The Payback (15 page)

I felt as though I was in some kind of dream as Lieutenant-Colonel Thom led me down a series of corridors, through the baggage area where the holdall containing what few possessions I owned was waiting for me, through doors marked No Entry, and past grim-faced officials who simply nodded deferentially at him before finally emerging into a rear car park outside the main terminal building. A military Land Rover pulled up almost immediately and we both got in the back.

As we drove out of the airport, I saw that the surrounding area was very different from the lushness of Thailand that I’d become used to. It was very flat and very dry, a patchwork of parched fields that were little more than red dust, with emaciated-looking palm trees poking up at various intervals like scarecrows, and scrawny cattle grazing by the roadside on what scrub they could find. This was the land of the Killing Fields: the barren, terrible place where the bones of thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide – men,
women, children, even babies – lay buried beneath the soil. Thirty-plus years on there was still a vague, lingering feeling of evil in the hot, close air, as if the ghosts of the past had yet to be fully exorcised, and my mood continued to darken as we drove into Phnom Penh.

The jeep wound through a maze of squalid, crowded streets until we came to a narrow, tree-lined boulevard of attractive brick and timber townhouses dating back to the French colonial era, the kind of architecture that Manila could only dream of. We stopped at a set of high double-gates, and a couple of seconds later they were opened from the inside by an armed guard in a blue uniform, with a rifle strapped to his back.

A western man in a suit came out of the house and led Lieutenant-Colonel Thom and me into a sumptuous, classically decorated entrance hall. We were then split up, he and the man in the suit heading off into a backroom while I was directed through a side door and on to a pretty covered veranda that looked out on a small but beautifully kept and watered garden.

I sat down in one of the wicker armchairs, and immediately my thoughts turned to Emma. I’d tried not to think too much about how she must be feeling now that she knew I’d gone, the look on her face as she slowly realized that I’d left her without a word of explanation. And then her dad putting two and two together before informing her that the father of the baby she was carrying was nothing more than a brutal murderer who’d spent the previous six years living a lie. I swallowed hard, fighting to keep down my emotions as I thought about the extent of my betrayal. How, in the space of a few hours, I’d managed to leave her life in utter ruins. I could imagine her weeping and inconsolable. The woman I loved. The woman I’d vowed to protect.

I’ve hated myself many times in my life – that’s the cross you bear
when you’ve sinned like I have – but never as much as I hated myself then, and I was shocked by the speed with which the intense wave of self-loathing enveloped me.

‘Good evening, Mr Milne,’ said a voice, interrupting my thoughts.

And that was the moment I first met Bertie Schagel.

‘It’s good to meet you at last,’ he continued, squeezing into the wicker armchair next to mine, a glass of what looked like G&T in one meaty hand. ‘I’ve read a great deal about your exploits.’ He smiled in the vulpine manner I’ve since become used to, the smile of a man who knows he’s holding all the cards.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said instinctively, but there was no conviction in my tone.

‘There is no point lying,’ he told me. ‘I received a phone call from a contact in Bangkok who said you were on the plane. It seems that every police officer in South East Asia is suddenly after you. The photo of your face taken at Thai passport control has now been passed on to police forces across the region. You are in a very dangerous position, with no room for manoeuvre at all.’ He paused to take a sip of his drink, eyeing me over the rim of the glass.

I didn’t say anything.

‘I can still help you though, Dennis.’ His cunning eyes, an icy blue, glinted. ‘Do you mind if I call you Dennis?’

I shrugged.

‘If you accept my offer, the following will happen. You will remain here for the next three days. There is a reliable staff here who will endeavour to make your stay as comfortable as possible. None of them know who you are, and Lieutenant-Colonel Thom can be trusted not to tell anyone. During this time, a whole new identity will be prepared for you, including a passport and driving licence. I will also organize a prosthetics expert to make some further cosmetic changes to your features so that you will be able to move around
freely again. Finally, I will supply you with a Panamanian bank account into which ten thousand dollars in cash will be deposited to – what is it you English say? – get you back on your feet.’

‘It sounds a very attractive offer, Mr Schagel,’ I said at last, my voice cracking just a little.

‘It is. The best, in fact the only one, that you are going to get.’

‘And what do you expect in return?’

He put his drink down on the table and regarded me closely. ‘Sometimes I have a need for the type of service you provide – the elimination of certain people who have become a threat or a hindrance to certain other people. I will only need such services on occasion, and will pay you a fair market rate each time that I do. The remainder of the time you will be free to do as you please, although I insist on always knowing where you are based. I am a fair employer, and prefer my employees to be happy, but should you decide at any point that you do not like working for me and try to disappear, then I will make the authorities fully aware which alias you have been travelling under and will put all my resources into making sure you are either imprisoned or eliminated. Do you understand?’

I nodded. It was pretty self-explanatory.

He put out a hand. ‘So, you will agree to work for me, yes?’

The fact was, he had me over a barrel and, as he’d pointed out himself, I wouldn’t be getting any other offers. I felt mildly nauseous at the prospect of going back to killing people for money after I’d left that whole life behind and started afresh back in the legitimate world, but in reality I had little choice. Needs must when the devil comes calling, and right then he was sticking his hooves straight through my front door.

With a heavy heart, I’d put out my own hand and we’d shaken on the deal.

And now, three years later, here I was sitting on a bed in yet another hotel room, although somewhat superior to the one I’d been in the previous night. It was 11.30 p.m. and I was drinking a San Miguel – the local Filipino brew. I was tired, but also restless, and thinking far too many melancholic thoughts. I was wondering whether O’Riordan and his partner had been in love, in the way I’d been with Emma, and concluded from the way the partner (a man whose name I would never know) had gone for me in a grief-stricken rage that they must have been. And I’d destroyed it.

‘I’m sorry, hon,’ I said aloud to the wall, addressing Emma as I still did sometimes when I was alone.

I wondered once again where she and our child were now. Emma would have found someone else, I was sure of that. She had too much personality, too much spirit, to be on her own for too long. Our child – for some reason I always imagined him as a son – would be two now. I imagined the three of them together. A tight-knit family tucked up round a warm, roasting fire, the kind I hadn’t seen for years now. I pictured Emma and her new man kissing; making love in front of that roaring fire; my son, walking now, smiling and calling him Daddy . . .

I drained the beer, knowing I had to stop torturing myself, and got myself another. I drank that one far too quickly. Then I picked up the copy of the
Manila Post
that had been left in the room and skimmed through it, conscious that there was no mention of the murder of one of their journalists yet. That would come tomorrow. I concentrated on the articles, working hard to keep the black cloud of melancholy at bay, though it continued to sit waiting on the edge of my field of vision.

The new mobile I’d bought that afternoon to replace the iPhone rang. Since only one person other than me had the number, I knew the caller would be Schagel.

He asked me if I’d picked up the email message with the details of the new target.

I told him I had.

‘Good. I can now confirm that she is arriving tomorrow on Singapore Airlines flight SQ910, landing at Ninoy Aquino Airport Terminal L1 at 1.25 p.m. local time.’

I found a pen and paper on a desk by the window and wrote the information down, the booze making my handwriting shaky.

‘I want you to meet her there, follow her to whichever hotel she goes to, and make sure she checks in. It’s imperative you don’t lose her. Understood?’

He seemed more agitated than usual, his cold arrogance noticeably absent, and I wondered yet again if everything was OK.

‘Understood. But how do we know she’s not being met by officials at the airport?’

‘She isn’t. Her business in Manila is unofficial.’

I was surprised at how much Schagel knew about her movements but didn’t say anything. I knew he had his methods.

‘And remember, if you do what needs to be done on this job, you can leave my service afterwards. You have my word.’

I thought about Tina Boyd – a woman, a police officer, someone who doubtless had loved ones of her own. People whose lives would be crushed savagely and permanently by my actions if I carried out the job.

And then I thought once more about the prospect of retirement. Of running my business in the hills of northern Laos, safe from prying eyes; of never having to be at the beck and call of anyone again.

‘I’m on it,’ I told him. And hung up.

The flight from London to Singapore was long, bumpy and full. Tina had managed to get an aisle seat, but the man sitting next to her had been overweight, far too free with his elbows, and had snored loudly on the few occasions he’d dozed off.

Consequently, by the time she arrived at Changi Airport at 8.30 on Sunday morning, after thirteen painful hours in the air, she was exhausted. She changed into a T-shirt and long shorts in the toilets, got herself a large espresso from the Starbucks in the terminal, managing to pay using US dollars that she’d changed at Heathrow, then found a seat and checked the messages on her phone.

The first was from Bob Levine at CMIT, in response to the message she’d left for him the previous morning in which she’d said that, following on from his kind offer to give her a week off, she now wanted to take two weeks of outstanding leave, starting immediately. Levine’s message was an annoyed one in which he said she needed to give him more notice if she wanted to take time off like that, and telling her to call him on Monday to discuss her request. He was going to be even more annoyed when he realized
she was calling him from the other side of the world, but she’d worry about that later. Tina knew that she was considered to be a generally reliable cop. She was rarely off sick (except through on-duty injury) and, apart from Christmases, she hadn’t gone on leave since the month-long trip she’d taken to central America the previous summer. She was due a bit of slack and, at least on this occasion, she had a good reason.

The second message was from a blocked number, and the line wasn’t good, but even so she recognized the voice of the Phnom Penh police officer she’d spoken to on Friday night. On the message, he introduced himself formally as Lieutenant Hok Ma of the Royal Gendarmerie of Cambodia, and said that he’d located the officer Nick Penny had spoken to.

Tina listened carefully while Lieutenant Ma left the details of the conversation that the two men had had, and those details confirmed what she already knew. Tina wanted to find out if the Cambodian police had taken any action as a result of Penny’s conversation with them, even though the tone of the message suggested they hadn’t. Lieutenant Ma had only phoned an hour earlier, and she found his number in her bag and tried calling him back, but there was no response.

No matter. Because she knew now she was definitely on the right track.

She finished her coffee and slowly made her way over to the departures gate to begin the next stage of her journey.

And that was when she saw him.

Coming out of the first-class lounge, twenty yards ahead. A small, hunched man in his fifties, with thinning hair dyed an obvious black, and sharp, pointed features on a pale, pudgy face, he reminded Tina of an overfed rodent. He was wearing an unfashionable cream suit and a white open-necked shirt that was
stretched tight over a prominent pot belly, and he would have looked like any other ordinary middle-aged traveller with his duty-free bag and carry-on luggage if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was accompanied by a powerful-looking bodyguard in a dark suit who was looking round with the studied, humourless air of a professional.

But there was nothing ordinary about Paul Wise. Nor about the terrible things he’d done.

For a moment, Tina was too shocked to react. She’d read so much about him, seen so many photos of his face, had spent so many hours making her own savage plans for revenge. Yet in all that time she’d never seen him in the flesh. Seeing him now, and knowing that she was powerless to do anything about it, filled her with an almost sickening rage. She wanted to grab him by his flabby throat and squeeze with every ounce of strength she had, enjoying the look of terror in his eyes, telling him how long she’d waited for this moment, that it was payback for all the people whose lives he’d ended, until the last of his rancid breaths came and went, and he finally went limp in her arms.