by Andy Maslen
“And you’d be able to do that, would you?”
Akuminde smiled.
“Absolutely. And if you needed a second doctor, once this hypothetical person was sectioned, I could reach out to a couple of colleagues who love this country as much as I do. Men whose gratitude could be demonstrated in a willingness to do the right thing.”
He was all but winking, and Collier felt a sudden urge to slap this more-British-than-the-British Nigerian.
“Thank you, Anthony, I might just ask you to do that. Here’s what I’m thinking.”
On the other side of the courtyard two female detectives – a detective constable and a detective sergeant – were enjoying a sly cigarette, in direct contravention of station policy.
“Who’s that talking to the pathologist?” the constable asked.
“It’s The Model, I think. God, they look they’re plotting together. What d’you reckon? Staging a takeover of the softball team?”
The sergeant laughed, shaking her head.
“Nah. You’d never catch The Model getting all hot and sweaty. He’s far too neat and tidy.”
They finished their cigarettes and ground them out beneath their sensible black shoes and rejoined their colleagues inside the station, and the law.
48
Doctor’s Appointment
Terzi’s house stood alone at the end of a street lined with white villas. Flowering shrubs grew in profusion, filling the air with perfume and the view with clouds of pink and yellow blossoms. Like its neighbours, it was a two-storey structure with terracotta barrel tiles on the roof, windows protected by white-painted wooden shutters, and a satellite dish craning upwards from one corner.
The man who opened the door was nothing like the figure who had formed in Stella’s imagination, based on her previous phone conversation with him, after she’d left Marilyn Wilks to the rest of the bottle of champagne. In her mind’s eye, which had been staring furiously into the future on her short bus journey from Marbella to this modest middle-class suburb on the northern edge of the town, Yiannis Terzi had assumed the form of a haggard, stooped figure in a stained white coat. He’d red-rimmed eyes and a junkie’s twitchy expression. She’d been steeling herself to transact her business with this cadaverous being who would probably give her AIDS with a dirty needle along with her new fingertips.
Instead, she found herself face to face with a man who might have stepped from the pages of a lifestyle magazine, either as the subject of a profile or perhaps the model in an advertisement for luxury watches. Terzi was wearing a navy cardigan over an open-necked white shirt, sage-green linen trousers and soft-looking leather boat shoes. He had an olive complexion, deep-brown eyes and a long, straight nose without so much as a single broken blood vessel to mar its surface. He was clean shaven, and recently, too, to judge from the whisper of expensive-smelling aftershave. His hair was thick, glossy and black, combed into a neat parting. He smiled.
“You must be Stella. I am Yiannis. Please, come in.”
He gestured for her to enter and stood aside so she could pass from the sunlit porch into the cool of the large, square hallway, which was floored with white marble. Stella sighed as the sweat on her skin began to cool in the artificially chilled air, then shivered.
“Should have brought a coat with me,” she said.
He looked over his shoulder, briefly.
“You are cold? I am sorry. I like to keep the house cool. I am Greek but I have never acclimatised to this infernal heat. Perhaps I should have been a Scandinavian. I will fetch you a sweater in a moment.”
“Well, well. Handsome and a gentleman. He’ll be telling you about the orphans he supports in Somalia next. Just remember what he does for a living.”
Stella glared at her unwelcome companion, who stalked across the marble beside her, unruffled and perfectly comfortable in the cool air, which was only to be expected as she didn’t really exist.
The room into which Terzi led her was furnished with deep-blue leather sofas and a rug woven with yellow fish swimming in a turquoise sea. French doors – closed – looked out onto a courtyard garden. Stella wandered over to the doors and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Geraniums of a shocking scarlet blossomed in terracotta planters alongside more of the cobalt-blue agapanthus she’d seen at the Wilkses’. A raised, stone pool, perhaps two metres by three, occupied the centre of the space, its surface in constant motion from the spattering of a fountain in its centre. As she watched the wavelets rippling out and criss-crossing each other as they bounced off the tiled edging, a large, white fish rose from the bottom and rolled over on the surface, its glistening flank dotted with golden scales.
She felt something brush her shoulders and whirled round, ready to strike, hand clutching an imaginary little helper, which was in the bag she’d placed on the coffee table.
But it was only Terzi, draping an ashy-brown cardigan over her shoulders. He stepped back, palms up.
“Forgive me. My mother always scolded me for creeping up on her. ‘You walk like a ghost,’ she used to shout at me.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m a little jumpy. Thank you for this,” Stella said, pulling the arms of the cardigan across her chest. “It’s very soft.”
“It’s qiviut. Made from the undercoat of the Alaskan Musk Ox. Hand-knitted by Eskimos. No, that is the outmoded term. The Iñupiat tribe, I should say. It passes the cashmere test, though. You know it?”
Stella spread her hands wide.
“I’m a police officer. My salary doesn’t really stretch to cashmere.”
Terzi smiled, unperturbed by her response.
“A four-foot shawl will pass with ease through a wedding ring.”
Stella looked down at her left hand and the simple gold band on her ring finger, looked back and noticed Terzi noticing her.
“Strange that a married English police officer should be here,” he said.
“I’m widowed. That’s why I’m here.”
His eyes closed for a slow blink, then his gaze returned to her face.
“I am sorry for your loss. Would you like something to drink, or eat?”
“I’m fine, thank you. But I would like to get down to business, if you don’t mind.”
He motioned for her to sit. She chose the sofa overlooking the courtyard and was pleased to see he made no attempt to move close to her, taking the other sofa for himself.
“So you come to me from my good friends Ronnie and Marilyn Wilks. Again, forgive me,” he dipped his eyes again, “but they are strange friends for a woman in your position to have, are they not?”
Stella paused before answering. She needed to keep Terzi sweet; he was crucial to her plans. But she didn’t want to share any more of her dealings with the Costa’s criminal royalty than she had to.
“Shall we say we have some history between us and leave it at that?”
He shrugged.
“I am merely curious, nothing more. Why don’t you tell me what you think I can do for you?”
She took a breath and let it out in a sigh.
“I think you can remove my fingerprints, permanently. You’ve developed a technique?”
He nodded and swept a hand over his hair.
“I have, indeed.”
“And it works?”
“Oh, it works, my dear Stella. I guarantee it.”
“I need to ask you this, so please accept it as just me doing my due diligence, but Marilyn mentioned you have a drug problem. That doesn’t affect your work?”
Terzi’s face darkened for a moment, a summer cloud over the sun, then it returned to a professional man’s smile in the face of questions from an ignorant laywoman.
“Marilyn is somewhat indiscreet. But, also, she is wrong. I do not have a drug problem. I have a drug habit. In fact, I will be totally frank with you, as we will be doing business together. I have a drug addiction. Heroin, before you ask. But as you probably know, junkies suffer not from the heroin but from the additives with which their dea
lers cut it to boost their profits. Rest assured, there is no talcum powder, laundry detergent or rat poison in my system.”
“I had to ask. You’re a high-functioning drug addict. Compared to some of the people I’ve had to deal with recently, that puts you somewhere between Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.”
“Then I am glad to be in such saintly company. And you can put your anxieties to one side as to my competence. I never operate unless I am one hundred and ten percent in control. My clients take a very dim view of medical errors, as I am sure you can imagine. Let us just say they do not bother with medical malpractice suits.”
Stella was beginning to like Terzi. Against her better judgement. But better an honest junkie than a corrupt lawyer.
“Now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Stel. Actually, better hope it’s not, eh?” Other Stella winked at her from her seat snuggled up to Terzi on the sofa.
“To the obvious question—” Stella began.
“How much? Three thousand euros—”
“That doesn’t sound too bad, I was—”
“—per finger.”
Terzi sat back, crossing his right foot over his left knee and revealing a hairless ankle above his soft leather boat shoe. She noticed a red pinprick just below the knob of bone.
“Thirty thousand euros?” she asked. “You’re serious? I could probably get a new face and a pair of tits for that in England.”
There was that smile again, only now Stella found it infuriating instead of charming.
“I have no doubt. There are plenty of clinics right here in Spain that would perform such a service for less than ten. But stroll in to their beautifully appointed receptions and ask to have one of their surgeons remove your fingertips? I think you would find yourself consulting with your colleagues in the Guardia Civil instead.”
“So it’s a seller’s market, is that what you’re telling me?”
“Exactly so.”
“Look. I can’t get my hands on that kind of cash. Not here in Spain.” Well, I could, but I’m not dipping that deeply into my savings. Not so you can shoot Richard’s life insurance into your veins. “Can we come to some sort of arrangement?”
Terzi smiled, and it was almost a sad expression.
“Please, Stella, do not embarrass yourself in this way. Yes, you are an attractive woman but I am not starved for female company here.”
Stella huffed with impatience. Why do men always think with their dicks? “I wasn’t talking about sex.”
“Oh? Then what were you talking about?”
“Look. You’re in a highly specialised occupation. And you work for some pretty sketchy people. I bet you have the odd dissatisfied client from time to time. Maybe I can help you smooth things out with them. I’ve recently discovered I have a talent for it.”
She waited. And watched. Cogs were definitely spinning in Terzi’s brain. She could almost hear them.
“If we are to continue this conversation, I think we need two things. One, a drink. Two, we drop all the coded talk. Let us stop pretending we are in a James Bond movie and call a spade a spade, yes? This is the correct phrase?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Good, then may I bring you something?” He checked his watch, slim, blue-faced and minimally garnished with pushers and crowns. “The sun is most definitely over the yard arm.”
“Surprise me.”
Terzi returned five minutes later with two stemmed glasses, each containing a pale-yellow liquid in their shallow bowls, which were rimmed with white powder and decorated with rosemary sprigs.
“I call these Menorca Sours. It is gin de Menorca, dry vermouth and freshly squeezed lemon juice, with powdered sugar.” She glanced at him sharply and he laughed. “It really is powdered sugar, I swear to you. And the rosemary comes from my own garden.”
She took the glass he proffered and raised it to him. They chinked glasses, and Stella paused momentarily, letting Terzi sip his first. When his eyes didn’t roll back in their sockets, she took a cautious sip herself. It was delicious, a sherbet-like ping of sweet-sour lemon, then the hit of the alcohol.
“That’s very good. You should have been a barman.”
“I prefer my hours. I like to retire early these days. Now, I have spoken plainly about the services I provide. Perhaps you will pay me the courtesy of dispensing with your talk of ‘smoothing things over’ and explain, exactly, what you have in mind.”
Stella took another slug of the cocktail, enjoying the sensation of the cold alcohol trickling down her throat.
“So far this year, I have killed or seriously wounded four men and one woman. I used a broken bottle, a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, a cook’s knife, bolt cutters, pliers and my own bare hands. I cut up my last victim with an electric carving knife. If you’d like me to make some of your enemies disappear, give me their names and addresses.”
She was gratified to see Terzi’s urbane demeanour desert him for a few seconds.
49
Crime Victim
Terzi’s expression was unreadable. Stella thought she could see doubt warring with hope, as his eyes shifted over her face, down to her hands and back again. She waited. She had grown used to waiting. Finally he seemed to reach a decision. He clasped his hands together between his knees and leaned towards her, a frown crinkling the smooth skin of his forehead.
“You are not a woman to get on the wrong side of, that is clear,” he said, in a low voice. “Let me tell you a short story.” He leaned back again. “About a year ago, I received a visit from a pair of Albanians. I hesitate to call them gentlemen. They have become more active in this part of the world over the last five or six years. They suggested I might want to take out insurance against my premises catching fire. I told them I had no need for that sort of product and sent them away.
“The following night, while I slept upstairs, my car, a rather beautiful old Lancia, was firebombed. My neighbour roused me, but by the time I got to my parking spot the Flaminia was burning so fiercely it had melted the rubbish bin on the pavement. The next day they returned and repeated their sales pitch.” He laid heavy emphasis on the final two words.
“So you paid?”
“What choice did I have? They had contrived to discover my line of business and threatened to expose me after they’d visited their particular brand of insurance marketing on my house.”
“They got greedy? Started asking you to increase the payoffs?”
Terzi nodded, sighing. He spread his hands wide.
“At first I tried to bargain with them. But do you know what? They went to my daughter’s flat in Athens. She is twenty-two, a medical student like I used to be. When she answered the door, they threw acid in her face. She is now blind in one eye and her face is ruined. She faces many years of plastic surgery and a great deal of pain.” He stopped and drew a finger across his eyes, wiping away moisture. “Look at me, Stella. I am a doctor. I am not a man of violence. They asked and I had no choice. But now they want too much. I will barely be able to survive, especially given my relationship with heroin.”
At the mention of the attack on his daughter, Stella felt a hard ball of anger forming in her chest. She was aware that her teeth were clamped together and she could hear a high-pitched whine in her ears. Across from her, sitting next to Terzi and staring back at her, grim-faced, Other Stella inclined her head—the briefest of nods. But Stella needed no permission from her alter ego.
“Do you have names, contact numbers, an address, hangouts?”
Terzi shook his head. “They come to my door on the first Monday of each month. Always late at night. Between eleven and midnight. I think they know I like to go to bed early so it amuses them to play with me like cats tormenting a mouse, you know?”
Stella looked up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to remember what day of the week it was. Her sense for dates had been disappearing over the weeks since she’d killed Ramage. She gave up.
“Sorry. What day is it? I mean, what da
y of the month?”
“It is Friday. They will come next Monday.”
“Fine. I need to sort out a few things. I’ll be back here at eight on Monday evening. You can make me something nice to eat, I hope?”
Terzi smiled for the first time in a while.
“I will make you my mother’s grilled lamb cutlets.”
This odd dinner date being agreed, Terzi showed Stella out and she returned to the hotel.
As promised, Stella returned to Terzi’s house three days later, at just before eight in the evening. Her outfit didn’t sit quite so easily with the prevailing fashions in Marbella. Gone was the linen, gone was the white cotton, the chambray and the silk. In their place was heavy-duty black twill, a surfer’s base layer T-shirt and a zip-up black hoodie. Black work boots completed the look: that of an eighties anarchist, perhaps, or a clubber who favoured music a little darker than the disco hits pumping out from the nightclubs fringing the coast. The evening was warm, and by the time she arrived at Terzi’s front door, rucksack bumping against her back, she was sweating.
He answered the door and beckoned her inside without speaking.
In the hallway, which was mercifully cool, just as it had been the previous Friday, she shucked off the rucksack and let it fall to the end of her right arm before arresting its fall with a strong grip around the shoulder strap. She placed it carefully on the floor, with a muffled metallic clonk.
“You look nice,” was Terzi’s ironic greeting as he led her through a door. “Very,” he paused, “professional.”
“Yeah, well leopard-skin and white silk aren’t really the look you need for this kind of work.”
As she unzipped the hoodie and draped it over the back of a chair in Terzi’s kitchen – a large, terracotta-tiled room hung with bunches of fragrant herbs – she drew in a deep breath through her nose.