by C B Wilson
Their car doors were pulled open. The men beckoned to Nikki and Oliver to get out.
“Come on pal,”said one of the men in a gentle lowlands Scots accent. “Come with us please, but don’t worry, we’re the good guys.”
“How are we supposed to know that?” said Nikki.
“You hear that car,” said the Scottish guy, pointing up the hill. Holmes and Nikki listened. At first it wasn’t easy to hear anything over the noise of the whistling frogs, but then the engine noise of a car being driven down the road towards them at high speed started to build as the car raced round the hairpin bends from the direction of Hutchinson’s house.
The Scotsman started hustling them towards the car that had boxed them in from behind. “Our recon says there’s six guys up the road, just killed some fella in a wee house up there, and it seemed like they were set up waiting for someone else. Now would you like to stick around and have a chat with them, or would you like to come with us and get the hell out of here?”
The Scotsman and his mate held the rear doors of the car open for Nikki and Holmes.
Nikki said, “At least they asked us nicely,” and she got into the car. Holmes followed.
The driver whipped the car round in a three-point turn and headed down the way they had come. In the few seconds before they were round the first bend, Holmes looked out of the rear window and saw someone toss a canister through the window of the ambush car. It was instantly in flames. The men in camouflage gear were nowhere to be seen.
The driver was an expert. He flung the car around a few corners and then at the apex of another bend, he waited, head out of the window, listening.
They heard a few shots. Shouts. Then the woof of an explosion and the clouds lit up with an orange glow.
An engine started up. A minute later, Nikki’s hire car appeared behind them. Two men dropped out of the woods next to the car and into the car behind them.
The Scottish guy got in the front shouting “Go! Go! Go!” and the driver was accelerating downhill before he was fully seated. As they shot round the corners, he stuck his hand over the seat and shook Oliver and Nikki’s hands.
“Murke. They call me Murke cos I never stop talking,” he said. “You alright?”
Nikki and Oliver said they were OK. Murke wouldn’t tell them anything else about what was happening. He spoke to someone on a radio. It didn’t sound like a happy conversation.
“She’s lost it,” Murke said when he’d finished on the radio, but the driver wasn’t listening to him. He pulled to the side of the road, turned his engine and lights off. The car behind did the same.
“Chopper,” said the driver and they waited for a few minutes until the drone of the helicopter had faded up the mountain before they moved on.
Over the seat, Murke said, “Ana’s waiting for you,” and then refused to tell them who Ana was. All he would say was that Ana wasn’t happy. She had told them not to kill anyone and apparently they hadn’t followed orders.
The South African in the driver’s seat gave Holmes and Nikki a big grin. “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys,” he said. “I think.”
Holmes said, “You seem very keen to tell us you’re the good guys.”
Nikki squeezed Holmes’ hand and then she told the driver she needed to be sick. Their little convoy stopped by the side of the road and she sucked in some fresh air and thought she felt OK. But after few more hairpin bends at speed she really did need to be sick.
53
The two cars pulled up in front of Devon House, built on the edge of Kingston by the first Jamaican millionaire in the nineteenth century. They parked next to a large black SUV with tinted windows.
Murke said, “Come and meet Ana.”
Holmes wouldn’t get into the black car. He started shouting. “I have had enough of being ambushed and kidnapped and pushed around. I am not getting in that car unless someone tells me what is going on.”
A tall, slender woman got out of the SUV. She had an air of sadness about her like a cloak. She said, “I’m sorry about this,” and she held out her hand. “My name is Ana Kulkani. I was raped and nearly murdered by Volkov five years ago. I need your help. Give me ten minutes of your time to explain it. If you don’t like what I have to say, we will drop you anywhere you like in Jamaica.”
“Why do we have to do it in the car?”
“I would prefer to be in the car,” Ana said. “I get bitten a lot by mosquitos.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Nikki. “When you’re with Oliver, you’re safe. He’s the one that gets bitten.”
Nikki shook Ana’s hand and introduced herself. She beckoned Oliver into the car. Holmes grumbled and moaned like people do when the thing they were cross about has been taken away but they can’t let go of being angry.
He allowed himself to be led into the car.
Apart from London taxis, Holmes had never been in a car with opposable seats until he sat across from Ana and listened to her story.
54
Most of the young women who cluster around the super-rich are there to snare themselves a wealthy mate. But not all of them. Ana was one of the fun-loving girls who were just there for the excitement, the drugs and the parties.
“I just wanted more, more, more,” she said. “Any drug, any time, anywhere. I was wild.”
Girls like that are never short of invitations to ski chalets, private beaches and mega yachts, so Ana partied her way round the world having fun. Until she was invited to Volkov’s yacht.
“I didn’t know anything about Volkov,” she said. “But that didn’t matter. It’s cool to get invited to a party on one of the world’s biggest yachts. So I went.”
She was never completely unconscious, even after Volkov had drugged her. It felt like she was looking the wrong way through binoculars. Sounds came as though echoing down long corridors. She had no feeling, no connection between her body and her mind.
She knew that she was dragged off the yacht and onto a smaller boat. She knew she was being raped, but she couldn’t move.
The easy thing to do would have been to give in, to let herself fall into the blackness that swam around the edge of her vision, but then she felt the pain, the choking on her neck. She struggled. Like a diver coming from deep under the water, bursting to the surface, gasping for air, she was conscious. Volkov was strangling her.
She pushed him away; they struggled; she was weak. They fell into the sea. The coldness shocked her. She was a swimmer; she had swum for hours every day since she was a child.
She shrugged off Volkov and headed for shore, just visible in the vague light. She heard the noise of the boat behind her. He was coming for her. She stumbled out of the water onto a beach, ran into the fringe of trees and heard his footsteps behind her. The burst of energy she had found to get away from him was fading. She crawled into a knot of bushes at the edge of the sand like a wild animal. The fishermen coming to the beach must have frightened Volkov away. She heard their voices, and then she slept.
Nikki slipped into the seat next to Ana. She put her arms round the woman. They hugged.
Nikki said, “I’m so sorry.”
Ever practical, Holmes said, “Did you go to the police?”
Nikki said, “Do you know anything about my friend Nadia?”
Ana nodded.
“Is she dead?”
“I think so,” said Ana.
The two women hugged again and whispered and cried, only this time, Holmes had the sense to keep his mouth shut.
55
Nikki wanted to know more about Nadia.
Ana said that the best way was for her to tell them what had happened to her since Volkov had attacked her.
“I went to the police and that was a mistake. The yacht had picked me up on Martinique but the island I was on was St Lucia so they threw me in jail for being an illegal immigrant.”
“They weren’t interested in your story?” asked Holmes.
“Nobody cared. The yacht had never
officially entered St Lucia. I had no money, no passport, nothing. I couldn’t get a lawyer. They deported me back to Spain.”
Ana told them a sad tale of how she had sunk even deeper into drink and drugs and harmful behaviour.
“Then, one day at a party, I met a girl who told me a story about a friend of hers who had been to a party on a yacht in the Caribbean and disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to her.”
Ana wiped the tears from her face. “I guess that made me realise that I was lucky, that I nearly died that night. So I decided to stop punishing myself for what had happened and I went to a clinic to get better.”
There was a tap on the window next to Ana. She buzzed it down. A tough-looking woman said, “Problem.”
56
The bodyguard was a woman called Lucy. Her suit accentuated the tautness of her muscles. She wasn’t relaxed and her eyes darted everywhere.
She opened the door and said, “The helicopter keeps circling around and we’ve got a car with hostiles nearby. Just in case, I checked the bag she left in the car.”
By “she”, Lucy meant Nikki. One of Lucy’s team put Nikki’s bag on the ground next to the car and passed a hand-held sensor over it. There was a beep.
“Do you mind if we have a look inside?”
Nikki apologised in advance for the state of her bag.
“It’s OK,” said Holmes. “They’re not interested in your packing.”
Everything came out of her bag. They passed the detector over the clothes and the bag again. The beeping came from a pocket on the inside of the bag.
“It must have been when Jerry was in my hotel room,” said Nikki.
“Miss, I would advise you that we need to act quickly,” said Lucy. We anticipate that they will make a move on us sooner rather than later.”
“No more killing,” said Ana.
“What happened tonight was regrettable, but those men did open fire. My men had no choice.”
“Get rid of the device and get us out of here. Will we be safe in Manderley?”
Lucy said, “Can I have a word in private?”
Ana said, “No.”
“We need to conduct a more thorough background check on this lady before I can guarantee your safety.”
Holmes said, “No. She’s with me. We’re together. Don’t forget, you kidnapped us. We didn’t ask you to bring us here.”
Lucy didn’t like it but Ana agreed with Holmes. “Don’t worry about Nikki,” she said. “Get us to Manderley.”
Then she said, “I’m assuming that you’re both going to come with me.”
Holmes said, “I don’t know how you think I can be helpful, but I have to tell you that I have some problems that you need to know about.”
“Can you tell us on the way?”
57
They drove out of Kingston fast, heading north. Holmes was vaguely aware of the other cars in the convoy rotating around them as a counter-surveillance technique while he talked.
Holmes told Ana about the Jamaican police, the murders and his falling out with Justice Unlimited.
“Why do you think this is a problem?”
“I have to clear this mess up before I can help you with anything else. I’m a wanted man for a start.”
Ana’s laugh was mirthless. “When we backgrounded you, the reports were that you were smart. I might have to revise that.”
“What am I missing here?”
“You really think the Jamaican police were behind all of that?”
Holmes scratched his cheek. “Of course.”
Ana said, “I don’t have much experience of the Jamaican constabulary but I’m convinced they couldn’t organise a professional execution, or hack into a US bank, or tie up all the good lawyers on the island.”
“Well who did all that?”
Nikki was way ahead of Holmes. She said, “Jerry.”
“Obviously,” said Ana, “Jerry Northey acting on behalf of Volkov and Malkin. Those are the people with the resources to do all that.”
“They got Charlotte and Ellie locked up in Miami as well,” said Nikki. “They wanted to get rid of us.”
Holmes was quiet for a moment while he readjusted his mental map. “All because of Nadia?”
“Because we were looking for Nadia.”
Like the pins in a tumbler lock falling into place, everything clicked for Holmes. “If you’re right, Nadia was murdered. As soon as we started asking questions, we had to be taken out of the picture.”
“Everything that happened to you was done by Volkov’s people because of Nadia.”
Holmes needed some time to digest that. Nikki said to Ana, “What do you think has happened to Nadia?”
“If his past behaviour is anything to go by, I think she was murdered,” Ana said. “Murdered, and her body disposed of at sea.”
“You mean he’s done this before?”
“I’m afraid so.”
58
Their convoy hit the coast and turned east. Holmes was listening to Ana’s story but he was struggling to stay awake.
Ana told them how, at the addiction clinic, she met Ravi, a modern dotcom billionaire with an old-fashioned cocaine problem. Two months later they were married. Ana didn’t say anything about love.
“He treated me like he treats everything. He overwhelms people and problems with time and attention, and for six months, it was amazing. Then he got into, I think it was wearable computers, and I was less important.”
“Did you tell him?”
“About the rape? No. I was going to but it never seemed like the right time, and the longer I left it, the more difficult it got.”
Nikki said, “But you’re using his money to follow Volkov?”
Ana said, “As long as I don’t embarrass him, I can more or less do what I want.”
Ana looked out of the window for a while, then she said, “I had never forgotten Volkov, and I kept looking for stuff about him and then I saw this case of a young girl who had disappeared in Guatemala. It turned out that she wasn’t anything to do with Volkov, but it got me looking. I hired a researcher to connect the dots and here I am, chasing him all around the Caribbean.”
Nikki got it. “He lives on his yacht, going round the Caribbean. I suppose this means that Nadia and you weren’t the only ones.”
Holmes said, “There was Kimberly, back in 2010.”
“Kimberly was the beauty queen who went missing, yes, she was one of his. But there’s a lot more than that,” said Ana. “Do you know how many girls go missing in the Caribbean ever year and are never seen again? Thousands. No-one’s watching. He can just sail around, take his pick and then be gone. There’s no-one there watching for patterns, pulling together the reports.”
“Surely someone is co-ordinating between the different countries?” Holmes said.
“Thirty different nations, most of them small and poor. More if you count the ones in Central America,” said Ana. “And whatever co-operation they have between islands, it’s about drugs. Maybe murders, but not about some girls that go missing here and there.”
Nikki said, “Doesn’t Interpol do that sort of thing?”
“There’s no such thing as Interpol. It’s just a list of international conferences on a computer in France.”
Holmes wanted to argue but he knew she was right.
“But it’s not just that,” Ana continued. “Most of the time, the girls aren’t even reported missing because Jerry, or some other creature who works for Volkov, offers the families money to keep quiet. And on the rare occasions that someone turns down the money, they can’t get anywhere.”
Nikki said, “Because he buys the police.”
“And the judges and the lawyers.”
Holmes said, “So he’s untouchable.”
“That’s what happens when you have enough money.”
“How many cases are we talking about?” asked Holmes.
“I don’t know for certain, but we found eighteen disappearances that we t
hink might be linked to him in the past five years. But it’s impossible to get proof.”
Holmes said, “What about the internet?”
“What about it?”
Holmes said, “Can’t you warn people?”
Ana said, “Type ‘Volkov’ into a search engine and you get hundreds of pages of him kissing babies, opening orphanages, curing cancer. If you believe what you read on the internet you’d think he was a saint.”
“It’s called relationship management,” said Nikki. “You employ an agency to bury bad news by making loads of websites and links about the wonderful things you do.”
“And they won’t let anyone post anything bad about him at all,” said Ana. “I tried posting a few times, saying what happened to me. A few minutes later it was deleted. I get cease and desist letters because it is all just unsubstantiated accusations. I have no proof of anything.”
Holmes said, “So he can sail around the Caribbean doing whatever he likes and no-one can touch him.”
“Not just the Caribbean. They get bored here, they’ve got another boat in the Philippines, another one in Thailand, that I know of. Now I’ve never been to the Philippines, but I’m guessing they can buy the legal system over there just as easily.”
Nikki said, “How do you know that’s what happened to Nadia? She might not be one of his victims. She could still be alive.”
The car arrived at a gated villa. As they drove through, Ana said, “There’s a guy you need to meet. He’s called Konstantin. He…I’ll let him tell you himself.”
59
The scar on his face had been caused by an artillery shell in Georgia. It made Konstantin difficult to look at. Nikki didn’t want to stare because that was rude, but she didn’t want to look away because that was rude as well. She fixed on a point at the bridge of his nose and looked at that.