CHAPTER TWENTYONE: BODYGUARDS
Gorbodey arrived at the hospital exactly half an hour later with a middleaged companion and a couple of bulletheaded young Russians, both in loose-hanging grey suits that might well be concealing hidden armaments. Hunter sat, curtained off in his small hospital cubicle, depressed and very uncomfortable and more than a little twitchy, when he heard the sound of marching feet, and the blue eyed blonde nurse appeared looking more than a little impressed.
‘Your friends have come to collect you.’ She looked down at Hunter with open admiration. She could now see that she had badly misjudged him - he was plainly not some run of the mill prosperous businessman damaged in an everyday car crash, but somebody special, with the power to summon up bodyguards,. Perhaps a millionaire international playboy of some kind. She thought ruefully of her sharpness in trying to prevent him leaving. Millionaire playboys came rather classier than traffic policemen.
Gorbodey smiled his most winning smile as he edged past her, perhaps a touch too close for propriety. ‘How beautiful you are.’ He purred his words, managing to catch and hold her fingers for a moment, and deftly extracted a card from his jacket breast pocket with his free hand. ‘Here, lovely woman, is my card. I am Russian, most romantic. Meet me, after seven tonight, we will drink champagne.’
The nurse was captivated. A romantic Russian, complete with champagne, came very much classier than a pint and the probability of a furtive tussle with a traffic policeman. She managed to look both interested and challengingly demure, and stowed Gorbodey's card swiftly away.
He beamed down at Hunter. ‘Now we carry you home. Can you walk?’
Hunter stood a little uncertainly. The middleaged man watched him with interest, and fired a quick burst of Russian. Gorbodey nodded wisely.
‘He is doctor. He says he thinks you are just a little rattled about. He would like to see you walk a few steps.’
Hunter limped the length of the cubicle, whilst the bulletheaded young men backed out into the corridor outside.
Another quick burst of Russian, with a question at the end. Both men eyed the nurse, who lowered her eyes most winningly. Gorbodey looked her up and down and shook his head, and then winked, possibly at Hunter, possibly at the nurse, or even at both.
‘My colleague.’ He nodded at the middleaged Russian. ‘He want you to come with us now, to help him look after our friend.’
The nurse looks startled, then a little perturbed, and backed up against the cubicle wall in a flurry of anxious alarm. Romantic Russians might be brilliant, but kidnapping Russians sent a shiver down her spine.
But Gorbodey's smile was totally reassuring. ‘I told him you have job to do, and tell him not to try and steal plum from my beautiful tree - it is a saying we have.’
He patted her shoulder, and it was a gesture of much promise. ‘Maybe I should send car for you, when you finish shift, if you tell me time.’ He raised a questioning eyebrow.
The nurse stammered her reply.
‘Good. It will be big black Mercedes, stretched limo, dark windows. I will tell driver to wait for you in hospital carpark, nearest to emergency entrance.’ He captured a hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Now we must go, we must take our friend.’ His voice was an elegy of regret. ‘I will be most sad, breaking my heart quite completely, until we meet again tonight.’
The nurse watched the two bulletheaded young men close in on either side of Hunter and the small procession move off towards the emergency department entrance and was totally bewitched. Nobody had ever kissed her hand before, let alone promised to send a stretched Mercedes to collect her. She sighed as she prepared to return to a humdrum reality of blood, and bruises, and broken bones. Accident and emergency work would never seem quite the same again. Then she looked at her watch, and realised that she would be drinking champagne in a couple of hours, and smiled at a passing hospital porter. She would slip out early, pop up to her room in the nurses' hostel, change into a nice airy little summer dress she had just bought herself, avoid the policeman, and have a bit of a fling. Cinderella would go to the ball in a stretched Mercedes, and Cinderella would have fun.
Gorbodey looked very pleased with himself as he shepherded Hunter out of the hospital building towards a long black Mercedes. The two young Russians manoeuvred Hunter gently onto a back seat, and he beamed. ‘I think I have found cute little romance.’
The middleaged Russian looked sour. But Hunter was already crumpled into a corner of the back seat and fast asleep.
The Mercedes purred to Notting Hill Gate, and the two young Russians helped Hunter out of the car again and across the pavement to his building, whilst Gorbodey and his doctor watched benevolently. Hunter was still bruised and very stiff, but regaining strength with each passing second, and he had a feeling that he would feel really very much better once he was nursing a glass filled generously with scotch.
The caretaker sat dozing behind his desk in the ground floor lobby. He eyed the Russians doubtfully as Hunter pushed the glass door open, and then waved a cautious greeting. ‘You just missed your other friends, sir.’
Hunter stopped dead in his tracks.
‘They came to collect your case.’ The caretaker saw Hunter frown, suspicion growing on his face, and twitched. He was close to retirement, and he wanted to serve out his time without a blot or stain on his character. He rummaged in his desk, and held up a sheet of paper. ‘They gave me your letter, and I took them up, but they let themselves in with your key.’
He handed a sheet to Hunter. It was a letter on Financeday heading, authorising the bearer to collect a large brown suitcase from Hunter's livingroom, and the signature was a fair stab at Hunter's. Somebody had scrawled a receipt across the bottom, and signed with a complex squiggle.
Hunter sighed. Gorbodey was hovering at his elbow, and the porter was now growing increasingly concerned. He decided not to mention a twenty pound note slipped in with the letter. ‘Have I done something wrong, sir?’
‘It doesn't matter.’ Hunter folded the note, tucking it into his pocket. Suddenly he was fearful, but also strangely elated. Somebody had tried to be smart and snatch his database, but he was a whole steeplechase of jumps ahead, and very well protected. He would avenge Cradock, and right would triumph, and it would be a victory. He smiled reassuringly at the caretaker. ‘Don't worry about it. I forgot they were coming.’
He began to limp towards the lift, young Russians on either side, but the caretaker still hovered, making anxious noises. He could now see that Hunter had dried blood on his sleeve, and must have been hurt in some way, and that the men with him were foreigners, and toughs of some kind to boot. Perhaps he was witnessing some kind of kidnap bid, though Hunter seemed quite calm. Perhaps he should ring the property company responsible for maintaining the block of flats, or even the police.
‘I'm all right, really I am.’ Hunter stepped into the waiting lift and waved him back. ‘I just had a bit of an accident, and asked some friends to bring me home.’ He smiled reassuringly again as the lift door closed. Solicitous caretakers were now the very least of his worries. He must get into his flat, have a stiff drink, water the Russians as well, and make up his mind on what to do next.
The flat was as silent as a grave. He made straight for his drawingroom, but Cradock's case had gone, and somebody had also accessed his personal computer: the keyboard had been shifted slightly from its normal position, and a floppy had been left unsheathed on top of his monitor.
Hunter limped into his kitchen. The Russians waited politely in his small hallway, but the two bulletheaded young men now had tucked their hands inside their jackets.
He stopped in the kitchen doorway. His visitors had also watered, and left his bottle of scotch neatly in the middle of his kitchen table, with two empty glasses pinning down another sheet of Financeday notepaper. The paper had two rows of words, scrawled in crude ballpoint capitals: 'We came, we collected. Cradock was a fool. Stay smart, Richard. Stay alive.'
Hunter held the sheet and stared at it blankly.An icy shiver ran down his spine. He had met some strange, and even villainous, people in his career as a journalist, but this was the first time in his life he had ever been threatened, seriously threatened, and he felt fear chill through him, even though he now had bodyguards, because the threat might well remain after the bodyguards had gone.
Gorbodey coughed pointedly, and Hunter handed him the sheet. He began to explain about Cradock, but the Russian was staring hopefully at the nearly full bottle of whisky. Hunter mobilised fresh glasses and poured generous measures all round, and the Russians drained them in unison. He poured again, slightly larger measures this time, and six generous whiskies vanished into six thirsty Russian throats, draining the best part of the bottle.
‘Now, tell us.’ Gorbody made himself comfortable on one of Hunter's kitchen chairs. His middleaged companion sat as well, but the two young Russians regrouped in Hunter's drawingroom. ‘I think some people do not like you very much. It is good that we are here.’
Hunter opened his mouth to speak, and suddenly stopped. Somebody had inserted a key in his flat door and was about to open it, and a quick fresh icy shiver raced down his spine. He lurched stiffly to his feet, and suddenly both Gorbodey and his middleaged companion were holding guns.
‘Hi, I'm home.’ Veronica fel very pleased with herself. She had bought all the ingredients for a tasty little supper a deux, and invested in a good bottle of wine, and expected her investment to nurture her a most comforting residential reward; particularly as it had also been a hot day, and she was feeling rather randy, and cementing the closest possible relations with Hunter was central to her game plan - though she had also had a couple of interesting offers from nice young men touched by her plight at being forced into exile. She pushed at the door of Hunter's flat, her hands filled with supermarket bags, hot with lust and culinary ambitions, and stopped short, frozen in terror.
A strange young man stood pointing a gun at her, holding it braced with both hands like some American gangster on television. He was staring at her stonily, and he plainly meant business.
She whimpered in alarm, libido suddenly swamped by terror, wanting to run. But she was transfixed, and for a moment she was certain that she was staring death, or worse, in the face. Then she heard Hunter's voice, and the man with the gun lowered his weapon to back away reluctantly into his livingroom.
‘Come in, quick.’ Now Hunter had taken the gunman's place, and was beckoning to her, and she stepped into the flat, moving like an automaton. Her mind was whirling, and she shivered abruptly, dropping her shopping. This was a long way removed from her dream of settling down cosily with a nice man, and living comfortably for the rest of her life. This was fear, and alarm, and terror, and not cosy or nice at all, and suddenly even Singapore seemed like a better prospect.
She stared at Hunter with eyes sharpened by alarm, and realised that he had been in some sort of a fight, because his left sleeve was stiff with blood, and small blotches of blood stained his beige suit jacket. She knew that she should immediately sweep into tender loving mode, gushing with sympathy, and ripping her blouse into bandages. But her terror made her want only to cut and run. Her heart had turned to ice, and held neither love nor tenderness, and she knew she must escape. Hunter's star had tarnished, and it was an ending. She inspected him again, and suddenly realised that he had quit her life quite totally, and that she must get clear away, and the quicker the better.
Now Hunter was explaining something about Russians, and a car accident, and a man being killed, but she barely listened. This was not the life she wanted. She waits impatiently for him to finish.
Hunter sighed. Veronica might have made a nice nurse, but she was plainly panic-stricken, and desperate to leave. He looked at Gorbodey. ‘Can you drive her back to her flat?’
Gorbodey looked at his watch. ‘Then we go and collect dream nurse, and take her to Jim's?’
The Russians all beamed. Jim Nash was always more than openhanded with his liquor, and the girls were pretty as well. They crowded round Hunter to help him finish his scotch, leaving poor Veronica quite ignored. But a dark shadow still lurked at Hunter’s shoulder, and he gestured at the sheet of paper on his kitchen table.
‘What about that?’
Gorbodey picks the sheet up to shred it. ‘No problem.’ He beamed at the two bulletheaded young men. ‘Sergei and Yuri will take care of you. Just make sure you have plenty of scotch.’
Meanwhile two other men were discussing Hunter on a secure line: one had a flat even voice, with a trace of a Birmingham accent, whilst the other spoke in clipped military tones.
‘Went like a dream, sir, no hassle at all. One of my men rammed him from behind, I sliced into his side. Caught him nicely, must have broken several bones, plenty of blood. Weren't sure I'd fully deleted him, so I reached in through the smashed window and chopped his neck, old Commando trick.’
The military voice was questioning. ‘Did that delete him?’
‘Fully, sir.’ Birmingham accent sounds pleased with itself. ‘I would have done Hunter as well, but a couple of people came up to pull him out of the car, so I pushed off.’
‘Very wise.’ The military voice sounded approving. ‘What then?’
‘We went to his flat, sir, and collected Cradock's case. It was all photocopies.’
‘I see.’ Now the clipped tone was rather less pleased. ‘We must find the originals, and pretty damn quick.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do we know what happened to the daughter?’
‘No, sir. She gave us the slip in Albemarle Street. We had her one moment, she was gone the next.’
‘Her father trained her well.’
‘Too well, sir.’
The military man sighed. Cradock remained a pain, as much dead as alive. He reflected for a moment before speaking again.
‘What about Hunter?’
‘He's back in his flat, sir. He's got four Russians with him.’
‘Russians?’ The military man's voice rose slightly.
‘Two of them look like professionals, sir. We think they might all be armed.’
‘The devil they are.’ The military man was silent for a long moment. This was a decidedly unexpected turn, and he must report back to client. But now his natural instinct urged him to take the best fee he could muster, and run. Hunter had plainly mobilised some powerful friends, and might well prove a painful tangle in a world where gun battles can never be profitable.
His musing was broken by a cough at the other end of the line, and he sighed. ‘We'd better back off.’
‘Completely, sir?’
‘Watching brief. I'm going to have to refer back on this one.’
The two men hung up, and the man with the Birmingham accent sniffed. He was a burly man, in black leather jacket, black shirt, black jeans and black combat boots, with close-cropped hair and steely eyes. He was disappointed: two kills would have been twice as rewarding as one, and security was no business for men who lost their bottle. He lounged back in his chair, resting his boots on the edge of his desk - he was in a sparsely furnished office close to Waterloo Station - and glanced at his watch. Then he swung his feet to the floor and stood up, flexing himself. Perhaps he had time for a quick one before starting night shift at Financeday.