As soon as the men had parked outside Pantile House, Szulu had phoned Palmer and given him an update. Then he’d asked what was going on.
Palmer had kept it short, explaining that the men were using the building illegally, probably with the connivance of the supervisor.
‘Stay with them,’ he’d told Szulu. ‘They might be there a while. If they leave, follow them and let me know. And stay out of sight.’
Szulu had rung off and chained the scooter to a convenient lamp-post, then gone in search of a doorway where he could sit and keep an eye on the place. He’d settled on an empty shop. The porch was jammed with rubbish and old newspapers, and smelled like an old cat, but it was dry enough for his purposes and suitable for hiding in without attracting attention.
He’d been puzzled when the men had parked the 4WD at a meter on the street, when there was a perfectly good car park at the rear of the building. When he’d taken a walk round the block half an hour later, he’d seen why: a CCTV camera up on the wall of the building was covering the car park. If it was working, it would record every vehicle entering or leaving. Out on the main street, the nearest camera was pointed at a busy junction and rarely moved. He figured the men were paranoid and thought they might need a quick getaway. Szulu knew all about quick getaways; sometimes they worked, other times they went pear-shaped over a bus-pass holder with a bad hip and a supermarket trolley.
On one of his other recces, he caught a glimpse of a face up on the fourth floor. It was too far away to be certain, but he thought it was one of the security goons. Later, one of the men came out to feed the meter. Szulu stood up, shaking off his stiffness and ambling along the pavement towards him. There was something he wanted to try out.
Palmer had mentioned earlier that the men appeared to have a weak spot: they seemed oblivious to certain types of people.
‘You mean black people, right?’ Szulu had been unsurprised. ‘Most whites are, man. We the invisible ones, didn’t you know that? We don’t exist.’
Palmer had given him one of his looks, and Szulu had quickly dropped the aggrieved minority act. Now, striding along the street, he kept his head down but a watchful eye on the man at the meter. Time to see if Palmer knew his beans or not. He loosened his shoulders, bouncing off his left foot and singing to himself as if he was out for a stroll, tugging loosely at one of his dreads. It was an act, meant to convince himself that he wasn’t about to run into seven kinds of hell like the sort of grief Riley Gavin and her ex-soldier friend had put him through the last time they’d met. He shivered at the memory, hoping Palmer had told the truth about Mitcheson on the other side of the Atlantic. Best worry, he told himself, about the gunman you know rather than the Russian hard-face you didn’t.
Fifty yards ahead of him, the man at the meter was digging in his pockets for change. His jacket was pulled tight across enormous shoulders, like a prize fighter.
Szulu eased by, humming softly. He was invisible, he reminded himself. No way he can see me. The man glanced up as Szulu’s shadow, thrown by a street light, fell across the pavement, then looked away again. Szulu shivered. It was just like Palmer had said: the man had clocked him, but he hadn’t seen him. Weird.
When he thought about it, he felt almost insulted.
He continued for a hundred yards and turned to cross the street. The man in the suit was returning to the building, his pace unhurried.
Szulu stopped at the next corner. It was good to change positions every now and then. Break the routine. He took out his mobile, intending to call Palmer with the car number.
Just then someone stepped up behind and prodded him in the back.
33
Szulu spun round. It was Palmer.
‘Jesus, man — what are you doing?’ Szulu thought his chest was going to explode. ‘How do you do that creepy shit?’ He was annoyed at having had the former MP sneak up on him so easily when he was supposed to have all his wits about him. He hadn’t heard a sound. The guy wasn’t normal.
‘You’ve got a guilty conscience,’ Palmer chided him cheerfully, and peered round the corner towards Pantile House. ‘What’s happening out there?’
Szulu told him.
‘Where’s your car?’ Palmer scanned the street.
‘I used something else.’ Now Palmer was here, he suddenly didn’t feel like bragging about using a scooter for a surveillance job.
‘Like what? A bicycle? You must have legs of steel.’
‘A scooter, all right? I borrowed a scooter.’ Szulu was angry at letting out the information so easily. But Palmer merely lifted an eyebrow.
‘Really? That’s neat. Who the hell ever looks at a scooter?’
Szulu smirked. ‘That’s what I thought. Say, you still haven’t told me what this is all about. You were kidding, about them blokes being Russian Mafia, right?’ He smiled hopefully, but was disappointed when Palmer shook his head.
‘Maybe not Mafia, but something close.’ Palmer felt in his jacket pocket and took out a small pair of binoculars. He looked around the street, settling on a building across from Pantile House. ‘See that place across there?’
Szulu nodded. He’d walked past it not long agearlier. The ground floor housed a travel agency and a print shop. The structure was old and of dull, red brick, falling behind its neighbours like a tired old horse with every new building project in the area and making it look more and more out of place. He bet it was on someone’s list for demolition. ‘Sure. What about it?’
‘If we can get inside, we’ll have a nice view of the fourth floor.’ He glanced at Szulu. ‘Keep watch while I go find a way in. If they make a move while I’m over there, ring me.’
With that, he slipped out of the doorway and made his way across the road, disappearing into the shadows behind the shops. Seconds later, Szulu heard a whistle and followed, keeping one eye on Pantile House. The light was still on.
He arrived at the rear of the building and found Palmer waiting, holding a door open.
‘Christ, how did you do that?’ Szulu was impressed; he knew one or two guys who could open doors in a couple of minutes. But that was after checking it out first, not walking straight up to it like Palmer had done.
‘Easy when you know how,’ Palmer replied, and closed the door softly behind them.
‘In this dump, maybe. No way would you get through my locks that quick.’
The sideways look Palmer gave him made Szulu instantly uncomfortable. ‘What makes you think I haven’t already?’ he said. Then he turned and led the way up a ratty set of stairs covered in mildewed paper and fallen plaster, leaving Szulu with his mouth open.
While the front of the building housed the shops, the rest seemed to have been abandoned to the elements and a slow, relentless decay. The treads were gritty and sounded hollow beneath their feet, and Palmer hoped the shopkeepers below were concentrating on cashing up and not listening for sounds of intruders overhead.
He stopped on the third floor. This was as high as the main floors went, but from the doorway across the street, he’d noticed small attic windows sunk into the roof. There had to be another staircase somewhere, narrower than the main one and probably accessible through a single door. He found it at the end of the landing, nearly invisible behind a layer of ancient wallpaper and grime. A small number 13 in grubby plastic had been tacked to the door. Hoping it wouldn’t be unlucky for them, he tugged it open.
A wave of damp, mouldy air hit them as they climbed a short flight of stairs into an open space with a ceiling angled downwards from the apex. Two attic windows looked out over the street, with another one at the far end of the room.