Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2)

by Giles O'Bryen

  Half an hour later, I was delivered to the kitchen for breakfast, supervised by the other two members of the night shift. They weren’t in uniform – ex-military, I guessed, employed by whatever private security firm had the contract to run this place. One of them leaned against the frame of the back door and picked his nails, while his mate perched on a stool by the counter, his large haunches engulfing the vinyl seat. I ate off melamine crockery, using plastic utensils: cereal, toast, lukewarm instant coffee which they’d obviously spat in.

  ‘If it was me, I’d feed slimy nonces on dog shit and broken glass.’

  ‘And a cup of cold piss.’

  Allowing these bullies to wind me up was the worst thing I could do. My Int Corps superiors wanted to take me off the map for a while, that much was obvious; but why go to the expense of a safe house with its three rotating shifts of three bruisers each and its no doubt inconvenient location? I chewed a corner of burnt toast and looked round the kitchen – an assemblage of laminated chipboard and plastic trim that could have been described as utilitarian if it hadn’t been falling apart. The kitchen gave onto a hallway with the front door and staircase, and a short passage with rooms either side.

  ‘I want a phone call,’ I said. ‘And get me Clive Silk. When you’ve done that, take this tag off my ankle.’

  ‘Did you say something?’ the man on the stool asked his companion.

  ‘Not me, mate. Maybe there’s an infestation. You know, roaches or vermin or suchlike.’

  ‘There’s a bad smell, that’s for sure. Slimy, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘Yeah, sort of noncey.’

  They sniffed the air theatrically, then smirked at each other.

  They locked me up again and I examined the tag strapped to my ankle – it was cheaply made, but still impossible to open or detach without sounding the alarm.

  I spent the next hour walking round and round the room, examining handles, hinges, brackets, screws – anything that would furnish me with a tool or a weapon. There was a shelving unit incorporating a column of small cupboards and a hanging space from which the pole had been removed. The bed was a flimsy divan that would be useful only if my warders had a pathological fear of upholstered pine. The window tilted open about four inches, at which point it was impeded by steel blocks screwed into the slides. As I pushed at them pointlessly with my thumb, a car pulled up in the lane. Three men got out and walked round the side of the house. A minute later, the three who’d guarded me overnight were driven off.

  Less than an hour into the wakeful portion of my captivity, and already I had nothing to do. Have another look at the window. Grip it top and bottom, like so, and you can pop it clear of the slides. My knuckles whitened and I realised I was already twisting the frame. I felt sick, empty. Do something. I checked the bed again. It was nothing. I could tear it apart in ten seconds flat. Do anything.

  Remember how his dying heart pulsed through the knife-grip?

  Yes, I remember.

  The boy dead in the loft, fear and loneliness draining from his eyes: remember how it felt?

  Exercise, I told myself. Get a routine going.

  I leaned against the wall and stretched, and the protests from my bruised limbs distracted me. I went at it hard, every rep I knew, demanding that my body find the energy to keep my mind at bay. As I worked, I noticed that a section of floor was uneven and springy. A loose floorboard: the sort of place workmen mislay tools or leave bits and pieces they can’t be bothered to take out to the skip. A screwdriver or a chisel, I fantasised. Something to investigate, anyway. Something to plan. I imagined lifting the length of timber to reveal my hoard.

  At midday I was taken downstairs for a microwaved lasagne served with a garnish of sneers. There was a row of dog-eared paperbacks set out on the counter by the kettle.

  ‘Could I have one of those books, please?’

  ‘Slimy Nonce wants a book. What do you think?’

  ‘We couldn’t allow it. Some of the characters might be kiddies.’

  ‘He’ll get all hot and sweaty. Next thing, he’s spunking all over his fucking room.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be right.’

  I told myself that their choreographed mockery meant nothing to me, but in truth it was hard to take.

  ‘We wuz going to let his royal sliminess have a walk in the garden after his lunch,’ one of them went on.

  ‘Can’t be allowed. Not when he’s looking for an opportunity to have hisself a wank.’

  Back in my room I decided to investigate the loose floorboard. I’d spent the last few hours clinging to the hope that it might hide something miraculous, and now felt a sentimental reluctance to see that hope dashed. Get on with it, I told myself, or you’ll never find the girl you fed to the dogs in Skopje.

  I moved the bed aside so I could get to the corner nearest the loose board, waited until I was sure the noise hadn’t alerted my handlers, then lifted the carpet off the spiked gripper tacked along the skirting and rolled back the underlay. The board was nailed down at one end, but the other had lifted enough that I could get my fingernails into the grain and start easing it up. I could hear a TV from the ground floor, the voices of my handlers conducting a desultory, stop-start conversation, but the noises weren’t coming from the room below mine. The one who was supposed to be posted outside my door had sloped off to bed in the room next to the bathroom half an hour ago, and the occasional snort suggested he was asleep.

  Once I had my fingers in under the board I could pull harder, but the nails protested and I had to take it slowly, pausing after every little creak. Five minutes later I was lying on the floor, my fingers scrabbling among the dust and wires between the joists.

  I set my haul out on the floor: eight pages of the Sun newspaper, dated 11 October 1978, and a piece of broken glass that looked like it came from the base of a Coke bottle.

  Hallelujah.

  It was ridiculous to feel so disappointed. You weren’t seriously expecting a chisel, were you? I stuffed everything back down between the joists, replaced the floorboard and rolled the carpet into place. I lay down on the bed and tried in vain to sleep. What would happen now to the girl I’d dumped in Syrna Street? I was the only person who knew what desperate trouble she was in, but I was being held in this grim little house somewhere on the other side of Europe. I could not save her. But I must. I would.

  24

  After breakfast next day, one of the bruisers diverted me down the passage off the hallway. The door to the room below mine was open and I looked in as we passed – a dining room that didn’t look used. That was good. I could move around upstairs without attracting attention. The bruiser hustled me into the sitting room on the other side of the passage, and there was Clive Silk. He’d disposed himself across the sofa in a languid manner and was studying the ceiling. I’m a highly intelligent spy on a highly sensitive mission, his demeanour announced. I wasn’t fooled. The skin of his face was damp and his tie looked as if it were throttling him.

  ‘Captain Palatine – good to see you’ve recovered. You were in a bit of a sorry state last time we met.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Funny kind of place, this – looks like it’s been parachuted in from Woking or Croydon or somewhere. They treating you OK?’

  I sat down opposite him and folded my arms. I thought I could damage Clive Silk quite badly in the five seconds it would take the hired hands to arrive.

  ‘I’ve come to tell you what happens from here on. Obviously you’re in quite a bit of trouble. No point pretending otherwise.’

  ‘You have forty-eight hours from my arrest to get me in front of a court and lay charges,’ I said. ‘Forty-eight hours is already up, so you’re committing a criminal offence by holding me here.’

  ‘Correct. And you smuggled an underage girl over the border from Kosovo. The driver said you had your arm round her in the back of the Land Rover. Then I guess she spent the night in your apartment.’

  ‘She had nowhere else to go,�
�� I said, thinking that, in the right hands, it would be a compellingly sordid piece of evidence. ‘Have you spoken to Sergeant Farah?’

  ‘Denies all knowledge of the girl, and so do his unit. They were hurrying to get an injured man back across the border, if you remember.’

  The story as agreed. It didn’t exactly help my cause.

  ‘Farah’s report says you couldn’t keep up,’ Silk went on, the corners of his thin mouth betraying the momentary twinge of pleasure this detail gave him. ‘Three days later, you were filmed in a club called the Vegas Lounge that’s under investigation for child prostitution. You must see how bad it all looks. Where is this girl now?’

  ‘I took her to a house at seventy-seven Syrna Street. I was led to believe it was run by the UNHCR. Does that address mean anything to you?’

  It wasn’t the sort of question people like Clive Silk answer. ‘So you left her there,’ he said. ‘Anything else I should know about?’

  ‘The girl who took her in I saw later at the Vegas Lounge.’

  ‘This gets worse and worse,’ said Silk. ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you have the tape?’

  ‘A copy. The Skopje police have the original. You, on a bed with an underage girl. Unfortunate.’

  I ignored the provocation and asked: ‘Did the police tell you they’d arrested me?’

  ‘They didn’t need to. We’d had the Vegas Lounge under informal surveillance for several days before you dropped in. You didn’t exactly go incognito.’

  ‘You’re watching it? Why haven’t you closed it down?’

  ‘Don’t be naive, Palatine. None of this is in our jurisdiction – UK intelligence is an interested party here, that’s all.’

  ‘There are girls being abused at the Vegas Lounge every night. If you don’t do something about it, you’re complicit.’

  This argument cut no ice with Silk. He didn’t feel complicit at all. ‘We’ll pass on any relevant intel, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Did it occur to you to talk to me,’ I said bitterly, ‘rather than fabricating this arrest?’

  ‘The Skopje police are in possession of a video showing a British army officer—Well, you know what it shows. How would it look if we’d got you released, then just let you wander off? We have to be able to demonstrate that you’ve been properly investigated.’

  ‘Now that’s been done,’ I said, ‘you can let me go.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. There are wider issues in play, which I’m not able to explain to you at this time.’

  ‘So this isn’t just about me,’ I said. ‘You’re not even that bothered by a bit of child prostitution. Why is MI6 handling this rather than the Int Corps?’

  ‘Because the wider issues are outside the Int Corps remit.’

  ‘And these issues are?’

  Silk didn’t reply. I looked into his eyes. They were a faded blue colour, slightly filmed-over, but the pupils had an anxious, startled energy. Silk was essentially a weak man for whom the corporate structure of MI6, allied to his sense of his own cleverness, provided the extra ballast he needed. It was galling to have him lording it over me, but he wasn’t enjoying it as much as he should have been.

  ‘The night I was at the Vegas Lounge,’ I said, ‘pretty much everyone was army, NATO or UN.’

  ‘Did you recognise someone in particular?’ asked Silk. ‘Or was there just a general twitching of the Palatine halo?’

  ‘I’ve been to embassy cocktail parties. The guests at the Vegas Lounge looked much the same.’

  ‘Why were you at the Vegas Lounge? You haven’t said.’

  ‘I don’t feel the need to explain myself to you,’ I said, ‘now I know my arrest is part of some charade dreamed up by you and your team in the MI6 playpen.’

  ‘But once inside, you thought you’d hire an underage girl, then start a drunken brawl.’

  ‘I lost my temper when I found out what was going on in the bedrooms,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Not because you didn’t get your champagne?’

  A pulse rocked in my neck, so heavy it made me nod. The urge to spring forward and kill Clive Silk was strong. I didn’t know if I could contain it. Silk had seen it. He made as if to stand up, thought better of it, shouted:

  ‘Ackford!’

  One of the old bullies trotted in.

  ‘You’re going to regret that remark, Clive Silk,’ I said.

  ‘Oi. Cut it,’ said Ackford.

  ‘Captain Palatine can go back to his room,’ Silk ordered.

  ‘Right you are, Sir.’

  ‘You know how sensitive this sort of thing is, Palatine,’ said Silk, an expression of the unjustly accused playing over his rubbery features.

  I stood and stared down at him. ‘So sensitive that I had to be locked up in a safe house with this knuckle-dragger for company?’

  Ackford hissed and stepped in, then realised he couldn’t hit me with Silk there and stood with his head thrust forward, inches from my ear.

  ‘You’ll be held here for another two weeks. That’s all I can tell you at this point.’

  MI6 won’t do anything about the Vegas Lounge, I thought, when they’d locked me in my room. Whatever network of corruption was allowing the place to operate, they weren’t going to unravel it. Silk and his colleagues and masters regarded such tawdry affairs as beneath their dignity. Geopolitics was their game, and they played it among themselves as far as possible. The lives of ordinary people were a complication easily set aside, an inconvenience easily forgotten. No, they’d leave the messy hands-on stuff to others – it didn’t much matter who. In the meantime, it would suit MI6 to survey the goings-on at the Vegas Lounge from a position of interested detachment: such places were prime sources of intel, especially the precious kind that enables you to add new names to the list of influential people you can blackmail.

  Besides, what Silk had said about Skopje being outside their jurisdiction was true. And the knowledge that an incriminating videotape of a British army officer was stored in the evidence room at Skopje police station would hardly encourage MI6 to press for a formal investigation into the Vegas Lounge. What else? I was missing something. Why exactly did they need me off the map for the next two weeks? I thought back over our conversation but couldn’t work it out.

  Brooding wasn’t going to get me any answers. I sat on the floor with my left leg stretched out so the ankle tag was next to the corner of the bed, then raised the bedframe and smashed it down onto the plastic case. The thick plastic band that secured it ripped into my shin, but I hammered it again, and then again, until the case split down its seam. I prised the tag apart and tore out its innards, expecting the alarm to sound immediately. It didn’t. I counted the seconds: five, six, seven, eight—The monitoring unit downstairs whooped into life. Seconds later, I heard swearing outside, a key scratching in the lock. I shoved the bits under the mattress, then sat with my back against the door and managed to hold them off for long enough to clip the plastic case shut. I rolled aside and the door flew open.

  ‘You cunt.’

  ‘I don’t want this box attached to my ankle.’

  They pulled me up, got me by the throat, slammed me against the wall. One of them kneed me in the groin. I lay on the floor and retched for a while. When I’d recovered enough to speak, I said: ‘You can tag someone when they’ve been convicted of an offence. Otherwise, it’s illegal.’

  ‘You pull that one again, I’ll tag your fucking cock,’ said the one who had kneed me.

  He knelt on my neck while the other two went downstairs. I thought of allowing myself the pleasure of snapping this one’s spine and making a run for it. Twist his foot to get him off balance, drop knee-first into the small of his back. . . But there were two more to get past, and two further shifts of three men each, probably located less than five miles away with an off-site monitoring unit to alert them to any goings-on at the house. They’d already be out looking for me. An abortive escape was the worst possible move I could make.


  A moment later, the alarm stopped shrieking and the two who had gone downstairs returned. One of them cut the broken tag from my ankle and handed it to his mate while he fastened a new one in its place. Seeing the empty plastic case clutched in the bully’s knobbly fist made me feel better than I had for days.

  ‘We can tag the nonce,’ he grunted in my ear, ‘or we can tie him up like a mad dog instead, if that’s how he likes it. Not a problem.’

  I lay on the bed and examined the innards of the tag. There wasn’t much to it: a master unit listens out from somewhere in the house, like a mother duck keeping tabs on her chicks; at regular intervals, the RF chip in the ankle tag emits a cheep of the required frequency. If the tag fails to cheep as expected, the mother unit sounds the alarm.

  The chip didn’t seem to be damaged. It was connected to a battery to extend its range, but although the wiring was intact, the tamper-proof circuit fitted to the case had broken when I’d prised it open. Because the alarm hadn’t gone off immediately, I knew this circuit worked passively – by disabling the chip so it couldn’t send its cheeps to the mother unit. On a more intelligent device, of the kind used to tag offenders on parole, the alarm would have been triggered the moment the circuit was cut. I felt a moment of glee that the place had been equipped with such a crude system.

  I went and had another look at the mechanism that stopped the window opening. It had started to rain. Drops clung to the pane, quivering in the wind, then burst and slipped down the glass. The two steel blocks squatted inside the guide-rails, screwed down snug and tight. I pushed the window open as far as it would go and stared down through the narrow gap. My eyes settled immediately on a green plastic box against the wall directly below. It was like a small version of the grit hoppers you see by the roadside in winter, with a sloping lid and a metal latch you could use to secure it with a padlock. The lid was down, but it wasn’t locked.

  I could lower myself onto that box when I escaped – it looked solid enough. I twisted my head sideways and pressed my cheek against the window to get a better view. What was inside it? I pulled the window shut and went back to the bed, pushed the mattress aside and picked at a corner of the ticking that covered the base. I used the broken glass to cut out a large oblong of material, then sliced it into strips, knotted them together and made a noose at one end.