by Lex Lander
Fourteen
By Monday morning, the fourth day since Clair’s abduction and still no news from Ramouz, I was ready to savage the carpet. To keep me sane and Lizzy from brooding I took us windsurfing. It proved to be good therapy. Like many young Australians Lizzy was no stranger to the sport and though my technique was on the rusty side we were evenly matched. Helped by a light west wind and temperate seas we finished the session with honours even at four wipe-outs apiece.
Afterwards we sat on the screened terrace at La Pergola Bar, which abuts onto the beach, chuckling now and again at the mishaps of other windsurfers, especially the obvious novices. Until today Lizzy hadn’t laughed since Clair went missing. It was too much to expect that she was turning some kind of corner; to raise her spirits at all was a breakthrough.
Lounging here in the heat, adding an extra dimension to my tan and slurping iced vodka, I felt not a little ashamed at my uselessness, at my inactivity. By all that was logical I had no reason for self-rebuke. The police were far better equipped than I to trace Clair, and unless Tony came up with something I was bankrupt of leads anyway. Plus, I had Lizzy to mother. All that said, I still reckoned I ought to be doing more than warming a chair with my backside and rotting my gut with booze.
Then Paul Masson called back on my cell phone. He was not forthcoming. His background was gambling and protection, he reminded me. The porn business was alien territory, and white slaving too repugnant even for his taste.
‘My second wife used to complain that I treated her like a slave,’ he joked. ‘But that’s as close as I ever got to owning one, let alone trading in them.’
‘Stay tuned, will you, Paul?’ I asked him. ‘If you hear anything at all, bell me.’
He promised to do just that. In truth, it was another dead end.
‘If only we knew she was all right.’ Lizzy said, her voice wistful, as I tapped the cell phone disconnect bar. ‘I could bear the rest.’
My sentiments to a T.
‘The police will be doing all they can,’ I muttered, hoping the words carried conviction. ‘They’ll find your mother. It’s only a matter of time.’
I sounded like a parrot.
The bouts of weeping were now behind her, and she was as pretty as ever in her white bikini, if somewhat finely drawn. A month from now, she had informed me, she would be sixteen. At what age did a girl metamorphose into a woman? Through my sunglasses I studied her surreptitiously, again considering her as a woman. Better placed than most to reap the ripest fruits of life, with her bright personality, her intelligence, her high spirits, and the external packaging of those perfect features. Especially the sleepy smoky eyes and the mouth that was made for …
Christ, what was I thinking of? Clair was prisoner of a gang of Arab thugs and here was I fantasizing over her teenage daughter. I felt a deep sense of shame.
‘Couldn’t we hire a private detective?’ Lizzy suggested, tugging a comb through a refractory pony tail. ‘People do, don’t they?’
It was an idea. I didn’t immediately discount it.
‘Well?’ she said when, after a few seconds, I hadn’t responded.
‘Sorry, honey.’ I patted her hand. ‘I was weighing the pros and cons. Let’s give the police a bit longer. They don’t take kindly to private enterprisers getting under their feet.’
She sighed. ‘If you say so.’
Next to report in was Tony Dimeloe. The text message announced its arrival a few minutes after the twenty-four hour timescale. I was just about to go under the shower; I stood there and read it bare-assed naked.
hi Alan
you may be onto something with yr mr de b.
he is known to Interpol. seems he was arrested
in bratislava slovakia 8 yrs ago in connection
with a snuff film. You are familiar with snuff films
arent you? your man held for several weeks
while police investigated alleged death of young
girl supposedly in making of film. body never
washed up & de b was released eventually
without charges. the report mentions local
speculation that he bribed police chief. since
then neither sight nor sound of him at any rate
not in Interpol records. film never surfaced far
as we can tell. sounds like a nice chap. sorry
not to be more help. if I can do anything else
just yell.
samantha (new mrs dimeloe) says hello.
up yours. tony.
Informative but not helpful. De Bruin might even have been innocent of the charge. The snuff movie and the missing girl might never have existed. Officially, de Bruin was clean so far as the world at large was concerned. What with Ramouz’s lack of progress, it was beginning to look as if I was Clair’s only hope of salvation. Bereft of leads as I was, it was a pretty forlorn hope.
No contact at all from Giorgy, my “only true friend”.
That evening we dined at Le Detroit where, a million evenings gone by, I had also dined with Clair. Though the food was assuredly exquisite, it might as well have been sweepings from the gutter for all the impression it made on my palate. Lizzy only played with hers, shoving kebabs around her plate, prodding moodily at her eggplants. Talk was desultory and trite.
Earlier, Ramouz had contacted me, forestalling my call to him. Delivering his no-progress report, he had sounded weary, defeated even, as if he had lost faith in achieving a result.
‘Call yourself a bloody policeman,’ I seethed, when he had finished.
‘Careful, Mr Melville.’ Some of the familiar bite returned. ‘I’m still not entirely satisfied about you.’
Touché. I glared at the receiver, caution dulling my rage.
‘Have you considered,’ I went on, in more respectful tones, ‘that she might have been taken out of the country?’
Sigh. ‘Naturally. And naturally we cannot be sure.’
When I had relayed the gist of this conversation to Lizzy, she became withdrawn and taciturn, and stayed that way throughout the evening. The restaurant staff did their best to inspire her. Flapping and fussing over her as if she were royalty, tempting her with this and that succulent dish – baby squid, lobster, snails, and later strawberries and figs. Their efforts were not well-rewarded. She was beyond consolation.
A little after ten we left, to walk the kilometre or so back to the Rif. The breeze had died away as it often did at dusk, and the moon was up in a clear, star-crowded sky. It was a night for lovers and loving. If Clair had been here we might by now have attained that status. As we came to the concourse of the Avenue d’Espagne, that hang-out of junkies and ne’er-do-wells, Lizzy noticed my abstraction and gave my sleeve a tug.
‘Want to see something really hilarious?’
I grunted. ‘Sure.’
‘Take a look at this then.’ She plucked a compact from her shoulder bag, opened it and thrust it under my nose.
I stared at my own lugubrious reflection in the little round mirror. ‘Well, what?’
‘The ugly mug, of course. Don’t you think it’s a scream?’
In spite of my gloom, I couldn’t help grinning.
‘Oh-oh,’ she said, in mock reproof. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. You’ve gone and cracked your make-up, I can see all the wrinkles underneath.’
‘That’s what comes of having plastic surgery on the cheap,’ I sighed, and we chuckled together convivially. I was still chuckling when a solid object slammed into the side of my skull and spread me all over the sidewalk.
I was hurt. Badly enough to be content to lie there and want to be left in peace and get well soon. Except that all around was yelling and cursing and no consideration at all for the afflicted. So I rolled over onto my back, the better to see what the fuss was about, and in so doing felt the wind of a descending iron bar, double-handedly wielded by a large, hooded Arab. The bar struck the sidewalk with a clang, a near enough miss to sting my cheek with sparks and chips of stone
. The closeness of my escape wiped away the wooziness like mist before a hurricane. I grabbed the business end of the bar as it left the ground for a second go at my head and gave it a vicious twist, ripping it from the hands of my attacker.
Back on my feet, still as wobbly as a sailor after a month at sea, I kicked the hooded one in some hopefully vulnerable spot. He hit the sidewalk, making a lot of noise. This left me free now to tackle two other Arabs, similarly hooded, who were getting the worst of an encounter with the clawing, spitting wildcat that was Lizzy. I wasn’t even sure she needed my help. One of the Arabs was hopping around, clutching his privates, the other was doing no more than hold her off. I ignored the hopping Arab and whacked the other across the shoulder blades with my new toy. Bones snapped audibly, and the accompanying screech must have carried across the Strait. Hey, this was fun!
The late owner of the iron bar now rejoined the fray, plucking a long tourist-bazaar knife from the folds of his burnous. I twirled the bar at him like a medieval knight with a broadsword and he gave ground, stumbling, his features in shadow within the hood.
‘You all right?’ I shot at Lizzy, who was standing apart in a defiant Karate-style pose.
‘Yes, yes, don’t worry about me. I’m a tae-kwon-do green belt.’
Just another of her multiple talents.
My next vicious swipe with the bar would have ripped the big Arab’s nose off had my reach been just a wee bit longer. It convinced him he was on the losing side. From the depths of the hood issued a rasping command. As abruptly as they had pounced our attackers were gone, the injured pair hobbling off in mutual support down an unlit side street, the Arab with the knife forming a rearguard.
The pedestrian traffic, which had inexplicably melted away during the fracas, came back to life. A fat guy walking his dog rushed up to enquire in breathless French, were we hurt, and weren’t these muggers tout à fait affreux and should he call the police.
I answered no, yes, and no especially to calling the police. Even as a victim of an assault I wanted no more of Ramouz’s hospitality.
‘No harm done,’ I assured the fat man. Except to the side of the Warner cranium, which, on examination, was found to be leaking red stuff. At the sight of my stained fingers Lizzy gave a cry of distress.
‘You’re bleeding, Alan!’
‘M’sieu!’ Fatso squeaked in alarm. ‘Vous devriez voir un médecin.’
Reluctantly, I was inclined to agree that I should seek medical help. ‘We’ll get the hotel to send for a doctor.’ More belated Samaritans were approaching, so I said hurriedly to Fatso, ‘Thanks for your concern,’ and hauled Lizzy off across the street.
‘Are you really good?’ she asked worriedly.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ I said, making light of it. ‘How about you?’
She rummaged in her bag. ‘Here, let me try and stop it bleeding. It’s running down your neck.’
We stopped. She produced a ridiculous tiny handkerchief with embroidered edges. While I stood and chafed under a street lamp, she dabbed uncertainly at the wound.
‘Sorry,’ she said whenever I flinched.
At the time I had been too dazed to notice the pain; now it was throbbing, a rising tempo of hammer blows between brain and bone. Which reminded me I was still in possession of the iron bar. I wasn’t inclined to ditch it just yet.
With the completion of Lizzy’s repair work we moved on. The bar came in handy as a walking stick, though a Zimmer frame would have served better, I was that shaky.
‘Were they really muggers?’ Lizzy asked. ‘I’ve never been mugged before.’
Nor had I.
‘Muggers? Probably.’
No, not probably; not even possibly. It was an amateurish, ham-fisted attempt at removing me from the scene, to leave the field clear for Lizzy to join her mother.
‘Which little bird told you we’d been mugged?’ I asked Ramouz as I settled in the interviewee’s chair before his desk.
He seemed surprised by my ignorance.
‘The doctor, of course. In Morocco all injuries caused by a third party must be reported to the authorities.’
I fingered the dressing above my left ear. Seven stitches had been inserted in the wound and the ensemble was smarting furiously, unresponsive to a heavy dose of painkillers.
‘So all right, we were mugged. It’s not unknown here in paradise, is it?’
Ramouz was impervious to irony this morning.
‘Not at all unknown, to my regret,’ He fashioned one of his famous smoke rings and studied the tip of his cigarette with an obviously affected negligence.
‘We sent your fingerprints to Scotland Yard,’ he said conversationally.
Oh-oh. My prints were definitely on record in the UK. Not as a criminal, and not at the Yard, but as an SIS operative, under my real name, of course. If Ramouz discovered I was in his country with a false passport he was sure to make me suffer. Fortunately, I was confident that MI6 wouldn’t have released my real name.
‘Since I’m clean, they presumably had nothing to offer.’
‘Precisely,’ he said, still absorbed in his cigarette. ‘They had nothing to offer.’
His voice carried a trace of resentment, suggesting that the response from MI6 had not been a straightforward “Not known to us”. The reaction to Ramouz’s enquiry over there would have been a closing of ranks. Spies, even when retired, enjoy the protection of their former employers.
‘I want you and the young lady to leave Morocco at once.’ Ramouz’s attention finally transferred from the cigarette to me. ‘And that is not a request.’
I didn’t try to hide my bewilderment.
‘For your own safety,’ Ramouz added, and so matter-of-factly that I had to take him seriously.
We matched stares. His had the force of law and order behind it.
‘It wasn’t a straightforward mugging, is that what you’re telling me?’ Although I knew as much already, that knowledge was meant for my brain only.
A series of slow nods. Through the spiralling smoke his gaze was unwinking.
‘The same gang as kidnapped Mrs Power?’
More slow nodding.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is what our sources tell us.’
‘Fair enough.’ No reason now to continue the facade of ignorance. ‘Let’s say I agree there’s a link between the kidnapping and the mugging … the attack. I’m still not running away. I can’t leave without Clair, or at least without knowing what’s happened to her.’
Ramouz was hesitant. ‘You must accept the probability that she is … no longer alive. Five days have passed. We have received no demand for money from the kidnappers, no messages of any description. Whatever the motive, it cannot have been financial.’
‘There’s still time.’ My voice was uneven.
‘You think so?’ The uplifted eyebrows said it all. ‘If money was the motive, how do you explain last night’s attack on you and the girl?’
In the street a bicycle bell tinkled. More distantly the rumble of a bulldozer from some building site. Out there were people who wanted me dead and Lizzy in bondage with her mother. It didn’t scare me for my sake, only for hers.
‘So you don’t think their objective was to put me out of action temporarily, you think they’re out to waste me … to kill me.’ It sounded like an accusation, and I suppose it was: I was accusing him of keeping it from me.
He hooded his eyes and said, ‘I can only speculate. However …’ He ground his cigarette into the brimming ashtray, ‘they know you are a threat. If they can remove you for good, cheaply, why let you live? A hundred dollars would do it.’
I considered last night’s attack afresh, as an attempt at murder rather than disablement. It was the method employed that made me dubious – an iron bar? Killing tools don’t come any cruder than that. Yet had that second blow connected with me instead of the sidewalk, it would have done the job efficiently, if messily, enough. The knife too. Tourist junk, sure, but lethal tourist junk. On reflect
ion, Ramouz’s hypothesis was credible.
I wrestled with my thoughts, trying to put them in order.
‘Commissaire… about Lizzy … Mrs Power’s daughter…’
‘Yes?’ Ramouz, grinding his cigarette into the brimming ashtray, had assumed a politely enquiring look.
‘I can’t just take her away. What I mean is, I’m not her legal guardian. Where am I supposed to take her?’
‘There is an uncle, is there not?’ He stirred his papers until he found what he wanted. ‘In Spain?’ Reading from a typescript, ‘Alistair Power. Last known address: Baya el Figuera no. 221A, Barcelona. He would appear to be – how is it in English?– next-of-kin?’
It was true that I could deliver Lizzy to Uncle Alistair in transit to Andorra, and that the inconvenience would therefore be minimal. But it wasn’t the mechanics of that operation that troubled me. It was the tacit desertion of Clair, the scuttling off home. The foisting of Lizzy on some unsuspecting relative, who might or might not be prepared to honour his obligations.
And where did it leave Lizzy (and me) if he wasn’t?
‘It can’t be done, Commissaire. Whatever the risks in staying here, I can’t leave yet.’
Ramouz bared teeth that were stained yellow with tobacco. ‘I understand, my friend..’ (we were friends?) ‘.. and I respect your reasons. Yet you can and must leave. If you force me, I will have you physically expelled. You must understand it is the safety of Miss Power that concerns me, more than your own.’ His raised hand forestalled my question. ‘She is at risk through her association with you. The men who abducted Mrs Power and who attacked you are being orchestrated by a single agency, that is clear. These gangs have little compunction about meting out injury and death to whoever stands in their way. And a girl as pretty as Miss Power may have worse to fear than death alone.’
Coming from a policeman for whom I was developing a lukewarm respect, I had to take this caveat at face value.
I got up. ‘If I’m to leave the country, I’ll need my passport.’