‘You destroyed everything, Perric?’ What Palmer took to be Radnor’s voice was calm and businesslike, and came from the door to the office. ‘If they find a link to this place, they’ll go through it with a magnifying glass. These people aren’t stupid.’
‘There is no paperwork.’ Palmer recognised the voice of the man in the white shirt. He didn’t sound happy.
‘It’s not just paper,’ insisted Radnor. ‘Packaging material, oil — even flakes of paint off the weapons and crates — they can trace it back.’
‘It’s all done. Dino burned what papers we couldn’t take. You can check the ashes out back if you want.’ Perric sounded resentful, as if his abilities were being questioned.
‘And the boxes from the last shipment? Those laser sights are worth a fortune. We can’t afford to lose them, not now.’
Laser sights? Jesus, thought Palmer.
‘Ready to go. We’re waiting for a call from the ship’s first officer to say when we can deliver without running into the docks supervisor. They should be on their way across the Med in three days.’
‘And the handguns?’
‘They’ve gone already. We re-packed them as you said and got rid of the original packaging. It’s in a landfill miles from here.’
‘What’s all this?’ A new voice spoke from much closer, and the wire cage rattled as somebody pushed against it. The speaker had a faint accent, but the voice was unfamiliar.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Perric. This time his voice was more respectful. ‘More rubbish. It won’t have any traces on it. It would have taken too long to burn and there wasn’t time to go to the local tip.’
The scrape of shoe leather on the bare concrete floor came close to Palmer’s hiding place, and the corrugated sheet above him shifted as somebody kicked at the pile of packaging. Suddenly, instead of the covering of cardboard, Palmer could see the roof of the warehouse, with its latticework of steel rafters and support beams. A large pigeon was looking down at him, cocking its head and shifting nervously from side to side as the men moved around.
‘Are you sure about that?’ The man’s voice was now so close, Palmer could hear him breathing as he bent over.
The pigeon took fright and clattered from its beam in the roof space, causing the man near Palmer to swear in surprise. As the sound of wing-beats moved across the warehouse and through the rear door, somebody laughed.
‘Michael, we don’t have time.’ It was Radnor again. ‘Let’s get out of here in case Palmer and the woman come back and bring the police with them. This place is compromised.’
The packaging moved again, but this time sliding back across to cover Palmer’s face. He hoped it hadn’t left his feet in sight, and held his breath until the man named Michael had moved away. There was a clang as the cage door swung shut, and the footsteps faded into the distance towards the front of the building.
Palmer waited a full five minutes, then slid out from his hiding place. He walked silently to the roller door and peered out through a gap in the metal slats. Radnor, Perric, and two men he couldn’t see properly were standing outside, talking. One of the men had his back to the building, but Palmer thought it might be the young Russian named Michael. It looked as if this was their final visit to the place before abandoning it altogether.
Palmer eased cautiously away from the door and out into the back yard. He crossed to the fence, stopping to pick up the Tesco bag with its bundle of evidence, then slipped through the gap and jogged through the deserted council depot to the road in search of a cab.
Chapter 24
The sound of the shot wasn’t as loud as Riley expected. A vague corner of her mind rationalised that Mr Grobowski downstairs wouldn’t have heard anything, as he was too busy banging his pots and pans in the kitchen. Even so, she flinched at the shockwaves in the air.
Szulu spun away with a cry of pain, clutching his left arm. When he straightened up and took his hand away, there was a hole in the sleeve of his jacket and a trace of blood was beginning to spread through the material.
‘Fuck, man — you shot me!’ he whispered, as if he couldn’t believe such a thing. ‘What you do that for?’
‘Damn, that was careless,’ commented Mitcheson mildly. He looked at Riley and continued as if discussing the matter with a new recruit, ‘They don’t always work after jamming like that; they usually need stripping down. Good job I was aiming at his head — I might have hit something serious, otherwise.’
Riley said nothing, too stunned to speak yet feeling an irrational urge to laugh. It had all happened so fast. She was mesmerised by the ease with which Mitcheson had shot her attacker, yet aware of the evident care he had taken not to kill him, in spite of his anger.
As if to demonstrate this, he grabbed Szulu by his good arm and slammed him against the wall. ‘Now, before I get really annoyed at you for frightening my girlfriend, what’s this about?’
‘John, wait.’ Riley stepped quickly alongside him and placed a hand on his arm. ‘He said he had a message for me. I want to hear what it is.’
Mitcheson lifted an eyebrow. ‘Really? Boy, Fedex must have really changed their core business.’ He jammed the gun barrel beneath Szulu’s chin and nudged it upwards until their eyes met. Whatever Szulu saw there made him go very still.
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘It’s…yo, man, this really hurts, y’know!’ Szulu sucked air through his teeth and held his wounded arm, until Mitcheson dropped the gun and pointed it menacingly against the man’s good shoulder. ‘Okay… okay. The message is… Christ, I don’t understand it, but she said to tell you-’
‘She?’ Mitcheson echoed.
‘Some woman called Fraser,’ Riley explained helpfully. ‘She hired him to drive for her. She’s been hanging around, but we don’t know who she is or what she wants. They already turned over Palmer’s office.’
‘So they’re not part of the other thing you told me about?’
‘Radnor? It doesn’t look like it.’
‘She said to tell you,’ continued Szulu, ‘she said you’d know what she meant. She said, ‘Lottie’s back’. That’s all, I swear. ‘Lottie’s back’.’ He slumped back with a sigh as Riley and Mitcheson exchanged stunned looks.
‘Lottie Grossman?’ Riley could hardly believe it. The name sent her thoughts spinning back to an assignment in Spain, when she had first met John Mitcheson. It was also the first occasion she and Palmer had worked together, and they had nearly lost their lives investigating the activities of the murderous ex-gangster’s wife and her gang of mercenaries. ‘I thought she’d be dead by now.’
‘Wishful thinking,’ said Mitcheson. ‘Never bloody works when you want it to.’
‘Of course!’ Riley said excitedly. ‘That explains the gardening bit in Palmer’s office. The evil cow was a mad keen gardener, wasn’t she?’
Mitcheson nodded. When Lottie wasn’t busy plotting, she had spent most of her time in the garden, armed with something sharp. ‘She just liked killing things. Weeds were a ready victim. She certainly put a lot of enthusiasm into it.’
Szulu looked from one to the other as if they were mad, and gestured towards the door. ‘Look, I hate to interrupt, but can I go now? I need a doctor.’
Mitcheson looked at Riley. ‘You got a small towel you don’t mind losing?’
Riley went into the kitchen and came back with a handful of paper towelling. Mitcheson made Szulu strip off his jacket and gave his arm a cursory examination. There was an entry wound but no exit, and he guessed the jacket and Szulu’s arm muscle, and maybe a poor charge in the cartridge, had combined to reduce the round’s velocity. He slapped the wadded tissue unceremoniously against the wound. ‘Hold that in place and don’t get excited, and you might not bleed to death.’
‘Wha-? Hey — I need proper medical attention, not this stuff!’