CHAPTER TWENTY: DEATH
Green Park station dozed listlessly at three o’clock. A handful of tourists and holidaymakers milled about aimlessly, studying maps and deciding on routes and destinations, whilst a small Japanese woman tour guide in a bright red dress waved an umbrella with great energy as she rounded up her charges. Hunter steered round the umbrella and climbed to street level, to step out into bright sunshine. He waited for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the light, and looked around hopefully, but could only see a couple browsing at the news stand, a straggle of waifs and strays queueing for buses, and a dusting of people drifting along the edge of the park. There was no sign of Cradock, though he had a feeling that he was being watched closely. He hesitated. Perhaps Cradock was late.
‘Hello.’ A woman's voice broke his scanning, and a hand touched his arm.
Hunter turns quickly. Joanna Cradock stood beside him, unsmiling in a grey silk dress. Her face was drawn, and her eyes flickered nervously, plainly partnering her father's fear.
‘Father is waiting for you in Albemarle Street, on the left as you walk towards Piccadilly Circus.’ She spoke quickly, nervously, as though rattling through a carefully prepared briefing. ‘He is sitting in the front passenger seat of a red Renault Five, on the east side of the street, and the keys are in the ignition. Get into the driver's seat as though it's your own car. My father will tell you when to start it up, and you will then head north, bear left and left again to return to Picadilly and head towards Piccadilly Circus.’
She paused. Her eyes engaged Hunter's, to flicker away again. ‘You'd better go straight away. Walk towards the Ritz and cross over at the lights. I will follow you, to check for surveillance.’ She stopped, but she was still staring at him. Perhaps she was challenging him to face some kind of danger.
Hunter nodded. It was a hot, sticky afternoon, but he felt suddenly cold, and had a strangely vulnerable feeling at the base of his spine, as though someone had begun sharpening a sharp knife for him. He turned away from her, to walk quickly along the Ritz arcade, staying exactly in the middle of the pavement, as far as possible from potentially murderous drivers and assassins hiding in doorways, and he had great difficulty preventing himself from looking back over his shoulder. The lights on the corner of St. James' changed, and he darted across Piccadilly to head up the west side of Albemarle Street, his eyes searching for a red Renault.
Cradock's car was parked on a yellow line, all on its own. It was elderly, and a little dented about the wings, a car that had plainly seen better days. Hunter paused to check that he had found the right vehicle, and a figure in the front passenger seat raised a hand in almost imperceptible greeting. He crossed the street quickly to tug open the driver's door.
Cradock was silent as he settled into the driver's seat, staring at the far side of the street as if waiting for a signal. He made a small clucking noise. ‘Now. We'd better go. Have you brought your draft?’
Hunter handed him an envelope, fastened his safety belt, switched on the engine and shifted into first gear. He waited for a car to pass, edged away from the pavement, and glanced sideways. ‘What about your daughter?’
Cradock looked up from opening the envelope and gestured irritably. He was not wearing his safety belt. ‘Drive on. Joanna has her own programme.’
Hunter steered the car out into a stream of traffic, made two left turns and drove east along Piccadilly. Cradock was now reading, folding Hunter's printed pages back on themselves one after another and making small clucking noises from time to time. He looked up as Hunter stopped at a red light.
‘Drive down Haymarket, around Trafalgar Square, along the Mall, up Constitution Hill, and back along Piccadilly.’ He rapped out his directions briskly, before returning to his clucking.
Hunter drove on, stopping from time to time for traffic lights, making eyes at a group of girls at Piccadilly Circus. Cradock folded his last page back, resting the draft on his lap. He seemed deep in thought. Then he cleared his throat as they turned left at the bottom of the Haymarket, and held the draft out to Hunter.
‘This is very well set out.’
Hunter slipped the folded sheets inside his jacket and nodded. He knew that it was good: he was an ace political correspondent. But he still needed Cradock's original documents to stand the story up. He stopped halfway down Haymarket. He needed to have the papers before the day was out, because all hell would break loose once he had interviewed Sam Goodman. Cradock would have to fly if Cradock was not to fall.
He eyed his companion. ‘I need the originals.’
Cradock nodded. ‘I imagine you do.’ He was silent for a moment, and then sighed. ‘My daughter has them, and she is on her way to your paper as we speak. You can meet her there.’
Hunter reached for his mobile. ‘I better warn Terry. Someone might see her waiting.’
‘Terry?’
‘My editor. He’ll find her somewhere to sit while she waits. The lobby’s not very comfortable.’
Cradock waited for him to punch out Terry’s private line, and smiled faintly as Hunter briefed Manning rapidly. ‘You’re very kind. I imagine he’ll know who she is?’
Hunter closed his call, and nodded. Now he had everything in the bag, and he could close in for a kill. ‘He’ll know her name. He thinks it’s a good story.’
‘Will you seek interviews?’
Hunter nodded again, pulling back out into the traffic. He needed to get back to Financeday at speed. Cradock could drive his own car after Trafalgar Square.
‘May I ask whom?’
Hunter shook his head quickly. ‘Sorry, I'm superstitious, I don't like counting my chickens before they hatch. I’m going for a Cabinet minister tomorrow, and the story will break in Saturday's paper. You can read about him then.’
They were now standing at the lights on the northeastern corner of Trafalgar Square, diagonal to the bottom end of the Charing Cross Road. Hunter looked at Cradock quickly as the lights changed, but the elderly man was deep in thought again. He changed up a gear, planning to drift across the traffic towards Whitehall, and then grab a cab.
It was only a momentary distraction, but it was a grave mistake. A big white Transit came bearing down fast on the left, plainly in a great hurry, and Hunter suddenly realised his risk. He braked sharply, and something rammed hard into the Renault from behind. He struggled to force the steering wheel over to the right, yanking hard on the handbrake, but the car seemed to keep going of its own volition, and he knew, in an agonising fraction of time that seemed to last forever, that the Transit was going to impact.
Everything then seemeds to happen in slow motion. Hunter heard an almighty crash, and the steering wheel tore from his hands, the Renault juddered and shook as though shaken like a pair of maracas by some giant hand, and a black mist engulfed him.
Some time later he woke again. He struggled to open his eyes, and heard a voice speak to him, but it was a very long way away.
‘How do you feel, sir?’ The voice was solicitous.
Hunter blinked. He could see a fuzzy shape above him, and he blinked again. The shape materialised into an ambulance man in a fluorescent jacket, and he flexed his fingers, and then moved his legs, one after the other. All his bones seemed very stiff, and he was possibly badly bruised, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.
‘I'm fine.’ His voice was a slurred mumble. He attempted to sit up, but it was too much of an effort, and he closed his eyes to drift back into unconsciousness.
‘He seemeds to be all right: a bit of concussion, a few abrasions. He'll mend.’ The paramedic kneeling beside Hunter, laid on a stretcher next to the wrecked Renault, looked up at his companion. Several policeman and firemen were milling around the Transit embedded in the Renault's near side, and a second Transit jammed hard up against the back of Cradock's car, and two firemen were looking down at a blanket covering a body. ‘Pity about the old man.’
His companion shrugged. ‘He probably didn't feel much.’ He had been driving ambulances for the best part of twenty years, and he was inured to death and corpses. ‘The Transit banged right into his door, almost as if it was targeting the poor bastard.’ He paused. ‘Strange that he snuffed it, though - I wouldn't have thought it was a big enough bang. But his neck snapped just as if somebody had chopped him one.’
The kneeling paramedic shrugged. It was near the end of their shift, and he was impatient to get off home. ‘He's dead. Let the law work out what killed him.’
Hunter surfaced again to feel himself being lifted into the air. He opened his eyes, and he was in an ambulance, and he could hear the siren shrilling, and the ambulance man smiled down at him reassuringly. ‘You're going to be all right.’
A little later he heard voices conferring. Somebody was holding his hand, and flexing his fingers. A woman's voice spoke. ‘Here he comes.’
Hunter closed his eyes and opened them again. He could feel himself slowly regaining strength and control. A man bent over him. He had a fluorescent jacket over a shortsleeved white shirt.
‘Mr. Hunter? How do you feel?’
Hunter struggled for a moment to pull words together. He smiled weakly. ‘I think I'm all right.’ He listened to himself speak, and his voice was muffled and distant and wobbly.
‘Are you in pain?’
He flexed an experimental muscle and grimaced. ‘I think I'm a bit bruised.’ His vision began to clear, and he realised that the figure in the fluorescent jacket was a policeman. He remembered the Transit. ‘How's Cradock?’
The policeman man hesitated for a moment. ‘Was he your companion, sir?’ He was a big man, but courteous in a strangely gentle way. A second policeman sat gingerly on a small metal on a chair by Hunter's feet, pen poised over a notebook.
Hunter managed to nod weakly.
‘He's pretty poorly, sir.’ The policeman avoided Hunter's eyes, and it was a doom.
Hunter struggled to understand. ‘Poorly?’
‘He's dead, sir.’
Hunter closed his eyes to shut the policeman out, and struggled to understand. Why was Cradock dead? He had been an old man, guilty of nothing but chasing ghosts from the past, and now he was a ghost himself. Somebody had taken his life, and snuffed him out, just to protect their good name and reputation, and now his death was a crime calling to heaven for punishment and retribution. He searched his minds for clues, and remembered the Transit.
‘What about the other driver?’
‘He got away, sir.’
‘Got away?’
‘It was a stolen vehicle, sir. The driver legged it.’ The policeman's voice held the regret of a lawman bereft of his prey. ‘There was another one behind you as well - he ran off too.’
Hunter opened his eyes properly. ‘You mean we were ambushed?’
The two policemen exchanged quick glances.
‘You might have been, sir.’ Suddenly the policeman's voice had a steely edge. Now he was no longer merely a rescuer and a protector, but also a sleuth and a pursuer. ‘Were you expecting an attack?’
Hunter remembered Harris' veiled warning. But Croesus had been seeking to to dissuade Cradock, not to kill him, and any underlying threat had never been more than a vague roll of thunder on the horizon. He searched again, and his mind played back Cradock's strained telephone message, and the fear in Joanna's eyes. Both plainly knew that they were being stalked, and yet Cradock had gone ahead and still challenged fate.
He opens his mouth to reply, and shut it again. Some bastard had taken Cradock's life, and walked free, and it was an affront to justice. But talking would achieve nothing - he would avenge Cradock best by publicising his story and lancing an abscess that was still breeding corruption.
The policeman frowned. ‘You were going to say something, sir.’ His companion was already busily writing.
‘We were working on a story together.’ Hunter searched for words that would say enough, without saying too much. ‘I write for Financeday - I'm the paper's political correspondent.’ His voice tailed off. He was tired, and he had said enough.
‘Story, sir?’ The policeman was insistent.
‘Something political.’ Hunter closed his eyes to shut the man out.
‘What about, sir?’ The policeman sat in the emergency cubicle, and waited, whilst his companion played with his pen. The two men both had an impatient look about them - now they were hounds, hot on a scent, and must not be balked.
A young blonde nurse with very blue eyes bustled into the cubicle and began to busy herself with small wheeled dispensary. She glanced at the policemen out of the corner of her eye, plainly expecting them to leave, and both fidgeted uncertainly. The seated policeman got to his feet, mumbled something and left, but his companion was made of sterner stuff. The nurse bent over Hunter solicitously, and then straightened up to moisten a cottonwool swab in warm water.
‘You'll have to come back later.’ She spoke without looking at the policeman, but her message was clear. She was now in charge, and would brook no disturbance.
The policeman hesitated. He was only a year or two older than the nurse, but he had all the ungainly deference of a schoolboy marshalled by a superior. ‘We'll need to take a statement.’
The nurse shrugged, and gestures towards a small pile of Hunter's belongings, including his wallet, some small change, his mobile phone, and his Cradock draft. ‘You'll find his address in there.’
She stared at the policeman dismissively from coolly efficient blue eyes. The policeman hovered, clearly torn between emotion and duty.
‘Will you be keeping him in overnight?’ It was a question with a hidden agenda.
Blue eyes assessed him, and were tempted. ‘Probably. Depends on the duty doctor.’
‘I'll come back.’ He smiled hopefully.
‘Come here first, and I'll tell you what ward he's in.’ Blue eyes melted, for just a fraction of a second, and were then briskly efficient again. ‘Remember that we change shifts at seven.’
She was sponging the side of Hunter's face as the policeman left. Hunter was battered, rather than injured, with someone else's blood staining his left sleeve. The nurse clicked her tongue against her teeth regretfully. It must have been a nice suit before the accident, beige, with handstitched lapels and seams.
She deftly unfastened Hunter's tie, opening his shirt. He had a large circular bluish brown bruise, the size and shape of a Renault Five steering wheel, across his chest, but otherwise he was pretty much unscathed. She dabbed away a couple of stray spots of dried blood, inspecting him thoughtfully. Nice looking man, prosperous too, by the look of him, and probably single or divorced, by the care he had taken with his appearance. She was tempted to peek into his wallet, to see if he was carrying any picture, of a wife, partner, sweetheart or children, but she restrained herself. Nursing was caring for people, not prying.
She straightened up with a sigh. Life was never quite what one chooses: here she was nursing a man who might be just right for a student nurse living on a tight budget, but she would probably spend her evening fighting off a predatory traffic policeman, who might well be married into the bargain.
Hunter opened his eyes, and she smiled down at him reassuringly. ‘Lie still, and rest for a while. We'll find you a bed for the night, and you'll be as right as rain in the morning.’
Hunter twitched in alarm and tried to sit up. Cradock was dead, and he had an interview with the Home Secretary in the morning. He must get out of this place as quickly as possible, back to his flat to lick his wounds and get his act together. But fear also swirled in his mind, and he hesitated. Perhaps Cradock's killers had more than one target. He needed to regroup, but he also needed shelter.
He thought of Veronica, and smiled wryly. Well brushed dark hair and a pout were not much by way of body armour. Then he remembered the Russians, and Gorbodey's bulky companion, and the memory was a liferaft. Perhaps he could borrow a bodyguard.
He flexed his muscles experimentally. It was painful, because he was very stiff, and many of his muscles seemed to have gone on strike. But it was not impossible, and he could already feel his strength rebuilding and replacing the pain. He must call Gorbodey, and beg for help. He levered himself up into a sititng position.
The nurse watched him with open disapproval. ‘Lie down.’ It was an order.
Hunter made a face. ‘I must go.’
She shook her head briskly. ‘You're not strong enough.’
He ignored her, struggling to reach for his mobile. The phone seemeds to ring for an eternity before Gorbodey's voice answered. Hunter lets out his breath in a long sigh of relief, and spoke hoarsely. ‘Come and rescue me, Sergei. I'm in hospital, I've been in a car crash. Somebody wanted to kill the man who was with me. That was what all the bugs were about. Now he's dead.’
He could hear Gorbodey speaking rapidly in Russian, as though translating, and again as the nurse reluctantly named the hospital. Then the Russian paused, as though listening.
Hunter waited anxiously. He was a mass of aches and pains, but he wanted to sleep in his own bed.
‘Okay, we come, straight away.’ Gorbodey's voice was a salvation. ‘I bring my best men. Are you on a stretcher?’
‘I think I can walk.’
‘We bring vodka then. It is the best medicine.’ the Russian laughed harshly. ‘You walk, we carry you, we take care of you. We will be with you in half an hour.’