Chapter Seven
The sun outside beat more harshly through the glass domed mall entrance than in the Middle East. They said it was the hole in the ozone layer shifting south over the UK for the summer.
Shops lined the subterranean tunnels that joined all the towers of Canary Wharf one floor below street level, interwoven like the roots of the monumental trees of glass and steel above.
Following one of the tunnels Savage swept down and into a larger section of the mall. The chatter of English voices deafened, the toffs and totty of the faded empire chewed their vowels in matching uniforms. His and hers pinstripes, varying shades of grey, blue and black. They talked of deals and politics and what Ralph did at the country house last weekend.
The bulls boasted about their bear markets. They haw-hawed in coffee shops and threw down heavy London grunts of trader machismo.
The occasional twang of American English broke through the scrubbed up anglo-accents of rich Arabs without their dishdashes.
All around brown faces and the harried servility of the Eastern Europeans fronted electronic outlets, high fashion boutiques and food chains. Jeremy and Jemima Public didn't notice.
The stench of money had always been overwhelming on the Wharf, but since the bank walkouts it was tainted with bile. The money left behind was older, cleverer, more powerful than those that had fallen to their knees with the latest crash. These were the blessed few who had picked up the pieces.
And the stench was overwhelming.
Savage took the next shining glass escalator up, walked past the window cleaners at the public entrance, and out into the harsh sun.
Canary Wharf was built as an island of commerce. Imagine Wall Street as its own little fiefdom. The wharf was it.
At its heart, where Savage stood, neck breaking towers in the American style looked down on the echoing canyons for streets. A dual design, to make the best use of real estate and, like the arches of old cathedrals, to lord it over the minions below and tell them: you are unworthy.
Savage shut his eyes to the cold reality and let the warmth seep into his skin. Renewing him. He listened to the subdued background noises of the Wharf. With controlled entrances, security scanners and bomb detection the norm after 9/11 and 7/7, passing traffic was rare.
He wondered why the suits congregated in the air-conditioned gloom below. Was the whole place just a fiendish design to keep the rats running the maze – earn your money upstairs then spend it in the Hades like mall below?
Something tickled at the back of his mind. He opened his eyes.
The Wharf didn't only have offices. The big hitters also had apartments. One in particular had been in his imagination almost every night for three years.
He stepped out into the road in front of him, slowed the pissed off drivers of a Bentley and a Porsche. Were Porsche even exclusive any more? He crossed to the opposite corner.
There was a café there now. He sat at the table nearest the kerb.
He'd been five feet away, standing next to his car. His eyes found the penthouse. He'd known Michael was there, apartment hunting.
He plugged the USB stick into his phone and navigated to the unheard audio recordings he'd backed up before his walk-off. He pressed play on the correct date.
Dial tone, the phone rang, then:
'What do you want?' Michael said. Savage looked up, as he'd done that day.
'We need to talk.' Savage heard voices in the background, Devlin's voice, and another.
'We've got nothing to talk about, and if you keep sticking your nose in I'll—'
'I know about the Caymans Michael.' Savage smiled at the old bluff. 'Whatever threat you were going to trot out, forget it. You're not tough enough.'
'Do you—' Michael faltered. 'What can we—what can I do to make this go away?'
We? Savage was just after him.
'Your dirty little secrets won't stay hidden Michael.'
'You've no idea what you're getting into.'
'So tell me.'
'Do you even know what you're doing?'
A door opened. Michael's breathing rasped as he tried not to hyperventilate. The noise of the city sounded over the phone.
'Michael, we can work this out. You know these white collar situations rarely go to court, no-one wants publicity when things go wrong, especially the company. Let's talk. We can find a way through this.'
The breathing got heavier. The man shouted, something Savage couldn't hear.
'Michael? I'm outside waiting for you.'
'Are you really?' He said. 'Do you have any idea? Do you?'
'Artemis Michael,' his second bluff, 'I know everything.'
'Where're you getting this information?'
'Michael. Just finish what you're doing, come downstairs and let's talk. I'll help you.'
'You'll help?' he said quietly. 'Of course, where are you exactly?'
'Just out front, parked on the street.' Savage heard the scrape of tables and chair legs. Michael caught his breath, then a laboured grunt.
'Well, you know what?' Michael said in a loud voice, 'I'm actually really glad you called—'
Savage heard the woman, 'Michael,' she said.
'And you,' he said to her. 'Don't we have everything we need already? What more can you want? What more can I give you?
'Michael,' she shouted, a threat in her voice. 'Come here now.'
'Are you listening?' Michael yelled into the phone. Savage held it away from his ear.
'Michael. Michael, no—'
Moments passed, nothing but the sound of rushing air, then the man's terrified pleas to god.
'Michael?' Savage said.
Michael's body slammed into the silver grey car, crushing the roof instantly, with a noise that Savage now knew sounded like the thump of mortar fire. He'd picked apart the memory of that noise over the years. In his imagination he always heard the crack of bones against the metal.
Savage had run across the street. Michael's body had scythed a deep vee into the expensive vehicle. The driver was pinned to his seat. The couple in back unconscious, sticky gashes on the woman's pretty blonde head. Michael's shredded torso had ruptured the metal, blood poured from him onto the seats below.
Savage had stood and stared. He remembered a voice asking for an ambulance, giving the place and location, then realised it was his own. He'd managed to unfreeze himself and start to help the occupants of the car.
The waiter interrupted Savage’s thoughts with a coffee he hadn't asked for. He followed Savage's gaze across the road, mugged at him politely, sceptical of his customer's intentions, or sanity.
Savage took the coffee and the waiter drifted away.
Looking at that space now, sun shining, life doing its thing. Savage found it hard to believe that what happened wasn't all a fiction he'd simply made up.
He peeled his eyes away from the spot and took out his phone. It had been running on silent and he had several messages already. Thomson demanding more of him. The usual job offers from the Middle East. And an email without a subject heading. Spam probably, but he had to make sure. He opened it.
IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT.
Skin prickled on the back of his neck and his heart jumped a beat. He scanned around him, at the stressed faces of passers-by, the well fed-faces behind the café window, an oriental man on a laptop. He strode over to him, stood behind and looked at the screen.
Google Earth and their current location.
'Are you alright, sir?' the waiter said.
The email. He opened the options menu and looked at the header again, but before he could read a thing, the window closed and a screen came up:
Deleting...
The email was gone in an instant. The sender was learning.
He stalked back to his table and pulled out the business cards he'd been given that morning.
He found the right card and dialled the direct line number.
'Administration,' the woman's voice sing-songed.
'Vanessa?'
'Yes?'
'It's Savage, from the meeting this morning. You only gave me your card not Jo Devlin's. I need her number.'
'I'm afraid I can't—'
'Then I'll just come to your office and take what I need. I have the authority. You know I do.' He waited. Bullying the poor girl, he felt like such a man.
'Fine, got a pen?'
'I'll need the address for her online diary as well.'
He hung up when she finished and dialled the CAO's number. It went straight to voice mail. As it should, she was flying after all. He rang off and checked her diary.
Whatever she was doing it meant lots of travel, five days, five countries, she'd be back either at the end of the week or the start of the next.
He had to speak to Devlin. She'd been the woman with Michael when he jumped. That was why, wasn't it? Or did he just want to hear her voice again?
He left a message, and then his own phone began to ring.
'Thomson,' he said.
'Savage. Is there a good reason why you're sat in a café in the middle of a work day?'
He scanned the crowds again.
'There's no point looking, you won't see me.'
Thomson was right, but he did recognise a young suit from the nether regions of hell downstairs reading a newspaper, camera phone on the table in front of him. The Wharf was small. It was entirely possible that the man was just on a coffee break.
'What d'you want?' Savage waved to the waiter, showed him the note he was leaving under the cup and began to walk.
'I heard about your storm out. Very dramatic. Everyone's talking about it. The killer in our midst.'
'How nice for you.'
Savage stopped at the side of the road and used the double-cross code: look left, check for surveillance operatives on foot. Check right, and ditto for any stationary cars or bikes. Anyone who knew what they were doing would have more than one operative on the ground.
Savage would have had two or three people posted at the other exit points to take over from newspaper boy once the target moved off.
'You're supposed to be doing a job for us Savage.'
'Everybody knows I'm here now, don't they?'
Should he try and flush them out? Savage crossed the road, looked left and right, newspaper boy got up and followed.
So, just one man. Thomson cutting corners again.
'Yes, they know you're here,' Thomson said, 'but now they have to know you're looking.'
'Fair enough. What d'you need?'
'What just like that? No fight?'
'I'm here to do a job. Just tell me.'
Savage ducked into a crowd of people walking toward a department store, trotted down some steps and entered the mall.
'By now, everyone will know about the info you presented this morning. Follow up on it.'
'Your critical path analysis?'
'Right. But back at your desk. People need to see.'
'You'll back me up if I need authorisation to look at people, places, files?'
He hesitated. 'Up to a point, yes.'
'What point?'
'I believe you already have files that belong to me.'
Savage let that one hang – it meant Thomson already knew everything he did on that computer.
Newspaper boy was still on his tail. Savage turned a corner and lost himself in a melee of shoppers. He saw a swarthy woman with a cleaning trolley tap a key code into a concealed door next to a bank.
'The account you accessed this morning is now dead,' Thomson said.
'So?'
Savage pushed the woman into the service entrance with her trolley before she could protest and flashed two twenties in front of her. The door swung shut behind them. He had his hand over the phone's mouthpiece.
'Exit?' he said.
The cleaner pocketed the notes and pointed along the corridor. He set off.
'So, you'll get new log in details from the office manager.'
'Uhuh. Great.' Savage climbed stairs to the next floor and pushed the exterior door open. The light dazzled after the flat illumination of the mall.
'Savage. I'm warning you. Don't go digging up the past.'
Thomson must have heard those recordings already, he could have stopped tongues wagging any time he liked.
'Listen, Thomson,' Savage said, 'You'd better send out a search party for your boy. I think he's lost,' then he hung up.
*
'Hello?'
'Tayla? It's Konrad.'
'Oh hi, Konrad. I was hoping you'd call.'
'Well, hi yourself. Are you still in town?'
'I am, for one night only.'
'Tayla,' he ignored the insistent beep of new messages on his phone, 'that's great. Tell me something. Are you an art lover?'