‘Eighteen and overexcited,’ he replied. All over within seconds, as he recalled.
‘You were so embarrassed,’ she giggled. ‘And you remember what we used to talk about in those days?’
‘Not really. I was only after your body.’
‘Oh sure. You remember all that teenage stuff. Why are we here? The world stinks but you can’t change it, so let’s drop out, get stoned and watch it all go by? We used to sit out on Hampstead Heath in the moonlight and talk about this life and the afterlife, about God and ghosts. And fate.’
‘Fate I remember,’ he conceded. ‘Your whole life written down beforehand in some doomy book. You still believe that?’
She was silent for a moment.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. What d’you think’s written in Vildana’s book?’
‘A lot more misery . . .’
‘Don’t say that. You think the Roches will adopt her?’
He thought about it. The odds were about evens, he reckoned.
‘If the police catch Pravic quickly, then it might work out. If he stays on the loose and the Roches have to live with the knowledge that he’s out there, then I’m not sure they could handle that.’
The telephone rang, startling them.
‘God, what now?’ Lorna gulped, picking up the receiver. ‘Hullo?’
‘Mrs Sorensen?’
She recognized the voice of Kommissar Linz.
‘Yes, hi there. You want to speak to Alex?’ She suspected the policeman was more comfortable talking to a man. She passed the phone over.
‘Good evening, Kommissar,’ Alex answered. ‘Has the Berlin woman told you anything?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. Tomorrow morning at nine I must release her, but I have an idea. Will you help me?’
‘Of course, if I can.’
‘Then would you and Frau Sorensen be here tomorrow morning? I want you to speak to Fräulein Pocklewicz after she leaves. She may talk to you if you say you’re not the police. Tell her you recognize her from the car, but won’t tell the police if she agrees to help you. Maybe take her to the hospital to see Vildana – she is a woman. Use tricks if you think it will persuade her to reveal to you where Pravic is now.’
‘A long shot, isn’t it?’
‘Ja, but it is the only shot we have. Except one. A new photograph. I will show you in the morning. You can be here at eight-thirty?’
‘No problem.’
‘Oh, and by the way, Herr Chadwick in London sends a big hello.’
‘Oh yes. Yes, thanks.’
He leaned across Lorna’s warm body to replace the phone on its rest.
‘What was that all about?’ she asked, running her fingers down the hard muscles of his back.
‘He’s fixed us a date,’ he replied. ‘With a prostitute.’
3.35 a.m. the same night Berlin
Karina closed the door to her room in the brothel and locked it. It had been raining all evening. Bad for trade. Only three punters since seven o’clock. Not even enough to pay the rent.
She’d changed from her working clothes into trainers, black ski-pants and a large purple sweater. Out in the street, she held a plastic bag above her head as protection against the downpour and began to run. It wasn’t far to the cosy little flat with the large bed that she shared with another girl in the same profession.
Dieter Konrad hardly recognized her through the rain-smeared window of the stolen Audi. But the doll-like hair and the look of her backside as she ran convinced him. He drew alongside, then wound down the passenger window.
‘Fräulein Karina!’ he shouted. She stopped and bent down to peer inside.
‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’
‘I want to do business,’ he replied, trying to smile.
‘What, another sodding passport? Piss off!’ She walked on, feeling the cold rain soak through her sweater.
Konrad eased the car forward, keeping pace.
‘Look, I said no!’ she shouted, halting for a second time.
‘Not a passport. Business. You know.’
‘What? Sex?’ she began to laugh. ‘You?’
‘Ja! And this time I won’t argue about the price!’
‘Switch the light on.’ She stuck her head through the window to get a better look at him. ‘What are you up to?’
‘You know.’
She saw his cheek twitch and mistook it for lust. She remembered he’d been wanting it when he came to the apartment the other day.
‘Why didn’t you come into the house?’ she demanded. shivering as the rain drenched her back.
‘I get embarrassed,’ he replied glancing down. ‘Didn’t want that old madame to see me. Anyway, get in out of the rain while we talk about it.’
Karina was wary about cars. If this was someone she’d never seen before, she wouldn’t get in. But it was cold, she was getting wetter by the second, he’d said he wouldn’t haggle over the price and it had been a slow night.
‘Okay, but don’t put it into gear.’ She got in, leaving the door slightly open. ‘All right. So what did you have in mind?’
‘Straight sex,’ he shrugged awkwardly.
‘Not without a condom, and I’m not carrying any around with me.’
‘But I have some.’ Konrad pulled from his pocket the packet he’d got from a machine in a bar round the corner.
‘Oooh, proper little boy scout!’ she said, huskily. ‘Where then, if you don’t want to trick in the apartment?’ She glanced over her shoulder. The car was a hatchback. He’d folded the rear seats down and covered the floor space with a yellow tartan blanket. ‘Thought of everything, haven’t you?’
Now, she decided, let’s see whether he’s serious about not haggling.
‘It’ll cost you two hundred,’ she announced coldly, opening the door wider as if to get out.
Konrad winced.
‘I know I said I won’t argue,’ he whined, ‘but that’s taking advantage. And if you’re fair with me, I might come back and see you again. It could be good business for you.’
‘Are you married?’ she asked out of the blue.
‘Ja.’
‘But she doesn’t like doing it any more?’
‘Menopause, you know?’ he answered, turning away from her. He saw two people walking towards them on the opposite side of the road. Better be quick.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘One hundred then. In my hand, now.’
‘All right, but close the door. It’s cold.’
He slipped the car into gear and drove off, juggling his wallet against the steering wheel. He passed her the 100DM note.
‘The Tiergarten, right?’ she insisted. There’d be other hookers around there. Safety in numbers.
Konrad headed down FriedrichstraΒe trying to control the sickness in his stomach, ticking off the preparations he’d made, wondering if he could go through with it when the moment came.
‘Have you done this sort of business before, handsome?’ Karina asked, resting her hand on his crotch. He brushed her away.
‘No. Haven’t needed to,’ he replied brusquely. There was double meaning in what he’d said.
He turned off Unter den Linden, round the back of the Reichstag, and headed into the broad, tree-lined avenue that crossed the unlit park of the Tiergarten.
One kilometre away, the distant, floodlit erection commemorating Prussian wars formed a priapic background for the whores at work in the vehicles parked in pools of darkness between the street lamps.
Konrad halted the car in a free space, a hundred metres from the nearest stationary vehicle.
Karina unzipped his trousers and slipped her hand inside.
‘You’ll have to do better than this,’ she smiled, feeling the flaccidity of his organ.
‘I think it will be easier if we get in the back,’ he explained, removing her hand from his underpants. He took off his jacket, then they opened the doors, turned their backs to the wind and rain, and climbed into the rear.
‘Fu
cking cold out there,’ Karina shivered. ‘Some poor sods will be out in the bushes.’
She looked at him. He seemed awkward. Perhaps it really was his first time with a whore.
‘What now?’ she asked, hugging herself. ‘You’re the customer. You have to say what you want.’
‘Take your clothes off, then.’
She pulled down the side zip of her ski-pants, then removed them together with her knickers. She lifted her sweater up under her chin then lay back on the blanket exposing her breasts.
‘Take your sweater right off,’ Konrad insisted.
‘Aw, come on. It’s too bloody cold. Get your pants off and let’s get on with it.’
Konrad loosened the belt of the trousers and eased down the zip again. Then he half-slid, half-rolled until he lay on top of her.
‘Oof,’ she gasped as his weight drove the air from her lungs. She reached down with her right hand. He pulled it away again.
‘Not just yet,’ he said, unable to stop the shake in his voice. ‘I like to take my time.’
He stretched her left arm out to the side.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, as she felt him slip a band over her wrist.
‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed, pressing together the Velcro straps he’d attached to the seat belt mount earlier. ‘It’s just my little game.’
Suddenly she began to kick. She was a lot shorter than him and powerless under the bulk of his spread-eagled legs.
‘No fucking games! Get off me you bastard!’ Her left hand jerked and pulled, but the strap held it. ‘Help! Help somebody!’
With his right hand Konrad peeled a pre-cut length of adhesive carpet tape from the back of the front seat and slapped it across her mouth. With his left hand he fended off the nails clawing at his eyes.
Using both hands now, he pinioned her right arm with a second Velcro strap, Karina’s eyes almost bursting from their sockets. Her lips and tongue pushed and twisted to dislodge the tape muffling her screams. Konrad ripped off the tape, stuffed a ball of paper into her mouth, shoved a hand under her chin and slapped the tape back in place.
Karina’s head shook in a frenzy, her panicky breath sawing through flared nostrils. Then, with a fresh length of tape he pinched them closed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Konrad whispered, his fingers feeling on each side of her neck for the throb of the carotid artery. Sensing the pulse through his thumbs, he pressed with all his strength.
‘Believe me, I did not want this . . .’ he added through clenched teeth.
Her nut-brown eyes stayed locked on his until her lids began to flicker and she blacked out. Slowly her face turned a purpley blue.
Twenty-five
Tuesday 5th April, 7.20 a.m.
London-Heathrow Airport
THE BA 214 from Boston landed ahead of schedule. Chauffeurs and minicab drivers on the early shift hovered outside the arrivals hall holding name cards. Amongst them was a short man with a florid complexion, wearing a grey suit, white shirt and dark, nondescript tie.
Inside the hall, Liam Doyle carried his shoulder bag through immigration and customs in a daze. He’d done the sensible thing on the flight across the Atlantic, turning down all offers of alcohol, but despite that he had a thick head this morning and eyeballs that felt as if they’d been smeared with Vaseline. He wore a light trench coat over a midweight, brown suit. His curly, grey hair was brushed across the top of his head to cover a bald patch.
Things had happened so fast yesterday afternoon, he’d hardly had time to think. The letter delivered to the Committee office by the older Donohue sister, the phone call to Belfast to tell them about the photograph, and the plea from Nolan that it be brought across overnight by hand.
He emerged from the baggage hall and followed other passengers past the waiting faces. Then he paused to read the name boards held by the drivers.
‘That’s me,’ he announced, approaching the short man with the florid face.
‘Mr Doyle of Emerald Finance?’ His accent was from south of Dublin.
‘That’s right.’
The driver offered to take his bag, but Doyle refused. They walked to the car park and were soon on their way round the perimeter road to the north side of the airport.
‘It’s another hour before your man gets in from Belfast,’ the driver explained. ‘I’ll bring him to you at the hotel.’
‘I guess that gives me time for a shower,’ Doyle remarked in his softly sterile New England voice.
The Post House was one of the older Heathrow Hotels. Not as plush as some, but cheaper than most and reassuringly anonymous. The driver hovered by the desk while Doyle checked in, waiting to learn his room number.
‘Nine-two-three,’ the man from Boston announced. ‘You’ll bring him straight up?’
‘Just as soon as his plane lands.’
The Belfast flight was twenty minutes late, due to a glitch in the security checks when they were loading the luggage.
Tommy Nolan felt as tense as a brick, but forced his face to relax as they filed past the Special Branch men who watched all arrivals from Ulster. He avoided eye contact and passed without trouble.
Deadly job. The Met bastards couldn’t hope to remember any but the most current of mugshots.
Nolan’s involvement with the Provos had declined since the 1970s when he’d been a company commander in the Whiterock area of Belfast. The breakup of the structure into cells had left him on the sidelines.
Nolan wore a dull, tweed jacket and baggy, bottle-green cords. He had crinkly, black hair which always looked greasy, and a broad, stress-worn face with watery brown eyes that made him look older than his forty-four years.
By day he drove a taxi, by night he hogged a seat in Dunphy’s Bar, talking about the old days. Talking too, often as not, about his younger brother Kieran, shot dead by the RUC during the failed Long Kesh jail break in 1973. More than twenty years ago, but after a few jars it still felt like yesterday.
In Republican Belfast, Tommy Nolan was known as the man who’d pledged to ‘top’ the tout who’d put his kid brother in Milltown cemetery, but in twenty years had failed to find him.
Last night’s transatlantic phone call had been pure adrenalin. The man he’d sworn to kill had finally broken cover. Just in the nick of time before they called an end to hostilities.
The man in the chauffeur’s grey suit had no need of a name card this time. Nolan was his cousin.
At the Post House Hotel, Nolan went alone to Doyle’s room. Had to hammer at the door because the American had fallen asleep.
‘You Tommy?’ Doyle asked bleary-eyed, opening it on the chain.
‘That’s right.’ Nolan replied in his tortured Belfast brogue.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Doyle yawned. He slipped the chain and pulled the door wide. ‘I guess I just passed out. I’m flying back this afternoon, so I’m staying with Boston time. And according to my brain, that means I should still be asleep.’
Nolan’s head hurt from the Bushmills he’d drunk to steady his nerves last night. He didn’t want conversation, just the picture.
‘This is the shot,’ Doyle announced, handing him the photograph taken on Lorna’s Nikon. ‘Pretty good, huh?’
Tommy Nolan held it in his shaking hands. Hard to reconcile this middle-aged, bearded figure with the lanky twenty-eight-year-old whose picture he’d kept in the tin box under his bed.
‘Is that her with him?’ he growled.
‘It certainly is. But she wasn’t involved, right? She was betrayed by him just as much as you were.’
‘So what’s she doin’ with him here then?’ he demanded, smacking the print with the back of his right hand.
‘Posing for a picture, that’s all. She was the one who sent it to us, don’t forget . . . Just like she did with the last photo, the one from 1973. She’s not to be touched, okay?’
Nolan reined in his feelings. He’d always reckoned the Donohue woman just as much to blame for his brother’s death as the man Jarvis.
‘And this was in Bosnia, you said?’ Nolan asked. ‘There’s no ways I’d go there to look for him.’
‘You don’t have to. As I told you yesterday, he’s in Frankfurt, Germany. Annie Donohue made some check calls with Lorna’s office. The guy’s been leaving messages for her. Here’s the name of his hotel and the phone number.’
He handed Nolan a page from a notebook.
‘Can’t say for sure he’s still there, but you can easily check.’
Nolan felt a nervous bubbling in his guts. The trail that chilled so many years ago was hot again. The blood throbbed painfully in his temples.
Half-an-hour later, the Irish driver parked outside a terraced house in the West London district of Chiswick and rang the doorbell of a ground floor flat. A man in his mid-twenties with dark hair and designer stubble let them in. The driver made the introductions.
‘Michael McCarthy – Tommy Nolan.’
‘Hello.’
‘Are youse Michael or Mickey?’ Nolan asked matily. He wasn’t at ease with the new generation of hard young men who ran the operation on the mainland.
‘Michael’s my name,’ McCarthy replied coldly. He led them into a cluttered back room adjoining the kitchen.
‘A quick cup of tea, Michael, and I’ll be out of your hair,’ the driver muttered, gravitating towards the stove.
‘Fix it for all of us, will you?’ McCarthy pulled chairs from under a dining table that had been picked up cheap at an auction.
‘We’ll talk the business after he’s gone,’ he whispered, jerking a thumb towards the kitchen. ‘How was your flight? No bother?’
‘Och, none at all.’ Nolan looked round the room. A clothes airer propped against the radiator had a woman’s underwear hung out to dry. ‘Nice place. Youse got a wife, then?’
The younger man looked away and ground his teeth. They’d no idea of security these old boys. Didn’t understand the rules of war.
‘Listen Tommy, all you need to know about me is my name. Right?’
Nolan felt bruised. Just trying to be friendly. He shrugged.
‘As you like.’
They sat in silence until the tea came. Then for the five minutes it took the driver to drink it, they nattered about horse racing and football.
Scorpion Trail Page 31
