‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘We can still make the exchange.’
‘No! I take her!’ and he pulled Isabel up the hill with him.
The voice was deep and authoritative, and I would have recognized it anywhere. Zico.
I pulled Francisco filho to his feet. ‘Let her go!’ I shouted. ‘We’ll let you escape.’
‘How do I know that? Perhaps the police wait for us. No, Isabel goes with me!’
He dragged her up the hill. I followed with the boy. At the top I could see Francisco and another man, who looked little more than a kid. A fellow kidnapper, presumably.
We were nearing the farmhouse and a red pick-up truck.
‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Or I’ll shoot him!’
‘No!’ cried Francisco.
Zico laughed. ‘Go ahead. Shoot him. I don’t care. He’s not my son.’
He looked into my eyes, mocking me. Of course I wasn’t going to shoot the boy. I released my grip on the kid, and let my gun fall to my side. He ran up the hill to meet his father.
Zico dragged Isabel towards the pick-up truck. She looked back at me, her eyes helpless, pleading with me to do something.
Damn! There she was, just a few feet away. The elation that I had felt seeing her walk out of the farmhouse had turned to almost unbearable anxiety. I was so close to freeing her and now Zico was simply going to drive her away from me, right under my nose. I couldn’t try to shoot him. He’d kill her first, and probably me too. The only experience I’d had with a handgun was the five minutes Nelson had taken to show me how it fired. Now it felt heavy and useless in my hand.
If Zico got away with her, what then? He might kill her. Or he might let her go when he had no more need for her. Or he might ransom her for cash. She still had a chance. Stay calm, then, and let him go. She’d be OK as long as I stayed calm.
I saw movement some distance behind the pick-up. Thin black limbs scurried across the ground to a water drum. A moment later a head and a short grey barrel peeked out from behind it. Euclides! And he had the gun Nelson had given him. Where the hell did he get that? He must have hidden it on him somehow. Oh, shit! The last thing I wanted was some cock-eyed heroics from a twelve-year-old. Someone would get killed, and it would most likely be Isabel.
Zico glanced at me as he neared the truck, and I quickly switched my eyes back to him, not wanting him to realize I had seen something. I moved slowly closer.
‘Keep away!’ he shouted.
I stopped.
Behind him, Euclides ran from the drum towards the pick-up truck. I still don’t know what he was trying to do. Hide in there, probably, and surprise Zico later on. But he trod on some old corrugated iron that gave out a sharp clatter. Zico spun round. Euclides stopped in his tracks, caught in the open. He began to move his gun towards Zico, and hesitated, presumably afraid of hitting Isabel. Zico whipped his weapon away from Isabel’s temple and pointed it at Euclides. Two shots rang out, and Euclides uttered a sharp cry.
I had no time to think. Instinct made me raise my arm, and point it towards Zico. I looked down the short barrel straight into Isabel’s terrified eyes. I jerked my arm to the left and pulled the trigger in one motion as Zico turned back towards me. I hit him in the right shoulder, throwing his arm back. His gun went spinning to the ground.
He let go of Isabel and bent down to pick it up. I ran towards him. There was another shot, Zico’s head jerked sharply to one side, and he fell.
Euclides lay on the ground, gun pointing towards the crumpled figure of Zico, a broad smile on his face. There was a dark patch on the grass around his chest.
I ran to Isabel, who was squatting on the ground, sobbing.
‘Are you OK?’
She looked up and a smile broke across her tear-stained face, the smile I had played through my mind so many times over the last few weeks. She nodded.
I turned and ran over to where Euclides had fallen. He was lying in a pool of blood, which grew in front of my eyes. It was pumping out from somewhere underneath him. I hesitated, unsure what to do. Euclides was struggling to keep his eyes open. His lips moved. I bent down to listen.
‘I hit him, meester,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, you did,’ I said.
I turned his small body over and tried to use his flimsy shirt to staunch the flow of blood from the hole in his chest. It was hopeless. Within a minute, life had drained away from him, into the damp grass.
30
Isabel was slumped in the other corner of the back seat of the car, watching the road ahead absently. Ronaldo was driving us back to Rio, leaving Nelson to clear up the mess we had left behind.
And there was quite a mess. Nelson and I had decided to let Francisco and his son go. We had, after all, promised as much to him when we had set up the exchange for Isabel, and he had kept his part of the bargain. It was Zico who had run after Isabel at the last minute. And implicating Francisco with the kidnapping would involve prolonged wrangling with the authorities. We thought it was better to wrap things up as quietly as possible. Nelson had, however, promised to bring back Euclides’s body for a proper burial.
Isabel didn’t look too bad after her ordeal. She was thin, but then she’d always been thin. Her skin was paler than it had been, after so many weeks away from the sun, I supposed. And there was a sort of fragility to her. But basically she looked unharmed.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
She looked at me and smiled, reaching out her hand for mine.
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I’m just so glad to be free.’
There was so much to say, so much to ask her, but I wanted to do it at her pace so I kept silent.
‘Where’s my father?’ she asked.
‘In London.’
‘In London?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Yes, it’s a long story. But Cordelia’s waiting at his apartment.’
‘How is she? I mean...’
I smiled. ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine. She’s growing bigger every day.’
Isabel smiled. ‘Good.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Did he pay a ransom?’
‘That’s a long story too.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can tell you later, when you’ve had some rest.’
‘No, tell me now. That’s all I’ve been thinking about over the last two months. What’s been happening at home? Tell me.’
So I told her everything. About the initial ransom demands, about the long silence after the failed police raid, and then about the renewed demands once I had suggested Bloomfield Weiss take over Dekker. I told her how Ricardo and Eduardo must have been in league with Francisco first of all to have Martin Beldecos murdered, and then to have her and me kidnapped to prevent the discovery of Francisco’s money-laundering operations. And finally I described how we had snatched Francisco’s son to force an exchange.
She listened in amazement. ‘So Ricardo was behind it all?’ she said quietly.
I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
She looked out of the window at the Rio suburbs drifting slowly by. ‘Bastard,’ she whispered. She turned to me. ‘It looks like you were right about him, after all.’
‘Right now I don’t care who’s right or wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m just glad you’re alive.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘Thank you. Thank you for all you did for me.’
There were loud squeals when we reached Luís’s apartment. Cordelia hugged her sister hard and long, and Maria danced around. Fernando was there as well. The excitement roused Isabel out of the daze she had been in since her release, and she became more animated. Within a minute she was on the phone with Luís at the Savoy in London. Tears flowed. Portuguese words were spoken at a hundred miles an hour. I watched with a huge grin on my face.