Quintin Jardine - For The Death Of Me

‘And now the Malaysian police will be after me for murder. Very neat, Oz. If I escape from you, they hang me.’

‘The Malaysian police aren’t after anyone, Maddy. Sammy Goss had a very quick funeral at sea, well away from where the scuba-divers will ever go. Maddy, think about this: he had a cool box with him, and you know what that was for. Suppose I did want you killed, a huge overreaction by the way. When you consider the size of the threat you pose to my brother-in-law, why the fuck would I want your head? If I’d sent Sammy, I’d have told him to take a photograph of you dead, for Christ’s sake. That would have been all the proof I’d have needed. It’s the Triads who go in for extravagant gestures.’

I looked at Prim as I spoke. ‘Ouch!’ she mouthed. ‘You’ll terrify her.’

I ignored her. ‘Why, Maddy? Why would I do that?’

‘I saw you with him,’ she blurted out. ‘I watched you all the way up the hill at Fort Siloso. I watched you, with him and your other heavy. Then they went and hid and you met me on your own. You were showing them what I looked like.’

‘Is that why you didn’t turn up at the Next Page?’

‘No. I trusted you then. It was Tony who didn’t. He wouldn’t let me go; he insisted on making the trade himself, and he went armed. He sent me on ahead to Dayang, and told me that he’d pick me up from there in a boat and we’d cross to Vietnam.’

‘That’s five hundred miles.’

‘We could have done it in three days. But we didn’t, though, did we? Because it wasn’t Tony who showed up, it was your man, the little fair-haired guy. I watched him go to Aur, then head across to me in Dayang. When he got close enough I recognised him, and I realised that this wasn’t about me photographing some Triad boss, at least not any more. It was about you, taking care of family business.’

I sighed. ‘Maddy, everything I know about these guys, and everything I’ve learned since we met, tells me that you were right to be terrified. You were in huge danger, and you still are. You’re right to run, but you’re dead wrong to believe you’re running from me. I didn’t know what Sammy Goss was. I didn’t find him, he found me, and I still haven’t figured out how or why. I want you to trust me and to meet me again.’

‘Where are you?’

‘If you come to the window and look to your right, you’ll see a car.’

‘I’m coming to no fucking window!’ she screeched. ‘I show myself and I’m picked off. Oz, I promise you, as soon as you step into this house, you or anyone else, I’ll kill you. I have another gun, my sister’s gun, and I’ll shoot the first person who comes near me.’

‘Okay, okay, I’m not going to rush you. You’re paranoid, woman, but you probably have a right to be. So I’m going to propose something else. I’m going to send someone across, someone you knew when you were in Edinburgh.’ I looked at Prim: I’d had a feeling it might come to this. She nodded. ‘She won’t be armed; given what she’s wearing, you’ll be able to see that. I want you to let her in, and let her talk to you. She’ll be your hostage if you want to look at it that way. She’ll even bring the money if you like.’

‘I don’t want your fucking money!’ she snapped. ‘I want to stay alive.’

‘Then let me do this, and you’ve got a chance.’

I listened to her breathing. I felt Prim’s eyes on me, and Dylan’s, but I kept mine fixed on the house, looking for anything, the faintest twitch of a blind or curtain.

‘Okay,’ Maddy said eventually. ‘Send her across. But no tricks, or her brains will be all over the hall.’

I ended the call and turned to Prim. ‘She’s says she’s armed and we have to believe her,’ I told her. ‘Plus, she’s very emotional. If you say no, I’ll drive away right now, but I don’t know what we do to help her after that.’

‘You give me as long as it takes,’ she replied. ‘While I’m in there, you do not phone again. If either of you gets out of the car, you keep your hands where they can be seen from the house at all times.’

‘All of the above,’ I murmured.

She squeezed my hand, leaned over and kissed me quickly on the cheek, then opened her door and slid out.

We watched her as she walked away from us, her brown body seeming to glow with health, her hips moving rhythmically, encased within the skin-hugging shorts.

We watched her as she stopped at the door of number seventeen. Almost at once, it opened. ‘There’s only one place she could possibly be carrying a weapon,’ said Dylan, as she stepped inside, with a flash of the crudity for which he had been famous in Scotland, ‘but no way could she ever get it out in time.’

We waited there for thirty-seven minutes. I know this because I must have checked my watch at least thirty-seven times. My patience control was set at one out of ten, but I managed to keep it in check. After half an hour I stepped out of the car, laying my hands on the roof as Prim had specified. The metal was burning hot, but I didn’t care: it gave me something else to think about.

I jumped when my phone rang. I snatched it from my pocket and flipped it open. ‘Yes? I snapped.

‘Hey,’ Susie exclaimed, ‘what’s with you?’

‘Can’t talk now, love,’ I said. ‘We’re almost there. I’ll call you when it’s all sorted.’

It rang again two minutes later, and this time it was Prim, calling from the house. ‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘Maddy says you can come in, but only you.’

‘Sorry, pal,’ I said to Mike. ‘You’re not invited.’ He wasn’t bothered. He’d started on my book; looking for ideas, I supposed.

I crossed the street quickly and took the steps in front of the house three at a time. Prim opened the door for me. Maddy was in a sitting room to the left of the entrance hall. She bore no resemblance to the assertive, well-groomed woman I’d met on Sentosa Island; even her hair was a mess. A gun lay on a coffee-table, a big Colt automatic, forty-five gauge at least. I’d fired one in a movie, blank rounds. If she’d tried to use it, the recoil would have taken it right out of her hand.

I held up both of mine. ‘Hello,’ I began. ‘I am the Lone Ranger, honest. Tonto’s out in the car.’

After everything that had happened to her, she managed a laugh. A weak one, but I took it as something positive, a sign that she didn’t feel alone any more.

‘What do I do now, Oz?’ she asked.

‘Whatever I say, would be a good place to begin. I think we should all get out of here. This is a dead end, Maddy, we don’t want to be cornered.’

‘Where do we go?’

‘Anywhere out of Princeton. Pack what stuff you have, and let’s move. We can make decisions on the road.’

‘Will I be safer?’

‘Sure. The Triads may be looking for you, but they’re not after me. With me, you’re less visible.’

She agreed, and she didn’t have a lot to pack. We were heading out of Princeton inside ten minutes. She was going to leave a note for her sister but I vetoed that. Just in case the opposition arrived and broke in (classic security: the key had been under a big flowerpot in the back garden) I didn’t want to leave any clue that she’d been there.

I decided against going back to New York. Instead I went back to Highway One and headed south for Trenton, the state capital, less than fifteen miles away. We didn’t shop around for a hotel: I spotted a big Marriott, almost on the Delaware River, which at that point divides New Jersey from Pennsylvania. We headed straight there.

We took three rooms; Madeleine wanted Prim to share with her, but there was no way I was bunking with Dylan. I filled out the registration forms, using phoney names (I registered Maddy as Ms April July and the clerk didn’t bat an eyelid) and hoping that I wasn’t as famous in Trenton as I was in most other places. I paid for two nights up-front, cash.