Authors: Peter Lovesey
21
The risk was high, but the prize was the big one.
Ingeborg sat on the bed in the guest suite, ready for the night’s adventure. She’d changed into black sweatpants and a loose-fitting top Lee had found for her and she was wearing her own trainers.
These nervous minutes before anything happened were a chance to focus on the whole point of the undercover operation. Getting into the locked room wasn’t just about confirming Nathan was the major supplier of weapons to armed gangs. She needed evidence that linked him to the saleroom killing. Logic suggested that some record of transactions was kept secure, inside the room, with the arsenal itself.
Surely
Nathan kept an inventory or something. He would need it in there each time he made a visual check of the guns. The best guess was a notebook with everything listed by date. Another possibility was a card index. She doubted whether he trusted a computer with such sensitive information.
She had her phone in her pocket. Some photos of the interior of the gun room would be useful. Even better, if it existed, the notebook. If she could find and photograph the names of recent clients, the weapons themselves would be of secondary interest.
She checked the time. Eleven twenty. Lee had said Nathan would be ready for bed before midnight. Right now the couple were in the main sitting room downstairs watching a film that was due to end soon. At Ingeborg’s suggestion Lee had arranged for one of the staff to serve champagne in celebration of her homecoming.
“Make sure Nathan drinks most of it,” Ingeborg had stressed, bearing in mind that Lee had already sunk a couple of glasses of Chablis. She didn’t want her accomplice falling asleep or falling over.
The couple would come past the guest room on their way up to bed, so she was listening up.
Another ten minutes went by.
Huge relief when she heard footsteps in the corridor. Soft giggling, too. The champagne seemed to be working.
The steps grew fainter and she heard the click of their bedroom door being closed.
Now it was a question of how long to wait before making a move. She didn’t want to risk stationing herself outside before they were settled. There was always a risk Nathan would think of some reason to go downstairs again. Allowing time for him to undress and use the bathroom (he didn’t shower at night, Lee had said), he ought to be in bed and proving his manhood inside the next twenty minutes. Lee, never short of an apt idiom, had confided that the lovemaking was like two shakes of a lamb’s tail. After that, it was a question of how soon lover boy would drift into a deep sleep.
Say half an hour from now.
Just after midnight.
Ingeborg didn’t want Lee in more trouble over this. There were limits to Nathan’s tolerance, however much he doted on his pet pop star. Lee’s openness was both brave and troubling. Subterfuge was foreign to Lee’s nature. She was deeply uncomfortable about breaking up with Nathan after he had spent so freely to launch her in the music business. But she was driven by this overwhelming ambition to succeed as a singer and she knew the time had come to move on. The complicating factor was Nathan’s emotional state. From all that had been said, the relationship had started out in a businesslike way with Lee trading sex for Nathan’s backing. He’d invested money, not love, and neither of them had expected much to change. But Lee’s winning personality had softened and mellowed the tough professional criminal
and his desire had grown into love. In this state he was capable of being badly hurt.
If tonight’s plan went wrong, and he knew he had been betrayed, all bets were off.
Once again, Ingeborg was forced to remind herself that her mission came before everything else. Come what may, she must get inside that room.
The minutes dragged by. She fastened and unfastened her hair a couple of times. Putting it up made her feel more positive. She wasn’t sure why.
Midnight arrived.
Taking care not to make any sound, she eased the door open and tiptoed along the corridor, sidestepping the boards that might creak. The whole house was as silent as falling snow.
On her right, she passed the locked door. The location of everything was all so convenient—and so fraught with danger.
At the end of the corridor she flattened herself against the wall to the left of the door. Really there was no way she could hide if Nathan got out of bed and looked out, but the semblance of stealth helped her nerves.
No sound from within.
She imagined Lee, tense and apprehensive after the lamb’s tail had stopped shaking, waiting for the regular breathing that would mean Nathan had drifted into post-coital slumber. Slipping out of bed wouldn’t be a problem. If the movement woke him, she could say she was going to the bathroom. The dangerous part would be picking up his trousers and rifling the pocket for his keys. Difficult to explain that away. And next there was the added challenge of creeping to the door, turning the handle, opening it and handing over the keys, all without making a sound.
What could she say if he woke up? I must have been sleepwalking?
Ingeborg snapped out of this destructive train of thought. How many times did she have to tell herself that empathising with Lee was unhelpful? What mattered was her own plan of action.
More time went by and there was no sound from inside the bedroom. She checked. Almost 12:15.
Doubts crept into her mind. Had Lee fallen asleep? Or become so petrified that she couldn’t go through with the plan?
And now her right leg started cramping below the knee, a familiar but excruciatingly painful spasm that usually made her cry out. All this tension was getting to her. Gritting her teeth, she tried stretching the muscle, working her foot up and down, hoping the stiffness would go, but now it was in her thoughts, it was difficult to shift.
About 12:25, the door opened and a small hand emerged with a set of keys resting on the palm.
Lee had delivered.
Heart going like the climax of a drum solo, Ingeborg closed her fingers over the bunch and backed away.
The door closed.
Now it was up to Ingeborg. She crept the few steps to the door of the locked room and stood outside in the dim light examining the keys on the ring. Two at least were of the Yale type. This was more of a mortise lock, needing a longer key. She found one and tried it, her hand shaking.
It wouldn’t turn.
A second key made a metallic rasp as she pushed it in.
She froze, fearful she must have been heard.
After waiting a few seconds, she turned her wrist and felt the key engage and shift the lock. She grasped the handle and eased open the door.
The interior was even darker than the corridor. She had to keep the door ajar for a source of light. For a couple of seconds she stood in the doorway, allowing her eyes to adjust.
But she wasn’t standing in an armoury. She was in a bathroom. There wasn’t a gun in sight.
Her expectation dashed, she closed the door behind her and felt for the cord that switched on the light. It was no illusion. This was a fully tiled bathroom in duck-egg blue and white, with an oval bathtub set into the corner, a shower
cabinet, toilet, bidet, vanity cabinet, wash basin, towel rail and mirrors. There were matching blue towels, a white candlewick bathmat, facecloths, soap and toilet paper. Toothpaste, electric toothbrush, shampoo and a shaver. Even a toilet bag.
She couldn’t have been more devastated if she’d gone through the gates of heaven and found it was Terminal 3 at Heathrow. All the speculation, the planning, the risk-taking—for this, a sodding bathroom. She could have wept.
But why would anyone keep a bathroom locked from the outside? It appeared to be set up for regular use, but who would use it? Only Nathan or Lee, and they had an
en suite
bathroom. Did Nathan have this as a back-up, for when Lee was using the other one? It had the look of a man’s bathroom.
She felt the towels and the facecloths. They had the fluffy texture that you only find straight from the shop. The toothpaste tube was new. The shampoo and the shower cream hadn’t been used. Did he insist on everything being fresh each time he came in here?
Her suspicion grew that this bathroom wasn’t all it appeared.
What if the guns were stored out of sight? They could be in the vanity cupboard or behind the cladding around the bathtub or even in the toilet cistern.
There were drawers and a cupboard in the vanity unit below the hand basin. The cupboard contained spare toilet rolls. Too bloody obvious, she told herself. If this was built to frustrate a search, you wouldn’t use the cupboard. That was the first place anyone would look.
She opened each of the drawers and found more towels. As silently as possible, she removed all three drawers completely from the unit and stacked them on the floor. The space inside was dark. Kneeling on the mat, she reached inside and felt with her hand. Her palm flattened against the solid wall. She probed up and down. Nothing was hidden there. Nor was there any kind of opening in the floor.
The wood cladding was more promising. The bath had been plumbed into a corner and had substantial space around it. Moreover, it was set into a platform at the end of the room
with two low steps up from the floor level, all built with the same veneered board. Behind and out of sight there was enough room for several rifles and assault weapons as well as handguns.
Was there a simple way of getting inside? Presumably Nathan needed easy access to show his wares to his customers.
On hands and knees Ingeborg made a search for a panel that could be lifted, or a hidden hinge. She spent the next fifteen minutes examining the joins. Everything appeared to be tightly screwed in and each piece was flush with the next. Whoever had made this had done a professional job, which encouraged her to think there must be a clever way in, a sliding panel or a loose board that lifted up.
She broke two fingernails trying.
Finally she accepted that if there was a trick, she hadn’t detected it. The only way she would get a look behind the cladding was by forcing a piece out. Any damage would then be obvious.
It didn’t take long to come to a decision. Tonight’s opportunity wasn’t likely to be repeated. But what could she use as a tool?
In the toilet bag was a manicure set, with scissors and a nail file.
The nail file would make a serviceable screwdriver. She chose a large panel in front of the bath and got to work. Getting the screw to move at all wasn’t easy, but with strength born of desperation she got it to turn. Out it came.
She started on the screws directly below. They would have been driven in using a power tool and she had only muscle power and a four-inch nail file. Each one was a brute to move. Only the extreme urgency and her persistence finally brought a result. The two extra screws came out and she was able to prise out one end of the panel. It made a horrible squeak and she gasped and froze.
No sound came from along the corridor.
She got her fingers behind the panel and tugged. The gap widened.
She put her arm right in and groped in the space. Nothing was there. Her fingertips made contact with the underside of the bathtub.
No guns. All this effort had achieved nothing.
In despair now, she pushed the panel back into position. It would have to be left without screws. She didn’t have the strength to replace them.
One last possibility remained: the cistern. Every police officer who has ever done a drugs raid knows water tanks are favourite hiding places for items wrapped in waterproof bags and strapped to the sides.
Maybe a handgun or two could be secreted in this one.
She stepped close and lifted the heavy porcelain lid.
It was a normal, functioning cistern filled with water. Nothing was in there that shouldn’t be.
At this of all moments, the cramp in her leg returned, rock-hard and agonising, sending a shockwave through her entire body. Her fingers flexed and lost their grip on the cistern lid. It slammed down with an impact loud enough to wake the entire population of Bristol.
In panic and in pain, Ingeborg’s reaction was to get out fast. She limped to the door and started along the corridor towards her own room.
Before she’d hobbled more than three steps, she heard the door at the end thrust open, followed by Nathan’s voice yelling, “Stop right there,” followed immediately by a shout from Lee: “Don’t run, Ingeborg. He’s got a gun.”
She wasn’t stupid. Hand-held guns are never wholly accurate, but there was a strong chance of being shot or hit by a ricochet. She raised her arms and waited. Ahead of her, someone else appeared, one of Nathan’s minders wearing nothing but boxer shorts. He, also, was pointing a gun.
“Grab her,” Nathan ordered.
She backed against the wall, hands spread in a calming gesture. “It’s okay. I’m not in for a fight.”
The minder made sure by stepping up to her side and pressing the muzzle of the gun into her neck.
The bathroom door was still open and the light was left on. Nathan—in silk floral pyjamas—padded towards it and looked inside. Lee, in a baby-doll nightdress, was framed in the doorway of their bedroom looking terrified.
“I should have known better than to let a fucking journalist sleep in my house,” Nathan said. “How the fuck did you get hold of my keys?”
Before Lee could say a word, Ingeborg said, “You were both asleep so I crept in and took them. I need drugs. I thought you must have some hard stuff hidden in the locked room.” In the situation, this was the best story she could think up. If nothing else, it shifted any blame from Lee.
“You’re a bloody junkie?” Nathan said. “You came to my house looking for drugs? I don’t believe this. Roll up your sleeves and show us your arms.”
“Cocaine,” she said at once. “I snort coke.”
“Cobblers. You wouldn’t come here if you wanted coke.”
“It’s got to be somewhere,” she said, at full stretch to sound convincing. “You live in style. Everyone says you’re importing. How else could you make it so big?”
“Someone’s been stringing you along,” he said, giving just a suggestion that he believed her. “Drugs are a filthy trade. I wouldn’t lower myself to deal with the scum who take them. Tell her, Lily. She’s got it all wrong.”