Shadow Creatures (7 page)

‘Then I believe you have an envelope for me.’

‘For
you
?’

‘To transfer to my clients,’ he continued smoothly. ‘Unopened.’

Rhino removed a smaller white envelope from his own pocket. He slid it across the table. ‘This is a banker’s draft for half a million pounds. Being a banker’s draft, it cannot
be rescinded or cancelled. It is as good as cash.’

‘With the advantage,’ Tzuke said, taking the envelope, ‘of being a lot easier to carry. I would not want to be carrying around a briefcase with half a million pounds in it. Not
in this heat.’

Rhino indicated the envelope. ‘Don’t lose it. Mr and Mrs Wilkerson are depending on that money to free them. It would be tragic if it was carried away by a freak gust of
wind.’

‘Worry not. I will take all possible precautions with this envelope before passing it to my clients.’

Tzuke held the envelope up and stared at it for a moment. He ran his fingers along it, looking for the telltale bulge of an electronic tracking device, Rhino presumed. Finding nothing, he slid
the envelope into an inside jacket pocket.

‘As I said,’ Rhino murmured, ‘you
have
done this before.’

Tzuke ignored the taunt. ‘Was it their family or their employers who provided the money?’ he asked.

‘Does it matter?’

The solicitor shrugged. ‘I suppose not. I am merely interested in the generosity of people in the Western world towards relatives, friends and work colleagues.’

‘I take it your . . . clients . . . wouldn’t do the same for you?’

Tzuke glanced sharply at Rhino. ‘You and I both know what the penalty for failure, carelessness and bad luck is in our respective professions,’ he said quietly.

Rhino smiled. ‘You’re just a solicitor,’ he said, ‘and I’m just a postman.’ He paused. ‘What are the arrangements for the handover?’

‘I understand from my clients that the . . . goods . . . will be released in the port of Mogadishu, close to the British embassy. Then they will be on their own.’

‘And you know, of course, that if you
don’t
release them then nobody will ever pay a ransom again?’

Tzuke nodded.

‘Then I think our business is complete.’

Tzuke picked up his lemonade and drained it in one go. He reached into a jacket and pulled out a plastic bottle with a spray top. He sprayed the empty glass with some colourless fluid, and then,
using one napkin to pick up the glass, he used a second napkin to wipe the glass dry, then very carefully wiped down any part of the table that he might have touched, including the underneath.

‘More DNA and fingerprint paranoia?’ Rhino inquired.

Tzuke shook his head. ‘Call it a pathological desire to leave everything neat and tidy.’ Placing the glass down on the table, he stood up and retrieved his jacket from the back of
the chair. ‘I have taken the liberty of paying for another coffee for you. I suggest you stay here for at least twenty minutes before you leave. Do not try to follow me. Mr and Mrs Wilkerson
would not be happy if you did that.’

Rhino watched the man leave. As he sat there, draining the last bitter dregs of his espresso, he turned his mobile phone back on. Immediately it told him that he had a text message. He checked
it curiously, and was surprised to find that it was from Eduardo Ortiz – or Gecko, as Rhino had learned to call him. The message was terse, but informative.
Strange animal seen in Hong
Kong. Need your help to travel out and find it. Are you interested and free?

A strange animal? Presumably it wasn’t going to be anything the size of an Almasti. Maybe it would just be a snake, or a beetle, or something.

A few days away in a place he liked with a bunch of kids whose company he enjoyed? And presumably paid as well? What could go wrong?

T
he car was arriving at seven o’clock in the morning to pick up Calum and Tara.

Tara had slept in one of Calum’s spare rooms, and she had stayed up late working on ARLENE at Calum’s request: deleting all information from the robot’s memory on where they
had used it. Seven o’clock in the morning was a lot earlier than she normally got up. When she came out of the bathroom ten minutes before the car was due, she was rubbing her eyes –
smearing her heavy eyeliner – and yawning.

‘Sleep OK?’ Calum asked, sipping at the breakfast smoothie he had made himself. He had been awake for a while.

‘Uh, I guess,’ she slurred. ‘I kinda stayed up, checking stuff out on the internet. I’ve got a lot of background material on Hong Kong and the Triads that I can give to
Rhino, Gecko and Natalie before they go.’ She winced. ‘I think I lost track of time.’

‘What time did you
actually
go to sleep?’

‘About an hour ago.’

He raised an eyebrow and slid another smoothie across to her. ‘
A
couple of times I thought I heard you laughing. I guess that research must have been pretty funny, huh?’

She blushed, and wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘OK, I also got emailing with this guy I know. He was awake as well.’

‘
A
guy? You mean you were laughing and joking with an actual male person?’ He stopped and thought for a minute. ‘In
my
apartment?’

‘It’s not like he was actually
here
.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘It’s exactly the point.’ She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Besides, what were
you
doing awake so late?’

He wouldn’t look at her. ‘I kept waking up.’

‘Worried about today?’

He shrugged, not really wanting to talk about it.

‘It’ll be OK, you know?’ she said.

He nodded. ‘I suppose it will. I just don’t want to get my hopes up.’

She nodded. ‘I can understand that.’ She hesitated, putting her head to one side and staring at him. ‘The problem is, I think, that you want success to be all or
nothing.’

Her words stung him, because he’d come to the same conclusion himself, lying awake in bed, but he just scowled and said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean that you either want to be completely cured of your paralysis or not cured at all. You don’t want to have to compromise with a half-solution that still leaves you with
problems.’

‘And you’re a psychologist now, as well as being a computer programmer?’

‘Hey,’ she said, smiling, ‘if the brain is just an advanced computer, then the two are essentially the same thing, aren’t they?’

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘they aren’t, and you know it. Computer programmers deal in hard facts and testable algorithms, while psychologists just make good guesses based on
what people tell them and then try to pretend they have some big theory that backs it all up.’

‘Actually, I think that’s “psych
iatrists
, rather than psych
ologists
, but I know what you mean.’ She bit her lip briefly. ‘Did you ever . . . you know
. . . see a psychiatrist after the . . . the crash?’

He laughed bitterly. ‘“I keep seeing purple cows. Am I going mad?” “Tell me, have you seen a psychiatrist?” “No, only purple cows”.’

‘Look, if you don’t want to answer the question . . .’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry. I have a bad habit of getting sarcastic when someone asks me something personal. It’s a defence mechanism.’

‘You don’t say!’ she murmured innocently.

He glared at her, and then had to smile. She was just trying to help, he knew that. ‘Yes, I saw a psychiatrist for a while. Gillian arranged it. “Trauma counselling”, she
called it.’

‘Did it help?’

He shook his head, remembering the sessions he’d had in a small front room in an old three-storey house in north London. He’d still been in a wheelchair then. ‘He told me that
I was failing to acknowledge the truth of my injuries because, if I did, it would mean actually admitting that my parents were dead. I told him that I
knew
my parents were dead, and he was
just wasting Gillian’s money.’ Calum laughed briefly: a harsh sound. ‘If I could have walked out, I would have done. Instead we had to wait half an hour until the session was over
and Mr Macfarlane came to get me.’ The thought of Macfarlane made him glance at his watch reflexively. ‘Speaking of which, you’d better get that drink down your throat.
He’ll be here in a minute or two.’

Tara eyed the smoothie suspiciously. ‘What exactly
is
that thing?’

‘Goat’s yogurt, Manuka honey, kiwi fruit, bran and banana, all expertly blended together. It’s the best thing for you in the morning.’ He indicated the kettle. ‘The
water’s just boiled as well, and I got in some of those green-tea teabags that Gecko says you like.’

Tara glanced around and reached out for the sealed container of ground coffee that Calum kept on the counter. Opening it, she poured a large spoonful into a mug and then poured hot water from
the kettle into the mug. She swilled it back and forth for a bit, and then put it down. Looking around, she saw a large bowl in the sink. Retrieving it, she poured the breakfast smoothie into it,
then added the coffee, straining it through a tea strainer to remove the coffee grounds. Finally she whisked the whole lot together with a spoon, then raised the bowl to her lips and drained it in
one go.

‘That’s better,’ she said, yogurt still on her upper lip.

Calum watched with morbid fascination. ‘That was disgusting. And I thought Gecko said you’d given up coffee.’

‘I had, but it hadn’t given up on me.’ She gazed up at him through her black-encrusted eyelashes. ‘Look, I
need
the caffeine to keep me going, OK?’

He raised his hands in surrender. ‘OK, that’s fine, but you know that coffee isn’t actually a stimulant if you drink it regularly, don’t you? The apparent stimulant
effect is only due to the fact that your body gets used to it and gets withdrawal symptoms if it doesn’t get a regular dose, and what you
think
is a stimulant effect is actually just
your body avoiding the withdrawal symptoms.’

‘Whatever,’ she growled. ‘At least it makes me feel better.’

Calum frowned. ‘And by the way – that’s a very expensive coffee to be mixing with fruit and goat’s yogurt. If you’re going to do that again, then I’ll get
some instant coffee for you. I wouldn’t touch the stuff myself, but at least you won’t be depleting my special supply.’

Tara glanced at the container of coffee suspiciously. ‘Do you get that stuff imported?’

‘I do.’

‘Is it a special gourmet coffee?’

‘It is.’

She winced. ‘Please tell me it’s not that special coffee that I’ve heard about – the one where the ripe coffee berries fall off coffee bushes growing wild in the jungle,
and they get eaten by jungle cats, and by the time the seeds inside the berries have passed through the digestive system of the cats they’ve been softened by the stomach acids, so if
they’re collected from the droppings, and cleaned and roasted, then the resulting coffee is really sweet and not bitter at all. Please tell me it’s not
that
coffee.’

‘It’s
not
that coffee,’ he said reassuringly. After a pause, he added: ‘Although that particular coffee, which is called kopi luwak, by the way, is exceptionally
good.’

‘You’ve drunk it?’

‘I have.’

‘And this isn’t it?’

‘It isn’t.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I would have remembered.’

‘OK,’ she said dubiously.

‘This is an organic nkempte from Ethiopia. It hasn’t been near – or through – any cats. Trust me on that.’ Calum took the bowl from her with one hand and put it in
the sink. He paused, thinking, then turned back to Tara. ‘It’s civet cats in Indonesia that eat the coffee berries,’ he said seriously. ‘And, yes, the enzymes and acids in
their stomachs do soften and sweeten the seeds – the bits that we call the coffee beans. The trouble is that the local Indonesians, knowing how much the coffee sells for in the West, have
taken to capturing the civet cats, keeping them in battery cages in their thousands, and feeding them any old coffee berries that they can find. They’ve turned something special in nature
into something grotesque in farming. I stopped drinking the stuff when I found out.’

‘Good for you,’ Tara said as the door buzzer sounded.

Calum called out, ‘Come in, Mr Macfarlane!’

The door opened. Standing there was Mr Macfarlane, the chauffeur and handyman of Calum’s Great-Aunt Merrily. He was small – smaller than Tara – with close-cropped hair that was
barely distinguishable from the stubble that spread across his cheeks and chin. He wore a pinstripe suit with a waistcoat and a spotted tie. He had always reminded Calum of a cross between a garden
gnome and an East End gangster.

‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said in a husky voice. He nodded towards Tara. ‘Ma’am.’

‘We’re heading off towards Farnborough,’ Calum told him. ‘I can give you the exact address when we get closer.’

‘You’ve got a satnav?’ Tara asked. ‘If not, we can use my tablet. I’ve got a 4G connection and a GPS chip, so it’s always receiving.’

Macfarlane tapped his forehead. ‘Don’t need a satnav, ma’am. It’s all up ’ere.’ He glanced back at Calum. ‘You got a box for me, sir?’

Calum indicated the crate containing the bionic leg braces. ‘We’ve got to take that with us. Can you manage?’

‘I can manage stuff bigger than that, sir, with respect.’ He frowned. ‘But what about . . . ?’

Calum felt his muscles tense, and forced himself to relax. Macfarlane was talking – or, rather,
not
talking – about the wheelchair. It was use the wheelchair to get down to
the limousine or be carried. Calum didn’t particularly fancy either option, but of the two the wheelchair was the least objectionable. Marginally.

He turned his head to look at Tara. ‘Would you . . . ?’ he started, unexpectedly tongue-tied, ‘I mean, could you . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply, ‘of course I could.’

Calum was about to ask her how she knew what he meant, but she was already going to the cupboard near the door where he kept his wheelchair.

‘Don’t worry,’ Tara murmured. ‘I won’t tell anyone about it. At least, I won’t if you keep quiet about me falling off the coffee wagon.’