Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  As soon as Eva had sent the message to Sophie she immediately felt better. Just taking some action – any action – was enough to shift that feeling of not being in control. She had taken care to compose a message that gave nothing away but would (hopefully) not cause Sophie to feel threatened. Once she had pressed ‘send’ Eva shut her laptop. This time, she didn’t hide it but left it resting on top of the bed. Carefully, she pulled out one of her own long, dark hairs and wrapped it over the front opening of the laptop. She tucked one end under the laptop between the machine and the bed and placed a book on top of the laptop with the hair underneath it so that it was stretched over the opening. The hair was completely invisible against the black laptop case and she would know immediately when she returned if it had been opened, even if the book was replaced on top. Checking the hair was still in place as she moved, Eva stood and walked over to the wardrobe. She selected a light-coloured blouse with a small round collar and a cheerful blue anchor print, put it on and buttoned it right to the neck, before tucking it into a pair of black jeans. The weather outside seemed bright, the sky blue, so she opted for a warm woollen military-style coat with bright gold buttons, rather than something more waterproof. Once she was ready to leave, Eva did one last sweep of the room, straightening corners and shutting doors. Then she picked up three of the papers she had selected from the ‘Sophie’ pile and shoved them into her bag before heading out of the door.

  Several streets over from her hotel Eva stopped for breakfast at one of the many tiny cafés in the area. From the outside these establishments seemed to be the French equivalent of a greasy spoon – watery coffee and tasteless food – but she was always pleasantly surprised to find that inside she could consume hypertension-strong, sweet coffee and the butteriest, flakiest of croissants for just small change. As she sat down at a small metal table, she felt the waistband of her jeans press slightly into the slight curve of her stomach and wondered whether she should lay off the croissants for a while, before concluding that now wasn’t the time for dieting. As she drank her coffee in slow, short sips, Eva looked at the documents she had brought with her. Next to all the information that ran along the bottom displaying Sophie’s name and the dates and times that she had printed the documents was the name of the company that Sophie presumably worked for – Bioavancement S.a.r.l. Eva had spent at least an hour searching the internet but had found no trace of this mysterious organisation. There was no company website, no hits on business networking pages, no news stories, no directories recording its address. Eva had searched UK Companies House website but Bioavancement S.a.r.l. had no UK subsidiary and she didn’t know the French equivalent of Companies House. This in itself was puzzling to her. Everyone used the internet now – it was the primary source of marketing for many businesses and almost impossible for any company to escape even a mention of its name on a website or chatroom posted there by someone else. The only organisations that didn’t have a public web face were those that didn’t want the public to know they existed.

  However, whilst the internet had proved to be barren ground for information on Bioavancement S.a.r.l., the papers in the sports bag had not and she had discovered that one of the printed-out Google maps showed a Paris location with the word ‘Bioavancement S.a.r.l.’ scrawled next to it in black pen. The writing was Jackson’s, without a doubt, and his unintelligible scrawl made it virtually illegible to anyone other than another person with an identical style of terrible handwriting. Once she had finished her breakfast, Eva packed the papers away deep in her bag, other than the map, which she stowed in the pocket of her jeans. She asked for a glass of water, which she finished in one go, and then she paid her bill and left. Outside, the sky was still a brilliant blue and the streets were quietening down as the post-rush-hour buzz began to fade away. Eva took her phone from her pocket and opened the maps app in which she had managed to find the Bioavancement S.a.r.l. address, thanks to a Métro stop and road names on the paper copy. The app showed that she was less than a mile away, just north of the location. She memorised the next three turnings she would have to take, pocketed the map and then set off south.

  When Wiraj had heard nothing from the boys he had recruited to rob the young English woman of her phone, he had taken Tahir, Muhammad and Nijam and gone to look for them. The estate where the children hung around was across the road from the flat where they knew the dead English man had lived. When the four men went back there after a wintry darkness fell that afternoon, there was a police cordon around the flat where the execution had been carried out. Wiraj was acutely aware that he was breaking every rule in the book by coming back here. They could be identified at any minute by a neighbour or the crazy old man they had passed at the front door, but Wiraj had to find that phone. He hoped that under the cover of darkness, with their hoods and low-slung jeans making them look like all the other shadows moving stealthily around the dark housing estates, he and the others would not be identified. The four men took a side road away from the cordoned-off area and traversed the estate opposite looking for the kids. At the back of a long-abandoned children’s playground, they saw the shadows of a group of five people smoking and taking long gasps of air from black plastic sacks. The men approached the group silently, so that they all jumped when Wiraj stepped out of the darkness and spoke.

  ‘You were supposed to contact me.’

  The tallest boy turned in his seat on the asphalt and looked up at him steadily, meeting his gaze with darkly ringed eyes. ‘There was no point.’

  ‘I paid you to get me the phone.’

  ‘We did get it.’

  ‘I want it.’

  ‘We don’t have it any more.’

  Wiraj took a step forward. ‘Who did you sell it to?’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  The boy rose to his feet. He was as tall as Wiraj, although skinnier and not as broad.

  ‘I told you, we don’t have it,’ he said, aggression leaking into his voice.

  ‘Then give me my money back.’

  ‘No.’ Silence fell between the two.

  Wiraj regarded his opponents. These were not children, he thought steadily, forcing himself not to overreact. They had the angry, unpredictable air of damaged adults. Before he could complete his train of thought he realised that the boy opposite him was now holding a knife. It had a curved, serrated blade that caught the light as he moved it subtly from hand to hand. He looked at the boy who met his gaze blankly, continuing to move the knife just below Wiraj’s eyeline. The two stood opposite each other; nobody moved. Neither party could anticipate the reaction of the other; both were on the defensive. After several minutes, there was a slight movement behind Wiraj and, as he turned, he saw that a gun had been drawn by one of the other kids, a small handgun that looked like a very old model Glock. The balance of power had shifted.

  Wiraj felt Muhammad tense up behind him. The enormous rhino of a man could probably rip these children in two with his bare hands – unless they shot him first. He willed him to stay calm. They needed to get information. The boy in front of him took a step towards Wiraj. There was a narcotic glaze over his eyes. ‘We don’t have your phone.’

  ‘Then give me back my money.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ The kid swiped the knife at Wiraj, who recognised it as a feint and stayed absolutely still.

  ‘Give me my money back or give me the phone.’ He repeated.

  Suddenly the boy began to laugh and all the others joined in, creating a high-pitched, maniacal sound like a pack of hyenas. In the almost complete darkness, with the only light from a small fire on the ground where they were burning newspapers, it was an eerie scene. The boy with the gun moved so that he was standing next to Tahir and put the gun up against his right temple, apparently without any fear of reprisal. Tahir looked at Wiraj, who looked away. Once he had finished laughing, the first boy leaned in to Wiraj so that their faces were only a hand-breadth apart, the knife flashing in his hands onl
y inches away from Wiraj’s waist. He paused before he spoke, drawing out the tension of the situation.

  ‘You have an enemy, my friend.’ Drops of spittle flecked Wiraj’s face.

  ‘And he’s way ahead of you.’ He smiled a yellow-toothed, leering smile.

  ‘He came and took that phone; he knew exactly what he wanted. We told him all about you.’ He smiled.

  ‘You’re next,’ he said, lifting two fingers of his free hand into the air to simulate the firing of a gun. As he did so Wiraj, with a skill and speed acquired from spending his life defending himself on the streets and slums of Khartoum, snatched the fingers wrapped around the knife and disembowelled the boy by his own hand. He moved quickly out of the way as the body fell forward, a stunned look on the boy’s face as he briefly saw his entrails falling through his tracksuit in front of him to the floor. A split second later, Tahir brought a fist up into the face of the boy holding a gun and heard the satisfying crunch of a broken nose. The boy’s gun hand flew up in reaction and Tahir punched him hard in the ribs and swiftly disarmed him before pushing him to the ground and stamping down hard on his head with the heavy sole of his thick boots. The boy didn’t move. The other three boys recovered quickly and began to run, disappearing like wraiths into the shadows without a sound. Wiraj held his hand up to stop any pursuit. He pulled a small case from the inside of his coat and flicked it open, letting the shell drop to the floor as he withdrew a small syringe from inside. Then, calmly, he walked back over to the prone child that Tahir had felled and injected him in the thigh.

  TEN

  IN AN AREA IN THE FAR WEST OF LONDON, a new development had been fascinating the locals. The temporary structure had appeared on the site of a disused waterworks, a series of enormous plastic tents the size of several football pitches, underneath which there seemed to be some kind of construction taking place. Local residents had noticed lights and activity over three nights and had seen JCB diggers and workmen arriving during the day. There was a buzz about whether this was lottery money – a new project for the local community. Close to the muddy banks of the Thames in a forgotten area of old waterworks and abandoned land, they desperately needed some kind of regeneration. Those who thought about it realised they hadn’t seen any planning permission notices, but it had only been three days and they assumed there would be an article in the paper by the weekend. The lorries that had been making deliveries were unmarked, other than a small acorn image on the back door, and the security around the site was tight. The residents had busy lives; three days went by in a blur of offices, school runs and evening meals. No one did anything.

  Inside one of the tents, engineer Rob Gorben surveyed the results of the last three nights’ work. Six large raceway ponds, so named because of their similarity to a racetrack, were set out before him. Each one was 1000 metres square, 35 centimetres deep, lined with cement and fitted with a motorised paddle at one end. The raceways were the most typical design for uncovered algae growing and he and his team had managed to set these six up in just three days, which was a record even for his efficient group. It had helped that they were starting on the site of an old waterworks but they had still had to demolish much of the existing structure and start again. They had been working through the night through the whole 72 hours and they had hit their incredibly tight schedule bang on time, which meant they’d be in for a sizeable bonus. All that was left now was to fill the ponds and implant the algae. Gorben shut down everything other than the security lights and went home to his family.

  Later that evening, Eva returned to her hotel, none the wiser about the identity of Bioavancement S.a.r.l., or what the company’s business was. She had easily located the building after just a half an hour’s walk, only to find it as impenetrable as Fort Knox. There was a small, rectangular metal plate marking the spot as belonging to Bioavancement S.a.r.l. but the building appeared to be empty as no lights showed at any of the windows, and not a single person had gone near the building for at least an hour. Eva had taken up a position in a café across the street, determined to watch the comings and goings, but no one had come and no one had gone. The office was not located on a particularly busy street but nevertheless there were people going in and out of the apartment block on one side of the Bioavancement S.a.r.l. office, and the florist’s shop on the other. After she had consumed three strong coffees, she had decided to go over and try to get into the building herself on some pretext or other, but the reception bell had gone unanswered and the door – when she tried it – was locked. At this point, Eva had become frustrated and she had turned back towards the hotel. That was when she had spotted Leon.

  At first she wasn’t sure that it was definitely him, but there was something about the well-built man in the dark baseball cap that reminded her of that moment she had seen Leon for the first time silhouetted against the light from the door in his flat. Over the past few days Eva had done her best to forget about the violence of that incident. Whilst she couldn’t dismiss Leon from her mind and had felt almost constantly on edge, she had been so caught up in the documents in the sports bag that she had managed successfully to sideline the shooting. Rather than dwell on the startling events of that night she had chosen to push it to one side and look instead for positive steps forward. Deep down, she knew that if she thought about it too much she would most probably lose her nerve with this whole situation. Right now, what had happened that night – someone getting shot – had seemed almost like a dream. In fact, if it wasn’t for the enormous bruise on her leg where he had clipped her with the car then she might even have been able to write it off as just that. But here he was again. On foot this time, but very definitely there.

  As Eva made her way back to the hotel she spotted him twice, once in the curved surface of a parking mirror and then again in the reflection of the glass doors as she entered her hotel. She considered stopping and speaking to him. That he felt the need to shadow her incognito when he could just call her was faintly ridiculous, but the fact that he was still doing it made her think twice.

  There had been someone outside Leon’s block of flats who had attacked her. Had Leon set that up? Had that been a genuine attack? She still didn’t know. But for some reason she found Leon’s shadowing comforting rather than threatening and so – despite her better judgement – she just let him do it.

  ‘We must get that fucking phone.’

  ‘Wiraj we have no idea where it is.’ Nijam was almost pleading with his brother as they sat once again in their shabby hotel room, the bare electric light bulb flickering weakly overhead.

  ‘We are not psychic, I don’t understand how you expect us to find it, Wiraj.’

  ‘I don’t care!’, came the roared reply.

  There was silence for several seconds and each man in the room found something on his hands, or a spot on the floor, to occupy him. None of them dared to look at Wiraj. The incident with the estate kids had been a disaster and Wiraj was ashamed that he had so quickly lost control and reacted with violence. They were supposed to leave no trace and yet they had two more deaths on their hands now, as well as witnesses. Whilst he seriously doubted that those kids ever went near the police, they could still identify Wiraj and his crew to other interested parties who might want to seek some kind of retribution for the deaths in the community. Suddenly, Wiraj’s own mobile phone buzzed to life with the only number it contained, ‘Joseph Smith’. He jumped violently and then ended the call. He could not speak to Smith now. He needed time to think. As he put the phone back on the table he saw the look on his brother’s face as he noticed the name of the caller whose call had been so rudely ended. Nijam was afraid. That enormous killer of a man was afraid. They were in too deep now.

  ‘Kill her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The British woman. I have had enough. We cannot waste any further time. Kill her and search her room for the phone, or for any other trace of those messages.’

  ‘Wiraj is there no… ’

  ‘Nijam,’
Wiraj spoke wearily. The flat tone of his voice surprised his brother. ‘We have no other choice. If you want to live, we have no other choice.’

  ‘This must surely be a gang execution, sir.’ Gagnere looked almost triumphant as they stood above the bodies of two teenage boys, both known to Legrand, one of whom had been savagely stabbed.

  Legrand stared down at the carnage on the tarmac, the abandoned bags of solvents, the glassy eyes of the dead child at his feet. He briefly wondered what the point of a life was that was so wasted like this. He felt Gagnere staring at him and looked up.

  ‘I’m still not convinced. There’s no consistency here – one stabbed and the other, what, suffocated like the English man? Beaten to death?’

  Gagnere frowned. ‘But these kids are gang kids. You know that sir, we’ve dealt with them before.’

  ‘I know. Does that mean they cannot be victims themselves?’

  Gagnere was silent, reprimanded. Around the two men, the Parisian police force was moving silently, setting up spotlights, donning forensic suits, preparing to work through the night in an area that most of them would not have wanted to be in during daylight hours.

  ‘It just doesn’t feel right, Gagnere. This is not the way these gangs normally carry out their executions. There is no mutilating mark, there is no motivation. These estates have been quiet for two months now. Why should a killing like this suddenly happen?’

  ‘I don’t know sir.’

  ‘Have we managed to corral any witnesses?’

  Gagnere shook his head.

  ‘No, of course we haven’t,’ said Legrand wearily. ‘No-one around here sees anything.’

  ELEVEN

  JOHN MANSFIELD WAS NOT A MAN who liked to be kept waiting. He particularly did not like to be kept waiting when he had gone out of his way to attend a meeting that was taking place in the dead of night – a fact that would create intense suspicion if it made it into the papers – and that could effectively end his entire political career if his presence there was made public. He looked around the mahogany-lined room at the other participants also waiting for the Bioavancement S.a.r.l. CEO to arrive. Thankfully, these were members of some of the most media-shy organisations in the world, or he would never have agreed to be physically present for the meeting, no matter how important the CEO thought it was. Around the room everyone was waiting, constantly checking Rolex or Cartier time-pieces, watching as the solid gold hands made their inevitable progress towards the hour after the meeting was supposed to have started. Finally, a small door at the back of the room opened and the CEO emerged, padding across the dark fields of the Persian Tabriz rug-lined floor to a red, stuffed leather chair. He gazed around the now silent room, coolly taking in every feature of the nine faces gathered around the table. Between them they represented three of the biggest and richest pharmaceutical conglomerates on the planet. And their lawyers.