Читать книгу Dead Lucky - Matt Brolly - Страница 21

Chapter 12

It had taken him fifteen minutes to get through the first gate. Now Lambert stood waiting outside the second. His jacket was damp beneath his suit jacket, the early morning sun already blistering hot.

‘Who did you say you were again?’ said the voice on the intercom.

He knew he was being mocked but played along anyway. There was sure to be more than one exit to the house and if he wasn’t polite, he knew Curtis Blake would suddenly be unavailable. ‘DCI Michael Lambert. I have an appointment with Mr Blake.’

‘Please wait,’ said the intercom voice.

Lambert waited another ten minutes before the front door opened. A slim muscular man dressed in a black suit walked down the stone pathway towards him, flanked on either side by two men almost twice his size wearing cheaper versions of the same suit. The man stopped, took off a pair of expensive looking sunglasses and assessed him with a stern glare. ‘Will Atkinson, Mr Blake’s head of security. May I see some ID, Mr Lambert,’ he said, his voice strong and authoritative.

Lambert handed him his warrant card.

Atkinson looked harder than necessary. He was clearly ex-military. He nodded to one of his colleagues, and the steel gate opened.

‘Quite the security set-up you have,’ said Lambert.

Atkinson nodded. ‘It’s important to be safe,’ he said.

Lambert held his arms out as one of the henchmen checked him for weapons.

‘Thank you, please follow me,’ said Atkinson.

The house, a detached property in Hampstead, would be worth millions. Blake owned a number of legitimate businesses, mainly property related, in the capital. It was feasible that he would make some enemies in such a line of work, but the level of security in the house was disproportionately high. The front door was made of steel. Atkinson had to punch in a six-digit pin to gain entry. Both the guards turned away as he entered the code, and Lambert was instructed to do the same. The door led to another gated area. Atkinson unlocked three locks to enter the main area of the house, leaving one of the guards to monitor the front door.

‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Lambert, following Atkinson into a vast dining room where a man sat drinking coffee, talking on a mobile phone. The man looked up and pointed to a chair.

‘Take a seat,’ said Atkinson.

Lambert sat and waited for Curtis Blake to finish his call. The man was in his late fifties but looked older, his leathered face crisscrossed with deep grooves. He was wearing a white linen suit, a crisp shirt with the top button pushed into the loose flesh of his neck. He said something into the phone, before placing it on the dining table. ‘DCI Lambert,’ he said, more to himself than directly at Lambert. Leaning back in his chair, he continued. ‘Yes, DCI Lambert. I know all about you. How is Glenn Tillman?’

Lambert had run through Blake’s file on The System last night and knew that Tillman had investigated him a number of times over the years with no success.

‘You’ll have to ask him yourself. I am here on another issue.’

Blake lifted his coffee cup. ‘Where are my manners? Can I get you something? Water, perhaps? You look like you ran here.’

‘I’m fine.’

Lambert told him about Moira Sackville.

Blake drank his coffee, lost in contemplation. ‘Poor Eustace. I never had the pleasure of meeting his wife.’

‘You knew Eustace well.’

‘Of course, of course. Eustace Sackville, reporter extraordinaire. That’s why you wanted to speak to me?’

‘I understand you and Eustace have a history?’

A smirk crossed Blake’s lips but lent no humour to his face. ‘I would hardly call it that.’

‘You know he was investigating you?’

‘You must have spoken to him already. Some preposterous idea he had. He still thinks I’m twenty, thinks I’m some sort of petty criminal. He even had the temerity to call me.’

‘I don’t think he believes you’re a petty criminal,’ said Lambert, looking around at the ostentatious decorations of the dining room.

Blake looked at his mobile. ‘My point exactly. This has been hard won. I work fifteen, sixteen hours a day. I’m never off this bloody thing.’

‘I understand that Eustace was looking at some competing groups?’

The smirk had disappeared from Blake’s face. ‘Some perceived competition. I told Sackville then, and I’m telling you now, that I have nothing to fear from Russians, Albanians, Kosovans, or whoever is the new flavour of the month. I have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me.’

‘Why all the security?’

Blake shook his head as if he was talking to an imbecile. ‘You don’t become successful in this world without making enemies, Lambert, you must know that. This is all for precaution.’ He took another sip of coffee. ‘I know why you want to speak to me, Lambert. Let me see, you think Moira Sackville was killed, what, as a warning?’

Lambert sat stony-faced.

‘No, not a warning. Why bother going to such lengths, may as well have bumped him off as well? You think Eustace was being punished for something. Something he knew, or something he did. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I think you are barking up the wrong tree, as it were. At least, if it’s concerning me. Why would I care about what that journalist was up to? Maybe he pissed off the wrong people somewhere. But really, it’s all a bit, well, messy.’

‘And it has nothing to do with you, I presume?’

Blake pursed his lips, his face cracking into a patchwork of lines like an uncharted map. ‘Of course not. Now if you don’t mind, Atkinson here will show you out. Please pass on my regards to your superior.’

Lambert felt a touch on his shoulder and turned to face Atkinson, who had crept up on him.

He allowed the head of security to escort him out. He couldn’t argue with Blake’s logic and he’d summed it up very well. The case was messy. Finding a motive was proving elusive and it was a possibility that the attack was a one-off, that there was no rhyme or reason, and that unless the killer struck again they would never find out who he was.

Lambert headed for the train station, thinking that the time may have come to start using a pool car. He’d avoided travelling by car as much as possible since the car accident which had taken his daughter but it was becoming unavoidable. Travelling by public transport may give him time to think but it also ate away at his time. As long as he didn’t drive late at night, he was sure he would be okay.

He checked his phone. Kennedy had called and left a text message. It was something about Moira Sackville’s ex-lover, the barrister Charles Robinson. Lambert was about to call her back when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

It was a firm tap, more a grab, and Lambert immediately went on the defensive. He turned in one swift moment, at the same time stepping back a few steps to avoid any contact from a would-be attacker.

‘Steady there,’ said the man who’d tapped his shoulder, lifting his hands in defence.

‘Can I help you?’ said Lambert, still poised for attack.

The man reached into the inside pocket of his threadbare jacket and showed Lambert a warrant card. ‘DS Harrogate. We need to talk.’