Dirty Business (The First Acer Sansom Novel)

by Oliver Tidy

  ‘Eda?’

  ‘What?’ said Smith.

  ‘Never mind.’ Sansom scowled at himself for another slip. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Bad timing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see that you’ve checked out of your hotel. Where are you now?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that.’

  ‘I do if you want your weapon.’

  ‘It’s taken care of.’

  ‘Really? That was quick. I’m impressed. You have anything to do with that shooting in the city?’

  ‘No, Smith,’ said Sansom.

  “No, Smith,” echoed the man, ‘not, “what shooting, Smith?”’

  Sansom cursed his tiredness. ‘What shooting?’ he said.

  ‘Never mind. I have a feeling that you could tell me more about that than I could tell you. Just take it slowly,’ he continued. ‘Let’s not take our eyes of the prize, eh? That sort of behaviour is bound to attract all sorts of unwanted attention.’

  It seemed to Sansom that everyone knew his business better than he did. He was forming a smart retort for Smith when the line went dead. He stood staring out of the window, wondering how Smith could possibly connect the shooting with him in such a short space of time, unless he had someone providing him with information. If that were the case, then there could only be one person.

  Looking out over the darkening residential district, he wondered where Eda was, whether she had returned home to find him asleep and left him to rest. As he gazed down on the street, his attention was taken by a slow-moving unmarked car heading his way. It drew to a stop outside the apartment block. Instinctively, he shrank back into the shadow of the room. The driver, a large man, got out and opened the rear door. Eda stepped out of the vehicle. She didn’t look up. Another man got out and came around to join them. Together they approached the front of the building.

  Sansom retrieved the pistol from his holdall and cracked the apartment door. He stared at the lift’s electronic display, counting off the floors as it climbed slowly towards him. In his panic, he struggled to remember which floor he was on. He felt perspiration prickle his flesh. The lift stopped at the fourth floor. He brought the pistol up, holding steady on the lift doors. They remained shut. From the floor below he heard voices, a jangle of keys and a door being opened. He lowered the weapon and edged back inside the apartment. He stood, rooted to the spot, straining his hearing above the pumping of blood in his ears for the sound of movement in the stairwell.

  Maybe two leaden minutes passed before he heard again the distorted sound of voices echoing up from below – Eda’s raised above the males’. A door slammed. The lift indicated descent. He stepped back into the apartment and from behind the curtains watched as the two men emerged from the building, got into their car and drove away. His phone rang.

  ‘Haven’t you wondered where I’ve been?’ said Eda.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I’ve only just woken up.’

  And then she surprised him – she laughed. Not a sarcastic comment, but a sudden release of pent up nervous energy. He waited. ‘I’ve spent the last two hours with the Istanbul police answering questions about my movements today and you’ve been asleep.’

  ‘Were they police with you just now?’

  ‘Yes. Come down.’

  He jammed the pistol into the back of his trousers, locked the apartment and went to her.

  *

  The door was ajar. He tapped on it and walked in, closing it behind him.

  She was at the breakfast bar with a drink in front of her, a cigarette smouldering between her fingers. Despite her laughter on the phone, she looked tired and drawn.

  ‘Wine?’

  He shook his head. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was picked up by those two, who so kindly brought me back home, or should I say came to check that I wasn’t harbouring a fugitive.’ She stared at him, no hint of amusement now. ‘They took me to the police station to – how is it the British police so politely put it? – assist them with their enquiries.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She smiled without humour. ‘It’s not the first time. Occupational hazard. I’m a journalist. The kind who makes a living making trouble for people like Botha. People who have contacts in the local police force, as I’ve explained before.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Sansom.

  ‘You didn’t ask and I didn’t say, so there’s no reason why you should. They asked me what I’d been doing in Bebek this morning. Why I’d been hanging around Botha’s. I told them to prove that I had. They said that they had CCTV footage. I told them to show it to me. They couldn’t. They didn’t have it. They asked me questions about you. I said, who? They were fishing without bait.

  ‘Finally, they asked me where I was this afternoon and if I could tell them anything about an attempted murder in Taksim. I told them where I was, that I could prove it and that I couldn’t help them. We played the game and then they kept me waiting around while they checked out my story. Then they brought me back to see if you were here.’

  ‘Attempted murder?’

  ‘That’s what they said; looks like my friend was misinformed.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Sansom.

  ‘What’s wrong? Not happy that you didn’t kill him?’

  ‘It’s what I said to him before I shot him.’

  She waited for him to expand on that before saying, ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m sure I asked him if he’d ever been to the Pacific Ocean, Jackson Island. If he lives through it and remembers, they can work out why I’m here.’

  ‘You want them to know, don’t you?’

  ‘Eventually, yes, but when I’m ready.’ The notion that they would be able to get some sort of a hook on him disturbed Sansom. It felt like a little more of the control of the situation that he’d enjoyed and needed was slipping away from him. ‘Will they come back?’

  She shrugged. ‘I doubt it, but they may make me a subject for their watchers. They’ll certainly be taking more of an interest in my movements. They didn’t have anything real that they could confront me with, but that doesn’t mean that they believed me.’

  She poured herself another glass of wine and one for him. ‘You don’t have to drink it,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t then I might end up drinking the whole bottle and in the morning I’d hate myself for it and you for not helping.’ The wine had brought some colour back to her face and seemed to be relaxing her.

  Sansom picked up the glass, raised it to her and drank. It tasted wonderful. Alison and he had regularly enjoyed wine together. This was his first glass since she was murdered. It occurred to him with a guilty pang that another thread of his connection with her was broken.

  She said, ‘We should eat something.’

  He agreed, realising that he hadn’t had a proper meal since the previous evening.

  She rummaged around in a drawer, pulling out a sheaf of take-away menus. ‘I’m not much of a cook,’ she said.

  She ordered pizza and they agreed that because the police could return at any time he should return to the flat upstairs. When the food arrived, she would come to him.

  *

  Thirty minutes later she was at his door, changed and looking refreshed, her short hair still damp. The scent of pizza flowed into the flat behind her, mingled with a subtle feminine fragrance. She had another bottle of wine under her arm. She handed it to him for opening.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ she said.

  With the apartment’s shutters lowered to their fullest extent, they were safe from prying eyes. They sat at the kitchen table eating, drinking and talking, an unspoken understanding to stay away from the business tying them together, if only for a short while. He asked her about her work, she about his life before. Eventually, he came to a point where he could either steer away from what happened on The Rendezvous, his life on the island and since, or tell her everything.

  Because he wanted her to understand his reasoning and at times
his lack of it; because he wanted her to appreciate his depth of commitment to the path he had set himself on; because he wanted her to know why he had acted the way he had that afternoon and about the strength and depth of his loathing for Botha and his men, and finally because he wanted her help, her support, but above all her connivance, he told her everything.

  She listened in silence, moving only to sip her wine and to smoke. When he told her of the loss of his wife and baby daughter, her eyes filled with tears. She listened attentively as he detailed his months on the island, his ultimate rescue and return to England, and the events that followed, which brought him to Istanbul.

  By the end of the telling, he was physically and emotionally exhausted. However, he sensed in the way that she now looked at him a softening of her feelings towards him; a development of understanding for his actions so far, and an empathy born of their common losses. His outpouring had also served to reinvigorate his own resolve to achieve his aim or perish trying.

  ‘There cannot be any halfway for you, can there?’ she said. He shook his head. ‘With what you’ve lost, I can’t blame you. I wouldn’t try to persuade you away from it.’

  They sipped at their wine in silence for a while before she said, ‘This politician, Bishop? Do you trust him? His information? His motives?’

  Sansom smiled at her. ‘He’s a politician. By definition they can’t be trusted more than you’d trust a fox in a chicken house.’

  ‘So why are you believing everything that he’s feeding you?’

  ‘Bishop has got me here, away from the constraints of British justice. He’s funding me. Whether I trust him or not isn’t really the issue. I’m using him.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not the other way around?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Question everything. It’s what we were taught all the time in journalist school. You don’t last long in the business if you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts, not easy after the quantity of red wine that she’d consumed. ‘What you’ve told me, about Botha’s reasons behind the hijacking and murders, his motives for such an atrocity, it just doesn’t seem like his line of work. He’s too big a player to concern himself with a bit of insurance fraud. It’s too small for him. His deals involve seven-figure sums, not six.’

  ‘But you told me yourself that Botha was responsible for the death of your brother because of extortion. That isn’t exactly big money.’

  She nodded agreement. ‘But that was some time ago. He was a smaller player then. Botha’s built his reputation quickly, moved on to much bigger things. If he were a politician the press would describe his rise as meteoric.’

  ‘So, maybe he just can’t resist a bit of dirty business, no matter how much or how little is involved. Some people are like that.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m just naturally suspicious.’

  It was well into the night. They had both drunk more than they should have. They said their goodnights and Eda left for her flat below, with an arrangement that she would return in the morning to discuss what they would do next.

  *

  Sansom showered, used the toothbrush of the absent tenant and went to bed. Tired and alcoholically-affected as his mind was, he lay awake for some time, turning over in his thoughts what Eda had suggested about Bishop and his motives for setting him on his path. He also dwelt briefly on the possibility that Eda was the one who was informing Smith of his movements, and if she were, why would she have voiced suspicions about his sponsor? It didn’t make sense. Eventually, in a state of extreme unease, he succumbed to sleep.

  ***

  9

  A barely perceptible pin-prick of dullness appeared in the distance. Instinctively, he began to haul his leaden existence, fatigued, spent, towards his salvation. The pin-prick expanded, brightened, became a diffused glow. Wearily ascending from the abyss, he struggled upwards, exerting every sinew, clawing at the darkness, the urge to survive desperate. His lungs agonisingly crushed, fighting for breath, for life, excruciatingly helpless. Nothing left: exhausted, drained, sapped. A sinking dizziness, resigned submission. The fight lost. His agonising exertions, frantic thrashings, were at an end. Defeat. Gravity the victor.

  A hand, an arm, reaching out from the world above; clasping his outstretched fingers, a firm familiar grip dragging him to safety. Brightness increasing. Dazzling. Bursting through the surface. Gasping, sucking, filling his shrivelled lungs with warm salty air. Relief flooding his whole being. Staring into the face of his beautiful wife, his reason, his responsibility, his saviour. Her remarkable features moving towards him, eyes closing, lips parting, intense heat.

  Then nothing.

  He started awake in the unfamiliar bed with only a sheet over him. The room was not hot, yet the perspiration flowed freely from every pore. His breathing was ragged, his heart raced. Sansom lay staring up at the ceiling, giving his system and mind a chance to stabilise, resigned now to the horrors that regularly plagued his sleep.

  As he waited, he wondered how many different ceilings he had woken up staring at in the last few weeks and then how many more he would see before this was over. What would his ceiling be in a month? A coffin lid? A prison cell? Then he wondered how long the nightmares would stay with him – whether he called out to Alison as part of it. The only thing he knew for sure at that moment was that his head ached from the wine.

  He peeled back the damp sheets and, for a few moments more, lay fingering the wedding band that still hung from the makeshift thong around his neck before swinging his legs off the bed and heading for the shower.

  On the way to the bathroom, he passed a full-length mirror. He stopped and looked at his naked form in it. He was still unused to seeing himself so thin. It was as though he was looking through a window at someone else, but it no longer disturbed him like it first had. His full tan accentuated his muscle definition, honed by twelve months of hard survival living, as it did the recent white scarring across his stomach. He had replaced some of his lost body mass since being back in civilisation and although he was still a long way off his former weight, he no longer looked like an advanced hunger-striker.

  He’d boxed for his regiment as a Heavyweight. By the time he left the island, he had dropped down to somewhere in Lightweight and was now balancing on the borders of Welterweight and Middleweight. A few kilos more and he’d be satisfied.

  He considered his hair – bright blond and past his shoulders. While he was indifferent to the surfer look that it gave him, it allowed him options for future presentation. At present anyone involved in searching for him would be watchful for his most distinctive feature – a mop of blond hair. He reasoned to himself that dying his hair, as Eda suggested, would give him a new look and buy him some more anonymous time in the city. If and when the time came that he thought the long, dark hair had outlived its usefulness, he would simply cut it all off and earn himself some more valuable time.

  Showered and dressed, he managed to locate some proper coffee and a cafetière. The scent of coffee brewing spread throughout the flat, prompting more memories for him as only smells can. He allowed himself to drift along with it until a shrill alarm intruded, bringing him instantly alert. Realising that it was only the doorbell and seeing Eda through the spy-hole, alone, he opened the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, walking past him.

  ‘Good morning. How are you feeling?’

  ‘If you mean, do I have a sore head? then yes, a little.’ She sniffed the air. ‘But nothing that a strong cup of proper coffee wouldn’t cure.’ She moved into the kitchen and poured herself one. Keeping her back to him, she said, ‘I hope that I didn’t say anything stupid last night or make any sort of fool of myself. I don’t often drink that much. It can make me a bit... ridiculous.’

  ‘You were fine. I think we both probably overdid the wine. But it was good to talk about it all
to someone. Thank you.’

  She turned to face him, locked eyes with him and, with a half smile that conveyed everything, nodded her understanding. ‘What now?’

  While waiting for her to appear, he had thought again of the possibility that she was an informant for Smith, reporting on his moves and intentions. He’d balanced the pros and cons of this and how it should impact on what he would tell her from now, how he would involve her. For the present, he had little choice and, he believed, little to lose by being honest with her. After all, whether she was working for Smith or not, the goal appeared to be common. But the fact that she had called into question Bishop’s motives and trustworthiness continued to confuse him.

  For now, he had decided that that detail was peripheral, something to deal with later. It would be enough for him to be mindful and vigilant to the possibility.

  ‘Did you get the hair dye, yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. It’s downstairs.’

  ‘Good. You’re right. I need a new look. But I’ve never dyed my hair before.’

  She smiled at him, fully revealing her even white teeth and giving him another glimpse, he thought with a twinge of guilt, of how attractive she truly was. ‘Well I’ve done lots of it,’ she said. ‘Blue, red, pink, not all mine, but I know what I’m doing, so I can help you with that. And afterwards?’

  ‘Get the dye and we can talk about it while you’re making me look more Turkish.’

  *

  Detective Inspector Tallis returned to work the day after his meeting with Captain Harris. Brushing aside questions and concerns about his health, he settled himself at his desk with a mug of instant coffee and put a call through to his opposite number in the Met. After re-introductions, they got down to business.

  ‘Any word your end on Sansom?’ said the Metropolitan Police Detective Inspector.

  Tallis had decided not to share all that he knew with his counterpart in London. ‘Nothing, yet. The military are still stonewalling us. I was going to ask you the same thing.’

  ‘Nothing. They gave us the same story they told you – deceased owing to post-operation complications. It stinks, if you ask me. Either he is alive and well and roaming around because they’ve lost him or someone has just set the whole scene up to make us believe that he was there. Leaving their bullshit aside, we don’t have a physical sighting of him anywhere, not even on one of the hundreds of CCTV cameras monitoring this area, so we can’t categorically tie him to the incident. Of course, there is another possibility.’