Read Online Family Business by Michael Z. Lewin - Free Book Online Page B

the previous night.
    â€˜Everything was exactly as per normal. Not a word out of the ordinary. Not a hair out of place.’
    â€˜And did he make a drink?’
    â€˜Horlicks. For sure.’
    â€˜So whatever he’s been up to didn’t happen.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And did you sleep?’
    â€˜Hardly a wink. Once Jack left this morning I collapsed into my chair.’ She demonstrated collapse in the Lunghis’ chair.
    â€˜Mrs Shayler,’ Gina said, ‘my husband followed your husband to work today. And Mr Shayler did not take the route you gave us.’ Gina described Angelo’s observations, including the two-minute stop.
    Mrs Shayler was devastated. ‘This can’t go on, Mrs Lunghi. It will kill me. This has to be resolved. It has to be resolved now.’
    Angelo appeared in the office at a few minutes before four. He opened the door slowly. He saw there was no computer terminal on his desk. ‘Is it safe?’ he asked.
    Gina, who sat at the desk, didn’t say anything to her husband.
    Angelo entered the room. ‘Has the computer man been?’
    â€˜He’s with Rosetta,’ Gina said.
    â€˜Is it that Adrian chap?’
    â€˜No. Someone else. He has a moustache.’
    â€˜But he’s still here.’ Angelo considered. ‘I want to be in position for Jack Shayler at five. I can go early.’
    â€˜No,’ Gina said. There was no playfulness in her voice.
    â€˜Gina?’
    â€˜The computer man is running wires through all the walls. Your terminal will be installed tomorrow. We have other business.’
    â€˜You want a cup of tea?’
    â€˜No.’
    The signs were of something serious. Angelo sat down.
    â€˜Mrs Shayler,’ Gina began. ‘She wants all stops pulled out. She can’t bear the uncertainty. Whatever it takes.’
    â€˜So what does it take?’ Angelo asked.
    â€˜She wants us to confront him. But first she wants us to put a bug in her telephone.’
    â€˜Did you ring Norse?’ Norse Electronics was the company the Lunghis hired their equipment from.
    â€˜No,’ Gina said.
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜For six more days we have an Adrian Boiling bug of our own. I took it out of our telephone and I set it up at Mrs Shayler’s.’
    â€˜Good,’ Angelo said. ‘Good, good.’
    â€˜But,’ Gina said, ‘I put in a fresh tape.’
    â€˜We have some cassettes, don’t we?’
    â€˜I found them,’ Gina said. ‘It’s all set up at the Shaylers’.’
    â€˜So what plan did you decide?’
    â€˜Tomorrow morning follow the husband again. Then back to the house to check the tape. If something on it explains what’s happening, fine. But if there isn’t, we stop him on his way home from work. You decide where. Maybe at the bench.’
    Angelo nodded but said, ‘What do we say to him?’
    â€˜We say we’ve bugged his telephone. We make him ring home and get his wife to look for the bug. We pretend we’re nothing to do with her.’
    â€˜Who are we to do with?’
    â€˜Anybody. We bluff, maybe make threats. Then we leave him.’
    â€˜The idea being?’
    â€˜Because it’s something from the outside that he’s brought into their home, Mrs Shayler can ask him what’s going on.’
    â€˜Where otherwise she couldn’t,’ Angelo said.
    â€˜Where otherwise she couldn’t,’ Gina said.
    â€˜OK,’ Angelo said. ‘So who intercepts Shayler? Me? Sal?’
    â€˜I think both of you.’
    â€˜Good. We can work something up.’ Angelo thought about it. ‘By then we’ll have spent most of her money. But maybe the case will be over.’
    â€˜There’s something else,’ Gina said.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜When I put the bug in at Mrs Shayler’s, I came back here. And there was nothing much I could do here while the computer man was back and forth