The Stretch (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (9 page)

Welch scowled at McKinley. ‘I can do you for obstruction, McKinley. Now get the hell away from . . .’

Welch dried up as he saw the flickknife in McKinley’s hand. McKinley thumbed the silver button on the handle of the knife and a six-inch-long blade snapped out.

‘Don’t do anything stupid, McKinley.’

McKinley looked at Welch with icy contempt, then bent down and stuck the knife into the front tyre. It hissed as McKinley pulled the knife out and retracted the blade.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ hissed Welch. ‘I could arrest you for that.’

McKinley shrugged indifferently. ‘So arrest me. Then we can go down to the station and talk to your boss about what you’re doing sitting outside Mrs Greene’s house in the middle of the night.’

∗      ∗      ∗

 

The doorbell rang and Sam hurried to answer it, wrapping her silk dressing gown around her. It was Andy McKinley, wearing a large black overcoat with the collar turned up against the cold of the night. ‘All sorted, Mrs Greene. He won’t be bothering you again.’

‘Thanks, Andy,’ said Sam gratefully. ‘I didn’t know who else to call.’

‘That’s what I’m here for, Mrs Greene.’ He gave a mock salute. ‘Take care now, yeah?’ He turned to go.

‘Andy, the least I can do is give you a drink. Come on in.’

McKinley hesitated and then turned and smiled. ‘Thanks, Mrs Greene. Never been known to turn down a dram.’

As Sam closed the front door and showed McKinley into the sitting room, Trisha appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s business,’ said Sam.

Trisha was only wearing a loose halter top and shorts, and Sam grinned as she saw how quickly McKinley averted his eyes. Trisha noticed, too, and she walked down a couple of stairs to get a closer look at the visitor.

‘Trisha, bed!’ warned Sam.

Trisha pulled a face, then went back upstairs.

‘Come on, Andy, take off that coat.’ McKinley put his overcoat on the back of a chair as Sam poured them both whiskies. ‘You want anything in it, Andy?’

‘Splash of water, Mrs Greene. Anything else would be sacrilegious.’

Sam added water to both glasses, then handed one to McKinley. She toasted him. ‘Thanks, Andy. My knight in shining armour.’

‘Aye, well, as my dad always used to say, once a king, always a king, but once a night is enough.’ He smiled. ‘You know, I was twelve years old before I realised what he meant.’ He sat down in the centre of the sofa and Sam curled up in an easy chair by the fire. They sipped their whiskies. ‘Thing is, Mrs Greene, Raquel’s gone now, but I don’t think he’s going to give up. He’s got a thing about you, you know?’

Sam nodded. ‘Yeah. I can see it in his eyes. Like he’s undressing me with them, you know?’

McKinley nodded. ‘I can see how that might be,’ he said and took another sip of his whisky.

Sam looked at him over the top of her glass, wondering if he was making a subtle pass at her, but then decided that he wasn’t. There was an openness about McKinley that Sam instinctively liked, and she figured that if he ever were to make a pass he’d be up front and honest about it, probably go down on one knee and hand her a red rose. She smiled at the image.

‘You all right, Mrs Greene? You look a million miles away.’

Sam’s smile widened. ‘I’m fine, Andy. Just glad you gave me your card, that’s all.’

‘I’m in the book, Mrs Greene. Ever you need me.’

‘How do you get on with George Kay?’ she asked.

McKinley shrugged but didn’t answer. He looked down at the floor and Sam presumed that he didn’t want to tell tales out of school.

‘What do you do for him?’

McKinley shrugged again. ‘Same as I did for Terry, pretty much.’

‘Think you could do the same for me?’

McKinley raised his eyes and looked at her again. For the first time Sam noticed how blue his eyes were, a pale, cold blue that seemed to look right through her. ‘You need protection, Mrs Greene?’

Sam ran a finger around the lip of her glass. ‘Terry’s asked me to take care of a few things for him. It’s new territory for me, Andy. It’d be a big comfort to me to have you watching my back.’

‘Mrs Greene, it’d be a pleasure,’ he said. He reached over and clinked glasses with her. ‘A real pleasure.’

∗      ∗      ∗

 

The captain checked his position on the boat’s global positioning system computer and grunted at his first mate. ‘About another ten minutes,’ he said in guttural Spanish. He took a small portable GPS handset from a plastic wallet and switched it on. It glowed with a faint orange light, hissed, and then figures flickered on its small screen. The captain checked that the hand-held computer showed the same readout as the boat’s.

The first mate tapped the radar screen. ‘Nothing for miles,’ he said. ‘God’s smiling on us.’ He slipped a crucifix from under his reefer jacket and kissed it. ‘I’ll get the men ready.’

The first mate left the bridge and went out on to the heaving deck. His name was Lucero and he was being paid a hundred thousand dollars for the night’s work. For that and for a brief trip to London.

It was a clear, cloudless night, but there was no moon and the four men huddled at the rear of the boat were little more than dark shapes as Lucero walked towards them, adapting his gait to the roll of the vessel with no more thought than a seagull gliding over the waves. Lucero was almost fifty and had been at sea since he was barely out of his teens. There wasn’t a major port in the world that he hadn’t visited, though his sailing days were now confined to trips from the Spanish coast to the North Sea in the fishing trawler. Not that Lucero was the least bit interested in catching fish.

There were eight plastic-wrapped bales attached to metal sleds lined up on the deck. At one end of each sled was a cylinder of compressed air connected to a plastic box. Lucero took a flashlight from his reefer jacket and knelt by the bales in turn, checking the mechanisms of each one. As he sealed the last box, the door to the bridge opened and the captain screamed over the howling wind that they were to dump the bales. Lucero slapped one of the men on the back. ‘Get to it!’ he shouted. The four men were also being well paid for the work, and like Lucero had done the trip many times. One by one they pushed the bales overboard and watched them disappear under the waves. Four tons of cannabis resin, consigned to the sea bed.

∗      ∗      ∗

 

Trisha was checking herself in the hall mirror when Sam came downstairs. ‘Are you allowed to wear that much make-up at school?’ asked Sam.

‘Mum, you say that every morning,’ said Trisha, smoothing her eyebrows and, pursing her lips.

Sam stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. ‘The teachers don’t mind lip gloss and mascara?’

‘It’s not lip gloss, it’s lip balm. I’ve got chapped lips.’

‘Of course you have.’

‘And my eyelashes are naturally long.’

Sam patted her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Of course they are. You know, in my day we weren’t even allowed to show our knees at school. And hair had to be short or tied back. And we’d get sent home if there was even a hint of lipstick.’

‘I know, I know, and dinosaurs roamed the earth, right?’ Trisha turned and kissed Sam on the cheek. ‘See you,’ she said, and hurried out of the front door.

‘Not if I see you first,’ said Sam, heading for the kitchen.

‘Oh my God!’ shouted Trisha.

Sam stopped in her tracks. ‘What? What is it?’

Trisha was standing on the threshold, her mouth wide open. ‘Oh God, Mum, look what they’ve done to your car.’

Sam joined her daughter in the doorway. The words ‘LYING BITCH’ had been sprayed in yellow paint across the windscreen and bonnet of Sam’s black Saab.

‘Bastards,’ said Trisha. ‘It’ll be that Snow family, that’s who it was.’

‘Maybe,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll get it fixed.’

‘Mum, you’ve got to call the police. You can’t let them get away with that. That’s vandalism, that is.’

‘The police aren’t our number one fans just now, Trish.’

‘Mum!’

‘It could have been worse, Trish. It’ll come off. Go on, off to school.’

Sam closed the door and went through to the kitchen. She telephoned Andy McKinley and asked him to collect her at the house. She’d arranged to meet Laurence Patterson at ten o’clock in Kensington, outside the safe deposit box depository.

She made herself a cup of strong coffee and nibbled on a peach as she read the
Daily Mail.

McKinley rang her doorbell at nine thirty. He was dressed in a blue blazer and black slacks with a white shirt and dark blue tie and he looked just like a holiday rep waiting to greet a planeload of tourists. He’d parked a grey Lexus behind Sam’s Saab. Sam locked the front door and went over to the Lexus. ‘Where did you get this from, Andy?’

‘Terry left the keys with me,’ said McKinley. He opened the back door for her and she slid into the plush interior. ‘I thought it was more befitting your status.’ He walked around to the front of the car and got into the driving seat.

Sam laughed. ‘What, as a gang boss?’

McKinley eased the Lexus out of the driveway and headed for central London.

‘Seatbelt, Andy,’ said Sam.

‘What?’ McKinley frowned at her in the rear-view mirror.

‘Seatbelt. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you while you were driving me.’

McKinley groaned. ‘Och, Mrs Greene, seatbelts kill more people than they save.’

‘I think that’s airbags, Andy. And it’s a spurious statistic anyway.’

McKinley groaned again and fastened his belt. ‘Who do you think did that to your car, Mrs Greene?’

‘One of Snow’s relatives, I guess,’ said Sam.

‘The brother?’

‘Maybe. I’ve been getting phone calls. And a chicken’s head.’

McKinley twisted around in his seat. ‘A chicken’s head?’

‘Don’t ask. And keep your eyes on the road, Andy.’

Laurence Patterson was waiting for her outside the nondescript building that housed the depository. He was wearing a long black Burberry raincoat that flapped in the wind behind him, giving him the look of a demented crow. He waved as McKinley parked the Lexus, and rushed over to open the door for Sam. McKinley gave the solicitor a curt nod but said nothing.

‘Everything okay, Samantha?’ asked Patterson as he showed a plastic identification card to a uniformed security guard.

‘Fine, Laurence. Considering that I’m about to embark on a life of crime.’

The security guard, a man in forties with a greying moustache, handed her a clipboard and she signed her name.

‘She’s joking,’ Patterson told the guard.

The security guard’s face remained impassive as he pressed a concealed button to open the reinforced door that led to the inner sanctum of the depository.

Sam followed Patterson along a grey-walled corridor covered by two closed-circuit television cameras, into a reception area where a young man in a grey suit checked Patterson’s identification card. The man took a small key from Patterson and disappeared through a side door.

‘Right, I’ll leave you here, Samantha,’ said Patterson.

‘Aren’t you staying?’

‘Best not,’ said Patterson. ‘Terry said the contents of the box are for your eyes only.’

‘You sure it’s not because you don’t want to get your hands dirty?’ Patterson looked hurt and Sam patted him on the arm. ‘Only joking, Laurence. Away you go.’

As Patterson left, the man in a grey suit returned with a large metal box which he placed in a booth. He nodded at a bell by the reception desk, and told her that when she’d finished she could ring it to have the box collected, then he left her alone.

Sam took a deep breath and opened the box. The first thing she saw was a bundle of fifty-pound notes, several inches thick. She whistled softly to herself and flicked her thumbnail along the edge of the notes. There must have been hundreds of them. More than ten thousand pounds. She put the notes in her bag and picked up a black leather Filofax. The alphabetical index section was packed with names and telephone numbers, and at the back a clear plastic pocket contained a single dollar bill, folded in half. Sam pulled it out. She tried to unfold the note and discovered that it had been torn in half. Sam frowned, wondering what its significance was. She flicked through the Filofax again and discovered a section of notepaper covered with Terry’s cramped handwriting. The Filofax went into her bag with the money.

She took a large manila envelope out of the metal box. Underneath it were three passports. Sam picked them up, puzzled: the police had taken Terry’s passport when they’d arrested him. Two of the passports were British and contained Terry’s photograph, but not his name or date of birth. The third passport was American, and again the picture was Terry’s but the details weren’t. Sam put the passports back in the box and opened the manila envelope. Inside were half a dozen black and white photographs that had been taken with a long lens. They were of Terry with a man she didn’t recognise, a large man with broad shoulders in a raincoat. Terry was giving the man an envelope, and in two of the photographs the man had opened the envelope and was examining a thick wad of banknotes. Sam put the photographs back in the envelope and dropped it into the box. She rang the bell and the grey-suited man reappeared and took away the box as Sam headed outside.

McKinley drove her home, then left the Lexus parked outside the house while he took the Saab away to get the graffiti removed. Sam made herself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table, reading through Terry’s notes.

She was still reading when Trisha arrived home. Sam put the Filofax away and cooked a vegetarian chilli with wild rice, knowing it was one of Trisha’s favourites. They sat and ate it in front of the TV, then when Trisha retreated to her bedroom to get on with her homework, Sam went back to the Filofax.