Old Enemies (12 page)

His life depended on all this, on the inner thoughts of these men. Ruari had lost his innocence, no longer assumed he was indestructible. Any lingering sense of his own immortality had been wrenched from him along with Casey and Mattias. He knew his plight was desperate. Then came the moment when Sandu arrived to relieve Cosmin and started swearing – Ruari had just used the latrine bucket and the atmosphere in the room was vile. Sandu moved his chair closer to the window and flung it wide open, lit one of his throat-searing cigarettes, staring into – what? Ruari realized he had no idea what lay beyond that window, had no idea where in the world he was.

Slowly the cool air of early winter began to reach into the room, even as far as Ruari’s prison bed, bringing with it new aromas. He could smell something sweet-sour, and remembered the aroma from the pastures above Villars. It was rotting cow shit. And on top of that there was a tang of something sharper. Fermenting cheese, perhaps? During the day the window was usually tightly closed and muffled the sounds from outside, but during the stillness of the previous night he had heard strange animal cries and the screech of hunting birds. The picture came together. He was deep in the countryside. There was still a world outside his cell.

That knowledge made Ruari determined to escape. Whether they were planning to kill him eventually, or to keep him alive, it seemed to him he had nothing to lose by trying to break out. He couldn’t be much worse off than he was now. So that’s what he would do. Escape.

Trouble was, he hadn’t an idea in hell how to do it. Not yet, at least.

‘Meet me,’ she had said.

‘For God’s sake, why?’ Harry had muttered.

‘Ruari’s gone. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Meet . . . but where?’ he had replied, more cautiously.

‘Our usual place.’

‘Stop talking in riddles.’

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Why all this bloody mystery?’

‘I can’t talk on the phone. I think it may be bugged.’

‘You’re kidding. Who the hell would—’

But the phone had gone dead, leaving Harry fuming in frustration. He had no intention of moving, not an inch, least of all of seeing her again. Her husband had been right, it was none of his bloody business. He was going to stay here on his comfortable seat and continue enjoying the company of both his friend Sloppy and the bottle that stood between them. And yet he couldn’t help casting his mind back to the last time they had been together . . .

Paris. Lapérouse, a restaurant that had stood on the Left Bank of the Seine since even before the Revolution, a place full of dark wood and discreet corners, of gilded mirrors and painted ceilings, of carved cherubs and dreams. How many lovers had met here, how many whispers had its walls soaked up and its waiters forgotten? That’s why Harry had chosen it for another of their stolen weekends, with excuses and lies left scattered in his wake. Yet it hadn’t turned out like the others. They had arrived separately, from different destinations. Harry had booked into the hotel on his own while she had come straight from the Gare du Nord. She’d arrived late, with a lame excuse about a delayed train, and no light in her face. It had been almost three weeks since they’d last seen each other and Harry thought she looked strained, was worried she was sickening for something. She had ordered distractedly and even before the first course had arrived she told him she wouldn’t, couldn’t, see him again. She wouldn’t explain why, wouldn’t look him in the eye, and he had started to protest but they had been interrupted by the waiter, and she had made an excuse to visit the ladies’ room. She had never returned.

A man in the midst of an intense affair rarely has full control of either his thoughts or his emotions, and it had taken Harry many distracted months to recover, even with Julia’s forgiveness, yet despite that forgiveness, and perhaps even because of it, he had never been able to forgive Terri, and least of all himself. Now she was back, along with echoes of so much pain.

Where the hell was he supposed to meet her anyway? Once more his mind dug into the old days, the memories came roaring back on a flood tide, and he knew.

It was still there, beneath the railway arches on the South Bank, the cramped bar with the vaulted brick ceiling and the incessant rumble of trains passing overhead. It meant the patrons had to lean close to catch each other’s words. That had been an advantage, back then. Both the lease and decor seemed to have passed through several different sets of hands since Harry had last been here; he’d remembered dark wooden tables but now there was nothing but glass and brushed aluminium, while the prices were unrecognizable, yet the atmosphere was still much the same, close, intense, private. Harry sat at the bar, distractedly making patterns with the rings of condensation from his glass of over-chilled wine. A second glass waited beside him, empty, with the bottle dribbling dampness close at hand.

‘Hello, Harry.’

He poured without asking.

‘Pinot Grigio. You remembered,’ she said with a catch in her voice.

‘I remember too much.’

She could sense his hostility. She sipped silently for a while, trying to decide where to start. ‘They’ve taken over, Harry, those men who came out of the blue, the risk assessors. They don’t know me, they’ve never even met Ruari, yet somehow they’re now in charge. Of everything. My dining table has become the centre of what they call their Operations Room, my kitchen is like an army mess, there’s a goon with a shaved head and no neck standing at my front door.’ She caught her breath. ‘Everything’s such a mess. I don’t seem to have a home or a family any longer.’

As she spoke, staring into her glass, he studied her profile, the lips that left their mark on the rim of her glass, the point of her nose that bobbed as she talked. He noticed a small mole just beneath her jaw. Had she had that when . . . ? He couldn’t remember, and told himself he couldn’t care less.

‘I’m supposed to tell them my every move, every time I leave home, where I’m going. I didn’t, not this time, of course. I don’t want J.J. finding out.’

‘Why not?’ he asked, trying to sound disinterested, yet chiding himself for being churlish.

‘Everything’s so rough at home, Harry. Stifling. I can’t breathe. I had to get out. J.J.’s under such pressure.’ She sighed, a mournful sound that came from deep inside. ‘If he knew I was here he wouldn’t understand.’

‘That’s the thing. I don’t understand, either. What the hell am I supposed to be doing in all this? It has nothing to do with me.’

‘They’ve set up what they call a family negotiating group to decide how to respond. To decide the fate of my child, Harry. And I’m not even on it. I’ve been pushed aside as if I don’t have a role in any of this.’

‘J.J.?’

‘I know he’s only trying to be kind, to protect me, but . . . He’s struggling to cope. He’s hurting, just as much as I am. I think he blames me. It was my decision to send Ruari to Switzerland, you see.’ Her voice had grown subdued, less controlled. She leaned closer to him and he smelt that perfume again.

‘I’m sorry, Terri.’ He meant it. His anger with her was waning, her son’s life was at stake, for pity’s sake.

‘They asked J.J. how much we were willing to pay for Ruari’s release, and he said as much as it takes, of course he would. And they said no, they needed a figure to work with. Five hundred, eight hundred thousand? A million? More? That’s when he shouted at them, almost lost it. “My son,” he said, “is not some sort of second-hand car with a price tag on it.” But, they said, that’s precisely what Ruari is in the eyes of the kidnappers. A commodity for sale. It’s business, and that’s how it has to be dealt with. Oh, Harry . . .’

She was on the verge of tears. It took all his resolve not to reach for her hand.

She gasped for air, sank more of the wine. ‘It seems like there’s a going rate for these things.’

‘If you need any help with cash . . .’ he began, remembering what Sloppy had told him.

But she shook her head sharply. ‘No! That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Then?’

‘The risk assessor, Hiley, tells us we ought to contact the police, to let them know Ruari’s been kidnapped. Archer thinks so, too, but J.J. won’t have it. It’s the one thing the kidnappers have said so far, don’t contact any authorities, otherwise . . .’ She couldn’t finish the thought. ‘Archer says the police business would all be done very quietly, no one would ever know, but J.J. says someone always knows, that it would leak, these things always do, that there’s not a town in the world where you can’t find a dodgy policeman willing to sell a story.’

‘To the newspapers.’

She nodded, accepting the irony. ‘So J.J. says no.’

‘And you?’

She turned to look at him, her eyes welling. He remembered those same, pain-stretched eyes from Paris, too. In his mind he recalled the tears as nothing more than drops of discomfort, but perhaps the moment had been harder for her than he’d realized. Her words, then as now, came slowly, as though she was having trouble forming them.

‘How am I supposed to decide, Harry? How? It’s my son’s life at stake.’ She was very close to breaking down. ‘That’s why I came. To ask you. For advice.’

It was his turn to gaze into his glass, to avoid the fear in her eyes that was ripping her apart and trying to drag him in, too. ‘These security companies always face a dilemma. In many countries it’s against the law to deal with kidnappers without informing the police. They can get themselves thrown in jail as accessories if they don’t cooperate with the authorities, and it happens. They walk a fine line – what are they really doing, helping the family, or the kidnappers? In any event they always risk being accused of above all helping themselves, of profiteering from misery. So they prefer to do things by the book.’

‘And you, Harry? I don’t ever recall you being a man who did things by the book.’

‘Flying in a straight line,’ he muttered, thinking of geese.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Nothing. Just something someone said.’

‘What should I do?’ she demanded urgently.

‘Listen to the advice. Those men are the experts in the field. But in the end it’s you who have to decide, isn’t it? You and J.J., together. Ruari’s your son, not theirs.’

Her nostrils flared, as they did when she was summoning up the courage to make a confession. ‘That’s not so easy. J.J.’s a complicated man, keeps a lot to himself, locked away inside that Irish soul of his.’

He thought she sounded bitter. The fault lines of a marriage, now being torn wide open.

‘You are Ruari’s parents. The buck stops with you, no one else.’

The words seemed to affect her. Her bottom lip wobbled and hesitated, as though she wanted to say more but then changed her mind. ‘I must go, before they miss me and I run out of excuses.’ Her eyes clung to him, trying to hold him, to close the distance between the two of them. She laid her fingers on the back of his hand but he could see nothing but the sparkle of her wedding ring. ‘I’ll remember what you said, Harry. I promise you I will!’

She disappeared into the night, accompanied by the wailing of some distant siren, leaving Harry staring after her shadow and wondering what on earth he had said that was so bloody significant.

Harry had taken a substantial amount of alcohol on board that afternoon, and although Terri’s arrival had had the effect of a cold shower that rapidly sobered him up, once she had vanished into the darkness he poured another glass and allowed himself to sink well below the Plimsoll Line. He was doodling with the damp base of his glass, constructing an Olympic logo on the bar top, when a man slipped onto the stool that until a few minutes earlier had been Terri’s. Harry ignored him, head down, concentrating on the rings, letting the alcohol massage his wounds, until the stranger interrupted.

‘Good evening, Mr Jones.’

Harry looked up, puzzled. To his surprise he recognized the older man, who had arrived back home with J.J. and the gumshoe. Despite the well-cut clothes and the classic Omega he wore on his wrist, there was an unmistakable rawness about him. His frame was wiry, his face weathered, and if he had been an animal Harry reckoned he’d have been an old fox, the sort that is cautious, accustomed to sniffing the morning wind, never sure whether that day he would be hunter or hunted. Harry remembered the eyes from their first brief encounter, cautious, sharp, but the wrinkles around them told of a lifetime of hard living, and they were looking at Harry with contempt. And the accent was unmistakably Irish.