by Rennie Airth
Some haggling had followed. The shopkeeper, thinking he had a fish on his hook and a valuable article to tempt him with, had pressed for a price well in excess of the sword’s true value. Given his uncertain command of English, it had taken Kimura some time and trouble to set him right, but in the end they had come to an agreement and he had purchased both swords for a total of thirty pounds.
His money would run out eventually, but the thought did not trouble him. He was confident matters would come to a head well before then and the important thing was to be ready when they did. With his purchases tucked under his arm he had set off at once to return home, pausing only at a hardware store where he bought an emery stone and a bottle of oil. By early afternoon he was back in his room and at work on the first of the swords.
TWENTY
DS Dave Malek cupped his hands and blew on them. Unlike Addy, he wasn’t wearing gloves. They had paused for a few seconds by a pond as they walked through the snow-covered park. Busy with duck life it was patrolled by two swans and they watched as the pair, like galleons in full sail, went coasting by in line astern.
‘It seems Bela Horvath was the only person in Safe Solutions – the only one here in London – who knew about Ryker’s assignment. Apparently it was his idea, and he set it up with the help of their New York office.’
‘And Mike was told to pick me up on the plane?’
‘To get to know you.’ Malek glanced at her. ‘Horvath thought it would be the quickest way to locate your aunt – maybe the only way. Or so he said.’
‘And I fell for it.’ Addy felt an overwhelming urge to kick something, starting with herself. She settled for glaring at a couple of kids who came belting down the path on a toboggan – one riding, the other pushing – yelling at the tops of their voices and forcing them to skip aside. ‘I thought he was flirting with me. How dumb was that?’
Since waking from a drugged sleep earlier that morning, the memory of all that had happened the night before had lain like a lead weight on her heart. The feeling was one she could hardly put into words. Her life would never be the same: it was as simple as that. The world had shifted in its orbit; it was no longer the same planet. It was a world without Rose.
There was anger, too.
‘How the fuck did this happen?’
She had muttered the words aloud as she lay in bed staring at the ceiling; staring at nothing.
What had Rose got into? Why was she running for her life – and from who? Was it that Russian psycho? Or was there more to it? And what about the crazy who had broken into Rose’s house the night before, the one dressed like an Arab? Was he part of it too? The questions had buzzed around in her head like a swarm of angry bees, and it was partly to put a stop to them – to bring some order to her thoughts – that she’d forced herself to get up and go downstairs, only to find there was another interrogation awaiting her there.
‘Addy! At last!’
Molly had been pacing the kitchen like a caged tigress and Addy could hardly blame her. She herself had been in no condition to talk when she’d got back from the hospital. Still clutching Grumble, it was all she could do to stumble from the police car to Molly’s door, helped by the hand that Malek had put under her arm. Once inside he had taken over, deflecting the barrage of questions Molly fired at them – on hearing them arrive she had burst out of the sitting room into the hall, demanding to know where Addy had been, what was going on (it was one o’clock in the morning) – but getting no change from Malek.
‘Addy can’t talk to you now,’ he had told her. ‘She must get some sleep. Let her go to bed.’
It wasn’t the first time they’d locked antlers and Molly had let fly.
‘How dare you? This is my house. You’ve no right to speak to me that way. I warn you I intend to lodge a complaint with your superiors.’
Unruffled, Malek had stood his ground. ‘I’ll explain everything to you,’ he had told Molly. ‘But leave Addy out of it.’
There apparently being no comeback Molly could think of, she had turned on her heel and flounced back into the sitting room. With a nod to Addy and a murmured, ‘Get some sleep’, Malek had followed her.
Addy remembered dragging herself up the stairs and collapsing into bed, but nothing more, and on finding Molly waiting for her in the kitchen this morning she had felt some remorse. It must have been tough being told about the tragedy that had overtaken her friend by a detective – and one she seemed to have a strong aversion to – when the person she really wanted to talk to had left her in his hands without a word. Addy had done her best to make it up to her, but the effort it took – the pain of going through it all again up to the moment when Rose had lost her fight for life – cost her and finally she’d had to quit.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it any more … please …’
‘Forgive me. I shouldn’t have pressed you.’ Molly had been contrite.
But sitting there in the kitchen, her breakfast untouched, Addy had felt despair take hold of her again – just picking up a cup of coffee seemed too much of an effort – and it had come as a relief when the doorbell rang and Molly said, ‘That will be that detective, I expect, wretched man. He said he’d be round again today.’
Her prediction proved right and it came with a bonus. No sooner had Molly ushered Malek into the kitchen than she’d announced that she’d be going out for a while. It seemed his presence was more than she could endure.
‘There are some errands I have to run. And we must think about the funeral.’
The prospect was one Addy couldn’t bring herself to contemplate, and she’d been relieved to have Malek there as a distraction and to deal with the business that had brought him back, which turned out to be the matter-of-fact process of taking her fingerprints for matching purposes, followed by a further statement they needed from her dealing with the events of the night before. Doing it that way – in a flat question-and-answer manner – was easier and they got through it facing each other across the table with Malek taking down her words on a laptop, looking up now and again to make sure that she was OK.
‘I’ll get it printed at the station. You can sign it later.’
Folding his laptop, he’d sat gnawing at his lip.
‘There’ve been developments since last night.’ He caught her eye. ‘Information’s come our way that I feel you have a right to know. I’m not authorised to tell you, so I’d appreciate it if you keep it to yourself.’
‘As in not tell Molly?’
He had grinned. ‘That’d do for a start. But what do you say we go for a walk?’
‘In case she comes back, you mean?’ Addy had summoned up a grin herself.
‘Battersea Park’s not far away. You look as though you could do with some fresh air.’
‘We called on him first thing this morning. Bela Horvath has been running the London branch of Safe Solutions for the past three years. Their offices are located in Canary Wharf. He said he was ready to fill us in on what Ryker was doing here and some other stuff too that he thought we ought to know about. I went over there with my chief super. He’d decided he’d better handle the interview himself. They’re a big organization, worldwide, and with friends in high places.’
He and Addy had driven across the river. It took only ten minutes to get there from Molly’s house in Carlyle Square, but Malek was already well into his story by the time they reached the park.
‘I might as well tell you we don’t have much time for them in the Met – Safe Solutions, I mean. I’m told they’re known as the SS. They’ve got their fingers in a lot of pies, some of them bordering on the illegal, and those are just the things we know about. But they have powerful clients and good contacts where it counts. Horvath himself is quite a character. I hadn’t met him before, but I’d heard about him. He’s ex-CIA and knows how to pull strings.’
Addy felt better in the cold air. The sky was still overcast but the threat of further snow flurries had passed. She was wearing a padded jacket and
a white woollen skiing beanie with a red bobble on top. Malek was clad in an overcoat that had seen better days and had a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. When he wasn’t playing with his forelock, trying to push it back from his forehead, he walked with his hands buried in his coat pockets.
‘He told us your aunt came to see him a few weeks ago with a request for protection from a man she thought might do her harm. She said his name was Philip Moreau.’
He eyed Addy hopefully, but she shook her head.
‘I’ve never heard of him. Why didn’t she go to the police?’
‘Because that wouldn’t have helped. We can only offer protection to people when there’s clear evidence that a threat exists, and, for reasons of her own, your aunt wasn’t in a position to supply that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ll tell you in a second.’ Malek paused. ‘But let me explain about Ryker first – how he fits into this. Horvath said he offered your aunt round-the-clock protection since that was what she wanted. He had her house watched twenty-four seven and assigned two men to accompany her whenever she went out. It cost a lot, but she was insistent. A fortnight ago she gave them the slip. She had an appointment at her hairdresser’s and while the two men waited for her outside she left by the back door.’
‘Why?’
‘Horvath has a theory about that, which I’ll get to. But in the meantime, he’d discovered she was in more danger than even she realized and he knew they had to find her as quickly as possible and put her in a safe place until the situation was dealt with. They’d been looking into her background and found out that you were the person closest to her. Their New York office was handling that side of things and they learned from one of your friends that you were going to London to spend Christmas with your aunt, which seemed unlikely, given that she’d vanished. What made you come, Addy?’ He looked enquiringly at her.
‘I got a letter from Rose inviting me, only it wasn’t from her.’
‘An email?’
‘A typewritten letter.’
‘But it had to be a person who knew you were close to your aunt?’
Addy was silent. It still burned her to think how she’d been made such a fool of.
‘And by someone who had the same idea as Horvath.’
‘What do you mean?’ She scowled.
‘Horvath didn’t know what was behind your trip, why you were coming to London, but he thought you were the one person who might lead them to your aunt. That’s why Ryker was on the plane.’
‘And I fell for his line.’ Addy smouldered. ‘You said there was a situation that had to be dealt with. What did this Horvath guy mean by that?’
This time the wait was longer. They had reached the top of the park and begun to circle round, following the path where the snow had been trampled and made walkable. Malek’s frown indicated he was having trouble formulating whatever it was he wanted to say.
‘Horvath told us a story that sounded far-fetched.’ He found his tongue at last. ‘But from the few checks we’ve been able to make, it seems to hold up. This is a whole other world, Addy, with some bad people in it, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that your aunt was caught up in it. It’ll be best if I tell you what Horvath told us. Then you can tell me if any of it sounds familiar. By the way, we have a line on the man who killed her now – and you were right, he’s a Russian, name of Grigor Klepkin. The description you gave us of him matches the one we got from Horvath and it’s been circulated to all police stations. But the story’s more complicated than that. It has to do with this man Moreau. He and Klepkin were working together, and if Horvath’s story is correct, he’s the one who got your aunt involved.’
‘So who is he?’ Addy demanded.
‘Hard to say. All we really know is it’s not his real name. Horvath recognized it from his time with the CIA. It was one of several used by an agent they had working for them then, a man who went by the code name of Charon. It was how Horvath made the connection – how he knew that your aunt was in real danger.’
‘Why so?’
‘He said this man Charon was something of a specialist, and when we asked what that meant, he said he carried out the kind of work that wasn’t talked about. It wasn’t even supposed to happen, officially. Then he said he’d leave it to our imaginations to figure out what that meant.’ Malek shrugged. ‘My guess is the man was a licensed killer, an assassin, but they don’t want to say so.’
Addy looked away. She didn’t know how to deal with all the feelings that washed through her, the pain they brought. But she wasn’t going to lapse into tears. She was going to get to the bottom of this. She owed it to Rose. She turned to face him and saw his eyes widen in surprise.
‘Did I say something?’ he asked.
It must have been the look she was giving him, she thought: the one that scared men.
‘What was this story you got from him? Just tell me.’
‘I know it must seem hard to credit. We didn’t believe it ourselves until we checked with MI6. They told us there’d been a rumour going around Moscow for some time giving those in the know a good laugh. Horvath heard about it from his contacts in the CIA. It was about some big shots, important men, friends of Putin, who’d had a fortune stolen from under their noses by a couple of smart operators. A billion dollars was the figure he mentioned, if you can believe it. The theft took place in Cyprus and involved a banker who was working for the Russians. He’d put the money into a number of different accounts along with the passwords to them and loaded it all on to a memory stick. Then he told the Russians he would only give them the stick if they paid him ten million dollars. The poor guy was murdered for his pains. Charon and his Russian chum left his body floating in a harbour.’
Malek studied Addy’s face, trying to gauge her reaction. They had stopped at a café in the middle of the park and bought mugs of coffee. Addy watched as a bird landed on one of the empty tables nearby and began picking up crumbs.
‘What made the joke even better was that it was money the Russians had stolen themselves, filched from the state. And like Horvath, MI6 had also heard that this man Charon was one of the two.’
‘Who just happens to be Moreau, the man Rose was afraid of?’ Addy had followed the tale with difficulty. It was full of twists and turns. ‘What I don’t understand is how she met him. Does Horvath know that?’
‘I don’t think so. But she said Moreau had told her he worked for the CIA, which didn’t surprise Horvath. He said it was exactly the kind of deception Charon would have employed – and that he almost certainly managed to persuade her she was doing something for her country by placing the memory stick in a safe deposit box in Zurich.’
‘Yes, tell me again about that.’ Addy shook her head. ‘It just doesn’t ring true. I can’t see Rose doing that. I don’t see her being fooled that easily.’
Malek looked uncomfortable. ‘According to Horvath, this Charon bloke is attractive to women. He called him “a charmer”. I don’t know about your aunt’s personal life, whether she had someone …’ He trailed off when he saw Addy shake her head again.
‘Her husband died a year ago; he was killed in a plane crash. She was alone after that.’ More than alone, Addy thought: despairing.
‘So she might have fallen for him?’
Addy said nothing. She was remembering the scene in the hotel room in New York when Rose had quoted the poem about being ‘desolate and sick of an old passion’ and Addy had thought she was talking about Uncle Matt. But maybe it was this new love, if that was what it was, and maybe she’d been trying to break free from an old attachment that still had a hold on her. Yes, and feeling guilty about it, just as Molly had said. But then she recalled the look Rose had given her in New York when they were talking about Macbeth and Addy had wondered if there were people who were just plain evil. What did that mean?
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But if so Rose never talked about him, not to me.’ It hurt her to say it. ‘But she couldn’t have know
n that they’d murdered that banker and stolen the stick from him. Rose would never have gone along with something like that.’
‘Maybe.’ Malek seemed less certain. ‘But at some point she must have discovered what was on the memory stick and that he’d been lying to her. Otherwise why go to Horvath for protection? She even knew that the Russians were involved.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’ Addy challenged him. She was going to defend Rose, no matter what. ‘And why did Charon give her the stick to take to Zurich? Why not do it himself?’
‘Because according to Horvath he didn’t want to be caught with it. He couldn’t be sure the Russians weren’t on to him already. If the stick was in a box in a bank in Zurich they’d have had to take him there to open it and that would have given him a chance to escape. He could have told the bank he was being robbed. It was the smart thing to do. He wanted to wait until the trail had gone cold and after six months he decided it would be safe to take possession of it. But he was still lying low, which was why he wanted your aunt to collect it for him.’
‘You say Rose knew the Russians were involved. Have you any evidence of that?’
‘She told Horvath that she’d already given Moreau’s name to the “authorities”. But she was afraid he would find her before they could track him down, which was why she needed protecting.’
‘Well?’
Malek looked unhappy. ‘She wasn’t being truthful, Addy. What she’d actually done was shop Charon to the people he’d stolen the money from and she was hoping they would take care of the problem for her. She was supposed to hand the stick over to him in Paris, but instead the Russians were waiting at the apartment where they were due to meet. Somehow Charon got away – leaving a couple of bodies behind him, if Horvath’s to be believed.’