‘How’re you feeling?’ Britta came to stand over her. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes red with exhaustion. She reached down and put her hand on Ellen’s forehead, taking her temperature.
Ellen opened her mouth to ask, ‘What time is it?’ Her voice was a croak. The curtains were drawn but fringed with sunlight.
‘You must drink water.’ Britta bustled about, getting a glass. Ellen heard the suck of the mini-fridge door and the tearing of a plastic bottle top.
Frank. Ellen turned her head. Thirteen nineteen. Already afternoon. She made to sit up, then stopped abruptly. Her lungs were so constricted she could only manage shallow gasps. Her hair felt brittle with ash.
Britta poured a glass of water and set it on the bedside table. ‘You will rest today. Doctor’s orders.’
She came round to lift Ellen into a sitting position. One strong arm supported her shoulders while the other arranged the pillows behind her head.
‘You inhaled smoke. You’ll be fine. But you need to rest.’
Ellen tried to speak and broke into a cough instead. Her breath rattled and wheezed. Finally she managed to whisper: ‘How’s Frank?’
‘Fractured cheekbone. Extensive bruising. Smoke inhalation. Concussion.’ She shrugged. ‘But he’s strong. He’ll heal.’
‘Can I see him?’
She shook her head. ‘Tomorrow, maybe. I gave him a sedative. He’s sleeping.’
‘And Layla?’
‘In my room. I wanted you to rest.’ She drew back the curtains and light swam in. ‘She was going through the minibar when I left, filling a bag with sweets and chocolate for Marva. I’ll take her down to visit this afternoon.’
Ellen leant back into the pillows. She reached for the glass and sipped the water. It was cold, icy and soothing on her throat. Britta settled in the chair and they sat quietly for a moment. In the corridor outside, the young man was wheeling his squeaky trolley to another door. He banged on it, shouting, ‘Housekeeping,’ in a shrill voice.
‘You shouldn’t have gone.’ Britta looked stern.
Ellen thought of Britta, hunched over the laptop late last night, trying to sift through Khan’s company accounts. She sat up straighter. ‘What did you find?’
Britta sighed. ‘You should rest.’
Ellen drank down the water. It spread cool through her chest. ‘Tell me.’
Britta frowned and leant forwards in her chair. ‘Well, I found the order for the drug supplies. He’s listing the full cost. At European prices. That’s quite a tax advantage.’ She ran a hand over her face. ‘So then I wondered, if he did in fact get them cheaply, what happened to the money he saved?’
Ellen stiffened. ‘And?’
She pulled a face. ‘Well, I couldn’t access much. I can’t see any strange payments to the business. Everything seems accounted for.’
Ellen’s fingers started to worry the edge of the cotton sheet. ‘So?’
‘I don’t know.’ Britta wrinkled her nose. ‘There is one account that looks strange.’
She pulled her chair nearer to the top of the bed, took a scrap of paper from her pocket and showed Ellen an Internet address. ‘I found this new personal account. In his name but without a title. Opened six weeks ago.’ She lowered her voice. ‘That’s when they made me cancel the Europe order.’
Ellen put down her glass. ‘What else do you know about it?’
‘It’s a Trojan, the brand. That’s a low access account so unlikely he’d use it as a float or for daily expenses. The money’s just sitting there.’
‘Any idea how much?’
‘A Trojan’s designed for around a million. Much more than that and he’d move it somewhere else, with better terms.’
Ellen listened, thinking. ‘Where are the transfers from? From his business?’
Britta shook her head. ‘I can’t tell.’
‘What about timing? Do the transfers match payments for the pills?’
Britta let her hands fall to her lap in a gesture of defeat. ‘It’s password protected. I tried two. His wife’s name. His child’s name. They weren’t right. That leaves one more try.’ Britta grimaced. ‘If we get it wrong a third time, the account locks.’
Ellen frowned. ‘You really think it’s odd, this account?’
Britta nodded. ‘I do. He’s a multimillionaire. Why open a new account in his own name, such a small one, just as we start setting up the camp?’
‘It could be something else.’
‘For example?’
‘A mistress?’
Britta put her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself up. She was ending the conversation. ‘Then he’d need a high access account, wouldn’t he? A mistress needs money all the time.’ Britta moved the chair back to its usual place in the corner. ‘I must go down to the camp. I’ll be back this evening.’ She gathered up her things, hesitated, then turned to Ellen. ‘I don’t want you moving from that bed.’
The door slammed shut behind Britta. Ellen looked over at her laptop, sitting right there on the table. She focused on breathing evenly, trying not to wheeze. She reached for the glass of water, drank it down and poured more. Her chest ached. She rested her head against the headboard, closed her eyes and thought about Khan and his account.
When her breathing had settled again, she opened her eyes. Her laptop taunted her. It would only be three steps from the bed to the table. She practised the movements in her mind. Finally she gathered her strength, pushed back the bedclothes and groped her way, coughing, along the edge of the bed. She put her laptop under her arm and staggered back. She rested against the pillows to recover. After a few minutes, she drank the second glass of water and booted up the laptop on her knee.
She typed in the web address Britta had given her. A bank account front page came up. When she tried to enter it, the password command flashed, a long, thin box of white light. A black cursor danced at the start. She stared at it.
‘Quentin Khan,’ she said to the empty room. ‘What would you choose?’
She looked round the room, at the pieces of fruit in the bowl, the book and papers stacked on the table, the blank television screen set back against the wall. Quentin Khan. She thought of him, reclining regally on the sofa in his brown silk shirt, his bare toes deep in the thick pile carpet. He oozed power. The expensive aftershave, hand-stitched clothes, helicopter.
She put her hands to her face, trying to concentrate. Her fingers smelt of smoke. She closed her eyes, slipping half into sleep, her thoughts about Khan drifting and dispersing. She lay there for some time, groping for a shadow of an idea which kept receding just as she seemed about to grasp it. He was a man who could have anything. Who’d come from nothing.
Her eyes snapped open. She sat upright. Dickens.
She stared at the flashing cursor. Her nails dug into her palms. Last try. A third wrong answer and that was it, they were locked out.
She closed her eyes and thought back to her interview with Khan. His voice had been so polished and rehearsed as he talked about the rise of his business empire. He had only come to life when he talked about his childhood. Surely that was the key to understanding him? She put her fingers on the keyboard, paused. She shook her head and pulled them away again. She reached for the pad and pen on the bedside table and wrote: ‘Dickens’ across it, just to see the letters written out. She considered them for a while. Finally she breathed deeply, typed in the letters and hit enter before she could change her mind.
There was a long pause as the computer whirred. Wrong. I’d be in by now. She bit her lip, looked away. The light at the window was hard and white, sitting heavily on the city. A dark pattern of birds rose in a graceful arc, then dived and disappeared from sight.
The computer chirped. The screen cleared. A new page flashed up. ‘Welcome, Quentin Khan! Please select one of the following options . . .’ Underneath, in bold, was the account balance: just over a million dollars.
For a second, she felt pure exhilaration. Got him. She was right. S
he’d nailed him. A million dollars, skimmed off his drugs fund and hidden away. And she knew.
The screen whirred and blinked, waiting. Slowly her sense of elation evaporated. She leant back into the pillows, her body leaden with exhaustion. She stared at the screen. Quentin Khan. A multimillionaire in his sixties who was still, deep inside, a small boy filled with longing. She shook her head.
She sat quietly, the laptop on her knee, and stared out at the afternoon sky. Somewhere down in the hotel grounds, a child gave an excited shriek. There was a smacking splash, then churning water and a man called a child’s name. Beyond them, the low rumble of traffic and blaring horns.
She thought of the scars the fake drugs had left on the lives of the living. She thought of the row of unmarked graves, adult and child, decorated with strands of tinsel tugged by the breeze.
She sighed to herself and lifted her fingers to the computer keyboard.
Chapter 29
The soft buzz reached Ellen before she could see the helicopter. The sound echoed through the air, ricocheting off the mountains. She was standing in a welcome line, craning her neck to the sky. The air was thick with ash and soot. Nearby, the brick walls of the administration block were blackened. Shovels of charred cardboard lay in piles near the entrance.
There was a shout and someone pointed. She shielded her eyes. A bank of threatening rainclouds hung low. The helicopter broke free of them and came in fast, skimming over the plains. It hovered over the landing site, blowing out a storm of dust, then lowered itself to the ground.
Khan stepped out first. His expression was stony. He didn’t wave this time, just kept his eyes on the steps. He looked portly in a white linen suit, the copy of an English gentleman from an earlier, more colonial era. His people scrambled after him. The jeeps nosed forwards to collect the passengers. And John, there was John, of course, lifting a hand to them all as he came down.
Britta was clutching her cross, running it up and down its chain. They’d been assembled here for the last twenty minutes, waiting for the grand arrival. All the talk had been of Khan. No one knew what he’d say about the fire and the destroyed supplies. No one knew whether he’d agree to replace them.
‘Don’t cause trouble,’ Britta whispered to Ellen for the tenth time as the jeeps approached. ‘We need his money.’
Frank stepped forwards to greet them. His face was distorted, a mess of bandage, cuts and bruises. The swelling had narrowed his eyes to slits. At the back of his skull, his hair had been shaved where a wound was dressed. His hand trembled as he extended it to Khan.
‘My dear girl.’ John strode over to Ellen, a fat fake smile on his face. He dived in and kissed her on the cheek. He smelt of gin. ‘We’ve all been so worried. You’ve no idea. Thought you were a goner.’
She forced a smile. ‘So I heard.’
‘Great piece on the web. Loved it. All that stuff about your heart to heart with that Taliban commander.’ He winked. ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?’
‘That was absolutely—’
‘Course it was. Won’t breathe a word.’ He tapped a cigarette out of its packet, looking round at the ashy mess behind them. ‘It’s OK to smoke? No fire risk?’ He sniggered to himself as he struck the match and lit up, blowing a column of smoke into the air between them.
He’s got something up his sleeve, she thought. He’s too pleased with himself.
‘What you do to your face?’
The gash on her forehead was starting to heal but she’d scraped her chin in the fire and that cut was puffy with a rising bruise.
She shrugged. ‘It looks worse than it feels.’
‘Accident-prone?’ He mimed drinking and laughed. ‘Too much of this, I know.’
They turned to watch Khan as he moved on. Frank was at his side, flanked by Khan’s people. They approached the administration building. Frank was pointing, explaining.
She nodded towards them. ‘What’s he been saying about it?’
John drew on his cigarette, considering. ‘Not good.’ He nodded to himself. ‘He doesn’t have much of a temper but he lost it yesterday. I really thought he wouldn’t come.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse.’
Khan had his back to them. His shoulders were rigid.
She said: ‘No insurance, I take it?’
‘Here?’ He pulled a face. ‘Too dodgy. You know what drugs cost nowadays?’ He didn’t pause long enough for her to answer. ‘Course not, why should you? Well, I’ve looked into it and I can tell you, that was a damn big investment, right there.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Up in smoke.’
‘You think he’ll pull out?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. And can’t say I’d blame him. What kind of security did they have? Where were the guards?’
She thought of the silver-haired old man, dozing on a plastic chair.
John leant sideways towards her and lowered his voice. ‘The word is, the gong’s in the bag. This doesn’t matter now. He’s home and dry.’ John dropped the stub of his cigarette to the mud and rubbed it into sparks with the toe of his boot. ‘Between you and me, I just filed another exclusive. Firming up the whole lordship thing.’ He made to follow Khan as he circled and headed back towards the jeep. ‘All this? The fire? Don’t bother filing on it. It’s not news. Take it from me, no one back home gives a damn about the refugees.’
An hour later, the storm broke. The cloud sank around them in a fine brown mist, blanketing the mountains. Ellen was sheltering in the doorway of the administration building, her head aching. She wanted to get back to the hotel, check on Layla and then sleep. She stood on the step, breathing in the rich scent of wet earth and watching a thousand arrows of rain fall.
‘You want lunch?’ Frank was suddenly behind her. His hair was damp, sticking to his forehead. ‘The helicopter can’t take off in this. We’re driving Mr Khan back to the hotel to dry out and eat.’
‘You really think the food at The Swan will cheer him up?’
His eyes were dull with fatigue. ‘I sure hope so.’
They ran through the rain to the waiting cars. Khan, his bodyguard and Frank took the first car, the most luxurious. She was pointed to the next one, with John and Khan’s press advisor. A third, with more of Khan’s people, followed behind.
The press advisor pushed past her, rushing to get to the far side of the car and grab the front seat. As soon as he shut the door, he twisted round and pressed down the button which locked it, then reached further back and locked John’s too.
‘He wanted to fly,’ he said to John. ‘I told him: it’s just not safe. It was bad enough coming in.’ He looked over his other shoulder at Ellen and added, ‘It was like a roller coaster.’
The first car set off in front of them through the rain. Their driver started his engine and crunched the car into gear, then set off, bumping and tossing along the track. Only one windscreen wiper was working. He strained forwards, peering through a narrow cone of swept glass.
Beside him, the press advisor started to fuss, searching for a seat belt. After a long hunt, he retrieved it only to find, when he pulled it across his body, that there wasn’t a buckle on the other side. He tutted and grumbled for a while, then finally gave in and clasped the roof strap with white knuckles.
Ellen looked out at the mudflats through windows streaming with rain. The visibility was poor. They were joining the road now, passing the place where the taxi driver had pulled over to set her down on the night of the fire. They turned right, following the car in front onto a narrow road across the countryside.
The wheat fields were dotted with bent, soaked men, plucking at weeds. Beside them, irrigation ditches swirled with water.
It was a dirt road, treacherous with rocks. They bounced on the seats every time the car plunged into potholes with a splash of brown water. The driver’s head bobbed up and down in front of her. This was a circuitous route, not the one she usually took as she drove to and from the hotel. She kept h
er back straight and looped her fingers through the roof strap, trying to absorb the shocks and ease the pressure on her body.
A copse was just visible below them. She could see the way the road veered to the right, then rose and dipped sharply down towards the trees. They started to take the right turn. She blinked, peering through the dripping windscreen. She’d glimpsed someone, just before the car changed direction. A man was standing down there by the trees, waiting. Something about him made her uneasy. She strained to look. The driver continued into the bend. The man and the trees disappeared from view.
She tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Would you stop?’
He started to brake.
John looked sideways at her, impatient. ‘What’s the matter?’
The press advisor frowned. ‘Carry on,’ he said to the driver. The car surged forwards again. The press advisor said over his shoulder to Ellen, ‘We must keep in convoy. We can’t just go stopping . . .’
She twisted to look back through the rear window. It was streaming with water, cloudy with condensation. She rubbed a patch of glass with her sleeve. The last of the three cars was braking and slowing to a halt. It shrank as they left it behind. Someone else clearly shared her concern.
She turned back to watch the road ahead. They were reaching the top of the rise now, ready to descend rapidly to the trees. As they crested it, Khan’s vehicle was suddenly large in front of them, too close, braking hard on the slope. Their own brakes squealed. The driver lurched to one side, fighting to control the steering wheel. The gears, forgotten, grated and meshed.
Just ahead, the man – a youth, she could see now – stood in the middle of the road, a gun in his hand. He was waving the cars down, forcing them to a halt. The loose end of a black turban dangled at his shoulder. It was saturated, dripping rainwater down his chest. The two cars skidded and finally stopped.
‘Police?’ The press advisor sounded panicked. ‘Do they often . . .?’
He wasn’t police. No uniform. No police car. No warning signs in the road. Just a young man with an unkempt beard and a weapon in his hands, pointed now at close range at the windscreen of the front car. After the sudden rush of movement, the world was still and laden with silence. The falling rain slapped against the roof, the bonnet, cascaded down the glass. The single windscreen wiper squeaked back and forth. No one breathed.
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