Читать книгу The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming - Страница 14

The dummy London cab that had tailed Mark’s taxi from Heathrow stopped a hundred and fifty metres down Elgin Crescent, engine idling. They had made good time from Terminal One, almost slipstreaming the taxi in the outer M4 lane denied to cars.

‘So this is where the brother lives?’ Graham asked.

Ian Boyle cleared his throat and said, ‘Yeah, house up on the left.’

They saw Mark Keen step out of the taxi, pay the driver and make his way towards the front door carrying a large overnight holdall and several plastic bags. He was broadly built and did not appear to struggle with the weight.

‘Nice fucking place,’ Graham muttered, tilting his head to one side to get a better look at the house. ‘What does the brother do for a living? Stockbroker? Investment banker? Dot com millionaire?’

‘None of the above.’ Ian dialled a number in Euston Tower on his mobile phone and held it up to his ear. ‘Our Benjamin’s an artist. Farts around all day in oils and charcoal, struggling with the impossibility of the authentic artistic act.’

‘I thought that sort of behaviour was out of fashion?’

The number wasn’t answering and Ian hung up.

‘Not so,’ he said.

‘What does the wife do?’ Graham was new on the Kukushkin case and still a bit sketchy on details. He looked upon Ian as a mentor, an older hand he wanted to learn from and impress.

‘Journalist,’ Ian said. ‘Writes about canapés and boy bands for the Evening Standard. One of your gorgeous, pouting, twenty-something hackettes, arse so firm you could crack an egg on it. Drive up and we might get a look at her.’

Graham flicked on the headlights, moved back out into the road and took the cab past the house. They saw Alice open the front door and fling her arms around Mark’s neck, her smile a flash in the darkness.

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Graham muttered. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of them in my Christmas stocking.’ He pulled up another fifty metres further along the street and peered back over his shoulder. ‘How long they been married?’

‘Couple of years; three, maybe. Daddy was decent enough to throw eighty grand at the wedding. Nice of him, wouldn’t you say?’

‘All things considered.’ Graham couldn’t keep his eyes off her. ‘Does the gaffer have ears in there?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. Only at Mark’s place. And the lawyer, Macklin. We don’t reckon young Benjamin’s involved.’

‘Right.’

‘So what time’s Michael taking over?’ Ian scratched his armpit. ‘I wanna get the Arsenal score, find a pub with ITV.’

‘Search me,’ Graham replied. ‘Search me. The way I heard it, I thought we was on all night.’