Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (29 page)

Michel
Fucking Freij. The cheeky bastard.

Lynch marched
across the lobby, suppressing the urge to slide the Walther from
its holster under his left shoulder. The balding man talking to
Freij was making a point, karate chopping one hand with the other.
Lynch confronted them. Freij looked up with a quizzical smile that
faded as he placed Lynch.

‘
Who the fuck
do you think you are?’ Lynch spat. ‘You think you can just fly in
here, arrange a couple of convenient murders and nip off
home?’

Freij glanced
across at the balding man, who was staring open-mouthed up at
Lynch. ‘I am sorry, John. This is Mr Gerald Lynch. He represents
British
Intelligence
. He is becoming rather a nuisance.’

Tomasi and
Lentini caught up with Lynch and paused behind him. He pointed at
Freij, his Northern Irish accent thickened by his anger, his raised
voice turning heads in the lobby. ‘There is a dead girl upstairs in
this hotel and a man murdered outside and do not tell me you didn’t
know it.’

Freij smiled
up at the three men standing in front of him. ‘I am so sorry,
gentlemen, but this has absolutely nothing to do with me.’ He rose
and smoothed his jacket. ‘Mr Lynch, I rather think that is enough.
John is my legal counsel here in Malta, where we have today made a
substantial investment in the Smart Village technology park. I have
been in meetings with government representatives and developers for
the past two days and can account fully for my movements. Your wild
accusations are not only baseless but actionable. If you do not
leave, I will instruct John to indeed act.’

Tomasi put a
hand on Lynch’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Gerald. We can’t do anything
here.’

Lynch stepped
forward and for the first time the brown eyes flickered. He stabbed
his finger into Freij’s face as he ground out the words. ‘You’re
cool, Michel. But I am going to fucking nail you. So help me God I
am going to nail you.’

He turned on
his heel and strode across the lobby. Tomasi and Lentini stayed
looking with curiosity at Freij, who sat down again. Ignoring them,
he turned to his lawyer. They followed Lynch, the hotel staff
frozen in a shocked tableau.

It was an
uncharacteristically grey spring morning, the air carrying a mist
of fine droplets, the precursor of rain. Lynch clicked the remote
and crossed the road as the car beeped twice. The stippled sea was
behind as he mounted the steps to the house, the green sward
blowing in the freshening breeze.

He knocked on
the front door and waited, surveying the sea and the patchy, wan
sunlight dotting its surface. Lynch had a dreadful premonition.
Someone had, indeed, been ‘cleaning up’ and he had been drawn back
to the little house by the coast in Sh’ayra precisely because
Scerri hadn’t answered Lynch’s repeated calls.

Lynch knocked
again, cupping his hand over his eye to see into the dark interior.
He picked his way through the garden rubbish along the side of the
house, the air shimmering above the rusty heating flue. He pressed
down on the kitchen door handle and felt it give, pulling it
towards him and letting the warmth escape from inside.

He pulled a
handkerchief from his pocket and placed it over his nose and
mouth.

Striding
through the kitchen and across the dining room, he pushed the
living room door open to see the body of Joseph Scerri slumped in
his chair, the carpet dark with blood. Stuffing was spread in an
arc on the floor behind the armchair. He felt oddly dispassionate
at the sight of Scerri’s violent end. The old man had lost control
of his bowels at the moment of death.

Most of them
do.

Belatedly,
the reaction hit him and the room seemed to spin, bile forcing its
way up his throat, an acrid tide he managed to stem as he turned
and fled for the fresh air.

It had
started to rain, the light drizzle carried on the cold breeze and
Lynch held his face up to catch the water, rubbing himself in a
washing ritual which didn’t take away the dirt of Scerri’s violent
death or the memory of the cloying stench in the over-warm house.
He called Tomasi.

‘
Gerald.’

‘
Scerri’s
dead.’

‘
Natural?’

‘
If
shooting’s natural.’

‘
You touch
anything?’

‘
Nope. Looks
like Scerri told Freij where to find the Hoffmann girl.’

‘
If it
was
Freij, Gerald.’

‘
Nobody else
had a reason to want her dead, Paul.’

‘
What about
the German? Meier?’

Lynch stood
rooted to the spot, the cold drizzle making him shiver. Meier, the
man they’d lost somewhere in Europe. The man who had killed Hoffman
and his wife, Meier’s own sister. There had been no
billets doux
left by the
corpses in Malta, if that was truly Freij’s pugmark. Meier, a
deadly shadow.

‘
Gerald?
Gerald? Look, I’ll send our boys up. You’d better make yourself
scarce if you want to avoid spending the rest of the year filling
out paperwork.’

Lynch wiped
the rain from his face again and used his coat sleeve to wipe the
door handle. He walked along the side of the house and down the
steps to the road and his car, staring at the grey horizon and the
dark clouds gathering overhead.

Glad to leave
the stench of death behind him, he drove quickly. Lynch had a
flight home to catch and, at the end of it, an invitation to meet
Leila in a sunny little apartment in Hamra.

TWENTY-THREE

Relieved to
be back in Beirut, Lynch left the airport terminal and breathed the
cool evening air, remembering his last arrival at the airport with
Nathalie in tow. He was startled to see Tony Chalhoub walking
towards him. Chalhoub’s car was parked illegally on the kerbside
directly outside arrivals. As head of police intelligence, Chalhoub
rarely faced the consequences of his sloppy parking habits and, in
fact, a policeman stood on guard beside the car. Chalhoub was
grim-faced as he approached and Lynch’s stomach tightened with the
premonition of bad news. Chalhoub took Lynch’s hand in a two-handed
press.

‘
Gerald, I’m
sorry. Leila’s dead.’

Lynch opened
his mouth to speak, but his lips felt glued together. He shook his
head, tears filling his eyes. Chalhoub’s hand was on his shoulder
propelling him towards the car, the policeman standing aside and
saluting. Lynch wasn’t there. Leila on top, smiling down at him.
Leila laughing as they raced down the bumpy piste at Feraya, she
skiing like a professional and he, militarily trained, rusty and
less fluid in his movements. Her middle finger raised at him in
triumph as he caught up with her at the bottom of the
slope.

God, but she
was gorgeous.

Lynch was
silent as Chalhoub pulled away from the terminal, ghosts filling
his head with perfume and softness and tears coursing down his
cheeks.

The body on
the gurney looked tiny, covered in green and washed by the morgue’s
greyish light. The attendant was about to pull the cover back, but
Chalhoub stayed her with a peremptory palm. His baggy, sad eyes
asked Lynch if he was sure and Lynch nodded. Yes, he was. He wanted
to see her.

The cloth was
folded back. Lynch felt he was outside himself looking down on them
both, he fearful and she in repose. The assistant, her eyes
downcast, left the room. Chalhoub stayed.

Her face was
calm. Lynch stepped forward, touched her icy cheek, her hair. He
spoke for the first time since leaving the airport. ‘How,
Tony?’

Chalhoub
winced. ‘Heroin. A big dose. I know, she wasn’t a user. No track
marks. Did you ever know her take drugs at all?’

Lynch shook
his head. ‘No. Never. She wasn’t against them per se. Just didn’t
do anything for her. Liked whisky. Smart girl.’ His lips trembled.
He shut his mouth, his lips tight.

Chalhoub
cleared his throat. ‘There was ... there was a note.’

Lynch nodded.
Of course there was.
Oh Christ, please not
let this be because of me, because of us
.
He wondered where she’d got the heroin. Why heroin? Why suicide,
come to that? Lynch’s mind was reeling. Leila was about
life.
‘What did she
say?’

There was
something desperate in Chalhoub’s eyes. ‘No, not suicide. One
of
those
notes.
She was tied. Cable ties, from the marks.’

Lynch stared
at Chalhoub.
Those
notes. The vellum, the thick paper with its flowing
calligraphy. He whispered, ‘No.’

Chalhoub held
him close. Lynch clutched at his friend, resting his chin on his
shoulder. Chalhoub patted his back. ‘I’m sorry, Gerald. I’m
sorry.’

Unseen by
Tony Chalhoub, Lynch’s eyes were dry and his face was set
hard.

Lynch rounded
the corner of the cobbled street, his eye distracted for a second
by the sun reflecting off the little pair of blue enamelled plaques
on the pale stone wall. Every street in Beirut had them, one in
French and one in Arabic, displaying the area and road number in
white lettering. Nathalie was waiting for him at the café. Lynch
was profoundly grateful she hadn’t been there when he had returned
to the apartment the night before. He had picked up a bottle and a
glass, filled a bowl with ice and shut himself in his bedroom. He
ignored her knocking on his door in the morning, but he had felt
strong enough to talk to her by noon and had taken her
call.

Nathalie
glanced up from her seat under the striped red and white awning. ‘I
am sorry, Gerald. They told me.’

His head hurt
and he had a raging thirst. He leant on the table, his face creased
with a winning grin. ‘Well, an’ that apart, it’s a lovely day to
meet a beautiful woman for lunch in this fantastic old city. So why
be caught in the doldrums, eh? Why waste all this
life
we
have?’

Her shocked
face told him anger had made him loud, couples turning to see what
the fuss was about. For a second his head dropped and then he
caught her gaze, his voice quiet. ‘She was killed with an overdose
of heroin. Freij’s killers left her a little note. I will have my
day yet.’

Nathalie was
patently at a loss for words and Lynch reached out to touch her
hand. ‘It’s okay, Nathalie. It’s something I’ll have to deal with
one day when there’s time. Right now, I just want Freij. No,’ he
said as her mouth softened ready to form a platitude, ‘I
really
want
Freij.’

Lynch tried
to rein in his feelings at her uncertain reaction to his cold
passion. He needed an ally right now, even a shoulder to soak up
the tears when they came back. He didn’t know when they would, but
for now anger had dried them up. He tried to lighten for her,
paused to control himself. Lynch knew his voice was too bright.
‘Did you get anywhere with Scerri’s phone records?’

She shook her
head, her eyes wary. ‘No, not yet. My team is looking for any
connection with Falcon Dynamics and this company Scerri had called
in Albania, an oil company called PIL. He had placed several calls
there over the past ten days.’

There had
been a scar on Leila’s arse where she had fallen on glass as a
child. In the war. It was a tiny sideways cicatrice like a smiley.
He used to find it in the dark, like a blind person finding ‘5’ on
a mobile or F and J on a keyboard.

Lynch forced
his thoughts back to the present. ‘So what else have we got to go
on?’

Nathalie
leaned forward slightly. ‘The night before you left, I met with
Ghassan Maalouf. And he wants Freij as well. He wants him very
badly.’

Lynch’s
eyebrows raised, an appreciative look at her. ‘But your father
doesn’t want Maalouf. He’s made that clear before. Why’s Maalouf so
interested in Freij, anyway?’

‘
We met in
Jounieh, at the Casino du Liban. For dinner. He is an interesting
man, you know? He knows we are going hard after Freij. And he,
they, want us to succeed.’

‘
They?’

‘
The powerful
Christians. They don’t trust him. Falcon has close ties to a number
of American companies and right-wing think tanks. It is true Freij
has been courting both America and Israel. But at the same time,
his business partner Selim Hussein is Shia and he has been visiting
Damascus and Tehran. The people aligned to Maalouf have a large
dossier on Freij. There is much that is unexplained. Beyond this, a
number of the more powerful Christian families are concerned at how
much popular attention Freij has managed to attract. There are many
vested interests. Many jealousies.’

‘
So what’s on
the table?’

‘
Maalouf has
given me a contact, a man we can use to gain access to Falcon
Dynamics’ networks. The Lebanese don’t have the advanced digital
resources we do, but they do have extensive human intelligence. He
has offered their cooperation in return for an equal share of our
product. And Freij’s head.’