The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4) Page 11

  The young lady wasn’t showing any, either.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, duckie. Come on in …”

  … said Melanie.

  “Lor lummy,” Jackson said, his pupils glued to the binocular lenses like those of an ornithologist in pursuit of the rare and exotic Needlebeaked Nellybird, “He isn’t … He hasn’t … Cor stap me sideways.” Jackson was surprised all right, all right.

  “I don’t know if … Perhaps I should have telephoned.”

  “Yeah, they do sometimes. But it don’t much matter,” the young lady said. “Jus’ so ’appens I’m free like, for the moment.”

  “Er, free like?” Dobie, peering again to left and right, was even more than before a prey to a certain perplexity. “You see, I was wondering—”

  “Free in a manner of speakin’.”

  “Ah,” Dobie said. “What I was wondering—”

  “Uvverwise it’s one ninety five, okay? Two fifty the tradesman’s entrance an’ anyfing else strikes your fancy, that’ll be extra.” The young lady was wearing, Dobie observed, a chic zip-up outfit in shiny black leather, the zip-up of which was zipped-down almost as far as her crotch, which in fact was where the outfit ended; not at all a secretarial sort of a … Or wait now. Hold it. Correction. The young lady had been wearing a chic zip-up outfit which now appeared, however, to be lying on the floor, how had she managed that? All in one movement. Quite extraordinary. “Oo sent you along ’ere, luv? That Tony, I suppose.”

  Tony? “Er … No. I don’t know anyone called Tony.”

  “One of my nonnymous clients, then, I ’spect. Some of ’em are funny that way.” She had a south-of-the-river accent that would have made Oliver Smirk sound like Mrs Miniver, but it wasn’t her accent that was chiefly occupying Dobie’s attention at that moment, since she now appeared to be wearing only a pair of briefs so spectacularly abbreviated as hardly to constitute bfs and was, moreover, as he couldn’t help but notice, now loosening his tie with long prehensile fingers, clearly by way of preparation for removing it altogether. This was something that Kate did on occasion, when she was feeling even more than ordinarily randy, and often enough would then proceed to undo the buttons of … Good God. So was she. Dobie started back like a stricken deer, seriously alarmed. The young lady at last showed a certain mild surprise at this and even mild disapproval. “C’mon then, tiger. Get yer trahziz off.”

  “But I don’t want to take my trahziz off.”

  “You mean … you want to keep them on?” The young lady’s large blue eyes widened appreciatively. “Hey, that’s kind of oridge-inal. I mean, it’s okay by me, but you shoulda told me.”

  Dobie, glancing wild-eyed around him, now perceived that he was being balefully regarded by a large blue velvet teddy bear. This creature was perched on the pillow of a large double bed which occupied the greater part of the far corner of the room and which could by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as any kind of an office accoutrement. Dobie’s imagination was unaccustomed to being stretched, except in mathematical directions, but his memory was in good working nick and he had a clear recollection of having found himself in a somewhat similar situation some years ago in Vienna … or if not clear, then understandably hazy … but what was clear, anyway, was that some misunderstanding had arisen which should at once be put right so that he and this young lady could have a good laugh about it together. “You see, I … I thought you were from the Hog, I mean from Codron Corp.”

  “Wot? Me? … No. I’m from the Elephant.”

  “Wot?”

  “Never mind all that. Doncha want an ’ump?”

  An ’ump? … Dobie was now totally bewildered. Elephants didn’t ave ’umps. Camels did. And also … what was it? … cassowaries. No, not cassowaries. Dromedaries. “Maybe,” Melanie said, breaking into his line of thought, “it was Gert you wanted.”

  “Gert? Gert?”

  “She’s Indonesian reelly, mind. Yeah, she’d do you some nice ’ot sauces. But she’s tied up right now. In a manner of speakin’.”

  “No.” Dobie was growing desperate. Camels, elephants, teddy bears, what was this? … “It’s a man I’m after. I mean, I want a man, if you take my drift.”

  “Ah,” the young lady said again, her gaze becoming distant. “Gave you the wrong number, then, an’ no bleedin’ error. Course, if I was you—”

  “No, no, no.” Dobie tore his wallet from his hip pocket, causing the young lady’s eyes once more to brighten slightly, and cascaded folded sheets of notepaper onto the occasional table immediately adjacent. “Got it here somewhere. Yes. No. Yes. Here. Look. That’s the bloke. Codron Corp. It says—”

  “’Im.”

  “Yes. ’Im. Or rather … You know him?”

  “Sure. That’s ’im upstairs.”

  Dobie’s eyes rose skywards, as though in search of some inadvertently invoked minor deity who might be about to hurl a thunderbolt in their direction. “Upstairs?”

  “Do I know ’im? That’s a good ’un.” Baring that limited part of her upper thigh that hadn’t been bared already and cocking her knee outwards to offer it for Dobie’s inspection. Dobie’s eyes directed their gaze downwards even faster than they had previously rolled upwards and took on a certain fixed expression as of one who has entered hypercoma. “’Ad ’im down ’ere this afternoon. Din’t arf give me a workout. All them aerobatics you see on the telly is nuffin to it, believe you me. Or lookit them bruises if you don’t.”

  “But … But … But …”

  “Nasty bit o’ work ’e is. Less you ’as to do with ’im the better if you want my opinion. ’E’s a Nungarian or somefing like that.”

  This, if true, was strange. And those bruises certainly did appear to be … But more in Kate’s line than mine, Dobie swiftly decided. Blinking, he averted his gaze. “Well, you see, it’s as I thought. I seem to have mistaken the, er …”

  “No ’arm done. Though in ’is case it weren’t for want of tryin’. Would ’e be expectin’ you, like?”

  “Well, I’m not quite sure. You see, Kate … or more exactly Kate’s husband …”

  “’Ang on a mo.”

  Making another minimal adjustment to the tanga panties that had earlier excited Wallace’s approbation, Melanie plonked herself down in an armchair, crossed her legs (thereby causing Dobie to emit a faint whinnying snort like that of a steeplechaser narrowly failing to clear Becher’s Brook) and picked up the telephone. She spoke to this instrument briefly and cogently, addressing her remarks, Dobie couldn’t help but note, to someone called Nicky. She then replaced it on the cradle and said,

  “’Is Nibs can’t see you now, any road, on account of ’e ’as a previous engagement. So there you go.”

  “Oh well,” Dobie said. “Perhaps I should have … And in any case I ought to apologise for this little contretemps. I’m afraid I didn’t …”

  “Contra wot?”

  “This little, er … misunderstanding …”

  “Ow, that’s all right,” Melanie said, rising to her feet again. “’Ow would you fancy a nice cuppa tea? … ’Cos I’d settle for that myself, any day of the week.”

  “Oh, indeed yes,” Dobie said. “So would I.”

  “… Wallace?”

  “Sir?”

  “What’s he up to?”

  “Looks like they’re having a nice cup of tea, sir. An’ chocklit biscuits.”

  Wallace’s tones were unmistakeably injured. After a pause, Jackson also sighed.

  “Has this strange power over women, does Mr Dobie. Chocolate biscuits? … How does he do it? … Blest if I know.”

  Primrose was also perturbed.

  Not, of course, because he was aware that Dobie the hit-man was at that moment consuming the products of Messrs McVitie and Price almost directly under his feet. He wasn’t. Nor, for that matter, because he knew that a high-powered combined force of the uniformed and Special Branches were discreetly surveying the comings-and-goings of Dobie (and others) from a vantage-
point across the street. He didn’t. Nor, perhaps, would knowledge of this have distressed him greatly. Other and more important factors were also involved. Intangibles. Primrose was a dealer in tangibles … In cocaine and its derivatives, to be precise. He didn’t like intangibles.

  They perturbed him.

  Drug dealing nowadays is, after all, a business like any other. Transactions are not conducted clandestinely in deserted parking lots between dark-suited gentlemen carrying hefty brief-cases, these being loaded respectively with the hard stuff in plastic bags and with oodles and oodles of lolly; they do it that way on the TV, certainly, but that’s only to make it more exciting. No, the business gets done in offices, like any other. In Primrose’s offices, concretely; he wouldn’t have pursued his objectives anywhere else. And doing business in an office naturally implies paperwork. Documentation. At some point in time, certainly, a number of wooden packing cases might have to be moved from one warehouse to another; dates and terms of delivery would accordingly be negotiated. Sure. As would the dates and terms of payment. Which might in some cases involve the raising of a loan from a friendly commercial banker (unless your company owned a bank, which as yet the Stainers didn’t) who would provide the necessary guarantees with regard to the honouring of your draft or who might alternatively arrange an appropriate payment into a numbered Liechtenstein bank account (Swiss accounts being now regarded as somewhat fuddy-duddy and untrendy). Corroboration may be further required from an independent auditor. As a fully paid-up member of the Great Capitalist Conspiracy, Primrose was well experienced in the making of all these arrangements, which of course were primarily designed to reduce the risks of investment for all concerned. A drugs bust that involves the seizure of a greater or lesser amount of your actual hoppity-juice is a low-level bust indeed; it’s the documentation that the fuzz and the Customs and Excise boys are always hoping to grab. The computer entries, the bank drafts, the laundry bills, stuff like that. Primrose liked to think that he took the proper precautions; that, again, wasn’t the cause of his present perturbation. No.

  It was hard to put your finger on it, really.

  … Except that all transactions in his line of business, as in any other, necessarily invoked some kind of shift in the balance of power. It was all getting to be very, very competitive. And that was the factor, more than any other, which occasioned the need for secrecy. Not the illegality. Heavens, no. That was a mere incidental. But when the transaction represented in essence some form of take-over bid, a raid or excursion into some other recognised practitioner’s territory, then you had to be very careful indeed. Careful to see that nothing could Go Wrong. Because if something did Go Wrong …

  Primrose sighed and ran his fingers through his prematurely thinning hair. You didn’t go bankrupt. You got dead. Or someone else did. The second alternative was unquestionably the more attractive, but was still less than satisfactory because then your turn might be next. The Middle East boys had always been strong on the eye-for-an-eye stuff and now that the Triads were moving in … The Stainers were supposed to have some pull in those circles but Primrose didn’t know much about that and didn’t want to. He was a skilled performer on the tightrope but if someone starts sawing through one end when you’re halfway across it’s better not to know because there’s bugger-all you can do about it from where you’re standing. And no safety nets, of course. You take that for granted.

  Sometimes you’re tempted …

  Ah.

  He picked up his ballpoint and wrote down numbers on a piece of paper as the door opened.

  “Mr Coyle’s here, sir,” Nicky said.

  “You gone him over?”

  Nicky was familiar with Primrose’s idiosyncrasies of expression. “Yessir. He’s clean.”

  “Checked his bag?”

  “He’s not got a bag.”

  “No bag? Then what’s he …? Orright then. Send him in.”

  “Yessir,” Nicky said.

  As the door closed behind him Primrose slid open the top drawer of his desk and reached inside to slide back the safety catch of the Beretta conveniently placed therein. Can’t be too careful, he told himself again. Better to be safe than sorry, as they used to say in Bratislava.

  Not that he made a practice of feeling sorry for anything or anyone. You lost your sense of balance that way. He slid the desk drawer half-shut as someone tapped gently on the door, tock tock tock, pressing at the same time the button activating the tape-recorder cunningly concealed in the desk’s inner recesses. “Yeh yeh, come on in,” Primrose said. George Stainer wouldn’t have approved of the gun or of the tape-recorder, either, but things didn’t always have to be done the way Stainer wanted and in fact hardly ever were.

  The man who was now entering his office he recognised immediately not so much as a man but as a type – a type, moreover, with which he was wearisomely familiar. The soldier of fortune type, Coyle himself would no doubt have said, meaning a mercenary who hoped one of these days to get lucky but conveying that meaning in a more personally flattering way. It wasn’t the element of self-deceit that Primrose invariably found objectionable but the fact that, in his experience, these types tended to take unnecessary risks in order to bolster their self-esteem and so sooner or later came monumental croppers in the process. “Ugh,” Primrose said, by way of expressing his feelings. He was not given to the social niceties in any case, least of all on these occasions. “Don’t know you, do I?” He flapped a hand in the general direction of the chair on the opposite side of his desk and his visitor, seemingly accustomed to this sort of a reception, seated himself thereupon with some aplomb. “Remarkably hot this evening,” his visitor observed.

  “You’d get usta hot wevver out there on the Gulf, I’da thought.”

  “Oh well, I haven’t been in those parts for some little time. What with one thing and—”

  “Not come here to talk about the fuggin wevver though, have you? You got something to show me, go ahead and show it. Where’s the doings?”

  “You mean the, er —”

  “The shit, man, the shit. I’m not talking about your dingaling. You got no samples, you got no deal.” Making his point, Kevin felt, with unnecessary emphasis. “Could be you got no deal anyway if I don’t like your style, which in fact I don’t. I don’t go a bundle on the al Halimis, either. They run the stuff a lot too close to the water to my way of thinking.”

  “Fuck you too, then,” Kevin said, seeking to maintain the cordial tone of this interchange. “There are other buyers around if you want out. All I got to do—”

  “Okay, but you’re here now, arncha? You got the powder, lemme check it out an’ get it tested. I mean, where’s the point in wasting my time with all this chitchat? Time is money, din’t no one ever tell you that?”

  “Yes. My wife used to tell me that. She’ll be bringing it along, since you ask.”

  “Your …?”

  “Of course she doesn’t know she’s bringing it round. It’s sewn into the lining of a travel bag. Soon as she gets here—”

  “When’ll that be?”

  “Oh, any time now.”

  Primrose was silent for a moment. Coyle, he was thinking, had maybe been working with the Arabs a little too long. He appeared to have hit upon a variant of that ingenious plan wherein you request your girl friend to carry an electronically-timed infernal machine aboard that aircraft whose passengers, in your considered opinion, merit immolation; not, of course, that his visitor intended his wife, whoever she was, to suffer such a fate, but it had clearly been his intention to ensure that if anyone got nabbed while toting packs of the big C around Cardiff, it wouldn’t be him. Yes, Primrose could see his point. But,

  “She’s not bringing the stuff up here, I can tell you that.”

  “No, no. I’ll pick up the bag myself when she gets here.”

  “And how you gunna know when she gets here?”

  “I’ll know,” Kevin said with some outward show of patience, “because she’ll be leaving
her car in the garage car park and I can see the parking spaces from here. Through that window.”

  “Ah.” Primrose glanced towards the office window at his right hand, which indeed had been left wide open in the hope that a nice cool evening breeze might sooner or later alleviate the sticky heat of the day. No such breeze had as yet put in an appearance, which was too bad. “Got it all worked out then, aincher?”

  “Always wise to do so, don’t you think?”

  “What she like?”

  “Eh?”

  “What she look like? Your wife?”

  “Oh, tallish, dark hair, good legs … I’ll know her when I see her, don’t you worry.”

  “What? Me worry? Now why should I do that? … What’s she wearing?”

  “As to that, not knowing, can’t say.”

  Primrose snorted and, rising abruptly to his feet, stomped over to the outer office where Guffin was diligently carrying out his secretarial duties with the aid of a pornographic magazine and a magnifying glass. These he hastily put away as his employer emerged from his private fastness. “Get down to the main entrance,” his employer instructed him. “And lissena me. Tall dark-hair chick gunna park the wheels cross the road, gunna come over carrying a bag. You make sure she ain’t got a tail. An’ if you reckon she has, you don’ letter in. Got the message?”