It’s slow work, but the indications are that Khalifi was indeed building a virtual arms-manufacturing network. We’ll know more once we have more data and once Brotherton has had a chance to analyse it, but it’s already pretty clear what the answer will be.
And I regret that, in a way. I’ve got on so well with the corpse of Khalifi, it’s sad to find how much I’d have detested him in real life. His little enterprise was no more ethical than Idris Prothero’s. Some people are better as corpses. They’re easier to like.
It’s not just the Barry end of things where we’re making progress. We’re making progress on the Langton–Khalifi link too.
We know for certain now that they had a relationship. It’s not just Swansea Bay Yacht Club that confirms it. The couple also went boating on the Llanishen Reservoir, before it was emptied. A guy who used to work there, renting boats, was able to recognise the pair.
Re-interviews of Langton’s old friends and a new analysis of material generated by the original enquiry all tends to confirm our general suspicion. That Langton, for whatever reason, got herself into a bad place when she started pole dancing and waitressing. The dancing was both an effect of that bad head space, but also a perpetuating factor. Langton was spiraling down. Then, her friends seem to agree, she got happier. Though she kept quiet about the details, it was assumed she had a man. She stopped dancing. Drank less. Got healthier.
As her old life got back on track, she no longer needed that rescue relationship. Again, we can’t be sure, but it does seem like she was the one who ended it, not him.
Some of these things aren’t beyond doubt, but most things aren’t. We work in a world of competing uncertainties. But for the first time since the enquiry started, it feels like all our effort is paying off. We’re moving towards arrests, prosecutions, convictions.
My own role in the hubbub is nicely ambiguous for a change. Partly because of that lunch and partly because of my little adventure on the hill, Watkins gives me considerable discretion in what I do.
And, as far as I’m concerned, it’s time that Mary Langton had more of my attention. It’s partly that I’m intrigued by the testimony of the boat guy at Llanishen. Previously, it was assumed that any normal girl leaving a party early and wanting to return to town would simply walk direct from the party to the station and await her train. She’s have had no reason, in failing light, to detour to a largely deserted reservoir.
Only, if you had recent romantic associations with that spot, mightn’t you do just that? Mightn’t, in fact, it be part of the reason why you left the party early, so you could commune with the spirit of your ex? Your past happiness?
I pile my desk with printouts and start to work. When Elsie Williams thrust her walking stick into a small boy’s bike, it was the August of 2007. I check against her daughter and son-in-law’s travel dates. They were visiting that summer. They were there when Elsie did it.
I check weather records too. When we sent an officer round to caution the old lady, it was a hot day. Sitting-outside weather. Bee-buzzingly, heat-shimmeringly, summer-lawn-beckoningly hot.
There was a door at the back of the garage, so if the front was open, you could simply walk straight from the street, through the garage, into the garden.
Or of course vice versa.
A hot day, a vicious widow. The things we coppers deal with.
The officer who cautioned Elsie Williams is away on holiday. Which is frustrating. I want to talk to him now. But that’s not the main thing, not by any means. I can feel myself convalescing, working more slowly than I normally would. And that’s okay. Slow is okay, it’s the outcome that matters. Mary Langton has waited so long, another week or two won’t bother her.
Her leg was in a freezer, her head in motor oil, her thumb in vegetable oil, a bit of leg packed in salt. Her arms were packed in polythene, but didn’t deteriorate as much as they should.
I click around on the Internet for a bit and discover that supermarket salads are bagged up in nitrogen. The exclusion of oxygen preserves the food that much longer. I poke around on the Internet and find that I can buy a nitrogen cylinder on eBay for seventy-two quid. Or get helium for not much more than twenty.
But who would do a thing like that? I wonder.
Wonder – but other bits and bobs of work keep pulling me away.
Mervyn Rogers and I have been down to David Marr-Phillips’s glitzy waterfront office to interview him about his arrangement with Prothero. He had a copy of the shareholder agreement waiting for us: the one that gave him a slice of Barry Precision, Prothero a slice of some of Marr-Phillips’s property assets. Also a report from an accountant stating that the valuations had been determined at fair market value. Some stuff on tax treatment. Accounts for the property companies. Financial data on Barry Precision. Blah, blah.
Marr-Phillips was both completely open with us and visibly irritated at the time we were consuming. Neither Mervyn nor I really knew how to play things. Mervyn’s best at frightening the tough-but-stupid criminals we spend most of our lives chasing, and we both felt out of our depth interviewing Marr-Phillips. We ended up asking repetitive, circular questions for twenty minutes, then let ourselves be escorted politely from the office.
We gave Watkins a full report of everything. Like us, she doesn’t know what to do with the Marr–Phillips–Prothero connection. We decide not to pursue it. If we can nail Prothero, other things may start to emerge. But maybe not. It doesn’t look to me like Marr-Phillips has done anything much wrong.
And nailing Prothero seems well within our grasp. Dunbar too. Watkins and I share a grim determination to see both men destroyed. Personally, I’d like to see how much they’d enjoy a prison in Libya. Or taste the pleasure of Bashar Assad’s hospitality in an Aleppo jail. Smashed ankles and a scream that echoes forever.
That won’t happen, of course, but I’d be happy enough if they do a long stint in Cardiff Prison. We may or may not get Prothero on murder, but there’s a maximum ten-year offence for weapons export offences. That’s twenty years too short, in my unhumble opinion. But still, it’s enough to fuck up a life. It would fuck up Prothero’s very nicely. He could try out his silvery indignation on his fellow prisoners, see how well it worked.
I think of Ayla and Theo. What does it do to children to learn that their father is a criminal and a suicide? What kind of abandonment is that? The jailing of Prothero might seem like redemption of the best sort. Yes, Theo, it was a mistake. We’re putting it right. We’re sending the bad people to jail.
These things run slowly, however. Barry Precision’s lawyers are working to impede the investigation at every turn, claiming unreasonable interference with the operation of the business. So far the Chief Constable and the county court have swatted aside every objection. I don’t think Barry’s lawyers expected anything else. I think their strategy relies on pushing up the cost of our investigation to a point at which we start having to scale back our effort. I’ve seen perfectly valid cases fail for purely budgetary reasons. But Watkins has the total support of top management. She thinks, and I do, that we’ll secure our conviction.
Slow is okay, it’s the outcome that matters. What I tell myself and my injured body.
One week ends. Another one begins. It’s now two weeks before Christmas and even Cathays starts to feel a little Christmassy cheer. Secretaries wear tinsel earrings. Jon Breakell attends the morning briefing in an elf hat. Jim Davis goes out to lunch at twelve fifteen and returns four hours later, barely able to focus. A fake memo is circulated seeking the apprehension of a well-known criminal, thought to operate an unlicensed flying vehicle, to be in breach of multiple immigration regulations, and to force nocturnal entry to millions of homes. Believed to operate out of Lapland. Aliases include Saint Nick, Santa Claus, ‘Father’ Christmas, etc.
Everyone circulates it to everyone. I receive five versions. Delete them all. Ho, ho, ho.
Tuesday night is usually my night. That means in theory an opportunity to clean and
iron things. In practice it means an opportunity to smoke a joint without worrying that Buzz is going to find me. An opportunity to moon around my own house, in my own way.
Most nights now that I spend on my own, Khalifi comes to see me.
He’s not always chuckling. He has a sadder side, I see. There was something unsustainable in his earlier mood. Something skittish, excitable.
I like his visits. If this is the form my psychotic side takes now, I welcome it. Better the occasional visit from a corpse than feel myself to be one of their number.
I don’t take my amisulpride. The pills go back to the bathroom cabinet.
And one night, I come home from the office. It’s six thirty. My night for being alone. Only, as I let myself in, I hear someone moving about upstairs. There is a black bag on the landing. I shout up a greeting, but get nothing back.
Go to the kitchen, put the kettle on.
Go to the potting shed, get some weed.
Start rolling joints. I didn’t leave the house unlocked but some people don’t need keys. There isn’t much in the fridge, but there’s probably enough. Lev is like me. He eats randomly. And it’s not my job to feed him.
Make peppermint tea for me. Put black tea out ready. Look for jam. Put that out too.
Then Lev appears. The unremarkable Lev. Old jeans and a jumper. Brown hair worn longish. Brown eyes like a spaniel’s.
We don’t kiss, hug, or shake hands. I don’t know why not. We do smile at each other, though. I make Lev’s tea. Push the jam jar and a teaspoon across the table at him. Light a joint.
We talk.
I never ask Lev much about his life. I used to, but then I realised he either said nothing or made stuff up, so I stopped asking. When he wants to tell me things, he does.
I tell him my news. About Buzz. About Langton and Khalifi. I tell him about Barry Precision: how a small Welsh engineering firm figured out it could make big money by exporting weapons parts on the pretext that they had innocent industrial purposes.
‘This company is where?’
‘In Barry. Down on the coast, just beyond the city.’
Lev’s face is dark. He’s been in war zones. He knows what modern weaponry can do.
‘Okay,’ he says, meaning Go on.
I tell him about Hamish and Olaf. About being made to stand outside in the snow, wearing nothing more than trousers and a T-shirt. About how I escaped and how I almost didn’t.
Lev mutters something in what might be Russian but could be Lithuanian. Then he says, ‘You know this people?’
‘We’ve identified the Scottish guy.’ I give Lev his name, photo, and the fact that he stole a numberplate in Drumchapel. ‘There’s money in the drawer,’ I say.
I first met Lev when he was an itinerant martial arts teacher. I used to pay him for tuition, then stopped. I’m not sure whether this is the sort of thing that requires payment. But I’ve put three thousand pounds in cash in the kitchen drawer. Lev can have as much of that as he wants.
He takes the documents, studies them briefly, then he says, ‘You want me to find him? Or what?’
I don’t know what the ‘or what’ means exactly. I don’t know how far Lev would go. But I say, ‘No, just find him. I need an address, that’s all.’
‘Okay.’
He nods. A dismissal. We talk about other things. Smoke. Make more tea. Lev has an iPod now – he never used to – and uses it to bend my hi-fi to his will. Russian music. The wild steppe and an infinite melancholy.
At some point we get hungry. There are peas and oven chips in the freezer. The fridge and cupboards yield up pesto sauce, crackers, some slightly bendy carrots, two eggs, some bacon that is turning an oily purple with age, and a jar of lumpfish caviar which my dad brought me thinking it was the same thing as caviar-caviar.
I say I’ll make supper. Lev says he’ll take a shower.
I don’t think there’s a recipe which involves the ingredients I have, so I just cook the things that need cooking and put everything out on the table.
Get another bag of weed from the potting shed in case we’re set for a long night.
Lev comes down. Wet hair. Jeans. T-shirt sticking to his back and chest because he hasn’t dried himself properly. Bare feet.
And then – we’re not alone.
In the opening to the living room, a man is standing.
It’s Buzz. Storm clouds rolling round his head. A deep-bladed anger between his eyes.
I’ve never seen him like this.
He does drop round from time to time, even on my nights off. He never stays for long and only drops by if he’s in the area, but there’s no rule that says he’s not allowed here. I’m sure he’d have knocked before using his key, because he’s a polite boy and because he knows I like my space. But I’ve only just come in from the garden and though Lev would certainly have heard any knock – Lev is vigilant even in sleep – he wouldn’t necessarily have thought that someone’s arrival demanded any action on his part.
Lev dips a bendy carrot in lumpfish caviar and eats it.
His eyes are watchful, but they always are. He is completely calm, but he always is.
Buzz studies Lev. The evidence of his recent shower. Our obvious intimacy. The bags of weed on the table. Marijuana smoke and violins.
And suddenly, there’s an ugly biology here too. The biology of rutting stags. Silverback gorillas battling over harems. Wolves snarling for supremacy.
And I know what Buzz is thinking. He’s figuring that he’s taller, stronger, younger, fitter. That’s he’s an ex-paratrooper. That he could give Lev a kicking.
And he can’t. He really, really can’t.
I follow the template of my own biology. Stand up. Say, ‘Buzz, no. This isn’t what you think it is. Buzz, this isn’t anything.’ I can hear my own voice high and shrill. Too high and way too shrill.
‘Really? Because I was thinking that there was a Class B drug being consumed on these premises.’
‘Fuck’s sake, yes, I smoke dope. Buzz –’
‘And little Mr Pretty here –’
‘Buzz, please –’
He steps up close to Lev. I don’t think he is going to hit him, but he’s certainly threatening to do so. He’s being deliberately invasive. Testosteroney.
And Lev reacts. Effortlessly. Sweeps Buzz’s legs from under him. Gets a shoulder underneath Buzz’s falling chin. Rams Buzz’s body hard against the wall. The move ends with Buzz in a neck-and-arm-lock, and I find myself thankful that Lev chose to moderate his reaction to this extent.
He can do worse than this. He can do very much worse.
I dance around being uselessly feminine, but this isn’t about anything I do or don’t say. The male hormones need to find their balance first.
Lev, retaining a grip on Buzz, says, softly, ‘Please be a little careful and we can all talk like respectable people.’
Then he steps away. Buzz is shocked and has probably taken a bruise or two, but he’s not injured. Not really.
I say, ‘Buzz, I smoke dope. Not often, but I do. This is Lev. He’s a friend. My martial arts teacher, or used to be. He has just taken a shower. That’s all. We have never had sex. Never. Not once and I’ve known him for six years now.’
We tiptoe back from the precipice.
Buzz gets up, rubbing his neck and his knee. He is still furious, but there’s a bewilderment here, which may yet be just as injurious. He looks at Lev with different eyes. Wondering what kind of man this is.
Looks at me differently too, I expect. My colleagues at Cathays love to tease me about a couple of incidents in my past. A man whose knee I dislocated and whose testicle I ruptured. Another man whom I kicked in the head and threw off a cliff. It’s been assumed that I achieved those things by accident almost. That a petite woman of no great strength or fitness could do these things only by fluke. Some fleeting combination of time and circumstance.
Now that Buzz has met Lev, he might just revise that opinion. And this was Lev gentle. Le
v the peace-maker.
I say, ‘Can we talk? Can we all just sit and talk?’
My voice sounds unreal, even to myself.
Lev ignores me.
Talks to Buzz and says, ‘Come.’
Takes Buzz outside, shows him the potting shed. My marijuana plants. My heat lamps. My bags of weed. My cubes of resin. The little seedbank which allows me to grow the sweetest weed in all of Pontprennau.
I don’t go with them. Just sit at the kitchen table wondering if I still have a boyfriend.
When Buzz comes back, his eyes are filled with questions.
I say, ‘When I was in recovery, half in Cotard’s, half not, marijuana was one of the few things I could rely on to calm my mind. I don’t smoke very often these days. Maybe once a week. Two or three times if I feel my head is in a bad place. And one day, maybe, I’ll give up completely. But for now, I still need this. Maybe I always will.’
‘So it’s medicinal?’
Buzz’s voice is hoarse. Like he lost it in an attic somewhere, and has only just found it, rusty and cobwebbed, like an old key.
‘Well, not always, obviously.’ I gesture at the table. At Lev. ‘It can be social too. But not often. I grow my own so I don’t have to buy it. And I never sell it.’
I add that last bit, because Buzz’s police mind needs that information. A police officer who sells drugs deserves jail. A police officer who purchases drugs needs to be dismissed. An officer who grows her own drug supply for primarily medicinal reasons – even Buzz has a separate category for that.
‘You could have told me.’
‘Really? Do you really think I could have done?’
Buzz doesn’t answer. He’s no idiot, but in the last few minutes he’s uncovered an assumed infidelity, discovered that his girlfriend is a drug user, been slammed painfully against a wall, and is now starting to wonder just how much violence his possible future wife is herself capable of.
Love Story, With Murders Page 31