Someone answered. 'Is Gill there?' Matt asked.
'Is that Matt?'
He recognised the voice: Sandy, one of Gill's colleagues. 'Yes,' he replied. 'Please get her for me, will you?' He looked out to the car park. Damien and Reid were climbing into a taxi, heading for the station. They were going to get the train back up to Herefordshire, collect Reid's car, then drive up to Derbyshire with Jane and the kids. They should be all right, Matt reflected. They're both good men, well able to look after themselves.
'Matt, is that you?' said Gill. 'Where are you?'
Matt cupped the receiver. It felt good to hear her voice: she was the only woman he had ever met who could make him feel better just by speaking. 'I can't say,' he replied. 'I just wanted to check in and see if you are OK.'
'What's happening to you, Matt?' she said, her voice full of anxiety. 'What are you doing?'
'Work, that's all,' Matt replied. 'Security stuff- but it's all gone a bit pear-shaped. I need a few more days to sort things out… I just wanted to check you were OK.'
There was a pause. Matt didn't need to be able to see her face to tell what Gill was thinking: anger and confusion were in her voice. 'Some men were hanging about watching us a couple of days ago,' she replied slowly. 'I was walking home with Sandy, and they gave us the jitters. They didn't whistle or jeer or anything, just watched.'
Christ, thought Matt. Kazanov's boys. Or worse. 'Anyone talks to you or approaches you in the next few days, stay out of their way.'
'What's happening, Matt?' she said quickly. 'No one's coming after me, are they?'
Matt hesitated. 'Let's just say the next few days are a bit tense for me,' he replied. 'Anything starts to happen, pack your bags and go away for a few days. Everything will be OK in a few days, I promise.' He paused, holding the phone closer to his mouth. 'Trust me, Gill. Everything will be all right.'
The Prince of Wales in Dalling Road, just off the Hammersmith Broadway, was a dark and gloomy pub. The yuppiefication of the 1980s and 1990s had passed it by. There were no stripped pine floors, no racks of Australian Chardonnay or South African Shiraz lining the walls. No ciabatta burgers chalked up on the wall. Just frayed and tatty red velvet chairs, a beer-soaked carpet and a barmaid who'd never see fifty again.
Matt could have used somewhere more cheerful. He needed something to lighten his mood. His nerves were still shaken and his head was aching from the lack of sleep. Still, Ivan had wanted to come here.
In moments of danger, we go back to the places we know.
'I'm worried,' said Ivan, pulling up a barstool.
'We're all fucking worried.'
They had taken the train down from Reading. Matt had left his car parked in a side street — he'd pick it up after all this was over, if some of the local villains hadn't nicked it. For the next five days — until the boat arrived in Rotterdam and they could unload their loot — none of them wanted to do anything that would reveal their locations. That meant not driving their own cars, not using their own houses, not using their own credit cards, and not phoning anyone on a mobile.
'I know.' Ivan took a sip on the pint in front of him. 'But I think the Provos might be after me.'
'The videotape said it was al-Qaeda that killed Cooksley,' said Matt. 'They wanted to frighten us — and they want their money back.
'The other tape — the one from the boat — it went missing,' he continued. 'Alison reckons one of us took it.'
Ivan looked at him, a question playing in his eyes.
Either a great actor, or else he's surprised, Matt reckoned.
'Why would anyone do that?' Ivan asked.
Matt drummed his fingers on the table. 'Beats me,' he said. He looked directly towards Ivan. 'Did you take it?'
'No,' Ivan said clearly. 'Why would I do that?'
Matt shrugged.
'It's a feint,' Ivan continued. 'Let me explain a concept from bridge.'
Matt rolled his eyes. 'For fuck's sake,' he muttered.
'You have some high diamonds, but you need to get rid of the other fellows' ace to win those tricks. You play a dummy card, misleading the other players, and try to force their card out of them.' He paused, glancing through the pub, making sure he couldn't be heard. 'I can't help feeling that Cooksley's murder was a dummy.'
'Provos posing as al-Qaeda? That's bloody ridiculous.'
'Not if they want to get at me, Matt. I think they suspect I've been turned. They know about a robbery — but how much do they know? After all, what would I be doing on a job with a bunch of SAS boys?'
'You're saying they took out Cooksley to flush you out. Why not just go straight to you?'
'I don't know. Perhaps they didn't know where I was, but they knew where Cooksley was,' Ivan replied. 'Then I'm next.'
'You're imagination is working overtime, Ivan.'
Ivan paused. 'There's a man near here who could tell us whether it's the Provos,' said Ivan. 'If you don't mind getting into a fight.'
'Fighting,' said Matt, smiling for the first time since they had sat down. 'It's the only thing I've ever been any good at.'
They finished their drinks then walked slowly along the Dalling Road. It was about a mile, said Ivan — up towards Ravenscourt Park. Hammersmith and Acton had always been strong IRA areas in London. There were a lot of Irish there — always had been — but it was a lot less obvious than Kilburn and didn't have the same levels of Special Branch surveillance. There were several IRA safe houses in the area: places where men on missions in the capital could store themselves away for a few days. They were run by a man called Keith Whitson, an old Provo fighter who had moved to London in the late 1970s. If anyone was chasing after Ivan in Britain, he would know about it.
'But we'll have to beat the information out of him,' said Ivan.
'I thought the Provos never crack under torture,' said Matt.
'Whitson's not an active brigade man,' said Ivan. 'More of a housekeeper. He's tough, sure, but not as tough as the soldiers. I can't guarantee he'll talk — but it's the best chance we have of finding out what's going on.'
Unless it's a trap, thought Matt. Maybe he's leading me into a house full of his Provo mates to finish me off. Just like they finished off Cooksley.
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Matt had never liked this part of town: too many grey Victorian terraces, too much snarling traffic and not enough green spaces. If he had to be in London, he liked the centre, or the bits of Camberwell and Deptford where he had grown up. Nobody ever went on holiday to Camberwell, but at least it was home.
Some of the paint was scratched away from the surface of 16 Cedar Road. Whatever the Provos were up to these days, Matt noted, it wasn't DIY. The frames of the windows needed painting, and some of the brickwork was starting to flake away. Still, it was designed for safety, not for comfort.
'Let me talk,' said Ivan, and Matt stood silently behind him.
I'm not going inside until I'm certain it's not a trap.
The man who answered the door looked about fifty to fifty-five. His hair was greying and thinning, and deep lines were etched into the surface of his skin. Even though the years had ground away at him there was no fat on him, and his eyes were rock hard. 'Yes?' he said, holding the door ajar.
Matt noticed that his foot was barring the entrance, stopping anyone from rushing inside once the door was ajar. A professional.
'Ivan Rowe,' Ivan said quickly. 'A few years ago I was blowing some safes for the family.'
Whitson looked carefully at his face, scrutinising it as if he were looking at a forged bank note. 'Who's your friend?' he asked.