Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure

by Peter Tonkin

  She pressed the little phone to her ear. ‘Good evening, Tristan.’

  ‘Hello, Robin. Richard about?’

  ‘If he was, you’d be talking to him. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, there’s a bit of a problem, you see …’ His oily voice drifted off without adding, And a problem for your major insurance syndicate is a problem for you.

  ‘A problem, Tristan? Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘Well … I’d have liked to have talked it over …’

  ‘With Richard.’

  ‘Precisely. But you say he’s …’

  ‘Unavailable. Yes.’

  ‘… out of touch … Hmmm … Look, darling, how are you fixed for dinner? I know it’s a bit aprez theatre at this hour, but I’m meeting someone who is, actually, at the theatre. Well, the opera. Verdi’s Macbeth at the E.N.O …’

  Robin looked around Heritage Mariner’s big boardroom. She was alone in the Victorian splendour, with a mixture of paintings, prints and flat-screen televisions on the walls – except for the one on her right, where a discreet hatchway communicated with the boardroom kitchens. Beyond the little mahogany hatch was a fully-equipped kitchen where, twelve hours ago, a top-flight chef had been preparing light luncheon for the London directors. She hadn’t eaten since and was ravenous now. She suddenly felt listless, lonely; as though the wind had been taken out of her sails. Many of the vessels whose models filled the display cases round the room were insured by Tristan Folgate-Lothbury’s syndicate. He was a bore, but better than nothing. Better than no one.

  ‘I’m not fixed at all, Tristan,’ she said. ‘And I’m famished.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t pop across to the Intercontinental, could you? This dinner’s set up at Theo’s. You can join in.’

  The eyebrows beneath the carefully coiffed gold curls rose into arches of surprise. Theo Randall at The Intercontinental was one of the most exclusive restaurants in Mayfair. Tristan was out to impress someone. Clearly not Robin herself – invited as something between an afterthought and an understudy. But someone Tristan wanted to impress would be someone Robin wanted to meet. And Theo Randall by all accounts cooked like an Italian angel.

  Characteristically, she refocused her eyes so that instead of looking at the model of Sayonara she was looking at her reflection in the glass of the case that contained it. Thank heavens she had chosen to dress up for the board meeting, she thought. At least she wouldn’t have to go up to the penthouse to change into an outfit worthy of the venue, though it was daywear, rather than eveningwear. But it was Alexander McQueen and it would do.

  ‘I’ll be there in half an hour, Tristan,’ she said. It was during that half hour that Richard finally came through, catching her in a taxi halfway along Pall Mall, so she was unusually short with him – something she would come to regret.

  Tristan Folgate-Lothbury was seated and waiting as Robin arrived. He was tucked away at an exclusive little table meant for two but set for three in a cosy alcove in the more muted, brown-on-brown section of the restaurant. He did not appear to realize that Robin was approaching his table in the wake of the maître d’ until the very last moment, for he was clearly keeping an eye out for someone else entirely. But when he finally registered her existence, he leaped to his feet and gave her his most winning and welcoming smile. The crowded table heaved. The silverware chimed. A wine bottle reeled. He would have offered to shake her hand but he was too busy keeping the bottle upright. In the moment it took him to fuss the maître d’ into seating her with her back to the room, she observed him. And was unimpressed by what she saw.

  He had put on weight since their last meeting and would have been unhealthily corpulent even had he been a man of twice his years. For an ex-rugger blue approaching his mid-forties, he was positively portly. His blond hair was greying already and thin on top. His eyes were bagged and watery. His cheeks were flushed. Although the restaurant was perfectly air-conditioned, he was sweating – perhaps because he had been caught out by the warmth of the evening outside, for he was dressed for the day, like she was. He wore a pinstriped three-piece suit that looked to be on the tweedy side of gabardine. The buttons of the waistcoat strained alarmingly, and the gold watch-chain he affected seemed to be all that was holding the two sides of it together. His tie was slightly askew and the fact that he had tied it in a full Windsor knot was clearly a mistake, given his choice of shirt and collar. The size of his collar was, indeed, another miscalculation, given the thickness of his short neck, the number of his chins and the way his jowls were maturing.

  There had been a wife somewhere in the picture the last time they had met, Robin recalled. She was clearly gone now – or as good as. No self-respecting woman would let a man she cared about go out in this state. And perhaps she had better mention that to Richard at their next contact – which should be happening soon, she thought with a frown. For the woman who so clearly no longer cared for Tristan was the source of his fortune. Daughter of a shipping magnate from … Greece, was it? No, from Italy; somewhere in the south. Calabria, was it …?

  ‘Lovely to see you, darling,’ he said, subsiding and cutting into her thoughts with a nasal drawl. He waved a hand once more and seemed surprised to discover there was an empty wine glass in it. ‘Good of you to come. Mario, another bottle of this Brunello di Montalcino, there’s a good chap. And, for the lady … Ah, Robin? A … a pair o’ teeth?’ Tristan emptied the bottle into his glass, much to Mario’s disapproval, and waved the empty in the air.

  It took just a moment for his meaning to register. ‘Aperitif? Yes, of course. Prosecco, please.’

  ‘We have the Colle del Principe, madame …’ the maître d’ offered, without bothering to call the wine waiter or his boss the sommelier. It was hardly surprisingly – the place was packed and heaving. Patrons were dressed in everything from black ties to T-shirts; Robin and Tristan were by no means out of place.

  ‘Perfect. A glass …’

  ‘Oh, bring the bottle, Mario. And that’s the 2004 Brunello, d’ya hear?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marco, in a voice that would have frozen gellate.

  ‘So, Tristan,’ asked Robin, her tone dangerously silky and her voice only a little warmer than Mario’s. ‘What’s the panic?’

  ‘Panic?’ Robin’s host jumped as though she had stabbed him. Wine slopped out of his glass and ran over his hands like blood. ‘Oh! I see what you mean … No. There’s no panic. Just a little … failure of communication.’

  ‘Between whom? About what?’ asked Robin as the maître d’ sent the sommelier into the firing line after all with Tristan’s Brunello di Montalcino 2004 and Robin’s Colle del Principe. ‘And what has it got to do with Richard or with me?’

  ‘Ah. Well, thereby hangs a tale, you see …’ Tristan rumbled, frowning over the length of time it was taking to get to his bottle.

  ‘I’m all ears, Tristan,’ prompted Robin, sipping the icy Prosecco.

  ‘Well, as one of the chaps at the centre of the insurance – and reinsurance of Sayonara, I was asked to arrange a little test of security …’

  ‘I see,’ said Robin, suspecting what was coming at once, or the start of it at any rate. Had Richard been sitting in this chair, she knew, he would have taken up the story like Sherlock Holmes. So you asked around and someone recommended a bunch of chaps who could really test out Sayonara’s defences. And you arranged to send them aboard …

  ‘… rounded up this bunch of chaps to go aboard and test the defences out, so to speak, and sent them up to Hawadax Island, in the Aleutians. Place called Rat Island Pass. Convenient for boarding, apparently… .’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Robin. ‘They went aboard earlier.’

  Tristan jumped again. More blood-red wine slopped over his hands.

  ‘You don’t say so?’ Tristan sounded relieved, and looked as though he had won the lottery.

  So that was what this was about, thought Robin. Tristan was under some kind of pressure – in some kind of funk
– because he’d lost contact with the men he’d sent aboard Sayonara. And he needed Richard – or her – to bring him up to speed. But why? Why the panic?

  ‘We lost contact, you see. Not a peep out of them in sixty hours and counting. Silent as the tomb since just after they got to Rat Island. We were expecting a call to confirm that everything was … ah … ship-shape, if you follow me. But they’re on board after all! I had no idea! On board already? Well I’d better tell …’

  ‘Signor Lazzaro,’ announced maître d’ Marco’s still-chilly voice.

  ‘Well, yes,’ blustered Tristan, disorientated. ‘But how did you …’

  ‘Good evening,’ said a new, smooth voice. Tristan looked up while Robin looked round. The regal maître d’ was standing with a man by his side. A slim, vibrant man perhaps ten years Tristan’s senior but less than half his weight. And yet the breadth of the shoulders and the depth of chest were there. Did they play rugby in Italy? She wondered. But, judging from the face, Murderball might be this man’s preferred sport. Even in profile it was easy to see the sharp line of cheekbone and the way the cheek itself settled into a cavern before the equally sharp line of his jaw. And, above the cheekbone, the deep, secret hollow of his eye socket beneath the crag of brow and the upward sweep of the domed forehead – hollow again at the temple, capped with short-cropped grey hair so thick it looked like a steel helmet. She noticed the aquiline jut of his nose down to the thin-lipped shark’s mouth, and the way his chin jutted just where Tristan’s receded. How apt, she thought. Here was a man that looked every inch the Italian Macbeth. Or the murderous Scarpia, perhaps, from Tosca.

  But then Signor Lazzaro’s profile swung towards Robin and the eyes in those cavernous sockets proved to be a deep, melting brown, fringed with lashes many a woman would die to possess and surrounded by deep laugh-lines. ‘Capitano Robin Mariner, is it not?’ purred a deep voice with a frisson of nasality and the sweet, heady Italian depth of Amaretto. ‘Permit me. Francisco Alberto Lazzaro at your service.’ Robin smiled and nodded, thinking that delicious Amaretto tasted and smelt of almonds. As did deadly cyanide. Straightaway, Robin suspected that Lazzaro was the source of Tristan’s nervousness. But why?

  The newcomer sat in the seat that Tristan had clearly been saving for him. Lazzaro glanced up at Mario. ‘I would like San Pellegrino to drink, and to see the menu now, please.’

  Mario vanished. Lazzaro leaned forward, still without having addressed Tristan directly, even though he was now seated at his right hand. He was careful to keep the sleeve of his beautifully-tailored beige suit jacket – Milan, Robin thought; perhaps Gianni Campagna – clear of the puddle of wine in front of Tristan. ‘Now, I expect that Tristan here has informed you, I have been in the fortunate position of being able to support him and his consortium through some difficult financial times. A disagreement …’ The rich voice lingered over the word, ‘… between poor Tristan and Signora Folgate, has, shall we say, alienated the lady and her father, the Patrizio Palmi. And as a result I have gained a certain amount of … shall we call it … influence in the syndicate. To the tune of a few million euros … As a friend of the family – of the signora’s family, true, but that should not get in the way of business …’

  Robin looked across at Tristan, but he was into his Brunello di Montalcino 2004 and apparently unaware of this humiliating washing of his embarrassingly dirty laundry in public.

  ‘And I’m afraid that it was I,’ continued the smooth Italian, ‘who suggested that we should test the security of Sayonara by sending a team of men aboard her. A little test by which I planned to assure myself of the soundness of my investment. A plan that now, however, may have gone awry.’

  ‘No, no, Francisco,’ huffed Tristan importantly, rejoining the conversation. ‘It’s all fine. Robin says the team went aboard in Rat Island Pass yesterday. It’s all going like clockwork. Just like I planned.’

  ‘That’s where Richard is,’ Robin added, her grey eyes probing the deep brown ones opposite. ‘He’s leading the security response team – the A Team – himself. They should have gone aboard about an hour ago if everything’s running to time. And with Richard it usually does.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lazzaro, leaning back suddenly.

  Robin too saw. More than she was supposed to see, perhaps. Something that Tristan did not – and would never have understood if he had done so. She saw a gleam in the depths of those dark Italian eyes, before those long, dark lashes came down like a visor. Tristan Folgate-Lothbury might think everything was going like clockwork, mused Robin as Mario arrived with the menus, but Francisco Alberto Lazzaro clearly thought otherwise. And if he was the new power in the Folgate-Lothbury syndicate now that Signora Folgate-Lothbury and her fortune had departed, it looked to her as though Tristan had better start watching his back. For the charming Signor Lazzaro looked as though he was up to something …

  It was a generally accepted fact that some sections of Heritage Mariner were open and functioning on a twenty-four-hour basis. Crewfinders never closed, for instance. Captains, owners and agents could call their number at any time, night or day, from anywhere in the world – any port or any ocean – certain of a speedy reply and of a crew member of any rank or skill available to them and arriving onboard within twenty-four hours. Another section of the massive company that never slept was London Centre – the commercial intelligence section. It would be working at full stretch even in the early hours.

  All the way back east from Mayfair, Robin’s mind whirled over what she had said, heard, seen and deduced during the conversation over dinner. Such had been her gathering concern that she had consumed only one glass of the divine Prosecco – with the Cape Sante scallops that had formed her Antipasti. Then she had joined Lazzaro with the San Pellegrino to accompany the Taglio di Vitello which had formed her main meal. Now, as she digested her heavenly wood-roasted veal chop, she found she had a good deal on her mind – and much of it worrying. Especially, she thought, checking the time on the screen of her doggedly silent cellphone, in the absence of any contact from Richard, who must have been on board Sayonara for well over an hour now.

  ‘No,’ said Robin to the taxi driver, therefore, as he slowed at the corner of Cornhill and Bishopsgate. ‘Not here at Heritage House. Can you take me on into Leadenhall and down to the corner of Creechurch?’

  Five minutes later, she had paid him off and was walking up towards the glass door that fronted the London Centre. The foyer was bright and an ex-army security man crossed smartly to the main entrance as she keyed in her security code, swinging it open for her and coming to attention as she entered. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Stone,’ she said. ‘Is Mr Toomey in?’

  Patrick Toomey met Robin at the lift door and ushered her down to the office as though she were visiting royalty. He was a big man, blue-eyed, red-haired and liberally freckled, as broadly Irish as his name. He was noted for his cheery bonhomie, his ready wit and a laugh that could fill a large room to the echo. He should have been the proprietor of one of London’s Celtic pubs. He was actually an ex-spy, special forces trained, and perhaps second only to Jim Bourne himself in the world of commercial intelligence. He was as usual in shirtsleeves, though his heather mixture Donegal tweed jacket was hanging over the back of his chair.

  ‘Francisco Alberto Lazzaro?’ he rumbled in answer to Robin’s question. ‘Yes. I’ve heard of him, all right.’

  ‘I’d like to know all about him, please, Pat.’

  ‘You want a drink? It’ll be a long night and you’re going to need one.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the girls. What’ve you got?’

  ‘Whisky.’ He was shocked that she’d even had to ask.

  ‘Bushmills?’ she hazarded, knowing his tastes of old.

  ‘Black Bush,’ he nodded. ‘And as it’s yourself, I’ve the twenty-one-year-old malt.’

  ‘That’ll do nicely. Straight up. No ice. I’ll sip.’

  ‘That’s the only way we serve it – and that’s the only way to
drink it,’ pontificated Pat. ‘Now, you’ll need to shuffle round to my side of the desk while I pour the drinks. I’ll show you what I’ve got on my laptop.’

  Five minutes later, Robin was nursing a quadruple measure of one of the finest liquors in the world, with the chocolate, toffee-rich taste of it chasing bursts of mint along her tongue, paying no attention at all to the heavenly savour as she watched the pictures on Pat’s laptop. A camera panned over a bullet-pocked car in which a dead driver slumped spattered with blood, and zoomed in on the first of five other corpses lying on the road partially covered with white sheets. White sheets through which more blood was leaking. ‘This is Germany,’ Pat was explaining. ‘Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia. Ten kilometres north of Düsseldorf. Fifteenth of August, 2007. Six dead.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Robin, willing to take it as read that this was relevant – something to do with Lazzaro. ‘Neo-Nazis? What?’

  ‘Italians,’ he answered. ‘Calabrians, in fact. Like your Francisco Lazzaro. They were slaughtered as part of a long-running vendetta. The San Luca feud.’

  ‘OK. Robin looked at the shocking pictures and took another sip of Bushmills. ‘What are Italians doing in north Germany?’

  ‘These Italians were looking to expand the family business,’ said Pat weightily. ‘And it seems that this particular family business involved cocaine.’

  ‘So Lazzaro is really a drug smuggler?’