Hider/Seeker (10 page)

He went down to the living room where Peter was already engrossed in a cartoon. There he found more bookshelves, odd bits of China on a dresser, and a Regency rosewood sideboard. Harry picked up a silver framed photograph from the sideboard. Aunt Jean was beautiful and black, and had a knock-out smile. She was slim with her hair brushed back behind her ears. Under her arm was a fat black older woman with big round glasses in her Sunday best.

Harry waved the photo to Peter. ‘Is this your Aunt Jean?'

The boy didn't want to peel his eyes from the screen until the round bomb with a lit fuse went off. Then he flicked his eyes across to the photo in Harry's hand, and gave a brief nod, before turning back to the TV again.

The room felt cold, and Harry decided to light the wood burner. When he had finished that task, he told the boy he was going to the kitchen to make something to eat for the two of them.

‘You all right?' he asked the boy.

‘Sure, done this loads of times, when she's too busy to pick me up at the end of term. Aunt Jean does it, and I wait for her here.'

After lunch, Harry went outside to see whether he could hide his car in the garage in case some local tipped off the police about intruders. He opened the wooden doors of the garage, and found an old Vauxhall Corsa inside. Harry changed his plan immediately, and went about removing the number plates of the car so that he could use them on his. He figured the teachers would have by now reported his registration, and he couldn't afford to take any more risks.

Angela Linehan's phone was still on voicemail. He didn't know what to make of it as nothing was going according to plan. Nothing. She was supposed to arrive at the cottage around six in the evening, but she was also supposed to have informed the school that he would be picking up Peter. He had no choice but to sit it out on the couch and watch Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote all afternoon with the boy.

It wasn't until early evening when Harry was in the middle of boiling spaghetti that she finally rang his phone.

‘What's going on?' he asked, shutting the kitchen door so that Peter couldn't listen.

‘He's found out everything,' she whispered, her voice trembling. ‘I can't get away. The school rang and he wants to know what I've done with Peter.'

‘Did the school call the cops?'

‘No. Nick convinced them there had been some misunderstanding.'

‘Where are you calling from?'

‘I've locked myself in the bathroom but there's no way out. You've got to get me out of here.'

‘And leave Peter at the cottage?'

‘There's no choice. Just get here as soon as you can.'

‘Is your husband on his own in the house?'

‘There's no one else here. Just hurry, I've never seen him like this.' The line went dead.

He had plenty of questions he wanted to ask her. The top of his list was why she hadn't told the school he would be picking up Peter. Her husband would never have found out, had she done that. And how come he wasn't in Switzerland or did he cancel the trip when he found out?

Angela Linehan and her husband lived in an Edwardian villa in a leafy cul-de-sac off West Hampstead Road. The house was on a private pebbled lane, lined with elms and crooked cast iron lamp posts. Being the end house it was far away from the others and was set well back at the end of a drive.

Harry went to the house on foot, having parked a couple of roads away as he wanted to make the quietest of entrances. It didn't look as if anyone was at home as all the lights were out. The Jaguar was parked on the drive a couple of yards from the front door. He tiptoed to the car and placed his hand on the bonnet. It was stone cold. The front door was ajar and he crept up the steps of the porch to take a better look. Thin moonlight shone on the black and white tiles of the large entrance hall. Harry went inside, careful not to make a sound, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. The living room was empty; the dining room too. Deeper he prowled. A creaky door opened onto a large study with a desk by the window. It had plenty of office equipment and rows of box files along one of the walls. He left the door open because it made too much noise and continued further down the corridor. Ahead, he could make out the wooden units of the kitchen and a cooker, mounded with dirty pots and pans. There was a slightest whiff of cooked onions and tomatoes in the air.

The kitchen table had been prepared for two and the wine glasses poured. A fridge the size of a hatchback hummed in the corner underneath a large clock that reminded him it was already midnight.

He came back to the corridor and stopped at the top of a narrow twisting staircase that led down to the basement of the house. The unmistakable smell of chlorine was becoming stronger with each step he took. As he reached the bottom landing, he saw light from under a door. He sidled towards it, placing his hand on the door knob. Turning it slowly, Harry was ready to punch the first thing that flew his way.

He froze in the doorway. Floating face downwards in the turquoise water of the swimming pool was a perfectly still body enveloped in a cloud of blood, like a piece of conceptual art. It reminded him of the Damien Hirst shark pickled in a tank of formaldehyde, as nothing moved, not the body, not the blood.

Water shadows shimmered on the ceiling as he walked around the pool's edge. The body belonged to a man dressed in a suit; a man with snowy-white hair with three holes in his back. Harry knelt down by the edge of the pool to get a better look at Nick Linehan's body. A second later he felt a crack across his head. Blackness followed.

Harry opened his eyes and Botticelli's Venus appeared before him. Only she had blonde whispery hair, powder blue eyes and a body that teased inside her polyester uniform. Harry raised his hand to his throbbing head and felt thick wadding and bandage. His eyes stayed on her as she approached. She drew back the curtain at the end of his bed and moved alongside him.

‘How're you feeling?' she asked as she began to examine the bandages before moving away to check the cardiac monitor by his bedside. ‘It's a real nasty wound you've got,' she said. ‘I'm Nurse Foster, but call me Nina.'

‘Where am I?' His throat was dry.

‘You were transferred to us this morning from intensive care. They took you off the ventilator and sent you here for monitoring.'

‘Here, meaning?'

‘You're in the High Dependency Unit. You do know you're at Whittington's, don't you?'

He remembered a disembodied voice telling him that from the end of a tunnel. A torch was shone in one eye, then another, he felt a needle in his arm and heard lots of voices talking numbers. It was all jumbled up in his head. Harry recalled dipping in and out of consciousness and feeling his body wasn't his anymore. His flesh was lifeless and felt no pain; not the incisions nor the tubes; not even the scraping of the soles of his feet. Out for a few minutes, and then back again.

‘You'll be here for a short while until the doctors think you can go into a ward.'

‘How long ago was I brought in?'

‘Three days back.'

‘What?'

‘It's normal to feel disoriented.'

‘You don't understand, I have to leave,' said Harry, attempting to get up but forgetting he was still plugged into the monitor. He immediately felt woozy and reluctantly gave in to Nurse Foster who gently eased him back to a horizontal position again.

Harry traced the wires from the monitor to inside his gown and asked, 'How long am I going to be hooked up for?'

‘You must relax,' she said, ignoring his question. ‘Now, do you feel that you could eat something?'

He looked blank.

‘Toast?' she suggested.

‘With Marmite?'

‘I'll see what I can find.'

Nurse Foster disappeared beyond the curtain wall and out of sight of Harry's vision. He had a room to himself and from the window that ran alongside his bed he could see the dark cloudy sky closing in over the huddled houses of Archway. He gazed a full minute at the wet slate roofs outside, before Nurse Foster returned with two burnt slices of toast and a cup of tea.

‘Found some Marmite for you,' she said, placing the tea on the bed table and offering to feed him.

Harry shook his head.

‘It's what I am here for,' she insisted, gently persuading him to open his mouth.

Harry bit off a corner of the toast and felt a bolt of electricity charging through his head, forcing him to spit it out.

‘Too much Marmite?'

‘No – a shooting pain.' The throbbing in his head was getting worse and he began to feel nausea.

‘Try some tea.' She picked up the cup of milky-looking liquid and pushed it to his lips.

Harry drank the tea while looking into her eyes.

She smiled again and returned the tea cup to the bed table. ‘So, can you remember what happened to you?'

‘Not a thing.'

Harry was lying, he remembered everything. He'd walked straight into a trap he should have seen coming. The blow to his head wasn't to make him see funny stars, but to deliver him to the celestial heavens. Angela Linehan wouldn't have had the guts or the strength to do that to him on her own, but her faithful manservant would.

‘That's going to be a problem for him around the corner,' continued Nurse Foster. ‘He demanded to see you as soon as you were out of intensive care.'

‘Who?'

‘He's been sitting outside for half an hour. Wants to speak to you.'

‘Who is he?'

‘A copper.'

‘What does he want?'

‘Have a guess,' she smiled. ‘Are you up to it?'

Nurse Foster left Harry and returned with Detective Inspector Wallace Gemmell.

‘I'll leave you two alone,' she said, disappearing once more.

Harry's and Gemmell's eyes followed her pert bottom rustling under the uniform, before turning back to face each other.

Unbuttoning his coat, Gemmell looked at Harry's head wrapped in bandages. ‘Christ, you look like the invisible man.'

Harry responded with two fingers.

Gemmell sat down in the armchair next to the bed. ‘The docs say you're lucky to be alive.'

‘I don't feel lucky getting this.'

‘What happened?'

‘You tell me; it's still a bit hazy.'

‘Very well. You were found unconscious at a house belonging to Nicholas Linehan and his wife in Hampstead. Linehan's body was in his pool and you were at the water's edge. He'd received three bullets from a nine millimetre that came from the same gun that killed your friend Ed Parker.'

Harry felt his insides churning.

‘Oh, I forgot,' continued Gemmell, ‘the gun was in your hand when you were found.'

The throbbing in his head and the nausea it was causing suddenly got worse. He felt like throwing up.

‘You don't look too good,' said the detective.

Harry became distracted by the appearance at the end of his bed of detective Kinnear with a uniformed policeman.

‘What's going on?' asked Harry.

‘What was your business with Linehan?'

‘I don't know who he is.'

‘Really? He's a property developer that had a business relationship with Parker.'

‘So?'

‘It puts you right in the middle of two murders, and I've got enough evidence this minute to put you away on one of them.'

Harry didn't respond.

‘There's more, Harry, and none of it good from your point of view.'

Harry's moment of puking past momentarily.

‘Angela Linehan and her son are also missing. Two members of staff at the boy's school identify you as kidnapping the youngster. Where are they, Harry?'

That was a good question that Harry also wanted answering. Now that she had Peter's passport, she would be far away by now.

‘You really are in a big pile of doo-doo. Aren't you? You got rid of Parker, not because of Bethany Parker as I first suspected. You dispatched him because Linehan paid you to get rid of his business sidekick. But when he didn't pay you for the job, you took his wife and boy. Then you went over to see him about getting your money in exchange for them; he clubbed you with a baseball bat and you shot him before passing out. Wasn't that what happened?'

Harry remained silent.

‘Don't you have anything to say?' pushed Gemmell.

‘Not until I see my brief.'

‘Very well.'

Gemmell got up, nodding to Kinnear to step forward and arrest Harry on suspicion of murdering Nicholas Linehan and of kidnapping his wife and son.

When asked at the end of the caution whether he understood, Harry looked up at the young detective, and replied emphatically by depositing the contents of his stomach over the Yorkshire man's brogues.

Harry sat upright in bed, bookended between two uniformed officers guarding him. They stared stonily ahead in their seats, strictly avoiding any conversation with him. Harry was handcuffed to one of them, a round man with full cheeks and a ski-slope nose. The other officer had a hangdog appearance and was much thinner.

He'd been moved to a side room as a precaution, in case his vomiting was a norovirus; there was a lot of it around in the wards. Harry had already lost count of the days that had slipped by since being admitted. Neither Gemmell nor the doctors liked the idea of him staying in hospital for so long. But until he was in a fit shape to leave, he couldn't be transferred to Brixton.

Nurse Foster entered the room and signalled to the thinner officer that he needed to move. He stood by the door while she carefully combed Harry's head. She did a good job re-arranging his messy hair so that it covered some of the large plaster on his scalp. When she'd finished, she took his temperature and made a note in the charts.

‘Am I still sick?' asked Harry. ‘Because I'm really feeling under the weather, you know.'

She ignored him and left the room. The officer returned to his seat next to Harry, but was back on his feet moments later to make way for Gemmell and a mystery guest.

‘You look chipper this morning, Harry,' said the detective, pulling up a chair by his bed while a slightly older woman made herself comfortable in an armchair at the foot of the bed. ‘Maybe we can free up your bed for someone more deserving of our splendid National Health care,' continued Gemmell.

‘Complain to your MP if you think I'm a malingerer wasting tax payers' money.' Harry's eyes wandered to the grey-haired woman studying him. Everything about her was grey, her skin, her eyes – even the coat she was unbuttoning. Her hair was short and her chin was pointy, like her nose.

‘The doctors seem more confident about your progress,' continued Gemmell, still not introducing the woman.

‘What do they know,' replied Harry. ‘I think I'm having a relapse. I'm really not feeling myself, at all.' He looked at Gemmell's beaming face and then let out a sigh of resignation. 'Okay, when am I being transferred?'

‘Any day. But I'm here for another reason.'

Harry made himself comfortable while Gemmell introduced Geraldine Strickland to him. She was from the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Command, and spoke her words slowly, as if embroidering them on a Java canvas.

‘As Detective Inspector Gemmell will explain, our investigations are broadening, and we have a new line of inquiry which we are vigorously pursuing. You reserve the right not to answer any of my questions without legal representation present.'

‘But Harry wants to help us,' jumped in Gemmell. ‘Don't you, Harry?' he added, not waiting for a reply. ‘We've discovered lots of things about Linehan and his business over recent days, interesting things. His real name was Todd Hogan and he was close to the republican terrorist organisation.'

‘IRA?'

‘That's right, Harry. The IRA. But you knew that, didn't you?'

‘I've told you before.'

‘Oh I forgot, he's a complete stranger to you. Well, let me fill you in. The guy's done time for robbing a string of Belfast banks in the early seventies. He blew up hotels and was the top dog in the provisional IRA's 1971 bombing campaign. The PSNI had no idea he was back with dissident republicans, until we started turning over his headquarters in London. Pertwood Developments is quite a grand business; offices in Dublin, Oslo, Moscow, Riga, Sofia and Beirut. I could go on, but I'll let my colleague tell you all about him.'

And she did. Linehan made a healthy living recycling the proceeds of Provo activities, from cigarette and diesel smuggling to robbing banks, drug trafficking, kidnapping and extorting money from local businesses. They were also big in legitimate businesses too; mainly taxi firms, restaurants, pubs and construction.

With the help of Ed Parker, he was laundering their cash through property deals in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Cyprus and Bulgaria. They built everything from holiday complexes to residential properties, apartments and marinas, she told him.

‘They recently ran a massive ad campaign in a Sunday supplement for one of their luxury developments in southern Italy,' said Gemmell. ‘And this is where it all gets rather interesting. You see, Linehan, or should I say Hogan, had forged ties with the Marotta family, according to the Guardia di Finanza in Rome. The Italian finance police had thought the Marotta brothers, Roberto and Pasquale, were building these concrete complexes with their own mafia money until Geraldine started making her enquiries.'

‘You've heard of the ‘Ndrangheta?' she asked.

Harry replied he'd read about the Calabria mafia in the newspapers.

‘They're one of the most powerful crime syndicates in Italy, if not Europe,' she continued. ‘Their business is so big it accounts for around three per cent of the Italian economy. The Marotta family contributes to nearly a quarter of that. Hogan and the Marottas became partners, building all along the Ionian coast in Calabria and other parts of Italy. They weren't just pouring concrete, but pouring millions of dirty money from the Provos and from the family.'

Harry now understood why Nick Linehan wanted to keep him away from Bethany. He didn't know how much Bethany knew about Eddie's business with him and probably had plans to take care of her had he lived longer.

‘It was the perfect match,' resumed Strickland. ‘The Marottas got around the planning regulations by buying off local opposition and Linehan marketed and built the properties. The Rome police said the Marotta brothers would get involved in any business that helped launder their money. It wasn't just Hogan they were in joint ventures with, but others too. They knew how to intimidate to obtain and develop land through a network of companies across Europe. It was a perfect synergy to their core business activity. With them, it was mainly financial scams, but there was also the usual commodity trading in cocaine, guns and girls, not to mention trafficking illegal immigrants and money laundering for terrorists.'

‘And how did they ever hook up with Linehan, I mean Hogan?' asked Harry.

‘They met at a property trade show in Milan,' she replied. ‘It's a global world, you know.'

Gemmell leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. ‘Aren't you curious to know why I've dragged Geraldine here?'

‘Can't wait to hear,' said Harry.

The Scot made a face and continued. ‘We were going through Nicholas Linehan's offshore accounts when we discovered that twenty-one million euros had been taken from one of them on the night he was murdered.'

Harry felt that sinking feeling again. The ten million sterling Angela Linehan had wanted to move out of the country had miraculously grown.

Gemmell went on to explain that the twenty-one million euros had been deposited only the day before Nick Linehan was killed. It was money from a mystery company that couldn't be traced. All of it was wired out that fatal night.

‘Someone knew when that money was coming in,' said Gemmell, his eyes burning into Harry. ‘It was a good motive for the murder, wouldn't you say?'

Harry suddenly realised that he'd known the day of the transfer all along; Angela Linehan had etched it in his brain when she doubled his fee. He understood now why she had to run away by the fifteenth of January and it wasn't because of any abortion.

Strickland spoke next. ‘Nicholas Linehan was the sole signatory of that account and someone not only knew when the deposit would be made, but that it was going to be a bumper one.'

Gemmell leaned forward in his seat. ‘Someone must have forced Linehan to authorise the transfer. Was that your role in all this? Threaten to kill his wife and kid?'

All the time Harry kept silent, thinking of Tucker holding a gun to Nick Linehan's head.

Then Strickland explained how the money became lost in a maze of wire transfers that would make anyone giddy trying to follow it. The money was pulled out of Lebanon and into a private bank in Hong Kong. Then another authorisation sent the money on to four further banks; one in Belize, another to Saint Vincent Grenadines, Nevis Saint Kitts and Panama. The deposits didn't stay long there either, being split up again, and sent to further banks in Central America where the trail went cold. She speculated that the subdivision probably went on all evening London time; the amounts being deposited getting smaller, less conspicuous, more manageable – in all likelihood ending up in some shell companies or bogus trusts.

His friend Ernesto had done a good job. No one was going to be able to trace the paper trail to Angela Linehan, including him.

But the expertise shown in moving the cash around the globe only prompted Strickland to ask Harry who he was working for, as it was clear to her he didn't possess those sorts of skills.

Again he didn't respond.

Then Gemmell made an inspired guess that took Harry by surprise. ‘Is she involved in all of this? Mrs Linehan, I mean? She would probably know everything about her husband's business and accounts. Probably knew when there was going to be a big deposit. Got you to force him to initialise the transfer. She's involved, isn't she, Harry?'

The question deserved an honest answer, but Harry had no intention of obliging. He was going to handle her personally. He stood the best chance of tracking her down as he knew the name of her new identity. It would be a lead until she realised he was still alive and had to change her name again. He wasn't going to give away that pleasure of finding her to anyone. Whoever the money belonged to, they'd be after him before long. His best chance of staying alive was to find her, and make her return the money. In prison, they would get to him, and his likelihood of survival would be zero.

‘You think the money belongs to the Marottas?' asked Harry.

Gemmell's eyes brightened. ‘Finally, he's interested.' He leaned uncomfortably close to Harry's face and said, ‘Feel free to contribute. You never know, it just might help reduce your sentence.'

‘To answer your question,' said Strickland, ‘we're not really sure. Could well be part of a much bigger partner whose money they were cleaning.'

‘Any ideas who?' asked Harry.

‘At this stage, none,' she said. ‘The Marottas have connections everywhere. They're bright men and they can thank their late father for that.'

She glanced at Gemmell to see if she had time to elaborate. Gemmell was too busy cleaning under his fingernails to give a damn, so she continued.

‘Roberto and Pasquale's father wasn't your typical Calabria mafia boss. He might have been a peasant, but he had aspirations for his sons. Making a living from
pizzo
was okay for him, but he wanted more for his sons. So he sent them to Harvard because he wanted them to be smarter than the other clans. The state would one day drive them all out of the hills in Calabria, and he wanted to make sure his sons would transform their business abroad before then.'

Gemmell had finished with his nails and wiped the end of his fingers on his jacket sleeve. Strickland had nothing more to say, and the two of them stood up. She looked down at Harry and said, ‘You've got a lot to think over. Talk to us, before it's too late. It might be your only chance of survival.'