“I think number twenty-four’s down a side road somewhere. You sure you want dropping here — there’s not many people about.”
Riley handed him a note with a fat tip. “Don’t worry,” she said, grateful for his concern. “There’ll be someone else along shortly.”
When he’d gone, she walked along the road until she reached a turning into a small cul-de-sac. On her left a high brick wall bordered a van-hire depot. To her right stood an unkempt shrubbery, before the road opened out in front of three small workshop units with roller doors. There were no cars in sight but she could see a light in the middle unit. She slipped into the bushes, pushing through dense laurel until she arrived at the wall of the nearest workshop.
The brickwork was cold and damp from a recent downpour. There was no sound from within. She slid along the wall to check for a back entrance, but found it blocked off by a high fence.
Riley headed towards the front and poked her head round the corner. Whoever was in the middle building was being very quiet, and she doubted there was any work going on inside.
Just across from the units was a rubbish skip. It was a perfect observation point but getting in there unseen might be a problem. She took a deep breath, ready to sprint across the road.
The air inside the workshop was musty. A pile of junk mail lay scattered by the door. The floor was empty except for some tea-chests and a heavy bench set against one wall. On the top lay a jumble of hand-tools, a kettle and jars of coffee and sugar.
Howie plugged in the kettle and spooned coffee and sugar into polystyrene cups. The drone of the water heating sounded loud in the empty space.
Mitcheson cast an eye over the tools on the bench. Home handyman stuff mostly, with screwdrivers, pliers, hammer, a hand-drill, and a selection of screws and nails in plastic boxes.
He pulled up a tea chest and sat down, watching Howie drum a spoon on the coffee jar while Doug stood by the roller door keeping watch through the viewing panel.
Howie handed out the coffee and they stood sipping, glad of something to do. Now would have been the time to talk about future plans and hopes… what any group of men did when about to split up and pass on. But it wasn’t going to happen. Their positions had shifted over the last few days, and Mitcheson was aware that he’d been kidding himself about any kind of bond existing between them. There might have been once, when the bullets were flying and they were screaming down a narrow, mine-infested road near Bihac; or out by the airport at Sarajevo in a white APC, hoping there were no Serbs with rocket launchers trained on them. But not any longer. The promise of easy money had seen to that. And maybe a growing desperation to make something, anything, of their lives rather than face life as a security guard in a shopping centre, growing soft and fat and being the object of scorn from kids with nothing better to do.
Twin lights blazed across the garden area as a van turned into the cul-de-sac and stopped outside the middle unit. The driver got out and looked around, then went to the passenger door and opened it. Riley heard him grunting as he helped someone out. As they stepped into the pool of light spilling from the observation panels, she recognised Frank Palmer. He looked pale and drawn. The man holding him was Gary.
A single access door opened alongside the roller door, and a face showed briefly before retreating inside. As soon as the door slammed shut, Riley was on her feet and running over to the rubbish skip, where she took cover behind its comforting bulk. Her nose twitched involuntarily at the strong smell of paint, burned metal and petrol.
She breathed deeply, recalling Mitcheson’s comment about how once they had no need for Palmer they would do away with him. She had to do something… But what? She had no weapons and if she waited for the police to come, Palmer would be beyond caring.
She rubbed her nose as the sharp smell of petrol aggravated her nostrils.
“Jesus!” Doug snorted, and stepped back at the sight of Palmer’s vomit-stained clothing as Gary pushed him inside. The investigator sank to the floor, his face slack and pale under the lights.
“Think yourselves lucky,” Gary muttered. “I had to put up with the stink all the way from Malaga.” He glared at Palmer as if he had been ill deliberately, and dragged him to his feet again, grunting with the weight. Then he slapped him twice across the face; hard, solid blows which echoed in the empty space above their heads.
Mitcheson recognised what Gary was doing. He wasn’t merely being brutal; he was psyching himself up to carry out the next task. Pump up enough hatred or disgust for the victim and it made the killing so much easier.
Mitcheson slipped his hand in his pocket and felt for the screwdriver he’d taken off the bench. As a weapon it was about par with the plan he hadn’t got to get out of here with Palmer’s life intact. But it would have to do for now.
With Palmer upright against the wall, Gary produced a knife and flicked it open. He turned to Doug with a cold smile. “I need a hand with this.”
Chapter 46
Riley pulled a bottle from the skip. It felt half full of liquid and she sniffed at the top, instantly pulling back and gagging on the eye-watering smell of paint-thinner. She placed it carefully on the ground and looked for something else. Her fingers settled on a half-inch thick metal rod. That would be heavy enough.
She bent and peered carefully at the bottle. From a repeat-arson case she had researched the year before, she had learned some interesting facts. One was that some kids really did hate their schooldays and would get out of them almost any way they could. Another was that making a Molotov cocktail was surprisingly simple. It was also dangerous.
She reached into the skip and searched around until she felt some cloth. Pulling it free she tore off enough to stuff into the neck of the bottle, then shook the contents around until the cloth was saturated with the paint-thinner.
There was no one at the window. She picked up the metal rod and ran across to the unit and squatted against the wall. From inside she could hear the rumble of voices.
She stood upright until she could see through the nearest window, keeping her face back from the glass in case one of the men looked her way. The one known as Howie was standing by a workbench, a cup in his hand. Behind him a kettle steamed in the cold atmosphere.
Mitcheson was in the centre of the room facing the door, his expression blank and unemotional. She wondered what was going through his mind right now.
Moving further she caught a glimpse of Gary and, behind him, a partial sight of Palmer. Doug was moving to join them and Palmer seemed to be leaning away as if he was drunk.
In the distance she heard a faint wup-wup-wooo of a police siren. Coming here or somewhere else? Either way, it was going to be too bloody late. It was time to move.
Holding the rod between her knees, she pulled Palmer’s lighter from her pocket and held the bottle with the rag trailing down. It was now or never.
Palmer felt himself being dragged upright and shook his head. The nausea had gone but while he could hear and understand most of what was happening around him, he still lacked full control of his limbs, which seemed unbearably heavy.
He felt somebody pulling at his jacket. Over their shoulder he glimpsed John Mitcheson a few feet away, hands in his pockets. Doug was coming towards him with Howie close behind. Palmer shook his head and tried to piece together Gary’s request for help and the other man moving in to assist him. Assist him with what?
Then he caught a flash of light on shiny metal at the periphery of his vision and knew instinctively what it meant. He tensed himself for the blow he knew was coming, for the cold shock of steel cutting into his body.
“Wait!” It sounded like Mitcheson, speaking in the background. “I can hear a siren.”