’ asked Siobhan. ‘Don’t be coy.’

Some uncertainty crept into their swagger as they saw her lack of fear. The bold, talkative one stepped forward.

‘How ’bout a fuck?’ he said.

‘Not with you … surprisingly,’ said Siobhan. ‘You’ve got work to do on those chat-up lines. Now piss off back to school.’

He went for her, ducking low, aiming to drive her off the path and on to the grass, get her on the ground. Siobhan brought her knee up sharply, and crowned him with both fists on the back of the head so that his face ploughed into the tarmac. His arms and legs twitched, which freaked out the other two, who turned and ran.