Nick Oldham - One Dead Witness

Then, loving husband that he was, he arranged private medical treatment for her at a clinic he owned.

Very much linked to the first lesson was that it was in her interests not to take any more interest in her husband’s whereabouts. He ran businesses which operated twenty-four hours a day and he had to be in a position to supervise them appropriately. So of course he would be away nights. It didn’t mean he was being unfaithful to her.

Yeah, right.

The final lesson was that she should be grateful to be married to him. She should be grateful he came home at all and even more grateful if he deigned to fuck her. She learned this lesson, because he told her.

Those, at least, were the direct learning points from hiring Steve Kruger.

She learned a few indirect ones too. One was to never — ever — trust the staff. Whatever they said, she would never again take anyone of them into her confidence, like she had done with the two bastards who had kidnapped Steve Kruger for her. In the end, Mario employed them, and their first loyalty was to him, not her.

She had also become aware that the house was riddled with listening devices and miniature cameras, monitored from a control room at the gate-house, into which she had never been allowed. She had been under the impression the gate-house was simply a place where Bussola’s heavyweights just crashed out. Now she knew it was far more sinister.

Her personal objective now was to find all the surveillance devices and then never to say or do anything further to incriminate herself or any other person in any way. It might get someone killed.

She believed she had located all the bugs. The only rooms which appeared to be free of them were the bedrooms, Mario and Ira Begin’s offices and most corridors and landings. She had no idea why the bugs existed and did not dare ask.

The main lesson she had learned from recent events, though, was that she was a stupid, naive bitch who had been blinded by money and lifestyle and was now more unhappy than she had ever been in the whole of her life. She felt trapped, with no way out… and she still didn’t know if Bussola was cheating on her.

Not that it seemed to matter any more.

‘ It took a little time,’ Ira Begin said apologetically, ‘but he came through in the end.’

Bussola looked up from his desk at Begin who was leaning against the door jamb of his boss’s study. It was 9 a.m., on the day after Begin had been given instructions to start making enquiries into the current state of play and whereabouts of Tracey Greenwood.

‘ Sit down,’ Bussola nodded. Begin came into the office and took a seat on the couch, pushing the door to behind him, though it did not close properly.

‘ I had to pull in some goodwill on this one, Mario. It’ll cost.’

‘ Pay.’

Begin nodded. ‘Apparently Tracey Greenwood presented herself to Myrna Rosza at Kruger Investigations and stated she wanted to testify against Gilbert in some old murder case in England.’

‘ Why Kruger Investigations?’

Begin shrugged. ‘Maybe she doesn’t trust the authorities. Anyway, she’s now with that black bitch Rosza, who’s babysitting her until the English cops get here. There’s a detective due to land at MIA later today to escort the girl back to Britain — a guy called Danny Furness.’

‘ Where’s the girl now, as we speak?’

Begin heaved a sigh. ‘With Rosza, place unknown.’

Bussola gave his assistant a withering look. ‘Make it a place known.’

‘ Working on it as we speak.’

Bussola ran a hand through his hair. ‘I want her dead, Ira. If you can negotiate a hand-over with Rosza, then all well and good.’

‘ I have an idea, a leverage tool we might use.’

Bussola waved a hand dismissively. ‘I believe in empowerment, Ira. Do it your way, but if it doesn’t work, kill the girl and then kill anyone else who causes any obstruction, cops included.’

At the study door there was the faintest whisper of a sigh, a movement… Begin leapt to his feet and jumped to the door.

No one there.

He gave a short laugh and closed it.

Felicity had been watching and waiting for Begin to go in and see her husband, and had then sneaked up to the door and listened to every word spoken between the two men. She had remained still, completely rigid, during the conversation, her ear literally at the crack in the door. Then her ribs twisted slightly and she could not prevent the squeak of pain escaping from her lips.

She spun out of sight in the dog-leg of the hallway just a moment before Begin poked his head out of the door, amazing herself how quickly she could move when she needed to, despite the present condition of her body.

Now she needed to get to a phone which wasn’t wired up. Something easier said than done.

Felicity’s activities had been very much curtailed since her recent blunder, and getting out of the house alone was now a major operation. Bussola was deeply suspicious of her, wanted to know where she was going, what she was doing, who she was seeing; he also made sure she was accompanied all the time.

Had she not been almost crippled by his beating, slipping away from a chaperone would have been relatively easy. Now she had to think up some other strategy, and double-quick too, for if she could not get away from the house, she’d be unable to warn Myrna of Bussola’s plans for the witness and possibly Myrna herself.

Ten minutes after his conversation with Begin, Bussola was again working by the poolside, his laptop connected up to the Internet where he was surfing the pornography pages. Felicity hovered with a complete lack of assertiveness, just in his view.

‘ Yeah?’ he said at length, not raising his head from the screen.

‘ Sweetheart, I need to get out,’ she said humbly.

Bussola stopped tapping at the keys. He regarded her sternly and she prepared herself for the ‘why’ question.

It came. ‘Why?’

‘ I just wanna drift around a few clothes shops, cheer myself up a little, maybe try on a few things. I won’t buy anything.’ Not that she could. As part of her punishment, Bussola had chopped off all her credit. ‘Honey, please can I?’ she pined.

He then shocked her. ‘Yeah, you can. In fact, go and buy yourself something.’ He delved into his briefcase and extracted a wad of cash. He did not count it, just handed it over.

‘ Gee… thanks honey,’ she said genuinely, seduced by the sight of greenbacks. There must have been about fifteen hundred dollars.

‘ Pleasure, babe.’

Then she remembered who he was, what he had done to her and others, but nevertheless maintained her gratefulness. ‘You are really good to me.’

‘ Hey!’ he clicked his forefinger at her. ‘And don’t you forget it. Now get lost.’

His attention returned to the computer. Felicity limped painfully away, hearing Bussola’s voice call behind her. ‘Gus, you take my wife shopping, y’hear?’

Gus stood up. ‘Okay, boss.’ Felicity saw it was the bodyguard with the rather substantial appendages. It was horrendous to be horny and unable to do anything about it.

Ira Begin had not reached his exalted position in life without proper planning, taking into account all the imponderables of a situation, always making back-up plans for any contingency and ensuring they were in place should his initial course of action not succeed.

As was the case with the situation concerning Tracey Greenwood and Myrna Rosza.

He had quickly established how he was going to approach the problem. It would, as Bussola had suggested, be through a process of negotiation. If that failed, other tactics would drop into place. But what he needed to know before anything happened at all was the exact holding position of the girl.