Free Luc: A Spy Thriller by Greg Coppin

licence plates in Belize?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘You don’t have an answer?’
    He shrugged again.
    ‘Maybe it’s because you’re proud to be Guatemalan,’ I said. ‘Or to you this is Guatemala.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. And then a more definite: ‘Yes.’
    ‘Hang the fact that it massively increases your chances of being caught and that no serious outfit would even dream of it.’
    He looked at me and screwed up his mouth. He shrugged again.
    ‘Do you ever feel you’re being used, Aruzo?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Ever heard of a man called Ernesto Giuttieri?’
    ‘No.’
    I turned to Mike. ‘Has he given you the code for the phone yet?’ I asked.
    Mike shook his head. ‘He’s not budging on that.’
    ‘I told you,’ Pinto said. ‘I don’t know code.’
    I stared at him. ‘What do you mean you don’t know the code?’
    ‘I mean I don’t know it. It’s not my phone. I didn’t have a phone. That’s Hector’s phone. You want code, you shouldn’t shoot him in face.’
    ‘They didn’t give you a phone?’ I asked him.
    Pinto shrugged.
    ‘Who hired you?’
    ‘Hired me?’
    ‘For your overseas job. Who hired you?’
    ‘I am an activist. I am engaged in an armed struggle. Nobody hired me.’
    ‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, but balls .’
    Pinto held his bandaged hands up. ‘I need to use toilet,’ he said, looking between me and Mike.
    I smiled thinly and looked across at Mike. ‘I’ll leave him with you.’
    ***
    One of those exotic birds that I don’t know the name of chirruped rhythmically outside the window as I clicked another newspaper story about Ernesto Giuttieri on the laptop. It brought up a story from the The Belize Times about Giuttieri’s involvement in the takeover of the Belizean company Triple Door Refrigeration.
    The story seemed to insinuate bad practice by the Giuttieri Corporation, but didn’t say it outright. I read until the end and then clicked on another story.
    The overarching picture I was getting of Giuttieri was of a powerful figure, a businessman, who was no doubt involved in illegal practices, but who was able now to stay one step ahead of the authorities. It was also clear that, certainly recently, very little else was known about him. While his businesses ran in various countries, it was not clear to me where exactly Giuttieri was. The last known sighting that I could find was three years ago in Barbados.
    One other thing chimed. Four of the articles I had read were written by the same journalist. They were not entirely complimentary of the man, although due to the libel laws, the journalist herself hadn’t been able to outright accuse Giuttieri of anything. Reading between the lines, it seemed to me that she was itching to.
    I scrolled up to the byline again: Vivienne Marlow.
    As the colourful bird outside fluttered into view, I pulled the phone from my jacket pocket and scrolled across to the Contacts page.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER NINETEEN
    Vivienne Marlow took a swig of rum and then cracked the empty glass onto the wooden coffee table. She exhaled and then looked up at me.
    ‘He’s a big man,’ she said. ‘I mean size wise. He’s large. He weighs a ton. You look at pictures of him now and you look at pictures of him when he was young, it’s almost impossible to believe that they are the same person.’ She picked up the bottle of One Oak Rum and refilled her glass. ‘But they are,’ she said.
    I had tracked Vivienne Marlow down to a wooden bungalow in Orange Walk. She had left her previous newspaper, the Amandala , a year ago and had now turned freelance. We were sitting in her lounge area, a wooden table between us. Stacks of books, magazines and newspapers were piled up on almost every available surface around us.
    ‘What was Giuttieri like when he was younger?’ I asked.
    ‘Thanks for bringing this man back into my life,’ she said. She downed some more of the drink.
    ‘Why, does he scare you?’
    ‘Ernesto Giuttieri?’ She shrugged.