Old Enemies (42 page)

Sean didn’t go after him. He didn’t want to leave these streets, where Ruari was hidden, and anyway he couldn’t have kept up, his leg was once again unbending iron. But within a few minutes Sandu had reappeared carrying a plastic bag of supplies, and this time Sean followed, hoisting himself up on his stick, trying to ignore his screaming knee. The Romanian didn’t even bother looking behind him as he led Sean all the way to the safe house.

With every hour and with increasing desperation, J.J. had been trying to make contact with Jimmy Sopwith-Dane, but the man was nowhere to be found. He tried the two numbers for his office, and even his home phone, although it was an unlisted number and supposedly unobtainable, but such things had never worried the news desk of a newspaper. He left messages everywhere, yet there was no reply. The news desk even sent a messenger to the City but found his office closed. It was as if Sloppy himself had disappeared along with everyone else.

It was well into the short December afternoon before any of his frantic messages were returned. Sloppy’s secretary called. She apologized for not doing so earlier, but she and the rest of the skeleton staff had all been out to lunch, which judging by her speech had been an indulgent one. Of course, Christmas. And that’s why J.J. couldn’t talk to Sloppy, because he was off trekking through some sticky Asian jungle and completely, utterly, hopelessly out of touch.

‘But you don’t understand,’ J.J. pleaded, ‘I must get in contact with him right now.’

‘I’m so sorry, sir, but you don’t understand. You can’t.’

Sloppy was the one chance they had of being able to raise the money which might save Harry’s life, and that chance was being paddled up some impossibly muddy river in Borneo.

Sandu looked carefully to either side before he entered the building, but peered straight through the bent man leaning on his stick a little way down the alley. Sean smiled grimly; maybe at last he’d found one advantage in getting old. The building into which Sandu had disappeared was a run-down town house of crumbling stucco that had once been gentrified, but had since gone through many periods of decline and neglect. The site was fenced off from the alley with mesh barriers, but carelessly, they didn’t meet in the middle. Immediately behind them was a tall Venetian door of old oak that had once been painted green and whose missing glass panels had been replaced by stray off-cuts of chipboard. The door was secured by a formidable padlock, but the hasp to which it was attached had been unscrewed. To those who knew, it was open house.

The building was five storeys, including the converted attic, but the windows on the top floor couldn’t be seen from the alleyway below, no matter how far Sean crooked his neck. Yet on the rubble at his feet was broken window glass. He knew this was the right place.

He’d found it. But what was he to do? In usual circumstances a call to the police would have settled everything, but the old Irishman in Sean trusted policemen very little and Inspector D’Amato not at all. He remembered the last time D’Amato was supposed to have resolved the situation, at the farmhouse, and in particular he remembered the corpses that had been left behind. No, this was family, and family troubles where Sean came from were sorted without running to others for help. That had been the rule for hundreds of years, it’s what had kept Ireland together, just as it had equally successfully kept Ireland apart. The Irish way. Sean would have to do the job himself.

Yet how, what was he to do? He had only one good leg, no weapon, and no idea what lay waiting for him inside. He knew there would be only one way to find out, and he’d only get the one chance. It had to be tonight. Before he ran out of strength, or courage, or found himself picked up by the police.

It was already growing dark, the alleyway was poorly lit by a single distant lamp, but as he craned his neck he could see a glow of light from the top floor. He was up there, Ruari. Sean knew the boy would die unless he got him out, might even die in the attempt, but better a half chance than none at all. He had to try. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, give me strength,’ he found himself muttering. Old Irish habits die hard. And old Irish men die hard, too, he told himself. Anyway, what did an old man have to lose?

In the rapidly fading light, he studied the building one more time, analysing its construction, imagining what it might be like inside, working out what he was going to do – going to
try
to do. He’d done it once before, for one of his insurance scams. Which meant he knew just how great was the risk he was about to take. With one last crick of the neck upwards, he shuffled on.

He found what he was looking for three streets away, on a small parking lot at the back of the Grand Hotel Duchi d’Aosta. A group of youths were gathered around their scooters, exchanging cigarettes, working out how they might spend their evening.

‘Anyone speak Irish?’ Sean asked, interrupting their chatter.

At first he was met with suspicion but then one of them replied, ‘English. A little.’

‘Then I suppose that’ll have to do,’ he sighed. He produced a £50 note from his pocket. ‘I’ve run out of petrol,’ he said, ‘and as you can see I’m not much of one for the walking. I wonder, if I gave you this, could you bring me back one of those plastic cans of fuel? And keep the change?’

The youth began to nod and smile. There would be plenty of change from that.

‘And if I gave you another note when you got back, could you be bringing me two?’

They were all nodding now, their English and their evening greatly improved. Sean handed over the first note. ‘Five minutes,’ the youth said, grinning as he started up his scooter.

The computer screen sprang into life once more. Cosmin appeared wearing a mask.

‘You got the money?’

‘You must give us time,’ Hiley replied, already pleading.

‘I give you time. Now time is up. I don’t think you bastards take me seriously.’

‘We do! Of course, we do. It’s just—’

But Cosmin wasn’t listening. ‘Screw you! I give you warning. Now I show you what happens when you not listen.’

Harry knew the time had come. They were going to kill him. Yet the moment of greatest danger was also one of opportunity, when they would release him from his tether to the steel joist. His hands would still be bound, but it would give him a chance, so he hoped. But they knew what was in his mind. They had their guns and boots ready, and the broomstick, and after they had kicked the wind out of him they threaded it behind his back and through the crook of his elbows so that he was completely powerless, couldn’t even curl up to protect himself. He was kneeling, defenceless, when another boot came flying in, straight into his groin, and he fell to the floor retching in pain. Tears began flooding from his eyes and nose, he looked up to see the masked figure of Cosmin towering over him.

‘You’ll be the first one I kill,’ Harry cursed, but he was choking and the threat disappeared in an eruption of phlegm. Cosmin laughed, mocking, then he dragged Harry by the broomstick towards the webcam that Nelu was placing in position. They knelt him down in front of it, he didn’t resist, he couldn’t. He was going to die trussed like a chicken.

‘You want blindfold?’ Cosmin asked.

Harry shook his head.

‘Good. So you watch yourself die.’

Sean let himself into the house with great care. It wasn’t easy, walking with a stick while carrying two cans of petrol. He had to put them down in order to open the old door, inch by inch, groan and creak, expecting that any moment its groaning and creaking would bring some scurrying guard, because he was sure there had to be a guard. Open the door, just a foot or so, creep inside with the first can of fuel, go back outside, fetch the second can, return, close the door, breathe again. It seemed to take forever yet he’d got almost nowhere.

It took even longer to adjust his old eyes to what he found within the house, for there was very little ambient light. He was in a hallway so filled with builder’s clutter that it threatened to trip him at every step, and there was a staircase hugging the wall as it wound its way upwards. Sean was relieved to see it had a banister rail and was constructed of stone, no ancient creaking wood to betray him. And he didn’t mind the clutter, either, with its off-cuts of wood, old pots of paint, plastic sheeting and even a gas cylinder, all excellent combustible material. He poured the contents of one of the cans over the lot until petrol was slopping at his feet. Then, leaning on the banister, he began climbing, dragging his bad leg behind him.

There was a guard, as he suspected. Toma was sitting on the first-floor landing, his automatic pistol beside him, yet his attention was not on the staircase but upwards. Sean saw him clearly from the turn in the stair, the guard’s face bathed in the light from above as he tried to make sense of the noises and snatches of conversation drifting down, wondering if they had done it yet. Because Toma knew that Harry was going to die. Cosmin enjoyed killing, would even give up his share of a million extra euros for it, the bastard. He was unbalanced, clinically insane, Toma thought. He was glad to be getting out of this mess in a day or two.

Toma was wrapped up in his thoughts. He never heard the gentle kiss of soles on stone as Sean crept up behind him, or the rustle of a sleeve as the shillelagh was raised high, or the swish of parting air as it came down with such force on the side of his skull that it killed him without a cry.

‘We have to talk about this, we want to help you,’ Hiley was saying, pleading, really, but his voice carried no confidence. His eyes were fixed on the screen that was bursting to its edges with the image of Harry, and Cosmin standing beside him. Harry appeared dejected, resigned, his shoulders slumped forward in defeat, but his eyes were fixed on Ruari, who sat directly opposite him against the other wall, his face fixed in horror. Harry tried to reassure him with all sorts of messages that he wrapped up in his stare, but which he knew Ruari had no hope of understanding. Yet if he were to die, Harry thought, he could do it in worse ways than staring into the boy’s eyes. Not that he planned to die, he still intended somehow to spring from their clutches and overpower them all, even though he was bound and they were armed, his legs were numb from the kneeling, and he’d been in this business long enough to know that sometimes plans just don’t work. So, for the moment, he kept staring at his son.