TURKISH DELIGHT Barry Faulkner (i love reading txt) 📖

‘Okay. I’ll keep watch, you stay listening,’ She pulled a small receiver pack from her shoulder bag and an earpiece on a cord. I clipped the pack to my belt, put the earpiece in and ran the cord down under my black sweater from the neck and plugged it into the pack. She did the same with a similar pack and put on a headphone and microphone that she plugged in.

‘Hear me?’

‘Yes, loud and clear.’ I’d be able to hear her but couldn’t talk back.

‘Good, here...’ She handed me a pair of night vision glasses, a pair of black leather gloves and a black balaclava. ‘Off you go, she might be back anytime.’

I nodded and put the night vision glasses on to make my way down the dark stairs to the front door. I took them off, put on the balaclava and rolled it up to look like a beanie hat and left the building trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as I dodged through the busy traffic crossing the road to the leather goods shop and stood like a tourist looking in the lit window. The pavement was crowded, tourists and people out for a meal moved slowly along drinking in the ambience that a busy central London can give out. I love it. Home sweet home.

‘Testing, one two three,’ Gold’s voice came through my earpiece. ‘Right arm raise.’

I raised my right arm.

‘Good. All is quiet in the apartment.’

I felt in my pocket for my plastic card and walking up to the door pushed it in level with the Yale keyhole. It hit the bar and a little effort in the push slid it open and I was in, closing the door silently behind me.

‘That looked easy.’

It was very dark inside, I put my night visions on; there was a switch for lights in the hallway and on the stairs but I ignored it and slipped on my gloves, pulling the balaclava down until the eye sockets were in place. I stood silently still for thirty seconds listening, just in case anybody was about on the staircase. Silence. Making my way up to the first floor and Rambart’s door, I kept to the side of the stairs and listened after every two steps. The landing was clear.

Her door was more of a problem than the entrance one and took a couple of minutes with the picks before I was able to push it slowly open. I was half expecting an alarm to scream out but if there was one it was a silent one, the kind that send a signal direct to a security firm who would alert the police. In the short hallway I couldn’t see an alarm keypad, so with a bit of luck there wasn’t one. I moved through into the lounge that had the big windows looking out over Knightsbridge.

‘I have you in view,’ was the message from Gold. ‘I can see you in the light from the street.’

I checked around for a desk that might have paperwork that could tell me what Rambart was involved in. There wasn’t one. I walked back through the lounge into the hallway and into the one bedroom; everything was tidy and in its place. Quickly I checked through the wardrobe and bedside cupboard – nothing that you wouldn’t expect. Her taste in clothes was expensive, designer labels on everything.

That only left the kitchen-come-breakfast room, which was small and windowless off the back of the lounge so I could turn the light on without it being seen by anybody looking up from the street, anybody like Eve Rambart coming back home. I didn’t have to do a search of the cupboards – a black holdall sat on the pine table. I pulled the zip along and looked inside, expecting bricks of cocaine; but no bricks were there – just guns, or to be precise Walther PPKs, six round automatic pistols packed neatly in their boxes plus twenty boxes of bullets to fit them. I remembered Jameson Reynolds had said Rambart’s husband had moved into arms dealing; perhaps these were for him, or perhaps Eve Rambart was branching out on her own?

 ‘You’ve got company.’ Gold’s warning was unemotional. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sound any other way. ‘Single male.’

I closed the holdall, switched off the light and quickly made my way back to the hallway.

‘Looks like a pro. He used a card to get in – dark clothes, no hat. Couldn’t see any night vision specs.’

He might just be a burglar trying his luck, but then again he might not be. I let myself out onto the landing, quietly pulling Rambart’s door shut behind me. Whoever this person is they hadn’t switched on any lights. I flicked down my night visions and crouched on the landing beside the top of the stairs. Anybody climbing the stairs couldn’t see me there; maybe he’d go on past and up to the second or third floor. He didn’t.

As he came off the stairs and round onto the landing, I stood and hit him as hard as I could in the face. He let out a stifled moan as he crumpled and hit the floor holding his broken nose, I stamped on his stomach. I never take chances, he was going to stay where he was, alternating between trying to get his breath back and stemming the blood and pain from a broken nose long after I’d gone.

I left the building and shut the street door behind me, Gold was crossing the road and walked close beside me as I dropped the night visions in to her shoulder bag. We separated and she dropped back into the crowd. I walked a further hundred metres along Knightsbridge, crossed the road and walked the same distance on the other