Luc: A Spy Thriller (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

One of Steenhoek’s thugs now patrolled the grounds. Light blue shirt, black jeans, cream linen jacket to conceal the gun.

The rain had now stopped and the humidity had dried much of the road. I was out of the Suzuki and approaching the gates. I raised a hand to attract the thug’s attention. He was about twenty feet up the drive. He saw me but didn’t approach. Just looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

‘Hello,’ I called out.

Nothing.

‘Couldn’t give us a hand, could you?’ I continued. ‘My car seems to have stalled or something. Can’t get it to start at all.’

Nothing. Just a malevolent stare.

‘It won’t take long,’ I said. I tried the gate. Locked.

‘Is this locked? Can I come in?’ Shook the gate again.

The thug was getting visibly annoyed at this.

Shook the gates much harder.
Rattled
them.

‘Can you open these things up?’

Bingo. He was on his way.

Okay, he looked mad as hell, and I really shouldn’t vex him any further.

Shook them so the ground quaked.

‘Open these bloody things up. What’s the matter with you?’

His hand shot through the bars to grab my collar. I side-stepped, grabbed his wrist, thrust his arm down onto my raised thigh. Heard the crack. Heard the cry. Reached through the bars, into his jacket, pulled the 9mm Glock from under his arm. I pointed the naughty end at his head.

‘Press the button,’ I said quietly.

He spat onto the ground.

I dug the barrel deeper into his head.

‘Press the button.’

After six more seconds of macho resilience he reached with his left hand and pressed the button on the remote control he had in his pocket.

The gates started to swing open.

A little awkward initially, because we were linked together on opposite sides of one gate and had to synchronise our walking in time to its movement. When the gate stopped, the thug was in the roses.

Keeping the gun on him I walked round the gate, told him to get on his knees. I used a plastic tie on his hands and then pistol-whipped his head. Left him in the bushes.

I headed inside.

***

All quiet on the ground floor.

I could hear voices coming from upstairs, so I stealthily crept up a winding wooden staircase, thanking my lucky stars that Steenhoek, apparently, did not have dogs. I came out into the lounge on the first floor. Steenhoek was sitting on his terrace overlooking the sea. I recognised him from the two photographs I’d seen of him a day earlier. A broad-shouldered, suntanned man with blond, greying hair. One of his thugs was standing nearby, his back to me. They were talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I padded quietly through the lounge and out onto the terrace. Steenhoek saw me first. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little, the glass of orange juice halting at his lips. Then the thug saw me out of the corner of his eye and snapped around, his hand going for the gun on the table. But I was already on top of the thug and I smashed my fist into his face and smashed it into it again, and he dropped to the stone tiles, out cold. I pulled the gun from my waistband and swung back to the still-sitting Steenhoek.

My breathing had accelerated a little, especially in the heat, but I was in control. Steenhoek was still coming to terms with the situation, pulling tightly at the end of his Hawaiian shirt.

‘What the hell is this?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’

‘Get on the floor,’ I told him. ‘On the floor.’

Steenhoek slowly got up from his chair. He looked at me and must’ve decided against doing something heroic. He carefully sat down on the white tiles.

‘Cross your legs. Hands on your head.’

When he’d done this I moved back to the thug, who was still out cold. I pulled another two plastic ties from my pocket and secured his wrists and ankles. I can do this now without needing to put down the gun.

I stood up, swinging the gun back to Steenhoek.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’ he asked. There was still the faint trace of a Dutch accent, but he had rattled around North and Central America and much of the tropics since his early twenties.

‘My name is Philip Luc. I work for the British government.’

‘Whoop-de-doo,’ he said. ‘
And?
’

‘I want to know - .’

‘Look what you’ve done to this guy,’ Steenhoek said, pointing at the thug on the floor. ‘A man just enjoying the day and then you - .’

‘He was pulling a gun on me.’

‘I don’t give a rat’s tit. I’m a man down.’

A seagull hovered high, away to my right. It gave its familiar plaintive cry and then swooped away, out of my sight.

Steenhoek jerked his thumb behind him. ‘There’s another guy, out front. Is he badly injured too?’

‘I shouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I will worry about it. You think these expenses don’t mount up?’

‘Mr Steenhoek, you know why I’m here, I’m sure.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘I’m somewhat tempted to kick you in the face, Mr Steenhoek.’

He looked alarmed at that.

‘What? What the hell’s going on here, would you tell me?’

‘Have you lost any buttons recently?’ I asked.

He frowned hard. ‘Have I - ? What sort of question is that?’

‘It’s the sort of question that requires an answer.’

‘No. I haven’t. Jesus.’

There was the click of a door opening from inside and all my senses were now on double alert.

A couple of seconds later a woman walked across the lounge area, heading for the kitchen. She was blonde, thirties, barefoot, wearing a red kimono, and by the look of her had just got up. She was padding slowly across the room. She stopped and looked out at us with half-lidded eyes. She took in the scene: the thug tied up, Steenhoek sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands on his head, me pointing a gun at him. Eventually she said, ‘Kinky,’ and continued toward the kitchen.

I looked at Steenhoek.

‘Get her back here.’

‘She doesn’t need to be involved. In fact, you know, it’s better if she’s not.’

‘Get her back here.’

He sighed.

‘Honey, sweetie, there’s a bit of a situation…’

There was the banging of cupboards coming from the kitchen.

‘Honey, come out here.’ Insisting.

The banging stopped. The woman appeared again, walking towards the terrace, a perplexed look on her drowsy face. She looked at me, her brain trying to compute something.

‘Sweetie,’ she eventually said, ‘who is this?’

Then she seemed to see the gun, as if for the first time. Her eyes looked worried. She looked at Steenhoek and then back at me. Then I could see that her eyes were welling up. She started crying. Lightly at first, but it soon developed into uncontrollable sobbing.

Then she launched at me, lashing out at me. Slapping, punching, kicking me. Letting go with everything she’s got. Screaming, yelping. I was taking blow after blow.

I thrust the gun down my belt and tried to grab her wrists. It was like trying to catch two flies. Eventually I got them and held them tight and knew the knee to the groin would not be long in coming, so I swung her round to face the other way, still holding her wrists, her arms now behind her. She could see her reflection in the terrace window, a crazy woman in a silk kimono and I pushed her forward and down so she had to concentrate on not falling over rather than extricating her hands. I used the time to think, sweet time, peaceful, and Steenhoek decided this was a good opportunity, with me, hands full, no gun, to make a little move and the sprightly fifty year old got to his feet and I dropped the woman, pulled the gun and shot him in the knee.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nobody was happy. I wasn’t happy. Steenhoek wasn’t happy. The woman with the silk kimono and flattened face wasn’t happy.

We were inside now, in the lounge, things were getting too noisy to stay outside. Even now I was sweating about the gunshot. Would it have been heard, would it be reported? But I wasn’t leaving them, not until I had the answers. And taking them somewhere else would be a nightmare to try. So I’d have to do just that: sweat it out.

Both were on the floor, wrists secured with plastic ties.

I’d checked both wardrobes. Neither owned any garments that had the same silver buttons as the one I’d found.

On the wall behind where they now sat, a small impressionist painting of a sparkling diamond looked down on us, and I remembered what Baxter had said about Steenhoek in the briefing: loopy about the things. Diamonds, that is, not paintings.

Steenhoek didn’t look good. I’d done preliminary first aid on his knee; stemmed the flow of blood, he should live. But at the moment he looked bad.

‘You need to take him to a doctor,’ the woman, Grace, if you please, had said.

‘You can ring for any amount of doctors as soon as you give me the answers to my questions. And we sit here until you do. If you don’t answer my questions and Mr Steenhoek here slips into shock and his body gives out and he dies in front of us, then that’s your choice. You need to know I will absolutely allow that to happen. But it’s your choice.’

Grace was crying again. Little sobs amid the unconcealed anger. With her hands tied she couldn’t wipe the tears away and they just rolled down her face and off her chin and made darkened patches on her red kimono.

‘Sweetie,’ she said, almost pleading, turning to her man.

Her man, Steenhoek, white as a sheet and lacking a kneecap, was staring at me with a suppressed fury.

‘What do you want to know?’ he said. Voice was weak.

‘Good, Mr Steenhoek. Good. I want to know about torture. I want to know about a man shot in the stomach and dumped outside a bar in Crooked Tree. I want to know about your bloody involvement in that.’

His eyes narrowed, he screwed up his mouth, and he started slowly shaking his head. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Do it? I didn’t do it. There’s no involvement because I wasn’t involved.’

‘That man was sent to get information from you. The very next day he’s tortured, shot in the stomach and dumped. And you want me to believe you had no involvement?’

‘The body up in Crooked Tree?’ He nodded. ‘Okay, yeah, I heard about it. But I had nothing to do with it. I mean, come on, does that sound like me? I buy and sell information. I have security to protect me because information can be sensitive. I don’t go around torturing and shooting people. Jesus, I never even met the man.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘You seriously didn’t meet him?’

‘No.’

‘He was coming here specifically to buy information from you.’

‘Well I never met him. Okay?’

I was looking at the blood seeping through the white bandage wrapped around his knee.

‘Please,’ Grace pleaded. ‘You’ve got your information. He’s told you. Let me ring for a doctor.’

I squatted down in front of Steenhoek. ‘Look me in the eye, Mr Steenhoek. Look me in the eye.’ He did, not concealing his disgust. ‘Remembering you have another, fully working, kneecap, tell me - did you have that man tortured and shot?’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’

I stood up. Cut the ties from Grace’s wrist and left the way I’d come.

CHAPTER FIVE

The coloured lights from the beach bar glowed a small distance across the darkened sand. There was laughter and loud talking and often the clinking of glasses as the young revelled in the beauty of their youth. I wasn’t in a mood tonight to be amongst the cheeriness and was sitting down the beach on the sand, gazing out at the dark sea.

I’d messaged London that I didn’t think Steenhoek had been responsible for the torture and murder of Wilson.

With nothing else to go on things weren’t looking good.

I’d also learned from our forensics team that the blood and the fingerprint on the silver button were
both
Wilson’s. I could imagine him, possibly his last act in this world, lying in that ditch and throwing the button clear. He wanted us to find it.

I took a swig from the bottle of Belikin as a couple of the girls in bikinis and sarongs danced out onto the sand, singing an unknown (to me) song. One of the lads merrily shouted out something to them.

I looked back at the sea.

‘So what happened, Wilson?’

There was no answer. Except the hissing of each hypnotic wave as it slowly crept back on itself.

CHAPTER SIX

The kettle boiled, rattling the cups and pens on the small desk in my hotel room. Instant coffee first thing in the morning was not ideal, but it was good enough.