“Packard Hotel, Mayfair. How can I help?”
“Can you pass me Mr Lambert, the manager? This is Mrs Bishop. I’m calling from England.”
“Just a moment please.” After several minutes the woman came back on the line. “I’m sorry, but there’s been an incident and I can’t talk now. Can you please call back later?” The phone clicked and went dead.
Johannesburg, South Africa
The Land Cruiser set off for Beitbridge at a quarter to two. Coetzee’s paranoia had caused a heated discussion about who should sit where in the car. Finally, the sitting arrangement was Nwosu in the passenger seat next to Coetzee with Doctor Blethin behind Coetzee and Leo lying on blankets with his legs stretched out across the back of the car. They drove onto the N1, direction Pretoria, five hundred and twenty-two kilometres of hot, dusty trouble ahead of them.
It was sixty-four and a half hours since Leo had been taken.
THIRTY-TWO
Marbella, Spain
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Jenny said. “I wonder what kind of incident she meant.”
“I have a feeling something might have happened to Mr Lambert.”
“I hope it was nothing trivial. That odious, hypocritical man.” Emma frowned with distaste then turned as a ‘ping’ emitted from her laptop.
“Oh my God!” She suddenly started laughing and crying simultaneously, floods of tears running down her face. After studying the screen for a few moments she picked it up, kissing it and hugging it to her breast. She placed it back on the table so they could all see the screen. They saw a picture of Leo sitting on a bedside, eating a banana. Underneath the picture was the message; Leo is healthy and in safe hands. Do not inform the authorities or take any untoward action as you will endanger him unnecessarily. We will be in contact again tomorrow.
She looked wildly at Espinoza. “What does it mean? Leo’s alive, thank God, but they’re not saying anything at all. No demand of any kind. Nothing that can help us.”
Jenny took her hands. “One thing at a time, Emma. Leo is alive and well. Our theory was right. They’re after money, so they’ll be making sure that nothing happens to him. I promise you this is really good news, right Pedro?”
“You’re right, it’s excellent news, the best we could hope for. It proves we are on the right track.” He placed the machine in the centre of the table where they could all see the screen. “Right. Now let’s study the message carefully. It’s the first real clue we’ve come across and we need to extract every bit of information we can from it.”
He started making notes. “First of all the photograph. Leo looks very well. They seem to be looking after him. He’s got an appetite, which is a good sign. That’s not his hotel room, of course?”
“No, his room was quite cosy. Wallpaper and an upholstered bedhead. That bed has an iron frame and the walls are completely bare.”
“It looks like a hospital room, but there’s something not quite right.” Jenny squinted at the screen. “There’s no pulley handle to lift yourself up and there’s no knobs or levers on the side of the bed. It’s like an army bed, just an iron frame and blankets, nothing else at all.”
“So it seems he’s in a room specially prepared to accommodate him, without any equipment or items which could identify it, either by him or by us. Very professional. There’s a window behind Leo’s head. See? It’s got closed blinds so you can’t look outside. Hmm.” He put on his spectacles and looked closely at the screen. “Look carefully at the window and tell me what you see.”
“There’s a reflection in the window, because the blinds outside are closed, so the glass reflects. There’s a door, partly open. Maybe a bathroom or toilet. What else?” Jenny’s keen eyes spotted the phenomenon. “I see it. There’s a picture on the wall near the door. No, it’s not a picture. I don’t know what it is.”
“See if I can enlarge it.” Emma double clicked on the photo. “No good. It’s been pasted onto the message and you can’t get to it. Wait. I’ll zoom it up. Right, zoom to double size. See? It’s a calendar with a photo of a pride of lions and a company name on top. Backwards of course.” She read out the letters, “C, L, I, N, I. It’s a clinic. P, R, I, V. Private. N, E, W, T. It’s the Newtown Private Clinic. Just along the road from our hotel.”
“I don’t think it is in a clinic, but if there were a doctor and a nurse involved maybe that’s where they came from?”
Jenny looked more closely at the screen. “I think there’s something else. Can you make it even larger? “That’s good. See? On the wall above the picture, a nozzle or a tube of some kind,”
“You’re right. It looks like a CCTV camera lens. The flexible tube type they use for indoor surveillance. Just a wide angle lens poking through the wall on the end of a tube that’s linked to a monitor. That’s what they’ve taken the photograph with and it’s reflected the image from the window.”
“So that means he’s been under constant surveillance from someone outside the room?”
“I think it means three things. Firstly, the calendar tells us Leo is still in the Mayfair area and there’s some connection with the Newtown Private Clinic. Probably they have a doctor or nurse to keep an eye on him in case the drugs have a bad effect. Next, he’s in a building where they’ve installed a CCTV monitor. Thirdly, now I understand why Coetzee is involved. This military type surveillance is costly and complicated. He obviously has experience in installing it and he probably supplied it. Can you see any properties on the photo file, Emma? Anything that could lead us to the originators?”
“There’s nothing. When a photo is pasted like that, there are no properties until you copy or save it and then your own computer creates the file. No more clues I’m afraid. But wait, I’m looking up the Newtown Private Clinic. See what it tells us.”
The website for the clinic was very understated, rather poorly done, in Emma’s professional opinion. She went through the various services they offered then looked up the page labelled ‘Consultants and Medical Staff ’. There were twelve short bios of doctors and consultants and she scrolled down the page, looking at each one.
“Fairly normal services,” She commented. “From Dermatology to Obstetrics. Nothing special that I can see.”
“But we know the clinic is close to the hotel and their calendar is in the room where Leo is being held.” The detective’s mind was now fully in gear. He had some evidence to work with. They now knew for sure who had carried out the abduction and had a good idea of where Leo was being held and who was looking after him.
“Thanks to this small mistake on their part, we’ve already found out a lot more than they expected us to. Now let’s see if the message itself reveals as much information.”
They read through the message again. “That’s strange. It came to my personal address and not my publishing one. Look, [email protected]. I only use that website for personal affairs, my friends and family, never for anything public.”
“Did you give Nwosu this address when you were being interrogated?”
“No. I always give my publishing address. It’s the one that’s on my visiting cards and website, everything. My private address is my only refuge from the publicity of being a writer.”
“So, the abductors know a website address that’s not public knowledge. That could mean that they have some connection with you, or some way of finding this personal address.”
“Actually, it’s not uncommon to have an address like that, first and last name only. I have one myself, [email protected]. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to send such a message to Emma’s publishing address, it’s too risky for them, considering the subject matter.”
“Perhaps. But I still think there may be a connection there somewhere. Look, the message was sent from an account called [email protected]. That’s the Philippines if I’m not mistaken.”
“The Philippines?” Emma gasped in incredulity.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a ver
y difficult place to find out who or where the actual users of the site are. It’s like the old fashioned Mailbox addresses, the user could be anywhere in the world, just using it as a communication base without giving away their true location. The Internet isn’t just a tool for innocent users like you, it’s very valuable to fraudsters and criminals of all kinds.”
“But it does tell us that the people involved are sophisticated enough to set up a CCTV monitoring system and this anonymous message service. They also seem to have expert medical staff looking after Leo.”
“Yes, it’s more professional than amateur, but we are still far from understanding what’s going on. I’ll check the ISP but I don’t think it will tell us anything.” He looked up International ISPs and chose a site then narrowed the list down to the Philippines. “There’s no site called ipsend. It’s a private address using a Philippine provider but we can’t tell where it originated.”
“It probably wouldn’t help if we did, just another link in a long chain I suppose.”
“Exactly. A needle in a haystack.”
“And who are ARGS? It sounds like a company or an organisation of some kind.”
“What about a group? If our theory is right the R could be for Rwanda or Rwandan, and then Group and so on. It could actually mean anything.” Jenny racked her brain, trying to guess the acronym.
“I’m sure we’ll find out in due course.” Espinoza was still writing his notes. “What about the message itself?”
“Well, it was written by someone with a very good command of English. Look at this phrase; Do not inform the authorities or take any untoward action as you will endanger him unnecessarily.”
“Not many people write like that anymore.” Emma intervened. “Inform, rather than contact, untoward, a very old fashioned word and endanger, rather than harm or hurt. It’s almost as if it was written by a foreigner with a very good command of English.”
“Since we have no idea of the identity of the sender, you could be right. It’s certainly not the average message you get by email.” He pointed at the ‘Sent’ panel. “The time tells us something, too. It was sent at one thirty-eight pm, Spanish time. It’s the middle of the night in Asia and Australia and only seven-thirty in the morning in the US, so the message was probably sent from Europe or Africa, where it’s daytime. I’m not sure that tells us very much, but it probably confirms that the Philippine address is a subterfuge.”
“So it could have been sent from South Africa?”
“I don’t know, Emma, but my instinct tells me it probably wasn’t. Even though we have a lot of evidence pointing to an African motive, it just seems to me to be a red herring, as you would say.”
“In what way?”
“Perhaps you didn’t notice in the announcement of Lambert’s appointment, that it mentioned he was English and came from the Sheraton in London. He was hired by someone in the UK, in my opinion.”
“You mean that the Packard is an English hotel?”
“Not the hotel itself, but the management company is. Packard Hotels Ltd, in London. It may just be a coincidence, but ...”
“We don’t believe in coincidences,” Jenny completed the phrase for him.
Espinoza nodded in agreement then continued. “And the style of writing of the message is definitely not South African, they just don’t talk or write like that. It’s very European.”
“Shouldn’t we reply to the message? We might discover more information. I think we should do something.”
“Normally in this situation, I’d agree with you Emma. We’d send a reply and ask for what’s called ‘proof of life’.”
Jenny saw her sister’s reaction and took her hand. “It’s alright, Emma. It only means that we need a photo to prove that Leo is still there and in good health.”
“Yes. A photo of Leo taken with evidence of the date, so we can see he is alive and well and possibly discover more, as we did here.”
“But in this case we already have a photo, so that wouldn’t be a convincing line of enquiry.”
“Exactly. I know you’re feeling helpless and desperate to do something, but what is needed now is patience. Let them make the moves, we keep up the detective work and wait for them to make mistakes. They will send another message within a short time and then we must decide how to react to their demands.”
Before either woman could reply, Espinoza’s mobile rang. He looked at the number and responded in French, “Bonjour Marcel, quelles nouvelles? What news?”
He listened for a while, making notes in his neat handwriting, interjecting questions from time to time. “Bien, merci Marcel. Je te tiendrai au courant. Salut. Thanks a million, I’ll keep you posted.”
“Bueno.” He addressed the two women. “We are starting to catch up on those sixteen years. This is what we know about Dr Constance.
“Apparently he left Rwanda in 1997, rather hurriedly. It seems there was some kind of incident and he left without ceremony and returned to France, where he got a job with a hospital in Toulouse, l’Hôpital des Sœurs de Miséricorde. He was there for three years as a Senior Consultant in Aesthetic Surgery.”
“So it’s true that he was a reconstructive surgeon and he returned to his original speciality?”
“Apparently. But then in 2001 he was fired from the hospital.”
“Do you know why?”
“I don’t have that information, but with doctors it’s often negligence or inappropriate behaviour, in my experience.”
“I find that hard to believe. He was a very competent doctor and never showed any signs of behaviour of that kind. Where did he go from there?”
“After that he had two more positions with smaller hospitals and ended up in 2007 at the Clinique Saint Christophe in the South of France, as Senior Consultant in Reconstructive Surgery. It’s a very expensive private hospital in Nice.”
“Is he still there?”
”Bad news, I’m afraid. He left France again in September last year and my source tells me that there was an ongoing enquiry at the clinic but it was abandoned when he left France. And that’s where the trail goes cold. He is reported as leaving on a flight for the UK, but there’s no record of his arrival. European passports have not been stamped at UK immigration for many years and the open border system means that we have no idea of where he might be now. He could have been in transit, either to a European destination, or elsewhere in the world.”
“But if Tony talked to him about Leo, he could be involved in the kidnapping?”
“We keep coming up against the same problem, Emma. How could Constance know about your trip to South Africa? How could anyone who knew about Mutesi and Leo also know about your trip and organise this abduction in time? Who could plan and fund what is obviously a major conspiracy. Certainly not a French doctor who’s been in and out of four jobs in the last ten years.
“And I still can’t understand the motive. I suppose it has to be money in the end, it always is. But it’s puzzling, because you’ve made it clear that you’re not a wealthy woman.” Espinoza sighed. “I find it all very confusing for the moment.”
London, England
“I can confirm that the first message was sent off to Ms Stewart at twelve thirty this afternoon.” The Voice sounded pleased with himself.
“Good. You sent a photograph with it”
“Of course. He’s a very good looking boy, expressive and intelligent features. It’s a rather amusing photograph. He is eating a banana. I thought it was quite a nice touch, after having been abducted in South Africa.”
“This isn’t a game. Just concentrate on moving him to a safer place and executing the rest of the programme.”
“They’re already on their way to Beitbridge, hopefully arriving this evening. The remaining connection with Johannesburg has been neutralised. Everything is proceeding according to plan.”
“I’ll feel a lot more comfortable when they’ve left South African soil. There’s going to be a hue and cry there now that the Bishop
woman is involved. She’s a very determined person. Don’t underestimate her.”
Slater rang off then selected his partner’s name from his Favourites list and relayed the message in a few brief words.
“When do we make the next contact?”
“Tomorrow morning. Things will be moving quickly now.”
“About time. Are you sure the banking arrangements are in order?”
“Everything’s in place. The accounts and standing instructions have been tested. The funds flow in series from Dubai to Nassau in six easy steps. After tomorrow’s message it just depends on the negotiations, but she lives for that boy and she knows where to find the money. It won’t take long.”
“Call me tomorrow when it’s started.” The speaker put the phone aside and lay back on the sunbed by the hotel pool in Nice. A waiter came over with a whiskey. A single malt on ice.
In London the Voice called a number in Marseille. “ Tout va bien? Everything’s OK?” His French was more than adequate, but he usually preferred to keep that detail to himself. He listened for a moment then said, “So Sunday the 18th is confirmed? Right, please make the call to Geneva as agreed tomorrow afternoon. Call me if there is any other news.”
THIRTY-THREE
Pretoria, South Africa
The trip wasn’t going well. There had been a nasty accident on the N1 to Pretoria, just south of Centurion. Two lorries had collided, with several cars joining the smash, causing a massive pile up on the northbound carriageway. It was almost four o’clock before they got to the Pretoria Eastern Bypass, leading to the N1 toll road to Beitbridge.
By now, Nwosu and Coetzee were on very bad terms. The policeman blamed him for the delay. He should have been on the R101, the Old Pretoria Main Road, and not the M1. “There’s always accidents on the M1,” he said. “Everyone knows you should take the R101 up to Centurion. There’s much less traffic and there’s no tolls either. It’s a complete waste of time and money.
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