Nobody Gets Hurt

by R J Bailey

  ‘Look what I found.’

  It was Jean-Claude, holding out two glasses of champagne. I hesitated.

  ‘It’s over. Off duty now.’

  I took the glass, clinked his and sipped, enjoying the little kick the first alcohol for a week gave me. Enjoying and worrying about it. I shouldn’t be so in thrall to it. Not in my line of work.

  ‘Sorry I snapped at you earlier,’ he said.

  ‘I deserved it.’ It was the truth.

  ‘We all have momentary lapses. You did well.’

  ‘Thank you. Although I am feeling a bit sorry for VJ now.’

  Jean-Claude leaned on the rail next to me. ‘That’s because you see him as your boss, your Principal. We just see him as a mark, someone to be taken down.’

  ‘Still . . .’

  ‘What if I told you something not in the briefing file. That he was a RoHo Roller.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I still have friends in the Sûreté. If this had been a normal party on Kubera, he would have made sure at least one pretty girl stayed behind for one last . . .’ He held up the glass of fizz. ‘The next thing she would know, she’d wake up in a state room, underwear missing, her insides feeling as if someone had been using a cheese grater on her.’

  ‘Nice image.’

  ‘Nice guy. He uses machines on them, sex machines, and films it on that fancy phone of his.’

  I felt VJ’s champagne turn to acid in my stomach. ‘RoHo is Rohypnol?’

  ‘Or something similar,’ said Jean-Claude.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘It was how we managed to get Balraj on board with this whole thing. He had no part in it, in the drugging and filming, but he is not a stupid man. He knew that VJ was up to something unsavoury. We just told him what that was and he came onside.’

  The whole charade of Balraj carrying VJ off the ship had been prearranged. He was never going to let him go below. My stab to VJ’s pudgy solar plexus was just an improvisation on my part. Now I wish I’d prodded him a little harder. ‘VJ was lucky the Sikh didn’t toss him overboard. It wouldn’t be the first time a Sikh bodyguard had turned on their employer.’

  ‘And you didn’t choose to tell me about his little hobby?’

  He shook his head. ‘Keegan and I agreed. You had to behave entirely natural around him. We thought this information might . . . colour your judgement. And, therefore, affect your behaviour towards him. Bust millionaire is one thing, but a man who likes filming unconscious girls being penetrated by a Robo-Fuk machine?’

  I laughed despite my disgust. I really hoped he had made that name up. ‘You were thinking I might swing him around the poop deck by his skinny dick?’

  ‘Something like that. But by taking away his toys, we have saved many young women from such an unpleasant experience.’ He gave me a smile that showed some expensive dentistry. ‘Feel sorry for him now?’

  ‘Well, I’d definitely unfriend him.’ I took another hit of the champagne, reasoning that Veuve Clicquot was an innocent party in all this. I pulled some wind-blown hair out of my face. Jean-Claude’s coiffure had, of course, barely moved. ‘However, you are not Robin Hoods, are you? You didn’t do this to right such wrongs. That was a fringe benefit. And you’ll be a wealthy man now, I suppose.’ Jean-Claude was on a percentage with Keegan. I was on a fixed salary, a third up front, the rest on final sign-off of the job.

  He gave an unapologetic shrug. ‘When I retired from the Sûreté I bought a vineyard near Beaune. Last year my vigneron died and I brought in a young lady from New Zealand. Very progressive. Very expensive. I am in a rich man’s game without being a rich man. You?’

  ‘Mine’s all accounted for too,’ I said. ‘At least the first tranche.’ I had already spent the initial retainer/expenses on the watch list and it would be months before all the monies finally came through – the companies who hire the retrievers usually don’t pay the full amount until all sales of recovered goods have been completed.

  ‘Why don’t you sign up for another job with us in the meantime?’ he asked. ‘Keegan would be happy to have you.’

  It was my turn to raise my shoulders towards my ears. ‘I’m not really a retriever. This was a one-off. I prefer looking after people to stealing from them.’

  ‘I have done your job,’ Jean-Claude said. ‘Looking after the rich and pampered. My God, it’s boring. Yellow status, orange status, clear to go, emergency evac. I don’t know how you do it. With us, we never know what is next. There is a Gulfstream in Hong Kong that needs to be retrieved, a garage full of Ferraris in Dubai, a house in Barbados to be cleared and sold while the so-called owner is off skiing, a Takashi Murakami lifted from a secure vault. There’s real adrenaline in that. And good money every time you pull a job off.’

  ‘And between jobs?’

  ‘I make my wine. And drink it.’

  ‘That last part sounds more up my street. But I’ve had my share of excitement,’ I said, truthfully.

  ‘In the army?’

  That, and in a garage in north London with men coming to kill me. But I didn’t really want to be there again, not even in conversation. It could have ended very differently. With me dead. ‘Yes. I think fundamentally we do different things. I’m there to stop the client getting fucked. You lot are there to fuck the client.’

  ‘That’s rather a reductive way of looking at it. In many ways we are the good guys – you keep the status quo, protecting the interest of an elite. We redistribute the wealth a little.’

  ‘Back to the banks and financial institutions. That’s not much of a redistribution, is it? As I said, not quite Robin Hood.’

  ‘Touché.’ I might have imagined it, but he appeared to move a little closer when he asked the next question. ‘And is there a man in your life?’

  Oh, for God’s sake. I wondered what his idea of a ‘wrap’ party for a job entailed. A quick roll in the sack with a suave Frenchman? I put some air between us.

  ‘I am only interested. I’m not interested,’ he said, catching my repositioning. ‘Marco is more my type. If you understand.’

  Well I’ll be damned, I thought. My gaydar must be faulty. ‘There is a man. Sort of.’ Tom Buchan. At least, that was the handle he was using when I met him. He had taken on several others since. But he was still Tom to me.

  ‘You don’t sound very certain.’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘I used to be a cop.’ I wondered if his being gay had anything to do with him leaving the Sûreté at a relatively tender age. ‘Complicated is second nature to me.’

  It was probably because I had finished the champagne, on an empty stomach, that I told him about Tom and Paul, my late husband. How they had rescued a young girl from a gang of rapists in Kosovo, but how Tom had let one of them, a mere boy, live. Now that boy had turned into a vicious gangster who had pledged to track down the British peacekeeping unit that had murdered his brothers, uncles and cousins on a lonely hillside. He had done just that to four of them, including Paul who, I now believed, had been executed for what happened all those years ago. So, Tom and the surviving members of the K-FOR patrol were in hiding, living under assumed identities until Leka, the Albanian warlord hunting them, was put somewhere where he was no longer a threat. Preferably with his brothers, uncles and cousins.

  Jean-Claude pursed his lips in thought when I had finished. ‘My sympathies are with the British soldiers, of course. I think they did the world a favour by killing those men.’

  ‘They felt they had no choice. They had broken the NATO mandate by intervening.’

  ‘Oh, I think there is a greater moral imperative than that.’ He drained his own glass. ‘Would you like me to ask my friends at the Sûreté if they have anything on this Leka? After all, he might be dead and your friend can breathe easy. Albanian warlords have a very finite lifespan.’

  ‘Would you? You can always get a message to me through Keegan. He has all my details.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure. And where is your m
an now?’

  I stole a glance at my watch. With a bit of luck, I thought, packing for the early-morning flight to Cristoforo Colombo airport. ‘Come on,’ I said, and pushed off the rail. ‘I’d like to see what Genoa looks like from the bridge of a forty-million-euro yacht.’

  Most of the retrievers went off to party in the bars along the narrow rat-run i vicoli, the web of alleys connecting the Old Town of Genoa to the port. I checked into my hotel and, after a quick shower, took myself down to the lobby bar rather than watch TV in my room. Keegan was there, nursing an open bottle of champagne. He had changed into a white open-necked shirt and pale-blue trousers with loafers. With his dark hair swept back he could pass for one of the locals. He gestured for me to sit down.

  ‘I thought you’d be out with the others,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll catch them for dinner. I’m here to persuade you to come along.’

  ‘Thanks. But I’m going to turn in early,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I wanted a word anyway. Jean-Claude told me you are giving up the retrieving game.’

  ‘I never really started it,’ I said, taking the glass of champagne he had poured me. ‘It was simply a favour. Cheers.’

  Well, not a favour. Just a way of earning cash to fund the Colonel’s watch list. But I didn’t feel like going into all that. I really did want an early night.

  ‘Cheers.’

  We drank. Out of habit I scanned the room, right to left, looking for anomalies. Apart from the elegantly attired woman perched on a stool at the bar who rented by the hour, nothing stood out.

  ‘I don’t get you,’ Keegan said, picking at a bowl of crackers. ‘And that bothers me.’

  ‘There’s not much to get.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re kidding, right? You telling me you have a nice, uncomplicated life? A missing daughter. A boyfriend under a death threat? J-C filled me in. It’s not really a story of everyday folk down on the farm, is it?’

  I drank some more, enjoying the buzz. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to meet Tom with a hangover. It always got things off on the wrong foot. ‘It is what it is. Not what I chose.’

  ‘Look, I have a crazy idea. Why don’t you come and work for us? It’s a pretty good life. Travel the world. Steal things from people. Things that don’t belong to them.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ I admitted. ‘But as I told Jean-Claude, no. Thank you.’

  His fingers drummed on the table while his brain turned over. ‘So, this Albanian J-C told me about. Quite a tale. Seems like your guy is in pretty deep shit. I know what these Balkan guys are like. Terriers with a bone. What’s the Albanian called again?’

  ‘Leka.’

  His brow furrowed in thought. ‘You know, the name almost rings a bell. What if we could get the skinny on him? Maybe neutralise him somehow. How about that?’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because we like you.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  He laughed. ‘OK, because we often need a woman in the set-up for a retrieval and qualified, trustworthy ones are few and far between. They’ve got the looks but not the brains, or . . . well, you know. You have both.’

  ‘Is that flattery I see before me?’ At my age, even after fifty years of feminism, I was still susceptible to a compliment from a good-looking guy. Call me shallow. I can handle it.

  ‘No. It’s the truth. I’m offering you a simple business deal.’

  I let out a sigh. ‘So you are saying, using Jean-Claude’s contacts, you’ll find out about Leka and let me know if he constitutes a real threat.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘And figure out a way to make that threat go away.’

  ‘If it’s possible, yes.’

  ‘And if you do, then I come and work for you.’

  ‘You got it.’

  I hadn’t had enough champagne to make me completely reckless. Just a little. ‘I’ll tell you what. You find out about Leka, and I’ll consider coming to work for you.’

  Keegan looked at my empty glass and signalled for another bottle. Then he held out his hand. ‘It’s a deal.’

  I took it, cursing the drink in my bloodstream and wondering what I had let myself in for. I wouldn’t have to wait too long to find out.

  SIX

  Northern Italy

  Tom had hired a car at the airport. I had told him to source an Alfa, but it turned out he’d gone for a Fiat Panda with a shitty semi-automatic gearbox. I let it pass and we drove south, more jerkily than I would have liked. He had some romantic idea about staying at Portofino, maybe at the Splendido. I squashed that like a bug. He’d be disillusioned by the miniature Chanel and Gucci boutiques squeezed into the old fisherman’s net stores. Also, I was well aware that Portofino was just the place that people with PPs frequent. I was in no mood to bump into former colleagues or clients while tucking into risotto on the terrace of the Splendido Mare.

  Besides, my funds wouldn’t last long there. Portofino is the kind of place where it’s always best if someone else picks up the tab. So I told Tom to keep the Fiat on the E80, heading for Pisa.

  ‘I’ve seen the Leaning Tower,’ he said grumpily as the turn-offs for Portofino slid past.

  ‘Me too,’ I said. I gave him what I hoped was my best enigmatic just-you-wait-and-see smile. He just shook his head in mock despair. I liked that about Tom. Recent events had made him more phlegmatic and accepting of what came his way. He used to have this theory that Trouble, with a capital T, was always following him around. I think he was learning to accept that shit happens and it happens to most people. Look at me.

  Stop that. Self-pity is not an attractive look for a date night.

  Friend Nina in my head. Nina right. Again.

  I had been toying with Lucca, but in the end I opted for Forte dei Marmi. It was May and I reckoned the beaches wouldn’t yet be lined with oiled bodies sequestered in overpriced – but I had to admit, elegant – bagni or beach clubs, and that we’d get tables at Lorenzo or L’Enoteca at Pietrasanta, up in the hills among the marble quarries that gave Forte its name. I had been there as a PPO to a pop star’s wife when Armani and his partner threw a party at their villa on Roma Imperiale, all laurel hedges, sprinkled lawns and Olympic-sized pools with a spray of international glitterati patrolling the grounds. But I got to see a little of the resort beyond the gates and walls of the lavishly porticoed private villas.

  Forte wasn’t that much cheaper than Portofino, but it had the sort of passionate dedication to indolence I needed. And we could always live on the pizzas from Pizzeria Orlando, which, as I recalled, stayed open till three in the morning, and eat cheap pasta at the Nelson Club. It was also, the Russians aside, very understated. You might be an Agnelli or a Juventus star, but it was all about dressing down and keeping a low profile. That included ditching the PPOs, so I was unlikely to meet anyone on the Circuit there.

  The suite I had booked at the Byron overlooked the main drag and its row of ninety-odd beach clubs. The room was a duplex, with the bedroom on the upper level, with one of those beds piled so high with cushions, it takes ten minutes to get them all off before you strike pillow. And if you aren’t careful, you spend the rest of the stay tripping over them.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress and bounced in the time-honoured way that tells you very little at all. Tom sat next to me and put an arm round my shoulders. I felt myself stiffen a little. I wasn’t used to letting another human get so close.

  ‘How do you do this again?’ I asked.

  ‘You relax. Christ, it’s like you’re made of iron.’

  I untangled myself, stood and went downstairs, opened the French doors to the terrace and stepped out, letting the breeze blow across my face. I had a little thumping behind my eyes from the champagne that I was trying to ignore. With Keegan’s considerable help we had finished off the second bottle. The walk back to my room was less than steady. But I had been alone, despite Keegan’s no-doubt chivalrous offer to escort me.

 
; Would I tell Tom about his offer of work? No, because it might be nothing, just post-caper bluster on Keegan’s part. I’d divulge the deal I had made with the retrievers once I had something concrete. But part of me was annoyed for letting myself be manoeuvred into a position where I might be in Keegan’s debt.

  Tom had followed me down and was standing a few paces behind me. Across the road the sun was dropping, the shadows lengthening, the daybeds on the beach were emptying, the sand groomed once more by the army of rake-wielding bagnini. Soon a languorous passeggiata would start on and around the pier just to the north of us, as fiercely competitive as any F1 race, only a lot slower.

  I heard Tom clear his throat. I knew what that meant. I waited while he summoned up whatever reserves he needed in order to tell me some bad news. ‘Sam. I’ve been seeing someone.’

  I folded my arms and closed my eyes. Of course. Intermittent Lover Syndrome. How could I expect him to wait for my erratic phone calls? He had probably hooked up with a nice, uncomplicated woman with a proper job and a stable background. Me? I came with more baggage than Terminal Five.

  I was aware he was behind me, hovering. ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Put your arms around me and nuzzle my neck.’

  ‘You are a scary mind-reader.’

  ‘Who have you been seeing?’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Her name is Rachel. The thing is, she’s good. Bloody good.’

  ‘Spare me the sordid details.’

  ‘Sam! Jesus.’ He spun me round and waited until I opened my eyes. Part of me was already wondering where to hit him first. ‘She’s good at listening.’

  Listening? He’d be telling me he had found his soulmate next and I’d have to retch.

  ‘I got her through OCC7.’