There was nowhere out here she could have hidden a set of keys.
I followed the block round to the back. Her curtains were closed. There was no sign of life. Maybe she really had played away last night.
22
Among the forest of Sky dishes that had sprouted along the wall there were two small bird boxes. One was by her bedroom — or what I remembered as her bedroom.
I pushed my hand inside the hole, felt around inside and heard a metallic clink. Old habits die hard. One was a plastic fob to enter the security door, the other an ordinary pin tumbler.
The footballers looked ready to take an early bath. I walked past and pressed the fob. The door opened. I opened the flat door slowly. I didn’t call out. As soon as I saw the state of the place I knew I didn’t need to. The hallway was strewn with coats and newspapers. Every drawer of the sideboard she used to keep the kids’ clothes in — the ones that didn’t fit in the bedroom — had been tipped out.
I closed the door with an elbow and headed for the bedroom.
Her dress and underwear were on the floor, alongside her shoes. Next to them was a pair of jeans and a blue-striped shirt. Their owner was still in bed. The duvet he was lying on was covered with blood. He had puncture wounds in his neck and chest.
I moved on to the living room. It had been ripped apart. Jan was sitting naked on the floor, her top half slumped over the sofa. She hadn’t been as beautiful as her sister for a good few years. Now she looked a whole lot worse. Her back was a riot of stab wounds and bruises. The carpet was soaked with blood. Like Nadif, she had been gagged with a tea-towel. Her face was black and swollen. There were splits in the skin above and beside her eyes. Part of an ear lay on the cushion beside her. The blood that had run down her neck and shoulders was dry.
Neither of them would have stood a chance.
I moved back into the bedroom and kicked at her bag to see if the phones were still inside. They weren’t.
I went to the front door and checked the hallway before closing it behind me, using the sleeve of my brand new fleece.
Outside, the kids were nowhere to be seen. I turned downhill towards Asda.
How the fuck had Ant and Dec managed to deal with both locations? Maybe they’d followed me to Nadif’s place, done him, then found out about Jan via his mobile. Or maybe they’d seen us together at Saxtys. It didn’t really matter. What did was that they had both confidence and ability, and that made them dangerous.
I felt sorry for Jan, and even sorrier for Blue Stripes. All he’d wanted was a shag. The Jock on her voicemail was going to have a pretty hard time too. The police would find his pissed-off phone messages on Jan’s other phones and he’d have a fuck of a lot of explaining to do. Another poor bastard dragged into this nightmare — but at least he was alive.
I pointed the 911 out of the city. I wanted to get into the countryside as quickly as possible.
I jumped out at a lay-by beside the mud flats, engine still running, and pulled apart Nadif’s first two phones. They didn’t have his two a.m. call in the memory, but they did have the ones I’d made. I took out the batteries and wiped them on my fleece. I clambered up the bank and through the hedge. I kicked a hole with my heel in the mud the other side, stamped the phones into the bottom of it and smoothed wet earth back over them.
I powered up Nadif’s remaining mobile and hit redial on the Somali number as I got back in the 911.
It rang several times, then I was treated to a high-decibel crackle of the local dialect. The only thing I could tell from it was that the guy who’d answered was very old indeed. I waited for him to pause for breath.
‘Do you speak English?’
More crackle. ‘
‘No. English?’
There was a sudden explosion of invective. It sounded like everyone around the old boy was getting shouted at to shut the fuck up. I held the phone away from my ear. Then there was a rustling sound, as if the mouthpiece was brushing against facial hair. A new voice came on, much younger.
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Where is Nadif? This is Nadif’s phone. Where is Nadif?’ He had a soft American accent, more
‘Nadif has been killed. I don’t know who did it, and I don’t know why. I want to find out. But I need help. I need help from someone with power and influence. I want to pay for my friends to be released. Nadif was going to help me, with his powerful friend. Are you his powerful friend?’
‘Yes. Only I can help you get your friends released. What is your name? Who are your friends?’
‘I’m Nick. My friends are a man, a woman and a child — a little boy. Their names are Justin, Tracy and Stefan.’
He was straight down to business. ‘Do you have the money, Mr Nick? Do you have three million American dollars?’
‘I am trying to get it. Please can I speak to them? I need to know they’re OK.’
And then it was as if we hadn’t had the first part of the exchange. ‘Nadif, where is Nadif?’
‘Nadif is dead. I don’t know who killed him.’
He thought about it for a while. I heard more rustling. ‘You will call again tomorrow. Same time.’
The phone went dead.
I gave it thirty seconds and rang again. Nothing. He’d powered down.
PART FIVE
1
The skids of the Bell 222 settled on the tarmac and the pilot killed the engines. The stainless steel and fibreglass rotors wound gradually to a standstill. I took off my headset and waited for the door to be opened.
The Bell could normally take eight passengers at a time on the shuttle between Geneva and Courchevel. Frank’s people had booked it exclusively for my use. The pilot said his instructions were to wait as long as I needed him to. Then, as soon as he’d worked out I wasn’t Russian, he started talking and didn’t stop until we landed. Better thirty minutes of that, I supposed, than two and a half hours up the mountain by car, duelling with kamikaze Peugeot drivers.
Apparently it had been a very strange season. Winter had started a month early, with heavy snowfalls in October. Spring had also arrived way ahead of time. The sun had shone almost continually and there had been weeks of bizarrely hot weather. Then December had had some of the best snow of the season.
‘But you know how I will remember this season most of all? As the one when the snow didn’t fall. We waited through January, February and now this month for the big dumps of snow that never came. That’s why we’re lucky we live in the Trois Vallees.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Wise leaders who invested heavily in snow cannons, reservoirs and piste groomers.’
‘Man-made snow doesn’t sound very eco-friendly.’
‘It’s economy-friendly. Without it, the Russians wouldn’t have brought their bling-bling.’
‘Good for business, are they?’
‘These days, they
