Keeping Bad Company (31 page)

Merv and Baz. That’s what couldn’t be made to make sense. They didn’t have an original thought between them. Look how easily they’d been swayed by Lauren’s arguments and had handed over all the advantages so meekly to her, putting themselves under her control. Could that pair really have worked out the original kidnap plan? Just to abandon it? Why had they been expecting so little money from the deal? Was it because they were not in charge of the haggling? Not prime movers, in fact, but mere hired heavies?

It was so obvious, I almost smiled. They had been paid cash to seize and hold Lauren. They had not been intended to share in any ransom. Not until Lauren came up with her own deal. Yes, that made a lot more sense.

‘Lauren,’ I said, ‘it’s not going to be that easy.’

‘Oh, why?’ she sneered.

I explained briefly how I reasoned it. ‘You thought you were running things because the only people you saw were Merv and Baz, and you had that pair of lowlifes eating out of your hand. But if you think it through, there has to be someone else behind all this.’

She began to look uncertain. I pressed home my argument.

‘For goodness’ sake, Lauren! The only thing you can be sure about with Merv and Baz is that they’re foot soldiers. They take orders from people they perceive as having brains. They even took orders from you. The one thing that motivates them is the thought of money. When they snatched you, they were following the orders of someone who planned it. That person was paying them what looked like a lot to them at the time. It was a flat rate for their services, not a cut of the ransom money. You said yourself, they had no idea how high a ransom could be asked.

‘But when you offered them a three-way split in a new deal, they decided to double-cross whoever was employing them. Whoever masterminded the kidnap still thinks they have you tied up here with a bag over your head. Because the organiser daren’t risk coming here himself to check. It’s far too dangerous. He has to accept Merv or Baz’s reports. Merv says you’re a prisoner here and Mr Unknown can only accept it.’

Lauren’s confidence was evaporating visibly as I spoke. ‘But who could it be?’ she asked.

‘How about Copperfield?’ I suggested. ‘He owes money to the banks.’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘Forget it. No way is Jeremy behind this. He’s terrified of blotting his copybook again. He had some trouble a couple of years ago when he got involved in some dodgy deals. He got off with a suspended sentence but it scared the wits out of him. He wants to continue in the art and antiques business. He can’t afford any more damage to his reputation. He wouldn’t touch anything crooked. He breaks out in a sweat whenever he sees a police uniform. Anyway,’ she concluded firmly, ‘not only hasn’t he got the nerve to organise anything like this, he hasn’t got the brains. It has to be someone else.’

Before I could answer, the sound of approaching motor vehicles became audible. We both hurried to peer out of the window.

‘The police have found us already!’ Lauren exclaimed disbelievingly.

I wish she’d been right. But it wasn’t the police. It was a private car, one I didn’t recognise, and following it an old van.

Both vehicles stopped. The van doors opened and Merv and Baz jumped down into the street. They went to the driver’s side of the car. At their approach, the window was wound down. Then two men stooped and put their heads close to it. An animated conversation began.

‘What are they all talking about?’ Lauren whispered, and for the first time she seemed scared.

‘Your pals are getting their final orders,’ I said. Merv and Baz were still huddled over the car window. ‘Getting the details right.’

‘What do you mean?’ Now she’d lost all her self-assurance. She looked at me helplessly.

‘Triple-cross,’ I explained. ‘Now they’re double-crossing you, Lauren. You had them seeing pound signs with your offer, but it’s all getting too complicated and they can’t handle it themselves. Suddenly a flat payment and no strings looks awfully attractive to them. Let someone else sweat over extorting a ransom, arranging the drop and all the rest of it. It’s way out of their league. Maybe it’s just occurred to them that, even if they did get their hands on a really large sum of money, they’d have no way of laundering it. Word would get round in hours and reach the police.’

She blinked at me. ‘How?’ she argued, but without her former spirit.

This was not the time for me to give her a detailed rundown on the criminal world. I said irritably, ‘It’s called informing, Lauren, in case you haven’t heard of it. Merv and Baz know that if they show up with more than the average windfall in used notes, someone will grass. So they’ve gone to their original employer with a highly edited version of recent events. They’re ditching you and your grand scheme, and taking orders from their former boss.’

Lauren was staring down in morbid fascination at the car below and the huddled figures. She put a finger to her mouth and chewed nervously at the nail.

‘Down there?’ she mumbled. ‘He’s really down there in that car?’

‘You bet he is!’ I told her heartlessly. ‘He’s been under the impression he’s been giving them orders all along, of course! But now he’s smelled a rat, or in this case, two rats. He’s not sure how far he can trust them any longer. He’s down there, in that car, come to see for himself what’s going on here and to make sure Merv and Baz do the job they’ve been sent to do.’

‘What’s that?’ she faltered.

There was no point in hiding the truth from her. ‘This whole thing’s got in such a mess, I don’t think any of them can let either of us leave here alive,’ I said. ‘They’ve come here on a damage-limitation exercise. Remember, they all think I’m locked in a room on the floor below. The big chief thinks you’re locked up here. None of them has any way of knowing I’ve called the police.

‘The man in the car is badly rattled by being told he’s now got two prisoners, but he still believes he can shake the money out of Szabo. He doesn’t realise that his two henchmen have tried to cut a deal with you and – ’ I allowed myself a nasty smile – ‘provided you and he never meet face to face, there’s no reason he’ll find out. So Merv and Baz will make sure you never do meet him.

‘From Mr Unknown’s point of view, you and I are just too much of a nuisance. All three of them, for different reasons, want us permanently out of the way. On that they’re well agreed.’

Merv and Baz straightened up and began to walk towards the building where we were. Lauren gripped my arm.

‘But who is he?’ she whispered desperately. ‘He can’t just order them to kill us!’

‘Why not? They killed Albie.’

Below us, without warning, the car door opened. There was a flash of long blonde hair as the driver leaned out and called to Merv and Baz. They went back to the car and there was another brief exchange. The two men eventually nodded and started off again towards the building. The driver got out of the car and stood by the door, watching them go.

‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Not a he but a she after all.’

Beside me, Lauren gasped, ‘That’s Jane Stratton, Jeremy’s receptionist.’

Chapter Sixteen

Recognising Jane Stratton effectively disposed of Lauren’s temporary nervousness. In a flash she was back to her old dictatorial self.

‘Bitch!’ she yelled at the window panes. ‘Wait till I get my hands on you!’

‘You’re not going to get the chance,’ I reminded her crisply. ‘Because the way things are going, Merv and Baz’ll reach us first if we don’t get out of here! Baz, for one, will be looking forward to it! Come on!’

I made for the door, but she stayed by the window. Would you believe it? She was still intent on yelling abuse at the blissfully unaware Ice Queen below. I ran back to her, glancing out to see how things were going below. Stratton stood elegantly by her motor, waiting for her two thugs to return and report they’d dealt with us.

‘She can’t hear you, you idiot!’ I snarled and grabbed Lauren’s wrist. I could’ve left her there, but I’d come this far in finding her, and losing her now made little sense. I hauled her away from the scene, with me through the door and down the corridor.

She was still spluttering with rage as she ran, obsessed, even at a moment like this, with the wrongs done her.

‘Would you believe it? I should’ve known-I should’ve guessed! She fancied her chances with Jeremy before I came on the scene, you know. She thought she’d be Mrs Copperfield, heaven help us! Not that she had the hots for him – but she always thought she could run that business better than he could . . .’

We’d reached the end of the corridor and the stairwell. From the floor below came a hoarse yell and a burst of profanity as Merv and Baz discovered I wasn’t where they’d left me. Baz sounded particularly enraged, cheated of whatever fun he’d promised himself. I needed no further encouragement to make myself scarce. We couldn’t go down so we had to go up. Stairs indicated another floor and we took them.

‘He dumped her for me because he thought he could get his hands on Szabo money!’ Lauren panted as she pounded up the staircase beside me. ‘So I suppose she thought she’d get her own back on him
and
get her own hands on Szabo money – ’

‘Will you shut up for a minute!’ I gasped as we stumbled out on to the next landing. ‘Just concentrate on finding somewhere to hide!’

Fat chance, was what was I was thinking. This floor mirrored the ones below, a corridor of stripped rabbit hutches. It offered no hiding place safe from the vengeful Merv and Baz who, from the sound of it, had reached the floor we’d just quit and any minute now, would find that Lauren was also missing.

A painted sign on the wall read ‘FIRE EXIT’ and an arrow pointed upwards. This staircase was unlike the others, narrow and dimly lit. It was Hobson’s choice. I raced up it, Lauren on my heels.

At the top our way was barred by a steel emergency door. ‘Give me a hand!’ I gasped.

We wrestled with the bar and managed to release it. The door scraped open outwards and a blast of fresh air hit us as we stumbled through to find ourselves on the roof.

I hadn’t realised, until we came out into the open, how late it had got. The daylight was fading fast and a grey pall hung over the skyline. The roof itself was flat, with a surrounding waist-high parapet. We’d exited through a square concrete hut-like affair. It was the only thing up here apart from a similar locked hut which was probably the housing for the immobilised lift machinery. Dotted around were some metal hoods crowning ventilation shafts. In the gloom, they looked eerily like giant mushrooms. The wind gusted around freely up here and it was very cold. There had to be a way down. It wasn’t a fire exit otherwise.

I raced round the parapet and finally spotted a short flight of metal rungs running up the inside of the low wall to a pair of hooped handgrips bolted to the rim. I looked over.

The malicious wind grabbed my hair and blew it across my face. The world swam unpleasantly from side to side. I shut my eyes and opened them again. Over the parapet was a straightforward metal rung ladder leading down to the floor below. An encircling metal cage offered the escapee some protection from falling as he/she climbed out on to the ladder and negotiated the top rungs. The cage looked anything but reliable. Its effect would be purely psychological. The lower rungs lacked even this nominal safety device. The ladder terminated at a metal platform opposite a window on the floor below. From there on downwards there was an iron staircase, running in sections from floor to floor, window landing to window landing, to touch down in a deserted shadowy alley at the side of the building.

I felt sick at the thought of clambering down there, but sicker still at the idea of falling into Baz’s hands. The bolts fastening the top of the ladder to the parapet had leached orange stain into the concrete, but when I shook the handgrips they seemed firm enough. We had to chance it. I showed it to Lauren.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I’m not going down there.’

‘Please yourself,’ I told her. I was more than fed up with her by now. ‘Stay here and let Merv throw you over the edge, why don’t you?’

‘I might just as well,’ she retorted. ‘Look,’ she pointed at the cage, ‘if a cat climbed out on to that rickety old thing the whole lot would fall off the wall.’

‘That’s dodgy, but the ladder’s OK. All you’ve got to do is climb down to that platform, see? From there on down it’s a proper iron staircase.’

‘I don’t much like the look of that either,’ she grumbled.

Nor did I, to be honest, and the longer I stood here arguing with her, the less I liked it. It was either climb down there now, straight away, or lose my nerve.