TURKISH DELIGHT Barry Faulkner (i love reading txt) 📖

arms warehouse went up. They can’t be too happy – that’s a lot to replace and a lot of money needed to do it.’

I nodded, ‘Cheaper if you own the production companies.’

‘Yes, much cheaper, all done at cost.’

‘Okay, so if that is the game then there’s only one person left to pull the strings at the top.’

‘Reynolds.’

‘Who is now in mortal danger – or in complete control with Aydin.’

‘Are you going to tell Woodward, put him in the picture? Might be a good time to hand it over and back out.’

She was making sense, but I didn’t like Reynolds lying to me – I’d been played by him; all that nonsense about only knowing Rambart six months and I shouldn’t touch Eve Rambart or Nicholas with a bargepole. But he didn’t know she had already told me that it was him who had suggested me to her, so what was he up to? No wonder he had me sweep his office for explosives; if he was a player in this armaments game with the Turks and the IRG, he was walking a thin line. Perhaps Eve Rambart had asked him to recommend a security firm for some task like sweeping for bugs, knowing his past and knowing that anybody he suggested would probably be in the hit market too. No, I wasn’t going to hand over to Woodward; I wanted to open the boxes on this one, even if some of those boxes might go bang. First job was to find if Nicholas Rambart was dead or alive – but I would send Woodward the photos of the paperwork and details on Serife Aydin. Just a safety net really; if I ended up dead he’d have the means to follow up the case with MI6’s forensic accountants, trace the money, trace the shares, re-open the four CEOs’ deaths and put it all together and make arrests.

Life is never straightforward. One minute I’m going to be very rich with a million, maybe two, in the bag, and the next I’m down to two hundred grand and mixed up with MI6, a Turkish lady assassin and a friend who may not be a friend after all. Perhaps I should try being the sort of PI who follows the wife to find out who’s shagging her for the husband; sounds a much easier way to make a living.

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CHAPTER 21

Nicholas Rambart had disappeared, but whether he was dead or alive I didn’t know – what I did know was that he’d disappeared from his Hilton suite. Alarm bells rang in my head when I went to see if I could get a meet with him in the hotel bar, a very public place; always choose a public place if the person you are meeting might have a reason to kill you – at least I wouldn’t be snuffed out there, might get a drive-by as I walk from the hotel, but inside I was pretty safe. The alarm bells rang when I went to ask reception to phone up and tell him I was in the foyer; I had hoped that might bring him down for a chat. He would be surprised I knew where he was for a start and would want to know how I found him, but the first thing I noticed at the reception glancing at his keycard pigeon hole was that the card was there but no green or red slide was showing. The suite was vacant.

‘They left yesterday,’ was the receptionist’s answer to my question.

‘Any forwarding address for mail?’

‘No sir, sorry.’

I was tempted to drive into the city and face Reynolds with what I knew, see his reaction, but I thought better of it; I had the upper hand knowing he was involved, and he didn’t know that I knew that. Complicated, eh?

So that really only left one way forward.

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We were parked in the darkness sixty metres away from the main gates to the Purley warehouse. The exterior floodlit the entrance and security gatehouse; a single guard sat inside watching TV. I was ready for another look inside: dark clothes, earpiece, Beretta 92 and AK-47, ‘tooled up’ as some of my criminal friends would call it.

‘Are you going in the back way again?’ Gold asked.

‘No point, go strut your stuff, time to upset the apple cart.’

I couldn’t see any reason to take on the razor wire again – this would surely be the end game; we knew what was what and who was who, and just needed to tie up the loose ends and put an end to Rambart and Reynolds’s business.

I watched as Gold left the car and made her way towards the gates. When she got to within twenty metres she started wandering a little on her feet; she hadn’t told me how she had attracted the guard from the gatehouse the last time we were here, now I guessed she’d played the drunk slapper card – it never fails. It didn’t this time either. She got to the gate and the guard hadn’t seen her, so she grabbed the gates where the padlock and chain fasten them together and shook them about. That got his attention. He must have recognised her as he was on his way out of the gatehouse and across the driveway pretty quickly – and he was smiling. They exchanged some words; it all seemed very cordial, he was smiling and Gold was laughing.

She reached through with her right hand and patted his arms – it was getting personal, I knew what was coming next; he didn’t. Her right hand reached up quickly to behind his head and rammed it forward onto the steel gate bars at speed, knocking him out. The guard slumped to the ground and Gold knelt to unhook his key chain from his belt and quickly found the one that released the chain from