EIGHTY-THREE
Sunday, 27th April, 2008
Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Holland
“Good evening again, ladies and gentlemen, Captain Haan speaking. I’m pleased to inform you that I’ve just received a confirmed departure slot from the control tower for twenty minutes to seven. This means that I’ll be starting the engines and pulling back in just ten minutes time. I apologise once more for the delay, but as I explained, the awful weather all over Europe has caused chaos, so we’re not the only flight to be held up. I estimate that we’ll be about one hour late, which would make our arrival time in Malaga at twenty-one fifty-five. That’s five minutes to ten. But you can be sure that Mikael and I will do everything possible to catch up on that. I invite you now to relax, watch our safety demonstration carefully then enjoy our in flight service.”
Chief Inspector Pedro Espinoza roused himself and checked his watch. He had been dozing in the plane for forty minutes, while they waited to start the engines. The captain had got them on board so that they would be ready to depart as soon as a slot came up. Now it had, evidently. He removed the marker from page two hundred and eight of his latest tome, Living in the Criminal Mind.
He took another sip of water and started reading. Fascinating stuff!
The policeman had been on a conference with his Interpol colleagues at the Amsterdam Sheraton. It was near the airport and they had assembled there on Friday evening, attended a conference all day on Saturday and Sunday morning, and closed the meeting down that afternoon. Most interesting, was the general consensus. Very boring, had been his own assessment. Modern technology made international policing a lot easier but as Espinoza kept reminding everyone, nothing replaced good old fashioned detective work. Toil, imagination, patience and psychology. That was the secret to solving crimes and nailing criminals. Get into their mind, work out their motivation and modus operandus, then ask yourself, What would I do next? Y vamos!
Espinoza had worked through his fair share of crimes in Malaga. The successful investigation of the Madrid lawyer, with José Luis’s assistance, had kick-started his career as a Detective Inspector and he had never looked back. A few years after his initial success his rank had risen to Inspector Jefe, Chief Inspector. Since then he had been allocated more than his quota of violent crimes, usually involving the most common motives for villainy of any kind all over the world since time immemorial; sex, power, fear, revenge and money.
He was appalled to witness the recent huge and rapid increase in criminal activity in southern Spain. The most telling example was that recently, the UK police had instituted a large scale effort to locate and apprehend the twenty top criminals on their most wanted list. Espinoza was proud, but equally ashamed, that five of them had already been caught on the Costa del Sol. It seemed incredible to him that his territory attracted such a huge number of miscreants, including some of the big-time villains of the moment. He had been asked to talk on this subject at the conference and had heard, not for the first time, the phrase, Sunny place for shady people.
Now, as the plane taxied to take off, he put aside his book, leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes again. He planned to wake up in time for the inflight meal, he was starving.
Jenny looked out the kitchen window, then at her watch. The time was just after nine. “That’s strange,” she said thoughtfully.
“What’s wrong?” Leticia looked up at Jenny’s tone.
“The garden lights aren’t on. They usually come on at eight-thirty and they haven’t.” After failing to pierce the heavy rainclouds all day long, the sun had finally given up and slid below the horizon and it was completely dark outside. The pouring rain could be seen against the glimmer of the street lights beyond the wall at the bottom of the drive. But the gardens, the driveway and the gates were cloaked in darkness. The property was so large and surrounded by so many trees that the house seemed to be lost in the middle of a forest, far from civilisation.
“Do you know where the outside switches are?” Jenny knew the outside lights had to be on a different circuit. “The circuit breaker must have gone and blown all the outside connections. That’s why nothing’s working.”
She followed Leticia downstairs and through the labrynth of corridors in the basement that led to the games room, the wine cellar, the gym, the massage and steam room and several storage areas, then through the garages to the machine room. It looked like a NASA missile-launch control room. Cables, pipes, valves, stopcocks and switches were connected to pumps and machines of all types and sizes. Computer screens showed the temperature, pressure and humidity of the various areas of the house, the pool, even the wine cellar. There were two tall electrical cabinets, each containing dozens of switches, buttons and dials, all labelled in Spanish, in Juan’s erratic script.
The women scanned down the list of labels. “We’re never going to find what’s wrong like this, we don’t know what to look for. In any case I think it must be something in the garden that’s gone wrong in this lousy weather. We’ll have to wait for Juan to check it tomorrow, like you said. If he can’t fix it, we’ll call the phone and electricity companies. At least the house is alright.” Jenny dusted her hands off and started back towards the door to the garages.
Leticia shivered and looked around the room. “It’s freezing down here. It’s always hot, not cold.” She went over to the outside door, the one that led to the driveway. She pushed against the large security handle. “Look. The door’s not locked. Juan always locks it. And there’s water on the floor. It must have come in from outside.”
“Strange,” said Jenny, walking back to her, “the key’s here.”
A rusted steel key was hanging on a hook at the side of the door. She pushed the heavy door open. A blast of cold air rushed in. The women peered outside. The light from the room illuminated the pitch black night and they could see the rain pouring down. It seemed to be getting stronger. Spray from the raindrops splashed into the room onto the tiled floor.
“He must have forgotten to do it when he went home on Friday.” Leticia shivered again and went to pull the door shut. “What was that?” She turned quickly and grabbed Jenny’s arm. “Over there!” she said, pointing at the shadows behind the machines in the corner of the room.
Jenny had heard the noise too. A sound like a child whimpering. “Who’s there? Come out of there, now!” She grabbed the key from its hook and hurled it into the corner.
There was a loud squeal and Fuente came racing between the machines and shot out of the door and down the driveway. The women almost collapsed with relief. “My God. He almost gave me a heart attack.” Jenny put her arms around Leticia, she was trembling like a leaf. “How on earth did he get trapped down here? He can’t have been here since Friday, can he?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. That cat scared me almost to death.” Leticia closed the door and pushed the handle into the locking position then went across the room to retrieve the key. “There.” She turned the key and hung it back on its hook. “Fuente can stay out tonight.”
The women went back upstairs to the kitchen. Jenny’s mind was whirling again. How could the cat get down here? The doors were all closed. And why was the outside door unlocked? Another coincidence? There are too many of them by half. It’s time we did something. She picked up her mobile from the counter. “I’m going to try Espinoza again.”
The phone started ringing in her hand. It was Adam, he had found a taxi and was leaving the airport. “I was lucky, only a half hour’s delay. The flights are in chaos with this rotten weather. I tried the house phone but it was off. Is everything OK?” He sounded a little worried.
Jenny forced herself to remain calm. “Everything’s fine, don’t worry. It must be this storm. I think the outside electricity circuit must have blown. It should take you about forty-five minutes to get here in this storm. Leticia and Emilio are here too. We’ll sort something out for supper, I bet you’re starving, and Laurent’s sure to be, too.” She gave him instr
uctions for the taxi driver to get to the house and told him about the open gate.
Leticia went along to check on Emilio. He was in a sound sleep, his arms stretched out above his head. She kissed him on the brow and closed the door. The bedroom was along the corridor at the other end of the house from the kitchen, so he shouldn’t be disturbed.
She came back to the kitchen. “I’ll see what we have to eat. You’re right, Adam and Laurent will be hungry and we need to have something too.” She started rummaging through the fridge and the pantry for anything still fresh after their absence.
To take her mind off her mounting misgivings, Jenny picked up her notebook and started skipping through it, thinking about the last week’s events.
“Another problem solved.” Leticia showed her what she’d found in the fridge and the pantry. They could manage a cold snack, at least. “I’ll get a bottle of wine. I think we need a drink.” She ran down the stairs to the cellar, where she had a choice of thousands of bottles of fine Spanish wines, and brought up a 1994 Tondonia Gran Reserva.
She opened the bottle, tasted the wine and poured two glasses. “Have a glass, Jenny. We have to cheer up, we are starting to worry too much.”
Jenny still had her nose in her notepad. “Not now, thanks.” She looked up at Leticia, her brow furrowed. “I was thinking about the diamond contract that Adam signed with Nick. We haven’t seen the contract. For such a lot of money we really should, it’s only common sense.”
“So you don’t trust Adam? You mean he might cheat us like Vogel did?”
“Leticia, apart from you, I don’t know who to trust. I’m just trying to be careful and not make a stupid mistake that could hurt us. We’re amateurs, with no business experience. We’ve just been robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars. We need to check everything to be sure.”
Leticia said, “I remembered one thing on Friday night. When we went to the restaurant in the park, he kept us waiting fifteen minutes, then when we came back again, the rooms were searched. It might be just a coincidence, but we need to check. But how?”
Then Jenny had a brainwave. “Come along to the study, I think I know how to do this.”
In Charlie’s office, she started up his laptop again. Under Documents and Settings, she found A C Business. She looked down the list of files and found a folder labelled IDD. She opened it up and saw that the sub-files were labelled by year, all the way back to 1992.
Scrolling down the list of the 2007 sub files, she got to December, 2007. There was only one Word file listed, labelled A. Peterson & Co. Final Dec. 07. She opened it up, it was the final contract sent by Charlie to Adam to take to Florida, to be signed by him and Nick.
Jenny read through the text on the screen. The conditions were spelled out clearly in Charlie’s methodical way and they corresponded with what Adam had told them. She came to the price clause, gasped and sat back from the machine, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
Leticia looked over her shoulder at the computer screen. “What is it?”
“The price that Adam told us was ten million dollars exactly, right?”
“That’s right. He said it was eight thousand three hundred and something dollars per carat, I remember perfectly, it was such a lot of money. So what does it mean?”
“Look at this!” She put the cursor over the price clause and ran it along the text. “It means that Adam is trying to steal two million dollars from the Angolan Clan, two million dollars, from us, and from his other partners!”
The price quoted in the contract was shown as:
Take down price, partial or total:
1,200 Carats @ $US 10,000- per Carat.
Total Net Price payable on completion: $US 12,000,000-
Jenny stared disbelievingly at the screen. She couldn’t believe that Adam could attempt this. He might have fooled her and Leticia, and maybe Raffael, but Laurent would spot it immediately. He must have some kind of a death wish, she thought. Nobody could be so stupid, or dishonest, to try to carry off such a brazen deception. She thought again about the break-in. Someone was definitely after the diamonds. But who? And where were they?
She had another thought. “Maybe the contract was changed again and Charlie didn’t keep a separate copy. He just made the changes in this one and then forgot to save it as the final one.” Knowing Charlie’s obsession for doing everything correctly, Jenny didn’t think this likely, but she was trying desperately to find a way of absolving Adam. After their recent disappointments, she wanted, needed to believe in him.
“But how can we tell without seeing Adam’s contract? What a mess, everybody wants to steal, even when they have got plenty of money. It’s crazy.” Leticia ran her hands nervously through her hair.
“There’s one way to try to find out, look.” Jenny went to File, up in the top left hand corner of the screen. Scrolling down, she opened up Properties, then Statistics, displaying a list of all of the data concerning the document, when it was created, modified, printed, etc. “You see, the file was created on December 10th, but it’s probably been modified several times since then. It says here that the last modification was on Dec. 15th 2007.” She stopped. Two days before Ron’s death. My God! Her eyes misted over. She pushed the thought away and read the data labels, wiping her eyes dry. It was impossible to know if the correct version had been saved or not. “No good. I can’t tell whether or not there was a different final version.”
“Wait.” Leticia pointed at the screen. “Look what it says under Printed.”
“It was printed out on April thirteenth, 2008, at seven twenty-two in the morning. That was the morning that Charlie died, he must have been working before he went in for his swim.”
“Jenny, it’s not possible. I was with Charlie the night before. He told me he was getting up for his swim at seven and playing golf at eight-thirty, like always. Just think. It takes him fifteen minutes to swim, then he has to shower and get ready for golf, go for coffee at the club. And he likes to practise before he plays.” Leticia was adding up the minutes on her fingers. “He didn’t have time to work before his swim. Besides, Charlie never worked on a Sunday. I always came to see him after his golf and in three years he was never working on a Sunday.”
The only explanation was obvious and terrifying. Someone had been in the house immediately after Charlie’s death. Someone who knew the computer passwords. The women looked at each other in dread. Vogel, Gloria, Jolidon, the break-in at the hotel, the difference in the contract, the telephone and electricity cuts, Fuente trapped in the basement. Now they were alone in the house, waiting for two men to arrive, men that they didn’t know at all. Could they trust them?
They walked back along to the kitchen. “I’m going to call Espinoza again. This could be evidence concerning Charlie’s death. We’ve got to let him know right away.” Jenny couldn’t find the card with Espinoza’s number, so she took Leticia’s mobile and pressed the call button again. The officer’s phone was still switched off and she left another message, telling him that they might have found important evidence.
As she switched off, they heard the front doorbell ring. Jenny looked at her watch, it was nine forty-five. “It’s too early for Adam, it can only be Laurent, his flight must have been on time. He’s probably left the taxi outside and walked up the drive, he’ll be soaked in this downpour.”
They walked along the corridor from the office. Jenny tried to suppress her forebodings and calm the other woman. “Don’t say anything about this. We’re probably imagining things. It’s this awful weather and the things going wrong in the house. It’s making us paranoid. There must be some simple explanation. Let’s wait and see what happens. At last we might get some answers, instead of just questions.” She went into the hall and unlocked the door.
“Hello, Laurent. Welcome to sunny Marbella.”
He was standing in the porch with his back to the door, shaking the water off his raincoat. The porch light wasn’t on, but in the light from the hall she saw that the shou
lders of his jacket were damp and his shoes and trouser cuffs were soaking. The thunderstorm seemed to have moved away but the rain was still hammering down remorcelessly. The rainwater was rushing down the staircase alongside the waterfall, causing the pond to flood the flower beds and plants around the entrance porch.
“You must be wet through and freezing. Come in.”
He removed his hat and turned around to face her. “Hello, Jenny. How are you?”
BOOK TWO
PART SIX: 2008
EIGHTY-FOUR
Sunday, 27th April, 2008
Malaga, Spain
Along with just about every other person on the flight, Chief Inspector Espinoza switched his mobile phone on as he was standing in the aisle with his carry-on bag, waiting to get off the plane. The flight had made up some of the original delay so by the time they taxied across and arrived at their stand it was ten minutes to ten. He saw that his battery was getting low, but the beeping noise told him he had messages. He dialled his answering service. There were five calls to listen to and a text message. On a bloody Sunday evening, he thought to himself. Is there no one who can do anything without calling me?
There were two messages from his daughter. She wanted to speak to him again about her mother’s allowance. She’d spoken to Soledad and wanted to tell him what had transpired. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, he decided, it’s too late for a fight tonight.
His secretary had sprained her ankle. She would be out for a week. Marvellous!
The fourth message was from Leticia da Costa. Could he call back as soon as possible.
The fifth was from the same number, but it was Jenny Bishop, who repeated the request. This time, she said that they might have some evidence about Mr. Bishop’s death. His pulse quickened and he ran through the teeming rain to his privileged parking place next to the arrivals hall. As he drove to the airport exit he returned the call to Leticia’s number, but her phone was off. He didn’t know where she was and he had neither her nor Jenny’s home number with him, so he’d try again from the landline when he got to the Comisaria.
[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan Page 52
