And now, here they were; at the appointed time, day, date and location, with the weather coming down fast. Boone wished he didn’t have to go now, would have preferred to be in the bar flirting with the hookers before leaving at midnight to pick up his fiancee, Michelle, from the dancing club where she worked, sharing a late night curry, then curling up with her in the houseboat on the river.
But income had to be earned. Michelle’s wages and tips were nowhere near enough. His earnings were spasmodic and his capital was dwindling.
A pair of headlights turned on to the creek road, the car bouncing in the potholes.
Aleef rose quickly. ‘He’s here.’
‘Only just in time,’ Boone remarked.
Aleef crossed the gangplank to the wooden quayside as the vehicle arrived, splashing his white trousers as its wheels threw up a wave of muddy water from a puddle.
Boone leaned on the cockpit door, another roll-up dangling from the corner of his mouth, watching with interest.
The car was a big old Mercedes, fairly common in the Gambia. The driver and the front passenger got out — two tough looking black guys — and spoke hurriedly to Aleef who did plenty of nodding and displayed lots of submissive body language. Boone made out the dark profiles of two other men in the back seat of the Mercedes, catching the glint of their eyes in the light cast from the boat. Aleef pointed to Boone. The men glanced over, their faces expressionless. Then they shouldered their way past Aleef, stepped off the quay and boarded the boat, bringing mud from their shoes on to the pristine deck.
Boone, though annoyed by this, kept quiet, a condition encouraged by the handgun each of the men carried. They were heavy pistols, ugly, black and dangerous looking — rather like their owners, Boone thought.
The first man aboard said, ‘We search.’
Boone shrugged, stepped aside. They went past him, down into the galley and stateroom, the toilet/shower, doing a sweeping and fairly cursory search. One lifted the engine cover, stuck his head down into the bowels of the boat, finding only a well-maintained Volvo diesel engine in there. Satisfied, they left the boat and went back to Aleef who was standing getting drenched in the rain as a heavy downpour came. His neat suit became misshapen and baggy. They exchanged a few more words, then one of them opened the rear door of the Mercedes and the two other men slid out.
Boone noticed that Aleef kept himself angled slightly away from these guys, eyes averted.
They came on board, the second one with an H amp;K machine pistol slung across his chest. The first man — who appeared to have Arabic features — walked straight past Boone, down into the stateroom, and closed the door behind him. The second man sat on the bench Aleef had been on a few moments earlier. He laid the H amp;K across his lap and regarded Boone stonily through creamy eyes.
Aleef stepped back on board.
Boone spun angrily at him. ‘Two things here, Aleef,’ he hissed. ‘One — I don’t allow guns on board, and, most importantly, two — the deal was for one passenger. ONE.’ He reinforced the word by jerking his middle finger in front of Aleef’s eyes. Truth was, the gun didn’t bother him. Firearms were a fact of life in the way he made the bulk of his living — collecting and delivering packages dropped by ships from South America anchored in international waters just outside the Gambian national limits. But he did have an issue with numbers. Didn’t like the change in odds.
The smaller man said, ‘It’s changed. Two will go and you’ll bring him back.’ Aleef indicated the lounging gunman.
Boone snorted. ‘In that case the price has gone up. I’ll do it, yeah, but it’ll cost another grand.’
Aleef swung his briefcase on to the table next to the wheel, thumbed the combination and opened it slowly, slanting it away from Boone’s inquisitive eyes. He handed over a stack of dollars. ‘One thousand, as promised.’ Then he gave him another stack, less heavy. ‘Five hundred extra, and on the return pick-up run you’ll receive another thousand.’
Boone snatched the money and tucked it under his jacket. Clearly these guys had dosh to spare, he thought, and said, ‘You were expecting this, weren’t you?’ He sniggered.
‘A man like you, Mr Boone, is very easy to second guess, something I factored into the equation. But you do need to know that you will not receive a penny more, nor,’ Aleef added, ‘should you even think about demanding more. That would be a very bad move on your part.’
‘That suits.’
‘May I also warn you not to engage in conversation with these men,’ Aleef said. ‘Speak only when spoken to. In fact, keep your distance, do your job and then forget the faces — am I clear?’
‘Crystal.’
Aleef took a piece of paper out of the briefcase and unfolded it. ‘You will be met at these coordinates just to the south of the Canary Islands and the package will be transferred. I take it you have the necessary electronic equipment on board to accomplish this.’
Boone took the paper and nodded.
‘I shall see you when you return, then.’ Aleef stepped off the boat and walked across to his own car on the quayside, a battered Citroen 2CV. The men who’d searched Boone’s boat leaned impassively against the big Mercedes, guns hanging loosely by their sides.
Boone’s mouth puckered unhappily as he turned to the wheel and pressed the starter, bringing the engines to life with a healthy burbling sound.
‘Ready for off?’ he asked the man on the bench. He got no response other than a half-lidded contemptuous look that brooked no conversation. Boone thought he would try anyway, despite Aleef’s instructions to the contrary. He wasn’t really someone who could not talk — unless he was banged up in a police cell — so he shrugged and turned his attention to the job at hand. Getting the human package from the Gambia to the Canary Islands, then bringing him back three weeks later. Straightforward and simple — with the exception of having an armed man on board, something difficult to explain should they run into the authorities. But that was something Boone was good at: slipping under the radar, keeping a low profile, so he wasn’t too concerned on that count. Having a pretty nasty looking dude on board who looked as though he got a lot of pleasure drilling 9mm bullets into people was the bit he didn’t like.
‘Don’t ask,’ Boone said to himself. ‘Just do it, keep your mouth shut, eyes closed, take the fucking money and run — and hope the bastard gets seasick and suffers.’
With that in mind, he released Shell from her moorings, gave the men ashore a cheery wave — got no response — and headed carefully out of the creek into the main river channel, hit the open sea, programmed his instruments and let the boat do the rest. Then he settled down for a long journey that promised to be rough.
TWO
The phone rang. It was two thirty in the morning. It continued to ring and even though the first ring didn’t need to wake him, because he was already awake, Henry Christie did not reach across to the bedside cabinet to answer it. Then it stopped and the room returned to silence with just the faintest echo ebbing away. He lay there, the duvet halfway down his body, his upper half naked and chilled, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
He knew it, or his mobile phone, would ring again. It had to because he was the only one available and they would keep trying until they contacted him, even if it meant sending someone round to knock him up. Part of him devilishly thought about taking it that far, but he knew he would answer next time. Henry did not like to keep people waiting, not where death was involved. Or as in this case, as he knew it would be, murder.
The call would be from the Force Incident Manager, the inspector based in the control room at police headquarters in Hutton, just to the south of Preston. All call-outs for Senior Investigating Officers — SIOs — were routed through the FIM, who held the rota for all disciplines, from public order to serious crime.