“He rang after you’d gone.”
“What? Why didn’t you bloody tell me?”
“Behave. I’m telling you now.”
“Well? What did he want?”
“He wanted to ask me out, of course.”
“Come on, Sandra, I’m not in the mood right now.”
“Oh, it’s so hard to believe is it, that he might be interested in me? I know men are brainwashed with images of thin women—”
I put my hand up; this wasn’t the time for a lecture on the social construct of male sexuality.
“Sandra, Aurora here was almost kidnapped by some hoodlums and cut in the process. The reason for which is beyond my grasp at the moment. Galbraith is likely the only person who somehow, but I’m not sure how, knew I was going to meet her there.” A horrible thought struck me: maybe he had asked Sandra out, distracting her with his oily smarm, and teased the information out of her? Perhaps I was being paranoid, but Bill and Ben hadn’t followed me there – they’d arrived before me.
“Did he ask about me picking her up when he rang?” I asked her.
A vein in Sandra’s temple started to throb dangerously. Her eyes were like needles in mine.
“He just wanted to speak to you,” she said, very controlled. “I would never give out your whereabouts or movements to anyone.”
We locked eyes for a few seconds.
“What did he want to talk about?” I asked.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
I noticed that Aurora was looking distressed at our exchange.
“What’s happening?” she asked. Sandra, finally appreciating the situation Aurora was in, adopted a mollifying tone lacking in our exchange.
“Nothing, Mummy and Daddy are having a fight. Let’s have a look at that arm.”
“Just a minute,” I said, as Sandra started to lead Aurora into the kitchen. They stopped. I pointed to the briefcase.
“Aurora, why don’t I take that to Mr Galbraith and get your passport, and the money? Then this will all be over.”
She thought about it but shook her head, pulling the case to her chest.
“Maybe try tomorrow, George. She’s been through enough for one night.” Well, I tried, and to be honest I didn’t blame her – it was her one bargaining chip. “By the way,” Sandra said, “I checked those number plates you gave me. One of them, anyway. I could only ask my contact for one favour at a time.”
“And?”
“It’s registered with a lease company. That’s the most I can get at the moment.”
“Which car was that, Sandra?”
“The Toyota. I’ll try the lease company tomorrow, see if I can blag any more info, although you are aware that once you’re licenced blagging becomes illegal?”
She was right: once the regulation of private investigators came in, engaging in that sort of dubious practice would make getting a licence impossible. “Better make the most of it then,” I said. She led Aurora away. Jason appeared, eating an apple.
“Boss. What’s the rumpus?” he asked, mouth full.
“Nothing.”
“OK…” he said, unconvinced. “Oh, I’ve had a trawl online looking at the Galbraiths, like you asked.” He waved the apple at me. “Do you want to see what I’ve got so far?”
“Not now, I have to go. Keep digging.”
* * *
I drove over to Fulbourn as it got dark, trying to make sense of what had happened earlier. Why hadn’t Bill and Ben just snatched the briefcase from Aurora if that’s what they wanted? It would have been easy enough between them; she wasn’t exactly built for fighting, although I liked the way she’d swung the briefcase at Bill (or was it Ben?).
Why try to take her?
The Galbraiths’ house was the centre of activity when I arrived. Five or six cars filled the drive and a Bentley with privacy windows was parked in front of the open gates. I turned the car round and parked in the pub car park down the road again. I thought about fortifying myself with some Dutch courage but it remained a thought.
I checked the cars on the drive, just to make sure the FFF wasn’t there, but they were all high-end cars one or two years old: Mercs, Beamers and Audis, apart from Bill Galbraith’s Porsche which was, of course, a classic. As I approached the house I could see people milling around on the upper floor. Galbraith, unless he was trying to break down class barriers, had not intended for us to attend a dinner party. Perhaps he had anticipated that we would conclude our business quickly in the scullery, or perhaps, I speculated, pressing the bell, he wasn’t expecting us at all. To give him the benefit of the doubt maybe his secretary hadn’t passed on my message.
“You’re here,” Galbraith said, slightly taken aback. Then, “Where’s Aurora? Is she in your car?”
“Really?” I asked. “You’re going to play it like that?”
“Play what like what? What are you on about? Where the hell is she?” He lowered his voice and leaned into me. “We had a fucking arrangement.” His breath smelled of wine and cured meats.
“Someone tried to kidnap her and the briefcase,” I said. “Someone who knew where we were meeting.”
To be fair, he looked genuinely shocked, but that could be because he’d been rumbled.
“Bill? Who is it, my darling?” Kristina asked from the top of the stairs, her voice falsely bright. I couldn’t see her from the door, but imagined her dressed for dinner.
Bill stepped outside, sliding the door to. “What on earth are you talking about?” he said.
“Why did you ring the office this afternoon?”
“I wanted to—” He looked over my shoulder, his eyes widening. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. I turned. Bill and Ben were a good stride back from me, slightly in the shadows. Blond Bill looked past me at Galbraith.
“Mr Badem says to go inside, Mr Galbraith, and that he’ll join you shortly,” he said in a softer, more educated voice than I’d had him down for. “Everything will be fine.” He held his hands together loosely in front of him. They contained something too big to be a knife but I couldn’t make it out.
I turned to Galbraith. “Might be a good time to invite me in for dinner,” I suggested. He looked over my shoulder and reached behind him to open the door just enough to back into the house. It slid closed after him. No dinner for me.
Before I could turn, arms gripped mine. Something metallic was placed against the back of my neck; it felt like two points. Bill and Ben were either side of me. Blondie Bill was at my right. He was holding whatever it was with his left hand, his right clamped to my wrist. Ben had both his hands on my left arm. Whatever was pressed against me didn’t feel like a firearm, or a knife.
“That’s a Taser at your neck,” Bill gently explained, a bit like a doctor talking through a procedure he’s about to perform. “It’s set to what they call ‘drive stun’ mode, or ‘contact’ mode, which is used for pain compliance rather than disabling at a distance. Do you understand?” Ben sniggered, a noise familiar from the hilarious Kardashian call last night. Since I’d kicked Bill in the nuts earlier in the evening, I deduced he was itching for an excuse to administer some pain compliance.
“I’m cool,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to turn round and walk to the gates. Mr Badem is waiting.”
“I’m dying to meet Mr Badem,” I said, as we turned round. The Taser was pressed harder into my neck and Bill’s mouth was at my ear.
“I’ve never used this on someone’s neck before, so dying could be a distinct possibility. Shall we go?”
I decided it was best to shut up.
18
WE WALKED DOWN THE DRIVE TO THE BENTLEY WITH THE tinted privacy windows parked outside the gate. Crooks and celebrities always have tinted windows. Ben knocked on the rear-door window and opened the door, releasing a great cloud of cigar smoke from inside. He gestured for me to enter, with Bill placing his hand on the top of my head to guide me in. He followed, the Taser moving to the
side of my neck. Inside, a very large man, whom I took to be Mr Badem, was doing a Sudoku puzzle in a big book of Sudoku puzzles. He had a fountain pen in one hand, cigar in the other, double chin supporting his fat head. The door thunked satisfyingly behind us and I was wedged between the two on the pale soft leather. The heady smell of spicy aftershave battled for olfactory supremacy with the cigar smoke.
“Put that away, Leonard, it’s unnecessary,” the fat man told Bill. Disappointed though I was to learn Bill’s real name, I was pleased when he removed the Taser from my neck. I waited, focussing on my breathing, not wanting to advertise my fear. Badem looked at me with green eyes topped with free-range eyebrows and ear hair to match. Badem was a Turkish name, I knew that much, and historically the Turks were no great friends of my ancestors. Ben, I realised, had got into the driver’s seat. He grinned at me through the rear-view mirror, remarkably unselfconscious about his teeth, which oddly enough I found endearing. Mr Badem cracked a window and chucked out the remainder of the cigar. Smoke was thankfully sucked out.
“I shouldn’t be smoking those, Mr Kocharyan. Not at all. Doctor’s orders.” He had an accent to him, not strong, one he had worked on to suppress, along with the verbiage to impress.
“We all have our vices.”
“I took up Sudoku to help me stop smoking. Now I do both. Do you do Sudoku?”
I shook my head. “I’m a chess problem type of guy. I take it you must be Mr Badem.”
He put his pen inside his jacket and handed the Sudoku book to Ben, then stuck out a giant hairy hand. “Apologies for this most unsatisfactory way of meeting.” I let my left hand be engulfed in his moist flipper.
“I feel, Mr Badem, that some sort of explanation is in order.”
He laughed, using his stomach, which undulated beneath a black silk shirt. The laugh turned into a wheeze, then a full-blown coughing fit. Neither Leonard nor Ben seemed concerned. Badem, incapacitated, reached out blindly to the front and Ben put a cotton handkerchief in his grasping hand, obviously practised at this. Badem wiped his eyes with it before handing it back.
“An explanation. Yes, of course,” he said, finding his breath. To my surprise and alarm he slowly unbuttoned his shirt, his big fingers struggling with the tiny buttons. I looked at Leonard who was staring longingly at his still fully charged Taser. Ben just grinned at me in the mirror. Eventually Badem tried to turn to me, his shirt undone. I looked at his exposed chest and stomach, heaving with each breath. Between his pendulous breasts ran a long, still-red scar. He looked at me expectantly. I wasn’t sure whether commiserations or congratulations were in order. Then, masterful detective that I am, I remembered whose house we were parked outside.
“Galbraith was your surgeon,” I said.
“He saved my life. He and a young man on a motorbike. Do you know what surgeons call motorcyclists?”
I shook my head.
“Organ donors.” He chuckled and tried to rebutton his shirt but struggled; getting the buttons back through their holes was harder than undoing them. “He’s a great man,” Badem said, gesturing at the house behind the willow trees.
“So…?” I prompted.
“So? I owe him my life. So, when I go to the follow-up clinic and he tells me that my medical notes are missing because his maid has run off with them, I decide to help him out, such a great man is he.”
“By following me?”
“You were withholding. You wouldn’t divulge the location of the maid.”
“I didn’t know where she was,” I said.
“Maybe you didn’t at that time.” He shifted his head to study me more closely. “But you do now.” It wasn’t a question. He stared at me so I could grasp the significance of his statement. I wasn’t happy about the direction things were headed, and they hadn’t started from anywhere good. I needed to buy time.
“May I ask a question?”
“Of course, but I am late to dinner at the house, so…”
“Why didn’t your men here just take the briefcase with your notes in it? Why were they trying to kidnap the woman?”
He smiled and pointed a sausage finger at me. “That’s a good question, Mr Kocharyan… Armenian, if I’m not mistaken.” Another statement that didn’t need an answer. “I’m Turkish, you know,” he said, allowing history’s baggage to settle heavily on our already imbalanced relationship.
“I’d worked that out, Mr Badem.” He smiled, but his demeanour had hardened.
“You asked why Leonard and Derin here didn’t just take the case from the girl, although I disagree profoundly with your description of their effort to persuade her to accompany them as a kidnap.” Ben, now revealed as Derin, was busy digging something out of his nose. “If you take something from a great man such as Mr Galbraith…” Badem was saying, “…then there should be consequences. Returning the case is a given. Getting my notes back is a given; they are needed for my personal care. But I strongly believe more is required of her than that. She owes her employer a grovelling apology. I think that’s what he is expecting, at the very least. Then there is the matter of a fitting punishment. It’s a question of honour, you see. She is in his employ.”
“Yes, the employ of a great man,” I said. Leonard, perhaps the only person to catch my tone, tapped my thigh with the Taser. “Mr Badem,” I continued. “The irony is that I was in the process of bringing the domestic – she’s called Aurora – to meet with Mr Galbraith, to come to an arrangement, when I found your men manhandling – sorry, persuading her to accompany them.”
“I concede that it is an unfortunate coincidence, Kocharyan.” What happened to Mister? “But the problem presenting itself to us right now is that you know where she is and we don’t.”
I felt trapped. Badem absently caressed his left breast and I felt nauseous, what with the smell of aftershave and cigar, Leonard fondling his Taser and Derin feeding himself with whatever he had found in his nose. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my mouth.
“How did you know she’d be there?” I asked.
“You ask many questions, but provide very few answers.” Giving up on his buttons, he said something to Derin in Turkish who turned in his seat and leaned into the back to button up Badem’s shirt. “Derin is my sister’s boy,” he told me, like I gave a shit. Then I realised that he felt it necessary to explain Derin.
I thought of making a dash over Derin onto the front passenger seat and then out of the door but all Leonard had to do was press that thing against me. My best bet would be going through Leonard himself, but up close he looked more canny than I’d initially stereotyped him as. He was resting against the door at an angle, so he was turned towards me slightly, and although he seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts there would be no element of surprise. I thought about using my witty banter to induce another coughing fit in Badem, but even if possible, the idea of trying to get over or past him to open his door and jump out was more fantasy than plan.
“So,” Badem said, now fully buttoned. “I must go to dinner with my surgeon and his lovely wife and the other interesting guests while you tell Leonard and Derin here where the girl is.”
Leonard, who hitherto had perhaps been meditating on life’s injustices, came alive. Derin got out and opened the door for his uncle.
“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr Kocharyan.” He started to slide out. The Taser was reapplied to my neck. “I like you,” Badem continued. “So I hope that you will be sensible and not cause yourself too much pain. I feel your people have suffered enough.” Once out he leaned back in, huffing and puffing. “Leonard, please don’t activate that infernal contraption inside the car. Last time you used it I seem to remember the consequences being involuntary urination and defecation.”
“Right you are, Mr Badem,” said Leonard, smiling at me. “Not in the car.”
19
I’M NOT VERY GOOD WITH PAIN, AND WOULDN’T DESCRIBE myself as stoic. So I went to my happy place, and visualised myself in the pub down the ro
ad, sipping a pint of the guest beer and perhaps indulging in a game of darts with an eccentric local. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when we disembarked from the luscious yet cloying interior of the Bentley and started walking towards the pub along the road. Perhaps positive thinking worked after all, and merely imagining a good outcome could make it happen. Of course Leonard and Derin were either side of me, close, gripping my arms as before, so that took the shine off things. To allow for the fact that we could be seen like this on the road by passing motorists, Leonard had moved the Taser from my neck to the base of my spine, where it was less obvious, although he made sure to explain, in his kindly doctor’s voice, the risks of permanent paralysis if ten thousand volts were applied for too long a period.
“I’ve disabled the five-second safety override,” he explained. I didn’t know what he meant or whether paralysis was actually possible but it wasn’t something I wanted to put to the test, especially since sweat was running down my spine into the small of my back. According to my basic knowledge of physics that would only increase conductivity, right?
Unfortunately nobody drove past us, so any ideas I had of leaping into the path of an oncoming car were unrealisable. But we were walking towards the pub, and therefore people. Leonard and Derin too must have parked their car there; I hadn’t thought to look for it when I was there.
“Electrocution and paralysis aside, what’s the plan, fellas?” I asked as cheerily as I could muster. There was no answer but the lights of the pub were a welcome sight. Lights meant people and that offered some hope. I presumed they wanted to know where Aurora was, and it seemed to me that this was all a bit OTT for some twisted concept of honour that didn’t really affect the person orchestrating it, namely Badem. But then a lot of people get killed in the name of honour so who was I to question its pernicious hold?
We turned into the pub car park which was only half full as it was a weekday.
The Surgeon's Case Page 9