‘I gather you want to take a quick recce inside,’ he offered eagerly as they shook hands. When his eyes fell on Palmer, he almost stood to attention. ‘Mark suggested I, um… get you in, then leave you to it.’ He seemed unconcerned by this strange request so late in the day, and turned to survey the building. ‘Fourth floor, Mark said. That right?’
Palmer nodded. ‘That’s the one.’
‘Okey-dokey. In that case, I’ll do my clipboard bit with the super and get you upstairs. Then I’ll go take a phone call or two. If anyone asks, you’re out-of-towners checking out some possibilities.’ He smiled to take any possible offence out of the comment, adding, ‘Londoners do office hours.’ He turned towards the entrance. ‘Follow me.’
They entered a glass-walled reception foyer furnished with a reception desk, a clutch of chairs and a few pot plants in large tubs. A faint smell of stale polish hung in the atmosphere, and the strip lighting highlighted the need for a coat of paint and a layer of carpet tiles to rid the place of its utilitarian appearance.
Along one wall was a black wooden board listing the tenants in plastic lettering. The names gave no useful indication of their function, consisting mostly of acronyms followed by the universally bland UK or EUROPE. None of them meant anything to Riley or Palmer.
‘Small businesses, mostly,’ said Swan perceptively, eyeing the board. ‘Some holding companies, manufacturing and distribution admin offices, that sort of thing. Four is empty right across the floor. Now, where is that man?’ He cast around just as the lift door opened and a tall, thin individual stepped out carrying a tool box. He was wearing dark blue overalls over a blue shirt and black tie. ‘Ah, Mr Goricz. There you are.’
He made vague introductions all round and confirmed that the visitors wanted to see the fourth floor. Goricz nodded affably enough, but made no attempt to shake hands.
‘It’s not clean, you know?’ he told them, his Central European accent overlaid with traces of east London. ‘Nobody has been in there for weeks — including me.’ He seemed impatient to have the viewing over and done with, and moved crabwise towards the lift without waiting to see if they wanted to inspect any of the ground floor.
‘No problem, ‘ Swan assured him. ‘They’re here to judge the space, not the dust mites.’
On the way up, Swan ran through the services and facilities on offer, playing his part to the hilt without sounding over-zealous. Goricz, meanwhile, stared blankly at the light board as if signalling that helping to do a selling job on the building’s facilities wasn’t part of his job description.
The lift stopped and they all exited, at which point Swan, who was bringing up the rear, excused himself and held up his mobile, which was buzzing. ‘Sorry — better take this. You folks go ahead and browse around. I’ll see you down in the foyer.’ He looked at the supervisor, who was unlocking the doors to the fourth floor suite. ‘Mr Goricz, do you want to come down with me? I’m sure we can leave Mr and Ms, umm… to take a peek in private.’
The supervisor hesitated, then threw open the door and peered inside. He stepped aside and gestured for Riley and Palmer to go in. As Palmer brushed by him, he was sure he sensed a wave of tension coming off Goricz, and wondered why.
He and Riley waited for the lift to go down again before moving through the empty offices. The floor was covered in drab, brown carpet tiles, with an occasional clutch of telephone wires showing where workstations had once stood. Other than a few empty notice boards on the walls, it was clear that whoever the previous tenants had been, they had left little of value for any incomers to use save for a single desk. This was in the main office, which ran from the front to the rear of the building and overlooked the rear car park.
Palmer walked over and flicked open the desk drawers. They were empty save for a large file drawer on one side, which held a reading lamp with a green shade, the flex coiled neatly around the stem. A plain telephone and plastic in-tray stood on the top of the desk, both covered in dust. Palmer ducked down and checked the surface against the light from the window, then straightened up and looked around the rest of the floor.
Riley watched him moving about. This was Palmer’s speciality. He knew more about examining buildings and rooms than she did, and she was happy to let him get on with it.
When he came back and stood next to her at the rear window, he wore a puzzled expression.
‘What’s up, hound-dog?’ she asked him. ‘You’ve got your worried face on.’
He shook his head and said loudly. ‘Looks pretty good. Not sure about the street access, though.’ With that, he walked back to the door, crooking a finger for Riley to follow. She caught on quickly: now was not the time or place to talk about why they were really here.
When they were out in the stairwell, he turned and said quietly, ‘For a place that’s been empty for ages, the desk is completely dust-free, but the phone isn’t. There’s a reading lamp in one of the drawers, and the inside felt warm, although it could have been my imagination. But the nearest wall socket switch is in the ‘on’ position and there’s no dust on that, either. The others are all off and haven’t been touched for a long time.’ He opened his hand. He was holding a toffee wrapper with a small dab of brown, sticky substance at one end. ‘This was on the floor near the door. The toffee’s still moist.’
‘A supervisor with a sweet tooth?’
But even as Riley said it, she recalled the man’s words just before they had entered the lift: ‘Nobody has been in there for weeks — including me.’
15
By nine the following morning, refreshed by a few hours sleep, Riley had completed researching what she could find of Helen Bellamy’s life. There was almost nothing of a personal nature.
A schools reunion site yielded some names from a meeting a year ago, but nothing recent. Helen’s professional record, which was spread across a wide range of business topics, showed a varied and regular pattern of work, although strangely, nothing for the last six weeks. But that, she decided, could be because Helen may have been working for publications without a web presence, and therefore with no electronic link to the Internet. She had worked for a number of small but solid magazines and newspapers, and was clearly building up to a more prestigious future when she had met her untimely death.
She had belonged to one or two journalism or writing-related support groups, but they were also woefully thin on detail. Riley’s conclusion was that Helen Bellamy had been a very private person, and had left almost nothing of a footprint, unless it was with people who had known her well. People like Frank Palmer, who appeared to have known precious little.
For a change of pace and atmosphere, she turned her focus on the background, work and minutiae of ‘Kim’ Al-Bashir, retailer, multi-millionaire, investor and speculator.
Originally named Muammar, after his grandfather, Al-Bashir had decided shortly after arriving in England to call himself Kim — a fact which had earned him the early, taunting tag of ‘Johnny English’ both from the press and his enemies. Al-Bashir seemed to have developed the knack of courting the former when it suited him, and evidently had no shortage of the latter. Rumour suggested that these enemies stretched from his birthplace in Egypt to the corridors of Whitehall in London, many of them the trampled human casualties from numerous business dealings and his ruthless desire to rise to the top.
Al-Bashir’s biggest problem seemed to be his belief that, having bought a large amount of London property during the ‘eighties, including a chain of household department stores with a flagship address and branches all over the country, he should have been riding high in the nation’s consciousness and hearts, loved and respected by all.
Sadly for him, this had not happened. As if in compensation, he had surrounded himself with a small army of security men, and the stories of how he dealt with perceived enemies were numerous. He had been investigated many times, some of his men had been charged with assault or intimidation, but nothing had stuck, confirming the belief among many in the press that, in spite of his claims to the contrary, he had friends in high places.