White Lines

by Mel Stein

  ‘Jet. I have to tell you about your new little playmates. You know I told you that Carr and the beautiful Alissa weren’t in total control.’ She didn’t wait for an answer and, as if to force Mark to concentrate, she roared on to the M4 and pushed the needle up towards ninety totally oblivious to the speed cameras waiting to entrap her. ‘Well who’s a clever girl then? Patti’s a clever girl. I saw the other shares were held in the name of Guernsey nominees. Now you may think that was where the trail would end …’

  ‘Patti, if you don’t slow down the trail for both of us is about to end,’ Mark said, sitting bolt upright in his seat, hoping that his apparent fear might curb her speed.

  ‘But you would be wrong,’ she continued gaily. ‘Your Patti has friends everywhere. It just so happens that one of my exes is an accountant on the island, so I rang him up and asked him to make a few discreet inquiries. Now our off-shore dwellers are very sensitive to any scandal, so I just sort of insinuated that there might be some money-laundering involved and that, as a favour, my friend should tip off the trustees if he knew them. And he did know them, and he did tip them off and they were very grateful. So grateful in fact that they resigned and after they resigned they took my friend out for a few drinks. Now my friend can hold his booze. Many’s the time he’d have to put me to bed while I was fetching up and he’d go downstairs and balance a few books …’ She saw the look on Mark’s face. ‘You’re not enjoying this story are you? Is that the little green god of jealousy I see? I do believe it is.’

  ‘Concentrate on the road, Patti, please,’ he said desperately. He did feel jealous. Every time she exposed a little of her past it swept over him. He knew that she was not some convent-fresh innocent, but it hurt nevertheless.

  ‘The story,’ she continued, unperturbed. ‘Where did we leave it? Oh yes, my sober friend amidst a group of drunken off-shore corporate managers. A dangerous combination. Let me tell you, Mark, if you are ever tempted to rely upon the discretion of men, do not do so. They are not to be trusted.’

  He was tempted to tell her to hurry up, but feared that in her playful mood she might take him literally and drive even faster. Instead, he stared straight ahead, which he had once been told was a perfect cure for car-sickness, and he hoped that, on that occasion at least, the man had not lied.

  ‘So one of those untrustworthy men told my sober friend all about the concerns they’d always had about the beneficial owners of the other half of the stake in Jet. It had been some kind of administrative oversight that had restrained these honourable men from taking any action until they had wind of an investigation and clouds appeared on the horizon of their cosy existence.’

  ‘And the beneficial owner?’ Mark asked, curious despite himself.

  ‘Well, there’s the coincidence. I started off trying to protect your back and it seems I may end up saving my own.’

  ‘What do you mean, Patti? Either that flight took more out of me than I thought or else you’ve had some raw alcohol for breakfast. Which may well explain the way you’re driving.’

  ‘I mean that the true owner of the other fifty per cent of the shares in Jet is none other than your friend and mine, Riccardo Branco.’

  CHAPTER 46

  Mark had thought he was getting near to the truth, yet Patti’s revelation about Branco’s interest in Jet had only succeeded in confusing him. He had worked on the assumption that the problems Barry and Patti had encountered in Colombia, and his own near encounter with death, had been entirely separate issues from the task that had been set for him by Mohammed Halid. Now he was not so sure. It was like a spider’s web, the strands seemingly unconnected, yet all spun from the same central thread. He had to stand back and see the whole picture, and for that he needed time. He had got off the plane with a schedule in his mind, but perhaps it needed to be rethought.

  ‘Are we still going to see Mo?’ she asked.

  He hesitated. Should he just drop in for a chat to tell him that he was off the case or should he tell him what they had discovered about his bitter rival? And if they told him what difference would it make? It certainly made Carr’s capture of the ESL rights more sinister, more threatening, and if Carr had told his partner, Branco, that Mark was working for him then it made Mark’s position even more dangerous. But why should Carr have reported the fact to Branco? Why should he even be aware that there was any connection between the Englishman and the drug baron? Even if Mark decided to end the subterfuge then he had already taken one hell of a risk and he had to decide whether Mo Halid had been worth taking it for. He just wished he wasn’t feeling so tired, so in need of a transfusion of black coffee into his bloodstream.

  He called ahead to make sure Halid was there but his secretary informed him that her boss was still at home.

  ‘I’m sure he won’t mind if you call him there, Mr Rossetti. I know he’s been waiting to hear from you. Do you have the number?’

  Mark did and immediately redialled. Mo answered.

  ‘My friend, it’s good to hear from you, and to know that you’re back in one piece.’

  Mark paused before replying. Should he read anything into that or was he becoming paranoid? He was beginning to doubt whether anybody was who they seemed to be, whether there was a single person in his life, apart from Patti and his daughter, that he could trust entirely.

  ‘Mo, I was going to come into the office before I went home to bed. I gather you’re not in.’

  ‘As ever you are perceptive. I’ll be at home all morning. Why don’t you come here?’

  ‘I’m in Patti’s car on the motorway.’

  ‘She too is welcome. Get her to turn around and I will have the oranges squeezed and the coffee ground by the time you get here.’

  He was as good as his word, better in fact, because as well as the juice and coffee there were warm, crisp rolls, croissants and bagels.

  ‘I didn’t know you owned a bakery as well as a media empire,’ Mark said, having made the introductions.

  ‘If you don’t help me get the ESL rights away from Carr then I might well be baking for a living,’ Mo replied.

  Mark was tempted to tell him there and then what Patti had discovered about the ownership of Jet, but he could not yet see exactly how it was going to help. So the company was half-owned by a crook. So what? Probably half the companies trading on the stock market had villains for shareholders. He had to see how the information he’d gleaned from Dr Guerra fitted in to the picture, if indeed there was a picture at all.

  Susie came in, with the baby on her hip, looking fresh and vibrant despite the disturbed night she began to relate to them in detail.

  ‘Can I hold him?’ Patti asked and Jason gave a little cry of pleasure and snuggled into Patti’s neck like a burrowing animal. Mo looked at his son and the woman gave Mark an affectionate hug.

  ‘She looks good with a baby. Maybe you should try it for yourselves. They’re always more fun when you don’t have to give them back.’

  The kitchen door opened and Dominique appeared. She looked tired and drawn as if she, rather than her stepmother, had experienced the sleepless night. Mark did not need telling that this was Nabil’s sister. There was the same sullen expression around the eyes, although he could see that this girl could be attractive if she tried. But she was clearly not trying. She looked defeated, a wild animal who had been broken, and Mark wondered what had happened to control her spirits. She gave Mark a desultory nod and poured herself a coffee. Patti reluctantly handed Jason back to his mother and turned her journalistic eye on the interrelationship between the three members of the Halid family. Her nose told her there was some secret they shared, even if they did not share it willingly.

  ‘Mark, come into my study, let’s leave the women to talk about women’s things.’

  Mark made no eye contact with Patti, which was fortunate as she might well have killed him with her expression, and she was left to stare daggers at his back and wonder exactly what it was that Mark was up to. She had been oddly e
uphoric at her discovery, momentarily convinced that her troubles were over just because she had found that the man who had caused them was an anonymous investor in an English company. Mark’s cool reaction had disappointed and disillusioned her. Nothing had really changed. She was still out on bail on criminal charges, even if it was her choice as to whether or not she needed to return to face them. She knew Mark, though, knew him well enough to realise that he was not telling her everything. That hurt her as much as her recollections of past affairs had hurt Mark. Patti wondered if he were simply punishing her for her dishonesty about her reasons for going to Bogota in the first place. As if she hadn’t been punished enough.

  Susie made her excuses and left to change Jason, with Patti declining the offer to watch. It was one thing to cuddle a baby, quite another to look inside a dirty nappy. She just hoped that Mark had a stronger stomach and then found herself surprised that the thought had even passed through her mind.

  Dominique, who until then had hardly acknowledged Patti’s existence, now sat down at the table opposite her and stared into her coffee cup as if seeking the meaning of life amongst its dark contents.

  ‘How long have you known your fellow?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Known him or known of him?’ Patti replied, hoping the conversation could be drawn out, could be made to lead somewhere so that she could satisfy her curiosity.

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Sure. I knew he’d been a bit of a footballer in his day, but I met him for the first time when I tried to interview him a couple of years ago and I suppose we’ve been together ever since.’

  ‘Are you going to marry him?’ Dominique’s face seemed to have become more animated, leaving Patti in no doubt that the exchange really interested her.

  ‘You know I really think I may,’ she said. ‘But for heaven’s sake don’t tell him.’

  Halid’s daughter laughed and momentarily she was any young girl pleased at having the chance to talk to an older woman who might actually come close to understanding her.

  ‘Do you think it’s hard to be hitched to someone famous?’ Dominique said, continuing with her inquiries as if she, rather than Patti, were the journalist.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Mark’s famous any more. I think your father’s better known than he is.’

  A shadow crossed the girl’s face at the mention of her father.

  ‘Nobody really knows my father.’

  ‘You sound as if you don’t like him,’ Patti said in an understanding voice.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But do you love him?’

  Dominique shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes he acts like the Islamic fundamentalist he isn’t. He uses his money as power. I’ve left home before and he banks on my always coming back.’

  ‘Sounds as if it never quite worked out when you left,’ Patti said perceptively.

  ‘No, it didn’t. Look, Patti, I read a bit about your problems in the papers. We’ve got a lot in common. I’m also out on bail. Drug bust,’ she added quickly to answer the question before it was asked.

  ‘I’m sure your father’s being supportive.’

  ‘Yeah, so supportive that he couldn’t even be bothered to come down to the station himself to get me out. He sent my brother who inevitably made a fuck-up out of it.’

  ‘You don’t like your brother either?’

  ‘He’s not easy to like. Ask Mark, he’s had to work with him for a while. If he’s as bad to work with as he is to live with then I pity your bloke.’

  Patti’s ‘bloke’ was finding it hard going with Mo. It had all seemed so easy on the plane. Go into Mo’s office, close the door, tell him you’d understand if he decides that he doesn’t even want you as a commentator at Ball Park, but that you want out from Jet. And then also ask him about certain phone calls that had been made to his home from Bogota. That was what Barry Reed’s phone bill had revealed, a whole string of calls to Mo, a man he had no reason to know, let alone speak with. Then had come Patti’s news. But far worse was Mo’s enthusiasm for what little he had so far achieved.

  ‘You’re getting close. All you have to do is find out who told him what we were going to bid so that he could offer just enough, so he could beat us without it costing too much.’

  Mark opened his mouth, but before he could launch into his speech there was an insistent ring at the door, as if someone were leaning on the bell. Mo looked puzzled, but there was no respite from the insistent noise.

  ‘Excuse me, Susie is upstairs with the baby, and obviously my daughter and your lady are getting on like a house on fire.’

  He rose and went to the door and Mark could see that he had aged in the few months he had known him. He shuffled across the room, his feet hardly leaving the ground, into the hall and before he opened the door grumbled aloud, ‘All right, all right, I heard you. What’s so important?’

  Then he pulled the door fully open, and anything else he had to say was cut off by a cry of horror as the bruised and blood-stained body of his son fell into his arms.

  CHAPTER 47

  It was over two hours before Mark and Patti were back in her car, this time heading for the Hertsmere training ground. An ambulance had taken Nabil to the nearest hospital, accompanied by his father, who had sat cradling the boy until the medical team arrived to take over. Dominique had wanted to go with them, and it was hard to believe that a family divided could be so firmly bonded together by the vicious assault upon one of them. It was Susie and Jason who were now the outsiders, even more than Mark and Patti.

  The visitors had stayed with Dominique until her father phoned from the hospital to say that Nabil would pull through, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t identify his assailants. Patti tried to resume her conversation with the troubled girl where it had been interrupted by the arrival of her brother in such a horrific state, but Dominique, not surprisingly, was distraught and distracted. Just as Patti made to leave in Mark’s wake, Dominique had pulled herself together and asked if she could speak to her again some time. Patti had not hesitated to give her the phone number at the Burrow and Dominique had carefully written it down in a battered diary.

  ‘She’s not a bad kid,’ Patti said to Mark as they stopped and started their way around the M25 on their way to Hertsmere.

  ‘Seems a typically spoiled brat to me,’ Mark commented, his mood beginning to be affected by the tiredness.

  ‘Look who’s talking. The man who’d never give his daughter anything … I don’t think.’

  ‘Just drive,’ he replied and closed his eyes, still trying to get his thoughts in order, but failing desperately as he drifted in and out of sleep.

  They’d phoned ahead to Hertsmere and the girl on the phone had put them through to Helen Davies without being asked.

  ‘Mark, Rob thought you might contact us. He’s left any number of messages on your answerphone at home. He heard about the plane crash in Brazil and he’s worried you might be wanting to run the show on your own.’

  ‘Me? When did I ever do that?’

  ‘Whenever you have the chance? He says there are enough corpses lying around the world without you adding to their number. Please call him, if only to get him off my back. He seems to think I’ve some permanent way of getting through to you. I told him I had more chance of a direct line to the Almighty …’

  ‘Don’t tell me, Helen,’ Mark said wearily, ‘he’s a cop and he doesn’t trust anybody, including his wife. I’ll get in touch with him, but just do me a favour, don’t tell him I’m heading for the training ground. I’ve got an agenda for the day, I’ll put your husband on it, but I have to do things in my order. If he asks, say I told you to tell him to trust me.’

  There was a muffled laugh down the line.

  ‘Yeah, sure, that’ll do it all right. When you’ve finished with whatever you think you need to do down at the training ground, pop in and see us. It sounds like you’ve got a busy day, but I’m sure David would love to see you. From the ton
e of your voice, it might well be his last chance.’

  There was a note of genuine concern and affection in her voice and Mark felt almost guilty at the knowledge that he was going to ignore her pleas, ignore her husband’s advice and pursue his lonely furrow wherever it might take him.

  Whenever Mark watched footballers in action, whether it was on the field or in training, he felt a terrible sense of loss. Of course, he could strip off, pull on a pair of trainers, shorts, a shirt sufficiently loose to hide the hint of a paunch; but once out there he knew there would be no first touch, no pace. He would be yet another volunteer for the sad regiment of yesterday’s heroes.

  He knew every one of the Hertsmere team out there, going through their paces, knew their strengths and knew their weaknesses. If they all played up to their potential, they had a real chance of grabbing the title, but football was all about ifs and maybes. If the referee had given a penalty, if he’d not given a penalty, if the ball had bounced down over the line after hitting the crossbar, if the keeper hadn’t fumbled, if the striker hadn’t spent the previous night out on the tiles. He’d sat a hundred times after matches in a hundred different dressing rooms and the talk was always of these possibilities that had failed to become facts.

  David Sinclair and Ray Fowler had realised that what they needed was a big man up front, someone to replace Nicky Collier. The former Hertsmere front man had not been particularly popular with his teammates and had taken a long time to win over the fans. But he got goals and anybody who could score a guaranteed twenty a season was an automatic selection, whatever the defects in his personality. That was why Sinclair had asked Mark to get him Ferrera. He felt confident that the tall Colombian could feed off the talents of Tommy Wallace, Dimitri Murganev and the emerging talents of the teenaged South African, Mbute.