‘You don’t want sex?’
‘Not right now. I’m more of a night-time person.’
She scooped up the money and slid it into a drawer in the bedside table as if she was scared he would change his mind, then returned to sit next to him. She clinked her glass against his beer bottle. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and kissed him gently on the cheek.
‘There is one thing you can do for me,’ he said.
The suspicion was back in her eyes. ‘What?’
‘Just let me have Tomasz’s address. I don’t have his phone number and I want to say hi.’
‘I don’t have the address.’
‘Ah. That’s a pity.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re sure he’s a friend?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He crossed his chest solemnly.
She laughed. I don’t have the address but I put the location on my phone. Sylvia makes us do that, just in case there’s a problem when we do outcall.’ As she leaned over and picked up her phone, her robe fell open and her breasts swung free. He couldn’t help but admire them and she smiled when she caught his look. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to fool around? You’ve paid enough. I can ask Elsa to join us.’
‘Just the address and I’ll be a happy bunny,’ said Harper.
She tapped on her iPhone and held it out, showing him the location of the villa. ‘I can send it you, if you want?’
Harper took out his phone. ‘I’ll take a picture. That’ll be fine,’ he said. He photographed her screen, then stood up. ‘Thanks. I’ll tell Sylvia I came quickly but it was my own fault.’
She smiled up at him and let her robe fall open again. ‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you?’
Harper grinned, and looked at his watch. He really wanted to take a look at the villa, but Katrin had one hell of a body. ‘You know what? You’ve talked me into it,’ he said. He took off his shirt. ‘Just be gentle with me.’
CHAPTER 29
Fedkin found Stepan Kuznetsov sitting at a table outside a café in a side-street not far from Notre Dame. There was a small steel-topped bar, where half a dozen men in overalls were drinking pastis, and a few tables where a crusty old woman begrudgingly served baguettes, Croque Monsieur and steak-frites. Tourists usually took one look inside and hurried away. Kuznetsov didn’t smile or stand up to greet Fedkin – he had never been one for the social niceties. ‘You’re putting on weight,’ he growled. ‘And you look soft.’
‘Let’s do three rounds in the ring and we’ll see who’s fucking soft,’ said Fedkin, pulling up a chair and sitting down.
Kuznetsov was always like a bear with a sore head – it was just his way. His name meant ‘blacksmith’, as common as ‘Smith’ was in the West, and he had the look of a man who worked with hot metal: big shoulders, massive forearms and scarred hands. He had been a relative high-flyer with the KGB when the Soviet Union had imploded and, like many, had moved on to work in the private sector, with as many files as he could take with him. He had married a Frenchwoman, he for the passport and she for the money he offered, but the business relationship had surprisingly evolved into a romantic one. They now had three children and lived in a large duplex apartment overlooking the Seine. Kuznetsov oversaw an investigations agency, which ran due diligence checks for French companies on their Russian counterparts. Russians were pouring money into France, as they were into the rest of Europe, but it wasn’t always obvious what the source of the funds was, and while most French companies would happily deal with an oligarch who had a shady past, few would be prepared to go into business with a known Russian Mafia hoodlum. Kuznetsov, with his KGB background, was often able to fill in the blanks. He had a sideline, too, in running a black intelligence service, happy to help out any government who would pay his fee, as well as individuals like Fedkin.
Kuznetsov had an espresso and a large brandy-filled balloon glass in front of him. A cadaverous grey-haired waiter came out and wished Fedkin good day in a tone that suggested he couldn’t have cared less what sort of day he was having. Fedkin ordered a café Américain and a brandy to match Kuznetsov’s. Kuznetsov had asked for the meeting so Fedkin sat back in his chair, intertwined his fingers over his stomach, and waited for him to speak.
‘Your man is in Marbella,’ said Kuznetsov. He held out a gloved hand, palm upwards. Fedkin reached into his coat, pulled out an envelope full of euros, and gave it to him. Kuznetsov slid it inside his jacket without checking the contents. ‘He originally flew into Paris from Bangkok and checked into a suite at Le Meurice for one night. He was using an Irish passport in the name of Sean O’Donnell. Then he vanished. He didn’t fly out of the country and there’s no record of a Sean O’Donnell booking into another hotel. He could have taken the train or the ferry to the UK, of course.’
Fedkin nodded. He knew that Harper had been in England, but he had no intention of doing Kuznetsov’s work for him. Lukin’s Thai contacts were able to keep an eye on Harper’s Thai mobile and he had used it in London. Fedkin didn’t have a location yet but he had somebody working on it.
‘Anyway, he came back to Paris because today he reappeared at the airport as Sean O’Donnell and flew to Marbella on Vueling.’
‘Vueling?’
‘A low-cost Spanish airline.’
‘And he’s still there?’
‘He hasn’t flown back. But my Spanish contacts are patchy at best so I don’t know what he’s doing there.’
‘No matter. I have people in Spain I can talk to. So, Marbella. What’s in Marbella?’
‘Sun, sea and sex,’ laughed Kuznetsov.
‘He lives in Thailand,’ said Fedkin. ‘He has all the sun, sea and sex he needs.’
‘British gangsters,’ said Kuznetsov. ‘The English call that part of Spain the Costa del Crime.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Fedkin. ‘He’s gone there to see someone. And the route he took suggests he wants to stay below the radar. He could have flown from London to Marbella but he chose to travel through Paris. And no record of him flying in, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Which means train or ferry. Which probably means he’ll travel back by the same route. You can keep a watch on the flight manifests into Paris?’
‘Of course. It costs, but then everything does.’
Fedkin waved away the mention of money. ‘You just let me know when he comes back. What about monitoring his phones in Spain?’
‘I can ask around, but it’s not something I’ve done before.’
Fedkin shrugged. ‘I doubt he’ll use his phones much anyway. And if he does he’ll probably use a throwaway or a landline. He hasn’t used his phone in France yet so I’m not holding my breath. The flight back is the best bet for catching him.’
Kuznetsov sipped his brandy. ‘What did he do, this Englishman?’
‘You know Yuri Lukin?’
‘I know of him, of course. He’s your client?’
‘Harper shoved a bottle up the arse of Lukin’s son.’
Kuznetsov tried to suppress a smirk but failed. ‘A bottle?’
‘A beer bottle.’ He pointed a stubby finger at the man’s face. ‘But keep that to yourself, hear?’
CHAPTER 30
The villa was a short drive from the coast in the area called Sierra Blanca, up a hill that gave it spectacular views of the Mediterranean, Gibraltar and Africa to the south, with the Marbella mountain range to the north behind it. It was a large plot – several acres at least – and it reminded Harper of Valentin Rostov’s villa in Pattaya, a high wall topped with security wire around it and a barred gate covered by CCTV cameras. He didn’t have a ladder or wire-cutters with him, and as the Poles wouldn’t know him from Adam, he figured he might as well try ringing the bell and playing the lost tourist – though he made sure to park the Rolls-Royce where it couldn’t be seen.
There was a brass bell push set into the concrete pillar to the left of the gate, and a grille. He pressed the bell several times but there was no response. He peered throu
gh the bars of the gate. A red Porsche was parked in front of the double garage and a black SUV closer to the house.
‘Hello!’ he shouted.
There was no reply. He shaded his eyes against the sun and stared at the villa for a while, then bent down and reached through the barred gate to grab a handful of gravel. He tossed a chipping towards the villa but it fell short. He tried again, harder this time, and the pebble clattered against the window. He waited a few seconds, then threw another. It, too, hit the glass. Still no reaction. Harper drew back his hand and threw the rest of the handful at the house and several tiny stones struck the window. No one came out to see what was going on. He looked around but the next villa was a hundred yards away and there was no sound of traffic on the hillside road. He grabbed the bars and climbed over the gate. He wiped his hands on his trousers and headed up the driveway to the front of the house, knowing he’d blown his chance of anyone believing he was a lost tourist.
He went through the motions of knocking a couple of times, but he already had a bad feeling about what he was going to find so he wasn’t surprised when no one came to open the door. He reached out and turned the handle. The door was unlocked. It was a huge piece of carved wood but it opened easily. Harper wasn’t sure what he became aware of first – the buzzing of flies or the stench of rotting flesh. Either way it told him all he needed to know about why no one had answered the door.
He found the first body sprawled across the bottom of a marble staircase. The man had been shot in the face, which was a mass of black flies. More flies buzzed around Harper as he stared down at the corpse. There were two more bullet holes in the chest, where flies were also feeding and laying their eggs, and a single spray of blood across the wall, which he thought had come from the first shot. That meant the gunman had gone for the head first and the shots to the body were overkill.
The 60-inch LED TV was showing a European football match with an East European commentary. A dozen opened cans of lager stood on a glass coffee-table with a large ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
The second body was in the kitchen, face down in front of a massive stainless-steel refrigerator. There was blood spatter by the kitchen door and streaks on the tiled floor. Harper figured the man had been chased, shot in the back and the legs, and fallen down. The bullet to the back of the head had been the clincher. Harper was pretty sure two shooters had been involved. Maybe more.
They had made no effort to clean up after themselves and had left the bodies in plain sight, which probably meant they weren’t local and in all likelihood had already left the country.
Harper padded upstairs. Two of the five bedrooms had been used. He found a Polish passport lying on a dressing-table next to a wallet, which was full of credit cards, and two mobile phones. The passport and cards were all in the name of Gabriel Wawrzyniak. He left the wallet but put the phones and passport into his hip-pack. There was no cash in the wallet but Harper didn’t think for one minute that robbery had been the motive. He opened a wardrobe and went through the man’s clothing, all designer labels and brand new. He took a pair of socks from a drawer and slipped them over his hands, then wiped down the wallet and anything else he had touched.
There was no passport in the second bedroom but he found a boarding pass with the name Tomasz Twardsowski, matching the tag on a hard-shell suitcase that had been pushed under the bed. The suitcase was locked but a couple of hard stamps broke it open. Inside a padded envelope contained a thick wad of five-hundred-euro notes and an iPhone. He took off the socks and flicked through the notes. There were a hundred or so, which meant he was holding at least fifty thousand euros. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he muttered to himself, and slid the notes into his hip-pack, along with the iPhone. He took the envelope to the toilet, ripped it up and flushed away the pieces.
He put the socks back on and checked the rest of the room, then went downstairs and searched the ground floor quickly and efficiently. He found the CCTV monitors in a room off the kitchen. They were working but someone had taken a hammer to the computer and removed the hard drive. It was clearly a professional job.
CHAPTER 31
Harper used a computer terminal at Marbella airport before flying back to Paris. He logged on to the Yahoo account and opened the draft folder. There was a single message from Charlotte Button, much longer than usual. He twisted the screen to the side to make sure it couldn’t be overlooked and read through it slowly.
LEX, I NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME. I THINK I’M BEING FOLLOWED AND I NEED TO CHECK THAT THE INSURANCE POLICY I SPOKE ABOUT IS STILL CURRENT. I CAN’T GO NEAR IT MYSELF SO I NEED YOU TO VISIT THE SAFE-DEPOSIT BOX AND CHECK THAT ALL’S WELL. THERE IS ONLY THE ONE COPY LEFT AND I NEED YOU TO MAKE ANOTHER AND GET IT TO ME. LET ME A HAVE A NAME THAT YOU HAVE VALID ID FOR AND I’LL HAVE IT PUT ON THE LIST OF REGISTERED USERS. IT’S IN BIRMINGHAM. YOU’LL NEED A KEY SO LET ME HAVE AN ADDRESS WHERE I CAN COURIER IT TO. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. I’M NOT SURE WHO IS FOLLOWING ME BUT THEY ARE PROFESSIONALS. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE THE COPY. I TRUST THE OTHER MATTER IS PROCEEDING APACE. KEEP ME INFORMED.
Harper read it a second time, then deleted it and typed: Will do. Sean O’Donnell. He added the address of a mailbox centre not far away from the ops room and continued:
GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS. I FOUND TWO OF THE GUYS BEHIND THE MANCHESTER HEIST IN MARBELLA BUT SOMEONE HAD BEATEN ME TO IT. GABRIEL WAWRZYNIAK AND TOMASZ TWARDSOWKI. BOTH SHOT EXECUTION-STYLE WHICH SUGGESTS TO ME THAT SOMEONE IS MAKING SURE THEY DON’T APPEAR ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE SUN. IF THIS IS YOUR PAL JEREMY’S DOING THEN HE’S UPPED THE ANTE. BE CAREFUL. I WILL SEND YOU THEIR PHONES. MIGHT BE USEFUL. LET ME HAVE AN ADDRESS.
He waited for a couple of minutes. A message appeared in the folder, with a mailbox address in Fulham. Then another message:
YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL. I’M NOT SURE HOW LONG THE TAIL HAS BEEN IN PLACE. WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED IN PARIS. SORRY.
Harper cursed under his breath. If there had been a tail on Button he wouldn’t have spotted it because he wasn’t looking. But the meeting had taken place in a hotel suite that he was sure was clean, so no one would have seen them together. But the fact that Button was worried enough to mention it meant he was worried, too. He deleted it and replied, NO PROBLEM. He added a smiley face, logged off and went to catch his flight.
CHAPTER 32
Fedkin had booked himself into the Sheraton Hotel in Terminal Two of Charles de Gaulle airport. His gut feeling was that Harper would fly back through the airport, but if he appeared in Paris it was only half an hour away. He lay on his bed, flicking through the channels on his television, but all seemed to be French and he barely spoke the language. He found a Russian news channel but it was only propaganda and, like most Russians, he preferred to take his news from overseas sources such as the BBC and CNN. His phone rang and he picked it up. It was Kuznetsov. ‘Your man is in the air as we speak, flying back to Paris.’
‘Same airline?’
‘Yes.’
‘What terminal do they use?’ asked Fedkin, sitting up.
‘Three.’
Fedkin swore. ‘I’d been hoping for more notice, Stepan.’
‘Yeah, well, as the French say, “When there’s a lack of thrushes, one eats blackbirds.”’
‘What the fuck does that even mean?’
‘The English say, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”’
‘You have been here too long, my friend,’ said Fedkin. ‘Look, I need something else from you. Manpower. Can you get two heavies for me at the airport?’
‘To do what?’
‘Wet work. I might have to take him out before he leaves Charles de Gaulle. I’ll be playing it by ear and that’ll be a lot easier if I’ve got back-up.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Kuznetsov.
Fedkin ended the call, grabbed his coat and rushed out of the hotel.
CHAPTER 33
Harper checked his phones as soon he was in the arrivals area at Charles de Gaulle. There was a
text message from Hansfree – TALLY HO! – which he took as a good sign. And a short voicemail from Mickey Moore, which was less optimistic, just a gruff ‘Call me, you bastard.’
Harper phoned Hansfree first. ‘We’ve had two contacts,’ said Hansfree. ‘I think he’s getting ready to move.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Harper. ‘Bring me up to speed.’
Hansfree ran through what had got him excited. The previous morning, with the team in position as usual, they had seen McGovan emerge from the club much earlier than he had done on any previous day. For the first time, he seemed to be walking purposefully, as if he had a definite destination in mind. He seemed to be carrying out anti-surveillance measures, checking in mid-stride and looking back at the people walking behind him, or stepping into a shop doorway to eyeball everyone walking past. However, the team were skilled and alert enough not to arouse his suspicions, and after a few more minutes of anti-surveillance drills, evidently reassured that he was not being followed, he had set off again, this time heading towards Hyde Park. There was a packet of cigarettes in his hand. As he’d walked through the park he’d bumped into a Muslim man wearing traditional dress. The cigarette packet McGovan was holding was jolted from his hand and it fell to the ground, but he kept walking, apparently not having noticed that he had dropped it. However, a moment later the Muslim man picked it up and slipped it into a pocket of his robe.
‘We’re calling him Yankee One,’ said Hansfree. ‘He’s medium build, about five foot nine, black hair, straggly beard, wearing a fawn dishdasha and one of those little round hats Muslims wear.’
‘A kufi?’ Harper said.
‘Erm, I guess so.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The aim now was to “house” the newcomer and, with luck, ID him and check his background,’ said Hansfree.
The team had spent the next few hours following the Yankee across London. According to Hansfree, it was an easy follow at first because the man had little tradecraft and made few attempts to check if he was being tracked, to double back or alter his route. However, to their intense frustration, they lost their quarry in Brick Lane, east London, where the indigenous population and the hordes of tourists were so dense that it was next to impossible to follow anybody.
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