Silencer (11 page)

We’d passed a whole stream of posters along the way showing a girl gripped in a huge clenched fist being exchanged for a handful of dollars. I didn’t know precisely what the caption said, but it was pretty fucking obvious. I wondered if there were any other countries in the world that had to publicize the perils of people-trafficking alongside the attractions of Diet Coke and Nescafé.

Lena didn’t have much solid intelligence on Diminetz, but was able to tell me he didn’t have a home: he hung out in the kind of five-star hotels that had sprung up in Chisinau to suck money out of people like him. Off his tits on drink and drugs most of the time, he shagged his life away between deals. Frank was right. This lad might have a big wallet, but it hadn’t lifted him out of the gutter.

Lena had listed my most likely targets and I’d already tried the Maxim Pasha and the Prezident in the centre of town. Number
three was just outside, in a park called Valley of the Roses. Not that I could see any.

It was a large, two-storey, rectangular shrine to the God of White Walls and Glass. A veranda fringed the first floor like a crinoline, possibly in an attempt to give the place some kind of colonial vibe. Lights glowed; expensive cars gleamed on the gravel forecourt. An island of cash floating in a sea of corruption.

I went up a short flight of black brick steps and in through a pair of gold-sprayed, aluminium-framed doors. The riot of brass and multicoloured fabric that hit me as soon as I’d crossed the threshold was like an artist’s impression of a migraine. Saddam Hussein would have felt completely at home there. Maybe he’d lent them his interior decorator; the only bit of Baghdad chic missing was a gold bust of the great man at the reception desk.

The signs were all in Moldovan with English translations, and the woman sitting behind them had scraped-back jet-black hair and drawings for eyebrows. I nodded at her as I passed, scanning the mauve chairs, swirling Oriental carpets and futuristic red lightshades. Moldovans kept their heads well below the parapet and never asked questions; it was a prerequisite of survival in this neck of the acid-rain-drenched woods. Even the shopkeepers never asked you how your day was or if they could help. They just left you to do whatever you needed to do. Old habits die hard.

It was dinnertime. Maybe Diminetz was sitting quietly with a nice bowl of boiled cabbage, but I doubted that was his style. In any event, the restaurant was the last place I’d check. I’d have to have a reason to go there – to eat or to meet – and I’d draw unwelcome attention to myself if I then walked away.

The bar and terrace were another matter. I could wander through them to my heart’s content. If they were empty, I would try the gym and the swimming-pool, but something told me that Diminetz wasn’t the sort to pump iron or clock up lengths. He had money to burn before it all ended in tears, and Lena had given me the impression he kept the furnace roaring.

I headed for the sliding patio doors, which were open just enough for one person to pass through. It would have made a
nice spot for dinner, but now it was a smoking area. A scattering of couples chatted over a glass of something and a cigarette. Three or four women sat on their own, each with a thick layer of make-up and weapons-grade hairspray. They weren’t there for the repartee. They cast an eye over me: I was alone and not about to join the natives in Marlboro Country. I had to be a foreigner and a potential punter.

For all the glitz, teak flooring and shiny chairs and tables the terrace had to offer, it had one glaring design flaw. The air-conditioning units that fed the rooms above were busy sucking up the smoke and dribbling condensation onto the deck in return, but nobody seemed to mind.

I moved back inside, past the bright red velvet curtains and migraine-triggering wallpaper, following the sound of loud voices and laughter.

Diminetz and his entourage sat around a small cluster of low tables piled with nuts and bottles in the bar area; six of them, in leather bucket chairs. He held court with a glass of something expensive in his hand, telling some joke by the look of it; everyone was very attentive apart from the two BG in black suits who seemed much more interested in whichever stockinged thigh was nearest to them.

I perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, ordered a Coke and busied myself with a bowl of pistachios. It was easy enough to keep eyes on the group. The wall behind the optics was mirrored. Diminetz faced away from me. His hair was a bit longer than it had been in the picture and he’d put on a bit of weight. He looked like any other dickhead in his early thirties with a big gob and too much money. His girlfriend wasn’t the normal pick-up for the night, though. She was in severe need of a few plates of chips. The rings around her eyes matched her frizzy dark-brown hair and her shoulder-blades stuck out from her strapless blue dress like shelf brackets. You could have fitted a wedding ring around her arms. Her look was more underfed whippet than heroin chic. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against the competition on the terrace.

Diminetz dominated the room. The other customers did their
best to ignore the noise as he gobbed off at a hundred miles an hour. I stole a glance at the BG. They were older, forties maybe; efficient haircut with a touch of grey at the temples. They’d seen a bit, judging by the state of their noses, but were now monstrously overweight. This was probably the best job they’d ever had: money, drink and women. What more could they ask for? Looking after a total dickhead just went with the turf.

Diminetz sparked up a cigar the size of a broom handle. The smoking area was clearly only for law-abiding morons. A haze of blue smoke billowed above his head and drifted round the room. The barman was unimpressed. He turned and walked to where his boss was standing. Both wore little red waistcoats, white shirts and bow-ties. The barman waffled away in an urgent whisper, but his boss just shrugged. What the fuck could they do?

23.56 hrs

I sat in a gilt and green velvet chair in Reception with my latest cup of coffee, the remains of a club sandwich and another bowl of pistachios on a table in front of me. I flicked through the last of the pile of magazines I’d worked hard at looking engrossed in.

I’d been there for about an hour, drinking, snacking and paying in cash while Diminetz and his entourage continued smoking, hollering, laughing, shouting and drinking too much. He didn’t look the gangster, organ-trafficking kind of guy, just a dickhead. But that’s the problem with people: you can never tell. I thought I saw the odd recreational item getting popped as well, but maybe they kept some ready-shelled pistachios in their pockets.

I’d had to leave the bar after an hour or so: there’s only so long you can hang around with a Diet Coke. Staying in Reception was fine because, unless they had a rush of blood to the head and relocated to the terrace, they couldn’t go anywhere without passing me.

The shrieks and laughs got louder as the evening wore on. My biggest problem now was boredom. I’d read every article singing Moldova’s praises as a wonderful holiday destination and focus for investment.

My iPhone started to vibrate and spin on the half-nutshell I had
balanced it on to pass the time. I’d texted Anna an hour ago:
Saw L. Boy OK?

Her reply was:
Boy good
.

I deleted the message so the phone stayed sterile. She wouldn’t contact me again until I contacted her – she was far too switched on. But I still needed to know how Anna and my boy were doing.

The young woman at Reception was getting ready for the long night ahead. She’d retreated to the back office, behind a frosted-glass screen. I could hear the gentle jabbering of a TV through the half-opened door. To the right of it hung two cardholders on blue lanyards. They were some distance away from the card-enabling machine behind the counter, so they had to be the admin keys.

The noise from the bar suddenly got louder. The group was on the move. As they squeaked their way across the glossy brown floor tiles, the whole entourage looked very much the worse for wear. There was a little bit of staggering as they swivelled towards the stairs, and a few giggles as they anticipated the fun and games ahead.

Diminetz was in the middle and having to bend down a little to get his hand on where the whippet’s arse should have been. His two BG were having more success: they were deep in conversation with the other girls, or possibly just nibbling their ears; one’s fingers brushed his girl’s hip, the other was going straight for the bra straps. All this lot were interested in now was shagging. That was what I hoped, anyway.

I waited until they’d turned on the landing and headed for the second flight, then got to my feet. I followed the noise up the plush Oriental carpet.

As I reached the first floor, I raised my head slowly to see them splitting off to their rooms either side of the dimly lit corridor. Diminetz and his woman carried on all the way down to the end and turned right, out of sight. The other two had a couple of goes at getting their cards into the slots of the Onity locks and finally fell into their rooms.

I legged it down the corridor, stopping short of the turn, in case Diminetz had his hand up the whippet’s skirt in his doorway or was still concentrating hard on his key card.

I eased around the corner to find that the corridor was empty. There was only one entrance, about four or five metres down, to the Presidential Suite. No surprises there, then. I shoved an ear to the door and heard muffled giggles. There would probably be a maze of different rooms in the suite, and they could be in any of them.

I pushed down gently on the handle, but of course it was locked.

I moved back towards the staircase and eventually found the cleaners’ store, and three carts loaded with bedding, towels, Aveda products, pencils and pads ready for the next day. I squeezed past them and closed the door behind me. I checked the pinnies and the contents of a couple of lockers, then the carts themselves, in case a master key card had been tucked into one of the pockets. But there was nothing.

I pulled the scrap of paper from my sock and texted the number:
OK for tonight? Maybe in an hour?

29 August 2011

01.15 hrs

I lay facing the door with a rolled-up bath towel as a pillow, munching on the complimentary chocolate wafers that went with the sachets of Lipton’s tea. They seemed to follow me everywhere. I kept one eye in line with the gap at the bottom in case anyone passed. If Diminetz left early, I’d have to follow or intercept.

I checked the time display on my iPhone. If it didn’t happen now, it never would. I got up onto my arse and took off my Timberlands, tucking them neatly under the front cart. I had no idea why, I just felt like it. Then I put the wooden doorstop that the cleaners used while moving the carts in and out alongside them.

I eased the door open a fraction, checked up and down the corridor and moved swiftly to the stairs. My socks left a few sweat marks behind me on the lobby’s polished tiles as I got a bit of a stride on towards the desk, but I wasn’t really bothered: they’d soon evaporate. I focused instead on what needed to happen when I got to the desk.

The brain has two orbs. One processes numbers and analyses information, the other is the creative bit, where we visualize things – and if you visualize situations, you can usually work out
how to deal with them in advance. The more you visualize, the better you’ll do so. It might sound like something from a tree-huggers’ workshop, but it does the business.

I moved through an archway, my mind fixed on what I was going to do, when and how I was going to do it – and, more importantly still, how I was going to react if things went to rat-shit. I realized immediately there was something that might fuck it all up; I undid the steel buckle of my belt, pulled it out of my jeans, and left it on the chair I’d used earlier. The highly polished wooden top of the reception desk was the barrier between me and my target.

The TV was still jabbering in the office and I could just about make out the back of the black-haired woman’s head. It was tilted to the right, as if she was asleep, or well on the way. I put my hands on the desktop, stood on the tips of my toes and pulled myself up onto my stomach. I went rigid so I could stretch further, and my fingertips brushed the cardholders hanging by their lanyards from a row of pegs. A couple more lunges and I managed to grab one.

I padded back into the hallway, retrieved my belt and headed back up the stairs.

These things are easy to do once you get yourself into the right mind-set. You don’t faff around and write a 6,000-word thesis in your head. You just have to plan, visualize, then get on with it.

Timberlands back on, I shoved the wedge down the front of my jeans and headed for the Presidential Suite, picking up a laminated Do Not Disturb sign from one of the door handles on the way. I carried my belt in my left hand.

As I passed the two BG’s rooms, I gave them both a quick ear to the door. There was no noise from the first one, and the sound of music mixed with lots of grunts and moans and cries of ‘S
chön! Schön!
’ from the next. Either they’d suddenly become fluent in German or the porn channel on the TV was getting a good seeing-to.

I turned right, transferring my wallet from my back pocket to the more secure front. I listened for a moment at Diminetz’s door. I couldn’t hear a thing. I slid the master-card into the lock. It gave a weak bleep and a dull green LED sparked up. Keeping the belt in my left hand, I slowly pulled down the handle. The door opened about fifteen centimetres, then stopped. Diminetz had flicked on the safety bar.

Pulling it back about five centimetres, I pushed the end of the Do Not Disturb sign against the bar. The card was flexible but the plastic lamination kept it more or less rigid. That was exactly what I wanted. Like most hotel safety latches, this one consisted of a long steel U, hinged at the end attached to the frame, which fitted over a bulbous steel thumb on the back of the door. I now had to close the door as far as possible so the base of the U was as near as it could be to the end of the thumb, and therefore to
disengaging. When the door was virtually shut, I pushed and jiggled the card until the catch popped.