The Concierge

by Gerard Gilbert

  “Shooting season ends the end of February I seem to remember,” he says.

  “No, you’re right,” says Max, recalling the crazily expensive shoots he used to go on with Simon and the others back when that’s what you did as young City bloods. “Can you imagine – caught breaking into an Arab’s home with intent to steal…”

  “Take back what is rightfully ours,” corrects Harry.

  “As you say, but, caught breaking into some Arab’s home and all anyone cares about is whether we trespassed during the pheasant-shooting season. Let’s hope the magistrate sees it that way.”

  * * *

  There’s a clear path through the copse, and to judge by the number of spent orange shotgun cartridges they pass, this is where the guns stand, although, says Harry, they’d usually be out in the field, waiting for the birds to be put up.

  “You’re a funny guy,” says Max. “Do you remember your dad?”

  “No,” says Harry, wrong-footed by the question, but not having to lie, which is a relief.

  “A hero though,” says Max. “You know, Harry, that’s why I’m doing this for you. If it was me I’d just write this diamond off… you know that don’t you? A fucking shit thing to happen, but then shit things happen. You’ve always got to move on, in my world. But you – and I think there must be a part of you that’s your dad – you don’t want to move on, forget what’s happened, you want to fucking hit back. I can see that… I can really see that.”

  Max is getting quite exercised by this speech, but Harry can’t feel anything. In fact he’s thinking how little he really knows Max. There’s a chance he might actually be mad. That explains why he’s going along with him on the hare-brained venture. He suddenly feels responsible and wants to tell Max to turn back. Let’s get back to equities and screwing our clients. He’s right. They can fight another day – fuck this A-rab, as Beardie in the pub put it.

  Five million quid.

  Five million quid.

  No, they must go on.

  Max lifts a hand, as if he’s an Indian tracker in the Wild West and has scented danger. He’s crouching. “This looks a good spot,” he says, tugging his rucksack from his shoulders. Harry looks at what Max can see – the second and third floors of a magnificent – there is no other word for it – building emerging from the top of the leylandii. They’ve chosen a good spot.

  Harry rummages around in his rucksack. The jemmy clanks next to the thermos, which he removes, but what he’s looking for is a book, a tatty, well-thumbed, second-hand book he bought from Amazon. Printed in 1974, it’s a guide book to Luddeston Hall, produced in the years between when the Cobhams realised that they needed to open up to the general public – the “grockles” as they no doubt would have called them – and when they realised that cream teas and guided tours weren’t going to keep them afloat. That’s when they sold up to the Arabs and moved to a chateau in France.

  Harry takes the book and starts reading aloud. “The main portion of the house is Elizabethan with Jacobean additions, etc.”

  “This is crazy,” says Harry, putting the guidebook down.

  “No it’s not, Harry, we’re doing the right thing.”

  “Then we’re crazy.”

  Max looks at him. There’s a slight suggestion of disappointment in his eyes. So, thinks Harry, he’s doing this for him – Harry, the son of the dead war hero. This is going to be our Goose Green, and the Arabs are the Argentinians. Too late now to tell him that the war hero wasn’t a war hero. That he never existed. That this mythical figure was the big lie that he carried all the way through their schooldays together and university and into adult life.

  Except that it didn’t feel like a lie any more, and the only person who ever asked directly about it is Simon. It’s one of the reason he hates Simon – that and the fact that Simon had always disliked him, smelt him out like a farm terrier sniffs a rat.

  “What time shall we attack?” asks Harry. A smile spreads across Max’s face. He looks across at the house, where lights have been turned on against the gathering dusk. They are acclimatised to the dimming light and so it only feels marginally darker.

  “Looks like they’re gathered in that end of the house to judge by the lights. Can’t see any outside lights but safe to assume that there are some and that they will be motion activated.”

  “I’ve been watching it get dark for the last week,” says Harry. “I know London’s different, but I reckon it will be fully dark in just over an hour’s time.”

  “Let’s set our watches for twenty minutes then,” says Max, yanking his woollen balaclava from his rucksack. He’s fully into the role now.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They run in short bursts, bodies bent forward to make themselves smaller, not because they’ve seen people do this in films – cops and the like – but because it feels entirely natural to do so. Max is holding the drugged meat in case they meet any dogs, and Harry has the cutters. They find a section of hedge that appears diseased and has died back to a brittle brown and start wriggling through, only to meet metal-link fencing.

  Harry snips the latticework of wire, aware that the fence was likely to be rigged up to an alarm system. But there’s no commotion as he completes his ragged circle and pushes all the loose wire away from them. They squeeze though and find themselves on bare earth. It’s a long stretch of border, lined with freshly pruned roses. It seems a good point to wait and see whether they’ve triggered any alarms.

  Max twists the binoculars from where they’ve become entangled around his neck, and scans the house. There appear to be no lights on at all on the ground floor, except from one window in the middle of the house, where a faint light glows. On the floor above nearly all the windows are blazing, and on the floor above that, three windows are illuminated. As Max watches, the curtains are drawn on one of these rooms.

  “Let’s make for that bush over there,” says Max pointing to what in fact is a patch of tall ornamental grass – ghostly in the twilight – close to the only illuminated downstairs window. The lawn is soft and springy and noiseless, unlike the clanking in their rucksacks. “We’d better leave these here and just take what we need,” says Max. What did they need? Harry couldn’t think clearly.

  Max is pointing to the downstairs window with the faint light emanating from it, and Harry suddenly realises he’s being ordered to go and take a look. In the same second it hits Harry that Max is a leader, the sort of man other men would follow into battle.

  Harry steps as lightly as he can across the gravel that surrounds the house and crouches beneath the window. Slowly he raises himself up, ready at any moment to flee. The light is coming from a television set. Sitting sideways on to him on a sofa is a man in chef’s whites watching a football match. Another man, also in chef’s whites, is standing doing something on a sideboard, with his back to him. He walks out of the room to Harry’s right.

  “Seems to be the servants’ quarters,” he reports to Max after crunching his way across the gravel.

  “Good,” says Max. “I wonder where they go out to have a cigarette… that would be our best bet of a way in. Let’s take the meat, a torch and the jemmy. Leave the rest here.”

  “Is that wise?” asks Harry.

  “Don’t question, just do it,” says Max, and Harry wants to laugh. Is leadership akin to madness? He takes his torch, a small pair of binoculars and the jemmy from the rucksack and pushes the bag into the middle of the grass. Max nods, and does the same with his rucksack. They creep around the edge of the lawn so as not to have to walk on the gravel, spotting a gateway that seems to lead into an inner courtyard, a suspicion confirmed when they make out a lighted doorway. Max looks through his binoculars.

  “That looks like a staff entrance… there’s a crate of Coca-Cola and a wheelie bin. Come on.”

  The courtyard is presumably where the carriages drew up in the olden days, thinks Max. He keeps to the shadows, close in to the wall, waving his hand to make Harry do the same. They are about
twenty paces from the lighted door when it swings open, and the chef they’d seen earlier watching football announces himself with a rasping smoker’s cough, and lights up a cigarette.

  Fortunately his full attention is taken with whatever he is looking at on his phone. Max and Harry remain stock still, Max looking around for any other signs of life. All the windows looking in on the courtyard are dark. Dragging deeply on his cigarette the chef finally finishes, flicking its lighted butt towards them. With that he turns and returns inside, without locking the door behind him. Max creeps on until he’s right beside the door, slowly turning himself so that he can reach the handle.

  He beckons Harry urgently with his hand, and Harry trots over. He takes another look, and then opens the door and they’re inside. They move away from the light and the sounds of football, and down a darkened corridor that leads to a narrow staircase, no doubt the servants’ staircase once. Harry becomes aware of his racing heartbeat and takes a deep breath.

  The stairs lead to a choice of corridor. Right, though the fire door, looks as if it might lead to staff bedrooms. The left hand corridor looks more promising. They reach another fire door and Max stops to peer through the small square window. He nods, and slowly pushes open the door, which leads out onto a landing, surrounding what looks like the main staircase. There are large paintings in dark frames along these walls, men on horseback and large naked women – the sort of stuff you find in museums, thinks Max.

  The carpet feels softer, plusher underfoot, and there’s a smell of expensive room scent of the kind that is soaked up and emitted along sticks. They have something similar in the office. Faintly they can hear music, pop music, and it seems to be coming from a room at the far end of the landing. Someone’s bedroom? Aafia’s? That would be too lucky. Max nods in that direction.

  Outside the door they stop and listen. It’s Billy Joel, Uptown Girl. Harry shrugs his shoulders. Too late. Someone is coming up the staircase, and fast. Max turns the door handle and they step into the room.

  “Good evening, gentlemen, and what can I get you?”

  At first Max thinks it’s the landlord from the pub standing behind the bar and somehow they’ve arrived back at the Golden Lion. And then he realises that the room has been mocked up to look like the Golden Lion, right down to the hunting prints and horse brasses. But the Golden Lion with a million pounds spent on it. The man who has addressed them from behind the polished mahogany bar is also fat and middle-aged, but the face is sleeker, less careworn. Ironic eyes stare out of it.

  “A pint each of best, perhaps?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The pair of them nod dumbly in unison.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see us,” says Max, managing to verbalise what he and Harry are thinking.

  The man nods towards a CCTV monitor in the corner of the room. A selection of views show the main doors as well as the courtyard and the lawns where they had been hiding. Infrared presumably.

  “Not that you didn’t announce yourself earlier,” says the man. “The pub has strict instructions to ring the boss if any strangers turn up asking about the house and who lives there. Stu rang ahead with your names – or the name on the credit card you paid with. The boss says he’s very happy to see you, Max.”

  Max laughs. “In that case I’ll have a pint of your best, landlord.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “I’ll have the same,” says Harry, just as the door swings open and the Arab guy with tight white jeans and thick, long greasy hair steps into the room – unsmiling just as he had been when they first saw him in Mayfair hotel lobby. The barman makes himself busy.

  “His excellency,” the man announces, and steps aside as the Saudi waddles into the room, in full Arab dress, and with a benign smile on his pudgy face.

  “Max. Max,” he says coming over to the bar and clapping Max on the shoulder. “And Harry, isn’t it?” Harry nods. “You have been served?”

  The barman comes over with the pints and places them on mats – the very same mats used in the Golden Lion, notices Harry. “Always in finest condition, the bitter,” says the Arab. “Never drink it myself.”

  “Your usual, your excellency?”

  The Saudi nods and beckons his guests towards a table, a dark wooden table with four chairs just like the one that they had eaten their lunch from.

  “Amazing,” says Max. “I bet the food’s better here than down the road though.”

  The barman places a chunky crystal tumbler in front of the Arab and fills it with twelve-year-old single malt Islay whisky.

  “Cheers,” says the Arab raising his tumbler.

  “Cheers,” says Max and Harry.

  “Now, what brings you here trespassing on my property? It’s not theft when you break into someone’s house, is it… it’s burglary. Have you found anything?”

  The greaseball in the white jeans steps forward and drops both their rucksacks on to the floor. Harry can see a silver candelabra poking out of the top of his.

  “Hey…” he says.

  “It would be too easy,” says the Saudi. “But tell me, what did you really come for?”

  Max sups his pint and looks the Arab in the eye. “We want our diamond back.”

  “Your diamond?”

  “Yes, the one your daughter stole from us in Geneva.”

  “My daughter?”

  The Saudi leans forward, his rheumy, dark brown eyes staring hard at Max.

  “If you mean Aafia – I disowned my daughter a long time ago.”

  “What about at the hotel?” asks Harry. “She didn’t look very disowned then.”

  The Saudi takes a dainty sip of his whisky, and gives a little shiver.

  “I was hoping to bring her back into the flock, but I fear that it’s… too… late.”

  “So you’re not involved in stealing our diamond… it was your daughter working on her own?” asks Max. Harry decides to leave the talking to Max.

  “Precisely.”

  “But you knew about it?”

  “Of course. The moment you reported your suspicions to the police. They did the courtesy of phoning the embassy in Geneva who phoned me and I told them exactly what I’m telling you. The theft – if such a thing actually occurred and it wasn’t just an insurance job – was nothing whatsoever to do with me.”

  “The insurance was null and void because we took it out of the back vault.”

  “That was foolish.”

  “You had requested that we bring it to the hotel. You e-mailed us.”

  “My e-mail was hacked. I requested nothing. If you don’t believe me ask the Swiss police, they could see that my e-mail had been hacked.”

  “By your own daughter…”

  “Or her associates.”

  Perhaps it was the long afternoon in the cold, or the effects of the alcohol, but Harry suddenly feels tired. He stands up.

  “I’ve had enough of this. Your daughter stole our diamond and we want it back.”

  “Sit down.” It’s the greaseball in the white jeans and he has a gun in his hand – a stubby but lethal-looking revolver. The barman is nowhere to be seen. Harry sits down.

  The Saudi leans in again. “There are things in this world you do not understand,” he says.

  “Enlighten us,” says Harry, softening the sarcasm in his voice as he watches the greaseball slip the revolver into his jacket pocket.

  “My daughter, Aafia, she has your diamond, no?”

  “That’s the last time we saw it,” says Harry.

  “She does have our diamond, your excellency,” says Max, emolliently. “She asked to show it to you and that’s the last we saw of it.”

  The Saudi waves his hand airily as if the theft of a £5 million gem was spoiling an evening in the pub with friends, and then looks at them thoughtfully. Max notices, not for the first time, how the whites of his eyes are yellowing. Is that a kidney problem? The Arab starts nodding to himself, as if he has made up his mind about something.

&n
bsp; “Aafia has always been trouble to me. She is very wilful, like her mother. And now…”

  Harry and Max lean in.

  “And now she has run off with a fucking useless playboy.” Max and Harry are both taken aback to hear this usually measured man swear. “Excuse my language, but this man is the worst type. A user. He doesn’t have any money so she supports him. She gives him everything, it hurts to see her waste her money, but more importantly, her youth on this man. She is of an age to make a good marriage, and he is… what?”

  “What is he?” asks Harry and the Saudi looks at him fully for the first time through those dark brown eyes afloat in those yellowing globes.

  “Who knows what he, or who he is. Not a Sunni anyway. He is a Libyan.” The Saudi almost spits the words out.

  Max and Harry frown at each other, not really understanding the nuances of what he is saying.

  “He is a poor Shia boy and he lives in Italy like he’s a billionaire, but really he’s just a thief. He steals from my daughter, and now, it would seem, she is stealing for him. But now…”

  The Saudi takes another dainty sip of whisky.

  “Now I have a little job for you.”

  * * *

  “And what if we refuse?” says Max. The Saudi has laid out the details and terms of his ‘little job’. They are to travel to Italy immediately, on his private jet, all expenses paid. They are to hire a suitable vehicle – arrangements to be made by his office – and to track his daughter down to her address on the outskirts of Rome. He didn’t have an exact address, but knows of a café that she frequents.

  At this point cowboy boots returns with a box folder, from which he took a pile of black and white photographs. They are of Aafia, several of her sitting at a table on the pavement terrace, sunglasses on top of her head, and speaking into a mobile phone. Others showed her entering and leaving the café, whose name was emblazoned across the glass frontage and sun awnings. Café Paolo.