Gatecrasher (30 page)

He wouldn’t have to do that tomorrow he knew, but the preparation was the same, the reading and re-reading, the notes he kept scribbling as he tried to absorb the information so he could reel it off without reading it. He needed facts and figures in his head, he needed to know what it was he would be talking about. It was this parallel that made him uneasy because it invoked memories of what normally followed; standing up to speak, all eyes on him, the dry mouth, the quick pulse, the pressure. Tomorrow, he knew at least that his would be an audience of one. But what an audience.

He was beginning to feel that he was soon to hit the wall; that what he was reading now was not going in anymore. His brain had reached its capacity and he couldn’t force himself to absorb anymore. He probably knew enough now and he wondered as he sat there, surrounded by paperwork and the humming PC in his flat, how much he would need to say and how much was already known.

Campbell
was nervous. He would have to make an instant impression. There would not be any long introductions where he could build a damning and convincing picture or put forth his claim, no visual aids or overhead projections, no PowerPoint. He would live or die in those opening seconds and he would need to have the other man listening from the off, to get him into the position that
Campbell
needed him.
Campbell
knew that the other man wielded immense power and influence and if he got it wrong the implications were grave and unthinkable.

But as much as he tried to formulate that clear, decisive argument, other details clouded in on his thinking, and one more than most. A name
, Ben Wishart
. One he knew
that
he knew but when or how he’d heard it, he couldn’t pin down. Wishart
’s name
popped up here and there in the research he’d been so submerged in
as did others. T
hough it we
re no surprise that other people
might have become involved, inadvertently or otherwise, along the way
, this name wormed its way into his thoughts the more he tried to dismiss it.

Sarah walked into the room and he looked up. She wore jeans and a fitted t-shirt with a Superman S emblazoned across the front. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail and she wore no make-up. Having come over to see him immediately on his return, she had retired exhausted and had been sleeping for the last hour leaving
Campbell
to his reading and his peaking sense of isolation and impending confrontation. She rubbed at her eyes and
Campbell
wondered that she might not be better going back to sleep.

‘How you doing?’ she asked.

‘Headache. Losing the plot,’ he replied. ‘You?’

‘Better for the sleep.’

She stood there in the door for a long moment.
Campbell
had hardly spoken to her since he had negotiated her safety the night before.

On arriving that afternoon she had looked tired, fraught and had told him that she had slept badly at her sister’s flat. Yes, she had been safe there and out of the way, where no-one might think to look, but she knew nothing of what was happening all the same and she had worried. She knew nothing of how he might be faring.

As she stood in the doorway running her hands over her tired face he felt as if he should be apologising for everything, that he should be begging for her not to hate him for what he had involved her in. He remembered that desperate sprint through the cold wet night, leaving her hiding frightened in the trees. He saw
Walker
touching her, leering at her. He remembered the look in her eye as he was led from the dark squalid room, leaving her behind in a cold and threatening place that she had not seen before and with people she did not know.

‘Danny,’ Sarah said looking at him. He realised he had been staring at her as his thoughts wandered.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. Thank you for coming back for me.’

‘What? Don’t be silly.’ It was the last thing he had been expecting.

‘Really. I know you think you’re responsible but I do make my own decisions, for better or worse. You didn’t have to do what you did.’

Campbell
remembered his clumsy flight down that dingy corridor, racing back toward her and Angie. He had been trying to escape from the gunman as much as anything. Had he any clear plan to rescue them? Any idea where he would go had
Walker
or Drennan followed him? All he could really remember was a fierce and driven determination to get to her.

‘I really didn’t do much you know.’

Sarah smiled at him and then walked across the room.
Campbell
felt something in his throat tighten and he swallowed as she drew near.

Without a word Sarah’s arms reached around his neck where he sat and she pulled him toward her, squeezing him to her chest and bending down to kiss the top of his head.

She held him there for a long time and he couldn’t tell for sure but it felt as if she might be crying. Nervously, uncertainly,
Campbell
put his arms around her back and turned in the chair. She moved her legs so they were between his and pressed herself closer to him and his arms reached as far around her as they would go, one at her waist, the other snaking up around her shoulder. He closed his eyes as they leant against each other.

And the name came back to him again. Ben Wishart.

Tuesday
.
6pm
.

Drennan had been sitting at home that morning after a restless night throughout which the image of
Tyler
’s dead vacant eyes staring upwards at nothing had haunted him. Drennan stepping over his body. Stepping into the road dazed, looking for his car, trying to decide whether to call someone, what he would say to them. Fighting panic.

He still had blood over him from the scuffle with the tall wiry man upstairs who had jumped him. Skinny but tough the man had proved a real problem and they had wrestled on the floor of that dank bedroom for long seconds, struggling desperately until Drennan had pushed the long snout of his gun into the man’s abdomen and pumped two rounds into him.

It had been as if someone had set a small bomb off inside his body and as he had drawn himself up out of the tangle on the floor to stand he could see what he had done to the man’s insides as they slipped out of his back. Only the detached unreality he had felt had saved him from vomiting at the stench of all that blood and the man’s relaxing bowels.

He remembered feeling very little at the sight of the knife handle pointing up at him from
Tylers
red chest like an accusation. Guilt certainly that it was his fault somehow, fear at what would happen now. But remorse? Grief for his fallen colleague? Drennan had only been worried, as he carried
Tyler
’s body to his car, that he didn’t feel these things. That perhaps he lacked something vital.

The one thing he was missing of course was the memory stick and as mystified as he still was about what he had walked into the night before, Gresham was insistent that he still had it and that the time had now come to make the exchange.

Drennan agreed. He suspected that
Gresham
had somehow managed to lose the stick after seeing
Campbell
in that house with men that had no obvious connections with
Gresham
. All the same he seemed pretty confident that he had it now and that he now wanted shot of it.

Perhaps one of his gang had run his mouth off and put one of
Gresham
’s rivals on the scent. That seemed a reasonable possibility and it seemed as though whatever they had tried, Drennan and Tyler had put paid to it since all the men in the house were now dead and Campbell and the girl had vanished again.

With
Gresham
now demanding his money, it seemed that the attempt of the man he had shot to get in on the deal had prompted
Gresham
to speed things up. With Drennan equally keen to get his hands on the memory stick, where it would be safer than with that useless rabble, he had readily agreed to meet with him that coming Thursday. His boss would sanction the payment now, eager to regain some grip on a situation that had threatened to spin out of control. With Gresham paid off and out of the way and the stick safe there remained only Campbell, who seemed more interested in running than fighting and that suited him fine. Maybe he would show up again soon, in which case they would take their chance to silence him when it presented itself. But maybe they would never hear from him again.

Drennan hoped so because so far he’d been nothing but trouble.

Wednesday
.
6pm
.

Andrew Griffin dipped his chin down into the woollen scarf he wore and hurried his pace but he felt unsettled enough by this meeting already to be too bothered about the temperature. He was both intrigued and agitated by what he was going to hear.

The neutral location suggested something clandestine, but as he trotted up the steps and into the lobby of the hotel he felt more comfortable in the anonymity that it might provide than in using a more public location. He could never have done this in the company offices.

He gave his name at reception and waited with a polite smile whilst the attractive blond girl behind the desk tapped a keyboard and watched a screen.

‘Five one four,’ she said and handed him a keycard.

Griffin
thanked her and walked to the lift trying to remain composed, trying to fight the rising unease. He had no idea what he would be told or asked. Was there more to discover that he did not yet know or had he found out everything about his predecessors?

Griffin
was nervous that things seemed to have gone quiet since the break-in. Though that did mean at least that nothing bad had yet happened that might threaten him or his company, neither did it rule such things out. He would rather have something tangible to deal with, a challenge to tackle. Waiting was pure frustration for
Griffin
but now perhaps he was finally going to find something out.

He hit the button for the fifth floor and loosened his coat and scarf. Already he was getting warm.

Wednesday
.
6.15pm
.

Campbell
sat in the chair near the window and watched the evening gather over
London
. He wore a navy suit, the only one he owned that was tailored. It was an indulgence but he had decided to spend a little of his bonus a year before on getting a tailored suit so he could look good in important meetings and at the summer wedding of his boss.

In a clean, crisp white shirt and red silk tie
Campbell
had looked at himself in the mirror and was surprised at the little boost of confidence that it gave him. A simple thing but effective to look well-dressed and professional.
Campbell
wanted to make an instant impression and jeans and a sweatshirt was not the first thing he wanted the other man to notice about him. The black eye he could not hide but he could at least take the focus from it.

After a moment
Campbell
stood again, conscious that he might be creasing the suit or the shirt beneath, scared that the slightest detail might wreck his carefully laid plans. He was unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. He knew that his wait was almost over now but it did not ease his tension.

He ran through what he would say again, rehearsed his opening line quietly to himself but every time he spoke it was different; now strong and confident, now nervous and pleading, now challenging and with an edge of aggression. The wealth of information that he had taken in over the past two weeks and in the previous twenty-four hours fought for priority in his mind. Facts and figures were piled on top of each other and he was starting to feel that he didn’t know which was most important, what might be irrelevant. He worried that in his haste he would simply spew out the information in a stream rather than building the coherent and definite argument that he wanted to present.

He looked for a moment at the mini bar in the corner, wondered whether a stiff drink might bolster his shaking nerves but thought better of it. He needed a clear head and the smell of alcohol on his breath would hardly help his credibility.

There was subdued noise from beyond the hotel suite and the sounds of other guests opening and closing doors, of a television turned up too high in the next room.
Campbell
heard voices in the corridor which caught his attention although he was not expecting more than one person. Perhaps his guest had not come alone, he thought with alarm, but the voices passed and it was quiet again.