Troll Page 12

  Yeah, right.

  I had an interview with a solicitor, who has been given my case, the one Charlie Jackson has brought against me. He was young and didn’t seem to rate my chances of getting off too highly. It was in his office, which was small and sandwiched between a betting shop and an off-licence called Bargain Booze. I sat down and he spent a few minutes leafing through my file before looking up at me across his desk and saying:

  ‘Do you have a record of mental illness?’

  No preamble, straight in there. No guessing what angle he was looking to take.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Have you ever been accused of harassment before?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve never harassed anyone in my life.’

  He ignored this declaration of innocence and instead said, ‘Have you ever attempted suicide?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often?’

  Do you know what? I had to think. I really did. ‘Four times,’ I said, eventually. One of them wasn’t even half-serious, but I guess all attempts count, particularly if you end up in hospital having your stomach pumped.

  ‘Are you on medication?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you been?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Prozac,’ I said. ‘Lithium. Some anti-psychotic I can’t remember the name of. Chlor something.’

  ‘Why did you stop taking them?’ he said.

  Because they made me shake, I didn’t say. Because they made me sweat through the night and lose interest in everything, robbed me of any emotional stake in this world. Because what I needed was purpose and independence and somebody to love and to love me, and I’d never get that sleepwalking through every day. What I actually said was:

  ‘Because I got better.’

  ‘We’ll need to do a psychological evaluation,’ he said. ‘See what comes out.’

  ‘You think I did it,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ he said. ‘Does it?’

  So here I am. No job, nowhere to live, unless I get sent to prison, which according to my useless solicitor is looking pretty likely. How the hell has somebody managed to do this to me? The coward. The petty, malicious, sneaky, odious coward.

  Josh says I need to get away. He says that by staying where I am, I’m just inviting more trouble. He’s flying to Paris in a couple of days and he’s given me the name of a restaurant and a time to meet. He’s going to be there to meet me, in another country, far from all of this. It’s the first thing I’ve looked forward to for weeks. For a day or two, all this will be gone, distant. Who knows? Maybe I won’t come back. How would that be? Start a new life in some faraway country where nobody can get to me. I’ll see what Josh says. Maybe he’ll come with me. Imagine. Just imagine that.

  twenty-four

  IN THE POST-9/11 WORLD OF GLOBAL JIHAD AND SHOE bombers, people opening the doors of moving aeroplanes were treated with hostility bordering on the abusive. Fortune’s hands had been cuffed behind him with plastic ties and a security guard had hustled him through Departures, holding his hands high behind his back so that his shoulders burned and his own momentum caused him to almost run. Three more guards had hurried alongside them, passing aghast passengers waiting to board other planes, mouths open in shock that it, that terror, was happening again, here, now. One of the guards had run ahead and unlocked a nondescript door in a carpeted corridor, the guard holding his arms pushing him through.

  They had placed him in a windowless room with two chairs and a table. He had been made to stand with his legs apart and hands resting on the wall as they took away his passport, wallet, phone, asked him to take his shoes off. It was hot and bright and very, very quiet in the room and Fortune had not been able to avoid thinking of extraordinary rendition, wondering whether Afghans or Syrians had also been held here before unmarked planes flew them to underground facilities in Poland, Ukraine, Jordan. The walls were a pastel green and there was nothing to drink and nowhere to go to the lavatory, and one of the fluorescent tubes flickered with an angry buzz. They had left him without telling him when they might be back or what might happen to him. He accepted that jihadists came in all manner of guises, but still. Surely they didn’t come in slightly-overweight-ex-pat-fifty-four-year-old guise. Or perhaps they did, hence his treatment. Whatever, he was stuck where he was, with nothing to do but think about what he had just discovered.

  That the amount of money stolen had corresponded with his daughter’s birthday was clear. The question was, could it be a coincidence? Fortune had left school at sixteen and maths wasn’t his strongest subject, but he imagined the odds were heavily stacked against it. In which case, what did it mean? Did it mean that Sophie had been right, and there had been somebody tormenting her, playing with her, setting her up? And what kind of person was capable of stealing a hundred and sixty million dollars from one of the most secure banks in the Middle East? He couldn’t get a handle on it, couldn’t find any way of making it add up. It sounded crazy. Hell, it was crazy, all of this. He was locked in the depths of Heathrow, in the hands of rent-a-cops who had most likely sent innocent men to be tortured in faraway lands. Crazy didn’t begin to cover it.

  The door opened and a man and a woman came in, both young, in their early thirties, both wearing suits. The man had rimless glasses and was clean-shaven. The woman was petite and had South Asian colouring, maybe Indian. They closed the door behind them. The man was wearing a gun at his belt, a rare enough thing in the UK to surprise Fortune, even though every cop in Dubai carried a weapon. Fortune stood up from the chair he had been sitting in.

  ‘Mr Fortune?’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sit down, please,’ she said. Fortune remained standing and the man said, ‘Sit down. Now.’

  Fortune sat, and the woman sat opposite him, the man staying at the door.

  ‘Date of birth?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Thirteen oh-eight nineteen sixty-three,’ Fortune said.

  ‘Address?’

  Fortune thought for a moment. ‘In Dubai or England?’

  ‘England.’

  Fortune gave his wife’s address, confirmed his mobile number, the name of his employer, his monthly salary, the date he had entered the UK, the names of his wife and daughter and the school he had attended, the grades he had achieved, five recent transactions he had made with his credit card, an insurance write-off claim from ten years ago, the make and model of car involved. He was amazed at the information they had managed to collect, so fast. His whole life in minutes.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the woman. ‘Not right now. You need to answer our questions.’

  ‘I want to know who you are. Who you’re with.’

  ‘With?’ said the woman. ‘We’re with the British government. Now, if you don’t mind, stop asking questions and let me do my job.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fortune. ‘All right. Ask away.’

  ‘Why did you open the door to the plane?’

  ‘I wanted to get out.’

  ‘Why?’

  Why? Fortune thought about his story, how crazy it sounded. He looked at the woman. He had never seen anybody so humourless. What would she make of his explanation? Not a lot, he suspected. ‘I had a panic attack.’

  ‘Really.’ She didn’t seem impressed by that answer.

  ‘I’ve been under a lot of stress,’ he said.

  ‘Your daughter.’

  Christ, they knew that too? ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. Took her own life?’

  Fortune nodded. ‘I’m not myself.’

  ‘No.’ The woman gazed at him and Fortune tried not to look away. She had brown eyes and was quite pretty, in a hard, take-no-prisoners way. ‘You know that plane’s still on the tarmac? We had to go through the hold, find your luggage.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Fortune hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Never
mind half the plane panicking. You understand that?’

  ‘I guess,’ said Fortune. He sounded like an errant schoolboy and was disgusted with himself for it. This woman was young enough to be his daughter.

  ‘So, again. Why did you open the door?’

  ‘I just, I needed to get out. I had this insane idea that my daughter was still alive, and that I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t just, I couldn’t … I couldn’t abandon her.’ Halfway through his explanation, Fortune realized that it was the truth. That was exactly what had happened. He just didn’t mention the money. Don’t mention the money, he thought. They’ll think you’re crazy.

  ‘Christ’s sake,’ said the man at the door, but the woman held up a hand, her back to him, and he stopped talking. No question about who was in charge here, thought Fortune. He’d employ her in a second. She was his kind of manager. Tough as they came.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to keep your passport. Okay?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because I want to do some more checking, and I don’t want you getting on any more planes and losing it. Fair?’

  Fortune nodded. ‘Fair.’ Jesus, this woman commanded respect.

  ‘Okay. Here.’ She pushed a card across the table. It had her name on it, Sunita Gandham, and a number. Nothing else.

  ‘Mysterious,’ said Fortune.

  ‘You have any problems, want to talk, you call me,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘If I don’t answer, you leave a message. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where will you be staying?’

  Fortune hadn’t thought. Didn’t know. Back to the same hotel, he guessed. At least he knew the barman. He told her the name of the hotel and the man behind her looked it up, asked him what street it was on. Asked him to describe the lobby. Fortune imagined there was a photo of it on the hotel’s website and that the man was looking at it. He described it, making it sound like every other hotel lobby in the whole world, but it seemed to satisfy the man because he nodded to the woman, a quick jerk of the head.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay, you’re free to go. Okay, I think you’re a dickhead but I think there are extenuating circumstances. Okay, there’s a decent chance I won’t have to arrest you. Yes?’

  Fortune nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Fab? Get his things?’

  The man nodded and left, and Fortune and the woman sat in silence. After a couple of minutes, she said, ‘Sounds like you’ve had a time of it.’

  ‘You could say.’

  ‘Your daughter. That’s tough.’

  Fortune nodded. ‘Yes.’

  The man called Fab came back in with Fortune’s luggage, phone, wallet and shoes. Fortune stood up and took it all from him, then knelt to put his shoes back on. He tied them, feeling the burn of both sets of eyes on his neck. He stood up and waited awkwardly, not knowing what to do.

  ‘Well?’ said the woman, Sunita. ‘Go on. Piss off.’

  As Fortune waited for a taxi, he called Owen. It wasn’t a call he wanted to make. He lit a cigarette, watched the smoke plume into the dark, cold night air as he listened to the ringing tone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Owen? It’s Fortune.’

  ‘Fortune. You’re back in Dubai?’

  ‘No. No, I’m still in London.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘It’s true. I need to stay.’

  Owen was silent for a moment. ‘Remember what I said?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘So that’s it. You’re done. Finished.’

  ‘I need to be here.’

  ‘And I need you here, yes, because some bastard’s stolen a hundred and sixty million dollars from my bank, and my fucking head of operations, which is you, by the way, has spent the last weeks fucking about in London looking for his daughter, who, just to be clear, isn’t fucking coming back.’

  Fortune felt a tug in his heart, an increase in his pulse, felt his chest flood with adrenalin. To hell with it, he thought.

  ‘You there?’ said Owen.

  ‘I’m here. I’m here, and I’m going to find my daughter, and you, you can find some other poor sap to do my job. I quit, I’m out. Good luck.’

  ‘You fucking can’t—’

  ‘Yes I can,’ interrupted Fortune, and hung up. He breathed out, found his cigarettes, lit one. As he inhaled, he had to admit that, actually, that call had felt a lot better than he had imagined.

  This was the third time in five days Fortune had made the journey from the airport to his hotel, and he knew the choke points, where the traffic would be. But it was late by this time and it took under an hour, Fortune paying the extortionate fare with even more reluctance than the last two times. He checked back in, the woman behind the reception desk raising her eye-brows in enquiry, then lowering them again when she saw his face. Fortune took his key and shook his head at the porter, figured he’d parted with enough money in tips. He knew what the room looked like, how the TV worked. He’d been here twice before.

  In his room, he called Alex. He owed him that. Besides, he had another question for him.

  ‘Fortune?’

  ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Owen told us. You’re not coming back?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. I’m sorry.’

  Alex sighed. ‘Hell, I can’t do this myself.’

  ‘You’ve got Sadler. Owen will find someone to replace me.’

  ‘Yeah. Some other big swinging dick.’ Alex stopped. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Fortune almost laughed. ‘I’ve got a question.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The second amount that was taken. How much was it exactly? I know it was around seventy million.’

  ‘$71,023,032,’ said Alex, immediately. He knows it by heart, thought Fortune, feeling a pang of guilt as he wrote the number down. He was abandoning Alex, an employee he liked and held in high regard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex. ‘Whatever. See you around.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Fortune hung up and looked at the figure he had written down. Wrote it again, starting with the last number and working backwards.

  230,320,17.

  23.03.2017.

  The twenty-third of March. This year. Fortune looked at his watch. Ten days away. Ten days from now. The first number, the first amount stolen, had been the day his daughter had been born. This second one, what did it mean? Did it mean nothing? Or did it tell Fortune the day his daughter was destined to die?

  twenty-five

  ‘THERE ARE THINGS CALLED SOLID LEADS, AND THEN THERE’S speculation.’

  Fortune was sitting opposite Marsh once more in a too-hot interview room on a cold morning, and Marsh wasn’t making any of the right noises. None at all. He leant forward, presumably the better for Fortune to understand the significance of his next words.

  ‘This? This is speculation. And the police are funded by the British taxpayer, who doesn’t expect us to run around the country chasing shadows based on speculation.’

  ‘You can’t believe it’s coincidence.’

  ‘It’s coincidence until something appears to make me think differently. Right now I have a missing young woman, presumed suicide, and a father who’s turned up with a story that I struggle to believe.’

  ‘So how did the money disappear?’ said Fortune.

  Marsh shrugged. ‘Did it disappear? If it did, were you the person to steal it, to make me, us, the police, keep the investigation open? To find out the answer to that, I’ll need men, bodies.’ He pushed himself back into his chair, hands on the edge of the table. ‘I haven’t got those resources. If I asked for them, I’d be laughed at. If I asked for them. Which I won’t, because I don’t believe a word of what you say.’ He sighed. ‘The more I see of you, the more I see your daughter.’

  ‘What do you
mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that you’re irrational, and very difficult to deal with. Though I understand you’re unwell.’

  ‘Irrational?’ said Fortune, ignoring Marsh’s attempt to patronize him. ‘These are numbers I’m giving you. Figures. They’re verifiable. Irrational? No. Sorry, I can’t accept that.’ He was aware that he was raising his voice and stopped, tried to bring himself under control.

  ‘And aggressive,’ said Marsh. ‘Your daughter, she gave me all that too.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fortune. ‘It’s just that this is new information. You have to understand that.’

  Marsh didn’t react, as if Fortune hadn’t just spoken. Instead he said, ‘What were you doing at Charlie Jackson’s house?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on. What were you doing there?’

  ‘I just wanted to talk to him,’ said Fortune. ‘Get a feeling for him.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Marsh nodded to himself, as if what Fortune had told him made sense, which it didn’t. ‘He told me you were hostile, that you lied to him, tried to blackmail him. That true?’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune, although he had to concede that Jackson had a point. ‘Anyway, I don’t understand why you’re taking his side in this. He’s clearly a nasty piece of work.’

  ‘Maybe. But he’s in the public eye. He’s got a reputation, people looking out for him. Lawyers. Plus, he’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Except for maybe kidnapping and holding my daughter.’

  Marsh raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay,’ he said. He started to stand. ‘I think we’re done.’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. How many times had he pleaded with this man? ‘Come on, just hear me out.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘No, just … You need to look into this.’

  But Marsh just leant forward, hands on the table. ‘Mr Fortune, we’re done here.’

  ‘No we’re not,’ said Fortune, an attempt at bravado.

  ‘We are,’ said Marsh. ‘I’m leaving, I’m going to send a uniform in, and he’s going to escort you out. And next time I see your number on my phone, I’ll reject the call. Clear?’