When Mitcheson reached the corner, he found the big man waiting for him. McManus seemed unaffected by the wind and was standing by the window of a travel agent, outlined by the neon tubing. There was nobody else about.
“Well, soldier boy,” he sneered. “Getting some pussy lined up? You’re forgetting what you’re being paid — ”
Mitcheson stepped in and hit him hard, putting his shoulder behind the blow. It was dirty and rough, and McManus dropped to the pavement, his breath leaving him in an explosive cough.
Mitcheson didn’t wait for him to recover; once back on his feet, the big man was far too dangerous. He dropped a knee onto McManus’s chest and grasped the lapels of his jacket with his hands crossed. McManus’s breathing, already strained through his damaged nose, was now in danger of stopping altogether. In the dim light Mitcheson could see his face darkening due to the lack of oxygen.
He eased off the pressure just sufficient to prevent the man dying on him, then bent and spoke into McManus’s ear. “Why are you following her?” he demanded. “I told you to leave her to me.”
McManus’s eyes slowly lost their pained look and focused on Mitcheson’s face. It was like having a malevolent dog staring up at him. A dog that knew only one thing: how to kill.
“I don’t take orders from you,” McManus croaked. “And I never will.”
Mitcheson shook him for a moment, then let him go. He wasn’t going to get anything from this man; he was too hard a nut to crack. All McManus understood was how to do what Lottie Grossman told him.
A noise made Mitcheson look along the street. A hundred yards away a pair of figures stepped out of a white van. There was mesh over the windows and the streetlights glinted off helmet badges. It was time to leave. He would have to deal with McManus another time.
As Mitcheson walked away, McManus levered himself up on one elbow and coughed, rubbing his damaged throat.
“I wasn’t following her, soldier boy,” he muttered. “I was following you.”
Chapter 17
Riley showered and ate breakfast in a mental fog, thinking about her dinner date with John Mitcheson. Sleep had not come easily when she got home, and she had repeatedly run over the bones of their conversation during the meal, trying to make some sense of how she felt. She’d found John Mitcheson engaging company, yet all the time she had been with him she had felt there was something in the atmosphere. It had been like sharing a cage with a tiger.
She shook off the thoughts and dressed, then went through her notes to get back on track. Four deaths and no clue as to motive or who might be responsible. Yet what were the chances of this many old ex-gangsters dying within days of each other? Whatever was happening to them was focussed and calculated…and personal. She went back to the brief that Donald Brask had provided. It wasn’t likely to tell her much she hadn’t already been over before, but it might throw up a clue. Very often the information you needed was staring you in the face. All you had to do was recognise it.
Donald had included some details from the police investigation into the two murders on the coast. There was a reference to Bertrand Cage’s chauffeur, Peter Willis. He had discovered his employer’s body when he had gone to collect him from the beach. According to their custom, Willis would drop Cage at the beach by car at about 08.30 in the morning, settle him in his deckchair, then return at 11.00 prior to driving him back to the house for lunch. Discounting illness, the routine never varied.
Which must have made it easy for the killer. No doubt Cage must have felt secure in his old age. How wrong that had proved to be.
Willis, the report went on to say, had been in Cage’s employ for fifteen years. There followed some brief comments about his background, but little else about the man was known. The original silent retainer.
Riley dialled Willis’s number again. Still no answer. She replaced the phone with a feeling of apprehension. Willis had either gone to ground after all the fuss surrounding Cage’s death… or something much worse. She gathered her notes and mobile phone. A trip to Sussex, she thought. There was no way she was going to get any solid help from the police files, so she might as well drive down to see if she could trace Willis and have a quiet chat. Failing that, a talk with the neighbours was better than sitting here staring at the walls.
As she drove she called Donald Brask. The fat man had more contacts who owed him favours than anyone else she knew. He was also rightly proud of his database and the sources of information at his disposal, including some friendly reporters and a handful of police officers. He answered on the second ring.
“Donald,” she said. “I need a favour.”
Frederick Hyatt looked more like an academic than the head of a news bureau. Dressed in tweeds and a bow tie, he shuffled out into the foyer of the Charlwood Lodge hotel near Gatwick, blinking in the light after the gloom of the conference hall, and looked around urgently. When he spotted Riley waiting by the front desk, he nodded and crossed to greet her.
“You must be Miss Gavin. Donald always had an accurate eye for description.”
“Mr Hyatt.” Riley checked his name badge and shook his hand. “Thank you for sparing me the time”
“No problem. He said it was urgent.” He indicated a quiet corner of the foyer and led the way over. “I can only give you a few minutes, I’m afraid. I’m on next. The local Chamber of Commerce seems to think I can enthuse its members on the subject of modern media awareness.” He smiled briefly. “As if they need it these days.”
Riley took the hint and launched straight in. “Mr Hyatt, I believe you interviewed Peter Willis after Bertrand Cage’s murder, is that right?”
“Yes. Only because he was fairly close by and I already knew about his job. We handled a profile about Cage a while back: local mystery man of substance and all that. It didn't go anywhere because Cage’s lawyer stamped all over it and the story died. What can I tell you?”
“I’d like to speak to Willis, but I can’t raise him on the phone. I though you might know something before I go to his home.”
Hyatt raised an eyebrow. “I’m not surprised he’s gone to ground. Peter Willis and his wife are hardly media-savvy. They’re an ordinary couple who’ve found themselves pitched into this thing without warning. I spoke to them before the main press arrived, just after the story broke. Unfortunately, they had a rough ride after that, especially when the television crews turned up. There’s a big difference between a man with a recorder and a van bristling with antennae. In the end they’d had enough. What do you want from them?”
“I’m doing background on the two dead men,” explained Riley. “And I’d like to track down any known associates of Cage and McKee. One of the most recent seems to be Peter Willis. I’m hoping he can give me some colour about their former activities.”
“Such as?” Hyatt sounded cautious, his head tilted to one side.
“Such as what they did, who their friends were… their business partners. Why their past seems to have caught up with them the way it has.”
Hyatt smiled and considered the pattern in the carpet. He nodded and pursed his lips as if making a decision, and it was obvious he’d had time to think about Riley’s visit.
“Okay. Two things, Miss Gavin. You’re assuming it was their past that has a bearing on their deaths. It wasn’t — at least, not in the sense you mean. These men had no past because they had never fully left it behind. All they had was what they had done last. Oh, they might not have been as fully active as they used to be — they were old men, after all — but that didn't mean they were no longer involved.”
“They were still running things, then?”
“To an extent. It doesn’t take muscle to own shares, Miss Gavin. All the front work is undoubtedly being carried out by professional managers. From what I could determine, Cage, at least, still had revenue coming in from a variety of enterprises, channelled through a network of holding companies. McKee would have been the same.” He smiled crookedly. “I tried to join the same golf club as McKee once. When I told my wife what the membership fee was, she threatened to divorce me.”