Hider/Seeker (27 page)

He'd always knew it would end with a knock on the door. But for some reason he'd forgotten his rules on self-preservation that Sunday afternoon as he woke up with aching muscles from a double shift at the docks.

The Atlantic was not offering its normal sea breeze to cool off the city, and Harry's studio flat under the Ponte 25 Abril was stifling. His shutters were closed against the blistering sun, making everything in his room look dull and monochrome. He pulled out a dripping flannel from a bucket of cold water by his bed and placed it over his face while he counted off the ship horns droning on the Tagus. Half-way between sleep and waking, he wondered whether he'd dreamt that someone was knocking on the door. He hadn't.

‘I know you're in there,' said a man's accented voice that sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Come on Harry, open up, we need to talk.'

Harry wrapped a bed sheet around his naked body and waddled to the door of his flat, dragging a tail behind him. He opened it, and saw a ghost.

‘A cat has many lives,' said Ernesto Paiz. He was fatter than before and wearing a black patch across his left eye.

Harry was stunned to see his dead friend standing before him. Nothing went through his mind for seconds, then an overload of ideas, postulating and speculating why Ernesto was outside his door, leaning on a walking cane, looking too fleshly real to be an illusion.

He led the way into his semi-dark flat and sat on the corner of his bed with his long legs apart. The smell of rotting food wafted from the kitchenette, piled high with dirty dishes and widowed wine bottles. Ernesto chose his steps carefully to avoid treading on Harry's clothes and underwear scattered on the granite tiled floor. Under a threadbare armchair was a pink lace thong and Ernesto hooked it up with the end of his walking stick.

‘Old habits die hard,' he smiled, before tossing the thong aside and sitting down on the armchair with pain in his hip. ‘It's so dark in here. Would it be possible to open one of the windows? I want to get a better look at you – I only have one eye now.'

Harry got up and let into the room a hot shaft of sunlight; the ships on the estuary were sparkling under the blue sky.

‘You mind if I smoke?' Ernesto did not wait for his reply and took out a cigarette and lit it with a silver lighter. The butt of an automatic peaked from under his jacket. Ernesto dragged on the cigarette and put the lighter back in his pocket. There was no ashtray in sight so he used an empty wine glass that had been left on the floor.

‘Still helping desperate people to vanish these days?' he asked.

‘You make me sound like a magician.'

Ernesto gave a brief smile. ‘Seriously, how are you getting by?'

‘A bit of this, a bit of that.'

‘You're probably wondering why I'm here?' He dragged on the cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nose.

‘I'm wondering how come you're not dead. I was the one who broke the news to Gabriela.'

‘Technically, I suppose I might have been for a very short while. But St Peter had other plans.'

‘What happened?'

‘I don't know. I woke up in hospital. Mercifully, one of my herdsmen had the wit to move me out of there before investigators from the city arrived and brought me to a convent in the hills. No one knew where I was, not even Gabriela.'

‘And?'

‘I recuperated there until I was strong enough to look after myself.'

‘What about Gabriela?'

‘It was a year before I could show myself to her again,' he said, tapping ash into the empty glass on the floor. ‘I thought it was safer for her to think I was dead, to convince everyone.'

‘How did she take it?'

‘What do you think? She told me to go to hell for not contacting her sooner. I don't think she appreciated me upsetting the new life she'd made for herself. She'd met someone else in that time and the authorities had stopped bothering her. I said to her that she should thank me for that as I'd decided against releasing my secret files that would have ruined the lives of many big politicians.'

‘So she's not with you now?'

‘No, we split up. Best that way. No one deserves to be near me right now.'

‘But the two of you were so close.'

‘Life can be messy. When we think we've figured it all out – it comes back and slaps you in the face.'

‘How did you know where to find me?'

‘I helped you buy this place, remember?' Ernesto looked around the room with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling and the plaster blistering on the walls. ‘I must say, I think you were taken advantage of.'

‘Want a beer?'

‘As long as you don't serve it warm, the English way.'

When he came back with the beers, he was facing a 9mm in Ernesto's hand.

‘Sit down,' said Ernesto. ‘And remain calm.'

Harry did what he was told and put the beers on the coffee table between them. He sat back on the edge of the bed again and said, ‘I was always curious about that day at your country house. You were going to kill me then, weren't you?'

Ernesto nodded. ‘You were lucky that I was shot first by the hired hands of the mines.'

‘We were going to drive up into the hills for a meal.'

‘Subterfuge to get you out of the house; it seemed more humane that way.'

‘It all came to me when I looked at Angela Linehan's passport. The one you gave her to replace the passport we made for her in London. When I saw you, you never let on about it. Pretended you didn't know that I'd escaped from the UK; when you knew all along because Angela Linehan had told you.'

‘I suppose it was the name on the passport that gave it all away?' Ernesto dropped the smouldering cigarette stub into the glass by his foot.

Harry nodded. ‘Corina's mother's.'

‘An old lady, housebound, going nowhere.'

‘You made Corina help you?'

‘She's a devoted maid; her family has worked for mine for generations. She does everything I ask of her.' Ernesto stopped to catch his breath. He began to cough violently but kept the gun pointing at Harry as he bent forward, his lungs wheezing like a shisha pipe. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his mouth.

‘I think you should quit smoking.'

Ernesto ignored Harry and continued, sitting upright again. ‘I had no choice using Corina's mother, we were in a rush to conjure up Angela a new passport while she was holidaying in Mexico with that friend of hers. The alterations were relatively simple.' He returned the handkerchief back to his pocket. ‘As for the boy, we stole a passport from a crackhead backpacker.'

‘Why did you want me dead?'

‘Once I heard you'd escaped from the police in London, I guessed you'd come running to me for help. You were the only link between Angela Linehan and me. No one but you would be able to track her down. The Marottas had read all about you in the papers. I was worried you'd lead them straight to me as I knew where the money was hidden.'

‘You could have just told them.'

‘That would have been a really crazy thing to do. They're not the forgiving type. I should know, because they're my clients too.'

Harry's eyebrows dropped, his face became tense. ‘You have dealings with them?'

‘For years. Once you get involved with the Marottas, there's no way out. I couldn't allow them to find out I'd whisked away Cobar's money. I had no idea what Angela had done at the time.'

‘I always looked up to you,' said Harry. ‘I saw you as the last of the honourable men.'

The gun was getting heavy in Ernesto's hand and it was no longer pointing at Harry's heart. ‘Well, I'm not a good person and I don't like good people, if you want to know the truth. What can I say? I have a gift for covering up who I really am.' A smile.

‘I still don't get why you need to kill me now, when the money has been returned.'

‘I'm afraid it's not that easy. I would like to say that this is all about collecting the money that is still owed to them.'

‘I told them a year and a half ago, the rest was spent. Went on the egg-shaped house in St Lucia. Sell it and get your money back.'

‘After what happened there, it would not be a good idea. The cops are just waiting.'

Harry waved a dismissive hand and said, ‘What's this really about?'

‘It's about settling a score, plain and simple.'

‘But I told you, I wasn't working for Angela.'

‘They think you were. They can't have anyone stealing money from their investors and not paying for it. You have to understand, the Marottas have an obligation to protect their partners and can't afford to lose face in front of them. The Cobar cartel just couldn't comprehend that sort of weakness. It's not part of their culture.'

‘But why you?'

‘One of my ex-clients discovered I'd returned to Guate after being missing for so long and found that information a good currency in the city. The Marottas somehow knew early on about my involvement with Angela. Perhaps not that surprising as I've done similar things for them. They recognised my handiwork. So when they got to hear that I was still alive, they tracked me down. Made an offer to overlook my misdemeanours, providing I find the woman and her boy – and of course you.'

‘Give me a head start and tell them you lost me. For old times' sake?'

Ernesto tried to get into a more comfortable position in the armchair. He rested the gun on his knee as he shifted in his seat with discomfort. ‘You don't understand,' he continued, raising the gun once more at Harry. ‘I pay back my life by taking yours. Apparently I make the ideal assassin. A well respected lawyer that can travel anywhere in the world, and whose targets trust him enough to allow him to come close. I'm not much of a good shot, you know. They usually use more qualified men to settle such accounts, but who am I to argue with their methods. Angela was so pleased to see me, the boy too. It took me a while to find them, but as she still had some money left in her deposit accounts, it was just a question of waiting until she made a mistake.'

‘Where?'

‘Buenos Aires. They had a nice little flat in a leafy suburb there. She had such good taste.'

‘Had?'

‘Yes, they're both dead.'

‘You killed the boy?' asked Harry in disbelief.

‘His name was on the contract.'

‘You didn't have to.'

‘But I had no choice.'

‘You could go places where they'd never find you. I'll help you.'

‘If I vanish into thin air, they'll go straight around to Gabriela's house and shoot her, next my brother, his wife, their children. There's no way out of this for me.'

‘What happened to fighting liberty and caring for the supressed? You and Gabriela once wanted to change everything and create a fairer society. And don't bullshit me with that spiel again about not being nice.'

Ernesto laughed. ‘Maybe that has been our greatest achievement in life – remaining idealistic. I have never been one to join political parties as they only want power, not justice. Now things are different; I'm only interested in the road that is less travelled.'

‘Christ I don't know who you are anymore. You grew fat off the cartels, and now you're doing their killing.'

Ernesto looked at him with no emotion.

‘What sort of life can you expect after this?' asked Harry.

‘I've lost my wife, my home, my sanity. The Marottas will dispose of me once I've served their purpose. What life can a man expect when he has lost all control of it?'

‘But you still have time to do something about it, Ernesto. Phone Gabriela, talk to her once more. You love her, you know you do. The two of you could start all over again.'

‘You're not talking to one of your idiotic clients. No one can run for ever from these people. They measure revenge in decades.'

‘So the answer is to just wait for them to turn up one night?'

Ernesto wasn't listening, his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘I do regret killing the boy. But that was the deal they were offering me.'

‘When did you stop believing in God?'

‘When I shot Peter. There was no divine intervention to save him. I was expecting it to go wrong. Really I did. I thought this was so evil, someone would come to the boy's rescue or the gun would jam. But nothing like that happened. I just squeezed the trigger as he struggled to open the window, and took his life away from him like the Lord almighty. It was so easy, how could that be?'

‘You stopped believing, just like that?'

‘It's the mystery of faith they never talk about – the falling out. True belief asks you to accept everything that happens to you in blind faith and to love your enemies. You think I can do that after what has happened to me? I can assure you, losing God is a lot faster than finding him.'

‘Who knows I'm here?'

‘Just me.'

‘So what are you planning on doing?'

‘First, I would like to know why you didn't go back to London when the police dropped all the charges?'

‘How do you know about me being let off the hook? It wasn't exactly in the papers.'

‘Angela told me before I shot her. She had made some enquiries of her own.' Then Ernesto gave Harry a quizzical look. ‘There was nothing stopping you going back home to your sweetheart. Maybe, she would have taken you back this time. You could have started a family you always spoke about. Become the man you wanted to be. More like your father who had an obsession for truth. Wasn't that what you really wanted to be? A great man of principle? So why didn't you go back?'

‘Maybe I could have.'

‘And?'

‘They always find you, as you say.'

‘And you are ready to approach death, just like that?'

‘Let's get this over with,' said Harry. ‘But I need to know Bethany and the baby will be left alone.'