by Lex Lander
And she, rot her, was still alive.
It was all making sense now. For all the huge profits of the child porn market I had never been able to rationalise Rik de Bruin’s actions in kidnapping Lizzy. For a start, she wasn’t a young enough child to appeal to the average paedo. Selling girls and boys as sex-slaves was a proposition of a different hue. Tales abound of fabulous sums forked out by oil-rich Arab princes and sheiks for European youngsters of both sexes, blondes especially. It was without doubt a profitable industry in its own right.
Lizzy’s gaze was on me and it was troubled.
‘Alan, do you hate me now? Now that I’ve told you everything.’
I hated all right, but none of it was directed at Lizzy.
‘I couldn’t hate you, Freckles, even if you’d done it of your own free will. If anything, I hate myself for letting it happen. You were in my care, under my roof. If I hadn’t been so fucking complacent – ’
She silenced me with fingertips on my mouth. ‘Shush. None of it’s your fault. You’ve only ever tried to help. First Mummy, now me, all we brought you is a lot of aggro. And that reminds me – you haven’t even told me yet what happened when Rik brought you back to the house. You know, after the crash.’
‘Later,’ I said curtly. ‘It’s history.’
She yawned gracelessly. ‘If you say so. Right now, I’m too shagged to care. All I want to do is sleep.’
I crouched on my haunches before her. ‘Sorry, honey, but there’s a couple more things I have to know.’ She nodded, and I went on, ‘I’m still confused about Annika de Bruin. Was she directly involved in the business side?’
‘Involved?’ Her laugh was humourless. ‘Maybe I didn’t explain it right. Rik was the front man, but Annika wasn’t just involved – she was the fucking boss!’
Hearing from your doctor that you’re going to die must take a little while to adjust to. When Lizzy shattered my satisfaction at a job well done, I took a little while to adjust to that. No loose ends, I had deluded myself. Now I found I had left the biggest loose end imaginable. I had killed the monkey instead of the organ grinder.
A full minute passed before I came to terms with it. Still crouching, I gripped Lizzy by her shoulders.
‘Are you absolutely sure about that, honey?’
‘Absolutely. She was the boss and the brains. Rik did as he was told. I got the impression she started the business with her own money, before they were married even.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘She’s fucking evil, that woman. Evil and sadistic. You’ve no idea.’
Perhaps I hadn’t. Perhaps even among the sewer rats with whom I came into contact in my line of work she would rank as a pariah. Unique in her rottenness.
‘I don’t suppose anybody ever mentioned your mother?’
‘No. I did ask, often. I even asked Annika. All that got me was a beating.’
‘Okay, honey. Interrogation over. I’m going to put some more music on, something soothing.’ I rummaged through the rack of compact discs. ‘Mozart, I think.’
‘You’re such a dinosaur about music. Anyone would think you were an old man. How about Taylor Swift? Tons of her stuff on my iPod if old Sistitis hasn’t thrown it out with the garbage.’
‘Down here,’ I said firmly, ‘we play my kind of music. Why don’t you go and lie down for a while. I’ll cook dinner.’
As the opening bars trickled from the speakers she said, ‘What happens next, Alan ?’
‘Next, my love? Fetch me my crystal ball.’
Her grin was unsteady.
‘Seriously, though, what happens? About you and me.’
‘Seriously? It’s my turn to tell you things. Clear the air a bit.’
She stiffened, instantly apprehensive. ‘Clear what air?’
‘About me, about my background.’
‘Oh.’ A frown, a narrowing of eyes. ‘Is it different from what you told Mummy?’
‘Look, you’re tired,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it tomorrow. Okay?’
‘No, let’s do it now. Okay?’
‘It’s no big deal, Lizzy.’
The big deal was not the truths I was going to tell her, the big deal was the lies.
I sat on the couch, and patted the space beside me. She came eagerly, as if she were a little girl and I was Father Christmas, dangling a brightly-wrapped package before her. I put an arm around her shoulders. Made a drama of clearing my throat. Breathed in deeply. That exhausted all stalling tactics.
What could I, what dare I tell her? My real name and origins would be only a start. Hints of my past profession as an MI6 agent would make my skills more explicable, and account for my access to guns and a lifestyle from which violence never seemed far removed. Beyond that all would be smoke and mirrors. Lies, and more lies.
‘First of all,’ I said, tongue stuck in cheek, ‘my name isn’t really Alan Melville …’
My alarm clock was bleeping, which was strange as I hadn’t set it. I rolled over, fumbled for the stop button, pressed it. The bleeping went on. Bonehead. Now try the cell phone.
Outside it was dark. The clock’s digital face tripped on to 6:51 as I reached for the cell.
‘Oui?’ I mumbled into it. At this hour it could only be the kind of joker who gets off on making heavy-breathing phone calls.
I was wrong.
‘Varnair? Bonjour.’
I sat up fast. ‘Petit?’
‘Lui-même. Are you well?’
‘Enough. Except some French prick just woke me up in the middle of the night.’
‘Unavoidable, I’m afraid. I am due at the airport at 7.30.’
I yawned loudly for his benefit. ‘Let me be the first to wish you bon voyage …’
‘Don’t be a fool.’ Sharply. ‘Do you imagine I am telephoning you at this hour for a joke?’
Now I’d made him cross.
‘Who gave you my number, Petit?’
‘Someone who knows us both.’
‘Name of du Poletti, by any chance?’ I said sourly.
‘Aucune importance. The grapevine tells me you have taken care of de Bruin. Congratulations on that. But why didn’t you do the job properly? It’s not like you. His wife is still alive, and it is she who controls the organization. Rik was never more than a … a marionette.’
‘Now he tells me. Pity you didn’t come clean about his wife when you were being so obliging with your floor plans and suchlike.’
‘Your complaint is justified. We had our reasons. However, circumstances have changed and I am about to make amends.’
A second, wider yawn froze on my face.
‘Listen carefully, mon cher ami,’ Petit lisped on. ‘I am flying to Tangier to meet Annika de Bruin and certain other interested parties.’
Tangier! I screwed my ear into the receiver while he miraculously gave me all I needed to finish the job. A time, a date, a place, and the pitfalls. And of the last there were plenty.
I committed it all to memory. Notes were incriminating, and I had long since learned to do without them.
‘Is all that clear?’ Petit demanded, on winding up.
‘If it wasn’t I’d tell you.’ Apart from his motives. ‘Why, Petit? Why the about-turn? Why this rush of goodwill?’
The chuckle was mellifluous.
‘Can’t you guess?’
I stared into the darkness. Dawn was seeping through the shutters and objects in the room were beginning to take shape.
Then I grinned. ‘You scheming bastard! You want the DeB organization for yourself, don’t you? You want the whole bloody set up!’
‘Ah, so there are brains behind the gun after all. But let us conclude matters.’ Tone hardening now, becoming businesslike. ‘Before I leave I will be posting you a cheque …’
‘No!’ The refusal came from gut level. ‘No, Petit. No cheques. I’m not doing this for money. In fact, I refuse to do it for money.’
He adjusted fast to my apparent altruism.
‘I understand. If you change your mind, before or after
, I can be reached on my cell phone.’ He rattled off a string of digits that I didn’t have the means to write down. ‘Except on the day itself,’ he added. ‘I must also re-emphasise that the day and the time are critical.’
I said, ‘The twelth, at 3pm precisely. No earlier, no later.’
‘Bien,’ he said and hung up.
The twelfth was five days hence. Not long in which to make preparations and resolve a jumbo-size problem, namely where to leave Lizzy the best part of a week. Lucien and Madeleine? They’d take her like a shot, but as long as Annika de Bruin was footloose I daren’t leave her in such an obvious sanctuary. Unlikely though it was that Annika still had any designs on her, I would never again take Lizzy’s security and welfare for granted. With or without the de Bruins, the Arab Prince was still out there, waving a fat cheque.
Which left only my sister Julie. Windsor was remote enough from the de Bruins’ hunting grounds, which took care of the chief criterion. Whether she and Willie would agree to have her, I now proposed to find out.
Over breakfast I steered away from sensitive topics. Afterwards, while Lizzy took care of the dishes, I telephoned from the study. Julie and Willie were both at work, but I got my sister’s business number from her cleaning woman. My call to the office was ill-timed: Julie was chairing a meeting. She took the call in front of her colleagues and her irritation was unconcealed.
‘How was I to know?’ I grumbled.
‘You weren’t,’ was the crisp response, ‘but that doesn’t make it any more convenient. There are five expensive people sitting around this table, apart from myself.’
‘Stop prattling then and listen!’ I gave it to her in a few terse sentences and, unusually, she didn’t interrupt.
The expected objections never arose. Maybe she just wanted me off her back.
‘How the hell did you get embroiled in all this? You must be keeping some weird company.’
‘You’ll have to take it on trust for now. I’ll explain more when I see you.’
Fortunately, thanks to those five expensive executives, she was inclined to co-operate.
‘A week, you say? H’mm. Is she clean? Not covered in tattoos with pink hair, is she?’
‘Christ, Julie! I’ll get her de-loused and disinfected if it’ll make you happy.’ Lizzy’s nose ring had gone so I didn’t have to mention that.
Sounds of amusement. The sale was made.
‘Elizabeth … Powell, did you say?’
‘Power. She answers to Lizzy.’
Sigh. ‘Do we meet her off the plane or what?’
Lizzy had just finished the dishes when I breezed into the kitchen and gave her the news. She was less than enthusiastic.
‘You just dare dump me with your sister!’ she yelled, waving a bread knife at me. ‘I’m not a parcel. You can’t send me …’
‘Shut up!’ I easily out-decibelled her, and she flinched, shocked speechless. ‘You’ll do as you’re told!’ I couldn’t remember ever shouting at her before. I lowered my voice. ‘I have some urgent, unfinished business. It means going away for a few days, a week at the outside. Is that too much to ask – a lousy week?’
‘But I’ve only just come back!’ Now would come the Lizzy wheedle. It was her specialty. ‘If you really really must go away, why can’t I come with you, or just stay here?’
I got the wheedle and more. Threats, tears, tantrums, and, naturally, bad language. I was unmoved and unmoving. For my sake I had to do what I had to do. For her sake, she had to be in a safe, secure place while I did it.
In the little Peugeot we drove to Barcelona. A flight to Gatwick was due to leave at 16.30, arriving there at 17.00 UK time. Julie, Willie, and the girls were to meet Lizzy, en famille. How they would cope once they got her home, what with Julie’s commitments and Lizzy’s heroin addiction, couldn’t have interested me less. These were petty details. Keeping Lizzy safe from harm was my sole motive and my sole concern.
‘I’ll be counting the minutes,’ Lizzy breathed as we said our farewells.
‘Me too,’ I said, running a finger down the side of her jaw. She imprisoned it and kissed the tip.
We hugged. Then, not satisfied with that, she tried for a mouth-to-mouth job. I deflected it onto my cheek.
‘When I come back,’ she murmured in my ear, nibbling at the lobe, ‘can we live together, I mean properly?’
For Lizzy, it was the whole hog or nothing. Any lesser relationship was becoming increasingly difficult for me to contemplate too, though I was resolved to keep her at a distance. To be a parent not a partner. It didn’t help my resolution that, for better or worse, she had added a year or more for every month she had spent in the clutches of the de Bruins. She used to look younger than her age. Now, facially, she could pass for mid-twenties.
The moral angle was not the daunting obstacle it had once been either. I was learning to accommodate it, like a boxer rolling with a punch to lessen the concussive effect. Even the generation gap was narrowing in my mind. My real reservations were intangible. It simply “felt wrong”. Indecent. Pervy. Outlaw though I was, my conduct and attitudes were in some respects conventional bordering on priggish. No matter how strong the temptation I would do what was best for Lizzy.
‘Can we?’ she demanded, tugging at my coat lapels, when she felt my deliberations had gone on long enough.
‘We’ll talk about it,’ I stalled.
‘Coward. Do you know girls can marry at fifteen in France?’
‘Been studying French marital law, have you?’
Her eyes sparkled, momentarily eclipsing the drug-glaze.
‘Stop being evasive … André.’
‘I will, when you stop being whatever it is you’re being.’
The take-off of her plane was delayed. I stayed on as I had promised, to wave goodbye from the viewing platform. A sentimental fool, that was me. Other kinds of fool, too.
It was raining as I drove out of the airport parking lot, a mist of drizzle blanking out the evening sky, darkening it ahead of schedule. I followed an airport bus out along the on-ramp onto the four-lane highway to Sitges.
Towards Seaspray.
Thirty-Three
ANNRIK it read, in bold black across the square stern, and below that, AMSTERDAM. Close enough in the zoom lens of the binoculars to reach out and touch. Proof of the rewards of the flesh-peddling business. Proof that some crimes pay more than others.
She was quite a size. A hundred and twenty feet or more, flush-decked, and a look of speed about her. Vestal white from waterline to the tip of the mast, except for the blue tinted windows and the drooping red-white-blue Dutch flag. A radar scanner spun lazily above the bridge.
Beside her Seaspray was an insignificant tub.
‘Never mind, old girl.’ I patted the cabin roof. ‘I still love you.’
‘Que?’ Alfredo looked up from applying a finishing lick of varnish to the slatted seats in the cockpit.
‘Never you mind, young Alf. Finish your chores, then I want you to go ashore and do some shopping.’
‘Okay, Señor André.’
Seaspray was at anchor in Tangier Bay, bobbing in a docile swell about a mile offshore. AnnRik was closer to the shore, and several small craft were tied up alongside her accommodation ladder. On deck nothing was moving. I wished I had X-ray vision.
A man in a white T-shirt with AnnRik printed across the front appeared at the rail. He hefted a bucket, tipped its contents into the sea, repeated the exercise with a second bucket. From nowhere a multitude of screeching seabirds converged on the yacht. The patch of sea where the garbage floated was converted into a battle zone.
It was 11 February, late afternoon. Pallid sunshine, a zephyr of wind conveying the spicy, earthy smell of Africa off the land. We had dropped anchor less than an hour before, after a non-stop sail down the east coast of Spain. Over five hundred nautical miles in eighty-two hours. It had been no joy ride, but using Seaspray was the only way for me to enter Moroccan waters without inviting the atte
ntions of Commissaire Ramouz. And even at that I was taking a sizeable gamble. Alfredo was on a generous bonus for crewing for me at zero notice. He remained ignorant of the reason for our haste, and I had no plans to enlighten or involve him.
A patch of royal blue popped up on AnnRik’s deck. I focused the glasses on it, and the gross frame of Tom-Tom leapt at me. So Petit had brought his favourite gorilla along. And gorilla he was, in every sense. The long swinging arms, the coarse hair sprouting from the vee of his shirt collar, black crew-cut head tapering towards the crown, and the flashy suit that was as shapeless as the man. I was still focused on him when he cleared his nasal passages: thumb shutting off one nostril, ejecting mucus along the palm of his hand and into the sea. Repeat the process with the other nostril. Disgustingly efficient.
The hands of my watch pointed to a quarter past four. In less than twenty-four hours it would be all over. During the calmer periods of the voyage down the east side of Spain, I had reflected long and corrosively on Annika de Bruin. The sac of venom I had expended on her husband was once more topped up, especially for her. More objectively, I had also mulled over the manner of her demise. If I stuck to Petit’s dictum, I would hit her on her boat, which also suited me in view of Ramouz’s ban. Yet the numerical odds were daunting. I rated Petit and Tom-Tom as non-combatants rather than allies, so it was me on my own against Annika and four leading lights of the porn world, plus a flock of shotgun riders, whose numbers and quality were uncertain. Not forgetting the skeleton crew of two – the rest were expected to be ashore. Quite a line-up. The watchdog contingent alone represented a formidable obstacle. Even more so if they were all in the Tom-Tom class.
Such arithmetic was profitless. I retired to my cabin to prepare my weapons inventory out of sight of Alfredo. I would be placing a heavy reliance on the Ithaca shotgun from my personal collection, smuggled from Andorra into Spain under the crude law-of-averages rule that hardly any vehicles are inspected by the border police. A hell of a gamble. But in the event, the averages had not let me down.
