Double Deal Read online

  ‘Answer the question, Senyor Chaudry. What is your relationship with Dr Swyft?’

  ‘I’ve answered that,’ said Frank, pausing for the translator before he repeated what he’d said twice before. ‘We are business colleagues. She is my immediate boss, actually.’

  Then another question he’d already answered.

  ‘I started phoning her at 7.20 am. My cell phone log will confirm that if you extract the phone from that ziplock.’ He pointed to the clear plastic bag lying to one side of the desk, his phone face down inside it and, even more inconveniently, on silent, so he couldn’t know if Tori, their boss Axel, or anyone else might be trying to reach him.

  Someone knocked at the door. The older cop – balding, wrinkled, crabby – called out what Frank assumed was ‘Enter’ and a female police officer came in. She pointed to the bagged phone and, when the senior detective nodded, took it and left. No words exchanged, no permission sought from Frank. He knew it was useless to protest so he continued.

  ‘Yes, I spoke to Tori, and yes, she seemed confused … distraught even.’ He paused again for the translator.

  After the ritual cough told him the guy was done, he went on. ‘I haven’t got a clue why she was distressed,’ he said, anticipating the next question, the same one they’d asked earlier. ‘To be honest, I was perplexed myself. She was supposed to be in the room opposite mine, 2420, but she wasn’t.’

  He could see the detectives remained as sceptical of this retelling of events as they had been the first and second times they’d heard it. ‘Like I said before, Tori also believed she was in Room 2420. No, I don’t have the slightest idea why she changed rooms. It was news to me and it sounded like it was news to her. She seemed dazed, so I think she may have been drugged.’

  He decided to repeat a question they’d so far ignored. ‘The TV said that Rao Songtian from China is missing. Have you found him?’

  The cops said nothing. Again.

  ‘I want to know,’ said Frank, pressing harder, ‘if Rao Songtian is still missing.’ He would have thumped the desk except that might take things too far, so he kept his hands in his lap.

  The younger cop answered in excellent English, ‘Senyor Chaudry, we ask the questions, yes? Your, er, little tale, it is very interesting. What is fascinating for us is that each time you’ve related it, you’ve been almost word for word the same. Verbatim, that is the English term, yes? You seem surprised that I speak English so well. May I say that you do too, especially since it is not your native tongue,’ he said, obviously noting Frank’s raised eyebrow. ‘That would be what, Hindi, Urdu?’

  ‘Punjabi, actually, if that is at all relevant. I was born in northwest Pakistan but I grew up in Britain, went to school there.’

  The cop winked at his colleague like he’d won a bet. ‘So let’s walk ourselves behind your little charade, the story you and Dr Swyft so obviously concocted and rehearsed. Tell us about the club you all visited last night, the last time anyone saw Mr Rao.’

  This wasn’t the moment to protest his innocence but he still wanted to put it on record. ‘Tori and I rehearsed nothing. Everything I’ve said is the truth, the complete truth. As to last night, Oriol – your president – took the four of us there for a nightcap, Dr Swyft, me, Rao Songtian and Nivikka Petersen. I felt ill quite soon after we arrived, something I’d eaten at dinner, I think, so I left early, about 9.30, and took a cab back to the hotel. Anyone who was there will confirm that. The barman. Your president. Nivikka Petersen. Wait a minute,’ he said, reaching into his pocket, pulling out his wallet and thumbing through it. ‘Here,’ he held out a slip of paper, ‘here’s my taxi receipt.’

  Before they had a chance to take it, Frank withdrew the receipt to scrutinise it for himself and only then handed it over. ‘It shows my ride started at 9.25 pm and finished at 10.05 pm at the hotel. Look, I need a toilet break.’ He didn’t. What he wanted was time out. No one had told him a thing, neither the hotel staff nor the police. All he knew were scraps he’d picked up on the TV. It had all happened so fast. Once hotel reception had told him that Tori had moved to Room 420, he’d gone back to his own room and tried phoning 420 from there while hotel security went downstairs to check it physically. The phone remained stubbornly unanswered, and just after his open balcony brought him the sounds of sirens arriving he decided to go down to 420 himself except, when he opened his door, he found these two detectives standing there.

  ‘You’ve been questioning me for a solid twenty-five …’ The cops’ body language told him he was about to get a refusal so he stood up.

  The younger detective nodded to his colleague who also got up and escorted Frank to a nearby bathroom. After he checked the room was empty, he held the door open for Frank, at the same time unbuttoning his jacket so it fell open to reveal a gun in his shoulder holster. Frank got the message: Don’t play me.

  The detective smiled as he rebuttoned his jacket. ‘I wait here, outside. With my little friend.’ He tapped the bulge under his coat.

  32

  Frank hit the washbasins and splashed his face.

  Annoyingly, the bathroom didn’t have handtowels, only an air blower. He pushed open the door to a stall and pulled off a few sheets of toilet paper, patted them over his face and dropped them into the bowl. He closed the lid, and the stall door, and sat down, wondering what he’d do next.

  Should he demand the right to call a lawyer? Could you even do that in Spain? Or make a call to Axel, give him a heads-up so he could begin working on damage control.

  A loud exchange came from outside the main door. ‘Hey man, what do you mean we can’t go inside? It’s a bloody toilet. See the sign. I’m fuckin’ desperado, bro. If I don’t take a piss in the next five secs, I’ll be sprayin’ it all over your boots.’ It sounded like a New Zealander. ‘Oh, shit. You’re a cop. Sorry, dude, we’re touristos. Don’t want no trouble but the truth is, senyor, I’ve really, really got to pee. Sure, search us all you want … Hey, man, that tickles!’

  Frank heard the outside door creak as it swung open. The detective must’ve taken the line of least resistance after judging the Kiwi to be harmless.

  The sound of flip-flops clomped in over the bathroom tiles. He listened … two pairs. Two people?

  ‘Why the fuck did dat cop have to frisk us? We’re bloody guests in a five-star hotel. I’ve got half a mind—’

  ‘Well, you are Irish,’ laughed the Kiwi.

  ‘Very funny. That cop was as edgy as a chainsaw.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be after seeing that video?’

  Frank heard two zips being pulled down as the Irishman spoke. ‘If that video went to my phone and your phone, it musta gone t’every phone. Kids, too.’

  ‘You’re pissin’ on my jandals.’

  ‘Then wear wellies. They’ll be handy for the next time you’re cuddlin’ up to your woolly sweetheart. Barbera, isn’t it? Baaa-bera!’

  ‘We’re in lockdown in a hotel where some freak shot a fuckin’ double-murder snuff movie and you’re making sheep jokes? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes … Jesus wept.’

  ‘That ginger bird. She was off her nut. The bloke was lucky she didn’t cut off his knob.’

  ‘Hey,’ the cop called out. ‘Wash hands and get out.’

  33

  Tori watched a strange version of a Mexican wave coursing along the beach, fingers pointing at phones, hands flying to mouths, a tide of gasps and chatter welling up with it.

  The Voice had kept his threat. He’d sent the video out. From this moment, every single person in Barcelona would know Tori’s face and more of her body than she’d ever want any stranger to see.

  She guessed she probably had a minute, maybe two, before the sand got too hot for her, figuratively speaking, so she kept skimming the search results on her tablet. Bar Canona, a strip club that recently closed down, was a nineteen-minute cab ride away.

  Suddenly, the beach erupted, people leapt to their feet, many shrieking, eyes glued to their phones; even the c
ops. Maybe a hundred faces were twisted in disgust or horror. She leapt up too.

  34

  The president of Catalonia sat at his desk with his head in his hands, a shocking image frozen on his cell phone in front of him. This was turning out to be the worst day of his political life.

  He heard soft steps on the carpet and looked up to see his chief of staff entering. Maria’s face was ashen, the tips of her fingers holding her cell phone in front of her as if it was oozing filth. ‘You saw it?’

  He nodded from behind his vast beechwood desk. It looked as blanched and sallow as he felt.

  ‘This is bad for us,’ she added, as if he didn’t know. ‘Your enemies will say—’

  ‘Maria, two people, good people, are dead and another is missing—’

  ‘Good people? Didn’t you see what they were doing? And that Swyft woman! She isn’t missing, Uri, she’s a fugitive. They used you.’

  ‘I can’t dance on these people’s graves just because it suits my political—’

  ‘If you don’t, the jackals will stomp over yours. Unless you take control of it, this is how it will go down. They’ll slam you for lack of judgement, how you naively conducted a secret process underpinned by corruption, sleaze and sexual perversion. How did he not know? they’ll shout. Then they’ll drop you right into the middle of it.’ She fixed her eyes on his. ‘Casals must’ve been in on it. Is he the guy holding the camera?’

  ‘Maria!’ he smashed his fist down on the desk.

  She shrugged. ‘That’s the crap we’ll be dealing with. The hate media’s been out to get you from the day you were elected. They’ll be playing yesterday’s press conference on a loop, the part where you take each woman’s hand and kiss it and—’

  ‘I kiss the hand of every woman.’ It was almost a whisper.

  ‘You stopped during coronavirus. Maybe you shouldn’t have restarted, even if palace protocol still gets everyone to sanitise when they arrive. Do you remember that moment in the talks? Second day, I think,’ Maria said, holding his eye. ‘Swyft turns up wearing black, as usual, and Rao smiles and cracks the only joke that ever fell from his lips. He says, “Whose funeral?” She smiles back, “Yours, if you’re not careful.” Do you remember that, Uri?’

  He’d taken it as innocuous banter yet, given what had happened since then, it looked bad. Terrible.

  Maria’s phone started to ring and, mouth tight, she moved closer to his desk and held the screen out to show him it was the police commissioner, again. She tapped the speaker icon so they both could hear and without a beat she barked into the phone, ‘Of course we’ve seen the video.’ Uri watched her free hand rise up, as if she was conducting Allegri’s Miserere, readying the choir for the soprano’s impossible top C.

  Have mercy upon me, O God, he thought, taking comfort in the text. Wash me thoroughly from this wickedness and cleanse me from its sin.

  The commissioner interrupted Uri’s silent prayer, ‘Maria, please inform the president that—’

  Uri leant forwards. ‘I’m here, Miquel.’ He heard the squeak of a chair being pushed back, a rustle of clothes, what sounded like the policeman standing up.

  ‘Excellency. It’s almost certain that the deceased male on the video is Rao Songtian and the female is Nivikka Petersen. Their delegations are sending people to the hotel room to ID them. Ah, sir, please wait a moment.’

  Uri heard a hand go over the mouthpiece and then muffled speech. The commissioner came back on the line. ‘My people are telling me that the crime scene in the hotel looks exactly like the video.’

  ‘Miquel, how did this filth get to my phone, to Maria’s?’

  ‘To every phone in the building,’ Maria added and, for Uri’s benefit, pointed to the room beyond his door.

  ‘Sir, apparently it went to every phone in Barcelona. We don’t know how, not yet.’

  ‘Tori Swyft,’ said Uri, trying to keep his voice neutral. Despite the video, he wasn’t prepared to accept he’d got her wrong, not yet.

  ‘Mr President, she is missing but my officers have detained an associate of hers for question—’

  ‘Frank Chaudry?’

  ‘He claims complete ignorance. Either the man is a great actor—’

  ‘Or he’s telling the truth,’ said Maria, saying what Uri was thinking. After ten years of working together she was good at that.

  Uri had felt a rapport with Frank the moment they met, and throughout the negotiations what he witnessed was an honest man. A straight shooter. As was Tori, he reminded himself.

  ‘Excellency, Chaudry’s timings align with those you gave me earlier.’ On Miquel’s first call, when he told Uri that Rao was missing, the president told him that he’d taken the four people to the club, that Frank got ill and left around 9.30 and, while they were only on their first drink, Maria turned up and pulled him out, just minutes after Frank’s departure. Uri couldn’t say what happened to the others after that.

  ‘My detectives are pursuing an angle that Chaudry’s stomach cramp was a blind, a ploy so he could return to the hotel and set up the kill space. Our forensics people are examining his room as well as the other.’

  ‘The hotel CCTV?’ Maria asked.

  ‘I’m waiting for a report on that.’

  Uri leant backwards into his chair. ‘Thank you, commissioner,’ he said and waved a finger to his chief of staff. She hung up. ‘Maria, cancel me out of the car show.’

  ‘Uri,’ she looked horrified. ‘It’s not a show. It’s a showcase of Catalan innovation. We’ve planned this for months.’ It was scheduled for eleven o’clock and, after Montse died last week, Maria specifically programmed the state funeral to follow it. The media’s spotlight on the visiting dignitaries would give a boost to the local initiative and, of course, to Uri’s re-election prospects.

  ‘Cancel me,’ he repeated.

  She gave him her look. The classic icy stare, the slightly squinty eyes, the flared nostrils. He didn’t need her to spell out her thoughts but knew she would.

  ‘Uri, you will attend. You will cut the ribbon. The people need to see you have nothing to be ashamed of, that it’s business as usual. Otherwise the opposition and, of course, Madrid,’ which they both saw as the same beast, ‘will bleat how weak you are, how you’re running scared, got something to hide, are out of control.’ She paused, then grimly shook her head. ‘And even worse, Uri, that you were involved. Cancelling will fuel wild speculation that will play into our opponents’ hands.’

  He dropped his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to dispel the images his brain insisted on replaying. ‘If you hadn’t got me out of the club last night, if I’d stayed with them, Maria, maybe this wouldn’t …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence and, instead, the words of the psalm filled the silence.

  Make me a clean heart, O God.

  Deliver me from blood guilt.

  35

  Tori put one foot onto the roadway and raised her arm to hail a cab. Three black and yellows passed by without slowing or stopping. She couldn’t blame them. Picking up a stoner who might throw up in your car wasn’t a great way to end your night shift.

  ‘Hola,’ someone shouted from behind her. A cop? Someone who recognised her from the video, despite the wig and dark glasses? Like the airy cokehead she was making herself out to be, she didn’t look around.

  Another cab was bearing down, so this time she shifted her pose, jutting one leg to the side like a model on a catwalk, a hand flicking back her hair, the other holding her boots and backpack by the straps.

  ‘Hola,’ The voice was closer, more insistent.

  She steeled herself and turned around.

  A man with leathery skin, a holey, dirty green T-shirt and mouth missing half of its teeth was holding his hand out to her. ‘Help me,’ he said, in English, somehow knowing she spoke it even though she hadn’t said a word. ‘Money … for breakfast?’

  She was wary. He might be a genuine beggar. He might not. The taxi veered out of its lane towards the kerb
and screeched to a halt so close to her its bumper nudged against her bag.

  ‘Five euros? Little money,’ the man pleaded but Tori ignored him. ‘You want I call police? Maybe it you they looking for … You with little bit red hair sticking out on forehead.’

  As three police cars tore past, their sirens deafening, Tori saw the loose strand reflected in the cab window … Damn it. Quick as a flash, she pushed it back under her wig, swung open the cab’s back door, slung her belongings onto the seat, hopped in, slammed the door shut on the panhandler and, fortunately, the driver pulled straight out.

  She looked back at the beggar, watching to see what he’d do next. Hail down a cop car? Pull out a phone and take a snapshot of the taxi’s numberplate? But he simply threw up his hands, showing his frustration at yet one more knockback from a tight-fisted backpacker.

  When she turned back, she saw her driver assessing her, his eyes darting between the road and his rear-view mirror, so she was glad she’d fixed her hair. Had he even seen the video? If the street person had seen it, surely he had too?

  She put on her best slurred French accent and gave him an address two blocks beyond Bar Canona’s. That way, if he twigged to her identity later he wouldn’t be able to tell the police where she’d actually gone.

  He spoke over his shoulder in Catalan, her FrensLens translating his words into her earbud. ‘Miss, are you certain you want to go there? That locale … it’s quite seedy, not very safe. My daughter, she is your age, I would not want her to go there. Certainly not alone.’

  36

  The detective escorted Frank back to the room commandeered for the interrogation. The office seemed smaller this time, the air thicker and clammier.

  The cop sat down and a shirt button popped off and pinged to the side, unburdening a few of his pounds to flop onto the desk. ‘Senyor Chaudry,’ he said, rearranging himself, ‘what you did after return to hotel last night?’