‘You first. Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you fake your kidnapping? What kind of a scandal made you do it?’
Greeves said nothing. He refilled his glass from the decanter on the table and took a long sip.
‘It was Ebony, the stripper, wasn’t it?’ Tom listened hard for any sound of movement in the house, and checked each side of the verandah again while he waited for the reply.
‘Yes.’
‘When did you sleep with her?’
‘You tell me.’
Tom looked down into those cold grey eyes. ‘How old was she? Ten? Eleven?’
Greeves exhaled and raised his glass, waving it casually. ‘If you must know, she was twelve. I didn’t know it at the time, I thought she was older.’
‘And you think that makes it all right?’
‘All right?’ Greeves stared back at him, defiant. ‘No. And that’s the truth. I know it’s not all right, but I can’t change it. It’s just the way I am — the way I’m wired. I like young girls. I’d forgotten all about her. It happened in South Africa, years ago. She came to England as an illegal, saw my picture in the newspaper one day, and contacted me. She bloody well made an appointment at my constituency surgery.’
‘And you had her killed.’ Tom felt the anger rising in him and tried his best to control it, to stay calm.
‘No! I’ve never killed anyone in my life.’
‘You lying bastard.’ Tom took a deep breath of his own. He needed to keep it together. ‘You sent Nick to get her… to kill her.’
‘No. I swear it. I swear on the life of my children. I told her it wasn’t me…’
‘But you recognised her.’
Another sigh. ‘Yes, I knew it was her, but I tried to convince her she was wrong.’
‘And so you sent Nick to do your dirty work.’
‘No, nothing happened. Not for a few weeks. She called my office and left me another message, saying, cryptically, that she’d been talking to the media and only I could do the right thing. Helen, my press secretary, told me, although she thought it was a prank call.’
‘Was that when you sent Nick to negotiate with her, after she contacted you?’
‘Nick’s dead, Tom.’
‘Bullshit. He’s masquerading as a journalist called Daniel Carney. It took me a while to put it together, but as soon as I realised you’d faked your death, it was obvious Nick was still alive as well.’
Greeves looked to one side of the verandah, and Tom followed his gaze. Greeves turned his eyes back to Tom. The defiance had gone from his face. ‘What gave it away? I’m curious.’
‘The monkeys.’
‘How?’
Tom recalled his internet research, about African primates. ‘Vervet monkeys are only active in daylight hours. They sleep in trees overnight.’
‘So?’
‘So, you and your band of merry men would have had to capture them during the day. Bernard’s stage-managed escape didn’t happen until well after dark. Your people lured the monkeys into cages during the day and kept them somewhere nearby. As soon as Bernard made it away safely you had the monkeys brought in and positioned in the house. You all had plenty of time to get away. It was proof the whole setup had been planned well in advance.’
Tom waited for a reaction, but got none, so he continued. ‘Someone drew half a litre of blood from you at some stage — not a difficult operation for your friend Doctor Khan — and spread it around the room where you’d been held, to make it look like you’d been shot. Khan even drew some cerebral spinal fluid and mixed it with the blood. Nice touch, that, though the spinal tap mustn’t have been pleasant. The hair was a giveaway, though. You made a mistake there.’
‘Really? Do tell.’
‘The “abductors” left your hair on the bathroom floor, after they’d shaved your head, for us to find. However, there was no blood in the hallway from the supposed wounds on the soles of your feet, which Bernard had seen as “evidence” of your torture.’
‘And you figured this out all by yourself?’
‘The clues, the evidence, were all there. All it needed was motive. That was the hard part. You wanted to drop out… to get out of the public eye without shaming your Party, but you couldn’t just quit. There was more to it, even after you had Nick kill the African girl.’
‘You think you know it all.’
‘Most of it. You can fill in the blanks when I get you back to London. Your mate Khan was the nail in the coffin, wasn’t he?’
Greeves shrugged. ‘You tell me.’
‘I heard on the car radio that the South Africans recently busted an international people-smuggling racket, whose main purpose was to supply the sex trade — including underage boys and girls for sick perverts like you. Khan needed to disappear too — I’m betting he knew the trail would lead to him. I’m also betting that the UK link was those two blokes in Enfield who blew up their own house. Was that Nick who topped them in the street? Had you sent him there as well, to get rid of some connection, or record they had of you?’
‘So, what are you going to do with all this information, Tom? The world thinks I’m dead. The British government is happy — there were rumours of my imminent demise already circulating. The press has swallowed the story. What would it take for you to turn your back?’
Tom shook his head. The bastard was trying to buy him. ‘A decent, honourable man took his life because of you, and you took my life away from me. I want it back.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen. Who else have you told your little tale to?’
‘I was wondering when you’d ask. I’ve sent a letter to a friend of mine who’s a crime-scene investigator. She’ll know the right questions to ask the right people. I’ve also told her that if anything happens to me, and she gets stonewalled by MI6 or the government, to pass on everything to Michael Fisher at the World.’
‘I wish you hadn’t done that.’
Tom looked up towards the lodge’s front door, from where the cultured female voice had come.
Janet Greeves emerged from the shadows. She held a two-two calibre semiautomatic pistol, fitted with a silencer, in her right hand. ‘Drop your gun, Detective Sergeant Furey.’
‘Do as she says,’ said another voice from behind Tom.
He turned and saw a swarthy man holding a short-barrel AK 47 assault rifle emerge from the line of trees that shielded the main lodge from the first guest bungalow. He was trapped.
‘Doctor Khan, I presume?’
The man smiled and shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter who I am. Drop your gun now, Furey, or I’ll shoot.’
Tom noted the man had a large mobile phone hanging heavily from a clip on his belt. A satellite phone, he guessed. Tom considered his options. He could take one of them out, but not both of them. What he needed to do now was stay alive, for as long as possible. Not that he fancied his chances. He crouched, aware of the two weapons following his every move, and placed Sannie’s pistol on the tiled verandah floor.
Greeves started to get up from his chair, but his wife took a step towards him, out of the shadows, and swung her pistol towards the politician’s head. ‘Stay where you are, Robert.’
‘What?’ Greeves looked back at his wife, the puzzlement plain in his face.
‘Cover him, Pervez.’ Janet Greeves closed the gap between her and Tom, but stopped out of arm’s reach of him.
‘Pervez?’ Greeves looked imploringly at the Pakistani-South African, but the man just shook his head. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’
‘Furey knows too much,’ Janet said to her husband.
‘I can get away, get a new identity. Why are you betraying me?’
Janet laughed. ‘Betraying you? Don’t be pathetic, Robert. It was worth the gamble, but our bodyguard friend here was too clever. For his own good, and for yours.’
‘You bitch.’
Tom looked from husband to wife, and back again. ‘What did he do, Janet? Did he touch your children just like he touched the African kids when he was over here for work and play?’
‘Very perceptive. I knew early on in our marriage that Robert wasn’t particularly interested in me, save from using me to breed a couple of children, which were part of his political career. The overseas trips started early on, and I had my suspicions. When our daughter was ten, I caught him sitting on her bed, looking at her body, lifting her nightie, while she was asleep.’