Authors: Dan Latus
I
waited.
‘I am an artist,’ she said eventually, full of lofty disdain.
‘And my friend is an artist.’
That got us a bit further forward. Bells were jangling. Lights started flashing.
‘An artist?’ I nodded. ‘So what are you doing here at Risky Point?’
‘Here is called Risky Point?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘A strange name.’
Then she clammed up. It was amazing how she could do that. What could I do about it? How could I coerce more from her? I didn’t even have any wild horses.
Then the bells and lights went into overdrive, and there was a crash as I hit the jackpot.
‘Meridion House?’ I said.
Her head spun round. Her eyes flashed. Her lips stayed sealed but I knew I had got there at last.
‘Something to do with Meridion House?’ I continued.
‘I can tell you nothing,’ she said.
‘I know. You’ve already said that – several times. Have you been there?’
Nothing.
‘Do you know the people there, the man who owns it? Mr Borovsky?’
She got up.
‘I can help you,’ I said.
‘You have helped me, but I can tell you nothing more.’
‘Where are you going? You can stay here.’
‘It is not safe here. They will find me.’
She moved towards the door.
‘Take some more food,’ I urged. ‘Anything!’
She hesitated. Then she moved into the kitchen. She reappeared with a loaf of bread. She knew where to go for bread by now.
‘Stay!’ I urged again. ‘You are safe with me.’
‘Maybe. But you are not safe with me. I am dangerous.’
I shrugged. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘They wrecked your house already.’
‘Only because I wasn’t here when they came.’
‘And they hurt the old man, your friend.’
‘We are ready for them now. It won’t happen again, I promise you. Besides, if anything more happens I will go to Meridion House for them. I know where they live now.’
‘No!’ She was suddenly very agitated. I must have pressed a switch I didn’t even know about.
She came back towards me and said, ‘Don’t go there. Please!’
I stared at her. She was genuinely upset.
‘You’re going to have to tell me what this is about,’ I said gently. ‘What more can they do to you?’
‘It is not myself I am worried about,’ she said bitterly. Then she collapsed into a chair and began to sob.
Frustrated, I went to put the kettle back on. While I was in the kitchen, waiting for it to boil, I tapped my fingers on the counter top and stared hard at the calendar on the wall, which was still turned to February. Then inspiration struck. I phoned Jac.
‘Can you come over?’ I asked.
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘Now?’
‘Now. I’ve got a situation here.’
In as few words as possible, I told her about my night visitor, her disappearance, her reappearance and her apparent fear of Borovsky.
Jac didn’t interrupt or, more important, laugh. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ she said.
The phone went dead even before I could thank her. Who could tell what that meant? I shrugged and put the phone down.
I returned to the living room. The tears had stopped. ‘So you are an artist?’ I probed gently. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The problem is my friend,’ she said, ignoring my question. ‘They have my friend. They will kill him if I tell the police.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Oh, yes! And he will disappear, like the others. The police will find nothing. And then they will say I am just a hysterical student, and claim me back.’
‘“They” being the people at Meridion House – Borovsky?’
She nodded. ‘Not only the house. Also the ship.’
I was getting somewhere at last, one step at a time. Better not to rush her.
‘What were you and your friend doing at Meridion House?’
‘We are artists. We were painting.’
I nodded to encourage her. ‘Students?’
‘Not really. Those days are over for us. I trained at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, Misha in Moscow.’
‘So what happened?’
‘It is simple. We need money to start our life together, Misha and me.’ She shrugged. ‘Borovsky offered us it – much money. So we came.’
‘To do what?’
‘To paint.’ She shrugged again, as if it were logical, common sense even. ‘I paint Rembrandts. Misha is better at Picassos.’
I sat down heavily. I needed a rest after that disclosure.
‘Forgeries?’ I managed to say. ‘This is what it’s all about?’
‘Not forgeries, no! They are not forgeries.’ She glared at me with contempt. ‘They are originals. We paint only originals, Misha and me. The others, well .… She tailed off with an elegant shrug. Enough said.
‘So they are all at it, all the students?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Borovsky pays you all money?’
‘Plenty of money, yes. It is a good job, I think.’
I spread my hands. ‘So?’ I said, trying hard to enter into the spirit of the conversation. ‘What is the problem?’
‘The problem is if you want to stop. Misha and me, we want to stop and go home to Russia. We have enough money now to build our house, and to have babies. But Borovsky say no – you must work some more, much more.’
Her command of English suffered as she became more
intense and excited, but I understood her well enough. Jac had evidently been right about the presence of forgeries in Meridion House, but neither of us had had any idea of the nature or scale of what was going on there. Industrial production, it sounded like.
‘People can’t stay with Borovsky for ever, surely? They must leave sometime?’
‘It is true. Some people leave, and don’t come back. New people arrive.’
‘Did you know any who left?’
‘A few, yes. My friend from St Petersburg, Anna. Also, Misha’s friend from China. They left and went home.’
Did they really? Or did they end up on the beach at Port Holland?
‘But he says we can’t leave, Misha and me. We must work more, and make more paintings. But we don’t want to work any more. So there is big problem.’
She paused and looked around. ‘Your house is very nice, I think. It is how I would like my house to be, in the country.’
I just nodded, stunned by the enormity of her revelations.
She agreed to stay for a while. I was relieved about that. She seemed none the worse for her ordeal in the open but I didn’t want her to venture out there again. Enough was enough. Besides, I wanted more information from her. I hoped Jac would be here soon to help me get it.
‘What is your name?’ I asked. That would do for a start.
She hesitated, mindful of the fact, I suppose, that information is power. ‘Sasha,’ she said in due course.
‘Sasha? A nice name.’
She smiled and added, ‘Yes. It means “Defender of Mankind”.’
I
went back to collect the Land Rover. Then we talked a little more. We ate a meal I prepared. Sasha had a shower. I piled wood into the stove. Then Sasha reappeared.
‘Feel better?’ I asked.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Now you should rest. You have had a difficult time.’
She shrugged. ‘Not so difficult, I think.’
‘Not cold, wet and hungry? The hut doesn’t offer many luxuries.’
She glanced at me sharply.
‘That is where you were staying, isn’t it? The hut on the beach?’
Reluctantly, she nodded, confirming what I had suspected since my visit.
‘It is yours?’ she asked.
‘My friend, Jimmy’s. The old fisherman in the other cottage. It’s his.’
She shrugged. ‘It is not damaged.’
‘No, of course it isn’t. And we don’t mind you being there. It would have been better for you to be here, but—’
‘I have told you. It is too dangerous to be here.’
I let it go. She was on edge. That wasn’t surprising if half
of what she had told me was true. But I was still trying to assess the scale of the problem, and becoming desperate for Jac to get here. I needed help with my visitor.
‘Your friend,’ I said. ‘Is he in danger? Immediate danger, I mean?’
‘Who knows.’ She shrugged again in her fatalistic way. ‘Maybe they have not killed him yet, but they will soon if I do not return.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then they will leave in Borovsky’s ship. They are nearly ready to go. They can’t stay anywhere long in case they are discovered.’
I hadn’t thought of that. But of course! A man with a big, fancy boat like Borovsky’s doesn’t have to stay anywhere long, and it might well be dangerous to do so. On the high seas he would be much safer.
All he really needed was to find somewhere ashore from time to time, somewhere quiet and out of the way where no one paid much attention to what he was doing. Somewhere exactly like Meridion House. I was beginning to understand how a man like Borovsky could have landed in Port Holland.
‘Perhaps we can rescue Misha?’ I said, privately thinking it would be a lot better to risk the wrath of Bill Peart and blow the whistle. After all, what were police forces for?
‘Yes,’ she said, as if the necessity and perhaps the outcome were already agreed. ‘We must do that.’
I smiled to myself.
We!
I seemed to be part of the team now.
Even so, I knew that if I picked up the phone and made that call, Sasha would probably scoot out the door and disappear
again. She didn’t seem to have my confidence in the police, or in any other authorities.
Besides, I would then have Bill Peart to contend with, not only for waking him up at this hour but also for ignoring his instruction to keep away from anything involving Meridion House. On the whole, it seemed politic to wait. At least to think it through a bit more.
‘Have you had enough to eat?’ I asked.
‘Thank you, yes.’
She had eaten sparingly, but with interest, selecting what she wanted. I was surprised she hadn’t simply wolfed down everything in sight.
‘Go to bed,’ I suggested. ‘Get some rest. We can talk more in the morning.’
She considered my suggestion carefully. ‘With you?’ she asked.
I smiled and shook my head. ‘You can sleep in the same room I showed you last time. I have a girlfriend,’ I added, just in case she was still uncertain about my motives.
‘You are very kind man,’ she said with a smile of her own. ‘First you let me eat all your bread. Then I don’t have to sleep with you.’
She had a directness that sometimes surprised me, but just then I smiled at her again. ‘Tell me that when you know me better,’ I suggested.
She made her way upstairs, leaving me to ponder what she had told me. There was a lot to consider, but at least I had found her, and found her alive still. That was a huge relief.
Right then, nothing else seemed to matter very much. One
way or another, her problems could be sorted – so I assured myself anyway. We would make some plans first thing in the morning.
Then the phone rang.
‘Mr Doy?’
‘It is, yes.’
‘Now is a time for plain speaking, Mr Doy. You have the girl. We want her back.’
Borovsky!
‘You have a lot of nerve. Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘My men will be there shortly to collect her. Do not try to make it difficult for them. And do not think of contacting the authorities. If you do, there will be consequences neither she nor you will like.’
The phone went dead.
I dropped the phone back on its anchor point and started pacing the room. Shit, shit, shit! How the hell did they know?
Surely they didn’t have someone watching the cottage?
No, of course they bloody didn’t! If they did, they would have been able to intercept her. At the very least, they would already have been here.
The answer soon came to me; it was obvious once I had recovered from the shock. They must have left some sort of eavesdropping device here – here in my home! Probably when they ransacked the place. A microphone and transmitter. Or just a simple bug.
‘Was it them?’
I looked up. Sasha had appeared on the stairs.
I nodded.
‘What did they want?’
‘You,’ I said. ‘They are coming for you.’
No point hiding it from her.
‘I will go.’
‘No! Get dressed, but you’re going nowhere without me.’
While I was talking I was unscrewing the base of the phone unit.
‘What will we do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
I put a finger across my lips and then pointed to the phone. She seemed to understand. At least, she nodded and shut up.
There was nothing in the phone. I put it back together and made a fast reconnaissance of the room, looking for anything out of place or out of the ordinary. Nothing that I could see. I cursed violently. Me, a security consultant!
I would be able to find it, whatever it was, but that would take time, time we didn’t have. They could be here in quarter of an hour from Meridion House. Already five minutes had elapsed. But they were not taking her, not after all the trouble I’d already been to. I was more than adamant about that.
I was still wearing my boots. I put on a fleece and outdoor jacket. Then I grabbed the shotgun and stuffed my pockets with shotgun cartridges. I also collected my hidden Glock.
From what Sasha had told me, I couldn’t risk bringing in the police now. Her friend’s life would be over if I did. I could guess what Borovsky had had in mind when he referred to consequences. So I had to deal with the problem myself, and protect Sasha while I was at it.
‘Can you manage in those boots?’ I asked her when she reappeared.
Then I mimed to her, telling her to get dressed.
She nodded. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, donning my sweater and parka again.
‘Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of this.’
She looked at me doubtfully.
‘I’m good,’ I told her. ‘Believe me!’
‘You know what you are doing?’
I nodded. But I couldn’t afford to say more.
Once outside, and away from anyone listening in, I said, ‘Go back to the hut. You’ll be safe there.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I will stay with you.’
I grimaced. There was no time for this.
‘Just do what I tell you,’ I snapped. ‘No arguments! OK? Understand?’
She nodded.
‘And if it goes badly, run like hell!’
‘Do not worry about me,’ she said, giving me a serious look. ‘I am competent.’
I didn’t know why, but I was inclined to believe her. I wasn’t going to worry about her. I had enough to do and to think about. And time was pressing.