Unholy Ghost (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-three

‘Yes and no.'

Nadine gave him a look.

‘Cut the crap, Costello. Did you get what I wanted?'

‘We wanted. I'm in this too, remember?'

‘Did you?'

‘Yes and no. I know where I can contact the people who used her.'

‘So it's yes?'

‘But I have no introduction, no safe way in. I can get in all right, but if they don't want to talk to me the question is, will I get out?'

Nadine stood up and took a slow turn round the room. It was a neat sitting room, not big but well done out. She didn't stint herself, thought Jimmy, always a suite. Still, if it was all on her obscene expense account why not?

She came back and settled again.

‘I don't like it.'

‘I'm not wild about it myself.'

‘If you go in and don't come out where does that leave me?'

‘That question isn't exactly top of my list.'

Suddenly she was loud and angry.

‘Fuck your list. I didn't come all this way for you to finish up in a back alley like Serge. I came here to get a job done. You've screwed up, Costello, I should have known you would.'

Jimmy ignored the outburst. She was just letting the noise out while she figured her options, so he sat and said nothing. Nadine got up took another turn round the room. Jimmy knew what she was working on – go with him to the club or let him go alone? It was a tricky call for her to make. Go with him and she might make the contact she wanted, but she might also suffer the same fate if the contact wasn't welcome. Let him go alone and either he made it or he didn't. If he did then he had what she wanted and that put him in too strong a position for her to feel comfortable. If he didn't she was still on the outside, alive, but in the cold with nowhere to go but back to Paris and the brothers from Chicago. And that would also be pretty much out in the cold now she knew Veronique was waiting in the wings in a place that had enough security to be sure no one could get at her without the right introductions. She'd thought hard but come up empty on how she might get Veronique for herself. To get Veronique she would need Costello and that put her back where she was already. She needed the bastard.

She settled again and gave him another look. It was meant to be a nice look, one which showed Jimmy that she had decided to trust him, one which told him that they were partners in all this. One which hinted that they could be partners in more than this if he wanted. Unfortunately it had insincerity stamped all over it.

Christ, thought Jimmy, she must be desperate to try that game out on me.

‘You shouldn't take too much notice of what I say sometimes, I speak before I think,' she lowered her eyes, ‘but I guess you already know that.' The eyes came back up. ‘Jimmy, I trust you on this, I know you're good at what you do, it's just that, well …' The eyes went down again. God, she was bad at this. But in a way Jimmy was pleased. He was glad she was lousy at something. He finished her sentence for her. It was better than watching her do it.

‘You want to stay alive more than you want to make the contact. You want me to go in and test the water. I take a bullet in the head or I get to meet someone, either way you get something out of it.'

She tried to keep the nice going but Jimmy could see it was hard work.

‘I only get something if you come out alive. If I didn't think you'd make it I wouldn't let you go.'

‘No. If I die you know the people who killed me are the ones you need to talk to and you know where to contact them. All you'll need is another messenger.'

The ‘nice' fell away, not that she'd ever been really convinced of it herself. It was something she did when she really had nothing else to do.

‘All right, either way I get something.'

‘That's OK, I would have made the same choice. I would have explained it differently, that's all.'

‘If you make the contact, what then?'

‘That, girly, is the big money question.' ‘Girly' hurt, he could see it, so he went on. ‘And I certainly don't need you with me fluttering your eyes at these guys. It wouldn't work with them any more than it would with me, even if you were any good at it, which you're not.' He could see she was getting up a head of steam. ‘I doubt they'll be like your amateur rent boy and think trying to be nice is any part of what they're doing.' Enough. Any more and she'd go pop. Now he'd made it clear he was the one making the decisions he could get down to it. ‘They'll only be interested if they believe we can offer a deal and it will have to be a damned good deal and laid out fast just to get them to listen, if they'll listen. To do that I have to be sure I'm offering them more than they've already got. And as I have no idea what it is they've got or are trying to get you'll have to tell me what this game we're all playing is about.'

There. It was out in the open.

The steam was all gone and her brain was ticking. She was good, she latched on to the business as soon as she saw it and put anything else to one side. She'd taken his point and was now deciding how to play it so it was to her own best advantage. Jimmy let her take her time. He wanted her to feel she was in control. That was important.

‘They want the Colmar estate.'

‘I know that much. What exactly is in the estate that they're so keen to get their hands on?'

‘What were you told?'

‘Loot, Nazi loot from the war.'

She had the good grace to laugh.

‘You didn't believe that, did you? No, you didn't, how could you?'

‘So what is it?'

‘An island. A smallish island with a big, deep-water harbour.'

‘The old whore owned an island?'

‘No. She owned most of the shares in the company who own the island.'

‘And what does this company do?'

‘It processes fish.'

Jimmy had been ready for many things, but not a fish processing company. Who causes all this mayhem to get control of a fish processing company?

‘That sounds about as sensible as Nazi loot.'

‘Oh it's sensible all right. The people I work for in America have been after that company for over five years, longer if you count all the lead-in work that went on before we got called in officially.'

‘Who kills people for a fish factory?'

‘Anybody who wants to control the world.'

The laugh came from Jimmy this time but it petered out when he saw she wasn't joking.

‘Explain.'

She sat back and let him wait. It was her way of saying she wasn't giving up control so easily.

‘I'll tell you enough to make you understand what this is all about because you're right, you need to know how big it is and because your boss was also right, you're a lousy liar. When you talk to them they need to know you understand how far everyone will go in this thing.'

‘And how far is that?'

‘All the way because a war is coming. In many ways it's already started, but at present it's very low-level and the casualties are small and peripheral. Your boss McBride, the old Nazi, the journalist, even Serge, are all casualties of this war. And more people will get killed, eventually lots of people, and in the end there will be winners and losers. But this time the war isn't being left to countries or politicians. No one is going to use military muscle, well, not much anyway and nowhere that it really matters. The real strategic fighting, the fighting that matters, will be done between businesses, multi-national corporations. It will be planned in boardrooms and carried out through stock exchanges. Countries don't matter any more, they're a leftover from a bygone age. Politicians are irrelevant. They can be bought and sold like any other commodity. You see, Costello, no one in their right mind wants a war that kills business and leaves everyone with some great, God-awful mess that has to be cleaned up. The people who want to run the world, to own the world, don't want it smashed to pulp first. Nuclear weapons are as far as military muscle can ever go and have proved as useless as all the other miracle weapons, expensive, unreliable, and in the end no damned good. The only real difference is that nuclear weapons don't even leave anything to the winner.'

‘All of which means?'

‘Large-scale military wars are over, but the aim of war remains – occupy your enemy's territory, subjugate it, and you've won! Nothing else works. Occupation means bring him to his knees on his own soil and have the means to keep him there.'

She waited, did he understand, was he convinced she was making sense? It mattered, it was important that he felt in control.

‘And this fish factory can do all that?'

She knew it wasn't a joke, it was a genuine question. He wanted to understand but unfortunately he was stupid.

‘Controlling energy does the job and does it without destruction of physical things or the economic fabric – only people die and then only the poor or unimportant, those who are neither serious producers nor mass consumers, the unnecessary, the unwanted, those surplus to economic requirements. Whoever has control of the energy will have the industrial might, a might greater than any military force. Machines need fuel, people need fuel, without fuel everything stops and we all go back to the Stone Age. Masses of cheap labour are useless without energy. Control the energy and you control the people. Control the energy and you have occupation. You win.'

Jimmy believed her, at least he believed big business was behind it all. He also believed that the fish factory island was part of it all, an important part. But was he right to believe? What would McBride have made him believe? And that brought him back to the most important question and the one he couldn't answer – what was it that McBride wanted out of all of this? Not control of a fish factory!'

‘Why is the island so important?'

‘No, you've got enough to be going on with. If you believe what I've told you then you know what the stakes are and that's enough. The people you will contact want the island. Colmar must have stashed some shares with the old man, he wouldn't deal, so they killed him and got them from the daughter. Now they want the other ones held by the Colmar estate. You have to convince them I can get the estate. That we have a cast-iron candidate whom we can control absolutely.'

‘If they've gone this far they must be sure they can get the estate somehow. What's my offer of Veronique Colmar likely to be up against on their side?'

‘Work it out for yourself, you're supposed to be the shit-hot detective. I'm just a girly who flutters her eyes badly, remember? Just get me what I want. If you set up a meeting for me, a safe meeting, I'll tell you the rest. If not, if you don't come back, well, I won't say it was nice knowing you.'

Jimmy wasn't happy. He'd done badly with Greta at the residential home, now he'd done badly with Heppert. He knew a bit more but nothing that really helped, nothing that he could honestly say he even understood. What would McBride want him to do? And what did he want? Did he still want to kill the bastards, did he still want that? Maybe, maybe not, but even if he wanted to kill them, was he still up to it? If the business in the alley with Serge was any indicator the answer was no.

‘Do I tell the Dane what's happening?'

‘Nothing, not this time. Let's keep this to ourselves. Does he still trust you?'

‘I don't think he ever did.'

‘Don't get smart. Does he still think you're feeding him straight information?'

‘How the hell would I know? I call him and tell him what I know. He listens. End of story. You two are the ones who know what's going on, not me. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the one who does as he's told. I leave you two big brains to figure out who believes what.'

‘When will you go to the club?'

‘Tonight. No point in putting it off or hanging about. I'll go early, about nine. If I'm not back by midnight …'

She waited.

‘Go on.'

But there was nothing to go on with. If he wasn't back by midnight he was never coming back at all, so what the hell did he care what she did? It all had to end sometime but he'd always hoped it would end for a reason, for some reason he'd understand. If he didn't come back he would have died without knowing why or for what: a stupid, pointless death. Then he thought of his wife Bernie, dying in a hospital bed from cancer with him useless, watching, with nothing he could do and nothing he could say. All death was pointless, why the hell should his be any different?

‘If I don't come back let McBride know what happened.'

‘Sure, I'll see that she knows.'

Jimmy knew it was a lie. It had come too quickly, too easily. But it didn't matter, one more lie among so many lies made no difference and in the grand bloody scheme of things, what the hell ever did?

Chapter Thirty-four

The Black Diamond club could never be mistaken for anything other than what it was, a cheap and nasty dive where small-time gamblers went to lose money. The entrance was down some steps off a street that was, at night, bright with harsh, coloured lights that flashed, flickered, and flared among the bustle of people desperate for fun and laughter, desperate to tell themselves they were having a good time. Daylight would reveal the reality, and it wouldn't be a pretty sight.

‘The membership charge is a one-off payment of two hundred Euros.' Jimmy handed over some notes. The young man counted them, slipped them into a drawer, and pushed across a form. ‘Fill this in using a name you will remember. It is the name that will appear on your membership card.'

‘If it's on my card why do I need to be able to remember it?'

‘In the event of your losing your card we would need the name to replace it.'

Jimmy wrote his own name and looked through the other information they wanted. He put the street of the residential home as his address and the telephone number of Nadine's hotel. For references, they required two, he put Nadine Heppert with her Paris office address and M. Joubert with his Paris address, then pushed it back to the young man who examined it.

‘You have a Munich address but your references are both in Paris?'

‘I'm an international playboy.'

The young man made a face that said he didn't care one way or the other so long as he had the money in the drawer. He filled out an elaborate membership card and pushed it across. Jimmy slipped it into a side pocket and went on into the club.

The place wasn't big and it wasn't busy. There were half a dozen tables each set out for up to six people to sit at and play cards. The lighting over the tables was adequate, elsewhere in the room it was about enough to get around without falling over anything but not so good the management would have to spend much on keeping the place decorated. Around the walls were pools of light in which stood gaming machines. In a dark corner a light shone weakly on the sign for the toilets and the emergency exit. The only other well-lit place was the bar. Jimmy walked through the tables, stood at the bar, and looked round the room. Two tables were in action, one was full, five players and the house dealer. A young man in a white shirt and black bow tie. The other had a young woman in a low-cut evening dress and two middle-aged men sitting talking. The young woman had a deck of cards in front of her so Jimmy assumed she was the dealer waiting to get a game going.

Somebody behind him said something in German. Jimmy turned.

‘I don't speak German.'

‘There is no problem, I speak English very well. What do you want to drink?'

‘Beer.'

The man went and got a bottle out of a chiller cabinet, snapped off the top, and picked up a glass. He put them before Jimmy on the bar.

Then he told him the price.

Jimmy's eyebrows went up. It was a small bottle even by small bottle standards.

The barman smiled.

‘Yes, I know, a good price, you are surprised, you expected to pay more.' He took the note Jimmy put on the counter. ‘The prices go up after eleven. This is what you in England call happy hour, yes?'

‘Happy hour, yes.'

The man went to the till, put in the note, and brought back the change.

‘Put it wherever you keep your tips.'

He nodded thanks and he went off.

Jimmy poured the beer into the glass and took a drink. It was, he supposed, beer under even the loosest interpretation of any trades description act, but it was gassy and really too cold to tell what taste it had, if any.

Another man came in and sat down at the table where the girl was the dealer. He shook hands with the other men. Regulars, thought Jimmy. For God's sake, why not play at home with friends with no cut going to the house? But no, people were people. They were funny and did things you never could explain. If you could explain why everybody did what they did there'd be no place for coppers and crimes would solve themselves.

‘Another?'

Jimmy turned back to the barman. The bottle was empty but he still had beer in his glass, not much, true, but there wasn't much to begin with, not with bottles that size. Jimmy decided the bloke must be on a percentage.

‘Is there a manager?'

‘Sorry?'

‘A manager, someone in charge.'

‘You wish to talk with the manager?'

‘Yes, I wish to talk with the manager.' If he was going to do it there was no point in hanging about until he had a bigger audience. ‘I have a message for him from a customer, Greta Mann. I don't know if she uses that name here but her first name really is Greta. He'll know who I'm talking about. If he's not sure tell him she's in the residential home business and drives a neat little Mercedes sports model that his friends bought for her.'

The barman's English obviously wasn't good enough to follow and even if it had been he didn't seem to like Jimmy's attitude.

‘Tell me your message and I will see that it gets to the manager.'

‘OK. I visited Greta today and we talked. We talked about two friends of mine, an old soldier who died in his wheelchair a few years back and a French journalist who sadly passed away under a train here in Munich not so long ago. Greta told me that the manager could tell me all about it and before you ask I'm not the police, not German police, not any police. I'm a businessman, I represent an office in Paris which has a proposal to put to his,' Jimmy paused looking for the right words, ‘his associates.'

‘Associates?'

Jimmy reckoned the barman was making a genuine enquiry, he couldn't imagine the man was any part of what was going on.

‘Yes, the people the manager works for or with, his business associates. They know all about my two friends here in Munich, the old soldier and the journalist. It's a long message, do you want to write any of it down or will you remember it all?' The barman wasn't in the mood for any kind of humour. He'd understood the general idea of what Jimmy was saying, Jimmy could see that by the way he looked at him. ‘And no more beer, thanks. It's too cold.'

The barman turned and went to a phone behind the bar. He talked to someone and then came back to Jimmy.

‘You wait.'

It was spoken like an order.

‘Sure.'

Another customer had come to the bar. The barman switched back on his smile and happy manner and went to serve him. Jimmy guessed that later on, if and when the tables got busy, there would be waitresses to do the fetching and carrying so the games wouldn't get interrupted. At the moment, as it was happy hour and the beer at almost give-away prices, it was self-service. Jimmy stood and looked at the room. Somewhere the manager was probably making a call, checking, finding out what to do.

After about ten minutes the phone behind the bar rang. The barman answered it then put it down and came to Jimmy.

‘Who in Paris do you represent?'

‘Parker and Henry, corporate attorneys, they're an American firm. I'm working with a Nadine Heppert who is in their Paris office. Nadine Heppert, Parker and Henry, got that?' The barman didn't answer, he went back to the phone and picked it up and spoke again. Jimmy waited until he'd put the phone down. ‘You can tell your boss that Ms Heppert is staying in Munich, he can check what I've told him if he likes. I put Ms Heppert's hotel number on my application form.'

The barman gave him a nasty look and for the first time Jimmy noticed what a well-muscled, fit-looking, young bloke he was. You wouldn't have thought they'd need much in the way of muscle in a club like this, still, I suppose they got a few bad losers who needed to be escorted from the premises now and then.

The barman was back on the phone. When he put it down there were two more men waiting at the bar. He served them and they took their drinks to the table with the young woman dealer. The table was full so the woman was shuffling the cards and there were chips in the centre of the table. There were dealers at two more tables, one had one punter, the other two. All men so far. Jimmy looked at his watch, quarter to ten. The night was getting going.

The phone rang again. The barman apologised to the man he was serving and answered it then came to Jimmy. He nodded to a dark corner.

‘That door over there, up the stairs, there is a door at the top. Knock.'

He went back to the man he was serving and Jimmy crossed the room to the dark corner. When he got really close he saw a door peeping out from behind some sort of heavy drape. He pulled the drape aside and opened the door. In front of him was a narrow, uncarpeted wooden stairway lit by a solitary bulb in a wall-bracket half-way up. The top of the stairs was in darkness. He began to climb, passed the bulb, and went on. With the bulb behind him the top of the stairs became a little clearer and he could see a door. When he reached it he knocked and a voice answered. He went in. It was a small, shabby, cluttered office lit by another single bulb, this time hanging from the ceiling. There were two people sitting at a desk. One was a well-turned-out woman in a business suit, the other an older man, flabby and bald, in an open-necked shirt with a gaudy tie hanging loose. It was the woman who spoke.

‘Please, Herr Costello, sit down.'

There was a chair facing the desk so Jimmy sat down.

‘You the manager?'

‘No, Herr Schmidt is the manager but he speaks no English so he asked me to come and talk to you. I speak English.'

‘I thought everyone spoke English, most of the people I've met did.'

‘I assume you have not come to talk about whether people speak English or not, so please explain what it is you have come to talk about.'

‘What about Flabby? If he doesn't speak English what's he here for, decoration?'

There was nothing in the way of a reaction on the flabby man's face so Jimmy accepted that he wasn't an English speaker. Not that it mattered if the woman could negotiate.

‘I've come to offer you a deal on the Colmar estate business. My partner, a woman of influence who has an interest in the matter, feels sure it will be a better deal than the one you think you have.'

‘I was informed you wished to talk about two friends. I know nothing about any Colmar estate.'

‘Of course you don't. But I bet you know someone who does.'

‘I was told you had a message from a customer of ours. Do you have such a message?'

‘No, I told you, I want to talk to someone about the Colmar estate.'

‘I'm afraid we know nothing about this Colmar estate and if you do not have a message then I think we have no more to talk about.' She turned and said something in German to the flabby man whose face didn't change and who said nothing, just kept looking at Jimmy. ‘If there is nothing further, Herr Costello, the manager is a busy man and I also have things to do.'

‘Is that it?'

‘Unless you have anything further you wish to say.'

No, he had nothing further he wished to say. He wished he wasn't there, he wished he hadn't come in the first place, and he wished he'd done a better job of making his pitch. All of those things he wished. But there was nothing he could think of that he wished to say.

He stood up.

‘Thank you for your time. If you or your friends change your minds I'll be around for a day or two.'

‘Goodbye, Herr Costello.'

She didn't get up to say it.

Flabby said something in German.

‘The manager says that your application for membership is not acceptable. I'm afraid you have been refused membership.

‘Why is that?'

‘There were irregularities in the form you filled. This is a respectable gaming club. We cannot allow irregularities.'

‘Of course not. Where would we all be if we let the irregularities pass?'

It was the manager who answered.

‘We would all be where you will soon be, Mr Costello.'

So, Flabby spoke English and spoke it well. Another mistake.

Jimmy went to the door and left. The light bulb on the stairs had gone out. It was total darkness. Jimmy felt for the wall and began to negotiate the steps slowly. Suddenly the light came on beside his head. He stopped and looked round. At the top of the stairs Flabby was looking down at him.

‘You were in the dark, Mr Costello, but look, I have returned the light so you can see your way out. Take my advice, Mr Costello, leave all this alone, get out while you can still see a way out.'

‘Or else?'

Flabby raised his hand and Jimmy found himself once again in total darkness. He waited for more advice from the voice but nothing came so he felt his way to the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. Compared to the dark of the stairway the room looked bright. Two more tables had gone into action during his short visit upstairs. At one of them a face was looking at him. Greta's face. She was smiling. Whatever they had planned for him pleased her and that was not a good sign. Jimmy walked across the room to the exit and out to the desk where the young man was still sitting. This time the barman was standing beside him.

‘Your card please, Herr Costello. Your membership has been refused.'

Jimmy pulled the card out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table. The young man took it, tore it in half, and dropped the pieces on the floor.

‘How about a refund of my membership fee?'

‘Oh no, that was a standard administration charge. Membership is free for those who are accepted. There can be no refund.'

Jimmy left the club and walked up the stairs into the street and headed quickly for the main road where it was brighter and noisier and there were plenty of people, witnesses. Before he could reach the lights and the people a car pulled in beside him the front door opened and a man quickly got out and looked around while he opened the back door. He said something in German. Jimmy guessed he was being told to get in so he got in. If he was going to die he didn't want to hurry it up by causing a fuss, and he didn't want it to happen on a grubby side street. Once in the car it pulled away, nobody spoke, there wasn't much to say. They all knew what they were doing so they got on with it.