A Silent Death

by Peter May

  ‘So what persuaded you that the NCA should be your next career move?’

  ‘I think I explained that at the interview.’

  Beard flicked him a look of irritation. ‘You got the job, Mackenzie. This is not an interview. I want the real story.’

  ‘I’m a cop, sir.’

  ‘So why did you leave the Met?’

  ‘Not really my choice.’ He corrected himself. ‘Well, it was. But one I was forced to make. In the jargon I think they call it constructive dismissal.’

  Beard sat back and laced his fingers across his ample belly. ‘Tell me.’ Although he surely already knew.

  Mackenzie drew a deep breath. ‘They put me on every shit shift going, sir. I was spending most of my life behind a desk doing paperwork rather than police work. I have been repeatedly denied promotion.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because nobody likes me very much.’ There was neither rancour nor resentment in this. It was just a simple statement of fact.

  Again, ‘Why?’

  ‘You would have to ask them that.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  Mackenzie took a moment to think about how he might frame his response. ‘I think, sir, because I say it as I see it. My wife says I have no filter. That I lack tact.’

  ‘Does she? And I suppose she would know. What kind of relationship do you have?’

  ‘Fractured, sir. We’re separated.’

  This was clearly news to Beard. ‘And whose idea was that?’

  ‘Hers.’

  Mackenzie’s boss made a thoughtful moue with his lips. ‘So . . .’ he said, ‘you think you know better than everyone else and aren’t afraid to say so.’

  ‘I think, sir, you’ll find that in most cases I do know better than everyone else, and I am never afraid to say so.’

  Beard cocked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Some people might characterize that as arrogance.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But not you.’

  ‘I’d characterize it as honesty.’

  Beard sat forward suddenly. ‘Well, let me be honest with you, Mackenzie. You were not my first choice for this job. But other members of the recruitment board were impressed by your . . .’ he swept his hand above the open folder in front of him ‘. . . credentials.’ He lifted the top sheet. ‘For my part, I have to wonder why a man with degrees in quantum physics and mathematics would want to be a cop.’

  ‘I never wanted to be anything else sir. The degrees are just a hobby. I study at night on the Open University. I’m planning to take another.’

  There was an almost imperceptible shake of Beard’s head. ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Astrophysics, sir.’

  Which left Beard temporarily speechless. To recover himself he lifted another couple of sheets from the file. ‘It says here your father was a police officer.’

  ‘In Glasgow, yes. He was killed in the line of duty when I was two years old.’

  Beard looked again at the sheet in front of him and a frown, like a shadow, passed momentarily across his face. His eyes flickered towards Mackenzie then away again, before he slipped the papers back in the file and closed it. He reclined in his chair once more. ‘Well, the reason I asked you here this morning is because of your talent for languages. According to the file you are fluent in French, Spanish and Arabic.’ He spat out each language as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  ‘I took French and Spanish at school, sir. Quite easy really. Latin roots. I’m just starting on Italian. Arabic was much harder.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ Beard said, ‘I can imagine.’ Not a flicker of a smile. ‘At any rate, it’s your Spanish I’m interested in. It’s two weeks since you finished up at the Met, yes?’

  Mackenzie nodded.

  ‘I know that technically you don’t start with us until Monday. But I want to farm you out on loan to my counterpart on the Fugitives Unit for a small job at the beginning of the week, and I need to brief you on it now. I owe him a favour, so I’m in his debt. If you do this for me I’ll be in yours.’

  ‘A little like guanxi, sir.’

  Beard frowned. ‘Gwanshee?’

  ‘It’s a concept in Chinese culture. A favour given is a favour owed.’

  ‘Exactly. And a good way for you to start off on the right foot, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not really, sir. I’m assuming we operate on a command basis here, not an exchange of back-scratching. Since you are my boss I will do what you order me to.’

  Beard held him in his steady gaze for a moment. ‘I can see why nobody likes you, Mackenzie.’ He sighed. ‘I want you to go to Spain to accompany a prisoner back on a flight from Malaga. His name is Jack Cleland. Number one on our most wanted list. He pretty much ran the traffic in cocaine here in London until a deep-cover sting operation went wrong and he killed an undercover cop. Unfortunately he got away. We’ve long suspected he was hiding out somewhere on the Costa del Crime. We still have a good relationship with the Spanish police. Ran a joint operation for several years called Operation Captura. It netted us quite a few villains who’d secreted themselves away on the costas, but we’ve never had so much as a sniff of Cleland.’ He paused. ‘Until now.’

  ‘How did they get him?’

  ‘Pure fucking chance. A couple of local cops in a district not far from Gibraltar went to investigate reports of a burglary at a villa in a very upmarket development overlooking the Med. Turned out not to be a burglary at all. It was Cleland’s place. He’d been living there under an assumed name. Ian Templeton. His idea of a joke, apparently, since that was the name of his old headmaster at Glenalmond College.’

  ‘He’s Scottish, then?’

  ‘You’ve heard of Glenalmond?’ Beard clearly hadn’t.

  Mackenzie said, ‘Of course. It’s in Perthshire. They call it the Eton of the North.’

  ‘Do they,’ Beard said dryly. ‘I take it you have no objection to nicking a fellow Scot?’

  ‘None at all, sir. Particularly a toff. They teach them to be like little Englishmen up there.’

  ‘Not like this fucking Englishman.’

  ‘No, sir. I did say toff.’

  Beard glared at him, but could detect no irony. He supposed that Mackenzie was probably incapable of disingenuity. ‘Anyway, he and his girlfriend had left the house earlier in the day, telling neighbours that they were taking a short holiday. But it seems they’d left something behind, and returned only to discover they’d mislaid the keys. So they broke into their own place, and disabled the alarm before it went off. A neighbour saw lights in the house and called the police. Of course, when the cops arrived they had no idea that the couple in the villa weren’t burglars. There was a shoot-out, and somehow Cleland managed to gun down his own girlfriend. Shot her dead. A British citizen. Angela Fry. He was arrested, we were alerted, and a European Arrest Warrant was issued. He hasn’t contested it in court, and the Spanish are happy to offload him on to us, since there were no Spanish casualties. He’ll come back here to face charges of drug trafficking and murder.’

  ‘When is it you want me to go, sir?’

  ‘Fly out Tuesday afternoon. The Spanish will hand Cleland over at the airport. Armed escort on to the plane. Just a few formalities to be dealt with in Spanish, then you’ll come back with him on the return flight. It’ll get you in around eleven pm, and officers from the Met will meet you off the plane to take him into custody.’ He smiled. ‘Not too difficult for you?’

  But Mackenzie was already wrestling with demons. He had realized at once that if he agreed, it would mean missing Sophia’s school concert. Though much as it pained him, even he realized he could hardly offer that up as an excuse for not going to Spain. He fell back on a more valid pretext. ‘I am afraid I have a family funeral in Glasgow on Monday, sir. I was going to alert HR. My aunt. I’ll be there until Tuesday.’

  Beard stroked his chin thoughtfully then reopened the file and sifted through the top sheets until he found what he was looking for. ‘You wer
e brought up by your aunt and uncle after the death of your father.’

  Mackenzie said nothing.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I was fostered by my father’s brother and his wife after I was removed from the care of my mother.’

  ‘Why were you taken from your mother?’

  ‘She was an alcoholic. Apparently.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I have no idea, sir.’ He paused. ‘And I don’t really care.’

  Beard regarded him curiously for a moment, then closed the file. ‘I’ll get them to reserve you a seat on a flight from Glasgow to Malaga on Tuesday then, and you can get the London flight back.’ When Mackenzie did not respond immediately he canted his head to one side. ‘Is there a problem?’ Almost daring him to say that there was.

  Mackenzie closed his eyes for a moment. An image of Sophia’s sad little face creased with disappointment floated up through dark red, and he felt tears welling up behind the lids. He blinked several times. ‘No, sir.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A smell like old socks drifted from the kitchen and followed him up the stairs. He had no idea what it was the old couple fried up in there, but it seemed only ever to reek of cabbage and onions. It was a depressing smell, one that had become synonymous with this house. And his unhappiness.

  Earlier he had walked the length of Oxford Street in search of a black tie. Perhaps, he thought, black was no longer de rigueur at funerals. He was unpractised in contemporary burial rites.

  The sun was out, the wind had swung to the south-west, and it was a balmy warm spring day. Pavements in sidestreets were crowded with tables and chairs, Londoners enjoying the promise of summer over the first premature salads of the year. Mackenzie had found a dark pub and ordered Scotch pie and beans, sipping on a beer, and putting off the moment when he would have to face the inevitable.

  Back now in his gloomy bedsit, he indulged in further procrastination. The dormer faced north, so while sunshine washed across the rooftops beyond it, none found its way into Mackenzie’s room. He turned on the anglepoise and settled himself in his armchair with the file on Cleland that Beard had provided to brief him.

  Cleland was thirty-six years old. Just eighteen months younger than Mackenzie. But while they belonged to the same generation, their experiences throughout what Mackenzie still thought of as his prologue years could hardly have been more different. Nor did they share a name, as might reasonably have been deduced. For while Jack was commonly a diminutive of John, it was what Cleland’s parents had actually christened him.

  Although his family lived in Edinburgh, he was boarded from the age of seven at Fettes, one of the most prestigious schools in the capital. Almost as if his parents had wanted him out of the way. And as soon as he turned twelve they sent him to Glenalmond. Neither school came cheap, and while there was nothing in the file about his family background, Mackenzie could only assume that his parents were independently wealthy.

  From Glenalmond, Cleland had gone on to Oxford, where he read economics, and took a master’s in Business Administration. Then followed a stellar career as a trader on the floor of one of the biggest investment banks in London, where he carved out a reputation for himself as a man with a keen eye for the deal. Then somehow, somewhere along the way, he had been presented with the deal of a lifetime. One that he simply couldn’t resist. Only it wasn’t currency or gilts or bonds that changed hands. It was cocaine.

  He was hooked. Not on the drug itself, but the money it could make him. No one can deal drugs with impunity though, and soon enough he found himself trespassing on dangerous ground. Territory controlled by the biggest name in London’s drug-trafficking underworld, a larger-than-life character known simply as ‘The Boss’. The Boss was a fifty-something former cop called Ronnie Simms, so well connected he was regarded as untouchable. He laundered his illicit profits through the two dozen clubs and restaurants he owned around the capital.

  According to sources, Simms took exception to Cleland’s activities and ordered him ‘taken out’. But the two thugs he sent to do his dirty work were no match for Cleland, who had long been a member of a gun club and possessed an impressive collection of firearms as well as an unerring eye. Legend had it that he shot one dead in his apartment then tortured the other into revealing who had sent them.

  It was said that on learning the truth he took his favourite shotgun, with which he had won numerous clay-pigeon competitions, and walked boldly into one of Simms’s private clubs. There he discharged both barrels into his would-be killer at point-blank range in an office above the dance floor. Afterwards he was alleged to have said to a gathering of Simms’s ex-employees, ‘The Boss is dead, long live The Boss,’ and offered them continued employment in return for their absolute loyalty. No one turned him down, and as Simms’s successor Cleland earned himself the nickname ‘Mad Jock’.

  The circumstances in which the undercover operation went wrong were sketchy, and Mackenzie surmised that someone, somewhere, wanted as few details on the record as possible. Armed police officers stormed the same club in which Cleland had shot Simms. But Mad Jock had been tipped off. He killed the undercover cop who betrayed him, and got away through an adjoining building that he’d bought solely to provide an escape route in an emergency. No one outside of a tight inner circle even knew he owned it.

  It was the last that anyone had seen of him. Until now.

  Mackenzie closed the file and tossed it on to the settee. He felt suffused by a strange sense of anger. Cleland had been given every advantage in life. One of the best educations money could buy. As a trader he had no doubt made more money in a week than Mackenzie earned in a year. And yet in order to make even more he had turned his talents to trading in misery. His disregard for the law, for human life, his obvious sense of entitlement, made Mackenzie ashamed to call himself a fellow Scot. There would be a considerable sense of satisfaction, if not pleasure, in bringing this toff back to face justice.

  He sat for some moments stewing on the thought, until he could no longer keep other considerations from displacing it.

  Most of all Sophia.

  His heart broke for her. And he could only imagine what Susan would find to say when she learned that he was about to let one of his children down again. He drew his phone from his shirt pocket and held it in his hand for two, three minutes, maybe more. It wasn’t until you had committed a thought to words or action that it took concrete form. He closed his eyes and wished he had some better excuse. But he would never lie to her.

  He tapped on the Messenger app and reopened last night’s conversation. She would be back from school by now, but there was no guarantee that she would be online. The coward in him hoped she wasn’t.

  – Hi darling. Got bad news, I’m afraid.

  He waited, and his heart sank as her face appeared in a tiny circle beside the message to indicate that she was there and had read it.

  – What is it? No preamble.

  – Daddy’s not going to be able to make it to the concert on Tuesday night. He didn’t know how to frame it any less bluntly.

  He waited, and the cursor blinked back at him for a long time before she finally responded.

  – Why not?

  – It’s work, baby. They’re sending me to Spain, and I won’t be back in time. Not his fault. Surely she would see that?

  Another wait. Longer this time. The blinking of the cursor was almost hypnotic. Then finally her response appeared on the screen.

  A large sad face.

  – Honey, I’m so sorry. Maybe I could take you out somewhere on Wednesday night, and you could sing your song just for me.

  When he hit return this time, her face in the tiny circle was gone, replaced by a tick. The message had been sent, but not received. Sophia had gone offline.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ana can feel the heat of the sun on her skin as it beats through the window. Although she has many fewer olfactory receptors than her guide dog, those she has are more
sensitive now. She has his scent stored in some inner filing cabinet, easily accessed, and can tell that he is not far away. Almost certainly lying basking sleepily in the heat where sunlight falls in warm wedges across the floor.

  She can smell Cristina’s shampoo. Some floral scent. But chemical somehow, like nothing found in nature. She can separate it from her niece’s perfume. But above all she can smell her gun. An unpleasant metallic smell. Sharp. Disagreeable. Cristina said they had taken it away for tests and only given it back to her today. Perhaps they had discharged it to check the ballistics, for Ana is sure she can identify the acrid reek of nitroglycerine – something she remembers from the chemistry lab at her secondary school. How long ago that seems now.

  Outside, there are children playing in the Plaza de Juan Bazán, among the flowers that hang in profusion from pots fixed around its whitewashed walls. But she can’t hear the children. And will never see the red and pink blooms, or the shrubs that grow green around the tiny fountains catching sunlight in the late afternoon.

  But though she can neither see nor hear she senses something else. Something in the air. Something that can only be felt. Divined in some way beyond her understanding.

  It is fear. And it seeps, it seems, from every pore of the young woman sitting opposite.

  In the normal course of events Cristina would come every other day, alternating with her sister. But since Nuri’s illness she has been more often. Taking her sister’s place on the days that Nuri is at the hospital in Marbella, or just too sick to get out of bed. Ana appreciates the visits from her late sister’s girls. A sister ten years her senior, and ten years dead, leaving Ana as her surrogate, a focus for the love of daughters for their lost mother. They are bright moments in the darkness that fills her each and every day, a delicious relief from the monotony of incarceration. Though it is technology which has released her finally from the confines of her physical self, her own body having raised an impenetrable barrier to the outside world, trapping her within, denying her sight and sound.

  Sitting here in the window, with the sun warm on her skin, she now has that world at her fingertips. Literally. A keyboard linked to a computer that powers a screen that can generate Braille. She can surf the internet, reaching out to interpret the dots on her screen with long sensitive fingers, reading of world affairs, of history and scientific advance, or even just of family gossip on Facebook. With her keyboard she can interact with others online. She can place phone calls through a special operator, speak to someone at the other end, and have their responses relayed to her in Braille by the operator. The whole universe reduced to raised patterns of dots on a screen.