To Tell the Truth (3 page)

Besmir picked up the puppy and it immediately started licking his face and nuzzling him. He pulled the puppy away and put it back on the floor.

‘I’ll get the girl.’ He headed for the door.

‘Leka is on his way,’ Elira said.

‘Good.’ Besmir went out and down the narrow stone staircase to the car.

He looked around the street before he opened the boot. All was quiet, so he clicked it open. The girl’s eyes were wide and blinking. A shaft of setting sunlight streaming between the buildings lit up her face, making her eyes the brightest blue he’d ever seen. It looked at odds with the dark hair and pale face. For a second, he thought the girl was going to smile, but she just stared at him, bewildered. He reached in and picked her up. He held her close to him in case she would start to scream. She felt soft and warm. Like the puppy. He went quickly upstairs. Elira opened the door. As soon as the kid saw her, her lip quivered. The sob started somewhere in her chest like a choking, muffled breath, then exploded in an agonising wail. Besmir handed her to Elira who tried to shush her, but the girl was inconsolable.

‘Ah, ssssh … shhhh baby … Sssh.’ Elira sat down on the sofa and rocked her against her heavy bosom.

But the girl sobbed, huge tears running down her face. Besmir looked away. Then the puppy clambered up beside them.

‘Look. Look,’ Besmir said. ‘Look at your little friend.’ He held the puppy close to the girl and she stopped crying instantly.

She looked at the puppy, then at Elira and Besmir, and she started to bubble again, but it was more of a sniffle. The puppy kept licking her face, and she stopped.

Besmir and Elira glanced at each other when they heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by one loud knock at the door and then the voice they knew. Besmir walked across the room and slid the heavy bolt across and opened the door. Leka stepped in.

‘Besmir.’ He stood for a second and they looked at each other.

Leka’s mouth curled a little, but his eyes were cold. He nodded and looked beyond Besmir to the girl on Elira’s lap and back to Besmir. Now he did smile.

‘You did good, my friend.’

Besmir said nothing. You didn’t make idle chat with Leka. You did what was required and you left. But he knew better than to ask for his money. Leka looked at him, as though reading his thoughts. He touched Besmir’s arm.

‘All in good time, Besmir.’ He walked over to Elira and bent to kiss her on the cheek and run his hand gently over her face.

‘You have a pretty baby there, Elira, yes?’ He surveyed the little girl who was so preoccupied with the puppy she didn’t even look at him. He took hold of her face and gently turned it towards him. Leka made a soft whistling sound with his lips.

‘The eyes, Elira. Look at the eyes. Beautiful. I think her price just went up.’

He walked across to the window and opened one of
the shutters a little. The dismal room suddenly looked less glum.

‘Besmir?’ He didn’t turn around. ‘There is a change of plan my friend.’

Besmir’s stomach tightened. Leka turned to face him.

‘I want you to deliver the girl to Morocco. To Tangiers.’

Besmir opened his mouth to speak. Leka put his hand up as though to stop him.

‘Don’t worry, it will be safe. I have it all planned. I just don’t trust anyone else to do it.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the girl. ‘Look how successful you have been here. You showed that you have good instincts by taking the girl the way you did. How could I trust anyone else to finish the job?’

‘But Leka,’ Besmir hoped his voice didn’t sound desperate. ‘You promised. We agreed. My job was only to get her.’

He folded his arms and stood tall. But Leka was taller, and he looked down at him.

Leka nodded. ‘I know. I know, Besmir.’ His steely eyes fixed him. ‘But this is new business. Totally new. We have never done this before. Nobody has. And I want to do it well. The people in Morocco have plans for this one. They never expected us to pull it off, but we have. And I want to prove to them that we can do anything. We are in charge here.’ He sighed. ‘You must. Then you can have what you need.’ He put his hands in his pockets. ‘But to be honest, it would be my wish for you to remain working for us. You are strong and fearless. So are lots of my men. But you, Besmir, you are not stupid. You are different.’

He turned back to the window.

‘Go now and come back tomorrow at four. Everything will be arranged for you.’

Besmir looked at Elira who looked back blankly. He felt the colour rise in his cheeks. He knew he had no choice.

‘OK, Leka,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’

CHAPTER 3

The Rt. Hon. Michael Carter-Smith MP turned back the cuffs of his immaculate white linen shirt and pulled the gold Rolex watch over his suntanned wrist. He walked closer to the mirror to examine his face, smooth and tanned after twelve days in the sun. His bronzed complexion made his eyes an even deeper blue, striking as they already were, fringed with thick black lashes. The newspapers and magazines who were fascinated by him always said he looked a decade younger than his fifty-one years, and he knew it. And, as they often added in veiled reference to his homosexuality, the Home Secretary wasn’t just a pretty face.

No. Carter-Smith was the acceptable face of New Labour. The face that had helped get them elected because it was he who was instrumental in them winning over the Middle Englanders whose traditions were steeped in Toryism, but who had become disillusioned after Thatcher’s reign. If someone like Carter-Smith, the privileged son of a wealthy banker, with credentials that were
true-blue Tory, could put himself at the centre of New Labour, then perhaps they’d give the Party a chance. And they did.

His appointment to the Home Office after they won the General Election was not unexpected: it had been leaked to the newspapers before it was announced. Carter-Smith made sure of that. Nobody did underhand tactics better than he. The campaign trail was littered with the political dead he’d backstabbed as he climbed his way to the top. When he came out of the closet and was outspoken about his homosexuality a year before the General Election, his kudos actually went up. He had made sure the story emerged in such as way that even the buttoned-up old cloth caps in the Labour ranks would admire him.

You could send Carter-Smith anywhere. He could charm the wives at the working men’s club in his constituency just as much as the ladies who lunched at the Dorchester. Men loved to hate him, but they accepted him, and everyone admired him. The gay community, of course, had much to thank him for, and they all did – with their votes.

No red-top tabloids had ever turned Michael Carter-Smith over. Even those who hated New Labour wouldn’t dare, because he was the very soul of discretion in his private life. He had to be. The Home Secretary’s little sexual peccadillo was his penchant for fresh young teenage boys. He loved the danger almost as much as the thrill and responsive enthusiasm of their tight young bodies. He never made mistakes. The word arrogant was invented for him …

He looked at the time. In precisely one hour he’d be on board the yacht of his multi-billionaire Russian businessman friend. If the tabloids got a sniff of that, they’d be all over him. He left his bedroom and headed down the marbled hallway to the living-room where his oldest chum, Oliver Woolard, was waiting for him.

‘Ah, Michael.’ Oliver handed him a drink. ‘Shaken, just enough to excite it, but not stirred,’ he said. ‘Just the way you like it.’

Carter-Smith grinned. He knew Oliver could never resist a dig. They had been at boarding school together and nobody knew more of his secrets than Oliver Woolard did. But Carter-Smith knew plenty of his too, and he watched, amused, at Oliver fawning over his beautiful wife, Connie, as though she was the only woman who had ever lived. But before the night was out, no matter how beguiling his wife was – and she truly was – he would be lapping up the variety of young women served on a plate for him by their Russian host.

Michael knocked back half his martini and put the glass down on the table. He looked at his watch.

‘Come on, Oliver. Car will be waiting.’

Oliver gave Connie a lingering kiss on the lips and held her lush dark mane of hair before letting it tumble onto her bare shoulders. He squeezed her bottom, encased in a tight electric-blue satin dress.

‘I might be terribly late, darling. Don’t wait up.’ He kissed her hand.

All dressed up, nowhere to go … ? Michael kissed Connie on the cheek as they left, wondering if she felt
sufficiently warmed up now for the young fitness instructor who would steal into the villa by the time their car was arriving at the harbour in Estepona.

Michael had only been staying with the Woolards for a few days when he noticed the attention Connie was getting from the young man, her personal trainer from the hotel beach club nearby. In fact, he’d even heard them one afternoon when he returned to the villa while Oliver was out on business. He didn’t blame her. He assumed Oliver knew about Connie’s little distractions while her husband was empire-building across the world. If he did, he had never spoken about it, but then ‘all’s fair in love and war’ was Oliver’s motto.

The days Michael had spent with his friends in their sumptuous villa in the hills high above Marbella had been idyllic, filled with leisurely lunches, and lavish dinners in nearby restaurants where the Woolards were adored. It had become an annual jaunt for the Home Secretary: an opportunity not only to catch up with his old friend, but also to get away from London and do exactly what he wanted – as long as he managed to give his private protection officers the slip. And when he felt the urge, he had only to make a phone call to a contact on the Costa and something would be discreetly arranged, to his particular taste and at an address not too far away …

As they got into the car, they both looked up to where Connie was blowing them a kiss from the terrace. In the back seat, Michael glanced up again and thought she looked slightly forlorn. Oliver’s mind, though, was already miles away, focusing on his next business.

When the Daimler dropped them on the harbour, close to the yacht, the two men were greeted by an elegantly dressed but stern-faced East European man in his thirties, who raised his eyebrows enquiringly as though waiting for them to introduce themselves.

‘Would you be good enough to tell Mr Daletsky that Michael Carter-Smith is here, please?’ He smiled engagingly.

The man said nothing, but beckoned them to follow him. As they did so, Michael noticed the bulge of a gun on the back of their escort’s finely tailored suit. They walked up the gangplank onto the yacht. Moored discreetly at the far end of the harbour and as big as a cruise liner, it was a splendid, gleaming vision in the setting sun. Here, multi-million-pound floating palaces took pride of place, far enough away from the people who merely
thought
they were rich with their half-a-million-pound yachts. There was so much money here in the port it was mesmerising; and most of it was dirty. But none of that bothered Carter-Smith.

On the open deck, wearing cream flannels and a black shirt, and surrounded by sycophants, stood Viktor Daletsky, oil baron, electronics magnate and exporter. He also had other credentials on his formidable CV, if you believed the tabloids. And a small, deep scar on his cheekbone told of a way of life far removed from the one he was living now. But nobody knew enough, or had enough proof, to write about it.

As Michael and Oliver walked onto the deck, Daletsky excused himself and made his way towards them.

‘Michael.’ His Russian voice was deep and rich. He stretched out his hand. ‘So glad you could come. How are you my friend?’ he said, flicking a glance at Oliver.

‘I’m very well, Viktor, very well indeed. How are you?’ He turned his body towards Oliver. ‘This is Oliver Woolard, of Woolard Institutions, who we’ve spoken about a few times … ?’

Daletsky raised his eyebrows and shook Oliver’s hand vigorously.

‘Oliver. I am very pleased to meet you. Very pleased. I hope we can have some time to talk tonight.’

He ushered them towards a podium where a waiter was opening a bottle of Krug. Three stunning, very young, Eastern European women stood by. Oliver’s eyes lit up.

‘Some champagne,’ Daletsky said, handing Michael a champagne flute so fine he could have shaved with it. Then one to Oliver.

‘We must drink to new friends.’ He raised his glass. ‘To new possibilities.’ He made eye contact with Oliver.

‘To new possibilities,’ Oliver said, as one of the young girls sidled a little closer to him.

Daletsky took a mouthful of his champagne then put down his glass. He looked across the deck and nodded to a tall man in a black suit who had just arrived.

‘Excuse me, for the moment, gentlemen.’ He crossed to greet the newcomer, who stood silently surveying his surroundings.

Daletsky lowered his voice, but Carter-Smith heard him address the man as Leka.

CHAPTER 4

As usual, the splendour of the five-star hotel was lost on Rosie. By the time she arrived at the Puente Romano in the heart of Marbella, her head was already buzzing, thinking how she could take the story forward so she’d have a good line for Monday’s paper.

Since the kid went missing yesterday, a formidable pack of big hitters from UK newspapers and television would be there already. They would be all over this story, pushing for exclusives, while theories and motives on the kidnapping were aired and dissected over hearty dinners by journalists on bloated expense accounts. They were always bloated when they went out of town on a job – especially on a foreign. Most hacks saw expenses as a kind of fine for taking you away from your own bed, your family, and what the rest of the world call a life, and replacing it with the frenetic round-the-clock graft of an assignment abroad.

The bottom line for Rosie was this: if she was abroad on a story, someone was dead – usually, a lot of people
were dead. That kind of shit got to you after a while. So what if she ate some decent lobster washed down with a glass or two of vintage wine. It was by way of compensation for making her the dysfunctional human being that all frontline journalists eventually became.