Chasing Innocence (44 page)

‘Up here,’ Ali answered.

Brian climbed the spiral stairs to a corridor flanked by desks. Ali stood at the end, hunched over a desk with a soft glow illuminating the front of his body. He was dressed in dark casual clothes. If not for the machete holstered against his thigh, he might have been checking paperwork before going for a meal.

Brian approached, relieved and on high alert at the same time. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Fancy that,’ Ali answered, intent on his task.

Brian looked around. The space was devoid of any other people, and the only light was on the desk.

‘Guess they’re going to need a new alarm.’

‘Looks like it,’ Ali said.

‘What about CCTV? They can make out all kinds of shit on those things.’

‘Not without power they can’t,’ Ali answered, flicking through a stack of papers, pausing at each page, his eyes searching and moving on.

‘No power’s going to draw attention.’

‘It did already. He’ll be back in fifteen, if I’m still here he’ll get twice as much.’

Brian debated the obvious, still cautious. ‘How’d you get here?’

Ali shifted a thick folder to one side and pulled across another, flipping it open. ‘A detective rang this morning at five, seemed to think you were the ace up his sleeve and thought you needed help. He gave me an address just down the road. Had to choke the pub out of the guy they had sentry inside.’ Ali’s fingers walked through the stack of paper. ‘Imagine my surprise, Brian, when this detective told me I was in the frame for your daughter’s kidnapping, considering we spoke Saturday night and there was no mention of
kidnapped
or
missing
.’

‘You’re pissed at me?’

Ali stopped at a page, studied it and moved to the next. ‘Pissed at you doesn’t come close, my friend. You knew this on Saturday and said nothing. That hurts, that really fucking hurts, after what we’ve been through.’

‘You were pissed at me then, you’re always pissed at me. On Saturday it was one guy and you were a breath from kicking my arse onto the street.’

‘You need to realign your perspectives, Brian, stop feeling sorry for yourself and making life miserable for everyone around you. Business and friendship are two different things.’

Which was all Ali had to say on the matter and Brian was in no state to argue with a six foot six Nigerian with a machete strapped to his thigh.

‘How’d the pub lead you here?’ Brian asked.

‘I watched them put you in the car. They dropped off one of the guys from the pub. We had a chat.’

‘You decided against coming to get me?’

Ali chuckled. ‘It was a toss-up between going after Andrea or you, and you can look after yourself.’

Brian leaned over a desk and plucked a headed sheet of paper from a tray, studying the header. ‘The marina,’ he realised. ‘You know which boat she’s on?’

‘
Passing Dream
,’ Ali answered. ‘Our problem is Grimsby’s got a marina, a harbour and a dock.’ He closed the last folder. ‘Except it’s not in the marina.’ He turned and for the first time faced Brian. ‘Christ!’ he said.

‘The two blonds,’ Brian said by way of explanation. ‘Now in the company of their good lord.’

Ali laughed, a deep basal sound that echoed in the space. He took two steps and draped a massive arm over Brian’s shoulder, directing him towards the stairs. ‘You, my friend, had better hope we find your daughter before that boat sails. I shall not be pleased if we have to tear Europe apart looking for her. And then when we’re done I will teach you a few hard lessons about friendship.’

EIGHTY-SEVEN

Simon knotted the towel around his waist and padded into the room. Sarah placed the book face down on her lap, her bare legs stretched straight out in front of her.

‘Sit there.’ She pointed to a space to the right of her feet and laid her hand on the book.

‘Why that exact spot?’ he asked, amused, exaggerating as he looked at the ceiling and pulled up the mattress, peering beneath.

‘Because I want to know about you,’ she replied. ‘How…what makes you such a gentle man and at the same time a monster.’

He stepped onto the bed, a brief flicker of hurt as he lowered himself to sit cross-legged. ‘We have thirty minutes before I have to go,’ he said, reaching and tugging the book from beneath her hand. ‘You must first tell me what you thought of the ending?’

She watched his hand as he lifted the book from her lap, trying to avoid looking at the blade that fell onto her shin with a barely audible sound and to the bed against her skin. She moved her leg a fraction and felt it slide cold beneath her calf. ‘Angels aren’t my thing,’ her voice a little uneven. ‘Why is the woman so important?’

‘It’s about what she becomes, and then her child in later books.’ He dropped the book onto the bed and rested a warm hand on her ankle. ‘I have the others, you might like them.’

She looked at him looking at her, searching for some hint he had seen the blade. He could only have seen and might even have heard. All she saw was love.

‘Tell me about those obligations you inherited,’ she said.

‘They were my father’s, passed on to me.’

‘That doesn’t sound very fair?’

‘It all depends on your perspective of fair. Fair is two people who agree terms. My father died because I killed him. His ideal of fair was not mine.’ Simon lifted both palms and looked at them, and then at her. ‘I killed him and inherited his obligations. Every action has a consequence.’

‘You killed your own father?’

He laid his hand back on her leg. ‘He deserved it. He made me what I am. My father died because his ignorance took something precious from me and that shaped what I would become. My mother played her part too. You’d never wish for anyone better to stand at your side, nor a worse enemy. Nor anyone more insecure, desperate for someone to notice the woman she was. I spent more nights in her bed than any man, for her peace of mind she said. I can’t stand the smell of women and their perfumes.’

‘You killed your mother as well?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t need to, cancer did that for me.’

From somewhere, which Sarah was sure came from inside her own head, she heard a child cry out.

‘What did they take from you?’

‘My sister,’ he answered. ‘They told me she was the daughter of my father’s friend. In fact she was the child of my father’s mistress. They put us together and never said a single word, for fear we would let slip the flaw in their married illusion.’

‘She was your sister and they never said anything?’

He shook his head.

‘What happened?’

‘What do you think? We fell asleep together and were made to be the guilty ones. She was sent back to Singapore.’ It was the first time Simon had told anyone.

Sarah shuffled closer to him.

‘We are not that different, you and I.’ She climbed her hands up onto his knees and let her mouth drift up across the skin of his chest, up around his neck, trailing damp hair across his shoulders.

‘I wish you would let the girl go,’ she said. ‘We two are meant to be together.’

‘You know I can’t,’ he replied.

‘I will persuade you, you know, in the weeks to come.’

EIGHTY-EIGHT

The sound of lifting boxes and bumping wheels was temporarily quiet, replaced by the light breeze and soft staccato of waves against the hull. Adam watched the stationary figure, a cigarette glowing, his shadow made long by the workshop light. He ducked down and edged along the narrow walkway.

He stopped at a sealed door in the bulkhead and struggled with the handle, managing to lift it out before swinging it open like any other. He moved inside, cautiously standing again and carefully moving through a kitchen to a space entirely fronted by curving glass. A darkly sleek console dominated the space. A leather chair faced a row of blank screens built into the console, a small round steering wheel and an array of neat dials and switches, a complementing leather sofa to the side. From here he had an elevated view of the quay and the service road, the warehouses looming in the middle distance.

He walked back through the kitchen into the main area, a mosaic set into the marble floor, the illuminated dock tower visible through the glass doors. He could hear a sound, like voices, too faint to discern but definite.

He climbed steps that rose another level through a hatch, to the bridge above and the open air. It was a near duplicate of the console he had already seen, an audience of sofas set on both sides. A canopy flapped above, but that wasn’t the sound he had heard. He went back down to the main deck and slowly down again another level, to a narrow corridor of polished wood. The sound was more distinct here, definitely voices, although too quiet to tell if one was Sarah’s. He moved towards a narrow door, pulling the knife from his pocket without even knowing he had.

EIGHTY-NINE

With her hands resting on Simon’s knees she was too far forward to easily reach behind her for the blade on the bed, and too far back for the one tucked between the bed frame and mattress. So she shuffled back and wriggled the shorts down over her knees and kicked them free. She felt the blade beneath her fingers as she pressed a palm behind her for balance and opened her legs wide for Simon.

‘I have decided you may kiss my body. You can start there,’ she said, tapping a finger against the inside of her thigh. He smiled and leaned forward as the door opened.

She immediately registered it was Adam without giving any thought or time to why, her mind too busy calculating opportunity. At the same time Simon glanced over his shoulder at the intrusion, which blocked her view of the door with the exposed flesh of his neck. The thick mass of muscle and ligaments that shielded his carotid artery. The perfect opportunity. Without pause and in a smooth motion she rocked her weight forward and swept her hand around towards the exposed flesh.

Simon saw the man in the doorway and was aware of Sarah’s sudden movement at the same time, reflexively ducking his head into the blow. The blade sliced across the curve of his jaw and up to the bone of his cheek, Sarah immediately cut back, left to right, with a second blow that hit hard and bit deep into the other side of his neck. Simon was only aware of her hand punching into his neck, not of what she held in her hand, just the cold intent in her eyes. He caught her arm as it came back for a third strike and clubbed the side of his fist into the side of her head. It spun her almost right around, over the edge of the bed, and unconscious before she hit the floor. A single blow that removed her as a threat, and more importantly for Simon, it meant if this was Hakan’s men come for her, they would have to get past him to get to her.

He rolled off the bed to face the intruder, feeling something warm on his shoulder. The blade had cut through skin and muscle and the surface of the artery, but not through it. He appraised the man in the doorway, only one man. Quite a tall man, lean with dark hair and bruises on his face. He was holding a knife. He was not one of Hakan’s men, simply because Hakan would not send only one man against him. And then the man did something that took Simon by surprise, mostly because it was the very last thing he should have done.

As the door swung open some part of Adam’s mind was already conditioning itself for what he was about to see. Seeing Sarah naked with another man was part of the inconsequential detail he stored for later processing. It was Sarah but it was not, she saw him but never took her eyes from her prey. He watched her arm strike twice, two fast pendulum blurs before she was knocked aside with no effort.

Seeing Sarah discarded like a rag doll overcame him with a dark vengeance, a blood lust and fury that inhibited his sense of self-preservation as Simon rolled off the bed to face him. Adam now stood face to face with his nemesis. The same man he had seen in ceaseless CCTV images, the man responsible for the here and now. A giant with a crimson slash across his face and blood oozing from a deep cut on his neck, seeping over his massive shoulders and chest. Adam did not need to think, he did not need to think about not thinking, he just did it. He ran at Simon.

He had seen Brian do something similar on the beach. It was no more than three strides across the room and having made the first two he slid to the floor and stabbed hard as Simon tried to hop sideways. The knife sliced through the towel and into the muscle and sinew of Simon’s thigh, the blade glancing off bone. He wrenched it out and plunged it in again and this time slashed, hoping to cut something important as Simon’s fist slammed into the side of his head.

The blow knocked Adam sprawling across the floor, almost shutting down all his cognitive processes. He looked up unfocused at a dark shape that filled his vision and got bigger. Hands laced through his hair and lifted him to his feet. A rising fist powered into him just below his chest and the join of his ribcage, compacting his diaphragm and paralysing his lungs. He gasped and then another punch. This one was like concrete slammed into him. The pain was instant and so deep it felt like Simon could wrap his fingers around his spine. Nothing had ever hit him so hard and nothing ever would again. Something inside him tore and he reeled backwards against the door frame, sliding to the floor. He looked down at himself, blinking and making out the familiar profile of his body. Hardly a blemish on the T-shirt but he knew inside he was broken.

Simon took a hesitant step closer to the man crumpled in the doorway, no longer a threat. He assessed his own injuries. Blood flowed freely from the wounds in his leg. He pulled the knife free and dropped it to the floor, then dropped to one knee, struggling to orientate himself, leaning forward with a fist on the floor, shaking his head as if trying to clear a fogged mind. He could feel the blood on his neck now, touched a finger to the cut, now torn wider, could see his own blood spurting across the room like a sprinkler in summer.

Adam coughed, more a spasm than a real cough, feeling something wet on his chin. He looked down and this time saw blood. He was sure it was not Simon’s, could see the big man’s eyes on him. He was leaning on one thick arm like some great Athenian mortally perplexed, his blood pulsing over the dresser and walls. Adam coughed again and again, his breaths short and gasping, the infrequent drum of his heart. White filled his vision like snow on a cold vista, not even sure now he was breathing. He felt nothing any more, had no sense of fear or regret.