The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [23]
‘Only that Thomas fools around with them in his hotel room. Perhaps he gets a discount.’
Taploe did not smile.
‘The impression I was given,’ Keen continued, ‘is that our lawyer friend is somewhat overwhelmed by the glamour of the way things work over there, the influence those boys wield. Unchecked power and unlimited violence. Excessive privilege for the select few. Free access to money, girls, narcotics, fast cars, restaurants; he’s in thrall to it all. The adrenalin, you see? Nothing like it over here, back in the old country.’
‘Yes,’ was all that Taploe managed to say, though everything that Keen was telling him fitted the emerging profile of Thomas Macklin. London surveillance had revealed nothing out of the ordinary: an on-off girlfriend (a receptionist in the City), the occasional escort, no tendency to gamble, a mild, recreational cocaine habit. He had an enthusiasm for lap-dancing and expensive clothes, few close friends, and a tendency to become aggressive when drunk. Macklin paid his bills regularly, but at any one time his major credit card - Visa - was never less than two or three thousand pounds in the red. He had sufficient funds in other bank accounts to pay the debt off, but for some reason failed to do so; Paul Quinn, Taploe’s closest associate on the case, had put this down to little more than negligence. There was nothing unusual about Macklin’s phone records, either at work, from home or on his mobile, save for the fact that he always called his Kukushkin contact in London from public telephone boxes, from which the calls were harder to trace. That, at the very least, hinted at a degree of concealment. The Internet, thus far, had revealed little that Quinn and Taploe did not already know: Macklin used email frequently, but only to stay in touch with developments within Libra worldwide. There had been nothing of any consequence to the ongoing investigation in the analysis of his Internet traffic, only incidents that coloured the psychological profile.
‘And Mark? That sort of lifestyle doesn’t appeal to him?’ Taploe asked.
Keen swallowed his espresso in a single controlled gulp.
‘I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘He’s more sensible, more down to earth. Like his father.’
Taploe did not acknowledge the joke. He thought that this would help him to make up some ground.
‘But you’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world,’ he said, deciding to take a risk. ‘You can understand why Thomas might be tempted by the high life?’
Keen looked at him very quickly. His eyes appeared to blacken at the implication.
‘Thomas is a very different animal, Stephen, I can assure you. The lawyer’s a barrow boy, a bright entrepreneur out for whatever he can get. His sort usually run into trouble.’
A braver part of Taploe wanted to embarrass Keen into an explanation of the term ‘barrow boy’, but he let it go.
‘And the boss?’ he said. ‘How does Sebastian fit into the picture? How does he benefit from the Russian organization?’
Keen shifted slowly in his chair.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s absolutely no point in asking me about Roth.’ The use of his surname was a slip. ‘I should have thought that these were the sort of questions to which you might already have answers. As I told you at our previous meeting, my organization doesn’t tend to meet the chaps at the top of the tree. They send their underlings, their lawyers. Mr Ro - ‘This time he checked himself. ‘Sebastian is a man about whom I know very little. I take it as read that he is greedy. I take it as read that he is unscrupulous. So many of us are, Stephen. But why would he be stupid enough to get involved with the Thieves? He must understand the power they exert in Russia? He’d be in over his head, could very quickly lose control of all his investments. It simply doesn’t make sense.’
‘And did Divisar warn him about that?’
‘Of course we did. Unfortunately Thomas ignored our advice to get a Russian partner on board whose contacts would have facilitated the company