STANDPOINT a gripping thriller full of suspense (12 page)

Someone tried the lock from outside. He didn’t bother responding; he had other things to think about. He’d keep the unsealed DSB and add it to the bugging device that Karl had given him in Caliban’s; he was fast building a trophy spy kit. He checked the rucksack was secure, flushed the toilet and opened the door, only remembering to take off his gloves halfway down the carriage.

By London, he and Chelsea Girl had totted up less than five minutes of conversation — a personal best in stonewalling. He let her exit the train first and gave her a couple of minutes’ head start.

* * *

Sir Peter was very specific about the delivery time — which left a conundrum. How do you kill a few hours with fifty-seven grand to look after? Simple really — you take it to the movies. Leicester Square was a ‘phantasmagoria of cinematic entertainment’ — he’d read that once on a tourism leaflet. He picked a foreign film with subtitles. Miranda had made him sit through a dozen foreign films when she’d returned from Bermuda. But once he’d seen
Rififi
, he was hooked.

Sadly, this wasn’t even
Rififi’s
second cousin. After two and a half hours, the tortured Breton artist had left her diplomat husband and set sail for Tangiers with her daughter and a cat called Filou — like the pastry. At least, that’s what he thought had happened; he’d tuned out for a while, absorbed by the soundtrack of his thoughts, trying to make sense of a
very
difficult day.

He arrived at Main Building with twenty minutes to spare. He’d decided to check in early, then kick his heels in the foyer, maybe count some tiles. He approached the reception desk, relieved to have finally made it.

“I have a personal delivery for Sir Peter Carroll.” He passed his ID through the slot.

The woman on the other side of the glass looked him up and down. Nothing like a hearty welcome, and neither was this. A colleague beside her picked up a telephone and a round of military whispers ensued. It was a quick game. “Sir Peter Carroll is no longer in the building.”

He took out his orders and studied them again; there was no mistake. “Can you check to make sure?”

Again, the look that told him he was about as welcome as Karl on Ann Crossley’s honeymoon. He put the bag down and massaged the sweat into the back of his neck. “Is there any way of reaching Sir Peter?”

“Sir Peter,” she stressed, as if to reclaim the name from the lips of an infidel, “. . . is unavailable.” There was a long pause. “Is there someone else I can call for you?”

“Forget it,” he narrowed his eyes, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Outside, the screech of London traffic brought him to his senses. He checked his watch; still time to make it back up to Leeds, but the building would likely be closed. Why hadn’t he rung ahead when he’d first got to London? Easy answer: because he’d never had to before.

His mobile held five numbers now: Miranda, her parents, her brothers’ place, Karl and the Pickering homestead. And by his own reckoning that was probably two numbers too many. His thumb hovered over the choice of speed-dials. No contest, under the circumstances.

John Wright picked up immediately. “Yorkshire Tourist Board.” Funny man — he must have clocked the caller. “Alright, Thomas, how was your time away?”

“Good, thanks; not long back. Listen, all right to pop over tonight?”

“You’re always welcome! Bring some money — we’ll play some cards.”

Bring some money; that had to be the understatement of the decade. “Nice one, John,” he fought to control the shake in his voice. “I’ll train it up and grab a cab at the station.”

“Don’t be daft. Ring from the train and one of the boys’ll meet you.”

“Thanks mate.” He began to breathe easy again. The boys would be there too. The Wrights’ home was the safest place he knew. And there was always the chance that Miranda would put in an appearance, especially if he texted her.

Back at his flat, he decanted dirty clothes, picking up clean ones and his personal laptop. He was in the middle of deciding whether to take along a camera when the phone rang. Fantastic, Miranda must have got his message.

“Hello?” Silence. The kind of metallic silence where you think you can hear whirls and echoes, but really there’s a cavernous emptiness. He waited, a minute or more, his heart pounding as he strained to pick up clues — breathing, background noise, anything. He put the phone down and straightaway drew the curtains.
Easy, Thomas
. Probably just a wrong number, some old dear, as deaf as a post, who’d misdialled.

The phone started up again, its tinny, synthetic sound reverberating through the flat. He crept to the window — nothing in sight either direction. The phone was still ringing relentlessly: number withheld. Now he was really freaked. Whoever it was, he’d answered before so they knew someone was in. Stupid — he might as well have hung a banner outside: ‘cash available to good home.’

The racket from the phone died; the silence afterwards was deafening. He tiptoed to the front door and double-bolted it. There was only one choice — he could either stay there with a bagful of money or make a break for it.

He grabbed his rucksack and bag — no time to change now — and went to the back door. He pressed his face tightly against the frosted glass and waited. There was no sense of any movement out there. The door opened with a creaking click; he never oiled it on purpose. He locked up and took the metal steps two at a time, down to the excuse of a garden. His eyes scanned the debris — bingo, just what the doctor ordered. He grabbed a piece of wood that had been dumped there and weighed it — good enough to do some damage.

The gate swung back and bounced a little against the back post. Another pause, listening out into the open space, breath held, straining for clues. At the point where he needed to breathe again he stepped into the back alley, club in hand. Fear was turning to a simmering rage. He slammed the gate shut and took practice swings with the stick. But all that lay before him was a few old dustbins, half a motorcycle and the usual mixture of newspapers, discarded milk bottles and dog shit.

He trod warily, the stick primed by his side. Nothing stirred except his own overwrought imagination. At the end of the alleyway he dropped the stick and broke into a gallop. Call it instinct, call it paranoia; call it what the fuck you like, he had to get away from there. As he closed on Walthamstow Central a bus drew by and he was so hyped up that he got on — and stayed on — just to give himself some time to uncoil. He sat downstairs near the exit and rode the bus all the way to Leyton Underground instead.

He didn’t phone the Wrights until he was climbing the stairs at Barking. Terry, the elder son, was there in minutes. How Terry could afford a BMW remained a mystery to him; the Wrights’ business dealings were as unfathomable as the Atlantic, and probably as treacherous. Two poor sods waiting for taxis looked on with envy as Thomas opened the car door; he couldn’t blame them. Silver and chrome bodywork, sixteen valves, two hundred Nm of torque, and all the other specs that had meant nothing whatsoever to Thomas when Terry described them in loving detail. But it looked the business.

He climbed inside, squeezed his bag behind him and kept the rucksack on his knees — he felt like a first day pupil holding his satchel.

Terry talked as fast as he drove. “So this American geezer rings up and offers me a ’67 Corvette — imagine that!

At that moment, all Thomas could imagine was his last coffee churning in his stomach. Terry interrupted the anecdote for some toe-curling cornering. “And I said to him: I’ll give you fifteen grand, subject to sight, and he says . . .”

Look at the road; look at the road.

“American geezer, he says to me: ‘Son, you got yourself a deal.’ Stupid yank got the year wrong. Turns out it’s a ’78, but I reckon there’s enough parts in the wreck to turn a profit.”

“Wreck?”

“Yeah — totalled. Dad’s gonna come with me to check it out, then we’ll strip it down at the yard. I know this, erm — whatcha call it — installation artist. Poncey modern stuff — great body though.”

“What, the Corvette?”

“No, some mate of Sheryl’s; comes into Caliban’s now and again.”

Thomas nodded carefully; his head was spinning.

“Yeah, she uses the car parts in her sculptures. I wish she’d use my parts.”

Hand off crotch; both hands on the wheel!

The BMW arrived at Chez Hideaway with a final flourish of brakes that set Thomas’s teeth on edge. Diane, matriarch of the Wright clan, was waiting at the door. Terry fetched Thomas’s bag from the car.

“Thomas, come inside love — you’re as white as a sheet.”

And no bloody wonder after Steve McQueen’s performance.
He went in to the living room and looked for Miranda; it was too much to hope for, but that hadn’t stopped him hoping. John met him with a beer in his hand. “John, could I ’ave a private word?”

“No problem. Come through — pizzas are on their way.”

He followed John to a side wing of the house, rucksack in hand.

“We can talk here in my office — I work from home some of the time now.” The room was as silent as a Mafioso on trial.

Thomas glanced around the room in surprise. It was spotless, orderly, not what he’d expected. No dodgy shipment receipts, no unpaid bills from the Revenue and no rolls of twenties — like
he
could talk, today.

“Take a pew. Now, what can I do for you?”

No easy way to do this.
Thomas pulled open the rucksack and the ripped DSB to afford John a generous view.

“Fuckin’ ’ell, Tom — this is s’posed to be a friendly game.”

They laughed together. And as Thomas leaned back he saw three frames up on the wall. In the centre was a classic photograph of the whole family. He remembered the occasion well; Miranda had made him go shopping with her. Not that watching Miranda try on a succession of figure-hugging dresses could ever be described as a burden. He’d been the photographer, plumping for a 90mm lens on a 35mm camera.

To the left of that was a framed newspaper clipping: LOCAL BUSINESSMAN EXONERATED IN POLICE INVESTIGATION. Thomas turned away quickly before the blush took hold. That had been the closest he’d come to owning up about his day job, around a year ago. His back twinged just thinking about it. Two hours in situ, waiting for a copper so bent he could have doubled as a corkscrew. Waiting in shitty weather and poor lighting so he could capture the moment when Bent Cop tried to collect a pay-off, to avert a watertight but spurious case.

Yeah, lots of risk on that one, especially from the work side. Still, he’d achieved a natty set of black and whites — he preferred them for detail in crap lighting — and a half-decent sound recording, good enough for the police anyway. John, his brief and some senior officers all received an anonymous set of photos. Only the police received the sound recording.

He sensed John watching him, but his curiosity was in overdrive. The third frame really surprised him. Circa 1990:
Meet the Parents
, East London style. It must have been one of their first nights out after he and Miranda had come down from Leeds. The composition was too wide and contrived although it had a sort of naïve charm; it looked like a snapshot in time, a moment of stillness that couldn’t last. Thomas and Miranda, front and centre, sharing a shy clasp at the very bottom of the picture. Diane and John resting hands on their shoulders. A tight-group foursome that still evoked a sense of belonging. Jesus. He’d be reaching for a hankie soon.

“I keep ’em up there to remind me what’s important.” John smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “So if you’re in some sort of bother, you only have to ask.”

Thomas kneaded his forehead. How do you follow that? With the truth — most of it anyway — starting with the pick-up in Leeds, down to the silent phone calls in the flat. John listened, perfectly still, as if several grand in a rucksack was nothing new.

“Well, you know you can stay here, as long as you want. Terry or Sam can drop round the flat tomorrow and pick up some of your gear.”

A nice idea, but not a solution. “Nah, I’ll be fine once I get rid of the money.” On cue, they both looked back into the bag.

“I s’pose it
is
real?”

Thanks, John; something else to obsess about.

John leaned back against his chair. “Okay, here’s what I think. Stash the money in my safe for tonight and we’ll consider the subject closed. You sleep on it and make sure you take some photos, as evidence.”

Sound advice. When the deed was done, John let out a belch that would rival anything the Harwich ferry claxons could produce. “Better out than in. Right then,” he clapped his hands together. “Let’s go play some
cards
. I feel lucky!”

Everyone in the family knew that Diane was the cards maestro. Popular rumour — and the couple encouraged speculation — was that John and Diane had first met at a casino. One version ran that Diane was a croupier and John the hapless punter. Another, that John had played dumb to win her over — unlucky in cards and all that. The romantic in Thomas was happy to believe either.

He followed John into the living room. Lounges were something other people had — in smaller houses.

“Where’s the bloody pizza — I’m starving. Thomas, do the honours will you; drinks and glasses in the usual place,” John waved him past. The doorbell rang. “About time!” John roared over the chaos of chairs, crockery and glasses all moving simultaneously.