by Koko Brown
Relief flooded him. “Thank you. I’ll get you everything you need.”
Chambers sent him the barest smile. “I’m trusting you.”
“As you should. You won’t regret this.”
Xiu got down to the cottage in record time, considering the weekend was approaching. Perhaps because he was travelling in the opposite direction to the traffic. Atarah would help them set this straight.
His confidence was undermined by her absolute horror when she heard what he had done.
“Did you even check to see if your chief is one of the moles?”
Xiu felt stupid. “She’s a good woman. I trust her.”
“You’ve trusted me, and that says everything,” she groaned, pushing her hair from her face with a growl of frustration. “I can’t believe you did this. Fuck. You want me to die. That’s the only logical explanation for giving information about me to your chief. Did you tell her I’m a woman?”
Xiu stayed silent.
“Oh, Christ. No, I can’t stay here.”
He caught her by the arms. “Please calm down. Listen to me…Listen!” he ordered. She looked at him, tears of frustration in her eyes. “I trust you because you did the right thing. I trust my chief to keep it to herself, because she has been a copper for longer than I’ve even been alive.”
“And she’s only a chief. You wouldn’t have thought that by now she’d be at the Yard? Or that glass ceiling really does exist? No promotions for women then?” Atarah sneered. “This is a mistake.”
“Let’s just do the statement, turn on Nicodeme’s phone. We’ll have all the information on both Gael and Sybilla. If I can open it.”
She lifted a brow. “Don’t worry your pretty little head. I know how to get around most phones.”
Xiu rested his hands on her shoulders, wincing when she flinched from his touch. “You’re a brilliant woman.”
She carefully moved his palms from her shoulders. “Are you staying for dinner? I made shepherd’s pie from scratch.”
Sounded all right. He returned to his car to retrieve the phone. A sound alerted him and he saw a little red-headed girl standing outside her cottage.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’m a friend. Who are you?”
“Rae’s friend,” she announced. “What are you doing?”
“About to have dinner… Does your parent know you’re outside?” A frown mixed with a bemused smile was received by a deeper frown and a mouth turned upside down.
“My dada knows everything.” With that, she turned back inside her home, closing the door with a bang.
Well, if her parents didn’t know she’d gone out, they did now.
He opened the door, barely looking up from the phone. “Have you been making friends…”
A grunt made him look up and he watched Atarah flip a grown man onto his back and karate-chop him flat, straight palm across his throat. As the man coughed and spluttered for air, Atarah used plastic wire around his wrists.
“What the hell?” Xiu breathed, skidding to Atarah’s side.
She sent him a dismissive look and hauled the man to his feet. “Pat him down,” she ordered him and the tone of her voice warned him he needed to obey absolutely.
He removed a burned phone, a hellishly old Nokia with not a single call on it and a receipt with a telephone number on it.
“How did you get here?” Xiu asked.
The man lifted his bruised face with defiance and stared him down. Atarah twisted his arm and to Xiu’s eternal surprise, the man cried out. “My friend asked you a question. I don’t have any problem breaking this…”
Xiu’s eyes widened in shock as she twisted harder and harder until a popping noise cracked across the room. The man screamed and after a brief pause, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he sank to the floor like a graceful lady.
“Jesus,” Xiu breathed the word in shock. Atarah stared in disgust.
“He must have parked around here. Do you want to go outside and check?”
Xiu frowned at her. “I think you need to go out and check while I put this man’s arm back in its socket.”
Atarah opened her mouth to argue and Xiu very nearly lost his temper. “Now!”
She huffed and turned on her heel to leave. The door remained ajar and Xiu knelt down to reset the man’s arm. The procedure was something he’d done a long time ago, but never with the arm in restraints. Quickly, Xiu sat the man up and then with one swift, arcing motion, pushed his shoulder back into place.
The man came to with a howl of misery and pain.
“All right, my violent friend has gone,” Xiu said gently. “How did you get here?”
“I got the Thameslink,” the man said, twisting his mouth into a grimace. “Had a nice walk.”
Xiu patted him on the shoulder, then took a kitchen chair and sat in front of him. “Shame you didn’t walk in the other direction. There’s a golf course about two miles away. You look like a golfer.”
“I don’t mind the odd bit of golf.”
The sarcasm rolled off Xiu’s back. “You know Chambers uses that golf course? She tries to go on the weekend with her husband.”
The man’s eyes flickered at the use of the chief’s name.
Shit. Shit. Shit. As if Atarah’s warning hadn’t been enough… She’d proved him so very wrong. He couldn’t trust anyone in the station.
It didn’t mean that Chambers had given him the information, only that maybe someone had followed him. Had been following him.
“Do you know Chambers?”
“I’ve no idea who you’re talking about. I said to you, I was walking…”
“Around the back of my house. Yeah, that’s not going down particularly well.” Xiu leaned forward and squeezed on the man’s swollen shoulder. “How did you find me?”
“I followed you!” the man screeched, turning beet-red with the pain. “I followed you from the station! The newspapers said you were in charge of the investigation into a murder…”
“Who told you to follow me?” Xiu squeezed again, his anger and his irritation with himself fuelled the desire to hurt the fool as much as possible. How dare he attack Atarah? Sneak into his home and try to kill her?
“I can’t say… I can’t!” he yelled.
Xiu sat back and rubbed his face with both hands. “You’re wasting my time.”
The man’s face bulged and he vomited on himself and almost on Xiu. “I feel ill,” he gargled, much to Xiu’s disgust.
“So make this easier for yourself. Tell me who told you to follow me.”
“Gael. He wants to talk to her,” he muttered, jerking his chin in the direction Atarah had left. “He wants to know why she ran after Nicodeme died.”
“How do they know Nicodeme died?”
“Cleaners who called the police also called them. He just wants to talk to her. I have a phone to give her.”
“Then why attack?”
“He told me to,” he gasped. “He said it would tell him if she was involved with his death. If she was just scared, then she’d tell me to come in. If she went for me… it would tell him everything.”
“She reacted like someone who was jumped in their home.”
“It’s not her home though, is it?” the man sneered at him. “She’s shacked up with a copper. That tells me everything.”
Xiu nodded. “That’s plenty for now, thank you. What’s Gael’s number? In case my friend wants to have a chat?”
“That receipt you pulled out of my pocket. He wrote the number down for me.”
Xiu nodded. “Come on. We’re going for a drive.”
The man frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not calling anyone from here.”
Atarah returned from the road closing the door behind her.
“Gael sent him,” she said, taking a card from her back pocket and placing it in Xiu’s hand. “Ugh, did he throw up?”
Xiu pushed him out of the cottage. “Yep. Sorry, we’re goi
ng to have to clean up later. We’re using his car.”
“Driving him back to London? Are you crazy?”
“What else do we do with him?” Xiu asked, pushing the man out of the door. “There’s nothing else for him to do except come with us.”
She followed them out of the cottage, then overtook to lead them to the man’s car. “It’s just down here.” She turned off the cottage road to a main street where the Volvo was parked behind a pub.
“He didn’t lock it,” Atarah said, opening the boot. “And I know every vehicle in this vicinity. Plus, he had the card.”
She removed some duct tape and flattened it over the man’s mouth. “Into the boot, Nosey.”
Xiu agreed. The risk of him making a noise during the call was far too great. The man struggled briefly, until Xiu wrapped an arm around his neck and pressed until the pressure made the man fall into unconsciousness.
Atarah took his legs and Xiu held him by the arms and folded him into the boot of the car. Xiu stared at him, breathless with the idea that this had been the plan for Atarah.
She slammed the boot and got into the passenger seat. “I’ll call. I won’t let him know you’re here, just in case.”
“Good idea. I’ll drive us up to a station towards the east coast. Better take everything out of here.” He removed the sat-nav and threw it into the back.
They drove quickly in a west direction, away from the cottage. All Xiu could hope for was the complete geographic ignorance of the potential assassin.
ELEVEN
His brain ran in circles, trying to consider who on earth had given him away, or why he was named in a newspaper, if he was named at all. “Atarah, get on the internet and look up my name. I want to check if that goon is telling the truth.”
Swiftly, he removed his phone from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Code is 878721.”
She tapped it out and flicked through the screens. Her exhalation told him firmly that the goon had been telling the truth.
“We have been informed that the officer in charge of the retrieval of the trafficked persons is a DS Jiang. Any information that can be provided should be directed to East Green Police Station. Please do not call 999 unless it is an emergency. “
It was either the hospital staff—who really should know better—or the social worker saw a little glamour coming her way and spilled her guts.”
“Or someone in the station overheard me talking to Chambers and made sure to keep tabs on me.” He briefly glanced at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I should have been more careful. I should have…”
“Trusted me?” she asked wryly, tucking his phone back into his pocket and giving his chest a gentle pat. “As if you could do that above the people that you work with. Don’t worry, I’m used to it…”
“You shouldn’t be. We’ve been through enough for me to take you at your word,” he said abruptly. “Let’s stop here.”
He edged into a service station and tapped in the number. A man answered within the second ring. “Did you find her?”
“Hello Gael,” Atarah said softly. “You sound stressed.”
He paused before replying. “Well, well. It’s like a voice from the beyond. Where have you been hiding, ma petite?”
“I’ve been dealing with my own issues. Why are you sending people to look for me?”
Xiu was amazed by her calm.
“Because you disappeared. And suddenly, our dearest friend is dead. Do you know what happened to him?”
“Who?” Atarah asked, her voice blank.
“Nicodeme. He’s dead. A terrible business.”
Atarah dramatically gasped “How?”
Gael chuckled. “Oh Atarah, you are amusing. I know you killed him.”
Xiu’s stomach dropped, his eyes watered with the horror of those five words. He glanced up at Atarah, who shook her head, mouthing, “It’s all right.”
“Did I?”
“Atarah, my darling girl. You called me for his address. The next morning, he is dead. You never got on with him. Just tell me why. Unless you are concerned I will contact the police…”
“I’m concerned you’re going to send someone after me in revenge.”
“It’s not me. It’s Sybilla. You know how close she was to Nicodeme. She considered him as a brother. And now you’ve taken him away. What will she do now?”
Atarah scratched her cheek. “I’ll think she’ll manage without a paedophile for a fake brother.”
Gael remained silent for a moment. “Maybe, but it wasn’t your place to take that away from her. I have tried many a time to convince her…”
“No, you fucking haven’t.” Atarah dismissed his protest. “You let him to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted, regardless. There were no boundaries or barriers to him picking and choosing whatever child he saw as easy meat.”
“You have a conscience. How…expensive for you. Well, you’ll have to come here. From wherever you are… What is this town? Northton?”
Atarah raised her brows. Of course he’d kept them on long enough to trace where they were calling from. Good thing they were sufficient distance from their hiding spot.
“Nice quiet place for me to keep my distance,” Atarah answered. “With that, I really should go. Can you leave me out of this?”
“No, I can’t, Atarah. You’ve exposed us. Very badly. I have good links with the station running the investigation, but something—someone—has to be sacrificed for that to continue. His murder is too gruesome for there to be anything less than immediate cooperation.”
“That’s not at all like you,” Atarah mocked. “Was this your idea or Sybilla’s? You’ve never made a decision without her twisting your balls in the wrong direction.”
Gael’s tone changed at the mention of his wife. “Get back here, you sanctimonious cunt. Get back here and hand yourself over, so we can all get back to business.”
“Nice invitation, but no thank you.”
She ended the call and shrugged. “Well, he pieced it together, which I did expect him to do to be fair, but not to say the accusation of being a ‘cunt’ doesn’t hurt. It’s really mean.”
Xiu took the phone from her and pulled her into his arms. “You did what you had to. For yourself and for Wen.”
She sniffed and pulled back. “Not sure he’ll see it that way. Look, you’ll probably need to go back to London. And we need to get out of here.”
Xiu agreed, and they wiped the phone down before throwing it under the seat. He grabbed the sat-nav and as they called for a taxi to take them to the nearest station, he cleared the sat-nav history before throwing into a restaurant bin.
A woman passed them. “Is that not working?” she asked, watching Xiu lift the lid of the bin to launch the system inside.
“Nope,” Atarah answered with a fixed smile. Sensing an atmosphere, the woman continued her journey, only for them to hear the beginning of a phone conversation.
“Crazy people throwing away a whole sat-nav! Must be fucking rich, I’m telling you.”
Atarah fingered the straight strands of her hair briefly. “At least I’m not as easily noticeable.”
He wasn’t entirely convinced. They were in a predominantly white area of the southwest of the country. People would remember seeing a black woman and Asian man together.
Christ. The taxi swiftly returned them to the train station, which was easier than having a driver recall dropping the oddly matched couple to a house. They had little to say to each other so out in the open, and they waited until they were able to return to the cottage.
Without saying anything else, Atarah set about cleaning the random man’s vomit from the wooden floor. She then asked for Nicodeme’s phone. He watched her make a paste from gelatine leaves, and smooth it onto her thumb. Using the pad, she pressed the touch pad and the phone unlocked.
They both took deep breaths and began skimming through his information. Xiu took notes on his bank details, lodged into the phone’s memor
y. “He’s making this far too easy for us,” he observed, barely looking up from his pad.
“Everyone thinks their iPhone is untouchable because their fingerprint is so unique,” Atarah mocked. “Here.” She noted the numbers that were locked into the phone. “This is Sybilla’s home number. Why would he have that?”
Xiu glanced over her shoulder to see the name marked as Queen S. “How do you know that’s her number?”
“Everyone calls her Queen S,” Atarah murmured. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she opened the photographs. Hundreds of pictures of children.
“Oh God, that’s going to make me sick.” She handed the phone to him and rushed to her feet. He paused to watch her brace her hands on the stainless-steel sink.
“Have some water,” he encouraged. Feeling unwell himself, he scanned through the photographs to see if there was anything within the cloud to show important figures within them. Anyone in the background that maybe Atarah could recognise.
He had no idea what either Sybilla or Gael looked like. There was nothing so far apart from the telephone number to connect Nicodeme to Sybilla. The e-mail section was empty. But perhaps…
Xiu checked the trash, and saw three lone e-mails.
Make sure you delete
Pick up today. Fourteen people from China
- Five children
o Two girls. Three boys.
- Nine adults
o Six women. Three Men.
Children to the North. High bidders in Manchester and in Birmingham.
Women are to be separated. Those under twenty-five are to be bid for in London. Those over twenty-five are for the packing warehouses. Men are to be assessed for placement.
Meet Rae at 8.30pm for collection for notation and translation.
QS
Deletion of all correspondence is imperative.
As if they were making an order for food. So cold and administrative.