NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer 5) (18 page)

Palmer’s
attention was fixed on a Victorian-style villa across the street. A low
retaining wall wearing drunken coping stones fronted a neglected garden, which
held a rusted motorcycle frame and a discarded kitchen unit with battered
fibreboard sides swollen and distorted by rain. A set of broken steps led up to
the front door, and the windows were draped carelessly with grey net curtains.
A line of buttons and name slots sat on one side of the door.

Palmer checked
his watch. So far, there had been no sign of movement at the house, and no
sight of the man he’d come to see. But he couldn’t sit here all evening.

Just as he was
about to cross the road for a closer look, a car pulled into the kerb. It was a
plain black Mondeo with a cab licence plate on the rear skirt.

The driver got
out and walked up the front steps with a spring in his step, scanning the
street on either side. He made it look casual but Palmer knew it was anything
but. A lifetime of staying one step ahead of dubious friends, unpredictable
enemies and the eager reach of the law had given Ray Szulu a set of habits too
ingrained to break. He disappeared inside and closed the door.

Palmer left his
car and quickly crossed the street. He knew Szulu’s flat had a view over the
front, and that he would probably look out of the window as a matter of habit
as soon as he got in. He ran up the steps and tried the door. It was locked,
but ill-fitting, the wood tired and loose. He grasped the central knocker to
keep it still and pushed with his shoulder, concentrating on the centre of the
door. The wood creaked once, then the lock clicked and the door swung open.
Inside, the air was muggy, the atmosphere heavy and dark. He listened for
sounds of movement, then walked up the stairs and knocked on the door of 3A.

‘Yeah, wha-?’
The door opened and the familiar face registered instant recognition. And
dismay.

‘Hello, Ray,’
said Palmer, smiling genially. ‘How’s it hanging? I was in the area and thought
I’d pop round for tea and cakes.’

‘No way!’ Szulu
started to close the door, but Palmer slammed it back, propelling him into the
room.

‘Not nice,’
Palmer chided him, and followed him inside, closing the door behind him. He
glanced around the room. It was furnished just as he remembered it, with large
cushions, a sofa, a couple of armchairs and a CD player, mercifully silent. He
remembered how Szulu liked to play music very loudly, even when he had
visitors. ‘Have you decorated since I was last here? It’s not very ethnic, if
you don’t mind me saying so.’ He was taking a deliberate swipe at Szulu’s
ability to dip in and out of his Rasta roots whenever it suited him. The man
wasn’t quite as dumb as he liked to pretend.

‘What the fuck
do you want, Palmer?’ Szulu was rubbing his arm and wincing, his dreadlocks
forming a curtain across the side of his face. ‘You can’t come in here like
this – I’ll call the cops.’

‘Of course you
will. And they’ll come running because they so value your safety. Now we’ve got
that out of the way, how about a cup of tea? I’m parched.’ He turned and found
his way through to a small kitchenette. It was surprisingly neat and tidy, with
evidence that Szulu knew his way around both kitchen and supermarket.

Palmer filled
the kettle and switched it on.

‘So,’ he
continued, affably, ‘how’s the driving job?’ He turned to face Szulu, who was
looking at him as if he’d grown horns. ‘More importantly, how’s the arm?’

‘Go screw
yourself,’ muttered Szulu, his voice sliding into a soft Jamaican twang. ‘And
stay out of me place, man. You trespassin’.’

Palmer gave him
a pained look. ‘See, that’s what I mean. Now you’ve gone all Bob Marley on me.
I only came round to offer you some gainful employment. You haven’t gone all
fussy about who you take money from, have you? Oh, of course, not – you drove
for Lottie Grossman, didn’t you? Remember - that wicked old bitch who tried to
kill Riley and me?’ He turned back to the kitchen and made two mugs of tea, and
brought them back into the living room.

Szulu was scowling
at the memory of his last encounter with Palmer and Riley, but took his mug and
sat down. ‘What do you mean, employment? You need a driver or a heavy - what?’
He’d lost the twang.

‘What I need is
someone who’s street-savvy. Someone who can melt into the shadows and move like
a panther. Someone who knows all the moves. A surveillance job, in other
words.’ Palmer took a seat and sipped his tea, waiting for Szulu to catch on
and show some interest. ‘Know anyone like that?’

‘You’re taking
the piss, right?’ Szulu looked offended. ‘I can do that. How much we talking
about?’

‘A hundred.
Cash. Shouldn’t take more than half a day. No risks.’

Szulu looked
suspicious. ‘Like there’s no catch, man. How do I know it ain’t gonna turn
tribal? Last time I had you and that Gavin woman near me, I got shot, remember?
And what was that army nut’s name – Mitcheson?’ He went back to massaging his
arm and glanced towards the door as if the assailant he was referring to was
about to come charging into the room.

‘Mitcheson’s in
the States,’ Palmer told him. ‘He’s got better things to do than follow you
around.’ Szulu had earned his bullet wound after threatening Riley Gavin with a
.22 calibre automatic. Her then boyfriend, John Mitcheson, a former army
officer, had appeared and calmly shot Szulu with his own gun. Szulu evidently
still hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that making threats sometimes
brought unforeseen consequences.

‘Oh.’ He seemed
to relax a little. ‘He comin’ back?’

Palmer waggled
a hand in a maybe/maybe not gesture. ‘The jury’s still out.’ He smiled. ‘I
could bring Riley round, though, if you like. She’s joined a gun club since you
last met. She uses a .357 Magnum.’

Szulu nearly
gagged on his tea. ‘Don’t joke, man. That ain’t funny. I already apologised to her
for that stuff.’

‘Don’t worry,
I’m teasing.’ Palmer looked at him. ‘Are you on, then?’

Szulu shrugged.
‘Sure. Easy. But why you being so generous with the dough? Who’s the target?’

Palmer rolled
his eyes. ‘Subject, Ray. We refer to it as the subject. A target is something
you shoot at. Or someone,’ he added pointedly.

‘Subject,
whatever. Who is it? And why the dosh? You could’ve got me to do this for
free.’

‘Because it’s
personal.’ Palmer’s face was suddenly serious. ‘And I believe in paying for
talent.’

Szulu’s eyes
widened and he tucked away the compliment for later. Having a man like Palmer
calling him talent was rare. But he stayed with the look. He remembered all too
clearly the last time he’d seen Palmer with that expression on his face. The
man was scary when he got going, and prepared to go through anything. The last
time, it had been a psychotic south London gang leader named Ragga Pearl and
some former spy gone bad that had set him off. Him and Gavin, he had to admit,
they made a good team.

‘So who is this
person?’

‘They. They’re
a very careful bunch.’

‘Yeah?’ Szulu
shrugged again and stared into his tea, which was growing cold. He wanted to
change his mind and say he was too busy driving, that he’d got a long distance
trip to do and couldn’t spare the time. But a part of him wouldn’t allow it. It
wasn’t the money, either. Christ, a hundred wasn’t that good, even for a half
day. He wondered about the subject. All he knew was, it couldn’t be Ragga
Pearl, who was currently a guest of Her Majesty in Wormwood Scrubs. But he bet
it was someone in the same mould. Otherwise, Palmer wouldn’t be interested. In
spite of that, he was intrigued. ‘How d’you mean, careful?’

‘The subject’s
got a security detail on him, twenty-four-seven. He’s also what we in the profession
call ‘risk-aware’. Take street-wise and ramp it up a few notches. He’s not the
sort of man to treat lightly.’

‘Okay. Sounds
cool. What’s he do, this bloke?’ Szulu took another sip of tea, relaxing at the
idea of doing something more interesting for a change than driving people
around London.

Palmer took a
long time before replying. He seemed to weighing his words with care. Then he
said calmly, ‘There’s a possibility he’s connected to the Russian Mafia.’

Szulu’s tea
erupted all over his face.

Palmer approached
the side of Pantile House and stopped, checking the area for any signs of
movement. He glanced at his watch. It was past nine in the evening and the
streets were quiet. He’d waited for ten minutes already but seen nobody. From
what Mark Chase had said about the building, there was no twenty-four-hour
security watch, and he’d already noted and discounted the position of the
nearest street cameras.

He stepped over
to one of the louvred vents at ground floor level and gently removed some of the
slats, placing them to one side. The opening was covered by a protective mesh
grill, and beyond that, more slats which could be closed like internal
shutters. He waited for a truck or a bus to go by, and under cover of the
engine noise, placed his foot against the mesh and kicked it in. Removing the
internal slats, he slid inside, then replaced a couple of the outer slats to
cover signs of his entry.

He waited two
minutes, ears taking in the hum of the heating and air-conditioning system,
eyes adjusting gradually to the atmosphere. He was standing at the end of a
passageway, lit every few feet by a low-wattage overhead lamp. The air was
stale and dusty, with the dull lifelessness of a space largely unused and
forgotten.

He moved along
the passageway away from the vent. At the far end he hoped to find the base of
the lift shaft and a stairway to the ground floor, rising somewhere near to the
reception area. He skirted a tangle of old Dexion racking, and adjacent to it a
pallet of paper bags, their gutted bellies spilling heavy grey dust, remnants
of a maintenance programme which, judging by the lumps of solidified cement,
had been called off long ago. Everything around it was grey and still. His
shoes crunched faintly with the gritty feel of an unswept floor, and he tried
to put his weight on the edges of his feet to minimise the noise. He breathed
through his mouth, straining for the sound of movement in the gloom.

A fresh pool of
light from one of the lamps revealed a puddle of water across the floor. Above
it, a dark mould showed in the concrete of the roof support, with another drip
ready to fall.

He skirted the
puddle, stepping past a pile of empty cement bags, and approached a large
square section of aluminium casing. It seemed to grow out of the concrete
floor, stretching to the ceiling and eating into the roof of the tunnel like a
square, hungry snake. The casing at floor level was scarred and battered, where
careless negotiation of the narrow gap with unwieldy objects had left its mark.

He moved past it
to the stairway and checked the layout. A steel door stood at the top of the
steps. He turned the handle with delicate care, just sufficient to check that
it was unlocked. It was. He left it and went to check out the lift shaft. But
here his luck ran out; the dimensions of the shaft were too narrow and there
was no handy inspection ladder to provide an alternative means of entry.

He walked back
along the passage to the vent where he had come in, and slid back out.
Carefully replacing the slats and the mesh, he walked away into the dark.

*********

Riley
felt strange entering the marble and gilt portals of Al-Bashir’s flagship store
in London’s West End without shopping in mind. She stepped out of the early
morning sunlight and was instantly absorbed by the warm glow of strategic
lighting and soft music, and the near-hallowed atmosphere of one of Europe’s
best-known stores.

She approached
the Information desk, where a young woman in the company’s sleek designer
uniform and an ergonomic head-set was checking a computer screen. She was
surrounded by a bank of phones and monitors with, Riley guessed, a panic button
somewhere close to hand below the counter top. There were relatively few people
about, and the day had clearly not yet begun in earnest in the field of luxury
retail goods.

‘I have an
appointment with Mr Al-Bashir,’ said Riley.

The young woman
smiled and glanced at the screen. ‘Of course. Miss Gavin, yes? I won’t keep
you.’ She touched the screen with her fingertips and spoke softly into her mouthpiece.

Riley looked
around her. There were no overt signs of the Al-Bashir security system in
sight, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that they were in place. She wondered
if she wasn’t sticking her head unnecessarily into the lion’s mouth. It would
hardly be the first time. Coming here could be a huge mistake if Al-Bashir’s
fierce reputation was as bad as it was rumoured to be.

A door clicked
open in one wall, and she turned to see a tall man in a dark grey suit appear.
He came over to her.

‘Miss Gavin? My
name is Koenig. I’m the security manager. Would you come this way?’

Riley followed
him through the door and found herself in a small lobby. As the door closed
behind them, Koenig turned and held out his hand. ‘May I check your bag,
please? It’s just a precaution.’

Riley allowed
him to take her shoulder bag. He produced a slim scanning wand and ran it over
the outside of the bag, then flicked through the contents. His actions were
precise and practised. He had the short hairstyle of a military man and the
angular face and build of someone accustomed to keeping fit, and she guessed he
was in his early forties. He reminded her of Palmer, only bigger and with a
less obvious charm.

‘That’s fine.
Thank you.’ He returned the bag.

‘I’m surprised
you don’t do body searches, too,’ she said coolly. ‘Not that it’s an
invitation.’