They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

22 22 July 2007 — Roel Albazi

The Song Wu Corporation headquarters were housed in a massive seven-storey building that was part warehouse, part offices. It was one of many ugly precast concrete structures that rose, with the very barest nod to Planning, in the building frenzy that followed in the aftermath of the Second World War. If anyone wanted to be anonymous, this New England hill area of Brighton, a short distance from the station, was the place to do it.

The ground floor and basement contained the vast range of food products, mostly imported from China, which the Corporation supplied to restaurants and specialist grocery stores around the south of England. On the floors above were the administration offices.

It was one of Song Wu’s affectations that visitors to her penthouse office were never permitted to arrive under their own steam, they were always brought here in a blacked-out Mercedes, and Roel Albazi, sitting in the dark rear of the car that had collected him from outside his office in Shoreham, had never liked this.

It was all part of her psychological play. Making visitors — and all visitors were here for business purposes — feel a little out of their comfort zones, a little beholden to her, and a little bit weakened and subservient. If a meeting went well, you were chauffeured back again afterwards. But if it did not go well, you were escorted to the receiving bay and then you were on your own. Albazi knew the game but what choice did he have?

The inscrutably silent chauffeur — just like all the Song Wu staff — did not respond to any of Albazi’s attempts at conversation. Twenty minutes after collecting him from outside his Shoreham office, the Mercedes dipped down a steep ramp beneath a rising, shuttered door, into the lower level of the ground floor, passing a forklift truck stacked with pallets, and pulled up in front of the metal gate of the elevator.

Albazi’s door was opened by a security guard with a rictus smile and equally dead eyes, who pressed the button for the elevator. The wide metal door opened as painfully slowly as the creaking, groaning and clanging ride up that followed. Albazi wondered every time he came here why Song Wu didn’t spend just the tiniest bit of her fortune on modernizing at least the lift — surely it drove her nuts too? But then, everything about this place indicated someone who didn’t care about their surroundings, just what it enabled — the money.

Except for her office itself, that was something else. As the elevator finally stopped with a jolt, the doors opened onto what could have been an anteroom in a Chinese palace. High, domed ceiling, bright red, gold, black and mother-of-pearl, with ornate lanterns, huge vases and figurines on plinths. At the far end were double bamboo doors, ornately latticed, with a clone of the guard down below standing in front.

As Albazi approached along the mosaic tiled floor towards him, the guard put out his hands, cautioning him, then patted him down. Only when he was satisfied that the Albanian was packing nothing more lethal than a mobile phone did he pull open the double doors to reveal Song Wu’s opulent office. Although Albazi had been here on many occasions, it never failed to impress.

She sat behind her magnificent, uncluttered, black lacquer desk, with a view through the window behind her across the streets and terraces to the east of the city and the racecourse, staring imperiously at her visitor. She was plump, but her girth was elegantly disguised inside a red silk blouse embroidered with Chinese symbols and tied at the front with a huge red bow. Matching bright red fabric earrings, like miniature sash cords, hung either side of her face, and a large ruby pendant on a gold chain nestled among the fleshy folds of her neck. She wore gold rings on each of her fingers, the nails of which were immaculately varnished.

A solitary joss stick stood in a jade incense burner on either side of the desk, from which rose little coils of jasmine-scented smoke. The only other objects on the desk were three exquisitely carved ivory photograph frames facing away from him, a red leather-bound notebook and a red pen.

If Song Wu was anyone else, Albazi was certain she would be considered obese, but she wasn’t anyone else. Somehow, she managed to carry her size with elegance, and even elan. Compared to the rest of her body, her face seemed disproportionally small, but she was strangely attractive, Albazi thought, with a perfect complexion, and black hair harshly raked back into a chic bob. She had a tiny rosebud mouth and eyes the colour of a glacier. He had once been to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta and she reminded him a little of the caricature of the queen. But there was no humour in Song Wu’s world. Or music. Or, so far as Albazi could tell, joy.

Without moving a muscle, both her arms resting on her desktop, she said, ‘Sit down, please, Mr Albazi.’

He sat, knowing better than to attempt any small talk.

As he perched on the edge of one of the two chairs facing her, Song Wu said, calmly, ‘You don’t know where they are, Mr Albazi?’ Her cut-glass English had no trace of an accent and she spoke with an almost girlish voice like a rather old-fashioned BBC newscaster. ‘Two hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds of my money? How do I know these people are real? How do I know you have not just made them up, Mr Albazi? Invented them as a way to steal my money, just like your predecessor?’

Her voice was getting louder, icier. But she remained deadly calm, too calm.

Roel Albazi sat uncomfortably, trying hard to look confident, although inside he was shaking. He was trying to focus, remembering what was important. Mianzi — Face. He needed to show Song Wu this and to allow her this, too. Face. Strength and respect. But being in her presence took all his confidence away. The whole ritual of arriving here was designed to do exactly that, he knew.

‘We have located two of the defaulters,’ he lied. He was trying to sound strong and hard, to keep face, but his voice came out small and almost reedy. ‘Alan Mitten and Robert Rhys. Skender has their addresses, he is going to sort them out.’

‘Sort them out?’

‘Collect.’

‘And this Sandra — Sandy — Grace? What is the update?’

‘We are on it.’

‘We?’

‘Me, Skender and Karter.’

She gave Albazi a strange look. He couldn’t figure it out but it unsettled him. ‘You and Skender and your little gorilla. You are very dependent on Skender, aren’t you?’

‘He’s a good man, as is Joe Karter.’

‘I decide on who is a good person and who is not, Mr Albazi.’

‘Of course. But they both worked for me for ten years before I... we... began to work for you and I completely trust them to do any job I give them.’

‘You would struggle without Skender?’

Albazi shrugged. ‘I take care of him, I don’t think he’s going to be leaving me anytime soon.’

‘Really?’ she said, with the trace of a smile that made her look colder, not warmer. ‘He’s not leaving you?’

‘No.’ Albazi felt his Adam’s apple rise. His mouth felt dry, his stomach was churning. He felt queasy and needed a drink of water. But to ask for anything would be weakness. Loss of face.

‘So, Mr Albazi, you had surveillance on Sandra Grace for several days, yes?’

‘Yes, Skender kept watch on her. And two other people I use when I need them.’

‘A watch twenty-four-seven?’

‘I didn’t feel that was necessary.’

Her eyebrows raised into two small, dark arcs. ‘You did not? You did not feel it was necessary to put twenty-four-hour surveillance on someone who owed me one hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Was that to save you the expense of paying Mr Skender and other people more than you needed?’

‘No, we were attracting too much attention from some of the Graces’ neighbours. A lady who lives in the house directly opposite is the local neighbourhood busybody and she marched up to Joe Karter, banged on the window, told him she had taken down the registration and demanded to know what he was doing. He told her he was a location scout for a movie company. After that, he moved further up the street.’ Albazi shrugged. The look she was giving him was really frightening him. Acidic bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it back down. His insides felt like they were in a blender. ‘I have no reason to believe Sandy Grace is a flight risk.’

‘You look very nervous, Mr Albazi. Is there something you are failing to tell me?’

‘No — I’m aware that it is not good, but we are on it — on all three of our defaulters.’

‘I think you are better off without Skender,’ she said. ‘It might concentrate your mind if you are not delegating to your flunkeys.’

‘He’s a good man — Joe too — they both are,’ Albazi replied, but his voice tailed off even before he had finished the sentence. He was distracted suddenly by one of his three phones ringing. Apologetically, he pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display. It was a number he did not recognize. Looking back up at Song Wu, he said, ‘This is the number Sandy Grace has. It could be her calling me.’

‘You’d better answer it.’

He stood up and turned away from her, tapping the phone and putting it to his ear. ‘Hello?’ he said. But there was no sound from the other end. Conscious of Song Wu watching him, he said again, ‘Hello? Who is this? Hello? Hello?’ After several more seconds of silence, he hit the red button and turned back to her with a shrug. As he sat back down he said, ‘Whoever it was must have been in a bad reception area. Hopefully they’ll—’

His voice froze in his gullet as he perched back on the edge of the chair and saw the three ivory photograph frames on Song Wu’s desk, which had all been facing away from him. All three now faced him.

One was a bearded, very old and contented-looking man in a floppy hat, with a fishing rod in one hand and a cigarette in the other, on a riverbank.

Another was of a couple in their sixties standing behind a higgledy-piggledy stall stacked with drab jumpers and sweatshirts. It was in a street outside a shop that had a display of lurid phone covers and advertised, in Albanian, mobile-phone repairs — all makes. The man, tubby and sad-faced, had a mop of grey hair, wore a black top and baggy jeans. The woman, of similar build, and dressed in shapeless clothes, was holding up a garment for a customer.

The third contained a photograph of a handsome, dark-haired woman in her late thirties. She stood in front of an ornamental pond with spouting fountains, her arms around an almost impossibly cute little girl of about three, with long dark hair.

Albazi was transfixed by them. The old man was his grand-father. The couple behind the clothes stall were his mother and father. The woman with the little girl, in front of the ornamental pond, was his sister and her daughter — his niece.

‘Next time you come to see me, you come with two hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds. You will come to me in exactly forty-eight hours, with the cash, a money-order, a letter of credit, whatever. My car will collect you. Are you very clear of the consequences if you don’t? Which one of these three photographs will not be here on your next visit?’

For some moments, Albazi barely heard her.

Song Wu’s message could not be clearer. In the Albanian community, there was a culture of retribution being carried out against innocent members of the target’s family, back home in their country.

His insides in turmoil, Albazi barely made it back out through the double doors and down to the lower level. There was no Mercedes like the one that brought him here. Only the security guard, who pressed the button to raise the shuttered gate.

He just got up the steep concrete ramp before he sank to his knees and threw up on the pavement.