by AD Davies
She nodded, and I headed into the crowd, away from the blue flashing lights converging on our spot. It was ten-thirty.
It took me twenty minutes to cross the city to my apartment. Twenty minutes of wheezing and aching, of staving off bolts of pain from my ribs, my head, my hand. Twenty minutes of looks from the nightlife of Leeds, of people eager to either get out of my way or hit me in the face. But I made it just as Jayne was leaving.
“Good Lord,” she said. “I’d about given up.”
“Give me a minute,” I said.
We went back inside. I drank water out of the tap and splashed it over my face. I told her what happened, and she didn’t outwardly judge me for what I did to Gareth, but I expected we’d be due a heart-to-heart pretty soon. With an hour to go, she held out the USB stick.
“You can’t just hand it over,” she said.
“I won’t. We have Benson’s extra-curricular payments, we have his dirty agent. Those things he can keep.” I was dog-tired and hurt everywhere, but I could see the finishing line at last. “I’ve made mistakes, but this makes everything right.”
And then the phone rang. My landline phone.
Jayne said, “I thought it was disconnected.”
“It was.” I picked it up and listened.
Mikey said, “Turn on the computer you keep under your couch. Your instant messenger has mail.”
He hung up. Jayne asked a bunch of confused questions about how the hell a cut-off phone-line could be reactivated like that. She asked what sort of people these were, how it was even possible.
I folded out the screen and it booted up immediately; asleep, not powered down as I’d left it. So someone broke in here this afternoon.
The IM icon blinked. I accessed it. A live video-feed commenced. A shaky camera focused on a door with a colorful glass inlay. A gloved hand reached from behind the lens to open it via a battered metal knob. Inside, the camera faded in, adjusted to a grim storage room with a fridge, sink and a black & white telly. Piped music echoed through streets in the distance, and I got the impression this room was located a long, long way from Leeds.
My phone rang again. Jayne handed it to me, my eyes glued to the screen.
Mikey said, “You thought she was safe, eh?”
The camera whip-panned to a sofa in the far corner, where a man all in black, his face hidden by a balaclava, held his hand around a young woman’s throat. Her hands were bound behind her and she was gagged. Tears streamed down her pixie-like face. Lily Blake.
They found her.
“We heard what you did in Vietnam. You even think about repeatin’ that tonight, those men will gut your princess and make sweet love to the corpse. You got that, pretty-boy?”
I watched the screen a moment longer before closing the lid.
“Meet me at my office,” I said. “It’s deserted.”
“You’re volunteerin’ to go somewhere without witnesses?”
“You could kill any of us at any time. Why should it matter? Bring Harry, and I’ll bring the data stick, along with the photos your boss is so scared of losing.”
Muffled discussion on the other end. Mikey said, “Okay. But remember you ain’t playing for one life now. Do not think for one second you can double cross us on this.”
Even though I now did not expect everyone to survive the night, I promised him no more delays, no tricks, no attempt to double-cross them.
I was lying again, of course.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Whilst waiting for Benson and Mikey in Gorman’s office, I checked on the progress of my money. By eleven p.m., twenty-five million pounds sterling had flowed into my personal bank account, Gorman happy to hold up his end of the contract. I filed documents with the bank to ensure the taxman kept his nose out of my business for another year, and spent a little more time communicating with Jess about our ever-evolving plan. Like the business with Gareth, she did not approve, but agreed if Benson made a good-enough case to kill me, he’d have the sanction to do so. In these circumstances, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
Then I perched on the edge of Roger Gorman’s desk-cum-penis-extension, the boardroom table broken up and retracted into its false wall. His Oriental-inspired rug made the room seem less spacious somehow. As I sat there, looking out over the softly lit snake of the River Aire, I pondered if I had truly crossed an irredeemable line in Vietnam. And with Gareth. Jess clearly thought so. If she was right, I was about to cross another.
In the car park below, a people-carrier pulled up, the sort parents might use to take the kids on a trip, or transport friends to the airport. Mikey led Harry out by the arm. He staggered—disoriented, confused. Sometimes, given his take-no-crap attitude, his Army background, it was easy to forget he was pushing seventy.
Benson stepped out too as they approached the building, disappearing beneath me. They would take the elevator up to the lobby. They would not have to bypass the shell of the building below, its construction equipment, the scaffolding, the plastic sheets snapping in the light breeze.
I made my way to reception, where I could hear the intercom buzzing. As I walked, I thought about the day my dad died, how my mother sat outside the morgue with me, tears on her cheeks, sad that her husband was no longer with us, yet even as a child I intuited it wasn’t all-out grief. There was something else there. I cried real tears, but it was a buxom nurse who comforted me. For years I couldn’t understand how I knew what my mother was feeling. It wasn’t sadness, not in the sense most would feel at the passing of someone you’d sworn to love and honor forever. A sense of relief, perhaps, no longer bound by doing the right thing and fighting for a marriage she and Sleazy Stu killed three years earlier. An end she had not envisioned, but an end nonetheless.
Benson, Mikey and Harry entered reception. Harry perked up as he recognized me, unhurt physically but his eyes were glazed. Mikey cut the cable tie binding his hands and he fell towards me. I hugged him properly, afraid of dropping him. He seemed as healthy as I could expect after five days as a captive. Or was it six?
“Careful,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
“Horse tranqs.” He sounded kind-of smug. “Shot of adrenaline’ll wake him up.”
As I walked Harry to Gorman’s office, he slurred indecipherable words like a drunk. Wielding a gun too bulky for his compact frame, a suppressor making it even more comically big, Mikey followed a few feet away. Once inside the office, Harry squinted to focus.
“Adam?”
“I’m here, mate,” I said. “Stay calm. We’ll get out of this.”
Benson snorted. “Where’s my drive?”
I lay Harry gently on Gorman’s overstuffed leather couch and took the USB drive from my pocket. Laid it on the desk.
Benson’s attention held steady on it. “And the other items?”
I clenched my good fist to stop it trembling. The gash stung. But in a good way.
“I wanted to talk about some other stuff first.” I gestured toward Mikey. “You might want to do this in private, Curtis.”
“I can stay, boss,” Mikey said. To me he said, “And it’s Mr. Benson.”
“Is that really your decision to make, little man?”
“I think I can guess what my boss wants, pretty-boy. Although, not so pretty now, eh?” He laughed at his own joke.
I looked at Benson. “You gonna let him talk to you like this, Curtis?”
“He’s my most valued employee,” Benson said. “He stays.” He took a gun from his jacket and pointed it at me. “Talk.”
I felt an odd sense of pride. My actions in Vietnam made them scared of me. They needed the extra leverage in Lily, tracked her down somehow, and now they were far less sure of themselves.
I had earned a reputation.
“Let’s see what I can do about Lily.” I presented Jess’s mobile phone.
I let Benson watch the first set of files speed over the screen, PDF documents Jess copied to a remote server, same as the photos.
Benson’s eyes flicked to the USB stick on the desk. “What does this have to do with my data?”
“It demonstrates that you are supplying a hospital with a lot of money on a monthly basis. Not just medical bills, but a whole lot more. That facility isn’t exactly pristine, or it wasn’t until just over a year ago, when it upgraded its facilities.”
Photos on the phone showed before and after pictures of St. Clarence’s: filthy interior, damp walls, grotty bathrooms. Following these were images of the standard you’d get in the most private hospitals or spas.
I said, “You had your mother committed here, but you couldn’t stand to have her suffer in those conditions. So I thought—I thought—you started skimming off the top. The money you were laundering, it would show short each month. Accounting issues, unforeseen bills, the odd bribe you needed to make.”
It was Mikey who spoke. “I do the books for him, arsehole. Money ain’t missing. I ain’t helpin’ him scam anyone. ’Specially not the people who send us these girls.”
“I know. It was my original theory. I was wrong. Things have changed, but the motivation is still the same.”
I showed a photo of a much younger Benson with Dorothy. Then I swiped to a photo of Dorothy in a hospital room surrounded by tubes and wires, then of her in a garden with a couple of orderlies.
“This is your boss’s mother,” I said. “He’s using money from some very powerful people to fund the upgrade of her living conditions.”
“First,” Benson said, “it benefits the whole damn community over there. Second, that money.” He jabbed a finger at the screen. “It’s my cut. My legitimate cut. Only reason it’s in cash is ’cause I choose not to pay tax to our bullshit government.”
“Curtis Benson, big bad gangsta-man, sends his wages home to Mommy.”
Benson didn’t find that amusing. Mikey did. He said, “So you thought you got yerself the upper goddamn hand, huh?”
“At first. And you’re right. He is not skimming extra from the smuggling networks.”
Benson picked up the USB drive and said, “Right. So you got nothing in that respect. Where’s the other item?”
“Right here.” I indicated the phone.
“What’s on it?” Mikey asked, adding respectfully, “Boss. If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Blackmail,” Benson said. “That bitch Gareth was trying to blackmail me.”
“Yes,” I said. “But not in the way I thought. Gareth Delingpole spent all the money before I could find them. It was far less than you said because you’d already shipped a ton of it off to St. Clarence’s. This is what you need to satisfy your paymasters.” I indicated the USB drive. “I’ll hold onto the other stuff until you release Harry and Lily.”
Benson said, “Hand over the phone. Now.”
Mikey said, “What’s the big deal? The data stick is what’s important, right?”
“I made a copy of that disk. I placed it on an SD card, like you get in a camera. Burglar Girl and Thick-As-Pig-Shit took it along with my money, and this drive. They were together. I want the backup copy.”
“Nah,” I said. “It can’t be copied. You have your orders to release Harry on return of that data. So don’t be stupid, Curtis. You don’t need Lily. You don’t need us. It’s over.”
Benson firmed up his grip on the gun. “I should kill that stripper just to piss you off.”
A glance at Mikey was all I needed. Benson thought he’d escaped Fanuco’s instructions on a technicality, that Lily was his upper hand. But I saw how frightened he was.
“You don’t really know what’s on that card,” I said. “Do you?”
“I don’t care,” Benson said. “I know he was gonna use it to get more money outta me.”
“Because if you did know, you wouldn’t let your pint-sized bodyguard be present.”
Mikey said, “Keep up the jokes about my height, pretty-boy. Remember I took you out when you was at full strength. Reckon a schoolgirl could kick ’yer ass right now.”
I kept my attention on Benson. “You think it’s accounting documents?”
Benson said, “Hand over the phone.”
I showed him the first photo. Him and Agent Frank in the Indian restaurant.
Harry stirred, conscious of guns.
I said, “Don’t worry. They won’t hurt us.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Mikey said, coming close for a look.
“It’s nothin’,” Benson said. “Business.”
“And this?” I swiped to a snap of him and Agent Frank exchanging envelopes.
I should have seen it from the shape of the envelope, but it wasn’t until Agent Frank told me how wrong I was that it made any sense. When he leaned over me on the road, searching my pockets, he insisted he was not corrupt in the way I thought he was.
“This man,” I said, “is Agent Frank McCabe of the Serious Organized Crime Squad, working out of MI5. I thought he was dirty, but I was wrong about that too, wasn’t I? It was a mystery to me how a lowlife hoodlum managed to smuggle so much cash out of the country, but now I see it. In exchange for MI5 and HM Customs turning a blind eye—”
“Fuck you,” Benson said. “Nothin’ here shows this.”
“Agent Frank McCabe is not passing you information. You aren’t giving him bribes. You’re leaking him information so you can keep exporting money to your mother’s hospital.”
Another glance at Mikey, and I knew he was processing all this.
I said, “And Mikey is not aware his boss is an informant.”
Lily was out of danger now. Me and Harry too. I couldn’t keep the grin from my face. I was fairly sure my eyes were sparkling.
I said, “The law making inroads is the reason Fanuco and his mates let me investigate on your behalf instead of going after the drive themselves. Because you’ve fed MI5 operational details. This USB stick, unencrypted, allows you to redistribute the laundered cash to its rightful owners, and could end the network, stem the flow of people and drugs and weapons.”
Benson held the gun out at arm’s length.
“These photos are on a secure server,” I said. “Me, Harry and Lily, we all walk free tonight, or this all goes to Vila Fanuco, along with everything I know.”
“It’s lies,” Benson said. “I swear.”
“It’s not,” I said. “And you know it.”
Mikey said, “He wasn’t talking to you, pretty-boy.”
Striking as fast as a cobra, Mikey disarmed Benson and pointed the silenced gun at his boss, the other at me.
“No,” Benson said. “Please. I can explain.”
Mikey raised his gun and shot Curtis Benson through the head.
Benson’s corpse dropped like a sack of wet sand and blood fountained out of the wound for a second before slowing to a trickle.
Mikey turned to me and said, “In case you hadn’t worked it out yet, Benson ain’t my boss. I’m his.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The connections were all there. Primarily Bosnia. Fanuco, running the black market in his old neighborhood, would have encountered soldiers trying to keep the peace. He and Mikey probably met through some mutually beneficial deal in those dark times. No reason a business relationship couldn’t be established there and then. Mikey the muscle, Fanuco the brains. The details were irrelevant, though.
“I want this done right,” Mikey said. “I want it clean.” His voice was reasonable, calm. Like Fanuco’s. “But someone might have to do somethin’ they don’t wanna. Don’t make
that person be me.”
Benson’s blood had spread all around his torso and was pooling closer to Mikey’s feet. He tossed Benson’s gun aside, the magazine toward the corpse.
“Benson was fairly new to our network,” he said, again reasonably. “I’m supposed to babysit for a year, make sure he knew the way we work before lettin’ him loose on his own. Thing is, no one coulda guessed some retarded girl would crack a safe he claimed was top a’ the line. We mighta’ killed him anyway fer losin’ it, but might not. If it came back clean. With no blowback. But you, not-so-pretty-boy, you’re some serious pain-in-the-arse blowback.”
“How do I get Lily out?” I asked. “She’s nothing to you.”
He picked up the USB drive. “Let me be honest. Vila likes you. Dunno why. But he says you live, so you live … ’til you create a direct problem. Tonight, though,” he said, his voice shifting down an octave, “might be a direct problem.”
My eyes found the data stick.
“You gonna stop messin’ around? Stop playing the big-man, like you’ve got some sorta free will?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So when I test this, I’m not gonna find an empty drive or nothin’?”
“You can test it right there.” I indicated the laptop on Gorman’s desk.
I spun the machine around, active already. He plugged in the USB drive. He would have to approach from that side coming off the rug. I had one chance at this. My leverage was almost gone. Once he verified the data was real, he could shoot us both and head off for a curry and a pint.
I asked, “How did you find Lily?”
“When your money got cut off,” Mikey said, as he studied the decryption software, “it cut her off too. She figured you’d set her loose so it was safe to update Facebook. She wasn’t happy. Said you dumped her like everyone else in her life.” Blue light from the laptop screen danced over his face. “But no matter how angry you are, you don’t update Facebook. Otherwise, you can bet the people lookin’ for you are gonna stake out that souk in Tunisia where you been spendin’ all yer time.”