Luc: A Spy Thriller Read online

  ‘Get her back here.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Honey, sweetie, there’s a bit of a situation…’

  There was the banging of cupboards coming from the kitchen.

  ‘Honey, come out here.’ Insisting.

  The banging stopped. The woman appeared again, walking towards the terrace, a perplexed look on her drowsy face. She looked at me, her brain trying to compute something.

  ‘Sweetie,’ she eventually said, ‘who is this?’

  Then she seemed to see the gun, as if for the first time. Her eyes looked worried. She looked at Steenhoek and then back at me. Then I could see that her eyes were welling up. She started crying. Lightly at first, but it soon developed into uncontrollable sobbing.

  Then she launched at me, lashing out at me. Slapping, punching, kicking me. Letting go with everything she’s got. Screaming, yelping. I was taking blow after blow.

  I thrust the gun down my belt and tried to grab her wrists. It was like trying to catch two flies. Eventually I got them and held them tight and knew the knee to the groin would not be long in coming, so I swung her round to face the other way, still holding her wrists, her arms now behind her. She could see her reflection in the terrace window, a crazy woman in a silk kimono and I pushed her forward and down so she had to concentrate on not falling over rather than extricating her hands. I used the time to think, sweet time, peaceful, and Steenhoek decided this was a good opportunity, with me, hands full, no gun, to make a little move and the sprightly fifty year old got to his feet and I dropped the woman, pulled the gun and shot him in the knee.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nobody was happy. I wasn’t happy. Steenhoek wasn’t happy. The woman with the silk kimono and flattened face wasn’t happy.

  We were inside now, in the lounge, things were getting too noisy to stay outside. Even now I was sweating about the gunshot. Would it have been heard, would it be reported? But I wasn’t leaving them, not until I had the answers. And taking them somewhere else would be a nightmare to try. So I’d have to do just that: sweat it out.

  Both were on the floor, wrists secured with plastic ties.

  I’d checked both wardrobes. Neither owned any garments that had the same silver buttons as the one I’d found.

  On the wall behind where they now sat, a small impressionist painting of a sparkling diamond looked down on us, and I remembered what Baxter had said about Steenhoek in the briefing: loopy about the things. Diamonds, that is, not paintings.

  Steenhoek didn’t look good. I’d done preliminary first aid on his knee; stemmed the flow of blood, he should live. But at the moment he looked bad.

  ‘You need to take him to a doctor,’ the woman, Grace, if you please, had said.

  ‘You can ring for any amount of doctors as soon as you give me the answers to my questions. And we sit here until you do. If you don’t answer my questions and Mr Steenhoek here slips into shock and his body gives out and he dies in front of us, then that’s your choice. You need to know I will absolutely allow that to happen. But it’s your choice.’

  Grace was crying again. Little sobs amid the unconcealed anger. With her hands tied she couldn’t wipe the tears away and they just rolled down her face and off her chin and made darkened patches on her red kimono.

  ‘Sweetie,’ she said, almost pleading, turning to her man.

  Her man, Steenhoek, white as a sheet and lacking a kneecap, was staring at me with a suppressed fury.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he said. Voice was weak.

  ‘Good, Mr Steenhoek. Good. I want to know about torture. I want to know about a man shot in the stomach and dumped outside a bar in Crooked Tree. I want to know about your bloody involvement in that.’

  His eyes narrowed, he screwed up his mouth, and he started slowly shaking his head. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Do it? I didn’t do it. There’s no involvement because I wasn’t involved.’

  ‘That man was sent to get information from you. The very next day he’s tortured, shot in the stomach and dumped. And you want me to believe you had no involvement?’

  ‘The body up in Crooked Tree?’ He nodded. ‘Okay, yeah, I heard about it. But I had nothing to do with it. I mean, come on, does that sound like me? I buy and sell information. I have security to protect me because information can be sensitive. I don’t go around torturing and shooting people. Jesus, I never even met the man.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘You seriously didn’t meet him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was coming here specifically to buy information from you.’

  ‘Well I never met him. Okay?’

  I was looking at the blood seeping through the white bandage wrapped around his knee.

  ‘Please,’ Grace pleaded. ‘You’ve got your information. He’s told you. Let me ring for a doctor.’

  I squatted down in front of Steenhoek. ‘Look me in the eye, Mr Steenhoek. Look me in the eye.’ He did, not concealing his disgust. ‘Remembering you have another, fully working, kneecap, tell me - did you have that man tortured and shot?’

  His gaze didn’t waver. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’

  I stood up. Cut the ties from Grace’s wrist and left the way I’d come.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The coloured lights from the beach bar glowed a small distance across the darkened sand. There was laughter and loud talking and often the clinking of glasses as the young revelled in the beauty of their youth. I wasn’t in a mood tonight to be amongst the cheeriness and was sitting down the beach on the sand, gazing out at the dark sea.

  I’d messaged London that I didn’t think Steenhoek had been responsible for the torture and murder of Wilson.

  With nothing else to go on things weren’t looking good.

  I’d also learned from our forensics team that the blood and the fingerprint on the silver button were both Wilson’s. I could imagine him, possibly his last act in this world, lying in that ditch and throwing the button clear. He wanted us to find it.

  I took a swig from the bottle of Belikin as a couple of the girls in bikinis and sarongs danced out onto the sand, singing an unknown (to me) song. One of the lads merrily shouted out something to them.

  I looked back at the sea.

  ‘So what happened, Wilson?’

  There was no answer. Except the hissing of each hypnotic wave as it slowly crept back on itself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The kettle boiled, rattling the cups and pens on the small desk in my hotel room. Instant coffee first thing in the morning was not ideal, but it was good enough.

  I strolled into the windowless bathroom and pulled the cord and the gloom was replaced by sparkling light.

  Brushing my teeth, I noticed a dark patch from the corner of my eye and lazily glanced over. A second later I had frozen, before jackknifing backwards and almost falling into the bath. A massive spider clung insolently to the wall, up in the corner of the room. By massive, I mean it was the size of a Volvo. I finished cleaning my teeth in the bedroom, only creeping back in to quietly wash my mouth out and gently replace the toothbrush in the glass holder. Do not like the things.

  I dressed in navy linen shirt, light chinos and blue plimsolls and went downstairs and out into the street. It was seven in the morning and the mercury was already rising.

  I walked across the road and down the street. People were up ladders, taking down some sort of bunting or decoration that had been strung across the street. Must’ve been some festival that I wasn’t aware of. I went inside a hut painted azure blue. It was a cafe, supposedly a good one. According to Jules at my hotel it was run by a woman named Audrey. He went on to say Audrey was a large pear-shaped lady, whose cheerfulness could easily slip into verbal abuse and back again before you’d even been aware what was happening. The food was top-notch though.

  The aroma as I stepped through the corrugated iron door intensified my anticipation for the meal ahead. They seemed not to skimp
on the spices and juices in this place.

  I’d ordered some johnnycakes - a small baked bread made with flour and coconut milk - scrambled eggs, beans and bacon. I also had black coffee, and something from the homeland - toast and marmalade. For me there’s no breakfast without toast and marmalade. The food was delicious.

  Audrey wasn’t there, so at least I wasn’t getting shouted at.

  The man behind the bar reached under the counter and picked up something and pointed it at the TV that was on the far wall. I realised he was turning the volume up and I glanced across at the screen. It was a news report. A group of a dozen tourists had been kidnapped by masked men at Xunantunichone, on the west of Belize, possibly the best known of the ancient Mayan sites. Gunfire was heard, but no reports of any casualties. I raised an eyebrow. That was all Belize needed.

  Back outside, the heat had risen further and the bunting now lay on the road.

  I crossed the street and stepped back into the hotel. I greeted Jules, who was behind the desk, and he stopped me and informed me I had a visitor. I raised my eyebrows, thinking it might be Steenhoek come to air his grievances with me. Or indeed Grace, come to continue the thumping where she’d left off.

  But it was neither. Jules pointed to a young woman sitting on a sofa in the lobby. I walked across.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me?’ I asked.

  She looked up. Then she stood. ‘Yes,’ she said, and I recognised her as the girl who had been cleaning the tables in the Barracuda Eye bar in Crooked Tree. I thought she looked a little nervous.

  ‘I can’t talk long, I have to go to work,’ she said. She saw Jules looking over.

  I nodded. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The streets were bustling now, alive.

  ‘It’s Hayley, isn’t?’ I said. She was about twenty and dressed in blue cutaway jeans and an orange T-shirt. She held a dark green rucksack over her left shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Hayley, I’m Philip.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Right. What did you want to speak to me about, Hayley?’

  She still looked nervous as we walked, rubbing her forearm and glancing around her.

  ‘Yesterday, when you came to the bar, you asked about the dead man,’ she said. I nodded. ‘I said I hadn’t seen anything.’ She paused. We passed a man with dreadlocks and two gold earrings, setting up his easel and paints outside a cafe. Two large women in colourful dresses shouted to each other from opposite sides of the street as loud punta rock came from a booming speaker in one of the shops.

  ‘My boss,’ Hayley continued, ‘doesn’t think we should get involved. Thinks it’s gangs, and we’re better off keeping quiet. But you said he was your friend…’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  She took a while in speaking again. I didn’t press her, hurry her, this had to be her decision.

  ‘I did see something,’ she finally said. ‘Not the body. I didn’t see that.’

  As if on cue we heard the siren of an ambulance and the crowd in the road, including us, dissipated out of its way and the large white van with BERT - the country’s emergency response team - in large letters on the side hurried through. Hayley seemed oblivious as we stepped back onto the opposite kerb, out of its path.

  ‘I was telling the truth about that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see them dump the body.’ The siren faded in the distance.

  ‘What did you see?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, I was outside, round the side of the bar, putting some rubbish in the bins. I heard a vehicle sort of screeching to a halt. Then there was another noise I couldn’t make out. Then a door slammed and the vehicle sped a way. I saw it as it passed the bar.’

  ‘What vehicle was it?’

  ‘It was a Ford 4x4. I recognised the logo. The thing is, I’m pretty sure it had foreign licence plates. They didn’t look Belizean.’

  ‘Foreign plates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you know which country they were from?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. There was a picture of a temple on them though.’

  ‘You did the right thing in telling me this, Hayley. Thank you.’

  She looked up at me and smiled. The smile was wide and beautiful and the effect on her face was wonderful. She should smile more. Perhaps we all should.

  ‘What time do you have to be in work?’ I asked.

  She looked at her plastic lime green watch. ‘I’ve got about an hour. The return bus leaves at ten.’

  ‘Then you’ve got time for a drink.’

  He eyes flashed back to me. ‘Oh, no, I…’ She looked a little bashful.

  ‘I’ve just had breakfast. But I could do with a juice. Besides, I need to thank you for taking the time to see me. And for telling me what you did.’

  She smiled again. She was certainly a good looking woman when life allowed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ***

  There was a tubby man sitting next to me. His paperwork was untidily spread out before him. His plate of conch burger, wedges and coleslaw, which he occasionally reached for, was pushed right over next to me. One onion ring draped itself perilously close to my computer.

  I tried to ignore him, and the munching sounds, and the aroma of someone else’s food, and concentrated on getting the information I wanted.

  I was in an Internet cafe, its wooden exterior painted pistachio green and yellow. The shy and cute Hayley had left about ten minutes ago to catch her bus and I had decided to jump on one of their computers. I was looking at images of licence plates from around the world. I looked at Google Images, then at a specific website. I searched for plates with temples on. Results for four countries. I got a picture of each plate onto one single sheet and then printed out a colour copy.

  I left tubby man and got back in the Suzuki.

  ***

  Augustin eyed me suspiciously as I walked back into his bar. There were a lot more people in now, and it was stifling. The fan whirred lazily, the only source of cool air in here. Amazingly, Augustin had a hat on today.

  ‘The man is back,’ the barman grinned. ‘He’s on elastic. You come for that beer?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes I have. How’s Jaspar doing?’

  ‘No idea.’ He pulled a pint glass from a shelf.

  ‘There seems to be a lot you don’t know.’

  ‘How I live my life, man. Works for me.’

  ‘I’ll be in the corner.’

  ‘Lovely. Well when you’ve finished being in the corner your beer will be on the bar.’

  I smiled. ‘I might just stand and wait then.’

  ‘Good ideas.’

  He brought me my beer and then said, ‘Gotta crack a new crate. Don’t hassle my customers.’ He waved a finger around the room.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream.’

  He disappeared out the back and Hayley, who was amending the chalked menu outside, came in to take his place behind the bar. Before she did I beckoned her over.

  ‘Hayley.’ I handed her the sheet with the licence plates with differing temples. ‘Take a look at these plates. Anything you recognise from the other day? The temples?’

  Hayley looked nervously round and then peered closely at the sheet. She looked for a good twenty seconds.

  ‘That one,’ she said, pointing to the third picture down.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s definitely the one. I recognise the peak and the colours.’

  The Tikal Temple.

  I nodded. ‘Thank you, Hayley.’

  She smiled and then continued round to the bar. A short while later Augustin returned and carefully dropped a wooden, clinking crate down behind the bar.

  ‘So Hayls,’ he said, standing back up, ‘time for a drop, no?’

  ‘Okay,’ Hayley said cheerfully.

  ‘Get yourself a glass, girl.’

  I smiled. And then looked back at the picture of the licence plate that Hayley had picked out.


  Guatemala.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Guatemala borders Belize on the west. It’s not a perfect relationship. Guatemala disputes Belize’s sovereignty. When Belize (as British Honduras) gained its sovereignty from Britain in 1981, Guatemala insisted again the territory was theirs. And it continues to dispute the sovereignty. There have, though, been confidence building measures between the two nations and relations have improved, even to the extent of one of those road maps to peace.

  However, in recent months there have been isolated flare ups. People have been shot on the border and tensions between the two countries has increased.

  And now apparently this with Wilson…

  I followed the nurse down the corridor.

  When the thug standing by the door saw me he turned, his eyes widening, his hand going inside his jacket.

  ‘This man would like to speak to Mr Steenhoek. May I leave him with you?’ the nurse said to the thug, and left to go about her duties.

  I looked at the thug and raised my hands. ‘I’m taking the proverbial, I appreciate that,’ I said.

  He didn’t take the gun out, just left his hand inside the jacket, a warning to me. It was the thug that had been on the terrace yesterday. There was bruising on his face. Probably why he was looking at me as if he wanted to do me some harm. He didn’t speak.

  ‘I don’t come empty handed,’ I said. I raised my right thumb and forefinger. In between the two, a small rock-hard substance sparkled. A diamond.

  ‘I’ve got a bagful of the stuff. I think Mr Steenhoek would want to know.’

  Or he would want to shoot me on the spot. One of the two.

  The thug stopped staring at me. He turned and went inside the room.

  ***

  ‘Mr Steenhoek,’ the thug said, ‘there is someone who wants to see you.’

  Steenhoek was sitting up in bed. He was wearing blue silk pyjamas. I had wondered if his leg would be suspended from the ceiling, like in old comedy films, but it wasn’t. It was tucked under the blankets with the other. Unless it was in the drawer, difficult to be certain.