by C B Wilson
He was waiting for them on the terrace overlooking the sea at a villa called Manderley that Ana seemed to own. It was probably beautiful but Nikki couldn’t care less. She desperately wanted to know what the Russian had to say. Ana organised food and drink for Nikki and Holmes and left Konstantin to tell them his story.
It took two of them to get rid of the body. Him and Alexei. She had been wrapped in a tarpaulin that ripped on a metal cleat as they stuffed her body into the sea locker on the Calinda, and Konstantin caught a glimpse of her face. He wasn’t bothered about dead bodies. You don’t spend eight years in Russian special forces if you’re squeamish about death, but he recognised her.
She was the one who had looked at him as he held open the door for her. The door to Volkov’s private party.
Most of the women they scooped up on board Plutus were brassy – prostitutes mostly – and the rest were the kind who would do just about anything for free to get invited onto one of the largest private yachts in the world.
Holmes shifted uncomfortably in his seat when Konstantin said this but Nikki didn’t react to his description.
The Russian continued with this story. This woman, Nadia, was different. Had been different. He remembered the smile she’d given him. Most women turned away when they saw the scars on his face but this one had smiled at him. It slotted in his memory with the power of a first kiss.
Swearing under his breath, Konstantin slammed the locker shut with a lot more force than was necessary. He stepped into the wheelhouse, swung the boat away from the yacht, and headed out into the dark.
The Calinda was a support boat for Plutus with enough space for ten passengers and a cabin that could sleep four. Alexei spent the journey in the cabin staring at the blank wall. He did that a lot.
Normally Konstantin wasn’t part of Volkov’s inner circle. He hadn’t been with the team for long enough to ever be fully trusted, but Vlod, the guy who normally took charge of disposals, had put a harpoon through his foot and was in the sick bay groping the nurses.
When the echo sounder put Calinda over the Bartlett Trough at a depth of 300 metres, Konstantin switched off the engines, turned off the lights and checked the radar. Nothing. Just the slap of the waves hitting the hull and the creaking of the boat.
He was alone in the Caribbean Sea. Him, Alexei and the dead woman. Konstantin wanted to forget about her, wanted things to go back to normal. But he knew they wouldn’t. Her death had tripped something in him. Something had changed. He couldn’t go on like this.
Reporting her death to the authorities was not an option. Konstantin knew what happened to people who were disloyal to Volkov. He paid his security team a fortune, but if you stepped out of line, you’d be fed to the sharks. He’d seen it happen himself. The guy wasn’t even dead when he hit the water.
He took a deep breath. He was about to cross a line that would get him killed if anything went wrong. And there was plenty to go wrong.
Konstantin took out his phone and clicked on the video recorder. He placed it in the window of the wheelhouse so it was recording what happened on deck. He bent down to check the field of view, propped it so it was facing down a little more, then took a couple more breaths to steady his voice and shouted, “Alexei!”
Konstantin came out of the wheelhouse as Alexei came out of the cabin. “We’re clear,” he said. Alexei said nothing. He spoke as if he was charged by the word and hated to pay.
After making his own check of the sky and the horizon, Alexei grunted. Konstantin was starting to sweat. The camera was too obvious. Alexei was bound to see it. The light from the phone’s screen was glowing in the wheelhouse. All he had to do was turn round.
There was no way that Alexei knew how to navigate back to Plutus but Konstantin was sure that wouldn’t matter. Alexei would kill him and toss him overboard with the woman. He’d probably swim back to shore, towing the boat with his teeth for the exercise. Konstantin moved his hand to his pocket where his hasp knife was folded. If Alexei looked up at the wheelhouse, he’d stab the guy before he could move.
Alexei didn’t look at the wheelhouse. Instead, he opened the locker, jerked his thumb at Konstantin, and they both pulled the body in the tarpaulin onto the deck.
From the locker on the other side of Calinda, Alexei took out the heavy chain and dropped it onto the tarpaulin. Konstantin helped him to wrap the chain around the corpse and they clicked a padlock each to secure the chain. Together, they heaved the body, the tarpaulin and the chain into the sea.
The splash wasn’t loud, but a drop of seawater hit Konstantin on the lip. He brushed it away, hating the taste of it.
Alexei went back to the cabin.
Konstantin hosed out the sea locker where the girl’s body had lain, then the deck. He got back into the wheelhouse, checked that Alexei wasn’t looking, and stopped the recording on his phone. He didn’t dare look at it to see if it had recorded properly.
All the way back to Plutus, Konstantin wondered what he was going to do with his video. He knew he had to do something, and then he remembered the stewardess. Maybe she could help him.
60
After they had heard Konstantin tell his story, Nikki and Holmes watched his video. It showed everything, exactly as he had described it.
Nikki couldn’t bear to be in the same room as the Russian. She shouted at him, told him he should be locked up, and then she left.
Holmes was used to dealing with witnesses who had blood on their hands. He questioned Konstantin gently, drawing out everything he could about Volkov’s operations.
It didn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that Ana was right. He left Konstantin and went outside to where Nikki and Ana waited for him down by the pool which was next to the sea. Wind blew spray from the choppy little waves onto the deck. Nobody seemed to mind.
“Hers was the fifth body in two years that he knows about,” said Holmes, “but he thinks there’s more.”
“So we go to the police,” said Nikki. “With his evidence we have enough to get the police to arrest Volkov.”
Ana and Holmes took it in turns to break the bad news to her.
“He won’t give evidence.”
“He’ll never testify.”
“He knows that Volkov will kill him before he can give a statement.”
“And he doesn’t know for certain that Nadia was murdered, or who might have killed her.”
Nikki was furious. “He knows that Nadia is dead. He got rid of her body and we can’t do anything about it! Can’t we force him to give evidence?”
“I have a better idea,” said Ana. “Listen to what I have to tell you, and if it works, then maybe we can persuade Konstantin to give evidence.”
Holmes was on the point of collapsing. “I haven’t slept for two days. Can you do this quickly?”
Ana said, “Coffee?”
Holmes shook his head. “I’ve had too much already,” he said and held out his hand so they could see the caffeine shake.
“Alright, I’ll be quick,” Ana said. “You can have the details tomorrow.”
Down by the water it was beginning to get cool. Cool enough to put on a jumper, so they went inside. The villa was large, and servants moved around silently, bringing food.
Ana said, “You worked in Colombia.”
Holmes said, “I kind of hoped I would never have to go back there.”
“We got lucky in Colombia,” Ana said. “There was a stewardess on board Plutus, she was helping me—”
“Was that the one who saw Nadia and told me?”
“It was,” said Ana. “She also told me about something similar that happened to a girl in Colombia, near Santa Marta. We got to the girl before Jerry could speak to her parents.”
Holmes said, “She wants to press charges?”
“She already did. Her father has money, so Jerry couldn’t bribe him. They want to do the right thing.”
Holmes said, “Won’t Volkov just bribe everybody else? Colombia is one of the mo
st corrupt countries on earth.”
“Ravi doesn’t know it yet,” said Ana, “but I’m putting his money to good use.”
Holmes didn’t like that. “We have to be clean in this.”
“Not now, Oliver,” Nikki said. “It’s not bad when you bribe people to do the right thing.”
Holmes shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”
Ana said, “Even if the thing gets thrown out of court, it’ll be the first thing on the record about him. We can publicise. It’s a chink in the wall. Then other people will come forward, like Konstantin. Volkov can’t kill everyone, or bribe everyone.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very good plan,” said Holmes.
Ana said, “It will do until a plan comes along.”
“I’m not saying I’ll do it, but even if I did, I still don’t understand what you need me for.”
“Volkov is heading to Colombia for his next party. We have an ambitious young prosecutor there who’s going to arrest him.”
“And where do I come in?”
“I have to go back to San Francisco for a while. Ravi is tolerant of me being away but I do need to be there for a few weeks. I need someone to babysit this thing for me until I can get back.”
Nikki said, “You’re perfect. You speak Spanish, you know the area, you know the system. You’ve got a grudge.”
Holmes needed to think. The mention of Colombia had sparked him back to life. He went outside and walked along the path that led along the coast. He sat and watched the sun come up, dancing on the waves, and then headed back.
Ana and Nikki were talking in hushed tones, their heads close together. Nikki said, “You have to take the job.”
“I don’t have a passport. I’m wanted for murder.”
Ana said, “We can sort those things out.”
“I think you would be better off with Nikki,” Holmes said. “She’s smart. Smarter than me. She’s tough. She wants to avenge her friend. And she’s a better driver than me.”
“But you speak Spanish. You have contacts in Colombia.”
Ana said, “Seems to me like you make a great team together.”
“He’s not happy about it because you’re bribing people. He has a conscience like a…like a big incorruptible thing,” said Nikki. “On the one hand it’s good because it makes him a great investigator, but it can also be a bad thing.”
“I understand,” said Ana. “Sleep on it. Tell me tomorrow…Today.”
61
A Jamaican woman in a maid’s outfit led them down a corridor open on one side to overlook the sea.
“Do you think they’ve given us one room or two?”
Nikki said, “We need to talk.”
“Are we going to go to Colombia?”
Nikki said, “Not about that. I’ve already decided.”
“You’re talking about going after a ruthless, violent, sadistic killer who has corrupted the whole of Central America on the say-so of a woman you’ve just met. You don’t even know who she is! Her plan is…it’s not even a plan, even she admitted that. And you think we can go after one of the most powerful men in the world?”
“We’re going.”
“We?”
“Exactly. We need to talk about us.”
Holmes said, “Not now. It’s not the right time.”
“It’s never the right time as far as you’re concerned.”
The maid opened two doors to bedrooms that faced each other. They thanked her and she left. Nikki wanted to go into the same room as Holmes.
“Not tonight.”
“Come on, Oliver. “
“No.”
Tiredness washed over him, swamped him. He kissed her good night. In the bathroom he saw the guest’s wash kit. He wondered if it would wake him up too much to brush his teeth. He brushed his teeth. It didn’t wake him up.
He walked out of the bathroom. Nikki was there, sitting on his bed.
“You left your patio door unlocked.”
“Later,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”
“Let’s talk now.”
Oliver lay down on the bed next to Nikki and used his last defence. He fell asleep.
Part II
Oliver and Nikki pursue Volkov to Colombia, where we learn a little more about Holmes’ past.
* * *
Part II of Absolute Money is available through the Graf Books website:
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Copyright © 2015 by C B Wilson, Graf Books
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