Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

They were in a wine bar in the City, in a long room with tables under high windows. Casca had arranged it. Casca said MI6 suggested a meeting, and that meant something.

Kirkby put the glass to his beaky nose, sniffed deeply, sipped, took in air like a fish, closed his eyes, rolled wine around his mouth, swallowed. ‘Helen Turley,’ he said. ‘A genius. One of yours.’

‘What?’

‘She made this drop. The proprietor here managed to get two cases. Exorbitant price. But.’

Palmer saw that Kirkby had caught the eye of the man behind the counter of the wine bar, a huge red-bearded, red-faced person wearing an apron. Kirkby toasted him wordlessly. The man nodded and raised his own glass.

Palmer drank. He liked wine. He’d come late to it. His father’s view had been that wine was one of many European curses on America. For some reason, he regarded it as an Italian curse. Probably because his father disliked Italians even more than he disliked the Irish. ‘The only good thing about the Irish is that they’re not Italian,’ he said when Palmer told him he planned to marry someone of Irish descent.

‘We’d like to know if he leaves, of course,’ said Palmer. ‘But he’s with a local. That’s where we’d appreciate help.’

Kirkby looked at him, a neutral gaze, looked away, looked back. ‘Yes?’

‘She may be the easiest way to find him.’

‘And she’s not…helping?’

‘Out of sight too.’

‘Inquiries, who’s been…?’

‘A private firm. Lafarge.’

Palmer knew that Kirkby knew about Lafarge.

‘Private. Yes.’ Kirkby touched his oiled hair, smiled, raised his glass to his lips. He seemed to hold wine around his gums before swallowing.

‘It’s urgent,’ said Palmer. ‘We wouldn’t ask otherwise.’

‘No, of course you wouldn’t. I’ll, ah, I’ll have a word with someone. Ask them to get a move on too.’

Palmer took out the card and held it edgeways on the table. Kirkby took it, delicately, at a corner, put it in his top pocket without a glance.

‘We’d like to know where she might go, friends, that kind of thing,’ Palmer said. ‘Without alarming her.’

‘Yes,’ said Kirkby, ‘that’s more or less what I thought you’d like.’

He finished his wine, licked his lips, took a doubled envelope from an inside pocket and gave it to Palmer. It wasn’t sealed.

Palmer took out his reading glasses. He hated having to do that.

Three pages. Phone-tap transcripts.

Palmer read, and he had to stop himself sighing.

‘You can keep those,’ said Kirkby.

‘Thanks.’

‘Well-connected, unfortunately. The father.’

Palmer nodded. It was over and they got up and went to the counter. He paid. Exorbitant was about right for the wine, he thought. At the door, they shook hands.

‘I’ll make a call from here,’ said Kirkby. ‘Get things moving.’

…HAMBURG…

Anselm went to the basement and got a beer from the machine. Soon they’d take the machine away. The room was empty, the heating off, damp blistering the paint on a wall. No one used the place any more except to sneak a smoke, avoid going out into the chill. In the first years after his arrival, the room always had people in it, financial charlatans from the top floor, advertising people from the annexe, people drinking liquor and coffee, smoking, eating their packed lunches. Flirting. The truck had come to refill the beer machine every afternoon. He’d never lingered, nervous, hanging out, just got two beers, gone outside, drained them in minutes.

He sat on the formica-topped table, put his feet on a chair. The television in the corner was on, an old Grundig, the colour uncertain. Beyond midday and he was only on his first beer. What did this mean? He took a measured swig and lit a cigarette. Drink and smoke, the fatal, sweetest combination.

Constantine Niemand had a film of something terrible in Africa. He tried to sell it to Caroline Wishart and later she saw someone try to kill him.

Kael and Serrano sent Shawn to Johannesburg to look for papers, documents, anything that involved them. Shawn found a film too. Then he was murdered. Niemand was there, and then he had the film and the documents.

Lafarge were looking for Niemand and someone called Jessica Thomas.

Caroline Wishart wanted to connect Kaskis’ one-paragraph reference to a rumour about an Angolan village to the film Niemand showed her.

Anselm thought about San Francisco, about Kaskis calling from somewhere, a message on the machine:

A few days in Beirut, it’s on me, my grandpa’s money’s come through, to spend not on myself but in the interests of truth and justice. I need a witness, a reputable witness, but you’ll have to do. And a photographer. Got one handy? Footloose and fancy-free?

On the plane two days later, Kaskis was just himself, giving away nothing, you didn’t bother to question Kaskis, he told you what he wanted to tell you. It was a free trip to somewhere where there were always saleable stories to be found.

What had Kaskis said about Diab?

He’s a bitter man, a wronged man, the army done him wrong…

He couldn’t remember when Kaskis had said that. At the hotel in Beirut perhaps. Riccardi arrived after them, the morning after. Kaskis and Riccardi went for coffee. How much did Riccardi know about the job? Who was he there to photograph? Stills or video? Black and white? Colour? So much photographic equipment hung off Riccardi that people in the street had been known to point and ask: How much for that?

But surely Riccardi already knew when he arrived in Beirut? Kaskis would have described the job when he rang him in Ireland. Told him who, why, the point of the exercise.

There was no certainty of that. Riccardi often forgot to ask the most basic questions. He simply didn’t care. And Kaskis always had the this-is-your-commanding-officer-and-I’ll-tell-you-what-you-need-to-know air. Presumably that came from the army. He joined at seventeen, became a Green Beret, ended up in Delta Force. He didn’t talk about it much. Once he had said the army didn’t want you to go beyond a certain stage of maturity:

‘If you’ve got the brains to grasp that, then baby, it’s time to saddle up and ride. The ones who don’t, well, they’re kids forever. Playing this fucking wonderful game with really dangerous stuff. And I’m not talking just the grunts, the cannon fodder. There are kids right at the top-the fucking Pentagon’s full of them.’

Anselm stubbed his cigarette, tested the can for beer, wobbled it, drained it.

The television showed a heavily built man getting into a car, Secret Service protectors around him. The woman on television said:

In spite of strong rumours, American Defense Secretary Michael Denoon today continued to avoid declaring that he will next year seek the Republican Party nomination for the American presidency. Gerald McGowan reports from Washington.

A solemn-looking man came on, standing in front of the White House. He put his hands into the pockets of his black overcoat and said:

White House insiders are today saying that Secretary of Defense Michael Denoon is hours away from resigning his position to begin his late run for the presidency.

Since the collapse of the Gurney campaign, Denoon is said to have been urged to take the field by powerful interests. These include the US military, which he left twelve years ago as a much-decorated four-star general, and the Republican Party’s most powerful business group, Republicans at Work.

Anselm was on the stairs when he thought about the flight to Beirut. Business class. Free drinks. He had been drowsing, cabin lights dimmed. Kaskis had taken a photograph out of his briefcase, adjusted the overhead spotlight to look at it. An 8 x 10 print, a group of men, perhaps a dozen, posing like a team, standing, some squatting or on one knee. Young men in casual clothes, jeans, T-shirts, some baseball caps. He remembered signatures-they had signed across their chests with a broad-nibbed pen, a felt-tipped pen, not full names, first names. He remembered thinking some of the signatures were childlike, immature. He also remembered thinking they all looked like bodybuilders. The thick necks, the big, veined biceps.