by Mark Dawson
Finlay turned to Jesse. “Is it time to tell him about Pierre, Jesse?”
“I guess it is,” said Jesse. He was grinning.
“You remember Pierre?” said Finlay.
“Yeah. Worked in London. He had a breakdown. About three months ago. Had to leave the firm.”
“You heard from him since then?”
“No. I didn’t know him that well.”
“Anyone else hear from him?”
“Didn’t he go back home to his family in France?”
Finlay shook his head. “They haven’t heard from him either.”
“So he just disappeared?”
Jesse nodded. That grin was widening. “Yeah. He just disappeared.”
“Wait a minute? Didn’t he . . .” Kevin didn’t finish the sentence.
Pierre Mascaux had been working on the Chalfont Chemical deal from the London end.
“He had the same idea as you,” said Finlay. “I offered him the chance to change his mind, and he didn’t take it. And now nobody knows where he is.”
For a second, Kevin felt a flash of fear. But then he pulled himself together. He had expected Finlay to bluff and he was bluffing. Finlay took big risks with hundreds of millions of dollars. Not with people’s lives. He was a hedge-fund guy, not a gangster.
Finlay nodded to Jesse, who left the table.
Kevin and Finlay stared at each other. Kevin was getting it together. He was coming out of this with his two million. He was not going to let Finlay intimidate him.
Jesse returned a minute later with a canvas bag, which he handed to Finlay. Finlay took a look inside and pulled out a black metal object.
A pistol. It looked like one of those old German pistols from the war.
“Did you know I was into military history?” said Finlay.
“No, I didn’t.”
“This is a Pistole Parabellum P08. A Luger. They are ten a penny. But this one was owned by General Heinz Guderian when he led the German Blitzkrieg into France in 1940. It cost me quite a few pennies.”
Kevin looked at it. He had control now. His cheeks were cool, his expression fixed. He could do this. Whatever stunt Finlay pulled, and it was clear he was going to pull one, he could do it.
“It’s for killing people,” Finlay said. He looked down to the gun and then back up at Kevin. “I’ve tried it. It works.”
“Bullshit,” Kevin said.
Finlay slipped out the magazine, checked it, and then replaced it. Then he took a suppressor from the canvas bag and fixed it to the weapon.
“These are hard to find and they don’t work well on Lugers. You can’t fire it semi-auto anymore. But I’ll only need one shot. And I don’t want to disturb the girls.”
He placed the weapon on the table beside him. “Now. Have you changed your mind?”
“Piss off, Finlay. You’re full of it. You shoot me, the cops will be all over you.”
“Didn’t you wonder why we wanted to meet you here?” said Finlay. “The cops here can be bought, and for a lot less than two million. There are guys on the island I can pay to clean up the mess. Five grand, Kevin. That’s all it’ll cost to make you disappear.” He clicked his fingers. “Poof.”
Finlay was doing a good job, but Kevin wasn’t going to be intimidated. “You’re bluffing. Give me the money. We both know that’s the easiest answer.”
Finlay raised the black pistol and pointed it at Kevin’s forehead. Kevin swallowed.
Finlay turned to Jesse. “You know, Jesse, this is like XHydron. Kevin is long and badly wrong and doesn’t know when to cut his losses.”
He turned back to Kevin. “For the last time – will you leave now and promise never to mention this again? Say yes or no.”
Kevin swallowed. If he gave up now, he was lost. If he was truly going to be a greater trader than Finlay, he had to face him down now. Later on, he would look back at this moment as the most important in his life.
“Yes or no?”
Kevin didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, just stared hard at the barrel of the gun.
“No.”
Finlay was right. It was a big trade, the biggest, and Kevin had made the wrong call.
They say you never hear the shot that kills you. In Kevin’s case that was true.
3
Björn Thorsson ordered a pint of bitter at the bar and retreated to a small corner table, from where he could watch the entrance to the pub. The Grafton Arms was tucked into a small street a short distance from the University College Library, where he had spent the last few hours. It had been a long day but a good one: up at five-thirty to run from his flat in Archway to the Ponds on Hampstead Heath for a half-hour’s swim, then a seminar at the university, then a couple of hours teaching Icelandic to first-year undergraduates, and then the library.
It was the beginning of the second year of his master’s at University College London – UCL – and he was enjoying it. Mostly. He had enjoyed the teaching more than he expected. Although he was studying Old Norse, the Head of the Icelandic department had soon spotted him and roped him in to give language classes.
He didn’t really fit into UCL, but then he hadn’t expected to. It wasn’t that he was foreign: the university was stuffed full of foreign students from every corner of the globe. And it wasn’t his age. Although at thirty-two he was older than most of his fellow master’s students: there were several in his class in their thirties, and one woman was in her sixties. It was just that he had a different background to the rest of them and they sensed it. Rumours flew about where he came from and what he had done, rumours he neither confirmed nor denied.
As he sipped his beer, he wondered whether his father had drunk in the Grafton back in the eighties. Probably. His mother said that Björn’s father, Thór Björnsson, had loved English pubs, and used to visit them with his English colleagues, leaving his wife at home in their flat in Bloomsbury with little baby Björn. Thór had been a lecturer in Old Norse Studies at UCL and was fondly remembered by the two remaining members of the faculty who had been his colleagues back then.
Everyone had liked Thór. He had been kind, generous, big, blonde, gentle and a brilliant scholar. Björn was big, too. Like his father, he was broad shouldered and had fair hair, although his was cut much shorter than was the style in the eighties. Björn could occasionally be kind. And generous. But he was definitely not gentle. And he had a long way to go before he could call himself a brilliant scholar.
And, unlike Thór, Björn could focus. Sometimes his father got distracted. Like the time he had crossed Tottenham Court Road and been hit by a Number 73 bus.
The Number 73 bus still made its way up Tottenham Court Road on its way to Stoke Newington. Björn stopped and thought of his pabbi every time it passed him.
He saw her come in, as did most of the men in the pub. There was a noticeable drop in the noise level. Some turned to stare; those with female drinking partners just glanced out of the corners of their eyes. She was very tall, at six foot two only a couple of inches shorter than Björn, her long legs clad in tight blue jeans. Short hair, perfectly sculpted cheekbones, wide green eyes. She knew how to move into a crowded room, or pub, and be noticed.
She sat in the empty seat opposite him. “Hi, Björn.”
“Olya.”
“How are you?”
Björn didn’t answer.
The woman leaned back in her chair. “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?”
“No.”
Olya seemed to take that in her stride. “What’s that?” She nodded at the half-empty glass of bitter in front of Björn.
“Doombar.”
She got up and moved to the bar, where she was served immediately, and returned with two pint glasses of brown liquid.
She sipped hers and scowled. “I always wondered what this stuff tasted like. Old man’s beer, isn’t it? As warm as a cup of tea.”
“I like it,” Björn said. “You get used to it, if you drink enough of it.”
Olya
looked at him. She was waiting for him to ask how his little sister was. He wasn’t going to do it.
“It’s Gudrún,” she said.
“What about her?”
“She’s in trouble.”
“I’m not surprised.” Björn wondered what she had done now. Was it drink? Drugs? Did she need rehab? Was she in trouble with the police? Had she run out of money again?
He did his best to harden his heart. Since Gudrún had dropped out of the Slade after her first year, she was on her own as far as he was concerned. When she had graduated from high school at the age of twenty, as was usual in Iceland, and heard that Björn was planning to do a master’s at UCL, she had decided to join him at the Slade, the art school affiliated to the same university. She was eleven years younger than Björn, and she was only his half-sister. He had been kicked out of their home at sixteen and had left the country at twenty-three, when Gudrún was just a kid. But she was crazy about him.
Of course, if she had known what Björn had done to her father, his stepfather, when she was three years old, she wouldn’t have felt that way about him. But she didn’t know, and Björn fervently hoped she would never find out.
All had gone well for the first term. Gudrún had loved the course and her painting had flourished: she had created a dazzling series of studies inspired by the rock pools back in Iceland. She had made lots of friends among her fellow undergraduates, most of whom were a couple of years younger than her. And she loved being a student in London.
Gudrún had always partied hard in Reykjavík, and she partied even harder in London. She had an innocent friendliness that charmed everyone, she was extremely attractive and she was willing and able to have fun. In her second term she had fallen in with Olya, a Russian design student, who was twenty-two and who had a network of friends outside the university. Friends with money.
Björn had met Olya twice. They hadn’t hit it off; Olya could see that Björn thought she was a bad influence on his sister.
During the summer vacation Björn had left London for a month for a high-paying short-term job in the Middle East to fund his studies and had returned to find Gudrún entwined with a hedge-fund jerk who should have known better, and determined to drop out of college. Their mother had been furious. She had cut Gudrún off financially, but Gudrún hadn’t cared. Gudrún was sharing a flat in Kensington with Olya, provided by Olya’s Russian father, and seemed to have no money problems.
She had tried to avoid Björn, expecting his disapproval. It was with some cause, because Björn did disapprove. It seemed to him like Gudrún was screwing up her life. But then it was Gudrún’s life to screw up.
They had arranged to meet three times in the six weeks since he had returned from Iraq, and each time Gudrún had cancelled at the last minute, but they had kept in sporadic touch by text.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what kind of trouble Gudrún is in?”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
Olya’s green eyes examined Björn. Cold. Haughty. Beautiful. Björn didn’t trust her an inch. “You blame me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. She was doing fine before she met you.”
Olya nodded curtly. “Well, you are right. I am to blame. I introduced her to Finlay Karsh. I met his friend Jesse at a party, and we hooked up. I thought Gudrún would like Finlay and she did. The four of us had a good time.”
“How old is he? Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six.”
“And he’s married?”
“Soon to be divorced.”
“And he runs a hedge fund?”
She nodded. “With Jesse.”
“Who is your boyfriend.”
“Was my boyfriend.”
“So you’ve split up with him and now you want Gudrún to split up with his mate?”
Olya sighed and leaned forward. “Listen, Björn. Gudrún is in serious trouble. I’m not fooling around. You’re right: I got her into it, and now I’m getting her out of it. By talking to you. I think you are the only person she will listen to. She worships you, you know that?”
Björn did know. Or he knew she used to. And he loved her. If Gudrún really was in trouble, Olya was right. He couldn’t stand to one side.
“Go on.”
“It’s this man Finlay. He’s bad news.” She lowered her voice. “He kills people.”
“What are you talking about?” Björn said.
“We were in the Caribbean last week and he killed a man called Kevin Walsh. I’m not kidding.”
“Was he arrested?”
“No. The police don’t know. No one knows.”
“Did you see him do it?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Then you’re going to have to do much better than that.”
Olya explained how Kevin had come to see Jesse and Finlay at their villa on the island, and how Finlay had taken Kevin inside with Jesse.
“They took him into the garage. I know because I saw Jesse coming out of there to fetch something. He looked really tense.”
“So he went into the garage. You’re still going to have to do better, Olya.”
“And then I never saw Kevin leave.”
“Because they killed him?”
“Yes.”
“In the garage?”
“I know it sounds flimsy,” she admitted. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I teased Jesse about it that night when we were in bed. I knew he wasn’t looking forward to the meeting, that there had been arguments with Kevin, but…” She paused. “I asked him if he had tortured the guy or offed him. I said it for a joke, but Jesse stiffened up; I’m telling you, Björn, he had a look of total panic on his face. He tried to cover it up, but I wouldn’t let him get away with it. In the end he said that Kevin was trying to blackmail them and they had warned him not to do it. He said Kevin left with his tail between his legs.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I did. The alternatives were ridiculous.”
“So why are you telling me this now?”
She lowered her voice again. “I was curious. I Googled Kevin Walsh the following day. There was a report from the island newspaper that an American citizen named Kevin Walsh had been found murdered on a beach on the other side of the island the previous evening. The police said he had been trying to buy drugs.”
Björn raised an eyebrow. “You mention it to Jesse?”
“I brought it up while we were having dinner, the four of us: me, Gudrún, Jesse and Finlay.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing. But Jesse had the exact same look of panic.”
“Finlay?”
“Totally calm. Jesse said, ‘So you think we did that?’ He tried to joke about it, but he’s always been a shit liar. Finlay just glared at him. I didn’t push it, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Neither one seemed at all concerned that the man they had been speaking to the day before – one of their top former employees – had been murdered hours after he had seen them.”
“What about Gudrún?”
“Oh, she was shocked. She had no idea what was going on, at least not then. But I was sure. There are some Russians, friends of my father, who you just don’t want to get too close to. I saw that Jesse and Finlay were just like them. I’d always known that they were ruthless, but I thought it was just a business thing. You know – dog eat dog. This, though?” She shook her head. “As soon as I got back to London, I told Jesse I didn’t want to see him again.”
“Do you know which one of them did it?”
“I’m pretty sure it was Finlay. Jesse always plays the bad boy of the two of them, but Finlay’s the dangerous one. He left his wife just before he met Gudrún, and he’s been leading Jesse astray, rather than the other way around. Maybe Kevin did leave the villa, and they arranged his death later on the beach. Paid someone to do it. But I don’t think so. I think Finlay killed him in the garage.”
“And you t
old Gudrún all this?”
“She didn’t believe me. Still doesn’t. She said I didn’t have any evidence. She said Finlay would never do anything like that. She said she loved him; she was going to stay with him.”
Björn winced. “What does she see in him? His money?”
“It’s more than that. He’s not good looking, but he’s very smart and he has this kind of aura about him. Gudrún says he reminds her of you.”
Björn sipped his beer and thought over what Olya had said. In a way Gudrún was right; Olya didn’t have any evidence. Maybe she was just getting overexcited.
“You didn’t go to the police on the island?”
“No point. The island’s been overrun by drug runners for years. Jesse will have arranged things. That’s what Jesse does. Makes problems go away.”
“And the police here?”
“Even less point. Gudrún’s right: I’ve got no evidence. And I know this is selfish, but I don’t want to upset Finlay and Jesse needlessly. If I’m right, they’re dangerous. They’d just come after me.”
Olya looked Björn straight in the eye.
“So why me?” he asked.
Olya smiled. It was the first time Björn had seen her smile and it was surprisingly warm, for one normally so cold. “I know Gudrún cares about you, and I kind of hoped you cared about her.”
“She’s my sister. Of course I do.”
“She said you were tough. She said you used to be in the SAS.” She frowned. “Does Iceland even have an SAS?”
“I served in the British army for eight years,” said Björn. “I was born here. I have a British passport.”
Björn still felt he was right to blame Olya for what was happening to Gudrún. But it was clear she was worried about his sister.
And now, so was he.
4
Björn took the Tube south to Waterloo. Olya came with him.
He had texted Gudrún, saying he had to meet her right away; he didn’t expect a reply and didn’t get one. He had decided not to wait. Olya said that Gudrún would be with Finlay at his penthouse apartment at the top of a new building overlooking the Thames in Southwark. She had insisted on coming too. Björn had resisted at first, but then relented. Gudrún was always hard to convince and Olya was clearly persuasive. Maybe the two of them together would be more likely to win Gudrún round.