KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (31 page)

‘Fine by me.’

‘And Dave, me bwoy, I didn’t mean that about calling me Marvin. I just lost my cool there for a bit. That Shaka Higgings, that pervert! Next time the bacon feel his collar let him dare to come crawling to my door asking for the best black lawyer in town. We’ll see who needs a decent haircut then.’

33

Thursday: 6.30 p.m.

Tony had got hold of a three year old Golf. It was black, which is a good colour for surveillance work. I’d decided to also take the BMW with me and asked him to check it out for bugs or trackers. I expected his ‘portable’ full spectrum device would be quite a sizeable piece of kit but the black plastic gadget he took from an inside pocket was no larger than an old mobile brick with two aerial prongs.

‘You’re clean, Boss,’ he announced after walking round the car.

For good measure I sent him into every room in the house.

‘’Nothing, Dave,’ he said, ‘no transmissions whatever.’

‘So why don’t I feel secure?’

‘This detector is the best on the market …’

‘So where did you get it? And don’t tell me a mysterious friend lent it to you.’

He started fiddling with his fingers as if he was playing on an invisible keyboard.

‘Best if you don’t know, Dave.’

‘A loyal employee has no secrets from his boss.’

His battered face furrowed as he put the re-wired brain into top gear. Finally he resolved his problem. It took him a minute.

‘It was in that box we found at your place. I took it.’

‘You light fingered little …’

‘Dave, it was too good to waste and I put it to good use, didn’t I?’

I stared at him. He was right and maybe I was wrong. He was the future of private detection and I was the past.

He took my silence as an invitation to make a plea … ‘I think we should go back to Topfield and retrieve that whole box of tricks. There was a complete video surveillance kit for four operators.’

‘What, you saw that in the few seconds I let you look?’

‘I knew what I was looking at. There are these pocket cameras and they’re wired to a lens which you wear as a button on your shirt. The camera transmits whatever it’s focused on to the other three units and if you have Android on your mobile you get a split screen with four images. It’s like doing surveillance with an extra three sets of eyes.’

‘OK, maybe we’ll try it but for now we’ve got to get to ourselves to Layborn Road Levenshulme before my ex-receptionist does another runner.’

I was banking on her waiting until her boyfriend arrived home from work. He knocked off at 5.30 p.m. I’d no proof but I was hoping that ‘real’ Fothergill, ‘white’ Fothergill, the notebook thief … whatever I was supposed to call the damned woman … would be linking up with Osman Ahmed Gullet before she made a move. That was my hunch based on years of old-fashioned non-electronic detective experience. Fothergill’s sort never runs without the boyfriend if they can help it and on her previous form she wasn’t the type to panic.

If I was wrong and she went solo I’d still have a chance to find out where she was from Ahmed Gullet. Maybe Tony’s cameras and bugs would come in handy for that but meanwhile it was back to tried and trusted methods. I intended to confront Fothergill and get Lew’s notebook back.

Tony and I set off in the Golf leaving Lee with instructions to bring along Clint in the BMW when he arrived from work. If the big guy was tired from lifting horses or pulling tractors out of ditches or whatever it was he’d been up to, that was too bad. I didn’t need any more sulks. Communication would be through the sterile charged mobiles I had upstairs. The ones Tony had brought with him would also have to be charged. Maybe it was paranoia but then my enemies had been one step ahead throughout. It was time I put myself out in front.

We reached Levenshulme by 6.15.

By pure luck we were in time to see a tall, slender black man dressed in ‘smart casual’ western clothes turn into the street as we parked in a spot on Matthews Lane where we had a view of Layborn.

‘He’s Somali,’ Tony said.

‘How can you tell?’

‘I just can. They’re different from other black Africans.’

‘Where’s he going?’

The man turned into a house on the odd numbered side. By counting down we worked out that it was number fifteen.

I’d no way of being certain this guy was Osman but I said ‘bingo’ to myself. This was the best progress so far.

Our position on Matthews Lane wasn’t good. We were on double yellows. Layborn Road itself was impossible. Two rows of terraced houses faced each across a narrow street, and every house had at least one car. There were no spaces, not that I fancied sitting in full view of so many windows. They’d think I was a bailiff if not the police. Sightlines from the park on the other side of Matthews Lane were tricky as dusk gathered and anyway there was another cross lane at the end of Layborn, not to mention a back alley. This was the sort of job where MI5 would use twenty men. I had Tony now and Lee when he finally arrived. I didn’t include Clint, he’d probably be exhausted.

I sent Tony down the street. He returned in ten minutes.

‘I got a peek into fifteen. The front door and the front window are wide open. There’s Somali music blaring out. It’s a party or something.’

Out of curiosity I opened the window. There was music.

‘How do you know that’s Somali music?’ I asked, anxious to explore the limits of the reconditioned brain. Perhaps he knew where the tune was on the Somali charts.

‘I don’t but it’s loud and repetitive and non-European and the house is full of Somalis and they’re all jogging up and down to it.’

‘Logical,’ I muttered, ‘but did you see Fothergill?’

‘I don’t know her, Dave. There were women but they were wearing Islamic kit.’

‘Hijabs?’

‘No, not veils; they were in long dresses, long sleeves, very modest stuff. I saw a few faces but I could only risk a quick squint. I don’t want my throat cut.’

‘Not a good idea.’

‘A couple of them could have been white girls. That house is crammed with people, standing room only.’

I felt fury mounting.

‘Hell and damnation! If only Fothergill and Osman were by themselves. As it is we’ll have to wait until she makes a move and we’re in the world’s worst place to see which way she jumps.’

‘So what do we do?’ he asked.

I said nothing.

I didn’t like to tell him that we were waiting until Clint got here and then I was going to storm Osman Ahmed Gullet’s house. Fothergill was a thief and she owed me some answers as well as Lew’s notebook.

Door kicking had been a speciality of my early days.

There was a long pause.

Then I became aware Tony was staring intently at the side of my head. Perhaps my fangs were showing.

‘There is another way, Dave,’ he said calmly.

‘Go on,’ I said, straining to be tolerant.

‘I noticed that there’s an empty house with a ‘For Rent’ sign three doors down on the other side from fifteen. I can break in round the back and then observe from upstairs.’

‘It’ll be alarmed. You’ll have the whole street out after you.’

‘Trust me, I won’t.’

Light finally dawned in my un-reconditioned brain.

‘You didn’t happen to palm any of those spy cameras from the Topfield box did you?’

‘As it happens, Dave, I did. They were like the
full
spectrum, portable bug detector
, too good for a man in my line of work to leave lying around. I’ve got them here.’

He had a small rucksack in which I’d seen him stuff a flask of coffee and some biscuits before we set out. He took it off the back seat, rummaged around and plucked out a handful of miniature gizmos with lens attached on wires.

‘Tra-la!’ he crowed.

‘You little bugger,’ I said.

He laughed triumphantly.

‘Great Tony, but can I remind you that your current line of work is as a temporary manager of a detective agency?’

‘So? … We’ve got to move with the times. You said yourself that bloody Schneider, our main competitor, has a top ex-military electronic expert working for him.’

There was no more to be said.

Half an hour later, we were unobtrusively parked in the entrance of a school two hundred yards away from the Layborn Road address. We were receiving good pictures of the front and back of Osman Ahmed Gullet’s home. More and more people were arriving and entering the terraced house.

What the hell were they up to?

Some of the visitors were heavily bearded and were wearing long white robes.

I felt I was getting into deep waters.

The surveillance was proceeding satisfactorily. Lee was on his way with Clint, pausing only at one of the many MacDonald’s in this part of Manchester to pick up half dozen or so Big Macs for Clint’s evening snack. So why was I still full of gloom and foreboding?

It was the Islamic angle.

I’d discounted Appleyard’s crazy Islamic terrorism riff mostly because the men who’d attacked me were very definitely white Brits. But Levenshulme has often figured in arrests of Islamic militants. One white British convert had even run a stall on Levenshulme market trying to recruit young men for the ‘holy war’. The Levenshulme situation was one of the reasons why they’d set up regional branches of MI5, wasn’t it?

Fothergill couldn’t be caught up in all that, could she?

If she was an undercover holy warrior what was she doing in my office? But then I never had come up with
any
plausible reason for her being there and doing what she did.

Islamic terrorism might be it.

I catch her looking up Uncle Lew’s in Who’s Who and that same evening he’s killed jihadi style. Yes, I’d already been through all that. English nobility used to get their heads chopped off at one time but we aren’t living in the Middle Ages now, are we? There
have
been cases of completely non-religious killers decapitating their victims, haven’t there? Maniacs of course …

I was confused.

Up to this moment I’d speculated that Lew’s murder was part of a ‘false flag’ operation by some bunch of loonies on the margins of the secret world. The MOLOCH scenario fitted that.

Now I was beginning to have doubts that the flag was false. I could have been wrong.

I ought to phone Brendan Cullen.

Yet I hesitated. Bren said they’d already discounted Fothergill. There could be any number of reasons for the gathering in Layborn Road and I’d look like a total fool if they raided the address and found nothing more provocative than someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

Lee finally arrived. He passed in burgers to us. I was hungry.

I came to a decision. Door kicking was off tonight. We’d watch and wait. There’d be an opportunity. Fothergill must have taken Lakesha William’s tip-off seriously. OK, she’d gone to ground among a huge party of Somalis. It wasn’t ideal but I could wait her out.

‘What am I going to do with Jaws, Boss?’ Lee asked. ‘Shall I take him back home?’

Clint was doing his familiar performance of struggling with his seat belt. Bob really ought to buy a car designed for the XXX man. I got out and helped him unravel the belt.

‘Stay where you are, Clint. You’ll never get into a VW Golf.’

‘It has four doors.’

‘Clint, if you do jam yourself into it we’ll need the Fire Brigade to cut you free.’

‘It’s only a one point two litre, not even a GTi and it’s got standard wheels. It’s low spec, Dave.’

‘Yeah, not what a guy like you wants to be seen in. Stay in the Beamer and get some sleep. There’ll be a job for you in the early hours of the morning.’

His gaunt features formed an enormous grin. I helped him to arrange his ungainly limbs in the back of the BMW. Being with him was twenty four hour parenting but I didn’t mind. I waited until he was still.

‘So what the hell’s going on then?’ Lee asked.

‘Not a lot,’ I said.

‘I’m entitled to know. If we get picked up by the police I’ll get done for whatever they do you for.’

‘Lee, there’s no reason for us to get done.’

‘Oh yeah, well why are you spying on them and why are you carrying a gun? Are you expecting another shoot out like Wednesday night because you can count me out.’

‘Gun?’

‘It’s in your belt behind your back. I saw it when you tucked Jaws up for beddie-byes.’

‘He’s right Dave. We didn’t sign up for this,’ Tony confirmed.

‘The gun is insurance and for your protection as much as mine. You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had the Uzi on Wednesday.’

‘Maybe not, but still Dave … I’m not suicidal like these hard guys who go around with guns. When they tangle with the cops they either end up dead or doing thirty years which is the same thing as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Yeah, look at Beast. Even his own mother won’t visit him,’ Lee added. ‘I’m walking away. I don’t want to be banged up in the next cell to that bastard.’

‘Wait! I’ll unload the gun but how the hell am I going to control that mob in Layborn Road unless they think I’m armed?’

There was a brief debate between my employees before they accepted my offer.