“Didn’t you want an update on Bob?”
“He’s still in surgery, so he’s alive. For now.”
“You’re always such a ray of sunshine, Ishmael.”
“And you’re a pain in the arse. Some things do not change.”
Leo laughed. “I guess they don’t. “
Ishmael’s phone rang. He fished it out from his pocket and thumbed to accept the call. “Mmmhmmm. Thank you for calling.” He ended the call and glared straight ahead.
“Well?” asked Leo. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Plausible deniability.”
“Fuck that shit. Attorney-client privilege, then. Besides, we’ve been friends since the first day of boarding school. I’ve been helping you clean up the messes ever since.”
Ishmael turned to look at his friend. “True. Me, you, and then Ollie. Okay, fine. You want to know? Jamal found out the plates did not belong to the car they were on. The number was nicked off of a tractor in Essex.”
“And cloned onto a new plate. That’s an old trick.”
“Yes. But, one of the cameras caught one of the men in the car’s reflection in a shop window at a stoplight. He did his geek shit and got it clear enough to make out a face my men recognised. It was one of Marcus’s men that he brought to a meeting at my club. The same asshole who brought a gun into my club and then left it.”
Leo glanced at him sharply. “What did you do with it?”
“Ezra took it from him using a hanky and locked it in the safe. When they left without asking for their weapons back, we got even more suspicious, so I had him dispose of it. He dropped it into a box which was placed on my plane and then couriered to a contact of mine in Interpol. We knew it was likely to match ballistics in an unsolved or two, figured we’d help them out.”
Leo laughed. “God, you’re such a bastard. I love you, man, don’t ever change.”
“Unfortunately, he lost him a short while after, the car seemed to have vanished,” Ishmael continued.
“So it probably turned off the road somewhere between that camera and the next.”
“Of which there are three as there’s a large roundabout right after it.”
“Shit.”
“Pretty much. But, it’s a start.”
