He leaned back against the window and nodded to the mobile, which he’d put down on a writing desk next to the landline.
‘I’m just off the phone to a friend of a friend. I’ve been makin’ enquiries and sendin’ up smoke signals since you called last night. The good news is, it looks like we’ve found somebody local that can help.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘I was right about what I says to you last night, Tom. There’s no’ many Bob Geldofs in this game. Naebody works for free. How much did you get?’
‘Five thousand,’ Dad said, placing the briefcase down on the bed and opening it to reveal several stacks of tightly packed notes. ‘I was on the mobile from the second the banks opened this morning. Got it wired through to Madrid. Comes out around seven thousand euros.’
‘Seven thousand?’ Connelly grimaced. ‘These boys were talkin’ aboot ten, for starters. I thought you says you had more.’
‘That was the maximum transfer they would authorise in one go. I can get more, but not right away.’
Connelly let out a sigh. ‘Hopefully they’ll prefer seven thousand and a promise to nothin’ for nothin’. We’ll front it out anyway. See what they say.’
‘And what does my dad’s seven thousand euros buy us,’ Ross asked, ‘if they accept it?’
‘Somewhere to lie low, somewhere safe, where naebody can get to you.’
‘A safe house? For that money I could rent a quiet wee place in the hills and get by for six months.’
‘It’s no’ safety that really costs, Ross son,’ Connelly explained. ‘It’s information. It’s findin’ oot who’s on your case, to begin with. After that, the next stage could be a bit dearer, if you know what kinda services I’m talkin’ aboot. But it might not come to that. There’s a lot of ways to get somebody aff your back. But in the short term, the safety they’re offerin’ is a sight better than holin’ up somewhere.’
‘How?’
‘You’ll see. And you’ll like it, trust me.’
‘I don’t trust you, Mr Connelly. You’re a drug dealer.’
‘Ross,’ Dad started.
‘Don’t worry aboot it,’ Connelly replied. ‘I wouldnae trust me either. But it’s not me you have to trust.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘You’d be better asking them, but you’ll need to hurry up. They won’t hang around forever. Time is money to these people, literally just now.’
‘Literally? How?’
‘Come on and find out.’
They followed the rental Mercedes in Dad’s hired Passat, Ross having caused another moment of parental embarrassment by refusing to get into Connelly’s car. Connelly seemed more understanding of it than Dad, perhaps appreciating the element of surrender entailed in climbing into a vehicle under the control of someone you didn’t know enough to trust. The Merc led them south-east, past the new harbour development already teeming with early diners and ubiquitous wandering Tims, until they were driving parallel to the coastline. A right turn took them past some low concrete buildings, probably boathouses, and on to the approach to a long stone jetty, along which several yachts were berthed.
Ross got it now. Time literally was money – in mooring fees.
‘It’s not a safe house,’ he said to his dad. ‘It’s a safe boat.’
And where safer, in fact? Nobody could find him, far less get to him, if he was secretly stashed out at sea.
Connelly’s Merc pulled over and parked by a low wall. He and Big Bhoy, whose name turned out to be Charlie, got out and stood at the entrance to the quay. Connelly glanced along the jetty but Ross couldn’t see precisely where he was looking or whether anyone was looking back. He beckoned them to come forth.
Ross and his dad climbed out of the Passat and walked slowly forward.
‘Come on, don’t worry,’ Connelly said. ‘We’re just gaunny talk. If you don’t like what they’ve got to say, we walk away.’
‘What about the money?’ Dad asked. Connelly hadn’t removed it from the Merc.
‘Aye, right enough. I’d better go and have a word about that first. Actually, fuck it. Tell you what, we’ll offer them what you’ve got, and if it comes tae the bit, I’ll front you the difference.’
‘Thanks, that would be, you know … I really appreciate it,’ Dad said.
‘Hey, I’ve got weans of my own,’ Connelly replied.
He led them along the jetty. Once they had walked about a third of the way down, past the first couple of yachts, Ross saw someone emerge on to the concrete at the very end, a man dressed smartly in sandy-coloured trousers and a crisp white shirt. He looked like he’d stepped out of a restaurant rather than off a boat, which augured well for on-board comfort. From what Ross could see of the stern, it was more than a weekend pleasure cruiser. The man smiled and gave them a broad wave. It seemed a disproportionately large gesture considering they were now only about twenty yards away, not at the other end of the quay.
Then Ross sensed movement behind him and turned to have a look. The man had been waving to someone further away, though not quite at the end of the jetty. Two men suddenly appeared from the first vessel Ross had walked past, both of them carrying what he recognised as Ingrams Mac-10 machine pistols.
‘What the fuck’s this?’ Ross asked Connelly. His failure to so much as skip a beat was too cool even for the most hardened and phlegmatic gangster. The bastard was in on this.
‘Fuckin’ slimy prick, you’ve sold us out,’ Ross said. He balled his fingers and swung a fist, but Connelly saw it coming. He’d seen it coming since last night when Dad was daft enough to phone and tell him Ross was on the run. Connelly shifted his weight and sent a fist upwards into Ross’s gut. He felt an explosion of pain and saw white as his breath burst from his lungs. Dad stepped to intervene and was immediately grabbed by Big Bhoy, who pulled him by the arm towards his oncoming head-butt. Dad dropped to the concrete, dizzy, on his knees, blood pouring from his nose. Big Bhoy knelt over him, patted him down and removed his phone. He went to place it in his pocket but Connelly overruled.
‘It’s traceable. Chuck it.’
Big Bhoy tossed it casually over the side of the jetty and into the water. Meanwhile, Connelly was frisking Ross, still paralysed as he bent double, reeling from a pain that was worse than a boot in the balls multiplied by raging diarrhoea. The three other men had arrived and surrounded them by this point. Connelly produced Ross’s wallet, ignoring the lip-balm tubes. He removed all the cash and let the wallet drop to the jetty.
His dad looked up helplessly, confused. ‘Why?’ he asked, his voice trembling with shock and tears.
Connelly simply laughed, a short dry snort of dismissive derision.
Ross just about summoned up the breath to voice a defiance he knew to be as pointless as his rage nonetheless made it compulsory.
‘I’ll see you again, Connelly,’ he vowed.
‘Sure you will.’
‘Think I won’t? You don’t even know why they want me. I’ll see you again, and I’ll shut both your mouths, ya two-faced cunt.’
Connelly shook his head. ‘Charles?’ he prompted.
Big Bhoy kicked Dad in the ribs, causing him to curl and writhe like a startled caterpillar.
‘Felipe,’ Connelly said to the man in the white shirt. ‘I suggest you take el papa too. He’ll make sure junior behaves himself.’
Vital away fixture
Bett got up and walked to the window again, having grown too restless for his chair to contain him. He prowled, a latent aggressive energy about him, like a static charge that would shock you if you got too close. Nuno, Armand and Alexis remained at the table as Jane spoke, leaning against an armchair a few feet away from them.
‘A drug-dealer,’ Bett muttered ruminatively.
‘Yes,’ Jane said, nodding, though she’d supplied enough details that she knew he didn’t require any confirmation.
He stopped pacing and sighed heavily, staring out across the perfectly manicured
lawns.
‘Shit,’ he stated, like it was the precise answer to a complex mathematical equation. He turned back to face the room. ‘Armand, go and tell Rebekah to fold her wings.’
Armand got up with a nod and made for the door. Before he reached it, Bett had an addendum. ‘She can continue with the refuelling but, other than that, we hold for now.’
‘Hold?’ Jane said. ‘You can bloody hold. I’m going to Barcelona.’
Bett shook his head. Infuriatingly, he clearly inferred it as an order, not a comment. ‘You’re staying here,’ he underlined.
‘My son is in Barcelona. You’ve already whisked me away to the wrong place once, you’re not doing it again. I even know what hotel they’re in.’
‘No, Mrs Fleming, you only know the location of the man who has just delivered your son into enemy hands.’
‘How can you possibly know that? How can you be so bloody certain, sitting here hundreds of miles away?’
‘Do you want to try your husband’s mobile phone again?’ he asked rhetorically. According to Michelle, the last time Tom called had been when he and Ross arrived at the hotel. Reception hadn’t been a problem then. Was it possible they’d gone somewhere since where there wasn’t a signal?
She knew her husband too well. If he was waiting on a call or he knew someone might need him, he was obsessive about checking his phone to make sure the signal was okay. When they’d been expecting Michelle to go into labour the first time, he’d stood in the street while Jane went into certain shops if the reception inside was poor. His phone was off. Jane tried to think of any circumstances under which he would deactivate it himself at a time like this, and finally admitted to herself that there were none that didn’t involve duress.
She grasped for flaws, though it was a sign of desperation that her only hopes lay via the gaps in her understanding.
‘Tom only phoned Connelly last night. How could a guy like that, a Glasgow drug-dealer, find out who was looking for Ross?’
‘He may not have, yet,’ Bett replied. ‘But in the meantime, he’ll be keeping him somewhere secure until he does. That or he’ll deliver him to an intermediary for a quick and simple return. A finder’s fee.’
‘But how would he even know there was anything to be gained?’
‘Simply because your husband told him, however indirectly. A man on the run is clearly valuable to whoever is chasing him. Add to that the knowledge that the man in question works for an arms company and the purse starts to look even heavier.’
‘Christ, do these bastards have some kind of worldwide-web message board for villains to trade information on?’
‘No, but only because their channels of communication have always been broader and faster than the internet. If they did have a webpage, it wouldn’t be a bulletin board, it would be an auction site. Every item of information is potentially saleable. A guy like Connelly will have all sorts of direct or indirect contacts, not just in drugs. Smuggling is most likely the common conduit. People who move drugs know people who move other things: guns, explosives, illegal immigrants. That’s you into human traffic and the arms trade in about two phone calls, maybe only one.’
Jane reeled at the words, realising she had until then only glimpsed the enormity of Ross’s situation. She thought of the driver yesterday, that cold, dispassionate professionalism. She remembered Michelle’s words on the phone last night. It was on TV about two burned bodies being discovered out by Calder Glen. The water was deep and sharks were circling everywhere. But surely one of the sharks had been tagged.
‘If Connelly’s got them, then what are we waiting for?’ she asked. ‘We know where he’s staying for God’s sake. Even if he doesn’t have them any more, he knows who does.’
‘He’s not going to tell us over a quiet drink, Mrs Fleming,’ Bett said.
‘That wasn’t what I had in mind, Mr Bett. Just give me five minutes with the bastard.’
‘Connelly won’t be alone. He’ll have back-up. There are measures we can take, but not in a busy hotel, no doubt full of football fans. These things take delicacy, and planning.’
‘Time, as you keep insisting, is of the essence,’ Jane reminded him.
‘As is timing,’ he replied. He narrowed his eyes and looked searchingly at her. She felt suddenly naked to his gaze, but naked like a patient being scrutinised by a surgeon rather than under the gaze of a voyeur.
‘You used to drive a taxi,’ he stated. ‘In this man’s firm.’
‘It wasn’t his firm when I joined, but he’d purloined it by the time I left, yes. Why?’
Bett didn’t answer, merely nodded to himself.
‘Okay,’ he announced to the room, a gavel-banging timbre to his delivery. ‘Reveille six o’clock tomorrow morning. For now I suggest everybody goes home and gets an early night. That’s all,’ he added, raising his palms in a class-dismissed gesture.
‘Ehm,’ Alexis ventured quietly but firmly. ‘You were planning on feeding your guest, I assume.’
Bett paused just long enough for Jane to guess the issue hadn’t remotely occurred to him.
‘Of course,’ he said; more ‘of course, thanks for reminding me’ than ‘of course, what do you take me for’. ‘I’ll have Marie-Patrice prepare something.’
‘And where will Mrs Fleming be sleeping?’ Alexis pressed. ‘I mean, I know you normally offer our most special guests the Romanian Suite, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to extend precisely that level of hospitality.’
Bett eyed Alexis with a look that would have withered spring flowers.
‘I do have quarters prepared, Ms Richardson. Why don’t you show Mrs Fleming to them. Upstairs, first floor. Turn right. Second door on the left.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to show her yourself, as the master of the house?’
Bett responded with a glare that made the first one look like something from a christening photo.
‘Okay, okay,’ Alexis said, getting up from the table. Jane spotted Armand offering his colleague a knowing, applauding grin, his back to the boss.
Alexis closed the door and led Jane back down the corridor towards the entrance hall.
‘He’s a whole bundle of fun,’ Jane remarked.
‘No, don’t be fooled by the façade. Beneath that icy and impermeable exterior there beats a heart of pure, simmering evil. Some nights we just laugh and laugh,’ she added grimly.
‘I’m not sure I caught his first name. In fact, I’m not sure he gave one.’
‘I’m not sure he has one. I find he usually responds to “Sir”. You could try Fuckface.’
‘Perhaps not while I’m a guest.’
Jane followed her up the broad staircase, conscious of the reverberations her footsteps made around the high walls and marble floor below. She lowered her voice to speak.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve not turned out to be much help,’ she offered meekly. ‘I get the impression there’s a bit of tension over me being here.’
‘Don’t sweat it, I’m sure you’d sooner you weren’t. It was Bett’s idea to bring you in, and not everybody was sold on it, but he’s the boss, and they’re used to that. Doesn’t mean they like it, but he’s got an infuriating, chronic habit of turning out to be right. They’re used to that, too, it’s just …’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I’ve said too much. You’ve got enough to worry about without our squabbles.’
‘You can’t leave me hanging there.’
‘Well, Bett’s about as single-minded as it’s possible to get, and on the whole you don’t ask questions because, like I said, he usually turns out to be right. He knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t take chances.’
‘But you think that’s what he’s doing with me?’
‘Me? I’m taking the fifth. But it would be fair to say there’s a concern that Bett’s being more single-minded than usual, and nobody can work out why.’
‘So me failing to supply many answers in there didn’t make it any clearer.’
> ‘Not much, no.’
Jane stopped on the first-floor landing and looked along the corridors in both directions. She dallied a moment as Alexis led off to the right rather more urgently than seemed necessary, even if Jane was in serious need of some rest. It seemed less a matter of hastening towards her destination than anxiety that she should be contemplating another. Jane stared along to the left a moment longer to test her thesis, prompting a beckoning gesture from her guide by way of confirmation.
‘What’s down there?’ she asked.
‘That’s the west wing. Bett’s private area. I mean, it’s all his house, but, you know, that part’s more his than the rest. It’s where he hangs upside down or naps in his casket, or whatever, I don’t know. But don’t go there. Come on.’
They reached the door Bett had directed them to. Alexis opened it and stepped aside to invite Jane past her. She walked in to find an area boasting more square feet of floorspace than an entire storey of her house. The four-poster against the near wall meant it could technically be referred to as a bedroom, but to Jane it looked like a flat missing several walls. Four windows gave out on to the lawns, each three panes tall, each pane six feet wide and three feet high. There were antique wardrobes, a chaise longue, a mirrored dresser, a bureau, two armchairs, a low coffee table and just acres and acres of space.
‘There’s an en suite through there,’ Alexis pointed out, indicating a half-open door to the right. Through the gap, Jane could see the end of a roll-top bath standing free upon a broad tiled floor.
‘So is this the Romanian Suite?’ she asked.
Alexis laughed rather darkly and shook her head.
‘No, no, this is … this is the VIP suite. He’s not the most communicative, so consider this Bett’s big stab at courtesy.’
‘I’d take this over a kind word, wouldn’t you?’
‘Sure. But you’ll be a long time waiting to get both.’
As soon as Alexis had departed, Jane ran a bath, peeling off her clinging and less-than-fragrant clothes as soon as she’d turned on the taps. She laid her garments on the arm of a chair and stood in the doorway, watching the tub fill and listening to the splashing resound noisily about the tiled walls. It was cool in the room, but it felt good to be naked, to feel the air on her skin.
All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye Page 24