Rant (9 page)

‘I assure you I'm not.'

‘Don't be so bloody silly. Have you been watching
The Godfather
again? And who the hell would trust you to kill somebody and get it right? You're more likely to kill yourself.'

I took offence at that and was about to argue when I realised that:

(1) As usual, she was absolutely right. Given how many near-death (or near-really sore) experiences I had had in the last twenty-four hours, I could hardly criticise
her
judgement.

And

(2) It was probably better not to panic her, as God only knew what damage she'd do if she thought I was telling the truth.

‘Never mind why,' I said instead, trying not to sound too huffy. ‘They just are. That's why they're holding you, Anna. To make sure I go through with some stuff they want me to do.'

‘I think you've got it muddled up, as usual. Typical of you, you always just see what suits you and lie to the rest of us to cover up how stupid you can be. They said you stole some money of theirs, you gormless effing tosspot, and they want it back.'

‘Look, just let me explain— I— Oh, whatever. But listen, they said they had my child. Our child. What child is this? Who the hell have they picked up with you? And could you please make sure they're not in the room with all that bad language.'

I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a few moments and then managed to slip in, ‘Whose is the child, Anna?'

‘
Our
child, shit-for-brains. I'm pregnant!'

That stopped me. Briefly.

‘What! What do you mean? Oh my God. You never even told me.' I was hyperventilating now, about to faint. Sam was looking a bit concerned over by the window, but he quickly shrugged it off and went back to watching out for the pizzas. ‘This changes everything. How could you not tell me?'

‘What do you mean it changes everything? You mean you wouldn't bother if it was just me being abducted by this bunch of rejects from
Allo, Allo
?'

I couldn't think of an answer for that, so I pretended the reception was bad and hissed down the phone, to more bemused stares from Sam.

‘How long have you known?' I eventually said.

‘I only knew for certain about a week ago. I wasn't sure how I felt about it.'

‘About what? About the baby?'

‘No, about telling you. I knew you'd overreact. Or
over-act
.'

‘What, you can tell Giorgio and Stephan and their gang of armed kidnappers but you can't tell your own husband?'

‘You
are
jealous, aren't you?' she said in that superior, I-knew-you-fancied-me-really sort of way that she has when she's feeling flirty. ‘Well to be honest they were a lot calmer than you usually are, so I thought I'd test it out on them first. So, what do you think?'

Reader, to tell the truth I didn't know what to think. To be honest, I was pretty much reaching the point where I was incapable of thought.

I noticed Sam was frowning at me.

‘We're having a baby,' I said to Sam.

‘Yes, I know,' said Anna, ‘I just told you that. I want to know how you feel about it.'

‘Is she alright?' Sam asked, impatiently.

‘Fine, yeah, okay, I think,' I said to Sam.

‘Is that all you can say?' Anna shouted, ‘You feel fine about it? You think?'

‘No, I was talking to Sam,' I told Anna.

‘Who?' said Anna.

‘A friend,' I said. Sam laughed. ‘He's a, er, agent, who's helping me.'

‘You've got some acting work?' asked Anna. ‘That's great. What with the baby and everything.'

‘What?' I asked.

‘Don't tell her I'm an agent, for God's sake!' hissed Sam.

‘You said you're with your agent,' said Anna.

‘Piss off,' I said to Sam.

‘What?' bawled Anna, and began to cry.

‘Not you,' I said to Anna. The crying was quickly muffled. I could picture her trying to hide it. ‘I love you,' I told her. She went quiet.

‘Look,' I said, trying to control the wobble in my voice, ‘I'd rather do all of this face to face, so the sooner we can get all of this out of the way and get together the better. I love you.'

‘I am love you too,' came back in a thick Eastern European accent, ‘and I am agreeing that we should be meeting. I am thinking we should get together on the tomorrow. Calling me tomorrow in the morningtime, so we can arranging this. Then we can be getting to know the details of what you arse doing for us and we can be arranging what to do with you wife and childs. We must be being the quick because your wifes is becoming very distressed and I am being worried this leads to violence.'

You bet it leads to violence,
I thought.
I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, Mr Kidnapper.

‘Can I speak to her again, please?' I said plaintively.

‘No. On the tomorrow, Mr Rant. Ciao!'

‘Wait!' I screamed. ‘At least give me a clue as to what the hell this is all about.'

Sam was mouthing a question again.

‘Whom do you want me to take out?' I asked. ‘Give me that much information at least.'

There was a prolonged pause and I was beginning to think he had gone. Then he said, ‘Okay. Just so that you can be doing your housework, likes a good boy. Your customer he is Bela Barbu. He is making the very interesting movies in Romania. Now I must gone.' And he was.

‘Well?' asked Sam.

‘Not really, thanks for asking,' I said.

‘What's going on?' he asked.

‘We're having a baby,' I said.

‘Well that's great, boy, but you're not going to be having anything – not even a wife – if we don't figure out what's going on. Who is the target?'

‘Er…Bella Barbie?' I said. ‘Or something like that. Some kind of director who makes films about Romania, I think he said.'

‘You think,' said Sam. He didn't look terribly happy.

‘Well I was a bit shocked by Anna's news. And he had a bit of a thick accent,' I finished, pathetically.

‘Right,' he said, obviously working hard to keep calm. ‘I assume Simon has internet access?'

‘I suppose so,' I said.

‘DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL, BOY!?' He had finally lost it. His face had gone bright purple and he stood up, looming over me and shaking his bound fists in my face.

Luckily, just at that moment the pizzas arrived and we both calmed down. (See, that's all it was. Just a bit tetchy because we hadn't had any supper.)

I paid with a fifty from my bag and of course the pizza guy had no change. I toyed with the idea of tying him up and beating him but decided my life was complicated enough. Instead I told him he could keep the change if he would run down to the local corner shop on his moped, and get us some beers and a couple of bottles of wine. I made him leave his wallet, just to make sure he came back, and guess what? He had loads of change in there. Cheeky bugger. I took a couple of tenners out and some small change.

Happily wolfing down half a pizza and some stale garlic bread, I switched on Simon's computer and waited for it to boot up. (It was next to his bed, so I pulled the sleeves of my shirt over my hands before I touched the keyboard. Well, you have to think of these things. Or I do anyway.)

While I waited I nosed through his bedside drawer. Oh, come on, don't act all high and mighty, we've all done it. I found lots of condoms. And two dildoes. And some KY jelly. And some rubber Laurel and Hardy face masks. Aren't people funny?

I went through and told Sam we were online. He pilfered the pizza slice with all the best bits on and disappeared.

I waited while he clicked and tutted away in the next room.

Eventually the drinks came. (The pizza guy asked for a tip. I told him my tip was, in future, not to leave his wallet behind after he'd claimed he had no change. He called me a poof and did a wheel spin in front of the house on his moped. Then he fell off, called me a poof again and started pushing his bike up the street. Luckily we both saw the funny side. Or I did anyway, and I didn't care whether he did.) I opened a bottle of wine and relaxed slightly for the first time that day. God, I felt miserable all of a sudden. Suddenly the whole situation began to sink in as my adrenaline level dipped.

Me, a dad?

About the only thing I knew about babies was that they were terribly expensive and made you settle down and get a proper job. Then they could grow up and sneer at you for being stiff and boring and conformist just long enough for them to get someone pregnant and the whole cycle could begin again.

I'm too selfish to be a father
, I thought.
I'm too busy screwing up my own life to concentrate on screwing up someone else's.
Though Anna would probably argue with that.

And before any of that I had to rescue them from some kind of lunatic fringe of the mafia.

And before any of that we had to finish off all this booze and pizza. Why can't life be simple?

Half an hour and half a bottle of wine later, Sam was back.

He looked at me oddly as he came back into the room and poured a glassful of wine – surprisingly neatly for a man with his wrists tied together.

‘You looked in his bedside drawer, didn't you?' I asked, innocently.

I could see he was about to angrily deny it, but then he snorted his wine out through his nose. When he'd recovered a bit he nodded, embarrassed. ‘Weird, huh? Which one would you rather be? I mean, which one would you rather have to look at if you were making love to someone?'

‘Neither really,' he said. ‘I'd just keep hearing someone say, “This is another fine mess you've gotten me into…”'

We giggled.

‘Anyway,' he said, ‘back to the business in hand. I think the target is a man named Bela Barbu. A Dagestanian “businessman” who migrated to Romania with aspirations to become a politician and take over certain less-than-legal operations there. He just happens to be flying in to London Heathrow the day after tomorrow.'

‘A businessman? Dagestan?'

‘A decidedly shady business man. Imports and exports are what he writes on his passport, but he usually deals mainly in pornography. And does very well from it, judging by the net worth of his company. And Dagestan is a small republic, formerly Soviet state, pretty much the centre of the new, Russian criminal mafia.'

‘There's a
non
-criminal Russian mafia?'

He conceded the point with a slow wobble of his head.

‘Hold on,' I said. ‘This is about pornography? You're telling me that the people who have kidnapped my wife are trying to steal dirty books?'

‘Well…it's more likely DVDs and internet software but—'

‘Don't “well” me! God knows what they could be doing to her! She could be tied up on a bed as we speak, with Stephan and Giorgio, being made to…made to…'

‘Wear Laurel and Hardy masks?' suggested Sam.

‘It's not funny!' I can feel myself on the verge of tears.

‘Whoa! Hold on a minute there, boy. I very much doubt this is about pornography. It has to be something else.'

‘Why does it? You said—'

‘I said that's where Barbu made his money.'

‘And?'

‘From what I've been able to dig up, it's all pretty tame stuff. I mean it's hardcore, but nothing out of the ordinary. The sort of stuff you can buy anywhere in Europe pretty much over the counter of your local convenience store.'

‘And?'

‘He makes this stuff, or the people who supply him make it, in Dagestan, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, where it's cheap. You're talking a three or four hundred dollars budget for making one of these. Three hundred pounds sterling, tops.'

‘And?'

‘Okay, if, say, you wanted to move in on his business—'

‘Which I don't, thank you very much. Even I can earn more than that as an actor. Well…on a good day.'

‘—then why, and this is the important bit, why would you blow fifty thousand pounds – that's enough to make a hundred films and have enough copies made to take over a large chunk of the market – why would you spend that money on killing him?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘You don't have to kill him for his porn. You just make your own if you have that kind of capital. We're talking about what is still an awful lot of cash in Eastern Europe.'

‘It's a lot to me, come to that.'

‘Yeah, well, imagine if your income was less than a hundred pounds a month. There's no equity union in Romania. Actors are cheap. Porno actors even more so. It's a buyer's market.'

‘So what does all this mean?' I was getting frustrated now.

‘That I don't know.' I sighed with exasperation but he went on, ‘I just know that Barbu must have something else, something much more important. I managed to do a little digging around and he's definitely getting into some heavy political lobbying, both here in the UK and at home. This guy has come from nowhere six months ago to suddenly having a shitload of support from a lot of very powerful people. He must have something they want, and want badly. And I think we can safely assume it's not kosher.'

I thought about this for a moment but it didn't help. I was still completely lost.

‘Okay, so what do we do now?' I asked. ‘Do you think we can go to the police?'

‘No,' he said, ‘I listened to the tape of your conversation and there still isn't really anything incriminating on there.'

‘But Anna—'

‘Even Anna thought you were making all of this up. And your conversation makes it sound like you're taking Mr Barbu to dinner. Do you still have the letter they sent?'

My heart lifted, then sank. I shook my head sadly.

‘In my car?' he asked. ‘The one you blew up? So we're still a bit sadly lacking in evidence that points toward anyone except you.'