Read Online Hidden Man by Charles Cumming - Free Book Online Page B

around the hotel lobbies and mezzanine floors, looking for businessmen with a wedding ring…’
    Taploe essayed an exaggerated frown, as if the moral implications of Macklin’s behaviour had briefly overwhelmed him. He looked visibly disappointed.
    ‘And is Mark involved with them as well?’
    ‘Good God, no.’
    Keen’s reply was abrupt and Taploe wondered if he might have offended him. He found himself saying ‘Of course, sorry,’ and then again resented his own awkwardness. A clatter of schoolgirls came down into the basement bearing tall beakers of coffee. One had a lit cigarette in her hand and was smoking it withoutskill, like someone sucking on the end of a pencil.
    ‘Is that an area you’re investigating?’ Keen asked. ‘Women being trafficked from eastern Europe, Russia and so on?’
    Taploe’s eyes flicked across to the Japanese student who was still engrossed in his notes. Next to him, about three feet away, sat a vast man in his late thirties - surely American - dressed head to toe in Reebok sportswear. He was slowly typing an email using only the index finger of his left hand.
    ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he said, and swallowed a long intake of still-hot coffee. The roof of his mouth throbbed. ‘Did Mark add anything else in connection to that?’
    ‘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 occasionalescort, 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