by Lex Lander
‘Wait!’ Martens moved forward, raising a mediatory hand. ‘No violence, please.’ He said unintelligible things to Christiaan, who promptly lowered the gun and looked sulky.
‘You,’ Martens then said to me, coming within throat-grabbing distance, which was brave of him considering my present mood. ‘Explain, please, what you want, and I will try to help. We want no troubles here.’
I bet they didn’t. Ramouz would have loved to bust up this party.
It was just conceivable this Martens had no knowledge of de Bruin’s interest in Clair, so I damped down my aggression for his benefit.
‘To speak to Rik de Bruin is what I want. Has he really gone back to Holland?’
‘Last week. Do you want to search the house?’
Christiaan growled an objection. If Martens heard, it didn’t faze him.
‘If you like, you can look.’
The camera crew, all Europeans as far as I could see, were hanging onto our exchange, as hushed as mourners at a burial.
I decided I had nothing to lose by taking Martens up on his offer. ‘Okay, I’ll look.’
This didn’t go down well with Christiaan. He covered me with the Ruger and rumbled menacingly in Dutch.
Martens shrugged. ‘He says he must go with you. It is because he is the bewaker, the keeper of the house. It is his responsibility.’
‘Fair enough.’ Then to Christiaan, ‘Come on, body beautiful. You can be guide.’
By giving me the run of the house Martens was as good as proving neither de Bruin nor Clair were there, though that didn’t mean to say they were in Holland. I went through the motions anyway, checking the place out from basement to loft. Having kicked up a big stink, I could hardly do less.
Twenty minutes or so later, my mind’s eye still reeling from visions of the master bedroom with its vast four-poster, gold lamé drapes, and yellow tinted mirrors covering every flat surface including the floor, I re-emerged onto the terrace, Christiaan dogging me closer than my shadow.
‘You are satisfied now?’ Martens shouted across; he was arranging the girls’ extremities, presumably for optimum artistic effect.
I signalled an affirmative and let Christiaan escort me to the gate. After a period of repose the gun was again muzzle foremost.
‘Do not come back,’ he said as he slammed the gate shut.
‘Don’t count on it, gorgeous,’ I returned, and left him scowling through the bars.
Thirteen
From de Bruin’s house I drove to Ibn Battouta airport, on the opposite side of the city. A polite enquiry about ‘my associate, Mr Rik de Bruin’, at the Royal Air Maroc desk, accompanied by a high denomination euro note, was met by frenzied checking of passenger lists but an ultimate blank. I fared better at KLM, the next obvious choice. More currency passed across the counter. Mynheer de Bruin had taken the Saturday flight to Amsterdam. Alone? A dusky finger punched more computer keys and there on the screen flashed a Mynheer Hock, de Bruin’s travelling companion. Whoever he might be.
No way could Clair be passed off as Mynheer Anybody, with or without her co-operation. Ergo, she hadn’t accompanied him. The next obvious step was to check all female passengers, though she would hardly be booked under her real name. The contents of my wallet were further depleted and the good-natured KLM clerk did a second scan of the passenger list for me. It proved nothing, as several lone women had travelled that day. Somehow, I couldn’t see him taking the risk of letting her travel with him openly.
This left just a single line of enquiry and the lengthiest of long shots. Ahmad and Yacoub, gun merchants, from the Tangier suburb of Charf. No obvious connection between them and de Bruin existed. We had done our business before I even met Clair, before the confrontation at the Chico Bar. But people who move in the criminal domain have their ears and noses to the ground. When rumours circulate, they are usually part of the circuit. Snippets are harvested, and retained as possible future bargaining tools.
With this in mind, I rolled up at the seedy little villa with its down-at-heel date palm and scraps of wiry grass trying to eke subsistence from a patch of land that was mostly sand. The front door was open, behind an insect screen.
‘Anybody home?’ I called through the screen. A cat mewed from within. ‘Il y a quelqu’un?’
My summons was answered by younger brother Yacoub. He was wearing the same outfit as on my previous visit, only grubbier and wrinklier. It looked like a nightgown, so maybe he slept in it too.
‘Ah, Mr Englissman,’ he said. His greeting was natural enough. If he had anything to hide it wasn’t apparent in his demeanour.
He invited me in, a further indicator of innocence.
‘Is Ahmad around?’ I said, as I trailed after him, into the living room. Standing by a stove in the kitchen nook was Yacoub’s wife. She was preparing a concoction of food. The burnt sienna eyes swept over me, disconcertingly hostile.
‘Nawal, you remember Mr Warner,’ Yacoub said to her in French.
‘Oui.’ This was her first ever utterance in my presence. She continued to stare at me as I accepted Yacoub’s invitation to sit.
‘Ahmad not home,’ he said. ‘He no live here.’
‘No matter,’ I said in French, which would be his second language after Moroccan Arabic. ‘You can probably help me.’
‘Bien. Voulez-vous encore une arme? Je suis à votre disposition.’
In other words, if I was in the market for another gun, he was my man.
‘It’s not about guns, Yacoub.’ Puzzlement wrinkled his smooth brown forehead. ‘It’s about information concerning the kidnapping of a friend of mine.’
His quick glance at Nawal could have been guilt, incomprehension, or just a loving look. If he was ignorant of the incident, this would be a wasted visit. If he was privy to it, I needed a sign. Then I could go to work. Until that point, I was still his friend and client.
‘I do not know this woman,’ he said, under a barrage of silent signals from his wife. ‘Kidnapping is not my business.’
The giveaway had come easier and faster than I expected.
‘What woman?’
‘The woman who was …’ Yacoub broke off, blinking like a semaphore lamp.
In Arabic, Nawal fired off a string of vituperation at him. He was in trouble. I almost felt sorry for him. He would be sleeping in the spare room tonight.
‘Allez-vous en!’ she snarled at me. A not-exactly polite request to leave.
‘Not just yet, sweetheart. First, tell me what you know about the woman who was kidnapped? If you like, you can begin by explaining how you knew my friend was a woman.’
Yacoub’s lips trembled. ‘I didn’t know, monsieur. I … I was guessing …’
‘So you’re a good guesser. That’s very helpful. Now you can guess where they took her, okay?’
His frightened glance at Nawal told me he was at least as terrified of her as of me. Suddenly he bolted towards the door to the room where the guns had been stored. I was off my chair and smashed into him as he pulled the handle. We went down in a bundle. He didn’t fight me but he worked bloody hard to get free. As he eventually subsided in defeat and I got up on my knees, a hard object slammed into the back of my head. It was badly aimed, more of a glancing blow, but it was enough to disorientate me. I subsided on Yacoub, who was not enthralled at taking my weight. A second blow, square on my back, hurt without incapacitating. It also made me mad.
With Yacoub serving as a rug, I got to my feet, deflecting Nawal’s third strike with her iron cous-cous pan. It connected with her husband’s shin instead of my skull. He howled. I yanked the pan from her fist and flung it across the room. Shattering noises ensued.
Disarmed, Nawal switched to her inbuilt weapons, notably claws as long as a leopard’s. After suffering a scratch across the jaw and narrowly avoiding a poke in the eye, I discarded the rules of gentlemanly conduct. A punch in her niqab-ed mouth with all my weight behind it was enough to subdue her. Her eyes slid under her eyelids and she
crumbled without a murmur. Instead of rushing to her side, Yakoub headed for the entrance door on all fours. He didn’t quite make it before I caught up with him.
‘Sois sage,’ I advised him. Be good.
‘Leave me alone!’ he squeaked, rolling onto his back and kicking at me.
I slapped his cheeks, one after the other. Not too hard, just enough to calm him. He curled up like a hedgehog in protective mode, his head tucked in his arms.
‘Listen to me, Yacoub,’ I said, keeping my voice low and level. ‘All I want to know is who kidnapped the woman and where they took her.’
‘Why are you asking me?’ he gibbered. ‘It was a gang from Casablanca, not Tangier men.’
I sighed. Whether he was lying or truthing, I couldn’t tell. That’s the trouble with duress. Victims will lie either to save themselves from punishment or to buy time. Ordinarily, I would have been inclined to beat it out of him and risk its veracity. But I didn’t dare jump off the precarious fence of legality I was now straddling here in Morocco. If word reached Ramouz, I would be back as his guest, minus the pastries.
Still, I had to throw a fright into Yacoub, at least.
‘Don’t give me that,’ I snarled at him and bunched my fist for launching. ‘I want names and locations quick, or you’re going to need plastic surgery.’ I may have gotten the French for “plastic surgery” wrong, but he reacted by moaning and shielding his face, so I reckoned the gist of it got through.
‘I only know what I heard in the Medina,’ he blubbered behind his hands. ‘It was only gossip, monsieur, I swear.’
‘So where do I find the Dutch guy, Rik de Bruin?’
‘Who?’
‘L’hollandais.’ I grabbed the front of his burnous and shook him. His head thudded on the tiled floor. ‘Rik de Bruin. Don’t pretend you don’t know him, you little shit.’
‘No, it is not un hollandais, I tell you, it is some men from Casablanca.’
Behind me I heard movement, accompanied by a feminine groaning. Yacoub’s wife was returning to the land of the conscious. In truth I was more worried about her than him. The so-called weaker sex fight dirty. That aside, mixing it with women wasn’t really my style.
Time to move on. I salvaged my pride by leaving a threat hanging in the air.
‘Okay, slimeball, I’m going to check it out with my contacts in town. If I find out you’ve been lying, I’ll be back and you and your brother will be two sorry assholes.’
It might have carried more weight if I had some “contacts in town” to check it out with.
Back in my room at the hotel, with Lizzy still out of my hair, I treated the scratch on my jaw with antiseptic cream, and sat down in front of the phone. In the whole world I could call to mind only five people who might – and it was a huge might in every case – be able to shed light on de Bruin. Giorgy was one; my old friend and former SIS compatriot Tony Dimeloe was another. Longer shots were Freddie, my Dublin-based passport maker; Tagd Corry, my armourer in the UK, and Paul Masson, a Marseilles-resident rackets boss who owed me a favour.
Giorgy first. My call to his business line was answered by a woman, who spoke only Italian, but managed to convey to me that he was out of the country. I tried his cell phone, but it was switched off. With Tony I had better luck. Unusually for a Saturday he was at his desk.
‘Well, hel-lo!’ He sounded sincerely pleased to hear from me. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’
‘Where people like me usually hide,’ I quipped non-committally.
‘It must be … what? Six months at least. I got married last week, by the way.’
‘Really? Congratulations, old son.’ He was the wrong side of forty, so it wasn’t too soon. ‘Tell me more.’
‘No, let’s save the catch-up for our next meeting. Are you over here?’
‘No, I’m in Tangier. And I’ve gotten a problem.’
He chuckled. ‘So long as you don’t need money. What’s up?
I gave him an abbreviated version of events to date, skipping my involvement with the police. As a British government employee Tony would instinctively shy away from anything that might cause friction with foreign powers, especially Arab ones. I also omitted to mention Lizzy.
When I finished, he made sympathetic murmurings and said, ‘So how can I help? You’re not expecting me to send a gunboat, are you? I doubt the navy has any left.’
‘Thanks for the offer. But joking apart, Tony, I just want anything on file about a guy called Henrik de Bruin, Dutch, about thirty-five, may or may not have a company called DeB -’ I spelled it out, ‘- Publications, which may or may not be located in a town called Egmond aan Zee, in the Netherlands.’
De Bruin’s name meant nothing to Tony. I hadn’t expected it to. What he did have to offer was access to computer files on every known and suspected criminal world-wide, so if de Bruin had any sort of record it would soon surface. Whether the databank would lead me to Clair was questionable. It was better than nibbling my nails.
‘This woman’s important to you, eh?’ he said sympathetically.
‘It’s even more complicated than that,’ I said, thinking of Lizzy.
‘It would be, knowing you.’ I heard the opening chime of his desktop coming alive. ‘Give me forty-eight hours.’
‘Could you make it twenty-four?’
A grunt. ‘Oh, hell, why not? What else have I got to do but run errands for you and give up my days off? Give me your cell phone number and I’ll text you.’
Text me. Security always to the fore with Tony.
‘Thanks, chum. I owe you one.’
‘More than one, boyo.’
‘Yeah. Say hello to the wife. I look forward to meeting her.’
‘Fuck off. I wouldn’t let her within a mile of you, you bloody Casanova.’
On that bantering note I hung up and moved to the next on my list.
For security reasons Freddie was loath to pass on any client details, even for payment. I didn’t blame him. The forged passport business relies on client discretion. In the end, after much hand-wringing, he checked his files and confirmed that he had never supplied a Henrik de Bruin. It was probably true. And it didn’t help.
Tagd Corry, another Irishmen, kept me in firearms. De Bruin, being on the white collar side of crime, was unlikely to have much call for guns on a regular basis. Still, I was leaving no trails unsniffed.
‘Ah, to be sure I’ve never heard of him,’ he piped in his Ulster brogue. ‘But you know, Mr A, if he’s the top man, it’s not likely he’d come a-buyin’ in person. Most likely he’d be sendin’ one of his lads.’
Most likely he was right. We chatted for a minute or so longer, and I left him to his lethal trade.
Finally, I called Paul Masson. He was out. I left a message with his answering service. To minimise the inconvenience to him (he was a man easily pissed off ), I asked him only to call if he knew of de Bruin.
End of enquiry leads for now. I hadn’t expected much, and so far I hadn’t gotten much.
The shadows were lengthening. If I knew Lizzy – and I thought I did by now – she would be fretting to be rescued from the clutches of a certain Mrs Haslam, a secretary to the Consulate. My private agenda listed a final source of information: electronic, not human. In the hotel lobby was a Wi-Fi Internet facility. It was here, with a glass of vodka within reach, where I set out to trace de Bruin with the help of Google.
The name de Bruin threw up de Bruin Aeromaintenance, de Bruin Group, de Bruin’s Greenhouses, and a whole host of individuals who might or might not have been related to friend Rik. Too many to pursue. DeB Publications gave me the Department of Environmental Biology (DEB), which published material on Integrative Organismal Systems, whatever they might be. Still, under the DeB search engine I did make a modest find: DeB Publications of Amsterdam had a website ‘under construction’. It featured a stylised naked woman with a bullwhip looped around her body, suggesting I was on the right track. The site was due to be up and running by October 1st. No
t a lot of use to me in July.
Depressed and suffering from a rising sense of impotence, I gave up the hunt for now. A couple of vodkas numbed the dolour. Afterwards I drove to collect Lizzy from the home of Mrs Haslam. The Haslams, who had a sixteen-year-old daughter, occupied a first floor apartment just off the Place du Maroc, on the southern edge of town. I parked in a residents-only bay, and was barely out of the car when Lizzy exploded from the building and came at me across a wizened lawn, amid incoherent cries of relief.
‘You’ve been so long,’ she whimpered, her arms like a steel band around my waist. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’
Over her shoulder I nodded meaninglessly at Mrs Haslam, who had followed Lizzy out and was watching worriedly from her porch. A Diplomatic Service wife who might have been fifty, such demonstrative behaviour was not for her. Upper lips should always be kept stiff.
‘Did you find out anything?’ Lizzy demanded, clutching at me.
‘Not much, I’m afraid. It was a dead end.’
Mrs Haslam came up and made as if to comfort Lizzy. ‘You can stay here tonight if you wish, my dear.’
‘No thanks,’ Lizzy said ungraciously, not looking at her.
Half of me was tempted to overrule her. The other half suffered twinges of guilt at my eagerness to unload her on someone else.
‘Kind of you to offer,’ I said in an effort to make up for Lizzy’s lack of courtesy. Motoring back into town, I gave her a mild ticking off. ‘You’ve blown it there, Freckles. Mrs Haslam won’t want you again.’
She snorted. ‘Who cares? She’s a vulture. If you put anything down, she swoops on it and whisks it away. “Tidiness is next to Godliness”,’ she mimicked.
‘I thought it was cleanliness.’
‘Oh, she said that too, don’t worry.’
‘But what about her daughter? Didn’t you have much in common?’
‘Apart from both being girls – no!’
I grinned, accelerated past a dithering motor-scooter, and turned into the Rif parking lot.
No messages for us at the desk. Lizzy rode the disappointment well, better perhaps than me. She was learning to overcome the fear and the uncertainty, if not yet facing up to the probable outcome.