Illegal Action (14 page)

32

A
fter a day of clear sky, cloud had moved in, obscuring the moon and darkening the street. Just in from the corner of the mansion block, steps led down to a basement door where the building’s rubbish bins sat on a dank square of concrete, handy for their weekly collection on the kerbside.

She had watched the street for several nights but there had been no sign of a surveillance team. Now she stood halfway down the steps, able to see either way along the narrow street, lit dimly by old-fashioned street lamps. When anyone came past, she moved silently down the steps and crouched, hidden, behind the bins until they’d passed, then emerged to resume her vigil.

She wore a black hooded jacket, trainers and trousers with large pockets. From a distance, she could pass for a teenage boy, and she was being careful to ensure that no one saw her up close. What she’d planned with clinical calculation was intended to look random.

She heard the brisk sound of footsteps as someone turned the corner a hundred yards up the street. Venturing a quick look, she saw the woman approaching, walking quickly. There was no one else in sight. This time she didn’t withdraw and hide, but crouched motionless against the iron railings of the stairs, certain her dark clothes would allow her to stay undiscovered until it was too late to matter.

The footsteps grew closer, then closer still, their sound now vying with the
thump thump
of her own heartbeat as her adrenaline surged and her pulse quickened. She reached into her pocket as a faint elongated shadow appeared on the pavement, not three feet from where she crouched. The shadow passed and suddenly the woman was above her on the pavement, moving quickly, a handbag hanging from her left shoulder.

She sprang out of her crouch and took two quick steps until she was right behind her. With one large sweeping movement, she threw an arm around the woman’s neck, jerking her so suddenly to a halt that her heels momentarily lifted right off the ground. A classic choke hold. The woman started to cry out, but then the pressure from the encircling arm had her fighting for air instead.

In her left hand now she had the Stanley knife, its blade extended full out. “Don’t move,” she hissed in a low voice, pressing the point of the blade against the woman’s arm. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t move.”

She kept her right arm taut around the woman’s throat, and with her left reached for the handbag. In one quick movement she cut through its strap, and the bag fell with a thud to the ground. “Relax,” she said. “I’ve got what I wanted.”

But the woman stiffened in her grasp, twisting and hooking her left leg round her attacker’s ankle, throwing the threatening left arm momentarily against the railings. She just managed to regain her balance, surprised by the defensive move. The woman was a more difficult target than she’d expected. She must finish the job quickly. As she raised the Stanley knife to slit the woman’s throat, a voice shouted, “Hey! What are you doing? Stop! Stop!”

Distracted, she looked over her shoulder and saw a group of people coming down the street. Pub leavers or partygoers, there were at least six of them, and they must have seen the struggle. The shouts grew louder, and she could hear running feet coming towards her.

She must not get caught—that was the highest priority, higher than finishing this job. She twisted her hold on the woman’s throat and through sheer strength forced her to turn towards the steps going down to the rubbish bins. Suddenly releasing her grip, she shoved the woman hard and briefly watched as she stumbled, then fell facedown on the steps, landing with a crash against a metal dustbin.

She reached down, grabbed the handbag and ran, sprinting in her trainers, away from the voices coming nearer, running all the way down the street and around the corner, then along two more streets to the safety of her parked car. She opened the car door and stood for a moment, listening intently. Nothing. If anyone had given chase, they had given up. She quickly took off her jacket, threw it and the handbag on to the back seat, then got in, started the car and drove carefully but at speed until she reached Albert Bridge Road. As she crossed the bridge a police car came past her from the opposite direction, its lights flashing.

She would have more chances to take care of this woman, but she would only get caught once. She realised what a close call it had been.

33

A
girl, you think. Are you sure of that, Miss?”

Liz looked up from the cheap plastic chair, relieved that she was no longer seeing two of everything, though her head still throbbed and she felt very sick. “I said it was a female. I don’t know how old she was.”

Liz had already been three hours in St. Thomas’s, which she supposed wasn’t actually too bad for Accident & Emergency this late at night. In the waiting room overhead fluorescent strips cast a bright, unforgiving light over the crowded room of waiting casualties. A couple sat right across from Liz—the man holding one arm and moaning in pain, while his girlfriend fiddled with her nails. In the corner a smelly old drunk in a dirty raincoat stretched over three chairs, snoring. A teenage boy, equally the worse for wear, had been sick on the floor and no one had come to clear it up.

There had been nothing to do but wait patiently, skimming through the battered copies of
Hello!
magazine, willing her eyes to focus, until at last they’d called her name. The nurse had cleaned the long, painful scrape on her forehead, then taken her to Radiology for her shoulder, which was bruised and incredibly sore from hitting the concrete. When she came back, the two policemen had been waiting for her.

“Did you get a look at her? Could you describe her?” asked the younger of the two. He was tall, with an earnest expression on his face and searching eyes.

“Not really. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and the next thing I knew she’d grabbed me from behind. I think she was wearing something on her head.”

“A balaclava probably. To hide her face,” said the older policeman. He had a puffy, beat-up face that looked as if he had seen it all.

“Did she say anything?” asked the young policeman.

“Not much. She said something like, ‘Don’t move and you won’t get hurt.’ Then once she’d got my bag she said, ‘I’ve got what I wanted.’” She thought those had been the words, but Liz remembered even more vividly the Stanley knife and her instinctive sense at the time that it wasn’t the bag the woman wanted. Not that Liz was going to tell these policemen that.

Fortunately, the older cop seemed content to treat it as a simple mugging; he was keen to get out of there. His younger sidekick was less sure. “It seems odd,” he was saying now, “a mugging by a single female. They usually work in packs.”

Liz said nothing, and the older cop spoke up. “Happens more and more these days. I arrested a girl last week in Tulse Hill who’d robbed an old man at knifepoint—believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted to meet her in a dark alley.”

He laughed but the young cop frowned. Leave it alone, Liz pleaded silently. The last thing she wanted was any kind of investigation. It wouldn’t take them very long to find out that there wasn’t much to “Jane Falconer”—she dreaded having to ask Brian Ackers to ring Special Branch and have them call off the dogs.

“Are you through with Miss Falconer, officers?” It was the nurse from the desk. “The doctor wants to see her now.”

The young one hesitated, but the old pro nodded. “Yeah, we’re done all right.” He gave Liz a smile. “You look after yourself, young lady, and we’ll be in touch when we have any news.”

“Thank you,” said Liz, more grateful than he knew.

The doctor had a thin moustache and looked harassed as Liz came into his small, stuffy consulting room. He motioned her impatiently to a chair sitting at right angles to his unadorned desk, and told her that the X-ray showed nothing broken. He argued only briefly when Liz declined to stay in overnight for observation.

“All right,” he relented, “I’ll get an ambulance to take you home. Have you got someone there to look after you?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to think of the cold, bare flat in Battersea she was going back to. “My mother,” she added. Which at least was potentially true, since Liz knew if she needed her, her mother would come up right away.

“Stay in bed for a day or two,” he said, “and just let yourself recover in your own good time. If you’re sick, or your eyes go out of focus again, come back here straightaway. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting a bit weepy—you’ve had one hell of a shock. It’s just one of those things, I’m afraid. It could have been anyone they attacked—pure bad luck that you got picked.”

As she waited for the ambulance Liz thought about this. Maybe it had been a random thing after all, she told herself. But no, she had an instinctive feeling that the attack had been professional—well planned and targeted specifically at her. But what did that mean? What would a professional attacker want from her? In her present half-concussed state, she wasn’t able to work it out. Even thinking about it made her head throb more. So she parked the thought at the back of her mind to return to later.

As her transport arrived at last, Liz suddenly shivered; she saw again the knife two inches from her throat. That woman hadn’t been after her handbag; she’d been after Liz. And as a nurse helped her up into the ambulance, she suddenly heard in her head the twittering sound of Dimitri’s telephone.

34

I
wish they’d just get on with it, thought Peggy Kinsolving, turning to her phone and willing it to ring. It didn’t.

She was feeling stymied. She’d done her bit; now all she could do was wait until other people did theirs. She stared at the hydrangea in a pot on her desk. It was brown and wilted. I suppose it would help if I watered it, thought Peggy. Her father, who’d had a small greenhouse tacked on to the back of the house where she grew up, used to say that she had a black thumb.

Peggy was experienced enough to know that
everyone
had something to hide. After all, her own claustrophobia was something she kept to herself. What was troubling her as the days passed and she did her best to act on the snippets of information Liz produced, was that none of the members of Brunovsky’s circle appeared to have a hidden past.

Yes, Mrs. Warburton’s ex-husband had once done six months in prison for GBH, and the new maid, a Slovakian girl named Emilia, had lied to the immigration authorities at Heathrow about how long she planned to stay in the country. But it was inconceivable that these offences were part of a plot against Nikita Brunovsky. As for the others, Peggy simply didn’t believe they had nothing to hide. It was just that she hadn’t found it.

She looked idly at the first two issues of
Private Collection
, the new art magazine which Greta Darnshof had founded. It was produced on thick glossy paper, full of colour illustrations—and singularly free of ads. Unless its circulation was remarkably large, the publication must be subsidised. By whom? Peggy wondered. A philanthropic art-loving millionaire? Russian perhaps? Or was Greta wealthy enough to fund it with her own money? She had asked the Danish authorities to check out Greta Darnshof. So far there had been no reply.

Similarly, she had contacted the FBI in Washington about Harry Forbes. They had taken their time, but eventually, after she’d sent several chasers, they had come back with nothing recorded against him. Forbes was apparently just what he purported to be: a private banker, ex–Goldman Sachs, with a strong network of clients and contacts in the art world.

Then, in this extraordinary game of Cluedo, there was Marco Tutti, the decorator–cum–art dealer. Remembering young Signor Scusi from the conference in Paris, Peggy had called him in Rome. His English had not improved but he’d been charm itself over the phone, immediately agreeing to run a check on Tutti. When he’d rung back it was with some embarrassment—not only had he found nothing criminal in Tutti’s past, he had been unable to locate Tutti at all. Could she please confirm the spelling of the man’s names? She promptly did, but had heard nothing since—and that was ten days ago.

Peggy hated waiting for other people. She was at her happiest doing her own research—like a bloodhound pursuing the scent, going where her nose took her. Now her frustration was increasing by the hour. For the first time she was beginning to feel that her enquiries were urgent. Two days before when she’d seen Liz, walking with a slight limp with a large bruise on her forehead, Peggy felt the first chill of anxiety. She’d been mugged, Liz had explained. She’d said it was pretty common in those streets just south of the river. Then Peggy had heard the report that Rykov had been seen by A4 snooping round the safe flat in Battersea that Liz was using. Yet Liz had not said a word to suggest that all this could be connected. Surely there must be some link; could it be to Brunovsky? Peggy had a gut feeling there was; and wasn’t it Liz who always urged her to follow her instincts?

A message came on to her desk. From Beckendorf, the veteran intelligence officer of the German BfV, it told her that Igor Ivanov, the economic attaché at the Russian Embassy in Berlin and suspected Illegal support officer, was planning to travel to London in the next few days with a trade delegation. Peggy grabbed the sheet of paper and walked quickly along the corridor to Liz’s office, where she found Michael Fane in mid-flow. “Anything interesting?” he asked, as Peggy gave the paper to Liz.

Peggy ignored him as Liz read the message then pushed it across the desk to him to read.

“What’s he really coming for?” asked Michael, frowning.

“If we knew that,” said Peggy sharply, “we wouldn’t be sitting here chatting, would we?”

“Michael,” said Liz “find out where Ivanov’s staying and let’s see if we can get a telephone intercept on his room. Also, let’s try to get A4 to cover him while he’s here. This might be our chance to get a sight of this Illegal, if there is one.”

Later, after Michael left, Peggy looked at Liz. “You’ve had your hair cut. I like the fringe, but I can still see the bruise.”

“Thank you, Peggy,” said Liz sardonically.

“I’m worried about you. You could have been badly hurt.” When Liz merely shrugged, Peggy said, “Did you tell Brian about it?”

“Of course. He says street muggings happen all the time, and they do, you know.”

“I suppose so,” said Peggy, but she was not convinced.