by Carl Goodman
There were a number of photographs too. Eva saw several by Annie Leibovitz, whose images also had a Pre-Raphaelite quality to them. Two were labelled as by Diane Arbus. Eva stopped in front of another. She had to look twice. ‘Is that you?’
Lily Yu almost shrieked with delight. ‘It is! I wondered if you’d recognise me!’ The image was stark, in black and white with warm grey mid-tones. It showed Yu, naked as ever, lying partly in shade somewhere that must have been extraordinarily hot. Long shadows fell over her. Eva stared. Kept staring. Yu moved closer to her; Eva barely noticed.
‘Who took this?’ she asked eventually.
‘Would you believe it’s by Fredrick Huss?’ She almost whispered in her ear. ‘It’s Marrakesh, about five years ago. Fredrick is quite the photographer on the quiet. He’s not a professional but every now and then he does create something quite remarkable, Berta says.’ The image almost seared itself onto Eva’s eyes. She could feel Yu’s breath on her shoulder now. ‘Are you sure you still need to wear your swimsuit?’
She wanted to move, but she needed to understand what she was seeing. After a few moments she turned to Yu. ‘I have to go.’
Yu looked crestfallen, ‘Oh Eva, I’m so sorry,’ she began, but Eva shook her head.
‘It’s not my thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered but it’s not that. I really do have to go,’ she said as she turned to leave the room. Yu still looked dejected, so Eva pecked her on the cheek. ‘Look after yourself, Lily,’ she told her. Even she could hear the police officer in her voice. ‘And tell Berta I think I found what I was looking for.’
Chapter Twenty
The text from Hadley made her seethe. A few terse, clipped sentences questioning whether the staged raid had been a complete waste of time and effort. Sitting on her bed with the box from Warren Muir’s safe next to her, Eva felt confident it had not, although she didn’t feel inclined to let Hadley know that yet. Instead she sent back a carefully non-committal message assuring him of steady progress. Without meaning to she glanced at the screen of the laptop on her table. The numbers still crept upwards. There had been no break yet but it would come soon, she felt certain of that, although if anyone had pressed her she could not have said why. The inevitability of number crunching, she supposed. The truth was always in the data.
Eva checked her other messages then. When she saw one from a number she had now memorised she almost gasped with excitement. ‘Grau Laska,’ it read, ‘but PLEASE be careful.’ The excitement faded almost instantly and was replaced by confusion. What was Grau Laska? A company, a person, a place? Eva sighed and started composing messages of her own.
Flynn, Newton and Chakrabati would be quietly cursing her now, she thought. It was going to be a long night.
* * *
The three of them sat in bemused silence as Eva described her experience at Berta Nicholson’s party. ‘So basically you hung out at an orgy,’ Flynn said when she had finished.
‘And didn’t invite us,’ Newton complained.
Raj held up his hands. ‘I’m a happily married man. I know, my wife tells me so. She’d have had my bollocks for earrings if I’d gone.’
‘Try to focus,’ Eva muttered to cover her embarrassment. ‘It’s the photo that’s the important thing. The shadows.’
‘It’s hard to understand without seeing it,’ Newton said. ‘You didn’t get it on your phone?’
‘I didn’t have it with me,’ Eva said, and left it at that. ‘Look, it’s about the shadows. Lily Yu was posed in exactly the same way he had laid out the women, but it was the lines of light and shade along her that made the image remarkable. She was lying under some sort of rail or grating. She said the photo was taken in Marrakesh. It was really high-contrast. It must have been brilliant sunlight. The shadow lines looked exactly like the markings on the bodies.’
‘What about the eyes?’ Flynn asked.
A good question. Eva thought back. ‘I couldn’t see them. I mean they weren’t visible in the photo. It was down to the play of light and shade. The shadows fell directly over the eyes. Yes,’ she decided, ‘that’s right. You could imagine from the photo she didn’t have eyes because there was complete darkness over that section of the face.’
‘It seems like one hell of a coincidence,’ Newton said.
‘Doesn’t it just?’ She took a breath. ‘That’s not all.’ Eva told them about the text she had received just before messaging them.
Raj clapped his hands with delight. ‘Somebody upstairs is smiling on us today. So what is Grau Laska?’
‘Ah. Not a damn clue.’
‘Sounds like a beer,’ Flynn mused. She sounded almost wistful. Eva raised an eyebrow. Raj turned to his computer.
‘Not helpful,’ he pronounced after a minute or so. ‘Nothing on that combination of words, but individually they come back with a bucket-load of hits ranging from a style of shirt to a town in who knows where. It’s going to take some digging.’
‘Are you up for that?’ Eva asked.
Raj grinned. ‘I have a task, a computer and a list of takeaways. And I’ve still got my bollocks. What more could I ask for?’
Eva grinned back and turned to Newton. ‘Are you happy to take over running financials on the Chatham Centre?’
Newton nodded. ‘Yep. Raj can help out if I get stuck but to be honest I’ve done reports and accounts and Companies House stuff before. I could maybe hunt around some of the brokerage sites to see if anyone’s doing any market intelligence on them? I might have to buy a couple of reports for that, though.’
‘Run it by me first if you do,’ Eva instructed. ‘The DCI will have my arse if we blow her budgets. Becks,’ she said, turning to Flynn. ‘I need you to do full background on Fredrick Huss and New Thought. Get what you can on the church, but he’s the focus.’
‘On the basis of one photo,’ Flynn pointed out.
‘You had to be there,’ Eva said. Then she shrugged. ‘You know what I mean. You’d understand if I’d been able to get an image of the photo, but I just couldn’t. I don’t want to go back to Berta in case it alarms her and she says something. I mean I trust her, but she’s got her limits.’
‘I get it,’ Flynn said. ‘A deep dive on one Fredrick Huss, pastor of New Thought transcendentalist church that’s got some lunatic painter spending years tarting up a wall.’
Eva ignored her scepticism. ‘Mathew Harred is an interesting character. He’s a painter but you wouldn’t want to cross him.’ She described Harred to Flynn.
‘Maybe I should just go and interview him myself, boss,’ Flynn said.
Eva disregarded the lascivious look. ‘Do just that if you need to. I don’t think he’s involved, I think you need to concentrate on Huss, but then again. Keep an open mind.’
‘Always,’ Flynn said. Eva knew it was a lie.
‘Thank you, folks,’ Eva said as she wrapped up. ‘I really appreciate this. It’s time for a bit of parallel processing, so let’s see what we can track down before it gets too late.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got to step out for an hour or so but I’ll be back later. I’ll have my phone on silent but message me if anything urgent comes up.’
‘Everything alright?’ Flynn asked. Her concern seemed genuine. The incident with the scaffolding lorry had seemed like an elephant in the room for a while.
‘Yes,’ Eva assured her. She hunted for an excuse. ‘I’ve just got to see a man about a dog,’ she told them as she left the incident room.
It was one of her grandfather’s expressions, one she hadn’t thought about in years. It brought back warm summer days in the West Country, memories of hiding in long grass and rolling down gently sloping hills. It could mean anything; she had understood that from an early age, from a trip to the pub to going for a pee. Seeing a man about a dog. That was exactly the way she felt when she turned up at Jeffrey Cowan’s door unannounced.
He looked surprised to see her. ‘Sorry, is this not a convenient time?’ Eva asked as he held on to the door. Cowan seemed al
most flustered.
‘I have family over,’ he explained after a moment. ‘I try to avoid mixing work with that.’
‘You’re retired,’ Eva reminded him.
‘Nevertheless.’
She took a breath. ‘It will only take a minute. I just wanted to ask you about a case?’ Cowan looked exasperated, but then he nodded. ‘Do you remember a restaurant owner called Phillip Jennings?’
‘It’s not like I could forget him,’ Cowan said. ‘It was a huge case. It tied us in knots for months. Jennings had a string of places. One of them was on the London Road, a pizzeria if I remember correctly. We had intelligence that said it was a front for money laundering. There was a raid, all the usual.’
‘So what happened?’
Cowan shrugged. ‘It turned out to be more complicated than it first appeared. Our people were out of their depth. There was something funny going on with the restaurant, but it wasn’t money laundering. Jennings was into tax avoidance, but when we went digging deeply enough it turned out all his schemes were legitimate. Convoluted, but he had a string of restaurants right around Europe and he kept moving ownership between them. HMRC were much aggrieved, but they couldn’t put a finger on him.’
Eva smiled. ‘That turns out not to be the case,’ she said.
Cowan didn’t understand. ‘What?’
She took her phone out and held it up. On the screen was a photo of one of the documents she had found in Warren Muir’s box, the one he called his pension fund. Muir and the thugs who hung around the pub on the Allen estate had been the foot soldiers of Razin’s local business. Muir must quite literally know where all the bodies were buried. Eva flicked through screens. There were more documents. ‘You almost had him. It wasn’t just money laundering. Jennings ran one of the main supply lines used by Razin’s organisation to bring drugs in and distribute them. Jennings was shifting between twenty and thirty million a year and then using his restaurants to hide the takings. He was even using delivery drivers on mopeds to distribute the stuff. That was the big one; the one that could have put a sizeable dent in Razin’s operation because once this unravelled, the forward connections would have been obvious. Somebody got word to Jennings, though. Razin’s people had contingency plans. Jennings’ network was wound up almost overnight and a carefully prepared cover story was dropped in its place. Somebody let Jennings know what was coming, somebody very senior. I’m close to finding out who.’
From inside the house she heard a voice. ‘Daddy? Who’s that?’ A woman’s voice; it struck her as unsteady; it whined a little.
‘It’s nothing, darling,’ Cowan called back. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He turned to Eva. The appearance of being flustered had not gone away she saw, quite the opposite. ‘For God’s sake, Eva,’ Cowan whispered. ‘Be careful. They’ve tried to kill you once. If they know you have this they’ll do it again. These people are the most dangerous you’ll ever come across. Forget Colin Lynch, he was an amateur in comparison.’
Eva did not blink. ‘I know that,’ she told him.
Cowan did not seem to notice the look she was giving him. He kept glancing inside. ‘I know you want to ask me something but I can’t answer right now. Come back in a few days. I have to go,’ he said. He closed the door in her face.
She stared at the door knocker for a moment – it was an ornate mass of brass fashioned in the shape of some allegorical fish. She could have simply lifted it, dropped it and then repeated the process over and over, forcing Cowan to return. How much trouble would that make for Cowan’s daughter? How would she react?
Eva stood contemplating the door knocker for another few seconds. Then she turned and walked away.
* * *
It struck her that evening as she stood in the supermarket trying to work out which ready meal would take least time to microwave. Fluorescent lights lit the cavernous space and drove out shadows. Cold air drifted from chiller cabinets and made her shiver. Somewhere in-between Beef Lasagne and Spaghetti Carbonara Eva suddenly had the overwhelming suspicion she was being followed.
She looked up and down the aisle, but she was alone. When she walked towards the beers, wines and spirits section she spotted no more than a dozen other shoppers with baskets dawdling between fixtures. She stopped by an orange sign announcing a buy one get one free offer and looked around surreptitiously. The feeling would not go away.
What had she seen? Something from the corner of her eye, a figure that had come close to her once too often? Pattern recognition, she reminded herself, the most powerful human cognitive skill. How our brains evolved to work, to see predators in the undergrowth and prey on the savannah. She kept watching in case someone stood out, a silhouette or a profile, an outline that seemed familiar, but she spotted nothing. Shoppers filled their baskets. The ready meal and a couple of bottles of imported beer were all she wanted. She kept looking around as she made her way towards the self-service checkouts, kept glancing up as she scanned the barcodes. Nothing, she thought as she left the supermarket; nothing and no one. Still the feeling would not go away.
As she lay in bed that night she imagined a sword hanging above her, suspended only by a thread. Another story from her childhood. Eva wondered why those memories seemed to be resurfacing more frequently now. A sword suspended by a thread, and only a matter of time before the thread would break. Only a matter of time before Razin’s people tried to kill her again.
Hadley must know that too, she thought as she lay there. He must, because Hadley had fixed everything. Her untimely promotion, her transfer, her involvement with Cowan. Everything was down to him. Not a real copper, Hadley was something else. She didn’t know exactly what. Cowan had said a spook, but Eva knew even that wasn’t the half of it. Some form of puppet master, though. A manipulative man with a multitude of connections who would do what he said, use her and discard her at his convenience, because when it came down to it, Alastair Hadley knew.
I’ll find out about you too, Eva thought as she stared at the ceiling. In the room next door, the eGPU counted towards infinity. I’ll get the proof, I know where it is. She rolled onto her side and tried to get to sleep.
It’s so close I can almost touch it.
* * *
Something woke her around two that morning. She didn’t know what. All she knew, instantly and intuitively, was that something had changed. She sat up in bed, immediately awake, and listened, but there was nothing she could hear above the distant sound of traffic that still rumbled through the night. Eva climbed out of bed and padded in bare feet around the apartment. On the street below she saw a lorry waiting for a traffic light to change. When it did the lorry pulled forward and was overtaken by a delivery van. An occasional car passed her window. Nothing else.
Eva stalked into the living room. She had not drawn the curtains. She rarely bothered. Her flat was on the fifth floor and nothing overlooked it. In the distance she saw the lights of a solitary aircraft beginning its descent towards Heathrow.
Something had woken her; something had disturbed her sleep. Had it been a nightmare? She couldn’t recall one. Out of habit Eva walked to the table and nudged the mouse connected to the laptop. When the screen brightened for several seconds she didn’t understand what she was looking at. When she did she had to stop herself screaming with delight. Instead of the counter the screen displayed a message:
FuckU2hell!?
The eGPU had finally cracked the password. She counted the characters, twelve in total, two upper case, one number and two special characters. Not a bad password, she had to admit that to herself, however much she disliked doing so. No wonder it had taken the eGPU so long to brute-force it. It was typical of him though, a piece of hateful spite that reflected the blackness that had passed for his soul. Fuck you to hell, she thought as she stared at the screen. I did. You do know that, don’t you?
When she minimised the window and checked the statistics she saw that the programme the eGPU had been running had actually completed barely twenty minutes af
ter she had gone to bed. There was no audio alarm set, so it was not the process ending that had wakened her. Something had, though. Her throat felt suddenly dry. Eva went back into the bedroom and took a sip from the glass that stood on the table by her bed. She swallowed, then took a deep breath, ready to begin work on the laptop. She coughed. Coughed again. Found she could not stop coughing.
Something was wrong. She turned on all the lights. There was a thin grey mist hanging close to the door of the living room, the one that opened onto the entrance hall of the flat. Eva walked to the door and opened it.
The hall was filled with smoke.
She slammed the door, ran to the window and put her head out, but she could see nothing. No broiling smoke, no orange flicker of flame. Was it just her flat? Panic started to chew at her gut. She ran into the bathroom, grabbed a towel and soaked it in water. Then she wrapped it around her face, took a breath and opened the door to the hall.
Smoke billowed in. Eva crouched down, almost on all fours, and made her way towards the front door. When she reached it she put the back of her hand against it. She pulled it away instantly.
Burning heat. A fire in the corridor outside. Why hadn’t the fire alarm sounded? A stupid question, she told herself. The fire alarm hadn’t sounded because it had been tampered with. Somebody was trying to kill her again, and they didn’t care who else died in the process. A stench hit her. Pungent and eye-watering. Somebody had used flammable liquids on the door.
The first thing she did was slam the door to the hall shut and wedge the towel against the gap between it and the floor. Then she found her phone and called 999. When the operator picked up she gave her name, rank, station and ID. ‘This has the potential to be a major incident,’ Eva said. ‘I can smell accelerants.’
‘You’re saying this is arson?’ She could hear the doubt in the operator’s voice.