by AD Davies
“See?” he said. “Hippie nonsense.” He frowned as if registering me for the first time. “Good God, what happened?”
“I was in a fight last night. Celebrating my windfall. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.” He looked up grimly. “They say the whole place was gutted. The computers, the servers. All our records.”
“It was stored remotely, though, right? In the cloud or something.”
“I’d … not gotten around to it. Besides, the confidential nature of what we do … it’s too risky to leave it in the hands of some Apple or Google university graduate.”
“So no secret backup?”
“Yes, we had backups, but—” He waved his hand upwards. “They were all in-house, at the other side of the property.”
“So Roger Gorman, businessman extraordinaire, still hasn’t quite moved with the times.” I’d known this, of course, but this needling of him was my first fun in what felt like weeks. “I don’t suppose you knew you could purchase server space in, say, Brazil or China, which would serve as your own personal ‘cloud.’ Run it yourself for minimal cost.”
“No,” he said. “I did not know that.”
Not that it would have done much good against Fanuco and his network anyway.
“You know,” I said, “if everything was on those servers, the whole business—your clients, your accounts, your results—that’s going to put a dent in your future.”
“It might do that, yes.”
“You’ll more than likely lose a few investors.”
He faced me fully. “What are you getting at?”
“We floated on the stock exchange some years ago, right? I mean, the brokerage side of the business did. I know the private investigation section is separate, but the real money lies in the other stuff doesn’t it?”
He now spoke slowly. “Yes … So…?”
“I’m wondering what this will do to the share price.”
His mind worked. He’d obviously been informed of the fire this morning. “The share price.”
“You don’t have a business to run, Roger.”
“But … but it’s more than bricks and mortar. It’s me, it’s the others who manage that place, the investigators, the software…”
“All gone.”
Gorman sat on the ground, head in his hands.
I said, “There is no Park Avenue Investigations anymore.”
I walked back toward the train station. He would know I had something to do with it, and he’d call the police to tell them. But it wouldn’t matter. The man I arranged to meet at the coffee shop on the concourse would see my alibi held strong.
Before I even reached the train station, he placed a hand on my shoulder. “You did a fine job here, Adam.” The voice was unmistakable.
“Hello, Vila,” I said, figuring first-name terms was a two-way street by now.
“Mikey was a valuable asset.”
“He enjoyed the violence too much. He was a liability. I did you a favor.”
“Perhaps.”
“And he was supposed to be watching Benson. He missed that the guy was a snitch.”
“But he was still a friend.”
“You don’t have friends.”
He gave me a pleasant smile. His dark woolen coat and the suit showing beneath made him look like a reporter. I handed him the USB drive. Simple. Just like that. I expected a fanfare.
I said, “I assume I’m safe now.”
“I did not think you would take such a chance. But I believe you understand the situation. We are like … Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.”
“Mutually-assured destruction.” I felt a shameful swell of pride. “Good.”
Fanuco chuckled quietly. “If you even come close to our business again, you will be killed. If you release this information, you will be killed very slowly. Your friends, your little girlfriend…”
I waved him away. “Okay, okay, I get it. No need to labor the point.”
Fanuco nodded. “How is your girlfriend?”
“She isn’t my girlfriend. And she’ll live. It’s not the first time Mikey hurt her.”
“Your other friend, then. Sarah, is it?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t imagine her fear, the simple terror of all she’d been through. Mission mode might carry her through. “She’ll be okay.”
Fanuco raised his collar. “Well, if you ever tire of this life, we will have work for you.”
I told myself to be disgusted at his suggestion, that I should be fighting his offer, but having witnessed the brutality of his kind first hand, I could not stifle a smile. I had survived. I couldn’t really say I won, but I had survived.
Vila Fanuco offered me his hand. “Farewell, Adam. I hope we meet again.”
I left it hanging there, wondering if I shook it, would I be viewing him as human? Would it make him a person as opposed to a force of nature dedicated to violence? Would it make me want to be his friend?
“Not me,” I said. “Not ever.”
And for the final time, I walked away from him.
Epilogue
Sat on top of the Miss Piggywiggy, I pulled my coat tighter. A frying pan smoked beside me as it cooled. July and August had gone, and September was approaching its end. Aside from some follow-up questions about the France business, I did not hear from any law-enforcement agency, so by now I figured I was in the clear over Benson and Mikey. The Vietnamese tourist industry, with help from Sarah’s true-crime book on her ordeal, helped douse the anti-Vietnam flames, and the poor and the EU resumed their place in the sights of the gutter-press. The book changed my name and did not once mention specifics of Vila Fanuco’s business. At least, nothing that would endanger it.
Endangering the business would be left to the drip-drip-drip of anonymous tips that Agent Frank would receive, courtesy of the decrypted data. Enough to point them at the correct people, but not incriminate me in supplying the information. It wouldn’t end the network entirely, but it was better than nothing.
A compromise, I suppose.
Lily was one of the people who—during the week following the fire at PAI—discovered her bank account bloated to the tune of around a quarter of a million pounds, her share of Gorman’s fee for Park Avenue Investigations. I did not believe I deserved a penny. The people who lost their jobs as a result of the business going under did, though, and so the investigators and administrators and researchers all received a cut of the loot.
After I rejected her proposal to rebuild the business from the ground up, Jess reluctantly used her money to move to London where she launched a boutique electronic investigation service, one that would work freelance for law. She would stay away from Fanuco, but other than that, she—and Phyllis from PAI—made a formidable team.
I allocated half the pot to that unofficial redundancy package, while the rest remained in a trust I set up to provide sustainable projects in war-torn countries. It wouldn’t change those countries overnight, but a school, a hospital, a freshwater well … anything that can be maintained by the indigenous population was something worth investing in.
I used my remaining money to hire an American private security team called Black Lion to sweep the area of the Mekong Delta along which I believed the network’s holding cell was situated. Over the course of a fortnight, helicopter searches identified a number of camps, but most were illicit alcohol dens or refining cocaine. But then, in the final few days, as my account dropped below seven figures for the first time in years, they located it. I did not enquire, exactly, what tactics they used, or if anyone was left alive; a crumb of deniability to which I treated myself. All I knew for certain was a total of thirteen young people were deposited at various embassies in Hanoi, and returned home to their countries of origin. No arrests were made, and Fanuco never enquired after me.
It left me a modest amount on which to live.
On the Miss Piggywiggy, I examined the pan and ascertained it was safe enough to return below.
I stepped into the galley and Lily said, “About time.”
Caroline Stiles tended sausages and bacon on my grill while Sarah poked at a pan of baked beans with a wooden spoon, trying to stop them sticking.
“Come on, Adam,” Caroline said. “Eggs aren’t going to fry themselves.”
“Gimme a break.” I rinsed the pan with cold water, dried it, and applied more oil. “It was her fault I got distracted.”
Sarah placed a mocking hand on her chest, so shocked. “I merely asked you to demonstrate how to break a stranglehold.”
I said, “How’s Harry?”
Caroline broke a second egg into the pan. Sarah answered for her: “He’s okay. Auntie Jayne wouldn’t talk about you, though. Even though Cazzy asked. Right?”
“Right,” Caroline said. “It’s a lot for them to take. You know?”
I took the pan of beans from Sarah and stirred them. I had seen the older couple only once since Jayne took Harry away that night. Harry fought in a war, but Jayne never experienced such stress, and was suffering from what Harry assumed was post-traumatic stress. I thought he probably was too.
I said, “Yeah, I understand.”
“Maybe they should go on holiday,” Lily said.
“Just because you’ve got a bit of cash, don’t let it go to your head.”
Over the past couple of weeks, she and I planned a route for her, one that would take her from country to country, avoiding France and Vietnam. She decided Kurt was a nice fling, and would meet up with him if their paths were to cross, but no more.
“Anyway,” Sarah said, “you can’t go too far. Not if I’m meeting up with you next summer.”
Caroline said, “Sarah?”
“Sorry, Cazzy,” Sarah said. “But I’m not going to let what those men did keep me locked up.”
Caroline looked horrified.
Sarah said, “I’ll be nineteen by next year. And Lily and I’ll be travelling together.”
I was so proud of her.
Sunday brunch was ready in a few more minutes, hash browns coming out of the oven, along with black pudding and soda bread. We sat around the table and Lily told Sarah excitedly about where she planned to go first. She would skip Paris…
“Obviously,” Sarah said.
Adam’s Smug Travel Tips #10: Planning ahead is not against the spirit of backpacking. At least book accommodation one stop in advance, and that way you do not end up sleeping in a railway station amid gangs juggling flick knives and cops patrolling with Dobermans.
Lily detailed her route from Balboa in Spain, south through Portugal and then back up through Madrid, Barcelona, maybe the south of France, and on—
A knock sounded at the door. Every one of us jumped and fell silent. Sarah edged behind her sister, while I took Lily by the hand and guided her to one side. From behind the fridge, I took a military-grade Sig-Saur, ensured it was loaded, cocked it, and snapped on the safety.
I obtained it on my final visit to Gareth Delingpole, once I tracked his new identity to a bedsit in Bristol. I broke in and searched the place, and found the weapon behind a loose skirting board. When he came home, the cops were waiting, and Sarah’s testimony, along with Agent Frank’s highly-selective account of those weeks, was enough to send him down for twenty years. I kept the gun, though. Spent weeks practicing flicking it off and dry-firing it, and had it down pat. And that’s what I held now, wondering who the hell was at my door.
The knock came again. “Hello? I know someone’s in there. I can hear you.”
“Relax,” I told the women. “I know who it is.”
Nobody relaxed as I opened the door, gun behind my back.
Sleazy Stuart Fitzpatrick, Mr. Moneybags, peered into the cabin. “Hello, Adam.” He was dressed in his rich-guy-on-a-day-off attire.
“Give me a minute.” I closed the door in his face. Lily took the gun from me and I exited the cabin into the bracing morning air once more. I faced Stuart Fitzpatrick and said, “Okay. Hit me.”
“One hundred and sixty-four thousand.”
“Why do you keep doing this? You know I’ll say ‘no’.”
“I heard your business went under,” he said, not quite answering the question. “I thought maybe—” He raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t taking the piss, but it felt like it. He walked around the side of the barge, stroking a hand along the brass rail I fitted last week. He said, “This is new.”
“A lot of it is,” I said.
He noticed the fresh paint on the roof, fingered a spot of solid gunwale that was rotting the last time he came by. “You’ve been working on it.”
“I’ve had some spare time.”
“What made you spend it on the boat?”
I shrugged. “Seemed like the right thing to do.”
“And you plan on keeping this up?”
“Well I’m not planning on working for folk like you anymore. And I’m not in the missing persons business. Maybe I’ll sell my flat and open a coffee shop.”
“Adam. Are you seriously telling me that you’re going to stop neglecting your mother’s boat?”
“It’s a barge. And yeah. When it’s ready I’ll take her for a trip somewhere. Sometime.”
He smiled. “I know you and I will never be friends, Adam. But that doesn’t mean we have to be at each other’s throats.”
“We’re not at each other’s throats.”
“We’re not mates. Some might say we dislike one another.”
“While you keep trying to buy this thing from me, we always will.”
Sleazy Stu seemed old now, older than he was. He could have retired years ago, sold his company. But people like him don’t retire. They don’t give up. So what he said next was a real surprise. “In that case, I rescind my offer.”
“What?”
“I no longer offer you a hundred and sixty-four thousand for this barge that’s worth maybe thirty.” Stuart completed a full circuit and he stood at the gangplank. “Of all the things I bought your mother, this, the thing she paid for herself, was what she loved most of all. Only used it twice a year, but she loved it.” He returned to shore. “The fact you were letting it go to ruin was killing me, Adam. But promise me you’ll take care of it, and you’ll never see me again.”
I said, “I’ll ride her for as long as I like. If I ever get bored of her, I’ll let you know.” I was surprised how easily the smile came to me.
He nodded and, satisfied, he started to walk away. I stopped him, though. I ran this moment through my head a hundred times since I decided to work on the barge. I didn’t know if I’d go through with it. But I did.
I held out my hand.
He looked at it. Like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Then he shook it. I made it brief.
We didn’t speak and this time I let him leave, his gait hesitant, like he was expecting me to call him back, to “one-more-thing” him. Maybe even invite him in for brunch. That didn’t happen. We’d stopped playing silly games over my mother’s memory, but friendship was perhaps too much.
I waited until he was a good distance away, then opened the newly-restored door, and descended the steps, returning to my friends where we would enjoy a perfectly normal Sunday brunch, before returning to our normal lives once more. Where Sarah would start university, where Caroline would continue bonding middle-managers via paintball matches, where Lily would set off to see the world.
And where I would decide what to do with the rest of my life, hopefully—in time—without the need to keep a gun behind the fridge.
A Desperate Paradise
With a damaging, violent case behind him, Adam Park is happy tending to his late mother’s canal barge and catching up on his reading. Unfortunately, he owes favors. And when the parents of an aid worker murdered on the Greek island of Paramatra believe the investigation is flawed, one such favor is called in.
With the island struggling to cope with an influx of refugees, Adam must battle corruption and ruthless smuggling gangs, all amid people so desperate
they will do anything to reach the paradise of the west. If he cannot stay the course and dig out the truth, a murderer will go free, and Adam will fall prey to the same evil.
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Novels by A. D. Davies
Adam Park Thrillers:
The Dead and the Missing
A Desperate Paradise
The Shadows of Empty men
Night at the George Washington Diner
Master the Flame
Under the Long White Cloud
Alicia Friend Investigations:
His First His Second
In Black In White
With Courage With Fear
A Friend in Spirit
Standalone:
Three Years Dead
Rite to Justice
The Sublime Freedom
Co-Authored:
Project Return Fire – with Joe Dinicola
Writing as Antony Davies
Exclusively on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
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As both parties race to decipher the bangle’s origins, they uncover a trail meant only for the holiest of men, leading to an apostle’s manuscript, the hunt for a tomb alleged to conceal great power, and a breathless, globe-trotting adventure that threatens to destroy them all.