The Outsiders (22 page)

It was a dream location: two dormers set in the attic roof of the bungalow. One, less important to them by a country mile, looked up the overgrown garden of the Villa Paraiso towards the mountainside down which they had come on hands and knees, with the rucksacks and bags. They had reached the back door. Snapper had done his burglary stuff and opened it. He had used the narrow-tipped screwdriver that was good for property or vehicle locks. Of course, none of the house lights had been switched on and it was a black night with only a thin moon. They had known from the satellite photographs about the converted attic and had headed for it. They had known also that they had a good chance of a view into the gardens of the villa beside them, the front, the pool area and the patio.

‘That’s our boy and he likes his evening cigarette.’ Snapper pitched his voice to carry far enough for Loy to hear him. Whether Sparky, who had the Boss’s ear, could pick up what he said was immaterial. He and Loy were a well-oiled machine.

In the kitchen, the door closed behind them, they had opened Loy’s rucksack and taken out the shoe covers. Everything was packed so that what was needed first was immediately accessible – it was a refined routine. They used the same shoe covers as the scenes-of-crime people to avoid contamination. Then they had groped out of the kitchen into the hallway and on to the stairs. Snapper had allowed himself to turn on his pencil torch, which threw a dull beam, just enough for him to see the steps and the steepness of the staircase. He had led them to the top of the stairs and had eased the door open slowly to mitigate the squeal of the hinges. To anyone without the training required of SCD11, whining hinges wouldn’t register: Snapper had a host of stories of how minimal noise had carried into the night air and shown out a surveillance site. Good-quality villains, who stayed clear of handcuffs, had dogs with the best ears or their minders wore aids advertised for the hard of hearing. Big players in organised crime, Snapper’s experience, were leagues ahead of the Islamist bomb people or the animal-rights crowd. The floorboards didn’t help – a couple squeaked when weight shifted on them. A detailed look round the bungalow could wait until daylight. He had reached the side window and stood back from it; the blind had been up so he didn’t have to fidget with it. He had looked out and seen the man, the glow of the cigarette.

‘About as good as it gets,’ Snapper said.

Gear was coming out of Loy’s rucksack. After the log book came the Swarovski binoculars, the Canon camera, the case for the lenses, the cables for battery renewal, the pocket printer, with paper, and the communications stuff that would link them to Xavier – he’d be checking into his hotel. The little kettle and the sack of first-day food would be backed up by what they’d brought in the larger rucksack, and there was toilet paper. Loy stacked everything where it could be found by touch. The side window gave Snapper a clear view of the main door, and the last part of the driveway approaching it, the pool and the patio, the side of the villa and the rear extension where a door led into the main garden. He watched Pavel Ivanov – height was right, as were the facial features and hair. A dog wandered near him – uninterested until Ivanov kicked a ball. The dog dived after it. It was big, weighed more than fifty kilos.

Snapper said, without turning, ‘Log that there’s a dog, German Shepherd . . . and that’s Ivanov, definite . . .’

Loy had brought him a bedside chair to sit on, and when it was light he’d use one of the inflatable cushions. They’d always log the presence of a dog. Dogs were a bad memory among the ranks of SCD11. There was a fine picture in the New Scotland Yard building, outside the administration offices, of a Detective Constable John Fordham. On a surveillance mission he had been on a stake-out inside the property of a target and had been found by the guard dogs and cornered. The target had stabbed him to death. A dog could walk past an ‘empty’ van in a street, get to the back door and stand still. Its hackles would rise and it would growl, telling the world that a couple of guys were inside. Pavel Ivanov looked to be in fair shape, maybe a little overweight. Then Snapper saw two more men.

‘For the log,’ he said. ‘We have Ivanov as Target One. There are now two others. Not advised of names. I have the taller man as Target Two. Target Three is shorter, heavier. Again for the log, Loy: they both have firearms in their belts, handguns. Got that?’

His back was tapped, the familiar signal of confirmation. He would have expected there to be weapons on the premises. He would not have expected those weapons to be carried. He had had firearms training, as did Loy, but neither had ever carried a Glock 9mm on an operation. They relied, in the choicer stake-outs, on having armed back-up close and ready. The dog and the guns were predictable, but that something was predictable did not make it easier on the stomach. Outside, more cigarettes were lit and the three men walked further from the house, the minders trailing their principal. There was a space where the ground had been cleared, the grass mown, and a chipper was parked there. At the edge of the space there was a heap of wood chips and—

A board creaked behind him. Snapper swung round.

‘You sure we’ve come to the right pad?’ Sparky asked, innocent.

‘Of course we bloody have – and we don’t speak unless we have to.’ Winnie had said Sparky was there to ‘watch your backs’. He had some kit that might bail them out of a hole, but wasn’t ‘one of them’ and didn’t move quietly.

‘Who lives here?’

‘Geoffrey and Frances Walsh. You heard the briefing as we did.’

‘How old are they?’

Snapper felt annoyance rising. He watched the three men on the lawn and the dog. ‘I don’t know. Eighty-something. Why?’

‘Who else lives here?’

‘No one. If you didn’t notice, it’s bloody empty.’

‘Care to come and have a look at this, and tell me what’s going on?’

Snapper scraped back his chair and stabbed a glance at his targets. They hadn’t heard the chair. He went from the side dormer with the view to the one at the back of the room. There had been no light when they had come across the long grass. The Targets move to the cleared ground had tripped another security light and a shaft came into the Paradise garden. It lit a washing-line. On it hung a pair of panties, a bra, a halter-top and a skimpy blouse.

It was said of Snapper that he was not a man to be lightly knocked off course. He muttered, ‘Have to wait and see what turns up – unless anyone has a better idea?’

‘Is that a rat?’

She stiffened, shrank from him, then flinched.

Jonno was sitting up. He had been close to sleep. He shouldn’t have driven back from Marbella – twice he had seen a man crossing the street ahead of him and swerved late. Should have had a taxi back up the hill and walked the rest. There had been laughter and giggles and they’d pretty much fallen – still half dressed – on to the bed. There’d been some fumbling, then a sort of understanding and they’d drifted off.

He said, ‘I don’t think rats snore.’

He could have sworn he’d heard the type of grunt that came with snoring, and then a sudden movement before the silence returned. What to do? He could phone the police, except it was past two in the morning and he spoke no Spanish beyond a couple of tourist pleasantries. He could turn over, mutter something to Posie about the wind in the eaves, then lie all night with his ears cocked. Neither was acceptable.

‘I’d better take a look,’ he said.

He switched on the bedside light and slid out of bed. She had a hand on his arm but he pushed it away. He was still part drunk. Perhaps he’d been mistaken. He bloody hoped so. He wore his boxers, and heard her whisper, ‘Be careful,’ as he went into the hall. From the coatstand he took the heaviest stick he could find, and put the light on over the stairs. He started up them.

At the top he eased the door open. He went inside. He saw the shoulders and head of a big man sitting on a chair, and then his toes met the soft shape of a sleeping bag. He reached for the light switch – it would have been to the left of the doorway. His hand was caught. He swung round and had the stick up and—

The movement was blocked and the stick clattered down. He felt a scream welling in his throat. He tried to writhe free but the grip was tighter. ‘Don’t fucking try anything or I’ll break you,’ a voice said in his ear.

He believed it.

The voice from the chair was softer, ‘All right, Sparky. I’m sure we don’t have a problem here. Let’s not bend the gentleman’s arm so it snaps. Who are you?’

Jonno gave his name and Posie’s. He’d heard authority in the voice. He realised it was close to controlling him and that he was near to capitulating, which built his anger.

‘Who are you, and this thug?’

He was not answered. Instead the man asked, ‘What right have you to be in this property?’

He said his mother was a sort of niece of Frances Walsh. The villa had been offered to himself and Posie – they were cat-sitting while Geoffrey Walsh had his operation in London and—

He was cut off. The thug swore softly. He heard her on the stairs. The one in the sleeping bag exhaled. From the chair there was a cough. She came up steadily.

He challenged again: ‘You answer that question now. Who are you, and why are you here?’

Posie was behind him. She said she had Jonno’s mobile. There was a blur of movement. Jonno’s arm was freed, but he was on the floor, the breath knocked out of him. The thug had Posie, who gave a muffled scream – he had a hand over her mouth – and the phone fell to the floor. The thug stamped on it.

The voice said, ‘Before we all get over-excited, can we – please – relax? I want you both to look at my hand. I’m going to shine a small torch beam at it and you’ll see my ID. I’m Metropolitan Police and am on duty, as are my assistant and our colleague. I apologise about the phone but you may not call from here, or shout, or use a flashlight from this room. Are we all calm?’ He showed them something the size of a credit card for a few seconds.

The voice said, ‘Most people find me pretty reasonable, and professional. Confrontations get in the way of my work. My advice is that you let us sort this out in the morning. I’m not here on holiday, and I’ll react unfavourably to anything you do – phones, lights, noise – that sabotages what I came here to do. Have I your word that this will wait till the morning?’

When the thing took his hand off her mouth, Posie murmured, ‘Yes.’

‘And you?’

‘I suppose I don’t have—’

‘Any
option
. No, not really. Go to bed.’

Jonno pushed himself up, and Posie was freed. They started down the stairs and the door closed behind them.

8

‘What to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

They were still in bed. The sun was already clipping the top of the mountain and a little came into the bedroom. They hadn’t touched each other during the night, but neither had slept.

Jonno steeled himself and made the equation. They had come under darkness into the bungalow. They would have said if they’d had the permission of the owner to be there. His mother would have been told that he and Posie would be with a police surveillance team. What
they
had done was the first line of his equation. He was still angry at how they had treated him and Posie.

He knew little of policemen, had had minimal contact with them. They inhabited a different world. They were on television wearing riot gear and whacking kids protesting in central London, and they were pictured in newspapers on their hands and knees, searching ditches and verges for weapons after a girl had been strangled, or they were in cars with their blue lights going. They were in the village where he had been brought up if there had been a burglary or if the cricket pavilion’s windows had been broken, and they had once been into his school to talk about the dangers of drugs. Jonno could not have said he’d ever had a meaningful conversation with a police officer. That was another line in the equation.

He was sitting up, still wearing only his boxer shorts. Posie was on her back, wrapped in a pink dressing-gown that had been on the hook behind the bedroom door. She had chucked it on when she’d followed him. His head throbbed with a hangover, and he had to blink to focus. His wrist was puffy from where he’d been held, and her elbow was scratched from her fall on the floor. Jonno almost needed to pinch himself to believe it had happened. Then he twisted towards Posie. The stress lines on her face were enough to confirm it.

What to do?

He could roll over like one of his parents’ Labradors and submit. He could be reasonable, or cold and questioning. He could object angrily to an illegal entry into the home of Geoffrey and Frances Walsh. Or he could wait to be told what was going to happen.

What to do? Make the bloody tea.

He kicked off the bedclothes. He should have kissed Posie, said something nice to her; given her a comforting squeeze. He didn’t. He padded out of the bedroom, across the hall. It was as if he walked through the lives of the couple who owned the place, past their possessions, the pictures that were important to them, the things they had collected over half a century. He would not have given house room to any of it. He went into the kitchen, filled the kettle, clicked it on. His mother would have thrown it out a decade before as unsafe because the flex cover was frayed. It was
their
kettle and
their
right to have it. It whistled first, then squealed, and he was at the window, looking out at the sun on the grass and the shrubs. It lit the big conifers along the boundary and played on the steepness of the slope going up to the plateau where the cave was and the plastic sacks. He had a cupboard open and was taking out the teabags and the mugs when he turned again.