Chapter 11
Lazlo
The thing with this meeting is I know what I am doing, and yet I am at sea.
Man, I love Sir Benjamin in a way that someone who hasn’t been saved from an IED could ever get the gist of.
I’d walk over lava for him because he did the same for me.
I’m big as a horse yet that day, he half-carried me from the explosion site, my broken and busted arm bleeding.
Two others had died instantly. I had a tourniquet on because he had the sense and guts to apply it even while we were taking fire.
With small arms fire coming from rear and sides, we’d used a gully to retreat.
You don’t ever forget that kind of bravery and friendship.
Yet here I am, watching him step into unknown territory that could land him in jail if discovered. House of Lords, distinguished career, and if I fuck up, or he does, it’s gone.
I stiffen as that man and woman descend the stairs and approach. “This way.” I point them toward the library before doing an about face and heading for it.
With the timber paneled door open, I usher them through then follow and close it. My memory summons their names. Rafael Navarro and a woman I know only as Georgia. If Ben wants to know who killed his son on that boat, I’m in with both feet, boots and all.
“Take a seat.” I indicate the armchairs opposite Sir Benjamin then go to the oak library ladder behind his shoulder and lean on it.
The ancient timber protests. The shelves of a thousand books and the portraits of his Somersby ancestors are watching us.
Hope they approve of this. I’m pretty damn sure they did far worse and then scratched out the diary entries.
History favors the winners and the bold.
“Thank you both for coming.” Benjamin nods to them. “Lazlo is here to take mental notes and, be aware, he is my righthand man. Anything I know he can know. If anything needs doing and I am absent, he’s the one you ask.”
“Understood.” Rafael shifts in the chair, glances at me.
I smile. “Good to see you’re both…healthy.”
He knows what I mean.
My gaze checks at the sight of marks on Georgia’s neck. Love bites, loads of them. She notices and visibly reddens. Makes me wonder if she’s wearing long pants and that sleeved shirt to hide more marks. A spanking is nothing and I heard no screams. Still.
I inhale then let out a long breath. Not my problem, yet. Unless I see him abuse her.
Ben continues, “I have a list of questions I need answered. Not by you necessarily, Rafael, or you, Georgia. Though I’ve written out this list on paper, I won’t be recording this session for obvious reasons. Lazlo will be my unofficial recording device.”
Let’s hope my memory holds out.
“Good,” Rafael says. “Let me add, although she drove away from the crash, Georgia has agreed to stay with me from now on and she wishes to help you find the answers you want. Your son’s killers are the same people who…” He hesitates. “Who hurt her badly.”
Ben addresses her. “Tortured you, I was informed by my contact at the fraternity.”
She sweeps us all with a surprisingly forthright look. I expected some nervousness. “Yes. They tortured me. Though those men are dead, someone sent me to them after I was taken off the yacht.”
“The yacht where Joseph died.” He rubs his hand on the side of his face.
“Okay. The possible complications from this are many. I will be blunt. You know who I am and what I am risking. I’ve already changed things as a result of the attack on you on my land.
Lazlo has increased our security though the acreage makes it a porous defence.
I need gun emplacements.” He looks to me.
“Sorry, sir. Drones and men are it.” We both know he’s joking, still, I wish I could.
“Drones, yes. Whoever those men were sent by, there have been no further incursions. Your entry was detected, Rafael, last night. I trust breakfast was to your liking?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Moving on.” He picks up our list from the small table, the one we pored over earlier this morning.
He ticks the points off with his finger as he goes down it.
“One. Georgia, I know you’re essentially a prisoner of this man.
For reasons.” She opens her mouth. “I will discuss that more, give us time. Two. Security of Somersby Estate was covered. Three. The CNC Fraternity. They give. They take. They want.”
He sighs and I can hear years of frustration there, years of trying to at least appear unaffected and unbiased by political radical rubbish, trends, phobias, business pressure, and all that shit.
Rafael has been sitting forward and now he looks at us both from under his brow. “If you need me to do something?”
“No,” Ben waves a hand. “It’s sorted. I spoke to a man I know well enough to trust. Your frat gives me assurances, help for the Porsche mess. Help investigating Joseph’s death, and in return I…I give them my own soul”—he laughs—“until I stand down from the House.”
Soul is just his humor, but it won’t be nothing. He’s quitting the government position in a year, but I guess they know that. I will make sure it’s all as legal as possible. No more stupidity like what Alden dragged him into.
Legal, except for this woman. I glower at the floor.
“Four. I am told I must attend a board meeting of this fraternity, tonight. I will not be doing this, Mr. Navarro. Lazlo will go in my stead. He represents me in every way, and I am not prepared to step into their realm as they wish me to. Yes, I am aware of what the CNC Fraternity does at their events.” Events is said like it’s a dirty word, and it certainly is that with them.
Or so I hear. “You’re to be there also, and Miss Georgia. ”
Rafael only shrugs. “That’s above my authority—whether you go or not. I’ve no great weight with the board. I didn’t know of this meeting and I do have to see my brother at an arms convention near London, today. I can do this and be back here in time, I’m sure.”
“Okay. Your father would have weight with the board members though. And now, Lazlo, your turn.”
He beckons me forward, so I unhand the ladder and advance until level with his chair.
“Thanks, sir. So I’m supposed to cover what we do with the odd person out here. You, Miss Georgia.” I smile at her. “You’re being kept by Mr. Navarro. We’ve agreed to the rules given. There will be no straying off the property, at all, as you are the weak point.”
“If she does, she’s off to someone stricter,” Rafael says. “I gave her that ultimatum.”
“Good.” A relief, providing we catch her doing whatever she does, if she does anything. I am so ready. To hell with having her here. If I can I will remove her.
Georgia winces. “Shit, you guys. I’m in the room.
I agreed to Rafe’s rules already. I need to find out which assholes sent me to be tortured.
I’m staying. Got that?” She glares at me, which is when I notice she’s found an antique metal letter opener that Ben left on the table next to her armchair, and is playing with it, twisting it from hand to hand as if she’d like to strangle the thing.
The girl has teeth. I broaden my smile, then I walk to her and hold out my hand. “That please. Give it to me.”
Startled at first, she grumpily gives it to me. I return to my position.
Yet I saw some fear on her face as I loomed over her. So she also has some common sense. A low bar, I remind myself.
“Just to make this plain. I’m repeating some things to be sure that we all know the important issues. No leaving this property unless told to and escorted. No blabbing to anyone else. Obey the instructions I or anyone else empowered gives you. Otherwise, your partner will be dealing with you.”
Her head shake comes with an eyeroll.
“A spanking?” I ask Rafael.
“Something like that. The punishment fits the crime.”
Talking over her works wonders. She sinks into the back of her chair, still unhappy but now silent.
“The police are convinced the sinking of the boat and the murders was a planned terrorist action meant to stir up the population, so we will leave them to chase that up. However, we have the only eyewitness. We’re getting further info through the fraternity that the cops would not pass to us.
Until then, our own investigation begins with Miss Georgia.
Now you can speak. You have permission.”
I eye her, waiting for the explosion. It would be interesting to see her spanked in here. Sir Benjamin might disagree, but we could move it outside.
“My god. You are trying to get me angry. Yes?”
Quick, she is. “Never.”
“Why are you hostile? I thought…” She waves vaguely.
“I was protecting you? At your room, I was. Being on that boat that night shows poor judgement. Drugs, drunk, sex with strangers. Going out to sea where getting help is difficult. A young woman among people you barely knew. I heard the police talk about it with Sir Benjamin.”
“Rude. Worse than rude. Everyone else died.” She growled that. “Everyone. And Joseph was there.”
“Joseph never touched drugs,” Sir Ben murmurs.
“I wager he was there partly to do some business deal. That was him. Drunk, maybe, but he was also a man and so the danger would’ve been less to him.
Should have been.” His sadness leaked into his tone for a moment.
“I will agree Lazlo is being too judgmental. And an asshole.” He looks up at me.
“Though we both know why. Apologize. We need to be friendly. Georgia is the one person who might shed some new light on what happened.”
She pinches her mouth. Says nothing. Again, smart.
Fuck. “I suppose I am being judgmental. A little.” Having a daughter die in a puddle in an alleyway has left me off kilter when it comes to these matters. “I apologize.”
“Thank you. You shouldn’t antagonize your only witness.”
“Witness…” I’m about to ask her for details when she adds more.
“I was studying law in Australia. First year, and I’d barely got anywhere, when my mother died. My dad died years ago from cancer. That’s why I was here being stupid.”
“Oh. I am sorry.” Properly this time.
“And…”
I brace myself for some further distressing details.
“And because my relatives were being dicks.”
“Not what I expected you to say. Most relatives are dicks.”
Which is when she snorts and gifts me with a real smile and it’s like the sun coming out after it’s been pissing down rain.
Then Alden barges through the door and sits on the arm of the one spare armchair. “Did I miss anything?”
I knew he was back but not that he was coming in here.
“Not really,” Ben says. “Take a proper seat, Alden. We’re about to hear Georgia tell us about the night the boat sank.”
She waits for him to slide onto the seat. “I don’t remember much, though, after we left the clubs. I guess the cops will have told you the boat name, color, where it left from, who was supposed to be on there. Me, I’ve blanked out most of it. I don’t think it’s the recreational drugs or the drink.”
Recreational drugs, not coke or molly or meth? There’s a potential lawyer in there somewhere, still.
Her voice drops, becomes softer. “Something else was done to me that night, because in the memories I have, the faces, the walls, they’re just too blurred.
And then all the other trauma happened…” She shakes her head.
“I will write it down for you. On paper,” she adds when Ben clears his throat. “Not on a device.”
“Not on a device?” Alden says, bewildered.
“Easier to burn paper,” I intone.
I’m imagining that—paper burning—when my mind skips to someone burning her, a woman writhing in flames, and it really drums into me what the people who sank that boat want to achieve. They need her seriously dead, yesterday. And we don’t even know why because we don’t know the who.
What is there that we can do if she’s forgotten it? There must be something. They’re afraid she will recall something that happened that night.