The Concierge

by Gerard Gilbert

“What is your reason for visiting Switzerland?” he asks.

  “Holiday,” says Max. “Vacances.”

  “Ou?”

  “Verbier”

  The man nods. “Okay, if you could pull over on your left, where that white car is just leaving. Merci.”

  “Shit,” thinks Harry. Max does as he is told, and pulls up by a uniformed man and woman, who place an orange plastic bollard in front of them. They have a dog with them, a spaniel of sorts. “Explosives or drugs?” mutters Max softly.

  “We’re about to find out,” says Harry.

  The woman steps forward. “Bonjour, monsieur.”

  The dog is being led around the car and sniffing energetically. “Bonjour, madame,” she says noticing Aafia.

  The dog completes its tour of the car. The woman pulls the bollard away, and with a sweep of her arm, signals that they may go.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking hell,” says Max, with mounting glee.

  “Must have been looking for drugs,” says Harry.

  But now they’re being flagged down by another official, this one in a hi-vis yellow jacket, who gesticulates for Max to pull in by his side.

  “Bonjour monsieur,” the man says, before tapping the windscreen. “You will need to buy a vignette to drive on the motorways. You can buy one over there for forty francs.”

  * * *

  It’s dark by the time the satnav guides them to Simon’s chalet in Verbier. They had pulled in at the Co-op supermarket in town, and filled an enormous shopping trolley full of food and wine. Above the cashier’s counter Harry noticed a sign in French and English informing the clientele that the Co-op would be open as usual on Easter Sunday.

  “What day is today?” he had asked Max.

  “Friday… Good Friday,” said Max darkly. “Tell me one thing that’s been good about it.”

  “Well, we didn’t get killed.”

  “Yet.”

  Harry lets it ride. Probably a reaction to the hell of a day they’d had, but Harry for one feels elated that they’ve made it to Switzerland, with Aafia, in one piece. She is scanning the newspapers sitting on a rack near the checkout, having informed the men that, no, she didn’t have particular dietary requirements. Finding what she’s after, a copy of that day’s Tribune du Geneve, she places it in the trolley.

  Although snow clings to the trees and mountains, the road up to the chalet is clear, as is Simon’s driveway. Max knows that Simon hires people to keep the place ready for use at all times during the season, and he may even have stocked the fridge, but Max doesn’t want to risk it. The short exchange of texts that they had had was to say, yes, it was fine to use the chalet for as long as they liked, and that the combination for the alarm is 1976, Simon’s year of birth presumably – Max recalling that Simon was a few years older than him. A typically thoughtless code was Harry’s silent reaction when Max told him.

  The heating is on when they arrive – either by remote or courtesy of the same people who cleared the driveway of snow. Now they are here in these familiar surroundings, scenes of so many fun-filled days and nights, Max can feel the tension draining from his body.

  Harry has been excitable and talkative ever since they made it through Swiss customs, but Max has kept on his guard, trying not to let his mind flash back to that cellar, and that video camera waiting to record his death for the whole world to see. It seems incredible that this was only this morning.

  Aafia stands in the hallway and looks around. She’s been to chalets like this before, when she was a boarder in England and a friend’s parents took her skiing with them. It was a Russian girl she quite liked for her rudeness – Sofia. This one is even furnished the same – with faded Persian rugs, paintings of Alpine scenes and framed photographs of someone skiing. It’s a large bloke wrapped in skiwear so that he looks like the Michelin man. Simon presumably.

  As he unpacks the bottles of Côtes du Rhône and Chablis on the kitchen sideboard, Max realises with a jolt that their ordeal is not over. They can’t simply kick back with a few drinks and a nice supper, and discuss the day’s adventure as if it was a particularly hairy descent of a black run.

  “Right… we need to eat and then sleep,” he says, resuming his role as leader. But he sounds tired. “I think we need to take turns.”

  “You go first… I’m not in the slightest bit sleepy,” says Harry. “More like wired if anything.”

  “Me too,” says Aafia. “I’ll stay up with Harry.”

  Max nods slowly. “Okay, but first we need to load Harry’s gun.”

  “I can show you if you like.” And before they can think of the possible consequences, they let her pick up the gun, clip the bullets into the magazine and then slip the magazine into the gun. It’s done crisply. If she wanted to, Aafia could now be the captor, and Max and Harry her captives. She could even have killed them. Max’s gun is on the sideboard at the other end of the kitchen. They say nothing, but the realisation is there.

  Aafia hands the pistol to Harry with that sardonic smile of hers. “There is one other thing we’ve forgotten. The selfie… for my father.” Should they smile?

  “Press in more closely,” says Aafia. Harry’s cheek brushes Aafia’s hair.

  “Wait,” she says, picking up the copy of La Tribune de Geneve from the table. “Hold this up, Harry.” He holds it in front of her; a bit closer and they would be in an embrace.

  She takes four of five photographs. And then a close-up of the date on the newspaper.

  “Who are you sending it to?” asks Max.

  “My father, of course; as you said, this will release you from your obligations.”

  “And who will your father send it to?”

  “Everyone who needs to see it.”

  “Do you think we’re safe here?” Harry asks Max. He shrugs, and starts unpacking the food – pasta and some jars of pasta sauce – from one of the shopping bags. Aafia picks up a bottle of Chablis and reads the label.

  “I think we’d better leave for Geneva in the morning,” he says.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Swiss customs officer has taken Omar’s Italian passport in the name of Amal Abulafia and is tapping the information into his computer. Omar, who has told the woman that he is travelling to Geneva on business, gently drums the steering wheel and tries to look unconcerned. The woman hands the passport back and suggests that Omar buy a vignette for the motorway. He thanks her and drives over to where they’re selling the vignettes. He can pay in euros.

  He also buys a coffee and scans his phone. The Britons’ car has come to a halt in Verbier, and has been there for an hour now. Is it safe to assume that’s where they’re staying, or have they just stopped for a meal?

  Omar Googles the distance from Chiasso to Verbier, and it tells him 286.1 kilometres, which will take him three hours and twenty minutes, but that route takes him back into Italy. He tries a longer route through Switzerland is told that this will be thirty-four minutes slower.

  “That’s fine,” he says to himself, and guns up the Audi again.

  * * *

  Aafia stares at her phone for the best part of a minute, and then stands up and heads to the kitchen sink. Looking around she finds a glass jug and fills it with hot water. She then drops the phone in.

  “What are you doing?” asks Harry, who has been watching her through the kitchen door, from the living room sofa in front of the wood burner, which he has managed to get going. Max has gone to bed with his alarm set for two in the morning – still four hours from now.

  “Someone sent me a message pretending to be Tariq,” she says, returning to the room and sitting down next to Harry.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not Tariq.”

  “Omar perhaps?”

  “I don’t think so. Tariq got away… you saw him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “To warn the Italian security services.”

  “To warn them about what?”

  She looks
at him, the firelight reflecting on her chestnut brown eyes. Then she seems to come to a decision and shakes her head.

  “I will tell you,” she says. “But tell me about yourself first.”

  Harry sits back and stares into the flames of the wood burner. He’s had two glasses of red, and is wondering whether it might be safe to have just one more. The pistol is on the table by his side, along with one of the iPhones from that bag that they were given by the man at the airport – just this morning – and which is now charging. The wine is making him feel warm and relaxed. Surely they’ll be safe here for one night.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” says Aafia. She is sitting with one knee up on the sofa, pointing towards Harry, with her hand sweeping her hair back on one side.

  “Well, I was born in Norfolk. I never knew my father – he was in the army and was killed in the Falklands War with Argentina. I was two.”

  She doesn’t utter any of the usual platitudes. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’, or anything like that. She just carries on staring at him, expressionless.

  “You’ve told that story many times before,” she says eventually. “Now tell me something you’ve never told anyone before – ever.”

  He pours himself a glass of wine now. He nearly died today; he nearly went to his grave without telling anyone.

  “Okay. So this I’ve never told another soul. I was sexually abused when I was a boy.”

  She sits back, not in recoil, but suddenly interested. “Go on. By who?”

  “By my mother’s boyfriend. Except I don’t think he ever loved my mother, he was just using her to get at me.”

  “Yes,” is all Aafia says. Not ‘No’, but ‘Yes’.

  “His name was – is – Nicholas Mooreland. He was a local businessman… very popular. Everyone loved Nick. My mother worked as a cleaner in her village… she’d never had any money until Nick came along. She used to clean for him and he soon swept her off his feet. This was when I was ten.

  “He smoked cigars and drank cider and whisky and I remember when I was first introduced to him, over Sunday lunch at our place, he said I ought to try cider, I was old enough now. I was thrilled. Cider, wow…

  “And I got a bit tipsy – the first time in my life. And he was looking at me with an amused look on his face. He had these weird bulbous eyes and thick specs that made them seem even more so. And fleshy lips where his cigar would be most of the time. He made me feel special. No one made me feel like that at home or my school – the village school, a really crap school.

  “Anyway, Nick, as he asked me to call him, was always round at ours. I’d come back from school and know he was there because of the smell of cigar smoke. We’d eat together and watch TV, but weirdly he never stayed over. I don’t know whether he and my mum ever had sex, I didn’t want to think about it… still don’t really… or whether she just liked the romance and the way he made her feel special. I can’t think that they did – after all, his thing was for boys – prepubescent boys.

  “And of course the money came in handy. He was loaded and he lived alone in this huge house on the edge of the village. He had one of the first Game Boys and said I could go over after school, if I wanted, and play Super Mario, and Sonic the Hedgehog… Mortal Kombat… God, I remember them all.

  “We used to play each other, and there would always be sweets and loads of chocolate to eat. And he’d bring out the cider and I’d swig it out of cans and get quite drunk. He was always nudging me and squeezing my knee, and one day he started rubbing my thigh and, God, I’m so ashamed…” She doesn’t say anything, for which Harry is grateful, just puts out a hand and touches his arm.

  “How long did it carry on for?”

  “Two years, maybe more. Until my voice broke anyway. He didn’t like boys when they reached puberty, or so I realised afterwards.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He paid for me to go away to boarding school. That’s how I met Max. He paid for me right up till I was eighteen… I never really saw him again. I think he dumped my mum pretty smartish and presumably moved on to another boy, or perhaps he had several on the go at the same time. I don’t know. My mum wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, and I guess she would just be grateful he paid the school fees. I was just glad to be away, and I was able to reinvent myself – and the whole story about being there on an Army scholarship because of my father being killed in the Falklands and all that.”

  “So that’s not true, about your dad being killed.”

  “I never knew my dad,” says Harry, wanting to reach for his wine glass, but not wanting to be released from Aafia’s touch. “He was in the military, but in the US Air Force, I believe. There’s an American air base near us and I think it was a one-night stand.”

  “You never asked?”

  “It doesn’t matter who he is. I don’t care.”

  “And what happened to this Nicholas…?”

  “Mooreland. Actually he’s recently been arrested. I’ve been asked to give evidence.”

  “And will you?”

  “Let’s get out of this one alive first.”

  She drops her hand and smiles at him, but says nothing. He feels liberated, as if for the first time in his life he’s been able to be truly himself. It’s like a skin, or several skins, have fallen away. He reaches for his wine glass and drains it. He feels strangely tired, as if he could sleep for years.

  “One question to you,” he says. “Why did you give me the unloaded gun and Max the loaded one?”

  Aafia smiles and reaches for her own wine glass.

  “I didn’t think Max could ever kill somebody,” she says. “But I thought you could. And now I understand.”

  There is a silence, in which anything could have happened. He might have reached across and kissed her. Instead headlights shine though the gaps in the curtains and a car can be heard pulling up into the driveway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Aafia is up from the sofa and across to the window before Harry can even sit up straight. She holds the edge of the curtain slightly aside and peers outside.

  “Turn out the light,” she says without looking at Harry, who stumbles across to a standing lamp in the corner and switches it off. The gun, loaded now, is on the coffee table, and he picks it up, plays with the safety catch as Aafia had shown him, and then takes up position where the living room leads on to the front hall.

  “Leave the light on in the hallway and stay where you are,” hisses Aafia. “It’ll make you harder to spot that way.”

  “Should I wake Max?”

  “No time,” says Aafia. “If he comes in the front door be prepared to shoot.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But she suspects, or fears, who it might be. Omar was scary, but not because he would kill without compunction – although he would – but because he knew exactly what he was doing. He’s professional through and through, unlike some of the amateur jihadis with their newfound doctrines and power.

  The security light is on in the driveway and she can just make out the car parked right behind the Mercedes. The headlights are turned off but the figure behind the steering wheel doesn’t move. He’s talking to someone on his phone. Back up? And Aafia can just make out another figure in the passenger seat.

  “He’s making a phone call... and there’s two of them,” Aafia says, briskly matter of fact. There is no note of panic in her voice.

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t wake Max?” says Harry, who’s crouching now, practising looking through the gun sights. The front door is bolted from the inside, he is reassured to see.

  “No, stay there. You’re perfectly placed. Right, he’s getting out.”

  The figure goes round the back of the car and out of sight. Nothing happens for perhaps a minute, just Harry repeatedly bringing his eyes up in line with the gun sights. Aafia comes over to where he’s crouching and drops on her haunches beside him. The door handle starts to tu
rn, once, gently, and then more forcibly, three or four times. Then silence.

  “He’s going round the back,” says Aafia, who has seen a shadow pass the curtained window.

  “Fuck… I don’t really know the layout here,” says Harry. “Let’s think…”

  “Quick, this way,” says Aafia, as she starts to move in the same direction as the shadow. It takes them through a sort of formal dining room and into the kitchen. They can hear a door being pushed open just off the kitchen.

  “What’s through there?”

  “A sort of utility room, I think,” says Harry, training the pistol on to the door between the utility room and the kitchen. The handle turns and it starts to open. A man’s voice says something.

  A plastic shopping bag emerges first, followed by Simon, followed by a girl wrapped in a thick, long ski coat.

  “What the fuck!?” says Simon, staring at Harry, who has his pistol aimed at Simon’s chest. Simon puts down the carrier bag with a chink, it’s full of bottles, and stands there gawping at Harry.

  “What the fuck? Is that a gun? Where’s Max, you haven’t shot him have you? I always said you’d end up murdering him.”

  The girl in the long ski coat screams as she realises Harry is indeed holding a gun, which he now lowers.

  “Oh, hello…” says Simon, noticing Aafia. “Welcome to my humble abode.” A looker, he thinks. Well done, Harry.

  “Let me look at that gun. Where did you get it? Is it loaded?” He takes the pistol from Harry, who hasn’t said anything. His throat is parched, he realises. He’s not sure whether he can speak.

  Aafia doesn’t say anything either, just stands there appraising Simon. The girl seems reassured by her presence and gives a little giggle, nervously extending her hand.

  “I’m Kylie… pleased to meet you,” she says with a strong Liverpool accent.

  Aafia doesn’t take the proffered hand. “Oh, shit,” she says instead, and starts walking out of the room, only to be met in the doorway by Max, who’s holding his phone.