Luc: A Spy Thriller Page 6

  ‘I would like to help you,’ Mike said, his voice showing genuine concern.

  The man did not respond. He stared grimly at the surface of the scratched wooden desk.

  ‘Would you like an interpreter? Do you understand what I’m asking?’ Mike shot up and grabbed hold of the bandaged hand. He smacked it back down onto the surface of the desk. The man’s cry was loud and high-pitched. ‘This hand,’ Mike said in his calm, caring voice. ‘Is it painful?’

  My phone vibrated.

  ‘Luc, it’s Charlie. We have some information on the photos you sent.’

  Mike sat back and lightly frowned as the man’s echoing screams filled the room.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said to Charlie. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Okay, the four younger guys. The ones who didn’t look in good nick. I guess they’re the ones we’re starting to hear about on the wires. Anyway, first we got Aruza Pinto. Twenty-eight. Guatemalan national. He’s the one in the red Jeep with the messy hand.’

  ‘Okay. I’m looking at him right now.’

  ‘Good, you managed - is that someone screaming?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘That’s him. That’s Pinto.’

  ‘His hand still hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it might do.’

  Aruza Pinto was doubled up, hugging his arm. He looked as if he didn’t know whether to scream, cry or hurl abuse at Mike. I think he was trying a combination of all three at the moment.

  ‘Alongside him in the car,’ Charlie continued, ‘was Hector Villio Fernandez. Thirty-six. Guatemalan. They’re all Guatemalans by the way.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The two in the street were Angel Mortez. Twenty-eight. Tiero Monaqui. Thirty-one.

  ‘Tiero’s been around, a sort of gun for hire. He was in the Guatemalan military, before being kicked out. Went south. Got involved in the drugs trade, FARC, spent time inside.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now, same as the others. Families report that they were hired for an overseas job about three months ago.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Pinto had quietened a little and Mike asked if he was now prepared to answer some questions.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Charlie said. ‘And nobody’s heard from them since. What appears to link them is that like Tiero Monaqui they were all, at some point or other, kicked out of the Guatemalan military.’

  ‘I know nothing about anything,’ Pinto said.

  ‘So someone went on a recruitment drive in Guatemala for disgraced ex-military,’ I said to Charlie.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘The clients?’

  ‘I guess it’s reasonable to assume so.’

  Mike leaned forward and held up a 5x8 colour photograph. I just caught a glimpse of curly black hair. ‘This man,’ Mike said. ‘You shot him. Why did you shoot him?’ Ned.

  ‘And what about the clients?’ I said. ‘Have you got them yet?’

  ‘Still working on them. They’re taking longer because neither are on the files.’ No criminal record match.

  ‘I no like his face,’ Pinto said.

  ‘All right, Charlie. Call me when you do.’

  Mike got to his feet. Shortly after, the screams started again.

  ***

  The light from the laptop glowed in the gloomy room. I was surfing news websites, searching for information on old and recent squabbles between Belize and Guatemala.

  There had been quite a few.

  A small, suspicious part of my brain had wondered if the Guatemalan security services had formed a unit of ex-military to carry out deniable operations in Belize.

  Maybe the man with the red handkerchief ran it. Maybe Pinto and the rest were the men on the ground. And maybe Wilson had somehow stumbled upon this information, and had to be silenced.

  I stood up, shaking my head. I put a hand on the back of my neck and looked up to the ceiling.

  That couldn’t be true.

  Couldn’t be…

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  There were loud noises from the ground floor and I went downstairs and saw Lucia arguing with one of the security men. When she saw me she strode over.

  ‘This man is refusing to let me leave,’ she said, her face red and her eyes puffy.

  ‘Just waiting to confirm the OK,’ the security man, Dennis, said to me.

  I nodded. ‘We’re not keeping you here,’ I said to Lucia. ‘We can’t keep you here, of course you’re free to go. But I’d remind you that it’s not safe out there for you at the moment.’

  ‘My gran wants some things from her home,’ she said.

  ‘Are they important?’

  ‘They’re important to her.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay. Would you allow somebody to go with you?’

  ‘I’m not a little girl.’

  ‘I appreciate that. But would you?’

  She looked at me, her eyes hadn’t softened.

  ‘It is a free country.’

  ***

  I sat on the wicker chair in the lounge as Lucia packed various items in the bag she’d brought.

  Above the old Ferguson television was a shelf with lots of framed photographs on it. Photographs of Frank and his wife. Photographs of Frank and his wife with their children. Photographs of Frank and his wife with Lucia.

  I stood up and looked out of the bay window. Iron roofed huts, colourful clothes on washing lines, and halfway down the street a wooden kiosk selling cold drinks.

  I thought about my theory. I had to admit it didn’t make too much sense. If they were deniable operations, why use vehicles with Guatemalan licence plates? Why have Guatemalan currency on you?

  It was almost as if they wanted someone to make that link.

  I could hear cupboards being opened and closed in the next room.

  Why was I even here?

  Guilt, of course. A sloppy reaction, but I couldn’t shake it nevertheless. I felt responsible for having got Lucia and Frank involved (because I was responsible) and therefore I felt responsible that she’s in there now sobbing away while sorting through her grandparents belongings. I’d got Frank killed.

  Had to let that go. Wouldn’t help me. Unless I could use it. Use the guilt and the anger to bring down whoever was responsible for this.

  I could’ve got Jefferson to be here. He’d have done a perfectly good job of minding Lucia.

  But it was that guilt thing again.

  Had to be me.

  I’d promised Frank, after all.

  I turned away from the window and Lucia was standing in the doorway, eyes red and puffy, tear stains running grey tracks down her soft cheeks.

  ‘Ready,’ she said quietly.

  ***

  Ned’s Nissan was a write-off, and the Suzuki I’d left at the marina. If the clients were still after us (and after what happened with Ned and Frank we had to assume they were), then I guess they’d reason that I had probably arrived at the marina in a vehicle and so would scout the surrounding area for any vehicles not being driven away. Probably had watchers there. As I was still with Lucia I could go nowhere near it.

  Mike had got me a new vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser. And it was good, nice handling. I looked in the rear view mirror. Clean, so far.

  I turned the wheel and we swung round a hairpin bend, mud splattering up the side of the vehicle. The new road had a steep gradient and I pressed the throttle down to get more power, the engine revving, the tyres biting into the muddy road.

  ‘You are going after these men?’ Lucia asked quietly from the passenger seat, hugging her bag.

  ‘I’m going to observe them. Yes. Investigate them. They have now killed two of our men.’

  ‘I can help you.’

  I looked over. Her wet, brown eyes gazed at me intensely.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lucia,’ I said. ‘You should stay with your grandma.’

  ‘I want to help,’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘I know.’

  ***


  The glass steamed up as I poured the hot water into the red plastic cafetière. I was making strong coffee for myself, Lucia and her gran. My pocket vibrated and I pulled out the mobile phone.

  ‘Luc,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Charlie. We have them.’

  ‘The clients?’ I dropped the kettle back on its tray and quickly switched the phone to my other ear.

  ‘Yep. The Caucasian man you pictured? Ray Mortlake. He’s a lawyer by profession. American. Forty-one.’

  ‘Right. And the other guy?’

  ‘The other guy is Arundel Salazar. He’s Mortlake’s security man.’

  ‘His bodyguard?’

  ‘Essentially.’

  ‘Guatemalan?’

  ‘Nope. American too.’

  Damn.

  I had convinced myself that the man with the red handkerchief was the main guy to focus on.

  I shook my head. ‘So where’s the Guatemalan connection?’ I asked. ‘Steenhoek reacted because I’d mentioned him meeting someone from Guatemala. He surely can’t have reacted that way because of people that they’d hired.’

  ‘Yes. I wondered that too. So I dug a little deeper. It turns out that Ray Mortlake is the right-hand man of one Ernesto Giuttieri.’

  I scratched the back of my head. ‘Okay. Who’s this Giuttieri?’

  ‘He’s a piece of work,’ Charlie said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The plunger went all the way down and the aroma of the chocolate brown coffee filled my nostrils.

  ‘Ernesto Giuttieri is forty-nine,’ Charlie said. ‘Born in Cobán, Guatemala. I’m guessing he’s the Guatemalan connection.’

  ‘Do we know anything about him?’ I asked.

  ‘Head of a corporation that looks legitimate, but there are persistent rumours.’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘That he had two of his fiercest business rivals murdered. On the same day. What isn’t a rumour, but is actual fact, is that he murdered his first wife. She was a small-time actress in a Guatemalan soap opera and he strangled her one night after a bitter row in a restaurant. A jealous rage brought about by the actress smiling at a man across the room.

  ‘Giuttieri was tried and convicted. Sentenced to twenty-eight years inside. Guess what happened to his legal team?’

  ‘Something not good?’

  ‘Something very not good. One morning they got into their respective cars, turned on the ignition, kaboom. Some of them had wives and kids in there too. Nobody can prove it was Giuttieri, he was inside, but it’s what everybody thinks. Guess what happened to the man she smiled at?’

  ‘I’m seeing a pattern.’ I poured some of the coffee into a dark green mug.

  ‘Robbery gone wrong, the official verdict,’ Charlie said. ‘Found in an alley with his throat cut.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound like a nice man at all.’ My thoughts were definitely shifting from the Guatemalan military to one Ernesto Giuttieri.

  ‘After his legal team went sky high, that’s when he brought in Ray Mortlake. Serious guy, Mortlake. Knows his business. Straightened out Giuttieri’s often chaotic businesses, made them professional. Also went to work on Giuttieri’s conviction. He’s good, or he knows people, or both, because Giuttieri walked out a free man after serving just three years. Three years - from twenty-eight years. Not bad going.’

  ‘They sound quite a pair.’

  ‘They are. They’re not exactly Laurel and Hardy. Nobody’s laughing. But they are very good at what they do.’

  I took a sip of the coffee. ‘So why would he want to set off a bomb in Belize City?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Charlie asked. ‘A group has now claimed responsibility for the bomb.’

  ‘Which group?’

  ‘The Guatemalan Territories Brigade.’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard of them.’

  She almost laughed. ‘Yeah. First time anybody’s heard of them. We’ve asked the usual people but nobody knows a thing about them.’

  ‘Is this what Pinto and the rest of them are part of? The Guatemalan Territories Brigade?’

  ‘As I say, nobody knows a thing. But yes, could be.’

  ‘And it could be that Giuttieri is behind the lot of them.’ I poured coffee into two more mugs.

  ‘That’s precisely what we’re looking into right now, Luc.’

  ***

  Mike Haskins was outside smoking a cigarette.

  ‘How’s it going with Pinto?’ I asked, stepping out into the heat of the street. ‘Is he talking?’

  ‘He’s a pesky one,’ Mike said.

  ‘Not talking?’

  Mike shook his head.

  ‘How’s his hand bearing up? We don’t want it turning septic on us.’

  ‘Molly’s taken a look. It’s fine.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You should know something else,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s got a hole in his other hand now.’

  My neck straightened. ‘Mike, for god’s sake…’

  ‘He clammed up. I need to get him to talk, don’t I?’

  ‘Let me see him,’ I said, striding back inside.

  ‘Don’t go off on one, Luc,’ he said following me in. ‘He’s perfectly fine.’

  Pinto was sitting on a bed in the holding room. When the door opened and he saw me, he stood. He held his arms up. Both hands were now covered in thick white bandaging.

  ‘Look at these,’ he said. He looked a bit like those people at football matches who wave large foam hands. ‘You think this is funny? I am in pain.’

  ‘Sit down,’ I said.

  ‘I no sit down, I - .’

  I lightly pushed his chest and he sank back onto the bed, not wanting to touch me, the bed, or anything with his hands.

  ‘A group has claimed responsibility for the bomb that went off in Belize City.’

  He glanced up at me.

  ‘Are you part of that group?’

  Pinto leaned a little forward. ‘I am proud to be part of that group.’

  ‘And what is the group called?’

  ‘We are the Guatemalan Territories Brigade.’ Telling him that the group had claimed responsibility had acted like a green light or something.

  ‘What are your goals?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your aims. What are you fighting for?’

  ‘We want to reclaim our territories.’

  ‘What territories?’

  ‘Belize.’

  ‘What part of Belize?’

  ‘Just…Belize.’

  ‘I see. Why drive around with Guatemalan licence plates in Belize?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You don’t have an answer?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Maybe it’s because you’re proud to be Guatemalan,’ I said. ‘Or to you this is Guatemala.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. And then a more definite: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hang the fact that it massively increases your chances of being caught and that no serious outfit would even dream of it.’

  He looked at me and screwed up his mouth. He shrugged again.

  ‘Do you ever feel you’re being used, Aruzo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever heard of a man called Ernesto Giuttieri?’

  ‘No.’

  I turned to Mike. ‘Has he given you the code for the phone yet?’ I asked.

  Mike shook his head. ‘He’s not budging on that.’

  ‘I told you,’ Pinto said. ‘I don’t know code.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean you don’t know the code?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know it. It’s not my phone. I didn’t have a phone. That’s Hector’s phone. You want code, you shouldn’t shoot him in face.’

  ‘They didn’t give you a phone?’ I asked him.

  Pinto shrugged.

  ‘Who hired you?’

  ‘Hired me?’

  ‘For your overseas job. Who hired you?’

 
; ‘I am an activist. I am engaged in an armed struggle. Nobody hired me.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, but balls.’

  Pinto held his bandaged hands up. ‘I need to use toilet,’ he said, looking between me and Mike.

  I smiled thinly and looked across at Mike. ‘I’ll leave him with you.’

  ***

  One of those exotic birds that I don’t know the name of chirruped rhythmically outside the window as I clicked another newspaper story about Ernesto Giuttieri on the laptop. It brought up a story from the The Belize Times about Giuttieri’s involvement in the takeover of the Belizean company Triple Door Refrigeration.

  The story seemed to insinuate bad practice by the Giuttieri Corporation, but didn’t say it outright. I read until the end and then clicked on another story.

  The overarching picture I was getting of Giuttieri was of a powerful figure, a businessman, who was no doubt involved in illegal practices, but who was able now to stay one step ahead of the authorities. It was also clear that, certainly recently, very little else was known about him. While his businesses ran in various countries, it was not clear to me where exactly Giuttieri was. The last known sighting that I could find was three years ago in Barbados.

  One other thing chimed. Four of the articles I had read were written by the same journalist. They were not entirely complimentary of the man, although due to the libel laws, the journalist herself hadn’t been able to outright accuse Giuttieri of anything. Reading between the lines, it seemed to me that she was itching to.

  I scrolled up to the byline again: Vivienne Marlow.

  As the colourful bird outside fluttered into view, I pulled the phone from my jacket pocket and scrolled across to the Contacts page.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Vivienne Marlow took a swig of rum and then cracked the empty glass onto the wooden coffee table. She exhaled and then looked up at me.

  ‘He’s a big man,’ she said. ‘I mean size wise. He’s large. He weighs a ton. You look at pictures of him now and you look at pictures of him when he was young, it’s almost impossible to believe that they are the same person.’ She picked up the bottle of One Oak Rum and refilled her glass. ‘But they are,’ she said.

  I had tracked Vivienne Marlow down to a wooden bungalow in Orange Walk. She had left her previous newspaper, the Amandala, a year ago and had now turned freelance. We were sitting in her lounge area, a wooden table between us. Stacks of books, magazines and newspapers were piled up on almost every available surface around us.