East of the City (3 page)

‘They haven’t phoned?' Bill asked Max.

‘Not yet.’ Max touched his jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got home and office redirected to the mobile. Not a squeak.’

‘The note was addressed to you?’

Max pulled out an envelope.
M. Ward Esquire
, it said. The door buzzer went, I took a step that way but Bill grabbed my arm. ‘It’s not for you.’ He went into the next room, we heard a button click. ‘Yes?’ he said.

A man’s voice came back over the intercom, just the code, ‘Full Cover’. Then we heard the front door open. Bill came back through, pointing at us on his way by. ‘No questions.'

He met the man in the hall, they talked quietly, I guess Bill was telling him about me and Max.

Max whispered to me, ‘No questions? Who the fuck’s he think’s paying for all this?’

Bill came back in with the other bloke, they walked past us as if we weren’t there. The man was wearing a duffel coat and carrying a sports bag, he had a crew cut that made the top of his head look blue. A big guy. Tough. Max didn’t say a word.

‘The others are down there,’ Bill told the stranger. I put my head round the door just in time to see the blue head disappearing down to the basement. Bill beckoned me over, I left Max behind.

‘When I sign a confidentiality agreement,’ Bill said quietly, ‘I’m not playing games.’

‘Max was in Allen’s office. Allen told me to bring him.’

‘Then Allen made a mistake.' Bill glanced over my shoulder, tense and unhappy. I got the message. This wasn’t just the usual check-up on a fraudulent claim, some people telling lies and others losing money. This was Sebastian's life on the line, and Bill wasn’t fooling around.

Voices came up from the basement, a clatter of metal. I looked at Bill but he avoided my eyes. Then I offered to take Max away.

‘Too late now. When I call, bring him up.’ I rejoined Max, and a moment later we heard Bill running up the stairs.

‘What goes on here?’ Max said. ‘What is this friggin’ place?’

I leant back against the wall and slid down. Reaching across, I picked up the lampshade and spun it like a top.

‘Hey!’ Max said.

He was angry, sure, but more than that he was scared. I told him to give it a rest, that Bill would call us upstairs soon enough.

Max did a lap round the room. Over the years my opinions about Max had changed. He came across as arrogant, but his main problem was he was weak, kind of under his old man’s thumb. Not hard when your old man’s a guy like Sebastian Ward. And after I had my bust-up with my own old man, I got to feeling a bit sorry for Max. There was just him and Sebastian, no other family. I guess it made them unusually close. Close, but Sebastian called all the shots.

But now Sebastian wasn’t here to tell Max what to do.

‘Okay Ian?’ Bill called down.

The same grey carpet ran up to the landing. At the top, Bill was standing by an open door. Inside, more grey carpet and cream-coloured walls. There was a bench piled high with electronic gear, a bloke sitting there twiddling knobs. He turned to us and nodded. Bill asked Max for his mobile, and then gave it to the technician.

‘Number?’ the man said. Max recited the number then asked what was going on. Ignoring him, the bloke slotted the phone into some kind of modem and started working the keypad.

Bill said, ‘Maybe you’ve saved us a trip to your office.’

Max nodded at the electronic gear. ‘What’s this?’

‘Surveillance.’

‘What, phone tapping? Stuff like that?’

Bill said they didn’t expect the kidnappers to be using the Royal Mail. He asked Max if Sebastian had ever been threatened. ‘Competitors trying to even the score? Personal grudges?’ Max looked blank. ‘When you got the note,’ Bill said, ‘did anything like that occur to you?' Max shook his head. Bill gave him a sideways glance. ‘Your father only took out the K and R policy three months ago. I don’t suppose he had any particular reason?’

Now I butted in, reminding Bill of what I was sure he knew already. That Sebastian had agreed to take out the policy as a sales gimmick to help us get into the market. ‘Him actually getting kidnapped,’ I said, ‘wasn’t meant to be part of the deal.’

Then the surveillance technician started grilling Max about the phone system back in the WardSure offices, and Bill’s attention moved on. He questioned Max too. I propped myself against a table, watching and listening.

Bill wasn’t as big a man as Allen Mortlake, probably just as tall, but leaner. He was in his mid-forties, ex-SAS, he’d fought in the Falklands, won some medal, but a few years later he’d chucked it in to go and work for a private security company set up by ex-officers from his regiment. Now he’d split from them and set up his own operation. We’d used him as an expert witness on security in a few disputed insurance claims like Ottoman. But K and R was a different league.

Questioning Max now, Bill looked seriously wired. Wired, but still in control. After a couple of minutes he went out, beckoning me after him. We crossed the landing into the back room, he closed the door.

‘Who’s the beneficiary of the K and R policy?’

‘WardSure.’

‘Currently being run by your friend Max?’

I nodded.

Bill walked a few steps away from me, then back. ‘Listen, as far as I’m concerned my client is you guys, the Mortlake Group. I don’t need this prat hanging over my shoulder.'

‘He’s harmless. Come on, Bill. It’s his old man.'

 ‘Max goes,’ he said. ‘He goes and he stays gone. I don’t want to see him again for the rest of this operation. Any contribution he wants to make comes through you, unless I ask for it.’

‘Okay.’ My gaze drifted to the three bunk beds, the three piles of sheets and blankets. I stepped over to the window and pushed back the curtain. The street was empty.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just looking.’

‘Well don’t,’ Bill said, and I let the curtain fall.

While he went for a leak, I strolled out to the landing again then in through the next door along. There were three more bunk beds in there, and more blankets and sheets. I took a quick peek out the rear window. A van was parked in the narrow yard. The yard backed onto a lane. A big tin gate marked the boundary, it was secured with a shiny new chain and a padlock. Across the lane was a warehouse covered in purple graffiti.

I met Bill at the head of the stairs. I asked him how many blokes he had coming, and if the police were involved.

‘Need to know,’ he muttered. ‘And you need to know bugger all.’ Then he stuck his head into the surveillance room and said to Max, ‘Right, son. Time to go.'

We followed Bill downstairs and into the front room. Voices, the sound of horseplay now, came up from the basement.

‘What do we know about the fire?’ Bill asked us.

‘When I left, the place was all taped off,’ Max said. ‘The engines were gone, the cops were waiting for some fire investigation team.'

Bill asked just how bad the fire had been.

Max made a scoffing sound. ‘It’s a write-off, Jesus. Bad?’

Bill told him to wait out in the hall, and Max went reluctantly.

‘Get over there,’ Bill said to me quietly. ‘Find out what they’ve got on the fire. Arson suspects, anything.’ He pulled out a business card, scribbled a number on the back and gave it to me. ‘Don’t come back here, just call.’

‘Why would they tell me what’s going on?’

‘Take Max. But make sure he understands that blabbing about the kidnap won’t help his father.’

Bill put a hand on my shoulder to guide me out, but then there was a rumpus from the basement and we both looked that way. The bloke with the shaven head appeared up the stairs, he laughed down to the others below. But when he saw us, he stopped dead. In his hands was a rifle, mounted with a telescopic sight.

Y
ou could smell it from out on the road, charred bricks and mortar, the misty drizzle of rain wasn’t doing much to hold it down. The iron gates were open so we just walked right in past the gatehouse and on up the drive. It used to be you walked out from under the trees and there was the house, white and massive, with a few expensive cars out front. It wasn’t going to look like that again for a while.

The roof was gone, you could see the sky through the glassless upstairs windows. The right wall of the house had collapsed, and the ground-floor windows looked like a row of burnt-out fireplaces. Max went on ahead, ducking under the police tape, but the smell got too strong for me, I had to stop. He called me on, then disappeared around the back of the house. My breath suddenly shallowed. I could feel myself slipping but I held down the urge to turn and walk away. Covering my mouth with a hankie, I forced myself to keep looking. It wasn’t as bad as that time in the Room, I didn’t choke, but suddenly I was back at my parents’ house again, the flames and smoke rising. I jumped out of the car, yelled at Mum to stay put in the passenger seat, then ran to the front door. When I opened it, the heat surged out. The stairs were burning, and the wall. I stepped back a few paces and screamed up to Dad. No-one came.

‘Oi!’ someone called now, but I couldn’t see anyone. Then there was a noise inside and a policeman stepped out through what used to be the front door. He came across. I told him I was with Max. 'You what?' he said.

‘Max Ward.’ As I repocketed the hankie, he gave me the once-over. He asked who I was. We’d dreamt up a cover story on the way over, so now I gestured to the gutted house and said, ‘The loss adjustor.’ He looked blank, so I added, ‘For the insurance,' and I stepped up beside him as if I had a right to be there. We gazed at the house. The ribbon of police tape went right around the place, strung on leaning pickets. ‘What happened?'

‘You can’t go in,’ he said. ‘The arson boys haven’t finished.'

‘Did it go up last night?'

‘Early this mornin’.’

There were noises inside, men talking and moving around. Over to one side there were half a dozen cars and a van parked under trees off the drive.

God, I thought, turning back to the house. Here again. Another pile of burnt rubble, and me. The memories I’d been holding off since hearing about Sebastian’s place, they all came pouring through.

It was on one of my rare visits home, the place where I grew up, a two-bedroom semi out in Wialthamstow. I’d go back there maybe once every couple of months for dinner, I thought I at least owed Mum that. Since my sister Katy had left for college I’d gone round there a bit more often, I knew they missed her pretty bad. That night, as usual, Dad drank and said about two words to me, then after dinner I gave Mum a lift down to her bingo. I was tired, looking forward to getting back to my own place, and so I wasn’t too happy when we got to the bingo hall and Mum realized she’d forgotten some ticket she needed.

But I gritted my teeth. No, I said, no problem. I’d take her back home; she could pick up the ticket; we’d be back at the bingo hall in half an hour. She apologized all the way home.

We didn’t see the fire till I parked the car out front. At first I thought the smoke was just clouds, but then I saw the flames, and I jumped out of the car, telling Mum to stay put.

I couldn’t get through the front door, and Dad didn’t answer when I screamed up, so  I ran. I didn’t think, I just ran. Vaulting over the fence into the neighbour’s front yard, I banged on his door. No lights came on, I did the same into the next yard, thumped the door, and this time it opened, I nearly knocked the poor old bugger down in my rush for his phone.

By the time I got back outside, neighbours were coming into the street. I went to my car, looking back at the burning house, flames were flaring out of the windows now.

I’d opened the passenger door and said, ‘Mum,’ before I realized the car was empty. And somehow I knew straight away what had happened. I ran across the road, but the flames were solid, the heat so fierce you couldn’t get near the place.

The fire engines arrived. The firemen stood well back and sent great jets of water into the blaze, the water ran in a stream down the street. And it was while I was watching the firemen that a neighbour came over and told me how she’d tried to stop Mum going in. An ambulance arrived, the chief fireman shook his head at the driver, like saying, Too late.

I sat down on the pavement, the water sloshed over my feet, and I started to choke.

‘Ian!' Max. He'd come back out from his father’s wrecked house, he was signalling for me to join him by the cars. So I made an effort to get a grip. When I got over there, Max was already digging around in the van. He tossed me a pair of rubber boots, and some overalls.

‘Put these on. The boss man says don’t touch anything in the house.’

While I pulled them on, I asked him if anyone had seen the housekeeper. As I remembered it, she was always around. But Max said she had her feet up at home, watching telly.

‘She didn’t know about this?’

‘She’s been off sick three days. When I rang her this morning and told her, know what she said? She said she had to have at least a month’s notice if she wasn’t needed.’ Pulling on his own boots, Max said, ‘Bloody cow.’

‘So who was here last night?’

‘Just Dad.’

‘Didn’t he have that bloke doing security?'

‘Who, Eddie Pike?’

I nodded. Eddie was someone from the dog world, a track rat who had somehow latched on to Sebastian. Sebastian kept him round as a kind of errand boy.

Max swore. He said that Pike had gone missing too. ‘But when I get hold of him he’s out on his ear, along with the old cow.’

We finished pulling on the overalls and went back up to the house, a long walk. The garden was about two acres. A stone’s throw from Regent’s Park, it must have been one of the most expensive stretches of lawn in London. The boss of the fire investigation team met us round the back; he warned us not to touch anything, then he led us in. Most of the structure was still intact, only the one side wall had collapsed. When I remarked on that, the bloke pointed to the rubble. That, he told me, was a post-war extension.

Then he slapped his gloved hand against an intact wall. ‘This early stuff you couldn’t knock down with a dozer.’

‘What’s it look like?’ I said. ‘Arson?’