The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Forty-Four

They broke in through the back door. Ben felt the flimsy lock give under the pressure of his shoulder. He stood back with the rifle shouldered, safety off, and counted one — two — three. No alarm or sudden yelling voices from inside. No twelve-gauge shotgun blast from the hallway. Nothing. He kicked the door open wider and marched into the murky hallway with Silvie one step behind.

It was one of those townhouses that are narrow from side to side, but deceptively deep and tall, on three floors with a converted attic at the top. They swept through the ground floor first, turning on lights as they went, covering each other at every entrance. Back hall, living room, dining room, kitchen, utility room, front hall, a downstairs shower room with cracked tiling and a dripping tap. The place felt cold and empty. There was no smell of cooking in the kitchen, no crockery or cutlery lying about, no lingering coffee aroma in the air, none of the subtle effects of human presence that Ben’s sharp instincts had been trained to detect. But those same instincts told him never to trust an empty house until he’d covered every square inch.

He led the way up the stairs, rifle at his shoulder, finger on the trigger, senses fully alert. There were no guns poking into the stairwell. At the head of the stairs, he motioned to Silvie to go left, while he went right. Doorway to doorway, moving silently, nudging open the door to one empty first-floor room after another. Nobody in any of them. Beds had been stripped. Wardrobes and shelves laid bare. The place was cheaply and minimally furnished, as if most of the stuff had been picked up in second-hand or junk shops. Streicher might be a wealthy man, but he obviously didn’t believe in luxurious accommodation for his faithful cohorts.

The first floor was clear. Five minutes later, the second floor proved to be too. Three more bedrooms, spaced out around a galleried landing. Ben moved fast from one empty room to the next.

The second was a bedroom that had been adapted into a recreation room, furnished with two mismatched sofas and a pine table in one corner surrounded by plain wooden chairs. There was a well-thumbed back issue of American Rifleman lying on the table, next to the half-eaten remains of a takeaway meal for two that had been consumed straight out of its packaging.

Ben walked over to the table. Four silvery aluminium trays, two more or less scraped empty and two still three-quarters uneaten. In one of those, the leftover noodles were slowly drying and going hard and crusty. The other was full of some kind of dark, congealing sauce with bits of what was presumably meat inside. He picked up the foil container, lifted it to his nose and sniffed. Smelled like chicken in oyster sauce. Or maybe alley cat in macerated fish paste. He dipped a finger and dabbed it against his tongue. It was virtually uneatable, but not because it had been sitting there rotting for days. Ben’s guess was that it had been pretty uneatable to start with, and only about twenty-four hours old. When you spent some time in the British Army, you got to be a decent judge of things like that.

The white paper bag the food had come in was lying rumpled on the table. Ben straightened it out and saw the name of the takeaway, with an address printed on one side.

The house sweep was almost done. Ben left Silvie to check the last bedroom while he trotted up the final staircase to the attic space at the top of the house. He knew it would be empty before he got there. Turned on the light and looked around him. It had been converted into its own self-contained flat, with a single bedroom and a kitchenette and living space combined. No sign of habitation, not within the last few days.

‘They’re gone,’ Silvie said from the stairs. ‘Shit.’

‘They must have been alerted when you and Breslin never returned,’ Ben said, walking down to join her. He let the rifle hang loosely in his hands, the safety back on now that the danger was past.

‘Then that’s it,’ she said. ‘We’re nowhere again.’

‘Which room was yours?’ Ben asked.

‘The small one on the second floor. Breslin was next door.’

‘Who used the upstairs flat?’

‘Streicher and his girlfriend, when they were around. Never longer than a single night at a time.’

‘What about the rec room?’

‘It was a spare they used as a spillover living room when we had a full house,’ she said. ‘Or when Streicher was using the lounge downstairs for one of his private conferences with the inner circle. Torben Roth, Holger Grubitz and some of the other guys tended to use it as a drinking and chow den.’

‘Chinese?’

‘Pizza,’ she said. ‘There’s a takeaway joint just up the street where they’d go for a quick run out.’

‘Is it an okay kind of place?’ he asked.

‘I’ve had worse. Don’t tell me you’re hungry again.’

‘Not exactly. Let me show you something.’ Ben led her back into the rec room.

‘Yuck,’ she said, pulling a face at the sight and smell of the half-finished food. ‘You’d have to be desperate.’

‘Super Delight,’ Ben said, pointing at the paper bag.

‘Who are they trying to kid, with a name like that?’

‘It didn’t come from this neighbourhood,’ Ben said. ‘The address is in Ouchy, wherever that is. The cab driver will know, if he hasn’t buggered off already.’

‘It’s a district of the city,’ she said. ‘An old port, a few kilometres to the south of here.’

He looked at her. ‘I thought you said you didn’t know the area.’

‘History nerd, remember? October, nineteen-twelve. Signing of the First Treaty of Lausanne in Ouchy, between Italy and the Ottoman Empire, spelling the end of the Italo-Turkish War.’ She smiled sheepishly. ‘What a team, huh?’

‘Nobody drives several kilometres for slush like Super Delight dishes out,’ he said. ‘Not when they’ve got a reasonably decent pizza joint close by. Which makes me think I’m right.’

‘Right about what?’

‘Where did they all go in such a hurry?’ he said. ‘My guess is they used a couple of cars to ferry everyone out, plus all their stuff. Maybe took them two or three trips. Which would suggest they didn’t drive that far. The two guys driving could have picked up the food locally on their way back, for a quick snack before heading off. Except one of them didn’t appear too keen on it. Maybe a sign of good taste.’

‘Another safe house?’

‘You said yourself, Streicher’s rich enough to have properties all over the place.’

‘Ouchy,’ she said. ‘It’s worth a try.’

‘It’s all we’ve got,’ he said.