All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as contrite as she was embarrassed, but that more defiant and calculating part of her was wondering at this rare show of sensitivity. There couldn’t be a chink in his armour, could there? Her apology certainly didn’t quell the hurt.

  ‘Perhaps you find your accommodations insufficient, restrictive,’ he suggested sarcastically. The tone of scorn and implicit snobbery dispelled Jane’s fears and replaced them with an outrage of her own, which she chose to voice with exaggerated articulacy.

  ‘No. My accommodations are, as you know, beautiful, and, I would wager, purposely ostentatious. I am under no misapprehensions about the levels of hospitality you enjoy it being in your gift to dispense. However, given the way I was peremptorily summoned here, I must say I feel more like a prisoner than I do a guest.’

  She stared him down, not attempting to kid herself that he wouldn’t know it was all front. His eyes narrowed slightly as she dared to put him on the back foot, and she was sure she saw a twitch in his cheek at the ‘purposely ostentatious’ remark. He knew when he was being called out.

  ‘I have no prisoners here,’ he said, stepping to one side to unblock her path. It might even have appeared chivalrous if it wasn’t so demonstrably self-righteous.

  ‘No. Not since the Romanian, I gather,’ Jane replied.

  ‘You came here of your own free will, Mrs Fleming. The Romanian did not. You know where the door is. You walked right past it on your way to play nosy parker. If you leave, no one will stand in your way.’

  ‘What, you were so anxious to get me here, but you wouldn’t blink if I just upped and left right now?’

  ‘Were you to leave, my task would be harder, much harder, but I’d still carry it out. It would be harder for you too, I’d expect, from the sidelines. Which is why we both know this conversation is moot.’

  Jane rolled her head to one side, a gesture of acknowledgement.

  ‘You’d carry out your task,’ she agreed. ‘No doubt. So what’s in it for you?’

  ‘You know what’s in it for me. You want a figure for what my client is paying to save your son’s life? In euros?’

  ‘No, I just …’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, smiling like a shimmer on black metal in twilight. ‘Perhaps you’re looking for the hidden message of hope, harboured somewhere in this darkest human heart, is that it? There is no hidden message, Mrs Fleming. This is what I do, for money, and I do it very well, so it’s a good thing Willis hired me and not someone else.’

  ‘And what if someone else had hired you …’ she paused, her mouth dry as she searched for the words and the nerve to say them, ‘… not to save Ross’s life? What else do you do for money, Mr Bett? What did you do to the Romanian for money?’

  Bett laughed, bleak and hollow.

  ‘I could use a coffee,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer my question?’

  ‘Not without caffeine, no.’

  And with that, he turned and walked away, annoyingly sure she would follow, and even more annoyingly spot on.

  He led her to the kitchen, a cavernous and handsomely fitted affair, dominated in the centre by a rustic table: vast, old and formidable enough to have been made from reclaimed drawbridge. She ignored the chair Bett pulled out for her, preferring the less subjugated posture of leaning against a slate worktop as he busied himself in front of a brass espresso machine that might well have cost more than her car. He filled two small cups and handed one to her. He didn’t ask whether she took sugar, nor did she see any around. She didn’t, but she didn’t think the lack of offer was because he had taken pains to ascertain her tastes.

  ‘You have quite a house,’ she said. ‘And my remarks about purposely ostentatious quarters notwithstanding, it is all rather exquisite. Which continues to pique my curiosity as to how you pay for all of this.’

  ‘Back to the Romanian already?’

  ‘You’ve got your coffee.’

  ‘I have. How is yours?’

  ‘Needs sugar,’ she lied.

  ‘You’re sweet enough. At least, you were yesterday when your spoon came back from breakfast unused, and when you drank your espresso neat after lunch in Barcelona. But if you require, it’s in that cupboard behind you.’

  ‘You don’t miss much.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, but I do pay attention. You have to in my line.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Tell me all about it: apart from security consultancy, fake assault exercises and high-end missing-persons retrieval.’

  ‘You didn’t get the hidden message of hope, so now you want to know how dark this human heart really is.’

  ‘Never mind how dark it is, is it big enough to own up to itself?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of, Mrs Fleming, let that answer your question. No, I’m not a hired assassin and no, there are no circumstances under which I could be hired to, as you diplomatically put it, not save your son’s life. But there have been lives I have gladly not saved. Sometimes we … I have been retained by individuals, by organisations, by governments, to do things that legitimate, official forces cannot or will not do. Ilianu, for instance, was legally untouchable, protected by a cocoon of deniability, hierarchical removes and loopholes. He was trafficking girls for prostitution, and when I say girls, I mean girls. He catered to paedophiles in high places, which bought him even more protection, and not just through direct influence, but through the lengths these people would go to cover their own crimes and secrets. His contacts, his supply lines, were key to an entire network of white slavery around the Black Sea, but no court, no policeman, could get near him. Even if he could have been indicted, he would have been murdered before he could possibly name any names. So my team were engaged to bring him in.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Client confidentiality forbids me from saying. But going through us bypassed extradition issues and any number of other legal impediments.’

  ‘But if you did that, how could he be tried?’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Bett said, his face expressionless. ‘But he did name names. Eventually.’

  Jane gulped her coffee, her mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘And what happened to him after that?’ she just about managed to ask.

  Bett looked directly at her, his eyes as dead as a shark’s.

  ‘Client confidentiality forbids me from saying.’

  Silence fell upon the kitchen for a while after that, punctured only by the sound of coffee being sipped and cups placed down on the table. Bett didn’t seem the type to be bothered by it. He was used to dealing with higher stakes than personal awkwardness. She knew that part of her should be glad someone of such mettle was in her corner, but couldn’t miss the wider picture, in which she, Ross and Tom were now caught up in a game played by men like him.

  Knowing she would be waiting a while to be offered, Jane got up and opened the fridge in search of some breakfast. She found some croissants, bread, some confiture, cheeses and cold cuts. It occurred to her to fill a single plate and make a point of eating it herself, but that was unlikely to register as a protest. Better to contrast her own example by serving enough for him too. She placed the breakfast items on the table and retrieved two plates from a rack on the wall. She put them down on opposite sides of the table and took a seat.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, a tiny note of surprise in his voice.

  ‘Don’t thank me. It’s your stuff.’

  ‘Thank you anyway.’

  She stopped herself saying, ‘You’re welcome’, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps she didn’t want the exchange to conclude like it was merely a ritual of politeness.

  ‘So,’ she said, swallowing a mouthful of croissant. ‘Serendipity. You’re unco fond of these elliptical pronouncements, aren’t you? Drip-feeding tantalising titbits to your underlings without letting them near the fridge themselves. Is it to remind them who’s boss, because believe me, pal, they’re under no doubts about that. Or do y
ou just enjoy reminding yourself?’

  Bett smiled as he chewed on a hunk of bread, amused in that patronising way she was already learning to recognise and resent.

  ‘Underlings. Something about that word makes me think of gnomes or smurfs or Oompa-Loompas. Does anyone really consider themselves to have “underlings”? Or is it merely a term used in envy or spite to impugn the respect a person has for his employees?’

  He fixed Jane with a scrutinising gaze, his tone markedly less amused as he phrased this last question.

  ‘Coming from me?’ Jane responded, meeting his stare. ‘Definitely the latter. You like playing the big I Am, and you control information so that your underlings don’t know which way is up without you telling them.’

  ‘I think you’re grossly underestimating a number of brilliant individuals, and that you’re only doing it to insult me is the reason I’m not taking great offence on their behalf. They are not underlings, but I am – there you go, is that “I am” big enough for you? – I am their leader. No, I don’t always tell them all I know about a situation, because if I did, there is the danger that they would assume it was everything there was to know about it. If I tell them too little, then they will assume there is more to find out, and find out they will. Information, yes, I control it, and they work to discover it. Information is the greater part of what we are about, me and my … crepuscular little company.’

  ‘Crepuscular?’

  ‘Beings of the twilight, Mrs Fleming.’

  ‘Scurrying around in the shadows.’

  Bett nodded. ‘Legal shadows, political shadows … moral shadows.’

  ‘Well, I’m not in your company. I’m sitting here in the daylight. Serendipity. What are you on about?’

  Bett rolled up a slice of cooked ham and popped it into his mouth. He gestured with a slight wave of the fingers of his right hand, indicating he would answer when he was finished. He chewed, swallowed, then went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of orange juice. Even when put on the spot, this guy really loved to tease it out. He was about to close the fridge door again when something struck him and he turned back to the table.

  ‘Juice?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please. All the juice.’

  He poured out a glass, handed it to her and then stood, leaning against a worktop as she had done before. Jane took the body language to be a good sign: he was shaping up to hold forth.

  ‘I got a call a few hours ago, around five a.m., from one of the contacts I fed our information to yesterday. He got a cross-match against Gelsenhoff for a Juan-Felipe Saleas. He’s a smuggler. Runs supplies to the Balearics, mostly Ibiza: ecstasy, cocaine, crystal meth. He’s comparatively small-time, which is why he’s still trading.’

  ‘The Spanish cops let him get on with it so they can follow his trail.’

  ‘Correct. He’s the criminal equivalent of a barium enema.’

  ‘Lovely image.’

  ‘Appropriate, don’t you think? They’ve got him flagged up so that they can track his progress through the murky depths.’

  Jane made a deduction and felt her heart quicken with anticipation.

  ‘They know his boat. They can find out where he is,’ she suggested, though even as she said it she realised it had to be over-optimistic. Whatever serendipitous connection Bett had referred to had been something he knew last night. The news about Felipe had only come in at five this morning.

  ‘They know where his boat is. It’s back in Barcelona.’

  ‘So can we, can they …’

  ‘Ross won’t be on it.’

  ‘How can you be so sure? Isn’t it worth—’

  ‘He won’t be on it,’ Bett stated firmly, and she knew he was right. Why would they take their prisoners out to sea only to return to their port of origin?

  ‘Saleas handed him over to someone else,’ she suggested. ‘A bigger player.’

  ‘Saleas is known to service some high-end clients as well as his bread-and-butter runs to the hedonist havens. His boat does little trips to Portal Nous, Puerto Banus, San Trop, Monte Carlo.’

  ‘Marinas. Yachts. The super rich.’

  ‘Private supplies, select gatherings. Clients who want the good stuff and can afford to pay a premium for convenience, discretion and the knowledge that they’re getting it far enough up the supply chain to be uncontaminated. He’s got a lot of exclusive mobile numbers. We can’t plot exactly who called whom in what order, but from Connelly telling Gelsenhoff, word would have made it through Saleas to someone who knew what Ross was worth. Then, same as Connelly passing him to Saleas, Saleas passed him up the chain, for a fee, to a real player, with the clout and the connections to move the merchandise.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, can’t someone lean on Saleas to tell us?’

  ‘That was the first thing I asked. Unfortunately, my contact informed me that Saleas being left unhindered is just too important to a number of ongoing investigations. Incidentally, you should be aware I informed my contact that there were two gentlemen in need of assistance at a disused petrol station, now that Mr Connelly’s information has been verified. He said he was very busy, but he’d send someone to look into it. I told him there was no hurry.’

  ‘I wasn’t losing sleep over Connelly.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘So if we can’t talk to Saleas, what’s so bloody serendipitous?’

  ‘The fact that I do know where Ross’s new captor is going to set up his medicine show.’

  ‘Medicine show?’

  ‘Well, he won’t roll up in a covered wagon, but he’ll be hawking his wares nonetheless, just like any number of other unconscionable shills.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a “European Defence Exhibition” taking place next week. Orwellian euphemism for an Arms Convention. All the toy manufacturers will be there, showing off their latest ways of defending the hell out of anyone who pisses you off. Displays, demonstrations, exhibits, stalls and conferences, just like any other trade fair. And like any other trade fair, all of this will be a sideshow to the real purpose of bringing the major players together in one place, where business can be done: offer and counter-offer, barter and trade, off the record, away from the boardroom, unofficial, unaccountable. The biggest deal in town will concern the opportunity to acquire the Gravity Well, for development or … discontinuation. We will be there, amid the shadows, watching and listening unseen. Track the buyers, we find the seller. Find the seller and then there’s the small matter of armed assault and hostage rescue, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  ‘Let’s,’ Jane said, glad to defer the thought. ‘So where is the Air Bett helicopter headed? Frankfurt? Milan?’

  ‘No. That’s the truly serendipitous part. It’s on the Côte d’Azure: Cap Andreus. Just down the road from here.’

  He picked up his glass and downed the last of his orange juice.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘any more questions, or can I get back to being the big I Am?’

  ‘Just one,’ Jane replied, toying aimlessly with a piece of croissant that had gone a little hard and which she had no intention of eating. Her fingers needed something to occupy them, a sign that she was unexpectedly nervous about this final, rather trivial query. ‘This dress,’ she began. ‘It’s not exactly lounge-wear. Is there a particular reason it was left out for me yesterday morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ he stated. ‘It was the only thing in the house in your size. Apart from fatigues, and of course what you came in, but those were in a bit of a state.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jane said, somewhat taken aback by how much his answer had disappointed her. Even though it would have pissed her off no end, she realised she’d actually have preferred if it had been for his amusement. What was it about indifference that drew you to seek reaction, to seek approval? He was an arrogant, callous, manipulative bastard. More than that, he was a brute, a killer. And yet she wanted to believe h
e saw her as more than a piece on his meticulously controlled board or another chattel to commandeer.

  ‘I’ll get Alexis to take you shopping for some new clothes if we can fit it into your schedule,’ he went on.

  ‘My schedule? What schedule is that?’

  ‘Your training schedule. You didn’t believe you wouldn’t have to sing for your supper here, did you? The Defence Exhibition starts on Tuesday, which doesn’t leave us a lot of time, so it’s going to be pretty intensive, but I’m sure you can handle it.’

  ‘Handle it?’ she enquired, bemused. He really was straight back into his elliptical drip-feeding. ‘And what exactly are you expecting to train me for?’

  ‘Espionage, Mrs Fleming. What the bloody hell else?’

  She was glad her mouth had been empty when he told her, as she would surely have choked otherwise.

  ‘Espionage? Me? I’m a housewife, a grandmother, for God’s sake.’

  ‘And as such, you’ve served the perfect apprenticeship, according to one expert.’

  ‘The perf … what numpty said that?’

  ‘Stella Rimington. She was the head of MI5. In truth, she said being a mother, so you’re more than qualified.’

  ‘How does being a mother prepare me for being a spy?’

  ‘For a start, you’re a woman, and therefore more naturally suited to this kind of thing.’

  ‘Is this where you imply my sex are naturally sleekit and two-faced?’

  ‘No, it’s where I concede that you have evolved over millennia to outwit men because you cannot compete with their brutality. Men dominate through their physical strength. It’s a contest women can’t win, so women entice them to play different games.’

  ‘So you are saying we’re sleekit and two-faced.’

  ‘You are more intuitive, psychologically aware, subtly manipulative, and, most crucially of all, more attentive to detail, this last for the simple reason that women listen. You see, the greatest skill of intelligence is to sit quiet and let everyone else talk.’

  ‘Around men, that’s not necessarily a choice.’

  ‘Quite. Men dominate conversations: they love to beat their chests and are less discreet about what they say because they are often less concerned by what they may betray than by how they are perceived – by their peers and especially by women. It’s a vulnerability women are therefore well-equipped to exploit. Take Alexis, for example. Her computer skills are valuable, but her true talent lies in simply getting people to talk. In fact, she’s the best at it I’ve known. I trust you heard what she did on Tuesday, with the man who tried to abduct your granddaughter?’