The front door slammed shut and he heard Gunner’s footsteps pound down the path towards the street. He grabbed his jacket and followed him outside. It was cold, the sky a deep iron grey, rain threatening. He put on his jacket and peered around the hedge. Gunner was nearly at the end of the road, walking fast. From a distance, it looked as though he was wearing a suit. Adam followed, ready to dip into a gateway if his quarry looked around. At the corner of Kensington Church Street, Gunner stopped, scanned both ends of the road, and a moment later stuck his hand in the air to hail a cab.
As he climbed in and drove off, Adam ran to the end of the street and did the same.
‘Follow the cab in front,’ he said, jumping in and slamming the door. It was such a cliché but he didn’t know what else to say. ‘I’ll give you double money if you don’t lose it, but I don’t want them to know. OK?’
‘No problem,’ the cabbie said flatly, as though used to such instructions.
The drive took them along the Bayswater Road and into Hyde Park. It looked as though Gunner was heading into town. Adam hadn’t seen him in a suit before and wondered if he was going to an interview. In the few days Gunner had been staying at the house, he appeared to have no regular routine, going out and coming back at unpredictable times. He also appeared to be an insomniac, habitually making noisy forays down to the kitchen in the middle of the night. He certainly didn’t seem to have a regular job.
The traffic slowed considerably as they negotiated Park Lane and turned off into Mount Street and then into South Audley Street, Adam’s taxi now two cars behind. At the bottom, they turned right and, just before Grosvenor Square, Gunner’s taxi pulled up on the left-hand side.
‘What do you want me to do?’ The cabbie asked in a bored tone.
‘Drive past. Stop over there, behind that red car.’
Through the back window of the taxi Adam saw Gunner disappear into one of the houses. He paid the cabbie, waited a minute to make sure Gunner wasn’t coming straight out again, then walked back along the street to where he had last seen him. Behind the eighteenth-century façade was an office building, like the majority of the others in the street and surrounding area. He took a quick look through the window at the front, but all he could see was a dark, empty meeting room. A fish-eye security camera stared out above the brass entry plate, which was engraved with the initials G.R.M.A. He took a photo of the plate with his phone. Wondering what to do next, he spotted a café on the corner, just a block and a half away, with tables and chairs outside on the pavement. He made his way there and sat down, tucking himself away in a corner that was well screened from the road by some large tubs of laurel. Through a gap he had a clear view of the building Gunner had entered. He turned on the patio heater and ordered a latte. As the waitress went inside, she shouted out instructions in Polish to the man behind the bar, along with a rude remark about customers who were stupid enough to sit outside in the cold. Since joining the EU, Poles had taken over London and you couldn’t move without hearing their foul language being spoken. He understood the gist, having been brought up in London by his Polish grandparents who had insisted he speak Polish at home.
Using his phone, he googled the company acronym, along with the office address. It stood for Global Risk Management Associates, whatever that was. Keeping one eye on the street, he tabbed through the website menu. The company seemed to be mainly active in Africa and the Middle East, ‘protecting companies’ risks abroad’, according to the blurb, with particular focus on the oil industry. The phrases ‘security consulting’, ‘security solutions’ and ‘experts in multiple security disciplines’ appeared many times, as well as the strapline ‘G.R.M.A. helps its clients to make security an integral part of their business model.’ Along with sections on personal and business protection, the other main tab was headed ‘Kidnap, Ransom and Extortion,’ with a paragraph that referred to personnel having ‘backgrounds in the military and special forces’. He thought of Gunner’s physique, his tanned face and forearms, the tattoo of the crow and skull on his chest. It all made sense and it filled him with foreboding. What was he doing in Kit’s house? Was he really Kit’s lover? Or had he been sent there by somebody else?