D-Notice by Bill Walker (big ebook reader txt) 📗

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want to alarm you. I didn’t think they would follow me here.”

“Erika, who are they?”

The night had turned colder, and a mist had begun forming on the ground. Michael helped her to her feet and then put his jacket around her shoulders. She leaned against him, shock and exhaustion finally taking their toll.

“My father had enemies,” she said finally, her eyes focused on a point far in the distance, “competitors who will stop at nothing to gain control of what is now my company.”

“Including murder?”

Erika said nothing, not sure if she could trust him, even after all they had been through. What would he say if he knew the whole truth? Would he still be willing to help her, or would he walk away?

“The pub I mentioned isn’t far from here,” Michael offered. “About a mile and a half. We’ll hike there and hire a cab to take us into town. I suggest we take a room at a hotel for the night. They might be watching my flat.”

“But surely they think we’re dead....”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t think they’re that easily satisfied. At best, your little deception has bought us some time. Eventually, possibly tomorrow if they check the car again, they’ll know they’ve been had. In the meantime, we need to find out what my father left for me. Perhaps then we’ll be able to make some sense of all this.”

Leaning on each other, they hobbled back to the road and headed off toward the pub.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was after one in the morning by the time they checked into the modest-looking hotel in East London.

“No one will look for us in a place like this,” Erika said.

She was right. The hotel lobby looked tired and threadbare around the edges, like a child’s once-favorite toy now relegated to the back of a closet. Cheap red carpeting dotted with dark oily stains, clashed with vomit-green walls and furniture covered in orange and black leatherette upholstery. The whole effect was of a room in some hideous corner of America’s heartland—the furthest thing from London’s East End. The only giveaway was a framed portrait of the queen staring sternly down from her perch on the wall above the soot-stained mantel.

After paying in cash, Michael and Erika trudged up to their room, the manager dogging their heels. A gnomish man of indeterminate age, he babbled in his thick Birmingham accent, pointing out various aspects of the hotel. A moment later, he was gone, his admonishment not to play the television after nine fading down the hall.

“Bloody depressing,” Michael said, wiping his finger along the top of the dresser. It came away smudged with grime.

“You’ve obviously never been to Berlin. There are places even a rat wouldn’t live in.” Erika stripped off her blouse, revealing a frilly lace bra, her generous breasts threatening to spill out of the cups. “I’m going to take a bath.”

She walked past Michael, her heady fragrance filling his nostrils. A flush of heat rose up from his collar.

Bloody Christ!

“Uhh, fine.... I’ll check the message machine at my flat.”

Erika nodded wearily and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later the sound of the water splashing into the tub filled the room. Shaking his head, Michael went over to the bed and sat down, reaching for the phone that sat on the battered nightstand. He grimaced when he noticed the rubbed-in filth on the ear- and mouthpieces. Wiping them off on the bedspread he dialed his number.

“Hello, you’ve reached Michael’s answering machine. Though I’m not at home, you may leave a message after you hear the tone. Cheerio!”

It sounded insipid now that he heard it as others did. He made a mental note to change it when he got home—if he ever did. And the bit about not being home, a bloody invitation to any thief who cased by phone.

The machine beeped and Michael punched in his three-digit code. He heard the machine click and the message tape rewinding. Three seconds later the first message played back: “Michael, it’s mother, I’m sorry again about what happened. Please call me when you get back. I think we need to talk.”

The machine beeped and then the second message played: “Michael! Where the bloody hell are you? Everything’s all mucked up. Call me as soon as you get home.”

He listened for a few minutes more then hung up when he realized there were no more messages. He would call his mother back and apologize. It was the right thing to do, after all. But she could wait. Ferguson was another matter. Picking up the phone, he dialed again.

Ferguson leapt for the phone when it rang, knocking it off the table. Cursing, he snatched it up and put it to his ear, suddenly nervous.

“H—hello?”

“Hi, John, it’s Michael.”

Ferguson rocketed to his feet and began pacing, the ratty robe flapping open as he walked. “Dear God, man, where have you been? I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“I’d rather not go into it. What’s the problem, someone misplace a grave?”

Ferguson rolled his eyes. “You know, Michael, sometimes you’re a real shit. I’ve just spent the last five hours sitting under a bleedin’ hot light answering the same damn questions over and over again. Christ! It was like something out of a bad Yank movie. We opened a real can of worms, mate.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence. “What are you talking about?”

Ferguson’s motions became more frantic. “What the fuck do you think? The bloody South Wessex crap. There’s a D-notice on that! These wankers aren’t fucking around.”

“Who? Special Branch?”

“MI-bloody-Six! They kept asking