Old Enemies (27 page)

Sean’s face was flushed, the old eyes bright with anger. Then they sank to his drink, which he finished with one throat-stirring draught.

‘Tell me, Sean, what got you started?’

His eyes came up again, angry, piercing. ‘You really want to know?’

‘I do.’

A long hesitation. Then Breslin slowly raised his hand again to summon the barman. ‘Two Bushmills, the sixteen-year-old, mind. Make them large. No ice.’ Sean gave his instruction without taking his eyes off Harry. ‘So, Mr Jones, you’re wanting to know what got me started,’ he whispered, so softly that Harry was obliged to lean forward to catch the words. ‘I’m surprised you of all people should have to ask me that. You see, I was no different from the rest. The winter of ’72 it was, and a bloody awful winter, too. I’d spent the afternoon playing football in the park with J.J., he’d have been, what, about five? It was snowing, we ended up building a snowman instead, but the lad never did take much to sport. We got back home, and we turned the radio on, and we heard. Bloody Sunday. Your troops had killed thirteen unarmed civilians in Derry. Half of them teenagers, many of them shot in the back, and the Union Jack a butcher’s apron once more. In half an hour your devils turned the clock back three hundred feckin’ years.’

Harry was about to challenge him, remind him of Omagh, of Bloody Friday, of Enniskillen on Remembrance Day, of the La Mon fire-bomb massacre and a dozen other examples of the slaughter of innocents that were down to the IRA, but he decided this wasn’t the moment. He wanted to listen, not to score points in a game that had no end.

‘There were no more bystanders after that.’ The tumblers of whiskey arrived; Sean took a sip. ‘One of those boys you shot. He was my nephew. Sixteen, that’s how old he was, still waiting to pass his exams and lose his cherry. Crawling away on the ground, trying to get to safety. The Paras said he was carrying a weapon; the priest who was beside him all the time and gave him the last rites says that was a lie. All the family got left with was a foggy black-and-white photo of a young kid, bleeding his brains out in a gutter.’ Very slowly, he ran his tongue across lips that had dried out with anger. ‘You were a paratrooper. Weren’t you, Major Jones?’

‘You know I was,’ Harry responded. Not then, not in Derry, not at that time, but the details didn’t matter.

‘It was after that I began helping. I was an accountant, a reasonably bright one. Lots of people were at it in those days, raising money for the cause. And very inventive, so we were. Some of the local pubs started running a little lottery, and there were a few insurance claims that needed – how can I put this to a law-abiding man such as yourself? – a bit of
massaging
. Then some of the local bookies who were operating beneath the radar volunteered to pay a little gentle tax, and if they didn’t volunteer they paid it anyway. Everyone was raising money in their own way – yes, and at times that might have involved a few unintended holidays for a banker or a wealthy foreign businessman.’

‘Kidnapping’s not a sodding vacation, Sean.’

‘Everyone had his own means, and it all needed accounting for. So that’s what I did. I was the gatekeeper. I handled the books.’

‘You laundered their dirty money for them.’

‘It was better than shooting kids in the back.’

The bar had begun to grow more crowded, but neither of them noticed. They had gone back to another world, another time.

‘I don’t suppose we’ll be needing another drink, you and I,’ Sean said, finishing off his whiskey without taking his eyes from Harry. ‘Blood. Family. At the end of the day, that’s what counts, Major Jones, isn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Then may God forgive me for saying so, but for the first time in my life, I pity you. Truly I do.’

Sex had its amusing side, Simona decided. She was in the modest hotel room booked by D’Amato where moments ago he had finished throwing himself at her, and on her. He wouldn’t use his own apartment, where his wife cast too many shadows, but he had begged Simona to spend the night with him rather than confine themselves to a few trembling moments behind a filing cabinet, so they had decided on the neutral ground of the hotel – an insipid establishment, near the railway station, but it had the benefit of being determinedly anonymous, a place where the inspector was unlikely to run into any of his colleagues. He had no desire to become an object of gossip. He had brought a bottle of Prosecco along with his overnight things, and they’d used tooth mugs, but she’d barely taken a sip before he was on her, in a state of considerable excitement. It wasn’t just her naked and youthful body; he’d arrived clicking his fingers, always with the inspector a sign of agitation, and he’d even clicked as he came. Now he lay back on the rumpled duvet, panting, spent, taking sips of Prosecco while his other hand remained clamped to her breast, and sharing the reasons for his turbulent mood.

The case on the Carso. It had come alive, and D’Amato with it. The two Englishmen, or English-speakers, D’Amato explained, had been regularly buying provisions at a local store, but far too much for their own consumption, enough for eight, at least. No one seemed to know why they were on the Carso, or why they had rented the remote farmhouse to which their car had been followed, although it was known that they had paid in advance for three months and in cash. It seemed clear they wanted to stay for some time, yet leave no trace. What was more, D’Amato insisted excitedly as he repeatedly stroked Simona’s breast, they had first appeared at the farmhouse less than two weeks before the English boy had disappeared, and there were reports that activity on the road that passed nearest to the farmhouse had been unusually busy on the day of the kidnap itself. ‘You see. It all fits!’ he exclaimed.

He rolled over to wrap her in his arms. In the light from the bedside lamp she could see the early signs of grey in his hair, and in the mirror the remarkable paleness of his bottom, yet for a man in middle age he seemed to retain plenty of enthusiasm and she could feel that enthusiasm once more brushing against her thigh. This case was clearly getting to him.

‘It’s not conclusive, I know,’ he continued, ‘so yesterday I sent one of my undercover officers in an egg-delivery van. Incompetent bastard, he broke most of them. He drove up pretending to be lost, needing directions. He said nothing was right about the place, no work being done, no noise being made, just a guy who answered the door and who made it clear he didn’t want a stranger on his doorstep. He wasn’t one of the Englishmen, either, some other type of foreigner, broken Italian, a fuck-off scowl on his face. There were other men in the house, the driver was sure of that, but they were keeping their heads down. Then this morning’ – so intense was his excitement that he had rolled on top of her once more – ‘the two Englishmen with another man in tow drove a few miles down the road and parked outside the research institute in Padriciano. The new man appeared to have a laptop with him, we think he was sending messages from the back seat, piggybacking on the institute’s wi-fi service.’

‘They can do that?’

‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes,’ he sighed, as though it hurt.

For a moment she thought he had become distracted because he was inside her once more, shuffling away, and he was gasping, the pitch of his voice rising with every breath, yet his mind was still elsewhere.

‘It can be done, my love. Easily. Happens all over the place. Outside schools, libraries, hospitals. Even private homes. All you need is the password and – they’re so simple. A five-year-old can guess them. Or you get – software – to do it – for you!’

She stifled a giggle as his forehead creased in concentration.

‘The kidnappers. They’re using the Internet. To contact the family. You know what I think? I’ll bet they’re driving round the Carso. Using different wi-fi hot spots. For every message. Makes it almost impossible . . . to – to-to-to – trace!’

He gave a squeak followed by a deep groan, and she could restrain herself no longer, bursting into a fit of laughter that she managed to disguise as a gasp of passion, which happened to coincide precisely with his own climax. Soon he was lying back, the pillows crushed beside his head, staring at the ceiling. He exhaled, long and forlornly, like a deflating air bed.

‘Simona, can you imagine what it would be like for my career, me smashing an international kidnapping ring?’

Trieste was, in the eyes of some, a nowhere place where little of significance happened any more. It wasn’t an entirely accurate conclusion, for its location on the edge of the Balkans meant that it was used for trafficking of all sorts – drugs, weapons, women – but for the most part such matters passed quickly through and onwards to other jurisdictions. They hadn’t had a car stolen in the last month, or a good international bust in years.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Simona whispered.

‘Raid the place. Early in the morning. I’m sorry, little one, but I have to leave you in a few hours . . .’

And still the man was insatiable, she had to give him that. It took more Prosecco and yet more sex before his eyes began to flicker and he was teetering on the edge of sleep. She rolled away from him and stole quietly from the bed, picking up her handbag.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked drowsily, his hand reaching out after her.

‘Just to the bathroom. To take care of things.’

He offered up a weak smile, weary yet triumphant, and closed his eyes once again.

Once in the bathroom, Simona reached for her phone, searching for the number of her cousin, Nelu. Simona lodged with his mother, her aunt, and although Nelu had moved to his own place she’d got to know him well, and liked him, despite the fact that he swam in pretty murky waters. Her aunt called the two of them ‘
Negru si Alb
’, Black and White, as they chatted around her table, and Nelu had chased her around the table, too, when her aunt was away, but she had never let him catch her. And a couple of weeks ago Nelu had gone away, on business so her aunt had declared, with some of those shadowy friends of his, doing whatever they did, but she couldn’t say what or where. As D’Amato had talked up the value of coincidence, so Simona had begun to grow concerned, for the dates of the kidnapping seemed to coincide all too neatly with the time Nelu had disappeared. Without wanting to she realized she had become involved, and that meant she had a decision to make, but it wasn’t much of one, not for her. ‘
Familie unita.
’ Family sticks together, as they say in Romania.

It wasn’t just Nelu at risk. If he was involved with the kidnap and it all went wrong, she was in danger, too, of being thrown out of her job which was her pathway out of poverty, perhaps the only chance she would get. That wasn’t going to happen. She began texting.

‘
Daca cu Englezashu, fugi. Razia politiei dimineata.
’

‘If you are with missing English boy, get out now. Police raid dawn.’

Three days, that was all. But what did that mean? Was it like the three days of Easter, from Friday until Sunday, or did it imply three clear days in between? Harry had been the one to come up with that limit, it was the minimum he thought Chombo needed to tear his plans to pieces so that Ruari could be released and the matter resolved safely – and safely not just for himself but also for the kidnappers. That had to be. There was no chance of them delivering up the boy unless their own safety was guaranteed. Ruari’s life depended on that; it wasn’t justice, merely survival, but that’s what mattered most. The kidnappers had to be allowed to go. So three days it was, give or take a few hours, although no one could say how many, not precisely.

As the hours seeped away, one by one, life in the Breslin household began to alter its pace. Minutes began to matter, change shape, grow longer, become endless as they waited to hear whether their son was alive or was dead. Terri stayed at home, J.J. began to cancel his meetings, they ate through the contents of the freezer and waited up together, surrounded by silence.

That evening, as close to the passing of seventy-two hours as Terri could reckon, she lit one of the Christmas candles she had prepared for Ruari’s return and placed it in the window overlooking their street. J.J. watched her, understanding, but saying nothing, suffering in his own way, unable to find words that any longer had meaning. In the darkness that covered the rest of the room, Terri fashioned a nest for herself in an armchair with a duvet and pillow, her legs tucked beneath her and the telephone by her side. She watched the glow of the candle, with every flicker of its flame, and waited for her child to come home.