The Concierge

by Gerard Gilbert

  Harry has got used to Fairbrother’s florid way of speaking. In normal life he wouldn’t have liked this morbidly obese solicitor – he was far too full of himself in more ways than one. But this wasn’t normal life, and Harry is so thankful for his entitled manner and deep knowledge of the law, that his gratitude is almost akin to love.

  Harry hasn’t been charged with anything yet, although Johns kept citing ‘reasonable grounds’, Fairbrother shaking his head and later telling Harry to ignore him. ‘Reasonable grounds’ were just a form of words in this case, to make sure that they could keep tabs on Harry.

  And so he has finally been granted police bail, although this proved slightly difficult because Harry didn’t have what Johns kept calling ‘a fixed abode’. Fairbrother had offered to put him up, but wasn’t attracted to the idea of listening to the lawyer’s flowery pomposity more than was strictly necessary in order to regain his freedom.

  Harry himself had ideas of living it up on the company credit card, a nice little discreet hotel in Mayfair within walking distance of the office. Johns wasn’t happy with that, of course, mainly because Harry had yet to book into one, but also on social grounds. He could see the old class resentment bristling in the detective.

  In the end, since he was planning to visit her anyway, Harry gave his mother’s address in Norfolk. He had to report anyway to Norwich police station, a week from today. And he must attend if Johns or any of the other investigating officers wished to question him further. Oh, and the safety-deposit key and associated documentation was still required as part of the ongoing investigation.

  Harry now steps outside for the first time in over three days. It’s sunny but with a cold wind whipping around the car park. Fairbrother indicates a blue BMW with tinted windows, against which is leaning a man in his mid-forties, fit-looking and built like a jockey. The man stubs out a cigarette as Harry and Fairbrother approach.

  “Jim this is Harry… Harry, Jim,” he says by way of introduction. The man nods, unsmiling, and pulls open a rear door for his two passengers.

  “Jim’s an ex-police driver,” says Fairbrother. “The best in the business. How he keeps a clean licence I’ll never know. Better put on your seat belt.”

  An unseen hand operates the gate to the car park, which slowly begins to slide open. Jim pulls the BMW around so that it’s revving like it’s on a racetrack starting grid. To the right, along the front of the police station, Harry can make out various vans with satellite dishes on their roofs, and a mass of people gathered around the front steps. As if in slow motion, the herd turns and starts rushing towards the BMW, but Jim accelerates off smoothly but speedily, taking the exit road in one.

  Jim keeps a steady eye on the rear-view mirror as they become locked into the traffic moving through the clogged streets of Crawley, but once out of the thirty-mph zone he steadily starts to put a speed on. Very soon they are on the slip road to the M23 and speeding not northwards towards London, as Harry had expected, but south towards Brighton.

  They move at a steady ninety-mph, Jim sticking to the slow lane where possible, overtaking if necessary and then cutting smartly back in. After maybe about fifteen or twenty minutes of this he indicates to come off at a service station called Pease Pottage.

  “Righty-ho,” says Fairbrother, who has been unusually quiet for the duration of the journey from Crawley, his plump hands gripping the seat edge. “We’re going to pull up beside a car and you are going to jump out and into that car, and it will take you to London.”

  “I see…” says Harry.

  “It’s a very comfortable car,” says Fairbrother as Jim navigates the service station car park. And there it is, the black on black Rolls Royce.

  “I think I may have already had a lift in that one,” says Harry.

  Fairbrother smiles but doesn’t say anything, as Jim pulls up beside the Rolls. He then jumps out smartly and opens the back door open for Harry.

  “I’ll see you in London later,” says Fairbrother before the door closes on him. Jim has now opened the back of the Rolls, and Harry climbs in, his nostrils assailed once more by the smell of leather. The Saudi is seated at the far end of the rear seat, beaming moistly from his jaundiced-looking eyes. Some sort of bodyguard is up front, while the driver is an oldish bloke in full uniform.

  “Harry… welcome,” says the Saudi, indicating the seat beside him.

  * * *

  Rachel flicks through the copy of Italian Vogue that she bought at the airport. Street style on the runways and fashion in the streets, the headline informs her, but she’s not really taking it in. In any case it’s an article she has read a thousand times in different guises.

  She likes Italian men: they’re flirty and not too serious about anything. That is until they do become serious when they become very serious. There are some pretty poor specimens in this Rome police station, although there’s one leaning over a desk, tidy bum sticking out, who keeps giving her the eye. So shameless. Quite cute.

  She deliberately took a different flight to Tash and Max’s dad, only meeting up with them in the offices of the lawyer recommended by the British consul. Massimo something or other. Massimo sounds like massive, she thinks, which is ironic because the lawyer turned out to be a tiny, birdlike man, bustling with nervous energy.

  Rachel had picked up a smattering of Italian from her countless trips to Milan, and acted as unofficial interpreter any time that Massimo’s English failed him, which was quite often. Basically, he said, the police and the public prosecutor believed Max’s story, and that he was innocent of planning the terrorist attack, and had become a victim himself when coerced into driving the truck. And they believed he was ignorant of the fact that the truck contained diluted sarin. But still, this was a highly serious and very public case, so they must be extremely cautious.

  Max was going in front of a judge later that afternoon, during which hearing the public prosecutor will recommend that the charges against him be dropped. If the judge agrees then Max will be freed.

  “And if not?” Tash had asked. “Will he get bail?”

  “There is no such thing as bail under Italian law,” the lawyer replied. “If the prosecutor believes that the accused might flee then he can recommend what is called pre-trial detention. But since the prosecutor is of the opinion that Max is innocent then this won’t be the case here.

  “However the prosecutor is under an obligation to inform the victims of any crime if he is going to recommend that the case be dropped, and the victims can then file an objection. But since, in this case, it is unclear who the victims are, then I don’t see this being a problem.

  “Ideally the police would like to interview the Saudi woman, Aafia was her name, but she had disappeared – her diplomatic immunity making any likelihood of immediate detention highly unlikely at present. For you see there is one area where Max’s involvement does not appear so straightforward and that is the initial journey from Italy to Switzerland. The evidence suggests the possibility that Aafia was taken against her will… under duress. Kidnap, in a word.”

  The policeman leaning on the desk straightens up and now gives Rachel the full stare. She sticks her tongue out and disappears smartly beneath the pages of her magazine. Tash and her father, who are sitting across from her like perfect strangers, are staring into space.

  Rachel had never got on very well – or even a little bit well – with Tash. They were so different. Tash was one of those big-boned, home-counties boarding school girls that Rachel had met so many of, destined to turn into their mothers, keeping home at an old rectory along with a pair of large dogs and a quietly expanding white wine habit. She had Max’s mouth and eyes and forehead, which was a bit weird for Rachel – her husband’s female doppelganger.

  Tash in turn thought that Rachel was a spoilt little daddy’s girl. Only half right, thinks Rachel, because she was a spoilt little mummy and daddy’s girl, an only child in a suffocating family triangle in which all attention, for good and bad, had been foc
used on her. The three of them in a huge house right by the park in Golders Green – so many rooms, so few of them lived in.

  She had managed to get herself expelled from the Jewish Free School by the simple expedient of bunking off lessons, and sitting in cafes in Harrow smoking cigarettes and chatting up waiters. Then her parents tried boarding schools, places in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire full of girls just like Tash. She must have got through one of those a year, until, aged seventeen, her father had wisely given up. She had been given a small allowance – enough to rent a room in a house – and told to get on with her life. The best thing her parents ever did.

  It had been the run-up to Christmas and Debenhams on Oxford Street were hiring extra sales staff. Shunted from department to department – handbags to kitchenware, electrical to toys – she soon found her spiritual home in ladies’ fashion. Her enthusiasm and natural good taste were soon spotted and after Christmas she had been taken on full time.

  By the time she was twenty-five and had met and married Max, she had been head-hunted twice by rival Oxford Street department stores, and by the age of thirty she was the chief buyer for a small chain of high-end women’s fashion stores based in Bond Street. Amazingly, she managed all that while continuing with the delinquent lifestyle that had got her kicked out of three boarding schools. Max used to say that she had an iron constitution.

  Tash looks over at her now, gives a warm little smile that doesn’t make the journey from her lips to her eyes, and returns to staring into space. Max’s father looks irritably at his watch.

  At least Max’s father isn’t wearing that bloody old cricket jumper. In fact he looked quite dapper in a grey suit and club tie. Rachel had been down to the family home in Hampshire quite often in the first two years of their marriage, but she steadily came to loathe the place. All that forced surface jollity when she could tell they were all cracking up. Nicky’s ghost was everywhere, and no matter how much they drank or how many tennis parties they threw, he just kept on haunting them.

  They should have seen a therapist, Rachel always thought. She loves going to see therapists; it’s great fun and well worth the money, just talking about yourself for fifty minutes. There was one therapist, though, who she had to stop seeing. It was too disturbing what he said about her sleeping around.

  Rachel thought about what he had said about her promiscuity – except he didn’t call it that – when she and Jess recently went shopping in Dubai. There she was, being pumped in bed by a French yacht skipper she’d met in the hotel bar, and all she could think of was her therapist.

  She tried to get Max to see a therapist, but he did the typical public school male thing and claimed it was self-indulgent. Actually he became quite angry with her, which was unusual. God, he’s going to need some serious therapy after this.

  A door opens and their lawyer, Massimo, bustles over to them.

  “We can see him now,” he says. “Do you want to go in together?”

  They look at each other, silently working out who has precedence – father, sister or wife.

  “You two go first,” says Rachel.

  “Are you sure?” says Max’s father.

  Yes, she thinks. She hasn’t worked out what she is going to say to him yet.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  The Saudi raises his bejewelled hand and the engine purrs into life, the Rolls gliding past a gawping family, their arms piled with McDonalds drinks cartons and bags.

  Harry is fighting with a mixture of emotions. There’s an anger that has been steadily growing since his near execution in Rome and Verbier; fear of the Saudi’s power, especially strong as he now found himself ensconced with him in his car, and there’s hope – hope that he might be grateful for rescuing his daughter. Very grateful.

  Harry’s anger at least allows him to ditch the bowing-and-scraping etiquette. He won’t be calling this podgy man ‘your excellency’, or whatever form of address Max had used all those weeks ago in Mayfair.

  The Saudi is looking at him through his watery brown eyes, and Harry can’t but notice again how yellow are the whites of his eyes. Is he ill?

  “Are you angry with me?” he asks Harry.

  “Well, yes,” says Harry, taken off guard. “I… Max and I were nearly killed.”

  “Yes, and I am sorry. But I want to thank you for bringing my daughter back.”

  “Back where? Is Aafia in England?”

  “Oh, no,” says the Saudi, swatting the suggestion away with a wave of his hand, as if it was annoying insect. “She’s safely back in the kingdom now, where she will remain.”

  “Saudi Arabia?”

  “Saudi, yes… Saudi.”

  Harry thinks of what Aafia had said to him about life in Saudi Arabia, and how she hated its attitude towards women. “At least she’s safe,” he says.

  “Yes, thank God. And so is Max,” says the Saudi. “He’s been released by the Italian police, you know?”

  “No, I didn’t know,” says Harry.

  “He will have to return to help with the investigation,” “but these things take months and even years in Italy…”

  “Like Amanda Knox,” says Harry.

  “I don’t know,” says the Saudi.

  “Is Max back in England?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” says the Saudi. “He’s in Geneva, buying me a pretty diamond.”

  “A diamond?” blurts out Harry.

  “Not that one… that one remains under lock and key for the moment, so I understand. But now, let’s talk about you.”

  “Go on…”

  But the Saudi pauses, seemingly absorbed in the motorway verge.

  “You remember the Mayfair hotel where we first met?” he asks at length. “Well, there’s a nice suite reserved in your name. It’s booked for the next month, so use it as you please. There’s also fifty thousand pounds in your personal bank account. We still have the details on file.”

  “O…kay,” says Harry, wondering what file this is. Something to do with their former business transactions perhaps. The man continues looking out of his side window as he speaks.

  “That is just a small retainer,” he says. “There will be two-and-half million in your account as soon as you do what I’m about to ask, and we have a satisfactory outcome.”

  Harry feels suddenly light-headed and realises he hasn’t eaten since the toast and cereal early this morning.

  “Two and a half million pounds,” he says. “Why that sum?”

  “For your share in the diamond.”

  “But I’ve already brought your daughter back safely… that was what we agreed…”

  “You kidnapped my daughter some might argue,” says the Saudi, still looking at the countryside passing alongside the M23. A plane passes low overhead – an Easyjet plane in its orange and white livery, Harry notices. They pass a sign for Gatwick. How long ago since he’d made that landing in just such a plane?

  “You’re threatening me?” says Harry. “After all we did for you?”

  “Carrot and stick, Harry… carrot and stick. Wouldn’t you like to hear some more about the carrot?” The Saudi is looking at him now. “Okay,” he continues. “We’re driving now to Claridge’s hotel. Waiting in a room there is your friend Mary…”

  “Mary?” Harry is beginning to feel seriously light-headed now.

  “Mary, your friend the journalist, along with a photographer. You are about to give her the exclusive of a lifetime.”

  “How do you know about Mary?” asks Harry.

  “Of course,” smiles the Saudi, tapping on the glass partition. It slides open and a newspaper is handed back to him. “Mary Erskine has been making quite a name for herself in the past few days,” he says, handing it to Harry.

  The front-page story is marked as an exclusive, with Mary’s picture byline attached. The story is about how both Max and Harry are to be released without charge. “We’ve been keeping her well informed,” says the Saudi.

  “The story you have to tell is quite
simple and only omits two facts: The stolen diamond and the kidnapping. Let’s call it mutually assured destruction – like in the good old Cold War. You mention a stolen diamond and Aafia starts claiming she was kidnapped at gunpoint. Oh, by the way, Max is fully onside with all this.”

  I bet he is, thinks Harry. It’s the sort of deal Max understands. “What do you want me to tell Mary?” he says.

  “It’s simple really. You did some services for a rich Saudi– the press are all calling it ‘concierge service’ now, like you worked in a hotel or something – and this Saudi, a sick old man, asked for you to find his daughter. He wanted to reconcile himself with her before he died.”

  He is impassive as he says this, but Harry wonders whether he is trying to tell him something.

  “It immediately makes me the good guy,” says the Saudi with a smile. “A terminally ill father wants to make up with his estranged daughter. Anyway, all the old man has is a photograph taken outside a cafe somewhere in Rome. A private detective he hired took it. Would Max and Harry do him this favour and try and persuade the daughter to come and see her dying papa?”

  Harry still can’t decide whether he is hinting at a truth, or being utterly cynical. He doesn’t look well.

  “Anyway, what you stumbled on in Rome was in fact a terrorist cell. My daughter, Aafia, who, by the way, has a proud record in campaigning for the rights of Muslim women…”

  That’s it, thinks Harry. The man is utterly cynical.

  “She has infiltrated this cell with the aim of exposing it before it can do any damage. She has used her contacts in the secret service to get an undercover minder to join her – the man who was regrettably shot dead in Rome when you made your escape.

  “And it was my Aafia who discovered the plot to spray sarin gas in St Peter’s Square on Easter morning – a diabolical outrage that would have pitted Christian against Muslim for the next 300 years.”

  “I don’t know what happened… what actually happened to stop the attack?” asks Harry.