Hider/Seeker

by Hider-Seeker (epub)

  ‘No – in all the excitement, I forgot.’

  Harry waited for her to come back from the kitchen before taking his turn to clean the blood from his forehead. When he returned, he asked her if she could bring him his knapsack from the house.

  ‘What if the police have found Ernesto and are waiting for me?’ She thought a second and then gasped, ‘They could even be on their way here now.’

  That was a real possibility that neither had considered. She grabbed her coat and bag straight away and led him out of the office, locking the door behind her. They took the stairs and grabbed the first cab they could find. He watched their back the whole way to Bar Margarita, but saw nothing.

  They sat at a table in the packed bar and ordered a meal. Harry agreed that Gabriela should call Corina from the bar’s pay phone to tell her to collect his knapsack from the house. If she saw anything suspicious outside the house she was to go back home immediately.

  While she was talking to Corina, Harry made his way to the kitchen where he knew Jairo would be. He asked his friend a favour and Jairo agreed without hesitation. A hug and a slap on the back, then back to the table where Gabriela was already waiting for him.

  There was still something on her mind. She wanted to know what had been so urgent for Harry to see Ernesto. Harry went over his story and explained that her husband would not help him track down Angela Linehan.

  ‘You have no clue at all to work on?’ she asked.

  ‘Just one, but it’s nothing really.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I told Ernesto I knew Angela Linehan was living close by. It was a shot in the dark, just to test his reaction.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That was it. He didn’t react.’

  ‘You think she’s in Guatemala?’

  ‘No. My guess is that Ernesto arranged the property for her hideaway somewhere in Central America.’

  ‘How is that going to help you?’

  ‘It narrows my area of search.’

  Gabriela cast her mind back and said, ‘Ernesto made quite a few trips many weeks ago. He told me he was looking for property for a client to rent or buy. Said it was a really big deal.’

  ‘You know where he went?’

  ‘No. Ernesto never spoke about his clients. But I don’t think this fits in with what you just said.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘On his last trip, he told me he was closing a deal on a property for this mystery client. He said he was glad it was going to be his last trip because getting there took over eighteen hours.’

  ‘Eighteen? Are you sure?’

  Gabriela was.

  ‘She could be living anywhere between Toronto and Santiago.’ He couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘I’m back to square one.’

  No one spoke while the waitress brought them their beers along with two chilli peppers stuffed with cheese, beef and beans. He and Gabriela began to eat, deep in thought. Around them was normal life; workers unwinding from a hard day in the office. Talking, laughing, blaspheming. Things humans do to forget their worries. But Harry couldn’t forget his and he doubted Gabriela could forget hers. It was developing and growing like a tsunami about to crash down on them.

  ‘I don’t suppose Ernesto rang you when he was on that trip?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘What time?’

  There was a pause while she finished what she was chewing. ‘I can’t remember Harry, I think I took the call in my office. I’d just got in around nine.’

  ‘And what time was it where he was?’

  She made a face as she pondered the question. She shrugged her shoulders, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it the middle of the day around lunchtime?’

  ‘No. Definitely not, because he hadn’t eaten yet.’

  ‘So was he one, two, three hours ahead?’

  ‘Yes – no. I don’t know. I guess he was ahead a couple of hours, because he was complaining that his stomach was rumbling and he would have an early lunch.’

  Harry stuffed a fork load of food in his mouth and considered what she had said before turning his attention to her problems. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll go back to the house and wait for the police to arrive if they are not already there waiting.’

  ‘Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘Guatemalan women are made of sterner stuff.’ There was a faint defiant smile. Her eyes brightened and her beauty returned. ‘We have bigger balls than our men. It’s true. That macho bullshit is just a pose; we own most of the wealth and the poor boys have to do what we tell them to do. Ernesto set up his business with the money I inherited from my mother. So there is nothing for me to fear. I know what I have to say, and how to comport myself with great dignity in our feudal society.’

  ‘What happens when Ernesto’s secret files are released?’

  ‘It will be a feeding frenzy for the journalists. At first they will attack members of the government he names, and then there will be an explosion of conspiracy theories about who killed Ernesto. Conspiracies are part of our DNA; they are the only thing we Guatemalans are literate in.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The government will leak more and more bizarre conspiracy stories until they become so ridiculous that no one can believe any of them. Once they have accomplished that, they will get some respected journalist they have in their pocket to write a long editorial discrediting Ernesto and probably me too.’

  ‘No investigations, inquiries?’

  ‘Sure, they’ll find some retired judge to head that. Probably a good man that everyone can believe in. But the conclusion will be the same. It always is.’

  ‘Won’t it be dangerous for you to stay?’

  ‘Yes. But I won’t abandon my kids so that they can do what they want with them. Not now.’

  ‘The state always wins?’

  ‘Have you not been listening?’ she said puffing out her cheeks. ‘Have you forgotten how this all started? With Ernesto gone, they get the commission to write the recommendations they want.’

  ‘So no mercury or arsenic in the water in San Marcos?’

  ‘Not enough to cause alarm, they will say. They will recommend some minimal engineering work to be carried out at the mines and that’s all.’

  ‘What about the church? Won’t the cardinal say something?’

  She shook her head.

  Just then, Corina entered the bar holding Harry’s knapsack. There was a half smile on her face as she handed over the bag to him, saying nothing. Gabriela told her to sit down with them and asked her whether the police were at the house. She said she saw them arrive just as she was leaving from the side door. They hadn’t spotted her. Corina asked what was going on, but Gabriela ignored the question as she didn’t want a scene in the bar as Corina and her family were close to Ernesto and his late mother.

  Gabriela stretched her hand across the table and grasped Harry’s. ‘You must go now, they’ll be looking for you.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I told you, I’ll be all right for now. I’ll go back with Corina to learn that I’m a widow.’

  Harry leant across the table to kiss Gabriela and then gave Corina a hug, before heading to the kitchen at the back. Jairo’s girlfriend, Doris, was waiting to take Harry back to the flat where he could change into Jairo’s best suit before setting off to La Aurora airport.

  Twenty-eight

  The first flight out of Guatemala was not until five-thirty the next morning to Newark via Panama. He paid cash at Continental’s desk and spent the night at Doris’ apartment as she lived close by the airport. She didn’t seem to mind, sheltering the notorious Harry Bridger, wanted for murder on two continents with warrants of arrest from the Metropolitan Police, Interpol and soon-to-be the Guatemalan authorities. It didn’t seem possible to Harry that he could be in so much trouble. And now he could be endangering Doris. But what else could he do? He had to stay indoors for the night and that was t
hat.

  He left early the next morning without waking Doris, and walked a mile to the airport. It was a risk, but one worth taking not to involve her further. Wearing Jairo’s checked grey suit, and holding a small leather suitcase lent by his friend, he was looking far too smart for a cabbie from Bow on an around-the-world holiday.

  The terminal was busier than he’d expected at that time of the morning. There were plenty of uniformed cops patrolling the terminal – all armed with TAR-21s, Israeli bullpup assault rifles. He had no idea whether there were more than usual, but remained calm. A sniffer dog showed much interest in the soles of his shoes. A quick smile at the cop at the end of the lead, and his wagging friend was off to smell another pair of heels.

  Harry followed the flow of fellow travellers towards passport control. Everywhere he looked there were uniforms and guns. He felt as if the eyes of each patrolling cop were upon him. Whether true or not, it made no difference as there was nowhere to go now.

  His head was filled with doubts, but he kept reminding himself he was just another anonymous face in the crowd; it would be alright. Then his heart skipped a beat. On the front page of the Prensa Libre was his picture. There was no time to catch the headline as the man reading the paper had set off in another direction. But it didn’t matter because he could guess what the grey print said. That picture was probably already with the enforcement agencies around the globe, and would at some point come to the attention of Detective Inspector Wallace Gemmell or worse still, the Marottas.

  The passengers in front of him started to slow down as they reached passport control. They squeezed into a single file before coming to a halt. He was part of a long queue and stood behind a man in a leather hat, holding a cardboard box under his arm with a Sony logo. Tufts of white hair stuck out from under his hat and the back of his neck was wrinkled and tanned. The man turned around and Harry took a step back, treading on the toes of a middle-aged nun. She smelt of Acqua Di Selva aftershave, which was curious on so many levels. He apologised to her and she smiled back.

  Outside the stale terminal building there would be a rising sun and fresh air to breath. Perhaps a warm breeze was developing. He could turn around at that moment and be out there once again. But that would only attract attention as there were at least a dozen people standing behind him in the queue, including a nun that shaved.

  He waited in line, craning his neck to see why it was taking so long. In between the heads in front of him he saw a uniformed man seated behind a glass window chatting to another uniformed man standing next to him. Both had thick black moustaches and looked interchangeable. The man seated stopped talking and stamped a passport belonging to a backpacker. Everyone in the line took a step forward. To Harry’s right, another two uniformed men were looking in his direction, and this time it was not his imagination playing tricks. He knew better than to make eye contact and asked the nun in broken Spanish where she was heading. She replied, Panama, and he told her that he was on the same flight.

  The uniformed officials beckoned Harry. They were gesturing him to come forward. The nun nudged Harry, thinking he hadn’t seen them. He could not ignore the men any longer. Making a bolt was not an option. Pushing his way through the line behind him, would be like trampling over thickets.

  The two men were waving for him to come forward. People turned towards him; eyeballs everywhere he looked. Then came shouting from passengers at the back of the line, followed by shoving. The nun grabbed his arm and pointed to a passport desk that had just opened up. Relief. He wasn’t being picked out for arrest; he was being fast tracked.

  Harry sauntered across to the glass window, and a second line formed immediately behind him. He slid his passport to an official sitting on the other side of the window. The man glanced at something below the desk, for what seemed like an eternity to Harry, and, then stamped his passport with a loud thump.

  Harry’s suitcase was small enough to take on board, but no one searched it, much to his relief, as it contained his grease-soiled jacket with cash in the lining. He followed the gate signs and found a comfortable bench to wait for his boarding call. The ordeal was over.

  The Boeing 737-800 took off on time and two hours later he was in Tocumen International in Panama City for a six hour layover. He didn’t arrive in Newark until seven-thirty that evening. An hour later he was boarding a taxi to Grand Central, where he knew a cheap hotel that asked few questions.

  He took a room on the fourth floor that had all the modern conveniences of a small apartment – a kitchenette, bathroom, TV, phone and internet connection. Harry could live there undisturbed for weeks, if he had to, as the Cockney cabbie blowing all his money in the Big Apple.

  After a hot shower, he sat on the bed with a towel around his waist. He punched in a string of numbers into the phone that blocked traces, and then made a call.

  ‘Good God man, where’ve you been?’ asked Nelson at the other end of the line, waking up from a deep sleep. ‘I was beginning to think funny things had happened to you.’

  ‘Ran into a few problems here, but okay now.’

  ‘There’s been no more news on Bethany. Elizabeth wants to go to the police.’

  ‘She can’t do that.’

  ‘I’ve explained it all to her, but you know how she is.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Did you get anywhere on Angela Linehan and the boy?’

  ‘Turned out easier than I thought. I was getting bugger all from my contacts at the airlines. So I tracked down her friend Jean, and was told she was on holiday in Cancun. Twenty hotels later, I find her. Guess who else was staying at the hotel?’

  ‘Kelly Hubbard and her podgy son?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And I bet she got them all to leave in a hurry when she read I was still alive.’

  ‘Absolutely. I hired a PI to pay a call on the hotel and he gleaned from one of the doormen that they had checked out all of a sudden.’

  ‘Did he find out where they were heading?’

  ‘He paid one of the cleaners to let him snoop around their rooms for ten minutes, but found nothing. The cleaner said she heard Angela and Jean talking a day earlier about leaving.’

  ‘Did she hear where they were going?’

  ‘Fifty bucks bought us the Caribbean as their destination.’

  ‘I presume another hundred didn’t help her recall which island?’

  ‘No that’s all he got out of her.’

  Harry didn’t think that the Caribbean sounded right, particularly as Gabriela had told him that Ernesto had flown more than eighteen hours to buy Angela Linehan a hot piece of property. Guatemala is close to the Caribbean and his journey would have been much shorter. This wasn’t looking good. His only lead on Angela Linehan and it was a dud. He said good night to Nelson and chewed on two aspirin to get rid of a headache he was rapidly developing.

  Twenty-nine

  Harry tossed and turned all night thinking of Bethany. A new layer of problems had grown over the old ones like scar tissue and he was clueless about what he should do next. Angela Linehan could have got herself another passport by now; she could have paid for someone to fly her or sail her to anywhere in the Caribbean, if that story was true. She could have also turned all the signposts around.

  His head told him he couldn’t find her in ten months let alone in the ten days he had left. But chance and luck would decide everything. The Marrotas must have had someone in their pocket at the Met because the two gormless officers that were supposed to be guarding his room at the hospital had disappeared far too easily in his hour of need. Someone was feeding the Marrotas information because they knew too much about him and Bethany, making things trickier. Somewhere along the line they got their wires crossed about Bethany expecting his child.

  He still trusted Gemmell and would have called him in the middle of the night to launch a search for her if he thought it would do any good. But the Marottas were bound to get a tip-off. There was no way out of this, other than finding Ange
la Linehan by the deadline set by Roberto Marotta.

  The wintry morning light seeped through the blinds and he got dressed into Jairo’s suit, as he still had nothing else to wear. Before going out, he called Elizabeth and assured her he’d sorted everything out with Bethany’s captors and that she would be home in a couple of weeks. There was no need to worry as everything was in hand. She’d soon see her daughter again, providing the police are kept out of the picture. The news lifted Elizabeth’s spirits and they said their goodbyes.

  He went across the road to a packed deli for breakfast and ate for two as he pondered what to do next. No ideas came, nothing that seemed practical or workable.

  Refuelled on black coffee, ham and eggs, he bought a week’s groceries from a convenience store nearby and dropped them off in his room, before heading out to a little computer store he knew off Delancey Street. He thought it would make him feel better if he bought a laptop as it meant he was at least starting to do something to get her back. On his way over, he picked out a couple of shirts, a pair of jeans, a jumper and a parka from an army and navy store he’d stumbled upon.

  For under eight hundred bucks, the latest Toshiba Satellite laptop seemed an obvious choice. It had plenty of power for what he wanted and was highly portable, weighing just over four pounds. He told the salesman behind the counter he was in a hurry and as he would be paying cash, could he throw in a headset and adapters.

  Clutching his bags of shopping, he left the store and looked for a cab. There was no time to waste, although what he was going to do next was still a mystery.

  Ten long minutes later he was inside a warm cab heading back to his hotel. He was in no mood for small talk as he had too much on his mind. But the cabbie from Mumbai, picking up on Harry’s English accent, insisted on telling him about his nephews and nieces in Willesden. Did he know the area? Harry’s head was elsewhere, focused on private airstrips in the Caribbean, the types that didn’t attract attention from the authorities. A local detective would know them, would pay the right people to get the answers. Had they seen two women in their early thirties and a schoolboy arrive in the middle of the night? But what was he thinking? There were too many islands to contemplate, and even if he narrowed it down to just fifty likely places, he would run out of time.