The Hidden Man (2003)

by Charles Cumming

  Mark

  Mark hit ‘Send’ and wondered if this was a good idea; he doubted whether Alice would be able to keep their arrangement a secret. Sometimes, in fact, he couldn’t even remember why he was doing his father the favour.

  11

  Taploe waited for Keen in the downstairs seating area of a Baker Street coffee shop. American-owned, the chain was populated by a preppy clientele drinking foam-laden lattes at Internet terminals. Bewildered by the range of drinks on offer, it had taken Taploe more than three minutes to explain to the South African girl working behind the counter that he simply wanted a black coffee, nothing more, nothing less.

  ‘You want an espresso, then?’

  ‘No. Just a black coffee. A normal black coffee. In a mug.’

  ‘Do you want me to make it a double? That’s longer.’

  ‘No. I find espresso too strong. Look-‘

  He scanned the menu board for the appropriate description. Latte. Mocha. Espresso. Ristretto. Mochaccino. Cappuccino. Iced Mochachino Latte…

  ‘It must be Americano,’ he said eventually. ‘That looks the closest.’

  ‘Americano!’ the girl shouted to her colleague and, given that there were four or five people queueing up behind him, Taploe felt that he could not now change his order.

  ‘Is that a shot of espresso with plenty of boiling water?’he asked.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ she said, pointing to the counter on her left. ‘Your order’ll be ready in a few minutes. Can I help anyone please?’

  Taploe had found a small round table at the rear of the basement where any conversation would be drowned out by the tapping of computer keyboards, the quack and beep of the World Wide Web. Twenty or thirty people, mostly students, were crowding up the seating area.

  Taploe sensed Keen before he saw him, a sudden intimation of good taste and disdain moving through the room. He was wearing a long, darkovercoat and carrying a small white cup of espresso in his right hand. Taploe was reminded of a Tory grandee.

  ‘Christopher,’ he said.

  ‘Stephen.’ Taploe’s view of his joe was already coloured by the basic antipathy that existed between the organizations to which both men had dedicated the bulk of their working lives. But the sense Keen gave off of living in an infallible bubble of privilege added a particular hostility to his contempt.

  ‘Did you find the place all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No problem at all. But it’s bloody cold outside. They say it might snow.’

  ‘Well, thankyou for agreeing to the meeting at such short notice.’ Taploe sipped at his coffee but found that it was still too hot to drink. ‘I hope we didn’t put you out.’

  ‘Not at all. I have a dinner engagement in the West End at nine o’clock. The timing was rather convenient.’

  Slowly, Taploe drew the tips of his fingers across the wooden surface of the table. It was an unconscious manifestation of his anxiety, and he was irritated with himself for showing it.

  ‘Can I get you anything from upstairs?’

  Taploe could not think why he had asked the question. Keen simply lowered his eyes and indicated his espresso with a downward nod of the head.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  There was an embarrassed silence that Taploe eventually broke.

  ‘This shouldn’t take long,’ he said. ‘It was just to find out about your enquiries.’

  Keen could see a Japanese student poring over notes held in a loose-leaf folder to the right of his chair. If Taploe considered this a secure environment in which to talk, he would take that on trust, but keep his remarks general to the point of being obtuse. Christian names. No specifics. Operational shorthands.

  ‘My view is very straightforward,’ he said. ‘If the lawyer is involved to any extent with the Russian organization then my son knows nothing about it. That would indicate to me that this is something that is happening only at the very highest level within the company. That is to say, only Thomas and perhaps Sebastian know anything about it.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Body language. A certain openness about the way he answered my questions. No obvious nerves. As our American friends might put it, Mark is out of the loop.’

  By his expression, Taploe seemed unconvinced.

  ‘What did he say about the lawyer?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing that you won’t already know. Bit of a chancer, man about town. Taste for what certain people regard as the finer things in life. Champagne, oysters, bliads.’

  Keen assumed correctly that Taploe would recognize the Russian slang for prostitute.

  ‘Is that right?’ He pursed out his lips. ‘To what extent is he involved in that when he’s in Russia?’

  ‘Happens mostly in Moscow, by the sound of it. You know the form. They hang around the hotel lobbies and mezzanine floors, looking for businessmen with a wedding ring…’

  Taploe essayed an exaggerated frown, as if the moral implications of Macklin’s behaviour had briefly overwhelmed him. He looked visibly disappointed.

  ‘And is Mark involved with them as well?’

  ‘Good God, no.’

  Keen’s reply was abrupt and Taploe wondered if he might have offended him. He found himself saying ‘Of course, sorry,’ and then again resented his own awkwardness. A clatter of schoolgirls came down into the basement bearing tall beakers of coffee. One had a lit cigarette in her hand and was smoking it without skill, like someone sucking on the end of a pencil.

  ‘Is that an area you’re investigating?’ Keen asked. ‘Women being trafficked from eastern Europe, Russia and so on?’

  Taploe’s eyes flicked across to the Japanese student who was still engrossed in his notes. Next to him, about three feet away, sat a vast man in his late thirties - surely American - dressed head to toe in Reebok sportswear. He was slowly typing an email using only the index finger of his left hand.

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he said, and swallowed a long intake of still-hot coffee. The roof of his mouth throbbed. ‘Did Mark add anything else in connection to that?’

  ‘Only that Thomas fools around with them in his hotel room. Perhaps he gets a discount.’

  Taploe did not smile.

  ‘The impression I was given,’ Keen continued, ‘is that our lawyer friend is somewhat overwhelmed by the glamour of the way things work over there, the influence those boys wield. Unchecked power and unlimited violence. Excessive privilege for the select few. Free access to money, girls, narcotics, fast cars, restaurants; he’s in thrall to it all. The adrenalin, you see? Nothing like it over here, back in the old country.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all that Taploe managed to say, though everything that Keen was telling him fitted the emerging profile of Thomas Macklin. London surveillance had revealed nothing out of the ordinary: an on-off girlfriend (a receptionist in the City), the occasional escort, no tendency to gamble, a mild, recreational cocaine habit. He had an enthusiasm for lap-dancing and expensive clothes, few close friends, and a tendency to become aggressive when drunk. Macklin paid his bills regularly, but at any one time his major credit card - Visa - was never less than two or three thousand pounds in the red. He had sufficient funds in other bank accounts to pay the debt off, but for some reason failed to do so; Paul Quinn, Taploe’s closest associate on the case, had put this down to little more than negligence. There was nothing unusual about Macklin’s phone records, either at work, from home or on his mobile, save for the fact that he always called his Kukushkin contact in London from public telephone boxes, from which the calls were harder to trace. That, at the very least, hinted at a degree of concealment. The Internet, thus far, had revealed little that Quinn and Taploe did not already know: Macklin used email frequently, but only to stay in touch with developments within Libra worldwide. There had been nothing of any consequence to the ongoing investigation in the analysis of his Internet traffic, only incidents that coloured the psychological profile.

  ‘And Mark? That sort of lifestyle doesn�
�t appeal to him?’ Taploe asked.

  Keen swallowed his espresso in a single controlled gulp.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘He’s more sensible, more down to earth. Like his father.’

  Taploe did not acknowledge the joke. He thought that this would help him to make up some ground.

  ‘But you’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world,’ he said, deciding to take a risk. ‘You can understand why Thomas might be tempted by the high life?’

  Keen looked at him very quickly. His eyes appeared to blacken at the implication.

  ‘Thomas is a very different animal, Stephen, I can assure you. The lawyer’s a barrow boy, a bright entrepreneur out for whatever he can get. His sort usually run into trouble.’

  A braver part of Taploe wanted to embarrass Keen into an explanation of the term ‘barrow boy’, but he let it go.

  ‘And the boss?’ he said. ‘How does Sebastian fit into the picture? How does he benefit from the Russian organization?’

  Keen shifted slowly in his chair.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s absolutely no point in asking me about Roth.’ The use of his surname was a slip. ‘I should have thought that these were the sort of questions to which you might already have answers. As I told you at our previous meeting, my organization doesn’t tend to meet the chaps at the top of the tree. They send their underlings, their lawyers. Mr Ro - ‘This time he checked himself. ‘Sebastian is a man about whom I know very little. I take it as read that he is greedy. I take it as read that he is unscrupulous. So many of us are, Stephen. But why would he be stupid enough to get involved with the Thieves? He must understand the power they exert in Russia? He’d be in over his head, could very quickly lose control of all his investments. It simply doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘And did Divisar warn him about that?’

  ‘Of course we did. Unfortunately Thomas ignored our advice to get a Russian partner on board whose contacts would have facilitated the company’s ex-pansion. Nor were they interested in franchising the name to local entrepreneurs. I advised them to become active in establishing relationships with senior government officials in the Ministry of Interior, men who might have offered them protection from organized crime, even if that meant paying off government bureaucrats instead. But Sebastian wanted total control. Apparently that was how he had built up the company and that was how he knew how to operate.’

  The schoolgirls, gathered in a chattering huddle around one of the larger sofas, began giggling at a photograph in a magazine. Taploe looked across at them, absorbing Keen’s remarks and then running them through his mind like a filter. Eventually he said, ‘Does your son trust Thomas?’

  Keen did not know how to answer the question beyond a simple, one-word response.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they’re friends? They rely on each other.’

  ‘If that is your impression, then yes,’ he replied unhelpfully. He recalled asking Mark a similar question in the Chinese restaurant.

  ‘But what’s your impression?’ Taploe had begun to feel hemmed in by the crowded basement, the black coffee working through him to a flushed sweat. It was not even a question to which he required an answer, but he had been flustered from the moment he walked into the coffee house.

  ‘My impression?’ Keen ran the dark blue silk of his tie between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, smoothing it before letting it come to rest on the soft folds of his cream shirt. ‘My impression is merely common sense. That they may rely on one another, but that there is a world of difference between reliance and trust. If there wasn’t, after all, men like you and me would be out of a job. Loyalty within the world of business is a fiction. When push comes to shove, Thomas will no more look after my son’s interests than he would cut off his own hand.’

  ‘And vice versa?’

  Keen moved forward.

  ‘You appear to be labouring under a misconception. Mark may have made several trips with Thomas, but they spent a lot of that time apart. What he gets up to in my son’s absence remains a mystery. You seem to think they’re some sort of double act, Libra’s answer to Morecambe and Wise.’

  Taploe frowned, angered that Keen had mentioned the company by name.

  ‘You can understand that he’s our best lead,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what about the French chap?’ Keen asked.

  ‘If you want someone on the inside, why don’t you run him?’

  ‘French chap?’ Taploe said.

  ‘Philippe, I thinkhis name is.’

  ‘D’Erlanger? He’s Belgian,’ Taploe corrected. ‘Anyway, he left the company to run a restaurant.’

  ‘Well, I was merely trying to help.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So call Mark yourself,’ Keen suggested. ‘It’s obviously the next step.’ He felt no ordinary moral reason why he should not hand his son over to MI5. He was anxious to leave for dinner, and Mark would at least be able to help with the investigation. ‘To be honest, I’ve become bored playing the middleman,’ he said. ‘There’s something rather demeaning about it.’

  12

  Why had he bothered coming?

  The pub in Edwardes Square stank generally of sweat and spilled pints, and specifically of stale sick in the area where Ben was sitting. He was halfway through a pint of Guinness, talking to an earnest financial journalist from the Evening Standard who wanted to know how he found the motivation to get up every morning and paint in his studio and ‘wasn’t there a temptation when you’re working from home just to fuckoff and spend the whole afternoon in the cinema?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Ben told him.

  ‘Well, I really admire you, man,’ he said. ‘No, I really do.’

  Alice was at the bar, surrounded by five drooling male colleagues making wise cracks and pulling rank. She had phoned at the last moment and all but demanded that Ben join her for a drink. Come on. We never see each other. You never want to meet my friends. He had been forced to abandon workon the picture of Jenny, but now that he was here Alice was scarcely giving him the time of day. Ben was thinking about leaving as soon as he had finished his pint and going backto workin the studio.

  ‘So how much do you charge for a portrait?’ the journalist was asking.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ben had heard the question, but wanted to suggest with his eyes that he thought it was none of his business.

  ‘I said how much do you -‘

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘Oh, right. What on, man? I mean, how do you rate it? By the hour?’

  The conversation went on like this for fifteen minutes. But can you make any real money as a painter? Don’t you get bored and lonely? Ben couldn’t get away. The constant opening and closing of the street door fed muffled traffic noise into the pub. Ben found himself explaining why he hated the cocktail-party circuit of art exhibitions and gallery openings, all that air-kissing and people with too much money buying paintings just to match a sofa. The journalist was laughing, agreeing with everything Ben said, even offering to buy him a pint and introduce him to a City financier who was collecting art and ‘really knew what was right and wrong’.

  ‘You know, man. Not shark tanks and elephant shit. Paintings. He really likes oils and watercolours. Give me your number and I’ll text you his details.’

  That was when Mark walked into the pub.

  He was stopped by Alice almost immediately among the jam of bodies at the bar. She squealed and put her arms around his waist, looking over in Ben’s direction. Was this more than coincidence? Ben was so pleased to see him that he dismissed the thought immediately. He stood up, said, ‘Back in a moment,’ and walked towards the bar.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, brother. Had a meeting next door. Just popped in for a pint.’

  ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Alice was saying, putting her hand on Mark’s back. ‘Of all the places.’

  There were introductions, rounds of drinks. For half an hour they ta
lked at the bar, Mark telling stories about Libra and Moscow, Alice involving everybody in the conversation and making sure to laugh at the news editor’s jokes. A frustrating evening became suddenly enjoyable for Ben, the easy slip of Guinness and close family. And as Alice’s colleagues left the pub one by one, it was easy for Mark to pull him away into a private huddle and to deal with the taskin hand.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, putting a grip on Ben’s arm. ‘It’s good we’ve run into each other. I need to have a chat with you about something. Something important.’

  Ben was smoking and pointed to the fourth finger of Mark’s right hand with his cigarette.

  ‘Is it about that?’ he asked.

  Mark looked down.

  ‘What? The ring?’

  ‘The ring.’

  A bad start.

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Something else, then?’ Ben said, and sat down at a free table.

  Mark was slow to follow, as if assembling his thoughts. He was always apprehensive when it came to talking to Ben. Coupled with a desire to protect and assist his younger brother existed an older insecurity, rooted in childhood squabbles and fights, a feeling that Ben could outsmart him. At Libra Mark was super-efficient, the man Roth relied on to charm and cajole, an executive ten years in the business and never a foot put wrong. But when it came to Ben those talents were compromised by sheer familiarity. He hooked his suit jacket on the back of a beer-stained tartan chair and wondered how he was ever going to bring him round.

  ‘You OK?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  Mark must have looked tired and distracted, some sort of apology already evident in his eyes, because right away Ben said, ‘It’s about Christopher, isn’t it?’

  And Mark nodded, hunching forward with an awkward smile.

  ”Fraid so,’ he said. ”Fraid so. Had lunch with him last week, before I went back to Moscow. That was when he gave me the signet ring. It belonged to…’

  Ben immediately raised his hand and a column of ash fell free of the cigarette, drifting in scatters towards the carpet.