Devil in the Wires (6 page)

 

Chapter 14

Flight and Pursuit

I
've seen the Registry try to cover up its messes and mistakes at several junctures in my life. There's usually a lot of running about and some frantic phone calling and e-­mails and invariably some major official whose authorization is required and who fails to respond in time. Everybody squawks and frets like turkeys before Christmas, not sure what to do.

This time, at least, we found out what had happened very early on. There was hardly any mystery at all—­except for why.

It seems Dayling had risen early, as was his habit, and attended to some morning chores, all as normal. He'd even booked a lunch appointment at his usual restaurant. Then, he'd visited the safe room, removed the flask, taken a Registry car to the airport, and booked himself a Turkish Airlines flight to Paris, France, leaving within thirty minutes. The flask went with him—­he had a Registry pass, top level, and used it to dodge his way round customs, but apart from that, there had been no attempt to hide his tracks. He didn't even seem to have been in any hurry about it.

Seddon, my boss, is a tall, gangly man with eyebrows of a startling whiteness, and sees himself as very pro-­active, very hands-­on. Unfortunately, in a case like this, the hands in question aren't likely to be his own. I spoke to him from Dayling's office, as it happened. The phone line was as sharp and clear as if he sat across the desk from me. Astonishing technology. So far away, yet I could hear each indrawn breath, each
tut
and
dear
and vexed
oh heavens
as I carefully explained the situation. After that, he was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his crisp consonants and plummy vowels allowed no willful misinterpretation of the job ahead. Would that they had.

“I want you to go after him,” he said. “You're his friend, aren't you? You can talk to him. Persuade him to see sense. I want to play it carefully on this one.”

“This whole job—­” I started, but he spoke across me.

“I don't know Dayling. Any vices, bad habits? Debts? Unsavory associations? Any kind of context we can put him in?”

“I hadn't seen the guy in ten years. I didn't expect to see him at all, quite frankly.”

Seddon clicked his tongue. “This is all very annoying,” he said, as if I were some hawker who'd just got him out of the bath. “I'll talk to our Paris office. Ask them to keep the local authorities out of it, if they can. . . . I do so hate working with ­people I don't know. You can't depend on them. That's why I need you there, Chris. Packed, already? Yes? I want you on the next plane.”

“There's more to this,” I said. I knew he'd given his command, and in his view he was done. But I pressed on. “There was an attempt to seize it in the field. Russian mafia or something, I dunno. Eastern Europe, anyway. Then Dayling runs off with it. Does that make any sense to you?”

“I'm sure it doesn't, Chris. Are you suggesting I might . . . know something about this?”

“I'm not suggesting anything,” I said. “You think he's trying to sell the thing?”

“Oh, I'd think so. Wouldn't you?”

“They couldn't get it off me in the field, so now they're going to buy it. Him, too, I imagine. He was Field Ops once. They wanted me, you know. Very . . . lucrative deal.”

“Really. You must tell me all about it. Meanwhile—­all haste, eh? Let's hope we have a quick end to this. God knows . . .”

I
don't like airports. I'm sick of them, really. Most airports rank about an inch higher than bus stations for comfort, convenience, and general human warmth. You're not there to enjoy yourself. You're there to go somewhere else.

They say that there are spirits in these great travel termini, still untapped, fed by the hopes and anxieties of millions of travelers. If so, the spirit at Charles de Gaulle is a particularly tetchy one.

The place was packed with ­people. I took a detour round a family of six seemingly camped out in the middle of the hallway, their suitcases piled up like a barricade. As I hit immigration, Seddon rang, and I had to cut him off to deal with the official sniffing at my passport. It was a flight from Baghdad, of course, an ordinary, commercial flight; and while my queue was long, the queue for anyone of darker skin and non-­EU origin was longer still and a lot slower moving. By the time I'd gone through the formalities and called Seddon back, he was engaged. A woman's voice asked me to
please hold
and a scratchy version of one of the Brandenburgs began. I rang off, went outside, caught a whiff of the night air, and hailed a taxi. From the back seat, I called London again.

Seddon said, “You'd have been quicker on the train to Gare du Nord. Cheaper, too.”

I grunted at this.

“Anyway,” he said. “We now have an address.”

“It's a false trail.”

“Not at all.” He was sounding a bit brighter than before; he evidently liked this update.

I said, “It's too easy.”

“French chap followed him. We circulated pictures and description, naturally. Claims there's no doubt. He's in a hotel in Pigalle. They're watching it now. You know Justine Dignet, don't you? She's handling their end of it. If you're lucky you'll be there before the fireworks, eh?”

“Traffic's bad,” I said. It wasn't, but I didn't want him hurrying me.

“You should have taken the train, Chris. Much quicker.” He mumbled something which may have been a swearword. Then he said, “I can't stress the importance of this. If there's anything you know about this Dayling chap—­anything he said, or hinted at, or said as a joke, even, or—­”

“Yeah. I get the idea.”

I'd spent the last ten hours going over what I knew about Andrew Dayling, and realizing it wasn't very much. I'd thought I'd known him, but all I'd really had was an opinion of him, which was not the same thing. We'd worked together, kicked back afterwards. I'd thought him pleasant, but a little shallow, something of a play-­actor. When he was drunk he'd talk about a girlfriend he'd once lost, the great love of his life, but it always seemed to me that he was mourning an asset, like a house he used to live in or a car he used to drive. The self-­pity, though, was real: a streak of misery and maudlin sentiment that would attach itself like a barnacle to any passing topic. Invariably, if I got inquisitive and started asking questions, a barrier came up.

And then there were his arms. “Have you seen his
arms
?”

I'd stolen a few glances while we'd been in hot countries where long sleeves just weren't practical. The scars were old, I think, most of them. They weren't easy to see; but once I'd tuned in, I saw them clearly enough. Most were straight lines, very thin, extending several inches; others curved, or zig-­zagged, so the effect was of some faded tribal tattoo.

I'd meant to ask him about them. I'd meant, I suppose, to ask if I could somehow get him help, counseling, whatever. That would have been a nice thing to do. Perhaps I'm unobservant. I don't understand about cutting. I know that ­people do it, and do other things, and that it brings some kind of relief, perhaps due to the pain, or the endorphins released, or maybe it just takes their minds off what's been bothering them. I don't know. But in the end, I had the same reaction most ­people have to such things. Repulsion, or that weird fascination where you don't like it but you still can't look away, and then . . . detachment. And I-­don't-­want-­to-­deal-­with-­this.

In my case, I was also thinking: do I want him with me on a job? Can I trust him? And I never said a word to him. I skated along on his cheery, confident self, which I now saw more and more must be a mask. The only time I challenged him at all, it was in an abstract sort of way, trying to broach a subject I could not, at that point, even put a name to.

I'd told him he'd no need to look so pleased each time I walked into the room. I was getting tired of his matiness, his endless cheeriness. I told him straight: I said it was an act.

He brushed it off. “We all put on an act, though, don't we?”

I was younger then; I said I didn't think we did. I got annoyed with him, yet he couldn't see—­couldn't conceive—­of a world in which ­people didn't hide a part of themselves. And it may be he was right. I'm older now, less idealistic. The world's a darker and more complex place, these days.

“What's in here,” he said, tapping his skull, “I mean, what's
really
in here—­you wouldn't let it out, would you?”

“Don't see why not.” I nursed my beer, watching a TV screen across the bar.

He said, “Have everyone see what a petty, mean, fucked-­up mess you really are?”

“You mean me?” I said. “Or just anyone?”

There was a hardness to his eyes I'd never seen before, but gradually it slackened and his face relaxed, and he was the old, amiable character he'd always been.

“Not you, Chris. Obviously not. Just—­well, anybody, really.
One
, you know? Not you. Just
one
.”

 

Chapter 15

A Body on the Floor

I
t was a small hotel, a narrow structure jammed between two taller, broader buildings. It looked like “Mac” in the old Charles Atlas ads, squeezed by a ­couple of hunky bullies. Personally, I'd have told it to gamble a stamp.

I spotted the Registry man hiding in the shadows, gave him a little salute, and went in.

A large, sleepy dog lay in the entranceway. I stepped across it and it glanced up, twitched an ear, and settled back to sleep. Welcome, then. My French is strictly schoolboy, but Justine had already commandeered the tiny lobby and seemed to be giving the desk clerk a particularly painful third degree. Her rapid-­fire French was much too fast for me, and possibly for him, as well. He was hunched down like a cyclist in a rainstorm, head turned away, one hand half raised like a shield. Justine Dignet had something of a way with words.

In appearance, she could have been a minor academic. She was small and thin, and tonight she had her hair tied back, emphasizing her long, slender face and pointed chin. She wore rimless glasses, a faded maroon jacket and designer jeans. There was a silk scarf at her throat, the one concession to ornament, but she meant business, nonetheless.

She nodded to me, as if we'd last spoken a minute or two back. In fact, I hadn't seen her for a year.

“He's here,” she said.

To the clerk, she snapped, “
Le clef, monsieur, s'plaît
.” When he didn't jump to it she said something hard and fast, and flashed an ID that had him muttering unhappily and reaching for the passkey. She took it with a contemptuous little glare. She looked like she was about to lecture him on post-­structuralist theory, or at least on how to conjugate his verbs.

To me, she said, “Stairs or elevator?”

“Lift. I'm tired.”

The lift was an old-­fashioned thing with a cage you had to pull across and a handle you held down to make it move. It wasn't fast.

I asked her, “What'd you say to him?”

Justine just smiled, reached into her pocket, and showed me the ID. “Public health. Not current, not my name. It doesn't matter. Even if their place is clean, they know public health will tie them up for months in red tape. This is better than a cop's badge.”

She told me, “We have two more ops downstairs. One at the front, one at the back. Your man is here, he can't leave. But your Mr. Seddon insisted we wait for you.” There was a slight rise in tone at this, a certain criticism. She said, “I hope that we will not be long at this. I have a supper date I wish to keep.”

“Well. That gives us a time frame, anyway.”

At the fourth floor, we stopped. I slid the cage back softly as I could. It still scraped. Dayling's room was in the rear. We lingered at the door a moment, listening. There was a sound from inside—­perhaps a voice. I tried the door. Locked. Justine used the key.

It was not a big room. There were two single beds, a bureau and an upright chair. A window gave onto a view between the nearby buildings, framing a small mosaic of Paris rooftops. The onion dome of Sacré Coeur blazed white in the distance. A little closer, down between the beds, someone was lying on the floor.

He wasn't dead, although he looked as if he ought to be. His clothes and a part of the floor-­rug were already dark with blood. There was blood on his face. His hair stuck up in bloody tufts, making it hard to see how bad his injuries might be. He wasn't very old. His hands were tied with packing tape; ankles, too. He wore a cheap black leather jacket, pulled halfway down his arms, and his T-­shirt and the skin beneath had been slashed by something very sharp. I had no idea who he was. I pulled one of the beds out so that I could get to him. It looked as if the bleeding was about stopped. He was conscious but I didn't think he'd stay that way.

Justine took out her reader, turning slowly round the room. “There is a drain,” she said. “The energy is all gone.” She clicked her tongue. “This place is stripped.”

“Shit.”

We checked under the beds, in the wardrobe, the bathroom. Then checked again. I lifted the lid of the cistern. I checked the screws in the ventilation grill, so old and rusted they couldn't have been moved in years.

There was no flask. There was no Dayling.

Just this unknown boy, here on the floor.

I rolled him gently on his side. He groaned. There was so much blood that it was hard to tell where he was cut. He had been trussed up quickly, carelessly, by the looks of it. Trussed and butchered.

I said, “Speak English?”

“
Peu . . .
little.” He sounded weak but co-­operative.

“Dayling. The man you came to see.”

That got a blink that might have stood in for a nod.

“Where is he?”

He muttered, shrugged. His eyes stared upwards, and the pupils were too wide.

Justine took out her phone. I asked who she was calling.

“Medical.”

“No. Not yet.” To the boy on the floor, I said, “You're bleeding. You're in a bad way. Understand? You could die, you could bleed out. Hurts, too, I bet. Or it will. One call, you get an ambulance. Paramedics. Morphine. Alternately, we walk and we were never here. Got that?”

Blink.

“OK. The Englishman. Dayling. Tell me about him. Where is he? Is he hurt? Is he all right?”

“He—­he cut—­”

His fingers moved. I looked at the poor guy's beaten face. I couldn't picture Dayling doing that. I told him so.

“No. Try again.”

He began to cough. Justine said, “Let me. His English is not good. And,” she caught my eye, “he is bleeding to death.”

She took a pair of nail scissors from her bag and cut his hands free. Then they talked. I could follow most of it, largely because the young man pantomimed, stabbing, ripping motions with his arm. He coughed some more. At the end of it, Justine called for the ambulance.

“He says it was Dayling. The Englishman. He himself, he is working for another man. The other man—­he says he does not know his name—­offered him money to come here to collect a package.” Justine stood up, brushed down her jeans. “My view—­I think he is nobody. An errand boy. I also think he is telling the truth.”

“That's rough.”

I looked at the kid. His eyes weren't moving. He was going into shock. Shit. He was in a worse state than I'd thought. I pulled the cover from the bed and laid it over him. I put a pillow under his head.

It wasn't his fault. He'd just got in the way, that's all, run up against something that he couldn't understand.

God knows, I didn't understand it either.

“All right. If your guys haven't seen him leave, he's still here. And we have the passkey.”

So we searched for Dayling. We searched for the flask.

We didn't find either.

We were sworn at by a woman in a pink toweling robe, ignored by a thin man with a newspaper, and offered dinner by an African family on the top floor. There were empty rooms, where we searched in wardrobes, shower stalls, and under beds. We looked in broom cupboards and opened suitcases we had no right to open, and checked bathrooms and cupboards. We were quick, we were efficient, we were thorough.

We found nothing.

There were sirens in the street.

I said, “Let's step away.”

Outside, and half a block away, I made my call to Seddon. He sighed, he tutted. I could picture him, pursing his lips, steepling his fingers, his white brows dipping in a long, unhappy V.

“I'd hoped to keep this all under the radar. Really, Chris. Did you have to call an ambulance? It makes me tired, you know. All these . . . complications. This injured man. He has a name?”

“Probably. But I doubt he's the buyer. He's a courier. Or a thief, maybe.”

The sirens were loud now, only a street away. No chance to find out more.

“You're telling me—­what? Dayling attacked him? Fought him off?”

“Can't see it either way, myself. The guy's a mess.”

“Then you're proposing a third party . . . ?”

“I'm not even proposing a first. Dayling's not here. This isn't what he does, it's not his thing. His passport's with the desk clerk, and Justine swears they followed somebody who looks like him, and the guy on the floor seems to think that's what went on, but . . .”

Somebody who looks like him
. That brought back memories. What if he wasn't who he looked like? What if he wasn't Dayling after all?

“Well, Chris.” Seddon rallied himself. “If he's not in the hotel, he must be somewhere else, mustn't he? And I'd rather it were you who clears this up. Our mess, after all. It will make it easier to deal with questions later. Don't you think?”

“Oh. I'm sure.”

The main question for now being, where to start?

“There's a complication, too,” he said.

“Oh, great.”

“
Great
, Chris?”

“I'm being sarcastic.”

“Well, you can save that. But I believe that the Americans are sending someone out to see you. They were trying to catch you in Baghdad, but of course, that all fell through. Just be aware of them, will you? Remember they're on our side. And do try to do your best. Mm-­hm?”