‘Should you be drinking on top of pills?’ Riley asked, flicking through his music rack. She didn’t recognise the names, but if the lurid covers were any guide, mood music it wasn’t.
‘Pills?’ He flicked his eyes towards Palmer, who was standing by the door, then looked back at Riley. ‘What are you — my mother?’
‘Don’t tell me the doctor who fixed your arm didn’t give you some pain killers.’
‘Yeah, of course.’ He shrugged as if it was no big deal, then walked over to the window and stared out, scanning the street. ‘So where’s the other guy? He waiting to come up here and shoot me in my other arm?’
‘Relax,’ said Riley. ‘He’s gone.’
Szulu grunted. ‘So what do you want?’
‘Where’s Lottie?’ Palmer leaned back against the door and yawned, seemingly bored.
‘How the hell would I know?’ Szulu picked up a slim remote and turned up the music a couple of levels, making the glass on the coffee table vibrate even more. Then he stood and stared in turn at them both, defiant.
Palmer came away from the door and walked over to the CD player. He turned up the volume until the glass began to dance across the coffee table. He picked it up just before it tipped off the edge, sniffed it and put it down again. Bourbon on ice. The beat was now bouncing off the walls, and in the depths of the house, somebody shouted in protest. Riley nudged aside a pile of clothes and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She said nothing, carefully studying her fingernails.
Szulu scowled and pressed the remote to reduce the volume, only for Palmer to reach down and hike it back up. ‘Hey — what the fuck you playing at, man?’
‘It’ll drown out your screams,’ Palmer replied coldly. He picked up a cheap plastic pen from a sideboard and nodded at Szulu’s bandaged arm. ‘Imagine how it will feel when I stick this in the hole and poke it about a bit. What’s the bet it’ll sting a bit?’
Szulu seemed to lose some colour and backed away, shaking his head. Clearly, the idea of suffering even more pain was enough to cut through his natural inclination to resist, and he held up his hands to ward Palmer off.
‘Hold on… there’s no need to get rough, man. I’m done with that.’ When he saw Palmer wasn’t going to attack him, he reached down and picked up his drink and took a hefty swallow, the ice cubes rattling against the glass. This time, when he reached for the remote and turned down the music, Palmer didn’t move. ‘She had another attack. We were by the river — near Runnymede. She asked me to take her for a drive, see. Said she was sick of the hotel. Then she told me to stop. We were in Egham by then, down a side street somewhere. It was quiet, peaceful. She offered me a wad of money to finish it with you two.’
‘Finish it?’
‘Yeah. You know.’ He blinked and seemed to shrink away, plainly not wanting to say the words. ‘I told her straight away I wasn’t going to do that. Said I didn’t want nothing more to do with all it. It’s gone too far.’
‘I can’t imagine Lottie taking that too well,’ said Riley. ‘She was a stickler for loyalty.’
Szulu shrugged. ‘She hardly said anything. In fact,’ he paused, then went on, ‘I suggested she get Ragga’s boys to do it. Sorry, but I couldn’t think of nothing else. She said she couldn’t do that because she’d stolen something from Ragga’s desk when she went to see him a couple of days ago.’
‘Oh, boy,’ sighed Palmer. ‘She never misses a trick, does she? What did she take?’
‘Information. Lists of bank accounts and stuff. She reckoned it would be worth something to someone, detail like that.’ He shook his head. ‘Man, I thought I was going to piss myself. Stealing from the Ragga? You don’t do that, not if you want to live. And worse was, she was going to take me down with her!’
‘What then?’ Riley said, sitting forward.
‘Then I noticed she was looking strange… like she’d suddenly got drunk or something. There was this stuff coming out of her mouth, like spit, only thicker. It was horrible. I was about to take her to hospital, but…’
‘But what?’
‘Ragga Pearl turned up.’
‘Just like that?’ Palmer looked sceptical. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Runnymede or Egham was quite his patch. You sure you didn’t call him up and tell him where you were?’
Szulu looked insulted. ‘Why would I do that? With me ‘n Ragga, you think I’m crazed?’
‘Because it would have got him off your back; a favour for a favour. Are you saying you didn’t think about it… of maybe bugging out and leaving her?’ The expression on Palmer’s face was stone cold. Then he shrugged. ‘Not that I’d have blamed you.’
‘What happened?’ asked Riley, ‘when Ragga and his men arrived?’
‘They took her,’ said Szulu. ‘Right there in the middle of that street. It was cold, man. They lifted her out of the car like a baby, and put her in one of theirs. Then Ragga told me to walk away and forget I ever laid eyes on her. He said the debt was paid and we were all clear. Man, when I heard that, I did what he told me.’ He shrugged, and had the good grace to look sombre. ‘That was the last I saw of her. You’d have to ask the Ragga what happened to her next, though.’
Riley nodded. ‘Don’t worry. We intend to. And that’s where you come in.’
Chapter 31
‘You two are paddling in some very deep waters, you know that?’ Charlie studied his pint then squinted at Riley and Palmer in turn. They were in a pub off St Martin’s Lane, where Charlie had suggested they meet. He had done some digging around in the vast boiler house that was the security department pool of information, and agreed to share what he could.
‘Adventurous, that’s us,’ said Palmer cheerfully. ‘How deep is deep?’
‘Well, that place in Harrow, where you might or might not have chucked some conman out of a six-storey window, and where you’ve been playing silly buggers with other persons named or unnamed? It’s been red-flagged, that’s how deep.’ He sipped his drink, pulling a face. ‘Try as in over your heads and likely to sink.’
‘Red flagged? What does that mean?’ Riley knew a lot of the official jargon, culled from years of brushing up against the police. But the world of security departments was an unknown quantity to her, and there was always some new terminology waiting to be discovered.
‘It means,’ explained Charlie, ‘that somebody’s keeping it under surveillance. The flag is to warn other agencies to tread carefully in the area, so as not to compromise any ongoing operation.’ He looked at Palmer with raised eyebrows. ‘Am I right?’
Palmer’s nod confirmed it, but he said nothing.
‘I checked with a mate,’ Charlie continued, ‘but all she could tell me was that the flag was issued on a Home Office security docket. There was no department designation that she could find, but that’s not unusual.’
‘She?’ Palmer grinned happily, sensing his friend’s slip of the tongue. ‘Well, well, you old dog. Nice, is she?’
‘Behave yourself.’ Charlie scowled back at him, but he blushed nonetheless and concentrated on his pint.
‘So it could be anyone watching the place,’ said Riley. ‘That’s a pity.’
‘It could be anybody with the right operational clearance, from Revenue and Customs — bloody unstoppable since they teamed up, I can tell you — to MOD… and maybe one or two little Embankment ferrets we mere mortals know absolutely nothing about.’ Charlie went on to explain that there were various sub-branches within MI5 and MI6, neither of whom were quick to disclose all of their departments to each other, let alone anyone else. These sub-branches were often created to deal with specific problems, then disbanded when no longer needed, their personnel re-assigned to normal duties.
‘And you can’t tell who they’re watching?’ queried Riley, twirling her glass on a beer-soaked mat. She didn’t want to push Charlie’s friendship with Palmer too far, but she sensed he needed to be guided towards disclosing any information that could help them, rather than giving it out too freely. Palmer was sitting back with his eyes on the yellowed ceiling of the bar, content to let her lead the way with the questions.