‘When you say Mark’s got a weird side, that he can give you the creeps…’
Martie was less happy about this line of inquiry. ‘I don’t know, something in the eyes. My wife saw it, my ex-wife. And she normally likes good-looking blokes, believe me. Does something about it, too.’
‘Just something in his eyes?’
He fiddled with his tie. It had little yellow ducks on it.
‘He’s got a way of talking about women, I can’t describe it, it’s like a contempt, like they exist for his benefit, like they’re dolls or something.’
‘He liked the porn studio idea.’
‘Excited by it. We were on the plane…Well, he loved it.’
‘You were on the plane.’
Martie checked his watch. ‘I’ve got a 9.30,’ he said, ‘some preparation required, so if…’
‘The plane from Europe? Is that after you’d talked to the Poles?’
A show of palms, a frown. ‘I never said I didn’t check out this deal. I never said that.’
‘No, you never said that.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘So you went to Poland with Mark?’
Nods. ‘I had other business in Europe, so I went, yes. Not in Poland. The other business.’
‘And you checked out the deal?’
‘Yes. We went to fucking Poland and got the spiel and I came back and talked to some people and I told him, I told him, no way am I dealing with these animals. And I was out. Out. Haven’t seen him since, don’t want to, never will. You can tell the Carsons that. Don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. He doesn’t call and I wouldn’t know how to call him.’
Swallow, the bobbing of the throat apple. ‘Mark Carson is not in my life anymore.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. ‘Martie, what excited Mark about the deal?’
Martie opened his eyes wide, then closed them for a while. Long curving eyelashes, noticed for the first time. He ran both hands over his naked head, penitent’s head in other times, clasped the back of it, pointed his elbows at me. A man trying to tell me he was comfortable.
‘Couldn’t stop talking about the women in the films,’ he said. ‘They showed us some films. Blonde Ukrainian women. These Russians, three of them, they talk about the girls like…like, I don’t know, cattle, sheep. Here’s a good one. Do you like that? There are many more like her, we can deliver a dozen, easy, that is easy.’
He was anxious now, anxious about what he’d been involved in, seen.
Done.
Done on his trip to Poland. Perhaps.
I said, ‘Martie, I’m very grateful that you’re talking to me at all. So anything about Mark, the family will be grateful. The women in the films, is that what excited him?’
‘Young, girls,’ said Martie. ‘With these massive blokes, never seen anything like it. Dicks, fists, dogs, anything. Violent. I closed my eyes, I can say that honestly. That’s not my idea of fun.’
‘Mark enjoyed it?’
He said nothing for a while, biting his ruby bottom lip, making small hand movements.
‘On the plane,’ he said, ‘he was pissed. He kept saying things like, the little bitch really got it, didn’t she, did you see the look in that fat cow’s eyes, that wasn’t acting, that was live, she didn’t know what hit her…’
Martie tailed off. ‘That kind of talk. He couldn’t stop talking about it. I had to pretend to go to sleep. Listen, I’ve got a client in about five minutes, I really…’
‘One thing. Apart from these Poles, would Mark have any special enemies? People who’d really want to hurt him? Really hurt him. Do anything? Hurt his family? Kids, anything?’
He looked at me for a while, working out the meaning of the question, held up his hands. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Just business between us. Personal. I know nothing. Tell them.’
I said my thank you. He came to the door with me.
‘Mark’ll turn up,’ he said. ‘He’ll talk the Poles into something. And I’m clean. Clean.’
26
‘Mark sounds nice,’ said Orlovsky. ‘In fact, I feel the whole family really growing on me.’
We were drinking coffee down the road from Martie Harmon’s office. ‘Mark’s a concern,’ I said. ‘But my heart says this thing isn’t masterminded by Russian pornographers. The stunt at the football, why waste the money?’
‘And why bother with the girl in the first place?’ said Orlovsky. ‘Presumably they’ve got Mark. They could ransom him.’
‘That might backfire. Barry for one wouldn’t be chipping in unless it was to have them keep him.’ I drank black coffee. ‘The vehicle, the Tarago. How long have they got to register it in a new name?’
‘Fourteen days.’
‘Too long.’ All the rivers ran dry. You knew more about the Carsons than you wanted to but that didn’t help you find the girl. Was that something to feel bad about? You could have all the resources of the force on this and still not find her. Anyway, I had no hope of finding her. I needed to keep telling myself that. I was just asking the basic questions, clearing the underbrush for the real investigators to come. If she was dead, that would be Vella and his gang of cropped-haired Homicide plodders.
I should not have stopped the Carsons calling in the cops. My chance to get out from under this mess thrown away, the perfect opportunity missed. I urged them to tell the cops, then, through sheer force of argument, I convinced them not to.
‘What makes you think she’s alive?’ said Orlovsky. He was watching a young woman in grey inserting wine bottles into an overhead rack. Every time she reached up, she exposed milky skin and vertebrae as prominent as the knuckles of a clenched fist.
‘Nothing.’ I had the last inky drop. ‘I just think they’re not finished. If I’m wrong and it’s not crazy people having fun or simple payback, something else, she may well be dead.’
‘What would something else be?’
‘I might have another one. You?’
Orlovsky nodded. I stared at the espresso machine jockey for a while, caught his eye, made the snail sign. His face said he didn’t like signals, he might or he might not respond.
‘Coffee’s like horse,’ Orlovsky said. ‘Millions of coffee junkies, that’s perfectly okay. They can’t get through the day without it, they’d rather drink it than eat. About something else? Like what?’
‘Who the fuck knows. What worries me is the silence. There’s nothing been done that could spook them. This is a very confident silence.’
‘The voice,’ Orlovsky said. His gaze was now on the street. ‘I should have thought of this earlier. That’s something to think about. It’s got intonation.’
‘What?’
‘Stresses words. As in saying “I don’t
‘So?’
‘Well, what the guy is doing is speaking into a device. I said it before, it’s not a cheap voice-disguiser. If it was, we could get his real voice in seconds. It’s a voice-recognition program that’s producing an electronic version of what he’s saying and it’s mimicking his intonation. It’s not just volume, it’s the actual way he’s saying words. Like when he says
The coffees came, brought by the wine stacker.
‘Thank you,’ said Orlovsky. ‘And may I say that you have beautiful lower vertebrae.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you for saying that. You don’t know the work I’ve put into those bits of cartilage.’
We watched her go.
