Silencer (42 page)

‘I don’t know … I didn’t want to … in case they made me tell them … He has … a wife, a family … I told him … leave Russia … go … anywhere.’

‘Any idea where he is?’

She sniffed. ‘Maybe Cuba …’ She fell silent again.

A wagon swung by. I saw the bottom half of a blue-cabbed truck dragging a trailer-load of logs, coming from the direction of Acapulco and heading for Mexico City.

Katya didn’t speak again until some time after the truck had gone. ‘How’s the baby, Nick?’

I glanced at the tears carving grooves in the dirt on her cheeks. ‘Last I heard, he’s doing great. Gaining weight, looking good.’

She tried to smile but her lips wouldn’t obey. ‘Have you chosen a name for him yet?’

‘Not yet. But I’m pretty sure we won’t be calling him Jesús.’

Another vehicle approached from the Acapulco side, more slowly than anything else that had come our way. I watched the bottom half of a clean white van crawl past, then kick up a little dust cloud as it veered off the tarmac.

I got to my knees, waited for it to stop.

Katya looked at me as if I had all the answers.

‘Wait here.’

I wasn’t sure why I said that. It wasn’t as if she had other plans for the morning.

I got to my feet and hobbled away, like a ninety-year-old. My blisters wept and my leg muscles screamed with every step. I dragged myself slowly towards the road, keeping low, at the edge of the scrub. A white Chevrolet was parked up, about thirty metres along the road, engine running. But just because it was white, static and on time didn’t mean Dino was inside it.

I moved back into the scrub and paralleled the verge towards the sound of the gently idling engine. Eventually I got level with the cab.

Dino wasn’t looking a hundred per cent happy; perhaps he was reliving the last time he was in that neck of the woods. As soon as he spotted me, I heard the clunk of the central locking. He thumbed vigorously over his shoulder, signalling me to get into the back, but I went for the passenger door instead.

A waft of the familiar disinfectant smell greeted me as I opened
it. I wasn’t worried, as long as he could still function. Besides, it was strangely reassuring.

‘In the back, man – out of sight – in the back!’

He checked his mirrors frantically. ‘Where the fuck is she, man?’

‘Go back thirty.’

‘She OK?’

‘Not in showroom condition, but she’ll scrub up fine. Go back down the road and throw those doors open.’ I gave him a big smile. ‘Cheer up, mate – you’re going to like this next bit a lot.’

I moved back into the scrub and headed towards Katya, my CamelBak and the moneybags as Dino swung a 180 on the tarmac and headed for his new pick-up point.

EPILOGUE

14 September 2011

05.28 hrs

The lift opened and its bright light elbowed its way into the gloom of Anna’s floor.

The blinds were closed on the internal windows at the far end of the corridor. I started towards them, a bulging bin-liner in each hand. I didn’t exactly have a spring in my step, but my limp had improved since the burst blisters had warmed up under their dressings. I was glad to be back, though, even if my face looked like it never wanted to go out in public again.

The weather was colder, though maybe that was because I was only hours away from sweating it out in the scrub. I wondered what the temperature was going to be like with Anna today. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t been too happy about having a dead body in the flat and never wanted to return to it. She’d spelt that out to me when I’d phoned from Mexico. Fair one: it was why I’d gone and collected everything a mother and baby could need from the box room. She was going to have to stay at the clinic until the boy was OK enough to leave.

There was no sign of Mr Lover Man or Genghis. Frank had called them off once Dino had picked us up and I’d told him the
heat was off. I didn’t know what Miguel would get up to next, but he hadn’t struck me as a lad with global ambitions. For that matter, he wasn’t even too clever with a Taser.

I’d called Frank from Baja California. Dino had driven us straight there from El Veintiuno. The cartels had no presence up in the north-west. There was nothing for them to fight over, apart from sand and tourists hooked on whale-spotting – and that was what had got me thinking about Frank.

I tapped gently and opened the door. The only light came from the glow of the machinery; the only sounds the gentle bleeps of the baby monitors. The room was warm and it smelt of sleep, just as it should.

I left the bags on the highly polished tiles and walked over to the incubator. A much healthier-looking baby gazed back at me. There were still tubes everywhere and sensors all over his chest and abdomen, but he seemed a bit bigger and stronger. The beanie had come off. He didn’t have much hair, but his skin was pink.

Anna stirred behind me and the sheets rustled. Instinct had told her someone was near her child and she needed to check it out.

‘Nicholas?’

I gave her a subdued ‘Hello’, partly because she’d only just woken up, partly because the darkness of the room and gentle bleeping noises somehow dictated it.

I leaned over and brushed a strand or two of hair away from her face so I could kiss her. She smelt the same as the room.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes, then reached over and picked up the small plastic clock on the bedside cabinet.

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry … But I thought, Why hang about in the flat? I’ve missed you guys.’ I thumbed behind me. ‘And I brought the stuff.’

The sheets rustled again as she sorted herself out, adjusting the pillow so she could sit up.

‘He’s looking good, isn’t he?’

She gave a gentle smile. ‘He’s doing really well. I see a difference in him every day. We might be able to leave in a couple of weeks if he keeps it up.’

I sat on the side of the bed, wincing a bit as the mallet wound on my shin reminded me of unhappier days.

She looked quizzical, then cupped my face in her hands and kissed me softly on the forehead. She dropped her hands again and I slipped mine around hers.

Anna nodded at the iPhone sitting in a charger on the bedside cabinet. ‘Katya called last night while you were in the air. She
says to tell you Dino sits at the back window twenty-four/seven, whatever that means.’

I grinned as I pictured him there. It wasn’t as if he could run the thirty metres to stop anyone digging it up. ‘Good to hear he’s looking after our money!’

I traced my thumbs across the back of her hands. ‘It’s all OK now, Anna. The drama’s over. We’re safe.’

The baby monitors gave another bleep or two and the smile faded from her eyes. I felt her withdraw from me again. ‘Really, Nicholas? You really think everything is good? That we are safe? Really? You know there will always be somebody from your past. Someone somewhere who wants to hurt you. I knew this from the start. I knew what you were. I knew what I was getting into. But that was OK. I wanted
you
. But that was then, Nicholas … Now we have someone else to think about.’

‘Let’s give it a little time, yeah? Let things settle down. Get us sorted with a house at least.’

She studied my face. ‘Time isn’t the problem, though, is it?’

She wasn’t leaking any tears. It was too serious for that.

She stared into my eyes with steely determination. ‘Nicholas, please listen. You may think of these things as “dramas”. You may tell yourself that. But in the real world they are
dangers
. We cannot have our child waiting for
danger
to come his way.

‘I don’t think you pick fights, Nicholas. But they sure pick you. Don’t you get that? You were the kid who always got into fights at school and didn’t know why. How do I know that? I know it because trouble always finds you. Nothing’s going to change that – it’s the way you are.’

She grabbed hold of my wrists, brought my hands up to her face and kissed them. ‘Nothing will change, you know that. Look at the state of you …’

I pulled away enough to have eye-to-eye. ‘But we’ve got to give it a go, haven’t we?’

She sighed. ‘I
know
you, Nicholas. And I know that whatever you did while you were away you enjoyed it. So it’s not just about the danger coming
your
way. It’s about the people around you. They’re
scared
.
I
’m scared – for our child, even for myself, now.

‘It’s not that you don’t see danger, I know that. But you do see it differently. You look at it as a challenge – a game, even. You’re wired that way. That’s who you are – and we can’t have that near our child, no matter how much I care for you.’

She looked across to check the baby. It was pointless arguing; I knew I’d lose. After all, we both knew she was right.

She exhaled slowly and I could feel the warmth of her breath on my hands.

‘Let’s talk about all that later. Let’s get both you guys out of here, into a new house – a new start.’

Her smile returned – but it was her bleak smile, not her happy one. ‘Go house-hunting, Nicholas, and then come back this afternoon when the baby’s awake and we’ll start thinking of a name. I know you love that little man. I know you’ll make a wonderful father … but … it’s more complicated than that …’

She let go of my hands.

I stood up and kissed her forehead. ‘At least we can agree on one thing: no happy snaps, eh?’

I finally got what I was after: a real smile. ‘You need anything else from the flat? I’m going to get myself sorted first.’

‘If you see any good places, do a video.’

I went over to the incubator and had one last long look at our son. I couldn’t touch him yet, but I hoped there’d still be time enough for that. ‘Mate, see you later.’

And then I nodded and walked out.

It took the best part of an hour to get anywhere near the apartment in the morning rush. I had one more set of lights to go before I was having a shit-shave-shower and then heading out to the real-estate people. I’d get back to Anna in the afternoon, and this evening I’d clean up the flat for the rental guys to check it out for the handover. Frank’s guys had removed the body, but hadn’t done anything about the damage – or the pool of dried vomit the brown-leather jackets had left as a souvenir.

The cash came to twelve million dollars in hundred-dollar bills, nicely banded up in $100,000 bundles, which made the maths easy. Owning big chunks of cash was all well and good, but getting it into the real world wasn’t straightforward. It wasn’t like you could turn up at the Halifax and open an account with a holdall full of greenbacks. So once Dino, Katya and I were holed up in a holiday shack overlooking a picture-postcard bay on the Pacific coast, we buried the bags about thirty metres from the window and I’d made the call to Peredelkino.

Frank was his usual unflappable self as he offered to ease the cash into the real world for only twenty-five cents in the dollar. At that rate he was doing us a favour, he said, and who were we to argue? So Frank, great humanitarian that he was, took on the problem, and was going to take a three-million-dollar cut. It wouldn’t exactly be a life-changer for him. That sort of money wouldn’t cover much more than his annual mineral-water bill.
But for the price Frank was going to throw in getting the passport-and-visa-less Katya out of Mexico at the same time as the cash. Frank would spit Katya out in Moscow, where she could sort herself out, then he’d launder the money through property and artwork companies, or whatever. It was going to take a couple of months before we got our thirds, but I knew he wouldn’t let us down.

We talked about what we were going to do with our share while we were trying to sort out a flight to get me home – as you do.

Dino’s paranoia was back, but at least it meant he kept his eyes glued on the cash. And Katya was now on his case, making sure he didn’t fuck himself up.

I’d kept my promise; now it was his turn. He wanted his family back, and a normal life. I had no idea whether that was going to happen – but he was going to have three million dollars with which to give it his best shot, and that had to be good enough.

As soon as Frank had worked his magic, Katya was going to go and look for her brother. How long that would take, and where it would lead her, none of us knew.

I’d wiped the slate clean with Frank, and not just on the currency exchange. The Narcopulco locals were already singing new folk songs about the death of Peregrino, and Frank was going to fill the vacuum, like he had when the Iron Curtain was pulled down. Right place, right time – it was his special talent. The cartels could kick the shit out of each other as much as they liked, as far as he was concerned, but there was still work to be done.

The cash would come in handy for Anna and me, but it wasn’t going towards a yacht in the Bahamas.

The final set of lights seemed to keep turning red every thirty seconds, but I finally covered the remaining two hundred metres and turned down the ramp into our basement car park.

I was going to miss this place. I was going to miss the views over the Moskva River and Borodinsky Bridge. I was even going to miss the world’s most miserable front-desk jockeys.

There had been a brand-new government-issue concierge sitting there this morning, with the TV on full blast, smoking something that smelt like boiling tarmac. It was good to know the factory that made these old men was still going strong. The production line turned out only one model: guys who hated everything and everyone in creation.

I wound down my window and thrust my battered face towards the camera so Comrade Misery-guts upstairs could check my registration against the vehicle log and lift the shutter. It would have been easier to install a card-entry system, of course, but that would have meant fewer jobs for the boys. A lot of that old Communist stuff died hard.

My parking space was in the first row, directly opposite the entrance. The shutter clanked and groaned as it started its slow descent behind me while I climbed out and put the key in the lock; the fob needed a new battery.