by Jake Cross
‘I know, of course I know that. Are you in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then stay here. Don’t you be running off where I can’t get to you, understand?’
He did, and it appalled him. She meant prison. She was telling him to stay in this country so she could visit him in prison. Did that mean she thought he was guilty?
‘I haven’t done anything,’ he said, his voice cracking.
‘The truth will come out, Nathan. It will. You just stay in England. Promise me.’
‘Do you believe me?’ he said. He needed to know. Her words so far had not unfolded her mind to him. Did she think he was guilty of killing his own brother?
‘You want your mother to be well, I know that, Nathan.’
A hammer blow to the heart. She was saying she knew that, guilty or not, he would deny any wrongdoing because that was what mothers needed to hear, to believe.
Then, the first crack in her voice as she said, ‘Is it Pete?’
He almost fell over. Guilty or not, there was still a dead man, and a good chance that that man was her other son. He couldn’t think of the right response. Both yes and no seemed wrong.
‘The police wanted my DNA,’ she said. ‘I said no. I don’t know why I said no. They don’t know if it’s Pete yet, do they?’ Then, more sternly: ‘Is it Pete?’
So, the authorities hadn’t yet announced that the dead man was Pete, despite the sesamoiditis angle. Perhaps they still wanted DNA to officially confirm it. He understood, even if she didn’t, why his mother had refused to give a sample. If the burned body was never identified, then she could convince herself that Pete was still alive somewhere. And so could Nate.
‘Are they threatening you about the DNA?’
What would they do if she continued to refuse? Slap a court order in her face? Scour the ruined house for some tiny item, a hairbrush or toothbrush, that might hold Pete’s DNA? If they needed Nate’s cells for analysis, he would find a way to give them all they needed. His blood posted in an envelope to the police station, maybe.
‘No. I haven’t heard from them since that first visit yesterday. Nathan, is it Pete?’
So, they hadn’t pressed her on the issue, and they would have because DNA analysis took time. Nate could fathom only one reason why, if indeed the police had decided not to chase up DNA collection. The sesamoiditis discovery. They had all the proof they needed.
‘Nathan!’
He snapped back to the now. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, Mum, but probably. Probably.’
Silence as she digested this. The crack was gone from her voice when she returned. ‘But you would know for sure, wouldn’t you?’
Now he was silent. He had no idea what that meant. Did his doubt tell her he was innocent? Or was she mocking his doubt?
Before he could speak again, she said, ‘I do not know if the police can somehow bug my phone, Nathan. I don’t know what they’re thinking and if they would do such a thing or not. Let’s speak no more for now. I will see you. I will see you in England, make sure of that.’
And she hung up. He slammed the phone down, hard. The bargirl yelled at him for it. The pool players glared at him with smirks. He was angry, and a big portion of that was his goddamned failure to grab a hold of knowledge. His constant fumbling about like a blind man. He gave the girl the finger and told the suits to mind their own fucking business. Then he stormed out. Before he hurt someone.
Number 18a was a basement flat with its entrance in a litter-strewn pit next to the front door of the main house. Nate clumped down the steep stone steps and opened the door, as instructed. He moved through a grimy hallway that had no carpet and wallpaper on only one side, as if the decorator had given up. Three rooms ran off the hallway, with voices billowing out of the open doorway dead ahead. He entered a living room lit by three standing lamps because the main window was whitewashed for some reason.
Toni was here, standing before a man Nate assumed was Olcay. Nate had expected a crime lord’s right-hand man to be a behemoth with no neck, but Olcay was a skinny runt with a beer belly and too much facial hair and a nose that would keep the rain off his chin. He was cowering on a crappy sofa.
‘I ain’t seen him for days,’ he said as Nate entered. ‘He’ll wipe you away for this, Nesrin.’
He saw Nate. And somehow managed to look even more shocked and scared than before.
Ten minutes. Nate figured she had been here for ten minutes already, and still hadn’t gotten any information. She had cut throats earlier today, yet had hardly touched this guy. Some kind of remnant loyalty? Maybe Olcay had done her favours in the past, or she felt bad for him because he’d had a hard life. But Nate knew nothing about Olcay’s struggles, and the guy hadn’t done Nate a single good turn. So there was no loyalty staying his own hands.
He grabbed one of the standing lamps and smashed the shade and the bulb against a wall bearing football posters. Feeling weak and helpless under his mother’s scrutiny had loaded him with anger. Like a bully beaten down by an abusive parent, Nate now needed a soft target to unburden upon. ‘Where the fuck is he?’ he snarled, maximum effort put into an angry face.
‘I don’t know!’ Olcay yelled. Louder than necessary: perhaps trying to alert the neighbours that he was in trouble.
Nate didn’t care. Not all of that rage-face was fake. ‘Then die!’ He felt a sudden explosive itch to crack open the guy’s head, and raised the lamp like a woodcutter with an axe.
Toni grabbed him, pushed him away, said they needed Olcay alive, and he saw the look in her eyes. Like she thought he was playing good cop, bad cop. He hadn’t been playing at all. He really thought he might have crushed Olcay’s head. But there was no need now, because the skinny runt was nodding furiously.
Nate leaned against a wall and tried hard to concentrate on Toni and Olcay, and ignore what had just happened. To pretend that he hadn’t been about to really hurt the guy.
Toni knelt before Olcay and coaxed answers out of him, and they came like a waterfall: a rave, tonight, don’t hurt me, some old warehouse, Puzzler might show up, don’t hurt me, the address is on a piece of paper on the TV, don’t hurt me.
The words continued. Nate pushed away from the wall and staggered into the kitchen. He grabbed the first glass he saw, even though it was dirty, and filled it from the tap. He drank the lot in one, refilled and repeated. His hand shook so badly that water spilled out and down his chin. When he returned to the living room, Toni and Olcay were sitting together like good friends, although the interview was ongoing.
‘Puzzler wanted a bunch of people for a recent job,’ she said. ‘What do you know about it?’ She was staring at a piece of paper that looked like it had been torn from a spiral notebook.
Olcay said he knew nothing. Promised on his mother’s life that he didn’t. Nate stood in the centre of the room to make sure Olcay knew he was listening. Olcay stared up at him.
‘What do you know about these people?’ Nate said, then reeled off names: Kaushal, Webber, Agar, Nathan Barke, Pete Barke, Ryback, Lazar.
And Olcay’s shaking head stopped shaking. Lazar. A name he’d obviously heard before.
‘Tell us about Lazar,’ Toni said.
Olcay seemed delighted to talk now, probably eager to give them what they needed in order to get them out of the house. And because he didn’t mind stabbing Lazar in the back.
‘All I know about Lazar is stuff I heard. I never met him. I don’t know him. But I know he’s a copper. I heard about the arrest of a guy in America, who told the cops over there something to get himself a deal, and they called the cops here. Lazar was one of those cops. Puzzler knows Lazar. Puzzler was helping with whatever it was Lazar was doing. But I don’t know what it was. And that’s all I know. Honest.’
Nate and Toni stepped aside. Olcay watched them as if he thought they were discussing which of his eyes to bite out first.
Nate said, ‘Agar tells the Americans something to get a shorter sentence
, and then they call Lazar? I think Agar might have seen something at HyperX. Something illegal, something Ryback was up to. HyperX could be a chop shop, or those Rolls-Royces could have been stolen.’
Toni shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Why?’ Nate snapped. Olcay heard his raised voice, and Nate saw the guy perk up. Maybe he hoped Nate and Toni would fight, allowing him to escape.
‘Look, I know you want an input, but you’re wrong again. Two reasons. First, the Americans didn’t call Scotland Yard. They called the people dealing with the murder case. They called Lazar. That means Agar’s information was not about HyperX in general, but about that night.’
Nate let his emotions subside. She was right. Maybe he just wasn’t very good at detective work.
‘Second, if Agar volunteers information about HyperX, the Americans will look into it and realise that they’ve got themselves a wanted murderer. He’d get extradited and he’d go to prison for a lot longer than if he just kept his mouth shut and did his time in America. So he– What?’
Nate had raised his hand, stopping her. ‘But what if he wasn’t a murderer?’
Toni stayed silent.
‘I always wondered where Agar got the money to suddenly flee to America. The guy had nothing. What if Ryback gave him the money and told him to hide and keep his mouth shut? And he did, for four years. Then he gets arrested and he’s facing prison, so he tells the Americans, “Hey, I have a deal for you. Give me a lighter sentence, and I’ll help you get some glory by clearing up an unsolved murder in Britain”.’
This time she didn’t shoot him down. She rubbed her chin, like a thinking cartoon character. ‘If not Agar, then who do you think killed the robber that night?’
‘Someone who might not trust three idiot security guards with half a million pounds’ worth of flash cars.’
‘Ryback?’
‘I think he was there. I think he was too paranoid to leave the cars alone with three people he didn’t know. So he stayed with them that night. And he had a gun. And he shot someone. And then he got Agar to flee with the blame. Agar was unlicensed as a security guard, and maybe the cops were after him for some other stuff, and he knew he’d be screwed. So he agreed. And then Ryback got the others to go along with his bullshit. Remember, the CCTV footage was missing. Why hide it if it shows Agar shoot someone? I think that footage captured Ryback killing a man. I think Lazar helped to cover it up. And I think Lazar and Ryback panicked when, four years later, when it’s all but forgotten, some cops thousands of miles away called to say they had a guy in custody who was telling a different story, or was planning to.’
Toni thought. He waited. ‘It would explain why the others were killed. To silence them. Maybe Ryback suspected that Kaushal or Webber had told you and Pete the truth, so he decided it was safer to kill everyone involved with HyperX that night. But the Americans might have already heard Ryback’s name from Agar, and they would suspect something fishy if the entire crew involved with HyperX that night, including a man in their custody, suddenly got murdered…’
She let that last sentence hang. A test for him: explain that one, Sherlock.
‘But one of that crew isn’t dead. He’s on the run, and the English police have evidence that he’s the killer. Lazar is one of the cops who investigated the case, and he can convince the Americans that Agar was lying. There are no witnesses left who can testify differently. The Americans will not involve themselves too deeply in a case that’s light years from their jurisdiction, and they’ll move on. There might not be a clear motive as to why the dangerous fugitive Nathan Barke killed everyone, but the evidence against him cannot be ignored.’
She was thinking. Looking for holes in his theory, he suspected. So he was surprised when she said, ‘That could be it, Nate. That brain of yours finally woke up when it mattered most.’
But already he’d found a crater in his own hypothesis: ‘Something doesn’t add up, though. Puzzler. He was supposed to be hired help. Brought in from outside, he should have no connection to HyperX, yet something about that place and that night must be so damaging to him that it forced him to kill Ryback.’
‘The jigsaw is not complete, but the last piece is in the hands of a man that we know might be at a warehouse later tonight.’
‘Puzzler’s going away tomorrow,’ said Olcay from behind them. They turned. He looked somewhat smug, and they knew he had heard some of their conversation. Their voices must have raised a little as they got carried away and forgot about him.
‘He cut his ties with me, Nesrin. I suspect he’s going away, and I don’t imagine he’ll be back. You want him, you better go now, get out of here or he’s gone. You got tonight to get him, or he’s a ghost, and then you’re fucked.’
Tough words from a frightened guy. But potent, because he was right. Toni and Nate looked at each other, and both sets of eyes said the same thing. They knew their next move. Tonight. Some old warehouse.
‘Now we have to tie you up,’ she told him. ‘No struggle, no pain. But it’s happening, so accept it in your mind right now. And lead us to some rope or something, or I’ll leave you here with him while I go to B&Q for barbed wire.’
Olcay wanted them gone quickly, and was eager to help. He told them he had a drawer full of phone charger cables in the kitchen, and asked if they didn’t mind tying him up on the bed. They allowed him the cable, but insisted on the bathroom, where there was a thick metal pipe running behind the sink and toilet.
Later, back in the car, Nate said, ‘Nesrin?’
‘You guessed it. I lied to you about my name. We were ten minutes out from trying to kill each other. It’s Nesrin, but I always liked the name Toni. So you’ll call me that.’
‘Is this why you don’t carry ID? In case people see your real name? What’s Nesrin mean?’
‘I’ve never had ID. So no. And it means wild rose.’
‘As in unpruned, left to grow in disarray, without order?’ He laughed.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He just laughed again. She gave him the finger.
She told him she wanted to drive, and he gave her the seat. He put his seat back and focused his eyes on a stain on the ceiling, and tried to make shapes with it. The next thing he knew, she was shaking him awake.
He sat up. It was dark. They were in a McDonald’s car park. She held up a tea and a wrapped burger. He was reaching for it when he noticed something, which he stared at for a few seconds. When he looked at Toni, ghostly cornflakes floated across her face.
She had hidden her emotions back at Olcay’s flat, but not now. Her expression was grim, her mind obviously in turmoil, and he understood why.
‘Ryback or Puzzler must own the warehouse,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘Are you okay with this?’
She nodded.
‘His body will be gone, you know.’
She nodded.
They ate, and then they drove. Eight minutes later, she made a turn. The residential road. The palisade fencing. The industrial park.
After hours, the place was empty and quiet. Streetlights illuminated the road, but apart from a lit sign or doorway, the buildings either side sat half-hidden in the gloom. No activity anywhere except ahead, on their right: Saturn Printworks.
Five vans were parked close to the doors. Men moved around them, unloading bags and boxes, which they carried inside via a loading dock at one corner. Nat saw a guy carrying tall lamps, and another with crates of alcohol. They were preparing for the rave.
Toni drove past, said it was risky to stay within sight.
A couple of hundred metres along, the road ended. ‘This helps us,’ she said as she turned in the road and drove back.
On the way past Saturn again, they heard intermittent music. Someone testing the sound system. The loading dock now had a pair of Tensa barriers blocking it and a guy was stacking pallets to create stairs up to the lip.
They left the park and parked between the fenced areas o
f scrubland, near a padlocked gate that led nowhere. Through the back window, they could still see the warehouse. Toni killed the lights and the engine.
‘Now what?’ Nate said.
‘If Puzzler’s coming to oversee his great show, it won’t be until it’s in full swing. So we wait.’
It got darker. Twenty minutes into their wait, they saw pinpricks of light ahead as a car turned into the residential road. A taxi rolled past them, three made-up girls giggling in the back. It stopped outside Saturn, out they got, back it came. It passed two other cars coming this way. Each had all seats taken. Only one of them returned, minus its passengers. The other parked near the warehouse and all living things exited.
Pedestrians next. Six young men in crisp shirts walked past the Almera, laughing and staggering. They nearly got hit by the arrival of yet more cars. The party was starting.
Half an hour later, the place was getting busy. Parking spaces near the warehouse were dwindling and neighbouring car parks were being used. People were walking down the road in ones and twos and groups. God knows what the residents thought.
Toni started the car and turned it. She drove past the warehouse again. There was a queue at the loading dock now. Two guys in long black coats, like genuine doormen at a legit nightclub, searched them and let them in. The music was thumping. Coloured lights starburst beyond the doorway.
‘What’s the plan?’ Nate said as Toni pulled up again by the gate that led nowhere.
‘Watch for Puzzler. Maybe he’ll come in a cavalcade, like a king.’
Another half hour passed. A steady stream of cars and pedestrians went by. Nate was surprised the warehouse had room for everybody. He was surprised some old dear in one of the houses hadn’t called the cops.
His ears registered the sound of a motorbike. Bikes had played a part in this thing a few times, and never in a good way. So, bikes he was wary of. He thought he might never again relax if he heard one. He sat up. Three headlights coming his way. Beside him, Toni was asleep.