‘No way, yeah? The guy said ten minutes,’ Sadiq protested as Mangle connected the call.
‘Yes?’ he said, trying to retain the illusion of being in control.
‘You don’t know me but I just listened in on your call and felt I had to act quickly.’
‘What? Who the hell is this?’ Mangle stammered.
‘I’m Detective Alan Bryson. We’ve had Dyson Steiger under surveillance for some time, but this could be the break we need to put him away for good.’
Mangle shook his head, trying not to get swept away by the complexity of the situation as it spiralled further from his comprehension.
‘Are you still there?’ Bryson asked.
Mangle nodded before recovering the power of speech. ‘Yes … I’m here. What do you want me to do?’
‘We have some of the same type of disks you got out of that place, blank ones. We want to switch them with the ones you have, and then use them to go through with the trade to get your friend back.
‘Meet him in the quadrant to the south of The Club, near the fence beside the esplanade. He’ll feel confident enough there to come in person, and there are no buildings nearby for him to hide any of his people and spring a trap. Tell him to take a car and meet you there, and that’s where you’ll trade the disks for your friend. We will have a squad ready to move in on The Club as soon as we have the evidence.’
‘Why didn’t you do this earlier if you knew what was happening?’
‘We had to have proof. Those girls would never talk, and if we stormed the place to get it, by the time we got up to the control room everything would have already been destroyed. That place is like a fortress.’
‘And you know what is on the disks we have?’
‘No, but if Steiger is so determined to get them back, I can imagine it’s pretty damning.’
‘You’re just a voice on the phone, Detective Bryson. How do I know I can trust you?’
‘I guess you don’t, but can you afford not take that chance right now? If you go through with the trade and we then try to recover the disks afterwards, Steiger may already have destroyed them. And if you go through with the trade with the real disks, what’s to say he isn’t going to double-cross you anyway? It’s your call, Mr Garrett, but make it quickly while we still have options.’
‘Alright. So where do I meet you?’
‘There’s an old bakery on the main approach to the esplanade. I’ll wait behind it on my own and I’ll have my badge so you know I’m legit. Call Steiger and tell him the exchange is in two hours. That’ll give us plenty of time to meet first, but not so much that he’ll have time to think up a way around the plan.’
‘Alright,’ Mangle said, and disconnected the call. He wasn’t happy about an exchange with either Steiger or the detective, but with no alternatives he had no choice.
Sadiq knew that speaking out against the plan would win him no friends. Their concern was to secure Tazeem’s release, and any monetary value the disks may hold was of no consequence. But Sadiq had already lost too much. Ermina had insisted he invest more and more of his fortune into the growing deal with Jupiter, and now that had been taken away he had virtually nothing left. His frivolous lifestyle, and the respect he gained as a consequence, was dependent on having lavish sums of money to throw around. He’d even lost his diamonds when they fled from The Club. He felt exposed and vulnerable, and he didn’t like it.
Carson Keaton was a hugely wealthy man, and he had everything to lose should those images be made public. Sadiq intended to make him pay to get them back. Once Mangle left he told Tatiana he was going outside to get some air. He rolled up the garage door and walked out into the bracing March air. The first call was to Mohammed. Sadiq believed he would remain loyal, despite the recent upheaval.
As soon as Mohammed connected the call, Sadiq worked quickly to fill him in on only as much as he needed to know. Sadiq wanted a phone number to contact the Mayor, the number of a call box they had used in a previous deal, and someone he could trust to collect the cash. Mohammed blustered a little at Sadiq’s brush-offs to his questions of what the hell was going on, but he settled, got down to business and supplied what was asked from Sadiq within minutes. Mohammed was instructed to go nowhere and speak to no one; Sadiq would be back in touch with further instructions.
‘The Mayor’s office, how may I help you?’ a nasal female voice whined down the line.
‘I need to speak to Carson Keaton, it’s of extreme urgency.’
‘I’m sorry, the Mayor is very busy. How may I be of service?’
‘You don’t understand. This is something I must discuss with him personally.’
‘I’m afraid the Mayor doesn’t accept unsolicited phone calls or meetings. If you’d like to leave your name and number and reason for your call, I’ll pass them along to his staff and I’m sure one of them will call you back.’
Damn it. Sadiq only had a small window of opportunity, and any hope of success hinged on the Mayor playing along right from the start.
‘There must be a member of his immediate staff that I can speak with now.’
‘There’s Mr Burgess, the Mayor’s personal assistant. I’ll see if he will take the call.’
Classical music chimed down the line as he was put on hold. Sadiq bit his lip and paced anxiously.
‘This is Raymond Burgess, to whom am I speaking?’ a voice asked stiffly.
‘Raymond. This is someone who has something very valuable and very damaging to the Mayor,’ Sadiq said, and grinned. He could feel the warmth of confidence returning to him now.
‘What are you talking about? Who is this?’
‘If you’re the Mayor’s right-hand man, I’m gonna presume you know some of the outside office hours’ activities he gets up to, yeah? Maybe at a certain club down by the old esplanade?’
A deafening silence echoed down the line as Sadiq paused for effect. This was the confirmation he had hoped for.
‘I have a recording from that establishment that is worth a whole lot to the Mayor. On the open market I know it would fetch a fuck-load more, but time is short so I only want two million.’
Sadiq heard some muttering followed by footsteps. The other staff members were presumably being asked to vacate the room.
‘This is a very delicate time with the elections being so close, so I’m presuming this is just an extortionate attempt to smear the Mayor’s reputation.’
‘Whatever you have to tell yourself, Raymond, but you know what I’m saying is true.’
‘Even if such a thing did exist, which I don’t for a second believe it does, how would you propose to make such a trade?’
‘You’ll meet an associate of mine at a location I give you. You go alone. When you have given him the money he will hand you a phone and leave. I will call him exactly five minutes later on a specific land line. If he doesn’t pick up I’ll know you double-crossed me and the recording will go to the press.’
‘You expect me to stand there with nothing but a phone after handing over a huge amount of cash?’
‘This is an unusual situation, yeah? But as it’s the only way this can go down, you’re just gonna have to trust me. I’m not trying to make an enemy of the Mayor; after this happens you’ll never hear from me again.’
‘So in this farcical scenario you’ve concocted, what do you envisage happening next?’
‘You stay put while my man leaves with the money. I call you after I know he’s OK, with the location of the disks. You go there and collect. Everyone’s a winner.’
Tatiana was cold and scared. Withdrawal lingered within her like disease and her whole body ached. Her escape from the torture and brutality of life at The Club was beginning to seem less liberating than she’d first anticipated. Tazeem had been taken, Mangle had left to try and save him, and despite his best efforts to convince her he would return safely, she knew just how dangerous and devious these people could be.
Being left alone with Sadiq in the cold, cramped
lock-up garage made her skin crawl. Her conviction in the goodness of humanity had been shattered through her experiences, to the point that deceit and treachery now seemed inevitable. Sadiq had given her no reason to dislike him, but he’d given her no real reason to trust him either. Looking into Mangle’s eyes, she believed he was a kind man who would do right by her. But the familiar detachment and absence of compassion she sensed when she looked at Sadiq added fuel to her already smouldering fire of anxiety. She felt a brief respite from her trepidation when Sadiq announced he was going out for fresh air. But this was short-lived, and suspicion stabbed sharply at her following his departure.
Tatiana stood and walked around the shadowed interior of the garage. She briefly saw Sadiq outside, but he was walking out of her line of sight. She crept around the parked camper van, and stepping over a leaking car battery she crouched as she approached the open garage door. Sadiq spun around and paced back the way he’d come. Tatiana shrank back, before realising that she wasn’t the cause of his sudden change of direction. He was holding a phone and speaking into it in a tense manner. She couldn’t lip-read every word as he paced back and forth, but by the time Sadiq got into the silver Mercedes and drove off, Tatiana had seen enough to know that she had to warn Mangle.
16
The city centre streets boasted a significant number of shoppers despite the temperature having dropped and the day rapidly growing dark. Each garish window display Mohammed hurried past promised bigger and better bargains than the last. He turned up his collar and looked nervously over his shoulder. The brown leather briefcase he gripped tightly knocked against his kneecap as he walked. He muttered protestations in vain at the task he’d been given, and carried on toward the meeting point.
Mohammed trusted Sadiq. He’d been his reason for hope during three years in jail. Their relationship didn’t offer him rehabilitation, but liberation. A lot was being said about Sadiq; whisperings from lesser men that he was finished. They wouldn’t have dared speak this way a month or two ago, and Mohammed believed that would be the case again. This job was surely evidence that his confidence in Sadiq was not misplaced. Those fools would quake when Sadiq again rose to power, and this time Mohammed would be right beside him – after all, he was the one who had been entrusted with this task. Mohammed smiled and shrugged off some of his earlier paranoia. This was his time.
He arrived at the coffee shop, and as instructed sat at a booth slightly away from the full-length windows. Mohammed ran a hand over his neatly trimmed beard and glanced around at the other occupied tables. A young mother was struggling to get a reluctant toddler strapped into a pushchair at the table beside him. The wailing of the child was caustic on his nerve endings. An old man sat statue still, a large cream cup nestled in his hand as he gazed out, unfixedly, at the passing shoppers. A group of students shared a humorous moment at the corner table, and a bray of obnoxious laughter drowned out all other background noise.
Mohammed, irritated, glanced over at them and scowled. He bit down onto the inside of his cheeks, a trick he’d learned in prison to help maintain focus when surrounded by distraction. The sharp pain drew his attention inward. The other customers ceased to matter.
An irritable-looking man in a sharp suit entered carrying a sports bag. He saw Mohammed, walked over and sat down in the seat opposite.
‘Raymond Burgess?’ Mohammed asked.
‘If you attempt anything other than what has been agreed, you know we will find you, don’t you?’ the man said.
Mohammed nodded. Sadiq had warned him that the meeting would likely begin with a threat, and that he was to let it pass. He looked down under the table. Raymond slid the sports bag towards him with his foot. Sadiq pulled back the zipper, revealing the requested paper grocery bag inside. He began to take it out.
‘What are you doing? Take the bag. You can see it’s all in there.’
Again, as instructed, Mohammed didn’t respond. He reached inside, thumbed through a stack of bills at random, and satisfied, folded the grocery bag closed. He flicked the briefcase clasps, releasing the nickel bar lock, and placed the bag inside.
‘You needn’t have bothered, there’s no tracker,’ Raymond sneered.
Mohammed snapped the case closed, spun the combination lock and stood up. ‘In five minutes someone will call with the location,’ he said, placing a disposable cell phone on the table.
Fury was evident on Raymond’s face at his lack of control, but he could only sit and watch as Mohammed walked away from him and out onto the street.
Mohammed’s fist clenched reflexively around the briefcase handle as Mohammed walked through a herd of teenagers. They converged again once he had passed without breaking stride. An unshaved man in a sheepskin coat busked outside of a shoe store, strumming an out-of-tune guitar. His eyes seemed to follow Mohammed who hurried across the plaza and into the nearby shopping mall. The clatter of shutters being pulled down outside an ice-cream parlour momentarily startled him. He bit down onto his cheeks again, hard enough for the bitter, metallic collusion of his own blood to pique the interest of his taste buds. He tried to relax a little, and snatched a look over his shoulder. No one was openly following him, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
He cut into an apartment store and almost knocked over an assistant who was refilling a rack of expensive-looking blouses. He mumbled an apology, quickly righted himself and resumed a quick pace. Then Mohammed forced himself to take a breath and slow a little. Getting picked up by a security guard mistaking him for a shoplifter was the last thing he needed. Mohammed jumped onto an escalator and walked through an electronics section. The flashing TV images and booming stereos made him feel less conspicuous. Again he looked back, but none of the faces around him appeared familiar.
He turned a corner, went down a short flight of stairs and followed a sign pointing towards the elevators and stairwell up to the parking garage. An attractive young woman wearing black stilettos and white earphones walked past, clumsily reciting something in Spanish. Mohammed forced another deep breath and pushed at the door to the stairwell. He stepped inside and collided with an old Sikh wearing a thick winter coat, a Santa-like white beard and a turban the shape and colour of a beehive.
‘Watch where you’re going, you old bastard,’ Mohammed snapped, scrabbling to pick up the briefcase which he’d dropped in the collision. He started up the stairs.
The disquieting aroma of urine and disinfectant irritated him and he held his breath. At the next level he stopped by the door to the parking lot, and breathed again. Mohammed stole a glance at his watch, and then back at the pay phone he waited beside. Any second now, he told himself.
A good-looking couple in smart business attire, each holding the arm of a little girl in a frilly pink and white dress, who swung between them, walked past and out onto the parking lot. The woman had shoulder-length blonde hair worn conservatively in a bob. She stopped, released the girl’s hand, and began to fish through her bags. The man had smoothly combed, glossy brown hair, like the ‘after’ shot in a commercial for hair dye. Mohammed watched the man for a moment as he patiently waited, then turned around and glanced back down the empty stairwell.
‘Honey, you take Karen back to the car. I forgot to pick up the perfume,’ the woman said, and handed over a set of keys.
Behind Mohammed the phone rang, a harsh sound that bounced off the enclosed brick walls. He snatched up the receiver.
‘Yeah … yeah, I’m out OK. No worries. Make the call, I’ll see you soon.’
He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.
Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialled.
‘The package is in my possession,’ a fema
le voice said and the phone clicked shut.
More warmth now, lots of it, this time spilling down his front. But by now everything had turned black.
Back in the car Sadiq dialled the number for the payphone which was answered abruptly after one ring. ‘Mohammed? … Everything good? … OK, see you when you get back.’
He terminated the call and dialled the number for the phone given to Raymond Burgess. ‘Here’s my end of the deal,’ he said as a tense voice answered the call, and informed him of a meeting to take place soon at a disused bakery.
After hanging up the call Sadiq pocketed his phone. Slowly, he peeled off the thick white beard, dropped it onto the floor beside him, and then removed the turban. He started the engine, smiled at himself in the rear-view mirror and patted the brown leather briefcase with nickel bar lock that sat on the passenger seat beside him.
Mangle, having foregone Tazeem’s more noticeable Mercedes, chose to drive the compact red Nissan that was stored at the back of the garage. The Volkswagen they had been driving was still, he assumed, parked outside Sadiq’s apartment, but going back there didn’t seem a viable option.
Mangle wanted to retrieve the gun Sadiq had dropped during their escape from the bungalow the night before. He felt he should have something with him in case things turned nasty, so allowed himself enough time for the detour before his meeting with Bryson.
They’d agreed that Sadiq and Tatiana would travel independently. If Steiger had something else in mind – and undoubtedly he would – at least they would have a chance to escape. Mangle left the highway and its perceived security of blending in with other motorists and began what he hoped would be the final chapter of his ordeal, but hopefully not of his life.
The bungalow appeared to be empty as Mangle approached from the rear. An old man, two gardens down, caught sight of his unfamiliar face, and the eager snipping of his hedgerow’s first pruning of the year fell silent. Mangle hunched down below the level of the greenery and hurried towards the fence. He plunged his hands into a thicket of small shrubs, and after a few seconds of scrabbling around they closed around the barrel of the gun. He tucked it into the waistband of his pants, stood up and walked briskly back out onto the street. A few seconds later a tentative snipping continued, but Mangle was already out of earshot and climbing back into the car.