Old Enemies (26 page)

‘If you dodge bullets as well as you duck my questions, Takere, you will live a long life.’

‘It is your life that is my concern, Mr President.’

‘I trust you will remember that. So make the arrangements. About the boy.’ He finished the last of the bourbon with one final swallow. ‘And get me back my money.’

There was never a chance that de Vries would agree to hand back any of the money. He even demanded payment of an additional ten per cent completion fee, but that was never going to happen. Nevertheless, he found the argument for a radically reduced fee intriguing, full of unexplored potential, so much so that he decided to try it out on his own group of Romanians.

‘So you get half,’ he told them, kicking a log on the fire and raising a storm of sparks. ‘Not bad for a couple of weeks’ work. Best payday most of you have ever had.’

That was accurate, but not persuasive. ‘Is not what we agreed,’ Cosmin, the spokesman, said.

‘I know, I know. It’s tough on us all. I promise, I have done my best, argued our case, but you know what those black bastards are like. They’d screw your mother then demand payment for her pleasure.’

‘Is not what we agreed,’ Cosmin repeated. There was a dull, dogged tone to his words that began to test de Vries’s patience.

‘How do you think I feel?’ he snapped, poking a finger into his own chest. ‘I lose more than anyone.’

It was a lie, and a grotesque one. When he had got them to take their half, he and Grobelaar would pocket the rest. It threatened to be the biggest handout they’d ever enjoyed. But Cosmin, stubborn mule, was still shaking his head. ‘No, not what we agreed. We don’t accept.’

‘Really? You don’t accept? A pity,’ the South African replied. ‘Because you don’t have any bloody choice.’

D’Amato often likened his job to his occasional hobby of fishing. A combination of experience and patience, and sometimes grabbing a little luck when it passed by, and good fortune arrived in the form of a burglary, in the hamlet of Rupinpiccolo up on the Carso. Crimes weren’t always reported there, the Slovenes did things their own way, had no time for authority, preferred to sort out their own problems without calling in the police. After all, who knew what the hell the wretched carabinieri might uncover once they started poking into barns and kicking over hayricks? But the elderly woman lived on her own, the thieves had taken all her family heirlooms and cash, and what enabled the investigation to float to the top of the slurry pond was the old woman’s claim that foreigners were to blame. There wasn’t a shred of evidence for this, her views were built on nothing but prejudice and her abject failure to realize what a thieving toe-rag her grandson had become, but a couple of foreigners had been reported in the neighbourhood and on the Carso such people stood out. She didn’t know what type of foreigner, or precisely where they might be found, but that was the job of the police to sort out and not let an old woman suffer.

It was enough for D’Amato to put a couple of his hounds onto the job. He didn’t associate the report of the burglary with that of the kidnap of the English boy, not at first, but when the hounds returned with the information that foreigners had bought substantial quantities of supplies at a small local supermarket, not just once but several times in recent weeks, and that they were English or spoke English, at least, and drove a rented car, the questions began to mount in D’Amato’s mind. And soon there were enough of them for him to instruct his hounds to return to the Carso and do a little more digging.

Ruari’s stomach told him something was up. That was how he told time, through his stomach, and he knew they’d missed a meal. It wasn’t just late, it had entirely passed by. Not as punishment, he concluded, because then they would have made a point of making him suffer, but for some reason their routine had gone. No one came.

He tried to distract the lingering pain from his finger and his rising sense of unease by turning the dusty cobweb dangling above his head into a street map. His home in Notting Hill was at the centre and his mind followed different strands of the silk, trying to remember where they led. Second right, fourth on the left, and after a while it had to be Earl’s Court, or was it Tyburn? Start all over again. It was mindless, but necessary, better than sitting in the semi-darkness hurting and worrying about his stomach, or the men upstairs.

He was wandering down the King’s Road towards his favourite pizza restaurant when he heard voices. That was unusual. Occasionally he would hear muffled sounds from upstairs, a scraped chair, a dropped bowl, the slam of a door, but the cellar was deep and the stone floor thick and he had only heard voices once before, at the time of the fight. So he abandoned his walk and concentrated, trying to pick up what was being said. He couldn’t make out the words, but there was no mistaking their anger. The voices were rising, growing increasingly strident. What could they be arguing about? It could only be one thing, he decided. Him.

As the aggression mounted, Ruari grew afraid. His finger, or lost finger, the little one on his right hand, had been agony at first, but gradually it had gone numb and did little more than complain, but now it began to throb and burn again, picking up on his anxiety.

He heard a chair topple – no, it was something more than that. It sounded like a chair being smashed to pieces, to matchwood. Then shouts. Noises of fury. More chairs being tipped or smashed. Confusion. A fight. And finally, a terrible cry.

The silence that followed the onslaught screamed inside Ruari’s imagination. He had heard no guns, this was no rescue bid, just his captors losing their tempers, and Ruari was in their line of fire. In the quiet of the cellar he listened to his own heartbeat.

The door to the cellar seemed to explode as it was kicked in, with such violence it was left lurching at a sickening angle on a solitary hinge. A curse rang out in Romanian. Then Cosmin was clattering down the unsteady wooden steps. He was sweating, had a wild look in his eye, and a torn lip. And in his hand he carried his knife once again. It was already dripping blood.

The Toucan had made its preparations for Christmas. Two strings of tinsel dangled from the beaten-up brass clock, another was draped across the front of the beer pumps. The cheap plaster bust that sat on a shelf behind the counter between the whiskies had been dressed in a red Santa Claus hat. Harry hadn’t noticed the bust before and was taken by surprise as he walked in; it had a prominent nose, sparse hair and appeared to be Prince Philip.

The man in the overcoat who had been eating oysters during Harry’s last visit was still there, except this time with a different woman. Their hands and eyes suggested they weren’t strangers, and that Christmas was likely to come early for him. Sean was there, too, at the same table. As Harry sat down, the Irishman pushed a fresh pint of Guinness towards him. That was all Harry got as a greeting.

‘This is getting to be dangerously like a habit, Sean.’

‘You’ve no need to be worrying yourself on that account, Mr Jones.’

‘Not a social invitation, then.’

And already the ingrained animosity was pushing them apart. Breslin was already most of the way through his beer and Harry sensed it wasn’t his first.

‘We had another message,’ Breslin announced. ‘Ruari’s to be released.’

‘Then let’s pray they mean it.’

‘I’m not much of a one for prayer myself, but I’ll not argue with you on that.’ He paused, as if he had something difficult to say, and his eyes, always so cautious, settled on Harry. ‘I understand you might have had something to do with that, with arranging for his release. I don’t know the details, and that pathetic excuse for a policeman Archer is already claiming full credit, but he’s just full of gab, the sort that always nibbles at someone else’s cheese. That man is about as much feckin’ use as a hole in your underwear.’

Harry suspected Sean held a similar opinion about most British policemen.

‘Anyhow, I wanted to say thank you,’ the Irishman continued. ‘On behalf of the family.’

‘I appreciate it. I know it’s not the easiest thing for you to say.’

‘No, it’s not, but we Breslins pay our debts.’ A final couple of inches of the dark liquor slid down his throat and he nodded to the barman for another, trying to drown his discomfort.

That was when Harry realized. No one else in the family wanted to see him. Not J.J., and after the other night in Hyde Park, not Terri either. Sean had drawn the short straw. ‘I think I understand,’ Harry muttered.

Sean waited to take the top off his fresh drink before he replied. It was as though he was considering his words, content to keep Harry waiting. ‘I’m the head of the family. Ruari’s my grandson. My thanks are sincere.’

‘And J.J.?’

‘He’s grateful, too. Would have been here himself, but he sort of has an issue with you and his wife.’

‘There is no issue.’

‘He seems to think so. And he’s a proud man.’

‘He’s wrong.’

‘Now you’ll not be asking me to take your word for that, Mr Jones.’

It wasn’t a thing Harry much wanted to swear to on a stack of Bibles, either. He’d sweated through an entire set of sheets after his encounter with Terri; she had a rare talent for making a mess of his bed. He decided to change the subject. ‘Of course. Jackie Charlton.’

‘What are you on about now?’

‘It’s Jackie Charlton,’ Harry repeated, nodding at the plaster bust and at last recognizing the angular features as those of the former Irish national football coach. ‘For one lurid moment I thought it was Prince Philip.’

‘An English prince? Bury me alive first, but not in here!’

‘He’s Greek, actually. And the Windsors are German.’

‘Then get rid of them, why not? We did.’

The man seemed hard-wired to hate the English, it was as though he couldn’t help himself. He’d been suckled on it at his mother’s breast, been taught it at school, heard it preached from any number of pulpits, had it sprinkled along with the holy water and sung about in every pub. God and Irish nationalism marched hand in hand, and the English were the Antichrist. That belief was as much part of him as was his name.

‘This wasn’t your first kidnapping, was it, Sean?’ The question sounded entirely rhetorical. ‘You were a Provo fundraiser. I seem to remember that kidnapping came in handy for a while when you and your friends were a little short.’

‘Somehow I suspect that even you, Major Jones’ – he used Harry’s old army rank, readily available on Wikipedia – ‘weren’t entirely an innocent in such matters.’

‘We didn’t take hostages, we tried to release them.’

‘And sure as Christ was crucified you took ’em,’ Sean replied, the softness of his voice no disguise for the passion behind his words. ‘You just changed the language, didn’t call them hostages but political prisoners, imprisoned them without charges and without trial, and even if they did make it to court it was in a secret hearing with a bent British judge.’

‘Don’t preach to me, Sean. I saw what your friends did.’

‘By God, you bastards have short memories.’

‘What’s done is done, Sean.’

‘And I’ll remember what was done till the day I burn in Hell.’