crunched when he moved his feet.
‘Who’s there?’
Tom made no move to hide. He was more than ready for this confrontation. He stepped into the light.
‘Detective Sergeant Furey,’ Greeves lowered himself slowly back into his chair. ‘Take a seat.’
‘I’ll stand.’ Tom kept looking around him, his pistol hand following his gaze as he swept the verandah, watching the flanks, and the door that led back inside the lodge.
‘I expect you’ve got some questions. Scotch?’
Tom shook his head.
‘Well, don’t mind me if I have another.’
Tom detected a slight slurring of the minister’s words. From what he could see, Greeves looked in fine shape. His face and arms were golden and healthy looking in the reflected light. His hair was brushed and he wore a crisp white cotton shirt, open at the neck, with navy chinos.
‘On your feet. Let’s go.’
‘Oh, not so fast, Tom. You made it this far. At least tell me how you knew it was all a fake, that I was never truly abducted.’
‘You first. Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you fake your kidnapping? What kind of a scandal made you do it?’
Greeves said nothing. He refilled his glass from the decanter on the table and took a long sip.
‘It was Ebony, the stripper, wasn’t it?’ Tom listened hard for any sound of movement in the house, and checked each side of the verandah again while he waited for the reply.
‘Yes.’
‘When did you sleep with her?’
‘You tell me.’
Tom looked down into those cold grey eyes. ‘How old was she? Ten? Eleven?’
Greeves exhaled and raised his glass, waving it casually. ‘If you must know, she was twelve. I didn’t know it at the time, I thought she was older.’
‘And you think that makes it all right?’
‘All right?’ Greeves stared back at him, defiant. ‘No. And that’s the truth. I know it’s not all right, but I can’t change it. It’s just the way I am — the way I’m wired. I like young girls. I’d forgotten all about her. It happened in South Africa, years ago. She came to England as an illegal, saw my picture in the newspaper one day, and contacted me. She bloody well made an appointment at my constituency surgery.’
‘And you had her killed.’ Tom felt the anger rising in him and tried his best to control it, to stay calm.
‘No! I’ve never killed anyone in my life.’
‘You lying bastard.’ Tom took a deep breath of his own. He needed to keep it together. ‘You sent Nick to get her… to kill her.’
‘No. I swear it. I swear on the life of my children. I told her it wasn’t me…’
‘But you recognised her.’
Another sigh. ‘Yes, I knew it was her, but I tried to convince her she was wrong.’
‘And so you sent Nick to do your dirty work.’
‘No, nothing happened. Not for a few weeks. She called my office and left me another message, saying, cryptically, that she’d been talking to the media and only I could do the right thing. Helen, my press secretary, told me, although she thought it was a prank call.’
‘Was that when you sent Nick to negotiate with her, after she contacted you?’
‘Nick’s dead, Tom.’
‘Bullshit. He’s masquerading as a journalist called Daniel Carney. It took me a while to put it together, but as soon as I realised you’d faked your death, it was obvious Nick was still alive as well.’
Greeves looked to one side of the verandah, and Tom followed his gaze. Greeves turned his eyes back to Tom. The defiance had gone from his face. ‘What gave it away? I’m curious.’
‘The monkeys.’
‘How?’
Tom recalled his internet research, about African primates. ‘Vervet monkeys are only active in daylight hours. They sleep in trees overnight.’
‘So?’
‘So, you and your band of merry men would have had to capture them during the day. Bernard’s stage- managed escape didn’t happen until well after dark. Your people lured the monkeys into cages during the day and kept them somewhere nearby. As soon as Bernard made it away safely you had the monkeys brought in and positioned in the house. You all had plenty of time to get away. It was proof the whole setup had been planned well in advance.’
Tom waited for a reaction, but got none, so he continued. ‘Someone drew half a litre of blood from you at some stage — not a difficult operation for your friend Doctor Khan — and spread it around the room where you’d been held, to make it look like you’d been shot. Khan even drew some cerebral spinal fluid and mixed it with the blood. Nice touch, that, though the spinal tap mustn’t have been pleasant. The hair was a giveaway, though. You made a mistake there.’
‘Really? Do tell.’
‘The “abductors” left your hair on the bathroom floor, after they’d shaved your head, for us to find. However, there was no blood in the hallway from the supposed wounds on the soles of your feet, which Bernard had seen as “evidence” of your torture.’
‘And you figured this out all by yourself?’
‘The clues, the evidence, were all there. All it needed was motive. That was the hard part. You wanted to drop out… to get out of the public eye without shaming your Party, but you couldn’t just quit. There was more to it, even after you had Nick kill the African girl.’
‘You think you know it all.’
‘Most of it. You can fill in the blanks when I get you back to London. Your mate Khan was the nail in the coffin, wasn’t he?’
Greeves shrugged. ‘You tell me.’
‘I heard on the car radio that the South Africans recently busted an international people-smuggling racket, whose main purpose was to supply the sex trade — including underage boys and girls for sick perverts like you. Khan needed to disappear too — I’m betting he knew the trail would lead to him. I’m also betting that the UK link was those two blokes in Enfield who blew up their own house. Was that Nick who topped them in the street? Had you sent him there as well, to get rid of some connection, or record they had of you?’
‘So, what are you going to do with all this information, Tom? The world thinks I’m dead. The British government is happy — there were rumours of my imminent demise already circulating. The press has swallowed the story. What would it take for you to turn your back?’
Tom shook his head. The bastard was trying to buy him. ‘A decent, honourable man took his life because of you, and you took my life away from me. I want it back.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen. Who else have you told your little tale to?’
‘I was wondering when you’d ask. I’ve sent a letter to a friend of mine who’s a crime-scene investigator. She’ll know the right questions to ask the right people. I’ve also told her that if anything happens to me, and she gets stonewalled by MI6 or the government, to pass on everything to Michael Fisher at the World.’
‘I wish you hadn’t done that.’
Tom looked up towards the lodge’s front door, from where the cultured female voice had come.
Janet Greeves emerged from the shadows. She held a two-two calibre semiautomatic pistol, fitted with a silencer, in her right hand. ‘Drop your gun, Detective Sergeant Furey.’
‘Do as she says,’ said another voice from behind Tom.
He turned and saw a swarthy man holding a short-barrel AK 47 assault rifle emerge from the line of trees that shielded the main lodge from the first guest bungalow. He was trapped.
‘Doctor Khan, I presume?’
The man smiled and shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter who I am. Drop your gun now, Furey, or I’ll shoot.’
