The Woodcutter (55 page)

In the event, though for very different reasons, neither interview lasted long.

Pippa Nutbrown denied all knowledge of the packages of cocaine discovered in her attic. When asked how, in that case, her fingerprints came to be on the plastic wrapping, she shook her head violently and said, ‘It’s a lie.’

Next she was asked if it were true that there was always a plentiful supply of coke on offer at her parties.

She snapped, ‘There might be the odd line for recreational purposes, but not fucking bucketsful!’

‘So you’re not in the business of actually dealing in the stuff?’ enquired O’Reilly.

‘Certainly not!’

‘In that case, you’ll have a perfectly reasonable explanation of your account in the Caymans that, according to my information, currently stands at something in excess of five million pounds in credit?’

And now she stopped talking altogether.

The same sequence of questions to her husband produced a rather different set of answers.

Asked about the packages found in the attic, he said, ‘It’s an old curiosity shop up there, wouldn’t surprise me if you found Lord Lucan riding Shergar.’

When told his fingerprints were on the wrapping of one of the packages, he said, ‘Suppose it must be mine then. Bit of a facer, finding I’d got all that gear up there when I think of the price I’ve been paying for a couple of bags in town.’

When asked if he supplied coke at his parties, he said, ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

And finally, asked about the Cayman account, he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Thought it would be more than that. Still, Pippa’s a bright girl, she’s probably got it spread about a bit.’

At which point DI O’Reilly enquired politely if Mr Nutbrown felt in need of some refreshment as he had a feeling this interview might take some little time.

Leaving Johnny to enjoy a breakfast-all-day from the canteen, he returned to Pippa.

‘Mr Nutbrown is being most cooperative,’ he said. ‘Usually, in the case of co-defendants, the judge tends to look more favourably on the more cooperative.’

‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘Any sign of Estover?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

She didn’t look surprised.

‘I hope the bastard rots in hell,’ she said.

5

It is not often that a wish so malevolent as Pippa Nutbrown’s is positively answered, but in figurative terms hell was certainly where Toby Estover had been spending the past couple of hours.

As he’d stepped out of his car in the underground car park, he was approached by a bulky figure he recognized as an associate of Pavel Nikitin. The kind of associate who fades into the background in polite society but looms menacingly in less friendly surroundings.

The man, who was definitely looming at the moment, said, ‘Mr Nikitin would like to talk to you.’

‘Yes, I thought he might,’ said Estover. ‘First thing I’ll do when I get into my office is give him a ring.’

‘He would like to talk now.’

‘Yes, I said . . . oh, you mean face to face. Listen, there’s something I’ve got to do, I’ll ring him and make a firm appointment for later, if that’s what he wants.’

Suddenly the man was looming very large indeed.

‘Now,’ he said.

And Estover felt his arm seized, he was spun round, marched forward a few steps, then thrust into the back seat of a car with windows tinted dark enough to hide an orgy.

In the front passenger seat sat a man he recognized. His name was Pudovkin, known familiarly as Pudo, though he did not invite familiarity. His precise function in Nikitin’s entourage Toby had never discovered. Small and wiry, he lacked the intimidating bulk of the looming man. ‘Make sure your bodyguards are wide enough to take the first bullet,’ Pasha had once said to him in a lighter moment. So, not a bodyguard. But clearly a man of value to Nikitin who always called him Pudo and occasionally draped an arm round the smaller man’s shoulders in a way that made Estover wonder if some of the services he provided might be very personal indeed. But the deference the big bodyguards showed him confirmed he was a lot more than just a best boy.

‘Pudo,’ said the lawyer, anger making him risk familiarity, ‘what the hell’s going on?’

The man turned and stared coldly at him and hissed, ‘Sit still!’ with hardly any movement of his mouth. Perhaps that was because his jaw was wired. Whatever, the effect was extremely scary, and increasingly, as the car sped through streets that, so far as he could tell through the darkened windows, did not lie on any route he knew to Nikitin’s home or office, fear began to outweigh anger in Estover’s mind.

Their destination turned out to be a riverside warehouse somewhere, he estimated, in Wapping. Pavel Nikitin was waiting for him here, seated behind a dilapidated desk in an office that did not look as if it had been occupied by anything but mice and spiders for a very long time.

‘Jesus, Pasha, you’re not back home in Russia, all you had to do was ring me,’ said Estover, exaggerating his exasperation in order to cover his concern.

The looming man thrust him down on to a chair he would have preferred to brush with his handkerchief before settling his mohaired buttocks on it. Nikitin still didn’t speak.

‘Look,’ said Estover, ‘there’s nothing to worry about, just because some gung-ho editor has a rush of blood to the head. They’ve all tried it before. We’ll have an injunction on them by lunchtime and by the end of the week they’ll be printing a grovelling apology and paying large sums to the charity of our choice.’

Now the Russian spoke.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They have more, much more.’

‘How much more? How do you know this? Have they been in touch?’

‘Early this morning, just before the paper came out. They woke me to tell me what was going to be printed and asked if I had any comment. They said there would be at least three follow-ups. They told me what was likely to be in them also.’

‘A bluff!’ insisted Estover. ‘They knew if they’d contacted you earlier, I’d have made damned sure even this first load of crap didn’t see the light of day.’

Then, genuinely puzzled because Nikitin was no respecter of anyone’s comfort or convenience, he asked, ‘Why didn’t you ring me straight away? I’d have come round, no matter what the hour.’

‘Because I wanted to see you without anyone knowing I was seeing you,’ said Nikitin.

For a moment the response seemed an impenetrable enigma.

Then the Russian drew an envelope out of his pocket and shook half a dozen photographs on to the desktop.

Estover stared down at them and the enigma began to dissolve.

They showed him at a restaurant table, handing a package to Kitty Locksley, the woman looking at it quizzically, the pair of them smiling as she slipped it unopened into her handbag.

‘This was delivered to my house just before the paper phoned me,’ said the Russian.

Professionally speaking, extreme situations had always made Toby Estover’s mind go into overdrive. This was one of the reasons he was such a good lawyer. As he riffled through a client’s options, he inevitably recited the reassuring mantra, ‘Rest easy, there is always a way out.’

His mind worked fast enough now to grasp the implications of the pictures and the fact that nobody knew he was here with the Russian. The reassuring mantra did not seem quite appropriate, and he was saying, ‘Come on, Pasha, you surely don’t believe . . .’ when the chair was pulled from under him and he sprawled on the floor. He cried out in alarm then screamed in pain as the looming man’s foot drove hard into his crotch.

They waited patiently till he was recovered sufficiently to push himself up into a sitting position.

‘Now, Toby,’ said Nikitin. ‘Let’s us talk.’

A couple of hours later, at just about the time Pippa Nutbrown was uttering her anathema, Pudovkin said to his master, ‘I think perhaps he is telling the truth.’

Nikitin nodded and looked at the photos on the desk.

‘I think so too, Pudo,’ he said. ‘This means we must look for explanations elsewhere. Go to this restaurant. See if you can find out anything about the taking of these pictures.’

Pudovkin nodded and left.

On the floor, Estover moved slightly and let out a groan.

‘So what shall we do with him, boss?’ said the looming man.

Nikitin made an impatient gesture and took out his cigarette case. He lit a cigarette and frowned down at the limp and bleeding figure on the floor. One eye was invisible beneath a mass of bloody flesh, the other peered out of the remaining narrow slit like a terrified hunted mouse that has squeezed into a minute crack in a wall. On the pulpy lips a pink bubble slowly grew, then burst in a soft, almost inaudible sigh.

He knew Estover. He was soft. No way he would have held out under this pressure. So someone had set this up. The question was why? To get at Estover, or to get at him?

He finished the first cigarette and lit another. Curiously, he found himself wanting to discuss the affair with the man at his feet. Soft, the solicitor might be, but when it came to working out moves and counter moves, Toby Estover was without doubt the best in the business.

Used to be the best in the business.

One thing was clear. They couldn’t just pick him up, dust him down and send him home.

The looming man was looking at him expectantly.

He stubbed out the second cigarette and said, ‘Make sure he is weighted down so much he does not come to the surface in your lifetime.’

‘Guaranteed,’ said the looming man with perfect confidence.

And whatever god the man worshipped smiled, knowing that this lifetime had something less than ninety seconds to go.

The door burst open, there was a cry of ‘Armed police!’ and the looming man reached inside his jacket. Two shots rang out, and he loomed no more but slumped on the floor, not yet as bloody as, but already stiller than the figure he joined there.

Pavel Nikitin stood perfectly still, his face impassive. When the new arrivals screamed at him to lie face down on the floor with his hands behind his head he obeyed instantly. Seconds later his arms were forced down behind his back, his wrists handcuffed, and he was dragged to his feet.

A well-dressed man with wispy, almost white hair and a benevolent smile stood gazing down at Estover. A pair of paramedics came into the room, took a quick look at the shot man, shook their heads, then moved John Childs aside to start working on the lawyer.

Childs turned his attention to the Russian.

‘I’m so glad to meet you at last, Mr Nikitin,’ he said.

The man regarded him blankly.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘A friend. I think you’re going to need a good lawyer, though after the way you seem to have treated your last one, you may find it difficult to hire a substitute. Whatever, it seems likely you are going to spend several years in one of our prisons. Parkleigh might suit you very well, it has all mod cons and is very handy for London. Of course, there is an alternative . . .’

‘What?’

‘Under the recent human rights reciprocation agreement, it may be possible to transfer you to Russian custody so that you can enjoy the solace of serving out your sentence under the tender care of your fellow countrymen.’

‘Go to hell!’ the Russian spat.

‘I daresay I will. But I hope we may meet again before then. Who knows? We might even find a way of being mutually beneficial. Grim necessity makes strange bedfellows, Mr Nikitin. I’m sure there’s an old Russian proverb that states as much.’

The man was back in control now. He even managed a smile as he said, ‘You speak very well,
friend.
But how important are you really? You are an old man and I think I know all the truly important old men in this country. Yes, soon you will find I have other friends who speak better than you. This is just a misunderstanding, a small difficulty that can easily be resolved.’

‘Of course,’ said Childs. ‘As you resolved the small difficulty of Mr Hadda, you mean?’

That got Nikitin’s attention. He looked genuinely puzzled as he said, ‘What has Hadda to do with this, old man?’

‘Nothing,’ said Childs, regretting the impulse that had made him mention Wolf. ‘I just happen to know you had a small commercial problem with him. And a small emotional problem too, I gather. Neither of which your boasted expertise was able to clear up.’

But he could see that his efforts at diversion were not working. The man’s gaze moved from the recumbent figure of Estover, still being worked on by the paramedics, to the photos on the table.

Childs thought, they must have worked on Estover enough to know it wasn’t him who spilled the beans to the paper. Now, because of my foolish desire to display omniscience, this bastard is making a link to Wolf.

He turned away abruptly and signalled to the armed police standing in the doorway.

He watched as Nikitin was hustled out of the room, then turned his attention to Estover. The medics had done all they could for him on the spot and were now preparing to stretcher him out.

‘Will he live?’ enquired Childs.

‘Probably,’ said one of the men. ‘But there’ll be long-term damage. And he won’t look pretty. One of his eyes is a goner.’

‘Oh dear. The whirligig of time, eh?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing. Don’t let me hold you up.’

A few seconds later he was left alone with the dead bodyguard. A fatal-shooting enquiry would follow and the corpse wouldn’t be shifted till it had been photographed from every possible angle.

In death we can all become stars, thought Childs.

Of course it would have been neater if it had been Toby Estover’s body lying there. The lawyer still had the capacity to cause the Chapel some embarrassment, particularly if, as was not uncommon, his near-death experience turned him into some kind of blabbermouth penitent.

On the other hand, he thought, studying the photographs lying on the desk, if the press were fed some tasty morsels about some of Estover’s other clients who were then permitted to see these pictures, no one was ever going to believe a word he said again!

He slipped the photos into his pocket.

It was an ill wind that blew nobody any good, and he could either sell Nikitin to the Russians or he could bargain every last drop of useful information out of the man. And once a man had betrayed his associates, he was yours for ever.