Corpse in Waiting Read online

  ‘With difficulty,’ I answered.

  ‘You ought to have your own space.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to buy a house in Bath. Unfortunately, you-know-who had seen it first. I’ve lost it now, she put in a higher offer.’

  ‘Don’t give up hope. She often sees something she decides she wants even more and drops what had been the latest toy. Unless she’s an innocent victim in all this she’ll end up in court and probably won’t need it anyway. Nasty of me, I know, but I rather hope she gets locked up.’

  What he had said would be a rough sketch was turning out to be what looked to me like a finely executed and detailed plan.

  ‘Please be very careful over this Descallier character,’ Alan said a couple of minutes later. ‘Since you rang I’ve been thinking about what went on that evening and have decided that my conclusions that he was merely a poser with very poor taste was because I had been looking at him through the bottom of a champagne glass for a lot of the time. There were some dodgy-looking people there with whom he seemed to have some kind of understanding.’

  ‘What else went on that made you suspicious?’

  ‘It was just the atmosphere. Convivial on the surface but with not too pleasant undertones. Meaningful looks, Descallier sending people off on some errand or other with a scowl and a jerk of his head, a general feeling of unease – hard to describe actually.’

  An argument, Justin shouting, again, having broken out in the kitchen, Kilmartin left the room before I could move and I heard him point out that drawing offices were very quiet places and any real problems should be referred to the dining room. Silence fell.

  No one, he went on to tell me, had been introduced to the guests as a wife or partner and no children or very young people had been present. There had been plenty of young women around though, some of whom had given the impression they lived there. The house was large, modern and situated close to Windsor Great Park.

  ‘Is your husband planning to break into this place and that’s why you want the information?’ he went on to ask lightly.

  ‘I don’t think so, but he might when I tell him about it.’

  Later, when he had gone, I rang Patrick and left a message, his phone being switched off, which I had half expected. There was no response until quite late in the evening when I was able to relax, Carrie having returned and happy to carry on with her duties.

  ‘We’re in a pub,’ was Patrick’s first piece of news.

  ‘Fancy that,’ I said.

  ‘We deserve a pint and something to eat. James broke all the speed limits except where there were cameras and we got here in time to take apart four one-time or active pimps who he knew about before they crawled back into their sewers. Another two were in prison and the last was dead. We didn’t learn an awful lot but got the whereabouts of an old warehouse that’s known to have been used to conceal female immigrants, legal and otherwise, and went there. The place is deserted but it’s obvious that people have been living there quite recently. Boyles House was mentioned by one man but he didn’t know any details. We’d called there on the off-chance on the way but Fred doesn’t work nights. Then we had a kip in the car and now we’re fuelled to follow another lead, an address in east London that someone swore is being used for what was described as a holding pen. What’s this about something the kids have found out?’

  I had not previously gone into details but did so now, finishing by saying, ‘In my view this would be a more profitable line of enquiry. This man could be the boss. He followed me to Warminster, and now he’s back. Matthew and Katie saw him the day before yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that. I’ll ring you back when I’ve spoken to James.’

  Quite a while went by before my phone rang again.

  ‘Understandably James doesn’t want to get involved with breaking into a private house without a warrant,’ Patrick said. ‘And I’ll have to get Greenway on board, ditto. We’re going to have a nose around the place in Chingford that I mentioned just now and then, if that doesn’t lead anywhere call it a day. James will then drive back home and organize some surveillance around Hinton Littlemoor. I’ll go to my club and contact Greenway. Would you email me the drawings and plans Kilmartin drew up?’

  ‘I can’t, they’re on A3 paper, too big to scan in to our machine. I’ll bring them.’

  ‘There’s every chance that Descallier, or one of his minions, will follow you.’

  ‘He might not be around at four in the morning if I leave then. If he is, or someone else is standing in for him and tails me I’ll just shoot out his tyres.’

  ‘No, I think you should concentrate on losing him – we don’t want this character to know we’re really on to him.’

  It was nice to know that he took my threat seriously.

  Brave statements apart I still tended to unlock the Range Rover with fear gnawing at my insides. I had been keeping it parked as close to the house as possible so that if anyone approached it during the night the outside security lights would come on. Still not being able to recollect those few minutes of my life made it worse and every time I went anywhere near the vehicle I checked that there were no tell-tale drips of brake fluid on the ground beneath it.

  Those still abed had been warned of my early departure and as the tyres crunched over the gravel of the drive I wondered if Matthew and Katie were now awake and this would be their new mystery. Perhaps Mike Greenway would permit us to show them a small part of SOCA’s HQ next time we took them to London.

  No black Mercs were parked in the High Street of the village and no one appeared to follow me. I had been on the road for over an hour, the sky lightening, before I saw a familiar black shape in my rear mirror. I was on the outskirts of a village and immediately turned left into a small housing estate where I did a U-turn and then parked, facing the way I had come in. Switching off the ignition and lights I waited.

  Five minutes went by. Light traffic whooshed to and fro on the main road but no one came into this quite little enclave, not even a dog barked. I set off again, prepared for the vehicle to be similarly parked in a side road while the driver waited for me to pass. A few miles farther on I had not seen it and began to relax, chiding myself for having got in a mild flap over what had obviously been another black Mercedes, hardly an uncommon vehicle.

  Patrick’s club – a low-key, but frankly, sumptuous affair for ex-officers who have been severely injured in the course of duty – is in Chiswick and I got there just in time for breakfast. This, and my arrival, had previously been arranged, the club being sufficiently old-fashioned to prefer members not to have females arrive out of the blue. I had asked on a previous visit if ladies who fitted the criteria were allowed to join and had been told they were: it was just that there weren’t any. And no, the place isn’t one of those stuffy establishments where old fogies sit around dozing, waiting to die. Behind the scenes it is a meeting place, the heart of an information network, a grapevine, for MI5, MI6, covert police departments, including SOCA and Special Branch. Most of the people who go through its doors are not members at all, but, like me, ‘visitors’.

  Patrick, who keeps a change of clothing on the premises as a certain standard of dress is expected, was waiting for me in the entrance hall, actually a large room furnished with armchairs and sofas with a coffee bar in one corner. When I first glimpsed him, standing by a table reading the headlines of one of the morning newspapers placed upon it, my heart turned over, as it usually does. Here, surely, was the other side of the coin to the man who had gone away just over twenty-four hours previously with murder writ large in his eyes. But not so, I saw when we were close: his smile when he looked up and saw me was genuine but he was as taut as a bowstring.

  ‘No luck then?’ I said, after I had signed the visitors’ book at reception and we had exchanged a quick kiss.

  ‘Yes, in a way. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. Were you followed?’

  I handed over the drawings in the cardboard tube that A
lan Kilmartin had left behind for me to use. ‘There was a Merc behind me at one stage but it hadn’t followed me from the village. And this man or his henchmen can’t possibly wait for me to go somewhere around the clock.’

  When we were seated in the dining room; heavy blue brocade curtains, gold-coloured carpet, marble fireplace, chandeliers, discreet bar, Patrick signalled to the waiter. Then he said, ‘I’ve been on to Greenway with your info. Descallier’s hot. Friend of Cabinet ministers – on the quiet – financier of political parties, whichever one best suits his inclinations, racehorse owner and on nodding terms with minor royalty. There’s no question that any vehicle registered to him – and it would have been driven by an employee – could have been remotely connected with what happened to you as it would retrospectively be reported stolen as he’s a chum of a couple of top cops too.’

  ‘We have a problem.’

  ‘Quite.’

  We ordered our breakfast and then I said, ‘I know he has a criminal record.’

  ‘Yes, as long as your arm, under different aliases and in different countries.’

  ‘I can’t understand why he’s bothering himself with what would appear to be taking over Alexandra’s business.’

  ‘It’s the contacts he’d be after. And people like him have their dirty fingers in so many pies, employing so many bit players who are terrified of them that it becomes almost impossible to trace crime back to the man at the top. Like Martino Capelli, only worse.’

  ‘I take it then that Special Branch is already working on this.’

  ‘Any number of branches are.’

  ‘Are there undercover people inside the house?’

  ‘According to Greenway, no – too risky. I shall take these plans to Mike.’

  ‘What about the couple of top cops?’

  ‘Being watched – and due for retirement.’

  ‘Which makes it stalemate as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘We could go and have a look at the place.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Shackled, as it were, by different protocols to those of MI5 we could only pause outside a pair of magnificent gates, one corner of the house just visible down a curving drive as it was screened by trees. One of several such, fairly new, properties, it was situated near the entrance of one of the public, but gated, roads that run through Windsor Great Park.

  ‘Nothing to see,’ I murmured.

  ‘But someone’s just driven either in or out,’ Patrick said.

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘The gates were a few inches from shutting as we came round that last bend.’

  His mobile rang and he handed it to me to answer.

  ‘Sorry to bother you at the weekend,’ said Alan Kilmartin’s voice. ‘But I’ve just had a another weird call from Alexandra and I thought I’d mention it to your husband first as you said he was working on it.’

  I asked him to hang on, relayed the message to Patrick and he pulled off the road on to a woodland track. I could gather little from what was said as he mostly listened and spoke little. After the call ended he sat pensively, staring at nothing through the windscreen.

  ‘Well?’ I ventured after half a minute or so.

  ‘He’s had this call, similar to last time, with Alex saying she’s managed to get to a phone and giving the impression she’s being held somewhere against her will. As before, the call was cut short but this time she screamed before the line went dead. I’d better let Greenway know so he can organize a trace.’

  The Commander said he would immediately do so and was sufficiently fired up to ask us to meet him at a local country house hotel in Englefield Green. (We discovered at a much later date that he lived in north Ascot.) He was wearing what my father would have described as ‘best gardening togs’ and had bits of leaves in his hair which made me think that his wife was probably away from home.

  ‘I hope you appreciate I wouldn’t be taking the weekend off if this case was my sole responsibility, which it isn’t,’ he began by saying. ‘But . . .’ He left the rest unsaid, gazing over what was before him. Then, ‘I’d like to talk to this architect . . .’ He glanced up questioningly.

  ‘Alan Kilmartin,’ I said. ‘He used to go out with Alexandra Nightingale, who’s been making these phone calls.’ I gave him his phone number which he noted down.

  ‘There being a possibility that Descallier’s involved with the people trafficking cases we’ve been working on is new,’ Greenway said, still perusing the drawings. ‘So my instinct is to act. But I do have to respect what other outfits have been working on for some time even though they’ve been at it, in my view, for far too long. When this finally does get blown apart there’s going to be a lot of what the farmers call muck flying around and a couple of our beloved political masters are going to lose their jobs. I think that’s the main reason for the delay. I shall send these off to the other departments involved to demonstrate that I’m sharing intelligence but how, or if, they’ll be used is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Do we know what this man looks like?’ I asked. ‘I forgot to ask Alan about that.’

  ‘I’ve seen a mugshot,’ Greenway answered. ‘But it was taken some years ago. He’s of medium height and build, greyish sort of complexion, pale blue eyes, light brown thinning hair, no visible scars. An ordinary-looking bloke, really.’

  The trace came back very quickly, an old warehouse on a wharf at Deptford.

  ‘But how does such a place still have landlines?’ Patrick said impatiently, Greenway having imparted the news.

  ‘I was just about to elaborate,’ he was told. ‘Presumably, it doesn’t. The building’s due to be converted to upmarket apartments, starting Monday, tomorrow, and the call was actually made from a Portakabin office hired by the developers. We won’t know any more until someone’s been round there.’

  This he organized and there was another wait.

  ‘I simply can’t believe that Alexandra’s in danger,’ I said quietly to Patrick when we were on our second pot of coffee. ‘Two calls almost the same is too much of a coincidence.’

  Patrick merely grunted. Me, right from the beginning I had thought it a whole barrel of stinking red herrings, the work of a spiteful woman all too keen to get her revenge on one man who had dumped her and another who had given her a piece of his mind and made her pay the bill. I was about to risk pointing this out but Greenway spoke first.

  ‘Think of the scorn of the media if we raided the place to look for trafficked women and found nothing,’ he said slowly, head back, eyes seemingly studying the ceiling.

  ‘What, this house?’ Patrick said, gesturing towards the drawings. ‘Bloody hell! You don’t think they’re actually being kept there now, do you?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But if this woman . . . she is the one who has the hots for you, isn’t she?’

  ‘So it would appear,’ Patrick said stiffly.

  ‘Forgive me for asking but have you told her where to get off?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘It fits. What revenge, eh?’

  A few minutes later Greenway had a call with the information that the Portakabin at Deptford had not been locked and there were no signs that anything had been disturbed. The phone was being examined for fingerprints but even though it had only recently been installed was greasy, as someone put it, “As if a bloke was eating fish and chips with his fingers while using it.” The warehouse itself was still being searched.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We can’t do any more right now.’ He surveyed the pair of us. ‘You know what I’m going to say right now, don’t you?’

  Patrick said, ‘You’re about to forbid me on pain of death from going anywhere near Descallier’s place.’

  ‘D’you reckon you could get a few bugs in there?’ said the Commander with a crafty grin.

  ‘If I know anything about Special Branch there’s probably a ton of them planted already. And what’s this about not messing around with any other departments’ scenarios?’

&nb
sp; ‘Cold feet?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘What would you do if you were still head of your own outfit at MI5?’

  ‘I had almost complete freedom then.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘And licence to kill.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘But you haven’t thought through the implications. If there was strong evidence that this character was keeping women prisoner on the premises I’d have gone in there and if I met resistance from any number of gun-toting minders, henchmen, whatever, I’d have started a small but useful war.’

  Greenway looked at me as if for verification but before I could utter a word, said, ‘There isn’t strong evidence.’

  ‘Then we stay out.’

  ‘Good,’ Greenway said, getting to his feet. ‘Just testing.’

  Patrick took a deep breath and let it go very slowly.

  An hour later, when we were having a light lunch, the Commander received a report on the search of the warehouse. Women’s clothing had been found on the top floor and one enterprising soul was of the opinion that although obviously old and creased, the garments were actually clean. With permission, whoever it was intended to call at all the nearest charity shops as soon as they opened the following morning to try to discover if they might have been the source.

  ‘The clothing you found at Boyles House had been worn, hadn’t it?’ Greenway asked us.

  I told him, yes, filthy.

  ‘Do we know what condition the stuff was in at the building in Woolwich?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘This has every appearance of being a hoax,’ Greenway muttered. He glared at Patrick. ‘Has this female the kind of mentality to do something along these lines?’

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ Patrick replied. ‘But it doesn’t mean that she’s a willing player. There’s more to this than a hoax. For a start there’s the irrefutable evidence that a car registered to Romano Descallier has been following Ingrid and the driver might be responsible for tampering with her brakes. I have to say in using such a potentially traceable vehicle they took a huge risk which perhaps demonstrates how arrogant, or stupid, or both, the man is. As we already know Descallier was a client of Alexandra Nightingale and a room she was ostensibly using as an office – it wasn’t – at Boyles House had another, concealed, room at the rear where people had obviously been imprisoned.’