‘Wouldn’t call them chatty, would you, Guv’nor?’
‘Spooks talking to lesser creatures – us. We’re honoured they even know of our existence,’ he said drily.
It had been passed from Vauxhall Bridge Cross to what they knew as Box 500, the Security Service, and from their headquarters overlooking the river it had come to this outpost of SCD7. Little explanation covered it. We understand you deal in such matters. Our sister agency informs us that sources known to them, and regarded as generally reliable, report a plot, believed still in the planning stages, for the killing of a British national, HERBERT DAVID GILLOT (now calling himself Harvey David Gillot), of Lulworth View, Easton, Isle of Portland. A contract has been taken out, we understand, for the assassination by a community in Croatia. Gillot’s occupation is self- employed dealer, broker in arms. No further details are available to us.
‘Doesn’t exactly weigh us down with intelligence,’ Roscoe murmured.
‘Or with what authority the intelligence travels. But it’s logged, timed and dated, and if friend Gillot ends up in a box, my balls will probably be in it with him. Not to be ignored.’
‘No.’
‘What do you know about the arms trade?’
‘That it arouses powerful passions, is generally legitimate, is distasteful until British-based jobs are at stake, and then it’s in the national interest. I would imagine it falls into two categories. There’s government to friendly government and…’
‘… there’s the verminous creature who sells where he can find a marketplace, which is what I assume Gillot to be.’
He thought Roscoe hesitated, as if unsure of sharing a confidence. He prided himself on leading his team well and having time for them. He hid impatience, let it dribble.
A wry smile played on Roscoe’s face. ‘I was back home for a weekend with my parents in the spring – a couple of years ago they moved to the Lake District. They joined everything and are stalwarts in their village. Anyway, at the primary school they had a good-causes fair while I was up there, in aid of the church roof. My mother was doing cakes, buns and jam, but on the next stall to hers there was an Amnesty International girl. The way she talked it up, the arms trade is pretty vile. Believe me, Guv’nor, I’m not a crusader but I doubt there’s much difference between drugs-trafficking and moving illegal arms. That’s about the limit of what I know.’
‘But he’d have to be protected,’ the chief inspector said, a calculated throwaway.
‘Of course.’
The package had been deftly placed in the hands of his detective sergeant. Most of the small squad’s work involved intervention to prevent the murder of some of the more despicable men in the capital’s organised-crime world. He didn’t reckon that an arms dealer, self-employed, would be out of place in that company. It was part of the job description that his guys and girls had to put the same work ethic into saving the life of a bad guy as they would into ensuring that of a law-abiding citizen. There was a procedure to be followed, so he would drag in a superior to act as Gold Commander and head up the business, then call together the necessary agencies – not the spooks because they wouldn’t give him the time of day, and certainly wouldn’t admit to holding a file on Gillot if they had one. He suggested to Roscoe that he contact HM Revenue and Customs and ask for the Alpha team.
Not much to start with, but often they had less.
Penny Laing took a call. She had cleared her desk, closed down her screen and had been about to head for the underground. She’d thought, when she was home and it was cooler, that she’d jog, shower, eat and then… She had nothing to do that interfered with picking up her telephone. And the first five minutes of the conversation was taken up with her name. Yes, she was Penny Laing. Yes, her surname was pronounced as if it was spelled LA-N-E. Yes, she was called Penny, not Penelope, and it was because of the Beatles song. Her parents had met at a UK Hydrographic Office party and had first danced to that tune. Yes, she did know that Penny – after whom the Lane had been named – was an anti-abolitionist and confirmed friend of the slave trade, which was about as politically incorrect as a man or woman could be, and she’d almost been laughing. Yes, she knew who Harvey Gillot was, and had an address, could have a phone number in five minutes and would call back with it. She could come to a meeting chaired by a Gold Commander instead of breakfast in the morning.
But her caller had not said why a meeting to discuss Harvey Gillot had been called at some bloody awful time not much beyond dawn… she was intrigued.
She went to her team leader, who had changed into his Lycra and had his foldaway bicycle beside his desk. ‘Dermot, what in the Met does SCD7 do? You ever heard of them?’
He didn’t look up but continued tying the laces of his cutaway shoes. ‘Part of the Serious Crime Directorate. They are the Serious Organised Crime Agency and include the Flying Squad. They do hostage-taking, kidnaps, and they’re supposed to intercept contract killers moving towards a hit – all very need-to-know. What did they want?’
She was the cat with the cream. ‘They want to talk about Harvey Gillot.’
She heard him chuckle, and then his helmet was on and he was gone, into the labyrinth of the building’s wide corridors. She opened again the files and pulled them up on her screen, utterly intrigued. Intercept contract killers moving towards a hit, he had said.
Only Leanne was allowed to go with Robbie Cairns when he went fishing. They were on the Royal Military Canal, south of Ashford in Kent. There were road bridges about every fifteen hundred yards, and he insisted on walking with the gear to a point at which he was as far as possible from the car, and therefore from other anglers. He was in front of her, hunched low on his canvas stool, and around him were tackle boxes, bait trays and the landing net. That afternoon and evening, he had caught nothing. She was behind him, on a collapsible chair, and had brought sandwiches and a Thermos of weak tea. He didn’t turn to speak to her and she wouldn’t interrupt his quiet.
Leanne was pretty. She had a good, slight figure, a clear complexion, natural blonde hair and nice nails; she had no boyfriend. She was content to sit in the failing light on the canal bank, swat away flies and watch her brother’s unmoving float as his maggots squirmed. He hadn’t caught a single fish, not even one big enough for next door’s cat… He could go a whole session, hours of it, and the float never go under, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. She thought he needed her there – would have been difficult to put it in words, even tell her dad or her mum or the grandparents who lived close by in their flat on the Albion Estate, so she told no one.
It had been a good day.
It had been the kind of day when the world moved.
The water glimmered in her eyes from the dropping sunlight and a water bird was in the reeds opposite. In the car she had told him all the detail she had. The price their grandfather had agreed with Lenny Grewcock. The name of the target. Where the target lived. She’d laughed and nearly swerved on the outside lane of the motorway when she’d described how a silly cow at the other end of a telephone had bought the crap story about her being a freelance writer and… No response. She had told him what she had learned, and there had been one sharp nod.
She worked hard for her brother, Robbie. She had no job other than supporting him. A teacher at school had told her she was bright enough for third-stage education, could have gone to college. The teacher had known nothing. She was of the Cairns family, from Rotherhithe, and that wasn’t something from which she would ever consider walking away. No boyfriends, but she idolised her brother. She cooked and cleaned for him in Clack Street, which was under the big blocks of the Albion Estate. She reconnoitred ground for him, did ferrying for him, and knew where it would end.
A gutter. Not rainwater but blood.
A pavement. Not a black bin-bag stuffed with rubbish but a body.
She doubted that around Rotherhithe – in Lower Road or Albion Street, in Quays Road or Needleman Street – there would be a wet eye, other than hers, when he was bleeding in the gutter or splayed on the pavement.
It couldn’t end in any other way.
The bloody float never shifted.
She knew how it would be: the next day he would start to think around it. Other than that Gillot sold weapons, she knew nothing about him – only that he was, pretty much, already dead.
He walked. The dog caught his mood and stayed a half-pace behind him. He’d a problem. Could be a small problem, one of lapsed trust; could be a big problem, of volcanic proportions. The towelling robe in the second bathroom had been damp.
He was out towards the Bill and the day’s tourists had long gone. The lighthouse was not yet activated and
