by J G Alva
“Will he do it for us?”
Yilmaz thought.
“He is good boy. We must tell him all of it, I think, for him to do this. But he will do it. We shall meet with him.” Yilmaz looked at Nick. “You are willing to tell him all that has happened?”
Nick nodded.
“Oh yes.”
◆◆◆
Nick thought they would have to wait, but Yilmaz's nephew agreed to drop everything and drive straight from London to meet them. Two hours later, he was sitting down in front of them.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it.”
Greg’s eyes flicked between Yilmaz and Nick. Greg Karipidis was a small guy, thin, with a head as bald as an egg, and skin significantly lighter than his uncle’s. But his features were unmistakably Greek, even though his accent was one hundred percent Cockney; he had been born here, had lived his whole life here.
Nick said, “if you don’t believe me – "
“No, I believe you. Sorry. Just a figure of speech. It’s incredible.” He looked at his uncle. “And he saved you?”
Yilmaz nodded gravely.
“And killed five men,” Greg said, looking at Nick, his eyes wide.
“I’m not proud of it,” Nick said.
“No,” Greg said, “I suppose you wouldn’t be. But I’m glad you did it. Or I wouldn’t be talking to my uncle right now. I guess I owe you.”
“No,” Nick said, “you don’t owe me anything. We’ll pay you – "
“Pay,” Greg said, with disgust. “Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t take it.”
Nick looked quickly at Yilmaz.
“This is risky,” Nick said. “You could go to prison. If you’re caught.”
“Yeah. If I’m caught. But that aint going to happen. And even if I am caught...” He shrugged, looked at Yilmaz. “I bet old uncle Yilmaz knows a few good lawyers who can get me off. Right?”
Yilmaz nodded.
“Yes. It is true.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Greg said, and reached out and shook Nick’s hand. His handshake was firm and good.
“Will you be able to?” Nick asked. “I assume he’s got passwords on his computer, things like that.”
Greg pulled a face.
“I’ve got a few programs I can use to crack that. If it’s only the initial windows login password it should be pretty easy.”
“It might be an idea to...take a few pictures with you,” Nick said. “In case he doesn’t have internet access.”
“Everyone has internet access,” Greg said, “but yeah, might be an idea. Then I’ll get out, and call the police straight away. Say something like, I don’t know, I’m a computer technician, come out to run a few checks on his home computer, and found the files. The police might try to find out who I am but I personally think they’ll be too busy crawling all over Mr Ross.”
“You think you may have problems getting in to the house?” Yilmaz asked.
Greg shook his head.
“Nah. I’ll wait until him and his old lady leave, and then when the workmen start moving about I’ll just trot up the drive and go straight in. I’ve got a bag of tools, nobody’ll look at me twice.”
“Okay then,” Nick said.
Greg looked at Nick again, his expression a little dreamy. “Two years on a desert island. And you shot five fucking people...Jesus Christ. You're a bad ass.”
◆◆◆
Before they had gone to The Classic Gallery, before Nick had gone out to find Karl, before Yilmaz had introduced Nick to his nephew, there was still Jessica to think about.
Nick didn’t want to think about her. She was as much a part of this as any of the others, more so, seeing as she had been his wife, and she had to pay for that, just like the rest of them, but he didn’t want to do anything to her. He didn’t know if he could.
He stood at the patio doors and looked out over the small roof garden, and at the lines of the city beyond, the overcast day darkening as night approached, lights beginning to come on in some of the taller buildings, a crane that had been working on the north side of Broadmead at rest now, it’s big arm like some giant’s fossilised skeleton.
He put his hand up beside the glass, and his sleeve pulled back, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the bracelet around his wrist, the one Rebekah had given him for Christmas.
He fingered it, a clumsy, badly made thing, vines and shells, but it had lasted all those long months on the island, had travelled halfway around the world with him, had remained faithfully on his arm through all of it, to this luxurious penthouse suite in a different climate, a different time zone. It wasn’t much to look at, but it had lasted a hell of a lot longer than his Storm watch had.
He looked at it, and felt a hollowness within him so complete it scared him, like a glimpse in to a black abyss. Where am I? Just where the hell am I?
When Yilmaz spoke, Nick felt relief at the distraction.
“I think I will ask Agathe and Kate to leave,” Yilmaz said.
Nick said nothing.
“They must go to London, I think, far away from...what we are doing here.”
“Might be a good idea,” Nick said.
“Yes.”
Silence.
“You know,” Yilmaz said lightly, “it is still possible she is not having anything to do with this. The £70,000 may only be for a boat. Does she like to sail?”
“No. Too much like hard work. That’s not for her.”
He came toward Yilmaz and stopped at the table. He bent down and picked up the picture of her, the one in which she stood, vulnerable, in a dressing gown.
“Maybe one of her friends was in trouble? One that she could not tell you about? An old boyfriend?”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do, Yilmaz,” Nick said.
“I do not know,” Yilmaz said uneasily.
“She put her own money toward having me killed,” Nick said, calmly enough, and strangely he felt calm. He was also suffused with a little wonder at the audacity of her. He hadn’t thought she was capable of something like this. He was starting to think that you never really knew anybody. Ever.
But he wondered, and now they had the proof of that.
“Alright,” Nick said, and so suddenly it frightened him the anger came on, like a runaway train, “alright!”
He threw the picture he had been holding on to the table, paced quickly in a circle in the centre of the room, all his muscles knotted so tightly he wouldn’t have been surprised if they had snapped off his bones like rubber bands.
He stopped in front of Yilmaz.
“There’s only one way to get to Jessica,” Nick said, and he could feel the heat in his face. “Sure, she loved money, and pretty things, clothes, jewellery, much like any woman I suppose, but the one thing she prided over everything else was her looks. She was forever having her hair styled, or having a manicure, or a pedicure, or a facial, or a massage. You should have heard the ruckus she used to raise when she found a zit. It was unbelievable.”
“So how are you to take this from her?” Yilmaz asked. “This is not so easy.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nick said, dropping in to one of the armchairs. “Cut the brakes on her car. A nasty enough car crash could fuck up her face.”
For the first time, Yilmaz looked shocked.
“She could be killed!” He exclaimed.
Nick shrugged.
“She could be.”
Yilmaz didn’t know where to look, or what to do.
“Nick, my friend, to hurt them is one thing, to take away the money and the company, yes, this I will do, but to kill them...I cannot follow you down this road.”
Nick smiled.
“Don’t worry, Yilmaz. I’m not going to kill anyone. I want them to suffer, and in order for that to happen they have to live. No, a car crash is a little too unreliable for my tastes. But I do have an idea that might work.”
And he told him.
Yilmaz listened, the shocked, horrified expressi
on never leaving his face.
◆◆◆
Late that night, he returned to the penthouse suite.
“Is it...is it done?” Yilmaz asked.
Nick couldn’t reply.
Yilmaz opened the door wider for him to enter, his face stiff, expressionless.
Nick went to the sofa, took off the black gloves he was wearing, put them on the table, took the black balaclava from his back pocket, threw that on the table next to the gloves, sat and with sharp, angry movements shrugged off the black jacket and tossed it on to the seat beside him. He stared at the floor in between his feet.
“I...I couldn’t do it,” he said finally, bringing his head up to look at Yilmaz. Yilmaz’s stiff expression loosened suddenly. Nick felt sick to his stomach, and sporadically shivers ran through all his limbs. “She was my wife, Yilmaz. At one time, I loved her. More than anything else. God, you don’t know how much I loved her. I used to drink her in, her smile, her face, her laugh. It wasn’t all that long ago that we were together. But what I was about to do...” He paused, staring at Yilmaz. “Could you do that to Agathe? I mean, if she betrayed you? Could you...hurt her?”
Yilmaz looked uncomfortable.
“I...do not know.”
“I had the knife, and she was there, but...I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” Nick spread his hands open in front of him and stared at them. The plan had been simple enough. Ruin Jessica’s looks. Scar her pretty face. Get her alone and attack her. He had caught her only three feet from her car, pinning her against the wall, her terrified squeals echoing down the deserted alleyway as one of his hands choked her. He thought he would be sick in that moment but the feeling passed. “What have I become? That I would take a knife to my own wife’s face?”
“You do not do these things lightly,” Yilmaz said. “She tried to kill you.”
“She did,” he admitted, surprised at how easy it had become to accept this fact. “But I can’t use that as an excuse to be...to be evil.”
Yilmaz sat next to him.
“You are not evil, my friend.”
“Aren’t I? Look at what I was going to do to her.”
“But you didn’t. You did not do it. It is not within you.”
“Yilmaz,” he said, staring at him, “you don’t know how close I came.”
Nick put his hands over his eyes, as if he could somehow blot out what he had seen, what he had become.
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 18
Alex Lovett at first glance appeared to be nothing more remarkable than any other well turned out thirty something individual.
But on closer inspection Nick couldn’t find one grey hair on his head, his hands were smooth with perfectly maintained nails, he had a good even tan, perfect white teeth, and his clothes were a little too sharp for someone who gave the impression of having thrown on whatever was available only moments before walking out the door. The only word that Nick thought adequately described him was slick.
Professionally, he was very slick as well, and though he sat easy in the armchair in the board room at Merchant Hammond’s main office in the centre of Bristol, and although his face was open and amiable, he looked fiercely competent.
All well and good, seeing as he was on their side.
Graham Hammond, sitting behind his desk with his long morose face, and even longer arms and legs, looked in that moment like an undertaker who’d been asked to lift the coffin lid on a body that was less than presentable.
“Mr Karipidis, it is a pleasure to finally meet you, after all I couldn’t call myself a businessman without being aware of your triumphant rise to the top of one of the most successful conglomerates of the last two decades, but what you’re asking” – and Graham Hammond’s eyes flicked to the man standing beside his desk, an equally sombre but considerably younger gentleman they’d been introduced to as Kenneth Fielding – “what you’re asking is, quite frankly, impossible.”
“I do not think so,” Yilmaz said.
Hammond looked at Fielding again.
“We’d have no ethical grounds to cease trading with Mitchell Cole. I don’t – "
“Excuse me, Mr Hammond,” Alex Lovett interjected, “but when have ethics ever dictated the dealings of your bank? Or any bank, for that matter?”
Hammond looked down at his desk, tapping it lightly with his fingers.
“I cannot in good conscience turn my back on – "
“Oh bullshit,” Alex said, uncoiling on his chair like a snake. “Mr Karipidis has made the time to come and see you out of a busy schedule and this is the best you can do? If I may be so bold, Mr Karipidis, this is the golden goose. All transactions for Glojet, Raceon and Passtime for the foreseeable future. In comparison, Mitchell Cole is like a dog’s bone.”
Hammond’s face had gone red, and as rigid as stone.
“It may not count for much to you,” Hammond said slowly, speaking directly to Alex, “but I am a man of principal. This bank was built on principal, by my grandfather more than one hundred and forty years ago. By doing what you’re asking me to do, I’ll be spitting on everything he worked for – and my father after him worked for, gave their lives to – for the last hundred and forty years.”
“Did you write that speech before we got here?” Alex asked. “Or did that just come off the top of your head?”
Nick thought Hammond’s head might blow off in that moment with the amount of blood being pumped in to it.
“Who the hell – "
“I think what may help us to understand your position,” Kenneth Fielding said, laying a calming hand on Hammond’s shoulder and silencing him, “is the reason behind your request for us to cease trading with Mitchell Cole.”
Alex looked at Yilmaz questioningly and, almost imperceptibly, Yilmaz nodded.
“Mr Karipidis means to acquire Mitchell Cole for his own,” Alex said.
Hammond and Fielding exchanged a look.
Hammond said, “then why ask us to cease trading with them?”
Alex made a face.
“Mitchell Cole is a successful company. In all honesty, this is something of a personal matter for Mr Karipidis, as he is acquainted with some of the people on the board of directors. You don’t need to know the details but, suffice it to say, these people have crossed Mr Karipidis. Now, Mitchell Cole’s status at present is strong enough that a takeover bid – should one be attempted – would most likely be rejected. Our plan is to bring Mitchell Cole to its knees, so to speak. In doing so, the share price will fall, creating conditions that will make a takeover – if not guaranteed – then at least possible. Mr Karipidis is confident that, even if – with your help – Mitchell Cole was to...founder, he would be able to build it up again. He’s not concerned about the condition of the company, only that he acquires it. Which leads us rather neatly to my second point.” Alex paused dramatically, watching Hammond and Fielding’s expectant faces. “As of this moment, Mr Karipidis, through various subsidiaries, owns 27.5% of the shares in Mitchell Cole. Your 10.1% would be a welcome addition.”
Hammond looked at Fielding again.
“What – "
“We’re not asking you to sell,” Alex said quickly. “I think we’d all be quite happy with a gentlemen’s agreement.”
Hammond licked his lips.
“Gentlemen’s agreement?”
“That when the takeover bid is proposed – and it will be proposed – that your votes can be counted on.”
There was silence in the board room. Nick sat comfortably to the side, watching a power struggle he had not seen before being fought out.
“It might sit a little easier,” Fielding began haltingly, looking sidelong at Hammond before fixing his attention on Yilmaz, “if we might know something of the...nature of the way in which the board of directors has crossed you.”
Alex looked at Yilmaz. Yilmaz sighed, and then spread his hands.
He said, “would it be of a business thing, I would not worry. Many times I have had business
problems, but pah! I do not worry. But this...it is a personal thing. I will not tell you much other than...my family was involved. He is a most unpleasant man. I think you know of who I am speaking. I was thinking him a good friend but now I wish him to suffer. I am a man in which tradition is strong – you must understand this, Mr Hammond, yes? – and I cannot let him get away with what he has tried to do.”
Hammond looked at Fielding again, and then stared down at his desk.
“I’ve heard the reports,” Hammond said. “I’ve known Mr Ross for four years now, and he always seemed like a good man, but...now I understand he has been arrested because of certain...images on his computer. Images of...children.” Hammond looked despairing in that moment, and seemed to be scanning the surface of his desk for answers to the woes of the world. “I heard about the attack on his wife – is no one safe anymore? – but after recent events...” He looked up at Yilmaz then, a steely resolve in his eyes. “I believe that what goes around comes around, Mr Karipidis. If not in this life, then in the next. And in a world that sadly lacks in principals of any kind, it is a pleasure to meet a man who shares my way of thinking.” Hammond stood then, leaned over his desk and extended his hand. Yilmaz stood also, and shook it. “You can count on Merchant Hammond to support you in anything you decide to do.”
“This is good,” Yilmaz said. “You are a good man, Mr Hammond. I am thinking we will be working together a long time.”
Hammond smiled, for the first time since they had entered the room.
“I hope so,” he said.
That seemed to be a signal that the meeting was over, as Alex rose from his chair, and Nick followed suit.
“And you’ll cease trading with them?” Alex asked.
Hammond smiled, and there was a little pain in it.
“We’ll slow it down, but I see no reason to stop at this juncture,” Hammond said, and looked at Yilmaz. “It might be best not to do so anyway, even if, as you say, you have no concerns over the condition of Mitchell Cole. But the strength of the company is based on a skilled workforce that could not very easily be replaced, and were we to stop trading with them, I’m not sure you could get it back on its feet.” He turned to Alex again. “But we will certainly slow them down. And you will have our votes.”