‘Hello?’ He sounded as calm as though he was contemplating a walk in the park.
‘I’m nearly there.’
‘Good. A white van will meet you.’
‘I’ll be in the alley next to it.’
‘Make sure you’re facing the road. He’ll be there soon.’ The phone went dead.
Rain cascaded down the windscreen as I got back into the car. I gave Suzy the pickup point. She listened with a sad smile on her face, then leant closer and kissed me very gently on the cheek. ‘This really might be the last time.’
There wasn’t a lot I could say back. I returned her smile, then checked my documents and bumbag and climbed out. My wet tracksuit bottoms clung to my thighs as I adjusted the daysack on my back. ‘Hope not.’ I gave a little wave.
‘Me too. Maybe out of work . . . you know, I come and see you, you come and see me, that sort of thing.’ She revved the engine.
‘That’d be good. I’d like that.’
She finally found first and drove off to get a trigger on Starbucks, while I set off on foot.
There was hardly anyone around as I walked towards the coffee shop and turned into the alleyway. The whole area was shut down for the night; everything was dark apart from the street-lights that shone weakly through the downpour.
A car splashed past, and a couple of people under umbrellas hurried towards Farringdon station. I didn’t know why: you could see it was closed. I didn’t see uniforms, but they’d be under shelter somewhere.
A white Transit, as knackered as the Renault, came slowly downhill and stopped opposite me. I squinted through the rain to try to identify the driver. As he lowered his window, I stepped out of the shadows. It was Grey, still on his own, still looking benign, the ultimate smiling assassin. ‘Give me the bag, please, and get into the back.’
That wasn’t going to happen. If I controlled DW I had a better chance of seeing Kelly. ‘No way. It stays with me.’
He smiled as if he was my host for the evening, and pointed to the side door handle.
After two attempts I eventually got the thing open, and the interior light flickered on. I climbed in. The van was the same inside as out, the steel floor rusty, dented and scraped. It smelt like a spice counter. He pulled the door shut, and I got down on my knees in the darkness to keep DW stable. I leant the side of my head against the cab bulkhead and listened to him climb back in. Almost as soon as we started rolling he was gobbing off in Indian or whatever, probably telling the source that everything was all right, he’d got me.
What now? Was I going to get dropped? I’d convinced myself they wouldn’t risk it, just in case I’d switched the bottles. Surely they’d want to keep me alive until they knew what they had. I fucking hoped so, but what choice did I have? I just hoped Suzy was out there following.
Less than a minute later the van stopped. The cab door opened, and after a couple of goes so did the side door. The light came on. He’d pulled up alongside a builder’s skip, in front of a red-brick wall and boarded-up windows.
I had to get in quick. ‘Whatever you’ve got planned, mate, think about it. What if this stuff isn’t real, what if I’ve swapped—’
Grey’s smile told me he didn’t give a fuck. I could talk all I liked: it was all the same to him. He threw me a roll of black bin-liners and stepped in next to me, a Sainsbury’s cardboard wine carrier in his hand. ‘Undress. Please, undress.’
He hit the light switch so it stayed on when he’d closed the side door. I hadn’t noticed before how deep-set his eyes were. ‘Have you the picture of your child, please?’
It was obvious from his tone that we weren’t going anywhere until I complied. I took off the daysack and placed it on the floor, then gave him the Polaroid from the bumbag. I started to get undressed. This was a good thing. He wasn’t taking any chances that I might have some kind of surveillance device on me – and now, whatever happened to my kit, the picture and number wouldn’t be among it. It meant that only my clothes were heading for the skip – for now, anyway.
He opened the daysack while I got my kit off, and the bottles clinked as he unrolled them gently from my old clothes. He lifted each one up to the light and examined it carefully, then peeled back the corner of the label with a thumbnail, and checked again. If there’d been tell-tales, maybe a scratch on the glass, he would have found them.
I was down to my boxers and socks. It was a cold enough night, and being wet didn’t help. He waved at my shivering body. ‘Everything, please. Undress.’
I did as I was told and threw them into a bin-liner, along with my bumbag, documents and traser.
‘Move back, please.’ He motioned for me to get further inside the van, and delved into his pocket. Out came a pair of surgical gloves and a tube of KY jelly. I knew exactly what was coming. I’d had it done to me enough times. Devices have to be small to stay up there, but even so, they can have a few hours’ battery life.
Without needing to be told, I bent over and touched my toes. The rubber glove snapped on behind me, then came the KY. The inspection only took a couple of seconds. When he’d finished, he slid the door open, picked up the bin-liner and threw it into the skip. The gloves followed.
That was it: I was completely naked, no kit, just five bottles of DW sitting in a box on the floor with labels hanging off them.
The door slid closed again, but at least the light stayed on. Then off we went, Grey gobbing off on the cell, even laughing from time to time. I didn’t know what he found the funniest: the KY-jelly trick, or me flapping about getting dropped.
We stopped at lights, slowed at junctions, turned right and left. Pedestrians splashed past in the rain. Sometimes I could hear car radios, or vehicles ticking over next to us. I tried to ignore the cold and my plucked- chicken skin, and just kept a tight grip on DW. I had no idea how far we’d gone – for all I knew he could have been circling two blocks continuously, trying to disorientate me.
We came to a standstill again, but this time the cab door opened and I heard a chain rattling, and the creak of gates. The van rolled forward, then the engine died and all I could hear was the endless drumming of the rain. Wherever we’d been going, I got the feeling we’d arrived.
The side door opened. We were in a yard. Two steps in front of me was a wall of brown, wet, grimy bricks. Set into it was an open door that led into a very small, grungy hallway. There was another door a few steps inside, and some stairs to the left of it.
‘Come, come!’ Grey ushered me in as if I’d just arrived for a dinner party. I stepped out on to the cold wet tarmac. DW was in my right hand. I couldn’t see anything but high brick walls and the shiny slate roofs of neighbouring houses. We couldn’t have been driving for more than half an hour, so we must still have been in London. I didn’t have a clue where, though. I just hoped Suzy did.
59
A couple of paces got me into the hallway. I could smell mildew and spicy cooking. The staircase was steep, narrow, and covered with greasy carpet that led up into the darkness. Grey stood behind me and pushed open the interior door. We were in a derelict restaurant kitchen. There was no direct light, just whatever sneaked through the square of glass in each of the two swing doors the far side of the room. It was strange that it still smelt: nobody could have cooked here for years.
He curled his finger in front of my face and whispered, ‘Come, come.’ We moved past a series of old pots and pans and all sorts of other kitchen stuff that still sat on the oven and worktops. The floor tiles were freezing under my bare feet.
He stopped just short of the doors and turned to face me. I could just about see his eyes in the quarter-light, and the finger that went up to his lips. ‘Look.’ He pointed at the window. ‘Look.’
I put my nose against the glass, still keeping a firm grip on the bottles. Most of the furniture in the old restaurant was stacked against the walls, but Kelly was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. She had her
