‘I stole it from the receptionist at Alan Donnovan’s clinic. Alan is Hazel’s gynaecologist. The receptionist’s name is Victoria Vusamazulu. She is a cute little African number and her name in Zulu is a political war-cry meaning “Rouse the Zulu Nation”. I am not sure about the nation, but with her physical assets I have little doubt she could rouse a few of the dead. She has probably woken up to my switch of her phone already, but I can stall her until tomorrow. You have got until then to suck her iPhone dry. Apart from her boss, Victoria is the only one who knew that Hazel was coming up to London on the day of the ambush.’
Dave grinned with delight at the challenge. ‘It won’t take that long. This little Zulu number will soon have no secrets from me. Excuse me, folks.’
Hector resisted the urge to follow Dave down to the workshop in the basement. Dave was one of the best in the business but he would work even better without unsolicited advice and chivvying. Hector left him to get on with it, and he went up to his study.
Agatha had digitized all Hazel’s information from the time she first came to work as her PA. On Hector’s desk she had left an external hard drive that contained all of it; many hundreds of gigabytes.
Now that the trail of Hazel’s killer had gone cold in Mecca, Hector was determined to go right back to the beginning of Hazel’s dazzling career, and search out all the rivals she had left along the road. As dearly as he loved her, Hector never once doubted Hazel’s capacity for making enemies. She had kicked and clawed her way to the top of a tall heap, and she had never backed away from a fight.
If you spend your entire life shaking the mountains, churning the oceans and beating the jungles, as Hazel had done, you are bound to flush out some pretty scary creatures. Hector began a fresh search for one of these. The most vicious and vindictive of them all; the enemy who would make a great white shark seem like a toothless Chihuahua.
He had been at work for only a couple of hours when the intercom rang. It was Agatha.
‘Good morning, Mr Cross. I have the receptionist from Mister Donnovan’s clinic on the line. I tried to put her off, but she is most insistent. Will you take the call?’
‘Thank you, Agatha. I’ll take it.’ He made a mental note to have a serious talk to Agatha. He badly needed a personal assistant, and she would be perfect in the job. Hazel had been her whole life. Perhaps now she might transfer that loyalty to him. A side benefit in the arrangement was the fact that there would be no danger of any emotional entanglements. He put that thought aside, and spoke into the handset. ‘Cross.’
‘I am sorry to bother you, Mr Cross. This is Vicky Vusamazulu. There seems to have been a mix-up. I noticed on your first visit to the clinic that you have an iPhone S4, exactly like mine…’
‘Yes, I have,’ Hector replied, and then he groaned. ‘Oh, damn it to hell. Now I understand what must have happened. I have been unable to open my phone. It’s been refusing to accept my password. I was standing at your desk this morning when you left the room. I was going to make a call, and then I changed my mind. Instead I went to the toilet. Then I realized I had left my phone in your office. I returned to your reception. You weren’t in the room, but I saw an iPhone lying on the desk. I thought it was mine and I took it. I do apologize, Vicky. It was very stupid of me. You don’t have my phone, by any chance, do you?’
‘That is why I am calling you, sir. I do have yours. I know it’s yours because you have written your number inside the back cover. Mine has a lot of very personal information on it. Can I come to your house after work this evening to exchange phones with you?’
‘Please forgive me, Victoria. I am going out in the next few minutes, and I won’t return until late tonight. But I will take your phone with me, if it has very sensitive information in it. Can’t trust anybody these days. I will stop by your office first thing in the morning to make the exchange.’
‘Oh dear! You can’t make it any time today? It really is inconvenient for me.’
‘Sorry, Victoria. Tomorrow before ten a.m., I promise you.’ He hung up before the girl could protest further.
Dave Imbiss called him on the intercom a few minutes after five that afternoon.
‘Sorry, boss. It took longer than I thought. Miss Vusamazulu is a cunning little vixen. She put a whole bunch of booby traps into her machine. But I have got it all out for you at last.’
‘Good man. Tell me about it.’
‘Better you come and have a look and a listen for yourself. We will need to use the cinema. I have got about an hour of videos to show you. Before you come, you should take a calm pill, or maybe even two. What I have for you is going to blow your mind, boss.’
‘I’ll be down in five. Give Paddy and Nastiya a call to join us for this gala performance.’
Paddy and Nastiya were sitting in the centre of the second row of seats when Hector entered the theatre. Dave was fiddling with the electronic equipment. He looked up as Hector swung one long leg over the first row and dropped into the seat beside Nastiya.
‘Sorry to disappoint, folks. We ain’t got no commercials. So, I’ll go straight to the main features,’ Dave told them. ‘Firstly, some selected conversations. A fact that most iPhone owners do not know is that nothing is ever lost; no matter how many times you delete it we can always get it back. Miss Vusamazulu had two shots at deleting this particular conversation, but here it comes again, recorded on the day that Hazel had her final consultation with Alan Donnovan.’ Dave started the audio machine. The first sound was the single ring tone of a mobile phone and immediately afterwards there was click as the receiver was lifted. There was a pause and then a woman’s voice.
‘Hello. Is that you, Aleutian?’
The answer came immediately.
‘I told you not to name names, bitch.’ The cadence was American hip-hop. The delivery was arrogant. The woman’s soft gasp of contrition was barely audible. Then her voice took on a submissive pleading tone.
‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’
‘Then don’t forget to delete this call when we finish. Now tell me! Has she come?’
‘Yes, she is here. But her husband has gone out. He told Doctor that he would return at one thirty.’
‘Good!’ said the male voice, and the line went dead. Dave switched off the audio. They were all silent for a while.
Then Hector said, ‘Aleutian. Was that the name she used?’
‘That’s what it sounds like. Anyway, it’s probably a gangland handle; a nom de guerre. Not his passport name, if you know what I mean.’
‘Play the call again.’
Dave ran it back and started it again. They all leaned forward to listen. When it ended Paddy agreed. ‘Aleutian. Definitely Aleutian. So at least we have some sort of name to work with now.’
‘The time and date are right. I dropped Hazel at Donnovan’s clinic and went to run a few errands around town,’ Hector agreed. ‘What else is there, Dave?’
‘The next call was at nine forty-five the same evening,’ Dave told them. ‘This is Aleutian calling Victoria.’
He started the recorder. There were four ring tones, and then the girl’s unmistakable voice and intonation.
‘Hello. This is Victoria.’
‘I’ll be there to pick you up in ten minutes. Wait for me downstairs, outside the tobacconist. I am driving a rented blue VW.’
‘You are late. You said seven.’
‘Okay. Forget it. I’ll get another ho for tonight. Pussy stacked up knee deep around here.’
‘No! I didn’t mean that. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’
‘You had better. I have a hard-on here that will blow the glass out of all the windows in the street when it bursts.’
Victoria giggled. ‘You are so funny. Come here and blow my window out, lover boy.’
Hector intervened softly. ‘At the time that cultured conversation was in progress, Hazel was lying in a coma with a bullet in her brain and just a few hours away from dying.’
&n
bsp; Paddy looked down and shuffled his feet. Nastiya took Hector’s hand that lay on the bench between them. She squeezed it hard, but remained silent. There was nothing that any of them could say for his comfort.
Dave coughed and broke the silence. ‘There are four more conversations between the two of them but it’s all the same sort of dismal stuff. It’s just threats and boasts of sexual prowess from him and a few recriminations from the girl. However, there’s not been a call from Aleutian for the past few weeks. I’ve tried the number, but it’s unobtainable.’
‘Either he dumped her, or he left the country a few weeks back,’ Hector suggested.
‘He just dropped her,’ Nastiya said with certainty. ‘Men like Aleutian don’t stick around more than a few weeks. They move on once they have had a good taste of the tart.’ Significantly she raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow at Paddy.
‘No private jokes here, please,’ Dave cautioned her. ‘Let’s keep it serious and on the ball. So that’s the end of the phone calls but they have given us some good stuff.’ He looked at Hector. ‘If you are ready, I can run the videos for you, boss?’
‘Go ahead please, Dave.’
Dave dimmed the lights and turned on the first video that he had copied from the iPhone. There was immediately a cacophony of background noise over the audio speakers, men’s raised voices and women’s high-pitched shrieks of laughter, loud music and the clatter of bottles and glasses. On the screen the images were jumbled and confused, as the camera panned wildly from ceiling to floor, over a table of beer bottles and half-empty glasses, down onto close-ups of human feet and legs. Then it steadied. The scene was obviously the interior of a squalid nightclub. The tables were crowded together around a tiny dance floor. Victoria’s unmistakable voice rose above the hubbub.
‘Be cool, everybody! Remember, this is your audition for The X Factor.’ The lens pulled back and focussed onto a group of young people sitting around a table laden with drinks and overflowing ashtrays. Some of them leered at the camera and raised their glasses in salute, others held hand-rolled joints at jaunty angles in the corners of their mouths and blew puffs of smoke, and one thrust his finger down his throat and made vomit noises.
The camera zoomed in on a pretty blonde girl sitting on a boy’s lap at the far side of the table, and Victoria’s voice instructed her, ‘Come on, Angie. Do some magic trick.’
Angie hooked her thumbs in the top of her dress and pulled it down to her waist. Both her large white breasts popped out and she took one in each hand and pointed her nipples at the camera. ‘Bang! Bang! You’re dead!’ she squealed. The camera shook with laughter, then moved on to the next reveller in the circle.
‘Here we go!’ Dave Imbiss told them and froze the frame. They were looking at the image of a dark-skinned male. Hector guessed he might be thirty or a little older. His hair was gelled into a quiff and he wore a hoodie jacket with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows and the hood thrown back. His forearms were muscular and toned as though from gym work. He was good-looking in a brutal fashion, with a cruel cynical mouth. His expression was studiedly nonchalant.
Dave let them scrutinize the image for a little longer. ‘I think we have here the missing link in the puzzle; the mover and shaker who set up the hit. This, boys and girls, is Aleutian.’
Hector straightened up in his seat and leaned forward like a hound with the scent of the quarry in his nostrils. ‘Do we have any more footage of this beauty?’ he asked in a deadly quiet tone.
‘Plenty, boss. Plenty. Victoria obviously has the big-time hots for him. She just can’t get enough.’
‘Neither can I,’ Hector murmured. ‘I want him very badly. Let’s move on, Dave.’
The video started again and Victoria’s voice picked up the commentary. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. They don’t come any cooler than this. This is Mr Cool in person. Give your fans a wave, Mr Cool.’
Mr Cool lifted two fingers in a V sign and placed his thumb between them. Without a change of expression he prodded it towards the lens in a grossly lewd gesture. Victoria hooted and she sang, ‘Do that to me one more time!’
The man in the frame leaned back in his chair and locked both his hands behind his head. He winked at the camera. Dave froze the frame again.
‘Okay, folks, check his left hand,’ he told them and zoomed in on it. ‘Is that the red tattoo, boss?’
‘That’s the one, Dave. The Maalik tattoo. But are we sure this one is Aleutian? She hasn’t used that name in this shot. Go on running the footage.’
Dave started the video again, but the camera panned off the subject and Dave apologized. ‘Nothing more on this one. But not to worry too much. There is plenty more on three of the others; enough to make a strong man throw up.’
‘Let’s see them, please,’ Hector ordered.
The next video was a wide shot of the same nightclub dance floor. The camera operator must have been standing on a table to achieve such a high-angle view. On the closest edge of the dance floor Victoria Vusamazulu was dancing with the man with the Maalik tattoo. She was oscillating her hips, throwing her head from side to side so that her long false hairpiece whipped across her face. Her partner towered over her. He had shed the hoodie jacket and the sleeves of his sweatshirt were cut away to expose the full length of his heavily muscled arms. Hector was able to judge his size by comparing him to Victoria. He stood head and shoulders taller than her.
He was big, very big, and he moved well. He was balanced and coordinated. He was quick on his feet. Hector judged that he would be a dangerous man in a fight. Suddenly the man snatched the hairpiece off Victoria’s head and he circled her, lashing her with the hairpiece across her back and buttocks as though he was her slave driver. She writhed in feigned agony. He reached out to the zip fastener running down the back of her dress and pulled it down to the cleft of her buttocks. She held the front of the dress to her breasts but her back was naked and shiny black with sweat.
The other dancers crowded around them, clapping time to the music and to their primitive gyrations, urging them on with shrill screams and yips of excitation.
The man closed in behind Victoria, grabbed her hips and pulled her towards him, pounding his loins into her buttocks in a graphic parody of anal intercourse. She pushed back at him just as vigorously, meeting each of his thrusts, riding out his assault.
Suddenly the screen went black and the noise cut off into complete silence. Dave switched on the overhead lights.
‘Sorry for that,’ he said cheerfully. ‘End of video. We will never know how that story ends.’
‘And a good thing too. No nice girl would be safe in bed with a husband who watched that kind of thing.’ Nastiya gave her opinion and prodded Paddy in the ribs.
‘If you thought that was a little over the top, Nastiya, you had better leave the room now before I run the last one,’ Dave warned her. She shook her head and moved closer to Paddy. She took a firm grip of his arm.
‘I can trust this man to protect me,’ she said. ‘It is my duty to stay here. One day it may be my duty to kill that nasty Aleutian animal.’
‘How do we know this is Aleutian?’ Hector cut in. ‘Come on, Dave, give us the name please.’
‘Your wish is my command, boss. His name is coming right up!’ He switched off the lights and started the last video.
Once again there was a rapid series of fuzzy, out-of-focus shots of the floor and ceiling of what was clearly a woman’s bedroom, with pink bedclothes on the queen-size bed and a dressing table crowded with toiletries and perfume bottles. There was also a menagerie of fluffy animal toys arranged on the single chair standing beside the bed. Then the frame steadied as if the camera had been placed on a tripod. Focus pulled in on the bed. Now the man from the nightclub sequence lay on the bed on his back. He was naked. He stared into the lens with that same enigmatic expression. He had one hand behind his head and the tattoo was in clear focus. With his other hand he was stroking himself.
‘Come on,’ he said to
the person behind the camera. ‘What are you waiting for? Does Mr Big frighten you, bitch?’
Vicky Vusamazulu sashayed into the shot. She also was naked. She undulated her glossy black buttocks as she went to the man on the bed. She swung one leg over him and straddled him.
No one in the theatre spoke again for a while. Twice more Victoria stood up from the bed and came back behind the camera to change the angle and the focus, from wide angle to tight close-up, and then she ran back to the bed and launched herself into the action once more.
‘Isn’t it strange?’ Hector asked at last.
‘Isn’t what strange?’ Paddy demanded without taking his eyes from the screen.
‘Isn’t it strange how boring it is to watch other people doing this, when it’s such great fun to do it yourself?’
Nastiya laughed delightedly. ‘I love you, Hector Cross! You can be so wise and funny.’
‘Fast forward please, Dave,’ Hector insisted, and Dave shrugged.
‘Okay, but I warn you that you are going to miss a load of good stuff.’
The movements of the couple on the screen became as jerky and frantically rapid as those in a Charlie Chaplin black-and-white movie from the 1920s. The sound was squeaky and unintelligible.
Nastiya started giggling and that set them all off. At last Dave Imbiss controlled his laughter sufficiently to warn them, ‘Okay, quiet please, the lot of you! Here comes the moment we have all been waiting for!’
The action calmed down into real time and Aleutian spoke out clearly.
‘Brace yourself, you little beauty! Here comes the deadly African black snake!’
‘Oh yes, Aleutian! Give it all to me, Aleutian, you dirty bastard, you!’
‘There you are!’ Dave Imbiss said smugly. ‘Ask for the name and Imbiss gives it to you not once but twice. That’s what I call real service.’ He reached across and switched off the video.
Hector broke the silence that followed. ‘That girl hasn’t been very well brought up.’ He gave his opinion gravely. ‘Did you notice that at the end there she didn’t even say please?’ He stood up and went to the podium. He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned to face them.