The Jackal's Share (16 page)

15.

N
O FUNERAL SHOULD TAKE PLACE
in high summer. Even in Highgate, on the rising hills of north London, the city’s heavy air had found its way through the oaks and sycamores to the mourners gathered around Timur’s grave, bathing them in a waxy heat that seemed to drip onto the skin and stick there. Webster, sweating in his wool suit, could feel grime accumulating on the inside of his collar and ran a finger around it to loosen it from his neck. Ant-like bugs flew silently, drawn to the white shirts of the men; next to him Hammer swatted at one on his neck, caught it, discreetly flicked the remnants away.

Cool earth, that’s what Timur deserved, but the ground looked heated today and seemed to offer no rest. Webster couldn’t help but picture him in his coffin as it was borne in on the shoulders of the pallbearers, Qazai at the front. His body must have been badly broken. He had died, the Dubai police had said, when his car hit a wall at somewhere just under a hundred miles an hour. The collision had been side-on; at the last minute his car had swung around, flailing into the concrete and crushing him inside. Webster imagined the tremendous noise it had made and the greater silence that must have followed.

This was not a grand funeral—there was no splendor, no pomp—but there were many mourners. Webster could make out a wealthy Iranian set, some of whom he recognized from Mehr’s memorial service: a handful of Tabriz staff, several friends of Timur and Raisa, less moneyed than the rest. And then there were the Qazais, in their black dresses and black suits, reduced, a flat outline of the people he had last seen in Como just two weeks before.

Timur’s sons were both there, decked out in mourning, Raisa holding them close. Parviz stared quietly at the freshly dug black walls of the grave while Farhad hid his face in his mother’s waist, nestling there, more shy than sad, occasionally glancing out as she stroked his hair. Raisa herself, the color in her face leached out, kept shaking her head, as if she was simply lost in the wrong place.

From the other side of the grave Webster saw all this. He saw Timur’s mother, the former Mrs. Qazai, standing apart from the family with her new husband, her blonde hair piled up on her head and her eyes masked by sunglasses. He saw Senechal, in his usual uniform, looking like an agent of the afterlife come to take stock. Ava, with her head bowed and eyes shut. And he saw Qazai, pale, gaunt, erect and proper in his suit, working hard to counter the new look of fear and haunting in his eyes.

It was a quiet ceremony. The celebrant’s soft voice was directed only to the family and Webster, standing far from the grave, couldn’t hear the prayers that were said over the body as it was lowered into the ground. The words over, Raisa reached down, took a handful of damp soil from a neat pile at the edge of the grave, and threw it onto the coffin, where it landed with a gentle patter. As each of her sons did the same she squatted down and when they were done held them in a long, still embrace. Then she stood, smiled at both, wiped her tears and led them away down a dark avenue of oaks toward the waiting cars.

Timur’s mother was next, then Ava, then Qazai, who stood for a long time—a full minute, perhaps two—staring at the coffin with the earth in his hand before letting it drop. His gaze was unblinking, intense, yet somehow absent. Webster wondered whether he was looking through the wood to send a last message, or making some inward search of his own soul. Behind and around him the other mourners started to disperse, and as the soil slipped from his hand an abrupt, silent sob shook him and he too moved away, making the procession back to the road on his own. Webster watched him go, sensing that he had just seen his first glimpse of an unadorned Darius Qazai, the raw essence of the man that investors and grandees and private detectives didn’t ordinarily meet. He could not comprehend his pain. Even his tireless imagination baulked at the task.

By the grand gates of the cemetery people had stopped and were saying goodbye to each other. Senechal, bleached out in the full sun, had taken himself to one side and now stood waiting. Webster saw him ahead and waited for him to stroll lightly toward them.

“Mr. Hammer. Mr. Webster. It is good of you to come.” He didn’t offer his hand and spoke with greater than usual earnestness. “I felt sure that you would wish to have the opportunity to say your last respects.”

“We’re grateful to be invited,” said Hammer. “It came as a terrible shock.”

“To all of us, Mr. Hammer. To all of us.” Senechal paused. He seemed at home here, almost relaxed. No smiling was required, no positivity. Just a meek, lawyerly deference to the likelihood that things will, after all, almost always go wrong.

“There is nothing worse,” said Hammer, “than seeing someone die young.”

Senechal inclined his head in a sort of bow.

“Our meeting tomorrow . . .”

“We will cancel,” said Hammer. “Of course. Or rearrange.”

“No, no. That will not be necessary. No, the meeting will proceed as before.” Sensing their perplexity he went on. “I’m afraid that the death of Mr. Qazai does nothing to solve our problems. Indeed, it makes them more acute. When we see each other I shall want to know exactly where we are with the report, and when we can expect its release. In all honesty,” he attempted a smile, “I think we have waited long enough.”

Hammer checked Webster with a discreet motion of his hand. “I understand. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

But Webster had stopped concentrating. He was looking over Senechal’s shoulder at Ava, who had broken away from the people still milling around the entrance to the cemetery and was now walking toward them with purpose in her stride. As she drew near, Senechal followed Webster’s look and turned to find her already by him and fixing his eyes with her own, tired and red as they were. She glanced at Webster before addressing Senechal.

“Did you ask these two?” Senechal hesitated, apparently surprised, but not discomfited, by the question. “Did you?”

“Mr. Qazai asked me to invite them, miss.”

Ava looked from one face to another, furious, shaking her head. Glancing behind her she leaned in slightly, lowering her voice. “This is not a business meeting. This is not a moneymaking exercise. Do you understand? For any of you. If he’s invited you to the wake, do the decent thing and go home. And you,” she turned to Senechal, jabbing a finger at him, “I don’t want you there. I don’t want you in my father’s home. Sucking the life from him. Doing whatever it is that you do.”

She glared at Senechal for a good two seconds, made to leave and then shook her head, as if remembering one last thing.

“Why did you come?” she said to Webster. “What is there to investigate here?”

“I came out of respect for your brother.”

“You didn’t know my brother.”

“Sadly, no.”

“I expected better from you.”

Her eyes were trying to impart some meaning that he couldn’t grasp; he felt baffled by her words, and awkward at having been singled out. Senechal, showing no signs of shock, looked intrigued, as if he had just heard something whose significance he couldn’t judge but whose importance he did not doubt.

•   •   •

T
WO DAYS EARLIER,
when Webster had first heard the news of Timur’s death, his response, after the shock, had been a strange, inappropriate lightness, almost peace: when he surveyed his thoughts the insistent muttering of his obsession had gone, and the switch was like moving from white noise to utter quiet. To continue his duel with Qazai now would be indecent and unnecessary. The man was already crushed, and though Webster wasn’t proud of it, beside his sympathy for Raisa, and her boys, and Ava, sat something like relief.

His first call that evening, after he had spoken to an excited Constance, had been to Ike. They talked about Qazai, and what this would mean for his plan, and agreed that without Timur it would at best have to be completely rethought; about Timur himself, the misfortune of being born the son of a rich man; and, with a certain amount of professional detachment, the difficulties of staging a car crash so that it might look like an accident. Hammer was of the opinion that it was more or less impossible, certainly a great deal harder than anyone might imagine, and Webster, though he disagreed, said little. Even before he had spoken to Constance, who was convinced, as ever, of a conspiracy (the car had been tampered with, no question; a mysterious Range Rover had been seen racing it shortly before the crash; the Dubai police were saying, unconvincingly, that crucial CCTV footage was missing) he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Timur’s death wasn’t the latest act in a sequence, a progression he could see but whose logic he couldn’t make out.

One day, perhaps, that story might be told, but he no longer had to be the one to tell it. In any case, he had nothing. Some strange payments through a dead man’s company and a hint of a conspiracy from, of all people, the Gulf’s most energetic conspiracy theorist.

“I’ve seen the light,” Webster said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re right. We should end this.”

Hammer was quiet, waiting for more.

“As painlessly as possible. I’ve got no appetite left.”

Webster heard Hammer take in a long breath. “Good. It’s one thing you being ruled by your appetites. It’s another when we all are. Welcome back.”

His next call had been to Oliver, and just dialing the number had made him feel cleaner.

“Dean. It’s Ben.”

“This is late for you. Not for me, of course.”

“We need to stop work. Send me your bill. Make it healthy.”

There was a pause. “You’re sure you want to do that, Ben?”

“I’m sure. Something’s happened. The client’s had enough.”

“Well that’s a shame. It’s getting interesting.”

“The money?”

“That’s a long trail. Both ways. No. Something else.”

Webster paused, knowing he had to hear it.

“We got the bins again on Tuesday. You should see some of the stuff that guy throws away. I could live off it. Anyway, not much of a haul, except two sheets of flight log for his jet. First quarter of this year, but I managed to get the rest. It’s a Bombardier, super long range. Flies it to New York, Hong Kong, Dubai. Always those three places. And Milan. Once to St. Kitts for a week. But there are one or two odd ones in there. Caracas, for a day, back in November. Flies in in the morning, back overnight. Belgrade early last year. He spent the night there. And Tripoli, in January.”

“OK. So what else?”

“Ben, you need to be a little more patient.” Oliver paused, and Webster apologized. “I’ve also done his cell phone. Took a while because it’s in the company name. He uses it a lot. Anyway, I couldn’t see anything in there, but I fed it all into this program I’ve got that spots patterns in data, along with the flights, everything we know about transactions on Mehr’s accounts, the lot.”

“And?”

“And two or three days before each of those trips, he gets a call from the same number. A UK cell phone, pay-as-you-go. I checked with Vodafone. Set up with bogus details—false address, false name. But it only ever calls one number—Qazai’s. That’s it. It was set up two years ago, and in that time it’s made just six calls. One before each of the trips, and three others. But in the last fortnight, it’s made two more calls. Both to that number.”

That was interesting. If Webster had wanted to establish a secure means of talking to a source, this is how he would have done it, and if he had wanted to meet him quietly—somewhere no one was looking, where discretion was assured—those might be the places he would choose. Interesting, but tenuous, and redundant.

“Thanks, Dean. But send me the bill.”

“You’re serious?”

“I am.”

“What happened?”

“Qazai’s son died.”

“You have a very decent client,” said Dean, after a pause.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, some people would say this is the time to press on.”

“Some would,” said Webster.

And that had appeared to be that. So convinced was he that the world had changed that when he and Hammer had received a call from Qazai’s secretary asking them both to attend the funeral, Webster had seen it as confirmation, a formal offer of a truce.

•   •   •

W
EBSTER’S GRANDFATHER HAD DIED
when he was nine. For a year and a day his grandmother, a Catholic, had worn black: entirely at first, and slowly introducing muted colors as time passed. Fascinated by the process, he had asked her why she did it, and she had told him that his grandfather would want to know that she was missing him, and this was her way of showing that she did. He would see the black and know.

The day after the funeral, walking to Mount Street with Hammer at his side, unity restored, Webster thought this was no way to mourn, with meetings and negotiations and business. What it said about Qazai that he should persist in this way he didn’t know. Was it heartlessness or doggedness? Or simple desperation? A week ago that would have been one of the questions that Webster would have liked answered above all, but now he couldn’t bring himself to care. What he had seen yesterday had shown him that his client, proud and tricky and even poisonous as he might be, was still a human being and therefore worthy of some charity. And some humility: who was Webster, after all, to take it upon himself to judge this man?

It had rained overnight, enough to freshen the air a little but not enough to wash away the heat, and even at ten it was uncomfortably warm. Mayfair woke up later than other parts of London and was still quiet. So was Hammer, by his standards. He was letting Webster know that his mood hadn’t softened nor his ultimatum changed just because Timur had died, and Webster felt a certain relief that for once he wasn’t going to have to fight him.

At the Qazai house they were shown by the butler, with greater than usual solemnity, into the sitting room, whose many treasures were showing only dimly through the gloom. The curtains were drawn and the only light came from four large, fabric-shaded lamps stationed around the walls. The air was stale and warm and smelled of must.