Safe House

by Chris Ewan

  His door opened. He stepped out. He straightened and gazed at Shimmin over the wet roof of the car. Then he walked around the bonnet and rested his hand on Shimmin’s shoulder. Escorted him to the rear of the van, where Rebecca and I joined them.

  Shimmin shook his head at me, his hands deep in the pockets of his mackintosh. He jutted his chin towards the cottage. ‘Just wouldn’t give it up, would you, lad?’ He smiled flatly, almost in spite of himself. ‘So I guess I was wrong. That acorn didn’t fall so far from the tree, after all.’

  ‘Mick filled me in,’ Dad said, his words sounding gruff and hurried. ‘About how you took control back in the hotel there. About how far you went for your sister.’ His voice became pinched and he looked down, then cursed and blinked his eyes against tears. He stepped up to me and cupped his hand behind my neck and pulled my face to his chest. ‘I’m proud of you, son,’ he whispered, his breath in my ear. ‘Laura would be, too. You didn’t let her down.’

  I didn’t say anything back. I couldn’t just at that moment. Instead I clinched him tight and nodded my head against his chest, and then I stepped away towards the van and opened one cargo door while Rebecca opened the other. Shimmin climbed up inside, pausing to rest a hand on my good shoulder, and then he heaved and slid the body of the man called Menser across the plywood floor. Dad grabbed the man’s legs, together with the plastic shopping bag that contained his belongings, and shuffled backwards so that Shimmin could clamber down from the van, lifting the man by his forearms. His head swung loosely between Shimmin’s knees.

  ‘Wait,’ Rebecca said. She delved inside the shopping bag. Removed the man’s phone. ‘OK,’ she told them. ‘You can go ahead now.’

  I unlocked the front door to the cottage and stood aside as Dad and Shimmin carried the corpse along the hallway towards the kitchen. Shimmin rested while Dad opened the door into the garage. Then they grunted and heaved and I could hear the scuff of their shoes and the rasp of the man’s body being dragged across the concrete floor to be laid out alongside Anderson.

  ‘We can’t just leave them here,’ I said to Rebecca. ‘Somebody will find them. They’ll see this car. They’ll poke around.’

  ‘They won’t be here long,’ Rebecca replied. ‘It’s like I told you, the intelligence service is good at cleaning up after itself. I still have contacts there. People I can talk to. I’ll tell them to come and tidy their mess. They won’t waste time.’

  ‘So this is it? This is where it ends?’ And as I said it, I realised that it was finishing back where it had all started for me.

  ‘No,’ Rebecca said, in a voice that was hard with conviction. ‘First, we need to be sure that Erik has secured Lena’s release. Then I’m going to track her down and talk to her. We need to know what she knows.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘There was somebody behind this whole thing. Someone on the inside.’ She showed me the dead man’s mobile phone. ‘I’m going to find them. I’m going to trace everything back to the source and hold that person to account. For Alex. For Lena. And for your sister. Then I’m going to come back and tell you all about it. That’s how you’ll know that it’s over.’

  I looked at her then. Down into her damaged face. Through the savage bruising and the bloody cuts and deep inside her eyes. And I knew that in her heart she meant it. And I knew that in my heart I believed her. Believed in her.

  And I reached for her hand and told her so.

  Five weeks later

  Amsterdam

  Two men were sitting together in the lobby of the Hotel Pulitzer, a safe distance away from a window. The view through the window was impressive: a line of plane trees running the length of the Prinsengracht Canal; the honey-toned timber and polished brass of the hotel’s personal boat, moored at the hotel’s private jetty; the green enamel water, brightly lit by the early morning sun, showing a reflection of the terrace of thin brown houses with gabled roofs on the opposite side of the canal.

  The two men weren’t interested in the view. They were sitting on plush armchairs, facing one another across a low mahogany table. There was a glass vase on the table with a single white lily inside it. The lobby was very well appointed. It had been expensively refurbished. The floor was highly polished marble, laid in a chequerboard style. The walls were done out in half-timber cladding and sober beige wallpaper. There were multiple flower displays. Countless lamps. A lot of artwork and sculpture.

  The lobby was filled with people. A concierge desk was located nearby. The reception counter beyond that. The staff on duty wore grey pinstripe suits with yellow neckerchiefs and ties. The porters and doormen were dressed in matching uniforms. There was a queue of guests waiting to check out. A family group was gathered around a city map close to the concierge. A selection of businessmen were reading complimentary newspapers.

  The bustling lobby didn’t concern the two men unduly. Their business was private, but most of the details had been negotiated over secured telephone lines during the preceding weeks. They kept their voices low. Their talk innocuous. Their tones civil.

  The man on the left was a guest of the hotel. He was English, visiting from London, and he’d enjoyed a one-night stay in an executive room. Mid-fifties in age, he had salt-and-pepper hair clipped close to his scalp. He wore a blue Savile Row suit and black, hand-crafted Oxford brogues. His shirt was white. His tie was blue with diagonal red stripes. He had a lean, serious face. His every faculty was focused intently on his companion.

  His companion was younger, taller, fitter. He was vastly more wealthy. He was wearing a pale-blue T-shirt over tan trousers. A brown linen jacket over the T-shirt. Open-toed sandals. His skin was tanned. His hair was sandy and grown longer than is customary for a respected businessman. He was Dutch. His name was Erik Zeeger.

  The Englishman reached a hand inside his jacket. He removed an iPod with a set of earphones attached. The white cabling of the earphones was coiled around the iPod. The Englishman untangled it and switched the device on. The colour touchscreen lit up. He selected an audio file and slid the iPod across the table to Zeeger.

  Erik held it in his hand and slipped one white earbud into his left ear. The recording was already playing. It featured two voices. His own and that of the Englishman sitting opposite him. He remembered the conversation. It was the one he’d expected to hear. It had taken place just over seven months ago.

  On the recording, the Englishman was advising Erik about the level of protection the British security services could offer his daughter during her time in England. The meeting had been requested by Erik. He’d been promised access to a man near the top of the organisation. Now that man – the man currently sitting opposite him – was detailing the hazards that Erik should be concerned by. He was focusing on the dangers created by Lena’s association with Alex Tyler. The direct risk from Tyler himself. The threats posed by the more extreme factions of the environmental campaign group Tyler headed up.

  And that was when Erik had interrupted the man. That was when the frustration of seeing Lena slip away from him over the course of her adult life had finally reached a head. He had looked the man in the eye and asked the question that he’d been whispering to himself in the small hours of the night, whenever sleep evaded him.

  ‘Can you kill Alex Tyler?’

  Five words. Five simple words with the power to change everything for him. The power to break the spell Tyler had cast over his daughter. The power to reunite him with Lena.

  The Englishman had stayed calm. He’d remained silent. Then he’d nodded and begun to explain that it was possible, but that it would be expensive. And they would have to be very careful. They would need to keep the agreement to themselves. The arrangement would have no official sanction. Erik could tell no one. Not even his closest adviser or his most trusted friend.

  Erik had complied. A fee had been agreed. The Englishman had amassed a team and Tyler had been killed.

  But Erik had learned the hard way that those five simple words had the po
wer to turn around and bite him.

  The Englishman had duped him. He’d organised Tyler’s death, but he’d framed Lena for the crime. He’d requested more money in order to clear her name.

  His plan would have succeeded but for the female operative who’d been assigned to protect Lena. Melanie Fleming (no, Laura Hale) hadn’t been part of the Englishman’s conspiracy. She’d worked hard to counter it. Through her efforts and those of her brother, Erik had the evidence necessary to clear Lena’s name. Soon after leaving the Isle of Man, Erik made the appropriate call and a few short hours later the British police cancelled the warrant for Lena’s arrest. They announced that they were investigating new and unspecified avenues.

  Erik had waited two days until Lena contacted him. Her telephone call was short. She claimed to have freed herself from her captors, though he didn’t believe it. She offered him no thanks, no gratitude. She simply informed him that she was staying with friends, and then she cut the connection.

  And that should have been it. Stalemate. A reasonable, if imperfect, conclusion.

  Until the Englishman called back and announced that he had a recording of their original meeting. Until he said that he would make it his mission to find Lena, somewhere, some time, and prove to her that her lover had been killed at her father’s request. Until he suggested that they should meet in Amsterdam to negotiate a mutually satisfactory outcome.

  Erik paused the recording. Plucked the earphone free. He looked across the coffee table at the Englishman. Met his cool, hard eyes. His complacent stare.

  ‘Twenty million euros,’ the Englishman said. ‘That’s the price we originally agreed. That’s the price you’ll pay me now.’

  Erik nodded. Fixed a smile to his face that he didn’t really feel.

  ‘Then we must go to my bank. I will have my driver bring my car around.’

  *

  It shouldn’t have been so easy, but it was.

  Erik Zeeger’s executive car pulled up outside the entrance to the hotel. It was a BMW 7 Series saloon in Titanium Silver with tinted glass and alloy wheels. The guy in the front passenger seat was a big fan of the colour. That was why he’d looked it up in the owner’s manual in the hand-stitched leather folder he’d found inside the glove box. He liked the name even better. Titanium Silver. It sounded like a secret weapon. Or a superhero.

  The guy in the front passenger seat liked pretty much everything about the car. He liked the supple leather seats. The generous leg space. The fresh, new car smell. Sure, he was an eco campaigner. An anarchist, some would argue. But now that he found himself inside the BMW, he couldn’t ignore the luxury feel and the quality finish.

  The driver was less impressed. He was a green activist to his core, Alex Tyler’s most trusted lieutenant, but he was also nervous, and the way his partner was flicking through the owner’s manual had been annoying the hell out of him. He checked his mirrors for other vehicles, but there was only a passing cyclist on an old-fashioned bicycle. No police. Nothing to suggest that Erik Zeeger’s real driver had been found in the rubbish-strewn alley where they’d left him gagged and bound.

  A sun-bleached red carpet led towards the front of the hotel. A uniformed doorman stood to one side of the automatic revolving doors, between symmetrical topiary.

  If it wasn’t for the BMW’s tinted privacy glass, the two men might have aroused suspicion. The guy in the front passenger seat wore his hair in a long pony-tail beneath a paisley headscarf. He had a full beard over pimpled skin. The driver had on a military-style shirt in khaki green. The sleeves had been rolled up on his swollen biceps, revealing a Celtic tattoo. His ear was pierced in seven different ways. There was a ring in his nose. Not your average BMW passengers. Not your typical employees of a billionaire businessman.

  Erik Zeeger must have seen his car from inside the lobby. He came out through the conventional door to the side of the revolving glass. A second man followed. The driver recognised him. He was the man from the photograph they’d been provided with.

  Zeeger walked around the back of the car to the rear door located behind the driver. His companion approached from the passenger side. They opened their doors at the exact same moment. Dropped inside together. Hauled their doors closed.

  That was when the man in the front passenger seat swivelled and pointed his gun at them. He nudged the central-locking control with his free hand. Since he’d earlier engaged the child safety locks on the rear doors, they were now impossible to open from the inside. And that, he told the driver as they glided away from the front of the hotel, was the benefit of consulting the owner’s manual.

  *

  The place they’d rented was a houseboat – a traditional Dutch barge. It was moored on the Amstel River, six miles outside the city. Another barge was tied up nearby. It was currently unoccupied.

  The houseboat had been Lena’s idea. She had firsthand knowledge of how disorienting it could be to be held in the bowels of a ship. And Rebecca could appreciate the benefits. Fitted with the right locks, the cabins below deck were as good as prison cells. The boat was in an isolated spot, where screams and shouts wouldn’t be heard. And then there was the river. It was deep and very dark. Perfect for hiding evidence. Ideal for submerging a body.

  Rebecca waited alone in the aft lounge. She listened to the sound of movement below deck. Footsteps. Barked commands. Muted responses. The thud of doors being closed. The snick of locks being turned and bolts being driven home.

  Then nothing at all until the two activists entered the room. The pimply one with the pony-tail came first. He was followed by the broad, muscular one in the khaki shirt with the multiple piercings. The men were carrying the belongings they’d taken from their prisoners. They set the items down on a fold-out table. Wallets and phones. A pair of highly polished brogues. A pair of sandals. One black belt. One tan. An iPod.

  Rebecca sorted through the collection. She parted the wallets and checked all of the compartments. She accessed the phones and cycled through the call logs and message records. She split the phones open. Removed the batteries and snapped the sim cards in half. Stacked the weightless handsets to one side. She reached for the iPod. It contained a single audio file. Nothing else. No music or videos or photographs or games.

  Rebecca plucked the earphone jack out of the iPod and connected the device to some portable speakers. She hit play on the audio file and watched the faces of the two men as they listened to the recorded conversation between the Englishman and Erik Zeeger.

  The recording was less than three minutes in duration. In three minutes, Rebecca saw the long weeks of talking and planning and preparing and speculating transformed into an unavoidable outcome.

  She nodded to the guy with the piercings. He fixed his eyes on her and removed the automatic pistol she’d given him from the back of his jeans. The gun was in perfect working order. Rebecca had made sure of that. She’d stripped, oiled and reassembled it personally, checking the mechanism very carefully. That was important. They didn’t want any mistakes. No distractions whatsoever.

  The two men left the room without another word. The guy with the pony-tail placed a reassuring hand on his companion’s shoulder.

  Rebecca set the iPod down on the table among the other items. She paced to the opposite side of the boat. Glanced outside through the brass porthole, checking that the canal path was deserted. She listened intently. To the creaking of the boat. The lapping of the water against the tarred hull. The sound of footfalls below deck. The thunk and snick of the bolt being withdrawn and the lock being turned. A long pause. Enough for a shred of doubt to creep in. Then a loud bang. An echoing boom. It started in the tiny downstairs cabin, reverberated against the metal framework, funnelled up from below deck and raced out to dissipate in the late-afternoon calm.

  The Englishman was dead. Rebecca was sure of that now. One shot. One clap of fire. She asked herself if the punishment had been too lenient, and the answer was probably yes.

  But then, there was balance
in all things.

  She reached for the baseball bat propped against the curved lounge wall. Ran her hand along the swollen shaft. The smooth, varnished timber. Once the men had returned with the gun, she’d hand the bat to the muscular activist. No point giving it to the weedy guy. Then she’d take the iPod and drive the few kilometres to her rendezvous with Lena.

  This was something they’d agreed on. No way could Lena listen to her father suffer. And in truth, it wasn’t something Rebecca would relish. The sound of the bat striking flesh and bone would be likely to bring back painful memories, flashes of agony that no amount of facial surgery and healing would ever be able to erase.

  But also, in the end, it would bring some form of resolution. And if Erik agreed to their wishes quickly, his suffering would be short. He’d be allowed to live. He had to, if he was going to make good on the promise they’d extract from him. An endowment to environmental causes, given in the name of Alex Tyler and Laura Hale. Twenty million euros ought to be a reasonable starting point, just to begin with. It was a fee he’d grown comfortable with before.

  Rebecca tightened her grip on the bat and wondered how she’d explain it all to Rob. If she ever could. But then, there was balance in all things. And she’d really like to try.

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful thanks to:

  Adrian Cain, Debbie Cormode, Allison Ewan, Allan Guthrie, Katrina Hands, Dr Lucy Hanington, Bob Harrison‚ Stuart MacBride, Donna Moore, Greg Norton, Juan Norton, Gavin Quiggin, Zoë Sharp and her husband Andy, Mum and Dad, my wife, Jo, our dog‚ Maisie (the inspiration for Rocky)‚ my US agent, Valerie Borchardt, and all at Sheil Land Associates, Faber and Faber and St Martin’s Press.

  About the Author

  Chris Ewan is the award-winning author of The Good Thief's Guide to . . . series of mystery novels. His debut, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and is published in ten countries, and Amsterdam, Paris and Vegas have all been shortlisted for CrimeFest's Last Laugh Award.