Vicious Circle (12 page)

Hector’s eyes darted down the page. The story was all there, and the facts were essentially correct. He crumpled the news-sheet into a ball and hurled it against the wall.

‘Bastards!’ he snarled. ‘Bloody bastards!’ He turned and ran back into the passage and up the stairs two at a time to the next floor. He burst into the nursery and then checked himself in the doorway. Catherine lay stark naked and tummy down on the table. She was waving her legs in the air as Bonnie stooped over her, sprinkling her pink bottom with white talcum powder.

‘Mr Cross!’ she gasped with shock. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ Hector backed away. ‘I just wanted to check on something. Is everything all right?’

Bonnie smiled. ‘Oh, yes. We have just finished up our entire bottle and done a lovely big poo.’ Her use of the plural conjured up a macabre image in Hector’s mind.

‘That’s good. That’s very good. Now listen to me, Bonnie. I want you to pack up everything here. We are moving up to the London house right away.’ The press had broadcast Catherine’s birth to the world. The Beast would know exactly where to find them.

‘Pack everything?’ Bonnie stared at him incredulously. ‘But we only just got here! Do you really want us to do that, sir?’

‘Yes, I really want you to do that. Just make sure you are ready to leave by one o’clock this afternoon.’

Hector left them and went back to his study. He picked up the internal phone and called the head gamekeeper’s cottage. ‘Paul, I want all the gates to the estate closed and locked. Put one of your underkeepers on guard at every entrance. They must all carry their shotguns. No stranger is allowed onto the estate. Do you understand?’

‘What about deliveries from the village, Mr Cross? We are expecting a van from Farnham’s with feed for the pheasant chicks.’

‘Make sure they know the driver by sight. No strangers.’ He dropped the phone back on its hook and looked around the room, making a list of the few items that he wanted to take up with him to London. There was not much. With her usual attention to detail, Hazel had duplicated most of the contents of the two houses. In most instances it was a case of walk out and walk in. Even Catherine had her own nursery waiting for her there. If only they had stayed in London on the fatal day, they would never have run into the ambush and perhaps she might still be alive. He wondered bitterly what was the title of the book she had wanted to collect from Brandon Hall that day.

He picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Belgravia house in London. The butler answered. ‘You have reached the Cross residence. How may I assist you?’

‘Morning, Stephen.’

‘Ah, Mr Cross! How are you, sir? We have all been so distressed about Mrs Cross. Thank you for inviting us to the service.’

‘Thank you, Stephen,’ Hector replied gruffly. ‘I will be arriving this afternoon with the new baby and her nurses. We will be staying for an indefinite period. Please have everything ready for our arrival.’

When they left Brandon Hall the gates to the estate were locked and Paul Stowe, the head keeper, was on guard with his shotgun under his arm. Hector rolled down the side window of the Range Rover to speak to him. Paul had served with the SAS, which was Hector’s old regiment. In Afghanistan he had been badly wounded in a firefight with the Taliban and after leaving hospital he was discharged from the army. Hector had not hesitated when Paul applied for the gamekeeper’s job, and he had never had any reason to regret the decision. Hector reinforced his instructions to keep the gates locked and allow no strangers into the grounds. Then they drove on and in the rear-view mirror he watched Paul close the heavy steel barred gates behind them. He drove into the underground parking garage at No. 11 in Belgravia three hours later. Hector had moderated his speed to give Catherine a smooth ride.

When Hector visited the nursery an hour after their arrival he found Catherine fed, burped and tucked up in her cot fast asleep. He relaxed for the first time that day.

*

One of the items he had brought with him from Brandon Hall was his favourite portrait of Hazel. He hung it on its hook facing his desk in the study before he even switched on his desktop computer.

As soon as the computer booted he logged on to his Gmail account. Near the top of the column of incoming messages was the one he had been keenly anticipating.

Nastiya and I arrive Emirates flight EK 005 at 1800 hours GMT this Thursday. Heathrow Terminal 3. Can you meet please? I have news. Paddy.

Twenty-four hours later when the two of them came through the arrivals gate Hector was waiting for them. Paddy’s craggy face was tanned cocoa brown. Nastiya’s face and bare arms were a glowing shade between copper and gold. They both looked fit and vital. Hector embraced each of them in turn. Their bodies were hard and lithe as those of trained athletes, which of course they were.

‘You are staying with me at Number Eleven,’ he told them.

‘I hoped you would say that,’ Nastiya replied. ‘It’s good to be treated like a duchess for a change.’

‘You are no duchess, Nazzy. You are a tsarina.’

‘What kind of bullshit you must speak all times, Hector Cross?’ She tried to look haughty, but she failed. Hector knew she secretly loved it when he called her that. She kissed both his cheeks.

They piled their luggage into the Range Rover. Paddy sat in the front passenger seat and Nastiya took the seat behind him. Hector suppressed a smile as he thought about how when Nastiya was not kicking the guts out of somebody who had annoyed her, she was convincingly playing the role of a subservient wife.

As soon as they were alone, both Paddy and Nastiya reiterated their commiserations on Hazel’s murder and spoke of their determination to revenge her. Hector responded awkwardly, maintaining a brave face with difficulty. It was a relief to all three of them when their conversation became more relaxed and commonplace. They had not been with each other for a while and so they exchanged news of their mutual friends and acquaintances and Paddy brought Hector up to date with the activities of Cross Bow Security.

Once they hit the motorway the traffic was light and Hector could give his full attention to the important issues.

‘So you say that you have news for me, Paddy? Good or bad?’

‘Good and bad. I’ll give you the good gen first. Nazzy has found a perfect safe house for your Catherine. As you suggested, it’s the entire top floor of one of Prince Mohammed’s new beachfront developments in Abu Zara. It is served by a private lift. It also has a helicopter landing pad and a swimming pool on the roof. There is plenty of space for a good security team on the site. We can make it impregnable. That’s the good gen.’

‘And the bad?’ Hector raised an eyebrow.

‘Princey wants one hundred and twenty million US for an outright sale, cash on signature of contract.’

‘Jesus!’ Hector exclaimed, and Paddy shook his head in disagreement.

‘Jesus isn’t involved in this deal. Princey doesn’t believe in him.’

‘Will he rent it to us?’

‘Yes, he will. But that’s not much of an improvement. He wants fifteen mill for a one-year rental. That’s his best price for good friends, or so he says.’

Hector thought quickly.

‘He has got us by the testicles,’ he said at last.

‘Not me, he hasn’t,’ Nastiya said smugly.

‘Can’t you keep that woman of yours under control, Paddy?’ Hector asked and relapsed into silence again while he pondered the problem. Ronald Bunter had assured him that the Bannock Trust would foot all Catherine’s expenses. This wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity. It was for Catherine’s safety; probably her very survival was at stake. Now was the time to put old Ronnie’s word to the test. If Bunter refused, Hector was determined that he would pick up the tab himself. God knows, Hazel had left him enough ‘small change’ to do the job, and then some. Catherine had to be moved to the safe house, and price didn’t come into the reckoning.

‘We have to take it. One year should see us running free. How soon can we move in?’ he asked Paddy.

‘Pretty much right away. Furnishings and fittings are included in Princey’s price. The property is highly liveable as it stands. You can add the finishing touches once we get Catherine safely installed. How long will it take you to get her down to Abu Zara?’

‘The sooner the quicker,’ Hector told him. ‘Every day increases the risk exponentially. Excuse me for a few minutes. I have to speak to a friend.’ He checked his wristwatch. Houston was six hours behind.

He had Ronald Bunter’s private number on his phone.

‘Bunter here.’ The unmistakable old maid’s voice broke his train of thought.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Bunter. It’s Hector Cross.’

‘It’s good to hear from you, Mr Cross. How can I help you?’

Hector told him, and Bunter listened silently until he had finished. Then he asked quietly, ‘What other options are there for safeguarding Catherine, Mr Cross?’

‘There are no other options, Mr Bunter. You know what they did to Catherine’s mother.’

‘I must speak to my fellow trustees. I’ll call you back before close of business today, Mr Cross.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bunter.’

He broke the connection and glanced across at Paddy. ‘Okay, what else have you got to tell me? You have that look on your face. You are holding an ace in the hole.’

‘We are almost at Number Eleven,’ Paddy demurred. ‘It’ll keep until we get there.’

‘Very well,’ Hector agreed reluctantly. ‘Your usual suite is ready for you two. But first I’ll take you to say hello to Catherine. Then I’ll give you half an hour to primp and preen. Hazel made it a rule of the house that gentlemen dress for dinner.’

‘I see no gentlemen around here,’ said Nastiya.

‘Don’t encourage her,’ Paddy said sadly. ‘Russian jokes are like Russian snipers; well camouflaged and difficult to see.’

*

When Nastiya laid eyes on Catherine for the first time a strange transformation came over her. She seemed to melt like a glittering sheet of titanium steel in the glow of an electric furnace. She took Catherine in her arms and spoke to her in Russian. Catherine’s milky blue eyes rolled around in their sockets short-sightedly as she tried to locate the source of these extraordinarily barbaric sounds. Then Nastiya looked up at Paddy accusingly.

‘Why don’t you give me one of these?’

‘Be fair!’ Paddy responded indignantly. ‘I’m trying my best, aren’t I?’ When he could drag Nastiya away from the nursery, Paddy led her up to their suite.

An hour later when they came downstairs again to Hector’s den, Paddy was wearing black tie and decorations, and Nastiya had her blonde hair up and her décolleté down.

‘My God, Paddy! You know how to pick them.’ Hector looked at her with exaggerated awe. ‘You’ve got a very fine-looking lady, there.’ Nastiya blew him a kiss. Hector had a vodka and lime juice ready for Nastiya and a large Jameson whiskey for Paddy.

‘Okay,’ he told them. ‘Sit. Drink. Then talk.’

Paddy took a sip from his glass and exhaled noisily. ‘You’ll no’ find anything to match that, this side of Dublin,’ he said in his broadest brogue.

‘Tell me something more interesting.’

‘Tariq has come up with a lead on somebody we missed when we thinned out Tippoo Tip’s brood.’

Hector sat up straight in his high-backed chair and set his own glass aside. ‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly.

‘As we agreed, I sent Tariq back into Puntland. It’s his homeland and he blends in. He has family and friends there. He travelled by bus. First he went down to the old pirate base at Gandanga Bay. He found it completely deserted.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ Hector gave a grim smile. ‘We worked it over pretty thoroughly.’

‘Scorched earth,’ Paddy agreed. ‘After that, Tariq returned to Tippoo Tip’s stronghold at the Oasis of the Miracle where you rescued Cayla from the Beast. There were a few survivors living in the ruins. One of them had been a concubine of the Khan. Tariq says she is an ancient crone, blind as a bat and starving. Tariq fed her and jollied her along. Her name was Almas and although she couldn’t remember what she had eaten for breakfast she could remember everything from twenty years ago with absolute clarity. She knew the Tippoo Tip family tree by heart, back for two centuries. She claimed that she had borne the Khan twins: a boy and a girl. She told Tariq that her son was Kamal, who commanded the Khan’s fleet of pirate attack boats. That’s the same likely lad you shot dead on board the
Golden Goose.
’

‘Never forget him.’ Hector smiled. ‘It took five nine-millimetre rounds to quieten him down.’

‘He was a tough bastard,’ Paddy agreed.

‘Not so tough.’ Nastiya spoke for the first time. ‘He squealed like a baby when I bit his finger off.’

Hector laughed out loud. ‘Which reminds me never to make your wife mad.’

‘Actually, she’s a soft-hearted little thing when you get to know her.’ Paddy looked at Nastiya fondly. ‘However, I digress. According to the old woman who claimed to be Kamal’s mother, Kamal’s twin sister gave birth to a son when she was sixteen years of age. So this child would be the grandson of Tippoo Tip.’

‘Do tell!’ Hector urged him. ‘Did Tariq get his name? What happened to him? Is he still alive?’

‘His name was and is Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip. He left Africa as a young man of twenty or so and he came here to London to study Islamic Law at the Great Mosque in Regent’s Park.’

‘Is he still here in London? Does his grandmother know?’ Hector demanded.

‘No, she doesn’t know. In fact she knows very little about anything that recent. She lives with the fairies most of the time. She doesn’t know where she is herself, let alone where her grandson is. However, I phoned the London mosque and spoke to one of the mullahs there. He knew Aazim Muktar well. He has become an important cleric, highly regarded across the Middle East; a man with influence and power.’

‘All right, but where can we find him?’

‘Just across the Gulf from Abu Zara. He is now one of the senior mullahs at the Masjid Ibn Baaz Mosque, in Mecca. I sent Tariq to do a recce of the mosque. That’s why it took so long for me to come back to you. Tariq attended prayers there a number of times. He saw Aazim Muktar in the flesh and heard him preach. Apparently the mosque was packed. Aazim Muktar had the congregation eating out of his hand. The faithful come from all over the Middle East to listen to him. Even Tariq was seriously impressed. He says Aazim Muktar is a very holy man.’