by Tim Weaver
Jade O’Connell, 31, thought to be an innocent victim of a violent gang war in the Tower Hamlets area, was discovered by nurses yesterday, only hours after doctors had given her the all clear. Police said the victim’s head and hands had both been removed.
‘This is one of the most sickening crimes I’ve ever seen,’ Detective Chief Inspector Jamie Hart, the officer leading the hunt for the killer, said yesterday. Ms O’Connell had no surviving relatives.
Jade was dead.
Looks like she’s a goner, Ethan had written. I remember that story. I was doing a piece on Cernoziom at the time. Vicious bastards. They never found out who killed her, but everyone knew it was Cernoziom. Had to be. She must have seen one of their faces. What a way to go.
I thought about Alex, about the parallels between him and Jade. They knew each other. Maybe not well, but she’d heard of him. And now there was a further link too: they were both supposed to be dead.
I let the water run down my body. I’d been in the shower for thirty minutes, hardly blinking. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the devil coming down the hallway to kill me.
I knew I was standing on the edge of the darkness now. If I stepped back, I’d step away from the case and from what I’d found so far. Whatever was behind me would be left there. But I still wouldn’t step away from them. They’d offered me the chance to walk and I hadn’t taken it. Maybe I’d thought they were bluffing. Or maybe the reason I had carried on was because everything Mary had said to me that first time – and everything I’d felt since – was connected to how I felt about Derryn. Deep down, perhaps I’d hoped my own answers would be waiting for me when I found out what had happened to Alex.
The good things are worth fighting for.
She’d told me that once, when she’d first been diagnosed. And now I knew, like then, the only way forward was into the darkness in front of me.
Whatever happened, there was no going back.
23
I called Spike and got him to source an address for Gerald – Jade’s fake ID contact – based on the number I had for him. It took thirty seconds for him to find out that Gerald lived on the third floor of a dilapidated four-storey townhouse in Camberwell. The police still had my BMW, so I hired a rental car and headed south of the river.
It took an hour to travel eleven miles. When I got to Camberwell, I managed to find a space straight away, right opposite the building. I turned off the engine. The road was like one long concrete storm cloud: narrow, grey-bricked terrace housing; oily sediment cascading from collapsed guttering; dark, blistered paint on the doors and windowsills. There was a big pile of bin liners right outside Gerald’s building, torn apart by animals, the contents spilling on to the pavement and across the dirty, stained snow.
After a couple of minutes I spotted a woman walking towards the house, digging around in her handbag for keys. I got out and crossed the road, catching the door just as it was about to close behind her. I let the woman disappear into the belly of the building, and then stepped inside and pushed the door shut. It smelt old, musty, as if its hallways hadn’t ever been cleaned. To my left were the stairs. I headed up, and found Gerald’s flat halfway along the third floor.
I knocked a couple of times, and waited.
‘What?’
A voice from inside the flat.
‘Gerald?’
‘What?’
‘I need to speak to you.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s David. I’m a friend of Jade’s.’
‘Who’s Jade?’
‘I think you know who Jade is.’
He didn’t reply immediately. ‘I’m havin’ breakfast here.’
I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty. ‘Well, you can eat while we talk.’
A thud. His feet hit the floor on the other side of the door. He was looking through the spyhole at me. I looked back, into the eye of it.
‘Come on, it’ll be fun,’ I said. ‘We can talk about the forgery business.’
He whipped the door open on the chain. ‘Keep your fuckin’ voice down.’
He was pale and fat, about forty, his brown hair disappearing fast. He looked like he hadn’t seen daylight since he was a teenager.
‘You going to open up?’
‘What d’you want?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘About what?’
‘About some IDs.’
He looked me up and down. ‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’
I sighed. ‘Come on, Gerald. You can save the act.’
He eyed me again, then closed the door. I listened to the chain fall from its runner and swing against the door. When he opened up again he waved me in.
The flat was a mess. Clothes were strewn across the back of chairs and sofas; packets of crisps and burger cartons dumped on the floor. Curtains had been pulled most of the way across the only window I could see, leaving a sliver of a view across the street. On one wall was a painting. On the others were shelves full of books and equipment. Towards the back of the room was a guillotine, rolls of laminate and a pile of large silver tins containing different coloured inks.
‘Nice place,’ I said.
‘Yeah, a real penthouse.’
He picked up a couple of sweaters and a pair of trousers and tossed them through the door to the bedroom.
‘I need something.’ I reached into my pocket and took out a roll of banknotes. ‘There’s a hundred here. All I want from you is some help. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Help?’
‘A few names.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘What are you, the Old Bill?’
‘No.’
‘My snitchin’ days are over, pal.’
‘I’m not a cop. I’m a friend of Jade’s.’
‘You’re a friend of Jade’s, huh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Bollocks you are.’
‘Listen–’
‘No, you listen. This conversation is over.’
I nodded. ‘Okay. What would it take?’
‘Take?’
‘For you to lose your newly developed conscience.’
I looked at him. He was going to ask for more money. I couldn’t go back – not now – even though I only had a hundred on me. But this was the way to play him. At the end of the day, as Jade had told me, Gerald was just a crook.
He shrugged. ‘Gimme five hundred and we’ll talk.’
‘Five?’
‘You wanna talk, we talk big.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But you give me everything I ask for.’
He nodded. As I stepped towards him, for the first time I could feel the kitchen knife at the back of my trousers. There for emergencies.
‘So, you know Jade?’ I asked him.
‘I know a lotta people.’
‘We’re not dancing any more, Gerald.’
He looked at me. ‘Yeah, I know her.’
‘You provided her and her friends with IDs. I want to know who you spoke to, who came here. Specifically, if you’re sending IDs out, I need to know where they’re going. You tell me that and you get this.’
He looked at the hundred, then at my pockets, where I presumed he thought the rest of the money was.
‘Okay,’ he said eventually.
‘First: did you deal only with Jade?’
‘Mostly her.’
‘What does “mostly” mean?’
‘Her, yeah.’
‘She came to pick up IDs for herself?’
‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Some others too.’
‘Speak up.’
‘Some others too.’
‘Who else’s?’
‘I don’t know. She never told me. I don’t work for her, or whatever the fuck she’s a part of. I work for myself. I’m independent. She just gave me the pictures and the names and addresses and I made them.’
‘Are they the same people every time?’
‘Yeah, mostly.’
‘The same people are getting different IDs every time?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘You keep a record of the names and addresses they give you?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. I keep a record of all of them, so when the pigs raid me I can make it easy for them. Of course I don’t keep a list of fuckin’ names.’
‘Did Jade ever tell you who she worked for?’
‘No.’
‘She ever mention a guy called Alex?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to remember? I’ve met a lot of people doing this, and most of them don’t come in here trying to make nice.’
‘How many IDs did Jade pick up?’
‘In four years?’
‘You’ve been doing this for her for four years?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How many?’
‘Fifty. Maybe more.’
‘When does she come round?’
‘Whenever she needs something.’
‘She doesn’t have particular days?’
‘No.’
‘When was the last time she came around?’
‘I dunno. Week ago maybe.’
I paused, nodded. ‘Okay. You doing IDs for them at the moment?’
‘Yeah.’
‘For when?’
‘Friday.’
‘Day after tomorrow?’
‘That’s Friday, as far as I know,’ he said, smirking.
I could feel the knife against my back again.
‘Is Jade supposed to be picking them up?’
‘Not any more.’
‘You know why?’
He looked at me, shrugged. ‘No. Someone just called this morning.’
‘And said what?’
‘That I’d have a new contact. Some guy called Michael.’
I nodded. ‘They tell you why Jade wasn’t coming?’
‘No. Just that she wouldn’t be my contact any more.’
‘How many IDs are you doing for this new guy?’
‘Four or five.’
I fished around in my pocket for the photo of Alex and held it up. ‘You recognize him?’
‘I can’t see.’
‘So, take a closer look.’
He shuffled forward and squinted at the photograph. ‘No.’
‘His isn’t one of the IDs you’re doing?’
‘No.’
‘You ever done an ID for him?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Be more specific.’
‘I dunno. Don’t remember if I have or haven’t.’
‘You better not be lying to me, Gerald.’
‘I ain’t lyin’.’
He looked like he was telling the truth. He was staring straight at me, barely flinching as he spoke.
‘How long does it take you to make up these IDs?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what it is. If it’s a driver’s licence, I can do it in a coupla hours. A passport takes longer. You gotta get the marks right, everything in the right place.’
‘They ever ask for passports?’
‘No.’
‘Do you get anything else for them?’
He shrugged.
‘What?’
He flicked a look at me. ‘Guns.’
I paused. Studied him. ‘You ever post their stuff instead of them coming here?’
‘I can’t tell you where I send them – it changes every time.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t give a shit what you believe.’
I took a step forward and pocketed the money. He looked me up and down, then held up both his hands, nodding towards the pocket with the money in it.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘This new guy wants to use a drop-off. A deposit box. He said he’d be leaving his place at 6 p.m., so he needs them to be there by then.’
‘Where’s the deposit box?’
He got up and walked through to the bedroom. While he was in there, I reached around to the back of my trousers and repositioned the knife so I could get at it more easily.
I waited.
He came back out, a piece of paper in his hands, and held it out to me. I took it without taking my eyes off him, and slid it into my back pocket.
‘You’d better not be messing me around, Gerald.’
‘It’s all there.’
‘It’d better be. If I find you’ve dicked me around, I’ll be back.’
‘Okay, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gimme my money.’
I held up the banknotes for him to see, then tossed them at him. We both watched them scatter across the floor.
‘What the fuck is this?’
‘Your money.’
‘This ain’t five hundred notes.’
‘You said you’d help me. If I get anything from your information, I’ll send you the rest. If I don’t, you just made a hundred quid for doing nothing.’
‘You little prick.’
I yanked out the knife and held it up as he came at me. The tip of the blade stopped an inch from one of his eyes. Along the serrated edge, I could see a strip of his face, his eyes wide, bulging, surprised. My heart was racing, thrashing around inside my chest, but the knife was hardly moving.
‘You just made a hundred quid,’ I said.
Gerald held up both hands and backed away. He’d probably had knives at his throat before. Guns too. It was the kind of business he was in. He probably thought it was the kind of business I was in as well. I edged around to my left, towards the door, and wrapped my fingers around the handle.
‘Thanks for your help,’ I said, and slipped out.
I drove north-east across London, crossing the Thames, and parked half a mile from the church in Redbridge. Then I waited. Evening started to move across the sky at about four-thirty. It worked its way in from the horizon, sucking up the light until all I could see were the stars. I put the heaters on full blast and felt the warm air against my body. Ever since I’d watched the man in the mask come into my home, I couldn’t warm up. Couldn’t shake the unease that came with staring into the darkness and not knowing what was staring back.
I knew I was doing the only thing I could now. There was no returning to the places I once felt safe. They knew where I lived. And they would know where I worked now too.
They knew everything about me.
This was all I had left.
24
At ten-thirty, I stepped out of the shadows and made my way around to the back of the church. The building was alarmed. I could see a box high up next to the statue of Christ, winking on and off – but there was no alarm on the annexe. They wouldn’t have had the chance to wire it up yet.
There were two locks requiring two different keys, but the wooden door meant that this was only token security. I slid my pocket knife in through the gap between door and frame and started prising at the opening. Some of the door split straight away. I could see the dial box for the keys. More of the door broke off, coming away in cable-thin strips. I kicked them out of the way, and took a quick look around, then started levering some more.
My hands got numb quickly. It was freezing cold; colder than at any point in the past few days. I jemmied the door some more, digging in deeper and deeper each time, fighting the cold as much as the wood. Then, finally, a whole panel came loose in my hands. I threw it to one side and it landed in the snow with a dull thud.
I waved a hand inside the annexe and waited. Ten seconds passed. No alarm. I reached in, flipped the lock on the handle and pulled what was left of the door open.
It was dark inside, but I’d brought a penlight. I went for the desk first. There were three drawers, all locked. I put the penlight between my teeth and dug the knife into the top drawer. It sprang open without too much effort. Inside were a couple of pens, some envelopes and a church newsletter. The second drawer was empty. In the third were four slide files, all empty.
Next to the door were the crates Michael hadn’t unpacked.
I stopped for a moment. Listened. I knew the weather would help me: snow would crunch under foot, so I’d be able to hear any approach. In fact, the night was so still now, the noise would probably carry all the way up from the main road.
Turning back to the first crate, I flipped the top on it. It was a mess, crammed with books, magazines, and folders full of notes and photos. I looked through the photos. Michael was in all of them: with his mum and dad; with what could have been a girlfriend or a sister; with some friends at a twenty-first birthday party. One was taken at a service, him high up in the pulpit, one hand on a Bible.
Below that, half sliding out of an envelope, was another picture.
A boy running around on a patch of grass, chasing a football. Jade had the same one. I flipped it over. Written on the back was exactly the same message: ‘this is the reason we do it.’
Chucking the photos back in on top of the books, I pulled the crate off the one below. It landed on the floor with a bang. Inside the second was more of the same. Then, at the edge, I noticed a small address book with Contact numbers written on it.
Inside, names were listed alphabetically, every page full of addresses. Most were local – Redbridge, Aldersbrook, Leytonstone, Woodford, Clayhall – but others were further afield, in Manchester and Birmingham. I flicked through the book, stopping briefly under each letter to see whether I recognized any names. I didn’t.
Until I got to Z.
Right at the back of the book I found a name I knew: Zack. I got out my notepad and flipped back through the pages to the names I’d collected from the flat in Brixton: Paul, Stephen, Zack.
The listing for him didn’t have a surname, but it did have an address in Bristol – and something else.
A line leading to a second name: Alex.
25
It took three hours to get to Bristol. By the time I came off the motorway, it was two o’clock in the morning. I needed rest desperately. I drove for a while, heading deeper and deeper into the deserted city, until I found a dark spot next to a railway yard. I backed in, under a bridge, and kept the heat on for an hour. Then, eventually, I turned off the engine, climbed on to the back seat and fell asleep.
I woke suddenly. It was light – almost midday. Fresh snow had fallen, settling beyond the bridge and all around the car. I was freezing cold, disorientated for a moment, as if I’d been pulled too quickly from my sleep. Maybe this was the way it was going to be now: every sleep bookended by the feeling I was being watched.