I ask him to put his preliminary conclusions in an email.
He does. Although the email is carefully circumspect, we don’t need proof to secure a search warrant, just reasonable suspicion. I forward the email on to Watkins.
I spend more time on Bev’s spreadsheets. They speak to you differently, depending on what you know.
Four years ago, before Mortimer started having his suspicions, before anything irreversible had happened, Khalifi took his holidays in Spain. Later on, Khalifi’s holidays changed. Dubai. Jordan. Lausanne, Doha, Vienna, Cairo. It doesn’t take long to figure out. A few mouse clicks.
I’m still grinning when Watkins calls.
‘I’m going to raid Barry Precision tomorrow morning.’ She briefly spells out her intentions. Five vehicles. Two dozen coppers. Arrive at 6.30 AM, an hour before dawn. Gain entry. Seize files. Seize computers. Interview all members of staff. Interview top management under caution.
She asks if I want to be there. I say, ‘Yes.’
‘Are you okay to move? I don’t want –’
‘I’m fine. I just won’t kick any doors down, if that’s all right.’
Watkins responds to that with her normal lighthearted grace and wit. She wants to send a car for me, but I don’t want that.
Instead I say, ‘Idris Prothero owns the company. He lives on Marine Parade in Penarth.’
She thinks about that, then says, ‘Okay. We’ll take Prothero in first.’ She gives me details of where and when we’re meeting.
I say, ‘We’ll need to interview him, of course.’
‘You want to?’
‘Yes.’
She thinks about that a moment. ‘All right. Mervyn Rogers leads. You support.’
I nod. Then, because nodding isn’t a brilliant telecommunication technique, I say, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And you both stay in close touch with me. No flying solo, Constable.’
I can’t quite say ‘Yes, ma’am’ again, so instead I say, ‘Did you know Swansea Bay Yacht Club doesn’t do boat hire?’ which might not be the best way to put it but was how it came out.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Watkins says something growly and hangs up.
I think that’s interesting, even if she doesn’t.
I get out of bed.
Apart from short visits to the bathroom, I’ve mostly avoided moving around. That’s partly because my healing skin is still fragile and so wants to be moved as little as possible. But also, bed has been the most comfortable place to be. Since I’ve not needed to be anywhere else, I’ve not forced myself to move.
Time for that to change.
I pull off the T-shirt of Kay’s that I’ve been using for a nightie. Examine myself in the mirror.
I’m okay. A bit bashed around, but okay. Walking feels a little strange, because toes turn out to be oddly important when it comes to balance and I still don’t have full feeling anywhere that’s been blackened by frost. But still. I’m on my feet. I’m not falling over. I feel achy and sore, but I felt achy and sore in bed too.
It’s odd examining myself like this. Back when I was staring into a shop mirror with Kay, I couldn’t connect with my own visual image. I seldom can. But I have no difficulty with that now. My face doesn’t seem particularly to belong to me, but the rest of what I see prompts a feeling of belonging. Of recognition. This is me. This petrol-scorched, frostbitten, snow-burnt, glass-lacerated body is mine. We feel a kind of kinship – the thing in the mirror, the brain in my head. When I move, the mirror-beast moves and it makes sense. It all makes sense.
I stare at the mirror until not just the body but the room behind starts to blur into unreality.
I run the taps and do stuff with water and soap. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but it’s what you do. Chomp some aspirin.
Get Mam upstairs to help change my dressings. Shoo her away when we’re done.
I dig through the clothes that Kay has brought me. Opt for leggings and a jumper. Boots. I check the mirror-beast to see if I recognise myself but I don’t. Not really. I’m not especially disconnected, just normal. My version.
Call Buzz. He tells me he’ll pick me up once he’s done at work.
I’m back in the saddle and it feels good. Me and Penry. Two sides of the same copper coin.
37
The next morning. Long before dawn.
It’s still astonishingly cold. Astonishingly snowy. This isn’t Wales as I’ve ever known it. It feels as though South Wales has somehow cut loose from the mainland and drifted north. We’re bumping shorelines with Baffin Island and Spitsbergen. Polar bears on Queen Street and penguins clucking in Bute Park.
I like it. When I’m not being left to die in it, I like it.
The alarm goes off at four fifteen. The rendezvous is at Cathays at five thirty. Because of the snow, we can’t just scream down to Barry in a blaze of sirens. We’ll need to creep there. And because Watkins is in charge, no one will dare be late.
Buzz gets up, showers, gets dressed. He chooses the sort of clothes you’d want if you were about to see real action. Boots. Thick trousers. Ski jacket. Combat wear. It’s hardly necessary, of course. We’re hardly expecting armed resistance. Indeed, we’re not expecting anything beyond an empty building and some unguarded computers. But still. The drama of a dawn raid seizes the imagination. Even for Buzz, who’s presumably kicked down a door or two in his time.
Bosnian doors. Doors with scarier things behind them than anything we’re likely to find in Barry.
But the mood is contagious. Instead of lying in bed and saying annoying things, I get up too. I don’t shower – I’m still wearing too many dressings to make that particularly easy – but I clean myself with a flannel. Do something to my hair so that it looks like I’ve done something to it. Buzz is in the kitchen, singing to himself and making a fry-up. Bacon and eggs. Probably a heap of other things besides.
I get stuck in the bedroom wondering what to wear. I’m not normally girly about that sort of thing. I just choose something and wear it. I never buy anything complicated, so the choices are easy.
But I already have a reputation in the office. A bit wild. A bit strange. My mountaintop adventure was always more likely to happen to me than to anyone else. So I want to downplay it. Make it seem smaller than it was. I want to diminish the gossip, not inflate it.
Buzz comes through to see where I’ve got stuck. I explain my dilemma.
‘You could wear that new outfit of yours.’
What new outfit? I can’t remember anything. He reminds me. There was a Hobbs bag in my car. He took it out when he loaded the back with snow shovels and sleeping bags. It’s now in my corner of the wardrobe.
‘You could wear that,’ he says.
I blink.
Yes, I could. I’d never really expected to wear it at all, if I’m honest, but nothing says ‘I’m not the almost-victim of a hypothermic contract killing’ like a three-hundred-pound suit from Hobbs. And, strangely enough, it’s not a bad choice. It’s loose over the parts of me that will welcome looseness. It’s comfortable enough to wear, chic enough to deflect attention from the way I spent my weekend.
So I put it on. My face has some minor burn marks and there’s still some abraded skin where I pulled my cheek from the frozen car panel, but I play around with makeup until I look presentable.
‘Bloody hell, babe, you look gorgeous!’
He gets a kiss for that, despite his tone of surprise. A kiss, but not a long one, because we have a fry-up to eat and a raid to attend. He clears away. I put on socks and boots, coat and hat, scarves and gloves. It’s a cold world and I don’t want to feel it.
The rendezvous at Cathays is a thing of headlights and car exhausts. Men in black jackets and knitted hats. Feet stamping on icy pavements. Snow in heaps along the North Road. The dirty grey-brown of city snow. Darkness overhead, battling streetlights for control of the city. Watkins, in her granny coat, bustles in and out of view
.
She’s good at these things. Certain and in command. There are six vehicles now, and more than two dozen cops.
We leave Cathays before dawn. Drive back down to Cardiff Docks, then across the bay. I’m in a Transit van with Watkins and two uniforms whom I know by sight and by name, but no more.
There’s not much conversation.
When we hit the end of the bay, our own vehicle and a patrol car make the turn down into Penarth. The other four vehicles continue on. We creep down the frozen roads into the sleeping town. Headlights shining office. An occasional breeze sends a scurry of ice crystals across the road. Between the tyre tracks, there’s a hard ramp of snow and ice.
Penarth. Marine Parade. You can’t see the sea from here, but you feel it. Cold waves nagging at cold sand, cold rocks.
Six fifteen. Prothero’s house. Pulled back from the road, a gravelled driveway in front.
We sweep straight in. Headlights shining full-beam on the front door. Partly for lighting. Mostly to disconcert and frighten the occupants. There are six of us all told. Four in uniform. Myself and Watkins not.
The knocker is a big heavy cast-iron thing. Lion’s head, or something like it. One of the uniforms smashes down on it. Not once but repeatedly. A din that, briefly, becomes the centre of the world. The only thing that matters.
Watkins stands back. She’s on the phone to the leader of the other team. They’ve gained entry to Barry Precision. Bolt cutters will have been used to cut the chain guarding the property, then a steel ram used to gain access to Barry Precision itself. ‘The Enforcer’. That’s what those rams are called. The boys love ’em.
The uniforms are having another go with the knocker and beginning to yell ‘Police’ and flash torchbeams around, when the hall lights go on. The front door opens.
Idris Prothero stands there – I recognise him from the photos I’ve studied. In a dressing gown and half asleep, but also composed. A kind of silvery indignation.
The uniforms don’t put cuffs on him. We will if we have to, but for now we’re not making arrests. If Prothero comes with us voluntarily, that’s good enough. We have a search warrant too, however. We’ll enforce that all right.
Watkins flashes her warrant card. Prothero takes it. Steps inside, puts the porch light on, studies the card, returns it.
He didn’t care about the card, though. He’s just staging a little show for us. The Idris Prothero I’m-not-flustered show. He’s about five foot eleven. Lean. Tanned. Handsome too, I suppose, though I don’t see him that way.
He’s a wanker and I want him in jail.
He agrees to come with us.
A uniformed officer escorts him upstairs, where he’ll be allowed to dress. He won’t be left alone for a minute, not even to pee. Prothero’s wife – Millie – appears briefly on an upstairs landing. Frightened. Pretty. Wifely. That’s what money buys you. The kind of woman who plays the part of loving wife so fully, she’s forgotten it’s all a part. Above her, one floor up, two moon shapes appear, peering over the banisters. Prothero’s kids, I assume. He’s twice married. This is his second brood.
There’s an odour of fear in the house. One we sought to generate.
Watkins doesn’t notice any of this, or if she does, she doesn’t care. The remaining officers are ordered to search the house top to bottom, including attic and outbuildings. Almost immediately, they locate two mobile phones, an iPad, a couple of laptops, a desktop, some boxfiles, a games console, but all those things were left hanging around in plain sight, in the sort of places you’d expect them. Prothero might be stupid enough to leave incriminating materials there, but he might not.
Watkins snappishly supervises the operation. I’m left out of things. Possibly because Watkins knows I’m still in a fairly delicate state. More likely because she thinks I wouldn’t be much use anyway.
Prothero is dressed by now and downstairs again. Grey suit. Pale blue shirt. No tie.
Watkins has a search warrant and orders the removal of the electronics and the papers. The standard play for someone in Prothero’s position is to argue with the warrant, demand a lawyer, start negotiating over precisely what is being removed and what not. He does none of those things. Just says, with a half smile, ‘I suppose I can use the coffee machine?’
He can. Goes into his gleaming kitchen. Polished wooden boards, hand-fired cream tiles. Coffee for six. Him, his wife, the four of us. Tiny white espresso cups with a blue pattern on the lip. Millie Prothero wears a bathrobe over a long cotton nightdress and keeps flitting in and out of the room. I’m not sure if that’s to look after the kids or to stress over whether the uniforms are grinding dirty snow into the pure wool carpets on her living room floor.
Watkins downs her coffee in a single blast. Woman has a throat made of fireboard. She leaves to supervise the removal of Prothero’s effects. I’m left in the kitchen guarding him. He looks at me with as much interest as he’d look at a new secretary at work. A vague sexual curiosity. Nothing else.
I look at him like he’s an arms dealer who murdered Ali el-Khalifi, caused the suicide of Mark Mortimer, and who almost murdered me. A cold sense of anger. Nothing else.
He looks at his watch and sighs.
But my anger is tempered with uncertainty. I strongly doubt that Prothero is innocent of arms smuggling, but what about what happened to me? I try asking, Did this man order my death? It seems highly probable that his firm, his arms dealing, sent Hamish and Olaf up into the hills to find that laptop. Given his choice of messenger, the murder of any police officer they happened to encounter probably lay well within their rules of engagement. But my question is more specific than that. What precisely took place? Was there an explicit instruction, a phone call, from this man to Hamish and Olaf, saying ‘Kill the copper’? And if so, did he make that call with this same calm demeanour, wearing this same elegant suit, this same air of slight impatience? Is that, in fact, how arms dealers conduct their business?
I don’t know, but in a way, it’s a side issue. His arms dealing has created plenty of corpses already. Not in the U.K., but abroad. Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran. How much blood is there in this impeccable kitchen? How many bones beneath these polished floors?
He says, ‘Will this take very much longer?’
I don’t answer. It takes as long as it takes.
There’s a minor commotion out in the hallway. I stand where I can see and listen better. One of the uniforms has just found a stack of boxed-up mobile phones in the wardrobe of an upstairs bedroom. Eight boxes. All unopened. Eight cheapie phones.
Watkins marches from the living room to view the haul. She reaches for her phone, summons another six officers. Then she does a thing which I’ve seen her do, but no one else. A kind of 180-degree rotation of the head, stare fixed outward, like a steel spoke aimed at anything in her path. The steel gaze stops when it reaches me. She jabs her chin in my direction, her hand at Prothero.
‘Cathays,’ she says.
And I nod.
38
‘Eight mobile telephones.’
Mervyn Rogers has one of the boxes in front of him. He’s broken the seal, opened it up, is playing with the little gadget in front of him. It looks small in Rogers’s hands. Like the buttons would be too small for his big fingers to operate.
‘You like phones? My daughter has two.’
We’re forty minutes into the interview. So far our interview tapes have recorded Rogers mostly, and me occasionally, asking questions. Prothero answered questions about name, address, and so forth with swift, clipped accuracy, and that’s about as much progress as we’ve made.
He phoned for a lawyer from the car on the way into Cathays. A London man, from a big firm of solicitors. The lawyer promised to come immediately, but that’s still three hours’ driving, even if the roads were okay, which they’re not.
And in the meantime, when we ask a question, Prothero mostly just smiles at us or waves a hand, as if languidly batting the issue away. It’s a gesture he proba
bly uses a lot.
The formula we’re required to use by the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act is intended to give us a little leeway. Right at the outset of the interview, Rogers said, speaking directly into the microphone, ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’
Prothero gave us one of his I’m-richer-than-you-are smiles, then leaned forward and said, also speaking directly into the microphone, ‘I’m perfectly happy to answer every one of your questions, but given that I’m suspected of what sounds like a very serious offence, I’d prefer to have a lawyer present throughout. You’ll understand that, I’m sure.’
Then leaned back and asked for coffee.
Rogers slams away at his current line of enquiry.
There is no innocent reason for Prothero to have these phones. Gangs, drug dealers, and serious-fraud-type criminals have modernised their communications. None of them would consider saying anything incriminating on a landline, and most are exceptionally careful about texts and emails. The gold-standard form of criminal communication is disposable mobile phones. You use them for a day or two – perhaps only a call or two – then ditch them. There’s a kind of organisational complexity in making sure that people have the numbers they need to reach you, but that’s it. Manage that, and you have an untraceable, untappable communications network.
I decide it’s highly improbable that Hamish and Olaf chose to kill me without getting instructions first. Apart from anything else, they’d have wanted to confirm a fee. So they rolled up the hill to get the laptop, found they were too late, and drove far enough down again to get a phone signal. Called Prothero on whichever phone number he’d given them. Got their orders. Drove back to do the deed.
Quite likely, these phones almost killed me.
Quite likely, the man sitting opposite me ordered me dead. I think of myself standing in the snow and the starlight. My feet in a basin of white fire as I froze, slowly, almost to death.
Love Story, With Murders Page 25