The Concierge

by Gerard Gilbert

  “A big one. Have you got a minute?” asks Charlotte.

  “Of course,” says Tom. “Shall we go to my office?”

  His ‘office’ is Tom’s sarcastic term for his desk in the corner of the open plan office. It’s separate from the other desks, which is the only indication that it belongs to someone of importance at the newspaper, most of the other journalists elbow to elbow on long tables.

  He perches on the edge of his desk, Mary noticing an incipient paunch beneath Tom’s tight white shirt, as she and Charlotte relay the story between them.

  “What do you think we ought to do?” he asks eventually.

  “Well, shall I write up everything I know about the case so far?” says Mary. “Harry and Max’s backgrounds and all that, and how they got themselves mixed up with the Saudis.”

  “Better get that all legalled if the Saudis are involved,” says Charlotte.

  “Good… yes… do we have anyone in Switzerland?” says Tom, but before he can get an answer, they notice another of the subs from the foreign desk approaching.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” says the young man, another shift-sub whose name Mary has forgotten. “I thought you ought to know. Harry Kimber’s just been arrested at Gatwick. Lots of witnesses to the arrest apparently, and some mobile phone footage that’s already on Sky and online. He’s being done under the Terrorism Act.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The man known to the Romans who worked at the port as ‘the Calabrese’, stands staring out of his office window. Even on the Saturday before Easter there is much activity on the wharves, as freighters dock and warehouses are stacked and emptied again.

  He is in his late sixties, with thick, lustrous grey hair swept back to reveal a handsome face, spoilt only by pockmarked cheeks that are a legacy of teenage acne. But it was his natural self-confidence that had always won him the ladies, starting with his wife back in Calabria, and continuing with a string of mistresses as long as Italy itself, he likes to joke.

  He first met the Saudi girl six months ago and she had appealed to him at once; she was a looker all right, but it was more than just that. Word had reached him, as all words at the port eventually did, that a Saudi woman was looking into freight transport from Tunisia, and Domenico had been immediately intrigued. What was a member of this wealthy elite doing sniffing around these dirty old docks? There had to be money in it.

  One of his main men, Gianni, made contact and told the Saudi that his boss would be able to help with all her requirements, and although initially suspicious, Aafia soon found a perfect ally in this flirtatious but obviously highly intelligent businessman.

  Domenico, for his part, liked Aafia at once. She seemed shrewd and hard working, and nothing like his own layabout sons who were spoilt rotten by their mother. In fact, Aafia – as she soon sensed as he talked about his family – was the daughter he never had.

  She was only interested in the odd container here and there, but Domenico enjoyed her company so much that, unusually for him, he didn’t allow this paucity of business to dismiss this cool-headed girl. He too had good instincts, and sensed that there was another, deeper story behind these modest shipments of carpets and vases and arak – the aniseed drink so beloved of Arabs. And let’s face it, he thought, the Arabic taste in hard liquor was a growing market in Europe right now.

  And Aafia had understood early on that Domenico was some sort of mafioso and had a hand in most of the port’s activity. It was only later that she understood that he was not the Sicilian variety of mafiosi, but belonged instead to the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta.

  From there, a spot of online research revealed that the ’Ndrangheta were considered more powerful than both the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and the Camorra of Naples, and their drug smuggling and other nefarious business interests represented three per cent of Italy’s entire GDP. They were always on the lookout for legal businesses that could be used for money laundering, and this seemed like a useful avenue to explore.

  Things had changed for Domenico as soon as the Arab man turned up – this Omar, with the scar and the dead eyes. He could tell that Aafia didn’t like the man one little bit, but for some reason she had to tolerate him. He made his own enquiries and learned that Omar was being helped in his passage by the ’Ndrangheta family back in Reggio that was involved in the people-smuggling business.

  He told Gianni to see what Omar wanted and, if possible, to help him. Gianni reported back various strange requests, including a water cannon. Gianni said he’d passed the request onto his Serbian contacts in Rome, who knew more about how to get their hands on this sort of stuff. The Serbians had been the ones, back in the 1990s, to supply the ’Ndrangheta with so many of their firearms – including, Gianni remembered, bazookas, and they were now well established in the arms trade.

  Domenico owned a gym in Civitavecchia, which was part legitimate and part used for money laundering. One of the gym’s phone numbers – rarely given out – was routed directly through to him, with a pre-ordained code. Anyone not using the exact form of words was brusquely told to contact the main reception – that this was the private number of the gym’s owner.

  Which is how he found himself talking to a breathless sounding Aafia, who had escaped from Omar at a petrol station somewhere near Genoa. Once she had calmed down she was able to check her phone’s GPS and give him the exact location. She then told him exactly what Omar intended to do with his water cannon. Domenico was shocked.

  He had no love of the present Pope, who in 2014 had visited Calabria and excommunicated the ’Ndrangheta. “The adoration of evil and contempt of the common good,” Pope Francis had said of the organisation, as if this Argentinian understood life in southern Italy. Domenico himself went to church-led religious festivals in the village of his birth, and even had a father confessor, who once explained to him that there was a difference between a sin and a crime. The sin of ‘Mafia’ doesn’t exist, he told Domenico. Where is it written in the Bible?

  All the same, Domenico understood how deeply religious are the people of Calabria. If an Islamic terrorist were to unleash a sarin attack on St Peter’s Square on the holiest day in the church’s calendar, and it was later revealed that the attacker had received the help of the ’Ndrangheta, the implications would be unthinkable. He phones Gianni.

  “A matter of utmost urgency,” he says without introductory pleasantries, so that Gianni knows it’s important. “Drop everything. Get in touch with your Serbian contact at once and find out what happened to that riot water-cannon truck. We have to find it… today.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Omar walks round the back of the building to discover the boy still happily spraying water into the field, and is glad to see him experimenting, alternating between a thin, hard jet and a diffuse spray, and moving the nozzle up and down, left to right, and back again.

  He opens the passenger door, clambers up and slips in beside the boy, who grins proudly.

  “Do you think you have the hang of it?” he shouts over the noise of water cannon engine.

  The boy nods enthusiastically.

  “Tomorrow we’re going to have some fun with this, and nobody is going to get hurt. We’re going to spray some kuffars. We’re going to soak the infidel. A bit of a prank. You up for that?”

  The boy nods again, grinning ear to ear.

  “You proved your faith and your bravery and your devotion to your family by being willing to sacrifice yourself,” he shouts some more. “Your reward will be this bit of fun. They won’t like it and they’ll be angry, but the worst they can do is lock you up for a few weeks. At least you’ll get regular meals for a while. Do you like Italian food?”

  The boy shrugs, then laughs.

  “You do this for me and your family will welcome you back with open arms, the day you decide to return, or when they come to join you in Europe. You’ll be a hero in every true-believing Muslim heart for making fools of the pagans.”

  The boy seems to celebrate this re
mark by shooting a high arc of water that splashes down into the field – uncultivated scrubland, for Omar didn’t want a nosy farmer asking about his business – and giving Omar the thumbs up sign.

  “I spoke to your mother this morning and she is happy that you are doing this, and not getting yourself killed,” Omar lies. Well, it’s a sort of lie. The boy’s mother was murdered this morning, along with his father, sisters and uncles. The boy himself would be dead by this time tomorrow, so in that sense he would be joining his family.

  Of course the truck itself is packed with explosives, which Omar will detonate using his mobile, just like the old days in Iraq. But this time he will have taken the fight to the heart of the enemy, to Rome on Christianity’s most holy day. He will wait till the police and soldiers are swarming over it, having arrested the boy and the British spy. Then… boom! The icing on the cake, as the Australian jihadi used to say.

  For now, the boy is happy – happy that he isn’t going to have to die, and that he has the approval of the man with the scarred face. He wants to impress the man – he is like a second father to him.

  “Now, I want you to use up all the water,” says Omar, tapping a gauge on the control box, which shows that the tank is three-quarters empty. “I’m going to make us some supper.”

  Omar mimes eating, and then opens the cab door and jumps down. The boy watches him on the CCTV screen, striding off round the front of the building.

  Lining the back wall of the warehouse are several dozen plain brown cardboard boxes, some of which are marked with a small black tick. Omar opens one of these and pulls out a bottle of colourless liquid, the label showing a brand of arak popular across the Middle East. Omar puts it back in the box, and counts the containers that have the black tick. There are eighteen in total, each containing twelve litres of sarin. That’s just over 200 litres in total, a gift from the late Muammar Gaddafi.

  In a grey, stainless steel cupboard in the corner hangs his yellow biohazard suit, which was priced at just over $4,000 on the Internet, he noted, but cost him just 500 euros from the Serbian who had supplied the water cannon. Apparently they had a job lot from when Syrian chemical weapons were transported to Italy a few years back, before an American warship had destroyed the chemicals at sea. He had tried on the suit several times, and although a size too small for him, it was possible to carry out quite fiddly operations while wearing it.

  He would mix the sarin and water while the others slept tonight, which they would do soundly thanks to the barbiturates he was about to mix in with their last supper. The last supper, he repeated out loud, smiling. He knows enough about the prophet Jesus Christ to know that before he was crucified he shared a last meal with his disciples.

  And on Easter Sunday Jesus rose from the dead, or so the Christians believe. This Easter Sunday, some of the most devout of these believers will die a horrible death, drooling, vomiting and shitting themselves in one of the holiest places in Christendom. TV cameras and countless mobile phones will be there to catch the moment. The Internet will broadcast his great victory.

  And Omar himself will be there to witness it in person. He will stand at the back of the crowd, well out of reach of the water cannon and upwind, just in case any vapour was to blow in his direction. But the weather forecast for tomorrow is set to continue cloudless and without much breeze, just as it is today. Beautiful weather in which to receive the Pope’s blessing.

  At the back of the building next to the office is a small kitchen. Omar unpacks the two plastic shopping bags that are sitting on the sideboard. In one there are four potatoes, two large onions, two red peppers, two large cans of tomatoes, a head of garlic, a loaf of bread and a bunch of now rather wan and wilted coriander. The other bag contains three cans of iced tea and a bottle of temazepam.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Harry has been in this cell for about an hour now – he can’t tell exactly how long it’s been because his phone and his Rolex have been confiscated, along with his belt and trainers. He has been alternately sitting and lying on the hard blue plastic mattress with its one folded blanket, and pacing up and down the room, trying to make sense of the police’s questioning.

  The detectives wouldn’t answer any of his own questions, but to judge by their repeatedly asking about Max, Harry formed the opinion that Max was no longer at the chalet and isn’t among the victims.

  “Where is your friend now, Harry?” the woman had asked. She kept emphasising the word ‘friend’, like she was insinuating the opposite. “Where have you agreed to meet up?”

  The residue from the gun he’d been handling for most of yesterday had shown up, of course, leading to the detectives accusing him of shooting Simon and his girlfriend. Why had Harry done that, the woman had asked? Was it because Simon had surprised them at the chalet? Did he like Simon? Did he perhaps owe him some money?

  And then there was the business with the stolen diamond. Okay, the male detective had said, you kidnapped the Saudi woman and took her to Switzerland. What then? Did Simon object to what you had done? Did an argument ensue?

  “No one kidnapped anybody,” he kept repeating, keen to nip this one in the bud. The policewoman’s smirk just got stronger.

  Harry kept asking about whether they had checked with the Italian police about the terrorist hideout near Rome. Surely that would confirm his story.

  But if that was true, the female detective put in, why hadn’t they just gone to the Italian police and handed themselves in? Why drive all the way to Switzerland?

  Harry kept explaining about the deal with Aafia’s father, and suggesting that they contacted him directly. Was Aafia safe, he wanted to know? As with Harry’s other questions, the detectives just ignored him.

  “We can see that you reported the stolen diamond three weeks ago, but that the matter wasn’t taken any further… was that because there was no stolen diamond? Were you laying the groundwork for a long con? Does this diamond you say is sitting in a bank vault – does it in fact belong to Aafia? Or to Simon? He’s a rich man, able to run a private jet. Was the diamond intended for his girlfriend, who’s also been murdered?

  “Kylie… Kylie was murdered too?” blurts Harry. The two detectives don’t reply, merely exchange glances.

  Why didn’t Harry contact the police as soon as he escaped from the chalet? What will they find, once the warrant has been issued, in the Swiss safety-deposit box? Why didn’t he give himself up to the police in Geneva? Why had he attempted to flee to Britain? Was he a Muslim convert? Did he believe in jihad? Did he know they could keep him here for another twenty-eight days?

  All Harry could think about was the diamond. Could they confiscate it, maybe as proceeds of a crime? Or perhaps as suspected funding for terrorism?

  Max had escaped, he was sure of that or they wouldn’t be asking Harry about his whereabouts. He thinks Aafia might have got away too. But then there were four bodies on the news item he had seen at Geneva airport, which would suggest that Max and Aafia had been killed by Omar. Maybe this was a double bluff to see whether or not Harry was surprised that Max and Aafia had escaped.

  It suddenly made horrible sense that he would be the prime suspect. His motive was to steal the diamond, and killing the others would get rid of witnesses, and, in Max’s case, the diamond’s co-owner. The way he had coolly deposited the gem in a Swiss bank vault and then made good his escape to London was also incriminating. He was, in their eyes, doing a runner.

  “I need to see a lawyer now,” he says to the detectives.

  “Sorry, no can do,” the man replies. “Not yet. You’re not being held on suspicion of shoplifting, you know. This is a multiple murder with possible terrorist involvement. By the way, I see you attended a ‘Stop the War’ rally in March 2003. Care to tell us about that?”

  * * *

  Max can no longer feel his feet or his hands, but the discomfort has been superseded for a while now by the sounds and smells of cooking. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday evening and is now rave
nous. He can hear Omar – he thinks it’s Omar – chanting as he stirs the cook-pot. From time to time he taps the wooden spoon on the pot’s rim, like Max does when he cooks, which is rarely and ostentatiously.

  His thoughts until now have been with his family, and his father and his sister telling him ‘to do what he thinks is right’, and his mother babbling on about the Buxtons coming over to play tennis. It was too weird, this collision of the mundane family life in Hampshire, the blamelessness of it… fuck, his childhood home... and the situation he finds himself in here, held captive by this fanatical terrorist for God knows what end.

  And Max feels guilty for dragging them all into this mess with his deals and his moneymaking. And he blames Harry – Harry and his greed, his inability to let go when a deal goes bad. Where the fuck did Harry get to anyway? Why didn’t he watch his back? That’s what mates do. That’s what Simon did outside that pub in Fulham.

  The door is unlocked and opens. Max can sense rather than see the light from next door, and he hears Omar speaking in Arabic. There is someone with him, an accomplice.

  The smell of the food is intense now. He hears something, a plate perhaps, being placed on a table, and some cutlery. More talking in Arabic. Are they going to eat in front of him? Is this a new form of torture?

  And then he senses someone step behind him and can feel their hands on the back of his head. The blindfold is tugged off and Max finds himself staring at the scared face of a boy, an Arab boy of about twelve or thirteen. Omar is standing against the far wall with his arms folded and staring at Max – his eyes unreadable but a faint smirk on his lips.

  He barks something at the boy, who picks up the bowl from the table and a spoon.

  “He’s going to feed you,” says Omar. “It’s not hot.”

  The boy scoops a spoonful of what looks like potato and tomato and draws it towards Max’s mouth, but his hand is trembling. Omar says something encouraging to the boy, as if he were trying to calm a nervous animal, and he nods.