by Andy Maslen
The man’s eyes bulged as he dropped the knife and scrabbled at his smashed windpipe, struggling to draw breath. Breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. It’s a reflex. That’s why we don’t suffocate when we sleep. So Gabriel relieved the man of his terror of suffocation by knocking him out with a blow from the side of his hand to his temple.
Broken Nose was still on all fours, his hand over his face, blood streaming from under his hairy fingers. From the space between the bed and the sofa Gabriel could hear the moans of the man whose lungs his kick had emptied; he’d crawled away from the fight to recover.
Ignoring the ringing in his ears and shaking his head to widen out his tunnel vision and dispel the bright, white sparks dancing in the corners of his eyes, Gabriel knelt beside the man whose nose he’d broken and elbowed him hard in the side of the head. He collapsed sideways, and Gabriel rolled him onto his front so he’d not drown in his own blood. Stepping over the prostrate form, he moved to the final man of the quartet, hunkered down with one hand over his bruised midsection. He staggered to his feet, still clutching his stomach and raised his other hand, palm upwards,
“Don’t kill me, man,” he gasped out. “Please. Don’t kill me.”
“Don’t worry,” Gabriel said. “It’s not your time.”
Then he jerked his knee up into the man’s groin and again into his descending face. He lay still in a heap at Gabriel’s bare feet.
Three loud knocks on the door brought him out of the semi-trance state he’d entered since the fight began. He walked back, stepping over the humped form of the giant and opened the door just wide enough to peer through the gap. The woman from across the hallway was standing there. She was frowning, but was that a hint of a smile playing over her lips?
“What did they say?” she asked.
“They promised to keep it down for the rest of the night,” he whispered back.
“Thanks. You must have been very persuasive.”
He smiled.
“Like I said, I asked politely.”
She returned his smile with a grin of complicity and went back to her room.
Gabriel closed the door and turned to the scene behind him. Blood from the broken nose had spurted across one wall, and a lamp had been knocked from its side table, but other than these two small disturbances to the furnishings, the room looked no worse than anyone would expect after a boisterous discussion between four or five drunk foreigners.
However, they’d be mightily pissed off when they started coming round, and Gabriel had a flight to catch. Avoiding the attentions of the airport police was his main concern now.
He dragged the big man who’d thrown the first punch into the centre of the room and matched him with a second. Heaving and straining against their considerable bulk, he rolled them beside each other, head-to-foot. He repeated the process with the other two men. All were breathing regularly, and even the man with the broken nose was managing to draw air into his lungs without much trouble. He thumbed an eyelid up on each man: eyes rolled up in their skulls indicated they were completely under and likely to remain so for a while yet.
In an ideal world, he would have pulled a bundle of cable ties from a pouch at his belt and lashed the captives’ wrists together. In an ideal world. As it was, he had to improvise. Happily, the hotel’s designer had selected curtain-tie backs in twisted nylon rope. Gabriel unhooked them from their fake-antiqued brass hooks and bound the four men, one man’s wrist to his partner’s ankle. When he was done, he retrieved flannels and hand towels from the bathroom.
As he knelt, fixing makeshift gags into place, he noticed the hunting knife, which had bounced under the bed. He reached under the mattress to snag it. It had a nice balance to it and the grip was non-slip rubber. He tested the edge with his thumb and nodded, glad he’d disabled its owner before the scalpel-sharp blade had got anywhere near his flesh.
He stood.
“Now, boys. Where are your passports, eh?”
He frisked their immobilised bodies but found no documents. Next, he checked the desk. Nada. One occupant, three guests, he thought. OK, so someone has theirs in the safe, maybe.
The steel safe in the bottom of the wardrobe was operated by a push-button entry code. The door was ajar. Gabriel reached down and withdrew a single burgundy passport. He read the details off the identity page.
“Genady Karisimov. Businessman. Well, tovarishch Genady, I’m afraid your business trip just got delayed.”
He pushed the passport back into the safe, added the hunting knife and read the instruction on the inside of the door for setting the passcode. He entered a new code – 1-9-1-7 – and closed the door, pushing it firmly until the latch clicked.
The men were still out cold, so he readied himself to leave. His hand was reaching for the door handle when somebody on the other side – somebody in authority to judge from the volume and number of knocks – announced their presence. Gabriel opened the door, once again just wide enough to speak.
Before him stood a grey-faced man in his midforties, short, grey hair, weary eyes, dark suit with a purple handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket. Gold-and-purple name badge on the other side. Ratip Advani. Manager. Miniature flag icons indicating he spoke English, Spanish, Turkish and German.
“I am sorry, sir, but we have received complaints about the noise. You and your, er, colleagues have been shouting.”
“No, it is I who should be apologising, Mister Advani,” Gabriel said, lowering his gaze briefly before resuming eye contact with the clearly reluctant hotel manager. “An argument over a business deal. It became heated. Overheated, in fact.” The man nodded and smiled as if to say, ‘we are men of the world, these things happen.’ “We’ll be quiet now. And we’ve changed our travel plans, so please could you cancel any wake-up calls?”
“Of course, sir,” the manager said, all smiles now, and clearly relieved not to be plunged into an awkward and possibly violent confrontation with his Russian guests. He turned on his heel and was off down the carpeted corridor to his office and perhaps a calming glass of something.
Before leaving the room, Gabriel removed the laminated sign from the inside of the door handle and turned it around before hanging it on the external knob.
“Shh!” it read. “We’re still snoozing. Come back when we’ve surfaced.”
12
Welcome to San Antonio
TEXAS
HEAT presents itself to the human body in many guises. Gabriel had experienced them all. The soupy humidity of jungles – and midwestern cities like Chicago. The intense, dry heat of the open desert. The pressure-cooker environment inside a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as it thundered towards a Taliban stronghold. The heat greeting him as he stepped out of the air-conditioned arrivals lounge of San Antonio International Airport was drier than the jungle, more humid than the desert. Pleasant, basically. He took off his jacket, half of a sage-green linen suit, hooked his thumb inside the collar and slung it over his shoulder. He’d texted Terri-Ann as the plane taxied to the jetway and received a short message in return.
I’ll be at the pickup point. Left of the doors. White Jetta. T x
He turned left and found some shade beneath the canopy over the entranceway. He shoved the handle of his silver Samsonite case down and perched carefully on its upper surface. His suit carrier he propped against its side. Even with his sunglasses, the Texas sun bouncing off the concrete was bright enough to make him squint after the carefully managed lighting of the terminal.
All around him, families were reuniting with hugs, kisses and in some cases squeals of excitement. A young woman in digital desert camouflage, midtwenties, very tanned, red hair tied back in a plait, was being smothered with kisses by a woman Gabriel assumed was her mother. For a moment, his heart flipped as her resemblance to his former fiancée jabbed a knifepoint of regret through a chink in his emotional armour. He shook himself free.
Who else can we see? Executive types with smart leather cases and la
ptop bags were climbing into shiny black Town Cars. And here and there, moving through the throng alone, that species of traveller with whom Gabriel had always identified. They were neither anxious-looking, nor brash. Their clothes didn’t melt into the background, but didn’t scream ‘Look at me!’ either. Who are you? he would always wonder. Freelance corporate headhunters? Web designers? Assassins? That was just it. You could never be sure. And what am I? Security officer? Government hitter? Free agent? It was getting harder to tell. But his mission in San Antonio was uncomplicated, at least. Find out what had happened to Vinnie Calder.
A cheerful double-toot from a car horn woke him up and he looked around before spotting a blonde woman smiling and waving from the open door of a white VW Jetta. He wheeled his case over and stopped by the rear of the car as Terri-Ann came to greet him.
Unsure what form of greeting would be appropriate in the circumstances, he hung back, but Terri-Ann settled the matter for him. She hugged him, then stood back and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Looking straight into his eyes with her own, which were the blue-grey of wet slate, she spoke for the first time.
“Thank you for coming, Gabriel. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Come on. Let’s get your bags in the trunk and get out of this heat. I guess it’s not what you’re used to in England, huh?”
Gabriel loaded his cases and placed his messenger bag on top of it.
“Not in England. But I live in Hong Kong now. It can get pretty warm there, too.”
She smiled, exposing even, white teeth, the canines slightly crossing in front of the incisors.
“Oh, my Lord, you Brits and your understatement. I love it! Come on, let’s get in anyway. You might not be feeling it, but I am.”
She pulled away and began the process of navigating her way onto Four Ten West driving fast where she could, but smoothly.
“Hong Kong? That’s a long way from home, isn’t it? Last time I saw you, you were living in, where was it, Southampton?”
“Salisbury.”
“Oh yes, near Stonehenge, you said. And such a beautiful cathedral.”
“Well remembered. Not all Americans are so good with British culture and geography.”
“When your subject’s English, it goes with the territory. So what happened? Salisbury to Hong Kong’s a pretty big jump.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, look up ahead. That’s the afternoon traffic in San Antonio. We’ve got some time.” As she brought the car to a stop behind the huge rear end of a metallic-blue Ford F150 pickup, she twisted the dial for the air conditioning up a little and turned to him. “I’m sorry. You only just got here and already I’m giving you the third degree.”
“No, it’s fine,” Gabriel said. Then he sighed. A long exhalation brought on partly by fatigue and partly by the realisation that he’d brought more baggage with him than was stowed in the Jetta’s trunk. He gave Terri-Ann a cut-down version of the events that had led him to Hong Kong. He left out the confidential parts to do with The Department, Don Webster and all the other sensitive aspects of the chain of events that had left him rich, virtually friendless and living in Britain’s former colony.
When he’d finished – “… so I inherited it all and decided to stay.” – the traffic was moving again and Terri-Ann was indicating for I-10 towards El Paso.
“My God, Gabriel. If I’d known what you’d been through, I would never have sent the text. I guess you don’t need any more deaths to think about.”
He shook his head.
“It’s fine, really. I was going crazy out there anyway. I don’t think I was cut out to be a man of leisure. There are only so many watercolours of Victoria Harbour you can paint before you want to fling them all into the water.”
They spent the rest of the journey talking about trivial things. Comparing climates and eating habits, favourite authors – Dickens and Dostoyevsky for him, Steinbeck and Updike for her – and what San Antonio was like.
Then she was indicating right, pulling off the suburban road and across the sidewalk, and stopping the Jetta on a smooth asphalt driveway. The two-storey house was mostly rendered in white stucco with exposed stone on the ground floor.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she said brightly, “Well, here we are, home sweet home!”
But Gabriel caught a catch in her voice and realised in a flash what it was costing her to maintain the façade of normality.
13
The Widow's Tale
GABRIEL retrieved his bags from the Jetta’s trunk, slammed the lid shut and followed Terri-Ann into the house. The interior was painted in soft shades of terracotta and sand. He poked his head round the living room door and saw squashy-looking cotton sofas, a La-Z-Boy recliner upholstered in black leather – Vinnie’s, he guessed – and floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books.
“Let me show you to your room,” Terri-Ann said.
He turned. She was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
The guest room was bright, with sunlight streaming through Venetian blinds. A double bed, dressed in plain, white cotton linen. More books, a wardrobe.
“It’s great, thank you,” he said, putting the bags down.
“You have a bathroom through that door, so no embarrassment in the mornings,” she said with a smile. “I’ll leave you to freshen up, then why don’t you come and find me in the back yard. I’ll fix us both a drink.”
Gabriel stripped off the clothes he’d been travelling in for what felt like days. The shower was powerful and as he stood under the stinging jets, he ran his fingers through his hair and rolled his shoulders, trying to unknot the tension that had built until it felt like solid lumps beneath the skin.
He dressed in jeans and a white shirt and walked through the house to find Terri-Ann. She was sitting on the terrace in a white wicker lounger. She stood to greet him as he emerged from the sliding glass doors from the kitchen.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked with a smile, pushing her hair back from her eyes.
“Better, thank you. It was a long couple of days.”
“So, how about that drink? You’re a wine guy, I seem to remember. The guys at the barbecue were ragging you about not drinking beer.”
Gabriel smiled back.
“Wine would be great, thank you.”
“Red or white?”
“You choose.”
Terri-Ann disappeared into the kitchen and returned a couple of minutes later bearing two glasses of white wine, the bowls already beading with condensation.
“Californian Chenin Blanc, one of my favourites. Cheers!”
“Cheers,” he said, clicking the rim of his glass against hers.
The wine was perfectly chilled, not so cold you couldn’t taste it, but cool enough to bring out the floral aroma and flavours of apples and pears.
Gabriel sat on a second lounger, feet on the ground, and put the wine glass down. Terri-Ann matched his pose, so they were almost knee to knee.
“I’m really sorry about Vinnie,” he said. “Do you want to tell me what you know?”
Terri-Ann took a mouthful of wine and swallowed it audibly. She breathed out in a sharp sigh.
“OK. So, last Friday, Vinnie was due home from a business trip with his boss. I had everything ready for a homecoming dinner – he’d been away for a week – and when he didn’t come home I started calling round, you know, the airline, the airport and then his PA. Eventually I tried the SAPD. Oh, sorry, that’s the—”
“The San Antonio Police Department. It’s OK, I worked it out.”
She smiled hesitantly, then continued.
“Sorry. Anyway, so they tell me I have to wait till Monday before they can record him as officially missing. I kept calling though, and my Dad came over to be with me, then on Monday I get a call from a Detective Casamayor down at Police Headquarters. I go down to meet her and she tells me Vinnie’s been found dead. In the desert.”
She took another gulp of her wine, and Gabriel used the
pause to ask another question.
“Have they said how he died?”
She nodded, mouth a tight line.
“He was shot. They did an autopsy. But there’s something off about it. His body—” she stopped suddenly and Gabriel could tell how much pain the retelling of her husband’s death was causing her. He reached across the narrow gap between them and gently laid a hand on her knee.
“We can do this later, if you want,” he said quietly.
She shook her head.
“No. It’s fine. Really.” She swiped a hand across her eyes and cleared her throat. “What the detective told me was, his bones were all broken. The ones that were left. Some were missing because, because … Oh, Vinnie!”
She wailed out her dead husband’s name and as the tears flooded from her eyes, Gabriel jumped up, perched next to her and hugged her while she wept. When the spasm of grief had passed, he offered her a tissue from his pocket.
“It’s clean,” he said with a small smile.
Terri-Ann blotted her eyes then poked the tissue into the sleeve of her shirt.
“Thanks. Sorry, it’s just I’ve been trying to deal with all this, this shit, on my own and it’s been so hard, Gabriel, so hard.”
“Did this detective, Casamayor?” Terri-Ann nodded. “Did she tell you if they had a working theory about how he got there?”
She shook her head.
“They’re playing their cards pretty close to their chest. ‘We’re doing everything we can, Mrs Calder, you have to be patient’,” she said in a comically deep voice. “That’s what this male detective told me. He’s Casamayor’s partner, I think. Sayers, I think that was his name. He gave me his card, it’s in my bureau.”
