Men in white overalls, hi-vis waistcoats and hard hats swarmed around the scaffolding, either looking busy but doing fuck-all or waffling into their mobile phones. I couldn’t be sure at this distance, but I’d bet they had a smile on their faces. They’d know an earner when they saw one.
I was about to clamber back down and go in search of a vantage-point at the rear when the phones suddenly disappeared in unison. It was like watching a well-rehearsed troop respond to a barked instruction on a parade ground. When I lowered the binos, I saw why.
A very smartly dressed woman – cream blouse, leopard-print pencil skirt – had just emerged from the front door. She flicked her shiny black hair over her shoulder and made her way across to inspect their work. Lyubova had broken cover. It was obviously still too early for her to be flashing the diamonds and rubies, but no one was in any doubt about who was calling the shots.
She waved her arms around and gave them shit until they started doing whatever they should be doing at warp speed. Then she turned on her no doubt very expensive designer heel and went back inside.
I stayed where I was, half hoping she’d decide to take a trip into town. She wasn’t about to wander into the local Spar, even if there was one, and I doubted that she’d wander about on her own, but I reckoned it might be easier to lift her outside the estate rather than in it.
I gave half a thought to the kid in the boot of my wagon, then dismissed it. The breeze off the water was still cool enough to give me goosebumps so he wouldn’t be baking yet. Besides, hard routine was hard routine. He knew that. And I wasn’t his nanny.
An hour later a couple more visitors arrived.
The first wagon through the gates was an Audi Q5. The second was a Maserati. They’d obviously travelled in convoy. I didn’t need to check their registration numbers against the ones I had in my Moleskine. Hesco and Dijani were paying the ex-Mrs Timis a visit. And, judging by their extremely cheery greeting, they hadn’t come simply to offer a grieving widow their condolences.
Mr Lover Man’s message had just become very clear indeed.
After she’d ushered them inside, I focused the binos on the white vans. This time, I did bring out the Moleskine and the UZI, and scrawled the name, contact details and website address of every contractor within reach.
More minutes ticked by. When Hesco and Dijani showed no sign of leaving, I climbed down and went back to the wagon. Whatever they were discussing over coffee and biscuits, I was now absolutely certain that there was a whole lot more to Frank’s death than revenge for his infidelity.
6
For the first time since we’d started doing this shit, Stefan didn’t seem too happy about his morning in the boot of the wagon. I rewarded him with an extra-large takeaway sausage, a roll and a bottle of Coke, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to his mood.
We sat in the parking area alongside a greasy spoon on the main back to St Gallen while I got a big frothy coffee down my neck and he ate. When one mouthful started to feel like it was going to last for ever, I gripped him. ‘OK, what’s the problem?’
He concentrated very hard on the next bit of sausage. ‘You’re hoping to leave me with her, aren’t you?’
Fuck. I’d been focusing so much on keeping him in the dark that I’d let his imagination run wild. ‘Mate, I told you I won’t lie to you.’ I put down my coffee and gently lifted his chin. It wasn’t easy, but I finally got him to look me in the eye. ‘There was a moment when I thought a nice Swiss chateau might be what you needed. But after you told me what you told me, and now I know more about the woman, I’d rather sell you to the circus.’
What happened next was an amazing thing to watch. It was like I’d lifted the world’s heaviest Bergen off his shoulders and he’d become two feet taller. He gave me a mega candle-power smile and demolished the rest of the wurst in no time.
We didn’t hang around long after that. I was about to go into the decorating business, and time was money in that game.
The second cyber café on my list wasn’t that far from the first, but it always paid to ring the changes. Stefan cheered up a bit more when I steered him into an artists’ store a few doors down and said I needed his help on a new mission. When he asked me what sort of help, I told him to wait and see.
He wrinkled his brow when I bought a plain A4 pad, two soft pencils and a rubber. Then his eyes lit up as we stopped by a display case of folding Laguiole knives with bone handles and good-sized blades. The assistant spotted us and went into overdrive. Yes, they were expensive, but the quality … Every man should have one … You never knew when they would come in useful … You could take them on picnics … You could sharpen pencils with them … How could I resist?
I couldn’t. But not for the reasons he had in mind.
He beamed as I looped the leather sheath for mine on to my belt, and Stefan put his in his pocket.
The café was a bit more like a café this time around, so I ordered a coffee and a milkshake as well as Internet time. Me and Stefan pulled up our chairs in front of the monitor furthest from the till and I kicked off by googling the contractors’ names I’d taken down at my linden lookout point.
Only two of the outfits weren’t owned by Adler, and boasted about their independence. One of them went on for ever but seemed to be mostly about konstruktion. I chose the other. They called themselves Hochfliegend, and had the simplest logo – three thought bubbles: small, medium and large – and the simplest lettering.
‘Mate, what does that mean?’
‘Hochfliegend? Great Ideas.’
That explained the logo. I hoped what I’d planned turned out to be one of mine.
I pointed at the decal on the side panel of one of their Peugeot vans and handed Stefan the A4 pad and pencils. ‘Draw that, will you, mate? The company name, the address, everything except the contact numbers.’ I didn’t need some nosy fucker ringing Head Office to complain about my driving.
He looked at me as if I’d had another blow to the head. ‘This is our mission?’
‘Trust me. It’s important. I can’t draw for shit, and I remember you being pretty good with crayons and a paintbrush. I need the thought bubbles and the lettering to be as accurate as possible.’
He shrugged and got on with it. Out came the tip of his tongue and he wedged it between his teeth. I remembered him doing that when he was younger, and Frank had sat him down in front of yet another mountain of homework.
He went wrong once or twice and had to get busy with the rubber, but came up with the goods in twenty minutes flat. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a fucking sight better than I was ever going to be able to manage.
I picked up the sheet of paper and smiled. ‘Brilliant, mate. I should put you on hard routine more often.’ I folded it carefully, twice, and put it in my pocket. Then I motioned him towards a sofa on the other side of the room and told him to catch up on his Dostoevsky.
Next up was the search for a second-hand auto dealer. I couldn’t just head for the Hochfliegend depot and borrow one of their vans. The word would go out at warp speed, and I’d be fucked as soon as I arrived at Lyubova’s front gate, if not before.
I toyed with the idea of cruising around until I found a Peugeot Expert, then nicking it. But I needed to be in control of this. I didn’t want to put the shits up Stefan any more than I already had done. I didn’t want to get caught doing it. Or to feature on the canton police computer when I had done. Or to go to all that trouble and then discover it didn’t have a plywood-lined load space.