Luc: A Spy Thriller (9 page)

‘And it could be that Giuttieri is behind the lot of them.’ I poured coffee into two more mugs.

‘That’s precisely what we’re looking into right now, Luc.’

***

Mike Haskins was outside smoking a cigarette.

‘How’s it going with Pinto?’ I asked, stepping out into the heat of the street. ‘Is he talking?’

‘He’s a pesky one,’ Mike said.

‘Not talking?’

Mike shook his head.

‘How’s his hand bearing up? We don’t want it turning septic on us.’

‘Molly’s taken a look. It’s fine.’

I nodded.

‘You should know something else,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘He’s got a hole in his other hand now.’

My neck straightened. ‘Mike, for god’s sake…’

‘He clammed up. I need to get him to talk, don’t I?’

‘Let me see him,’ I said, striding back inside.

‘Don’t go off on one, Luc,’ he said following me in. ‘He’s perfectly fine.’

Pinto was sitting on a bed in the holding room. When the door opened and he saw me, he stood. He held his arms up. Both hands were now covered in thick white bandaging.

‘Look at these,’ he said. He looked a bit like those people at football matches who wave large foam hands. ‘You think this is funny? I am in pain.’

‘Sit down,’ I said.

‘I no sit down, I - .’

I lightly pushed his chest and he sank back onto the bed, not wanting to touch me, the bed, or anything with his hands.

‘A group has claimed responsibility for the bomb that went off in Belize City.’

He glanced up at me.

‘Are you part of that group?’

Pinto leaned a little forward. ‘I am
proud
to be part of that group.’

‘And what is the group called?’

‘We are the Guatemalan Territories Brigade.’ Telling him that the group had claimed responsibility had acted like a green light or something.

‘What are your goals?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘Your aims. What are you fighting for?’

‘We want to reclaim our territories.’

‘What territories?’

‘Belize.’

‘What part of Belize?’

‘Just…Belize.’

‘I see. Why drive around with Guatemalan licence plates in Belize?’

He shrugged.

‘You don’t have an answer?’

He shrugged again.

‘Maybe it’s because you’re proud to be Guatemalan,’ I said. ‘Or to you this
is
Guatemala.’

‘Yes,’ he said. And then a more definite: ‘Yes.’

‘Hang the fact that it massively increases your chances of being caught and that no serious outfit would even dream of it.’

He looked at me and screwed up his mouth. He shrugged again.

‘Do you ever feel you’re being used, Aruzo?’

‘No.’

‘Ever heard of a man called Ernesto Giuttieri?’

‘No.’

I turned to Mike. ‘Has he given you the code for the phone yet?’ I asked.

Mike shook his head. ‘He’s not budging on that.’

‘I told you,’ Pinto said. ‘I don’t know code.’

I stared at him. ‘What do you mean you don’t know the code?’

‘I mean I don’t know it. It’s not my phone. I didn’t have a phone. That’s Hector’s phone. You want code, you shouldn’t shoot him in face.’

‘They didn’t give you a phone?’ I asked him.

Pinto shrugged.

‘Who hired you?’

‘Hired me?’

‘For your overseas job. Who hired you?’

‘I am an activist. I am engaged in an armed struggle. Nobody hired me.’

‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, but
balls
.’

Pinto held his bandaged hands up. ‘I need to use toilet,’ he said, looking between me and Mike.

I smiled thinly and looked across at Mike. ‘I’ll leave him with you.’

***

One of those exotic birds that I don’t know the name of chirruped rhythmically outside the window as I clicked another newspaper story about Ernesto Giuttieri on the laptop. It brought up a story from the
The
Belize Times
about Giuttieri’s involvement in the takeover of the Belizean company Triple Door Refrigeration.

The story seemed to insinuate bad practice by the Giuttieri Corporation, but didn’t say it outright. I read until the end and then clicked on another story.

The overarching picture I was getting of Giuttieri was of a powerful figure, a businessman, who was no doubt involved in illegal practices, but who was able now to stay one step ahead of the authorities. It was also clear that, certainly recently, very little else was known about him. While his businesses ran in various countries, it was not clear to me where exactly Giuttieri was. The last known sighting that I could find was three years ago in Barbados.

One other thing chimed. Four of the articles I had read were written by the same journalist. They were not entirely complimentary of the man, although due to the libel laws, the journalist herself hadn’t been able to outright accuse Giuttieri of anything. Reading between the lines, it seemed to me that she was itching to.

I scrolled up to the byline again: Vivienne Marlow.

As the colourful bird outside fluttered into view, I pulled the phone from my jacket pocket and scrolled across to the Contacts page.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Vivienne Marlow took a swig of rum and then cracked the empty glass onto the wooden coffee table. She exhaled and then looked up at me.

‘He’s a big man,’ she said. ‘I mean size wise. He’s large. He weighs a ton. You look at pictures of him now and you look at pictures of him when he was young, it’s almost impossible to believe that they are the same person.’ She picked up the bottle of One Oak Rum and refilled her glass. ‘But they are,’ she said.

I had tracked Vivienne Marlow down to a wooden bungalow in Orange Walk. She had left her previous newspaper, the
Amandala
, a year ago and had now turned freelance. We were sitting in her lounge area, a wooden table between us. Stacks of books, magazines and newspapers were piled up on almost every available surface around us.

‘What was Giuttieri like when he was younger?’ I asked.

‘Thanks for bringing this man back into my life,’ she said. She downed some more of the drink.

‘Why, does he scare you?’

‘Ernesto Giuttieri?’ She shrugged. ‘Would standing under a teetering building scare you, Mr Luc? Because that’s what Giuttieri is like. He’s there. He’s always there. And he could crush you at any time.’ She shrugged again. ‘Or not.’ She looked to be late fifties, but I believe she was almost a decade younger than that.

‘You mentioned his younger days…’ I said.

Vivienne got up and noisily cleared her throat. ‘I need a cigarette. Have you seen any cigarettes since you’ve been here?’ she asked, looking around.

I pointed with my thumb. ‘I think I saw a packet on the kitchen fitment when I walked in.’

‘Good boy. Well done. Ah,’ she said, entering the kitchen area. ‘Here you are.’

She offered me one but I declined. She sat back down on the sofa and took satisfying draws on the cigarette.

‘E.G. The younger years.’ She laughed to herself. ‘The young Giuttieri was a talented scholar. Yes. He was a quiet boy. Studious. He came from a good family. The road ahead for him was assured and promising.

‘He got into a good university. He was reading Physics. And from what I’ve been able to gather, he was not only very good at it, he had set his sights on devoting his life to uncovering many of the unknowns in that scientific world.’

‘So what happened?’ I asked.

‘What happened was his sister.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Ernesto loved his sister. He loved his whole family. When he went to university, he would phone his sister every night to speak to her. And every night, according to her friends, she would eagerly pick up the phone to speak to him. Except one night…she didn’t.’

Vivienne pulled a face and looked at her cigarette. ‘I’m either losing my taste buds, or they’re weakening these things,’ she said. ‘The nicotine equivalent of watering them down.’ She looked earnestly up at me. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘I don’t know. What happened to the sister?’

Vivienne cleared her throat again. Busily tapped some ash into a saucer on the coffee table. ‘Raped,’ she eventually said. ‘Four men. Her throat cut. Her body dumped in a garbage truck. She was coming home from an evening out with her friends in Cobán. Young Ernesto…didn’t take it well.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘It’s about twenty-five years ago.’

‘What did Giuttieri do?’

‘Giuttieri… well, first he went quiet. Sullen. Brooding. His work began to fall off a cliff. From being an A student he was suddenly mopping up the Fs. Then… well, then he took a bunch of guys and tracked down the four men who had raped and murdered his sister. And he did…
things
to them. He tortured them, Mr Luc. And then he killed them. Which, after the third day, no doubt came as a sweet mercy for them.’

‘Three
days
?’

She nodded. ‘And now he had a gang. A feared gang. And,’ she raised a finger, ‘and this is just my guess, I have no proof, but it occurred to me as I was researching him that
now
he’s experiencing something that he’s never truly had before.’ She leaned forward. ‘Control.’ She almost breathed the word.

‘Up until this point he’s been the good little boy, doing what’s expected. Not in control. The biggest loss of control was what happened to his sister. He wasn’t there, couldn’t do anything about it. Wasn’t in control.

‘But now, taking on these men, defeating these men, he’s suddenly suffused with a feeling of control. And this,’ she highlighted the point with a stab of her finger, ‘is what sowed the seeds for everything that came after for him. His life simply became one of wanting more and more control. Of gangs, of money, of women, of businesses.’

‘So he dropped the studies, became a gang leader, got into businesses, bigger businesses...’

She nodded. ‘Anything he could control, he did. His appetites just got bigger and bigger.’

‘And today?’

‘Today he’s at the top of the tree. He controls everything he looks at. But is he satisfied? I doubt it. Nothing is going to be enough. There is no big that’s big enough.’

‘And where is he today?’

‘Ah.’ She took a draw on her cigarette and blew the smoke away to the side. ‘Million dollar. Where is Ernesto today?’ She coughed, a slightly hacking cough, and took a gulp of the rum to soothe her throat. ‘Oh dear. Well, he has this yacht. A very large white yacht. That is where Ernesto Giuttieri is. But where the yacht is?’ She shrugged.

‘This yacht must berth somewhere at some point,’ I said.

‘Oh, it must,’ she agreed. ‘But he hasn’t been back to Guatemala for over fifteen years now. Not a
fan
of the place. Maybe he sometimes fetches up in Belize, I don’t know. But I think he simply prefers the international waters. Are you sure I can’t tempt you to some of this rum?’

‘Thank you, no. So he leaves his business affairs to Ray Mortlake?’

‘Ah. Ray Mortlake. Another charming chappie. Well, yes, to a certain extent. But wherever he is, Giuttieri is still in control.’

I leaned forward and clasped my hands together. ‘How would you suggest I find him, Miss Marlow?’

‘Mr Luc, I don’t believe that you are a fellow journalist. I’m sorry but I’ve been in this trade for over thirty years and you don’t give off the right vibe, I’m afraid.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m just trying to find this man.’

‘Most people run away from evil.’

‘You didn’t.’

Vivienne held my gaze for a long time. Eventually she spoke. ‘Mr Luc,
Yuh gat yuh han eena tiga mouth
, as me Pappy used to say. You’re involving yourself in something very dangerous.’

‘I just want to find him.’

‘Be very careful where your journey takes you, Mr Luc,’ she said. ‘But what would I suggest?’ She nodded. ‘Yes, Mortlake. I would start with Ray Mortlake.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

The bass thumped as the music drifted over from the first floor gathering across the road. I could hear the laughter too. Some sort of party. There was something to celebrate on this night was there?

I’d latched onto Ray Mortlake, the lawyer, after observing his office for some hours. He’d eventually come out at eight, late worker, and I watched as he got into his silver Mercedes and drove straight here, to the building with the party.

Charlie came back on the phone and informed me that the house was owned by a Jacaranda Thomas. A thirty-two-year-old woman.