Old Enemies (29 page)

It was less than a week away from the longest night of the year. Daylight didn’t take hold until around eight in the morning, and in Notting Hill it brought with it the reluctant figure of Archer, dragging behind him the news from Trieste. It required careful handling. Bad tidings. He’d been hoping there might be a bonus for him in all this, enough to pay for the flat he wanted to rent for his young Polish mistress, but that prospect had gone out of the window. There might even be worse to come. It had been a mistake to insist to his contacts at the Yard that all communications with the family be directed through him. They’re fragile, in no fit state, he’d argued, but in reality it had been so that he could keep hold of the reins, be in control. Yet now the horses were threatening to charge off in entirely the wrong direction.

He found J.J. in the kitchen, washing up his breakfast bowl and mug with meticulous, almost obsessive care. They could perfectly well have gone in the dishwasher, even been left for the housekeeper, but Breslin needed something to pass the time, to disguise the trembling in his hands, so he washed up. He turned sharply when he heard Archer arrive, leaving the tap running.

‘They’ve sent news, J.J.’

‘Ruari!’ The mug slipped from his hands and cracked against the side of the sink, and suddenly Terri was out of her armchair and close by, gripping the doorframe for support.

Archer knew he was about to step out onto the thin ice of a total screw-up and he wasn’t as light-footed as once he had been. Eating at the corporate lunch table could do that to a man. Yet that was where experience came in, and Archer knew the moves, all of them. It was the young guys who rushed ahead and found the ice collapsing beneath them.

‘They almost got him this morning,’ he said, summoning excitement into his voice. ‘In the countryside near Trieste. Missed him by only minutes and now they’re searching every farmhouse and outhouse and possible hiding place in the region.’

‘They?’ J.J. asked, a sudden croak in his voice.

‘The Italian police.’

‘But . . .’ J.J. was shaking his head, trying to get a fix on what he had just heard.

‘Road blocks. Spotter planes. Sniffer dogs. The lot.’

‘We had a deal, they weren’t meant to be there, Brian.’ It was Terri, her voice low.

Archer heard the ice beginning to groan beneath his feet. ‘Apparently the police stumbled across the hideout. In the circumstances you can’t expect them to turn a blind eye.’

‘What I expected was my son,’ Terri said.

‘Someone messed up.’

‘Someone?’

‘The police.’

‘But they weren’t supposed to be involved.’ J.J. seemed bewildered, floundering in disbelief.

Archer blanched. The two of them were at it together, which was unusual in this family, joining up to throw rocks at him from both sides and threatening to break through the ice. But what was it his old man had said? Never drown on your own, always do it with company. And right now his father seemed a wise bird.

‘You’ll remember . . . We decided,’ Archer suggested.

‘What I remember is that you insisted, Brian,’ Terri said. Somehow she seemed stronger than J.J., had a firmer grip on her emotions, had taken charge.

‘But we’re getting closer. The Trieste police are certain Ruari’s alive, the kidnappers are on the run. Who knows, they might even drop him at the side of the road.’

‘Or down a hole,’ J.J. whispered.

The ice was cracking, giving way. ‘That’s unfair, J.J.,’ Archer replied. ‘We all agreed we had no choice. What other option was there?’

‘Chombo,’ Terri reminded him.

‘But we didn’t know about him at the time.’

‘
You
didn’t.’

‘The Trieste police didn’t, either, that’s why they raided the place. They had no choice, it’s a major crime, they had to get involved. It’s just . . . these things don’t always run to plan.’

He was going down. He knew it, could see it in Terri’s eyes, flickering with rage, while her husband seemed to have turned to stone, his face a mask, his thoughts in another place, with his son. Terri leaned across him to turn off the tap. When she turned back once more, she looked directly at Archer.

‘Brian, I don’t think I want you in my house any more.’

It was in the silence that followed that they heard the warble of the Skype connection calling from the dining room.

No Hiley this time, they’d sent him to Rome to be ready for Ruari’s release, and no Jan, either. The voice at the other end was rougher, the English broken.

‘We have your boy. You want him back?’

‘But of course!’ J.J. shouted.

‘How many fingers you want back?’

‘Please, no!’

‘Five million euro. You get him back for five million.’

‘But we had a deal!’

‘That deal is dead.’

‘Where’s Jan? I want to talk to Jan.’

A harsh, callous laugh. ‘He dead, too. Very dead. Like the boy will be.’

‘We can’t possibly—’ But Terri had grabbed her husband’s arm, squeezed it tight, pleading caution. ‘We have to think about this. It will take us time to raise any money.’

‘Take all the time you want. Until Christmas. If no five million euro by Christmas Day, the boy end up like Jan.’

‘But that’s less than two weeks,’ Terri cried.

‘Get busy, bitch.’

Drinking. On your own again, Jones. He knew he was doing too much of both and neither had brought him happiness. Harry stared into the fire. This was Mayfair, a smokeless zone, so the fire consisted of nothing more than ribbons of designer gas flame, but it was better than staring at a blank wall and an empty glass. Anyway, wasn’t he supposed to be celebrating? He’d told Mary he wanted to come to Downing Street to finalize the details on the new job and she’d put some time in the diary for early the following week, so now he sat in his den beneath the stark light of a reading lamp and raised a toast in glorious farewell to his old life as a backbench politician, a life in which he had no real responsibilities apart from his constituents and making an occasional speech that was noticed by almost no one except the record-takers of Hansard. Not much of a life. At least as Foreign Secretary he would be able to pretend.

His melancholy was interrupted by the telephone. It was Sloppy. ‘Evening, you inglorious bastard. Remember you asked me to keep you up to speed on any stories of wickedness and worries around the Breslin camp?’

‘Ah, yes,’ Harry sighed, trying to summon up enthusiasm from the dregs.

‘Well, bingo, old buddy. Word is he’s trying to sell. Everything. And in a hurry, poor sod.’

‘Sorry, I don’t understand . . .’

‘Wake up at the back of the class, Jones! The newspaper’s up to its rafters in debt and the whisper in the gutter is that the bum-bandits at his bank have recalled the loans, so he’s trying to raise new money on everything he’s got, including his house. Sounds desperate. Wolves waiting in the wings on this one, old chap.’

‘Really?’

‘Suggestion is he may even have to bail out of the newspaper. One minute he’s telling everyone there’s light at the end of the tunnel, next he’s desperate to jump ship.’

‘Ship in a tunnel, Sloppy?’

‘You don’t pay me for my command of syntax, old chap. But take it from me, Breslin’s for the high jump. There’s a smell of death around this one.’

‘Thanks, Sloppy. I owe you. But I’ve got to go. I think someone’s trying to kick down my front door . . .’

Sloppy was chuntering on about Harry’s taste for desperate women when Harry cut him off. The banging was persistent, along with the ringing of the bell, and as he opened the door he found the last person in the world he wanted to see. Terri. She was standing on the doorstep, her face pale in the lamplight.

‘I’d better come in,’ she said quietly.

He moved aside to let her in, reluctant, and led her into his den. She shrugged off her coat, allowing it to fall aimlessly on the floor, and when she turned, he was startled how much she had aged. It was more than just the stark, atmospheric lighting; her features were drawn, sallow, the eyes exhausted.

‘They still have Ruari,’ she said softly.

‘Dear God, I’m so sorry,’ he said, cautious, defensive, not wanting to get too close to her. ‘What happened?’

‘A total bloody screw-up. The police, they raided the hideout – near Trieste. Yes, you were right about that, too. It was this morning, before the handover. Found two bodies. They think that one of them was the man we call Jan.’

‘What?’

‘They’re guessing, but the Trieste police believe the kidnap has been taken over by the hired help. Changed the rules of the game. It’s all just got worse.’

Harry was shaking his head in bewilderment.

‘They want five million euros, Harry. Five million. By Christmas Day. Or they will kill Ruari.’

Harry winced inside. ‘Kidnappers have to say those sort of things.’

‘I think they mean it. They’ve already left bodies scattered across Switzerland and now Italy. What’s one more? They mean it.’

He couldn’t deny her logic. ‘You seem . . . remarkably composed, in the circumstances.’

‘I don’t have a choice. If I wobble, lose control, even for a moment, I’ll fall apart. But I’m not going to. Ruari needs help not hysterics.’

‘So?’

‘J.J.’s running through town trying to find the money. Selling investments. Raising loans.’ She was about to say more, but changed her mind. There was no point. With the newspaper already drowning in debt, they’d already discovered that no one wanted to lend them more.

‘I heard. Will you be OK with that?’

‘It’s tough. Sean has said he’ll help.’

‘It seems he was right. That old bugger never did trust the police.’

She took a step towards him. ‘What can we do, Harry?’

‘It’s not for me to tell you and your husband—’

‘No, Harry,
we
! You and me.’

‘We?’

‘You have to help me!’ Her composure was beginning to slip. An urgency had crept into her voice and her body was beginning to shake. ‘J.J.’s dying under the pressure, can’t think, can barely function any more. The police have no clues, Archer is useless, we sent Hiley to Rome to wait for Ruari’s release . . . That only leaves you and me, Harry.’

‘Not me, Terri. I have no further part to play in this. Anyway, what can I do?’

‘Something, Harry! Do something, for God’s sake!’

Do something. The curse of the politician throughout the ages. Harry had never been one to make fatuous promises and he wasn’t in the mood for it now, particularly with a woman he desperately wanted out of his life. It wasn’t punishment, merely self-protection. Harry shook his head defiantly. ‘I can’t think of a thing that would make the slightest difference.’

‘There must be. You’re Harry Jones,’ she whispered.

And still he shook his head.

‘Even Sean’s going to Trieste,’ she said, her eyes brimming with accusation.

‘What’s the point? He’s unlikely to stumble over him on a street corner.’

‘At least he’s trying!’

‘He’s family.’

She was shaking with emotion, and despite all her defiance suddenly very close to falling apart. She took another step towards him, hesitant, uncertain, within touching distance now. ‘Harry, about the other night . . .’

‘When you—’ Immediately he regretted starting on the thought, couldn’t finish it, couldn’t be that cruel. But she knew where his mind had lodged.

‘When I ran out on you yet again.’

He sipped his whisky rather than respond or look into her eyes, but then quickly cast the glass to one side. Getting drunk wasn’t the answer. Her voice was steadier now.

‘I ran because I was afraid, Harry. I ran because I care so much about you.’

‘Seemed a strange way of showing it.’

‘You have no idea what you mean to me, do you?’ She was reaching for him, just as she had done in the park.

He took a sharp breath. He had no idea she would stoop this low. ‘What I think, Terri, is that you would do anything, say anything, to help Ruari.’

‘They’re not just words . . .’

‘I’ve done everything I can to help. Now leave me out of this. Please.’

She grabbed his arms. ‘You can’t be left out!’

‘Oh, just watch me.’ He tried to turn away, reach once more for his drink, but she held him too tight.