Blood Money (30 page)

The rental car has been in use for 24 hours and now needs to be changed for something completely different if the surveillance is going to remain inconspicuous. He makes arrangements to hire a Vauxhall saloon from a different car-hire company and then calls his ex-army associate to arrange for him to take over a little earlier than planned.

They meet-up close to Kings Cross at 3pm. Eddie hands-over the fresh set of wheels and the duffle bag full of equipment. Then after showing him how the software on the laptop works they discuss the latest developments which have confirmed John Gibson to be a significant threat to his boss's organisation. Eddie's parting instructions are to observe, follow and photograph. If the policeman leaves Ark House at any point, Eddie must be contacted immediately via the pay-as-you-go phone.

*

Returning to Lombard Street, Eddie withdraws into his private security office. Knowing that it's unwise to approach Vasilakos without a full story to hand, he begins to map out all the known facts he has on John Gibson. He walks over to his office wall where he displays his ongoing ‘projects'. The largest section of this wall is taken-up with the containment activities regarding the threat posed by the FSA. A picture of Rebecca Kavanagh is at its centre, above her there is a photograph of her enfeebled boss, Tom Vaughan and above him there is a photo of the FSA Director of Enforcement, Hilary Demming. Now he adds pictures of John Gibson and Bill Warren just beside that of Rebecca, and next to each new photo Eddie methodically writes the names, ages and personal details of the two Bishopsgate policemen.

Taking out a red permanent marker-pen, Eddie strikes a big red cross over Rebecca's picture and smiling broadly he then adds a small red line across her throat. Alexis and Eddie have repeatedly discussed the threat posed by the other two key players at the FSA, Vaughan and Demming, until they became satisfied that they had them under control. Tom was a nervous wreck of a man following Eddie's systematic programme of threats and intimidation. Hillary, well…she seemed to talk a good game but as long as the people below her were prevented from supplying her with any bullets then she was as impotent as all her predecessors had been. All too predictably, the Government would sack her in a few years time, only to then install the next big-talking director, someone whose appointment they'd claim proved that they were once more cracking down on insider dealing.

*

When Vasilakos comes down to the security office it is evident from the sour look on his face that he's not in a very good mood “What's this about Eddie?”

“We need to talk about John Gibson, there have been some developments.”

“What's happened?”

“Well I've had him under observation since the start of the week and, well…He's been buying loads of gear.”

“What sort of gear? Drugs? Guns? Explosives?”

“I'm talking industrial diamond tipped angle grinders, sledge hammers, crow-bars, a giant masonry drill, acrow props, a generator and flood-lights. But most worrying of all, he's bought himself a thermic lance.”

“Oh yeah…and what's one of those?”

“It's like a really high-powered cutting torch that you'd use to cut through something built really strong like a reinforced concrete bunker or a bank vault.”

Eddie now has Alexis's full attention, his eyes open wide, betraying his disbelief. “Are you saying he's going to try and break into my vault?”

“Everything points to that conclusion, yes. Perhaps he thinks he'll get revenge for his girlfriend's death by taking something precious from you. It seems like a lot of bother to go to, though…I mean, if it was me I'd just have you…”

“Killed?” Alexis frowns. He's certainly not amused by the suggestion. “That's your answer to most of life's little problems, isn't it? But maybe John Gibson isn't like you? Maybe he lives by some sort of moral code? Maybe he draws a line at taking someone's life?”

“I'm sure you're right, but he's not so perfect…seems like he's prepared to turn criminal as and when it suits him, a bit hypocritical don't you think? I reckon he knows full well that the police haven't got a chance of connecting the Kavanagh death to us, so he's decided to take the matter into his own hands.”

“Hmmm, I see.” Alexis nods thoughtfully. “Continue…”

“All the gear he's bought tells me he's intending to break into your vault. He thinks you've got something extremely valuable in there. His motives aren't greed, or gain. He's after revenge, maybe justice, but mainly revenge. He wants to get even. He wants to hurt you. He's promised to help his girlfriend and even though she's dead he's going to make good on that promise.”

“Look, this is crazy! All that's in there are a few pieces of Greek pottery, a few shields, some helmets and a bunch of old coins. It's all just sentimental stuff, to be honest I'm not sure what any of it's really worth, I've never had any of it valued.” From the look on the Greeks face, he's now clearly perplexed by something. “So…does he think that simply because Kronos has a vault that there must be something valuable inside? I mean, it could be empty for all he knows…or has he found out from someone what it is that I keep in there?”

“Good question. If it was me, I'd only go to all the effort, risk and expense if I knew exactly what it contained and I knew that by stealing it that it'd punish you sufficiently for what you'd done to me.”

Alexis paces to and fro across the room, racking his brains, weighing up scenarios and possibilities, connections and coincidences, until at last he stops in his tracks. “It's my father…
it's my fucking father!”

“Sorry Alexis, I don't quite get you there. Where on earth does he come in?”

“It's the only thing that makes any sense of this…” Alexis shakes his head in disbelief. “My father knows I've got the collection and he knows I stay in a hotel. The only place I could keep the collection secure would be in the vault in the basement of this building. He's teamed up with Gibson…They're trying to get even with me for everything I've done. He must have been keeping tabs on me. Then when he heard about Kavanagh's death he must have made contact with Gibson. Maybe I'll never know for sure, but it's exactly the sort of thing he'd do.
Shit!”
Alexis is now highly agitated over the whole thing, the colour has visibly drained from his face. “We're going to have to watch ourselves very carefully over the coming few weeks Eddie, very carefully indeed. I'm going to be relying on you for protection more than ever.
You'll do that for me, won't you?”

“Of course, but if you want me to help you I think you should start by telling me what's the big deal over those Greek antiques and why your dad has this vendetta against you.”

“Well…perhaps it's because all the items in the vault are stolen.”

“What are you talking about Alexis? You don't need to steal stuff! You've got enough money to buy just about anything you want. So come on…you're telling me you had all that stuff nicked…WHY?”

“Well…because I couldn't buy it, not from the previous owners anyway.”

“Go on, explain. I have to understand all the details.”

“I couldn't buy this stuff because it belonged to my family; it's from their private collection. Actually it's their entire private collection.”

“You stole all that stuff from your own family!
Jesus H!
You're unbe-fucking-lievable! You really don't have any scruples at all do you? And why would you go and do such a thing?”

“I was homesick Eddie. You probably won't understand, but I guess I wanted those things to remind me of home. They'd never have agreed to part with any of them, especially to me. They're jealous of my success, you see?” Alexis is trying to find excuses to explain-away the actions of a spoilt brat. “I wanted them, so I took them. All of them. I emptied their entire private museum…
completely.”

“And does your dad know it was you?”

“Pretty much…Soon after, Interpol interviewed me over the matter and they basically came right out and said that my father had accused me personally for the theft. Not that they could prove anything of course. And actually, I ‘spose they are pretty valuable. Many of the pieces are priceless; some of them are the only surviving examples of their kind anywhere in the world.”

“We're in a bit of mess then, aren't we?”

Alexis tries to begin thinking more positively. “Ok, let's get our heads round what John Gibson's attempting to do. Have you got any idea of where he's going to be tunnelling in from?”

“We're surrounded by buildings on all sides. It could be from the sandwich shop behind us, the pub in front of us, the vacant offices to the one side or the church on the other. Maybe he's going to use a disused tube-tunnel or a Victorian sewer pipe that runs close by. I think there's even an underground basement that extends out a long way behind 20 Gracechurch Street. We might never find out until it's too late.”

“Ok…There's absolutely no way we're going to let him take any of my stuff, we're clear on that, yeah?”

“Definitely!”

“We've got the what, where, who, why and how…the only thing we don't know is the when.”

“Agreed.”

There is a pause as Alexis slowly realises what it is that they need to do. “You're going to have to booby trap the vault so that whenever he breaks in, he winds up dead. You need to find a method that doesn't require me to move any of those artefacts to someplace else.”

“Are you sure that's what you want me to do?”

“It's seems to be the best countermeasure. Yes…-Booby trap the vault without me having to shift the collection, and do it in such a way that nothing gets damaged…Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well it's got to be poisonous gas I suppose. Something colourless, odourless and non-flammable. Something that's easy to get hold of…–It's going to have to be carbon monoxide I suppose…-yes.” Eddie nods thoughtfully. “Lethal…easy to set up…and as simple as you like.”

“Explain?”

“Anyone can make carbon monoxide; you just need to burn something in a poorly ventilated room, which I guess is exactly what your vault is. It happens all the time. A dodgy boiler with a blocked flue. Some camper who's stupid enough in cold weather to light a stove in their tent. It's a lot more common than you'd think!

I'll put a gas fire in the vault with a bottle of butane. Then all I need do is light the burner and close the door. Once it's going I reckon it'll fill the vault with lethal gas in a matter of hours.”

“It's not going to create a load of heat and smoke is it? I don't want my collection damaged.”

“Don't worry, it'll burn slowly and the heat won't build up in there more than a few degrees. There'll be no smoke either. I'll need to rig-up something so the butane gas turns itself off once the flames go out through lack of oxygen, otherwise when Gibson breaks through with his thermic lance he might cause an explosion, what with fresh oxygen coming in from the tunnel. Yeah, I'm sure I can set something up to prevent that.”

“Perfect. He dies if he tries. He won't if he don't.” A broad smile spreads across the fat Greek's face.

“And if I continue to discretely keep watch on Gibson's flat we'll know if he suddenly stops returning home. Then after a few days if he still hasn't shown up, we'll know he's dead. No witnesses, no loose ends. I'll dispose of the body and pump away all the poisonous gas from the vault and I ‘spose there'll also be a ruddy great big hole and a tunnel to put right. But we can sort all that out later.”

“Sounds like a plan Eddie. Are we up for this?

“We certainly are!”

Setting up the ‘right sort' of carbon monoxide generator had been far easier than Eddie could have possibly imagined. He knew he needed some sort of gas burner, either a cooker or a heater or something. But what he hadn't known at the time was how to prevent any unburnt butane from turning the vault into a violent explosion just waiting to happen.

Needing to buy what he wanted as ‘discretely' as possible, he'd driven over to the place where he'd grown up as a kid.

Eddie avoids returning to Peckham as much as humanly possible because even back in the day it had a reputation for being a run-down neighbourhood, blighted by high unemployment, lack of investment and general urban decay. He naively thought it couldn't have gotten any worse. But it clearly had.

Perhaps he was being unfair…? Perhaps it was him that had changed? Maybe he'd been spending far too much time in places like Mayfair, KnighPSBridge and Monaco? Perhaps he'd become brainwashed into thinking that everyone was living the same jet-setting lifestyle that he was?

With memories still fresh in his mind of how poor the place had been during his childhood years, he'd been appalled to see it now, over-run with pound shops, pawn-brokers, fast-food litter, dog shit and ‘wannabe rude boys'. What a depressing concrete slum, plagued by pervasive gang culture, an urban battle ground beset with crime.

He's eternally grateful to no longer have to live in such places anymore and so long as he manages to keep his well-paid job as Alexis Vasilakos's bodyguard he knows he'll never have to return.

The acne-ridden sales assistant, fresh out of school, had been only too pleased to explain the clever features being built into the latest range of portable gas heaters. Eddie had forced himself not to smirk as the over-eager youth had tried his very best to close the sale. If only he'd realised he was helping his customer to kill someone! There aren't too many things in life that Eddie finds particularly amusing, but this situation had definitely made him smile.

Less than twenty minutes after entering the showroom, he'd left the store with a ‘radiant heater' the size of a small fridge which came complete with everything he needed fitted as standard. Its self-contained 15kg bottle of Butane would last up to 70 hours and though he wasn't going to bother doing the math, he was pretty sure that'd be long enough to generate sufficient lethal concentrations of carbon monoxide inside the vault to ‘do the business'.

His purchase incorporates two progressive safety features. The first one, called an ODS (oxygen depletion sensor) is basically a little magnetic valve that automatically closes-off the gas supply if the oxygen in the room falls below a safe level. This attribute needed disabling and Eddie figured he'd have little trouble in disconnecting its two wires. But the second feature is cleverer still, and it'd been exactly what Eddie had been hoping for…a thermocouple sensor that turns off the gas automatically should the flame accidentally go out. This failsafe would prevent large amounts of unburnt butane from being released into the vault once all the available oxygen got used up.

*

By 8 o'clock, the last employee has left 60 Lombard Street, leaving only the nightshift security guard to deal with. Alexis helpfully finds some fool's errand to get him away from the reception area just long enough for Eddie to move the heater down into the basement without being witnessed.

Once Alexis has opened-up the huge vault door, he helps his bodyguard carry it inside and to reassure his fretting boss, Eddie demonstrates how the ‘flame-out' switch will work by snuffing out the pilot light with the tip of his knife. It only takes a short while before the sensor cools down sufficiently to trigger the solenoid valve into clicking shut, thus sealing-off the gas supply from the regulator.

Satisfied that his vault's precious contents will remain undamaged, he allows Eddie to re-ignite the room heater, leaving it burning-away on a moderate setting. They turn off the lights as they exit, and shut the massive steel door behind them.

*

The rest of the week passes without incident. The exhausting round-the-clock nature of staking-out Gibson's flat meant it became necessary for Eddie to involve a second operative and it seemed only right to employ the other ex-soldier who'd recently helped him ambush and kill Alexis's kidnappers.

Once, maybe twice a day, Gibson is observed to leave his apartment. Each time, he is on foot and the furthest he travels is some 800 yards away up the road to the local shops. Sometimes he goes to get a newspaper and sometimes it's for food. Sometimes he just sits on a bench in the park and watches the world go by. He's never out for more than half an hour or so, and nobody is seen visiting him. As the days progress Eddie's men get a mutual feeling that their target might be playing games with them. The more they compare notes the more they can't decide whether or not they've been rumbled.

The thing is…on no occasion has Gibson made the slightest bit of eye contact with any of them. He's at no point tried to give them the slip and the silver Mondeo estate with its GPS transponder has remained in the policeman's lock-up garage all week long. They have nothing to back-up their suspicions apart from a nagging feeling in their guts.

Satisfied that they're doing everything they can to be as discrete and as low key as possible, Eddie can only suggest that they increase their distance and keep changing the vehicle on a daily basis. Other than that, they are to continue with their surveillance as before.

*

Come 9:30am on Thursday morning, people begin arriving at Ark house dressed in black suits and overcoats, then a couple of floral tributes are seen being delivered. Eddie is contacted immediately and told that today is clearly going to be the day the Kavanagh girl gets her funeral.

With so many policemen attending, it really wouldn't be appropriate for Eddie to observe the proceedings from afar, despite knowing how thoroughly he'd enjoy it. And anyway, there's a new armour plated S-guard being delivered in about two hours time and come three o'clock he'll need to set-off for Monaco once more with Alexis. This time he'll have to pass-up on the opportunity.