“We do. Your idiot theory? Forget it.”
“Why?”
“I saw the guys who disagreed with the door. And they were no idiots. Trust me.”
“How would you know? You weren’t there.”
“Oh, but I was. Right there. In the room. With Tony.”
“Doing what?”
“Following up after the rendezvous problem. Fothergill was concerned. Like you said, he wanted to help. He asked me to track Tony down.”
“What did Tony say? Did you speak?”
“No. I was about to broach the subject when the door imploded.”
“How many gatecrashers?”
“Two.”
“The two bloodstains?”
I nodded.
“Dead?” he said.
“That’s what happens when you bust in uninvited,” I said.
“Tony killed them?”
I didn’t reply.
“Was it Tony? Did he take care of business?”
I shrugged.
“Oh. That was your work, then?” he said. “Hypocrite.”
“Someone had to deal with them,” I said. “Tony was more concerned with leaving.”
“Can’t blame him for that. He was hurt. Stop. Wait. The stain on the stairs? That couldn’t have been . . . ?”
“No. It was the doctor. From the clinic.”
“Oh. Was he dead?”
“Apparently so.”
“What was he doing? How come he was there?”
“It’s a long story. But forget him. The point is, I didn’t see where Tony went. And I need to know where else he could be. I guess we both do.”
Young didn’t answer.
“Wake up,” I said. “People are trying to kill your friend. I can’t help him if I don’t know where he is. The shed was a blank. So think. Where else would he have gone?”
“How many guys busted in?” he said. “Two?”
“You know him. What was his MO.? Back against the wall, what would he do?”
“ ’Cause if there were two guys, we’re screwed. Were there two?”
“Where would he run to?”
“I don’t know. But please. How many? You said two?”
“Two. Obviously. Else there’d have been more bloodstains.”
Young didn’t reply.
“Don’t go all coy on me, now,” I said. “And why are you so bothered with the head count?”
“Because you don’t know how these guys work,” he said. “They’re not like us. They don’t have budgets to worry about. I’m talking unlimited resources. What weapons were they carrying? Nothing cheap, right?”
“MP5s.”
“Right. New clothes?”
“Yes.”
“I could go on. And I can guarantee, they never just travel in pairs. There’d have been six of them, on a job like this. Minimum. You burned two, so that’s four more outside. Tony’s good, but there’s no way he’s getting past four guys, while he’s wounded. It’s time to face facts. They’ve got him.”
“OK. Supposing you’re right, where would they take him?”
“No idea.”
“Think.”
“No point. I have absolutely no idea.”
“And if he did somehow get past them? How could we find him?”
“No idea.”
“No? What do you have an idea about?”
Young scowled at me, but said nothing.
“Then wait there a minute,” I said. “And keep your mouth shut till you’ve got something useful to say.”
Fothergill answered the phone on the first ring. He was disappointed, but not exactly surprised. He’d never expected my time with Young to turn up anything of value. And he was less than encouraging when it came to sketching out our next steps.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Young is ex–Royal Marines, after all. So you better get yourself ready. London will be ordering another hard arrest. They’re still deliberating, but I can’t see another outcome. I’d put money on it coming through.”
I looked across at Young. He was skulking next to the compound fence, hands in his pockets, kicking his toes into the dusty ground and trying to avoid catching my eye. I could almost see the tidemarks on his clothes. He was up to his neck in McIntyre’s cesspool of a scheme. That’s what I’d put my money on.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Que sera, sera. Let’s just not drag things out, eh? McIntyre’s in the wind, and I’m not going to find him if I’m bogged down in this other mess.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I’ll confirm directly. In the meantime, take him somewhere safe and sit on him. And I’ll keep you posted if anything else breaks, this end.”
My first thought was that if I had to waste time on this guy, I might as well do it somewhere with room service. I was tempted to head up to Clark Street, grab us a cab, and stash him away at my hotel for as long as necessary. But the snag with that plan was, if Fothergill’s hunch played out and I did have to dispatch Young anytime soon, there’d be nowhere convenient to do it. I needed somewhere with more privacy. Somewhere with disposal facilities. And certainly somewhere with no housekeepers who could stumble across the body.
A picture of the tramp he’d just killed floated into my head. McIntyre’s building was close. I knew I’d spent too much time in it recently, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate place to run down the clock on Young. And because I’d been outside, chasing after his red herring, I still needed to have a thorough look for any traces the police had missed.
Young seemed tense and distant as we made our way back along Fullerton. He stared at the ground as we walked and made no attempt to speak, which was fine by me. He grew more anxious the closer we got to the building, but didn’t break his silence till the moment we entered the apartment.
“When he left, he must have been in one hell of a hurry, yes?” he said.
I pushed past him and kept going toward the end of the corridor. I wanted to see the room where McIntyre had been waiting before going to answer the door.
“What I mean is, was he carrying anything?” he said. “McIntyre? Did he have time to stop and collect anything?”
Three items of furniture had been left in the living room. An air mattress, slashed, gaping, and discarded in the far corner. A mountaineering-style sleeping bag, dull and green, three feet from it on the floor. And a bentwood chair, battered but still standing, in the center of the room.
“No,” I said. “His hands were empty.”
“So if Tony wasn’t carrying the stuff when he ran, it might still be here,” he said, following me through the door. “We should look for it.”
“Do you think?”
“Wait. Something’s changed. The Maggot. It’s moved.”
Green Maggot was army slang for sleeping bag, as far as I could recall. But I wished he’d just speak in plain English.
“You sure?” I said.
“Certain,” he said. “I was here earlier. Just before you turned up. I looked in all the rooms. The bag was on the mattress. I guarantee it. Hobos must have got in. Trying to steal it, I guess.”
“Go and check,” I said, pulling back to the corridor. “See if there’s any other reason.”
Young walked all the way round the sleeping bag. Twice. Slowly. He pulled back the top layer and peered inside. Then he rolled the whole thing over, looked underneath, and called me over to see what he’d found.
“Run your finger over that,” he said, pointing to the join between two floorboards.
It wasn’t certain by eye, but you could feel that one of the boards was definitely proud of its neighbor. I traced the raised joint along and around, and found that it formed a rectangular section about two feet square.
“Open it,” I said, stepping backward again.
“Empty,” he said, after scrabbling at the edges of the trapdoor for a few seconds. “Oh, no, wait a minute. Come and look at this.”
Young was right. There was nothing hidden under the floor. But something had been roughly scratched on the underneath of the removable panel. Two numbers. One above the other, like a fraction. A four. And a five.
“They must have brought Tony back here,” Young said. “To pick up the stuff. He must have had it stashed.”