‘You had a visitor,’ she told him without looking round. ‘You just missed her.’
‘Yeah? Who?’ He frowned. Who the hell knew he was here? But the receptionist had already turned to answer the phone.
When he got outside, there was nobody around. Then he heard a car start up across the road from the hotel. It was a VW Golf. As it pulled away from the kerb, he saw a woman with a familiar shock of blonde hair in the driver’s seat.
Szulu ran for his car.
Frank Palmer studied the rear of the VTS unit from the cover of an abandoned council road maintenance depot, pondering on the amount of foot traffic between VTS and the SkyPrint premises further along. Most of the time it had been the boss man with the white shirt, accompanied by faces Palmer hadn’t seen before. He assumed the faces were there to lift and carry, and this was borne out when they left VTS bearing boxes and packages Palmer was too far away to identify. On two occasions the big lug in the romper suit had walked out of the rear door of VTS carrying tied bundles of paper. He had dumped these into a large metal drum on a patch of open concrete. Judging by the scorch marks on the drum, it was used regularly as an incinerator, and Palmer wondered what it was they were so keen on torching, rather than consigning to the dustbin.
Apart from the activity here, there was also a lot of movement at the front of the building. He could guess what was happening: the VTS birds were clearing up and getting ready to fly. They had clearly been sufficiently shaken by Palmer and Riley’s visit to know they were on somebody’s radar. The SkyPrint premises were probably squeaky clean, and would therefore pass scrutiny. Given enough time for any problems to blow over, they could set up another VTS operation somewhere else without being compromised.
The rear door to VTS opened and the man in blue overalls appeared. He was carrying a bottle. He approached the large metal drum and emptied the contents inside, tossing the bottle into the grass nearby. He reached down into the drum, and there was a muffled whump and a thin ball of smoke lifted into the air. Moments later, the atmosphere around the drum began to shimmer as heat built up and flames licked hungrily around the rim. Giving the drum a kick, the man returned to the building, slamming the door behind him.
Palmer watched the smoke billow across the open ground, and fought a powerful urge to leave his hiding place and see what he could rescue. Burning papers meant they must be worth destroying. But rushing over there might entail coming up against Romper Suit and his friend. He had attended sites in the past where documents had been torched, and he’d always been surprised by how much survived the flames. Given that the man in overalls hadn’t even checked to see if the bundles thrown into the drum had been untied, he was content to take his chances and see what could be salvaged later.
He shifted his position to ease a touch of cramp and tried not to think of strong, hot coffee. He’d give it another hour. By then, they might have decided to pack up for the day.Then he’d slip across for a closer look.
Riley looked objectively at her flat. Untidy, maybe — even lived in if she was being generous — but nothing a quick, ten-second tour wouldn’t put right. It wasn’t as if John would be expecting a scene from Homes amp; Gardens. Too bad if he was.
She heard a burst of classical music coming from downstairs. At least they wouldn’t need violins to go with the atmosphere: Mr Grobowski was probably cooking up a huge meal for the community centre members while enjoying his favourite fellow compatriots’ musical compositions.
She plumped cushions and nudged the place into order, then put on some coffee. If John’s was a flying visit, they might have enough time to go out for a meal. Then she thought about Palmer. She should call and tell him she’d bunked off. With the thought came a renewed twinge of the guilt at not sticking with Szulu and finding out more about the mysterious Mrs Fraser. But it was too late now; as her mother used to say, make your decisions by all means, but live with the consequences and get on with it.
The cat wandered in and sat licking his lips in a meaningful manner, and she decided not to make him wait. There was no saying how he’d react to Mitcheson’s presence, anyway, so if he was going to slink off in a huff at having another male about the place for a couple of hours, he might as well do it on a full stomach. She spooned a generous portion of meat into his bowl and left him to it, then returned to the living room and opened her laptop.
Now they had a link between Radnor’s office and Gillivray’s death — no matter how tenuous it would seem to a defence lawyer — they might be able to fill in any missing pieces. Donald Brask might be able to help there. It didn’t sound as if the police had made any connections between the sixth and first floors of the building yet, but the journalist within her hoped that would be the case for some time while she and Palmer carried on digging. All they had to do was forge a provable link without showing they had broken into Azimtec’s offices in the process.
A knock at the door made her jump. She saved her work and closed the laptop, trying to control the smile that had been hovering since getting Mitcheson’s call. As she reached out to open the door, the defensive part of Riley’s brain wondered how Mitcheson had got inside without buzzing. If he’d met Mr Grobowski on the way in, surely she would have heard the elderly Pole’s booming voice.
The inner warning came too late: as she tried to close the door again, Szulu burst in on her, dreadlocks swirling about his head.
This time he was carrying a gun.
Chapter 22
‘Who else is here? Tell me right now!’ The words seemed to tumble out of his mouth in a rush as he drove her away from the door, the gun barrel level with her face. His eyes had a wild, intense look, as if he had been winding himself up into a state of readiness before coming up here. ‘Don’t shit with me, you hear!’
Stunned by seeing the gun, Riley back-pedalled until she felt the sofa behind her legs, barely managing to prevent herself from falling. Whatever else you do, she told herself frantically, stay on your feet.
‘There’s no-one here,’ she replied. ‘Just me. What do you want?’
Szulu reached out and grabbed her shoulder with his free hand, looking around the room and pulling her close, then swinging her in front of him like a shield. When he seemed satisfied that nobody was going to jump on him, he let her go and shoved her away. He continued to wave the pistol, though, nodding to himself and pacing about, his breath whistling between his teeth.
‘You Riley Gavin, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. You listen, you hear? That’s all you got to do and you won’t get hurt. I got a message for you. You and the ex-cop — what’s his name — Palmer? Yeah, him. Where is he, by the way?’ He glanced around as if expecting Palmer to materialise from nowhere.
‘He’s working,’ said Riley, eyeing the gun. Instinct told her that if Szulu had come here to shoot her, he would have done it by now and be gone. But she wasn’t about to take any chances. She looked around for a weapon — anything — but couldn’t see anything even remotely useful against an armed man. Damn. So much for tidying up. Why couldn’t she have the odd baseball bat lying around? She edged towards the door, which was still open from when he’d charged into the flat. She was surprised she could think so clearly, even though he was here, right in front of her, especially after the other evening. She instinctively grabbed her laptop, the repository of all her work. If she could get close enough, she could be through and downstairs. Providing he wasn’t much of a shot, she might be able to get out into the street and yell for help.
‘Wait!’ He lunged forward, raising the gun. ‘What’s that?’