Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London 3) (20 page)

I ducked out of sight behind a truck that was waiting to be loaded.

No, I thought, it still would have been flagged. Not least because DCI Seawoll was one of the most respected and formidable officers in the Met and you’d have to be remarkably stupid to try and do an end run around him.

I got out my torch and examined the tracker, which was identical in every way to mine and probably bought from the same online catalogue. Unless I wanted to open it up, it was about as traceable as a ballpoint pen. I took out my keys and scratched a tiny X into the casing in between the attachment magnets, took a deep breath to calm my nerves and strolled back towards Kevin Nolan’s crap Transit van.

I had to put it back where I found it but I couldn’t leave my tracker next to it, or whoever had planted the first tracker might find mine if they came to retrieve theirs. I couldn’t hear any voices as I reached the van. I hoped this meant they were all inside the lock-up. I bent down, replaced the tracker where I’d found it, removed mine and was just heading for the back of the van when the rear doors crashed open.

‘You need to clean this fucking van.’ It was Kevin’s probable brother. I froze, which was about the most stupidly suspicious-looking thing I could do, and the van rocked as someone climbed inside. ‘No wonder they’re not happy. Pass me the broom.’

‘It’s not the van,’ said Kevin from the back. ‘They think they should be getting more.’

‘They get what they pay for,’ said the voice. ‘I didn’t make the stupid deal.’

It’s always a risk when you have a plan that you fixate on it even when things go pear-shaped. I realised that because my plan had been to stick my tracker under the back of the van. I was actually waiting for Kevin and his friend to leave so I could do so – risking discovery the whole time. How stupid is that?

The van rocked rhythmically and I heard god-knows-what being swept out of the back. ‘I thought Franny’s was closed down,’ said Kevin.

I crouched down and put the tracker ahead of the front wheel arch and nonchalantly walked away. It wasn’t as good or secure a position as the back or the mid-section, but the magnets on those things are much better than they used to be.

We’d picked our position on the fourth floor of the car park with care. From there me and Lesley could have set up our camera with the telephoto lens on a tripod and had a direct line of sight on Nolan and Sons – had we only been willing to freeze to death or indeed had remembered to bring the tripod. The Asbo was conspicuously the only car in its row with the engine running.

‘Sorted?’ asked Lesley as I climbed gratefully into the warm interior.

‘Not exactly,’ I said and told her about the second tracker.

I fished out the thermos flask, yet another Folly antique, a khaki cylinder the size of a shell casing, and poured myself a coffee. Lesley was equally sceptical about us being tracked by CTC, but for different reasons.

‘They don’t need to track us. If they want to know something they’d just phone us up and ask. And if MI5 wanted to know something they’d just call CTC who would call us and ask,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the FBI.’

‘All the FBI has to do is ask Kittredge and he’d ask us,’ I said.

‘But we might not tell Kittredge,’ said Lesley. ‘Not to mention we know Agent Reynolds bent the rules already by following you.’

Lesley went quiet and I paused with the coffee halfway to my lips.

‘Go on then,’ I said.

‘Why do I have to do it?’ asked Lesley.

‘Because I went out last time,’ I said. ‘And I’m still freezing.’

Lesley snarled but she got out of the car and while I finished my coffee she checked for bugs. She was back inside in less than two minutes with another identical GPS tracker.

‘
Voilà
,’ she said and dropped it into my palm. The casing was freezing – it must have been attached for ages.

‘Agent Reynolds,’ I said.

‘Or somebody else,’ said Lesley. ‘That we don’t know about.’

I twirled the rectangular box in my hand. If it had been set up like ours, then it was probably programmed to send a signal if we started moving. Chances were if I deactivated it now the operator wouldn’t notice until she, or possibly a mysterious they, pinged it to check its operating status.

‘Should I fry it?’ I asked Lesley.

‘No,’ she said.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Because if we destroy it they’ll know we know but if we keep it we have the option of feeding whoever it is false information. We could put the tracker on a decoy vehicle and send them on a wild goose chase or we could use it to set up a sting—’

Lesley snorted.

‘We’re the police,’ she said. ‘Remember? We’re not spies, we’re not undercover and we’re conducting a legitimate investigation that’s been authorised at ACPO level. We want them to follow us so we can identify them, call for backup and arrest them. Once we have them in the interview room we’ll be able to tell who they are by what kind of lawyer turns up.’

‘My way’s more fun,’ I said.

‘Your way’s more complicated,’ said Lesley. She dug her finger under the edge of her mask where it itched. ‘I miss being a proper copper,’ she said.

‘Take it off,’ I said. ‘No one’s going to see you here.’

‘Apart from you,’ she said.

‘I’m getting used to it,’ I said. ‘It’s starting to become your real face.’

‘I don’t want it to become my real face,’ hissed Lesley.

I replaced the tracker under the Asbo and we sat in stony silence while the main Nolan and Sons vans were loaded up and driven away. Finally Kevin did his rounds and returned, surprisingly, not with the bin bags of leftovers but with neatly loaded pallets on a forklift. His customers were truly getting the good stuff today. I jumped out of the Asbo, snapped some pictures with the long lens and dived back in again.

‘Turn the tracker on,’ I said.

Lesley opened the laptop and tilted it to show me that the device was already activated and sending a signal every five seconds. I backed the Asbo out of its parking space and headed for the exit ramp. Using a tracker means you don’t have to crowd your target, but you don’t want to be too far away in case they suddenly do something interesting.

Dawn brought a clear sky of dirty blue and illuminated a landscape of pockmarked snow and icy slush. Lesley and I instinctively hunched down into our seats as Kevin Nolan’s Transit lurched past. We waited until we were sure we knew which way he was turning on Nine Elms, and then we followed.

It was all very civilised, but I still would’ve liked to have a pickaxe handle in the back seat – just for tradition’s sake, you understand.

‘Cultural weapon,’ I said out loud.

‘What?’ asked Lesley.

‘If the police had a cultural weapon,’ I said. ‘Like a claymore or an assegai – it would be a pickaxe handle.’

‘Why don’t you do something more useful,’ said Lesley. ‘And keep your eyes open for a car with diplomatic plates.’

We were coming up on Chelsea Bridge, which for all its blue and white painted carriage lamp charm is only three lanes wide – two if you don’t count the bus lane. A good choke point to spot a tail.

All diplomatic cars have distinctive plates which indicate status and nationality, for the ease and convenience of terrorists and potential kidnappers.

I spotted a late-model dark blue Mercedes S class with a D plate and read the code out.

‘Sierra Leone,’ said Lesley and I felt a little borrowed patriotic tug.

‘Have you memorised all of these?’ I asked.

‘Nah,’ said Lesley. ‘There’s a list on Wikipedia.’

‘What’s the code for the US then?’ I asked.

‘270 to 274,’ said Lesley.

‘She’s not going to use an embassy car,’ I said. ‘Is she? I mean talk about conspicuous.’

Lesley felt that I had failed to understand the full implications of using a tracking device, i.e.: you can hang back far enough to be inconspicuous so it doesn’t matter what plates you have. And if she did have diplo plates she wouldn’t have to pay congestion charge or parking tickets and it would make it fucking hard to arrest her.

‘Does she have diplomatic immunity?’ asked Lesley.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We could ask Kittredge.’

‘Or we could phone Kittredge now and make it his problem,’ said Lesley. She checked the laptop. ‘Where the fuck is he going?’ she said and tilted the screen so I could see it again – the little dots marking Kevin Nolan’s Transit were heading into Knightsbridge.

Suddenly a luxury car with D plates would have blended in perfectly.

‘Who round here is going to want a van full of dodgy greens?’ asked Lesley. The restaurants in that area generally had their own people to go down to Covent Garden for the best produce.

‘Things are tough all over,’ I said. But our fears for the palates of the diplomats and oligarchs proved baseless as Kevin skirted the west end of Hyde Park and turned up Bayswater Road. When he turned again into a side street I put my foot down and closed the gap. We followed him up a line of deceptively modest-looking terraces until Lesley said, ‘He’s stopping.’ In time for me to find an inconspicuous parking space from which we could keep him in view.

London was mostly built piecemeal and if, like me, you know a little bit of architecture you can see where the initial developers built a string of grand Regency mansions along a country lane. Then as the city ground remorselessly westward a line of neat little Victorian terraced houses was built for those members of the working class that one needed to have close at hand.

Kevin had stopped outside an odd late-Victorian terrace consisting of exactly three houses that abutted the back of a 1930s London brick shopping arcade. I forbore from mentioning this to Lesley because discussion of that sort of thing tends to get her vexed.

‘Here come the greens,’ said Lesley.

Kevin Nolan slouched around to the back of his van, opened the doors and collected the first of the pallets and headed for the front door. Lesley lifted the camera and its telephoto and we watched through the cable link on the laptop while Kevin scrabbled around in his trouser pockets.

‘He’s got his own keys,’ said Lesley.

‘Make sure you get a close-up on the pallet,’ I said. ‘I want to know who the supplier was.’

We watched as he ferried the pallets from the van to the house. Once he’d taken the last one inside, he closed the door behind him. We waited a couple of minutes and then we waited some more.

‘What the fuck is he doing in there?’ asked Lesley.

I rummaged in the stake-out bag and discovered that we’d eaten all the snacks except for Molly’s sandwich surprise, packed neatly in greaseproof paper. I gave them an experimental sniff.

‘Not tripe this time?’ asked Lesley.

‘Spam, I think,’ I said as I opened up the parcels and lifted the top slice of homemade bread. ‘My mistake,’ I said. ‘Spam, cheese and pickle.’

‘He’s coming out,’ said Lesley and raised the camera again.

Kevin emerged from the front door carrying a battered cardboard box. From the way he carried it I assumed it was heavy. This was confirmed when the van sank on its rear axle as he dumped the box in the back. He rested for a moment, panting, breath visible in the cold air, before returning to the house, where a minute or two later he reappeared with a second box and loaded that.

It’s a funny thing, but you only need to be following someone for a very short period of time before you start identifying with them. Watching Kevin stagger out the front door with a third heavy box I had to fight down the urge to jump out of the car and give him a hand. If nothing else, it would have speeded things up. As it was, we waited and watched him bring out two more boxes while taking the occasional picture to relieve the boredom.

Much too Lesley’s disgust I ate the spam, cheese and pickle sandwiches.

‘Are you planning to spend the rest of the day breathing out?’ she asked.

‘It’s an autonomic function,’ I said smugly.

‘Then open the window,’ she said.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘It’s too cold. Tell you what, though.’ I fished out a Christmas-tree-shaped air freshener from the glove box and hung it from the rear-view mirror. ‘There you go.’

I was probably only saved from death, or at least serious injury, by the fact that Kevin chose that moment to get back into his van and drive away. We waited a couple of minutes to make a note of the house number and call AB for a pool check and then drove after him.

Kevin’s next stop was fifteen minutes away on the other side of the Westway in what had to be the last unconverted warehouse in the whole of West London. It still had its double-width wooden loading gates on which the original blue paint had faded to a scabby dark grey.

We drew up and watched as Kevin left his van, stamped over to the gates, unlocked the inset pedestrian door and stepped inside.

‘I’m bored of this,’ said Lesley. ‘Let’s go in and search the place.’

‘If we let him move on,’ I said. ‘We could have the place to ourselves, have a good look around before anyone finds out.’

‘We’d need a search warrant,’ said Lesley. ‘On the other hand if we wait for little Kevin, who I believe you witnessed assaulting someone yesterday, to carry a couple of boxes in then we’re just investigating his suspicious behaviour. And once we’re inside—’

She was right, so that’s what we did. When Kevin opened the gates and drove his van into the warehouse we drove in just behind him. He didn’t even notice until he came round the back his van to unload.

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

‘What wasn’t you?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘What’s in the boxes then, Kevin?’ asked Lesley.

Kevin actually opened his mouth to say ‘nothing’ again, but realised that was just too stupid even for him.

‘Plates,’ he said, and it was true. Every box was full of plates all made of the same tough biscuit-coloured stoneware as the fruit bowl in James Gallagher’s flat – and the shard that had killed him. But that wasn’t all.

The loading bay was a wide two-storey space that penetrated through the centre of the warehouse. At the far end was another set of wooden loading gates that opened directly onto the tow path of the Grand Union Canal, which ran along the rear. Opening off the bay on either side were two storage rooms, a pattern duplicated on the first floor and again, albeit with larger rooms, on the second. All but one of the rooms were fitted with rotting wooden shelving itself piled with pottery.