The Damage (David Blake 2)

by Howard Linskey

  Pratin waited a little longer, checking his watch. He didn’t really want to think about what was going on in that squalid room with the child, but he had to time this just right because he wanted to ensure Gladwell was entirely preoccupied.

  When he felt enough time had elapsed, Pratin climbed out of his car, buttoning his jacket, making sure there were no tell-tale gaps through which the gun could be seen. Not that there was anyone else out here, as far as he could see. The place was almost deserted. He had only seen one other westerner enter the building since he’d pulled up outside its doors over an hour ago. In any case, Pratin was willing to bet that anyone using this hotel would be very unlikely to come forward as a witness.

  Pratin walked around the building until he reached the rear. He stepped out from behind a cluster of trees with long golden leaves in full bloom that would hide his presence until the very last moment. It helped that it was dark with no moon and the street lamps were dim. He approached the designated window and drew his gun, inching slowly towards the window until he was standing right by it. The blind was tilted at an upward slant. He’d arranged that with the boy when he handed over the money. It meant that Pratin could not be seen from inside the room, but he had an uninterrupted view of it. Pratin recoiled in disgust at the scene on the bed and instinctively pointed the gun towards Alan Gladwell. It was so tempting just to squeeze the trigger now and end this, but Pratin forced himself not to. He had a job to do. He was being paid to do that job. He had to do it correctly or he would be in a whole world of trouble.

  Slowly and carefully Pratin put his police-issue revolver back into his shoulder holster, then he reached into the little black bag he was carrying and drew out the tiny digital camera.

  Alan Gladwell steered the car beyond an ancient bus, then accelerated past a VW Beetle that had seen better days. At this rate he was going to be really early for his flight, but that was no bad thing. He’d be home without anyone ever being any the wiser. It was always a risk flying out here, but no one in his crew, or his family, suspected a thing. This was just something that he needed – that they didn’t have to concern themselves with. Nobody in Britain would understand it, which is why he had to come all this way. Thank God for Bangkok though, thought Gladwell. If it didn’t exist you’d have to invent it. He was already wondering how long it would be before he could come out here again, when he noticed the car pull out in front of him. It was a Honda, with an instantly recognisable yellow and burgundy livery, and the words ‘Highway Police’ stencilled on it in blue lettering on a yellow background. Gladwell instinctively slowed, even though he had been keeping within the speed limit. The car slowed too, then pulled into the slow lane, allowing him to pass, which he did gingerly, not wishing to give them anything to be concerned about. As Alan Gladwell drove by he glanced to one side and noticed the uniformed officer in the passenger seat eyeing him intently.

  No need to get paranoid, thought Gladwell, I’ve nothing to hide. He edged cautiously past and was on his way again when the police car pulled out once more and followed. Seconds later they were tailgating him and Alan Gladwell was frowning at the rear-view mirror, wondering at their sudden interest in him. He didn’t have time to wonder for long. The red lights on the car’s roof came on and started to spin wildly as the policeman in the passenger seat beckoned for him to pull over by the side of the road. Gladwell cursed and did as he was told.

  Once Gladwell’s car was stationary, the Highway Police car overtook him and parked in front of his vehicle. The two officers climbed out and walked towards Gladwell’s car. He wound down the window and asked, ‘Is something the matter?’

  They looked at him blankly, their eyes obscured by pairs of Ray-Bans. The younger of the two men was wearing a long, brown leather, presumably police-issue coat, even though Gladwell was overheating in just a T-shirt.

  ‘Get out of the car please, sir,’ the driver asked him in flawless English. He complied.

  ‘Step this way, sir,’ the passenger of the car gestured for him to accompany them.

  Gladwell followed them uneasily. He figured he was about to become the victim of a shakedown, a suspicion that was confirmed when the passenger said, ‘You drive too fast.’

  ‘No,’ answered Gladwell firmly.

  ‘Yes,’ contradicted the driver more forcefully, and they both took off their Ray-Bans.

  ‘Look I have a plane to catch and….’

  ‘You no catch plane today,’ the passenger spoke again.

  ‘Like I said, I have a plane to catch,’ he sighed, ‘is it possible to sort this out by paying a fine? I heard that was possible, when there has been a misunderstanding, to pay a fine I mean?’

  The eyes of the police officers took on a sly look and the older man, the driver, turned to his partner and jerked his head to one side in a dismissive gesture. The younger man walked away. Gladwell followed the driver towards the Highway Police car. The rear door was opened and the driver gestured for Gladwell to sit inside. Gladwell climbed into the back seat of the patrol car and the driver went round to the other side, opened the door, and sat next to him.

  No one spoke for a moment. In the end Gladwell felt compelled to break the silence. ‘How much?’ he asked, ‘to clear up this problem?’

  The driver looked at him sternly.

  ‘I mean the fine,’ Gladwell assured him, ‘how much is the government going to fine me for going too fast?’

  ‘Thirty thousand baht.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ replied Gladwell, without thinking, ‘that’s…’ and he thought for a moment, converting their ludicrous currency in his head, ‘…over six hundred quid. That’s fucking robbery.’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand baht,’ the driver amended his demand; all pretence that it was really a fine seemed to have disappeared now.

  ‘Fifteen,’ offered Gladwell, ‘I’ll give you fifteen thousand baht and that’s all you’re getting.’

  Again there was a long silence. Christ, thought Gladwell, I don’t need the grief. I just want to be on my way and off home. ‘Jesus,’ he hissed at the officer, ‘this is fucking bandit country. Alright, okay, twenty-fucking-thousand, but that’s it.’ He reached for his money belt, pulled out a wad of currency and started to count it out in front of the officer, ‘but I want a police escort all the way to the airport.’

  The Thai policeman frowned at this at first and Gladwell wondered if he had overstepped the mark. God knows what he would do if the deal was off. Then, suddenly, the policeman roared with laughter, ‘for twenty thousand baht we drive you to the airport!’ He laughed deeper then, ‘for twenty thousand baht we drive you anywhere!’ and he carried on laughing.

  Despite the delay on the highway, there was still no queue at the check-in desk. Gladwell dragged his suitcase along on its wheels until he halted in front of a young Thai girl who checked his ticket and passport, then asked him the usual routine questions about whether this was his bag, and if he had packed it himself.

  She nodded in acknowledgement as he answered and he was about to hoist his case onto the conveyor belt when he became aware of a presence behind him. Gladwell turned to find four uniformed men blocking his path.

  ‘What?’ he asked them.

  ‘Please come with us sir.’

  ‘Eh? Why? I haven’t done anything.’ Gladwell felt a slight panic when he said this because he knew that what he had been doing was enough to get him a very long jail sentence – but they weren’t to know about any of that, so he regained his composure long enough to ask, ‘What’s the matter?’

  One of the customs men smiled at him politely and used a palm to indicate the direction he wished Gladwell to proceed. Gladwell glanced up at the departure time that was written on the board, then he looked at his watch. He still had ages before his flight. Long enough surely to clear up whatever ‘misunderstanding’ this lot might have concocted for him. He looked at the four expectant faces around him, ‘Christ,’ he thought, ‘they’ll all want paying,’ and with a sharp intake of
breath he followed their lead to a back office.

  Once inside the office, Gladwell was asked to place his case on a table. He had no particular qualms about doing so. He wasn’t daft enough to try to smuggle anything in or out of a country as hard core as Thailand. This was a nation that would imprison you for being mildly disrespectful to its royal family. Gladwell knew they didn’t fuck about here.

  He watched as one of the men began to slowly unzip the case, becoming aware that the room seemed to be gradually filling up with other people. As well as the four men who had approached him at the check-in desk, there was now a slow procession of officials and policemen filing into the room. Gladwell started to feel a little uneasy, not least because he didn’t have any cash right now to pay this lot off in hard currency.

  The man behind the table finished unzipping the case and turned it upside down. Out fell the contents, under the watchful gaze of what now amounted to more than a dozen people. Gladwell became more worried when he noticed the large bulky, brown envelope, an item that he had never seen before, in amongst his shirts and underwear. Suddenly he revisited the image of the police officer in the long brown leather coat with its deep pockets, standing by his unguarded car while Gladwell was bribing his colleague. Instantly he knew he’d been set up. Gladwell opened his mouth to protest but, just as he did so, the customs man tore open the envelope and allowed the contents to spill out onto the table in front of everyone. A dozen colour photographs confronted him. To Gladwell’s horror, there for all in the room to see, was graphic and uncensored photographic evidence of his time with the young boy. He felt his face burn with shame and had to fight hard to quell the nausea as he suddenly realised the level of trouble he was in.

  ‘That’s not me,’ he protested as he took in the looks of disgust from the officers who closed in on him, but it was him and everyone in the room knew it, thanks to the quality of the photographs, which were better than any human witness. Hands were on him now, pinning his arms behind his back. He didn’t even struggle because he knew it was hopeless. How could this be possible? And just when the earliest realisation began to dawn on Alan Gladwell that David Blake might somehow have had a hand in it, a second package fell from the case onto the table. This one had been taped to the inside of the case. It was a black plastic parcel that looked like a folded-up bin liner and, when the customs officer tore that outer layer open, beneath it was a second covering made of brown wax paper. The officer reached into his pocket for a penknife, extended the blade and slid it into the wax paper. The parcel burst open and out poured thousands of granules of pure white powder in one steady stream. There had to be a kilo in there and Gladwell would have bet what was left of his worthless life that it was the purest heroin.

  Gladwell knew for certain that he’d been set up. Only David Blake was capable of engineering something like this. It had to be him. The hands gripped tighter around Gladwell, pinning him down until his face was pressed against the table, his arms were dragged behind his back and there was a click as the handcuffs tightened around his wrists. There would be no escape now, and all because of Blake. Gladwell had been so certain that he had set in place the sequence of events that would ensure he’d outlive Blake; it wasn’t supposed to end like this.

  He tried to fight them, but the customs officers hauled him upwards and dragged him towards the door. There were too many of them and he couldn’t fight back with his hands cuffed behind his back. Gladwell’s legs must have given way then because strong hands grabbed him and held him upright. He was led from the room screaming that it was a set-up and the drugs weren’t his, demanding to be let go. But Alan Gladwell already knew his situation was hopeless.

  39

  .......................

  With Alan Gladwell safely under arrest in Bangkok I could return to Newcastle to conclude my business. The golf club was the best in the north east and the fees reflected its status. It took two minutes just to drive down the road to reach the club house and the greens on either side were all busy. I parked up close to the main door, in an area that wasn’t supposed to be used for parking, but I wasn’t planning on staying long.

  Inside, the bar had oak panelling on its walls and pictures of hunting scenes hung in frames. There was a large plaque that had the names of all of the club’s previous captains on it, next to the year in which they presided, and a display case full of ancient silver trophies. Men in blazers were standing in little groups, drinking scotch or gin and tonic before lunch, and the barman who served them wore a bow tie. It was the obvious place to find the north-east’s most famous socialist and he was there, just like the old dear at his constituency office had assured me he would be, once I’d convinced her I had an urgent message for Ron Haydon.

  My local MP was ordering drinks at the bar for his golfing mates while they were standing off to one side, laughing at what would be described in these parts as an off-colour-joke.

  I walked right up to Haydon and showed him the manila file.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘Some papers.’

  ‘Got a file on me, have you?’ he was squaring up to me again, puffing his chest out and drawing his fists to his side like he was preparing to knock me down.

  ‘I’m just here to give you a preview of a story that will break later in the week. All of the red tops will run with it on their front pages. That’s what you want isn’t it, you politicians, to be on the front pages? Not this time though.’

  ‘What are you banging on about?’

  I handed him the file and he snorted, pretending not to care about its contents, but that didn’t stop him from opening and reading it. After the first page, the colour drained from his face and he started to leaf quickly through the supporting documents I’d thoughtfully provided. He examined them one after the other. When he finally glanced back up at me, he was already a beaten man.

  ‘Where did you…’ then he stopped. I knew he would be wondering how I could have seen these damning documents. Me? Just a small-time gangster from Newcastle, accessing confidential papers from a giant US conglomerate; all courtesy of Amrein, of course, and some of his tame journalists. They might have been on Amrein’s pay-role but they were bloody good at their jobs. What they’d unearthed was gold dust. Credit where credit was due, Amrein had finally come up trumps.

  I’d just handed Ron Haydon the transcript of a story no newspaper could afford to turn down. It was a tale of corruption, and the headline was ‘Former Government Minister took massive bribe to change Iraq war vote.’

  I nodded at the headline on the transcript he was holding, ‘Of course the red tops will be more creative than that. I wonder what they’ll come up with. Frankly, I’m disappointed. You’re supposed to be one of the good guys, the principled man-of-the-people who stands up for the working classes. Who’d have thought that Red Ronnie would have taken vast sums of money from a US company so right-wing even the Yanks are uneasy about them? You know they are being investigated by the CIA, the FBI and the NSA all at the same time? They’ve been out in Iraq for years with their own private army, shooting any bugger who steps within a hundred yards of their convoys. They’ve killed more civilians than the US Air Force and you took their money.’

  ‘It’s lies,’ but his voice was cracking so I knew the only lie here was his.

  ‘You know, it’s strange. When you changed your vote to support the war, after months of telling everyone who’d listen how illegal it was, we were all disgusted. I mean everyone up here was ashamed of you, but it was the oldest story in politics; politician sacrifices principles for political gain and self-interest. We figured you’d been got at by the Prime Minister. Now it turns out you were bought off with a bribe from a US construction company.’

  ‘It’s a mistake,’ he told me, ‘if anyone prints a word of this, I’ll sue.’

  ‘Then you’ll end up bankrupt, because they are all going to print it, and you will lose.’ I assured him. ‘The trouble with taking kickbacks from Amer
ican companies is that they are too damned bureaucratic. They even keep records of transactions they don’t want anyone to know about. Your bribe was buried deep in the company accounts, but it was there. I mean they explained the payments to you as a consultancy or commission, they don’t actually use the word “bribe”, but that isn’t going to fool anyone. You won’t be able to provide an explanation for the work you supposedly did and you didn’t put any of it in the Register of Members’ Interests. It’s not as if anybody could forget sums this large, and they are all going to want to know why the money went into off-shore accounts.’

  ‘Alright,’ he held up a hand to stop me, ‘let’s just say…’ and he licked his lips nervously, ‘let’s say that I might struggle to prove that all of this is a lie, before the damage to my reputation is done. I mean people still believe what they read in the paper, even now, for Christ’s sake,’ and he rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it all, ‘so let’s say then that it would be in everyone’s best interests if this story was buried.’

  ‘Your interests, you mean?’

  ‘Everyone’s, bonny lad,’ he forced himself to laugh, even though he was terrified. Ever the politician, he even slapped a friendly hand onto my shoulder. ‘Yours too,’ he assured me.

  ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘what have you got in mind?’

  He gave me his hundred-watt smile, ‘well, a new hobby for me, for starters,’ he laughed again, ‘you know, fly fishing or golf.’ I said nothing, letting him offer up more, ‘I’ll resign from the Police Authority; ill health, more time with the family, the usual shite.’