Old Enemies

by Michael Dobbs

  It was enough for D’Amato to put a couple of his hounds onto the job. He didn’t associate the report of the burglary with that of the kidnap of the English boy, not at first, but when the hounds returned with the information that foreigners had bought substantial quantities of supplies at a small local supermarket, not just once but several times in recent weeks, and that they were English or spoke English, at least, and drove a rented car, the questions began to mount in D’Amato’s mind. And soon there were enough of them for him to instruct his hounds to return to the Carso and do a little more digging.

  Ruari’s stomach told him something was up. That was how he told time, through his stomach, and he knew they’d missed a meal. It wasn’t just late, it had entirely passed by. Not as punishment, he concluded, because then they would have made a point of making him suffer, but for some reason their routine had gone. No one came.

  He tried to distract the lingering pain from his finger and his rising sense of unease by turning the dusty cobweb dangling above his head into a street map. His home in Notting Hill was at the centre and his mind followed different strands of the silk, trying to remember where they led. Second right, fourth on the left, and after a while it had to be Earl’s Court, or was it Tyburn? Start all over again. It was mindless, but necessary, better than sitting in the semi-darkness hurting and worrying about his stomach, or the men upstairs.

  He was wandering down the King’s Road towards his favourite pizza restaurant when he heard voices. That was unusual. Occasionally he would hear muffled sounds from upstairs, a scraped chair, a dropped bowl, the slam of a door, but the cellar was deep and the stone floor thick and he had only heard voices once before, at the time of the fight. So he abandoned his walk and concentrated, trying to pick up what was being said. He couldn’t make out the words, but there was no mistaking their anger. The voices were rising, growing increasingly strident. What could they be arguing about? It could only be one thing, he decided. Him.

  As the aggression mounted, Ruari grew afraid. His finger, or lost finger, the little one on his right hand, had been agony at first, but gradually it had gone numb and did little more than complain, but now it began to throb and burn again, picking up on his anxiety.

  He heard a chair topple – no, it was something more than that. It sounded like a chair being smashed to pieces, to matchwood. Then shouts. Noises of fury. More chairs being tipped or smashed. Confusion. A fight. And finally, a terrible cry.

  The silence that followed the onslaught screamed inside Ruari’s imagination. He had heard no guns, this was no rescue bid, just his captors losing their tempers, and Ruari was in their line of fire. In the quiet of the cellar he listened to his own heartbeat.

  The door to the cellar seemed to explode as it was kicked in, with such violence it was left lurching at a sickening angle on a solitary hinge. A curse rang out in Romanian. Then Cosmin was clattering down the unsteady wooden steps. He was sweating, had a wild look in his eye, and a torn lip. And in his hand he carried his knife once again. It was already dripping blood.

  The Toucan had made its preparations for Christmas. Two strings of tinsel dangled from the beaten-up brass clock, another was draped across the front of the beer pumps. The cheap plaster bust that sat on a shelf behind the counter between the whiskies had been dressed in a red Santa Claus hat. Harry hadn’t noticed the bust before and was taken by surprise as he walked in; it had a prominent nose, sparse hair and appeared to be Prince Philip.

  The man in the overcoat who had been eating oysters during Harry’s last visit was still there, except this time with a different woman. Their hands and eyes suggested they weren’t strangers, and that Christmas was likely to come early for him. Sean was there, too, at the same table. As Harry sat down, the Irishman pushed a fresh pint of Guinness towards him. That was all Harry got as a greeting.

  ‘This is getting to be dangerously like a habit, Sean.’

  ‘You’ve no need to be worrying yourself on that account, Mr Jones.’

  ‘Not a social invitation, then.’

  And already the ingrained animosity was pushing them apart. Breslin was already most of the way through his beer and Harry sensed it wasn’t his first.

  ‘We had another message,’ Breslin announced. ‘Ruari’s to be released.’

  ‘Then let’s pray they mean it.’

  ‘I’m not much of a one for prayer myself, but I’ll not argue with you on that.’ He paused, as if he had something difficult to say, and his eyes, always so cautious, settled on Harry. ‘I understand you might have had something to do with that, with arranging for his release. I don’t know the details, and that pathetic excuse for a policeman Archer is already claiming full credit, but he’s just full of gab, the sort that always nibbles at someone else’s cheese. That man is about as much feckin’ use as a hole in your underwear.’

  Harry suspected Sean held a similar opinion about most British policemen.

  ‘Anyhow, I wanted to say thank you,’ the Irishman continued. ‘On behalf of the family.’

  ‘I appreciate it. I know it’s not the easiest thing for you to say.’

  ‘No, it’s not, but we Breslins pay our debts.’ A final couple of inches of the dark liquor slid down his throat and he nodded to the barman for another, trying to drown his discomfort.

  That was when Harry realized. No one else in the family wanted to see him. Not J.J., and after the other night in Hyde Park, not Terri either. Sean had drawn the short straw. ‘I think I understand,’ Harry muttered.

  Sean waited to take the top off his fresh drink before he replied. It was as though he was considering his words, content to keep Harry waiting. ‘I’m the head of the family. Ruari’s my grandson. My thanks are sincere.’

  ‘And J.J.?’

  ‘He’s grateful, too. Would have been here himself, but he sort of has an issue with you and his wife.’

  ‘There is no issue.’

  ‘He seems to think so. And he’s a proud man.’

  ‘He’s wrong.’

  ‘Now you’ll not be asking me to take your word for that, Mr Jones.’

  It wasn’t a thing Harry much wanted to swear to on a stack of Bibles, either. He’d sweated through an entire set of sheets after his encounter with Terri; she had a rare talent for making a mess of his bed. He decided to change the subject. ‘Of course. Jackie Charlton.’

  ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘It’s Jackie Charlton,’ Harry repeated, nodding at the plaster bust and at last recognizing the angular features as those of the former Irish national football coach. ‘For one lurid moment I thought it was Prince Philip.’

  ‘An English prince? Bury me alive first, but not in here!’

  ‘He’s Greek, actually. And the Windsors are German.’

  ‘Then get rid of them, why not? We did.’

  The man seemed hard-wired to hate the English, it was as though he couldn’t help himself. He’d been suckled on it at his mother’s breast, been taught it at school, heard it preached from any number of pulpits, had it sprinkled along with the holy water and sung about in every pub. God and Irish nationalism marched hand in hand, and the English were the Antichrist. That belief was as much part of him as was his name.

  ‘This wasn’t your first kidnapping, was it, Sean?’ The question sounded entirely rhetorical. ‘You were a Provo fundraiser. I seem to remember that kidnapping came in handy for a while when you and your friends were a little short.’

  ‘Somehow I suspect that even you, Major Jones’ – he used Harry’s old army rank, readily available on Wikipedia – ‘weren’t entirely an innocent in such matters.’

  ‘We didn’t take hostages, we tried to release them.’

  ‘And sure as Christ was crucified you took ’em,’ Sean replied, the softness of his voice no disguise for the passion behind his words. ‘You just changed the language, didn’t call them hostages but political prisoners, imprisoned them without charges and without trial, and even if they did make it to court i
t was in a secret hearing with a bent British judge.’

  ‘Don’t preach to me, Sean. I saw what your friends did.’

  ‘By God, you bastards have short memories.’

  ‘What’s done is done, Sean.’

  ‘And I’ll remember what was done till the day I burn in Hell.’

  Sean’s face was flushed, the old eyes bright with anger. Then they sank to his drink, which he finished with one throat-stirring draught.

  ‘Tell me, Sean, what got you started?’

  His eyes came up again, angry, piercing. ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘I do.’

  A long hesitation. Then Breslin slowly raised his hand again to summon the barman. ‘Two Bushmills, the sixteen-year-old, mind. Make them large. No ice.’ Sean gave his instruction without taking his eyes off Harry. ‘So, Mr Jones, you’re wanting to know what got me started,’ he whispered, so softly that Harry was obliged to lean forward to catch the words. ‘I’m surprised you of all people should have to ask me that. You see, I was no different from the rest. The winter of ’72 it was, and a bloody awful winter, too. I’d spent the afternoon playing football in the park with J.J., he’d have been, what, about five? It was snowing, we ended up building a snowman instead, but the lad never did take much to sport. We got back home, and we turned the radio on, and we heard. Bloody Sunday. Your troops had killed thirteen unarmed civilians in Derry. Half of them teenagers, many of them shot in the back, and the Union Jack a butcher’s apron once more. In half an hour your devils turned the clock back three hundred feckin’ years.’

  Harry was about to challenge him, remind him of Omagh, of Bloody Friday, of Enniskillen on Remembrance Day, of the La Mon fire-bomb massacre and a dozen other examples of the slaughter of innocents that were down to the IRA, but he decided this wasn’t the moment. He wanted to listen, not to score points in a game that had no end.

  ‘There were no more bystanders after that.’ The tumblers of whiskey arrived; Sean took a sip. ‘One of those boys you shot. He was my nephew. Sixteen, that’s how old he was, still waiting to pass his exams and lose his cherry. Crawling away on the ground, trying to get to safety. The Paras said he was carrying a weapon; the priest who was beside him all the time and gave him the last rites says that was a lie. All the family got left with was a foggy black-and-white photo of a young kid, bleeding his brains out in a gutter.’ Very slowly, he ran his tongue across lips that had dried out with anger. ‘You were a paratrooper. Weren’t you, Major Jones?’

  ‘You know I was,’ Harry responded. Not then, not in Derry, not at that time, but the details didn’t matter.

  ‘It was after that I began helping. I was an accountant, a reasonably bright one. Lots of people were at it in those days, raising money for the cause. And very inventive, so we were. Some of the local pubs started running a little lottery, and there were a few insurance claims that needed – how can I put this to a law-abiding man such as yourself? – a bit of massaging. Then some of the local bookies who were operating beneath the radar volunteered to pay a little gentle tax, and if they didn’t volunteer they paid it anyway. Everyone was raising money in their own way – yes, and at times that might have involved a few unintended holidays for a banker or a wealthy foreign businessman.’

  ‘Kidnapping’s not a sodding vacation, Sean.’

  ‘Everyone had his own means, and it all needed accounting for. So that’s what I did. I was the gatekeeper. I handled the books.’

  ‘You laundered their dirty money for them.’

  ‘It was better than shooting kids in the back.’

  The bar had begun to grow more crowded, but neither of them noticed. They had gone back to another world, another time.

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll be needing another drink, you and I,’ Sean said, finishing off his whiskey without taking his eyes from Harry. ‘Blood. Family. At the end of the day, that’s what counts, Major Jones, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Then may God forgive me for saying so, but for the first time in my life, I pity you. Truly I do.’

  Sex had its amusing side, Simona decided. She was in the modest hotel room booked by D’Amato where moments ago he had finished throwing himself at her, and on her. He wouldn’t use his own apartment, where his wife cast too many shadows, but he had begged Simona to spend the night with him rather than confine themselves to a few trembling moments behind a filing cabinet, so they had decided on the neutral ground of the hotel – an insipid establishment, near the railway station, but it had the benefit of being determinedly anonymous, a place where the inspector was unlikely to run into any of his colleagues. He had no desire to become an object of gossip. He had brought a bottle of Prosecco along with his overnight things, and they’d used tooth mugs, but she’d barely taken a sip before he was on her, in a state of considerable excitement. It wasn’t just her naked and youthful body; he’d arrived clicking his fingers, always with the inspector a sign of agitation, and he’d even clicked as he came. Now he lay back on the rumpled duvet, panting, spent, taking sips of Prosecco while his other hand remained clamped to her breast, and sharing the reasons for his turbulent mood.

  The case on the Carso. It had come alive, and D’Amato with it. The two Englishmen, or English-speakers, D’Amato explained, had been regularly buying provisions at a local store, but far too much for their own consumption, enough for eight, at least. No one seemed to know why they were on the Carso, or why they had rented the remote farmhouse to which their car had been followed, although it was known that they had paid in advance for three months and in cash. It seemed clear they wanted to stay for some time, yet leave no trace. What was more, D’Amato insisted excitedly as he repeatedly stroked Simona’s breast, they had first appeared at the farmhouse less than two weeks before the English boy had disappeared, and there were reports that activity on the road that passed nearest to the farmhouse had been unusually busy on the day of the kidnap itself. ‘You see. It all fits!’ he exclaimed.

  He rolled over to wrap her in his arms. In the light from the bedside lamp she could see the early signs of grey in his hair, and in the mirror the remarkable paleness of his bottom, yet for a man in middle age he seemed to retain plenty of enthusiasm and she could feel that enthusiasm once more brushing against her thigh. This case was clearly getting to him.

  ‘It’s not conclusive, I know,’ he continued, ‘so yesterday I sent one of my undercover officers in an egg-delivery van. Incompetent bastard, he broke most of them. He drove up pretending to be lost, needing directions. He said nothing was right about the place, no work being done, no noise being made, just a guy who answered the door and who made it clear he didn’t want a stranger on his doorstep. He wasn’t one of the Englishmen, either, some other type of foreigner, broken Italian, a fuck-off scowl on his face. There were other men in the house, the driver was sure of that, but they were keeping their heads down. Then this morning’ – so intense was his excitement that he had rolled on top of her once more – ‘the two Englishmen with another man in tow drove a few miles down the road and parked outside the research institute in Padriciano. The new man appeared to have a laptop with him, we think he was sending messages from the back seat, piggybacking on the institute’s wi-fi service.’

  ‘They can do that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes,’ he sighed, as though it hurt.

  For a moment she thought he had become distracted because he was inside her once more, shuffling away, and he was gasping, the pitch of his voice rising with every breath, yet his mind was still elsewhere.

  ‘It can be done, my love. Easily. Happens all over the place. Outside schools, libraries, hospitals. Even private homes. All you need is the password and – they’re so simple. A five-year-old can guess them. Or you get – software – to do it – for you!’

  She stifled a giggle as his forehead creased in concentration.

  ‘The kidnappers. They’re using the Internet. To contact the family. You know what I think? I’ll b
et they’re driving round the Carso. Using different wi-fi hot spots. For every message. Makes it almost impossible . . . to – to-to-to – trace!’

  He gave a squeak followed by a deep groan, and she could restrain herself no longer, bursting into a fit of laughter that she managed to disguise as a gasp of passion, which happened to coincide precisely with his own climax. Soon he was lying back, the pillows crushed beside his head, staring at the ceiling. He exhaled, long and forlornly, like a deflating air bed.

  ‘Simona, can you imagine what it would be like for my career, me smashing an international kidnapping ring?’

  Trieste was, in the eyes of some, a nowhere place where little of significance happened any more. It wasn’t an entirely accurate conclusion, for its location on the edge of the Balkans meant that it was used for trafficking of all sorts – drugs, weapons, women – but for the most part such matters passed quickly through and onwards to other jurisdictions. They hadn’t had a car stolen in the last month, or a good international bust in years.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Simona whispered.

  ‘Raid the place. Early in the morning. I’m sorry, little one, but I have to leave you in a few hours . . .’

  And still the man was insatiable, she had to give him that. It took more Prosecco and yet more sex before his eyes began to flicker and he was teetering on the edge of sleep. She rolled away from him and stole quietly from the bed, picking up her handbag.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked drowsily, his hand reaching out after her.

  ‘Just to the bathroom. To take care of things.’

  He offered up a weak smile, weary yet triumphant, and closed his eyes once again.

  Once in the bathroom, Simona reached for her phone, searching for the number of her cousin, Nelu. Simona lodged with his mother, her aunt, and although Nelu had moved to his own place she’d got to know him well, and liked him, despite the fact that he swam in pretty murky waters. Her aunt called the two of them ‘Negru si Alb’, Black and White, as they chatted around her table, and Nelu had chased her around the table, too, when her aunt was away, but she had never let him catch her. And a couple of weeks ago Nelu had gone away, on business so her aunt had declared, with some of those shadowy friends of his, doing whatever they did, but she couldn’t say what or where. As D’Amato had talked up the value of coincidence, so Simona had begun to grow concerned, for the dates of the kidnapping seemed to coincide all too neatly with the time Nelu had disappeared. Without wanting to she realized she had become involved, and that meant she had a decision to make, but it wasn’t much of one, not for her. ‘Familie unita.’ Family sticks together, as they say in Romania.