The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 10

My primary hazard was being spotted. In most locations, approaching a super-yacht just after midnight, even a heavily guarded one, wouldn't involve a high degree of risk. Here, by virtue of the film festival, the situation was different. Floodlights bathed the geometric walls of the Palais des Festivals and the gleaming white hulls of the yachts moored beneath it, casting green halos of light into the murky waters along the quay. Partygoers were everywhere: strolling the Jetee Albert Edouard; toasting one another with chilled wine on hotel patios; gazing down from the vaulted decks and bubbling hot tubs of the yachts themselves.

The craft I was swimming towards went by the name Lazy Jane. She was a sleek, 100-foot Italian vessel with five cabins, eight crew and, for this week in particular, a rental cost in excess of 80,000 euros. She boasted three decks, a salon that doubled as a screening room, an aft lounge, a Jacuzzi sundeck, a shaded flying bridge and one highly recognizable target.

The target was a former action hero, from a franchise that had been big in the eighties. His accommodation sounded impressive, but the reality was that no bankable movie star would stay anywhere close. The big names were hiding out in secluded villas up in the hills, where their privacy and security could be guaranteed. Yachts were reserved for middling organizations start-out production companies, European sales distributors, a cable p.o.r.n channel. Oh, and the former star of the Vengeance series of espionage thrillers.

He had begun his career as a kickboxing champion with a fondness for steroid injections, a north European accent and a memorable name, and advanced until he was married to the daughter of minor Hollywood royalty, with a mansion in Beverly Hills, a three-way share in a chain of celebrity nightclubs and a shot at cementing his fame as a crossover star in a line of family comedies. It didn't work. His box office plummeted, younger stars nudged him out of the limelight, his wife divorced him and his popularity began to sag along with his pecs.

Unable to quit, he still made movies, but these days they went straight to video. Now, his star had faded so badly that he was worth more to the makers of his latest film dead than alive. Cannes was scheduled during a hiatus in shooting, but his insurance cover was ongoing. He was a cheque waiting to be cashed.

He was also standing on the aft deck of the Lazy Jane, bunched arms resting on the wood-and-aluminium rails, a mobile phone clasped to his ear. I was close enough by now to count the b.u.t.tons on the open-neck Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt he was wearing, and to hear his side of the conversation. He didn't sound happy. The yacht was too noisy to sleep, he complained. There were too many tourists trying to sneak pictures of him. Some jerk from the cable p.o.r.n channel hadn't let him board their s.h.i.+p. Didn't anyone know who he was any more?

I had a reasonable idea who he was talking to, and I could hazard a fair guess at what he was being told. The yacht was ideal. It was central. It was perfect for all the business meetings they had lined up.

And it was also vulnerable to attacks like my own.

Clutching my equipment bag to my chest, I ducked silently beneath the rippling surface and kicked for the cooler waters below the slick of diesel snaking away from the engine outlet and the wash of light from the submerged bulbs under the hull. I have the ability to hold my breath in excess of two minutes when the situation demands it, but I had no need for party tricks this time around. I came up to the side of the mini-deck at the rear of the vessel, where a pair of jet-skis were moored. Tossing my bag up before me, I gripped the smooth timber with my fingertips and heaved myself aboard in one fluid movement.

First, I dried myself with the towel I'd packed inside my waterproof bag, since I didn't want to leave a giveaway trail of water running through the inner corridors of the yacht. Then I slipped my backpack over my shoulders, removed my flippers and climbed barefoot up the metal ladder to the deck above.

It didn't take long to locate the burnished wooden door to the master cabin, and it occupied but a moment's thought for me to kneel before the flimsy lock and coax the tumblers into tumbling with my picking gun. I slipped my hand inside and flipped a light switch, then entered a sumptuous world of highly polished teak, fine cotton sheets and thick woollen carpet. I scanned the lighted interior until my eyes settled on a small drawer in the fitted cabinet beside the bed. Perfect.

I was back in my compact hire car, towel coiled around my damp hair and a pair of field binoculars raised to my eyes, when I clicked the appropriate icon on my laptop to place the call. Minutes before, I'd watched the target flick a cigarette over the side of the yacht, check his watch and disappear below deck. Once the lights in his cabin had been extinguished, I'd made the connection. The American answered on the first ring.

"Yeah?"

"Are you watching?" I asked.

"h.e.l.l, yes. What kept you? We've been waiting hours already."

"You wanted a thorough job."

"You didn't tell us it'd be this late. Christ."

I scanned the quay. "Less people means less casualties. Less witnesses, too."

"Yeah, maybe."

"You're sure you still want to go ahead?"

"Sure I'm sure. a.s.shole's been griping on the phone, yanking my chain about his d.a.m.n issues. Thinks he's still somebody. Nothing's good enough for him. Go ahead. Toast the schmuck."

"I'll leave that to you, if I may."

"Huh?"

"Write down this number."

I delivered the sequence. He interrupted me halfway through.

"Wait. What is this?"

"Are you writing it down?"

"I don't have a pen."

"Then get one."

"OK. Jeez. Keep your panties on."

I counted to ten. Made it to twelve. I was still shaking my head when he came back on the line.

"Give it to me again," he said.

I did. Slowly. I had no desire to repeat myself.

"It's a telephone number," I explained. "For a mobile. I hid it in his cabin. You call the number and when he picks up it completes the circuit."

"Ka-boom time?"

"Indeed."

"No s.h.i.+t. And say, do you have some kind of master-control over all this?"

Funny. I had a feeling he might ask me that. "Not any more," I told him. "It's all down to you."

He paused. "Wait. If I use my cell, it can be traced, right?"

"It could be."

"Don't you think maybe you should have considered that?"

"Go to the kitchen in your apartment," I told him. "Open the bottom left cupboard beside the gas cooker."

"Huh?"

"Just do it."

I heard the cluck of his tongue, followed by the sound of his footsteps and the rasp of his breath. Then I heard the squeak of the cupboard hinge.

"Hey, there's a handset in here."

"It's prepaid," I told him, trying not to sound vexed. "No trace."

"s.h.i.+t. You've been here?"

This time I failed to control my irritation. "You invited me in, remember?"

I waited for the cogs to mesh. It took longer than it should have done.

"Lady, you're good."

"I'm pleased that you're pleased. And I a.s.sume that I will be paid the rest of my money."

There was a moment's hesitation. "Oh, sure thing. The bonus too. Absolutely. No question. You're coming to Antibes, right?"

I let go of a weary breath and lowered the binoculars from my eyes. "There's n.o.body on the Jetee just now. You should make the call."

I closed the lid of my laptop, gripped hold of my steering wheel and craned my neck until my line of sight was clear. I turned the radio on low and was mid-way through a morsel of Euro-pop when I saw the bright pulse of blue-white light. The windows gave out in a flaming burst and a cloud of blackened smoke idled upwards on the faint night breeze. I muted the radio and awaited the boom.

Less than three minutes later, I was fitting my key in the ignition of my rental Citroen and getting ready to drive to the airport when I happened to glance across to the Lazy Jane. Standing on deck was a man in a Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt. He had a mobile phone clutched uselessly in his hand and his tanned face was lifted towards the fire raging through the exclusive apartment overlooking the harbour.

My name is Rachel Delaney and there are three things you'd do well to remember about me. I never negotiate. I always do my research, so I know if a client is lying about a place in Antibes, or anything else for that matter. Oh, and I'm a huge fan of cheesy action movies, especially the ones starring Rick van Hammer.

JUNGLE BOOGIE.

Kate Horsley.

RAOUL STOOD ON the corner, leaning against the plaster wall of Bar El Diablo, telling himself to walk away. It was seven in the evening and the sky was a ripening bruise behind the cathedral. The August heat licked his face and a knot of girls skipped arm in arm across the zocalo. One burst into song. He told himself to go back to the museum, to lock the statue in its gla.s.s case, and if his boss asked any questions to make up some amusing story. But he'd crossed an unseen line on Barrio El Cerrillo and now he couldn't move. So he dragged on the stub of his cigarette and stared at the blonde woman on the cathedral steps.

She was wearing her new green dress with the red cherries pouting from it. It flared at the waist, making it look as if she had hips. He thought about grabbing her a.s.s last night because he wanted something heavy to hang on to, to tether him when he came, and about how, at the crucial moment, his thumbs dug into her hip bones. She was thin and pale and tall and not his type. She wore orange cowboy boots in summer and people walking by them said that she was loco. He was addicted to f.u.c.king her maybe, or in love, or just pathetic and obsessed. He didn't know which one and he didn't care.

He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel, picked up the briefcase. Walking across the zocalo towards her was like crossing the border into a better place. Her hair was gold from Fort Knox. Her teeth were silver dollars. Together they would f.u.c.k and make babies and be rich. She saw him coming and smiled a little and started walking to him, swinging her boy hips like she was doing the jungle boogie. It made him laugh. Maybe jungle boogie was the first symptom of jungle fever. Man, he had it bad.

Raoul wiped the sweat off his forehead and walked to the blonde, to the church. They met on the bottom step and kissed and he dropped the briefcase so he could hold her round the waist. She tasted of beer and cigarettes just like he did. Blue doves called from the rain trees behind the cathedral. He was half hard already. "You check out of your hotel?"

"Hours ago." Darla laughed and bit his throat. "You bring it with you?"

"You wanted it, I got it."

She pushed him away, her blue eyes narrowing. "No one suspects?"

"Not yet, but when I don't show up tomorrow-"

"Let's not get our panties in a bunch about tomorrow." She pulled a pack of Bohemios from her purse and tapped one out, pinching it in her mouth so that her lips thinned to an angry coral line.

He flicked open his Zippo and lit it for her. "Talking of panties-"

"One thing at a time. The car's nearby?" She took his zippo and tucked it into her cigarette pack, as if it had been hers all along.

"Parked on Cinco de Mayo just like we said. Don't you trust me?"

She picked up the briefcase. "Can I see?"

"In the middle of the zocalo with the whole town looking?"

"The square's empty. Not a soul."

He looked behind him. It was true. "It just doesn't seem like the place to break out something so sacred."

She laughed. "You worried about angering the Mayan G.o.ds?"

He said nothing. He'd grown up with so many stories about the ancient ruins, the jungle full of spirits and bad blood.

She dropped her cigarette and dragged her arm across her forehead. "Oh my G.o.d, you are worried. You people ..."

"You people? You mean Mexicans?"

"No, I mean museum curators. You've got too much knowledge, not enough nerve." She pulled something out of her purse.

He thought it was the cigarettes again, but it looked too dark, too long. He didn't really see, just heard the m.u.f.fled shot and felt the burst of pain. He fell on his knees. "But I love you."

"I know. That's why I asked you to do this for me." She bent down, pressed her lips on his forehead. "I'm sorry, but it's just too valuable."

He clutched his gut and watched her walk across the zocalo, briefcase in hand, boy hips doing the jungle boogie under her new green dress.

Sighing with relief, Darla slid into the front seat of Raoul's small red coupe. She turned the key in the ignition, heard one of the wretched local channels crackle into life, pressed down the lighter, took out a smoke. She'd pulled it off, dared to do what a lot of guys wouldn't have had the b.a.l.l.s to. She lit up and swung out into Cinco de Mayo without looking behind her. And even though her heart chirred like a cicada, her hands were steady on the wheel.

Five miles from San Cristobal, she thought someone was following her, a black car in her rear-view mirror, almost b.u.mper to b.u.mper with her. On impulse, she turned off the main road, watched him sail by behind. Now if he wanted to find her, he'd have to make a U-turn and come back. She laughed. Why was she being so paranoid? Sure, the museum police would be tailing her now, like Raoul would ever have the guts to turn her in. That's how she'd picked him out, how she knew she'd get away with it.

The coupe rolled down a dirt track with weeds sprouting in the middle and fallen branches squealing on the belly of the car, began to speed up, the c.r.a.ppy little path thinning as the trees on each side thickened. Who'd have thought a little road like this would go down at such a steep pitch? It was getting dark, too. She stepped on the brake. The car slowed some, but didn't screech to a halt like she thought it would.

Instead, it kept on rasping over the tall gra.s.s, headlights cutting a yellow groove into the jungle's darkness. She jammed her foot down hard. The coupe twisted sideways on a root, throwing her into the wheel. She hit her head on the top of it. The bottom dug into her ribs. The car lurched to a stop in some spiky Mexican bush or other, flinging her back against the seat, breathless and bleeding. A parrot flew up squawking through the leaves. The engine made a coughing sound, a sort of deathbed rattle before cutting out in a bleakly predictable way.

"f.u.c.k it." She pulled the mangled cigarette out of her mouth, lighting the next from the glowing cherry. "f.u.c.k it all to h.e.l.l."

It was his Abuela, his tiny grandmother, muttering the rosary to herself as she stirred bread soup, who'd made him the lace handkerchief. He stuffed it into the s.p.a.ce between his belt and the wound in his gut. As he staggered along he could feel it getting wetter and in his mind's eye he saw the silk curlicues growing brittle and black. What would Abuela say if she saw her handiwork jammed between his watch pocket and the nugget of lead? Nothing probably. She would simply take it and wash it for him, crossing herself and whispering about la agonia en el huerto. Then it would appear, clean and pressed, in the breast pocket of his linen jacket. He told himself that it was there now, crisply folded.

The blonde would be behind the wheel of his coupe by now, headed for Mexico City. Meanwhile, he was almost at a bar not the Bar El Diablo, full of tourists and sugary, cold beer, panpipes blaring over the PA. No, his hand was propping up the yellow-painted wall of La Cantina del Corazon where the men sipped cane hooch in dark corners and chewed the fat. He could rest there for a little while, maybe.

He stumbled through the swinging doors, trying to hold his head high long enough to get to a table. A few people stared then turned back to their talk, probably thinking he was drunk or stoned. The bar was hot and it was hard to walk like there was no hole in his gut just next to the fake-silver belt buckle, no dark wad of silk sticking to his black cotton s.h.i.+rt. He slumped at an empty table and a woman with hard black eyes, long hair and a proud, straight throat came to wipe the crumbs and peanut sh.e.l.ls into his lap. "Drinking? Eating?" She said it in English, like he was just another tourist.

"Long time since I've been in here, I guess." Speaking tore him up. He winced. It felt like that blonde had hammered nails through him, tacking his flesh into his bones. Maybe voodoo was her thing. Maybe that was why she'd wanted the statue of Xbalanque, Jaguar G.o.d of the Underworld, shadow of the shaman. Xbalanque would bring her all the darkness she could wish for if she let him.

The waitress stopped wiping. Her eyes softened. "Una cerveza grande?"