Payback (29 page)

‘I’ll get you connected.’ Hussein pointed to a chair in front of a desk, on which stood a red telephone. The inspector spoke to the communications officer, and ten seconds
later the phone started to ring. Hussein nodded to Dawson, who picked up the receiver.

‘American Consulate,’ announced the voice in the earpiece.

Dawson pulled a small notebook out of his jacket pocket. The inspector left the room as the American spoke into the microphone. ‘Richard Owens, please,’ Dawson said, using the
contact details Grant Hutchings had recorded in his neat script.

Five minutes later, Dawson emerged from the office to find Hussein and O’Hagan waiting outside. ‘Any problems?’ the inspector asked.

‘None at all,’ the American said truthfully. In fact, it had been a lot easier than he’d anticipated. Owens, the ranking CIA officer at the consulate, had been expecting
Hutchings to contact him, and he’d been happy to provide an update over the phone.

Not that there was very much to update. Two further victims had died from injuries sustained in the Manama explosion, but there was still no further information about the perpetrators. According
to Owens, the conclusion drawn by the Bahraini Special Intelligence Service was quite likely to be correct.

Al-Ramool district, Dubai

Hussein stepped out of the lift and strode down the corridor to a blue door. Dawson and O’Hagan stopped beside him as he knocked.

There was no answer. Hussein shrugged and knocked again, still without result. He flicked open his mobile phone and pressed a few keys. All three could hear a phone warbling inside. Hussein let
it ring for a minute.

‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘I rang Mr Holden at lunchtime and he said he’d be staying in all afternoon.’

‘Maybe he went out to buy something,’ Dawson suggested. ‘Does he have a mobile you could try?’

Hussein rang again and they heard a distinctive trilling ringtone from within. Again nobody answered it.

‘It’s not a problem,’ Dawson said. ‘Let’s go grab a drink somewhere and come back in half an hour.’

Ten minutes after they’d left the building, a light-coloured saloon car stopped on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from the apartment block. Paul Richter
got out and followed Michael Watkinson into a nearby café.

Sitting near a window, with an uninterrupted view down the street, was a fair-haired middle-aged man dressed in casual clothes and apparently reading the
Daily Telegraph
.

‘George Blakeney,’ Watkinson introduced him. ‘This is Paul Richter. Any movement since I called?’

Blakeney shook his head. ‘Nothing since he came back from the café at about eleven. He read the
Express
, smoked three cigarettes, drank two cups of coffee, and went
home.’

‘Three cigarettes?’ Watkinson observed. ‘Usually he just has two.’

‘His nicotine intake’s increasing, but I doubt that’s significant. He’s had no visitors that I’m aware of. People go in and out of that building all the time, but
they’re mainly Arabs. Holden doesn’t seem to have many Arab friends – or many friends at all, in fact.’

The two men left the café and crossed to the apartment building. Watkinson pressed the lift button for the third floor.

Five minutes later, he called a number on his mobile. ‘George? We’re outside Holden’s apartment, but there’s no answer. We’ve tried his landline and mobile and we
can hear the phones ringing inside. Are you certain he never left the building?’ Watkinson listened to Blake-ney’s reply. ‘Right, I’ll try again. But if I can’t raise
him, I’m going to blow the whistle.’

Watkinson looked at Richter. ‘Blakeney’s certain Holden didn’t come out of the front door, and there’s no exit at the back because there’s another apartment
building directly behind. There’s a fire escape on one side, but it leads to the street, so Blakeney would still have seen him. I don’t like this at all.’

He hammered on the door again, then pressed his ear to the faded paintwork and listened closely. ‘Nothing,’ he said, after a few seconds.

Richter examined the keyhole. ‘This looks like a fairly standard Yale-type,’ he said. ‘I’m not that good with locks, but I think even I could get past this
one.’

‘The local police take a very dim view of breaking and entering,’ Watkinson warned.

‘I’m not breaking anything,’ Richter replied, ‘and I think any minute now you’ll recall that this door was slightly ajar when we arrived here. If the flat’s
empty, we’ll just walk away. If something’s happened to Holden, whether the door was open or closed is going to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.’

He pulled out his wallet and selected a yellow card. ‘Now, let’s just see how helpful the Automobile Association can really be.’ He slid one corner between the door and the
jamb, moved it down until he felt the catch of the lock, then jiggled the card until the corner eased under it. Then he pushed firmly, and with a sudden click the door opened.

‘We haven’t got gloves,’ Richter reminded him, replacing the card in his wallet, ‘so don’t touch anything apart from the outside of the door.’

The hall was a tiny square space with two doors leading off it. Richter pushed the outside door closed, then wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and opened the door to their right. That
revealed a small toilet, so he tried the other one.

Immediately the two men stepped into the lounge, it was obvious that the place had been ransacked, clothes, books and magazines scattered about the floor, furniture upturned or pushed aside to
allow easier access to the drawers and cupboards.

‘This doesn’t look like a burglary to me,’ Watkinson remarked, glancing round. ‘A thief would have taken the DVD player at least, and probably the TV.’

Richter walked across the room to where the flat-screen television was positioned on a stand. ‘That’s odd,’ he said, looking down. ‘All these DVD cases have been opened
but not closed again, and the discs are still inside them.’

Watkinson shrugged. ‘Maybe Holden’s the lazy kind and doesn’t bother shutting them.’

‘On one or two, maybe, but on all of them? I don’t think so. And there’s a digital camera and an iPod on that table over there. Whoever did this was searching for something in
particular.’

‘Makes sense to me. But where’s Holden?’

Richter nudged open the door on the opposite side of the lounge. He took one look inside and immediately stepped back.

‘Michael.’ The SIS officer swung round to look at him. ‘Time to call this one in,’ Richter said. ‘Somebody’s popped your star witness.’

Friday
Al-Khaleej Hotel, Dubai

‘Any problems?’ Wilson asked quietly, as Petrucci stepped into the hotel room and began pulling off his Arab garments. Music was playing from the bedside radio to
confuse any microphones.

‘Nobody followed me, and no one seemed to take the slightest notice of me at the apartment building.’

‘And Holden?’

‘James Holden,’ Petrucci replied, with a wolfish smile, ‘is now a sleeping partner – sleeping peacefully, and permanently.’

‘Good. What’s in the bag?’

‘A bunch of disks and stuff from his study. I don’t think he made copies of anything we sent him, but if he did they’ll be amongst this lot.’ Petrucci lifted up the
plastic carrier bag. ‘I wiped the hard drive on his PC, so that’s now been sanitized. I don’t think we need worry any more about James Holden or his predictions.’

Al-Ramool district, Dubai

It didn’t take Inspector Hussein long to respond to the call, because he was sitting with Dawson and O’Hagan in a nearby café.

As he reached the apartment door, Michael Watkinson stepped out to meet him.

‘OK, Michael,’ Hussein began. ‘Tell me what happened here.’

‘My colleague and I came to interview Holden. I checked that he was at home: one of my men is watching the building. The apartment door was ajar, but there was no reply, so we entered to
investigate.’

Hussein looked at Watkinson. ‘What time was this?’ he asked.

‘About twenty minutes ago.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Hussein with a slight smile, ‘because I was in this area on a very similar errand. These two gentlemen’ – he gestured towards
Dawson and O’Hagan – ‘are Grant Hutchings and Roger Middle-ton from the CIA and this’ – he changed hands – ‘is Michael Watkinson of the British Secret
Intelligence Service. We also wanted to talk to Holden, but when we were here about half an hour ago, the door was locked.’

The Arab eyed Watkinson appraisingly, just as Richter appeared behind him. ‘Are you absolutely certain the door was open when you arrived?’

Watkinson glanced at Richter before replying. ‘Let’s just say the door was closed but, when we applied pressure, it opened.’

‘Quite,’ Hussein said, putting a wealth of meaning into the word. ‘Don’t give me any more details of the “pressure” you applied. And this would be your
colleague?’

Richter stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘Paul Richter. I was sent out from London to investigate this man Holden. But I guess I’m a little late for that now.’

‘I have a forensic team on the way over,’ the inspector said. ‘Stay here, please, while I check the place myself.’

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and was back in under a minute. ‘Have you disturbed anything in there?’

Richter shook his head. ‘No. We realized it was a crime scene the moment we went in. Once we found the body we knew we were dealing with a murder, so we waited in the hallway for the
police to get here. We didn’t touch or move anything.’ He glanced at the two Americans. ‘I gather you’re from Langley?’

‘Yup.’ Dawson nodded. ‘I’m Grant Hutchings, the senior agent, and this is Roger Middleton. I got your name, but who do you work for – exactly?’

‘An outfit that’s attached to the British SIS. We act in what you might term a supporting role.’

Dawson didn’t look entirely happy with this reply. ‘You carrying some kind of ID?’

‘Only a passport. Why?’

‘I like to know who I’m dealing with,’ Dawson snapped.

‘So do I,’ Richter replied, ‘and if we were on your home turf in the States, I’d be happy to provide whatever you needed. Out here, we’re all guests of the
government of Dubai, and you’ve no authority to check my credentials, any more than I can check yours. So unless you want to get involved in a serious pissing contest, I suggest you just
accept what I’ve told you and leave it at that.’

Dawson glared at Richter, but O’Hagan shook his head. ‘Leave it, Grant. He’s right – we’re all here under sufferance.’

Watkinson and Hussein watched this exchange with bemused expressions.

Dawson still looked less than happy, but then shrugged. ‘OK, so you’ve been inside. What the hell happened in there?’

‘We don’t know for sure,’ Richter said, ‘but I think Holden was strangled. Whoever did it was searching for something. Every drawer and cupboard has been
emptied.’

‘Could it have been a burglary?’ Dawson suggested.

‘I don’t think so, because there are several attractive items still inside. Thieves usually grab whatever’s going. This has all the hallmarks of a professional search
operation. What I don’t know is exactly what they were looking for.’

‘Can we go inside?’ Dawson asked Hussein.

The inspector shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. This is now a murder scene, so nobody – apart from the pathologist – can enter until the forensic people have finished
their work.’

‘OK,’ Dawson said, ‘so there’s nothing else we can do here until tomorrow, I suppose.’

Hussein nodded. ‘I should have the preliminary report by lunchtime. But there’s nothing you can achieve here, so I suggest you take a taxi back to your hotel.’

‘I’ll need to tell Langley about this,’ Dawson said. ‘Can I use the communications at the Old Fort again to talk to the consulate?’

‘Of course. Tell the taxi driver to take you there, and then get a police car to return you to the hotel.’

Dawson and O’Hagan nodded briefly to the other men, then walked back to the lift.

‘I think the same applies to us, Saeed,’ Watkinson said. ‘Paul and I will let you have our statements tomorrow.’

Once outside the building, Watkinson turned to Richter. ‘I’ve two questions for you. First, what the hell was that spat with the Americans about?’

‘Some CIA officers have the knack of rubbing me up the wrong way,’ Richter replied, ‘and that Hutchings character had it in spades. They stomp in as if they own the place and
expect everyone to jump just because they’ve come all the way from Langley waving the star-spangled banner. And usually they’re only on a seagull mission anyway.’

‘Seagull mission?’ Watkinson asked.

‘They fly in, shit all over everyone, and fly out again.’

‘Oh, right.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll remember that. The second question’s more serious. I
was
waiting there in the hallway of the apartment, just as I told Hussein,
but you weren’t. What were you doing?’

‘Nothing contentious, but I knew that once the plods arrived we’d be booted out, and have to wait days to be told what they managed to find. I don’t think we’ve got days
to spare, so I was trying to work out what the guy who killed Holden was looking for.’

‘And did you?’

‘I think so, though trying to see something that isn’t there can be a difficult trick. The only room where anything struck me as unusual was the study. There were no computer disks
anywhere. These days you don’t often need CDs or floppies, but you always keep the master installation disks, just in case the whole thing crashes, and anyone with any sense makes regular
backups. There were no disks anywhere in that room.’

‘So you think Holden’s killer took them?’

‘Yes, and something else pretty much confirmed it.’

‘What?’

‘While you were waiting for the Thin Blue Line to arrive, I tried to boot up Holden’s computer. Someone had pulled the plug out of the socket, which is unusual unless you’re
paranoid about power surges. When I finally switched on the PC it wouldn’t start, and the error message reported no operating system could be found. That means the hard disk is faulty,
missing, or it had been wiped. The disk was still in the machine, because I could hear it running, and hard drives are very reliable, so the most likely explanation is that somebody ran a wipe
utility on it.’