by Bo Brennan
Colt eyeballed him. Reynolds’ clothes could do with a change. The bloke looked like a hobo who’d crawled out of a skip. Hadn’t seen soap or shaving foam for days. “Believe me, I’ve done you a favour,” he said. “And it’s the only one you’re getting. Who verified it?”
Ryan sighed and scratched his stubbly jaw. “Never gets old does it, this dance between you and me. It’s like the hot shoe shuffle. You get all hot and heavy, and I shuffle off,” he said, readying to leave. “The story was touted. We bought it, fact checked it, ran it.”
“It’s bollocks, Ryan. Your fact checkers are crap. Why didn’t you run it by me? Could’ve saved us both a lot of time and money.”
“I tried, three times. You were dead.”
Colt frowned. “When has that ever stopped you? You usually try harder.” Christ, he’d chucked himself under the wheels of his car before now.
“I usually write the story too.” Ryan groaned and slouched in his seat, resigned to having a conversation. “My junior wrote it. And that one,” he said, staring at the front page condemned to a congealing greasy grave. “I was too pissed to care.”
Colt nodded at the reporter’s empty cup. “You want another drink?”
Ryan brightened at the prospect. “There’s a pub up the road. Rum?”
“No.”
His shoulders slumped as he disappeared into the doldrums again. “Might as well get a bottle and go home then.”
“What the fuck’s going on with you, Ryan? You don’t get awards for getting pissed.”
Ryan lifted his head. “Seem to remember you winning ‘Caner of the Year’ once or twice.”
Colt grimaced at the reminder of another life, when punk awards for youthful stupidity were the most outrageous items to arrive in his mail. “That was a long time ago.”
The reporter’s keen eyes danced across Colt’s hands. “You haven’t remarried and you haven’t been pictured with a star struck starlet for some time.”
“I’ve grown up.”
“But have you settled down?”
Colt crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Not with a dismembered Muslim woman, no.”
Ryan screwed up his face and fists, dismayed his drunken ploy had failed. “Junior interviewed the surviving brother and sister at the love-nest you own.”
The ‘surviving sister’ Colt presumed was Shayla Begum, but it was the first he’d heard of a brother. “The article didn’t say anything about a brother.”
“He wasn’t giving the story; he was just collecting the cash.” Ryan shrugged. “You know how these things work – a woman wearing a burka has to have an escort, right. I’m guessing it was a woman. Junior said she had lady lumps, but for all he knows it could’ve been a suicide vest.”
“Did the lady have a name?”
“Yep. Brother too. Also had a key.” Ryan winked. “Black silk sheets. Nice touch, chief.”
Colt grimly shook his head. The only sheets he owned were Egyptian cotton, and his love-nest remained bird free. He’d have no trouble getting India to move in, if she thought for one second she’d find the elusive Miss Begum there.
Ryan smacked his lips and peered into his empty cup, Colt pushed his mug of murky coffee towards him. The hack smiled knowingly as he lifted it to his lips. “Apartment on The Embankment. Owned outright by you.”
“Which one?”
“Just told you. The Embankment.”
“Address?” Colt said, unwilling to divulge he owned several.
Ryan’s eyes narrowed as he wiped his mouth. “Haven’t got it with me.”
“Better have it when my lawyers ask. Being pissed won’t cut it.”
“What about being orphaned, will that work?”
Colt stared at him, wondering what he was going to pull out of his bag of tricks next.
“Look, no one else knows this except my junior, and I’m only telling you because I don’t want him getting shafted on my account. He’s a good kid, just starting out. We’ve all been there,” he said, tilting his head at Colt. “My old mum died last week, I haven’t put pen to paper since. Last article I wrote myself was the one about you on Primetime Issues. It was me by the way.”
“What was?”
“The phrase ‘on-street grooming’. I coined it. Glad you approve.” He half-heartedly flicked a baked bean off his sleeve. “Mum died the same night. Wouldn’t have seen the article, but I get a kick out of thinking she might’ve been watching when you flattened Councillor Cooper. Mum was a big rugby fan, liked you a lot. Miranda Ayres, too. Real journalists get TV shows apparently.”
Drowning your sorrows was something Colt was well acquainted with, so was disappointing your parents, however, taking a hack’s word as gospel was not. Especially under the current circumstances. “Sorry for your loss,” he said stiffly.
“Thanks. Hadn’t seen her for a while. Been too busy chasing awards and trying to make her proud. Found out about it on the office newswire, would you believe. Big police investigation going on, and the bastards won’t tell me anything. Asking as a son, not a reporter. Even junior can’t find out, and there ain’t no flies on him. Found out where that priest was from because rent-a-cop on Winchester’s front desk assumed he was calling about that. They still haven’t released his details. Guess holy moly’s next of kin hasn’t been informed yet.”
Ryan stared at the table and sniffed. For one god awful second Colt thought he was going to cry. “Anyway,” he said, glancing up with glassy red eyes. “Maybe you can cut me some slack, maybe even do a mate a favour?”
Colt raised a brow. Over the years their volatile relationship had settled to as tolerable a truce as the police and press could manage . . . but they were far from ‘mates’, and Colt didn’t do the press ‘favours’, at least not the sort they liked.
Ryan raised a hand. “No need for cuffs, it’s not a bribe, hear me out. We paid a lot for that story about you and the dead sister, but we would’ve paid more. Brother didn’t want a bidding war, came in hard and – in hindsight – came in cheap. From what I remember, and it’s all a bit hazy, he provided the Land Registry documents on your love-nest too. Which currently means you’re in deeper shit than me.”
“Is that so?”
“Mate, you’re up shit creek without a paddle.”
Colt leaned towards him. “Ryan, you don’t even have a boat.”
“I don’t need one. If you take Captain Morgan out of the equation, no one’s trying to drown me.”
Hampshire
India crossed the examination centre car park, the welcome tune chirping from her phone as it sprang back to life.
She frowned as the number of missed calls lit up the screen. Seventeen.
All from Gray.
Her shoulders sagged with relief. Thank God he’d finally come up for air.
“Can’t have been that bad.”
India snapped her head around at the sound of the familiar voice. “What do you want?”
The NCA’s Doug Henderson grimaced. “Sergeant Sangrin called me about connections to my case. Since he’s a bit of a dick, I thought I’d be better off speaking to you. Your name’s all over it. How did you do in there?”
“Who gives a fuck. I haven’t got a job anymore.”
“Don’t be silly. The stripper’s a whore. She’ll do whatever she’s paid to do. DCI Firman knows that, he’s a sensible man. It’s sad-sack Sangrin who’s struggling to make it stick. Have a little faith. The stripper will be gone before you even get your results.”
“How? You gonna beat her to death for me?”
India wasn’t sure who she currently hated the most. Melody Fletcher, Henderson, or Sangrin. Fletcher might’ve stuck the knife in, but Sangrin certainly knew how to twist it. She wondered how many others he’d delighted in telling. Just thinking about it made her skin crawl.
Her phone rang in her hand. She put her palm in Doug’s face as she answered Gray’s eighteenth call. She wanted to speak to him. His was the only voice she wan
ted to hear right now.
“Calm down . . . you received a what? . . . where is it now? . . . where are you?” She glanced sideways at Doug Henderson, saw his body tilting as he strained to hear the other side. Pulling her keys from her pocket, India made for her car. Henderson fell into step beside her. “Okay, stay where you are. Do not open the door to anybody. I’m on my way.”
Doug pointed his key fob at the pimped-up Subaru next to hers, and all lights flashed as the doors unlocked. “Get in,” he said.
“Get lost.” India rammed her car key into her lock.
Henderson’s hand appeared on her driver’s window, keeping the door shut. “I said, Get. In.”
“And I said, Get. Lost.” India shoved him away from her car. “You wanna go for round two?” she said, squaring up. “You got lucky last time, Henderson. You won’t get lucky again.”
Doug Henderson raised his hands in surrender. “We got off on the wrong foot.”
India glared at him. “No, Colt got the wrong foot. You just got off.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, slowly lowering his hands. “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought you were working with them.”
“Who the fuck is ‘them’?”
“Nisha Fisher told you about the network, right?”
India’s eyes narrowed as her spent brain scrabbled. “Why don’t you start from scratch?”
“Please,” he said, gesturing to his car. “Get in. I’ll tell you everything on the way to collect Nazreem Sinder’s head.”
Chapter 57
“Start talking,” India said, thumbing the keypad on her phone.
Doug Henderson shifted through the unmarked Subaru’s gears as he undertook a queue of traffic on the motorway approach road. “What are you doing?”
“Checking my mail, if that’s all right with you. Southbound,” she directed as they reached the main intersection. “We’re going to Portsmouth.”
“Got anything more from this Davies fella?”
India pinged a text to Gray and then deleted it from her sent folder. “No.”
“Why’d he phone you?”
India shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.” She held on to her seat as Doug hit the motorway with his foot to the floor, blue lights flashing, siren wailing. The Subaru made mincemeat of rush hour, the traffic parted as though Moses were behind the wheel. “Who’s Nazreem Sinder?”
Doug Henderson shot her a sideways glance. “The dead woman.”
India wet her lips, unsure how much Winchester had told him and wary how best to proceed.
“She was a witness,” he said, giving a little.
“To what?”
“That’s classified.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Classified.”
India sighed, wishing she’d stuck to her guns and brought her own car. “And the network’s classified too.”
He laughed like a crazy cultist. “No, the network’s wide open. When these women run, they chase.”
“These, they, them.” India gritted her teeth. “Stop talking in fucking riddles or stop the fucking car.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth as he swerved a lorry, Portsmouth’s spikey Spinnaker Tower coming into view. “Am I taking the M275?”
“No. A27. First junction. You can let me out on the slip road.”
“Asian women,” he said. “Nazreem Sinder was a British Pakistani. A Muslim. She came to us with a problem, we provided a solution.”
As he pulled up at a traffic light-controlled roundabout, India unfastened her seatbelt and reached for the door.
“She gave us information that guaranteed her death if we acted on it.”
“And did you?”
“Yes,” he said as the light turned green. “If you’re staying, belt up, please. You’re committing a criminal offence.”
India’s eyes narrowed as she jammed the seatbelt back into place, and Doug took off towards the estuary, heading into central Portsmouth. “So after three years in witness protection they found her,” she said. Doug’s jaw tightened. India knew more than he thought. “Take a right here,” she directed. “How’d that come about?”
“The network,” he said, speeding through the industrial estate. “The Muslim community is tight-knit. Six degrees of separation is more like two. Loyalty and honour are core Islamic values. It doesn’t matter where you were born or raised, Islam has no boundaries, so the law of the land takes second place to Sharia. You have a problem; you go to the elders. You don’t go to the police, no matter what. Left or right?” he asked, reaching the end of the road and a sign pointing back to the motorway.
“Left, then second right.” He hung a left, quickly gaining on the turning into Gray’s short residential street. “Who’s in this network?”
“Muslims mainly,” he said, spinning the car right and hitting the brakes hard as a group of kids chased their ball down the road. “Black or white, male or female, all walks of life. The Muslims are loyal to Islam and defending it against detractors. The others, well, I guess you’d call them bounty hunters and intelligence gathers, they’re just loyal to the cash for locating the enemy. By coming to us, Nazreem Sinder became the enemy.”
“And you can’t tell me what she came to us for?”
“Nope. Classified.” He gave an angry blast of siren to clear the kids out of the street.
“You can park anywhere,” India said. “It’s that house there.”
He remained motionless as the car engine thrummed. “You took us the long route.”
“I had a lot of questions.”
They stepped from the car and approached the house. India pushed through the gate to see the front door ajar. Doug Henderson flattened her against the bay window of the lounge as he kicked the door wide open, gun in hand. In that split-second India knew the moves she’d made were right.
Taking a deep breath, she followed him inside, heading straight for the kitchen while he thumped around upstairs.
The head lay on the kitchen floor, next to an upturned box. The eyes were open and empty, devoid of all the things she’d seen. A bloody mess where long hair should be, made it look like she’d been scalped.
India bent beside it and pressed a bare finger to the cheek. It was cold, clammy, and well preserved. Probably spent time frozen.
If she didn’t know better, she’d say this was Shayla Begum.
“Clear!” Henderson continually shouted above her as he moved from room to room.
She straightened up and scrubbed her hands with her brother’s anti-bacterial hand wash, drying them with a neatly folded tea-towel as Doug came down the stairs. “You should’ve waited for my command before entering, Kane,” he declared, holstering the gun at his shoulder.
India was relieved he’d put the weapon away. She wouldn’t trust him with a spud gun. “Sorry, haven’t had much practice at this sort of thing.”
He took photographs on his phone before flipping the box with the toe of his expensive looking shoe. “Grayson Davies,” he murmured. “He’s not here. Who is he and what does he do?”
“Local firefighter.”
Henderson sucked air through his teeth as he looked her up and down. “How’d he get your number?”
India raised a shoulder. “Worked a few arson cases together in the past. Guess he kept it.”
Doug stared at her. “You screwed him?”
“Fuck you,” India spat, heading for the door. Doug blocked her route with his arm.
“You didn’t ask his address,” he said, inclining his head so they were nose to nose.
India held her ground. The last time this man interrogated her in a residential dwelling hadn’t ended well. “I interviewed him here after the attempted murder of Shayla Begum. Now get the fuck out of my face, Dick.”
He huffed a mirthless laugh. “Fair enough,” he said, dropping his arm. “Can’t be too careful. But I’m not finished yet. Where is he now?”
India drew a deep, steadying bre
ath as he retreated from her personal space. Her urge to respond with a headbutt retreated with him. “No idea,” she said. “You heard me tell him to stay put.”
“Where does he work?”
“Winchester.”
“Winchester?” he said, screwing up his face. “Why not Portsmouth?”
India threw her hands in the air. “Better class of fire maybe? How the hell should I know?”
He ushered her towards the front door, pausing to take a photograph of the gaffer tape sealing the inside of the letter box. “What d’you make of that?”
“He’s a fireman,” India said, with an uninterested glance. “Probably changes his smoke detector batteries as often as his underpants.”
Doug raised his brows. “Or Shayla Begum was here, and he was trying to prevent a repeat of what happened at Cantilever Court.”
India frowned and jerked her head, unable to contain her surprise. Seemed Winchester had told him a lot. “Why would Shayla Begum be here?”
“Why not?” Doug asked, stepping outside. “She’s hiding somewhere.”
“What’s she hiding from?”
He peered at the bulky waterproof cover in the forecourt, shoved the bins aside, and pulled it off the bike. Dropping to his haunches, he started clicking with his camera phone. “She was here all right,” he said, pointing at droplets of blood behind the motorbike’s back wheel. “Davies is the guy from the church.”
“What guy?”
“Surprised you haven’t seen it, Kane,” he said, fiddling with his fancy phone. “But then, hey, you don’t have a job anymore, so why bother.” He held out his phone, a YouTube video playing. “It’s all over the internet, gone viral.”
India stared at the small screen in silence, watching Gray fight, get stabbed, and then ride off like a bat out of hell with Shayla Begum on the back of his bike, sporting a hospital gown and a plaster cast. It almost made her vomit.
“Some kids filmed it on their mobiles Monday night in a churchyard near Winchester. I’ve checked every fucking hospital and medical centre in a fifty-mile radius looking for Evel Knievel.”
India could hear police sirens getting closer. They couldn’t come fast enough, the sooner they got here the sooner she could end this. “Why are you looking for him?”