TURKISH DELIGHT by Barry Faulkner (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

entrance doors, each timer set ten seconds after the one before. This was going to be one hell of a firework display! The amount of C4 wouldn’t bring the building down, but there wouldn’t be much of Reynolds’s dealing room or computers left standing after they’d gone off, and with a bit of luck not much of him left either. I had set the first one to go off at 7.10a.m. as I knew Reynolds got in his office at 6.30a.m., and his staff arrived at 8a.m. – I just hoped nobody had decided to make an early start.

I left the floor and started down the staff stairs when Gold came through on the earpiece.

‘Company.’

I froze. ‘Go on?’

‘Cleaners, two of – coming up from the staff entrance.’

I could hear them now – foreign voices, and they were coming up the stairs, why hadn’t they taken the lift! I retraced my steps up to the top floor, listening and hoping they’d move off the staircase into an office below; they didn’t. I let myself back into Reynolds’s floor – surely he hadn’t hired night cleaners? As far as I remembered he had a company come in every day at close of business at about five o’clock and do a clean. I checked the waste bins nearest to me – full of shredded paper, a bad sign; he must have changed things. I hit the fluorescent light switches and the floor was bathed in a white light. I sat at a desk halfway down the aisle and hit all the hardware switches; screens flickered into action and the pixels danced, showing graphs and bars and flashing red and green stock prices from God knows where in the world at that time of night.

The two cleaners came in and stopped, surprised the lights were on and even more surprised that some fool was working at this time of night. I gave them a friendly wave and smile; they nodded back.

‘Just finishing up,’ I shouted.

One of them smiled and laughed. ‘We can go – can come back later.’

‘No, no, I’m off now,’ I replied.

He translated to his friend and they started emptying the waste bins into plastic refuse sacks. I switched off the hardware and made towards the door. ‘Have a good night,’ I shouted.

They both nodded and I left the floor, took the stairs two at a time and rejoined Gold.

‘Hungry?’ I asked her. I was.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a rib-eye steak, salad and chips.’

Ten minutes late we stood beside an all night burger van on the Embankment off Battersea Bridge, chomping through cheeseburgers washed down with some of the best coffee you can get in London.

‘You really know how to impress a lady don’t you, eh?’ Gold said between mouthfuls.

Well, it was either that or a jellied eel and whelk stall down the Commercial Road. Some people are never satisfied.

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CHAPTER 23

Jameson Reynolds felt good. There was a definite spring in his step and a smile across his face as he walked through the dealing room and sat in his office, putting his Costa coffee on the desk in front of him. He didn’t know why he stopped at the coffee shop every day on his way in for a take-out of the tasteless drink at three quid a cup when there was always plenty of decent coffee pods and milk in the dealing room where he had three Barista coffee machines for the staff to help themselves; but the other city high-flyers seemed to do it, so he did. Good for the image was how he viewed it. His smile broke into laughter as he flipped off the lid and took a sip. He raised the cup as though toasting a deal.

‘Here’s to you, Ben – so predictable and so gullible. Shame to lose you, but that’s life. Winner takes all.’

He switched on his screens and checked the Reynold-Rambart stock price. He was the major shareholder and would have his dealers buy as much as they could before announcing Rambart’s retirement and his own elevation to chairman – his people on the board would nod that through. He had checked the papers and the BBC News website both days since the warehouse episode to see if there was any mention of it; there wasn’t. The Foreign Office was probably keeping it quiet with a DSMA-Notice whilst they cleared things up. They wouldn’t want a spat with Iran if they could avoid it. ‘Well done, Rankin. I wonder what you did with Nevis’s body? Not that I particularly care.’ He checked his watch; it was coming up to ten past seven. The daily papers should have been left in the building foyer by now; he read them all closely every day, looking for any indication of something happening to companies of countries that could move a share or currency market – early bird gets the worm. He stood and stretched, took another sip of coffee and walked out of his office.

The explosion behind him startled him and shook him rigid as he turned and saw the ceiling crashing down, covering his desk with burning ceiling tiles, plaster, twisted metal frames and concrete. The desk he had been sitting at moments before. He made for the main door where a row of powder fire extinguishers stood, but in front and above him the ceiling exploded again bringing him to standstill; he covered his face with his arm and started running towards the doors but he was running under a storm of crashing ceiling, twisted metal and broken concrete. The roof was straining against the explosions that were ripping it apart above and in front of him as he ran showering him with bricks and concrete, until the debris on the floor piled up blocking his path and the constant hammering of falling broken concrete falling on him sent him