‘Hello!’ he said, breezily, to the patient. ‘How’s your day so far?’
Suckling looked at him groggily, heavily sedated. ‘Not that great, actually.’
‘Too bad. Mr Dervishi said to say hello, and how sorry he is about your accident.’
Suckling peered at the man in blue scrubs with the stethoscope dangling from his neck.
‘Mr Dervishi asked me to explain to you that this is not personal. It is simply that shit happens.’
‘Shlit shappens,’ Stephen Suckling echoed. He watched the doctor replacing one bag of fluid attached to a drip line, grateful for the care, grateful for the constant numbing of the agonizing pain he had been in before they brought him here.
Within seconds of the doctor leaving his room, he started feeling happy. Incredibly happy. Life was great.
He felt full of love. All his cares were drifting away. Everything was wonderful. Boy, would he and his wife have a celebration when he got out of here!
He was only dimly aware of a steady beep-beep-beep sound.
The monitor’s display was turned away from him so he could not see it.
The blood pressure reading began to drop, steadily and rapidly. Along with his heart rate: 62; 51; 47; 35; 22.
Somewhere out in the night, hazily, he heard the roar of a powerful motorcycle. And somewhere nearer he heard a steady beeping. It sounded like the warning from a lorry reversing.
A few minutes later, the heart rate on the monitor flat-lined.
53
Saturday 12 August
22.30–23.30
Velvet Wilde looked at her watch. It was just after 11 p.m. ‘Does Mr Dervishi know we’re coming?’
‘Yes,’ Norman Potting replied. The Detective Sergeant’s driving made her nervous — he barely looked at the road, seemingly treating it as a distraction from their conversation and from looking at her.
He drove them up a steep hill at the far eastern extremity of the city of Brighton and Hove, the posh Roedean area, with clifftop views across the English Channel. High above them, to their left and lit up like a Christmas tree, was a white, colonial-style mansion with a columned portico, surrounded by large grounds. He pulled the car up in front of tall metal gates, put down his window and pressed the button on the elaborate panel. Instantly a light shone on them.
‘Who is this?’ a guttural male voice asked.
‘Detective Sergeant Potting and Detective Constable Wilde,’ he replied.
‘You are thirty minutes late,’ the voice replied, curtly.
Potting glanced at his watch. ‘We said we’d be here at about 11 p.m. It’s now 10.55 p.m.’
‘You are thirty minutes late.’
‘No, we are not late, we are actually five minutes early,’ he said firmly in his West Country accent.
‘Mr Dervishi has gone to bed.’
Potting turned, puzzled, to DC Wilde, who frowned, then again spoke into the panel. ‘I was told Mr Dervishi would see us at 11 p.m.’
‘You wait, please.’
‘No,’ Potting said, loudly. ‘You wait and you listen. Tell Mr Dervishi that if you don’t let us in, he will be arrested. So he has the choice of seeing us now in the comfort of his home or being taken into custody and spending the night in a cell.’
‘I will speak to my boss.’
‘You do that, sonny Jim.’
Potting and Wilde sat in the car, in the darkness. ‘Can we do that?’ she asked. ‘Arrest him?’
‘We’re in a fast-time kidnap situation. Dervishi is linked to a mobile phone that’s been used by the kidnappers. You bet we bloody can.’
She smiled.
Suddenly the gates began opening.
They drove through and up the steep driveway. Four large men, almost as motionless as statues, and dressed in black, lined the drive, watching them suspiciously. As they neared the house, which had a quadruple garage to one side, two rottweilers appeared out of the shadows, barking savagely. Potting slowed the vehicle, not wanting to hit either of them, and pulled up in front of the porch. The dogs jumped up at the sides of the car. There was the piercing, high-pitched screech of a whistle and the dogs turned their heads, suddenly calming down, and padded away. Two men, sporting coiled earpieces and dressed in black suits and shirts, appeared seemingly from nowhere. One was enormous, with hair reduced to stubble and wearing dark glasses, striding with an arrogant swagger towards them. His colleague had almost ridiculously broad shoulders from working out, that seemed out of proportion to his small head, as if he had been the victim of an erroneous transplant. He had short, dark hair that finished in a widow’s peak some way down his forehead, and dense eyebrows, giving him a permanent, worried frown. In contrast to the bully-boy appearance of his colleague, he seemed less threatening.
Potting and Wilde opened their doors and got out of the car.
Dark Glasses said, ‘You are thirty minutes late.’
‘No,’ Potting said. ‘I’m telling you we are not.’
‘You are thirty minutes late. Mr Dervishi is a very punctual man, he does not like people being late. You have upset him.’
‘Really?’ Potting said. ‘Well let me tell you, he has upset a lot of people also.’ He looked at the silent man with the widow’s peak. ‘You and baldy-pops work for him, do you?’
‘He is our boss,’ he said, unsmiling.
‘Fine.’ Potting looked at each of them in turn. ‘You have a choice. Either you take us to him this minute, or you are both nicked. Under arrest for obstructing justice. Understand?’
In reluctant silence, they ushered the two detectives through the front door into an imposing hallway that, Potting thought, could have been the entrance to a stately home. It was lined with classical oil paintings, busts on plinths and fine antique furniture, with a grand staircase at the far end. A distinct aroma of cigar smoke hung in the air.
From above they heard a cultured female voice with a trace of an Eastern European accent. ‘What’s going on, Valbone, Dritan? Is it Aleksander? Is he home?’
‘Two detectives wish to talk to Mr Dervishi, madam,’ one of the henchmen said.
‘Oh God.’
A handsome, immaculately coiffed woman in her late thirties hurried down the stairs. She wore a velour tracksuit and suede Gucci-monogrammed slippers; her hands sparkled with ornate but classy rings and she held an equally sparkly mobile phone in one. Looking at Potting and Wilde, she asked, anxiously, ‘Is this to do with Aleksander? Has he had an accident? Is he all right? Please say he’s all right, yes? I’m his mother.’
‘Mrs Mirlinda Dervishi?’ Potting quizzed.
‘Yes.’
He showed her his warrant card and explained who they were. ‘We’d like to speak with both your husband and your son very urgently, madam.’
‘Aleksander is not home. I was worried something has happened — I don’t know where he is. He was going after the football to a friend, to work on a school video project. I phoned the friend’s house a little while ago and his mother told me he never went there — unless I got it wrong and he is with other friends. I keep trying his phone and he is not answering.’ She held up her hands with a gesture of despair. ‘It’s after 11 p.m. and he is only fourteen. He was going to phone Valbone to collect him when he was ready — I—’
She was interrupted by one of the bodyguards who had greeted Potting and Wilde. He spoke to her in a harsh-sounding foreign language and immediately she looked relieved. Turning back to the detectives, she said, ‘Aleksander has just texted him, saying he will be sleeping over with his friends at a house in Hove — a different friend, I had it wrong. Everything’s fine.’ She smiled. ‘My husband is in his office. I take you.’