I Dare You: A gripping thriller that will keep you guessing (A Kate Blakemore Crime Thriller Book 1)

by Murray Bailey

  Nanninga put down his espresso and followed Martens, strolling towards Parc de la Ciutadella. This prime location, a stone’s throw from the marina, abutted the old Olympic village, and Nanninga inhaled the warm air and a whiff of the ocean. He stopped fifty yards back when Martens mounted the steps to his latest development—four storeys, about three hundred years old with scaffolding outside. There was the name of a swanky construction company displayed on a sign. As expected, when Nanninga searched for the company on the internet, he was impressed by the portfolio of their totally fictitious upmarket developments.

  Nanninga checked his watch: twelve minutes before his appointment. He hung back and then, on time to the second, rang the doorbell.

  Martens opened the door with a smile, although Nanninga saw the confusion in his eyes. A racist, he expected a tall white Dutch diamond dealer and saw a smaller man of swarthy complexion.

  “Mixed race,” Nanninga said by way of explanation. He looked past the conman and saw some kind of light stone flooring, a large planter and giant fern, rich brown and dark grey walls, subtle down-lights. Nanninga stepped over the threshold and nodded. “Impressive.”

  “I use the best interior designers, so I hope you continue to be impressed when you see the apartment.”

  Nanninga had no doubt the interior designers had been easily duped by the lure of a big paycheque that would never arrive.

  Martens led the way to a lift, all the time spinning a sales pitch as they travelled up a floor to a door marked “Three”. Nanninga suspected that Martens had changed the number just before he arrived. It was called the “number and screwdriver scam”. Martens finished one apartment to perfection and sold it ten times over. Each buyer bought one with a different number. The trick was to ensure all completions happened at the same time. Martens would take the money and run while his buyers discovered they were all trying to move into the same property.

  The smell of fresh coffee and clean air washed out when Martens opened the door. The lights were already on and Martens walked straight into the kitchen.

  “I prefer not to rush these things, Mr Nanninga—to give a sense of the place before we tour the property. So, can I suggest we sit and relax and review the details first?” He opened a refrigerator and removed plates of caviar, smoked salmon and paté de foie gras. “Now, Mr Nanninga, may I offer you a glass of champagne? Caviar and coffee perhaps?”

  Nanninga looked directly at him, an expression of curiosity on his face, and for the first time Martens seemed to realize something wasn’t right. His eyes went wide and he finally stopped talking.

  Nanninga pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and shot Martens in each knee.

  Phut. Phut.

  The sound of the silenced gun contradicted the damage it caused. Small calibre meant the pain lasted longer.

  Martens gasped and dropped to the floor clutching both knees. He tried to staunch the blood that seeped through his trousers and dripped onto the beautiful Italian floor tiles. A strange whine came from his throat as he looked up into Nanninga’s cold dark eyes.

  Nanninga now spoke in his natural Middle Eastern accent. “As you can guess, Mr Martens, I am not who I say I am. Oh, but then again neither are you! Now, you will answer my questions or you will die slowly and in extreme pain.”

  Martens dragged himself backwards and drew streaks of red on a plush white carpet. Nanninga casually stepped past him and closed the room’s curtains. Now behind Martens, he said, “You are wondering what this is about, aren’t you? Do you remember the name Riyad bin Shahd?”

  Martens swivelled as Nanninga eased himself into an armchair, the gun on his lap no longer pointed at the bleeding conman. He watched the man’s breathing change from panic to irrational hope—hope he could reason with his attacker or maybe buy him off.

  Trying to sound calm, Martens said, “I don’t recall a Ben Farhad. If there’s any way—”

  “Prince bin Shahd was one of the victims of your silly scam, Mr Martens. You sold him an apartment in the Czech Republic, but like these apartments, only one was finished and that one you sold many times over.”

  Martens nodded weakly. His hands trembled as he tried to hold himself up.

  “You really should be more careful about who you decide to defraud.”

  Martens’ eyes glazed briefly and Nanninga knew the man’s vision was fading in and out.

  “I’ll give him the money back!” Martens said.

  Nanninga flicked open the catches on Marten’s briefcase and thumbed through the contents. When he looked back at Martens, the man’s eyes were pleading. Nanninga shook his head. “My dear Mr Martens, this is not about money anymore.”

  While Martens lay dying, the Arab, who normally went by the name Amir, walked to the kitchen for a snack. He returned to the living room with biscuits and caviar on a napkin, and black coffee. He sat on the sofa and watched as he ate. When finished, he put the napkin and cup in his pocket. As he walked out of the apartment, Amir speed-dialled a number on his mobile phone.

  “Speak,” a voice said on the other end.

  “It’s done.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve extracted information about associates.” He paused. “And there’s something else. There was information about that other matter.”

  “What other matter?”

  “The problem with… with the missing friend from America.” Amir hoped he’d be understood.

  “You know where the man is?”

  “No, but there is a trail. There’s a link to someone called Sikorski, in Prague.”

  The voice on the line was silent for a while and Amir knew this was big.

  Amir prompted, “Shall I take care of it?”

  “Yes,” the other man said with rare emotion in his tone. “Take care of it.”

  TEN

  Kate put down the phone. There was a moment of hesitation as she wondered whether it would be more sensible to ignore the flashing thing in Joe’s box. On the one hand, her mother and sister would disapprove, but on the other, Andrew’s place was only ten minutes away and the intrigue was killing her. Seconds later she was in her Mazda driving to South Ascot.

  Cars crammed along the dark narrow streets, half on, half off the pavement, and she had to pass Andrew’s Victorian cottage looking for a space. Finally she found a gap big enough to squeeze into, parked and walked back.

  She always had an odd feeling in his house. It was the polar opposite of hers. His home was chintzy and spotless with décor in keeping with the style of house, and if she didn’t know better she’d assume there had been a woman’s touch. Everything was ordered with nothing out of place, even temporarily.

  Andrew was a hoarder by nature. His house was full of family antiques that overfilled the property but were too precious to be discarded. Kate knew he had a huge box of his father’s camera slides. He would never view them, the technology was too passé, too old now, but he didn’t have the heart to throw them away. He had his grandmother’s crockery: fine china plates with gold leaf trim. Kate was amazed to see that each was unique in its pattern and totally over the top. It was probably worth something, but not a fortune because many items were missing. Andrew kept it all even though he would never use any of it.

  Kate sat in the lounge waiting, as he went upstairs, located the box and returned carrying it like a trophy.

  “You know, I half expected you to chuck it like my sister wanted,” she said.

  “You know me. I can’t throw anything away. Anyway, I guess I wondered whether one day you might want some of these things back, if only to just confirm that you were over him.”

  Andrew placed the box in front of her and sat on the chair opposite. She stared at it for a while and then lifted the flaps.

  The first thing she pulled out was a blue Cornish sweater, bought for Joe on a weekend break in Coverack, a tiny but quaint Cornish village. Kate had joked that he looked like a fisherman and could always catch lobsters and crabs if the mobile business didn
’t work out.

  The next item was an electronic desk calendar he’d included in her pile of birthday presents. She’d never liked it and recalled now that he said something like, “Always think of me when you change the date.” There was model of a British Beefeater that he’d bought at the Tower of London. Tacky. There were some medals from runs they had competed in and the London to Brighton cycle ride. There were piles of CDs—some containing photographs, others favourite music.

  Under this was a pile of clothes, including the sexy underwear he had bought her when he first moved in. She felt a flush of embarrassment as she lifted them out one by one and quietly added them to the pile. Andrew didn’t comment, but then again he didn’t need to.

  Under the clothes were three framed photographs of the two of them, a handsome couple, people said. Joe had framed her favourite: the one of the two of them on the Charles Bridge in Prague. Again, she remembered him saying something odd when he gave it to her, but she couldn’t recall what it was. She held the photograph for a while, studying his face and his unusual grey-brown eyes that seemed so genuine.

  She shook stray thoughts from her mind. “So what was so urgent that you get me to drive over here and spoil my evening run?”

  “This,” he said, picking up the desk calendar and handing it to her.

  A grey plastic tube about five inches long, the calendar was electronic, changing the date automatically. So Joe’s comment about her changing the date and thinking of him was nonsense.

  A tiny light blinked at one end.

  She turned it over in her hands and frowned. “I don’t remember there being a light on this.”

  “It was beeping earlier. That’s why I took a look and then called you.”

  “Batteries running out?”

  “That’s what I assumed.” Andrew reached out and took the calendar. “The batteries go here,” he said, indicating one end. “So what’s this for?” As he spoke, he slid back a section on the back near the flashing light.

  Expecting a display of the internal electronics, Kate was surprised to see a small empty compartment.

  “Is that why you asked me over—to show me this?” she asked, suddenly deflated. “Is that it?”

  “No.” Andrew put his hand in his breast pocket and handed her something that looked like a tiny mobile phone memory card. “But this is.”

  “What is it?”

  Andrew smiled. “Apart from the obvious—a memory card?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve already taken a look. Come on, let me show you.”

  He led the way into his study.

  In contrast to the rest of the house, Andrew’s study was not old-fashioned, but high tech. He loved the latest gadgets and had an impressive computer set-up, including two wide screens. She had seen him use the two screens on one PC and still didn’t quite get how it worked. She didn’t dare ask Andrew to explain because she doubted he could summarize it in less time than it would take to read the manual and, of course, she didn’t read instructions.

  Andrew took the card, slotted it into a larger card and inserted it into the pc. He opened Windows Explorer. There was a single file on the disk.

  The file was named Trust Me.

  ELEVEN

  A vacuum sucked the air from Kate’s lungs. The room spun.

  Andrew gripped her shoulder. “You all right?”

  She took deep breaths until she felt calmer. “It has to be from Joe. He wants to tell me the truth. What does it say?”

  “There’s the thing.” Andrew double-clicked on the file and a window opened asking for a password. “Password protected.” His fingers hovered over the keys. “Any ideas?”

  “Try Joe.”

  No luck.

  “Joe Rossini?”

  Andrew tried it with and without a space. He also tried combinations of upper and lower case. Not right.

  They tried versions of Kate’s name. They tried Tolkien.

  No.

  Andrew used Windows Explorer to locate another file on his PC, clicked it open and set it running. “Password finder,” he said. “It’s infallible, providing it was encrypted with a Western keyboard and we have forever to decrypt it.” He stood. “Come on, let’s have a cup of tea while it’s running.”

  Five minutes later, in the lounge, he handed her a cup of Earl Grey. “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “I know you don’t want to believe it, but what if this message tells you that everything you heard from the agents—everything you read on the internet—was true?”

  Kate sipped her tea and stared out of the window into the dark night.

  Andrew said, “I guess we can at least rule out one option. He wasn’t just an ordinary guy who worked for a mobile phone company.”

  She turned from the window and regarded her friend for a long time, couldn’t read what he was thinking, but his eyes seemed unusually cold. “You were the only one who supported me about Joe,” she said finally.

  “You’re assuming this is a positive message, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Katie, sweetie, I just want you to be prepared for the worst, that’s all. Even though you’ve suppressed it, deep down you’ve held onto the dream that he was some kind of secret agent.”

  “There was the scar on his shin that he said was from shrapnel and the one on his side where a bullet had grazed him and broken a rib,” she said, thinking back to when she’d probed him for details. “But it wasn’t that, it was the silly stories of eating pasta between his knees while flying into Afghanistan; parachuting into enemy territory at night and landing on a chicken coop; playing American football with an ex-college player—across a minefield.”

  “For goodness sake. Would you have fallen for me if I had told you that I was a fireman and rescued six people from a burning office? My clothes caught fire and by the time I’d hauled out the last survivor, I was butt-naked.”

  “Be serious.”

  “OK. My point is that this stuff is easy to make up.”

  “I guess.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t really a twin and just used that story because of your sister’s twins. Conmen do that sort of thing to show you have something in common.”

  “He only told me about his twin later.”

  Andrew shrugged his big shoulders. “It was just an example. Maybe he wasn’t deliberately conning you. Maybe he was a bit of a fantasist. People like that start believing their own stories, no matter how crazy. What did the US papers call him?”

  “They likened him to the guy in Catch Me If You Can. The character Leonardo DiCaprio played.”

  Neither of them missed the irony of the Italian name.

  Andrew said, “He was caught too.”

  Kate nodded, and before the tears burned her cheeks, Andrew was by her side, his big arms wrapped around her.

  “Sorry, kiddo, I don’t know what came over me.” He gently eased her off his chest and she saw his eyes were softer now.

  He said, “I’m just scared you’re going to be hurt. There’s just as much chance of the truth being a confession as an explanation.”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, that’s all I’m saying.” He kissed her wet cheek, disappeared to his study and returned with disappointment etched on his face. “Program’s still running. It could take a while.”

  “I should be going.” Kate finished her tea. “Give me a call when you’ve cracked it?”

  “As soon as.”

  Before she left she went back to the box, picked up the photograph of the Charles Bridge and put it in her handbag. At the door she thanked him and he hugged her.

  “Think about it,” he said.

  As she drove home she considered what Andrew had said and realized he’d played devil’s advocate—preparing her for the worst—and, by the time she reached the Great Park, she knew she’d have to know the truth, no matter what. Her headlights picked out the thousand-year-old oak tre
es along the road, their gnarled outlines like giant old men reaching out into the night, and for the first time in a year she felt positive. She was wondering whether it was the prospect of closure when her phone rang. It was the wrong ringtone to be Andrew. She looked over to the passenger seat where her phone lay. The display said: Sarah Mobile. Kate snatched it up and pressed receive.

  “Hi, Sarah. Look, I’m so sorry for not being in touch…”

  There was no sound.

  “Sarah?”

  Dead air.

  Kate glanced at the display. Number disconnected.

  She pressed return call.

  Voicemail.

  “Hi, Sarah. It’s Kate. You just called me. Call me back when you can.”

  Sarah didn’t call back.

  TWELVE

  Amir found the address in a nice quiet suburb of Prague. Wearing generic workmen’s blue overalls and carrying a canvas tool bag, he knocked on the door, layered thickly with years of black paint. He made a quick assessment: solid wood, old, single latch, easy. Opening his bag, he removed a flexible metal strip and was in the house within seconds.

  “Hello,” he called. “Gas engineer. The door was open.”

  Putting on his gloves, he walked along the hallway: high ceiling, herringbone parquet flooring, antique oak and yew furniture, oil paintings with ornate gilt frames. Old money, Amir decided.

  He entered the first room. A dining room. Again, nice solid wood furniture: a table, eight chairs and a sideboard. He opened the drawers and cupboards and searched the contents. Finding nothing of interest, he checked behind the paintings. After replacing everything, he left the room as he’d found it.