Stealth (21 page)

‘Yes, with Sonya,' I said. ‘I have a horrible feeling he raped her – turned on by the violence.'

Greenway said, ‘Although the house wasn't treated as a crime scene for reasons I think you already know about someone did have a careful look round and reported that there was no sign of anything like that having occurred. He could have taken her off in his car though. He must have known that the nanny and children were in the house.'

‘If he went on to kill her . . .' I muttered.

‘He's had plenty of time to dispose of the body. But I suggest we remain optimistic and work on the assumption that the woman's still alive and try to find her.'

‘Will you give it priority?' I persevered. ‘Even if it means using members of your team for that rather than first looking for Anthony Thomas?'

We had reached the vehicles. Greenway found his cars keys in his pocket and paused with them in his hand. ‘I think I'm prepared to give it two days – but no longer. And you? Are you fit to do a little, less stressful, routine work? It was a pity your MI5 approach with Hamlyn came to nothing before it even got off the ground.'

‘We haven't started yet,' Patrick said. ‘We'll find Thomas.'

‘He's not at his place in Barnes,' Greenway said. ‘Sorry, I should have mentioned earlier that it was searched this morning.'

‘According to his website Thomas's interests are classical music and going for long country walks,' I said, back at our hotel. ‘I thought that was hogwash when I first read it and I do now.'

‘But he
is
Russian,' Patrick demurred. ‘They wrote some of the best classical music in the world. And just because he looks a bit stupid and his grasp of English might not be too good – I heard him talking in the pub – it doesn't mean he fails to appreciate the finer things in life.'

‘So we comb London listening out for Borodin and Rachmaninov?'

Patrick impatiently shook his head, thinking my joke sarcasm. ‘You probably don't read the sports' pages of the newspapers, but I do. He's livid right now. Another Russian's bought the football club he was one of the directors of and he's been slung off the board, the new owner saying he didn't want any connections with mobsters. Obviously word gets around.'

‘He's presumably still involved with boxing.'

‘And the last thing I want to do at the moment is present myself at a place where there are any number of super-fit younger blokes, thank you. No, we get him right where he lives – in every sense of the expression.'

‘Dinner?' I queried, interrupting what had every appearance of developing into a dark brood and praying that the final showdown in Sussex was not still preying on his mind.

‘Good idea. Fuel for a nocturnal venture.' I must have looked a bit pained at this for Patrick added: ‘Your idea, working as we did for D12.'

Ye gods, I did
not
want to go out again tonight.

No, I would
not
go out again tonight.

I was surprised then when, after we had eaten and gone back to our room, I thought for him to change into something more suitable – I had not told him yet but was
damned
if I was going out again tonight – he appeared to be getting ready for bed. That is, removing all his clothes and staying that way.

‘Change of plan?' I wondered aloud, aghast at the still black and blue state of him.

‘No.'

‘When's the nocturnal venture then?'

‘Now.' This with a big grin.

‘You appear to be fully prepared,' I commented, getting undressed – nay, stripping off – with scant regard to a rather good dress.

He was, magnificently so.

I suppose at this stage that if I had been writing one of my novels I would have composed a few slightly raunchy lines about my heroine's sensations before leaving everything to the reader's imagination. In real life, however, my only reaction to events right now was to be totally gobsmacked at the miracle wrought in my man by fillet steak and chips.

It has to be said that we made love very, very gently.

The Met removed their surveillance of Anthony Thomas's house in Barnes, partly because he had never shown up there but really due to overtime costs and a lack of personnel. With regard to the protracted no-show, it had occurred to us that the owner of the property opposite, from the loft room of which the watch had been carried out, might not be a disinterested party. We proposed to find out.

First reactions would be important.

‘Serious Organised Crime Agency,' Patrick said crisply to the middle-aged, pyjama-clad man who answered the door holding a brimming mug of sludge-coloured liquid that might have been tea.

‘They've gone.'

‘Who's gone?'

‘The cops who were watching the place opposite.'

‘I know. May we come in?'

‘Is it important?'

‘It might be.'

Grudgingly the door was opened a little wider and the man slouched off, his slippers scuffing along the carpet. We followed him into an untidy, stale-smelling living room where he flung open the curtains, shifted a couple of empty ash trays from the arms of chairs on to a side table and dropped with a heavy sigh into a sofa.

‘What's it all about then?' he wanted to know.

Patrick introduced us, as usual giving the impression that I was merely his minion note-taker, established that the householder's name was Norman White and then said, ‘Do you know the man who lives over the road, Anthony Thomas?'

‘I was asked that. I only know him by sight.'

‘D'you know anything about him at all?'

‘Not a thing. They asked me that too.'

‘He doesn't appear to have turned up the entire time the place was watched.'

‘A waste of public money then, wasn't it?'

‘Before the police were here how many times had you seen him?'

‘Only now and again.'

‘Was he alone or with other people?'

‘Sometimes on his own, once or twice with a few blokes. They were quiet, not the kind of folk to make a nuisance of themselves.'

‘Has there been any kind of activity since the police went?'

White began to show signs of impatience. ‘Not that I've noticed.'

‘Did you know that he's Russian?'

‘Well, he has quite a heavy accent so—'

‘You have spoken to him then,' Patrick interrupted, having hooked his fish.

‘Er – once now I come to think of it. He asked me about the refuse collection day when he first came here.'

‘When was that?'

‘Around a year ago.'

‘I suggest that he might have told you quite a bit about himself. I have an idea he could be a charming character when he so chose.'

‘He didn't tell me anything – but was pleasant enough when he asked about the bin day.'

‘He's involved with boxing promotion and until very recently was the director on the board of a football club. Before that he was some kind of film star. I've no doubt he's a good actor.'

White shook his head. ‘That's all news to me.'

‘You seem to have a photograph of the football team signed by the players on the DVD storage unit over there. They can't be all that easy to come by.'

‘So I – I – support that team,' White blustered. ‘It's not against the law, is it?'

‘I suggest you tell me the truth before I arrest you for being an accessory to serious crime.' Patrick followed this up with one of his stock-in-trade star-of-
Jaws
lookalikes.

‘I've heard about cops like you!' White said hotly. ‘
And
on the telly. Bash the door down and frame some poor sod for any number of crimes.'

My husband tends not to get really nasty with those he has wrong-footed who are middling stupid. ‘Mr White, Anthony Thomas, once known as Anatoli Tomskaya, is wanted for attempted murder. If it's found that you're protecting him—'

‘He said the cops'd say he was wanted for something,' White triumphantly butted in with. ‘So he was right.'

‘Why did you believe him?'

‘Why shouldn't I?'

‘Especially if you accepted a handful of tenners as payment for the nod if the police came nosing around looking for him.'

‘No!' White shouted.

‘I'm utterly fascinated by this. What was the
reason
he gave you that the police would lie to get their hands on him?'

‘I can't tell you,' White muttered.

‘Why not?'

A woman wearing a pick fluffy dressing gown came into the room. ‘Norm, I heard you shouting. What's going on? What do they want?'

‘It's a different lot of cops. They're on about Thomas – the bloke over the road,' White told her. And on an afterthought, ‘My wife, Debbie.'

‘
Tony?
'
She rounded on us. ‘You can't leave him alone, can you?'

‘You seem to be on first name terms with him,' Patrick said.

‘No, not – not really. We just wave if we see one another . . . outside, you know, parking our cars.'

Patrick looked from her to the pot-bellied, unshaven ruin on the sofa and back again and smiled a little smile, a good paragraph's worth of insinuation. Then he said to White, ‘Answer the question – how did he explain his statement that the police would lie in order to arrest him?'

‘As I said, I can't tell you.'

‘I insist that you do.'

‘I can't! It's sort of – secret.'

‘Like the secret services, you mean?'

‘Yes. I can't tell you. He made me promise. I'm the only person who knows other than his . . .' White shook his head. ‘I'm not saying another word.'

‘Handler?' Patrick asked sharply.

‘You know about such things then,' White said in surprise.

‘Yes, we used to work for MI5.' Patrick leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. ‘Look, we've both signed the Official Secrets Act. You can tell
us
.'

‘You're not the only person,' the woman said indignantly to her husband. ‘He told me too – said
I
was the only one who knew.'

‘While he was screwing you?' White bawled. He had not missed Patrick's little bit of theatre – not that it had been intended he should.

‘I have
not
been carrying on with him! How the hell could I? He's hardly ever at home. We've just had a couple of little chats, that's all.'

‘Has this man told you both that he's some kind of spy?' Patrick asked, an edge to his voice. When nothing was immediately forthcoming he bellowed, in his parade ground voice, ‘Tell the
truth
!'

They both started violently and then White blurted, ‘I knew you were a bloody bully! All right, he said someone's reported him to the security services as one, industrial secrets and all that. But he's a double spy and MI6 know all about him. He said I was serving my country by helping him.'

‘Did he offer you money?'

‘Yes, but I refused it. I used to be in the Territorials so wouldn't take money for something like that. But I accepted the photo of the lads at the club. They're real signatures, not photocopies.'

‘You're not going to believe me if I tell you that he left Russia with the Moscow police after him and is now on the Metropolitan Police's Most Wanted List as he's a mainstream mobster, are you?'

White, looking completely baffled, remained silent.

‘No spy of any kind would have given you all that information about himself,' Patrick pointed out.

The woman sighed. ‘He seemed such a nice bloke and we have a little chat and laugh about our secret and he asks me how I am and . . .' She tailed off and then snapped, ‘But he lied, didn't he? About me being the only one who knew. And when men lie about one thing they've probably lied about loads of other stuff as well.' This with a glance at her husband and the certainty of bitter experience.

‘You have his mobile number then?' I said to her.

There was a slow nod.

Her husband fixed her with a furious stare. ‘You've been phoning him too?'

‘Why not?' Debbie practically spat at him. ‘At least he knows how to speak nicely to a lady. I talk to him quite a lot actually.'

Patrick interrupted more pending warfare with, ‘Have either of you let him know that the police have left here?'

‘No, they only went last night and I couldn't get hold of him this morning,' White replied.

‘Mrs White?'

‘Not me. I leave all the boring stuff to Norm.'

‘Please try contacting him again now,' Patrick said to White. ‘Tell him.'

‘I'll phone,' the man said, getting up to use the landline phone on a small table.

‘Are you going to arrest us?' Debbie White said in a small voice. I am afraid this author had earmarked her for a sparkly, hard and shallow character in her next novel.

Patrick put his finger to his lips while the call was made. Then he said, ‘No, of course not. Being manipulated by a good actor isn't a crime.' More accurately, it simply was not worth the hours of paperwork.

‘He told me, boasted really, that he knew all kinds of people in showbiz: pop stars, actors, even a top author who writes crime stories, Clement somebody or the other. That was all lies as well, I suppose.'

‘Clement Hamlyn,' I said. ‘Yes, he does know him.'

‘He once said that the bloke's right off the wall, whispered that he might have even killed people. I think Tony had been hitting the vodka, mind.'

‘Time will tell,' Patrick said with a smile.

White reseated himself, looking grim. ‘As you heard, I told him,' he said, resuming his seat. He picked up his cold tea and then replaced it on the table with a grimace.

‘Did he make any comments?' Patrick enquired.

‘Not really. Thanked me and said I might see a bit more of him from now on.'