The Zombie Room (25 page)

‘You have Tazeem?’

‘Astute as ever Mr – oh, I almost called you Mr Lowell, silly me, when of course your real name is actually Nicholas Garrett.’

‘Let me speak to Tazeem,’ he said, trying not to let the revelation that their true identities had been compromised shake him.

‘Mangle, yeah I’m here,’ Tazeem’s voice said into the phone, then came a muffled sound, and Steiger was back on the line.

‘There you are, Mr Garrett.’

‘He’d better be OK,’ Mangle said sternly, but Steiger didn’t dignify this outburst with a response.

‘You will bring the disks to The Club and your friend will be released to leave with you.’

‘There’s no way I’m going back into that place, I’d never walk out again.’

‘You decide where it is to happen then, Mr Garrett, and call
me back. This phone will remain turned on for the next ten minutes, but do not test my patience.’

The line went dead, leaving Mangle staring at the silent phone in his hand.

‘What’s the deal? They have Tazeem and want the disks in exchange?’ Sadiq asked.

‘That’s pretty much it, yes,’ Mangle confirmed. ‘I have to call back within ten minutes.’

‘Fuck, man, the pictures on those disks are priceless, we can’t just hand them back. Besides, even if we do they’ll still kill us.’

Mangle nodded dumbly. Ten minutes to think up a way of getting them all out of the situation in one piece. Mangle leant forward, put both elbows onto the desk and placed his forehead against his palms. The same phone began to ring again.

‘No way, yeah? The guy said ten minutes,’ Sadiq protested as Mangle connected the call.

‘Yes?’ he said, trying to retain the illusion of being in control.

‘You don’t know me but I just listened in on your call and felt I had to act quickly.’

‘What? Who the hell is this?’ Mangle stammered.

‘I’m Detective Alan Bryson. We’ve had Dyson Steiger under surveillance for some time, but this could be the break we need to put him away for good.’

Mangle shook his head, trying not to get swept away by the complexity of the situation as it spiralled further from his comprehension.

‘Are you still there?’ Bryson asked.

Mangle nodded before recovering the power of speech. ‘Yes … I’m here. What do you want me to do?’

‘We have some of the same type of disks you got out of that place, blank ones. We want to switch them with the ones you have, and then use them to go through with the trade to get your friend back.

‘Meet him in the quadrant to the south of The Club, near the fence beside the esplanade. He’ll feel confident enough there to
come in person, and there are no buildings nearby for him to hide any of his people and spring a trap. Tell him to take a car and meet you there, and that’s where you’ll trade the disks for your friend. We will have a squad ready to move in on The Club as soon as we have the evidence.’

‘Why didn’t you do this earlier if you knew what was happening?’

‘We had to have proof. Those girls would never talk, and if we stormed the place to get it, by the time we got up to the control room everything would have already been destroyed. That place is like a fortress.’

‘And you know what is on the disks we have?’

‘No, but if Steiger is so determined to get them back, I can imagine it’s pretty damning.’

‘You’re just a voice on the phone, Detective Bryson. How do I know I can trust you?’

‘I guess you don’t, but can you afford not take that chance right now? If you go through with the trade and we then try to recover the disks afterwards, Steiger may already have destroyed them. And if you go through with the trade with the real disks, what’s to say he isn’t going to double-cross you anyway? It’s your call, Mr Garrett, but make it quickly while we still have options.’

‘Alright. So where do I meet you?’

‘There’s an old bakery on the main approach to the esplanade. I’ll wait behind it on my own and I’ll have my badge so you know I’m legit. Call Steiger and tell him the exchange is in two hours. That’ll give us plenty of time to meet first, but not so much that he’ll have time to think up a way around the plan.’

‘Alright,’ Mangle said, and disconnected the call. He wasn’t happy about an exchange with either Steiger or the detective, but with no alternatives he had no choice.

Sadiq knew that speaking out against the plan would win him no friends. Their concern was to secure Tazeem’s release, and any monetary value the disks may hold was of no consequence.
But Sadiq had already lost too much. Ermina had insisted he invest more and more of his fortune into the growing deal with Jupiter, and now that had been taken away he had virtually nothing left. His frivolous lifestyle, and the respect he gained as a consequence, was dependent on having lavish sums of money to throw around. He’d even lost his diamonds when they fled from The Club. He felt exposed and vulnerable, and he didn’t like it.

Carson Keaton was a hugely wealthy man, and he had everything to lose should those images be made public. Sadiq intended to make him pay to get them back. Once Mangle left he told Tatiana he was going outside to get some air. He rolled up the garage door and walked out into the bracing March air. The first call was to Mohammed. Sadiq believed he would remain loyal, despite the recent upheaval.

As soon as Mohammed connected the call, Sadiq worked quickly to fill him in on only as much as he needed to know. Sadiq wanted a phone number to contact the Mayor, the number of a call box they had used in a previous deal, and someone he could trust to collect the cash. Mohammed blustered a little at Sadiq’s brush-offs to his questions of what the hell was going on, but he settled, got down to business and supplied what was asked from Sadiq within minutes. Mohammed was instructed to go nowhere and speak to no one; Sadiq would be back in touch with further instructions.

‘The Mayor’s office, how may I help you?’ a nasal female voice whined down the line.

‘I need to speak to Carson Keaton, it’s of extreme urgency.’

‘I’m sorry, the Mayor is very busy. How may I be of service?’

‘You don’t understand. This is something I must discuss with him personally.’

‘I’m afraid the Mayor doesn’t accept unsolicited phone calls or meetings. If you’d like to leave your name and number and reason for your call, I’ll pass them along to his staff and I’m sure one of them will call you back.’

Damn it. Sadiq only had a small window of opportunity, and
any hope of success hinged on the Mayor playing along right from the start.

‘There must be a member of his immediate staff that I can speak with now.’

‘There’s Mr Burgess, the Mayor’s personal assistant. I’ll see if he will take the call.’

Classical music chimed down the line as he was put on hold. Sadiq bit his lip and paced anxiously.

‘This is Raymond Burgess, to whom am I speaking?’ a voice asked stiffly.

‘Raymond. This is someone who has something very valuable and very damaging to the Mayor,’ Sadiq said, and grinned. He could feel the warmth of confidence returning to him now.

‘What are you talking about? Who is this?’

‘If you’re the Mayor’s right-hand man, I’m gonna presume you know some of the outside office hours’ activities he gets up to, yeah? Maybe at a certain club down by the old esplanade?’

A deafening silence echoed down the line as Sadiq paused for effect. This was the confirmation he had hoped for.

‘I have a recording from that establishment that is worth a whole lot to the Mayor. On the open market I know it would fetch a fuck-load more, but time is short so I only want two million.’

Sadiq heard some muttering followed by footsteps. The other staff members were presumably being asked to vacate the room.

‘This is a very delicate time with the elections being so close, so I’m presuming this is just an extortionate attempt to smear the Mayor’s reputation.’

‘Whatever you have to tell yourself, Raymond, but you know what I’m saying is true.’

‘Even if such a thing did exist, which I don’t for a second believe it does, how would you propose to make such a trade?’

‘You’ll meet an associate of mine at a location I give you. You go alone. When you have given him the money he will hand you a phone and leave. I will call him exactly five minutes later on a
specific land line. If he doesn’t pick up I’ll know you double-crossed me and the recording will go to the press.’

‘You expect me to stand there with nothing but a phone after handing over a huge amount of cash?’

‘This is an unusual situation, yeah? But as it’s the only way this can go down, you’re just gonna have to trust me. I’m not trying to make an enemy of the Mayor; after this happens you’ll never hear from me again.’

‘So in this farcical scenario you’ve concocted, what do you envisage happening next?’

‘You stay put while my man leaves with the money. I call you after I know he’s OK, with the location of the disks. You go there and collect. Everyone’s a winner.’

Tatiana was cold and scared. Withdrawal lingered within her like disease and her whole body ached. Her escape from the torture and brutality of life at The Club was beginning to seem less liberating than she’d first anticipated. Tazeem had been taken, Mangle had left to try and save him, and despite his best efforts to convince her he would return safely, she knew just how dangerous and devious these people could be.

Being left alone with Sadiq in the cold, cramped lock-up garage made her skin crawl. Her conviction in the goodness of humanity had been shattered through her experiences, to the point that deceit and treachery now seemed inevitable. Sadiq had given her no reason to dislike him, but he’d given her no real reason to trust him either. Looking into Mangle’s eyes, she believed he was a kind man who would do right by her. But the familiar detachment and absence of compassion she sensed when she looked at Sadiq added fuel to her already smouldering fire of anxiety. She felt a brief respite from her trepidation when Sadiq announced he was going out for fresh air. But this was short-lived, and suspicion stabbed sharply at her following his departure.

Tatiana stood and walked around the shadowed interior of the garage. She briefly saw Sadiq outside, but he was walking out of
her line of sight. She crept around the parked camper van, and stepping over a leaking car battery she crouched as she approached the open garage door. Sadiq spun around and paced back the way he’d come. Tatiana shrank back, before realising that she wasn’t the cause of his sudden change of direction. He was holding a phone and speaking into it in a tense manner. She couldn’t lip-read every word as he paced back and forth, but by the time Sadiq got into the silver Mercedes and drove off, Tatiana had seen enough to know that she had to warn Mangle.

16

The city centre streets boasted a significant number of shoppers despite the temperature having dropped and the day rapidly growing dark. Each garish window display Mohammed hurried past promised bigger and better bargains than the last. He turned up his collar and looked nervously over his shoulder. The brown leather briefcase he gripped tightly knocked against his kneecap as he walked. He muttered protestations in vain at the task he’d been given, and carried on toward the meeting point.

Mohammed trusted Sadiq. He’d been his reason for hope during three years in jail. Their relationship didn’t offer him rehabilitation, but liberation. A lot was being said about Sadiq; whisperings from lesser men that he was finished. They wouldn’t have dared speak this way a month or two ago, and Mohammed believed that would be the case again. This job was surely evidence that his confidence in Sadiq was not misplaced. Those fools would quake when Sadiq again rose to power, and this time Mohammed would be right beside him – after all, he was the one who had been entrusted with this task. Mohammed smiled and shrugged off some of his earlier paranoia. This was his time.

He arrived at the coffee shop, and as instructed sat at a booth
slightly away from the full-length windows. Mohammed ran a hand over his neatly trimmed beard and glanced around at the other occupied tables. A young mother was struggling to get a reluctant toddler strapped into a pushchair at the table beside him. The wailing of the child was caustic on his nerve endings. An old man sat statue still, a large cream cup nestled in his hand as he gazed out, unfixedly, at the passing shoppers. A group of students shared a humorous moment at the corner table, and a bray of obnoxious laughter drowned out all other background noise.

Mohammed, irritated, glanced over at them and scowled. He bit down onto the inside of his cheeks, a trick he’d learned in prison to help maintain focus when surrounded by distraction. The sharp pain drew his attention inward. The other customers ceased to matter.

An irritable-looking man in a sharp suit entered carrying a sports bag. He saw Mohammed, walked over and sat down in the seat opposite.

‘Raymond Burgess?’ Mohammed asked.

‘If you attempt anything other than what has been agreed, you know we will find you, don’t you?’ the man said.

Mohammed nodded. Sadiq had warned him that the meeting would likely begin with a threat, and that he was to let it pass. He looked down under the table. Raymond slid the sports bag towards him with his foot. Sadiq pulled back the zipper, revealing the requested paper grocery bag inside. He began to take it out.

‘What are you doing? Take the bag. You can see it’s all in there.’

Again, as instructed, Mohammed didn’t respond. He reached inside, thumbed through a stack of bills at random, and satisfied, folded the grocery bag closed. He flicked the briefcase clasps, releasing the nickel bar lock, and placed the bag inside.

‘You needn’t have bothered, there’s no tracker,’ Raymond sneered.

Mohammed snapped the case closed, spun the combination lock and stood up. ‘In five minutes someone will call with the location,’ he said, placing a disposable cell phone on the table.

Fury was evident on Raymond’s face at his lack of control, but he could only sit and watch as Mohammed walked away from him and out onto the street.