The Loyal Servant (34 page)

47

Three cabinets down and ten more still to check, Caroline was beginning to lose heart. The thought of Pete chatting up some strange woman down the other end of the corridor had sparked a twinge of jealousy she was amazed still existed. She closed another drawer and pulled open the one beneath.

‘So what’s this Shirley woman like?’ she whispered.

‘Now’s not the time.’ Tate didn’t look up. She flicked through the file she was holding and slotted it back in a drawer.

‘I just want to know what we’re up against.’

‘She’s officious and rude.’ Tate pulled out another file. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. She was only obnoxious to me. As soon as some hulking great construction worker came in she was all smiles and batted eyelids.’

‘Great.’

‘Your Pete scrubs up OK. Hopefully he’ll keep her distracted.’ She nodded to the open cabinet in front of Caroline. ‘Still no joy?’

Caroline shook her head. She leafed through another folder.

The women continued to work in silence, the only sound the gentle click of a catch as a drawer opened or closed. Caroline stretched her arms and unkinked her back. She rolled her head from one side to the other.

Then she froze.

Her phone was ringing, loud and insistent. She ran across the room and leapt onto her bag to muffle the sound and located the mobile in an outside pocket. She stared at the flashing message on the little screen telling her Dan was calling and looked desperately at the keypad trying to remember which was the call answer button. She found it and lifted the phone to her ear. There was no sound from the other end.

‘Dan?’

Tate was waving at her from the other side of the room. She pointed at the door and dragged a finger across her throat. Caroline threw up her free hand and desperately scanned the room for a nook or niche to hide herself in. She could hear Pete’s voice, begging Shirley to come back. Then footsteps thundering down the corridor.

The door swung open. Caroline stood facing the receptionist, her phone still clamped to her ear. ‘Who the hell are you?’ The receptionist took a step into the room towards Caroline, then turned abruptly at the sound of Tate clearing her throat. ‘What is this?’ She stared hard into Tate’s face. ‘I know you.’

The door slammed shut. Pete edged himself towards Shirley, blocking off her exit.

‘What’s going on, Pete?’ The receptionist took a step backwards.

‘Sorry, Shirley. You should have stayed in reception.’ He moved in closer. Again Shirley backed away from him.

Tate dragged a chair from the other side of the room. ‘Sit down, Shirley.’

The woman spun round to face her. ‘What do you think you’re doing with those files? That’s confidential information.’

‘I should bloody well hope it is.’ Tate gestured to the chair. ‘Come on, play nice and we can all get along splendidly. Sit down!’

Shirley glanced at Pete, who was still covering the door, and made a quick lunge towards the desk, stretching out an arm for the telephone on the far side. Tate got to it before her and yanked the cord from its base. She shook her head.

‘I do so wish you hadn’t done that.’

Pete grabbed Shirley’s arms from behind. She tried to wriggle free. ‘Please, Shirley,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ He looked up imploringly at Caroline. ‘I can lock her in one of the other rooms, if you like. Keep her out of the way.’

Shirley stamped hard on Pete’s foot and tried to pull away.

Tate moved the chair closer. ‘No – I want her where I can see her.’

Pete returned to guard duty on reception and between them Caroline and Tate secured the receptionist to the metal-framed chair with a combination of computer cables and phone leads. Tate tugged hard on the final cable.

‘You’re going to be in so much trouble for this.’ Shirley was practically snarling at her.

‘I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. Now where was I?’ She turned round and faced the bank of lifeless television screens. ‘How do you switch this lot on?’ She spun back to Shirley. ‘Where’s the power button?’

The receptionist turned her face away.

‘OK, fine – I’ll find it for myself.’

While Tate inspected the panel of monitors, Caroline went back to the files. She’d reached as far as the L’s. Before she tucked her phone away in a pocket, she punched in Dan’s number. After half a dozen rings the voicemail service kicked in. She hung up without leaving a message, not wanting to be accused of fussing. She lifted out the next hanging file from the run and leafed through the contents.

‘Finally!’ Tate said.

Caroline looked up to see the monitors had all flickered into life. Tate stood back and scanned them. ‘Good God – there’s an army of security out there.’ She shuddered. ‘Come and have a look at this. Jean’s mob haven’t organised another demo, have they?’

Caroline hurried over to the five rows of CCTV screens and checked each one. All but two of the 20 displays seemed to be monitoring various parts of the yard, including the gates at the entrance and the outside of the reception block. Each image featured at least two heavy-set security guards, sipping hot drinks from polystyrene cups or smoking cigarettes. The two monitors on the right in the middle row were displaying images from somewhere outside the complex. One showed another set of gates, these ones made of ornately decorated ironwork, rather than the galvanised steel of the yard gates, and the other featured a columned portico around a grand front door. The bonnet of a dark green car was just visible in the bottom corner of the screen.

‘The Larson mansion?’ Caroline said.

Tate nodded. ‘I can’t imagine what else it could be. I’m surprised there isn’t a camera set up right next to Sir Fred’s sick bed, just so Valerie can keep her beady eye on him.’

On another of the screens Caroline noticed a guard with his arms outstretched. He play-punched his colleague on the arm and set off in the direction of the camera.

‘We should get back to it,’ Caroline said and returned to the open drawer.

‘Now, Shirley.’ Tate approached the receptionist. ‘Where can I find information about all of Sir Fred’s subsidiary companies? Would it be under ‘S’ for sub-contractors? Or ‘T’ for tax evasion?’

The receptionist huffed out a breath.

‘Please yourself – I’ll just carry on working through the alphabet until something turns up.’

‘You should leave now – while you’ve still got the chance.’ The woman glanced at the security system monitors.

‘Thanks for your concern – but I think we’ve got it under control.’ Tate returned to the cabinets and plucked out a handful of files. ‘These don’t seem to be labelled using any kind of logic.’

Caroline was making good progress. She was already halfway through the O’s. She lifted out a thick folder from the back of the drawer and peered at the label:
Out of court settlements
. She quickly scanned the contents.

‘OK – this is something,’ Caroline said. Tate stopped what she was doing. ‘Records of all the compensation requests for the workers who were injured and the families of the men who died.’

Tate hurried over to her and glanced at the paperwork. ‘Fantastic! See what I mean, though? You would have thought that’d be filed under ‘C’ for compensation.’ She went back to her own drawer. ‘Oh fuck this.’ She wrenched open a random drawer and stared down at the files inside. ‘Looks like I wasn’t so far off the mark after all.’ She lifted out an armful of folders. ‘Seems ‘T’
is
for tax.’ She dumped the folders on top of the cabinet and fanned them out.

Caroline heard a scuffling noise behind her. She turned to see Shirley trying to get to her feet, the chair lifting off the ground like an awkward pack attached to her back.

‘Sergei!’ the woman shouted.

Caroline followed her gaze and spotted a security guard running up the steps to their building. She shoved a hand over the receptionist’s mouth and forced her to sit back down. Then she held her breath and listened.

‘Hello, mate.’ Pete’s voice, too loud again. ‘No, I’m waiting for Shirley to come back. I’d try again later if I were you.’

Shirley screamed into Caroline’s hand. The sound came out as a muffled groan.

‘There’s nothing to see down there.’ Pete sounded panicked.

There was a crash followed by a thud. Caroline and Tate looked at one another, unable to move. Caroline sucked in a breath and let it out again, she pressed harder against Shirley’s mouth. Then she heard a loud grunt. It sounded like Pete. A scraping noise followed, getting louder, approaching the office. Caroline braced herself. Then let out another breath.

Pete appeared at the door, bent over, gripping a thick ankle of meaty security guard in each hand. ‘He weighs a ton.’ Pete dragged him through the doorway and into the room, finally dumping him against the wall opposite the filing cabinets. ‘He shouldn’t get in your way there.’

‘What did you do to him?’

Pete screwed up his face. ‘It was a rubber mallet – he should be all right. He’s still breathing.’ His hands were shaking as he bent over and checked the man’s pockets. ‘God almighty.’ Pete stretched a sleeve over his hand and pulled something from inside the guard’s jacket. He held out his hand, a heavy revolver dangling from his fingers.

‘Oh my God! Put it down!’

He scanned the room. ‘Where?’

Caroline ran to a cabinet she’d already searched and yanked open a drawer. Pete laid the gun carefully inside and she locked the cabinet, slipping the key into a pocket. ‘We should leave,’ she said.

Shirley started to rock her chair from side to side; she took a deep breath and screamed.

‘For fuck’s sake.’ Tate wrenched the scarf from her hair, tied a thick knot in the middle of it and marched over to Shirley. ‘Pete! Hold her still.’ She waited for Pete to steady the back of the bucking chair and shoved the knot into Shirley’s mouth, then secured both ends behind the woman’s head. Shirley moaned and saliva seeped through the material.

‘Hermes.’ Tate shook her head. ‘What a terrible bloody waste.’ She hurried back to the files on top of the cabinet. ‘Pete – you stay outside in reception. We’ll keep an eye on the monitors and shout if anyone gets anywhere near.’ She flicked through the first two files then discarded them. The third she took more time over. Caroline was trying to simultaneously watch Shirley, Tate, and the monitors, while checking more files herself.

‘Bloody hell.’ Tate flicked through a thick pile of paperwork. ‘Details of donations and loans made to political parties going back ten years. I’ll leave you to guess which party got the bulk of the money. I’m sure not all of that was officially declared.’ She reached the bottom of the stack of papers. ‘Oh this just gets better. One of Larson’s companies has donated funds to England for the English.’

Caroline stopped what she was doing. ‘That’s enough now, isn’t it? We should call it a day.’ She glanced up at the monitors then down at the unconscious security guard. She watched him until she was certain he was still breathing. ‘We shouldn’t push our luck.’

Tate leafed through more pages. ‘Shame there’s nothing here proving Barry Flowers’ connection with the gang of Nazi thugs. Jason’s investigations seem to have been in vain.’

‘Come on,’ Caroline said. ‘Let’s just go.’

‘Ten more minutes. We can’t walk away from all of this.’ Angela Tate turned back to the open drawer. ‘There’s still so much stuff we haven’t even touched.’

The security guard started to moan. Tate stuck her head into the corridor and shouted for Pete. ‘And bring something to tie him up with.’ She walked the length of the cabinets and stopped at the last one. She kicked the bottom of the drawer. ‘There wasn’t a key for this one, was there?’

‘No – 12 keys and 13 cabinets.’

Tate marched over to the gagged receptionist. ‘Where’s the key, Shirley?’

Shirley turned her face away.

‘I don’t have time for this.’ She barged past Pete coming through the door, and disappeared down the corridor. She returned a few moments later wielding a crowbar and a hammer.

‘What are you going to do to her?’ Caroline put herself between Tate and Shirley.

‘Nothing!’ Tate said. ‘I’m getting the bloody drawers open.’

Caroline stepped back and watched Tate go at the cabinet, keeping an eye on the monitors at the same time. Pete’s offer of help was dismissed, Tate sending him back out to reception with a wave of her hand.

There was movement on one of the television screens. Then the one next to it. The dark green sedan that had been sitting on the gravel drive outside the Larson mansion was on the move. The wrought iron gates opened and the car swept out. Caroline couldn't make out who was inside. The car disappeared from view.

Tate let out a loud grunt. The crowbar flipped into the air and clattered onto the floor. The top drawer was open. Caroline peered inside as Tate shoved in a hand. The hanging files inside took up only half the space, but each one was stuffed with paperwork. Tate pulled out all the files and spread them across the floor. Caroline closed the drawer and quickly checked the ones beneath. They were both empty.

Shirley started moaning, her eyes wide as she stared down at the files.