Falling (20 page)
If I want to be sure Simon is not
here I only have one real choice and that is to go up to Retip’s floor and
check for myself. I head for the lift, get in and I am about to hit floor
twenty four when it occurs to me that anyone watching the lifts will see it
coming. The alternative is to hike twenty four floors of concrete steps. That
will take a while and both Tina and Charlie will wonder where the hell I’ve
gone so I risk going up to twenty and walk the rest.
I get out at twenty. I’m tempted
to nip into Cheedle, Baker and Nudge and see if I can find Leonard’s hard drive
but Tina and Charlie will be waiting so I push on.
The stairs come out near the far
end of the Retip office. Unusually the space is not an open plan desert like
most of the floors. Every staff member seems to have their own small office -
privacy is something the company seems to revel in. Simon’s office is at the
far end and I can still smell the stale alcohol from the party the night
before. Only the reception light is on and I have to walk slowly across the
main office for fear of walking into an open door in the dark.
About ten yards from Simon’s
office I stop and peer into the gloom. If someone is around they are sitting in
the dark. The place feels empty. I walk forward and try the door to Simon’s
office. It swings open. I look in. The room is empty so I head back to the
stairs.
I choose the stairs and as I drop
down flight after flight I hear the lift fire up. Probably Tam on his rounds. I
reach the basement and see Tina’s car sitting where it was. I get in the
passenger side. Tina asks where the hell I have been and I ask why there is no
Charlie. Tina tells me Charlie wouldn’t wait and he was willing to take his
chances with Simon and the gorillas if they were there.
I thought I had been gone no more
than ten minutes but Tina said it was nearer half an hour. The lift I heard was
probably Charlie on his way up. I decide to start clearing the gear from my
cupboard. I tell Tina to wait and I get out the car. I cross the car park. I
take the van’s keys from my key ring and unlock the Transit. I open the back
doors and head for the freight lift. The lift needs a key to operate it and
when I insert it the floor number light kicks in above and the door opens onto
a lift interior that would take a small car.
Tina joins me and we ride up two
floors and I show her where my cupboard is. Against one wall is a two wheel
trolley. The sort with prongs at the base for wheeling around boxes. I pull it
out and load up the trolley with the iPods, push it to the lift and unload them
onto the lift floor. I push the trolley back and repeat the process. Tina is
standing like a spare spanner and I tell her to lift anything she can and stick
it in the lift.
In my head I had this down as a
quick job but there seems to be far more crammed inside my cupboard than I
recollect. It takes us half an hour to empty it, transport the stuff to the
lift, take it down to the basement and fill up the van.
I check on Tina’s car twice
during this time but there is no sign of Charlie. I wonder what is taking him
so long.
With the van full, I lock the
Transit and Tina and I go back up for one last check round. I do a complete
sweep of the cupboard to check I have left nothing in some darkened corner. In
the distance I think I hear a car engine growl into life but apart from that
the building is a ghost town.
Happy the cupboard is bare, I
take Tina by the hand and we go down the stairs to reception to see if Tam is
there. I tell Tina to wait in the stairwell and go to find Tam. The reception
is still empty. He could still be on his rounds. I can’t wait and I decide to
phone him later on and see if I could arrange for a little editing of the CCTV
coverage.
Two things were apparent when we
got back to the basement garage. Firstly there is still no sign of Charlie and
secondly Simon’s BMW is a goner. The combination of these two facts does
not bode well. I tell Tina to wait and take the lift all the way to the
Cheedle, Baker and Nudge offices. I push past reception and into the corridor
beyond and down to Charlie’s office but it is dark. I scout around the whole
floor but there is no sign of life. I sprint back to the lift and ride up to
the Retip floor but it is as empty as it had been not an hour since.
I drop back to the main building
reception and look around but Tam is still missing in action. I run down the
stairs to the basement and tell Tina the bad news. She looks pale and I put my
arm around her but she pushes me away. I can hardly blame her.
I have two heads on now. One says
bugger this - call the police and be done with it. The other says dump the
stuff first and then make the call. The last thought makes more sense. I can’t
leave the gear in the van as it is due to be picked up in the morning. I ask
Tina what she thinks we should do and she says the police. I decide she is
right - but only after I dump the stuff and bring the van back. I try my mobile
for a signal. I need to let my friend the fence know I am on my way but buried
under forty odd floors of concrete the phone is dead as a Dodo. I’ll make the
call on the way and tell Tina to follow me in her car. Dump the gear then
contact the police - that was the order of the day and with that thought I
start up the Transit and head for the exit.
The kissing stops. It had been
just about to gear up to something all too more inappropriate for a car in a
public street. My phone rings. I curse and excuse myself and answer it. The id
says Quentin. Good news I hope.
And it is. He has cracked the
code. He babbles on about how simple it was. He yacks something about had it
been him he would have used double Boolean Schwarzkopf para logical dissection
in an irregular form to encrypt it. I blank him. I don’t care. I ask if we can
pre-empt the last ‘strategic location’ without them knowing. Quentin says there
is no way. The recipient needs to open the e-mail.
I consider the options if we send
an e-mail from Leonard. If they know he is dead they will open it out of
curiosity. If they don’t they will think it is an update to the last e-mail.
Either way they will open it. I consider if I should cancel the contract on the
last two e-mail addresses. I decided against it. What if the ‘strategic location’
goes straight to the police without responding to the e-mail? I tell Quentin to
send an e-mail from Leonard’s e-mail address with the correct password, shut up
shop and leave the laptop for me to dispose off.
Karen listens into the
conversation. I realise I should have taken the call outside the car. In for a
penny, in for a pound I decide to tell her the works. I wasn’t going to. Shit
happens. Lock, stock and four dead bodies coming up.
She quizzes me with the prowess
of a professional interrogator. By the time I am finished - I am really
finished. I slump back in the driver’s chair feeling almost relieved. Karen
doesn’t look half as surprised as she should. She gets out of the car and
lights up. Another contribution to a future hospital visit. She paces away from
the car. Then she turns and comes back. She leans in the window. She asks me
another couple of questions and starts pacing again.
Ten minutes drift by. She returns
to the passenger seat. We are going for a ride I am told. Back to work. We will
clean out all traces of the recent transactions. Empty computer files, trash
paper files. Get rid of as much as we can. We can then e-mail all the live
contacts in the money laundering side and start the process of exiting all
deals. This will take weeks to complete I say. She agrees but if we trash the
evidence at our end tonight then it would take a financial genius to track down
the customers. I’m not sure it will be that easy. She says we can start the
e-mailing in a day or two.
Karen goes into control mode in a
big way. She wants the number for ‘the Voice’. Now she is making me nervous. I
tell her that he won’t return a call from anyone but me. She tells me to give
the number to her anyway. I hesitate. Karen makes it clear there is no option.
I hand her the phone and the number.
She tells me straight that there
are two things that we must possess if we are to get out of this. Leonard’s
colleague’s files and the ‘strategic locations’ files. I tell her I already
know this. I tell her that ‘the Voice’ is on the case. Karen doesn’t seem to
listen. She wants to up the ante. Cost isn’t an issue. She wants to offer a
substantial uplift to get the job done as quickly as possible. I don’t see how
this will help. ‘the Voice’ is hellish expensive as it is. A few extra grand
won’t cut it with him. Curiously she doesn’t ask how I got to know about ‘the
Voice’. Something smells bad.
As Karen fiddled with my phone I
thought that ‘the Voice’ was an odd connection to make in the first place.
Robin put me in touch. We had been bidding on a tricky Euro tender. One that
had revealed a competitor of ours was in the driving seat by dint of their
track record. The contract was a highly technical software build. The
competitor had delivered three similar systems in the last three years.
Needless to say we had no track record. We were counting on a substantial
backhander to a Euro official to swing the show. Word had come back from our
official that his hands were tied. He told us that he had no way to influence
the final outcome of the tender. That was a bastard as we were down to the last
two.
We were in the swamp. It had cost
us the best part of thirty grand just to get this far. We were in the hole for
twenty more regardless. On top of this the contract was earmarked as the way to
wash a serious wedge of cash from our biggest customer. To add to the pain I
had already told the customer it was in the bag. Unless we could get the
competitor to pull their interest there seemed no way we could win.
Robin told me he knew someone who
might help. It wouldn’t be cheap. It would need another thirty grand to fix it.
Given the alternatives I asked for the contact and made my first call to ‘the
Voice’ (I had no clue who he was so the name ‘the Voice’ became my shorthand
for him) and set the wheels in motion. A week later and we were informed we
were now the sole bidder on the contract. Our last remaining rival had decided
to remove their name from the final tender list. We won the contract and ‘the
Voice’ became a source of help on a number of occasions. An expensive help, but
a help all the same.
I tell Karen what to do and she
dials the number from my phone, waits for the answer machine and hangs up. Ten
minutes later my phone rings and she answers it. To my surprise ‘the Voice’
doesn’t hang up at the sound of a strange voice. Karen opens the car door and
gets out to hold the conversation.
When she gets back in she says
‘the Voice’ was close to resolving the remaining two potential ‘strategic
locations’ so she has left well enough alone. She has arranged additional
resource to be put on the case for Charlie. She hands me back my phone. She
instructs me to head back to the city
The light is beginning to fade as
we drive. Half an hour later we are in the offices. Why do I suddenly feel like
I have become the tea boy?
Karen seems to have a fairly
comprehensive plan of action. The plan suggests this wasn’t the first time she
had thought about doing this. I am relegated to following orders. She will take
care of the digital trashing. I will take care of the dead wood trashing.
We have an industrial shredder -
three thousand pounds worth - a HSM 411.2 Professional Shredder. Maximum
security so it says. I get to work and soon have a sweat on. The last of the
paper disappears into the machine just before eleven. Karen is finished and is
closing down all the systems. We tidy up; haul the sacks of shredded material
to the lift and down to my car. I close the boot. Karen is waiting at the car
door when the main door shutter cranks into action. I run to the far side of my
car. Karen follows. We duck down as a Vauxhall Astra comes in. It parks near
the lifts. I watch as George the maintenance man gets out. He heads for the
fire stairs. There are two more people in the car. I let two minutes tick and then
circle round the back of my car. I use the pillars as cover. I make my way to
the Astra.
As I close in the figure in the
back stretches and turns profile to me. The light from the lifts highlights the
face. There sits Charlie Wiggs. I nearly choke. Charlie seems to have a bandage
wrapped around part of his head. The driver is a woman. I don’t recognize her.
I go back and tell Karen our luck is changing. We debate how we can get Charlie
from the car. We are just about to go for the direct approach when the car door
opens. Charlie gets out and walks to the lifts. He calls one up and gets in.
There is only one passenger lift
in the garage and I’m sure the girl in the car can’t see the lift doors. I tell
Karen to sit tight.
I run, hand against the wall, to
where the lifts sit. I crouch down. Slowly I crawl up to the pillar that sits
in front of the lift. I put my head to the ground and look round the base. The
car is hidden from view. I move to the lift, keeping low to the ground. If
someone comes out the fire door or the lift arrives I am dead to rights. I
crawl right up to the lift door. I look back. I still can’t see the car. I
reach up and press the call button and wait. The lift is at twenty. Charlie is
working late.
The lift arrives and I crawl in.
I slide up the wall of the lift and hit twenty. I’m away.
As the door opens on Cheedle,
Baker and Nudge’s floor I flatten myself against the wall. When the doors are
fully open I place my hand on the door to stop it closing. I look out. The
reception area is empty and a single light burns over the receptionist’s desk.
Beyond this I can see light in Charlie’s corridor. I head to the door beyond
the reception and into the corridor.