‘Have you spoken to them? Arrange the exchange. I can have the money ready in—’
‘Stop. It doesn’t work like that. Where are you? We must meet. I need to tell you what’s happening, and what to do next. I’m not going to do that on an open line.’
There was another pause.
‘How good are the indications? Are you able to get them back?’
Either he hadn’t heard or he wasn’t listening.
‘I’m not talking on the mobile. We need to meet.’
‘I am in France. I will send my jet to London.’
‘Can’t you come to me? It’ll be quicker. The clock’s ticking.’
There was a long silence.
‘There is something happening here that I cannot cancel. How long until you can get to the airport?’
‘Three hours, maybe. Less if I get picked up at Bristol airport.’
‘Where?’
‘B-R-I-S-T-O-L. It’s in the south-west.’
‘Someone will call to arrange this.’
‘One more thing …’
‘What?’
‘Call off your guys. You don’t need to check up on me. I’m only letting them stay with me because they’re yours. It’d be a lot easier for me if you lose them. I’m not going to let you down, because I’m not going to let her down. I’m not going to leave them in the shit. So just call them off, yeah? They’ll only fuck things up.’
It took him a moment to digest this too.
‘I have no one following you, Nick. Why would I? Why do you think I chose you? You say you can lose them, so do it. Whatever it takes. I do not want any of my enemies to interfere with this.’
He ended the call.
I pulled off the motorway at the next exit and headed back the way I’d come. I rang Nadif. His phone was turned off. At least, I hoped it was.
Frank’s enemies were now my enemies. He probably wasn’t short of them, but the only ones I knew about came from Tbilisi.
20
It was light by the time the taxi dropped me off. This time I got the driver to take me to the other end of Barratt, so I could walk the last three blocks. As we drove past the turning, I looked to my left. A couple of people in work clothes were getting into their cars.
‘Just here, mate. This’ll do.’
I paid him off and headed back towards Ali’s place. I could soon see the shop front about thirty metres down on the left. What little sunlight there was glinted on the display window and the roof of a car parked beside it. There was no sign of any shiny rental C-class Merc.
I got out my iPhone and tried Nadif one more time as I turned in towards the blue door.
I grabbed the lion’s head knocker to give it a couple of bangs, just to let him know I was there. The door opened towards me a couple of centimetres.
As nonchalantly as I could, I let go of the knocker and stepped aside so I could see through the gap. I eased it further open with my finger. The D-bar was locked. I could see a little way up the stairs, as far as I needed to. A Burberry-slippered foot was just visible at the top. I hoped the rest of him was still attached.
I eased the blue door towards me until it looked like it was shut. A couple of brightly dressed African women came out of the shop laden with milk, bread and papers. They passed me, jabbering away in a dialect I didn’t recognize. I stayed where I was, as if Nadif was just about to answer the door. A couple of trains passed each other at the other end of the street. Traffic whipped along the elevated section a couple of hundred metres away.
Once the women had disappeared, I stepped back onto the pavement and went into Ali’s emporium. It was full of plastic stuff I hadn’t known I needed: cans of dodgy-sounding fizzy drinks and cat food; plastic flowers and bottles of cleaning fluid with Greek labels. I went straight to the kids’ section. For a quid, I picked up a twelve pack of felt-tip pens, a bit thicker than ordinary biros, in a plastic case with a picture of Shrek on the front. I grabbed some rubber gloves on the way to the till.
The woman behind the counter was deep in conversation on the phone about the trouble in Libya as she marked up front pages full of it for the paper rounds. Her brother-in-law’s family lived in Benghazi and she was worried sick. I didn’t interrupt. I put a two-pound coin on the counter with a sympathetic smile and loaded the stuff into a carrier myself.
As soon as I was outside, I ripped Shrek’s head off with my teeth and pulled out a pen. By the time I got to Nadif’s door, I’d also pulled off the cap at the end opposite the nib. I didn’t look around for Ant and Dec, or anyone else. I had to look natural. I had my back to passers-by. They wouldn’t be able to describe anything about me except my height, hair colour and clothes.
I eased the door open far enough to expose the bike lock. There was no point mincing about. I jammed the open end of the pen into the circular key well. Gripping the bar with my left hand, I pushed the pen and twisted. Two turns and the lock fell apart.
I pushed the grille open and slipped inside. I closed the main door behind me. I looked up at the little I could see of Nadif as I put on the rubber gloves. The one contact I had was now history. I dropped the packaging into the carrier bag and shoved it down my sweatshirt.
Nadif’s body, what was left of it, came into view as I moved up the stairs. He lay sprawled across the small landing. There wasn’t that much blood on the carpet but his sweatshirt was covered with it. A tea-towel had been rammed into his gaping mouth, probably to stop him being heard as one of his steel ballpoint pens was forced through his right eardrum and driven into his brain.
The rooms had been ripped apart. My bundle of cash was scattered across the carpet, along with the papers, books and Mac screen. They’d been after something more important.
I checked Nadif’s pockets for the keys and his mobile. Nothing. The rubber gloves were now wet and red as I lifted his right arm and turned him over. He had been punctured seven or eight times with a narrow blade into the lower stomach. Some of his gut had spilt out. Ant and Dec weren’t fucking about. They knew exactly how to inflict maximum pain.
The second steel pen was embedded in his left eye. The eyeball was still in place but the vitreous fluid had drained out.
Why hadn’t Ant and Dec locked the door? The keys were in his jeans pocket, in a thick pool of blood. They must have thought the door was on a latch instead of lever locks, and only realized once they had closed the D-lock. Or maybe they just didn’t give a fuck.
I went and locked both doors. Because of the shitty double-glazing I didn’t have any other way of escaping now, but if Ant and Dec decided to come back at least I’d buy myself a few minutes to reflect on how badly I’d fucked up.
Avoiding the blood, I climbed over Nadif. He didn’t smell yet. But that wouldn’t take long.
First things first. I checked the kitchen. The teapot wasn’t on the tray, but the glasses were. They, too, went into the bag inside my sweatshirt. One of them carried my DNA.
I got to my knees and started pulling out the shit from under the sink that Ant and Dec hadn’t already pulled out during their search. It hadn’t taken Nadif long to retrieve that phone last night. It had to be close to hand.
I pushed at the panels round the sides and the back of the unit, then lifted the once-white Formica sheet at its base. I was rewarded with a Tupperware box containing three small grey mobiles and a charger. There were also five Lebara SIM cards, still embedded in their credit-card-sized plastic mounts. They’re cheap. Immigrants use them to phone their families back home — or to call their clan leaders.
