Harm Read online

  HUGH FRASER

  urbanepublications.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Urbane Publications Ltd

  Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleamingwood Drive,

  Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ

  Copyright © Hugh Fraser, 2015

  The moral right of Hugh Fraser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910692-73-8

  eISBN 978-1-910692-99-8

  Design and Typeset by Daniel Goldsmith Associates, Cheshire and Julie Martin

  Cover by Oliver Bennet at Daniel Goldsmith Associates and Julie Martin

  Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

  urbanepublications.com

  The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace.

  Contents

  1 Mexico, 1974

  2 London, 1956

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  About the Author

  1

  MEXICO, 1974

  The armoured glass revolving door twitches into motion as I enter its orbit and sweeps me firmly into the foyer of the Acapulco Flamingo Resort Hotel. In its vast atrium, towering coconut palms glower malevolently, as if resenting the brilliantly coloured birds that flit busily between them. Glass lifts waft silently up and down, flaunting their superiority over nature. A diminutive busboy approaches me with intent upon my suitcase and my local currency. I ignore him, inhale a lungful of conditioned air and walk towards the reception desk, passing five mutations of the species cocktail bar, deployed around a sunken aquarium, offering infinite varieties of alcoholic fruit salad. In the ethnic version, a gypsy quartet, wearing overlarge sombreros and a collective rictus grin, sing four-part harmony with depressing jollity. Jaded waiters lurk beside pillars, embalmed in contempt for the guests, who they irritate with their unnecessary presence.

  The receptionist greets me with vacuous enthusiasm and runs through the checking-in procedure. I obtain a key, repel the busboy and head for the lifts. The foyer dwindles below as I glide to the fifth floor and step out into a long curving corridor that gradually relieves me of my sense of direction as I move along it. The room offers a minimal array of comforts with its functional layout and moulded surfaces, but I note the sizeable mini bar beneath the TV and the pristine bathroom. After putting down my suitcase, unplugging the telephone and closing the velour curtains on the view of the atrium, I lie on the bed. Shrinking gratefully into myself, I vacate my personality and drift into sleep.

  A knock wakes me. It could be hours later. I arrived in the early afternoon and now there is no light edging the curtains as I switch on the bedside lamp and move to the door. I look through the spy hole. It is Randall, suitably distorted by the lens, unless some effect of altitude or cabin pressure during the flight has caused his face to bulge hideously. I contemplate with some pleasure the catastrophic effect this would have on this narcissist, with whom it is my misfortune to share responsibilities, for the immediate future. He knocks again and a ripple of irritation corrugates his distended features. I am tempted to ignore him and prolong my solitary confinement but I open the door and smile.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  Randall is a manner masquerading as a person. He has exchanged any individuality he might have possessed for a repertoire of gestures, physical and verbal, stolen from people who he perceives as having ‘made it’, and he’s beginning to resemble a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘Looking good,’ he says.

  Randall wants to sleep with me. All men, apart from homosexuals, paedophiles and the very old, want to sleep with me. I am not a classic beauty by any means but I have ‘it’. ‘It’ is what makes a woman sexually attractive to men. When a woman has ‘it’ they will dedicate themselves to her conquest with Napoleonic determination, devoting years to the project if necessary. I have spent a large proportion of my life since the age of thirteen enduring the overtures of men with designs on my body, whose seduction techniques have run the gamut from acquainting me with Kierkegaardian philosophy in candle-lit private dining rooms to bellowing “Fancy a fuck?” across a pub car park.

  ‘Eight-thirty?’ says Randall.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Meeting?’

  Inflecting everything as a question is Randall’s way of implying that he is reminding you of something you have been stupid enough to forget, even though he is giving you information you could not possibly have obtained.

  ‘Where?’ I ask.

  ‘Martin’s suite?’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Pick you up …?’

  ‘What number?’ I repeat.

  ‘Six nineteen?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Drink first?

  ‘No, I have … er …’

  I gesture vaguely back into the room and dismiss him with a smile which will leave him wondering if he should try his luck again later. I really ought to tell him I’m a lesbian living with a black cab driver, then he can spend a few weeks trying to figure out whether I meant the cab or the driver and give me some peace.

  I shut the door and check the shower. Moderate pressure. When I turn on the TV, Richard Nixon bangs on about the war on drugs. I open my suitcase, shove some clothes into the wardrobe and take out my gun, wondering idly why I always wrap it in underwear when I travel. It sits heavily in my hand. I pop the magazine, fill it with ten rounds from the toe of a shoe and slide it back in with a little more force than necessary.

  I ponder the odds of staying alive beyond the weekend. I like the simplicity of crime, it has pure lines, a sharp silhouette and a great buzz. A corporation plunges an entire country into poverty for a spike in the share price. A government murders tens of thousands for some bullshit ideology dreamt up by stupid old men. Crime between consenting adults is clean, and fair-minded.

  I take a shower and select a light suit for the meeting. I have been hired by Martin and Randall to take care of a drug dealer called Rodolfo Cortez who has failed to honour an agreement. We’re posing as property developers looking to buy land for development in a nearby town called San Marcos, a cover that legitimises our presence here and allows us to move around while we find Rodolfo Cortez, exact revenge, and consolidate Martin’s reputation, here and in London. We know where Cortez is based, but not his exact location. I walk along the curved corridor. Two American teenaged girls in wet bikinis slouch along ahead of me, mumbling everyday discontent. I reach Martin’s suite and knock. Randall opens the door. ‘Hey.’

  In the living room, Martin, a powerful six-footer wit
h a shaved head, broad shoulders and a bull neck, stands with his back to the Pacific Ocean conjuring millions of dollars into the space between him and three Mexican estate agents, who are sitting together on a long leather sofa. The estate agents are under the impression that they are being commissioned to negotiate the purchase of the land in San Marcos and handle the sale of the development once it is built. They are young and well-dressed in light linen suits. One, tall and languid with a thin moustache, appears to be trying to maintain a distance from a short, plump little man who sits next to him and fidgets with a pad on his knee. Their colleague at the other end of the sofa is thin and wiry with a mop of dark curly hair and a preoccupied look.

  Martin introduces me and I sit in an armchair, taking a sheaf of brochures, architects’ drawings of the proposed resort development and various flow charts from my briefcase and laying them on the coffee table as Martin blathers on about projects we have supposedly completed in Portugal and Greece and our desire to meet with the relevant government officials for planning consents and allocation of services. I must say he does all this rather well, his Essex twang giving him a certain rough diamond credibility. Randall has apparently been instructed to keep his mouth shut and it only remains for me to slip in a few remarks in my posh p.a. voice and cross and uncross my legs a couple of times. I put a note in the diary for a trip to San Marcos the following afternoon as Martin wraps things up. The estate agents gather up the brochures, assure us of their enthusiasm and support for our exciting project, wish us a happy stay in their wonderful country and leave.

  ‘Cool?’ says Randall.

  Martin ignores him and sits beside me on the sofa. ‘Hello, doll.’

  I ignore the insult, pour myself a Tequila, and cross to the window to take in the magnificent subtropical coastline resting below me. I tune out whatever aspect of the obvious Randall is busy pointing out and consider that one of the advantages enjoyed by the career criminal is the freedom to behave among colleagues exactly as he, or she, cares to. Executives in other fields of business are constrained to put others at ease with gentle wit and pleasant conversation. Among criminals, a repulsive personality is a distinct advantage and can often instil essential fear and respect without the necessity for precursory violence. Friendship is dangerous, it encourages trust, the prerequisite of betrayal; almost always the cause of things coming unstuck.

  Martin comes to stand beside me at the window. ‘Went OK?’ he asks.

  ‘So we’ve got access. Now what?’ I reply.

  ‘Since we’re here, we might as well have a look at a couple of other opportunities.’

  ‘What about Rodolfo?’

  ‘I thought you might find out where he is and shoot him in the head.’

  ‘While you open a gift shop on the prom?’

  ‘Something like that, yeah.’

  Martin is a pit bull. He is good but impulsive. He’s clearly entertaining fantasies of hijacking the Mexican drug trade and ought to be disabused of them before he gets himself killed. Since I’m merely associated with him for the matter in hand, my only interest is to get the job done and return to London.

  I look him in the eye and say, ‘The deal was that you find him and I do him. If you’re going to fuck about, I’ll get on a plane tomorrow.’

  He gives me a hard stare while he considers whether to let a woman tell him what to do, then he glances at Randall and smiles.

  ‘All right, Rina, no need to get your knickers in a twist,’ he says.

  I give him a look of utter loathing as we arrange to meet in the foyer the next morning, rent a car, and go in search of Cortez.

  I leave Martin and Randall deciding where they are going to begin their survey of Acapulco’s night life, and return to my room.

  I stand at the window watching people come and go across the foyer. The lifts abseil silently up and down. A man seated at a table in one of the bars glances up in my direction before summoning a waiter. I close the curtain, undress and get into bed with Erica Jong.

  • • •

  I am woken by the Sombrero band murdering La Bamba in the foyer. I open my eyes and turn to look at the time. Martin’s severed head is staring at me from the bedside table.

  I try to move but can’t. It takes me a moment to gain control of the fear, then my body unfreezes and I take the gun from between my legs, look under the bed and move to the corner of the room. I check the wardrobe and walk slowly to the bathroom. Randall’s head is leaking blood in the basin. I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, slip into a pair of trainers and pocket passport and money. I am fitting the silencer to my gun, and wondering why I haven’t been killed as well, when I hear a key slide into the door. I hold the gun behind my back. The door opens and I recognise the curly-haired estate agent from last night, coming towards me with an AK 47. As he opens his mouth to speak, I jump at him and kick the gun out of his hands. He gets a lucky hold on my weapon and wrenches it away from me. I twist my arm around his neck, grab a ballpoint pen off the dressing table, and jam the sharp end into his ear. He screams and hits the floor. I kneel on top of him, reach for one of my stiletto shoes, and stab the pointed heel into his neck just below his Adam’s apple. Blood spurts from the hole and he goes limp.

  I hear people approaching along the corridor. I open the window, step onto a ledge below and make my way slowly along it, clinging to a line of raised brickwork at arm’s-length above me. In the crowded foyer, people point up at me and security men talk into radios. I look back to see if I am being watched from the room but see no one. As I move along the ledge, something is being shouted in Spanish through a loud hailer. I reach a vertical steel beam. As I climb round it, it starts to hum and vibrate. I look up and see a lift plunging towards me. I pull back onto the ledge as it slices past me and stops a few metres below. I put my arms round the steel beam, slide down it and land on the roof of the lift. The crowd that has gathered below gives something between a gasp and a cheer.

  I lie flat as the lift drops to the ground floor, then climb down the side of the cage, put my head down, dive into the crowd and force my way through the press of bodies before the security men can see which direction I go in. I break free of the crowd and sprint for the main doors. Two men run after me but I am through the exit, down the steps and wrenching open the door of a taxi before they hit the fresh air. Breathing hard, I wave my gun at the terrified driver and drag him out. I jump in, start the engine and screech out of the access road onto the main drag.

  Cutting through the traffic, bringing the blaring horns to a hysterical crescendo, I see that I am being followed by a black Mercedes. With no idea where I’m going, I swing a U-turn and head for an entry ramp signed to Highway 95D. The Mercedes follows me onto the crowded two-lane highway and settles in behind me. We climb from sea to mountains. When I see a toll booth ahead, I swerve right into the slow lane and brake hard, narrowly avoiding being rear-ended by a truck. The Mercedes overtakes in a cacophony of horns and barges into the inside lane in front of me. I pull the taxi onto the hard shoulder and skid to a halt. I jump the crash barrier and scramble up a steep sandy bank into trees and thick undergrowth which claws at my legs, preventing any serious headway on such a gradient. I turn and see two men, one short and one tall, coming up after me. I recognise the other two estate agents from last night. Two others are aiming rifles at me from the bottom of the bank. I know I am done. I turn towards them, and raise my arms.

  They surround me and take me to the Mercedes, making no attempt to hide their weapons from the traffic streaming past. The tall one searches me and takes my passport and money. He opens the rear door and gestures me into the back of the car. The short one opens the door on the other side and sits next to me.

  The tall one gets in on my right. As the car moves onto the highway, he turns to me and smiles.

  ‘Cigarette?’ he asks.

  I shake my head and turn away.

  At the toll booth, we are waved through without payment and the car surges into the fast lane. Sh
orty studies my breasts and begins fondling the left one. I pull away from him. The tall one barks at him in Spanish, leans across me and swings his fist into his face. Shorty yelps as blood explodes from his nose. The man in front raises his rifle, shouts at them and they fall silent.

  Since it seems that my life is not immediately in danger, there is little to do but wait to see what my captors want from me. I sit back and take in the rugged scenery as dense vegetation and palm trees give way to emaciated pine trees and scorched scrubland. After a while, we leave the highway and climb up a twisting two-lane road with a sheer drop to the right. I consider diving over the front seat, wrenching the wheel and plunging the car over the edge, but conclude that, even if I survived, I would probably still be outnumbered.

  After a few more bends we stop at a pair of iron gates beneath a wrought-iron arch. A high stone wall curves away on each flank. Armed guards open the gates and we continue along a curved, tree-lined driveway. As we emerge from the trees, I am confronted with the most vulgar building I have ever seen. A vast squashed hacienda style wedding cake, oozing arches and porticoes from a bulbous central tower, crawled over by malign-looking creepers and climbers bent on strangling its buttresses and lacerating the dirty white stucco grimly adhering to its ageing shanks. In the precariously balanced bell tower the rusted incumbent hangs limp and impotent, as if embarrassed to toll for this obese monstrosity.

  Guards in military-style fatigues, toting AK 47 assault rifles, appear from a pink gazebo beside a kidney-shaped swimming pool as we approach. The car stops in front of the main entrance and I am escorted through the metal studded front door. Inside, the vulgarity continues. A yellow marble staircase with a gold bannister rail curves upwards and becomes a gallery encircling the wide entrance hall. My trainers squeak faintly as we cross the purple marble floor. A door opens at the top of the stairs and an elegant figure in a black silk suit walks slowly down the staircase. The armed guards back away. I hold my ground as he approaches and says, ‘Señorita Walker.’