Her Fugitive Heart Read online

  “You’re thinking about Sikhs, Brenda,” Mum said. “It’s Tamil men who wear those. And they usually have very long hair and beards, which my Ravi doesn’t. We’re Hindu.”

  “Ah, my apologies,” Brenda said, face reddening. “I’m so sorry I can’t distinguish between Asian cultures.”

  “No need, Brenda,” Mum said. “You’re not expected to be fully informed of all the differences.”

  And on and on.

  “What do you think, Ravi?” Mum said. “Surely you have an opinion on all this.”

  “I’m perfectly fine with the gray tuxedo and just going old-school,” I said.

  Mum shot me a sharp look.

  “Then again, a bit of color wouldn’t go amiss,” I added.

  My phone rang, which was a relief.

  Ariel.

  I stepped outside to take the call, leaving Julia to deal with our mums.

  “Hey, hon,” Ariel said. “Guess we’re working together again.”

  “Is Jarrod with you?” I asked.

  “You bet. No way was he going to pass up the chance to get al-Hassah. He had run-ins with his group in Syria. Jarrod would love to pop a cap in al-Hassah’s ass, but he’ll follow the rules and try to take him alive. We got a full squad with us in London.”

  “Let’s make a deal,” I said. “Why don’t you lot go ahead and hunt him down? You can have him as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Aww, don’t you want in on the fun, or the twenty million?”

  “We’re just a bunch of private eyes,” I said. “What do we know about finding a terrorist hiding in the city? No, this is entirely your specialty. Have at it.”

  “Are you okay? You sound a little stressed.”

  “I’m with my mother and Julia’s mother. They’re arguing over my tuxedo.”

  “Oh man, that’s rough! Are you sure you don’t want to hunt for a mean ol’ terrorist with me to take the edge off?”

  “No, thank you. Look, I’m just proposing that if I get any information, I’ll pass it on to you, since you lot are the ones with the guns and the brutality for going after people like that, and I’m perfectly happy to stay out of your way.”

  “Come on, you’re playing an angle.”

  “I’m not interested in the reward. It’s blood money, and my karma’s messed up enough without adding this to it.”

  “I bet you’ll look hot in your tuxedo,” Ariel said.

  “If I wear a tuxedo. That’s still a work in progress between our mums—Look, why are we talking about this? Just do whatever you lot do and find the guy—”

  “Don’t I get an invite to your wedding?”

  Another call. Benjamin.

  “I have to take this,” I said, and gratefully hung up on her.

  “Ravi? Listen, mate, I’m with Ken and Clive. We could use your help with somethin’. Need to pick your brain, if you like.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Can you come meet us at Ken and Clive’s gaff?”

  I walked back into the tailor’s.

  “Mum, Brenda, we have to go,” I said. “But you both have exquisite taste, so I will wear whatever you agree on.”

  I kissed them each on the cheek and bid my farewells.

  “So charming,” Brenda said. “Is he like this with all the ladies?”

  “Yes,” Julia said proudly as she left with me.

  FIVE

  Clive opened the door to us.

  “Thanks for comin’, mate,” he said.

  He looked a bit surprised that Julia was there, but he let us in. Benjamin and Ken were in the living room. Take-out cartons recently emptied of Indian food were on the dinner table.

  Ken and Clive’s council flat was just off Ladbroke Grove. The place was cramped with old army paraphernalia from Clive’s days in the military. Photos of him in uniform. Photos of Ken and Clive in the boxing ring. It might surprise you to know that Ken and Clive’s flat was actually sparklingly clean. The CD collection was catalogued by artist in alphabetical order, a lot of seventies glam rock, Led Zeppelin, Marc Bolan, T. Rex, and David Bowie. There were no take-out food cartons on the carpet or unwashed dishes in the sink. The state-of-the-art desktop computer with scanner and broadband connection sat on a desk near the window.

  Ken had actually inherited the flat from his late mother, and he considered the place sacred. He told me she only let him have it after he swore to her on her deathbed that he would keep it spic-and-span like she did, and say what you will about him, he kept his promise. There was a picture of her taking up pride of place on the mantelpiece. She looked at least as big as he was, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d killed people with her bare hands in her time as well. She looked like Ken, only much more clean-shaven. I found no pictures of his father at all. Maybe he was a Viking god who met his mother and goes around the world leaving large, scary offspring in his wake. I always had the impression Ken was descended from a long line of shitkickers that kept empires running. I imagined his distant ancestor as a very large Celtic psychopath with a very large axe hacking away at Roman invaders and then the family ended up working for whatever regime was in charge of Albion at any given time. Obviously, the “large” and “warrior” genes survived through the ages. Not for his family the glories of rank, promotion, and titles, no. Ken’s family provided the A-grade cannon fodder in the armed forces, enthusiastically fighting in wars for King and Country, using patriotism as a cover for the fact that they simply liked to fuck people up.

  There was a framed X-ray of Clive’s skull up on the wall. It had been taken when he was hit by shrapnel in Afghanistan. The shrapnel had gone into his brain, lodging itself in his pineal gland, and remained there to this day because it was too dangerous to operate. Clive had suffered no brain damage or impairment to any of his higher functions, but a neurologist might have suspected that his propensity for violence was the direct by-product of that bit of shrapnel hanging there in his frontal lobe, where certain emotions were supposed to be, like empathy. Or remorse. There was, however, no explanation for Ken sharing the same tendencies. Somehow, I didn’t find this fact particularly reassuring whenever I worked with the two of them.

  Clive himself was barely out of his teens when he fought in the Gulf War, and unlike many of his comrades who came back forever traumatized, he merely shrugged and said, “It was awright.” I suspect that while his comrades suffered from post-traumatic stress and had nightmares for years, Clive was the one who had provided the nightmares. He applied to join the police force, where he met Ken. They came up together when they were promoted to the detective squad. The two of them were like peas in a pod, two halves of the same violent whole that believed in rough justice beyond the letter of the law. They just enjoyed what they did more than others were comfortable with, like killing and disappearing the worst criminals they couldn’t convict, and covering it up. They were so good at it that when they started disappearing certain powerful people who were part of a pedophile ring, their bosses had to frame them for corruption in order to drum them out of the force. They were also a couple, which was unsurprising. After all, the couple that slays together stays together. They didn’t hesitate when Roger came a-calling with a job offer.

  “There’s something we need to pick your brains about, mate,” Ken said.

  “We have a bit of a problem,” Benjamin said.

  “So what are you doing home?” I asked. “Can’t we go back to the office?”

  “We can’t talk about this back at the office,” Clive said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  The gods were all here with us. They piled onto the sofa and watched for my reaction.

  “Here’s the thing,” Benjamin said. “We found al-Hassah.”

  SIX

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “For reals,” Benjamin said.

  “We found him last night,” Clive said.

  “Completely by chance,” Ken said.

  “It was on the case we were on,” Be
njamin said.

  Ken and Clive had accompanied Benjamin on a routine bugging operation in a flat in Earl’s Court: the American media tycoon Lucas van Hooten had hired Roger to keep tabs on Vanessa, his dilettante daughter who had come to London as an exchange student and decided to go all Vanessa Redgrave and join the Socialist Workers Party and change the world. Van Hooten owned a right-wing media empire and was concerned that his baby girl was running with the wrong crowd. I was glad Roger hadn’t handed this case to me, but he’d been especially nice to me because of my impending wedding, and probably after I threw a strop about nearly getting my head blown off in Alfie Beam’s mansion. Benjamin was the one who liked to sneak into people’s places to place cameras and microphones in them, so this was business as usual for him. Since this was a high-profile client in a posh part of town, Benjamin asked Ken and Clive to go with him in case they needed to smooth things over with any local coppers that might have come across them. Julia and I were at home fast asleep at the time.

  Van Hooten had provided Golden Sentinels with the security code for the building’s front door and his daughter’s flat’s burglar alarm. Benjamin easily picked the lock to her door on his own. Then it was a matter of planting pin-sized webcams all over the place and getting out before she got home from the pub.

  Van Hooten owned a twenty-four-hour news channel for which truth was optional and the extolling of the virtues of the Republican Party and the demonization of liberals and people of color was its bread-and-butter. It played a huge part in stirring up Islamophobia and fomenting white America’s paranoia about Muslim terrorists, even pushing the paranoid fantasy that entire chunks of the UK and Europe had become Sharia no-go zones even the police didn’t dare enter. No wonder Roger didn’t give this one to me or Mark. We would have refused.

  Benjamin got back to the car to rejoin Ken and Clive, then turned on his laptop to log into the server so he could check the footage from the cameras. The car was nearly at South Kensington when Benjamin yelled “Fucking hell!” and told Ken and Clive to turn back. On screen, who should walk in the front door with Vanessa but Hassan al-Hassah. Or a bloody good lookalike in an Armani suit, brandishing a bottle of wine and a talent for tongue music.

  “Fucking hell, it’s him!” Clive said.

  “No way,” Benjamin said. “The world’s second most wanted terrorist leader suddenly turns up for a drink with a posh tottie in her flat in the heart of London?”

  “Why not? Don’t you believe in coincidence?” Ken said.

  “Hang on,” Benjamin said. “He’s a Muslim. They’re not supposed to drink booze.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna stop ’em,” Clive snorted.

  Ken and Clive were great believers in the human capacity to yield to temptation. They often watched people do it and stood in judgment, never mind that they gave in to temptation themselves sometimes, usually involving beating the shit out of people they despised.

  “Yeah, guess no right-thinkin’ man’s gonna resist booze and tottie,” Benjamin said. “They hardly said a word to each other. But it would’ve been hard to say much with all the snogging. It certainly didn’t look like they were strangers.”

  Hassan al-Hassah. One of the world’s most hated terrorist leaders. He’d had a hand in the planning of almost every major bombing campaign against American and British interests all over the Middle East in the last decade. Americans troops hunted for him in Afghanistan but lost his trail when rumor had it he crossed into Pakistan and hid there under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence. In the meantime, he continued to issue audio and video recordings exhorting true believers to wage Holy War against the West.

  “Imagine our surprise when he suddenly showed up in London snoggin’ the daughter of the biggest right-wing American media mogul out there!” Benjamin said.

  “And you recorded it all?” I asked.

  “Too right we did!”

  “It took forty-five minutes for their horizontal tango to end,” Ken said.

  “That was when we three voted we should go for it,” Clive said.

  “Fuck me,” said Ken. “As a postcoital drink, he fixed himself a gin and tonic!

  “The bastard’s havin’ an English drink!”

  “Well, he was educated at Oxford and Harvard,” Benjamin said. “Reckon he developed a taste for the ol’ G&T.”

  “Bastard killed hundreds of innocent people and thinks he can drink our booze . . . !” Clive ranted.

  “You know,” I said, “there’s a possibility it’s not him.”

  “It was fucking him, all right!” Ken said. “Benjamin zoomed in to his face five times and matched it with the online database that law enforcement used!”

  “Eighty percent match,” Benjamin said. “I even said to Ken and Clive, ‘Hold on, let’s think about it for a minute. Are we fallin’ into one of those ‘they all look alike’ situations here? It’s late, we’re tired, and he could be some professor or SWP member she’s seeing. He may not be al-Hassah.’ And Clive said ‘No, you think about it, mate! Daddy is one of the biggest media moguls in the world, knows everybody, had business dealings with al-Hassah’s family in Saudi Arabia before he declared himself a Jihadist, even went to university with Hassan himself back in the day! Little Vanessa has got a right rebellious streak, what’s an even better way to fuck Daddy off than membership in the Socialist Wankers Party? Why, bonk Daddy’s old-mate-turned-terrorist-leader, of course! What are the odds, eh? What are the fucking odds?’ ”

  “Okay,” I said. “Think about this: What if that’s just a lookalike?”

  That made Ken and Clive pause.

  “I told ’em, if we’re gonna go all Freudian on the girl,” Benjamin said. “Why not try this for size? It doesn’t need to be the real McCoy. A stand-in will do just fine.”

  “It’s him,” Clive muttered. “I can feel it in me bones.”

  “If it is him, where are his bodyguards? He’s an important guy. They’re not gonna let him wander around alone.”

  “They arrested his bodyguards in Lahore, remember? Bodyguards said he was dead. These bodyguards weren’t supposed to ever stray more than ten feet away from him, and yet they were caught wanderin’ about on their own after the drone strike that the Yanks thought done him in. They were obviously meant to make us believe he was dead, throw us off his trail. He could’ve crossed over into Pakistan, and from there, gone anywhere. It’s him. I’m tellin’ you.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not. But your work here is done. Go to Roger, hand over the video links for her daddy to watch her on the Internet, let Roger report Mini al-Hassah to the Yanks, and if he’s the real deal, Roger collects the reward and pays us all a bonus. What’s the problem?”

  They paused and looked down. This was when I could tell the story was about to get worse.

  SEVEN

  “There was no way we were going to pass up a major opportunity here!” Ken said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “We voted to nab him!” Clive said.

  “Right fucking there! Do the world a favor!”

  “And you went along with that?” I said to Benjamin.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Kali started laughing. Not good.

  “Of all the cosmic jokes in the universe,” she said, “you had to end up in this one!”

  “To be fair,” Benjamin said, “I did say we should make sure he was the real McCoy and not a lookalike.”

  Clive began to talk in a hushed tone, full of restrained rage that indicated the utter seriousness of his intent.

  “It’s not just about the money this time, all right?” he said. “Ken and me’s got mates in the army who were killed by this bastard’s people.”

  “We reckoned we could just capture al-Hassah,” Benjamin said, “if that was really him, and turn him in for the twenty-million-dollar reward the US had posted for him. But that wouldn’t work. The circu
mstances behind how we came across him would be hard to explain. Besides, where the hell could we hold him until we handed him over for the reward? It wasn’t like we had a bunch of safe houses around town for stashing warm bodies.”

  “Well, now you have an option,” I said. “Tell Roger! He’ll sort it out!”

  “Er, yeah,” Ken said. “There’s more.”

  “You have to hear the rest of it,” Clive said.

  “What, he got away? Then it’s not your problem anymore. Just tell Roger you came across him last night and he’ll tell you to follow up on the connection to Vanessa van Hooten,” I said.

  “You really want to hear the rest of this,” Ken said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go on.”

  “All right,” Benjamin said. “So. But I want to make it clear that I went along to make sure things didn’t go horribly wrong. ‘Nah, nah, nothing’ll go wrong, it’ll be a doddle. You’ll see,’ Clive and Ken kept sayin’.”

  “Well, things went horribly wrong,” Ken said.

  “Of course they did,” I said.

  “You know,” Benjamin said, “London may be the most surveilled city in the world, with the hundreds of cameras stuck on virtually every street corner, but it’s still surprisingly easy to disappear someone off the streets if you set your mind to it. At night, the streets are so dimly lit, it’s a wonder the city isn’t a serial killer’s paradise. And the surveillance cameras are only good for catching people in the act after the fact. The police aren’t going to watch every screen for every hour of the day. They only pour over footage for an incident after it’s occurred, to see if they can identify the perpetrators, and that’s only when they have an idea who they’re looking for. If it’s a total blank without a previous record, they’re lost at sea. Amateurs get caught. We are not amateurs. We knew that we could get away with what we were doin’ if it didn’t look like a suspicious act. That is, assumin’ we had to do it at a spot that had a camera pointing at it.”

  “Yes, Benjamin,” I said. “You gave me and Julia that speech when we started working at the firm. You’re rambling.”