Hider/Seeker (11 page)

Next evening Nurse Foster checked in on Harry before going home. She picked up his notes at the end of the bed and began to read through them. The thin officer handcuffed to Harry paid no attention to her while the other officer in the room flicked through a tabloid.

‘You off?' asked Harry, with disappointment in his voice.

‘Not a moment too soon,' she replied.

‘Couldn't take these two with you?' asked Harry, glancing at the two officers.

‘I'll be back to check on you tomorrow,' she said, putting the notes back in their holder.

Later that evening, after eating a tepid scrambled egg and yoghurt for supper, he watched a programme about bears on a fuzzy screen. The cub had got separated from its mother and everyone was worried, including the mother. To his annoyance the programme ended with a cliffhanger, and he would have to wait until the following week to see whether they found the tiny furry creature or not.

Harry snapped the off button of the remote, wondering where he might be in a week's time. He closed his eyes and dozed off to the sounds of the hospital gently fading away in his slumber.

He awoke in the middle of the night with a gloved hand over his mouth, pushing so hard that he felt his front teeth shift. There was no light on in his room and his wide open eyes could only make out a shadow of a big man pinning him down. Another dark figure was dragging his feet away from the bed. Harry's hands were free, the handcuffs were gone, along with the officers that were supposed to be guarding him. He felt woozy again as the two men hauled him up too quickly to stand. They shoved him into a wheelchair, ripping his hospital gown, and then tossed a blanket over his lap.

‘I've a gun in your back,' said one of them into his ear.

The Irish lilt in his voice raised Harry's heartbeat. ‘What do you want from me?'

‘Shut your mouth.'

Harry was pushed along the empty corridor, the duty cops nowhere to be seen. He felt his nausea coming back again and he lost track of his thoughts as they raced through the corridors. Everything was just a blur to Harry. Next a lift to the ground floor, then a sharp left as the doors slid open. Harry realised they were heading to the A&E because it offered easy access outside for a car or van to pick him up.

They wheeled him into the foyer with rows of metal benches; the glass exit doors were in sight. He knew his survival depended on somehow staying inside the hospital, but how? A call for help would end with a bullet in his back, but who would come forward to his aid? The foyer was virtually empty apart from two elderly Indian women in saris, sitting quietly on one of the benches, and, a pregnant woman holding a baby behind them.

He became dizzy again, his stomach heaved, and he vomited over the side of the wheelchair, causing the men to slip and curse him. It was the first time Harry could get a good look at them. They were packed with plenty of muscle under their leather coats. One had a shiny scalp with a light frosting of ginger hair. He had a crooked nose and a spider web tattoo on his neck. The other was bearded with thick eyebrows.

Beyond the glass doors Harry could see a stationary SUV with darkened windows, its exhaust billowing into the cold night air. It was now or never. He leapt forward from the wheelchair, but tripped on his torn gown, crashing to his knees. The men cursed him again and grabbing both his arms, dragged him towards the entrance, his toes scraping along the floor.

Two black security guards raced across to help Harry, then caught sight of a gun and backed off without hesitation.

Harry was pushed onto the back seat of the SUV, and the two men sat either side of him. A hood slid over his head, followed by a punch from the ginger man, for good measure.

On leaving the hospital gates, the SUV turned right towards the Archway roundabout and then along Holloway Road. Harry didn't need eyes to track where they were going as these were the streets where he grew up. All the time, he felt they were heading south. No one spoke in the car and any attempt to ask where he was being taken to was met by an elbow to his chin.

Forty-five minutes later the journey was coming to an end. The car's speed was dropping, eventually slowing down to a walking pace before finally coming to a halt. Wherever Harry was, it was quiet.

He was yanked out of the car into the freezing night by one of the men, his bare feet cutting up on the sharp gravel. He was near the Thames because the smell of the muddy salt air was unmistakable, even with a hood over his head. He walked painfully over the rough ground, dragged by the arm, and stubbing his toes on concrete steps. The cold easterly wind blew hard, causing his torn gown to catch sail, exposing his rear to the blue moonlight.

They entered a building and the vinyl tiles underfoot felt immediately luxurious after the gravel. He was marched along a corridor and then down a flight of stone stairs, the temperature dropping with each descending step.

Then another long corridor, a door opening, and the sound of frenetic activity. Wherever he was, it smelt musty like his old school. It sounded like a busy office with much gabbling. Harry was shoved onto a wooden chair. The hood came off, and his eyes blinked under the bright strip lights.

He was facing two men seated behind a long wooden trestle table, piled high with documents and files. For a brief second, he thought he'd been hauled up before HMRC officers. But the two men with grey faces in suits were not government employees. Nor were the small army of men behind them running back and forth with box files. They were moving in any which direction before disappearing into the dark corners of what he realised was an old gym with boxing training rings. Along the sides of the walls were punch bags, speedballs, weights, benches and other equipment.

It was all like a bad dream. He was in a public place in the middle of the night filled with strangers, and all he was wearing was a torn hospital gown barely long enough to cover him.

The men in suits were too pre-occupied to acknowledge his presence. While he waited for them to say something, he attempted to pull down the gown to cover his knees. Harry turned around in his seat, and was met by the eyes of the two bovine men who'd brought him there. The bearded man pushed Harry's face around to look forward at the two men sitting behind the table as they were now ready to start.

One of them with a pockmarked face and thinning hair looked at his watch and put down the pen he was holding. He had close set eyes like two dots on a dice.

‘Do you know where you are?' he asked, with a soft Irish accent.

‘Not the foggiest,' replied Harry.

‘You're in the middle of our war room.'

‘That's nice. Who are you at war with?'

Harry received a clip over the head from the ginger man sitting behind him.

A skinny teenager in a Celtic shirt and torn jeans emerged from the darkness behind the two men and stood at the end of the table, waiting to get their attention. In his arms were three box files. The man with the pockmarked face stopped what he was saying to Harry and told the teenager to shred the lot. The youngster disappeared into another corner of darkness at the far end of the gym.

‘We'd worked our balls off to set up this deal in Sardinia. Prestigious project. Our biggest undertaking ever. An important backer had been found. Only it isn't going to happen now and you know why.'

‘I do?'

A further slap.

‘Don't worry, Mr Bridger, our friend Tucker told us everything.'

‘Who?'

‘Come, come. Time is short. I think Angela must have mentioned his name to you, so let's not play about.'

‘So why am I here?'

‘Because I wanted to meet you, Mr Bridger,' said a voice from a man in his late thirties stepping from the shadows. There was a slight Italian-American accent in those few spoken words and Harry knew immediately the man's name without introduction. He was wearing a green Loden coat with the lapels turned up to his cheeks. His face was androgynous in appearance and looked like a Venetian masquerade mask.

‘This is Mr Roberto Marotta,' said the man with the pockmarked face, patting some papers into a neat pile on the table. ‘Mr Marotta has flown specially in to sort out the mess Angela has made for us all. She's taken a great deal of money from one of our major investors and you're going to tell Mr Marotta everything you know.'

‘You've completely lost me.'

This time Harry ducked and the ginger man swiped air.

Marotta sat at the table next to the two men with no names.

‘I didn't kill Nick Linehan,' said Harry.

The man with bad skin leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. ‘We know. We beat that out of Tucker. What we don't know, is why you were there.'

‘Eddie Parker introduced me to her. He told me she wanted to get away from her husband because he was heavy handed with her. After Eddie died, I agreed to drive her to wherever she wanted to go. Then she called that night out of the blue to pick her up. You know the rest.'

‘We heard you killed Eddie,' said Marotta.

‘Eddie was my best friend,' replied Harry in a dismissive tone. ‘I've been through all this with the police. You know from this Tucker fellow, I didn't kill Nick or take Angela and the boy. And what possible motive would I have to knock off Eddie? He gave me work from time to time.'

Marotta thought for a moment and then asked, ‘Was Eddie fooling around with Angela?'

‘What do you think?'

‘I can't see the two of them together, somehow. I doubt he was her type. He wouldn't go behind Nick's back like that. The two of them got along fine. Nick told me so, himself.'

‘I tell you Eddie and Angela got on real fine too. Her husband must have got wind about them.'

‘So you think Nick got rid of Eddie?'

‘Who else?'

There was a brief pause as Marotta exchanged a few mumbled words with the men sitting beside him.

‘So can I go now?' asked Harry.

He forgot to duck.

Marotta was deep in thought and then in a calm tone said, ‘Where were you supposed to take Angela that night?'

‘She was going to tell me once we were in the car. But we never got that far.'

‘The police think you kidnapped her and the boy?'

‘They've got that all wrong,' said Harry. ‘I took the boy out of school as Angela had asked me. Then I went to pick her up, as she had asked me. And then I got the headache from your friend Tucker.'

‘Money went missing from one of our offshore accounts,' said Marotta. ‘Money of our most important investor. Money that was going to be sunk into the marina we're building in Sardinia. We know Tucker forced Nick to authorise the transfer, but what we don't know is how Angela would have been capable of hiding so many millions.'

Harry sat passively listening to the man.

‘Whoever pulled this off, was really good,' continued Marotta. ‘A real artist. There are only a handful of people who could have done this so brilliantly, and I've used all of them.'

‘Now can I go?' said Harry for a second time.

‘We can't find Angela,' said Marotta. ‘She's disappeared into thin air. We've checked with all her friends. Nothing. I still think you know more about her whereabouts than you're letting on.'

‘I swear, I don't.'

The man who had been doing most of the talking earlier leant over to Marotta to whisper in his ear. Then he and the man next to him, who'd said nothing the whole evening, picked up the documents from the table and disappeared into the shadows.

That left Harry alone with Marotta and the two thugs sitting behind him. The floor had become eerily quiet, the frenetic activity he saw when he arrived had now stopped. All the workers had left the building and there would be no more witnesses from now on.

Marotta stood up and walked around the table. He stopped a few feet away from Harry and asked, ‘What do the police know?'

‘About Nick?'

Marotta nodded.

‘They know what he got up to in Belfast and they're playing catch up with what he was up to with his property development business.'

‘Has my name come up?'

Harry shook his head. Another lie.

‘Tell me about Angela?' asked Marotta.

‘I hardly know her. We met a couple of times at Eddie's office.'

‘I haven't seen Angela for a while. She used to complain that Nick was always trying to hide her from us. I really can't imagine her pulling off a stunt like this alone.'

‘Didn't you say she had some help from this Tucker fellow?'

‘I don't think Angela is clever enough to think this up.'

‘Really?'

Marotta remained silent for a beat, his girlish lips twitching as he weighed up everything. ‘Maybe you know where to find her.'

‘I was her ride that night, nothing more.'

‘Just tell me where she's heading.'

‘If I knew, I'd tell you. Don't forget, she's responsible for this,' said Harry, parting the hair at the back of his head to show the large plaster covering Tucker's handiwork.

Marotta nodded to the man with the beard. The man left the room and no one spoke. A river tugboat tooted its horn in the distance breaking the silence. The door behind Harry opened and he turned in his seat to see Bethany manhandled by his bearded kidnapper and another man in a studded denim jacket. Harry leapt from his chair, but was struck hard by ginger. Half dazed, Harry was hauled back onto his seat while Bethany was placed next to Marotta.

She looked pale and in a state of shock, her eyes puffy and red from crying. Marotta stood up and went across to look at her.

‘She told us she's pregnant,' said Marotta, turning to Harry.

‘Leave her out of this,' replied Harry, his voice loud and guttural.

‘I'm betting it's yours,' said Marotta. ‘Nick told me the two of you were seeing each other after Eddie was killed.' He held her chin with his hand and looked into her eyes. ‘Did you know Eddie was also having an affair?'