Nils scanned the crowded pub.
We were the only men who were not in the white coats of Smithfield meat market. And there were only men in here.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said.
‘This makes your trouble go away,’ I said. ‘Have a drink. You need a drink.’
His hands were trembling.
He took a nervous gulp of his beer. And then he began to talk.
‘I was making a delivery,’ he said. ‘Alprazolam.’
I felt my stomach fall away.
‘It calms you down,’ he said. ‘It calms you right down. Sometimes it calms you down so far that you might never get up again.’
‘I know what it does, Nils.’
‘No need to snap at me, Max.’
If you wanted to keep someone quiet and pliant then you would feed them Alprazolam, available under the trade name Xanax, among others. Alprazolam belongs to a class of medications called benzodiazepines which produce an intensely calming effect on the central nervous system without inducing any feeling of euphoria. No real high, but it knocks you right out, working on the brain and nerves to melt away feelings of anxiety and panic disorders.
No matter what is being done to you.
It is highly addictive.
‘So you’re dealing now, Nils?’
‘I wish,’ he said. ‘I’m just a delivery boy.’
‘So who are you delivering for, Nils?
‘Somalian drug dealers from Dagenham who will break both my legs if I give them up to the law. But do you want some low-level dealers or this woman who was taken?’
We both knew the answer.
‘Where?’
‘Belgravia,’ he said. ‘Eaton Square.’
I pictured the beautiful white stucco-fronted houses of London’s most exclusive square.
‘One of those big gaffs that are left unoccupied for years by some rich thieving bastard who robbed his own people back in the old country,’ Nils said.
I must have looked sceptical.
‘They’re not using all of the house,’ he said. ‘Just the basement. The rest of the place is locked up. From the street, it looks like one more oligarch’s holiday home. I made the delivery at the tradesmen’s entrance. You know those big houses in Belgravia have still got tradesmen’s entrances, some of them? As though we were living in ye olde Victorian days where the workers come around flogging their strawberries and fish every morning. Sharpening your knives and so on.’
‘Get on with it, Nils.’
‘You’ve been very short with me lately. The tradesmen’s entrance is at the side of the building. You can’t see it from the street. The order was for five hundred two-milligram pills at a tenner a time, delivered in an Amazon package. Guy I’ve never seen before gave me five grand in new fifties in an unsealed, unmarked brown envelope. I did the count, sealed the envelope and went away.’
‘And what are they doing in there?’
He looked around the pub. ‘What do you call it? Fantasy enactment. That’s my guess, Max. Fantasy enactment – where you get to live the dream. Whatever the dream might be. Now, my problem,’ he said, moving on to what I could do for him, ‘is that I have this uniform at New Scotland Yard who has taken a real dislike to me. If you could have a word, get him to take a step back, tell him that I am your highly valued CI …’
I stood up and took his beer from his hand.
‘Where we going, Max?’
‘Belgravia,’ I said. ‘Take me to this place.’
We drove across town and then slowly cruised the vast expanse of Eaton Square. Nils squinted uncertainly at the pristine rows of white five-storey buildings. Many of the houses appeared to be shuttered for the summer or for longer. The only sign of life was the odd uniformed doorman.
‘I know it was definitely Eaton Square,’ Nils said. ‘And it had the – you know – the tradesmen’s entrance down the side of the building …’
‘You weren’t given the address?’
‘I was driven. Did a few deliveries around town. And I remembered Eaton Square because – well – look at it. It’s Eaton Square.’
Nils was right. Eaton Square was beautiful, like somewhere fancy in one of those old musicals where London is full of singing street traders asking who will buy this beautiful morning?
But Eaton Square is huge, far more like a highly exclusive neighbourhood than anything resembling a square. The residential gardens that occupy its leafy centre are so large that they are crossed by two side streets and have the King’s Road running right through the middle. And although we circled so many times the uniformed doormen were noting my registration plate, Eaton Square kept its secrets.
‘Were you stoned when you came here, Nils?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘Although I might have had a Xanax just to calm my nerves.’
‘And who were they? This crew you saw?’
‘They looked like Albanians.’
‘How do you know they were Albanians?’
‘I know what Albanians look like, don’t I? They’re just – you know – Albanian-looking.’
‘You go inside?’
‘No.’
‘How many of them in there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are they armed?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know very much, do you, Nils?’
He shrugged.
I stared around the vast expanse of Eaton Square. Then I looked at Nils’ beaky, drug-ravaged face in the half-light of my car.
And I believed him.
‘This place you went to,’ I said. ‘What makes you think they have Jessica Lyle in there?’
‘Because I could hear a woman screaming,’ he said.