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.Angelique hides her anxiety behind a poker face: she always knew she’d have to negotiate, and with an arch-haggler no less, but she’d told herself she wouldn’t go above one thousand and the bugger was starting at two.She had the money, but she didn’t know what else she was going to need it for in her secret little quest.She’s about to lie that it’s not worth that to her, fearing that this will tell him it’s worth at least that to her, when he reveals he wasn’t indicating a price at all.‘Twice I went after him,’ he says.‘First time, I had him handcuffed to a pillar; hands and feet.Thirty seconds later, it’s my hands, my feet that’s chained to the same pillar.Second time, I didn’t fare any better.Not against him, anyway.That’s why I didn’t fancy the bank’s chances, or anyone else’s.’‘Who else did you offer this information to?’‘The notorious Mr Bud Hannigan’s people put me on to Innez in the first place.But by the time I got back from me travels, as you’ll know, Mr Hannigan had changed his titular prefix from “the notorious” to “the late”, and his successors had different priorities.Besides, I had different priorities myself by that time.My second encounter with Mr Innez convinced me to get out of that whole game.You live and learn, I always say, and if you don’t learn, you might not live.’‘I realise it’s going to cost me,’ she states, taking his meanderings to be a means of dangling the goods.‘I’ve got five hundred in cash right here.’‘Listen, darlin’, I will happily take your wonga to give you the name he was using and the place I last saw him.But the most valuable thing I could give you would be to keep this shut.That way, I’d be sparing you a lot more than just your money.’Angelique takes out a roll of notes from her bag.‘I only want to talk to him.’Fleet pauses to think for a second, then to her surprise accepts the roll.‘I sincerely hope that’s true, love,’ he says, flipping through the notes to count them.‘Because even if you go after him with the whole of the SAS, he’ll find a way of vanishing.Just when you think you’ve got him, you find you’re left holding sand.But then you know that, don’t you, because I’m guessing he’s vanished from you before.’Angelique tries not to betray any affirmation, but she’d be as well nodding like a car ornament.They both know.‘See, when he had me handcuffed, I drew on a bit of the old bravado and told him I’d catch up with him again.I am thus compelled to ask you the same question he put to me at that point, which was this: what makes you think it’ll be any different next time?’Angelique feels a bullet to the heart, for this is the question she’s been asking herself since the night Zal slipped silently from her flat while she slept.‘I don’t have an answer,’ she admits.‘But same as you, I need to find out first hand.’Fleet nods, understanding but regretful, like he knows from his own experience that this is a mistake she has to make for herself, and from which she cannot be dissuaded.‘Second time I went after him, that was what did it for me,’ Fleet says, unbidden.‘He was on a cruise ship, working as a magician.Watching him perform, I thought I knew his tricks, thought I could suss him out.Instead, I learned that this guy would always be one step ahead, and I’d never suss him.Course, I only worked that out in retrospect.At the time, I thought he was in my grasp.One minute I was watching him onstage – being handcuffed to a pillar, which was what tipped me off things might be going a bit hooky.Next thing I know – I mean literally, next thing I know – I wake up in a lifeboat in the fucking Atlantic.Scuse the language, my dear, but it still gives me the shivers thinking about it.’‘How long were you adrift?’ she asks, wondering how ruthless Zal was prepared to be.She already knows he’s killed when he had to.‘Long enough to precipitate a career change, I’ll say that much.Nah, he’d hidden a transmitter on the boat, hadn’t he? He never abandoned me to the fates, but he did give me a very long dark night of the soul before salvation arrived: as it happened, in the shape of Señorita Yolanda Gomez and her colleagues on the Islas Canarias coastguard
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