NATIONAL TREASURE by Barry Faulkner (life books to read .TXT) 📗

couldn’t hear a thing. With a bit of luck the news about the episode in the front would be getting through and security’s attention moving there.

I moved beside Bogdan and held my gun to his head as I opened the drawer and took out a PKK Walther and put it in my belt.

‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

He was very calm. ‘Yes, Ben Nevis – named after a racehorse, not a mountain.’

‘Very good.’

‘We have done business in the past, Mr Nevis, but not business like this. I seem to recall I sent two of my men to have a word with you some time ago. They still haven’t come back. Perhaps they got lost?

‘Perhaps.’

He shot a glance at his dead goons. ‘What do you want?’

I pulled out the photo of Janie bound and gagged. ‘I want her.’

‘Aah, now I see. And what if I don’t have her?’

‘I’ll kill you.’

‘And what if I do have her?’

‘I’ll probably kill you anyway. Where is she?’

‘I seem to remember you were a good negotiator, Mr Nevis. Perhaps we should negotiate?’

‘You aren’t in a good position to negotiate, Alexadru.’

‘Then an offer, not a negotiation.’

‘An offer?’

‘Yes. The lady’s father owes my family a million pounds sterling, did you know that? Unfortunately the goods he promised us for that million never materialised, and nor did the refund, and he died. In our business, Mr Nevis, family is everything, but the man’s family have not refunded us. Now they will, or the daughter will disappear.’

‘You’re talking about James Randall and the Epping Forest delivery.’

‘You are well informed. Yes I am, but it was not delivered – the police intercepted it.’

Not according to Dick Clancy they didn’t. The firearms unit SCO19 had reported that Randall’s accomplice had got away with the drugs. Perhaps Clancy needed to take a closer look at that operation. He said he would; I wondered if he’d come up with anything interesting?

‘The police report says the driver got away with the drugs.’

‘No, if he had he would have brought them to us, and if he had sold that amount to another dealer we would hear about it. No, the only way those drugs left the Forest was in a police vehicle. So I want my money back.’

Interesting, but this wasn’t why I was here. ‘The lady you sent the ransom note to and then had beaten up knows nothing about it.’

‘Family, Mr Nevis, family. She is Randall’s wife – she knows where my money is.’

‘They divorced twenty years ago – the daughter you have kidnapped was three at the time and never knew her father. Marcia Johnson hasn’t seen Randall for twenty years. She and the daughter have nothing to do with the money.’

‘Perhaps you should have a word with Harry Cohen.’

Harry Cohen? What has he to do with this? I was getting confused.

‘Harry Cohen the agent?’ I asked.

‘Yes, for the last ten years we have bought our merchandise from Randall in varying amounts to send out to Romania. The border police in the EU are very, very good – they have a good network, and we were losing many mules bringing it in, and our boats coming across the Black Sea were regularly stopped. We lost a lot of money, and others were taking our business. Randall had a good idea. Cohen sends his, what you call, ‘boy bands’ out on tour round Europe using the same road crew each time. We used them – amplifiers stuffed with kilo bags of cocaine. They were never searched, works well. Randall got ninety percent of my family’s business.’

‘You still doing it?’

‘Of course, but we buy our own product now and Mr Cohen handles the logistics.’

No wonder Harry Cohen didn’t want the police involved.

The handle on the door turned, and the door shook as somebody put their shoulder against it. The lock and bolts held, and then there was thumping on the door; it wouldn’t hold for long. There was another door in the side wall of the room. I had to act quickly before the goons came that way too. I fired twice at the door to the dance floor; the 9mms went straight through, and I hoped I’d hit a goon and not a punter. I had; the banging stopped. I released the spent magazine from the Beretta, took a new one from my pocket and pushed it in.

Bogdan was beginning to look worried. I pointed to the photo again.

‘Where is she?’

‘Not here.’

It wasn’t the answer I wanted. ‘Where?’

‘You won’t get out of here, no chance.’ He gave a smile.

I’d had enough. I aimed the gun towards his groin. ‘Where?’

‘Somewhere you won’t find her. You could work for me, Nevis – you get my money, I pay you a finder’s fee, let the girl go, and we call it quits.’

I knew full well that my finder’s fee would be a bullet in the head. I moved the gun slightly to the right and put a bullet in his left knee. ‘Where?’

It sunk into his stupid brain that I meant business as he screamed in pain and fell sideways off his chair, squirming on the floor like footballers do when they feign a leg injury. I raised my gun and aimed at his other knee. ‘Where?’

‘Bucharest.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘She is, at The Amsterdam Club – she is!’ The pain he was in had brought out the truth. I couldn’t see that anything Alexandru Bogdan would ever do in his life would add to the wealth of mankind’s knowledge, so I put a bullet in his brain. No more widows.

I eased open the door on the sidewall. It led into a narrow corridor, obviously an escape route for Bogdan if needed. At the end of the corridor another door