I tried to tell myself there wasn’t a man alive could have passed her up. But I was hurting now. I knew I’d jeopardised my position, relinquished the upper hand.
As Nadja ordered room service, I put the Glock out of sight, stuffed it between the mattress and the bed springs. I looked for a way the situation might work to my advantage, but found none. Women like her, in situations like this, hold the aces. Christ, Billy was proof of that.
She came back, said, ‘My, my, you are quite the cowboy.’
I had to laugh. ‘Cowboy?’
‘With the gun in your pocket.’
I touched the rim of the bed, where I’d hidden the Glock.
‘Weren’t you about to have a bath?’
‘You are right. I will take a shower. Would you join me?’
‘Rain check. I’ll wait for the food.’
She climbed over me, lingered on a kiss, then slipped off to the shower.
Dressed, I poured another whisky. Got halfway through my second when room service arrived, closely followed by Nadja.
‘Ah, now we eat,’ she said.
‘Yeah…’
‘Come, sit by me.’
She’d ordered eggs Benedict, not my usual fare of choice.
‘You like it?’
‘It’s very… rich.’
‘That will be the hollandaise, dar-ling.’ She lingered on the dar-ling.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
She laughed. ‘We can have the concierge call out for McDonald’s if you prefer.’
I tried to get the conversation back on a business footing.
‘Nadja, I went to see Zalinskas.’
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘How do you think I got this?’ She waved a hand over her eye. ‘He knows about us.’
If Zalinskas thought there was an ‘us’ he was misinformed.
‘ Us?’
‘He… heard you were here.’
‘Yeah, you said.’
She put down her knife and fork. ‘I have lost all appetite.’
‘Nadja, it’s time you laid your cards on the table.’
She stood up, walked over to the window and picked up my cigarettes. ‘Can I take one of these?’
I nodded.
She looked out, blowing smoke onto the windowpane. ‘Benny found out about Billy’s plans.’
‘Plans?’
‘He had big plans, he was going to break away from Benny. He was tired of… how do you say? Playing the second fiddle. He knew he could make enough money to leave Benny for good and set himself up.’
‘What were the plans, Nadja?’
‘I do not know.’ She turned away. ‘I do not know anything.’
I walked over to the window, placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her around. ‘You can tell me. We’re on the same side, remember.’
She sat down. ‘I do not know everything, but I do know some. Billy, he had… knowledge. He had some… information.’
‘And…?’
‘It would pay him. He was going to make someone pay him.’
Things suddenly clicked into place.
‘This was a government minister, wasn’t it?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Who?’
Nadja stood up again, started to walk around. ‘That I do not know. I promise I do not.’
‘Then, Zalinskas… how did he sus this?’
‘Benny knows everything. He finds out by… he has many friends. Perhaps this person found out and went to him, like you say, out of the blue. For help perhaps. It happens all the time, all it takes is for Benny’s name to be put up and things happen or don’t happen.’
So, Billy had got greedy. Saw himself as the Big I Am. But he’d decided to put the make on the wrong man. No wonder Zalinskas was sore.
‘Billy was blackmailing this minister?’
Nadja nodded meekly.
Just what Billy had on the minister was anybody’s guess. The obvious old favourites sprang to mind, it mattered for one reason alone — to point me to Billy’s killer. I needed to know who the minister was.
‘Does that work?’ I pointed at a laptop on Nadja’s desk.
‘Yes of course.’
‘Internet connection?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then log on.’