Whistle Blower (31 page)

JAN WAS ALSO on the E19 heading towards Antwerp and home to Brussels. But, near Breda and unable to resist the temptation any longer, he pulled off, went into a rest area and plugged the voice recorder into his own laptop on the passenger seat and listened. Not bad. He smiled to himself, then phoned Jonathan.

"The first piece of recorded evidence, Jon. Guido's voice in full soprano. Tell Jim. I'm now heading home. Any idea where Tom is?"

Tom Hanrahan was still driving south in his small rented Opel following the big BMW's red lights and wondering whether it was heading for Brussels—in which case he was worried he might lose it. But suddenly he saw its orange indicators come on and take the N16 into Mechelen. It was now ten o'clock, the traffic much lighter. At a junction, dominated by a tall, red and yellow McDonalds sign, the BMW turned and headed straight for the McDonalds car park. Tom followed. He parked behind a sign that said Family Combo Special and sat and watched the BMW. Nothing happened for twenty minutes. Then the driver's door opened and the tall woman emerged. In the street lighting, Tom saw that the headscarf was gone. Instead, long black hair hung below her shoulders. She was a smart-looking woman in a dark suit and she wandered around her own car, speaking on a mobile phone. Tom got out, strolled passed the Play Place, around a short hedge and stood in the shadow. He wrote down the BMW's registration number and returned to his own car to watch as the woman got back into hers.

The area was even quieter and darker now. A light drizzle was falling but a few cars were still using the drive-in. Then a big black Mercedes turned into the car park, circled around and parked a few spaces from the BMW. Tom watched a small, round man in a suit get out, open the rear passenger door and pull out an umbrella that seemed to sparkle in the lights. He put it up over his head and strutted quickly around to the passenger door of the BMW, shook the umbrella and got in. It could only have been a few meters but the man seemed determined not to get wet. Five minutes later, the rain had stopped and he emerged carrying the laptop that Jan had used and the rolled-up umbrella. He gave a delicate wave to the woman in the BMW, opened the rear door of the Mercedes, put the umbrella on the back shelf, shut the door and got into the front. Then he drove off.

Tom now followed the Mercedes at a safe distance, but too far to read its registration plate. 

IN SIERRA LEONE, driver Mitchell was, as usual, the last to arrive back at the yard of Mambola Transport Enterprises. It had been another long, hot day and the sun was just setting in a red ball over the Atlantic Ocean beyond the fence and through a row of silhouetted coconut palm trees. He reversed the truck into his allocated space next to the concrete block building that was the company headquarters, switched his engine off and jumped down. Van drivers Samson, Big Saidu and George were sitting together, smoking on the wooden pallets in the lengthening shadows.

"What's up my man?" Mitchell called to the three.

"Mr. Suleiman, he want to see you," said Big Saidu.

"Him very serious this day," added Sampson, grinning. "He tok about that bastad Moses, say he know now he big teef and skimmer. Say he have proof. Say he wanna speak to you, Mitchell. You must go, fast like. He's in the office."

"OK," said Mitchell. "But you got any watta, man? I gave all my watta to lady who sell banana but still not get any free banana."

Mitchell knocked on Mr. Suleiman's office door and went in.

"Ah, Mitchell. We have a serious matter."

"Something I did, Mr. Suleiman?"

"No, no. It's that bastard Moses. He is a criminal, Mitchell, a big time crook, a scammer and a thief."

"You see, Mr. Suleiman? I told you."

"Yes, but my cousin Cole in England told me more."

"Sorry, Mr. Suleiman." 

"Now then, Mitchell. Tomorrow I need you to be like that big, fat lady from Botswana. You know who I mean? The lady detective—except you are not a lady."

Mitchell scratched his head.

"I have a plan, Mitchell. Tomorrow you must deliver some boxes to Rocki General Supplies."

"How many, Mr. Suleiman?"

"I don't know, perhaps ten. The number is not important, Mitchell. Listen and do not interrupt. Tomorrow you will deliver some boxes to Rocki General Supplies. They are water purifiers that were lost at the airport but now found. It will be a nice surprise for Mr. Moses so when you turn up he will be very pleased to see you. Now—listen, Mitchell. Tell him you want him to check inside the boxes. When he is not looking and busy checking, you must do something. You must stick this little machine in his office near his telephone. It is a big mess, yes? His office?"

"A big mess, Mr. Suleiman, but what is that?"

"It is a voice recorder."

"Where did you get it, Mr. Suleiman?"

"From my cousin, Cole, in England DHL delivery this morning. There is another little machine that belongs to the first one—they are like brother and sister. This one is for Mr. Moses, this one is for you. You must sit outside in Sani Abacha Steet for three days to listen to what Moses says. Then you must go back and retrieve the machine before he finds it." 

JIM HAD FELT tired and exhausted all day and now he couldn't sleep.

"The time difference is catching up with you. You'll be OK," he reassured himself aloud to the walls of his hotel room. He was also rapidly losing track of what was going on and he didn't like it. Phone calls were all he had to go on. The mobile had rung constantly all evening.

"Action through my Brighton lawyer friend, Cole Harding, to find out what's going on in Sierra Leone, Jim," Jonathan had earlier reported with an energy that Jim wished he shared. "Let's see if we can prove a link with Guido. And Jan, under duress, is the one responsible for tampering with my bid for Jacob Johnson. Let's see how Eichmann deals with it at the next EAWA meeting tomorrow. And Scott Evora is phoning me tonight."

Then: "I'm on the tail of a black Mercedes, Jim," was the late evening call from Tom somewhere in Belgium. "The car contains a small fat man. Guess who?"

That morning, Jim had called Hugh McAllister for an update on the exhibition. "Anything remotely professional is going to take me at least three weeks to organize, Jim. And I'll need to start promoting it now if you want people to turn up. "

"Proceed, Hugh. I've decided to go off for a couple of days. I'll be in touch by phone."

Jim's plan to go off for a couple of days had been in the making for three years. The plan was for Margaret to go with him to a place he knew she loved as much as he did. That plan was now shelved, but he had decided he'd still go, but alone.

He had taken an early train to Derby and then a bus to Ashbourne. He bought a can of orange juice and a pack of fresh sandwiches and hired a bicycle to pedal in the autumn sunshine along the Tissington Trail that led into the Derbyshire Dales and Peak District of England.

At midday, he sat to eat his sandwiches on a damp, sunny bank of grass, brown leaves and some lingering but fading summer flowers and then crawled to the top of the bank where the wind blew fresher. With his hand shielding his eyes, he looked out towards the bright, sunlit hills that stretched into the far distance—a view he knew and had expected to share with Margaret.

Then he rode slowly on using the straight, flat cycle track that had once been a thriving railway line that linked the area's ancient industry and then onto a narrow road that led towards Dovedale and the tiny hamlet of Thorpe. Then, when his breath became short and his lungs began to hurt, he dismounted, and pushed the bike slowly up another slope until he could once again freewheel down into the spectacular, green valley of the River Dove.

He stopped at the bottom on the corner by the stone bridge, leaned over and looked into the water flowing beneath. It was crystal clear with long, flowing strands of green weed and he watched a water vole swim across and disappear into the shelter of dark, tree roots at the water's edge. He watched and he listened.

Just as at home up on his rock, nature was noisy. The water, tumbling over the black, stony, river-bottom, a robin in the branches of the trees, sheep on the hillside. And civilization—a tractor, somewhere out in the fields. Then a kingfisher, like the ones at home, but smaller. It flew from under the bridge beneath his feet to disappear in a flash of fluorescent blue upstream. And Jim wanted to go the same way, to leave the bike and walk, to stroll along the stony pathway beside the river, to follow it upstream to where it opened into a wider valley of high, green, rocky hills, to the tiny village of Mill Dale and still further into the higher hills.

But there was someone missing.

And Jim was out of breath and his chest hurt him. He leaned heavily on the parapet of the stony bridge looking down. Then he looked at the bike. "Oh dear. Now what? How the hell are you going to get back?"

He stayed, leaning on the bridge wondering what to do. Here he was in a place he had always wanted to see again, a place he would sometimes dream about with such clarity. He took a deep breath, but his lungs and chest hurt and he felt dizzy. He leaned more heavily, his arms propping him up to make breathing easier and exhaled noisily through his mouth feeling hot and sticky. There was no doubt about it. Jim Smith was in a bit of a predicament again and there was no Tom around and only the sound of a tractor to suggest another human being close by.

"And you made another mistake over the month," he mumbled to himself. "Your plan was to come here in May not October. If you remember, you wanted to hear a cuckoo and perhaps tell Margaret a story."

Jim listened, but only heard the tractor and sheep.

"It was about a Tibetan cuckoo, Margaret—not an English one—but the story is the important part. I know I test your patience, but bear with me. That cuckoo could never settle down until all his jobs were done, you see. He was a perfectionist cuckoo and had been a very successful cuckoo in his odd, strange way. All the other cuckoos said so. He did not care much about himself, he was untidy and his feathers were a bit shabby. But, once he'd started a job, this cuckoo never stopped until it was finished. One day he decided to make a perfect nest for his wife and himself to sleep in. So he left his wife to sit and wait and then spent hours and hours seeking the softest mosses and finest grasses. When he had finished the job to his own exacting standards, he looked around for his wife to show her what he had just built. But she had already flown away."

His breathing seemed easier now and as he looked at the steep hill that he had just, so easily, freewheeled down, he heard a tractor coming from the direction of Ilam. He pushed the bike up and over the cattle grid and sat down on the grass verge amongst the droppings of sheep and rabbits and waited. The tractor was towing a wooden trailer holding some old sacks and a black and white sheep dog. It came on slowly, passed the farm entrance towards the bridge. It was going up the hill. Jim waved and the driver slowed.

"Aye up," the driver said.

"Good afternoon," Jim panted. "I'm so sorry to trouble you but I wonder if you would give me a lift to the top. I've rather run out of steam."

"Aye, put bike on back and 'op oop."

"Thank you so much." Jim hauled himself and the bike up and sat there beside the dog, which wagged its tail and came to stand by him, its mouth open and a pink tongue hanging between white teeth. The dog, Jim was pleased to note, was also panting.

"Nice day," the driver called back above the engine noise.

"Splendid," said Jim, breathing deeply.

"Aye, but autumn's on its way."

"Where are you going?" Jim inquired.

"Callow Hall."

"Could you take me there? I would be extremely grateful."

"JIM, I FOLLOWED Guido to Antwerp. How I managed to stay close I don't know. I could get a new job, Jim—police interceptors. I'm now in an underground car park right in the city. I think it has a hotel up above. But—what does Dirk Eischmann look like?"

Jim, now with a throbbing headache and worn out from his cycling, had fallen asleep at a small bed and breakfast establishment in the nearby market town of Ashbourne. He sat up, half got out of bed, put his bare feet on the cold floor. "Why?"

"Someone was there to meet him. As soon as Guido stopped, another car on the other side flashed its headlights and a man got out and went over. They are sitting in Guido's car right now, as I speak."

Jim described Eischmann as best he could, but there was nothing noteworthy about Dirk Eischmann, He was average everything. Pass him in the street and he could have been on an errand to the shops for his wife.

"Jesus, Jim. That the best you can do?"

"What car did he get out of?"

"A black BMW, Belgian plate I think, though I'm not close enough."

"That fits. And Guido's Mercedes. Anything about it?"

"Big, black, Italian plate I think but I can't read it."

"What time is it?" Jim ruffled his own hair and scratched his chin beneath the beard.

"Here, it's nearly midnight. Hey, hang on Jim. Movement. Eischmann, if it's him, is getting out—shutting the door, walking over to his car. Guido's getting out as well. Jesus, he's a funny-looking guy. He walks like he's got something stuck up his arse, Jim."

"Please, Tom, not now. It's late and I might start dreaming again."

"Eischmann's heading off. Guido's going to a lift. Yes, it's definitely a hotel above my head. It says 'Lobby.’ You reckon he's staying the night?"

"Tom, I'm in England, was asleep five minutes ago. Your opinion counts, OK?"

"Yeh, I reckon he's checking in. He's lugging a bag half his size and the laptop's under his arm. He's in the lift. The BMW is moving off."

"What are you going to do?"

"Leave it a minute and see if I can get a room, but it looks pricey, Jim. Christ, I've just seen another sign—it's the bloody Hilton. I hope they don't put me in a room next to that fucking midget. I'll call you later."

Jim lay back and closed his eyes, but his mobile rang yet again. This time it was Jonathan.

"I thought you'd like to know, I've just had Scott Evora on. Seems like they've overheard Silvester Mendes talking to Guido and it seems Guido wants Mendes to join him in the fraud and corruption business. But from what Scott just said, he's not exactly going about it in the right way. Meanwhile, Scott's trying to pick my brains about Guido. Should I say anything, Jim?"

"Not yet, Jon. Let me think. Anyway, Tom might be sharing a room with him tonight. We might get some pillow talk."