Sight Unseen

by Graham Hurley

‘I expect so.’

  ‘Expect so?’ I’m suddenly very angry. ‘You know. You have to know. The word I’ve heard is wholesale. That must put you at the top of the tree, because in the end you’re the man in charge. I doubt you’ll ever get your hands dirty. There’s no way you’re ever going to be in Bridport or Brixton or anywhere else for that matter. But you know the way it works, you know about the shit that goes in one end, and you love the money that comes out the other, and it must be very wonderful living here with your port decanter and your peacocks and knowing that the machine, the operation, the laundromat will just keep churning on. Am I getting just the teeniest bit warm here? Or should I blame the port?’

  This is very definitely not the demure Eleanor I’ve been assigned in the evening’s script but I don’t care. Sir John, with his fancy costume, and his archly wooden dialogue, has made me vengeful. Glasgow, I think. The Premier Inn car park. The Landfall down in Bridport. Brett Dooley. Noodle. Kids chained to sofas and crap television in case they stray outside and come home with a habit. The glue’s dripping out of what we used to call society and everything’s falling apart. But how, exactly, do I voice this? How do I concentrate a mind like Franklin’s and make him understand the damage he’s done? And even if I could do this, if I was clever and articulate enough, would he even begin to care?

  ‘Icebergs,’ I tell him. ‘Think icebergs, Sir John. The bit you can see on top and everything else that you can’t. It killed you up there in the Arctic. And now it’s killing us. All that shit you’re selling. County lines. Kids out of control. Whatever it takes to make a profit. It’s killing what’s best in us. Slowly, oh so slowly. And it fucking hurts.’

  H is studying me with something close to respect. Given his background, and everything that happened down in Pompey, he’ll never be blame-free, but the man across the dining table in the tricorn hat has taken the drugs game into another dimension and everyone around this table knows it. Dominic Franklin can’t fail to get richer. Neither does he intend to stop trying.

  Baptiste beckons me closer across the table. I assume she wants to offer some form of apology on behalf of the Somalis but I’m wrong.

  ‘I’d really like to fuck you,’ she murmurs. ‘You think that might be nice?’

  I don’t react. H is shaking his head. Franklin breaks the gathering silence. Malo, he says, was the one who took the deal to the Somalis in the first place.

  ‘What deal?’ I can’t believe my ears.

  ‘Deal?’ Franklin is toying with his glass. ‘Maybe business proposition might be closer. Clemmie’s father is a rich man. He also carries kidnap insurance. The Somalis loved it. Why not borrow this rich kid’s lovely girlfriend for a couple of days and then sell her back?’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To Clemmie’s father, my dear. Or perhaps the insurance company. Twenty per cent of a million dollars? In real money, I make that two hundred grand. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘But who gets the money? Who gets the two hundred?’ I’m lost.

  ‘That enterprising son of yours. Except it all went wrong. The guy with the dreadlocks and the teardrop tattoo? You know who I’m talking about? Your son took him for a friend, or perhaps a business partner, and that was foolish on his part. No way would he ever see any kind of commission. Not a penny. Neither, it began to occur to him, would he ever see the lovely Clemenza again. Which is when, I suspect, he began to panic.’

  H nods. He seems to know most of this already. Unforgiveable.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ I turn to H. ‘You said you sent the boy abroad. Why? Why did you do that?’

  H shakes his head. Looks pained. He doesn’t want this conversation. He’s in denial.

  ‘Well?’ I’m staring at Franklin now. ‘What’s my son been up to? Are we talking Bridport? Is that where it happened?’

  Nothing. I’m looking at Baptiste. My last chance.

  ‘You’d know.’ I can hear my voice rising and rising. ‘You’re thick with Brodie and Brodie knows everything because Brodie’s made that way. So what happened?’

  Baptiste slips out of her chair and comes round the table. Moments later her tongue’s in my ear. ‘Come upstairs,’ she whispers, ‘then we can talk about it.’

  Her hand has slipped into mine. She’s trying to ease me back from the table. H is aware of her every move.

  ‘Leave her alone.’ He’s looking up at Baptiste. ‘I’ll sort it.’

  I don’t give him a chance because something’s suddenly hit me. It’s come with the kind of force that good screenwriters, Pavel among them, reserve for the final reel. Malo is here in this house. Clem, too. Maybe at the back of the property. Maybe upstairs. Maybe they’re banged up together. Maybe not. But that’s exactly the kind of trick a man like this would pull, a little curtsey from the ultimate control freak after the dressing-up and the after-dinner musical entertainment. Here they are. Your precious babies. The rabbits from the hat. My pleasure.

  I’m on my feet again. Whatever else happens, I need to deny Franklin that pleasure. He’s robbed us already, helping himself to our lifeblood, to our kith and kin, to our peace of mind. If anyone lays hands on Malo and Clem in this house it’s going to be me.

  I ask Baptiste where I might find a toilet. For one agonizing second I think she’s going to come with me but when I shake my head and ask for directions she sits down again. Down the corridor towards the kitchens. First door on the left.

  I don’t bother with the loo. I weave past and try the next door on the left but it’s locked. At the far end of the corridor I can hear a fall of water from the kitchen. Between me and the kitchen is yet another door. This time, it opens. I peer inside, aware of a blast of chill air. Then comes laughter from the kitchen and the sound of footsteps. Alarmed, I slip inside the room and close the door behind me. In the pitch darkness I wait for the footsteps to approach. When nothing happens, my fingers locate a switch on the wall. The room is very cold, close to freezing.

  By now, the evening has become surreal: too much alcohol, too much make-believe, and then the sudden, hot spark of anger that triggered my little outburst. I meant every word, and then some, but in truth I’ve slipped my moorings. I’m not sure where I am, or even who I am, and unlike Pavel I’m hopelessly under-equipped to cope. Anything can happen. And probably will.

  My imagination, for once, has ceased to be a friend. I turn on the light, praying that this isn’t the moment I discover the stiffened remains of my precious son and his lovely girlfriend, but mercifully I’m spared. Instead, I’m looking at what must be a cold store.

  Shelves are laden with various perishables. There are boxes of butter and margarine, piles of fresh salad veggies, vacuum packs of bacon and other meats. But what really takes my eye are two headless animals, unskinned, hanging from meat hooks against the left-hand wall. They have hooves, like deer, but their pelts are thicker, hairier. Someone has run a knife up their bellies and disembowelled them but they still, visibly, belong in the wild. A knife – almost of the length of a machete – lies in a plastic bowl on the floor. The bowl is smeared with what I take to be dried blood. I’ve taken a step closer when the door opens silently behind me.

  I sense the movement, the stir of cold air, and spin groggily around. It’s Franklin. And he’s closing the door.

  I don’t bother with excuses about getting lost. No point.

  ‘Where are they?’ I manage.

  ‘Where are who?’

  ‘My son. Malo. Clem.’

  ‘You think they’re here? In this house?’

  ‘I know they are.’

  ‘Really?’ Franklin’s smiling now. ‘How sweet.’

  Sweet does it for me. I bend for the knife and turn to face him, fighting for my balance. The smile has widened. The knife is evidently a further source of amusement.

  ‘You know what they are?’ He nods at the animals.

  I shake my head, hold his gaze, the blade of the big knife steady in my hand. I don’t care about his fucking animals, about
his fancy dress, about his Spitfire, about the view his wife enjoys from their grand Monaco apartment, about all the money he’s made. I just want my son and his girlfriend back.

  ‘Caribou,’ he says softly. ‘They’re caribou. I laid hands on a breeding pair a while back but it hasn’t worked. They need it to be colder. Thousands live up in the Canadian high Arctic. Sir John used to survive on them.’ He nods at the animal on the left. ‘We had a couple of fillets from that one at dinner just now. Un vrai hommage, n’est-ce pas?’

  I’m staring at him, amazed. Mr Ugly speaking French? In a passable accent? Impossible.

  ‘You think I’m a yob, don’t you?’ He’s read my mind.

  ‘That would be unfair to yobs.’

  ‘What, then? What do you think?’

  ‘I think what I thought back then at the table. These last few weeks, believe it or not, I’ve learned a thing or two, seen stuff even you would find hard to believe. Your business is obscene. It eats people whole and spits them out.’

  ‘My business?’

  ‘Drugs. Bad. Smack. You name it. Any fucking thing that will bring you a profit. Noodle? A psycho called Brett Dooley? Larry Fab? I doubt any of these people mean anything to you because you’ve never got your hands dirty, and that just makes it worse because the real obscenity is here, in this house. Everything you’ve bought, everything you’ve hung on the wall, every car you’ve parked outside is paid for by drugs money. People bleed to stock your cellar, to have your Spitfire serviced, to improve your view, and all of that to feed your grotesque ego.’

  Franklin doesn’t say anything. Then comes that hideous smile again. ‘And your friend H? Does he get this brave little speech as well?’

  I shake my head. I’m not going to play this game any more. I’ve said what I’ve said. I’m done. All that matters, I tell him, is Malo and Clem.

  There’s a long silence between us. Then Franklin shrugs and says I can have free run of the entire house, every room, every cupboard, every outhouse. Either now or tomorrow morning. My choice. In the meantime, we might return to the dinner table and behave like civilized people.

  Mention of civilized people does it for me. I take a step towards him, tightening my grip on the knife.

  ‘One question,’ I say. ‘Just one. Do you know where they are? Malo and Clem?’

  ‘Yes.’ He half-turns and reaches for the door handle. ‘And so does your friend.’

  ‘Friend?’

  ‘H.’

  Our eyes lock. Franklin is within range now but he’s making no effort to defend himself. A single thrust, a downward stab, and I can bring this whole miserable business to an end. The police won’t be amused, and neither will Tony Morse, but at least I’ll have extracted just an ounce or two of payback. The likes of Dominic Franklin, I realize dimly, are more right than they’ll ever know. Life, in the end, is all about money. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Now, I think. Allotted span, I think. Pretend you’re a Somali. Pretend you’re in a Mercedes that’s just crashed. Pretend you need to settle accounts once and for all. Seize the moment. Carpe diem. Just do it.

  Franklin at last understands I’m serious. He takes a tiny step towards me, reaching for the knife, and as he does so the door behind him bursts open and there are suddenly three of us in the chilly gloom. H has a talent for reducing complex situations to a line of the simplest dialogue. He pushes Franklin aside and twists the knife from my hand.

  ‘You’re welcome to kill the bastard,’ he grunts. ‘But spare me the fucking paperwork afterwards.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  We’re out in the corridor. Franklin has disappeared.

  ‘You OK?’ H is looking at me.

  I nod, say nothing. My anger has gone and I’m exhausted. I’m also very drunk.

  H steers me towards the door that leads out to the hall and the staircase. I know already that the staircase is going to be a challenge and I’m praying that our hostess isn’t on hand to witness the car crash that’s about to happen. H knows it’s going to be tough, too, and the moment we get to the bottom stair, wincing with pain, he half carries me up in a cascade of soft cotton-lined lawn, lightly scented with Coco Chanel. As we leave the ground floor, and picture after picture drifts past in a blur of icebergs and impending catastrophe, I plant a sloppy kiss on the moistness of his cheek. He’s saved me from killing Dominic Franklin and – even more importantly – he’s saved me from that bloody woman. He’s also lied to me, not just once but a trillion times.

  ‘This has to stop,’ I tell him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lying. You treat me like an infant. I’m better than that. And so are you.’

  We make it upstairs. H opens the bedroom door with his foot and carries me across to the safety of the four poster. There’s a brass bolt on the inside of the door and he slips it across. When he returns to the bed I hoist myself half-upright and try to get him into focus. Shouldn’t we summon the Pompey crew?

  ‘No point.’ H shakes his head. ‘There’s no way anything’s going to happen.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  H smiles down at me. Then he pats the bulge in the pocket of Captain Dannett’s serge trousers.

  ‘What’s that?’

  H produces a gun. I recognize the Glock automatic Malo had stolen.

  ‘Franklin knows you’ve got it?’

  ‘Of course. And he knows I’ll use it, too. If you think he’s just like me, you’re wrong. The guy was never on the street. He’s never done the business. He’s always kept his distance. Just now that makes him there for the taking. And he’s bright enough to understand that.’

  I nod. Distance, I think. This is exactly what I’ve just been raving about in the chill room. At least I got that bit right.

  ‘And Malo?’ I mutter.

  H settles on the bed and takes a closer look at me. ‘You’re sure you want to know? It’s not the funniest story. The boy was a dickhead. Even he admits it.’

  ‘I have to know. Just tell me.’

  H nods, then sheds the jacket and lets it fall to the floor. Malo and Clemmie, he says, had got into the habit of riding down to Flixcombe once the weather cheered up in late spring. Some evenings, they’d take the Harley into Bridport and trouble a pub or two.

  I nod wearily but at the mention of the Landfall, my mind is suddenly pin-sharp. I can picture this happening. Clem doesn’t drink. She’d park the beast outside the pub and unzip her leather jacket, feeding the locals’ curiosity. Malo would sort out the drinks. They were young. They were beautiful. They were exotic. They obviously had money. And this combination would open countless conversational doors.

  ‘They made friends with the locals?’ I’ve closed my eyes. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘They did. Big time.’

  ‘And some of them were selling?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Anyone in particular? Anyone I might know?’

  ‘The kid on the beach. Whatever his name was.’

  I nod. Noodle.

  ‘Cocaine, was it?’

  ‘Yes. At least that’s what our boy owned up to.’

  ‘Really?’

  I hear a grunt from H, then I drift away. Time seems to pass. Maybe I’ve been asleep. I open my eyes. My hands are tidily folded over my belly and H has been kind enough to prop my head on a couple of pillows.

  From the bed, I have a perfect view of a framed pen-and-ink sketch of a sailing boat trapped in ice. This is the same vessel that left Greenhithe all those years ago, but the crew crowding the decks seem to have disappeared. There’s nothing except the ship, the bare rigging and a wilderness of ice. This bleak image, it occurs to me, serves as the perfect metaphor for H’s unfolding story. A shipwreck in the making. Lives at stake. And fates possibly worse than death.

  ‘The crew ate each other,’ I tell H. ‘Pavel told me that. The Eskimos knew about it at the time and Canadian scientists have been working on bones they recovered. Human bones. With sa
w marks. So maybe we were lucky tonight. What do you think?’

  H laughs softly. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. He half-turns and reaches down before stroking my face. The Glock still lies on the counterpane.

  ‘Malo?’ he says. ‘You still want to know what happened?’

  My nod draws another smile from H. The boy Noodle, he says, came up with a couple of deals that our son described as ‘outstanding’. Clemmie wouldn’t touch the stuff but that made no difference to Malo. Through Noodle, he met another dealer, younger, much more together.

  ‘Brodie,’ I murmur. ‘The Machine.’

  ‘That’s right. They spent some time together, had a drink or two, talked business.’

  ‘This is to do with cocaine?’

  ‘Big time. And it was about Clemmie, as well. You can hear him, can’t you? He worshipped the girl but he loved to show her off, too. Fabulous to look at. Drove the biggest fucking bike in town. Rich daddio. Great connections back home.’

  ‘Meaning Colombia?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Meaning cocaine?’

  ‘Of course. This Brodie’s not stupid. A couple of nights in the pub with Malo and he’s looking at the deal of his dreams, hundreds of kilos of the marching powder at a silly price, all thanks to this loved-up bloke who never knew when to stop drinking.’

  ‘And Clem? She knew about all this?’

  ‘She knew lots. She was there. She was listening. She was probably the only one sober enough to realize what a twat Malo could be. All he had to do, our boy, is plant an idea and that’s exactly what he did.’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘Yes. He wanted to play the big man in town. The girl, the bike, the connections, it was all there. People like Brodie can spot an opportunity at a thousand yards. It was there for the taking. Franklin was right. In the end Malo even suggested the fucking idea. He knew about the kidnap insurance Mateo carried. There was money to be made.’

  There for the taking. The simplicity of the proposition suddenly hits me.

  ‘You mean Clem, don’t you? You mean she was there for the taking?’

  ‘Of course. Brodie put the boy in touch with Mr Dreadlocks. Malo wanted twenty per cent to help make it happen. Brodie knocks out a plan and the Somalis do the rest. The next thing Malo knows is a phone call from a number he doesn’t recognize and a shot of his lovely girlfriend’s favourite tattoo. Game, set and fucking match to Mr Dreadlocks. Malo was out of his depth from the start. He wanted to be the next Mister Big and he didn’t have a prayer.’