One Way or Another(89)

He jogged toward the house but was stopped by a couple of firemen. There were half a dozen trucks outside, plus several police cars. He went over to one, explained to the cop that he needed to get through, his young friend might be in there, but was told it was impossible.

“Can you help me?”

He turned his head. He was looking at the red-haired girl he had painted so often. The girl from Fethiye, whose drowning eyes remained in his memory. The girl he had been searching for ever since. Back from the dead.

“They tried to kill me on the boat. They kept me alive to torture me, they meant to kill me, make sure this time. They kept me prisoner here, and I started this fire to escape. I was afraid no one would believe me but now I’ll tell it all to anyone who will listen. This man, this powerful billionaire, is evil and what I am now is testament to that.”

She swept off the red wig and stood, humbly, before him. “It was all a game with them,” she said.

Marco knew they had no time to waste, but first Angie insisted he round up the cops to help.

“The man is dangerous,” Angie said. “He’s angry, and he has a gun. And he has all this swamp in which to bury us without a trace. We need help.”

*

Lucy lay shivering on the wetlands; she was so cold her teeth could not chatter because her jaw seemed frozen. She could not have moved a foot, not even a finger had she wished.

Ahmet loomed out of the darkness. The burned house cast a rosy glow over him as he stopped and looked at her.

“Well,” he said, with something of the old power back in his voice. “Will you just look who we have here. The fine Miss Lucy. Paragon of virtue and f*cker of pizza delivery guys. The girl who is too good for pearls. I guess diamonds are where you’re really at. Girls like you, who think themselves better than other people, always really want diamonds. They expect a fair return for their sexual services, because for sure they don’t get actual sexual gratification, that would be too demanding. Right, my little Lucy? I mean, it’s much more fun to f*ck delivery guys and stable lads, that kind of thing, and hold yourself back, pretending virtue when a real man comes on to you, offers you the world.”

He sank to his knees beside her, took off his jacket. She shrank away as he put it round her shoulders. “Can’t say I’m not a gentleman.” He touched her arm as he put the jacket round her, felt how cold she was, the icy chill that comes from exposure, and that he knew meant death if she stayed out here any longer. He stared at her, taking in her exhausted face, the slow tears oozing from beneath her swollen eyelids, the faint tremor that shook the hands he took in his. He could not bear it, he could not lose his Lucy.

He rose to his feet, scooped her in his arms. She weighed nothing, less than any of the precious oil drums that had made him wealthy. Holding her, shivering, close to his chest, he set off back across the swamp, not knowing where it was safe to walk, hoping he’d make it. He had to save Lucy.

*

The dog appeared out of nowhere. A shrill bark, a quick flash as it ran past then circled back again. It leaped up at Lucy, licked her dangling arm, sniffed, yelped some more. Ahmet knew this was Marco’s dog. Marco was here. He would help Lucy.

Standing there holding her, Ahmet waited until he heard their voices. When he saw their approaching figures silhouetted against the red glow, he took a long last look at his beloved. Then he laid her on the ground, wrapped his jacket over her again, saw that the dog had run off toward the voices. The dog would bring them to her, they would find his girl. He would be gone. And there would be nothing they could do about it. All they’d have would be a story from a strange, crazy red-haired woman who nobody would ever believe. Lucy would not even remember. If she lived, that is.

He remembered the Beretta, removed it from his jacket pocket. He stood for a moment more. He did not kiss Lucy. He never had. He turned, and strode off into the night. He knew where he was heading.

It was Marco who found her, of course. And who glimpsed the man walking away. He knew who it was.





66

Ahmet was back on the MV Lady Marina, off the coast of Fethiye, alone on deck gazing out at the deep cobalt sea, lit every now and then by a flicker of phosphorescence. Nature was magical, he thought, and more powerful than man. No one knew that better than he, who had survived storms in the Mediterranean, typhoons off the coast of Japan, and hurricanes in the Pacific. One thing he had no control over was the weather, a fact which, complete narcissist that Ahmet was, annoyed him. He would have paid his fortune, well, a part of it, to any scientist who could give him that power. Meanwhile, what he did have power over was people. “Human beings,” as they liked to be called, though “human,” to him, was a relative term and he himself was of course above all that. He had power; he did what he pleased; took care of life and death any way he chose. Tonight it was Mehitabel’s turn.

He sat for a while longer, contemplating the fact that he had lost out on Angie, that she of all people had been the one to have beaten him, come out the winner in their stupid battle. A battle which should never have started and would not have, if he had only used his f*ckin’ head and not become entranced with her.

Was he entranced with Angie? Yes. But he was also entranced with Lucy. There was a difference, though. One was a woman of the world, the other a girl who needed to be taught the ways of the world.

He closed his eyes, sitting there on the deck of his yacht, recalling the feel of Lucy’s warm young neck as he’d clasped the pearls around it, breathing in the scent of her, the heat, the new sweat that layered her skin and a French perfume he knew but could not identify, and which she had sprayed on too lavishly, leaving a drift of it behind wherever she walked. It was a young girl’s mistake, no real woman would have been so unsubtle. Except maybe Angie, but that would have been for a different reason, which was because Angie didn’t know any better; she had not been to the same school of life as Lucy. Angie was from the streets. Like himself. That’s why he liked her. And why, like Mehitabel, she was a danger to him, and also like Mehitabel, had to die.