“What are we doing?” whined Freddie.
“We’re in the middle of an exciting car chase!” said Malcolm through his teeth. “Enjoy!”
As they sped down Bisham Gardens they saw the Volvo speed past up Swain’s Lane. They’d lost him! Malcolm couldn’t believe it was that simple to lose a car that was chasing you. It always seemed much harder in films.
After half an hour of zig-zagging in and out of roads he had never driven down before, Malcolm headed back to Highgate and swung along Hampstead Lane, driving round the northern edge of the Heath. As they drove past the crossroads at Whitestone Pond, they failed to notice a car parked on the other side of the pond.
The car started its engine as they continued down into Hampstead village. It rolled forward on to the main road several hundred yards behind them. Neither Angela nor Malcolm noticed it.
“Well done!” said Angela, patting Malcolm on the shoulder.
“Was that exciting or was that exciting?” replied Malcolm.
“It was exciting!” said Freddie.
Ten minutes later they turned into the Holiday Inn at Swiss Cottage.
They checked into a family room with three beds. Freddie fell asleep immediately. Angela and Malcolm raided the mini bar, but soon followed their child’s example. It had been an exciting night.
The next day, Malcolm phoned the university to say he wouldn’t be coming in for the rest of the week. Then he phoned his sister, who – for some reason he never understood – lived in Leicester.
The three of them had a relaxed breakfast, and then set off, heading north.
Neither Angela nor Malcolm, nor even little Freddie, noticed the black Volvo tailing them, six cars behind, all the way up the M1.
Chapter Eleven
Grigori Koslov hadn’t believed it when he first found it. It was unheard of! Why on earth would a criminal organisation post a list of all its members on its website, along with their addresses and phone numbers? Why on earth would a criminal organisation have a website in the first place?
For a split second Grigori Koslov thought that maybe he should have one too. Perhaps he also should list all his employees? Maybe it was some new government regulation?
But then he remembered who he was. He was the Evil Emperor, with a vast network of illegal businesses. He did not give a fig for the law! And anyway, the law in Russia had been a feeble, toothless pussy cat since the collapse of Communism. They couldn’t force him to put up a website if he didn’t want to!
But there it was. He had Googled ‘Highgrove Park Residents’ Association’ and got their website. Unbelievable.
If it was an off-shoot of Boris Zolkin’s organisation it must be a scam or a cover-up for some villainy.
He checked the addresses. They all seemed genuine. If he put them into Google Earth he got their exact location. He could even see the houses themselves.
But what was this?! They were all situated around the two houses he had bought! What was going on? Had Boris Zolkin positioned his henchmen to surround Grigori Koslov’s property? Property which he had bought with his own hard-fought-for money?
Of course he never intended to live there, but the palace that he was going to erect in that green bit of London would act as a base for his operations in the UK. The vast mansion that he had designed himself would be a signal to Boris Zolkin and Ivan Morozov to MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.
It did occur to Grigori that the ‘Residents’ Association’ might be exactly what it said it was, but such was his hatred for Zolkin and Morozov, that he simply could not believe that this wasn’t their work.
In truth, Grigori had become so used to seeing the dark side of everything that he could no longer see the obvious. Suspicion and double-dealing had so deformed his mind that he had become, quite honestly, as mad as a hatter.
Only his wife, Eva, knew this, and she wasn’t going to tell anyone.
Another thing Eva knew was how much their lack of a family had weighed on her husband’s mind. She, herself, had no desire to have children, but Grigori had always wanted a son. That was why he had adopted that idiot Anton Molotov. Well he hadn’t actually officially adopted him, but he had taken the young man under his wing some years ago, when he took him on as a night-watchman.
She could see that her husband liked the boy from the moment he first saw him. Perhaps Anton reminded Grigori of himself as a young man? They had a similar build and a similar outlook on life, except that Anton wanted to be a concert pianist back then, whereas Grigori had always wanted to be a villain. But they both wanted to reach their goals with the least possible effort.
Eva could see her husband becoming more and more fond of the young man. It was so unfair. He didn’t love her. He never had. But she was convinced he loved Anton.
Couldn’t he see that the young man was a fool? Couldn’t he see that the young man was incompetent? Anyone else who worked for Grigori would have been out on their ear years ago. If they were lucky. More likely they would have quietly ‘disappeared’ by now.
But Grigori overlooked all Anton’s defects. He forgave every bungled task. He excused the young man and encouraged him.
Slowly but surely, Grigori was turning Anton into the son he didn’t have. Perhaps he didn’t realise he was doing this, but Eva still felt the pangs of jealousy. She grew to hate and despise Anton in direct proportion to her husband’s fondness for him.
Chapter Twelve
Malcolm normally had very little time for his sister. In fact he disliked her. He disliked her house, her hair-do and her job. She was a pattern-cutter for one of the big fashion houses in London, and in her spare time she was a dress-maker.
He disliked her general attitude. She accepted everything that happened to her with a cheerful shrug.
He disliked the way she lived. She lived amidst clutter. The real problem was that she never threw anything away. That was the thing Malcolm hated most about her. She was a hoarder.
“Glenys! Just get rid of them!” he would say as she hesitated over throwing away tins of sardines that had a sell-by date of around 1,000 years BC.
“But they may come in handy,” Glenys would murmur as she loaded them back into the cupboard.
She never threw away newspapers. There were stacks of them behind the sofa, on every seat, in the coal shed, in the pantry and (for some strange reason) even in the sink!
Glenys had been pleasantly surprised when Malcolm phoned to ask if he and his family could come and stay. She had given up expecting her brother to want to spend time with her.
“Ah, well, it’s probably difficult when you’ve got a family,” she would say to her neighbour. “I’m sure he’d come if he could.”
Glenys herself had no family. She had been married for a short time, but she and her husband had not really got on together. Secretly, Malcolm was in sympathy with the husband, who also could not stand clutter.
Malcolm once told Angela: “He had wanted to throw out the newspapers, so she threw him out instead.”
Glenys made a great fuss of her brother and his wife and son when they arrived. She’d baked a sponge cake, but hadn’t been able to read the recipe, because she’d lost her glasses. So the sponge didn’t really rise like it should have done. It was more like a large biscuit than a cake. However they ate it for tea, with the result that Glenys found her glasses. They were in the cake.
“Isn’t it lucky we ate the cake?” she said. “If I’d just thrown it out I would never have found them!”
Malcolm had warned Angela not to tell Glenys why they needed to stay with her so suddenly, and since Glenys never asked, Angela had no problem staying silent. She did feel a little guilty that they might be exposing Glenys to some danger, but then she told herself that there was really no danger. They had shaken off their pursuer the previous night, and there was no way he could have traced them to this address in Leicester.