Текст книги "Chameleon"

Автор книги: Jackson J. Bentley

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Chapter 30

Vastrick Security, Nr 1 Poultry, London. Tuesday 11am.

Simon yawned, opening his mouth so wide that his jaw clicked, and for a moment he thought it had locked. He massaged the sides of his face just below his ears with his fingers until the muscles relaxed. As he had predicted, he had been up all night, spending only three hours in the tiny bedroom at the end of the corridor. In an hour or two he would make the journey home and crash out until tomorrow morning, but for the moment he still had work to do.

The young forensic analyst leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses; he rubbed at the bridge of his nose where his glasses had left small red marks. He just needed a moment. The tiredness was becoming a hindrance. He had been so tired overnight he had begun to hallucinate.

He had a dream that he was sitting at his computer as lines of text zoomed up past his eyes so quickly they were a blur. When he woke up he was indeed at his keyboard, and his sleeping hand had been resting on the down arrow, scrolling through pages of research at increasing speed.

He was sure that coffee would help, but it wasn’t an option. Simon’s blood stream was probably already more caffeinated than was wise and so he sipped a glass of chilled water and refreshed his face with a handy wipe. The printer in the background hummed as each page of his report printed. He had gathered, ordered and summarised over eighty pages of text relating to the life history of Gillian Davis.

Simon knew he was a bit of a geek. He also knew that, despite his best efforts, he tended to look like a geek, too. He was almost six feet tall, with short fair hair that refused to accept a parting. His skin was fair and prone to sunburn and freckles. Skinny to the point of malnutrition, he did not wear clothes; he hung them on his shoulders and let gravity take care of the rest. Even the smallest waisted trousers would be cinched at his midriff with a belt. Women like Gillian Davis rarely paid him any heed, until their computers failed; and then their wide bovine eyes pleaded for his help. The printer stopped churning out paper, and Simon reached over and gathered the printed sheets of A4 which almost filled the tray.

Skimming through the summary before he clipped the pages into a folder, he read:

Gillian Davis was born to a single Mother by the name of Andrea Jane Bailey, father unknown, appearing on her birth certificate. When just a few months old her mother died and she was adopted by her Mother’s employers, the Davis’s. At the time of the adoption the Social Workers attempted to contact Gillian’s potential father, Denton Miles III, but were unsuccessful.

Gillian had grown to maturity on the Tallgarth Manor Estate at Stratfield Turgis, near Basingstoke in Hampshire. She had enjoyed a healthy adolescence but had been admitted to hospital as a young teenager when an overzealous doctor treating a suspected case of strep throat reported to social workers that the infection was actually gonococcal pharyngitis. The doctor was concerned because the main cause of this type of infection was oral sex and Gillian was so young. During an uncomfortable investigation male family members were both suspected and quizzed, but eventually the girl admitted to her case worker that she had been assaulted by a local man who had later taken his own life.

Simon’s quick search of the Newbury Weekly News archive revealed that Leslie Barnett Vaughan, aged 35 years, took his own life in the same year in the woods surrounding Tallgarth Manor. He was not well liked or respected and his own wife and children did not attend his funeral.

“Harsh,” Simon thought to himself. He continued reading.

An exceptional student at some very expensive, but very ordinary, minor public schools, Gillian Davis excelled at shooting, archery and orienteering. Gillian was Junior National Rifle Shooting Champion – Field, twice, and Junior National Rifle Shooting Champion – Target, three times. Called up to the National team on six occasions, she missed what would have been the highlight of her amateur career when she missed the Commonwealth Games with a dislocated shoulder.

With the award of a First Class Honours Degree in Combined Sciences, she was able to go on to achieve a Masters in Biological Chemistry.

Because Simon hadn’t immediately known what Biological Chemistry was, and because being a geek makes one thorough, he included a footnote for his readers;

¹ Biological Chemistry combines studies in Organic Chemistry with Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. These are combined with fundamental Chemistry and Biology and may also contain elements of Analytical Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Ecology and Developmental Biology.

Gillian Davis was reading for a Doctorate when she was recruited by the MOD as an intelligence analyst (more likely as a special operations field officer/ sniper).

After a distinguished period of service she was pensioned off, and completed her Doctorate before using an inheritance to buy a failing greetings card company [Celebrato] and turning it into a commercial success.

NB: Whilst Ms Davis clearly was in receipt of an inheritance, probate records at Winchester indicate that she was the heir to Nicholas Barnaby Davis and not the heir of Harold Graham Davis, the owner of Tallgarth Manor. It was assumed that upon the sale of Tallgarth Manor to an international computer company, Gillian was gifted a proportion of the £7m sale price by her cousin. No records exist to verify this transaction but Ms Davis did invest £2.5m cash into Celebrato Greeting Cards shortly thereafter.

As recently as yesterday morning, the Clayton Card Chain announced the purchase of Celebrato Greeting Cards, and its assets, by a mix of shares and cash.

Satisfied with his work Simon sat down and bound the document before walking along the corridor to speak to Dee Hammond, his gorgeous – but married – boss.

***

The mobile phone on the desk vibrated and then rang with a tinny rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” that the composer, John Philip Sousa, would not have appreciated.

“Dee Hammond,” the phone’s owner announced to the caller from the Vastrick head office in the USA.

“Dee, this is George Templeton, Vice President of Operations in New York.”

“Hi, George. I haven’t seen those wobbly jowls of yours for an age. How are you doing?” Dee enjoyed bursting the bubble of the American contingent at Vastrick whose grand titles were beloved of their clients but anathema to Tom Vastrick, the American owner and President.

“Oh, I’m good. I’d be back in the field if it wasn’t for this damn arthritis, you know.”

“There’d be no holding you back, George. I tell you, if I wasn’t already married....” Dee teased the sixty three year old executive mercilessly. She knew very well that if George was ever let out on fieldwork it would be bladder control that let him down, not arthritis.

“Dee, I need you to meet Flight AAM 46 from Los Angeles when it lands at Heathrow. It’s due to arrive at sixteen hundred hours UK time. It’s an Air America A380 and Katie Norman is on board.” He paused before emphasising the word, “alone.” The American sounded vaguely panicked.

“OK George, I’ll do it. Why is she alone, though? We have a base to base contract with personal protection and close residential protection.” Dee was genuinely puzzled, and for good reason. Katie should never have been on an aeroplane alone. It was a blatant breach of procedure.

In plain English, Vastrick had a contract to protect Katie at all times, with personal protection – a bodyguard, base to base cover – a protection team during travel, and, close residential protection – an agent eats, drinks, sleeps and attends University, parties and any other event with the client.

Normally such protection would be seen as overkill or tawdry fee generation, but when the client is very young, very vulnerable or under threat, it was occasionally necessary. This client met all of those criteria.

Katie Norman was one of Vastrick’s youngest clients. She was still only twenty years old, but her film career had taken off when she was only twelve years old and she landed the role of Clara Campbell, a schoolgirl who attends a mystical school for spiritually gifted children. The books were a publishing sensation, and it was always accepted that the subsequent films would be box office hits if they were directed and produced with care and with respect for the author’s characters and plots.

In the films Katie played Clara, a psychic who helped the hero, schoolboy Matthew Tibbett, release their friend, Jamie Faraday, a ghostly schoolboy from being imprisoned in the Netherworld. The three friends, now all mortal again, then battled the evil Spectre through six books and six blockbuster films, the last of which was due to premiere in London on Friday.

Luckily, Dee had protected Katie on a part time basis between the ages of twelve and fourteen, when she was handed over to another female operative called Janna, when Dee had to go to the USA for extended CPT (Close Protection Training).

Janna had looked after Katie until the young actress left school at seventeen and headed off to University in the USA. Since then, the Vastrick UK team had seen little if anything of the elfin face super starlet, except in the celebrity columns of the newspapers.

George sounded weary as he explained that Millie Pederson had been waiting to accompany Katie onto the plane to Heathrow when her appendix burst and she was rushed to hospital. The panicked crew held the distraught Katie in the VIP lounge until loading was complete, and then accompanied her to a private bedroom on the A380 airliner. At the personal request of Tom Vastrick, the First Class Purser ensured that a flight attendant was sitting outside the private room for the whole flight.

As far as anyone knew, Katie was upset but safe in her tiny suite forty two thousand feet over the Atlantic.

“OK, George. I’ll take care of it. But she probably won’t even remember me.”

“Dee, you’re not that easy to forget,” George replied, his voice gentler, more relaxed.

***

Katie paced restlessly around her small suite. The interior had been designed by the renowned yacht designer, Jaques De Valle, and he had used the sparse room wisely. The room was furnished with two leather seats and a double bed. A thirty two inch flat screen LED TV had also been squeezed in. With IPod connections, a mini fridge and a choice of over one hundred and eighty films and TV programmes, this was how flying was meant to be done.

The aeroplane had been on the ground for almost thirty minutes and the young starlet was still not being allowed to disembark. She picked up her mobile phone and dialled the hospital but, despite her best endeavours, they would tell her nothing about Millie because she was not family. Frustrated, she threw herself on the bed and considered her itinerary. In less than three days she had to attend two parties, a fashion clothing launch, a book reading and the Premiere of Clara Campbell; Revenge of the Spectre.

She heard a polite tap on the door and, with the enthusiasm of a claustrophobic inmate about to be released from prison, she leapt up and opened the door.

***

Dee was frustrated by the delays she was encountering at Heathrow’s Royal Suite. She was seated in Suite 1, on a luxurious sofa which had hosted the delicate derrieres of the Pope and Boris Johnson, amongst others, just a year before. She scanned the luxuriously appointed suite and took in the bright Hockney painting and the folding screen commissioned from Lord Linley. A moment later Melita Avery, known colloquially as ‘Melita the Greeter’ strode over to Dee, who rose from the overstuffed sofa with some difficulty.

“Dee! How nice to see you again. Are you back on protection duty? I’d heard that you’d crashed through the glass ceiling to head up Vastrick in the UK.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Dee responded. “Are you still in the Territorials?”

“I am indeed. I’m a major now, but obviously my occasional trips to trouble spots are less dangerous than yours. I heard you got shot.”

“Twice,” Dee replied with a grimace. “When Josh gets back, let’s have a run out to Jamie Oliver’s place for dinner. You can still get a table there, I guess?”

“If he ever wants his luggage back, I can.” They both laughed before Melita placed her hand on the small of Dee’s back and guided her out of the door and towards the limousine that would take them to the Airbus.

***

Dee tapped on the cabin door a little apprehensively. When she had last known Katie Norman she had been a quiet fourteen year old who thought of Dee as the big sister she never had. But now, at twenty, what would she be like? Would years of stardom have turned her into a diva, perhaps? Dee would have to be careful.

The door opened and a scowling young face appeared, appraising the visitor for a moment. Suddenly, in an amazing transformation, the twelve year old pixie face was back. Gone were the long, wavy chestnut tresses of yesterday. They had been replaced with a sophisticated short cut which emphasised her fine bone structure. The smile that split the face was as wide as it was genuine. The girl threw herself at her new bodyguard.

“Dee! This is fantastic. I’ve missed you. Wow, I never thought I’d see you again.” The last few words were spoken directly into Dee’s right ear as the two girls hugged. They unlatched, and Katie stepped back and took hold of Dee’s two hands. As she squeezed she felt something on the left hand. Her eyes widened with excitement as she lifted Dee’s left hand for a closer look.

“Oh, Dee! You haven’t!” The young actress admired the rings at close range, rubbing her thumb over the diamond engagement ring. “The boys will be destroyed when they find out.” Katie was referring to her co-stars in the films, both of whom had developed a serious crush on the protection operative when they were young teenagers.

“You exaggerate, I’m sure,” Dee answered, smiling. “I don’t think they’ll even remember who I am.”

Katie laughed. “Oh, they will, you can be sure of that. Boys always remember their first lust.”

Dee shook her head in mock annoyance in an attempt to stop the conversation where it was, though unsuccessfully.

“There isn’t a boy alive who wouldn’t fall in love with a beautiful older woman who could throw the stage manager to the floor without spilling her coffee.”

“Katie Norman! Stop this now. You were a wicked fourteen year-old and it seems college in the States hasn’t improved your manners.”

“Come on, Dee. Surely you must have noticed? If you as much as winked at either Tom or Danny they got all hot and sweaty and....” She held her left hand out in a fist and flicked up her forefinger until it was perpendicular. “Ping!”

The young girl accompanied the gesture with the sound more than the word.

Dee looked shocked, and she could feel herself beginning to blush.

“It seems that I’ve been assigned to look after you just in time. You are a wicked little madam who needs a bit of discipline. Come on, we have to go.”

Katie laughed out loud and, despite not wanting to do the same, Dee followed suit. They laughed the tension from their bodies. They sat side by side on the bed. Dee looked at her young client and squeezed her hand.

“What took you to LA? I thought you were studying in New York?”

“Breast reduction,” Katie blurted out as quick as a flash, as though such a procedure was the most normal thing in the world. Dee couldn’t help laughing again because, until she was fourteen, Katie was forever measuring her bust, looking for that extra millimetre that would tell her that her breasts were still developing, but they never had. Even today she was, at best, a B cup.

“Joking, obviously,” she said as she looked down at her chest. “Actually, I was working. I was launching the Fair Trade fashion show and opening the Fair Trade clothing emporium. I knew that Millie felt unwell and I just carried on. I feel pretty bad about that. I keep called the hospital but they just say she’s as well as can be expected, whatever that means.”

Dee was a little surprised at the concern this famous young woman felt for Millie Pederson, a polite but tough security operative from the Bronx.

“Well, you have no need to worry because Millie had an operation and they caught the post trauma infection early in the process. She’ll be on an antibiotic drip until you get back, and the prognosis is that she will fully recover. She was lucky that she wasn’t actually on the plane when her appendix burst, or she could have contracted peritonitis, which can be fatal.”

Katie looked solemn, and her eyes glazed with tears. Dee placed her right arm around her shoulder and squeezed gently.

“Come on, don’t worry. Millie is tough. I remember hearing that once she left a New York Deli, only to be confronted by six self styled ninjas. Then, armed with just a loaf of French bread, four carrots and a tub of Tofu, she fought them all off.”

“Is that true?” Katie asked, her face brightening.

“Not a word, but it made you smile. We both know she’s a tough cookie.” Dee paused, and it was the younger woman’s turn to shake her head with disapproval.

“Come on, Clara Campbell,” Dee said, referencing the actress’s alter ego. “We have an appointment with the Pope’s couch!” Her protégé looked puzzled, but picked up her bag and followed anyway.

Chapter 31

Doncaster Railway Station, East Coast Line. Tuesday 5pm.

Gil was halfway between London and Newcastle when a text came through on her mobile phone, informing her that her premium seat on the aircraft had been confirmed. Upon her arrival at Newcastle Central Station, a limousine would be waiting to whisk her away to the Britannia Hotel at Newcastle Airport.

Agents, and particularly former agents like Gil who were trying to remain anonymous, loved train travel. It was possible to travel anywhere in the UK, and no one asked for your name as long as you paid for your tickets in cash. These arrangements made it doubly difficult for anyone to track your movements. As cautious as ever, when Gil arrived at the Airport’s basic three star hotel, she would be staying in a room booked under the name of Jean Lansbury, the Celebrato Cards North East Regional Representative. By the time the invoice was queried by Celebrato HQ, Gil would be long gone.

Gil was content that the precautions she had taken at the Strand would convince MI5 that she was dead, but only for the time being. Whether it took twenty four hours, a week or a month, they would eventually find out that she had survived Tim’s amateur assassination attempt and they would be back on her tail. She had no qualms about that; she just had to make sure that when they started looking for her the trail would be stone cold.

Gil set down her fork, having demolished the decadent dessert she had ordered as a well deserved treat. The sticky toffee pudding with caramelised sugar strings and sauce anglais lay heavy on her stomach as she looked out over the Yorkshire countryside, whilst the 6090 bhp electric train whizzed along at over one hundred miles per hour. The carriages attached to the 225 engines that pulled and pushed her northwards along electrified tracks to Newcastle had, coincidentally, been recently refitted at Doncaster, according to the metal plate on the floor by the door. The pleasantly appointed rolling stock had, rather ostentatiously, taken the name of the Mallard Coaches, to reflect the past glories of the railway and more specifically to honour the fast steam trains which had once travelled the historic east coast line between London and Edinburgh.

As she was still around ninety minutes away from her final stop, Gil leaned back in her reclined seat and snoozed.

***

Barry Mitchinson had made the first mistake of taking some of his wife’s beta blockers to calm himself down, but he had made the second mistake of washing them down with copious amounts of Old Time Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey. The pills and the whiskey didn’t mix well, and Barry had been experiencing mild hallucinatory side effects, as well as feeling an exaggerated sense of anxiety. He told himself he was a professional and that he needed to carry on. He had an operative missing.

He looked at his watch. Almost eight hours had passed since Tim had reported that he was on his way back to the office, having disposed of the Chameleon. Barry rarely left the office on business matters, but this was a search that he would have to conduct himself; if the Director caught even the faintest sniff of a Level Three operative being lost on assignment in the UK, Barry’s career would be over.

“Evening, Mr Mitchinson.” The formal greeting came from a well built man of indeterminate age who lacked a single hair anywhere on his head or face. His shiny bald pate shone under the streetlight.

“Right, then. Let’s get this gate open and get out of this wind.”

Trevor fiddled with the lock for a minute before declaring, “Someone has changed the padlock. I can’t get in. We’ll have to go down the side entrance if you don’t mind, sir.”

Barry shivered as he pushed his hands deep into his old Crombie overcoat. The woollen scarf around his neck was offering some protection from the cold, but his face was almost numb. They reached the side entrance.

“Bloody hell! The lock’s been changed here as well. You know, I bet those idiots in maintenance have put the wrong padlocks on the station doors. I wouldn’t mind betting that if we went to Temple we’d find the Strand padlocks on the wrong gates.” The man paused as he placed the keys back in his pockets. “I hope you don’t mind tight spaces,” he said, leading him back the way they had come.

Barry huddled into his coat and followed Trevor to the Aldwych and the old fire exit door.

“Hoo-bloody-ray!” the Transport for London operative hooted loudly as the door opened. The two men entered and began to descend the narrow stairway to the platform level. A faint but rather unpleasant aroma met them on the breeze.

“What’s that smell?” Barry asked, turning his nose up.

“Buggered if I know,” the old underground worker responded. “It smells like yesterday’s barbeque.”

Trevor Deacon took a long hard look at the door leading to the rail line. Signs of recent burning were all too obvious. Kids, he thought to himself.

***

Barry didn’t like fieldwork at the best of times, and if his career had not been at risk he would never have entered this pit of a staircase. He was panicking in a way he had never done before, and only his pride prevented him from screaming out, demanding to be freed from this claustrophobic hell.

Trevor took his time opening the door and the pungent, rancid smell reached their noses even more strongly, but not before the charred remains of Tim came into sight.

“My God, is that Tim? Is he dead?” Barry spluttered uselessly.

“Hang on, I’ll check for a pulse.” The older man leaned closer to the body that looked more like a charcoal sculpture than a human body.

“You’re joking surely?” Barry exclaimed.

“Of course I am, you prat!” All respect had disappeared from his voice. Norman leaned forward, being careful not to touch anything. “Did your man wear a Rolex?”

“Yes, an Oyster, I believe. Why?”

“Well, good news there, then.” There was a pause. “It’s still working.”

***

Twenty minutes later the tunnel was filled with bodies, all alive except for Tim, whose metal service tags had survived the incineration. There were representatives from the Transport Police, Transport for London, the Health and Safety Executive and an MI5 duty officer.

Barry had tried fruitlessly to rein things in, to keep the lid on this, but Trevor Deacon was having none of it. This was his problem, even if the dead man was some fried spook who had evidently been wandering around where he shouldn’t have been.

The HSE man was clearly in charge, and the police were following his instructions. He wandered over to Barry, who was sitting on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling over the rail.

“Here’s the thing, Mr Mitchinson. Your boy has undoubtedly been cooked by several hundred volts, but the line is not presently live.” The tall thin HSE inspector took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Using his spectacles to point in the direction of the rails at the entrance of the tunnel, he continued.

“The bar – the one you see there – well, that bar prevents anyone from making the line live inadvertently. So, given that it’s in place now, the only possibility is that someone replaced it after your man died. No current can have passed though the line with that bar in place.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Barry asked, fearful of the answer.

“It means that this may no longer be an HSE matter. It may be a police matter. I think your friend there was murdered.”