Viper's Nest (15 page)

‘The thing is, Arthur,’ she began slowly, ‘I don’t quite know how to tell you, but IMIA are involved with this . . .’

Cate couldn’t bear to see Arthur’s face as he digested the news. She shut her eyes and waited for the inevitable explosion.

After a few seconds’ silence she opened them again. Arthur was chewing on a cereal bar and looking remarkably calm.

‘Well,’ said Cate, ‘go on, Arthur. Say something. I know you’re going to be mad.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s OK, sis,’ he said through a mouthful of food. ‘I kind of knew this was going to happen again. IMIA think you’re the bee’s knees, and
you’re about as likely to give up on adventures as I am to sell my computers and buy a subscription to the National Trust.’

Cate giggled. ‘So you forgive me?’ she said, flicking away a rather large fly that had landed on her thigh. ‘Thanks, Arthur. And you promise not to tell Dad any of
this?’

‘Naturally,’ said Arthur gravely. ‘If you promise not to tell him that I’ve been hacking again. Even if it is on your behalf. I promised I’d give it up for
Lent.’

‘It’s a deal,’ Cate laughed. ‘Honestly, Arthur, we’re so bad. I can’t think where we get it from.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Each other
probably.’

Cate put her bag down on the spare lounger at the side of the pool and tried to avoid the sight of Burt lying asleep on a green lilo, his muscular torso clad only in the
tightest pair of Speedos she had ever seen. He had obviously calmed down since lunchtime. Perhaps he had simply been hungry.

She glanced over at her mother. She appeared to be asleep too, but as Cate stuck her toe into the warm turquoise water, she opened her eyes and sat up.

‘Hello, darling, where have you been?’ she said brightly. ‘Do you still want to go shopping this afternoon? We can buy something special for our trip to Mexico.’

Cate looked at the text she’d just received from Marcus. As she guessed, he wanted to meet. Today. Right now.

‘It’s OK. I’m fine for clothes, really I am.’

Her mother stared at Cate in amazement. ‘I find I can always do with more clothes.’ She shrugged. ‘OK, if you say so. Well, how about a trip to the nail bar? Or the
hairdresser’s? If you don’t mind me saying, sweetie, your grooming is – well, a little British.’

Cate looked at her mother, noting her extraordinarily long, thick hair and her French-polished nails, and bit her lip.

‘Thanks, Mum, but I actually wanted to meet someone this afternoon. A friend.’

‘Really,’ drawled her mother. ‘A friend of the male variety, I expect?’

‘Yes,’ said Cate. After all that wasn’t a fib. Marcus was male. ‘It won’t be for long,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He’s sent me a text. It’s just
that with me going off to Mexico I thought I would catch up with him and make arrangements for when I got back.’

‘It’s that boy Nancy mentioned, isn’t it? Greg? Ritchie? The nephew of Johnny James.’ Her mother sounded amused, intrigued even. ‘I have to hand it to you, Cate,
you’re a fast worker. You’re hardly in the country five minutes and you’ve already bagged yourself an eligible bachelor.’

‘It must be all that British grooming,’ said Cate, with an innocent look on her face. ‘So it’s OK if I go? I said I’d meet him at the pier. Is there any chance that
you could run me down there, please? Or maybe Burt?’ She tried not to wince as she spoke. The last thing she wanted was to share a car with her mother’s boyfriend, but she was aware of
the bugs that were burning a hole in her rucksack. She wanted rid of them – and fast.

‘Good idea. Burt, wake up.’

‘What?’ He sat up suddenly, nearly dislodging himself from the lilo in the process.

‘Burt, can you run Cate into Santa Monica? It will give you two a chance to get to know each other.’

‘No problem,’ he said, as he pulled himself out of the pool, his black hair slicked back from his face highlighting his razor sharp cheekbones, his perfectly white teeth gleaming
against his tanned face. ‘I’ve got a bit of business in town, anyway. I probably won’t be back until late, so don’t wait up.’ He slung a towel around his shoulders and
gave Cate’s mother a kiss.

‘More business?’ Cate’s mother laughed. ‘You are such a busy man nowadays.’

Burt pulled back his lips into a semblance of a smile. ‘Hey honey, things are pretty stacked right now,’ he said placatingly. ‘I’ve still got to sort out that goddamn
mess with the pick-up and we haven’t unloaded the stock we brought back from Mexico. Don’t you worry though, honey.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Just leave everything to
me.’

Fifteen minutes later, Cate was hanging on to the front seat of the red Mustang, hurtling back down the winding road. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Even the
freezing-cold air conditioning couldn’t remove the faint whiff of sweat and sickly smell of stale aftershave, and Cate could feel the waves of tension coming from the driver. It was all Cate
could do not to beg Burt to stop the car and let her out. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on the task in hand.

‘So, Burt,’ she said, turning to him. ‘How long have you been dealing in Mexican stuff?’

‘Not long as it happens,’ he said, giving her a sideways glance. ‘I used to box, act, do a bit of stunt work and, when that got too painful, I played in a band. After a few
years I got a bit too old to be a rock-and-roller.’ He grinned self-deprecatingly. ‘That was tough. I was washed up, with nothing to do. So I took on removals and house clearances for
an old buddy who had a second-hand shop selling furniture and then I went out on my own and got a lock-up in Santa Monica.’

He yanked the car violently around a hairpin bend, narrowly missing a woman who was hanging on to the leads of what seemed like a dozen dogs. As he glared back at her over his shoulder, Cate
slipped her right hand down the back of Burt’s seat and released the listening device. That was the easy one. She eyed his phone, lying on the tray in between their two seats.

Burt growled as he straightened up the car again. ‘Where was I? Oh yeah. Then I bumped into this guy in a hotel – an old friend back from my boxing days. He asked me to help ship
some stuff over the border for him from Mexico – you can buy imitation stuff down in Mexico cheaply and bring it here for people to buy at inflated prices. It was good work – easy and
the money was great.’

He went quiet and looked again in the rear-view mirror. Something was bothering him, Cate thought.

‘After a while I started to bring my own stuff back,’ he continued. ‘Bits and pieces at first, and then I went the whole hog and rented Mexicano Magic – started selling
it myself. That’s where your mom comes in.’ He grinned mirthlessly at Cate. ‘She’s got that cool British accent which makes people think they’re dealing with some sort
of aristocracy. It makes it all more – how shall I say? – respectable.’

Cate stared back at him coldly. ‘You mean you flog fakes to innocent people?’ She couldn’t help herself.

‘Hey there! That’s harsh.’ Burt hit the brakes for a set of traffic lights just as they turned red. ‘It’s called commerce, Cate. It makes the world go round.
Especially here in the good old US of A.’

Cate persevered. ‘And do you ever sell – well, anything a bit more precious or genuine?’

Burt shot her a speculative look. ‘You kinda nosy, ain’t cha?’ he said. He had tensed up again and his voice had lost its friendly tone. ‘What makes you ask
that?’

‘No reason.’ Cate shrugged, doing her best to look innocent. ‘It’s just that I love Mexican jewellery. The turquoise stuff.’

‘OK. That kind of precious.’ Burt relaxed visibly. ‘Honey, if you want some Mexican jewellery, that ain’t a problem. I’ll get you some next time I’m down
there.’

The road had finally bottomed out and Santa Monica lay ahead. As Burt looked over his shoulder, Cate dropped her rucksack casually on to the centre tray.

‘Burt,’ she shouted above the noise of his engines, ‘could you stop at an ATM? I need some cash.’

He nodded and pulled over as Cate grabbed her rucksack and the phone that had been concealed underneath it. She stood with her back to the road, pretending to have a problem with the buttons on
the cash machine, praying that Burt wouldn’t get out of the car and come over to see what was causing the delay. As she waited for the cash to come, she slid open the back of his phone and
removed the battery, then dropped in the flat card chipped with a bug that would record every single conversation Burt had on his phone. She replaced the battery and cover and pushed the phone up
the sleeve of her denim jacket. She looked over her shoulder to where Burt was sitting in the car, engine still running, his fingers tapping impatiently through the open window.

Back in the car, she gave him an apologetic grin. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Wasn’t used to the instructions.’

He grunted and nodded. Then, as he went to release the handbrake, Cate felt his phone vibrate in her sleeve and emit a loud bleep. Automatically, Burt reached down between the seats. As he
realised his phone wasn’t there, a puzzled look spread over his handsome face.

‘That yours?’ said Cate, trying to sound as casual as possible, although her heart was racing. She reached on to the floor. ‘Sounds as if it’s coming from here.’
She straightened up and handed him his phone.

‘Thanks,’ grunted Burt, looking down at the incoming text. Suddenly his face paled and he almost threw the phone back into the tray as if it had suddenly become red-hot.

‘Where d’ya want dropping?’ he said roughly, pulling back out into the traffic. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

Santa Monica Pier was packed. Groups of tourists rubbed shoulders with young families enjoying a stroll and couples who were holding hands and taking each other’s
pictures. Cate passed signs for boat rides, cafés and fishing rods for hire and then, before she even reached it, she could smell and hear the funfair – the sickly aroma of candy
floss, the dirty fumes from the diesel engines hazy in the sunlight, the excited screams coming from the rollercoaster which loomed high above her.

As Marcus’s text had instructed, she walked over to the ticket booth, which was underneath the Big Wheel. She stood there, scanning the crowd, trying to ignore the blaring music, and
waited.

Above her, the huge wheel cranked and ground its way across the bright blue sky, tiny gondolas full of people hanging from it, quivering like baubles on a Christmas tree.

She looked at her watch. Marcus was late. The music faded away and the clanking above her stopped and, as the gondolas disgorged their passengers, the next people in the queue surged forward to
take their place.

‘I think it’s our turn.’ A familiar voice spoke quietly in her ear and at the same time she felt a nudge in her back, propelling her towards an empty gondola. She didn’t
have to look round.

The interior of the gondola stank of stale chips and coffee, and the floor was dirty, as if it hadn’t been cleaned for months. As it weaved and rocked upwards, Marcus gazed out of the
window. ‘I love these things,’ he said. ‘Always have done. Henri sends his regards, but excuses himself on the grounds that he hates heights! It’s the one flaw in his
otherwise robot-like brain. How are you getting on with Burt Tyler? Anything to report?’

‘Give me a chance,’ Cate protested. ‘I only met him a few hours ago. Actually you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve just fitted a bug in his car, down the back of the
driver’s seat, and one in his phone.’

‘Great work, Cate,’ Marcus said enthusiastically. ‘I’ll get the boffins to activate the bugs. Anything else? What’s your impression of him?’

‘Edgy,’ Cate said thoughtfully. ‘Nervous. Jumps at the slightest thing. Odd really, because Mum usually goes for really laid-back types. They have to be, to cope with
her.’

Cate paused, thinking hard. ‘I don’t know if I was imagining it, but at one point he got a text and I could have sworn Burt looked really scared when he saw the number. Yeah, scared
stiff.’

Marcus was looking out of the window. He nodded thoughtfully, then turned to her, his expression grave. Suddenly Cate felt nervous.

‘You haven’t brought me here just to ask about Burt, have you?’ Cate said. ‘After all, I could have told you that on the phone.’

‘You’re right, Cate,’ Marcus said grimly, his face suddenly stern. ‘I wanted somewhere we could be safe, where I knew it was impossible to be overheard. I have to tell
you some bad news. In the early hours of this morning, Gabriel Montanez was found dead in a back alley a few hundred metres from the Erin Hotel.

Cate shook her head, trying to take it in. ‘Montanez? The guy who nearly killed Ritchie and me the other night? What happened?’

‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Marcus, ‘but it looks as if he was felled by a heavy punch, hit his head on a paving slab, and died from the injuries almost instantly. In his
rucksack we found a stash of dollars, an airline ticket to Spain, a false passport, a Beretta and a silencer.’

‘An assassin’s kit,’ said Cate, half to herself. ‘Was he carrying anything else?’

Marcus sighed, his dark eyes boring into hers. ‘A business card belonging to Burt Tyler. And a photograph of you, with your room number at the hotel scribbled on the back. Cate, you have
to know. We believe you were his target.’

Cate took a swig of water from her bottle, swilling it around her mouth as she tried hard to quell the panic that was threatening to shut her throat and stop her breathing.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked eventually. ‘Why would anyone want to kill me? I barely know anyone in LA. I’ve only been here three days.’

Their gondola was at the highest possible point on the wheel now, rocking gently in the light breeze. Far below her, Cate could see people like pieces of the Playmobil that her brother used to
enjoy before he got into computers. How could she be thinking about that now? she wondered vaguely.

‘You’re clearly a danger to them, whoever they are,’ said Marcus. He shook his head. ‘We have to consider the possibility that somehow someone has found out about your
work with us. When you turned up here, they panicked, assumed the worst and thought you’d been sent in as an undercover agent.’