‘The deal was five million!’ Hiley protested.
‘Now it is six.’
‘We can’t! We simply cannot. It’s not possible,’ J.J. gasped from the background.
‘That’s what you said before, about five.’
‘But . . .’
‘I give you time. Until this evening. You have many friends. Call them.’
‘Listen. We cannot do this.’ Hiley’s voice was adamant and slow, hitting every syllable, hoping it might get the message across.
‘This evening. Tonight,’ Cosmin repeated. ‘If you don’t . . .’
Suddenly Harry’s head had been jerked up again, exposing his neck, and a large blade was being drawn slowly across his throat.
‘Mr Jones will show you tonight what happens to the boy on Christmas Day. Unless you pay. You understand?’
‘I understand you very well,’ Hiley said grimly.
The connection went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As the hours passed, the guards relaxed, sent out for pizzas – another benefit of being in the inner city, they no longer had to put up with the malevolent muck Sandu passed off as cooking. Even the prisoners got a slice. And when the pizza was finished and the cartons thrown into a corner, Cosmin led the other Romanians off for a game of cards, leaving just one, Puiu, the electrician, on guard. Harry spent the time inspecting his manacles, but they were secure and firmly locked. No way out. As the hours drew on towards evening, he sat propped against the wall, looking across at his unknowing son, feeling the bite of fear.
When Puiu began to look bored Harry tried to talk with Ruari, but all he got for his efforts was a Romanian curse and another kicking. So they sat in silence. The two windows at either end of the room remained closed, the sounds of the city muffled, but they could hear the bells, the buzz of noisy scooters, and occasionally even make out shouts from the streets below, yet up here in the attic it was a one-way process; Harry could have screamed his head off and it would have been heard by no one but pigeons and seagulls.
Then Harry heard the strains of the song.
‘Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen, and down the mountain side . . .’
He stiffened. He’d never heard Sean sing, but how many other daft bastard Irishmen were out there on these streets?
‘But come ye back, when summer’s in the meadow . . .’ The words bounced off the walls of the Old City ghetto, echoed upwards and crept into the room.
Sean had chosen his moment well, Puiu was taking a leak. Harry searched around desperately; he had to find some way of letting Sean know where they were, some means of making a racket, but there was nothing within reach, even of his feet, except for a couple of discarded takeaway boxes and a broom. On the workbench there was any number of useful items, a hammer, a bucket – God, he could have marched to war behind their noise – but they were hopelessly out of reach. The nearest tool was a scaffolding clamp, lying discarded on the floor and well beyond his grasp, the sort of thing he would gladly have used to beat out Cosmin’s brains, if only he could stretch that far.
‘And I am dead, as dead I well may be, You’ll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me . . .’
He could hear Puiu pissing in the bowl; Harry doubted the man would stop to wash his hands. He was running out of time.
He was a good two feet short of the clamp, but by stretching himself full length on the floor he was able to hook his foot around the broom, which came tumbling towards him, and by grasping the handle between his knees and feet he was able to reach behind the clamp and sweep it towards him. But the bloody thing was heavy, obstinate, the broom kept brushing over it, and Harry could hear Puiu finishing in the bathroom. Yet with every awkward jerk of the broom head, the clamp scraped and inched its way across the bare floor, until at last, stretching to his limit, he hooked his toe inside it. Even as the figure of Puiu appeared in the doorway, Harry swung his leg and hurled the clamp across the room. It smashed through the window, accompanied by an explosion of glass that went clattering down into the street below, followed by a waterfall of splinters that sang out like wind chimes in a gale.
Harry knew he was taking a terrible risk with the retribution Puiu would inevitably wreak upon him, but what had he got to lose? Cosmin was planning to slit his throat in a few hours’ time, and the man was a psychopath who took pleasure in keeping to his word. In any event, Puiu’s wrath was tempered by concern; this screw-up had happened on his watch, while he wasn’t watching, and he was all too aware that Cosmin’s temper was best avoided. So Puiu decided he would play the whole thing down, explain it away as an accident, a stumble over all the crap that others left lying around the floor. After all, what did it matter, it wasn’t as if anyone was storming up the stairs. For the moment, he decided, it would be enough to remind this English prick of the pain that came with screwing around with a man like him. He started swinging his boot.
Harry had taken beatings all the way around the world, from West Africa to Afghanistan, some on home turf and even from Irishmen outside his own home in Mayfair, but never had he taken a bloody good kicking with such a sense of satisfaction.
It was a broken window, no cause for alarm, just one of many minor distractions in the Old City that disappeared as quickly as they came. But Sean heard it, the clatter of falling iron and the singing of tell-tale glass shards. Only trouble was, he couldn’t find them. The maze of passageways was too confusing, filled with derelict homes and reconstruction sites where broken glass lay scattered on all sides, and where some of the alleys were so narrow it was impossible to see up to the windows on high. He knew that the sound could have come from only a handful of nearby streets, but although he hobbled back and forth and through them all, he couldn’t be sure. So when he had exhausted himself foraging for signs that would not be found, he sat himself down in a derelict doorway at the heart of these cramped streets and alleys, rolled himself a cigarette, and waited. An old woman in threadbare woollen tights passed by and tried to sell him some mistletoe, but otherwise no one disturbed him.
But what did a kidnapper look like? Sean had seen two of them in the bar when they picked up Harry. Young, dishevelled, like a million others, and all male, he guessed. So he sat patiently, trying to translate the meanings of the graffiti on the walls, studying the little spirals of rubbish picked up by the wind, and casting a builder’s eye over the half-finished streets around him.
It was Sandu he saw, one of the men from the bar, who had suddenly appeared through a fug of tobacco smoke and was walking down the street towards him. For a moment Sean was anxious – would Sandu recognize him, too? But Sandu was young, with all the arrogance of his few years, and to him Sean was nothing more than an old man on a doorstep, someone of no consequence. He strode past.
Sean didn’t go after him. He didn’t want to leave these streets, where Ruari was hidden, and anyway he couldn’t have kept up, his leg was once again unbending iron. But within a few minutes Sandu had reappeared carrying a plastic bag of supplies, and this time Sean followed, hoisting himself up on his stick, trying to ignore his screaming knee. The Romanian didn’t even bother looking behind him as he led Sean all the way to the safe house.
With every hour and with increasing desperation, J.J. had been trying to make contact with Jimmy Sopwith-Dane, but the man was nowhere to be found. He tried the two numbers for his office, and even his home phone, although it was an unlisted number and supposedly unobtainable, but such things had never worried the news desk of a newspaper. He left messages everywhere, yet there was no reply. The news desk even sent a messenger to the City but found his office closed. It was as if Sloppy himself had disappeared along with everyone else.
It was well into the short December afternoon before any of his frantic messages were returned. Sloppy’s secretary called. She apologized for not doing so earlier, but she and the rest of the skeleton staff had all been out to lunch, which judging by
her speech had been an indulgent one. Of course, Christmas. And that’s why J.J. couldn’t talk to Sloppy, because he was off trekking through some sticky Asian jungle and completely, utterly, hopelessly out of touch.
‘But you don’t understand,’ J.J. pleaded, ‘I must get in contact with him right now.’
‘I’m so sorry, sir, but you don’t understand. You can’t.’
Sloppy was the one chance they had of being able to raise the money which might save Harry’s life, and that chance was being paddled up some impossibly muddy river in Borneo.
Sandu looked carefully to either side before he entered the building, but peered straight through the bent man leaning on his stick a little way down the alley. Sean smiled grimly; maybe at last he’d found one advantage in getting old. The building into which Sandu had disappeared was a run-down town house of crumbling stucco that had once been gentrified, but had since gone through many periods of decline and neglect. The site was fenced off from the alley with mesh barriers, but carelessly, they didn’t meet in the middle. Immediately behind them was a tall Venetian door of old oak that had once been painted green and whose missing glass panels had been replaced by stray off-cuts of chipboard. The door was secured by a formidable padlock, but the hasp to which it was attached had been unscrewed. To those who knew, it was open house.
The building was five storeys, including the converted attic, but the windows on the top floor couldn’t be seen from the alleyway below, no matter how far Sean crooked his neck. Yet on the rubble at his feet was broken window glass. He knew this was the right place.
He’d found it. But what was he to do? In usual circumstances a call to the police would have settled everything, but the old Irishman in Sean trusted policemen very little and Inspector D’Amato not at all. He remembered the last time D’Amato was supposed to have resolved the situation, at the farmhouse, and in particular he remembered the corpses that had been left behind. No, this was family, and family troubles where Sean came from were sorted without running to others for help. That had been the rule for hundreds of years, it’s what had kept Ireland together, just as it had equally successfully kept Ireland apart. The Irish way. Sean would have to do the job himself.
Yet how, what was he to do? He had only one good leg, no weapon, and no idea what lay waiting for him inside. He knew there would be only one way to find out, and he’d only get the one chance. It had to be tonight. Before he ran out of strength, or courage, or found himself picked up by the police.
It was already growing dark, the alleyway was poorly lit by a single distant lamp, but as he craned his neck he could see a glow of light from the top floor. He was up there, Ruari. Sean knew the boy would die unless he got him out, might even die in the attempt, but better a half chance than none at all. He had to try. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, give me strength,’ he found himself muttering. Old Irish habits die hard. And old Irish men die hard, too, he told himself. Anyway, what did an old man have to lose?
In the rapidly fading light, he studied the building one more time, analysing its construction, imagining what it might be like inside, working out what he was going to do – going to try to do. He’d done it once before, for one of his insurance scams. Which meant he knew just how great was the risk he was about to take. With one last crick of the neck upwards, he shuffled on.
He found what he was looking for three streets away, on a small parking lot at the back of the Grand Hotel Duchi d’Aosta. A group of youths were gathered around their scooters, exchanging cigarettes, working out how they might spend their evening.
‘Anyone speak Irish?’ Sean asked, interrupting their chatter.
At first he was met with suspicion but then one of them replied, ‘English. A little.’
‘Then I suppose that’ll have to do,’ he sighed. He produced a £50 note from his pocket. ‘I’ve run out of petrol,’ he said, ‘and as you can see I’m not much of one for the walking. I wonder, if I gave you this, could you bring me back one of those plastic cans of fuel? And keep the change?’
The youth began to nod and smile. There would be plenty of change from that.
‘And if I gave you another note when you got back, could you be bringing me two?’
They were all nodding now, their English and their evening greatly improved. Sean handed over the first note. ‘Five minutes,’ the youth said, grinning as he started up his scooter.
The computer screen sprang into life once more. Cosmin appeared wearing a mask.
‘You got the money?’
‘You must give us time,’ Hiley replied, already pleading.
‘I give you time. Now time is up. I don’t think you bastards take me seriously.’
‘We do! Of course, we do. It’s just—’
But Cosmin wasn’t listening. ‘Screw you! I give you warning. Now I show you what happens when you not listen.’
Harry knew the time had come. They were going to kill him. Yet the moment of greatest danger was also one of opportunity, when they would release him from his tether to the steel joist. His hands would still be bound, but it would give him a chance, so he hoped. But they knew what was in his mind. They had their guns and boots ready, and the broomstick, and after they had kicked the wind out of him they threaded it behind his back and through the crook of his elbows so that he was completely powerless, couldn’t even curl up to protect himself. He was kneeling, defenceless, when another boot came flying in, straight into his groin, and he fell to the floor retching in pain. Tears began flooding from his eyes and nose, he looked up to see the masked figure of Cosmin towering over him.
‘You’ll be the first one I kill,’ Harry cursed, but he was choking and the threat disappeared in an eruption of phlegm. Cosmin laughed, mocking, then he dragged Harry by the broomstick towards the webcam that Nelu was placing in position. They knelt him down in front of it, he didn’t resist, he couldn’t. He was going to die trussed like a chicken.
‘You want blindfold?’ Cosmin asked.
Harry shook his head.
‘Good. So you watch yourself die.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sean let himself into the house with great care. It wasn’t easy, walking with a stick while carrying two cans of petrol. He had to put them down in order to open the old door, inch by inch, groan and creak, expecting that any moment its groaning and creaking would bring some scurrying guard, because he was sure there had to be a guard. Open the door, just a foot or so, creep inside with the first can of fuel, go back outside, fetch the second can, return, close the door, breathe again. It seemed to take forever yet he’d got almost nowhere.
It took even longer to adjust his old eyes to what he found within the house, for there was very little ambient light. He was in a hallway so filled with builder’s clutter that it threatened to trip him at every step, and there was a staircase hugging the wall as it wound its way upwards. Sean was relieved to see it had a banister rail and was constructed of stone, no ancient creaking wood to betray him. And he didn’t mind the clutter, either, with its off-cuts of wood, old pots of paint, plastic sheeting and even a gas cylinder, all excellent combustible material. He poured the contents of one of the cans over the lot until petrol was slopping at his feet. Then, leaning on the banister, he began climbing, dragging his bad leg behind him.
There was a guard, as he suspected. Toma was sitting on the first-floor landing, his automatic pistol beside him, yet his attention was not on the staircase but upwards. Sean saw him clearly from the turn in the stair, the guard’s face bathed in the light from above as he tried to make sense of the noises and snatches of conversation drifting down, wondering if they had done it yet. Because Toma knew that Harry was going to die. Cosmin enjoyed killing, would even give up his share of a million extra euros for it, the bastard. He was unbalanced, clinically insane, Toma thought. He was glad to be getting out of this mess in a day or two.
Toma was wrapped up in his thoughts. He never heard the gentle kiss of soles on stone as Sean crept up behind him,
or the rustle of a sleeve as the shillelagh was raised high, or the swish of parting air as it came down with such force on the side of his skull that it killed him without a cry.
‘We have to talk about this, we want to help you,’ Hiley was saying, pleading, really, but his voice carried no confidence. His eyes were fixed on the screen that was bursting to its edges with the image of Harry, and Cosmin standing beside him. Harry appeared dejected, resigned, his shoulders slumped forward in defeat, but his eyes were fixed on Ruari, who sat directly opposite him against the other wall, his face fixed in horror. Harry tried to reassure him with all sorts of messages that he wrapped up in his stare, but which he knew Ruari had no hope of understanding. Yet if he were to die, Harry thought, he could do it in worse ways than staring into the boy’s eyes. Not that he planned to die, he still intended somehow to spring from their clutches and overpower them all, even though he was bound and they were armed, his legs were numb from the kneeling, and he’d been in this business long enough to know that sometimes plans just don’t work. So, for the moment, he kept staring at his son.
‘Now, you tell me one more time,’ Cosmin was growling, ‘you got five million, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you not got six million.’
‘No.’
‘So now I show you I am serious businessman and this is serious business. You mess with me, so this one will die. And if I not get my five million by tomorrow, the kid die, too.’
‘But you said Christmas Day. Tomorrow’s the twenty-third,’ Hiley protested. It was a pathetic objection, he knew, but he was desperate to keep the other man talking. ‘Just give us a little more time!’
‘You got five million, so you give it to me now. I send instructions. Anyway, Christmas Day fucking banks are all closed, no?’