NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED (Gavin & Palmer) Page 22

  A car started at the front of the house and faded away down the drive. Riley chewed her lip. It looked like they were off. There might not be a better time to do it.

  She pushed through the branches until she was clear of the overhang. Seconds later she was running across the lawn, body hunched and expecting any second to hear a warning shout. She hit the back of the villa and ducked down, her breathing harsh and loud. That’s it, she promised herself; when this is all over, I’m joining a gym. All this work and no play’s turning me into a soft pudding.

  She pressed her ear against the brickwork and listened. Apart from the hum of an electric motor there was nothing. She crept along the rear wall, peered round the corner... and ducked back as voices sounded nearby.

  Something scraped behind her. She began to rise but found a powerful hand pressing down on her shoulder. Another hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Easy,” Mitcheson hissed in her ear. He held onto her until she subsided, then let her go.

  “Where’s Palmer?” Riley whispered, spinning round. Her heart was thumping in her chest and a wave of nausea threatened to rise in her stomach. “Is he okay?”

  He placed a finger against her lips. “No time. We’re off to the airport. Lottie’s taking a private plane back to England. Ray’s body’s inside. Gary’s going too, with Palmer as insurance. He’s been sedated to stop him kicking off en route. The rest of us are following by scheduled flight to Heathrow this evening.”

  “And the drugs?” Riley’s face was centimetres away from his, and she could smell his aftershave, see her reflection in his eyes. Something told her this man couldn’t lie this close up to her. She hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking.

  He hesitated for a moment, then said: “They’re strapped to Palmer’s body.”

  “What? They’re going to take him through customs like that?”

  “No. They’ve filed a flight plan to Luton for customs purposes, but she’s paid the pilot for a last minute diversion to Rickmansworth, claiming engine trouble. Less likely they’ll be searched there, especially with a coffin on board. In any case, they’re counting on enough time to get Palmer out of the plane and away before anyone arrives.”

  Someone called Mitcheson’s name from the front of the building. He clamped his hand back on Riley’s mouth but she angrily pushed his fingers away. “Where are they taking Palmer?”

  “Horton Road commercial estate, West Drayton. Unit twenty-four. Once they’re in the UK they’ll have no further use for him. I’ll try to stop it but I can’t promise anything.”

  As he stood, Riley put a warning hand on his arm. “Wait. There’s something you should know.”

  He frowned. “What is it?”

  “The police in the UK know you’re coming. Not you personally, but they’ll be waiting for the plane at Rickmansworth.”

  He blinked. “How do they know that?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “Christ. That’s not good. Okay. I’ll see if I can get them to go in somewhere else, although if Palmer’s caught it’ll be pretty obvious he’s not doing it voluntarily. Anything else?”

  “There was another car along the coast where Palmer got picked up. It’s either the Moroccans or the Spanish police. They could be on their way here already.”

  He nodded. “We haven’t got long, then. Thanks for the warning.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Whatever I can for Palmer, I promise. You keep your head down. Take care.” With a brief touch on her arm, he was gone.

  Chapter 44

  Riley shivered as a vicious wind cut across the top level of Terminal One car park at Heathrow, bringing a faint sting of rain on her cheeks. Dark clouds had brought the evening in earlier than usual, a brutal contrast to the heat and light of Spain.

  She’d been hoping to go out to Rickmansworth to try to intercept Lottie Grossman’s plane, but in the end knew there was too high a risk of missing them. They would have already arrived and Palmer would be long gone by now, spirited away before he was spotted. On the off chance, she’d called the airfield and asked if the Grossman Cessna had returned, but the woman on the other end had been guarded about flight movements.

  In the end, with daylight making it too risky to hang around a trading estate too long, she decided to wait at Heathrow for the Malaga flight to arrive and follow Mitcheson and the others to their destination. She was praying nothing would happen to Palmer until the group was together.

  She checked her watch. Nearly time to go. She hurried down to the ground floor and found a quiet spot away from the noise. Brask answered on the first ring. As soon as Riley left the villa at Moharras, she’d called and told him what was happening. He had promised to get whatever official interest he could. Now he sounded less than hopeful.

  “I’ve bent every ear I can, sweetie,” he said, “but there seems to be a marked reluctance to do anything. The only thing in our favour is there aren’t customs facilities at Rickmansworth to clear the body, so Grossman must be planning to just drop in and take a punt on getting it through without being spotted. However, that may be the official view - I don’t know what the uniformed pinheads may be planning on the quiet, of course. For all I know they may be getting together the massed ranks of the Metropolitan Police Band and Customs & Excise and descending on Heathrow and Rickmansworth even as we speak.”

  “If they are, they’re being bloody quiet about it,” Riley replied. “The trouble is, I’m only guessing Mitcheson’s flight number, and all Rickmansworth would say was they weren’t expecting Grossman’s plane, anyway.”

  Brask breathed sympathetically down the phone. “Well, there’s nothing more I can do. Sorry. The best I can offer is some muscle at the commercial place your friend Mitcheson mentioned. It’ll probably take Palmer and the others some time to get through formalities, so I doubt they’ll be out of the airport for a while yet.”

  Riley shook her head. “Forget it. These men won’t think twice about cutting their losses; if they spot a bunch of security guards armed with nothing more lethal than fists and rubber torches, there’ll be a bloodbath.”

  Brask said nothing and the line hummed with static. Riley hung up, feeling suddenly helpless and cut adrift, and wondering where Palmer was.

  Frank Palmer was feeling sick. He was lying on a seat in the rear of a transit van that smelled of paint, and the constant bumping and swaying wasn’t helping. For some reason he couldn’t work out, his body felt as if it was on fire and perspiration was streaming down his face into his collar.

  Unable to lift his head, all Palmer could see was the floor of the van a few inches away and the wooden legs of the bench seat he was lying on. The floor was scuffed and bare and showed signs of rough use. Movement showed a man’s leg and foot, but there was no conversation to show how many people were in the vehicle with him.

  He tried to crane his head round to see more, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. His body wanted to lay down and go back to sleep, yet his instincts were screaming at him to get a grip and start running around before it was too late.

  A hand grasped his chin and forced him upright, and he found himself staring through the front window of the vehicle at a busy motorway. It looked familiar and was obviously England, but his brain couldn’t yet make the right connections to tell him where he might be.

  He was sitting behind the passenger seat and the driver was reaching back to examine him. Gary? Doug? Howie? It was Gary... he remembered the boyish face handing him a glass of orange to drink in the house. That was when he’d felt tired and fallen asleep. Spiked it, the bastard.

  The van turned several times, and Palmer opened his eyes. He was lying down once more, dribbling onto the seat. He must have fallen asleep again. He got a vague impression of houses and shops, and he reasoned sluggishly that they were no longer on the motorway. Then the vehicle slowed and went over a bump, and he felt a strong hand tighten on his arm to stop him toppling off the seat. It seemed to release a surge of clari
ty into his brain, and his thoughts swam and became momentarily more lucid. He’d been drugged. Like a lemon in some cheap Portsmouth boozer. He shook his head, trying to brush away the fog and find clear air on the other side. Riley was going to be so pissed off at him for getting caught like this.

  Then he remembered she’d been caught too, once. Only he and - what was that bloke’s name? - Mitcheson, had galloped to her rescue like knights in rusty armour-for-hire. But she hadn’t really needed rescuing, had she? She’d kicked seven kinds of piss out of that McManus bloke and would’ve chucked him down the hole if Mitcheson hadn’t got there and done it first. Or had he? Shite, he thought, I feel sick...

  He held his breath and concentrated, remembering an airport - somewhere hot this time. He’d been lolling about on legs like spaghetti, feeling unbearably heavy and unable to control his movements. Somewhere along the way he recalled being sick down his front. No one had bothered cleaning him up, and when he’d tried wiping the mess off his chest, his hands had been slapped away. After a while he’d almost got used to the smell.

  Along the way, under strong overhead lights, someone had asked if he was fit to travel. No, he’d wanted to shout out... I’m not fit. I’m sick and carrying more narcotics than a Boots delivery truck, for Christ’s sake..!

  But nobody had been listening. He’d been manhandled up a set of narrow steps and strapped into a seat. Alongside him was a long metal box fixed by brackets and straps to the floor. He wondered who’d got the cheap seat. Then someone fed him some liquid through a straw and he was sick again. Soiled and uncomfortable, and with a vague sense of shame settling on him, he’d gone back to sleep, feeling the floor lifting beneath him and the pressure building in his ears.

  He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and huddled in on himself, eyes tight shut. That was better; the nausea was receding. Still bloody hot, though. Couldn’t figure out why. He was surprised to find he was no longer trussed up like a Norfolk turkey. He sighed and flexed his fingers in his pockets, remembering some distant lesson in a tin hut somewhere about examining extremities to gain awareness in times of disorientation. Jesus, he was so fucking disorientated, he couldn’t even recall what his extremities were. But the movement made him remember something more recent. It tugged at his consciousness and slipped away, a ghostly thought, then came back through the fog, gaining clarity. That other bloke, Mitcheson, had been helping load him into the Land Cruiser at the villa, and had pressed something into his pocket, like he didn’t want anyone to know. A going away present.

  Palmer extended his fingers, feeling the cloth inside his pockets. He felt something hard and the memory came flooding back. It reminded him of the games he’d played with his sister a lifetime ago on cold, wet days when there was nothing else to do. They would take turns at putting their hands into a box and saying what was in there. Dead easy. Half the time he got it wrong - especially when she put in stupid girlish things like walnuts and hair-clips and pens. But not when it was his turn. Like tennis balls, a matchbox or the plastic frogmen he’d saved up and bought to play with in the bath.

  Or the pruning knife his dad had given him on his twelfth birthday. The one with the wooden handle and curved blade.

  His fingers slid along the familiar shape, and for a moment he wondered if his childhood memories were playing tricks. How could he have his old pruning knife in his pocket after all this time? He’d lost it years ago. Then the image burst through in another bubble of clarity, and he remembered. Good old Mitcheson. So you came through in the end? Only thing is, what the hell can I do with a pruning knife if I can’t stand up?

  Chapter 45

  Mitcheson swayed against the rolling of the taxi as it passed under the M4, watching Doug and Howie on the back seat. He guessed they were probably dreaming about how they were going to spend all the money Lottie Grossman had promised them. Whatever they were thinking, they seemed uneasy in his presence, like kids meeting up with a former teacher and not quite knowing whether to call him Sir or not.

  He glanced through the side window at the familiar landscape. They were passing the Holiday Inn, the road curving north through landscaped banks and artificially created gardens.

  They were nearly at their destination.

  He felt a thudding in his chest and came as close to praying as he had done in years. It wouldn’t have been a traditional prayer, but it would have amounted to the same thing. Save Palmer, save himself. Keep Riley safe. Amen.

  Not that Doug and Howie would give a toss about saving anyone. To them, wasting Palmer was just another job. He guessed Gary would do it. He didn’t turn a hair - never had done. Killing was what he did. No problems.

  He wondered if Palmer had discovered the knife yet.

  He glanced at his watch. By now Lottie Grossman would be on her way to Jordans, her husband’s body trundling somewhere else in the back of a funeral van. Unless everything had gone pear-shaped.

  He wondered if the drugs had got through. Unless the police were waiting it would take a brave official to question the arrival of a coffin and insist on a search. Lottie Grossman had detailed Gary to do that job and told Mitcheson and the others to get on with cleaning up the villa and making sure the Moroccans weren’t around. He stopped thinking about it when the taxi turned into a commercial estate. The place was nearly deserted at this time of day, with just a few cars parked in front of some units, lights burning against the falling gloom.

  They swung into a small cul-de-sac and Doug told the driver to stop in front of a row of three small workshops with oval glass panels set into roller doors. Two of the units had name-plates. The third, in the middle, was blank. Nearby stood a skip full of twisted car body parts and scrap metal.

  The workshops were dark. They waited for the taxi to turn the corner before unlocking the small personnel door in the middle unit.

  Riley hurried across to the taxi rank, scanning the area in case Mitcheson or the others should appear. She gave the driver the address of the unit Mitcheson had mentioned and sat back, heart pounding, willing the traffic to keep moving.

  As they emerged from the tunnel and split into the feeder lanes to the A4 and M4 link roads, Riley dialled Brask’s number again. “Any news?” she asked.

  “Psychic child,” he breathed down the line at her. “I’ve just had a call from a detective sergeant in the drugs squad. He was asked to have a look at the Cessna out at Rickmansworth, but it was too late. Everyone bar the pilot had gone.”

  “What?” Riley exploded, causing the taxi driver to look anxiously in his mirror. “Of course they’ve left... how could they be so bloody incompetent?”

  “It happens,” he said calmly. “I hope you’re not going to do anything silly, sweetie. I’ve got other jobs lined up for you already. Leave the rest to the police.”

  “I can’t,” she retorted. “Anyway, I wouldn’t miss this for anything. I owe Palmer for getting him into this in the first place. You’d better tell the editor what’s happening. This is going to explode tomorrow morning and I don’t want the editor thinking he’s been scooped out of a story. The details behind this aren’t going to be known by anyone else, so I don’t want him going into a panic.”

  “Will do, sweetie. Take care.”

  As she switched off her mobile, the cab pulled into the commercial estate and coasted past the rows of near-empty buildings. The driver slid the glass back.

  “I think number twenty-four’s down a side road somewhere. You sure you want dropping here - there’s not many people about.”

  Riley handed him a note with a fat tip. “Don’t worry,” she said, grateful for his concern. “There’ll be someone else along shortly.”

  When he’d gone, she walked along the road until she reached a turning into a small cul-de-sac. On her left a high brick wall bordered a van-hire depot. To her right stood an unkempt shrubbery, before the road opened out in front of three small workshop units with roller doors. There were no cars in sight but she could see a light in the mid
dle unit. She slipped into the bushes, pushing through dense laurel until she arrived at the wall of the nearest workshop.

  The brickwork was cold and damp from a recent downpour. There was no sound from within. She slid along the wall to check for a back entrance, but found it blocked off by a high fence.

  Riley headed towards the front and poked her head round the corner. Whoever was in the middle building was being very quiet, and she doubted there was any work going on inside.

  Just across from the units was a rubbish skip. It was a perfect observation point but getting in there unseen might be a problem. She took a deep breath, ready to sprint across the road.

  The air inside the workshop was musty. A pile of junk mail lay scattered by the door. The floor was empty except for some tea-chests and a heavy bench set against one wall. On the top lay a jumble of hand-tools, a kettle and jars of coffee and sugar.

  Howie plugged in the kettle and spooned coffee and sugar into polystyrene cups. The drone of the water heating sounded loud in the empty space.

  Mitcheson cast an eye over the tools on the bench. Home handyman stuff mostly, with screwdrivers, pliers, hammer, a hand-drill, and a selection of screws and nails in plastic boxes.

  He pulled up a tea chest and sat down, watching Howie drum a spoon on the coffee jar while Doug stood by the roller door keeping watch through the viewing panel.

  Howie handed out the coffee and they stood sipping, glad of something to do. Now would have been the time to talk about future plans and hopes... what any group of men did when about to split up and pass on. But it wasn’t going to happen. Their positions had shifted over the last few days, and Mitcheson was aware that he’d been kidding himself about any kind of bond existing between them. There might have been once, when the bullets were flying and they were screaming down a narrow, mine-infested road near Bihac; or out by the airport at Sarajevo in a white APC, hoping there were no Serbs with rocket launchers trained on them. But not any longer. The promise of easy money had seen to that. And maybe a growing desperation to make something, anything, of their lives rather than face life as a security guard in a shopping centre, growing soft and fat and being the object of scorn from kids with nothing better to do.