He glared at me for a moment, his nostrils flaring, then turned back towards the door.
Which was when I grabbed him by the collar of his boiler suit, dragged him back and, in one swift movement, put the carving knife to his throat. ‘Don’t move,’ I whispered in his ear. He tried to turn his gun arm round so that the barrel was pointing in my general direction, but the angle was too difficult and I was in too close to him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to know who I’m dealing with here. So if you tell me who the client is, I’ll remove the knife and we can talk calmly.’
‘Fuck you,’ he spat, but there was a tremor in his voice.
I increased the pressure on the knife, not wanting to draw blood, but prepared to do so if I had to. After all, this was the man who’d killed my brother.
‘I’ll kill you for this,’ he whispered.
‘Just tell me.’
And that was when he dropped his final bombshell: ‘I don’t know.’
Thirty-six
‘What the hell do you mean?’ I asked incredulously, still pressing the knife against his throat.
‘Exactly what I say. I don’t know the name of the guy who’s paying us to do this. I just know him as Alpha. Now, can you please remove the blade from my throat?’
I thought about demanding he give me the gun but concluded that he almost certainly wouldn’t comply. ‘As long as you promise not to put a bullet in me, and to answer my questions.’
‘All right, but I’ve got to find Lee. She’s out there on her own.’
‘And I’m prepared to help you, but first we need to get a few things clear.’ I moved the knife away from his throat, but kept it close, and didn’t release my grip on him. ‘First off, I want to know how you know this guy Alpha.’
Wolfe took a deep breath and started talking. ‘He works on behalf of some people we’ve been importing coke and smack from. We get calls from him now and again, giving us instructions on when and where the transactions are going to take place. He also gives us tip-offs if he thinks we’re being watched.’
‘Is he a cop?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know anything about him. We’ve only ever spoken on the phone. But he’s always got good information, and he’s reliable. So when he phoned up last week and told me he wanted someone busted out of police custody, and was willing to pay a load of money to make sure it was done, I didn’t think there’d be a problem.’
‘And this was when last week?’
‘Friday, I think.’
‘But Andrew Kent was only nicked last night.’
He craned his neck, looking at me with an angry glint of suspicion in his eyes. ‘How do you know? I never told you that.’
‘Tommy did,’ I lied. ‘And don’t ask me how he knew because I haven’t got a clue. But the point is, what was Alpha doing hiring you to break someone out of custody who wasn’t even in custody at that point? That’s completely illogical.’
‘That’s what happened. And he was paying us big time as well. Half a million for the job. I couldn’t believe it, but he sent me the key to a deposit box and there was a hundred grand in it. He called it a “golden hello”, something to seal the deal. Clarence wasn’t sure about getting involved, because we’d never done anything like that with him before, but I wanted to go for it.’
‘I can’t believe this. And you’re meant to be a careful operator.’
‘I thought it was kosher. And you try and turn down that much money when it’s there in front of you. It ain’t easy. Anyway, Alpha told us all the details, except the name of the prisoner. He said we’d get that later. In the meantime, he wanted us to set everything up.’
‘Who organized this place?’
‘He did. The instructions were to bring Kent back here, get him down into the basement, and make sure he wasn’t roughed up too much. Then wait for him to turn up. We were going to meet him for the first time when he gave us the rest of the money.’
‘Did you ask what he wanted Kent for?’
‘He told me I didn’t need to know.’
‘So all that stuff about us doing it on behalf of a relative of the victim was bullshit?’
He nodded.
‘And you weren’t suspicious it was a set-up?’
‘Why should I be? We did what we were paid to do. There was no reason why he wouldn’t give us the rest of the money.’
I sighed. Wolfe was right. The problem was, it was clear he wasn’t going to. Instead, he seemed to want to make sure that everyone involved in the Kent snatch ended up dead.
Feeling confused and exhausted, I relinquished my grip on Wolfe and took a step back. He turned to face me, making a great play of rubbing his throat, an angry look on his face. ‘When we get out of here. .’ he growled.
‘When we get out of here, Wolfe, we’re quits. But first we’ve got to make it out.’
‘With Lee.’
I nodded, knowing that I was going to have to give her the benefit of the doubt, since if she was innocent, I owed her big time. ‘With Lee.’
‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘And watch my back this time.’
I followed him as he moved back out into the darkened foyer and stopped, looking round anxiously. ‘She can’t have got far,’ he whispered, before calling her name, his voice reverberating through the silence of the house.
There was no answer.
‘Maybe she’s outside somewhere,’ I said. ‘She could have made a run for it.’
‘You should have stayed with her, you arsehole.’
I felt like arguing the point, but didn’t bother. It didn’t matter what Wolfe thought. As soon as we were out of here, I was going to get him nicked, using the evidence I’d got on the recording device in my watch. And I was going to make sure he knew who’d done it as well.
The bump was faint but audible, and it came from somewhere up on the next floor.
We both stopped and listened. It came again, sounding like movement. Then it stopped.
Wolfe called Lee’s name for a second time. For a second time, there was no answer.
‘You know the layout upstairs, don’t you?’ I said quietly.
He nodded. ‘Yeah. Me and Clarence came here a few days ago to check the place out. There are about a dozen empty rooms up there, but the floor’s pretty flimsy in places so you’ve got to be careful where you tread. Do you think it’s Lee making the noise?’
He suddenly seemed vulnerable and, in spite of myself, I found myself feeling sorry for him, just like I’d felt sorry for Kent earlier when he was being kicked and beaten all the way down into that claustrophobic basement, and I had to remind myself what he’d done to my brother.
‘I’m guessing as soon as she heard me fighting in the basement, she made a run for it. She’s probably halfway to London by now.’
‘I’d try her on her mobile but there’s no bloody reception here.’
‘It’s probably why the place was picked.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘So that we couldn’t call for help.’
Wolfe shook his head. ‘No way. You’re getting paranoid.’
‘Look, two men are dead in here, the man we abducted is missing, and someone — and I’ve got no idea who it was — just tried to kill me as well. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think Lee’s up there. I think she ran.’
‘But what if she is? What if the bloke who just tried to kill you’s got her and she can’t answer?’ He paused. ‘I’m going up. Are you coming?’
