Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

He knocked briskly with the brass knocker. The door, when it opened, was on a chain; it jarred, somehow, that someone so pugnacious should consider such things as home security. Hammer pushed the door to, unhooked it and looked down on Webster with mild surprise in his eyes.

“My God. They waterboarded you. Come in, come in.”

It was warm in the hall and Webster could see orange light flickering on the gray-green walls of the study on the left. Hammer was wearing his reading glasses, more delicate than the thick-framed tortoiseshell he wore in the office, and in the near-dark looked more delicate himself, and older.

“Did you walk?”

“I rode.”

“Elsa has the car?”

Webster only smiled.

“You look like shit. Take that jacket off. I have no trousers that will fit but a sweater I can manage. Luckily we have a fire. Go on.”

He started up the stairs. Webster took off his jacket, which was wet through, hung it on a coatrack in the corner and went into the study. On a table by Ike’s chair, a high-backed affair with wings, stood a spotlight, an empty glass and a copy of Livy’s History of Rome , open, pages downward, its spine cracked about halfway through. Webster stood over the fire for a moment, looking at the books on the shelves either side of the mantel.

“You caught me lighting fires in June. I’m ashamed. The truth is I wasn’t feeling too good but the sight of you is enough to make anyone feel better. Here, try this.” Hammer passed Webster a thick brown cardigan with a shawl collar, not unlike the one he was wearing himself. “No one’ll see you. There. Now, do you want a drink?”

Webster shook his head. “I shouldn’t, thanks.”

“You should. I’m having beer.”

Webster asked for whisky, put on the cardigan, which was tight and heavy, and sat down on the far side of the fire. He should have phoned Elsa before coming in. He looked at his watch and realized with a lingering sting of regret that by the time he got home she would be in bed, either asleep or pretending to be.

“Here. There’s a drop of water in it.”

“Thank you.”

He watched Hammer pour his beer from a bottle into the long glass, failing to tilt it so that it ended up with a thick head of froth. They drank.

“So,” said Hammer, licking foam off his top lip. “You owe your freedom to Mr. Senechal.”

“I owe everything to him.”

“What happened? I was expecting another call.”

“I wanted to leave it to tomorrow. Let it settle. Which wasn’t a great idea, as it happens.” He took another drink; it was good whisky and he relished the burn in his throat. “They set me up. Or they took advantage of a gift-wrapped opportunity. I think they set me up.”

“They had you arrested?”

“Why not? It’s Italy. He’s had that house for twenty years. Enough time to put down roots.”

Hammer frowned. “They did a nice job. If it was them.”

“They’ve been checking me out. I’m sure of it. The other morning all our rubbish had gone by six. Our recycling’s gone missing. And I had a call last week from Lester at GIC after he had a call from a headhunter wanting to know why I’d left.” He paused. “It’s them.”

Hammer took a deep breath in through his nose. “You think Darius Qazai is going through your bins?”

“Wouldn’t you in his position?”

Hammer raised his eyebrows and nodded. His fingers thrummed on the arm of his chair as he continued to nod, a slow, gentle bobbing that meant he was really thinking.

“So,” he said. “Their plan is to make you beholden to them. The carrot is they stop beating you with the stick.”

“That’s the second carrot.”

Hammer looked quizzical.

“Senechal tried to offer me a bribe. He told me good work would not go unappreciated.”

“You’re sure?”

“If I’d looked greedy they’d have told the Italians to stand down. No question. It was a test. The whole Como trip.”

Hammer sat thinking a little longer. “It seems a lot of effort. I had no idea he cared so much.”

“Quite. His daughter thinks that we’re more important to him than we might imagine.”

“She was there?”

“Oh, they were all there. I suspect so that it wouldn’t look like the visit was all about me.”

Another deep breath. “If you’re right, we stop the case.”

Webster put his glass down and shook his head. “We can’t stop until we know what he’s scared of. What it is he thinks we’ll find. Otherwise he’ll carry on, and so will the Italians.”

Hammer paused to take a long sip of beer. “What have they got on you?”

Webster blinked and tried to hold Hammer’s look, but it was no use. “This and that.”

“What, precisely?”

“The PIs I used were…” He sighed. “They were thorough.”

“How thorough?”

Webster hesitated. “Some hacking.”

“In 2004? Pioneering work. Is that it?”

Webster looked up at him and after a pause gave his answer. “All the usual stuff. Banks. Phone records. I think they paid someone in the Polizia for his file. And they broke into his office.”

“Whose office?”

“Ruffino’s. Photographed everything they could get their hands on. You could say they exceeded their brief.”

Hammer’s fingers thrummed and his head bobbed. “The police know about that?”

“From something they said yesterday, it could come out, yes.”

“And you didn’t know what these idiots were doing?”

“None of it. Not until they gave me their report. But I’d have a job proving that.”

A pause. “When I hired you, you said all this was dead.”

“It was.”

Hammer took a drink and thought for a moment. “Why come here? If you don’t want to stop the case?”

Webster hesitated. What he had wanted was a blessing to fight fire with fire, to do anything necessary to expose Qazai; but he had expected Ike to be as exercised by the day’s events as he himself had been, and this coolness gave him pause.

“To talk it through. To get your support.”

“For what?”

Ike, as ever, knew what he wanted. “Nothing. I thought you should know our client—the one you were so keen to sign up—is a crook. After all.”

“You’re sure?”

“Jesus. How much do you want? They’re blackmailing me, for Christ’s sake. And they wouldn’t bother unless they saw me as a threat.”

Hammer stopped tapping. In the firelight his eyes were serious now, emphatic. “If you’re right, find something to nail him with. And if you can’t, you need to let go. I haven’t seen anything that convinces me either way. Did Senechal try to bribe you? I’m sure he did. He would. But set you up?” He paused. “Sounds to me like they may not have needed to.” He let the words register. “Your job is to tell the world whether he’s OK or not. But not on a hunch. You don’t get to crush a man like that without something really good. Meanwhile, he’s our client. He’s paid us a lot of money, and we owe him more than suspicions in return.”

Webster gulped his Scotch. He stood, peeled off Hammer’s cardigan, laid it on the back of the chair and made to leave.

“The first time I saw him I knew he was wrong,” he said. “I can’t believe you don’t see it.”

“I’m letting you do the seeing.”

Webster shook his head. “While you watch the fees? I understand.”

He gave perfunctory thanks for the drink and left, taking his damp jacket from the stand.

THE NEXT DAY,after a cool morning at home, Webster took Nancy to school and Daniel to nursery and made his furtive way to the Caledonian Road to see Dean Oliver, stopping in Queen’s Park to arrange for flowers to be sent to Elsa. They were a poor substitute for honesty but he couldn’t afford that, not yet. Throughout his time at Ikertu he had told her almost everything almost all the time, only leaving out the details that he thought would appall or bore her. This, though, would frighten her, and he persuaded himself, disingenuously, that he preferred to lie to her than see her scared. On his way he left a message for Constance, telling him that things had become more serious and asking him to call.