Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

They exchanged some sharp words of Portuguese, and Luís stormed out of the sitting room into the garden. I glanced at Nelson. For the first time he looked flustered and angry. I followed Luís.

He stood, staring out at the garden, breathing heavily. A cloud was gathering above the hill at the head of the valley, threatening to roll rain down towards us.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Merda,’ he muttered. Then ‘Merda! Merda! Merda!’ more loudly.

I waited.

‘Zico wanted to know why we had told the police. I said that we hadn’t, that they had just received a tip-off. He didn’t believe me.’ He sucked in his breath. ‘Zico said I was lucky Isabel wasn’t dead. He said he would give me just one more chance. I should pay ten million dollars tomorrow night or Isabel will die. He said now the police are on to him he can’t afford to wait. He’s going to call me back in two hours. He sounded serious.’ Luís jerked his head back towards the house. ‘I told that idiot that the police should have checked with me first before going to the hideout. I should never have trusted him!’

I let Luís stew for a minute. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Pay the ransom, I suppose. I can’t risk Isabel’s life further.’

‘Can you get ten million dollars by tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know. It’ll be difficult.’

‘What does Nelson say?’

‘I don’t give a shit what Nelson says.’

We walked along the path towards the lake. A tree burned orange in front of us. The clouds at the head of the valley were darkening, although the garden itself was still in sunshine.

I took a deep breath. ‘It looks like the police made a mistake. Maybe Nelson made a mistake in trusting them. But his advice has been good so far. He’s objective, and he’s seen all this before. Maybe we should listen to him. Then we can decide what to do.’

We walked on in silence. I was scared about Isabel. But I thought our best chance lay in behaving calmly and following the rules. Zico was prepared to release Isabel alive; Luís was prepared to pay a ransom. As long as we kept our nerve, that’s what would happen.

‘OK, let’s talk to him,’ said Luís.

‘Good,’ I said, and we hurried back to the house just as the sky went dark and raindrops began to fall.

‘Keep negotiating,’ said Nelson. ‘He has lowered his price so fast because he knows you are worried about the police. He hopes to close the deal quickly. Well, that’s fine with us, but not at ten million. We were raising our offer by half a million at a time. We should reduce that, let him know we’re getting close to our ceiling. Offer two million two hundred thousand.’

‘No!’ said Luís. ‘I can pay more than that! Why don’t I offer three?’

‘Because he will think there is a lot further to go!’ said Nelson, who was beginning to lose his patience. ‘Don’t you see that if your offer goes up in larger amounts, the whole negotiation will take longer?’

I saw what Nelson meant. So, in the end, did Luís.

Zico called back when he said he would. Luís gave him his offer of two point two million dollars. The conversation was short. Luís went pale, but stood his ground.

‘What did he say?’ I asked, as soon as Luís had hung up.

‘He asked for five million,’ said Luís. ‘And he said Isabel would definitely be dead tomorrow night if I didn’t pay up. I think I believe him. He’ll call back in another two hours.’

I turned to Nelson, who looked thoughtful. ‘He’s coming down too quickly,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a demand drop so fast before. And he seems genuinely eager to get the payment through fast.’

‘He thinks the police are on to him,’ Luís muttered.

Nelson shook his head. ‘I don’t think that would bother him too much. Kidnappers expect the police to investigate them.’

We watched him. His face clouded over into a frown.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He sighed. ‘I think we should ask for proof of life again.’

Luís exploded. ‘You heard him! He’s not going to stand for that now. There’s no time!’

I was silent. I felt sick. I knew what Nelson was thinking.

Luís saw my expression. ‘What?’

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

‘What is it?’ demanded Luís.

‘Nelson thinks she might be dead,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s why the kidnappers are so eager to be paid now.’

‘No!’ shouted Luís. ‘We have no reason to think so. I won’t accept that!’

Nelson held up his hands. ‘You may be right. I hope you’re right. But we should just be sure.’

‘And I suppose you want me to make a tiny increase in my offer again?’

Nelson nodded.

‘Well, I won’t! I’m accepting their five million, and I’ll have Isabel back here tomorrow night.’

I glanced at Nelson who was watching Luís closely. He shrugged. ‘I can offer my advice, nothing more.’

‘Good.’

‘Luís?’ I said, hesitantly.

He frowned towards me.

‘I know you can pay five million dollars, and you want to. That’s fine. I’d like to see Isabel back soon too. But Nelson’s right, we should just check to see that she is alive. So why don’t you agree to five million provided they come back with proof of life? If they have her, and they know they will get their five million, then there’s no reason for them to delay in replying, is there?’

I looked over to Nelson for support. He nodded.

‘OK,’ said Luís. ‘But you think up the question.’

The question was, ‘Which town does Dave come from?’ Luís never got a chance to ask it.

When he suggested proof of life, Zico refused. Luís stuck to his demand, with no luck. Eventually the phone call ended, with Zico swearing he would kill Isabel.

Luís put down the phone. His face was fixed. Cold.

‘You know what this means? She might be dead already,’ said Nelson quietly.

Luís stood before me, tall and gaunt. The events of the last few days, and especially the last few minutes had aged him.

‘I’m just going up to her room,’ he said.

I pounded up the track, the trees and undergrowth of the Atlantic rain-forest on either side a mass of dark murky green. But I hardly noticed the profusion of life around me: my eyes were focused on the dirt under my feet. My brain was focused on Isabel.

My feelings were a swirl of contradictions. I hardly knew her, yet I felt as though I knew her better than any other human being in the world. The conversations we had had together played over and over again in my mind, especially those discussions we’d had long into the night about everything and nothing. I saw parts of her, now her huge eyes, now her shy smile behind a strand of black hair. I remembered the time I had first seen her, leaning against a desk in the Dekker Ward trading room, sexy, instantly attractive.

I burst out of the forest into the sheep meadows above. Behind me, I knew, was a spectacular view of the fazenda and the outskirts of Petrópolis. But I didn’t look at it. My head was bent, my eyes down.

I was angry, angry that Isabel might now be dead. Angry with myself for abandoning her, angry with Nelson for not preventing the police from disturbing her kidnappers, angry with Luís for not being more in control. But worst of all, and this was something I could hardly admit to myself, I was angry with Isabel. She knew she was a kidnap risk, so why hadn’t she been more careful? Why had she gone and got herself killed just now, just when I realized how much she meant to me?

Except I didn’t know how much she meant to me. I was confused about that, too. We were only at the beginning of a relationship. How would it have developed? Would it have come to anything? I found my imagination fast-forwarding to a whole life together. Would she have fitted into my small flat in Primrose Hill? It was difficult to imagine her there.