TURKISH DELIGHT Barry Faulkner (i love reading txt) 📖

and let the ramp down. This was professional, very professional.

It took twenty minutes at the outside before everything that was to be removed from the apartment had been put in the lorry, it was everything except the furniture. Maybe the rental agreement was for ‘furnished accommodation’, so that had to stay – everything else, all reference to the person who had rented it, which I presume was Eve Rambart, was gone. The last thing out was Eve herself – or I presume it was, inside a large rolled rug tied at both end and carried out by three of the men. A professional job, very professional. I made my way down to the street; the lorry had no markings on the side or back, and I took the number as it drove off – it would be false. I could follow in a cab but any pro would soon suss that. That’s why Ubers are so useful – ordinary cars don’t stand out like cabs; but by the time I ordered one and it got to me through the London traffic, the lorry would be well gone.

I rang Clancy at the Yard. Dick Clancy and I had worked together on many cases when I with the OC Unit at the Yard; he was pretty high up now and would have unfettered access to surveillance programmes.

‘Nevis, long time no contact. I thought you’d retired to the coast like you always said you would?’

‘Nah, not yet, Dick – not old enough for that yet. I thought you’d be an AC by now, office on the fifth floor and spend the day pushing paper clips around the desk, and choosing between a custard cream or a digestive with you coffee.’

He laughed. ‘Bollocks, when they offer me that I’ll be round to you for a job. Anyway, what do you want?’

‘Got a pen?’

‘Yes.’

‘See if you can do an ANPR on a vehicle for me, just today’s journey.’ I gave him the lorry number.

‘Person of interest?’ he asked.

‘Most definitely. It’s on a lorry but probably false plates.’

That was the great benefit of ANPR, it traced the plate whatever it was on.

‘When do you want the info?’ asked Clancy.

‘Tomorrow morning will do fine.’

‘Okay, I’ll give you a bell.’

‘Thanks Dick, I owe you.’

‘Yeah, you say that every time. I reckon my credit with you must be pretty high by now. Talk tomorrow.’

And he rang off.

The lorry’s route and where it took the deceased Eve Rambart would hopefully provide a few answers as to what and who I was dealing with. Whoever it was had just cost me one million pounds, or eight hundred thousand pounds, or both. I couldn’t claim the eight hundred thousand from Eve if I killed Nicholas, and I couldn’t claim the million from Nicholas for killing Eve.

**************************************

Clancy woke me at seven the next morning. He always was the first in the office and the last to leave; it’s a habit you can fall into if you’ve no family – work becomes your family. He told me what I thought he would: the lorry ended up at a warehouse on an industrial estate in Purley. I took the postcode from Clancy to check it, just to make sure Nicholas Rambart hadn’t got two warehouses in Purley; he hadn’t, the code checked to the one I’d been in.

Gold arrived back early afternoon and travelled into London on the Piccadilly Line, changing onto the Bakerloo Line at Piccadilly Circus for Charing Cross and met me in our usual station cafe. I brought her up to speed.

‘We need to know who that lady in Rambart’s apartment is – she’s the key to all this. If she can handle a hit then she’s a pro,’ Gold said.

‘Yes, but working for who?’

‘Got to be Nicholas if the body ended up at Purley, must be. This coffee is crap compared to the stuff in Turkey,’ she said, putting her cup down and pulling a face. Subtlety isn’t in Gold’s dictionary.

‘So Nicholas kills his own wife?’

‘He offered you a million to do it, perhaps he couldn’t wait any longer?’

‘Why bother with a look-a-like? Just do the job and that’s that?’

‘He obviously needs to create the impression Eve’s still around maybe?’

‘I think I need to try and get a meet with Nicholas.’

‘Dangerous.’ She pushed the coffee cup aside. ‘Not as dangerous as British Rail coffee, but dangerous.’

***********************************

I tried contacting Rambart at the Hilton, pretending to be a financial journalist wanting to do a piece on his success. It was always an answer phone and my recorded messages were never replied to. I tried for two days and then decided to go full frontal.

‘I nearly didn’t recognise you, you look quite the rich boy about town,’ Gold laughed. She was in the Podium Bar at the Hilton as I came and sat opposite her on the third day at lunch time. If I was going to wander around the Hilton’s corridors I had to look the part: the dark blue Savile Row suit and matching shirt and tie hadn’t been out of the wardrobe since a protection job for an opera diva who was being bombarded with death threats a couple of years ago; you can’t work in the Opera Houses of Europe in faded jeans, a Status Quo T-shirt and Skechers.

I laughed. ‘You think I fit in then?’

‘Oh yes, eyes turned when you came in the Bar – especially the female ones.’

‘Well that’s no good then – I’m supposed to fit in, not stand out.’

‘You’ll do. What’s the plan?’

‘The plan is to get into Nicholas Rambart’s suite and bug it.’

‘How?’

‘No idea, but I noticed at the reception desk his room number key card is in the pigeonhole, so it’s empty at the moment.’

Gold’s mind flicked into operational mode; I knew she