Blood Money (29 page)

Having been wholly unsuccessful in clearing a range of bothersome and unanswerable issues from his mind, Eddie Slater is already awake when the shrill electronic bleeping starts-up from somewhere to the right of his weary head. Before the cacophony has a chance to get any louder the din is silenced by a strong hand on an outstretched arm.

Dutifully obeying his obligations, he rolls out of bed and quickly showers. Slipping on his oldest pair of jeans and a shirt and jacket he leaves his sizeable Mayfair apartment, locking the door behind him.

Descending down the grand communal staircase Eddie then walks across the ornate hallway and exits onto the street outside. Flagging-down a passing black cab, he quickly gets inside and curtly instructs the driver to head for Finsbury Park. Whilst the taxi weaves its way through the early morning traffic, the man in the back refuses to engage in any polite small-talk and makes no eye contact for the entire journey.

He implicitly trusts that his man has been professional enough to have stayed awake all night, indeed, all of the associates who work for Eddie are fully aware of their contractual obligations, and understand the severe consequences that failure will bring.

Having left the cab, he approaches on foot for the last couple of hundred metres. Walking quietly up to the rear of the Golf TDi, Eddie is pleased to see that his night-watchman is sat upright in the car and is both awake and reassuringly bleary eyed. Once it's been unlocked, he opens the passenger door and gets inside. The five consumed cans of energy drink in the passenger foot-well seem to confirm that the all-nighter has been a sleepless one. Ignoring the stale air that has accumulated inside the car overnight, Eddie gets straight to the point and asks for a situation report.

As expected, there's nothing to tell other than Gibson has remained alone in the flat all night. Confirming his willingness to take on another shift later in the day if required to, Eddie's exhausted associate takes his leave and allows the bodyguard to continue the recon operation alone.

Slipping awkwardly across into the vacated driver's seat, Eddie mentally prepares himself for today's shift to be just as monotonous as yesterday's. He opens up the windows by just a crack to change the air, and then he settles down to listening to the inane chatter from the radio whilst gazing at the scruffy block of flats some hundred yards away to his right.

Two hours of tedium pass before the inactivity breaks. At last Gibson is on the move; casually leaving the flats via the back entrance he walks unhurriedly over to the residence's lock-up garages.

Concerned that within minutes the policeman will be driving straight towards him, Eddie reverses his VW further up the road, backing it into a private drive to partially hide himself from view. Although he can no longer see Ark House from here, he can at least maintain a visual with the end of the access road.

Minutes later, an old-style silver Mondeo estate stops at the end of the lane and unmistakeably, the man at the wheel is John Gibson. Once it pulls away, Eddie takes a moment to memorise the Mondeo's number plate, then after a few seconds, he rolls the Golf forward and sees Gibson pulling out onto the Seven Sisters road, heading east.

Tailing a wily policeman through heavy traffic without being spotted is going to be an extremely difficult task. Get too close and the game will be up and Gibson will know for sure that Kronos is concerned about the repercussions from killing his girlfriend. Stay too far back and it'd be real easy to get separated before he's learnt anything of the man's intentions.

The situation will become far less awkward once Eddie's has had an opportunity to attach the GPS tracking device to the underside of his mark's vehicle. Then he'll be able to stay as far back as he wants without fear of ever losing contact. Until then, he's just going to have to stay sharp.

As they travel in a north easterly direction, Eddie keeps tabs on their changing location by occasionally glancing down at the tattered old A-Z on his lap. He tries to maintain a respectable 80 yard gap behind the lead vehicle and feels more comfortable when there are several cars between them during the course of the journey, -which is easier said than done.

After something like five or six miles, the silver estate slows down and (very helpfully) indicates left before turning off into an industrial park in some unfamiliar outlying part of Walthamstow.

With far less traffic to hide behind, Eddie pulls-up onto the pavement just before the turn-off and keeps watch from there. He immediately realises something significant is occurring when the policeman's vehicle turns into a shabby retail unit signed-up as ‘The Scaffolding Warehouse'.

Eddie gives it a good thirty seconds before he too drives into the industrial park. Taking a quick glance across as he drives past Gibson's parked vehicle he continues on for some distance before eventually turning around and pulling-up behind a parked lorry. Reaching for his cigarettes and the binoculars he jumps out of the Golf and uses the back of the articulated truck as cover whilst he lights-up and gets his binoculars properly focussed.

Twenty minutes later Gibson comes back out of the store and takes a good few glances around as if he's worried about being seen. Then he opens the Mondeo's tailgate and reaches inside for a few moments before standing around beside the open boot, as if he's waiting for something.

From his remote viewing position Eddie watches as someone from inside the premises noisily raises-up a roller-shutter door. Once it's fully lifted, a small forklift pulls out with a pallet stacked with short poles and some equally short planks. Gibson and the fork-lift driver then begin hand-balling the equipment into the back of the Mondeo. Increasing the zoom, Eddie can now make-out that the poles are unusually short acrow props (distinctive jacking poles used for support when you're taking out a load-bearing wall). Once the acrows have been removed from the pallet, Eddie can see that the planks are in fact very short scaffolding boards. Eddie is mystified…‘What on earth is the fool up to…?'

It's clear that Gibson is very nervous; because he keeps looking around as he loads more and more into the back of the car.

Eddie gets back inside his own vehicle and puts his camera to good use, getting some digital shots of this bizarre behaviour.

As they head off, Eddie follows the heavily laden Mondeo, again leaving a generous gap between their respective vehicles. It soon becomes clear that Gibson is driving straight back home, so Eddie drops back a little further and uses the time to try and understand what explanation there is for a man to need so many short acrow props. Perhaps he's suddenly got to underpin the foundations of some large property he's about to begin developing. But if that's the explanation, why does he appear so nervous? And also, if Eddie had been the one to have purchased all that gear then he'd have gone straight to the development and dropped it off on-site. Why take such a large and heavy load of equipment back to Ark House? Things just aren't making any sense.

Having seen that the Mondeo has turned off the Severn Sisters Road, Eddie holds back yet again, giving the guy sufficient room for manoeuvre. And rather than getting any closer and increasing the risk being seen, Eddie pulls left into the nearby petrol station forecourt, just on the corner.

Parking in a space designated for shoppers, this discrete position will allow him to remain out of sight and permit him time to take stock of the situation. He's not quite tall-enough to see over the wooden fence at the rear that separates the back of the petrol station from Ark House, but by standing on car's door-sill he gains an extra foot in elevation and can now peer over the wooden panelling to see the Mondeo estate parked just on the corner of the residence.

Once he's nipped into the shop to buy a couple of packs of his usual smokes Slater quickly returns to the Golf and retrieves the GPS device from his duffle bag. Opening it up, a little red LED begins to flash as soon as he switches it on, confirming that it's now fully operational. After re-sealing it back in its waterproof case, Eddie slips it into his pocket and concentrates on observing the policeman's peculiar activities.

Gibson appears round the back of the Mondeo and gathering up an armful of poles he wastes no time in carrying them inside the building. Keeping a check on his watch, Eddie is curious to see just how long it takes before the copper comes back for the next load.

Forty seconds. That should just about be sufficient.

Casually moving round to the access road, Slater gets as close as he can without being seen. Now he waits for the policeman to show himself once more. Right on cue, Gibson comes out for yet another load before disappearing back inside. With the coast clear, Eddie jogs toward the Mondeo before slowing to a normal walking pace and then stooping down once he's right alongside the car. In less than a second Eddie has the device attached to its underside and is nonchalantly walking away. As he continues over to the far end of Ark House he casually lights-up a cigarette and disappears around the corner, pleased to have accomplished the task without incident.

Walking full-circle, Eddie arrives back at his own parked car and getting inside he boots-up the laptop and initiates the GPS software.

*

The rest of the day is a busy one. Gibson continues to make car journeys, visiting a variety of builders' merchants in a range of different locations scattered across north London. The receiver ‘dongle' attached via a USB cable to the laptop keeps in communication with the GPS transmitter and the clever software displays the results. As well as showing live data on the location, speed and direction of travel, it also keeps a time-stamped record of everywhere the Mondeo's been to date.

Evidently, John is planning something big.

It might all seem quite innocent if it weren't for the fact that every time he's entering or leaving somewhere he's acting as if he's got something to hide. And on top of all his twitchiness, there's something else he's doing that's making Eddie really curious. He appears to be very careful in only buying one or two items from any one shop. It's like he's trying to prevent any one individual from seeing his true intentions. It's all very perplexing.

By keeping a close watch via the binoculars, Eddie is taking note of all the items Gibson is purchasing. Most of these things are serious industrial tools, and there's no difficulty in identifying any of them as they're simply too big to hide as they get loaded into the estate's boot. Sledgehammers, a power generator, flood-lights, a large disc cutter, a giant masonry drill and some of the biggest jemmy's and crow bar's that Eddie's ever seen. If all of this is for some sort of renovation project, then it looks like it's quite a big undertaking. With Rebecca dead, perhaps he's inherited some run-down house and is going to quit the police to become a full-time property developer?

Eddie keeps thinking of Gibson's nervousness and his attempts to hide his intentions. None of this is making any sense just yet. Some part of the story is still missing.

Keeping well back, he follows Gibson onto yet another industrial estate. Having seen on the laptop that the policeman's vehicle has come to a halt, Eddie gives it a minute or two before he cautiously approaches to see where he's stopped this time. The silver Mondeo is now parked-up in front of some unit called ‘Barking Welding & Engineering Supplies'.

Driving past by a couple of hundred yards, Eddie turns his car around and coasts to a halt behind a parked-up butty-wagon. Not wishing to waste the opportunity, he gets out and orders himself a coffee and a bacon sarnie. Whilst he waits for the chubby middle-aged woman to prepare his food he keeps watch on the front of the welding store which sits diagonally opposite. Eddie gets back into his car and unsure of how long he's got, he chows-down on the greasy roll before Gibson gets on the move once again.

Having had time enough to drain the tasteless coffee from its styrofoam cup, Eddie now starts getting a little bit twitchy. It's been some thirty minutes since Gibson went inside…so what on earth can he be doing in there?

At last, the door opens and Gibson begins struggling over to his car with a very long and heavy box in his arms. Eddie stares through the binoculars in disbelief. His mind is shocked by what he is seeing…
the lunatic has gone and bought himself a thermic lance!

All day long, Gibson has been buying some pretty serious power tools, but equipment doesn't come any crazier than a thermic-bloody-lance! Having seen a TV documentary recently about conspiracy theorists and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, he now knows something about these awesome things. To describe them as ‘powerful industrial cutting torches' is something of an understatement.

Concrete crumbles to dust once it reaches 1,000 degC, steel becomes liquid at 1,500 degC and diamonds melt at a mere 3,550 degC. But these ‘bad boys' kick out a whopping 5,000 degC! That's so much heat they're able to cut through anything that's put in front of them. Demolition specialists at ground zero had been using them to chop up the steelwork so the collapsed structure could be dismantled and removed. Later on, some conspiracy theorists noticed several vertical steel beams sliced diagonally across and saw the dribbles of slag that these torches had left behind. They then began claiming that such cuts could only have been made by ‘some kind of technology not yet invented'.

The only thing those crackpots had proved was that they were all a bunch of misguided, uneducated, irrational, red-necked fools.

He's finally seen enough. It's fairly obvious what's going down. As far as Eddie's concerned, the policeman has been found-out, ‘cause his intentions are now blatantly clear.

Whilst he sits tight and allows Gibson to drive away, Eddie watches the screen on his laptop and can see the Mondeo is now travelling back towards Finsbury Park.

Eddie now also leaves the location, but heads off in a totally different direction, south.