The check-in process for the inn involved one of the heavies with Court stepping behind the counter and pulling a set of keys off a shelf while the front desk clerk looked on silently, and seconds after that the three men began walking up a staircase. Court was led to a room at the end of a hall; the door was opened by the guy with the .45, while the other grabbed a chair by the tiny elevator door and dragged it over. Court entered his room, gave a nod to the men who led him there, then closed it, just as the one man sat down on the chair, facing the stairs and elevator.
Looking around the simple space, he realized the room had no balcony. There were two windows, one on either side of the bed, and while they weren’t large, they opened to the side. He peered outside and down the street, then stepped out onto the windowsill in a crouch.
He used a drainpipe to climb down to ground level and was clear of his two minders a minute and a half after they locked him in his room.
It took him another thirty to steal a locked Vespa scooter from behind a theater in the city center. As he putted off back in the direction of the pub, he wondered if he would end up stealing or commandeering every vehicle in the UK before this damn operation ended.
CHAPTER 20
Charlie Jones left his pub at nine, walked out to his Jaguar, and folded into the backseat. His driver and his bodyguard climbed into the front, and together the three men headed west through town, towards a restaurant Jones frequented.
It was only a ten-minute drive, and the crime boss spent the time on his phone, calling people who knew people in Southampton. He was determined to find out if one of Reggie Palace’s men was missing and, if so, if the man fit the general description of the man he’d met tonight.
Jones liked the thought of having a “dead” man working for him, untied to his syndicate, unaffiliated with his town. If this stranger checked out, Jones had decided he would give him the information about the bastard who’d set this up and see what he did with it; if the man did manage to pull off some sort of retribution for Jones’s dead crew, then Jones would want to talk to this fellow again.
There was always a need for a proxy asset in organized crime.
Charlie Jones and his bodyguard climbed out of the Jaguar at the entrance to the restaurant and stepped inside. As had been the case with the pub, the people at the restaurant knew him well. They kept a table for him, and he in turn watched out for them.
He was taken to his table in the back of the room, while his bodyguard took a stool at the bar—his regular perch—and ordered a soda water. The bodyguard faced the door, monitoring anyone who came in to see if they posed a threat to his protectee.
* * *
• • •
Jones’s driver stood outside by the Jag, smoking a cigarette and thumbing through text messages on his phone.
He didn’t hear anyone walk up behind him on the darkened pavement, so he was surprised when a voice coming from not three feet away said, “Hey, mate, got a light?”
The bodyguard spun his head around to the voice and straight into a vicious right jab to his face, knocking him out cold.
* * *
• • •
Court scooped up the man and dragged him quickly up onto the stoop in front of the carpet store. Once out of view from the restaurant on his right, he knelt over the man, reached into his coat, and fished around for a weapon. As had been the case with the heavy who’d escorted him to the inn, Court saw that the driver had a .45 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. And while the old 1911 model pistol wasn’t Court’s first choice for combat, it was certainly a supremely lethal and imposing weapon.
He pulled the pistol, jabbed it into his pants under his shirt, then headed around back to enter the restaurant from the kitchen.
* * *
• • •
Charlie Jones put down his mobile phone and fumed.
He’d spent the last ten minutes on a conference call between a friend in London and his contact in the employ of Reggie Palace, head of the Southampton criminal firm. This man claimed to have direct knowledge