Deep Shelter (25 page)

He continued east, past Centre Point. No armed support there yet, just a confused-looking constable. Then down Chancery Lane to Merrill Lynch: two City police drove up as he watched. It wasn’t clear to what extent they understood the operation. But they were present. No one was getting out easily. This was chaotic but it might actually work, Belsey thought. He allowed himself that brief hope. Trap him. Smoke him out. Belsey turned and headed back along the Strand to Trafalgar Square. That was when he clocked a black Land Rover in his rearview.

IT WAS A BOXY DISCOVERY 4, CUSTOMISED WITH A BULL
bar. Heavy tint on the sides. Driving too close. The Land Rover circled the square behind him. Then a debate started on the police band-radio.

“It’s Nick Belsey’s I reckon, sir.”

“Nick Belsey’s voice.”

“His call sign . . .”

“. . . wanted for questioning.”

“Call it off,” the Assistant Commissioner instructed. “It’s a hoax.”

Belsey punched the steering wheel. His pursuers weren’t letting him out of their sight. He cut sharp right, then left. The accumulated mess of his car went flying. Something jammed beneath the pedals. He reached down and pulled out the spray can he’d retrieved from Centre Point. The Land Rover caught up again. Belsey swerved the wrong way onto St. Martins Place then hit the brakes. The Land Rover slammed into his back. Belsey jumped out with the spray can. He walked around to the Land Rover, tore the windscreen wipers off and sprayed the windscreen red. Two men inside stared at him. They both wore suit jackets over T-shirts. They disappeared behind the paint. Belsey got back in his car and slipped west into Chinatown.

They had Belsey’s name and a full description out on the Met-wide police band. “Detain if seen . . .” He imagined various friends and former lovers tuning into that with a roll of the eyes. He stopped behind the Trocadero and caught his breath. Half six in the West End, surreal at the best of times. The confused and desperate and drugged. Find yourself by Leicester Square at six thirty in the morning and you knew something was going wrong with your life.

So, Belsey thought: Kirsty’s crash—that looked like it might have been caused by a black Land Rover. Only witness to Powell’s death was a man in a Land Rover who wasn’t answering Belsey’s calls. What if we flip the incident on its head, he thought. You’ve still got Powell and another man running, only both are being chased. Powell gets struck by the Land Rover. The other man, understandably, gets back in his stolen BMW and bombs it. Down North End Road, down Heath Street. Past a detective trying to get some peace.

It was time to go under the radar. Belsey scribbled down the numbers he needed, then took the battery and sim card out of his mobile. He tore the rear facing police lights from his back windscreen. He went to a cash machine in a twenty-four hour Costcutter and withdrew the maximum daily amount of three hundred pounds. He bought new batteries for his torch. He asked the kid behind the till if they sold screwdrivers and, after a moment’s searching, he found an all-in-one pack beneath the counter with three screwdrivers and a pair of pliers.

Belsey drove around the back of an Angus Steakhouse. Rats scattered. There were three cars parked. He unscrewed the number plates on a VW Golf and switched them for his own. It meant he could keep access to police-band radio while deflecting attention from any Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology.

It was time to sample the delights of the Golden Pavilion.

He left the car behind the Steakhouse and walked down Gerrard Street to the Golden Pavilion, a good restaurant on the corner of a piss-stained alleyway. Its lights were out, but a slice of neon cut into the side street from its kitchen door. Belsey knocked and pushed the door. A waistcoated man sat at a table just inside. He had a bow tie hanging loose around his neck, a sheen of sweat over his pockmarked cheeks.

“Play?” he said.

“Mr. Andrew here?”

“Not tonight.”

“I wanted to buy some things. I need a phone,” Belsey said, “Pay as you go, but web-enabled. And something I can use for self-defence: small, but effective.” He showed money.

“Weapon?”

“Weapon and a phone, for under a hundred quid. If you can do some kind of early-morning deal.”

The doorman led Belsey to the back of the kitchen and opened a second door into a brightly lit room with fifteen men playing Mahjong and Pai Gow poker, a lot of smoke and paper money around. The walls were peach-coloured. The men were all either very fat or very thin. A young waiter with an empty tray appeared and the first man said something in Cantonese. The waiter looked at Belsey, then disappeared. He came back a few moments later with a fake Samsung Galaxy and a leather-wrapped cosh. The cosh felt good to hold, with a wrist-strap and spring handle. Belsey checked that the phone got him online and haggled the whole thing down to ninety.

When he was back in his car, he tried calling Jemma’s number from the new mobile. No answer. He left a message explaining that he’d changed phones. Tried Kirsty. The same. He dug through the Umbro bag for the phone number he’d obtained for Gary Finch. It was a landline. It wasn’t local to the hit-and-run and it wasn’t New Scotland Yard. He dialled. No one answered. Belsey tried again. This time, after 0207 for central London, Belsey dialled the first three numbers of Finch’s phone followed by four zeros. Someone did answer.

“Yes?”

“Is this the right number for Inspector Finch?” Belsey asked.

“This is the reception of Tintagel House.”

Belsey hung up. Tintagel was home to the Confidential Intelligence Unit. So now he knew who’d been looking into Powell’s accident. The exact details of CIU’s remit were opaque for obvious reasons. They had inherited a lot of Special Branch files. They also inherited Tintagel on the Albert Embankment, the ugliest office block in police hands. The place was known jovially among officers as Tinkerbell. It was a hop across the river from MI5, ten discreet steps to MI6, and it accommodated men and women from both. From a police point of view the unit drew in members of Covert and Firearms and Counter Terrorism who disappeared off police books and changed their phone numbers. They gathered intel on what had been called subversion when Belsey joined the force and was now referred to as extremism. He guessed he was being extreme.

One thing was certain, however. Finch was a dogsbody. Someone on the other side of secrecy was running the show.

He watched Sky news through the window of a cafe as it prepared to open up. No news on Craik. No news on St. Matthew’s. Full-blown Jemma appeal, parents crying and holding on to one another. Jemma took after her mother. Belsey remembered her saying she hadn’t spoken to her parents for two years, that they were born-again Christians who’d found sex toys in her bedroom; they lived in Peterborough. They’d been reconciled with their daughter in her absence, it seemed. The parents’ appeal was followed by shots of Euphoria with the house lights up, which didn’t flatter it.

Missing since Monday night.

No point holding on to incriminating evidence. He found the envelope containing the CCTV footage from Costa and wondered how best to dispose of it. Burn the envelope, break the disc. He shook out the disc and a note came with it. He walked outside, put his lighter to the note then saw what it said.

Customer account: Ms. J. Stevens.

Last use: Tuesday, 11 June, 18.10

That was almost twenty-four hours after he lost her.

HE READ THE NOTE IN FULL:

Card no. 94406. Customer account: Ms. J. Stevens.

Last use: Tuesday, 11/06/2013, 18.10. Store: 210 Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park.

Transaction: £6.30.

So, according to Costa, she was buying coffees thirty-six hours ago. This was the transaction on the footage they’d sent, not her with Belsey. He wondered if they’d made a mistake.

He put the disc back in the envelope and looked around. Where to play a DVD in Soho at seven in the morning? Plenty of
24-hour
signs flashed untemptingly. Only the Flamingo advertised XXX Film Shows. It was worth a shot. Belsey found its doorway, between Genuine Models and We Sell the Blue Pill. Narrow red stairs led down to a UV-lit bar with elaborate group sex up on a projector screen. It was empty. The UV picked out dust. He could see stains on the red-cushioned seating. Then the staff woke up. The scene assembled itself for his benefit. A woman in a short dress got onto a low stage and started to gyrate. After a few seconds she was joined by a friend who wanted to rub their bodies together: one blonde and one brunette, equally toned and glazed. Shadows crossed on the projector screen.

Belsey took a stool at the bar. Eventually the dancers stepped down and sat either side of him. It was a buyer’s market. 7 a.m. in a Soho clip joint, and he felt safer than he had for a while. They fussed with the lint on his jacket. A barman appeared, looking more like security with a bow tie. He wiped a dirty rag down the bar, as if the whole place was a museum of insincere gestures.

“Drinks?” the barman prompted.

“I’ll have a coffee,” Belsey said.

“Minimum spend is fifty pounds.”

“Then make it a large one. I need to play this.” Belsey put the disc down. The barman considered the request.

“Do you like champagne?” one of the women asked.

“I love champagne. I love watching other people drink champagne.” Belsey laid one hundred pounds by the disc. That was two thirds of his crash money gone and he was still on Berwick Street. “We can get whatever we want if this gets played.”

The barman took the disc to a laptop at the side. The orgy disappeared, replaced by the Belsize Park Costa, ten feet by ten. The women exchanged looks.

The CCTV footage came from a ceiling camera above the service counter. It covered the entrance and the tills and a fair slice of store. A good shot of customers ordering, also the front tables and window seats. Date stamp: 11 June.

Ferryman walked in at 17.58. He was in a suit, no hood, but it was him. The best shot of him so far. Short, neat hair, eyes deep-set and a little far apart. He walked in and looked around, checking people. He was searching for someone. They weren’t there. He chose a table close to the front window. It was to the right of the shot but comfortably within range. He borrowed a third chair from an adjacent table.

Belsey’s fifty-pound coffee arrived. The barman placed flutes of champagne in front of the women and set up an ice bucket. They were all watching the footage.

Ferryman didn’t buy anything. He sat stiffly and tried to figure out what to do with his hands. He straightened the other seats. He glanced at the door as Joseph and Rebecca Green walked in.

Belsey stared. Dr. Joseph Green, proud owner of the BMW that had broken his peace three days ago. Green headed straight over to the man who had stolen it and placed a hand on his shoulder. His wife followed and hugged him.

Belsey walked up to the projection. Rebecca wore a white sundress. She held a straw hat. Joseph wore a creased white shirt and linen trousers. Rebecca sat down and put a hand on Ferryman’s arm. Green took a seat too. The three of them had a chat.

After two minutes Ferryman stood up and got three coffees. He took a wallet from his back pocket and slid out Jemma Stevens’s reward card. You could see the card in his hand as he waited to pay. He tapped its edge against the counter. Belsey stared at the card, at what felt like a display for his eyes now, here, two days later. The rectangle of plastic was a link to a different world, one they shared. Ferryman paid and checked as the card was swiped. He returned it carefully to his wallet. He took a tray with three lattes in tall glasses to the table and sat back down with the doctor and his wife.

The three of them spent another fifteen minutes in the cafe. At one point the doctor appeared to cover his face with his hands in exasperation. He left with his wife at 18.27. You could see their legs outside the window, upper halves blocked by a sign. They went north up the hill. Ferryman sat for forty seconds at the table then left and went south. The three coffees remained on the tray, untouched.

Belsey went around the bar to the laptop. His companions had lost interest. The barman was refilling the ladies’ glasses with the businesslike expression of someone pouring alcohol down the sink. Belsey ran the footage back to the start—to Ferryman walking through the door, suited, hot, anxious. He watched the screen, beyond the stage and its pole and its drifting coloured lights. Then Belsey knew where he’d seen him. Emerging, awkward, from the consultation room on Windmill Drive. He was Joseph Green’s patient.

THE FRONT DOOR WAS ON THE LATCH AT WINDMILL
Drive. Belsey stepped inside. He could hear two voices, Joseph Green with another man. They were in some kind of argument. Belsey felt for his cuffs. Then he recognised the second voice; it was the disciple. The argument was an intellectual one.

“How is this relevant?” Green asked gently, wearily. “I’ve told you I attended his lectures in Paris. But I hadn’t encountered Brodsky’s theory of the ego when I wrote
Unnatural Man
.”

Belsey walked to the waiting area and watched through the study doorway. Green stood, staring out of the window like someone at the bars of their cell. The disciple was sitting in front of notes, glowing with combative delight. Coffee and croissants waited on a tray at the side.

“It is entirely relevant. You see, this is crucial to the development of your theories. This is your major influence, and if you don’t mind me saying, its omission in your account is striking.”

“I’ve never denied my debt to Otto Brodsky. But if you think his theory of the ego underlies my work then you’ve either misunderstood his writing or mine.”

Belsey walked in.

“Doctor Green, I need to speak to you.” Green spun towards him, trailing irritation. The disciple watched with proprietorial eyes as if Belsey might have a few theories about Brodsky’s ego up his sleeve.

“We were just going to give it five more,” the younger man said.