Last Resort

by Susan Lewis

  As her eyes came back to rest on the lawyer she wondered who he really was. She’d seen no credentials. And Jalmasco, was he really a Chief Superintendent of police? She’d seen only a brief glimpse of his badge, but in a country as rife with corruption as this it wouldn’t be hard to forge those things. There was no sign of Jalmasco today, yet there was no mistaking the fact that she was in a police station, so her arrest at least was genuine. What concerned, no, terrified, her now, though, was how many people had already been bought and how far things would go before she managed to get word to someone at the Embassy of where she was and what was happening to her.

  Chapter 22

  HAVING MANAGED TO give Stirling the slip, David had flown first to Frankfurt; then, after an interminable five-hour wait, he had boarded the direct flight to Manila.

  Whilst he was at Frankfurt airport he had spoken to Sylvia, then to Pierre, then last of all to Stirling. Sylvia had managed to contact the British Embassy in Manila, only to be told that they were aware of Penny’s arrest but were powerless to help since Penny was currently refusing to see anyone. That alone had scared the hell out of David, but when Sylvia had gone on to tell him that Penny already had a lawyer with whom she was perfectly happy it had been all he could do to stop himself hijacking one of the jets on the tarmac and redirecting it to Manila. It was small comfort to learn that so far the press had been told nothing, for the last thing David wanted right now was a battery of cameras and loudly inquisitive journalists getting in the way. The whole story would come out soon enough and until then he could do without the publicity.

  Pierre had confirmed what he’d already guessed: that the lawyer had not been provided by them. But time was still on their side, he’d reminded himself. Just as long as he got there before the thirty-six hours were up there was a chance he could buy off the cops who were holding her in the godforsaken backwater of Manila that Pierre had pulled no punches in describing.

  Having been unable to get past the front desk of the police station, Pierre was now back at the Shangri-La, keeping in contact with the BPI bank who were to receive the funds Sylvia was wiring over. Now that he had all but bankrupted himself, David had no resources of his own to call upon – at least, nothing that could in any way match the sums Mureau would have paid out.

  His final call, to Stirling, had gone better than he’d expected. Stirling had shown no surprise and little concern that he’d taken off the way he had.

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ he’d told him bluntly.

  ‘I know that,’ David responded. ‘But I just need these few days.’

  ‘Seems like you got ’em,’ Stirling said. ‘But you ask me, you’re crazy going out there, ’cos, if all you been telling me is true, then between them Mureau and that wife of yours are gonna bust your ass you go within ten miles of Penny the Moon.’

  ‘It’s a chance I’m going to have to take,’ David said shortly.

  ‘And what about Penny the Moon? You thought about what they might do to her if you go riding in like some half-cocked Gallahad?’

  ‘I’m thinking about nothing else.’

  ‘Then take my advice, boy: don’t do it.’

  ‘If I don’t she’ll go to jail and we both know it. They’ve set her up good and proper here—’

  ‘Let the DEA boys handle it,’ Stirling interrupted. ‘They know what they’re doing . . .’

  ‘Like they knew what they were doing when Mureau skipped the Manila Hotel?’

  Stirling grunted. ‘Unfortunate that,’ he said. ‘How did you find her, by the way?’

  ‘Another time,’ David answered. ‘The important thing is I found her and if the DEA had got off their fat butts a bit quicker than they did they’d have found her in the hotel alone. No hostage situation in that. She’d have been clean away and Mureau would have been behind bars by now.’

  ‘Uh, uh,’ Stirling said. ‘She might have been clean away, but so would Mureau.’

  ‘Have you heard where he is yet?’

  Stirling chuckled. ‘No. But my guess is you’ll find him. Or, more like, he’ll find you. And do you want to know my next guess? He’ll have her killed before you can get to her. Either that or he’ll make sure you don’t get to her before she’s arraigned. She’ll be facing the death penalty then – meaning there’ll be no blood on his hands. But I’m going with the first. I reckon he’ll have her killed the minute he hears you’ve set foot in Manila. And if by some miracle he doesn’t manage to pull it off, then he’s got that there death penalty as a back-up. Seems like he can’t lose.’

  ‘He’s not a killer,’ David said savagely.

  Again Stirling laughed. ‘He’d kill you, my son, make no mistake about that.’

  ‘Then why hasn’t he already done it? He’s had plenty of opportunities.’

  ‘’Cos you’ve never had him in a corner so tight he can’t feel his nuts before,’ Stirling answered. ‘If he’s got any sense he’ll cut his losses now and disappear for good. Maybe he’ll do that, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. He took Penny the Moon with him for a reason and that reason, by my reckoning, has got more to do with what’s what going on out there than it has with getting under your skin.’

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ David said. ‘He gains nothing if Penny dies.’

  ‘Then maybe he’s got something else planned for her. Something we haven’t thought of. He’s smart, David, and I’m beginning to wonder if he ain’t a whole lot smarter even than you. So you take care of yourself out there, son, and come back to me soon, ’cos we got a ways to go yet and I’m kinda getting to like your company.’

  ‘The feeling’s not mutual,’ David responded. ‘But I’ll be back – and Penny will be with me.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence, son,’ Stirling said with a sigh. And with that, he rung off.

  Now, sitting in the first-class seat that Sylvia must have arranged since he’d been unable to pay for it himself, David was jotting down names and numbers ready to hand to Pierre when he arrived. He’d give all he had twice over to know what was going on in Mureau’s head right now, but could only pray to God, as he prepared Pierre’s instructions, that he was covering all eventualities.

  As the adrenalin continued to thump around his system he looked impatiently at his watch. Another five hours before he got to Manila. But that still gave them plenty of time before the arraignment. He guessed the DEA would be waiting for him when he got there, counting on him now to flush out Mureau. Having had him in their sights all this time, they sure must be kicking themselves to have let him slip through their fingers the way they had. But there had been nothing they could do while Penny was with him. They couldn’t run the risk of what he might do to her had they gone in. He wondered if Penny realized that she had been a hostage all this time, but wondering what Penny did and didn’t know, what she might be feeling now and whether she was as terrified as he imagined she was, wasn’t something he was going to dwell on. He needed all his wits about him when he got there, so the best thing he could do now was try to get some sleep.

  Miraculously he managed to drift off into some kind of semiconscious state for a while, but then he was suddenly jolted awake by the one terrifying eventuality that hadn’t even occurred to him until now. He sat up straight and started to work it through carefully in his mind. Before Penny’s arrest he had been prepared to believe that Mureau was in love with her – being in love with her himself, it was easy for him to believe it of someone else, even Mureau. But the moment Pierre had told him Penny had been arrested David had discounted the possibility; it had been such an obvious frame-up that no one in his right mind would believe that a man would do that to a woman he loved. But what if he was wrong? What if Mureau did love her and . . . Jesus Christ, he groaned, as the thoughts started tumbling in upon one another. What if he’d been right about Penny’s feelings for him, David? What if she did feel the same way and somehow Mureau had found out? Of course he might be kidding himself here, telling himself something just becau
se it was what he wanted to believe, but he’d be a god-damned fool if he dismissed it. For if he was right and Mureau did love Penny and was therefore planning what David was now very much afraid he was planning, then there was already every chance he was never going to see Penny again.

  Penny was trying to prepare herself for another night in the damp, rat-infested hell-hole of a cell. Since the policeman had brought her back after her showdown with the lawyer she’d seen no one other than her cell mates. She hadn’t eaten all day and though she doubted she’d manage to get even a mouthful past her throat without throwing it back up again she had promised herself that when the next meal came she would try. God only knew what the water was doing to her, but she would lose strength if she drank nothing. Though there were still all too many moments when panic and fear threatened to explode in a screaming, jibbering fit of hysteria, she had so far managed to keep that at bay. But for how much longer, she wondered, averting her eyes as the old woman scratched at the teeming lice in her hair and the younger girl stuffed old, balled-up newspapers inside her panties to absorb the flow of blood.

  The falling darkness was acting like a blanket, holding in the suffocating stench of human waste. The sluggish humidity in the air was dampening her hair and making it cling to her skull, while the persistent scratchings of rodent life caused shivers of revulsion to trample over her skin. Her urine-stained clothes were smeared with dirt, as were her hands and face.

  Throughout the day the other women had been scrubbing police shirts in the old tin bowl in order to earn themselves a few pesos. The pesos, the old woman had told her, would be used to buy themselves larger helpings of the rancid, greasy slops they called food. Their situation was so desperate that even confronted with it the way she was, Penny found it hard to make herself accept it.

  All that was keeping her sane now was the faint belief that she had found a way of letting someone know she was here. It was going to cost her her shoes, but that was all she had to bargain with now. Her diamond watch had been taken the moment she got here and no doubt the spoils in her suitcase had already been shared out between the arresting officers – with the lion’s share almost inevitably finding its way into Jalmasco’s pocket.

  It was the old woman who, simply by staring at Penny’s shoes, had first given her the idea of trading them. They were a pair of white leather Charles Jourdan pumps with small, gold-framed buckles on the toes which she had bought on one of her shopping sprees in Hong Kong and which had probably cost more than this woman would see in a month, maybe a year. Remembering what the old woman had said about not being able to raise the money to make bail, Penny had tentatively offered to give the shoes to her son or daughter the next time they came. In exchange she wanted the old woman to ask her son or daughter to go to the British Embassy and tell someone there where Penny was.

  It was a long shot and Penny knew it, for if anyone got wind of the fact that she was corrupting the other inmates it would probably be the worse for them all. Added to that was the likelihood that it could be days, even weeks, before the old woman’s family came again, and Penny didn’t even want to think about what kind of state she would be in by then. For now, she just had to force herself to go from one hour to the next – and if she thought about the future at all, then it must only be to a time when all this would be behind her and she and Sammy were together somewhere in France, or London, or some place anywhere in the world where they were safe.

  She had no way of knowing then that she was wasting her time even thinking about bribing the old woman, that the time would never come when she’d be able to put her plan into motion; all she knew then was that the small comfort it gave her had calmed her enough for her to fall into an unsteady, dream-ridden sleep.

  It was just after eleven at night when David landed at Ninoy Aquino airport. Pierre was waiting, ready to update him on what had been happening.

  ‘Where’s Penny?’ David said, before Pierre could speak.

  Pierre blinked. ‘Still in the jail.’

  David’s tension seemed to relax for a moment. ‘Thank God for that,’ he said, starting to walk on. ‘And the DEA?’

  ‘They’re waiting to talk to you. David, I don’t think—’

  ‘No, don’t think,’ David interrupted. ‘I know what you’re going to say, that I’ve got to be out of my mind coming here, but it’s too late now, I’m here. Now, I’ve got to get out to that jail and fast. How long will it take?’

  ‘An hour. Maybe more.’

  ‘Where’s the money? Did it arrive?’

  ‘It’s locked in the boot of the car. They won’t arraign her for at least another twelve hours . . .’

  ‘If I’m right about this,’ David said, ‘they won’t arraign her at all. Where’s the car?’

  ‘Right outside. What do you mean they won’t arraign her? They have to; there’ll be hell to pay otherwise. The British Embassy knows she’s there.’

  ‘There’s not the time to explain,’ David said, pulling the notes he had made on the plane out of his pocket. ‘Right now I want you to go back to the hotel and call these people. Get everything set up, including the plane, and make sure it’s ready to fly out at a moment’s notice.’

  Pierre’s face had turned white. ‘David, you can’t—’

  ‘Just do it,’ David snapped. ‘Now, how the hell do I find this place?’

  ‘You won’t need to worry about that,’ Pierre told him. ‘You’ll have company. There are two DEA agents in the car. The Manila section of Interpol have managed to get themselves involved too, and so have Narcotics Command.’

  ‘Let’s all go to the fucking circus,’ David said scathingly.

  A few minutes later he wrenched open the front passenger seat of the car and glared down at the DEA agent sitting there. ‘Have you got someone watching that jail?’ he barked.

  ‘I guess you must be Villers,’ the agent responded silkily. ‘The name’s Foreman. This here,’ he added jerking his thumb towards the back seat, ‘is Bertolucci, like in the movie director. We call him Lucci, or Looch.’

  ‘Sure is a pleasure to meet you,’ Lucci grinned.

  ‘Are you in contact with whoever’s watching the jail?’ David snapped.

  ‘Sure. You think Mureau’s gonna get in there . . .’

  ‘It’s not Mureau I’m worried about,’ David seethed. ‘Now, get on that radio and find out if she’s still in the jail.’

  ‘She’s still there,’ Foreman answered. ‘And I think we’d better straighten out just who’s giving the orders round here, ’cos it sure as hell ain’t you, sonny boy.’

  David was already walking round the car. ‘You want to see an innocent woman lose her life, then you just carry on debating who’s in charge here,’ he said, getting in behind the wheel. ‘Now, which way are we heading? What the fuck . . .?’ he cried as he started to pull away and a Disneyland of police lights started flashing in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Hit the brakes,’ Foreman said. Then, turning to Lucci. ‘Go tell them to cool it or we’ll go out of our way to lose ’em and they’ll miss out on all the fun.’

  David threw him a filthy look, then said, ‘Why aren’t they out there already? The way I heard it, it’s their own officers who took money from Mureau . . .’

  ‘Which puts your girlfriend back in a hostage situation,’ Foreman reminded him. ‘One step out of place and good night, Penny Moon. Least, that’s the way we see it. You want to tell me different?’

  ‘No,’ David answered shortly. ‘What I want to tell you is why it’s so god-damned vital they keep her in that jail till we get there, ’cos if Mureau’s up to what I think he’s up to, there’s every chance in the world we’ll never see either of them again.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Foreman drawled, his interest perking up. ‘D’you hear that, Looch?’ he said as Lucci got back into the car. ‘Mr Villers here reckons there’s a chance we might never see our friend Mureau again if we don’t keep the girlfriend in jail. Now what do you reckon to that,
Looch?’

  ‘Reckon it calls for some sort of explaining, Jim, is what I reckon.’

  ‘Yeah, s’about what I reckon too. So hit the gas, Mr Villers, and tell us what you know.’

  ‘Before I do that, how about you telling me what kind of jurisdiction you have here?’

  ‘Carte blanche,’ Foreman answered. ‘Mureau’s our man and the Filipinos aren’t arguing the point. Turn right out of here. Head up to the next lights, then turn right again. So, what you got that we ought to know about?’

  It didn’t take David long to tell them what he thought Mureau was proposing to do, and even before he’d finished Foreman was on the radio to the agent watching the jail.

  ‘She still there, Todd?’ he shouted over the static.

  ‘Sure, she’s still here. Would’ve told you if they’d taken her anywhere, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Foreman said. ‘Don’t let them take her anywhere. If they try to move her, shoot. D’you get that? Shoot!’

  ‘What, are you crazy?’ David yelled. ‘If you shoot, everyone’s going to end up dead, including Penny. If they try to take her anywhere, you just follow. How many men have you got out there?’