I was really pleased with myself when I left. The team leader had come up trumps. I walked back towards the Blue Point, and saw Prim standing there waiting for me. ‘Mimosa Avenue,’ I told her.
‘I know. I found her hairdresser.’
We’d have had to wait another half-hour for Dylan, but I spotted him coming out of a coffee shop and gave him my best piercing whistle. ‘Any luck?’ I asked, as he drew close.
‘Not a bit.’
‘Just as well you’re with us, then. Come on.’
42
If I’m ever a Princeton academic, and my life has been so strange that I will never discount the possibility, I’ll want to live in a place like Mimosa Avenue. It was quiet, it was secluded, it was exactly the sort of place you would want to hide out if you were on the run from a murderous gang. . and from a movie star.
We sat in the Caddy, parked outside number six, with a clear view of Trey Raymond’s place. It was a white two-storey house, the sort of dwelling I’d hire as a location if I was making a movie and needed a home for a model American family. But it was still and silent: nothing was moving, the garage door was closed and there were no toys, or anything else, in the yard.
‘And now?’ asked Prim. ‘We go up and ring the doorbell?’
‘That would be a very bad idea,’ Dylan, in serious mode once more, told her. ‘The last guy who walked in on this lady had a gun placed against the back of his head and his right eye blown out.’
‘So? We just sit here? Which one of you two guys is Dumb and which one is Dumber?’
‘Neither,’ I said. ‘This is what we do.’ I took out my mobile, checked the signal strength, then keyed in the number Aline had given me. The phone at the other end rang, ten times, unanswered. I disconnected and tried again. The fourth time I called, it was picked up, on the sixth ring.
‘Yes? Is that you, Trey?’
‘Maddy,’ I said, as gently as I could, ‘why the fuck are you running from me?’
‘You bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Leave me alone. Come near me and I’ll kill you too.’
‘I’m not going to come near you if you don’t want me to. But I want you to tell me why you’re acting like this. We made a deal in Singapore, remember? I’m ready to complete: I’ve got fifty thousand dollars with me right now, as agreed.’
‘Sure,’ she snarled. ‘And when I show up to meet you, someone else is waiting, your other hired killer.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘What happened to Tony?’ she shouted. ‘What happened to my husband? Are you telling me he isn’t dead?’
‘I’d love to be able to tell you that, Maddy, but if I did I’d be lying. Tony was killed in the Next Page, when he turned up to meet me, like you just said. Somebody was waiting for him. If Tony had the film, I guess he took it after he stabbed him.’ I heard her sobbing. ‘If it’s any consolation in the long term, you killed the guy on Dayang.’
‘And now the Malaysian police will be after me for murder. Very neat, Oz. If I escape from you, they hang me.’
‘The Malaysian police aren’t after anyone, Maddy. Sammy Goss had a very quick funeral at sea, well away from where the scuba-divers will ever go. Maddy, think about this: he had a cool box with him, and you know what that was for. Suppose I did want you killed, a huge overreaction by the way. When you consider the size of the threat you pose to my brother-in-law, why the fuck would I want your head? If I’d sent Sammy, I’d have told him to take a photograph of you dead, for Christ’s sake. That would have been all the proof I’d have needed. It’s the Triads who go in for extravagant gestures.’
I looked at Prim as I spoke. ‘Ouch!’ she mouthed. ‘You’ll terrify her.’
I ignored her. ‘Why, Maddy? Why would I do that?’
‘I saw you with him,’ she blurted out. ‘I watched you all the way up the hill at Fort Siloso. I watched you, with him and your other heavy. Then they went and hid and you met me on your own. You were showing them what I looked like.’
‘Is that why you didn’t turn up at the Next Page?’
‘No. I trusted you then. It was Tony who didn’t. He wouldn’t let me go; he insisted on making the trade himself, and he went armed. He sent me on ahead to Dayang, and told me that he’d pick me up from there in a boat and we’d cross to Vietnam.’
‘That’s five hundred miles.’
‘We could have done it in three days. But we didn’t, though, did we? Because it wasn’t Tony who showed up, it was your man, the little fair-haired guy. I watched him go to Aur, then head across to me in Dayang. When he got close enough I recognised him, and I realised that this wasn’t about me photographing some Triad boss, at least not any more. It was about you, taking care of family business.’
I sighed. ‘Maddy, everything I know about these guys, and everything I’ve learned since we met, tells me that you were right to be terrified. You were in huge danger, and you still are. You’re right to run, but you’re dead wrong to believe you’re running from me. I didn’t know what Sammy Goss was. I didn’t find him, he found me, and I still haven’t figured out how or why. I want you to trust me and to meet me again.’
‘Where are you?’
‘If you come to the window and look to your right, you’ll see a car.’
‘I’m coming to no fucking window!’ she screeched. ‘I show myself and I’m picked off. Oz, I promise you, as soon as you step into this house, you or anyone else, I’ll kill you. I have another gun, my sister’s gun, and I’ll shoot the first person who comes near me.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m not going to rush you. You’re paranoid, woman, but you probably have a right to be. So I’m going to propose something else. I’m going to send someone across, someone you knew when you were in Edinburgh.’ I looked at Prim: I’d had a feeling it might come to this. She nodded. ‘She won’t be armed; given what she’s wearing, you’ll be able to see that. I want you to let her in, and let her talk to you. She’ll be your hostage if you want to look at it that way. She’ll even bring the money if you like.’
‘I don’t want your fucking money!’ she snapped. ‘I want to stay alive.’
‘Then let me do this, and you’ve got a chance.’
I listened to her breathing. I felt Prim’s eyes on me, and Dylan’s, but I kept mine fixed on the house, looking for anything, the faintest twitch of a blind or curtain.
‘Okay,’ Maddy said eventually. ‘Send her across. But no tricks, or her brains will be all over the hall.’
I ended the call and turned to Prim. ‘She’s says she’s armed and we have to believe her,’ I told her. ‘Plus, she’s very emotional. If you say no, I’ll drive away right now, but I don’t know what we do to help her after that.’
‘You give me as long as it takes,’ she replied. ‘While I’m in there, you do not phone again. If either of you gets out of the car, you keep your hands where they can be seen from the house at all times.’
‘All of the above,’ I murmured.
She squeezed my hand, leaned over and kissed me quickly on the cheek, then opened her door and slid out.
We watched her as she walked away from us, her brown body seeming to glow with health, her hips moving rhythmically, encased within the skin-hugging shorts.
We watched her as she stopped at the door of number seventeen. Almost at once, it opened. ‘There’s only one place she could possibly be carrying a weapon,’ said Dylan, as she stepped inside, with a flash of the crudity for which he had been famous in Scotland, ‘but no way could she ever get it out in time.’
43
We waited there for thirty-seven minutes. I know this because I must have checked my watch at least thirty-seven times. My patience control was set at one out of ten, but I managed to keep it in check. After half an hour I stepped out of the car, laying my hands on the roof as Prim had specified. The metal was burning hot, but I didn’t care: it gave me something else to think about.
I jumped when my phone rang. I snatched it from my pocket and flipped it open. ‘Yes? I snapped.