Big City Jacks hc-8

by Nick Oldham

  ‘As it happens, you’re basically OK. X-rays show no skull damage, nor any damage to the rest of your body. You’re just bruised. Your experience is rather like having thrown yourself into a spin-drier. Wearing your seat belt probably saved your life.’

  ‘Seat belt?’ Henry’s face screwed up. ‘Er. .?’ he found himself at a loss. ‘Have I been in an accident or something?’

  He was in a side ward, did not even know which hospital. Alone now. Everyone had left for the moment; even the worried Kate had withdrawn. They would all be back soon, crowding him. A nurse had propped him up on soft pillows. He carefully laid his head back. The pain had been held at bay for the time being. Drugs. Good drugs. Warm, soft, fuzzy drugs, comforting him. He closed his eyes again, thanking the world for drugs. Apparently he was lucky to be alive. But why? What did that mean? Why was he so bloody lucky?

  What the hell had happened?

  Try as he might, nothing would come. He had no idea why he was lying in Bolton Royal Infirmary. And he was getting to the point where he needed to know, because it was driving him nuts.

  * * *

  They came at noon. Their faces were serious, grave even. He was sitting up now, a bed tray across his knees, trying to digest some food which did not really want to go down. He had been concentrating on drinking the fruit drink, all he felt capable of keeping inside.

  A few moments passed before he actually recognized his visitors: Detective Superintendent Anger and DI Jane Roscoe. Anger’s face stayed very serious, Jane’s relaxed a little with relief. They pulled up chairs on either side of the bed.

  ‘Welfare visit?’ Henry said with a forced smile.

  Anger merely raised his thick eyebrows impatiently. ‘The consultant tells us you’re fit enough to talk to now.’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ Henry said brightly.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ Roscoe asked.

  The patient shrugged. ‘OK, I guess. Battered, bruised and a mushy-pea head, but otherwise not too bad.’

  ‘Good — can you tell us what happened then?’ Anger blurted sharply.

  ‘About what?’ Henry said blankly. His brain was hurting.

  ‘The accident.’

  ‘What accident?’ His mind was adrift again.

  Anger sighed, seething, and opened his mouth to remonstrate. Jane Roscoe held up a calming hand to hold him back.

  She spoke. ‘What do you remember?’ Her voice was gentle.

  Henry shook his head slowly. ‘Erm. .’ he began pathetically, but could not follow it up.

  ‘Do you remember going to Manchester with the chief?’

  ‘The chief constable? Why would I be going to Manchester with FB?’ Henry said, rubbing his tired eyes, trying to concentrate. Then something came back to him. ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’ He paused, forcing his grey matter to get hold. ‘I remember having a Big Mac with him, surrounded by a load of kids.’

  ‘What else?’ Roscoe probed.

  ‘Nothing, nothing there.’ He was getting frustrated with himself. He banged his fist on the bed tray, rattling the cutlery and crockery. ‘Shit!’

  ‘It’s OK, Henry,’ Roscoe said consolingly. ‘It’ll probably take time for it to all come back. Funny thing, memory.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said dreamily.

  Dave Anger was less understanding and his dislike of Henry surfaced like a bubble coming up from the slime in the bottom of a cesspit and popping on the surface. ‘I think you’re taking the piss, Henry.’

  ‘Boss!’ Roscoe said sharply.

  Henry stared distastefully at him.

  Anger shot a warning look at Roscoe. ‘No,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘This is all one big piss-take. Someone ducking and diving their responsibility, trying to wangle their way out of a messy situation.’

  ‘Boss!’ Roscoe said again.

  ‘No — he’s having this, the bloody bastard.’ Anger rose to his full height, like a bear about to attack. Then he bent over close to Henry and pointed a thick, stubby, accusatory finger at him. He growled through clenched teeth. ‘I want to know fucking everything, Henry. I want to know why there were two guns in the car and two knives and an Intel file, what’s been going on, who the third person was and I want you to stop playing this bloody amnesia game with us. It’s boring and very annoying.’

  Henry felt himself draw back into his pillows and stare at Anger like a confused, frightened rabbit.

  ‘Mr Anger!’ Roscoe protested. She stood up, hands on hips, trying to reign him back. She looked pretty intimidating to Henry, but Anger was having none of it.

  ‘No! There’s questions that need answering and this bastard has those answers in that — allegedly — jumbled-up head of his.’ He towered over Henry. ‘You — start talking — Now!’ he ordered Henry.

  Henry shook his head despairingly, on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t fucking remember!’ he insisted.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Look, you pathetic bastard, the chief constable’s lying through there in a bloody coma and there’s a dead guy lying stiff as a board in the mortuary who was in the back of your car. And we found guns, too — one was a Luger — and some ammo. You’d better start remembering, because there’s some very big questions need answering.’

  They came at noon. Their faces were serious, grave even.

  Sweetman and Mendoza were hunched bleary-eyed at the table in the dining room of Sweetman’s apartment, picking over the crumbs of a very late breakfast.

  Mendoza’s prostitute had gone and they were alone.

  Lopez and Grant came in. Their approach had been well rehearsed.

  ‘Cromer and Teddy Bear unearthed anything yet?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Not so far as I know,’ Sweetman said. They were the first words he had uttered that day. He swilled some fresh orange juice down his throat.

  ‘They won’t,’ Grant said firmly.

  Sweetman raised his eyes. He did not ask the Why? question, no need to.

  ‘It’s not one of them,’ Grant said.

  ‘One of who?’

  ‘One of the people they’ve been sent to terrorize. It’s not one of them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Had a whisper from a good source, a reliable source, who doesn’t want to be named.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Like I said. .’

  ‘OK, OK. So you’ve had a whisper. . what’s the whisper?’

  ‘I’ve been given a name.’

  Mendoza and Sweetman sat upright.

  ‘Speak it,’ Mendoza said.

  Grant paused for effect, keeping his eyes away from Lopez. He cleared his throat, then spoke.

  Anger’s approach may not have been the most considered and appropriate (and he did get himself escorted from Henry’s room by the consultant and a nurse) but it did have some positive effect on Henry. Things, images, began to tumble along his battered dendrites. Now he could see the gun. Napoleon Solo. A Luger. Now he could visualize a journey along the motorway, adjusting his rear-view mirror, looking in his side mirrors, seeing headlights. But all these things did not merge into coherence. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the lid.

  He had been driving a car which had crashed. That he knew because he had been told so, not because he remembered.

  FB had been severely injured. Another man had died. What other man? Why had there been an accident? What had caused it? What had he done wrong? The lights in the mirrors were something to do with it.

  Henry wracked his brain, banging his forehead with the balls of his hands.

  It would not come.

  Perhaps if he got up and went to see FB. That would be a good memory jogger.

  He was no longer connected to anything. The blip-machines had been removed, the drips extracted from his veins. No longer tied down to any medical technology, he was a free man. He sat up, hung his legs over the side of the bed, aware that he was only wearing a rear-fastening hospital gown, loosely tied up the back — and that he was completely naked underneath.


  His feet touched the cold floor. Gingerly he took his own weight, stood up and felt OK. The first time he had been up, all previous visits to the bathroom via bedpan alley. Two steps, then a wobble. Balance out of kilter slightly. One more step. . whoa! Not good. He grabbed the bed and eased himself back into a sitting position.

  For the moment, Henry Christie was going nowhere.

  Eighteen

  Karl Donaldson opened his eyes. Warm, tawny sun filtered through the latticed shutters, spreading a glow across the room. He sat up slowly, rubbed his caked-up eyes and breathed deeply, blinking to try and focus. He looked at his own body, saw he was naked, saw how battered it was and knew he was fortunate to be alive.

  Slowly he got to his feet, steadied himself and padded across the cold marble floor to the shuttered window, which he opened.

  The view made his lips purse in wonderment. A beautiful valley, a river snaking through the floor of it and far away in the distance the shimmer of the sea in the heat haze. Rays of sunshine flooded in, caressing his body like a warm massage as he stood there gazing down the mountainside. Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe he was dead, maybe this was heaven.

  There was a soft tap on the door.

  Donaldson turned slowly, his aching joints not allowing quick action.

  The door opened to reveal a beautiful girl standing on the threshold, long golden hair cascading across her shoulders, a dark Mediterranean shade to her glowing skin, wide brown eyes, dark eyelashes. A simple dress covered her, but also accentuated her full figure, her breasts pushing up against the fabric.

  Yes, I am dead, Donaldson thought. I have gone to heaven and this is my angel.

  The clothes were rough, well worn, but clean and cared for. The girl carried them in front of her. She crossed to the bed and laid the items carefully on it, together with a pair of shoes she placed on the bedroom floor. Her eyes stayed low, looking away from Donaldson’s nakedness, though they did occasionally flicker in his direction.

  ‘I heard you moving,’ she said, drawing back to the door, Donaldson watching her open-mouthed. ‘There is a towel there’ — she pointed to a rail — ‘and the shower is down the hallway.’ She smiled nervously.

  She held up a finger, silencing Donaldson, who was about to speak. She shook her head. ‘Get a shower, shave if you like, then come out on to the terrace. You’ll find it.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ he said quickly.

  She nodded impatiently.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘Two days? What the hell has been going on?’

  ‘You’ve been recovering,’ she said. ‘You had a fever, then you slept and now. .’ She shrugged.

  ‘One more thing. . are you Spanish?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled. ‘English.’ With that she closed the door, leaving him alone. He stretched, standing in the sun, feeling it warm his bones, but also feeling aches and pains inside him. He closed the shutters and walked back to the bed, reaching for the towel, which he wrapped around his waist.

  The shower, down the hall as described, worked very well. It was hot and powerful and Donaldson revelled in it, soaping himself gently, allowing the heat of the water to permeate through his tired muscles, helping to ease their tension. As he showered, his mind worked back to everything that had happened to him. It was as these thoughts rearranged themselves into order, he started to panic.

  ‘Give me an hour,’ Lopez had said to Donaldson. The hour stretched forever as the big American sat in the restaurant in Ciudad Quesada, drinking cafe solo, hoping the huge quantities of caffeine would keep him alert and ready for the worst. He was beginning to think this little unauthorized jaunt might not be such a good idea after all. No one in the office knew where he was, he hadn’t even told Karen, though at least Henry knew something. But because he was in Spain very unofficially, it also meant there was no chance of being armed and at that moment he was feeling very vulnerable indeed.

  Midnight came, went. Diners filtered away from the restaurant, leaving him and a couple of other hangers-on to annoy the waiters who were clearly desperate to wind up for the night.

  Donaldson had nowhere to go.

  Even the other two stragglers asked for their bills, paid up and left.

  A chill descended on the night. The waiters began stacking chairs. One sauntered hesitantly up to him and said, ‘Senor?’ with a shrug. ‘We are closing now.’

  Donaldson nodded. ‘Si. . la cuenta, por favor,’ he said, much to the man’s relief. It looked like Lopez was a no-show. He counted out his euros on to the saucer, was about to stand and leave when a large black Mercedes, with tinted windows and a driver, drew up outside.

  Lopez climbed out and trotted up the restaurant steps, nodding at the waiters. He walked confidently across to Donaldson’s table and sat down, beckoning a waiter. The man scurried over, all tugging forelock and bowing and scraping. It was plain to Donaldson that Lopez was well known to the staff.

  ‘Do you wish for anything more?’ Lopez asked Donaldson.

  ‘Espresso.’

  Lopez barked the order, then turned and regarded Donaldson.

  In the records which Donaldson kept on Lopez, he was known only under the codename ‘Stingray’. Lopez did not know this, but it seemed an appropriate name for him as his lips reminded Donaldson of those of a stingray. It was a horrible, pale mouth, pink and bloodless, shiver-inducing. Donaldson did not like or trust him, but he was willing to become bedfellows with anyone who gave him a chance of nailing Mendoza.

  Lopez had approached him in the first instance and had provided good information initially, but never quite enough. He realized that Lopez was playing his own game here, too. Quite what it was could only be guessed at. Maybe he would find out more tonight. . and even as Donaldson considered this, his instinct warned him: ‘Be very careful here. This man is an informant and he is meeting you out in the open on his turf. . what does that signal?’ Though it had been Donaldson’s idea to meet here, he would have respected Lopez’s decision to meet somewhere more discreet.

  The American’s whole being came on the alert.

  Showered, shaved, fully clothed — although no garment actually fitted him properly, everything just too small because he was a large, broad man — Donaldson took a deep breath and wandered through the house, walking out of the kitchen and emerging on to the terrace, which had the same view as his bedroom, only without the frame. There was a large wooden dining table, six chairs, a stone-built oven; beyond was a swimming pool.

  The girl was sitting at the table, reading a novel. She placed it down and raised her face to Donaldson, smiling with perfect teeth. Donaldson squinted, shading his eyes from the beating sun.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hello.’

  He paused, blew out his cheeks, gave her a cautious sideways glance, smiled himself.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Confused and very, very sore.’

  ‘Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten for days.’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, I’m ravenous.’ On cue, his stomach roared like a lion. Both laughed.

  ‘I’ll do something simple,’ the girl said, standing up. She was backlit by the sun filtering through the thin cotton of her dress. Donaldson caught his breath, reminded of the famous early photos of Diana Spencer. It was clear that this girl knew, as Diana had, the effect she was having. She was fully aware he could see her body. She grinned coyly, moved past him, closer than she needed to. He trailed her into the kitchen. ‘Scrambled eggs on toast?’ she asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he responded.

  She set about the task in the spacious, simple room. Slicing bread from what looked like a home-made loaf, cracking and whisking four big, brown eggs, adding sprinkles of herbs, cheese, salt, ground pepper and some creamy milk.

  ‘I’m at a loss,’ he admitted. ‘I kinda know why I’m here, but the finer details escape me. It’s been a bit of a haze.’

&nbs
p; ‘You’ve been ill. . anyway, my father will be back soon,’ she told him. ‘He’s down in the orange grove. . he’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘Right, good.’ He watched her, busy at the range, turning the thick toast under the grill, stirring the eggs which began to harden, boiling a kettle. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Maria.’

  It had to be, he thought. ‘Last name?’

  ‘Elliot.’

  ‘I’m Karl Donaldson.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She glanced over her shoulder at him. ‘You work for the FBI.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ he clicked his fingers. ‘My things.’

  ‘All washed — what was left of them. They were in a bit of a mess, but Dad found your wallet and it seems OK.’

  ‘Good. I need to contact some people. Was there a mobile phone?’

  ‘No.’ She spooned out perfect scrambled eggs on to perfect toast. ‘It’s ready.’

  With equally perfect coffee, Donaldson sat and consumed the plain but delicious meal at the table on the terrace. Each mouthful made him feel better and better, his energy flooding back.

  Maria busied herself in the kitchen, taking sly glances at him.

  When he finished eating, he sipped the coffee, gazing at the view.

  The situation he had brought about put his defences up: Lopez in the open, talking to a stranger, and it did not feel right. Donaldson’s eyes constantly roved, seeking danger.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘This is unacceptable,’ Lopez said. ‘You have caused me great problems. When you called me, I was with him.’

  ‘You handled it OK.’

  ‘Maybe, but whatever. . I am no longer your informant. Our relationship is terminated.’

  Even though Donaldson was half-expecting this, it still punched him like a fist in the solar plexus. Without Lopez, Mendoza would be far more difficult to bring down.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Donaldson said. ‘You’re in too deep.’

  Lopez shook his head. ‘It is over,’ he said, as though ending an affair. ‘I do not need it any more.’

  Desperation made Donaldson say the next words. ‘What would Mendoza think if he knew you and I talked?’