Hot Pursuit (5 page)

Maggie stared at him, feeling totally deflated. ‘What? Is that it? But you
were
a witness, weren’t you?’

Nick nodded. ‘Uh huh, I suppose so, but not in a Perry Mason big courtroom drama kind of a way. All I had to do was to identify them as the two people in question, give a few details from my bookings diary. When they’d met, how often – and of course it was me who gave permission for the bug to be planted at their table in the first place –’

‘And they relocated you for that?’ Maggie knew she sounded slightly incredulous.

Nick’s face reddened. ‘Yes. The unfortunate thing was the two of them came from different sides of the tracks. One was a highly respected financier in the city of London and the other one was something very, very iffy in organised crime.’

There was a long pause. ‘And?’ prompted Maggie. It was like pulling teeth.

Nick sucked his bottom lip and slowly turned the coffee mug between his long fingers. ‘And after they were arrested the two of them tried to
persuade me not to testify.’ His voice was low now and very controlled as he turned the mug around and around. ‘It got very nasty very quickly once they’d been picked up. They’re not the sort of people you mess with. They threatened to rearrange my anatomy so I could bear children, they firebombed my restaurant and filled my basement with raw sewage. Not them personally, of course, but their hired help.

By the time the case came to court they’d blown up my car, ruined my business, destroyed my marriage, terrorised my staff and driven me to breaking point.’ He sighed heavily. ‘The pair of them systematically destroyed everything I had built to try and stop me from taking the stand. The authorities extradited one of them to the States. The police had already decided by that time that I was at long-term risk from reprisals.’ He drained the dregs of his coffee. ‘So there we are, now you know, Maggie. That’s what I’m doing here.’

She stared at him, not quite sure, now that she had dragged the story out of him, what to say. ‘My God. So what happened to the two men?’

Nick shook his head, uncomprehendingly. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Which two men?’

Maggie looked heavenwards. Nice eyes but not too bright obviously. ‘The two men you gave evidence against?
Your two regulars
? Mr Vegetarian Lasagne and Mr Home-made Game Pie.’

Nick shook his head. ‘Oh no, you’ve got it wrong. It wasn’t two men I testified against, it was two women – and if they find me they’ll have me killed.’

Maggie swallowed hard. ‘Two women?’ she whispered.

Nick nodded.

‘Oh bugger,’ murmured Maggie, ‘You really
are
in trouble.’

Nimrod Brewster and Cain Vale had booked into the large anonymous hotel adjoining the airport. They had shed their suit jackets, turned on the TV and raided the mini-bar by the time their contact arrived. He was a man so undistinguished, so grey that he managed to render himself practically invisible. He stepped quietly into their hotel room and smiled without warmth.

‘All set then, are we, lads?’

Nimrod nodded and removed his mirrored shades to reveal the palest ice-blue eyes rimmed with piggy-white lashes. Outside, beyond the triple glazing, a silver jet rose noiselessly into the late evening sky.

‘Yeah, all fired up and ready to go. Brought everything we need, have yer?’ he asked, tucking his shades into the top pocket of his immaculately pressed shirt.

The man nodded and dropped a large manila envelope on one of the single beds.

‘There we are. Half now and half on completion, all expenses paid, as agreed. Oh and I thought you might like this.’ He pulled out a radio scanner and set it on the bed alongside the envelope. ‘You know how to use it?’

Nimrod nodded. ‘Nice touch. I always like to keep an ear out for the feds.’

The man paused and then looked at Nimrod thoughtfully as if weighing up just how much to tell him. ‘I want you to be especially careful with this one, Nimrod,’ he said in a low, unremarkable monotone.

‘Of course. We always are,’ said Nimrod, slightly affronted by the slur on his professionalism.

‘I know, I know, but just hear me out. Is your friend here with us?’ he said, stony-faced. Across the room Cain was stretched out on the other bed, his attention firmly fixed on the TV screen.

‘Don’t mind Cain, he loves all them crime reconstruction programmes, CCTV footage, anything like that, watches them all the time in case he sees someone we know. Saw his dad on there once. But when it comes down to the job, we’re there, you know that. Totally focused – one-hundred-and-ten per cent or nothing at all. It’s just that the planning side of it isn’t his forte.’ Nimrod’s tone was icy.

The little man nodded his head. ‘Sorry. I’m most certainly not implying that you’re normally
careless. We wouldn’t have hired you if we thought that was the case.’ He paused. ‘It’s just that I think that somebody somewhere out there may already have got a sniff that something’s going down.’

Nimrod raised an eyebrow. He liked violence; he didn’t like unnecessary risks involving the law.

‘Yeah? What makes you say that, then?’

‘My clients are very insistent that Mr Lucas pays for his faux pas, and if you don’t take the hit someone else will, but what I’m saying is that if you don’t want it, it’s not too late to pull out.’ The man sucked his teeth, waiting for Nimrod’s reaction.

‘Go on,’ encouraged Nimrod. ‘Cough it up. We’re here now.’

‘My sources at Stiltskin have informed us that our friend, Mr Lucas, was all set to be relocated as one James Anthony Cook. Three days later and James Cook Esquire has vanished completely from their computer records only to reappear as one Mr Bernard Fielding.’

Nimrod nodded knowingly although he hadn’t got a clue what the man was going on about, his only real experience of computers involved creaming countless hoards of screaming aliens, but he did know when to keep schtum.

The little man continued. ‘My instincts tell me this may well be a complex double-bluff to throw us off the scent. I’m still convinced that James Cook is our man. The powers-that-be have just
tried to dig him in a little bit deeper, added a
soupçon
more camouflage. Made it a little more difficult for anyone to find him. Maybe they suspect someone is hacking into their database, maybe they suspect a leak, who knows? One thing is for sure: if they knew for certain it was us then the likelihood is we would have been pulled in by now.’ He pointed towards the envelope on Nimrod’s bed. ‘We’ve already turned up several bank transactions in Banbury for our Mr Cook. New suit, good shoes –’ He grinned and tapped his nose. ‘Don’t ever doubt that Big Brother has his eye on you, lads.’

Nimrod grimaced. He sincerely hoped not; he had kneecapped his big brother back in ’86.

Across the room Cain was flicking through the channels while delicately stirring a maraschino cherry on a cocktail stick through the froth on the top of his Advocat snowball.

‘So, you’re saying that Nick Lucas is definitely now this James Cook bloke, then?’ Cain said slowly, suddenly looking up at their undistinguished visitor. ‘You’re certain? Only it could get very messy if you’ve got it wrong.’

The man sniffed, his smile opening up like an icy fissure.

‘Yes, absolutely. His new address is in the envelope, courtesy of the bank’s computer, then there’s photos, all the usual stuff that you need. He’s holed up in a caravan site near Banbury apparently,
presumably sitting tight until they find him a house. So there we have it, lads. Your mission if you choose to accept it.’

Nimrod looked at Cain. For a moment their eyes met and Cain gave a barely perceivable nod.

Nimrod picked up the money. ‘Seems like the deal is on, then,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said their contact. ‘I knew you two wouldn’t let me down.’ He paused as he got to the door. ‘Ring me when it’s all over. And don’t blow it, lads. I don’t have to tell you that my clients are very influential people. Mr Lucas is to be made an example of. We can’t have people of their calibre being screwed over by some moronic little gimp in a pinny, now can we?’

Over the years Bernie Fielding had developed a sure-fire way to get women into bed; he led them to believe that he was impotent. It always worked like a charm. A few veiled references to things not being quite right. A murmur of regret at being unable to take a relationship any further. A tender plea not to get involved because he could never give a woman what they truly wanted or needed and could only bring them heartbreak and he was in like Flynn. It seemed that a plea for understanding and consideration brought out the Florence Nightingale in them all.

Women, he had realised early on in life, loved a challenge; loved to feel that they were special,
different, needed. It didn’t take very much to have them thinking that perhaps they were that special someone, the one to provide the sexual elixir that would miraculously cure him of his tragic affliction – and of course, as it turned out, they always were.

Stella Conker-eyes was proving no exception. Snuggled up beside him in a quiet corner of the lounge bar in the Lark and Buzzard, compassion was her middle name. She had delicately teased out of him the full story of his poor dead wife, wiped away a tear as he spun her a long and complicated yarn with many thoughtful pauses – which Stella took to be grief, but which were actually Bernie trying to think up something heartrendingly tragic. It was only halfway through the evening and already Bernie had successfully wiped out his wife, the family Labrador and his sex drive. Not bad going for a slow night.

And now, after four large gin and lemons and something greasy in a basket, Stella’s little leather skirt was riding higher up her thighs than Bernie thought physically possible. Her dark eyes glistened as she leant towards him, her floral perfume so strong it was making his nose run.

‘Oh, James, you poor, poor man,’ she purred, easing herself closer still so that they were sitting thigh to thigh. ‘Life really hasn’t been very kind to you at all, has it? No wonder you’re always on the move. I can understand it. It must be so
hard to put down roots after everything that’s happened; you’re afraid of getting hurt all over again, aren’t you?’

Bernie sighed theatrically. ‘Not everyone sees it like that. You’re a very perceptive woman, Stella,’ he said, damp-eyed. ‘You’ve made me realise just…’ he paused for added emphasis, ‘…just how empty and pointless my life has been for the past two years.’ He let his hand rest lightly on her knee.

Stella let out a strangled throaty sob. ‘Oh, James,’ she said softly and guided his head down into the cleft between her expansive breasts.

Bernie shivered, drinking in her warmth and the scent of her skin as she held him tight against her. Shit, the way he was going he’d have her knickers off before closing time.

Meanwhile, in the
Gotcha
production office, now that the creative kindergarten had all gone home, Robbie Hughes was pitching his story to the show’s producer. He had waited patiently for this moment. Bernie Fielding was far too important a pearl to be cast before the rest of the
Gotcha
swine. Robbie was hoping, if he played it right, that his boss would let him have that magic one-off special – a whole programme devoted to the machinations of Mr Bernie Fielding. She had given him ten minutes.

‘Double glazing,’ he said, stabbing a pile of
brochures with one doughy finger. ‘Conservatories, pyramid selling, security alarms, pension plans, time-share. Jesus, what more do we want? What more do we need? He’s quiet at the moment – probably regrouping, going for the big one. I think now is the perfect time to get him. Bernie Fielding has been into every money-grabbing, stitch ‘em up cowboy con trick you can think of, and more besides. The man is a real menace, a social evil, he needs putting away.
We have to put him away
. We’ve got complaints, affidavits, reports, letters, photographs. We’ve got all the evidence we’ll ever need to nail him.’ Robbie picked up a letter at random from the pile. ‘Eighty-year-old pensioner lost her entire life savings in one of his pyramid scams. He took her for every penny she’d got and then backed over her cat in his Jag –’

His boss leant back in her swivel chair and peered for a moment or two at her long scarlettipped fingernails. He could sense that she was deliberating; Robbie held his breath.

‘We’ve been here before Robbie so I’ll cut right to the chase. This isn’t research; it’s a personal vendetta. It’s an obsession. A hobby gone bad. I have heard this damned story dozens of times. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Robbie, but it’s old news, darling. Stale. Let’s face it, these days everyone is bored shitless by all this sort of stuff. It would be different if you could prove that this guy had
actually killed somebody. Even maiming is better than nothing –’

The smell of her perfume, the odour as memorable as sulphur, permeated the entire room. She picked up her pen and pointed at the rows of hessian-covered pin-boards that dominated the office walls. Each one was a précis of a story that they were currently working up for broadcast.

‘Organs. That’s really hot at the moment. Unwashed proles being hoicked in to have their tonsils out and waking up to find someone’s whipped out a kidney. Nineteen-year-old mother of four goes in to have her appendix out, wakes up with an eye gone – emotive stuff.’

She swivelled a little further round on her chair, pen aimed at the pin-boards like the staff of Moses. ‘What have we got – toxic teddies, some guy poisoning toddlers, that’s always a good angle. Family pets into fun furs, tabby tote bags. Dodgy doctors, a nun selling smack outside an orphanage. It’s all ground-breaking stuff. Pyramids are very passé, Robbie, very passé. Does your man do organs?’

Robbie looked down and closed the bulging dossier he had on Bernie Fielding.

‘Just give me a little bit longer,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can come up with.’

Once he had been dismissed Robbie hurried back downstairs to his own office. The lights were still on although the rest of the floor was in darkness. Inside his assistant looked up expectantly.

‘How did it go?’ she asked, and then the words and the smile faded as she saw Robbie’s expression. ‘Oh no. Was it that bad?’

Robbie threw out his chest and stapled on a happy face. ‘No, no, not at all. Don’t worry. Just a little set-back. It’s nothing that can’t be sorted out.’ He made an effort to sound brisk and businesslike. ‘What we need is to find the focus, the hook for one good Bernie Fielding special. Madam Upstairs was worried that the thrust of our programme was perhaps a little too broad – maybe even a little dated – but as I told her it’s nothing that can’t be put right with a bit of old-fashioned dedication, research and midnight oil. We just need to find out what Bernie’s up to now.’

Lesley smiled. ‘It sounds quite promising then?’

Robbie nodded. ‘Absolutely,’ he said, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘Now, I know it’s late, but I want to pull out everything that we’ve got on our Mr Fielding: old addresses, old haunts, old ties, any little clue that we can come up with as to where he is now and what he’s up to. This is all-out war. I want to get that bastard put away before Madam Upstairs decides to pull the plug on the whole bloody project. You know how fickle she can be at times,’ he added hastily in answer to Lesley’s startled expression. ‘I can’t believe that Bernie isn’t up to his old tricks somewhere. We just have to track him down and nail his hairy little arse to the mast, and we have to do it soon.’ There was just a hint of Winston Churchill in his delivery. As Robbie Hughes spoke he stared up at the pictures and notes on the pin-boards above his desk. Some had been there so long that they were brittle and yellow with age. He and Bernie Fielding went back a long, long way.

His entire office wall looked like the presentation of evidence for a serial killer. Passé; he’d show that bloody bitch passé. Still mumbling to himself Robbie started rummaging through the filing cabinets pulling out great wads of paper, photocopied sheets and all manner of advertising fliers. ‘Right, let’s see what we’ve got –’

‘Oh God, I love it when it’s like this, Robbie,’ said Lesley breathlessly, taking down a row of box
files from one of the stationery cupboards. ‘It feels like we’re at war, you know – like we are really making a difference.’

‘But we do, Lesley, we do.’ Robbie smiled indulgently in her direction and opened the first of the box files.

They were labelled by date with
Bernie Fielding 1–5
along the spine. Lesley had stayed behind to lend him moral support. A couple of years out of university she was still a little overwhelmed by the whole set-up at
Gotcha
, and for some reason by Robbie Hughes in particular. Maybe because he had personally plucked her out of a backwater in the company to join his personal staff. Unconsciously, under her adoring limpid gaze Robbie puffed out his chest further.

‘That’s exactly what this is – war. It’s this kind of dedication that brings in the awards year after year: ITV viewers’ Community Service Award three years running, Senior Citizen’s ‘We’re Fighting Crime’ special award for five years on the trot, Senior Ladies’ Circle best programme award. This is the cutting edge, but we mustn’t get complacent. Oh no – we need to continue with the good work, we must track these con men down, sniff them out wherever they’re hiding. We have a duty to the people of this country.’ Robbie allowed himself the ghost of a smile and turned up the Winston Churchill just a smidgen. He pulled himself up to his full five-foot-two-and-a-half
inches while holding tight to his lapel and tucking his elbow firmly into his side in his favourite ‘leader of men’ stance. Shame they weren’t filming him, really.

Lesley nodded enthusiastically – Robbie thought for one glorious moment she might actually burst into spontaneous applause, but no, she just blushed furiously and pushed her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose with her index finger. It was an endearing little habit Lesley had, and sometimes when they were in bed together he noticed that she would do it even though she hadn’t got her glasses on and would then giggle self-consciously. Robbie smiled indulgently for a few seconds, coming over all soft and sentimental; what a precious little thing she was.

Lesley understood of course that Robbie would never leave his wife for her: he’d made that perfectly plain right from the very start. Robbie had decided that Lesley probably saw herself as the latest in a long line of valiant, self-sacrificing, much-overlooked women who attempted to sleep their way to the top and eventually settled for a place in the shadow of great men. The wind beneath his wings. Not that someone like Lesley was actually destined for the top, but even so he wasn’t the sort of man to disillusion a girl, particularly not one who was a natural blonde and so pleasantly perky and eager to please. No, Robbie Hughes was genuinely fond of Lesley, and she
hadn’t said a word nor batted an eyelid when he’d slipped on her tights one night after work and suggested she might like to let him try on her shoes some time. Oh yes, as a personal assistant Lesley was perfect in lots of ways.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked, as he opened up the first of the files. ‘It might help us to concentrate?’

‘Thanks, but no thanks. Not really a good idea, Lesley, not with my prostrate the way it is, I’d be up and down all night, but you have one by all means. We’re both in for a long hard session.’

She giggled although Robbie decided not to pick up on the double entendre; it wouldn’t do for them to get distracted when there was work to be done.

‘How about a mug of Cup-a-Soup instead, then?’ she suggested, padding over to the side table where the kettle, mugs and drinks were kept.

Robbie nodded, all the while surveying the notes he had piled on his desk. ‘Why not. I’ll have one of the ones with croutons. Now what we have to do is to imagine that we are big game hunters, Lesley. It’s important to understand our quarry if we stand any chance of catching him. So how do we find this man – where do we start?’ It was a rhetorical question and one that Robbie would try and work into the commentary if they ever managed to track Bernie Fielding to earth.

‘Let’s start with what we know, shall we? How about his background, his family?’

Waiting for the kettle to boil, Lesley gazed up at the ceiling and recited from memory, ‘Born 1952 to Shirley Elizabeth Fielding. His father Ernest Charles left when Bernard was just four years old, under a cloud of suspicion about his relationship with Lily Smith from the chip shop, to name just one of his numerous liaisons, and the whereabouts of the Glee Club Christmas money. Bernie left school at fifteen and has had various jobs since, including working on a market stall, delivery driver for
Sunblessed
, taxi driver and window cleaner – although he likes to tell people he was a paramedic in the Army or served undercover in the SAS. In 1972 he opened his first shop, importing cheap electrical goods, and he has been married twice; to Doreen Jean Parker in 1972, and in 1982 to Margaret Ann Morgan. Divorced twice, 1980 and 1990, a string of lovers and live-in girlfriends in between and on occasions at the same time, no children – or at least none that he pays maintenance for.’

Thoughtfully, Lesley stirred a heaped teaspoon of Nescafé into her mug, although her attention still seemed to be focused somewhere in the middle of the office ceiling. It disturbed Robbie a bit when she looked like that; it was as if Lesley could see something that he couldn’t, and then she turned and said thoughtfully, ‘You know, Robbie, if I’d have been married to Bernie Fielding I’d jump at the chance to stitch him up, once and for all. I
mean I can’t see him playing straight with his wives any more than he did with any of the other punters.’

Robbie nodded. Lesley had picked up a certain streetwise patois since working at
Gotcha
, a little at odds with her nicely clipped Home Counties accent. She hadn’t quite got a real grasp of mockney yet but Robbie noticed with some pride that she was really giving it her best shot.

‘So you think we should start with his ex-wives, do you?’ he said hesitantly. It sounded a bit too close to home.

She nodded. ‘Uh huh, and previous lovers. I’ll go right back to the beginning, that way we won’t miss any potential leads; we’ve got lots of his old addresses on file. I’ll chase up all the Fieldings as well. I’ve got a copy of the electoral roll on the computer –’

Lesley handed him a mug of Cup-a-Soup and as she did Robbie engineered it so their fingertips touched for just an instant. She blushed deliciously, giggled and went to pick up another of the files.

‘It’s a real shame that we haven’t got a decent photo of him,’ she said, although Robbie could see that her mind – like his – had at least momentarily moved away from Bernie Fielding and onto something more carnal, more pressing, more immediate. They both knew that moral support wasn’t the only thing that Lesley had stayed behind for.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ he said in a low purr.

Eyes glittering like a feral cat, Robbie took the file out of her chubby little fingers and set it down alongside her coffee. A grainy press cutting of Bernie Fielding’s second marriage to some poor unsuspecting girl in Norfolk slipped out onto the desk top. The dots that made up the image were so blurred that it looked as if a giant hat was marrying an Afro with a Mexican bandito moustache. The clipping fluttered with surprising grace into the puddle around the bottom of Robbie’s mug and sucked up the liquid like a parched man, tinting the bride and groom a not unattractive sunbed beige.

Not that Robbie took a lot of notice. If they were going to pull an all-nighter what was half an hour between friends on the office couch? He picked up his digital camera from the desk and pointed it at her. ‘How about I get a few good close-up shots of you for the album?’ he purred, in what he liked to think was a deep, seductive tone.

‘Oh Robbie,’ Lesley giggled furiously as he leant closer and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. As she wriggled like a fish, he pulled her down onto his lap.

‘You are such an animal,’ she gasped, as Robbie focused the camera on her cleavage.

‘Why don’t you take the rest of your clothes off,’ he said. ‘Get yourself nice and comfortable?’

Lesley put her hand over the lens, while with the other hand she tried to undo his trousers. ‘No publicity,’ she whispered thickly as the buckle gave way.

In the small but snug sitting room of a residential caravan at the back of the Old Dairy in Renham, Stella Conker-eyes had pulled off a miracle comparable only to the raising of Lazarus; and so far she had managed it twice. Although it would have been a considerably more erotic encounter if she hadn’t cried the first time and kept telling Bernie what a dear, sweet man he was.

Not that Bernie had too many problems with the idea of being a charity case in this particular instance, although when she managed it a third time even he was surprised.

Holding her tight up against him in case she stopped her ministrations, Bernie said, ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this – this relaxed and happy, Stella. It’s been a fantastic evening. You have no idea how good it’s been –’

‘Oh James,’ she whispered thickly.

Bernie froze for an instant, feeling as if he had caught her out in some act of betrayal until it struck him that he was, of course, now James Cook. He really had to get used to the idea, before his face gave him away, although fortunately for him, Stella wasn’t looking at his face at that particular moment.

On the drive home from the pub he had floated the idea of dropping in for a coffee.

‘Oh all right, then,’ Stella said with a giggle. ‘If you insist.’

Bernie, who, as he was driving had only had a pint of bitter and then gone on to orange juice and was as sober as a Methodist Minister, smiled. ‘Your place or mine?’

‘It’d better be yours. Mum will probably still be up. She’s a very light sleeper – get’s a lot of gyp with her back and her sciatica and her waterworks – and besides there’s the two West Highland whites, Nancy and Ronald, and that bloody parrot of hers. The row them three make if she isn’t awake when we get in she soon will be.’

Bernie nodded and turned off towards the caravan site. The night was dark and warm, the wind rustling through the treetops like indolent fingers.

‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like animals,’ Stella was saying, her speech slurred with drink, ‘but them bloody little dogs make such a row, yap-yap-yapping, and the parrot is so messy, seed and bits everywhere. No, as soon Mum passes away, God bless her, or goes into a home, they’ll have to go.’

Bernie nodded. He knew better than to interrupt a woman when she was rambling. ‘Okay,’ he said when he was certain that she’d finished. ‘Although I have to warn you that the caravan’s
a bit of a mess at the moment, but at least it’s nice and quiet and it is only temporary.’

Stella looked at him slyly and said that she quite understood that it was only temporary, and no, she didn’t mind the mess at all. No, really. It was fine, after all things would be different when he got his new house, wouldn’t they? Maybe she could drop by with a copy of the local paper later in the week; they had a big pull-out housing section at the back and she had always liked house-hunting.

So here they were, stretched out half-naked on the hearth rug in front of the gas fire, in the wee small hours. Stella moaned softly and crept up towards him.

‘Would you like to go to bed, James, only I’m getting terrible carpet burns on my knees.’

Bernie did his best to look tender and serene, although he did wonder just how much she could see without her glasses. ‘You know, Stella, this really is the best evening I’ve had in – in –’ he began, wondering what constituted a suitable measure of time.

Fortunately he was saved by Stella pressing her fingertips tightly to his lips. ‘Don’t. It’s perfectly all right. There really is no need to say anything, James,’ she murmured in a low throaty mewl. ‘Let’s not dwell on the past, this is not the time. Why don’t we just go to bed instead?’