by Holly Watt
Past caring about the Post’s budget, she took a helicopter transfer down the coast, just a few miles to the tiny principality perched on the edge of France. The residents of Monaco treated the helicopter like a taxi service anyway, the ticket office tucked in next to the taxi counter.
Casey knew where she would find Maurice Delacroix. Folded into a booth at Teddy’s, the little nightclub next to the harbour side.
Delacroix saw her as soon as she walked in, and was on his feet in a second.
‘Cassandra.’ His mouth curved as he raised her hand to his lips. ‘It has been too long.’
Before Casey had sat down, a waiter rushed forwards with a fresh bottle of champagne. Delacroix spent more in Teddy’s than almost anyone else, and it was one waiter’s task to keep a watch on his table at all times.
‘Would you give us a moment, Tiphaine, my love?’ Maurice turned to the girl sitting on his right.
Tiphaine pouted, just for a beat. Then she stood and sashayed away across the club in her red feathered dress and Louboutin heels. Just before she reached the tiny dancefloor, she blew Delacroix a kiss over her shoulder.
‘That’ – Delacroix’s eyes ran over Casey – ‘is a beautiful dress.’
‘Thank you, Maurice.’ She caught his eye with a smile.
Casey disliked the skintight Hervé Léger dresses, but she had laughed about this one earlier with Miranda as she yanked open the cupboard in the corner of the investigations room.
‘It never matters how long this dress lies in a crumpled heap.’
A quick shake and the sequined black dress was ready. Casey had done her make-up as her flight descended towards Nice.
‘Now, how may I assist you, Miss Benedict?’
Casey had met Maurice Delacroix a few years earlier. She had been in the Vandals club, on the opposite side of the port from Teddy’s, circling one of the richest Russians in the world. All week long, the Russian had been watching her, dark eyes flickering in a still face.
Casey had been in a different Hervé Léger dress then. Imperial purple, her mouth a curve of scarlet. Simpering on a bar stool, and kicking her heels carelessly.
In the end, Kuznetsov had sent one of his bodyguards across to her. ‘You join us, yes?’ and it wasn’t a question.
Casey had sat across the table from the Russian, while his eyes flicked from her to the dancefloor and back, unspeaking. She had tried all her wiles: the half-questions, the flirtation, even the clowning. Nothing worked.
All around them, eighteen-year-old girls flirted relentlessly with men three times their age. They were professional, the Monaco girls.
Later, much later, the Russian stood. ‘You. Come with me.’
Casey knew Kuznetsov’s enormous yacht waited out in the Mediterranean. Too large to dock in the Monaco harbour, so the tenders raced back and forwards to the coast, like bees to honey.
Every instinct screamed no, but Casey hesitated. The story, the story, the story.
She stood up, smile glimmering. And just then, a man stopped in front of the table. Brazilian, from his accent.
‘One moment,’ Kuznetsov told Casey, over the Brazilian’s shoulder.
As she was standing by the table, another man – so casual, just passing – stopped and turned to her, and spoke so quietly that she almost missed the words in the roar of the club: ‘Who are you with?’
Casey turned with a jolt. He was tall, this man, with a tanned face that would have been unremarkable but for the intensity of the black-eyed stare. Beautifully dressed, in a dark suit, the jacket thrown over his shoulder. His voice was English public school, with the faintest of French inflections. Casey guessed he was in his early fifties.
‘I don’t’ – Casey had almost stumbled over the words – ‘know what you mean.’
‘You don’t have time to mess about,’ said the man. ‘Are you with an agency, or are you working alone?’
Casey tossed her head, and was moving away when he grabbed her elbow with a surprising strength.
‘It’s dangerous enough if you are an agent,’ he said, sitting down on a bar stool, so offhand. ‘But if you get on that ship without proper backup, that man will kill you.’
‘I know how to look after myself.’
She jerked at her arm, but his fingers only tightened. The Brazilian was wandering off, Kuznetsov looking around for her.
‘Tell him you’re staying with me,’ said the man. ‘Tell him, or I will blow your cover.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
A whisper in her ear. ‘I would.’
Kuznetsov had stepped towards her then. ‘We go now.’
‘I see you’ve met my little friend, Andrey.’ The man stood up from his bar stool, limbs unfolding, all nonchalance. ‘I’m sorry to do this, old boy, really I am. But I very much need this girl’s company, just for a few minutes.’
‘Maurice.’ Kuznetsov’s face moved into an approximation of a smile.
The two men shared the briefest of hugs, but Casey sensed the tension flaring between them. She almost stepped towards Kuznetsov, but the grip on her arm tightened again.
Then the Russian shrugged, stepped back. ‘If you insist, Delacroix.’
Kuznetsov turned on his heel, ignoring Casey. He strode out of the door of the club, clicking his fingers at one of the girls sitting at a table outside. The girl stood up sharply, and shimmied after him, heels clacking on the pavement.
‘You just blew weeks of work,’ Casey stared after the Russian. ‘I only needed one fact. You . . .’
‘I saved your life,’ Delacroix shrugged. ‘That man likes girls to scream as he fucks them. And his bodyguards are chosen to be deaf.’
‘Well, what about her?’ Casey gestured at the girl tottering towards the tender, precarious in her heels.
‘You can’t,’ Delacroix said thoughtfully, ‘save everyone.’
The Brazilian reappeared beside them. ‘He wasn’t up for the Kazakhstan deal, Maurice.’
‘No,’ Delacroix murmured after the man had moved on. ‘He wouldn’t be. But thank you for asking anyway. Drink, my dear?’
Delacroix was a fixer, Casey learned later. One of the small group of men around the world who put together deals worth billions, taking a slice every time. By the time Casey met him in Monaco, he had his own vast fortune, taking cut after cut after cut.
He was charming, amoral. Made her laugh that evening, and every evening after.
‘You owe me,’ he said, hours later that night, as he kissed her hand goodbye. And he was a man who called in his promises, she thought. Honour among thieves, or something close to it.
They met, now and again. His tentacles reached everywhere.
‘Never write about me,’ he had ordered that night. ‘That’s the deal, for saving your life.’
‘I don’t know that you did.’
‘I did, my girl. I did.’
She had kept her promise, half-believing him. Now and again, he rang her – from strange time zones, never the same number – with a clue or a tip. They always offered up gold.
Like many of the very richest, he liked having a journalist to call. Not quite a pet, but tame. More or less.
She didn’t know how he had peered through her veil that night, but he was the only one who ever had.
‘Delacroix.’
‘Miss Benedict.’
‘Are you well?’
‘Very.’
‘And are you working on anything special at the moment?’
Delacroix inclined his head thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I’m selling an oil refinery.’
‘An oil refinery?’
‘Well, the machinery inside the refinery. It’s old, so it will fail the strict new regulations where it is at the moment. Red tape, you know. So tedious. But we can dismantle it, ship it, and then put it back together again. So I have to find a country where they don’t care so much about these petty rules. Nigeria, maybe. Angola, possibly. Lebanon, probably.’ His teeth gleamed for a second. ‘Yes, Lebanon.
’
‘You’re impossible.’
‘If I don’t do it . . .’ he shrugged. ‘I saw you got Kuznetsov, in the end.’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it was you.’
She had waited for a week, in a small café close to where the tender docked in Monaco. Sat there, quite invisible, in her plaid shirt and rolled-up jeans.
She had followed the girls the morning after, as they staggered off the tender, tottering away up the narrow Monaco streets.
The first three wouldn’t talk. The fourth would, trailing behind her to the police like a deflated helium balloon. When the police shrugged, she brought in the fifth the next day. Kuznetsov was arrested two days later.
‘But you never wrote about it.’
‘The women I spoke to didn’t want anything in the Post.’ Casey tilted her head to one side. ‘And he’s in jail anyway now, so it doesn’t matter. Our Paris correspondent wrote up the basic trial stuff. Not the story I wanted, but you wrecked that one . . .’
She didn’t tell Delacroix that she had come down to Monaco to find the girls on her holiday. South of France, they said in the office. Very nice.
‘Kuznetsov had it coming.’
‘Who,’ Casey asked, ‘took over his businesses?’
‘Who,’ Delacroix grinned, ‘do you think?’
‘You’re a disgrace,’ she said, and he half-winked at her in the hot twilight of the club.
‘So.’ Delacroix waved away a waiter trying to top up her glass, and poured the champagne himself. ‘What do you need, Cassandra?’
‘I want to know who bought a ship for scrapping in Bangladesh. It was sold a few weeks ago, the Tephi,’ Casey spelled it out. ‘And another one called the Beauvallet. They were probably bought by the same person or company.’
Delacroix narrowed his eyes as he stared across the club. ‘It should be possible to find out. This ship is in Bangladesh at the moment?’
‘Yes. It’s being taken apart right now. The Tephi used to belong to the Alexakis family.’ Casey named one of the Greek shipping dynasties. ‘But it was sold to a cash buyer in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and I can’t track it any further. The Beauvallet belonged to a BVI shell company, and it operated under the Liberian flag.’
‘And you need to know soon?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ He raised his eyebrows with pretended surprise. ‘It is impossible.’
‘It is important.’
‘All right,’ Delacroix sighed. ‘I am sure it will be achievable. For you, Cassandra.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You know the rule.’
‘I know,’ Casey exhaled. ‘I owe you.’
‘One day,’ he murmured. ‘One day.’
55
Delacroix called her a few hours later, in the breaking dawn. Casey answered the phone as she was sitting up in bed, blinking at beige curtains.
‘Portunus Marine,’ Delacroix said in her ear.
‘Who?’ Casey pushed back her hair. ‘Have you ever heard of them?’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘But there is no mistake. Portunus Marine bought both the Tephi and the Beauvallet out of Hong Kong. They were bought from the original owners by cash buyers, who sold them on to Portunus Marine. Portunus are still holding those ships now. Even if they are in bits all over a beach in Bangladesh.’
‘Thank you, Delacroix,’ Casey said, meaning it.
‘It took hours.’ He put a grumble into his voice.
‘There haven’t been hours.’ Casey looked at her watch.
They had left the club together at the end of the night, after a few more rounds of idle gossip. Delacroix added the drinks to his vast bill with a gesture as they left.
‘They’ll just be getting started in Hong Kong now,’ he had said, as he waved her goodnight. ‘It’s a good time to make calls.’
Delacroix barely slept, she knew. The long nights in Teddy’s were a way of filling time, as much as anything else.
‘And you’ve never heard of Portunus,’ said Casey, scowling at the curtains. Nice airport was waking up beyond her window.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can make some more calls, if you like. But they seem to be some wreckers in Bangladesh. Nothing more. There’s no name behind them that people know.’
‘Damn.’
He didn’t ask why she wanted to know. He never did.
‘Thank you,’ said Casey, after a pause.
‘Any time,’ he said, and the phone went dead.
Casey scrambled onto the first flight to London. ‘I’ll be in the office by nine,’ she messaged Miranda.
She tried the Burton-Smiths again. No answer. She felt her worries deepen. Emily should be waiting by the phone, high-wire tense. Casey stared at the blank screen, and bit her nails.
The Heathrow flight was almost empty apart from a few expats on their commute. As the plane curved over London, Casey peered down at the silver ribbon of the Thames. Hyde Park, Regent’s Park and bridges like stitches. She tried to spy the Post building, in the grey of the morning.
‘Nearly there,’ she texted Miranda, as the plane trundled towards the gate.
Messages were already bleeping in. Gabriel Bantham: Call me.
She rang him as soon as she was off the plane.
Bantham answered at the first ring, his voice ragged with nerves, an echo of that panicked diplomat in Georgetown.
‘Erica Whiddon,’ he said. ‘Erica Whiddon.’
‘Yes?’
‘Erica Whiddon.’ It was as if his mind was stuck on the words. ‘Erica Whiddon,’ he said again.
‘What?’ Casey interrupted him. ‘Who is she?’
‘She’s a friend of mine,’ Bantham managed. ‘At the Commission. We got on well, always did.’
‘Is she the person?’ Casey asked. ‘The person who fixed the passports?’
There was a long pause.
‘I think so.’ His voice was faint, reeling with shock. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Her brisk questions chipped away at his shock. ‘She worked closely for me and Sir William out there,’ he said. ‘A sort of deputy. And she stayed on in Dhaka.’
‘Have you spoken to her about the passports?’
‘Spoken to her?’ There was a long dull silence.
‘Yes, Gabriel. Have you spoken to her about it?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Well, I’ll call her then. Take me through why you think—’
‘You can’t.’
‘Of course I can, Gabriel. We’ve got to hurry.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I can.’
‘She’s dead.’ Casey stopped, staring at the adverts for banks and scent and duty-free whisky, travellers flowing around her like a rock in a river.
‘What happened?’ Her mouth moved eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Gabriel. So sorry to hear that.’
‘They found her’ – his voice was unsteady – ‘in her flat this morning. In Gulshan. She’d been attacked. Beaten about the head. Blood everywhere, they said.’
‘Do they know who did it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They have no idea.’
The phone line was silent for a beat.
‘Can you leave the country?’ Casey asked. ‘I think you should get out of Dhaka as soon as possible.’
‘She was such a nice woman,’ Bantham said. ‘Never married or anything. But she was so thoughtful. Remembered birthdays. She was always pleased to see you.’
‘She sounds lovely, Gabriel.’ Casey fought for patience. ‘But why do you think it was her?’
‘She had access to the emergency passports.’ Gabriel sounded almost dreamy. ‘She’s who Sir William would have turned to for help. And she had a sister, back in England, who had serious problems. I’m not sure what, but supporting her cost a lot, I know. Erica helped out. It was a big pressure. When I saw Erica yesterday, I asked after her sister, and you could just see that tension had gone. And I just suddenly realised.’
‘No.’ His voice was still hazy. ‘I told everyone I would only be here for a couple of days.’
‘Get to the airport,’ Casey ordered. ‘Go there right away, Gabriel. I’ll look at flights.’
‘Poor Erica.’ It was as if he was talking to himself. ‘Poor Erica.’
‘Yes,’ Casey agreed. ‘Poor Erica.’
After she hung up, Casey stood, processing her thoughts. Then she hurried through the airport, almost running. She raced through passport control, ignoring the still luggage belts, burst out on to the concourse and raced towards the train station. And almost fell as a hand grabbed hard at her shoulder.
56
‘Ed,’ Casey gasped.
‘Be quiet,’ he muttered. He had her firm at the elbow, towing her smoothly across the huge hall.
‘Ed, what are you doing?’
He paused behind one of the big pillars, pushing her close to the concrete. ‘Stay there.’
‘What . . .’
Ed was scanning the concourse, eyes narrowed.
‘There. Grey jacket, blue jeans, white sign with red writing.’
‘Doesn’t,’ Casey was over her shock, grumbling slightly, ‘narrow it down much.’
‘Just look.’
She saw the man almost at once, among the crowd of bored chauffeurs and happy families. Casey Benedict read his sign.
‘Who the hell . . .’
‘I don’t know.’ Ed was searching the rest of the airport now, eyes casual, but focusing in on every person.
‘How did he . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ Ed said again. ‘Miranda texted me to say you were flying in. I thought I would come and meet you. Find out what was happening with the story.’
‘Oh,’ said Casey. ‘That’s . . .’ Then she sharpened her voice. ‘But how did he know? Whoever he is.’
‘I was waiting for you,’ said Ed. ‘Your flight was a few minutes late. I just saw him there, in the corner of my eye. I’ve checked with Miranda. She didn’t send anyone.’
‘Who is he?’ Casey was watching the man.
He was deliberately anonymous. The sort of person who would be near-impossible to describe for a photofit. Medium height, medium brown hair, medium brown eyes. Hard muscles though, and a toughness in his movements. There was a menace about him too, the crowd keeping a step back even in the crush.