“OK,” I said, aiming for a level tone, off-hand. The logical half of my brain recognised the truth of it. The emotional half sulked and glowered and stuck its bottom lip out. I slapped it down. “Have you found out any more about these kidnappings?”
“Not much,” Sean said. “The last kid to be taken before they snatched Heidi Krauss was a Russian businessman’s son. He disappeared about three weeks before she did, on his way home from school. They forced the car off the road, shot the bodyguard who was driving, and burnt the wreckage with him still in it. They had to identify the guy from his dental records. The kid’s fifteen. He’s still missing.”
“Gregor Venko again?”
“Hmm, possibly,” Sean said, but there was a hint of doubt in his tone. “I’ve been reading his profile and if it is Venko who’s behind these kidnappings then it’s not his usual style. He’s always been ruthless, but this is beyond that. It’s nasty. Vicious.”
I realised I was still turning the round over and over in my fingers like a worry bead. I slipped it back into my pocket.
“D’you think there’s any connection with what happened to Kirk and these kidnappings?” I wondered aloud. “Do we know what kind of weapons the kidnappers were using?”
“Machine pistols,” Sean said, “But that doesn’t prove much. The close protection team were using something very similar.”
“The same type of weapon used to kill Kirk.” A cold little ghost scuffed its feet all the way down my spine. “Are you sure he might not have been involved in some way?”
“Salter was many things Charlie, but I don’t think he’d quite lowered himself to criminal status,” Sean shot back. “Besides, just about every thug in eastern Europe can pick up a machine pistol and a box of Hydra-Shoks these days. It’s common. I wouldn’t read too much into it if I were you.”
“Nevertheless, we know that there is some connection between the Manor and Kirk’s death, and whatever’s going on here they might be prepared to kill to keep it covered. Bearing that in mind,” I went on with a studied mildness, “you might want to get Madeleine onto another little research topic before you finally send her home for the night.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, if this all goes pear-shaped,” I said, my voice calm and even, “how do you propose to get me out of here?”
Eight
Gilby didn’t show.
After I’d finished talking to Sean I waited for another forty minutes before the cold finally got the better of me and I sloped back into the Manor.
I ran into Jan in the hallway. She had her cigarette packet and lighter in her hand, and had obviously just been out onto the terrace for a crafty smoke. We compared our reddened noses and whitened fingers.
“I keep threatening to give up the soddin’ cancer sticks and if this doesn’t make me, nothing’s going to,” she muttered. She checked her watch. “I’ve got my name down for the pool table in five minutes. D’you fancy a quick game?”
“OK,” I said. “I’ll just dump my jacket and I’ll see you down in the mess hall.”
The mess hall had once been another of the Manor’s elegant drawing rooms, now stripped bare except for a tatty selection of easy chairs and a ripped and faded snooker table with a downward slope towards the bottom left-hand corner pocket.
On the far side of the room was a darts board of similar vintage. The wall around it was pockmarked like a woodworm-infested beam as a testament to people’s general inability to throw a straight arrow. Looking at just how far away some of the holes were from the board itself, it was quite scary to realise that the same people were also given guns and expected to shoot straight.
Jan was setting up the pool balls in their plastic triangle by the time I arrived. She’d helped herself to coffee from the hulking vending machine that lurked in one corner and she offered me a cup.
I shook my head. I’d made the mistake of trying the coffee it dispensed early on. It turned out to be tasteless thin grey sludge with peculiar thermal properties which meant it was either so hot it burned your tongue or stone cold, without seeming to pass through any other temperature on the way.
Jan broke the pack with an aggressive thwack of the cue, scattering the balls in all directions, but not managing to pocket any. She reached for the crumbling cube of blue chalk as she stepped back.
I walked round the table with my eyes on the lie of the balls. There was an easy stripe near the middle pocket, but the others were in difficult positions. I chose a more difficult spot instead, lurking close to the bottom cushion. I was lucky, and I nudged it just far enough to topple into the pocket, wiping its feet on the way in.
“Nice shot,” Jan said.
“Luck rather than judgement, I’m afraid,” I said, bending to see if I could just squeeze the cue ball past the black without a foul.
“So, I hear you work in a gym,” she said as I tried it. The white cleared the black by a fraction and a second spot dropped in.
“Yeah,” I said as I straightened up. “Personal training, stuff like that.”
“Not aerobics, then?” Jan said, and there was just a trace of a sneer in her voice.
It made me unwilling to admit to having taken such classes in the past. Besides, the gym where I’d been working during much of the previous year had not been the kind of place you’d imagine anyone skipping around in shocking pink lycra.
The lads who went there were all seriously into training hard with the biggest weights they could lift without rupturing themselves. Getting them to do proper warm-up stretches was as close as I ever came to introducing any form of aerobic exercise.
“No,” I said, flicking her a quick smile. “I just sort out people’s weight programmes and keep my eye on their technique.” I failed to give my next shot enough pace and the slant of the table had it rolling way wide of the mark.
“So they listen to you OK, do they?” Jan asked, her tone dubious. “They don’t give you any shit because you’re a woman?” She was a canny enough player to leave the easy stripe over the pocket it was covering and pot another instead, putting plenty of backspin on the cue ball to bring it back up to the top of the table for her next shot.
“Not really, no,” I said. Maybe it was because my boss was built like Schwarzenegger and always backed me up, right or wrong. Or maybe it was because all the regulars had seen the scar round my neck at one point or another, and between themselves had exaggerated the rumours about how it got there. Either way, I didn’t get many clients who were prepared to argue with me.
“You’re lucky.” Jan put another two stripe balls away with gutsy determination. “I qualified as an engineer. Got a fucking good degree, too. Better than half the guys I was working with, but you try telling that to most of the macho numskulls and they just pat you on the backside and send you off to make the tea.” As she spoke she let her eyes slide across to where the blokes were playing darts with much loud laughter and matey camaraderie.
I wondered how much of the attitude Jan had experienced was down to her combative stance. You have to show people you know what you’re talking about, not just tell them. Besides, she was too touchy, too perfect a target for winding up. I could understand why they hadn’t been able to resist the temptation.
She miscued her next shot completely and nearly snookered me. I was just about to try and play a tricky bounce off the far cushion when Major Gilby walked in.
The Einsbaden staff had their own mess hall in a different part of the building. Separate and segregated. For any of them to venture into the students’ area was unusual enough to cast the conversation adrift and bring all play to a standstill.