Blood Whispers Read online

  The spray-tanned blonde sitting at a table for four near the piano laughed out loud at a joke that wasn’t so funny. It was more about letting the Serbian guy who’d made the crack think she was having a great time. The laugh was the least false thing about her. Even the Manolo Blahnik kitten-heel pumps she was wearing were fakes. She looked a million dollars, but only cost a few thousand to construct. The Serb was paying nine hundred an hour and he’d booked her for an overnight, so right now he was the funniest guy on the planet.

  ‘You got any friends want to party too?’ he asked her in broken French, sitting there with his legs splayed open and his left arm draped casually over her shoulder.

  ‘Sure, I got a friend,’ replied Claudette, raising her eyebrow as far as her Botoxed forehead would allow. She gave him a look that made him shift his groin forward to stay comfortable and said, ‘She loves to party,’ like she was delivering a line in a cheap porno movie.

  The Serb was in good shape – not bad looking in a rough sort of way, but his dress sense didn’t fit with the five-star surroundings. The suit was off the peg rather than tailored and his black shirt was tucked into his trousers, which in her book was a no-no. Claudette’s first thought when she’d noticed the loafers with no socks was, Small time made good. But what did she care: they were halfway through their first bottle of €14,000 wine and he had his hand in the air looking to order another. He could be as small as he liked as long as he remembered his PIN. The next question confirmed what she already knew: this guy had as much class as a double-shot can of ready-mixed pina colada.

  ‘How much for her to swing by?’

  ‘You want to know what she looks like or just how much she cost?’ Claudette framed the question with a big smile so as not to piss him off.

  ‘I’m more interested in what she does.’

  Claudette took a sip of red wine and tipped her head over to the side to whisper in his ear. ‘She’s very pretty blonde, with long skinny legs and beautiful tits, who does whatever you want, but she likes to take control. If you think you can handle it, I will give Sophie a call?’

  A waiter arrived at the table.

  ‘Monsieur, you have a visitor in reception. Would you like me to bring her through?’

  ‘No. I’d like another bottle of wine.’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur. The 1995 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Grand Cru?’

  ‘Is that the one we just had?’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur.’

  ‘Yeah, that one, and will you tell those two guys to show the visitor up to my room? I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the waiter as he set off.

  Claudette looked to the far end of the room where the Serbian had been pointing and saw two men dressed in dark suits sitting at the table nearest to the main lobby. They seemed more interested in who was entering and leaving La Galerie than in having any sort of conversation with one another.

  ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘Bodyguards.’

  Claudette made a face. ‘You have a body needs guarding?’

  She could tell from his big dumb grin that he liked that one.

  ‘You tell me,’ he replied, overplaying it.

  ‘Why don’t I get my friend round?’ said Claudette, nuzzling into him. ‘We can let you know.’

  Abazi slid his hand across her thigh and down between her legs. ‘I have to go take care of some business, won’t take long. Call your friend, tell her to come by, then I take care of you both.’

  *

  ‘Pardonnez moi,’ said the waiter as he approached the table where Besnik and Andrej were sitting, ‘Monsieur has a guest in the lobby.’ He indicated Fisnik Abazi with a slight gesture of his hand. ‘He has asked if you could take the visitor to his room. He will join you shortly.’

  Besnik was already on his feet. ‘Andrej, go sit with the hooker, keep her company until Mister Abazi gets back.’

  Besnik left the table and headed out of La Galerie into the large marble-floored reception area. A woman was standing next to a statue of Marie Antoinette by the arched art-deco doors at the entrance.

  The woman was of medium build, weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds and had dark brown hair down to her shoulders. Besnik recognized her face, but couldn’t remember where from.

  ‘You are here for meeting?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Mister Abazi.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  *

  ‘You look different with your hair like that. It suits you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You travelling in disguise?’

  ‘Strathclyde police have put in a request to Interpol to have you put on the Red Notice list.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘It’s the closest thing they have to an international arrest warrant. Technically I’m breaking the law by not disclosing your whereabouts to them. It wouldn’t be good for me to be seen with you.’

  ‘You’re my lawyer.’

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘Officially too; I notice you cashed my cheque.’

  ‘I set up a trust fund for someone. It all went into that.’

  Abazi looked surprised. ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘No. A small boy whose mother and grandparents were murdered.’

  ‘You’re all heart.’

  ‘I’ve changed my name too. It’s Niamh McGuire now.’

  ‘What happened to Keira Lynch?’

  ‘She’d had enough. Niamh’s in charge now. Any future cheques should be made out to her.’

  ‘Who’s Niamh McGuire?’

  ‘Me . . . It’s my real name.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’ Abazi flicked her a look, but wasn’t interested enough to pursue the topic.

  He handed her a sheaf of papers, ‘Here.’

  The headed notepaper read, Médecin Généraliste, with the name and address of a private clinic written below.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Copies of medical reports for safe keeping.’

  ‘Why are you giving them to me?’

  ‘It says there in black and white that I have longstanding medical issues, kidney and heart problems, that kinda shit; pneumonia, even.’

  ‘You look fine to me.’

  ‘Got the idea from Jacques Chirac, but he’s not the only one. President Marcos, General Pinochet, Chris Kuruneri the finance minister for Zimbabwe, that’s just a few: there’s loads of them. They all got something in common – even a guy called Ladislaw Gura as far back as 1945, a member of the SS at Belsen – all of them, “too ill to stand trial”. Goes without saying – you get busted, you’re gonna be feeling fucking sick. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not intending to get caught, but if I am, then we’ve got this in our back pocket to let them know just how ill I feel. A bit of forward planning.’

  ‘What d’you want me to do with them?’

  ‘Keep them somewhere safe.’ Abazi paused and gave her a tight little smirk before changing the subject. ‘How d’you like my room?’

  Abazi had taken the presidential suite for three nights. It had an office, a gymnasium and a lounge-dining area with its own separate kitchen. The lounge was floored in polished parquet and had thick panelled walls painted off-white. The room was filled with antiques and grand pieces of Louis Quatorze furniture upholstered in rich blue velvets and damasks, with contrasting details picked out in gold.

  ‘A little too busy for my tastes.’

  ‘I heard someone broke into Sellar’s house and attacked him.’

  ‘So I believe. I don’t think they got away with anything. Sellar managed to fight them off.’

  Abazi laughed. ‘Is that the official story?’

  ‘That’s what he’s telling everyone.’

  ‘He really is an idiot. He screamed like a stuck pig for them not to hurt him, cried the whole time. They got exactly what they wanted.’ Abazi p
ulled a small sample bottle from his pocket and threw it to her. ‘For you.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘His blood.’

  She placed the dark brown liquid gingerly on the coffee table in front of her.

  ‘What do I want with Sellar’s blood?’

  ‘It has a story to whisper to you. You’re holding his life in your hands now. Trust me: one day soon I’ll text you the code. Then it will all fall into place. But like I told you; I don’t give you everything at once. I’m still holding a few things back so you’ll stay on-board.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted to see me, to give me a bottle of blood?’

  ‘Not only that.’ He walked over and lifted a USB stick from the dining table. ‘I have in here all the documents you’ll need to fight the CIA. Flight plans, delivery dates, names and contacts throughout the supply chain working for the Americans. All the drug shipments they were involved in. Everything in here will back up your case.’

  ‘Why not just courier it to me?’

  ‘You think I’m going to trust all this shit to the post? This tiny little stick is an atom bomb. I don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.’

  Abazi brought the USB stick over and placed it in her hand. ‘Did you hear what happened to the two CIA agents?’

  ‘Not the full story: only rumours. The police are staying very tight lipped.’

  ‘They walked bang into the centre of a party I’d laid on for the Holy Man and got themselves shot. But not before they’d taken out eleven of my soldiers.’

  Abazi was watching for her reaction.

  She gave a slight shrug and said, ‘Shame!’

  ‘Yeah. They must have been a pretty good shot to kill that many of my men all by themselves.’

  She nodded. ‘Must have.’

  ‘I hear E Zeze is recovering well.’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘You should have killed him.’

  ‘He’s more useful alive. He’s not being very communicative, but it’s early days.’

  ‘He’s not going to say a goddamn thing. You should have put a bullet in his head when you had the chance. What happened, did you get scared?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Like I said, he’s more useful alive.’

  ‘You got something else you need to say?’

  ‘What happened to Rebecca Rey?’

  ‘Who she?’

  ‘The police officer. No one has had any contact with her.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘She hasn’t come home?’

  ‘No. You gave me your word you’d let her go.’

  ‘I gave you my word I wouldn’t kill her.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I kept my word.’

  ‘D’you know where she is, then?’

  ‘Like I said. I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘But, someone did?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  Abazi was heading towards the door. ‘Well, lovely as it is to see you with your beautiful brown hair, Miss Lynch, I got some other business I need to take care of.’

  ‘It’s McGuire.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s McGuire now, not Lynch.’

  ‘Yeah, sure . . . McGuire.’

  ‘D’you mind if I quickly run to the toilet?’ she asked, placing the USB stick and blood sample in her bag.

  ‘Sure. That door at the end of the lobby, then first right.’

  As she headed away from him Abazi shouted to Besnik, ‘Call down to Andrej and tell him to bring the girls up. We’re done here.’ Besnik Osmani’s huge frame appeared at the other end of the hallway. ‘Sure thing, Mister Abazi.’

  *

  Claudette and Sophie were laughing as the lift door opened on the top floor. Andrej stood to one side as the pair of hookers stepped out then he held the door to let the elegant brunette in.

  ‘What floor?’ asked Andrej, with an unconvincing charm-school smile.

  ‘Foyer, please.’

  Andrej pressed the button marked ‘F’ and slipped out between the closing doors. He let the girls walk ahead of him so that he could watch their asses swaying from side to side as they sashayed down the corridor. ‘When you finish with the boss, you come see me?’

  ‘You couldn’t afford my travel expenses, baby‚’ replied Claudette over her shoulder.

  Although he had a key to Abazi’s suite, Andrej still knocked before opening the door.

  As he moved through into the small lobby he could tell that something felt wrong. Andrej had grown up with guns, served time in the military: the faint, acrid smell of burnt metal was unmistakable. He drew his Glock from the holster concealed under his jacket and gestured with his left hand for the girls to stop.

  ‘Wait here, don’t fucking move,’ he said, leaving them standing at the front door.

  He leant forward slowly and peered round the corner into the hallway. The trail of blood started halfway along the corridor and led towards the bedroom, where Besnik Osmani’s body lay motionless in the doorway.

  Andrej was aware of a movement behind him and turned quickly, weapon raised, ready to fire.

  Claudette froze when she saw the gun.

  ‘Take your friend and go wait back in the bar,’ he snapped at her.

  Claudette didn’t speak. The look on his face told her he wasn’t messing around: the party was over. Claudette nodded and quietly did as she was told.

  Andrej waited for the front door to click closed behind the girls before cautiously making his way into the lounge.

  Fisnik Abazi was slumped to the side of one of the blue velvet sofas. He had been shot twice: once in the head and once in the chest. His hands were clasped round a stab wound in his throat; blood still seeping through his clenched fingers. It trickled down his wrist and dripped on to a glistening patch that was spreading slowly across his black cotton shirt.

  Andrej took a few steps further into the lounge.

  A noise in the hallway made him turn.

  ‘I told you to go wait in the fucking bar.’

  The brunette he’d held the lift for was standing there like a statue, with her arms down by her side, staring at him.

  As he raised his gun, she suddenly flicked her hand out in front of her.

  Andrej felt an intense, stabbing pain and reeled backwards, clutching at the knife embedded in his throat. As he sank to his knees, gasping for air, his Glock slipped from his grasp and clattered noisily to the floor.

  Andrej watched helplessly as the brunette slowly made her way towards him and picked it up. In a last desperate attempt to save his life, he lunged at her and tried to grab the gun from her hand‚ but his clumsy effort failed and he fell heavily, face down on the floor.

  As he drew his hands alongside his chest and tried once again to push himself upright he felt the tip of the gun barrel being pushed into the back of his neck.

  Andrej screwed his eyes tight shut.

  A handgun this close would be loud when it went off.

  *

  Niamh walked the wide, tree-lined stretch of the Champs Elysées until she came to the Place de la Concorde. With the illuminated Luxor Obelisk behind her she cut down towards the river heading for the Pont Royal, where she crossed the Seine and continued left along the Quai Voltaire towards Rue des Beaux-Arts.

  The hotel, called L’Hôtel, had a restaurant, called Le Restaurant. Niamh booked a table for supper at reception and ordered two whisky sours to be sent up to her room.

  Thirty minutes later, with one sour drained and the other almost finished, she stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror running her fingers gently over the raised mounds of skin left by the bullet wounds. The small, crater shaped scars had healed over completely now and were no longer sensitive to the touch.

  She turned her hands – palms upward – and stared at the two thin lines, like red pencil marks, on each of her wrists. After a while she lifted her glass and downed
the rest of the sour.

  The empty glass clinked loudly as she placed it beside the auburn-brown wig on the marble topped bathroom cabinet. The sample bottle of Sellar’s blood sat alongside. Using the tip of her metal nail file, she’d scratched a question mark into the white label wrapped around it.

  Niamh closed her eyes then brought her wrists together and started rubbing them until the only sensation she was aware of was the warm contact of skin on skin and the slight, almost imperceptible bump as the scars crossed each other’s path.

  When she was finished, she let her head droop forward and slowly raised her arms out to the side in the shape of a cross.

  Forty-one

  Niamh McGuire and her mother Orlaith left the Bridge Bar in Newry, County Armagh, and crossed the busy road, turning left on to Upper Water Street. They both wore sober black suits, opaque black tights and black-veiled hats. They walked past a terraced row of shuttered shop fronts: each building in turn painted a pastel shade of blue, pink or yellow. At the Phoenix Bar they turned right into Margaret Street, then left at Margaret Square into Hill Street. Nothing had changed in the twenty years since they had last set foot in their hometown, but everything was different. The streets, the shops, the shoppers all looked exactly the same, but the Troubles were over, and the sense of danger that had been so much a part of life growing up there had disappeared.

  Life had more or less returned to normal.

  Niamh stopped when she saw the twin, grey-granite spires of St Patrick & St Colman Cathedral half a mile or so along the narrow one-way street. Her childhood had died just a few miles from here in the house where she had killed a man. She knew even then that her life would never be normal again. She had been taken to the cathedral immediately afterwards. It was there that they had washed the blood from her face and stripped and burned the clothes she was wearing in an attempt to destroy any evidence of the crime. She remembered the cold flagstone floor beneath her bare feet, where she had stood shivering under a blanket as Father Anthony handed her a change of clothes that smelled musty and damp. She remembered the murmur of whispered conversations when the doctor arrived and tended to her uncle Danny and her father, Sean. She remembered the hot tears streaming down her face and believing that they would never stop. The ghost of her childhood was waiting behind the doors of St Patrick & St Colman and the time had come to take it by the hand and set it free.