Gatecrasher (12 page)

‘You been on-line the whole time?’ asked Luke through a mouthful of Mighty Meaty.

Campbell
nodded sheepishly and shrugged.

‘You owe me for the food.’

‘Alright. I’ll pay for it.’

Slater resisted the urge to stick his foot through the door and walk straight into the flat but he knew he wasn’t there, that he had missed him jumping into the taxi earlier.

Gresham
was going to be livid when he told him. Still, no point wasting any more time. He would be back soon enough and Slater would be there waiting. Slater knew he had fucked-up this time but he was beginning to run out of patience with everybody now and there absolutely would not be any more fuck-ups. This little shit had run him around plenty. He took one last look at the front door of
Campbell
’s empty flat through narrow eyes and stalked back across to his car.

Home to bed now for some much needed sleep and then back in the morning nice and early to give the lad a proper wake up call. Enough was enough.

'You going to tell me wh
at's up then, or are you just a
bit menstrual?' Luke's standard approach to any kind of potential awkwardness, as
Campbell
knows, is to confront it in a belligerent and insensitive manner.

'Nice,'
Campbell
replies as he slides hot pizza from the box.

'Well fuck, Dan. You forgot to bring beer, you've been buried in the laptop for hours and it's not even porn. Either it's a girl, a job hunt or you've found some weird online forum to indulge your inner nerd. Something is up.'

'None of the above actually. Actually, perhaps a tiny bit of each of the first two.'

'You need a new job because you shagged some girl at work and you're afraid she's going to tell everyone about your tiny weiner?' There it was, thought
Campbell
. Imagine if I had an actual problem to talk to you about.

'Nothing major really. Just a bit cooped up in the flat after all the shit of the last few days.'

'Yeah, you now how to throw a party,' Luke smiled and shook his. Equal parts sympathy and morbid fascination.

Campbell
couldn't help but smile back. His brother may be employing bravado in the face of all the things he had told him about the gatecrasher and the burglary and the police, but maybe a little false courage and nonchalance was what was required here. Campbell had scarcely switched off thinking about things and as much headway as he was making with the research this evening, what he'd most like was a bit of a mental block, something to numb.

He had been surprised how edgy he had been at the sharp incessant ringing of the doorbell. There could surely be no way that anyone could know where he was, but they new where he lived and Campbell harboured dark thoughts of being trailed and watched, stalked from the shadows by determined, malevolent figures.

'So when are you off then?'
Campbell
said through a mouthful of garlic bread.

'Two days and then it is wall to wall sunshine, food and booze. And when I'm finished burning and bingeing it is back to the room with the missus.' A broad grin and an entirely unnecessary wink.

'She excited?'

'She has no idea. I sorted the time off with her boss, and as far as she is concerned we're off to her parents for the weekend.'

'So they're in on the big surprise too?'
Campbell
looked quizzically at his smiling brother, obviously pleased at the smooth planning of a surprise holiday trip for his girlfriend of a year.

'So won't they be disappointed when you come back and she isn't any more engaged than when you left?'

'I'm not proposing. Why would they think I'm proposing?' Luke replied, the grin dropping a little.

Campbell
's smile moved in the other direction.

'I never said anything about that. I'm fucking miles away from any of that...' he said and after a moment more of
Campbell
's broadening grin, added 'Fuck off.'

'You've paid for and organised a surprise holiday for their only daughter and you have involved them in the deception. The thought won't have crossed their mind that you have a plan here of some kind?' He was enjoying this, particularly the slowly dawning realisation of the corner that Luke may have painted himself into.

'I've got one very simple plan which involves a pool, a bar, an all-you-can-eat-buffet and copious nudity.'

'You might want to keep those relatively separate. There's a limit to what "all-inclusive" means at these paces. Bringing your own sausage to breakfast is considered poor form.'

But Luke wasn't playing along and the look on his face was getting sourer by the moment.

'I was just trying to do a good thing,' Luke protested to nobody in particular. 'Now I'm right in the shit.'

Daniel Campbell felt the smile fade from his own face.

'Well that backfired on me,' Luke said. 'How the hell do I get out of this?'

Campbell
shrugged at him. 'No good deed goes unpunished.'

Tuesday
.
10.30pm
.

Michael Horner quietly replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle and turned up the volume on the television. There was a calm serenity about him that was directly at odds with the tone and manner he had taken during the previous brief conversation.

Geoffrey Asquith was not a man given over to unnecessary worry or drama but he had certainly sounded rattled as the conversation wore on. At first he had sounded relaxed, almost confused
-
that what he had called Horner to talk about couldn’t possibly be the truth but some terrible misunderstanding. Horner, for his part had begun by responding in a vague and noncommittal manner until Asquith pushed him, revealing that information had come into his possession that indicated strongly that Horner had, whilst the two were business partners, engaged in corrupt and illegal activity. This, Asquith had speculated, would have been of great personal profit to Horner and great risk to the business at the time and to both men for some time to come.

Reluctantly Horner had been forced to admit it. It certainly sounded as if Asquith had convincing evidence.

‘I’m not entirely sure that you appreciat
e the magnitude of this Michael,
’ Asquith had said indignantly when Horner tried to play it down and whose apologies did not allay Asquith’s obvious sense of injustice and betrayal.

‘Please Geoffrey, there’s no cause to panic. It was many years ago. I took numerous precautions. The money and transactions have been layered and laundered countless times. Do you really think I would have put you or the company in any real risk?’

‘Michael, that
is precisely what you have done,
’ Asquith countered sharply. ‘If this information finds its way into the public domain it will ruin both of us, not to mention
Griffin
and the staff it employs. This is no game.’

‘Everything is a game Geoffrey, it just depends on how you play it.’

‘For God’s sake! You can dispense with the fortune-cookie wisdom. I am seriously upset about this. You may have the luxury of a low profile but my own life is now very much lived in public. There are grave implications. I'm probably in breach of any number of rules or regulations just having this conversation with you. This could destroy everything I’m working for. Do you know the number of foreign development contracts we are negotiating at the moment? The number of companies and jobs that could be affected if I am forced out of office?’

‘I think you’re jumping the gun a little. Has anyone contacted you yet? Threatened you? To what end? Think clearly man. You’d have heard by now if this were about you or I. It
’
s probably some bungled industrial espionage – one of
Griffin
’s competitors stealing the wrong bloody information.’

‘How can you be so blasé?’

‘I am not being dismissive Geoffrey but with all due respect, until someone comes forward and declares their intent then there is nothing we can do. Except of course work yourself into a lather of paranoia and panic if you really want to. But until then we have no problem to tackle and if we do, then we will deal with it. I rather fancy the two of us can dispense with a couple of small time blackmailers or troublemakers if they do deem to come into the open. Stop borrowing trouble. And more to the point please don’t dump this nonsense on me.’

Asquith had paused, surprised by the stinging rebuke from Horner who had long played the understudy to Asquith’s wise old hand. Horner would relive that moment over again in his mind.

‘I thought you
ought to know at the very least,
’ Asquith had said sounding a little more reserved. ‘But this is potentially very serious and we need to remain alert.’

When the conversation had ended with Asquith making a further pointed comment about what Horner had done and how shocked and let down he felt by the younger man, Horner had apologised again. But he had not missed the opportunity to underline that as upset and angry as Asquith might be, any sense of injustice or instinct toward retribution would not only be counterproductive but foolhardy in the extreme. Like it or not, he reminded him, they were still partners, even now. Particularly now.

It was quite obvious from what Asquith had said, what he had learned about Horner’s past, that the implications were extremely serious. The consequences could be far reaching, could impact on the lives and livelihoods of a very many people if the situation was not handled correctly. Horner could hardly deny what he had done, not in the face of what Asquith had quite demonstrably discovered and in any event such a course of action struck him as futile. No, in order to control and contain this it was important that Asquith did not panic. The old man had sounded scared and Horner would have to be in charge of the situation to guide them safely through it. And so he had done.

Michael Horner was a veteran of a thousand board meetings, of hostile take-overs, of making million pound trades on foreign equity markets before most people had eaten breakfast. He had skied alpine black runs in blizzards and scuba dived with sharks. As he sat thinking everything through he began to feel the strange and unfamiliar pangs of fear in his stomach.

Wednesday. 6.45
am
.

He had gone home thinking about it, all the long drive back across city. He had fallen asleep thinking about it and woken up thinking about it as well. Slater was going to enjoy this. He was going to savour each second.

The space that he had been parked in the night before was still vacant but he decided not to leave the car there this time where the neighbours might begin to wonder. All the others in this leafy SW postcode seemed to be sporty hatchbacks and soft-tops. He found a spot around the corner and trotted back along the pavement to
Campbell
’s front door.

‘Here we go again,
’ he said and pressed the bell.

He would answer in a minute. Give him a moment or two – maybe he wasn’t even up yet. And then, all bleary-eyes and bed
-
hair – Slater was picturing it now – in his dressing gown, he would look blank for second as Slater asked if he was Mr Campbell? And then, before he’d got to the S of yes Slater would be on him, barrelling into the flat, a heel kicking the door shut behind him, maybe stick a couple on him. Crack a rib, or loosen a tooth perhaps.

‘Wake up sleepyhead,
’ he said and pressed the doorbell several times.

Then he’d explain carefully that all
Campbell
nee
ded to do was hand over the memory stick
– which he would dutifully do – and then Slater would make it clear that
Campbell
had not seen nor heard a thing. They knew after all, he would point out with maybe a physical emphasis to the midriff, exactly where he lived.

The morning was mostly silent but somewhere in the distance a bus revved its engine and he could hear the manic enthusiasm of a breakfast radio DJ blathering.

There was no sign of activity from inside yet, no giveaway sounds of movement. Slater pushed the button repeatedly and then his frustration got the better of him and he knocked sharply on the door.

‘Wakey fucking wakey sunshine,
’ he hissed and then looked at his watch. It was not even 7am. No-one left for work this early. He’d watched him leave the day before at 7.45. Slater began to consider the possibility that he had messed up once again. That
Campbell
had got jittery and not returned to the flat last night after leaving in the taxi, was gone for good. Or maybe he had left for work even earlier today. Perhaps yesterday he had in fact been late and he was normally up with the lark.