The phone rang for ages. I was on the point of giving up when the deep voice suddenly answered. He was guarded, probably because I’d withheld my number. ‘Hello …’
I didn’t fuck about. ‘You left a message. I’m calling about Tracy — Janet’s sister. My name is Nick. Are they safe?’ I kept my tone even and respectful, not wanting to spark him up.
His, too, was measured. ‘I’m trying so hard to keep them alive. Why have you taken so long? Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend of Tracy’s. A very old friend. Is her little boy safe?’
‘They’re all safe. But they won’t be safe for long. Only I can save them. But I need your help. Please, you must help me. Will you help me?’
The world is full of chancers who pick up their phones after a kidnap, claiming to be the only ones who can get the hostage back. They collect a deposit, and then they’re never heard from again. I needed to know that Nadif wasn’t one of them.
‘Nadif, I want to help you, but before we can do anything I need proof that they’re alive. Can you provide that? Can you prove to me they’re alive?’
‘Yes, of course. But the people who are holding them, they demand three million dollars. Do you have that? Can you bring them this money? If you bring this money, I can help you get them released. Do you have this money?’
My tone changed from positive and obliging to scared and concerned. ‘No. I mean, yes, maybe — maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I’m not rich — we’re not rich people. But we will get the money together. I will try everything. I will do everything possible to get that money. I will get the money somehow. But, please, you must prove to me first that they’re alive. Can I talk to them? Please?’
There was a pause.
‘Nick, do you really, really want them to come home?’
‘Yes, I do. I really do. I’ll do anything I can to get them back.’
‘That is very good, Nick, because only I can keep them from being killed in a very terrible way. Remember that, my friend. I will prove that they’re alive. You will come to me tomorrow. You will do that, yes?’
I took up the pencil once more as he gave me his address in Bristol.
‘Listen, I’m less than two hours away. Why don’t I come now? We can start the process. Please, Nadif, I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
He agreed, and I powered down the phone. I grabbed my keys and started down to the car park.
The one thing you’ve got to do with these people is be subservient. You must show them at all times that they hold all the cards. Right now it wasn’t that difficult.
12
I drove past Ascari’s.
Maybe it would have made sense to sell the 911 a month ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d enjoyed fucking off the salesman when I bought it, and I still enjoyed the mere fact that I owned it. I’d wandered into the showroom in my stinking trainers and running kit and the fucker had sneered when I asked how much it cost. I’d pulled out my wallet and asked if he was OK with cash.
And, anyway, I wasn’t too sure what was going to happen with me and Anna. Maybe she’d seen the light and was ready to fuck me off already. After all, I was punching above my weight and she wasn’t in any rush to get back to Moscow. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about that, so I immediately told myself: Fuck it, so what? I didn’t own the woman.
But going back to a life of Saturday mornings on my own in a cafe? I suddenly realized I was too old for that shit.
At this time of night there wasn’t much traffic once I’d got out of town, especially on the route I was taking. Rather than use the main drags and the motorway, I was going to go via Pontralis, into Wales, and then on B roads to Chepstow, before crossing back into England on the Severn Bridge.
I knew I’d be able to get my foot down this way. The speed cameras had sprung up like dandelions over the last few years, but I had a detector. I could do this route blindfolded. I used to fast-drive it day in, day out, in another lifetime. Bristol was used as a training ground for covert operations in Northern Ireland. The little B roads were where we’d practised our fast-driving skills. Sometimes you could make it door-to-door in under an hour.
The roads were narrow and bendy, with high hedgerows each side. Ant and Dec were going to have their work cut out to keep up, though the geography would help them. Each time I went up a hill, they’d be able to see my full beams.
Now and again I saw headlights behind me as I hit a long stretch of straight. I didn’t blame Frank. I’d probably have had someone following me as well.
13
I reached the Chepstow ring road, and then the bridge approach. The traffic was a little heavier as I re- entered England for the princely toll of ?5.70. I took the motorway to Bristol and headed for the town centre instead of Nadif’s address. I parked on the second floor of an NCP and took the stairs.
Leaving the car there had nothing to do with good antisurveillance skills. I just didn’t want to get Nadif all sparked up. A 911 outside his front door would say all the wrong things about the size of Tracy’s bank account. I also didn’t want to come out and find the thing up on bricks. If Frank’s boys were about, they’d get the message as soon as they saw where I was going.
Bristol is a bit special on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s a well-known venue for lads on the piss and, increasingly, girls keeping in step. My route to the ATM became a giant pavement slalom as I dodged and wove through discarded kebab wrappers and the odd splash of vomit. I maxed out for the day on my three cards and soon had fifteen hundred pounds in my jeans pocket.
A taxi rank served the Broadmead Shopping Centre and cinema. I joined the queue. Four or five groups of students were ahead of me. The girls’ skirts weren’t long enough to cover their goosebumps, and they weren’t carrying coats because they knew they’d get nicked in the bars and clubs.
When my turn came I jumped into an old Renault people-carrier. The sickly aroma of vanilla air-freshener did nothing to disguise the smell of the roll-up the driver had blatantly just finished. He was in his mid-fifties, white hair greased back. He didn’t need gel; not washing it for a month did the job just fine. His faded tattoos and big rough hands told me that, if it wasn’t for the recession, he would have been more at home on a building site.
‘Easton, mate. I’m after Barratt Street in Easton.’
‘It’s an extra fiver for a drop-off in little Mogadishu, boy.’
It was far enough from the centre of town to be a good fare, but even beneath the deep West Country burr I could tell he wasn’t too pleased.
We used Bristol for training because it was close to Hereford and as segregated as Belfast and Derry. The safe areas were very safe; the rough areas were very rough. But unlike in the Province, the segregation wasn’t religious. It was financial. A lot of places were in shit state. The local housing authorities used them as dumping grounds for the poor and dis advantaged. In the 1980s the St Paul’s area, near the city centre, became notorious for riots and drug-dealing. It all boiled down to lack of opportunity.
Easton had become a Somali ghetto, and it was no accident. Bristol lads were the original slavers, and for hundreds of years the dockland was populated by Africans, Indians and Chinese. Some of the graves in the local cemeteries contain the bodies of black businessmen, and they date back to the first half of the eighteenth century.
My iPhone vibrated.
‘I need to stop at a cashpoint, mate.’
He grunted something indecipherable in carrot-cruncher code but pulled over outside a building society. I
