Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

‘I hit him, meester,’ he whispered.

‘Yes, you did,’ I said.

I turned his small body over and tried to use his flimsy shirt to staunch the flow of blood from the hole in his chest. It was hopeless. Within a minute, life had drained away from him, into the damp grass.

Isabel was slumped in the other corner of the back seat of the car, watching the road ahead absently. Ronaldo was driving us back to Rio, leaving Nelson to clear up the mess we had left behind.

And there was quite a mess. Nelson and I had decided to let Francisco and his son go. We had, after all, promised as much to him when we had set up the exchange for Isabel, and he had kept his part of the bargain. It was Zico who had run after Isabel at the last minute. And implicating Francisco with the kidnapping would involve prolonged wrangling with the authorities. We thought it was better to wrap things up as quietly as possible. Nelson had, however, promised to bring back Euclides’s body for a proper burial.

Isabel didn’t look too bad after her ordeal. She was thin, but then she’d always been thin. Her skin was paler than it had been, after so many weeks away from the sun, I supposed. And there was a sort of fragility to her. But basically she looked unharmed.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

She looked at me and smiled, reaching out her hand for mine.

‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I’m just so glad to be free.’

There was so much to say, so much to ask her, but I wanted to do it at her pace so I kept silent.

‘Where’s my father?’ she asked.

‘In London.’

‘In London?’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘Yes, it’s a long story. But Cordelia’s waiting at his apartment.’

‘How is she? I mean...’

I smiled. ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine. She’s growing bigger every day.’

Isabel smiled. ‘Good.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Did he pay a ransom?’

‘That’s a long story too.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I can tell you later, when you’ve had some rest.’

‘No, tell me now. That’s all I’ve been thinking about over the last two months. What’s been happening at home? Tell me.’

So I told her everything. About the initial ransom demands, about the long silence after the failed police raid, and then about the renewed demands once I had suggested Bloomfield Weiss take over Dekker. I told her how Ricardo and Eduardo must have been in league with Francisco first of all to have Martin Beldecos murdered, and then to have her and me kidnapped to prevent the discovery of Francisco’s money-laundering operations. And finally I described how we had snatched Francisco’s son to force an exchange.

She listened in amazement. ‘So Ricardo was behind it all?’ she said quietly.

I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

She looked out of the window at the Rio suburbs drifting slowly by. ‘Bastard,’ she whispered. She turned to me. ‘It looks like you were right about him, after all.’

‘Right now I don’t care who’s right or wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m just glad you’re alive.’

She squeezed my hand. ‘Thank you. Thank you for all you did for me.’

There were loud squeals when we reached Luís’s apartment. Cordelia hugged her sister hard and long, and Maria danced around. Fernando was there as well. The excitement roused Isabel out of the daze she had been in since her release, and she became more animated. Within a minute she was on the phone with Luís at the Savoy in London. Tears flowed. Portuguese words were spoken at a hundred miles an hour. I watched with a huge grin on my face.

The one sour note was Euclides. Cordelia was shaken by news of his death. It had affected me too. But it wouldn’t have surprised the boy himself: I doubt he had expected to reach adulthood. Cordelia had been right, he was brave. He had been stupid to take Nelson’s gun with him, and to try to sneak up on Zico. But he was only twelve, how could you blame him? He had been trying to save Cordelia’s sister and impress us. In fact, he had died with a gun in his hand, having just shot a bad guy; by Euclides’s reckoning that probably was a good way to go. But it was a waste. And a waste for which we were all responsible: the Brazilian government and middle class who allowed such poverty and violence in their midst and, more particularly, Nelson, Cordelia and me, who had armed him and encouraged him on his last adventure. I wouldn’t forget Euclides.

Isabel had a long bath, and then told us about her ordeal. She had been looked after well. For the first couple of weeks she had been kept in a tent inside a basement. Then she had been hurriedly moved up to the farm, and had been imprisoned in a barn with only one window that was fixed shut. She had had heat, light, adequate food and drink. She was allowed to wash once a day, and had been given a radio, books and newspapers. She had only seen her captors wearing masks, until that last day when she had finally seen Zico, but of course she had soon grown to recognize their voices. There seemed to have been five of them, who guarded her in shifts.

Right from the beginning she had decided that her best chance for survival was to co-operate with them. She had frequently asked about the progress of negotiations but they had told her nothing. The only indications she had had that there had been any communication with her father were the two proof-of-life questions she had received. The first, asking the name of her teddy-bear, had made her smile. It was typical of the sentimentality of her father, and it reminded her of the security of her childhood.

But, through it all, she kept calm. She knew that kidnappings could take months, but she also knew that her father would find a way to pay her ransom. It was clear that she had been a lot less worried about her safety than we.

She told us all of this in a mixture of English, for my benefit, and Portuguese for Maria’s. But when her story had finished, and the conversation had broken up into rushed questions and answers, I left them to it. Despite all the time I had spent with them, I wasn’t really part of their family. I grabbed a bottle of beer, and went out on to the balcony to watch the sunset, glad that Isabel was finally free.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up.

‘Hallo,’ said Isabel.

‘Hi.’

She bent down and kissed me, her hair falling on my face. Then she stood up and looked out to sea. ‘You can’t believe what it’s like to see the sea again,’ she said. ‘This view. These people.’ A pause. ‘You.’

A warm glow of happiness ran through me. It was just what I had hoped to hear. I reached up and pulled her lips down to mine again.

Eventually she broke away. ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’ And, in truth, I hadn’t. My plans had gone no further than Isabel’s release.

‘Is Papai really going to take over Dekker?’ she asked.

‘We’ll soon find out. The auction is tomorrow afternoon. It’s between him and Bloomfield Weiss.’

‘So Ricardo has finally lost? I still can’t believe he did that to me. Had me kidnapped. I know our relationship was over, but I thought I meant more to him than that.’

‘You know what he’s like,’ I said. ‘With the survival of Dekker Ward at stake, he’d do anything. And at least you’re still alive.’

Isabel frowned. ‘I guess you’re right.’

It was getting dark quickly. The floodlights were on, picking out the white spume of the waves on the beach. I had stared out at this view often, worrying about Isabel in captivity. And now she was here, next to me.

My thoughts turned to Luís in London, and the auction tomorrow. I prayed he would be successful. I badly wanted Ricardo to see that he wasn’t invincible. That he couldn’t mess up so many people’s lives, especially mine and Isabel’s, and get away with it.