The Blue Ring (A Creasy novel Book 3)

by A. J. Quinnell

  The three men looked up as Maxie hooked a chair over and sat down.

  He said, ‘Nicole sent me over. I’m released from my promise, so whatever it is, I’m available if you need me.’

  Creasy turned and looked at Nicole behind the bar. He saw her almost imperceptible nod. Then she moved towards the kitchen.

  She brought coffees and Cognacs on a tray and put it on the table.

  Creasy thanked her and said, ‘Why don’t you join us, Nicole, and hear what it’s all about?’

  She looked at Frank and Rene; they both nodded. She went to the bar to collect her Armagnac, and Creasy pulled up a chair. Half an hour later she turned to Maxie and said in a tight voice, ‘I don’t just release you from your promise. If you don’t help them find and kill those bastards I won’t sleep easy. I was lucky. I only ever worked for Blondie, and you know how well she treated me and all her girls. But I’ve seen the result of what those bastards do. They’re not fit to live.’

  Maxie shrugged and looked at Creasy. ‘I guess I have no choice now.’

  Rene grinned and said, ‘It will be like old times. I’ve spent the last six months playing nanny to a Swedish industrialist . . . about as interesting as watching paint dry. If he ever gets kidnapped whoever does it will send him home within a couple of days. Hell! They’ll even pay his family to come and pick him up!’

  They all laughed and then Creasy said soberly to Nicole, ‘Thanks. We all feel better having Maxie along. We always did make a good team.’

  ‘Who else is in the team?’ she asked.

  ‘Blondie, of course,’ he answered. ‘She’ll handle communications up here. Guido will do the same in Naples, but I won’t get him directly involved.’ He thought for a moment and said, ‘Then there’s a Danish policeman called Jens Jensen. He was involved at the very beginning and is desperately keen to keep that involvement.’

  ‘Is he good?’ Maxie asked.

  Creasy shrugged. ‘He’s intelligent and experienced, tough and streetwise, a bit above average . . . but not in our league.’

  ‘How many are there in your league . . . in the whole world, I mean?’ Nicole asked with a slight smile.

  The American answered. ‘On our side of the fence, maybe less than fifty. On the other side, a few hundred.’

  The others nodded in thoughtful agreement and then Rene asked Creasy, ‘Might this Dane be something of a liability? Is one of us going to have to watch his back?’

  Creasy drained the last of his coffee and shook his head.

  ‘No. There’s a Frenchman who watches his back. He was a bodyguard to Leclerc in Marseille. You all know about Leclerc.’

  ‘Then he’s good,’ Maxie remarked. ‘Leclerc doesn’t hire bums. How will you use the Dane?’

  ‘As a tangent,’ Creasy answered. ‘After all, he is a cop who works in the Danish Missing Persons Bureau; he can open doors. He’s also motivated and has at least another month of unpaid leave. I can get that extended if necessary.’

  ‘What about Michael?’ Maxie asked.

  Creasy thought for a moment and then said, ‘I told you about the girt, Juliet. I spoke to Michael a few hours ago on the phone. She’s making a good recovery, both physically and mentally.’

  Nicole was looking at him curiously. Only she noticed that his voice had softened as he talked about the girl.

  Creasy went on. ‘In a week or so she can go to stay with friends and Michael will join us. By that time we should know whether Satta and his sidekick Bellu have got more information on this guy Jean Lucca Donati.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m catching the three a.m. flight back to Milan. I have a meeting with Satta at ten o’clock in the morning.’ He gestured at Frank and Rene. ‘I’d like you guys to base yourself at Guido’s pensione, starting from the day after tomorrow. Leclerc’s sending some machinery to Guido. Hand-guns, grenades and SMGs. He’s also sending a similar package to Milan.’ He gestured at Maxie. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow night. Depending on what information I get from Satta, I’ll need you in either Milan or Naples.’

  ‘What about the Dane?’ Maxie asked.

  ‘He’s flying down to Milan tomorrow, and The Owl is coming in from Marseille. They’ll meet me at my hotel there.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. They all did the same, and Nicole watched as they went through the ritual that never ceased to intrigue her when such men greeted each other or made their farewells. One by one, they put their left hands behind the other’s neck and kissed them hard on the right cheek, very close to the mouth.

  Chapter 31

  They swam twenty-five lengths of the pool. Michael kept his pace down so as to swim alongside her. When they stopped she was gasping for breath, but she got the words out. ‘I can do another ten lengths.’

  He pulled himself out of the pool, reached for his towel and grinned down at her.

  ‘Do another five but no more.’

  He towelled himself dry, watching her thin shape slide through the water. She was wearing a bright red one-piece swimsuit they had bought the day before, during a great shopping spree in Rabat. It was an hour after dawn. They had taken up a routine of rising early and going to bed early. After breakfast they would take the jeep and he would show her more of the island. Then they would have a big lunch at the Oleander in Xaghra. She liked the local dishes and she liked Mario, the owner, who treated her as a grown-up rather than a child. After lunch they would swim again, but this time in the sea, from the rocks at Qala Point. They would sunbathe for an hour or two. She always took a notebook with her and he would teach her Maltese. It had only been a few days, but he knew that within a matter of weeks she would be able to communicate in the language.

  ‘If my passport says I’m Maltese,’ she had said, ‘then I’m going to speak the language.’

  ‘Your passport says you are Maltese,’ he had answered. ‘But don’t ever forget that you’re a Gozitan.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘There is. The Maltese think that Gozitans are the peasants of the islands, but we have a saying over here: it only takes one Gozitan to put three Maltese in his pocket.’

  She had laughed and said, ‘Then I’m definitely a Gozitan!’

  She finished her last length and collapsed, gasping, over the edge of the pool.

  He reached a hand down and pulled her up and asked, ‘What do you want for breakfast?’

  Her small chest was heaving, but her eyes lit up at the thought of food. ‘Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes . . . oh, and lots of toast . . . and fresh orange juice.’

  He walked to the kitchen shaking his head and heard her call out behind him.

  ‘I’ll make dinner!’

  She came into the kitchen ten minutes later. She was wearing denim shorts and a white ‘Smugglers Cave’ T-shirt. Another restaurant that she liked, especially for its pizzas. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her face was taking on a tan. She wrinkled her nose in anticipation.

  He turned back to the stove and said over his shoulder, ‘In about a week I want you to go and stay with Laura and Paul.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll be leaving.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Somewhere in Italy. I have to join Creasy.’

  She sat at the table and asked, ‘How long will you be away?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be days or weeks or even longer.’

  He turned to look at her, expecting to see petulance on her face. There was none. She was simply nodding in understanding.

  She looked up at him and asked, ‘Can’t I stay here?’

  He slid the food onto her plate, took it over, put it in front of her and said, ‘If you stay here alone, Creasy and I will worry about you. We have enough to worry about.’

  Again she nodded and, before starting to eat, said, ‘On the day I move in with Laura and Paul I will make them promise only to speak to me in Maltese. When you get back I will be a Gozitan.’ She looked up a
nd said seriously, ‘And I’ll have three Maltese in each pocket.’

  He grinned and went to get his own breakfast.

  Chapter 32

  Creasy dozed on the flight. He disliked flying, not out of fear, but because he felt that such journeys held no interest. They stuck you into a tube and delivered you to a different place, a different culture and often a different climate. It was like being mailed in a package. He much preferred trains and ships, and would always use them when he had the time. Due to the usual air traffic controllers’ go-slow over Italy, they had left Brussels an hour late, and that also irritated him.

  He was not in a good mood when they touched down in Milan but since he only had an overnight bag he was spared the wait for customs.

  He quickly found a taxi and, as he ducked into it, said, ‘The Excelsior Hotel . . . near the railway station.’

  The driver cursed under his breath. Anyone staying in that fleapit near the station would not leave a centime of a tip. Italian taxi drivers can be loquacious, but this one remained silent at least during the early part of the forty-minute journey. After twenty minutes Creasy leaned back and closed his eyes and dozed again. The city of Milan had no beauty to keep him awake. Had he not dozed he would have noted the sudden interest in the taxi driver’s eyes as he looked at Creasy in the rearview mirror. Five minutes later Creasy was woken by the driver’s voice.

  ‘Are you staying long in Milan?’

  Creasy’s eyes opened and he shook his head to clear it.

  ‘Just a couple of days.’

  ‘Business or pleasure?”

  ‘Just to look up an old friend,’ The tone of his voice was curt enough to indicate that he was not looking for conversation, but the driver was persistent.

  ‘Are you from Naples?’

  ‘No. But I spent some years there,’

  The taxi driver nodded, ‘I can tell it from your accent, it’s not a city I like myself. Neither a taxi driver nor anyone else is safe on the streets.’

  Creasy grunted non-committally. The driver seemed to take the hint, and they completed the journey in silence.

  The driver did get a tip. A thousand lire note. He looked at it and then at the back of the man who was walking into the shabby hotel entrance. The driver engaged the gears, drove around the corner and reached for his mobile phone. Almost every taxi driver in Milan and many other Italian cities is an informer of one kind or another. It’s a general sideline and the masters are sometimes the police, sometimes drug pushers, sometimes a pimp and occasionally a local Mafia capo. This taxi driver was linked to Gino Abrata, one of the two capos who ran Milan.

  Within two minutes Abrata was on the line, even though it was only seven o’clock in the morning. Five minutes later Gino Abrata was on the phone to Paolo Grazzini, the sole capo of Rome.

  ‘Yes, he’s sure. He swears to it . . . Yes, I know he’s supposed to be dead. Of course I know he’s supposed to be dead! I saw his bloody funeral on television . . . No, the taxi driver had never seen him before face to face, but he’d seen that face on television and then full size in the newspapers six years ago. It’s a face you don’t forget. Also the taxi driver says he speaks fluent Italian with a Neapolitan accent . . . that also fits. My guy’s reliable . . . I’ll have a couple of my men round there within half an hour . . . OK . . . OK, I’ll send half a dozen of my best guys . . . Yes, sure, how could I forget? Sure I’ll call you the minute I see that face myself.’

  Chapter 33

  Michael was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. At first he found it heavy going, but Creasy had pushed him to read it, telling him that it was one of the great works of the century. He was sitting in the shade of a rock at Qala Point. Occasionally he glanced over to look at Juliet, who lay on her stomach in the sun. She was studying her Maltese language book, sometimes calling out for a clarification.

  After an hour they both went to cool off in the sea and then sat in the shade. He took out a can of beer for himself from the cool box and a Coke for her.

  They sat in companionable silence for a while and then she said, ‘I want to talk about it.’ She was gazing across the flat, dark blue sea to the island of Comino. He stared at her.

  Very quietly, she continued, ‘About what happened to me in Marseille. I’m better now, physically. All the good food, the sun and the sea have made me better . . . I’m starting to put on weight and I feel stronger every day.’ She turned to him and then said almost defiantly, ‘But I cannot sleep well at night, and sometimes I have nightmares and sweat a lot . . . I think it’s all in my mind and I think I have to talk about it to you.’

  Creasy had discussed this possibility with Michael, and so he answered, ‘Juliet, there are people who are experienced in this kind of thing. Specially trained doctors and social workers. What’s happening to you is a delayed reaction. It’s quite normal. Sometimes people who have been through such a terrible experience need weeks, months or even years to get over it. It depends on their character and on their background. The horror for you started when your stepfather began abusing you. You should talk to an expert and go back to that time. There’s a very good one in Malta, a woman, trained in England.’

  The girl shook her head emphatically. ‘I don’t need a psychiatrist, Michael. I just need to talk to somebody I trust. It has to be you or Creasy, and you both might be away for a long time, so it has to be you. Can we do it now and then forget about it?’

  He drank some beer and then said, ‘Go ahead.’

  She talked for half an hour. She cried twice and each time he put an arm around her shoulders and waited until she had controlled her tears. At the end of it he was both thoughtful and puzzled.

  ‘So your stepfather never actually raped you?’

  ‘No . . . he never put his thing inside me. He just stroked me and made me use my hands on it . . . maybe it was worse that way. Also he beat me. He liked to do that.’

  He nodded and said, ‘Maybe that’s all your mother would let him do.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘She would have let him do anything. You see, it’s why I ran away. He kept telling me that he would do it on my fourteenth birthday . . .’ she looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. ‘He told me it would be a special birthday present . . .’

  Michael was silent. His mind was far away in Germany, and he was thinking that when this was all over he would make a journey there. He would give a certain man his last ever birthday present. A present of eternal damnation. He brought his mind back to the present. ‘And the same thing happened with those bastards in Marseille?’

  Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘Yes, they made me use my hands . . . and my mouth. They brought a woman in to show me how to use my mouth . . . she was a very beautiful woman with long blonde hair and they used to watch her while she did things to me . . . sometimes there were three or four of them . . . afterwards, they would make me use my mouth.’

  She started to cry again and Michael pulled her close and held her head against his shoulder. It was a warm day but his body and mind were totally cold. He thought of the beautiful, blonde woman and said, ‘Juliet, I don’t know if it will help, but I killed the woman who did that to you.’

  She looked up and pulled herself away from him.

  ‘You killed her . . . yourself? When . . . how . . .?’

  He told her in detail about the cellar under the villa in Marseille. He told her how Denise Defors had panicked and run for the steps and how he had shot her first in the back and then in the head.

  He saw the fierce fascination in the girl’s eyes and she asked, ‘And the man she was with, the handsome man? The one who always wore shoes made from a snake or a lizard or something?’

  Michael nodded. ‘Creasy killed him. He tied him to a crooked policeman who had a bomb strapped to his back. The bomb was detonated and blew them both into pieces.’ Again he saw the satisfaction in her eyes. ‘Does it help?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘You killed her
and Creasy killed him . . . It’s just like I took a warm shower.’

  She could see the slight puzzlement in his eyes. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He spread his hands. ‘Well . . . I can understand that animal of a stepfather waiting for a few months in anticipation, but I can’t understand those bastards in Marseille waiting. They certainly didn’t wait with that poor Danish girl.’ A thought struck him. ‘Juliet . . . were you . . . are you . . . a virgin?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said solemnly, ‘They even had that old woman there check it out . . . she seemed to know about those things . . . she put a finger inside me and said, “Oui . . . c’est là . . .!” I speak French quite well because I went to an international school.’

  ‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘They were probably keeping you a virgin to sell you to the highest bidder. Beautiful virgins around fourteen or fifteen years old fetch a huge price in the Middle East or the Far East.’

  She shook her head,

  ‘I think it was something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered. ‘But it was something they said. The woman was there and the man with the snake shoes. There was another man. Of course they spoke French but they didn’t know I understood most of it. Snakeshoes was polite to the other man . . . he must have been important. He wanted me but Snakeshoes said no, I was a virgin. The man became very excited and pushed Snakeshoes, but still he refused. Then the man said, “Of course you can get a fortune for a young virgin like that.” Then the woman laughed, the one you killed, and said, “We get more than a fortune for a virgin. We get a bigger fortune for her virginity, her youth . . . and her life . . . all together.” Then Snakeshoes told her to shut up.’