To Tell the Truth (22 page)

‘What do you want? Why did you come back?’ The words were out before she could stop herself, and she could see his face fall.

He looked at the floor and they sat for a moment, both taking in the cruelty of her words.

‘I mean, why come back after all this time? Do you have plans to stay here?’ She put out her hands almost apologetically. ‘I … I don’t know what to say to you. What do you want to do?’

For what seemed like a long time he said nothing, but just looked at her face, as though he was drinking in every feature. The light seemed to come back in his eyes for a moment as he spoke.

‘You’re so like her, Rosie. Every move. Except the eyes. They’re mine. But you have her spirit.’

‘Her spirit was broken, long before she died.’ Rosie couldn’t help herself.

He nodded, then looked at her with the same sadness as when they’d met just an hour ago.

‘I’m dying, Rosie.’

She put her head back and looked at the ceiling, then closed her eyes, shaking her head. She looked at him, but couldn’t speak.

‘I came home because I want to be buried beside her.’

She didn’t need to ask him about the simple wooden cross that had become old and worn with age at the pauper’s grave where her mother was buried. But if he’d been there, why hadn’t he tried to find her?

He nodded as though reading her mind. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. I put the cross there. It was all I could do.’

They sat in silence as the waitress came up and cleared
the table and Rosie handed her a fiver, waving her away.

Then Rosie gave him his jacket and stood up. He wasn’t much, but he was all she had.

‘Come on. Let’s go home.’

CHAPTER 28

As usual, Leka was late. Besmir was glad to be in the shade, unlike the foreign tourists who sat with their chairs positioned so the sun beat down on them.

Besmir had been waiting at the cafe on Plaza Naranja in the heart of Marbella’s old town for thirty minutes. He decided he would give Leka another ten minutes then he would call him. He fidgeted with his lighter, irritated, because he knew that Leka’s habitual lateness was all about power. He wouldn’t be late if he was meeting Daletsky. He lit a cigarette as he saw Leka coming up the cobbled street towards him, his bodyguard a few steps behind him. He steeled himself.

He and Hassan had made a pact that night at the driver’s family home that they would work together to get Amy back and to help the other kidnapped children. They’d talked long into the night making a plan, knowing one wrong move, one sniff of their betrayal and they’d both be history.

It had to begin with Besmir getting out of the
organisation. Leka had promised him that the kidnapping job would be his last, that he’d get his money and be free to do what he wanted. But Besmir knew he would never get out. As an enforcer for Leka, he knew too much – long before he was told to kidnap the little girl.

‘Besmir,’ Leka, said, stretching out both hands as though greeting a favourite son. ‘You did the job well.’

He sat down. The waiter came over and he ordered a beer for himself when Besmir said he was fine with his coffee.

‘The Moroccans are very happy with the blue girl. Very happy.’ He watched Besmir and lit his cigarette.

Besmir shrugged. ‘Is not my business, Leka, but I was wondering, why take the girl to Morocco? What will happen to her?’

Leka looked at him, and Besmir cursed himself for asking such a stupid question. It wasn’t a good start.

‘I mean, what difference does it make to her, Morocco or here? If she is valuable, she’s just as valuable here. No?’ He tried to get over his mistake.

Leka said nothing. Then he looked around the cafe and pulled his chair closer to Besmir.

‘Why do you ask about the girl, Besmir?’ His eyes were cold. ‘Did you become attached to the little fëmijë?’ He used the Albanian word for baby.

Besmir blew smoke upwards and looked away, aware that Leka was scrutinising him.

‘No. I don’t care. Is just a job for me. I’m only curious.’

Leka raised a finger and wagged it in mock warning.

‘Curiosity, my friend. Not good. It killed the cat, I think the English say.’

Besmir didn’t reply and tried to look uninterested.

They sat for a moment in silence, then Leka spoke.

‘The girl is no value to us,’ he said. ‘I sold her to prove a point to the Moroccans. We are making a deal with them. We let them have some of the people we bring into the country for their whorehouses, and in return they give us a share of their drugs trade. They have the drug routes all to themselves. We want some of it – a lot of it. We traded the girl to show these Moroccan bastards that we can do anything. We can even steal a British kid. It shows them how powerful we are. And to make them understand that if they don’t do business with us, we will simply take their business away from them.’ He examined his manicured fingernails. ‘They will sell the girl on. It is nothing to me. Or you.’

Besmir nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

Leka went into his pocket and brought out a wad of notes.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Now you get your reward for a job well done.’ He kept the money tightly covered in his hand and put it into Besmir’s hand.

‘Thank you.’ Besmir said, stuffing it into his jeans pocket.

‘Are you not going to count it?’

‘No. I don’t need to.’

‘But if you count it you will see there is an extra five hundred euros for you – for being so patient when I sent you to Tangiers.’

Besmir raised his eyebrows. ‘Thank you. I will need it on my travels.’

Leka looked at him, disappointed.

‘You are really going, Besmir?’

‘Yes. But only for a little while. I wanted to talk to you about it.’

Leka waited, his expression blank.

‘There is a woman,’ Besmir lied. ‘She is pregnant with my baby, but she is not here just now. She is Spanish, from the north – Galicia. She has gone back there for a while to be with her family, but I want to be there for a couple of months until the baby is born. Then I will come back.’ He hoped he was giving a convincing performance.

Leka was quiet for a moment.

‘Why not keep the girl here?’

‘She want to go back with her family. She want the baby to be born in Galicia. I can bring her here after the baby is born.’

‘But you will come back, Besmir? To work? Or have you gone soft now because you are going to be a father? Is that why you asked about the blue girl?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘I told you. I was just curious. And yes, I am coming back, in a couple of months.’

‘You must come back, Besmir. Because for you, this is all there is. You can go and live in the north with a nice Spanish wife, but you will be like all the other peasants from Eastern Europe. Your life will be a struggle wherever you go. Dead-end jobs, everyone hating you because you are foreign, and distrusting you because
you are Albanian. People like you and me – Albanians, Russians, Romanians, the people from the Eastern bloc. Nobody wants us. We have to make our own business. Look at Daletsky. I will be the same as him one day. And you could be too. But not in some stupid job like the others.’

Besmir nodded. ‘That is what I want, Leka. But for a little while I have to give my woman what she wants – to be with her family in Galicia. Then I will be back.’

‘Alright my friend.’ Leka stood up. ‘You have made your mind up. I wish you well. And I will see you on your return.’ He smiled but his eyes were flat. ‘With your little baby. I hope it is a boy child. Strong. Like the father.’

Besmir stood up. ‘Is okay for me, a boy or girl.’

He watched as Leka turned and walked away. His bodyguard got up from the table next to them and followed behind.

It was getting dark by the time Besmir made his way back to his apartment. He knew Leka didn’t believe a word he’d said and he was ready. He hadn’t gone straight to the apartment after leaving Leka, but wandered around the town, keeping himself in the sidestreets, getting into taxis and hoping he would lose whoever was following him. He hadn’t seen anyone but he was sure Leka would have had him tailed.

When he got to the building he went round the back and up the fire escape onto the roof. He knew he could enter his top floor apartment from a trap door on the roof. He eased it open and silently dropped inside the bedroom.

Besmir moved like a cat, listening, peering in the darkness. He slipped the knife out of his pocket. He saw a door in the living room move a fraction. He pretended he hadn’t noticed and walked in, the knife in his hand.

As soon as he put his foot into the room, the man jumped him and stabbed him in the arm. Besmir turned swiftly and plunged his knife into his attacker. It was Sergei, Leka’s bodyguard. He dropped like a sack onto the floor.

Blood seeped through Besmir’s shirt but he couldn’t stop now. He went quickly into the bedroom and threw some things into his small rucksack then climbed down the fire escape and hailed a taxi. He looked at his watch. If he hurried he could get the midnight ferry to Morocco. If he was still in Spain by the morning he would be dead.

CHAPTER 29

‘So tell me exactly what they said, Adrian. This is a real turn-up for the books.’

Rosie listened as Adrian gave her the details of the conversation he’d overheard between Daletsky and another of his Russian friends who was visiting. Leka was also in the car. He’d been driving them to Puerto Banus, and Daletsky and his friend were talking in Russian together. What they didn’t know was that Adrian had understood most of what they were saying. For nearly two years in Glasgow he’d had a Russian student girlfriend, he told Rosie, and he’d picked up the language.

‘You’re a revelation every day,’ Rosie grinned as she poured him a coffee. He’d been waiting at the hotel for her when she arrived back from Glasgow. He was very excited, which was an eye-opener in itself. Adrian didn’t do excited.

As they settled themselves on the terrace of Rosie’s bedroom, Adrian had told her that Martin Lennon’s father, who died of a heart attack eight months earlier while on
business in Amsterdam, had been up to his eyes in scandal. He had been involved in the death of a prostitute in Russia months before. But he had managed to keep it under wraps.

‘Daletsky told Leka and the other man that the kid, Amy, was stolen for revenge – payback he said – for an old comrade.’

‘Payback?’

‘Yes. I heard him say that word, that he had an old friend, a comrade, named Uri, a Ukrainian. This is what he said. They fought together in Afghanistan in the war, and they see many terrible things. It was a long war. But after the war finish, they went different ways – Uri goes home to Ukraine and works in a factory, and Daletsky goes to Russia and made all the money.

‘He did not hear again from him until one day this year, when Uri came to Russia, to his business, asking to see him. Daletsky said his friend was like the shadow of the man he knew. It seem his daughter – he had only one daughter – was killed in Moscow. She had left home, and he did not know that she was a prostitute in the hotels, hanging around the bars and picking up Western businessmen. One of them was Martin Lennon. I heard him say the name, and I understood what he was saying, because I know this name. I was very surprised, Rosie.’

‘No wonder. Go on.’

In fact, following Adrian’s call yesterday, before she’d left Glasgow Rosie had phoned a private eye friend to look into Martin Lennon senior’s dealings. So far he hadn’t come back to her.

‘I am driving, and listening hard,’ Adrian continued, ‘and I hear Daletsky say that Martin Lennon killed the prostitute in his hotel room in Moscow.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Some sex game goes wrong. She is found the next day in the room with a sheet pushed in her mouth, naked and dead.’ He raised his eyebrows at Rosie. ‘And she is pregnant. Was.’

They sat quietly for a moment as Rosie processed the information.

‘Was anything said about how Martin Lennon could have got out of the country without being arrested, after leaving a dead body in a hotel room? That just doesn’t seem possible. In Russia?’

‘I don’t know, Rosie. It is Russia. It depend on who you know. You can get anything you want in Russia if you know the right people.’

‘But Lennon was an estate agent. He bought and sold property, he wasn’t a gangster. How would someone like that know anyone in Russia powerful enough to get him out of the country and in those circumstances?’

‘Who knows, Rosie? I do not know the answer to that.’

Rosie thought about the Lennons and wondered if they had any inkling that their little girl’s grandfather had been involved in the seedy death of a prostitute. Surely they couldn’t be hiding something like that from the police investigation.

‘It’s hard to believe that they would actually kidnap someone’s innocent child because of something her grandfather did. Is there anything these people won’t do?’

‘Nothing, Rosie.’ Adrian’s jaw tightened. ‘I told you. They do anything to protect themselves and their people. They do not care who they kill.’

‘So what else did Daletsky say? Was this all some grand plan or something? I mean, how did they know the Lennons were in Spain?’

Adrian blew air out of pursed lips. ‘I do not know for sure. Only one thing Daletsky said is that one month ago one of his men made contact with the son of Lennon. With Amy’s father.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No.’

‘And?’

‘Well,’ Adrian pressed his fingers to his temple, concentrating. ‘I did not hear all what he said. But I think he say something about they had spoken about properties in Spain that Lennon would be selling for them. His father had been selling. I think that is what he said. He told them he was coming to Spain for the holiday, and maybe they would have a meeting. They were going to make a deal.’

‘So it could be that Daletsky’s men were just fishing to find out where he would be, and bingo, he just happens to be coming here? So they start planning their kidnap from then?’

Adrian shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘Christ,’ Rosie said. ‘This puts a different complexion on things.’ She got up and paced the terrace. ‘I wonder if Martin Lennon met this man Daletsky or one of his cohorts for talks while he was here. If he did, maybe Martin even told them where he was staying. Maybe he
even took his wife and Amy along to the meeting. What if he introduced his kid to the very people who would kidnap her?’