Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel)

by Giles O'Bryen

  ‘You had me abducted and tortured. And when you set your dogs on me in Smara, it wasn’t to take me back to the compound.’

  ‘It was. But it is hard to find reliable staff in that infested place.’

  ‘I’d like to kill him, too,’ said James to Nat. ‘With your permission.’

  Nat leaned against his shoulder. ‘Don’t. I don’t want you to.’ She felt nothing for Grey Tony, and not much for Zender any more. But she was terribly afraid for James.

  ‘You mustn’t fall out on my account,’ said Zender, affecting the manner of a thoroughly genial fellow waiting for his after-dinner coffee to be served.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Nat.

  ‘I would be happy to assist,’ said Zender. ‘The border officials know how to make themselves awkward, but there are routes that offer a discreet and even passably comfortable exit.’

  ‘Nat doesn’t want you shot but I do. Stand up, take your jacket off and throw it over here.’

  Zender did so, with an exaggerated sigh.

  ‘Turn round. Put your hands against the wall.’

  Men of Zender’s bulk were usually very strong and James wasn’t going to take any chances. He searched him at arm’s length, taking his time and keeping the gun out of the way. He took Zender’s keys and cellphone. Nat found the phone he had taken from her earlier in the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Stand here, in the middle of the room,’ James said. ‘Where is Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah? I’m not at all sure I know—’

  James crouched, braced himself, and rammed the heel of his foot into the side of Zender’s knee. The huge man gave a roar of pain as the joint buckled inwards.

  ‘One for Nikolai.’

  Zender succeeded in keeping himself upright for a few seconds, then gave up and crashed to the floor. He tried to heave himself into a sitting position, but managed only to raise himself on one elbow.

  ‘A heinous act of cruelty on a defenceless man,’ he panted. ‘I should have expected it. Your liking for violence is well known.’

  ‘Sarah,’ said James, pointing the MAB at Zender’s other knee.

  ‘Etienne is taking care of her – or rather, his wife is. A most gentle creature.’ He grunted and, looking reproachfully at James, covered his knee with a large hand.

  James led Nat out into the hall and held her in his arms for as long as he dared.

  ‘Will you search the house for phones and computers – any way he can call for help? I want to isolate him here while we get away from Algiers.’

  ‘OK,’ said Nat. She was reluctant to leave his side. ‘I said not to kill him, remember?’

  James went back into the salon. The kick had done its job – the stricken arms dealer hadn’t moved an inch.

  ‘What are you doing, Palatine?’ he asked querulously from the floor.

  James pulled the rose-coloured sofa onto its back and knocked over the side table next to Zender’s chair. Zender probably numbered some of his most obligated friends among the Algiers police, and James had no intention of calling them. But it made sense, anyway, to arrange the place so that it looked as if Zender and Tony Schliemann had fought and the NSA man had ended up dead. He checked the room again: no landline, the windows shuttered and padlocked. He found a clasp knife among the things Nat had emptied onto the desk and pocketed it. He searched the side drawers of the desk and found another set of keys, one of which locked the salon door. Then he looked over at the corpse of Grey Tony and realised there’d be a phone in one of his pockets. He found it and brandished it at Zender.

  ‘Almost forgot.’

  Zender scowled horribly. Nat called from the hallway.

  ‘I found this in his bedroom.’

  She showed James an ornate wooden box that contained half a dozen sets of keys, carefully labelled: Algiers, Oran, Marrakech, Geneva. . .

  ‘There’s a computer in that room there.’

  She pointed to a door to the left of the main entrance – a bare office with dirty white walls and steel shelves stacked with trade journals and boxes of accounts. James went under the desk, disabled the network card and cut the phone line.

  ‘D’you still have the Remington?’

  ‘Upstairs, in the cupboard where I found the keys.’

  ‘Clean?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We need to wipe our prints off everything before we go.’

  They went over the house together. Nat collected her bag and the gentian blue dress, then waited in the hall while James went back to the salon. He emptied the remaining bullets from the MAB, cleaned it off and dropped it on the floor by Zender’s elbow.

  ‘Wouldn’t want you to shoot yourself,’ he said.

  The great arms dealer didn’t reply. He had folded himself into the foetal position, one hand still laid protectively over his knee, the other held up to his mouth. James inspected him for a moment, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. He left the salon, locking the door behind him.

  ‘Zender is sucking his thumb.’

  ‘He does that sometimes,’ said Nat. ‘Creepy, isn’t it.’

  ‘No kidding. Do you think he’ll set the police on us?’

  ‘He spends a fortune keeping them out of his life – this doesn’t look like a great moment to invite them in.’

  Nat followed James into the kitchen, then down into a large cellar. By the far wall was a set of wooden steps leading up to a hatch.

  ‘Is this how you got in?’ asked Nat.

  ‘The cook and his wife use it. They keep a key tucked into a crack in the wall.’

  He climbed the steps and reached down to help her. Nat looked up and saw his head silhouetted against a sky bright with stars. She took his hand and felt herself lifted up. It was lovely that he was thinking of her, that he could make her feel so agile and light. She reached for his waist and pulled him close so they could kiss.

  Zender’s Citroën DS stood in front of them. Someone had cleaned it up and secured the damaged boot lid with a length of nylon cord. James padlocked the hatch, then opened the passenger door and bowed.

  ‘Mam’selle?’

  ‘Enchantée. Won’t someone notice it’s missing?’

  ‘I just think we have to drive out of here in a black Citroën DS.’

  ‘Hey, you’re learning.’

  She tucked herself into the capacious leather seat. He shut the door and went round to the driver’s side, pulled the ignition key from behind the sun visor.

  ‘How did you find that? Oh, never mind. Where now?’

  ‘Etienne’s. We have unfinished business.’

  They drove down the hill into town and parked round the corner from the apartment block where Etienne lived.

  ‘Will you wait here, Nat? Don’t come after me, even if. . . Please?’

  She didn’t want him to go, knew he would anyway.

  James went to the door of Etienne’s building. It opened onto a concrete stairwell that stank of urine. It was airless and almost dark, lit only by the feeble orange glow from a bulkhead light above the door. He climbed to the first floor and checked the apartment numbers: 11, 12. Two on each floor. Number 41 would be on the fourth floor, at the top. He carried on up. Each floor seemed narrower and more foetid than the last. On the fourth floor, the dim bulkhead lamp had been replaced with a naked fluorescent bulb that gave off a stark grey light. Number 41 was straight ahead. There were two extra locks on the door, and a spyhole. He stood aside so he couldn’t be seen. A bicycle was propped up outside 42, no front wheel and the chain lying broken on the floor. He picked up the chain and coiled it into his pocket.

  To his left was a flight of steps that must lead to the roof. He tried the door at the top, found it unlocked, and stepped out onto a square of rumpled bitumen no more than twenty feet across, surrounded by a drainage gully and a low parapet. In the far corner was a huge, rust-streaked water tank. He padded softly over to it – Etienne’s flat was directly below. He tapped the tank at several places – it was nea
rly full. There was a thick iron pipe at the base, tightly wrapped in a tarred rag with a jubilee clip holding it in place. He worked the clip aside and unravelled the sticky rag. You could see why it was needed: the pipe was intact, but the area round the joint was almost rusted through.

  The gully carried rainwater out to a drainage spout overhanging the street. James took off his jacket and blocked it, then found a ridge of cracked bitumen that he thought would be directly above Etienne’s front room. He unfolded the clasp knife and sliced through the ridge, exposing the chipboard below. The bitumen was soft from the heat of the day and yielded easily. Working as quietly as he could, he scooped out an inch-wide hole in the chipboard. That should do it. He went back to the water tank, put his feet either side of the pipe and wrapped both hands round it, close to the joint. He bent his knees, braced, pulled the pipe upwards with all his strength.

  The tank tipped back and he heard water swilling around inside. Again. Water dribbled over his fingers. Once more. The dribble became a stream and he braced for a final heave. That did it. A jagged disc of rusty steel ripped clear and water gushed out. He watched it course into the gully, slop against his folded jacket and spread out across the roof. The flood found its way to the slit he’d cut in the bitumen and started to drain slowly down the hole into the ceiling below.

  He stood by the door to the stairwell and wrapped one end of the bicycle chain twice around his fist. A woman screamed. A thump, then a shout – a man’s voice, tight and irritable. The man went on hectoring for a moment then, above the sound of gurgling water, came the scrape-click of a door being unlocked. Footsteps on the landing.

  James heard a hollow pop and the bar of light beneath the stairwell door went out. Another scream from the woman.

  ‘Tais-toi, salope!’

  He was coming up the steps, shoes crunching on the gritty concrete. James crouched. The door banged open.

  James swung the chain through a full arc and the steel links lashed the jaw of the man stepping out onto the roof, the tail end snaking round the back of his skull. The man gasped and stumbled forward, knees splashing into the water. Etienne. James moved up behind him and brought the chain down again. It flailed over the top of his head and whipped into his face. James reached down to haul him up, but Etienne wasn’t done. He rolled, a knife glinting in his hand, slashing at James’s outstretched arm. James drew back sharply, but the roof was slippery now and he lost his footing. Etienne pounced, the knife darting for James’s throat. James threw his hand out and the point of the knife snagged in a link of the chain. The blade slewed sideways and sliced into the pad of his thumb. Etienne kicked out at James’s groin but misjudged and his foot glanced off James’s thigh. James grabbed his ankle and pushed sharply up. Etienne tipped backwards. The momentum of his fall helped pull James upright. He jabbed his heel into Etienne’s solar plexus, heard a grunt as his lungs emptied of air. James wound the loose end of the chain round his fist and drove the clump of oily links into Etienne’s eye.

  ‘Lost your Taser, Etienne?’

  Etienne’s face had been ripped open by the lashing chain, but he was tough as a street rat should be and still wasn’t out. James punched him again, same place, same eye. He unpicked the knife from Etienne’s hand and tossed it over to the adjoining roof. Etienne was too groggy to stop him. Blood from James’s cut hand was dribbling into the water at his feet. He ignored it, took Etienne by the throat and heaved him upright.

  ‘Where’s Sarah?’ he said. ‘The English girl.’

  The eye James had punched looked like a burst plum. Etienne glared at him with the other one and spat a mouthful of blood.

  ‘Where is she?’

  He drove Etienne back until he crashed into the doorframe, then swung his chain-wrapped fist into the man’s kidneys. Etienne doubled over and coughed. He was only upright now because James was holding him.

  ‘Where is Sarah?’

  ‘Fuck you. She’s dead.’

  ‘No. She’s not dead.’ Rage and desperation flared inside him. He drove his fist into Etienne’s midriff again.

  ‘What shall I do to you, Etienne? Cut holes in your skin? Tear your hand apart to the wrist, the way you showed me?’

  ‘Fucking girl is dead,’ Etienne panted. ‘You can’t—’

  James stopped him with another hammer-blow to the kidneys. Etienne dropped to all fours, a strand of bloody drool dangling from his chin. James kicked him in the stomach, and Etienne lay prone. Water from the broken tank streamed over his flayed cheek. A trickle entered his mouth and he spluttered, lifted his head, but couldn’t hold it up. James dragged him by the ankles over to the corner of the roof. The gleaming water parted round his torso and slapped gently together at the top of his head, making his spiky hair weave from side to side like seaweed in a tide. James pushed Etienne’s face down into the gully, where the water was deepest, and stood on his neck. Etienne tried to twist his face clear of the water, but didn’t have the strength. His limbs flailed, shuddered, finally went still. Bubbles formed around his ears. In less than a minute, he had drowned.

  Nat had been sitting in the Citroën, watching the apartment block and thinking James shouldn’t have gone in alone, that he was pushing his luck. When all the lights in the apartments went out, she ran from the car and over to the stairwell door, convinced that James was lying somewhere being repeatedly stabbed by Etienne or some other grinning henchmen of Zender’s. Dying, alone, without anyone to comfort him.

  There was still some emergency light in the rank stairwell. She ran on up. An old man watched her from the doorway of number 22. He shouted something she didn’t catch, then gave a sour laugh. Not Etienne. When she reached the fourth, she knew this was it. Number 41. Two extra locks and a spyhole. The door was half an inch ajar. She pushed it open and peered in. A short corridor, ending in a room that seemed to flicker with pale blue light. She stepped inside.

  The blue light came from a gas stove with a pot of something simmering on top. A sharp smell of spices and hot fat. Water was dripping from the ceiling light and drumming softly onto the rug in the centre of the floor. A tasselled drape hung over the window, beneath it, a small steel-legged table and a padded bench. There was a door set in the wall opposite her.

  She tiptoed over and listened. Muffled breathing. Something else. . . A whimper, perhaps, or the squeak of a bedspring. She was startled by a bang from the roof above her head, and without thinking she pressed the handle and opened the door.

  A woman in full burqa was sitting on a bed, lit from the side by a row of tealights set on the window ledge. She was clasping a long-bladed kitchen knife in both hands. A figure lay stretched out on the bed behind her, hands and feet bound with duct tape. All Nat could see of the woman with the knife was her eyes, shining from the narrow slit in her veil. Nat looked into them and they flicked away, then back to face her. Not anger, Nat realised, nor ferocity, nor zeal. Fear. She said the first thing that came to her.

  ‘Ma pauvre.’

  Poor thing. The figure lying on the bed twisted round. She too was veiled, the black cloth bound tight round her mouth with swathes of tape.

  ‘Lâchez le couteau, je vous en prie. Personne ne vous fait mal.’

  No one will hurt you.

  The woman’s eyes brimmed with tears. She spoke, but the words came so fast and indistinct Nat could not hear them.

  ‘Lâchez le couteau,’ Nat said again.

  ‘Eh-i-enne,’ the woman whimpered. ‘Il e-ait-al.’

  A thought so awful Nat could hardly bear to let it enter her head. . .

  ‘Je suis amie d’Aisha. Vous souvenez? Aisha, qui travaille chez le Casino des Capricornes?’

  ‘Oui, Aisha,’ said the woman.

  The tears were welling from her eyes. Nat crossed the room, reached over to touch the woman’s hands, still grasping the handle of the knife. Nat pressed her palm gently over the woman’s hands for a moment. They were small, delicate hands, shivering like a trapped bird. She patted the woman on the
shoulder and slowly released the knife from her fingers, placed it on the window ledge next to the candles.

  ‘Is that Sarah?’ Nat asked. ‘I’ll help you in a moment. You OK?’

  The figure on the bed rolled awkwardly to the side, sat upright and nodded. Nat wrapped her arms round the woman beside her.

  ‘Ma pauvre,’ she said again.

  She pulled away and gestured to the woman’s face-veil.

  ‘Montrez-moi, s’il vous plaît.’

  The woman looked down, then slowly unhooked the square of black cotton that covered her face. She raised her head and looked Nat square in the eye. Her mouth was a lipless oval, the teeth and gums obscenely prominent. The flesh where her lips had been was etched with bone-white scars.

  ‘Etienne did that? Because you spied on Claude Zender?’

  She nodded.

  This was the woman Aisha had told her about at the casino. Etienne had disfigured her, then made her his own. At Zender’s behest. Zender. . . Had she ever really seen him for what he was? Nat hugged the woman again, and while they embraced, James rushed into the room. He seemed impossibly huge in the dim, cramped space. One hand was wrapped in a sodden rag and his deep-set eyes were so dark and wild that for a moment she felt afraid of him.

  ‘Etienne?’ she asked.

  ‘Dead,’ said James. ‘On the roof. Is that. . . Sarah?’

  He stepped over to the bed and started to strip off the tape wrapped round her mouth. The woman was hurrying to fix her veil back in place.

  ‘You’re safe,’ said Nat to the woman. ‘Come and see.’

  She led the woman from the room. James had Sarah’s veil off and the girl fell into his arms.

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ, you came. You came. I thought you’d given up, I thought I was here forever.’

  She lapsed into hysterical sobs. James cut her hands free, stood her up and half-carried her into the living room.

  ‘Your passport,’ he said. ‘Where did he keep it?’

  ‘There, I think.’ She pointed to a drawer beneath the TV. James sorted through a pile of documents, found the passport and handed it to Sarah. He put his arm round her shoulders and they left the apartment. Nat came down from the roof.