The Solitary Man (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Read online

  As Bird took the photograph back, there was a knock at the door: three taps close together followed by a pause, then two more taps. Bird opened the door and let in a small wiry Thai wearing a Calvin Klein sweatshirt, shorts and flip-flop sandals. He was carrying a white plastic bag. He handed the bag to Bird, who dropped it on to the bed and opened it.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Hutch, peering inside. He reached out his hand but Bird pulled the bag away. ‘You musn’t touch it, we don’t want your fingerprints on it. That’s why he’s here. He’s the one who’s going to call the police, and then confess later.’

  Hutch looked across at the man in the Calvin Klein sweatshirt. The man smiled at Hutch and nodded several times. ‘He doesn’t understand English,’ said Bird.

  ‘And he’s happy about taking the fall for this?’

  ‘Taking the fall?’ repeated Bird, frowning.

  ‘He’s going to confess to planting the stuff, right? How does he feel about going to prison?’

  Bird burped, a long, loud belch that seemed to fill the tiny room. ‘Like we said, he’ll probably just get fined. And if he does go to prison, we’ll look after his family and he’ll be well paid. Where’s your bag?’ asked Bird.

  ‘Under the bed,’ said Hutch. He knelt down and pulled it out. Bird spoke to the man in Thai who put the package of white powder in the bottom of Hutch’s holdall.

  ‘Anything else to go in it?’ asked Bird.

  Hutch shook his head. Bird said something else to the man, who nodded and zipped the bag closed.

  ‘Don’t open it again,’ said Bird. ‘For any reason.’

  Hutch looked at the ticket again. The flight left in three hours. They didn’t want him to have time to think, to change his mind.

  ‘You have your passport?’

  Hutch patted the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Are you coming to the airport with me?’

  ‘No. Billy says you are to go alone.’

  Hutch picked up the bag. ‘I’ll be seeing you, then.’

  Bird held up a hand. ‘We must leave first. Wait ten minutes and then catch a taxi to the airport.’

  Hutch dropped his bag on the floor. Bird put his palms together in a prayer-like gesture and pressed the fingertips to his chin, bowing his head slightly. It was a wai, the Thai way of saying hello or bidding farewell. ‘Chaw-di,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘All the luck I’ve had so far has been bad, Bird. I don’t expect it to get any better. Now fuck off and leave me alone.’ He turned his back on the two men and stared at the wall until their footsteps had faded down the stairs and all he could hear was the street sounds outside.

  RAY HARRIGAN SAT WITH his back up against the cell wall, his knees drawn up against his chest. Something buzzed by his ear but he was too tired to swat it away. He had been working all day in the prison’s leather factory, sewing bags by hand, and he was bone tired.

  ‘You okay, Ray?’ asked the Canadian.

  Harrigan shrugged. ‘I’ve been better.’

  ‘Rough day at the office?’

  Harrigan snorted. It was as close as he could get to a laugh. ‘I’m knackered,’ he said.

  The Canadian sat down next to Harrigan and coughed throatily. ‘I don’t know why you don’t buy your way out of the factory,’ he said, and spat on the floor.

  ‘Nah, I’d rather work. What else would I do all day?’

  ‘There are ways of passing the time,’ the Canadian said. He pulled a cloth bag out of his shirt pocket and undid the drawstring.

  ‘Not fifty years,’ said Harrigan.

  The Canadian took a syringe out of the bag. ‘It goes faster this way,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus, it was drugs got us put in here. Why would I want to inject the stuff into my veins?’

  The Canadian chuckled. ‘Because it feels good.’

  Harrigan watched as the Canadian prepared his heroin. ‘How long have you been using?’ he asked as the Canadian wrapped his shoelace tourniquet around his arm and popped up a vein.

  ‘Eight years, I guess. I started sniffing, you know, chasing the dragon. Guy in Hong Kong showed me how.’ The Canadian began to cough again, a dry, hacking cough that made his whole body shake. He held the syringe away from his body until the coughing fit subsided.

  Harrigan ran his fingers through his dirty hair. ‘How come heroin’s so easy to get in here?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

  The Canadian rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, the syringe needle narrowly missing his right eye. ‘This is Thailand,’ he said. ‘They send you to prison for possessing the stuff, then the guards sell it to you.’

  ‘The guards?’

  ‘How do you think it gets in here?’ the Canadian asked. He shoved the needle into the raised vein and slowly withdrew a small amount of blood. Harrigan watched, fascinated, as the blood swirled into the heroin mixture. The Canadian sighed and slowly depressed the plunger, pushing the drug into his system.

  ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’ asked Harrigan.

  ‘A bit,’ admitted the Canadian. ‘But it’s nothing compared with the buzz. You’ve never tried? Not even smoked the stuff?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Harrigan.

  ‘Like I said, it’ll help pass the time.’

  ‘I don’t want to pass the time,’ said Harrigan venomously. ‘Anyway, they said they’d get me out. They promised.’

  The Canadian’s eyes began to blink. ‘What are you talking about?’ The empty syringe fell from his fingers and clattered on the floor.

  ‘They promised,’ repeated Harrigan quietly. ‘They fucking promised.’

  BILLY WINTER DREW DEEPLY on his large Cuban cigar and watched a blonde girl in her twenties rub suntan lotion along her smooth, shapely legs. She looked up and saw him staring at her. Winter raised his cigar in salute but she pretended not to notice. Winter grinned and put the cigar back in his mouth. A poolboy hovered and Winter pointed at his empty glass. ‘Brandy and Coke,’ he said, his eyes still on the girl. ‘A double. With ice.’ The poolboy scurried away.

  The blonde’s bikini was the flimsiest of things: the top was barely enough to conceal her full breasts, the bottom little more than a thong. Her tan was already a deep, golden brown, and the sun had bleached her hair almost white. Winter blew a tight plume of smoke through pursed lips. He was lying in the shade of a spreading umbrella, wearing a pair of swimming trunks and with a white towel draped over his lap.

  Another blonde, a few years older and wearing a bright blue swimsuit, pulled herself out of the pool and walked over to the girl on the sunlounger. Without asking she took the bottle and poured a little of the lotion into the palm of her hand. The younger girl rolled on to her front and unhooked her bikini top. The older blonde began to massage in the lotion, using both hands. Even from the other side of the pool, Winter could see that her fingers were pushing deep into the girl’s flesh. The girl on the sunlounger opened her legs, allowing the older girl to rub the inside of her thighs. Winter was reasonably certain that they were doing it for his benefit.

  He’d seen the older of the two blondes in the hotel elevator that morning. Then she’d been wearing a short cotton dress, skin-tight in all the right places and a blue almost as vibrant as her swimming costume. Winter was sure she was on the game. She had a hooker’s eyes, pale green and almond-shaped, and she hadn’t avoided his stare as he’d asked her what floor she’d wanted. Winter had spent a lifetime paying for sex and he was as expert at recognising prostitutes as they were at identifying prospective clients. Winter had been tempted to ask her then and there if she’d go to his room with him, but the elevator had stopped and a young couple had got in. The blonde had given Winter a small shrug, as if recognising that an opportunity had been lost.

  Winter knew that women didn’t find him instantly attractive; even when he’d been in his prime he hadn’t had the face or the physique that pulled women towards him, and he’d never had a good line of chat. It wasn’t that he was shy, or lacked confidence, but he’d a
lways despised small talk. Winter knew that women didn’t open their legs for him because they fancied him, but because he had money and power, and he also knew that these were far greater aphrodisiacs than a strong jaw and rippling biceps.

  The older woman wiped her hands on a towel, lay back on her sunlounger and put on a pair of sunglasses. She raised her knees slightly and opened a magazine. The other girl said something and they both laughed like schoolgirls. Winter could feel himself growing hard. He took a long pull on his cigar. As he exhaled he saw Bird walking through reception. Winter gave him a half-wave and Bird came over, his gold bracelet and neck chain glinting in the sun. Winter was always amused by the tasteless jewellery favoured by Bird and his fellow Thais; they had all the class of an East End used-car dealer, and even the gold seemed a brighter yellow than he was used to seeing back in Europe.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked as Bird walked up and sat down on the neighbouring sunlounger.

  ‘No problems,’ said Bird.

  ‘What about the stuff?’

  ‘He was a bit worried, like you said he would be. He wanted to check it. I told him that he couldn’t touch the package. Because of fingerprints.’

  ‘And he was convinced?’

  ‘I think so.’ Bird looked at his diamond-studded gold Rolex. ‘He should be at the airport soon. The plane leaves in one hour.’

  Winter nodded, satisfied. ‘He’s going to go apeshit when he finds out,’ he chuckled.

  ‘Apeshit?’ repeated Bird.

  ‘Apeshit. Crazy. Very unhappy.’ He punctuated each word with a jab of his cigar.

  ‘How do you know he won’t tell the police what happened?’

  Winter looked at Bird over the top of his sunglasses. ‘Because I know him, Bird. I know how he thinks, I know how he reacts. I spent twelve months banged up with him, he’s an open book to me.’ Winter flicked ash from his cigar on to the floor, ignoring an ashtray on the table next to him. He swung his legs off the sunlounger and leaned towards Bird. ‘Let me tell you about Chris Hutchison,’ he said, his voice a soft growl. ‘Throughout his life he’s had one philosophy, one creed that he lives by.’ He paused for a few seconds, checking that he had Bird’s undivided attention. ‘There is no problem so big, no situation so unpleasant, that Mrs Hutchison’s little boy can’t run away from it.’ Winter raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘That’s how he’s lived his whole life. He ran away from home when he was fifteen. His father used to knock him about a bit, his mother was an alcoholic. His first serious girlfriend dumped him and he ran away to the navy. He served five years, mostly as an electrical engineer, and when he left went through a succession of jobs. None lasted for more than a year. Every time he had a problem, he’d quit.’

  Bird pulled a face. ‘He’s a coward?’

  Winter shook his head. ‘No, he’s not a coward. If he has to fight, he fights. He killed a man in prison, stabbed him in the throat. It’s nothing to do with cowardice, it’s to do with avoiding unpleasant situations. It’s to do with escaping. And you’re right, under normal circumstances he’d do a deal with the cops, but that’s not an option for him now. His son is his weak spot, he has no choice but to do what I say. He’ll hate it, he won’t stop thinking of ways of getting away from the situation, but so long as I know where the boy is and he doesn’t, I’ve got him by the short and curlies.’

  Bird frowned, but before he could ask for an explanation of ‘short and curlies’, the poolboy returned with Winter’s brandy and Coke. The poolboy put the glass down on the table next to Winter’s sunlounger and picked up the empty one.

  ‘See those girls over there?’ Winter asked, nodding in the direction of the blondes.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the poolboy.

  ‘Take them over a bottle of champagne. The best you’ve got, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Winter swung his legs back up on the sunlounger as the poolboy dashed away. ‘Bird, it don’t get much better than this, do it?’ he asked, and sucked on the end of his cigar like a baby feeding.

  HUTCH PAID OFF THE taxi driver and walked inside the terminal. He stared up at one of the departure screens, looking for his flight. Several flights had been delayed but his was on time. He rubbed his chin as he stared up at the list of destinations: London, New York, Paris, Sydney. Places far, far away, cities where a man could hide and never be found, where new identities could be bought and old ones lost, where a man could start again if he didn’t have a young son who wanted to play for Manchester United when he grew up.

  ‘Damn you, Billy,’ he muttered to himself. His hands were sweating and he put the holdall on the floor and wiped them on his jeans. Two policemen in brown uniforms walked by. One of them looked at Hutch, but he was listening to his companion and his face was an expressionless mask. Hutch bent down and picked up his holdall again. He figured that the phone call had probably already been made. The police would have been tipped off: his name, a description, and the fact that he had a kilo of heroin in his bag. It was just a matter of time before they grabbed him. He looked over his shoulder at the two policemen, but they were heading out of the terminal, still deep in conversation.

  Hutch took his passport and ticket from his jacket pocket and went over to check in. He waited behind an Indian family who seemed to have packed the entire contents of their house into cardboard boxes. An elderly man in a grubby white turban was arguing with two young Thai girls about an excess baggage charge, but eventually he handed over a wad of banknotes, grumbling loudly. Hutch was checked in with a minimum of fuss. They looked at his passport, took his departure tax from him, and gave him his boarding card. He looked at his wristwatch. There was still an hour to go before his flight was due to board. He could feel his pulse racing and his forehead was bathed in sweat. He took several deep breaths and went over to immigration control.

  The immigration officer who took his passport was a middle-aged man with skin the colour of malt whisky. He looked at Hutch, then at the photograph in the passport, then back at Hutch. Hutch smiled but his lips seemed to drag across his teeth and he knew that it was more of a snarl. The immigration officer flicked through the passport, seemingly at random. Hutch looked away. Two policemen were standing at the entrance to immigration control, and they were both staring at him. Hutch’s heart began to pound and he felt light headed as if he was about to pass out. He took off his glasses and polished them on the edge of his shirt, concentrating on cleaning the lenses in an attempt to take his mind off his predicament. He couldn’t understand why he was so nervous, because there was no way of changing what was about to happen. It would go down exactly as Billy had said: the police would stop him, they’d find the package, he’d be arrested and thrown into prison, and a week later he’d be released. When he looked back at the immigration officer his passport was already on the shelf in front of him. Hutch nodded, picked it up, and walked through.

  The departure area was packed and there was hardly a vacant seat to be found. He wandered through the duty-free area, past shelves piled high with cigarettes, alcohol and perfume, and threaded his way through a crowd of Japanese tourists to a cafeteria. He joined the queue and helped himself to a cup of coffee, then found an empty table where he sat and sipped it. A group of Cathay Pacific stewardesses walked by, giggling, and one of them flashed him a shy smile. She reminded him of Chau-ling, and his mind flashed back to Hong Kong and his kennels. He wondered what Chau-ling was doing, and what she’d think when she discovered that he’d been arrested on drug-smuggling charges. His friends, too; how would they react when they heard the news?

  Hutch stared at the holdall as he sipped his coffee. He wondered how the professional drug couriers managed to control their nerves. He was only carrying a kilogram of innocuous powder and facing a week in prison; the real smugglers knew that they’d be behind bars for fifty years or more if they got caught. It almost defied belief that anyone would risk a life sentence for a few thousand dollars. His hand shook as he lifted the coffee cup to his l
ips. A week. He could manage a week.

  Hutch wondered how far they’d let him go before they arrested him. They could have taken him when he’d checked in, or at immigration. He doubted that they’d wait until he was on the plane. He looked at his wristwatch again. Forty-five minutes before the plane was due to leave. Some time within the next three-quarters of an hour they’d come for him. He sipped his coffee again. It was tasteless. Hutch slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes. The tension was painful; he felt as if he had a strap across his chest, so tight that he could barely breathe. He wiped his hands on his trousers.

  ‘Passport.’ Hutch opened his eyes. A Thai police officer in his fifties stood in front of Hutch, his hands on his hips. His right hand was only inches from a large revolver in a black leather holster. The dark brown uniform was immaculate and the silver badge on his chest gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria.

  Hutch heard the squeak of a boot behind him and he looked over his shoulder. Two younger policemen stood there, and behind them two men in polo shirts and jeans. Hutch looked back at the senior officer. He handed over his passport and boarding card and the policeman scrutinised the names on both.

  ‘You are Warren Hastings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come with us.’ The policeman nodded at his colleagues and they stepped forward. Hutch reached for his holdall but one of the men in polo shirts rushed forward and beat him to it.

  ‘That’s my bag,’ said Hutch.

  ‘We will take care of it,’ said the officer. ‘Come with us.’

  Hutch pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with my passport?’ It was important that he played the part of the bewildered innocent, so that when they eventually discovered that the package didn’t contain drugs everything would be in character. Heads began to turn in Hutch’s direction. He felt his cheeks flush red with embarrassment.