by Jo Bannister
Shapiro didn’t answer right away, and when Liz looked at him, puzzled, his face was screwed up as if he was wondering how to break bad news. ‘Frank? What is it?’
He was doing the thing with his toes again, watching them so he didn’t have to look at her. ‘Liz, don’t set your heart on seeing this man in court.’
She stared at him, a blaze kindling in her eyes. ‘What do you mean? We know what he did. We have forensics connecting him to the girl in the hotel. We have Kendall’s testimony. We even have his own actions - if it’s all a case of mistaken identity, how the hell did he know how to contact the mechanic? Of course we’ve got him!’
There were times, he thought wryly, when it seemed Liz Graham had managed to claw her way up to the exalted rank - for a woman - of detective inspector without ever learning what a corrupt place the world was. Not the criminal substrata, you expected them to behave like that, but the place where the so-called decent people lived. As soon as people had a bit of money they began to think they could behave as they liked; as if middle-class values only applied when you couldn’t afford to pay for your vices. Coming as he did from a great bastion of middle-class values, Frank Shapiro didn’t have a lot of time for the seriously rich. He could understand people who stole because they were too stupid to earn what they wanted - not excuse, but understand. He honestly couldn’t understand people who had all the advantages and still couldn’t conduct themselves decently.
‘I know it shouldn’t matter who he is, but we may find that it does. He’s a high-ranking foreign national - he’s the second cousin of an absolute monarch, for God’s sake! This whole business is going to be a massive embarrassment for both governments. If the Saudis say they want him back, they’ll deal with him at home, I think the Home Office may go along with that.’
When they were as wide as this Liz’s eyes were more green than hazel. ‘They can’t! What the hell kind of a message does that send to the world? - Come to Britain, see the Palace and Shakespeare’s birthplace, commit a murder or two and if you’re important enough we’ll brush it under the carpet in the interests of the next trade agreement! Frank, are you serious?’
Shapiro shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m wrong. We all know I have a nasty suspicious mind, maybe it’s working overtime. I just - wanted to warn you, I suppose. There are things that officially don’t happen but in fact do happen and are just kept quiet. This maybe one of them.’
She still didn’t believe. Until she got back to Queen’s Street and found her parking space occupied by a black limousine with a uniformed chauffeur.
Inside the police station she found a lot of people carefully not looking at her.
‘What’s going on? Whose is the hearse?’
Sergeant Bolsover was on the desk. ‘Home Office,’ he said morosely. Of course, he could sound morose ordering a chocolate digestive for his elevenses, it was just his way, but he didn’t usually look like he wanted to spit and then wipe his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Detective Superintendent Hilton said—’
‘I know,’ she said shortly. ‘To see him when I got in. I’m on my way.’ She started resolutely up the stairs.
You can tell a genuine Fenlander not only by his glum expression but by the slow deliberation of his speech. Liz had disappeared round the angle of the stairs before Bolsover rumbled, ‘No. He said to keep out of the way.’
So Shapiro was right. They were going to Reach an Understanding. To protect Siddiq’s family and the British government from public embarrassment, they were going to circumvent the process of law and send the transgressor home for a slap on the wrist. As if the lives of Maddie Cotterick and her friend were of no consequence. As if three murders mattered less than the risk of offending a major export customer. Mounting outrage and a savage determination to get justice for the dead girls, and for the homeless man called Wicksy, powered her up the stairs two at a time.
Hilton either heard or anticipated her arrival. He met her in the corridor. More than ever his expression was internalized, tight and wary. He was expecting fireworks. He thought he’d slammed the blast-proof door just in time, was alarmed to hear a fizzing sound on this side of it.
‘Inspector Graham. Didn’t you get my message?’
Her eyes were hot on his face. ‘No, I don’t think I did. You’ve got the Home Office in there.’ She jerked her head at his door.
‘Yes. And the Assistant Chief Constable, and a gentleman from the Saudi embassy. It’s not a big office,’ he added pointedly, ‘when I go back in there it’ll be full.’
‘You’re going to let him go.’
Hilton elevated one thin eyebrow. ‘Really? You’ve got a crystal ball, have you? - you know what the outcome of this meeting’s going to be? Excellent; you can save us all a lot of time.’
But she was too angry to wilt under his sarcasm. ‘God damn it, sir! He killed two women and a man: one with his hands, the others with his chequebook. He had Frank Shapiro shot in the back to stop him investigating, and Donovan almost bled to death. And you’re going to let him go. Because he has friends in high places, and after all, we do some valuable business with his cousin! And they were only a couple of working girls; oh, and your colleagues.’
If she’d been a man it’s just possible he might have decked her for that. Detective Superintendent Edwin Hilton was not blessed with unlimited personal charm, but he was an honourable man with twenty-five years’ service under his belt and he found both her tone and her words deeply offensive. The more so because, though they hadn’t worked together very long, it had been enough for each to gain an appreciation of the other’s worth. He had come to respect Liz Graham’s opinion, was hurt by her judgement of him.
Another man might have tried to explain, to justify himself. But Hilton had a pride as brittle and impervious as porcelain, fired long and hot for maximum lustre and minimum flexibility. His lips just tightened and his eyes grew hard and cold. ‘What you think of me, Mrs Graham, is of very little moment; but if you imagine I don’t care what happened to Mr Shapiro, and indeed to Sergeant Donovan, you’re mistaken. I also care about the murder victims. But I’m a police officer: I have superiors, I have orders, and ultimately I have to defer to them. I may not like it any more than you do, but I don’t actually have a choice.
‘When we’re done here I shall go back into my office and try to persuade my visitors that they’ve got it wrong, that upholding the rule of law is worth putting some pressure on even a profitable friendship. But if I don’t succeed, and I’ll tell you frankly that I don’t expect to - if they start talking about the public interest and diplomatic immunity - then I shall do what I’m told by those with the authority to tell me. And so, Mrs Graham, will you.’
With that he turned on his heel, crisply as a storm trooper, and returned to his office, shutting the door with an audible snap behind him.
Liz remained where she was in the corridor, frozen like Mrs Lot, for perhaps a minute. She could hear the murmur of voices through the door without being able to pick out the words. After a few exchanges the voices began to rise, becoming querulous.
Liz was already growing aware, even through her fury, that she’d been unfair. Hilton was only a link in the chain, like herself - a bit further up the chain maybe, but a long way from where decisions like this one were made. He was wasting his time even pressing for a rethink. The decision had already been made, not by the people in that room, and was not open to negotiation. They were here to inform him, not to engage him in discussion.
As soon as Ibn al Siddiq had telephoned his embassy, which as a foreign national in police custody he was entitled to do, the great wheels and little wheels stirred into motion and soon the machines of state were clanking along at maximum revs. If Hilton or any of them got in the way they’d be mown down, and the machines wouldn’t even notice. They were concerned with world events, not the ant-like activities of a few people in a town whose existence history would hardly acknowledge. There was nothing more he could do. There was nothing she could hav
e done, had it been her call, or Shapiro had it been his. Ultimately, as Hilton said, they were public servants. They did as they were told.
It crossed her mind, during that minute, that she could make it a resigning matter. There were issues she would resign over, and for a moment she wondered if this was one. It would free her to make public what had happened. But what, really, would it achieve? A brief satisfaction for her, and then twenty years doing some job that was less important, less relevant, than the one she was doing now. The outcry - as outcry there would be - would not bring Ibn al Siddiq to justice. Its faintest echoes would hardly reach him, safe in his palace near Dhahran. She would suffer; and - not to be too modest - Castlemere would suffer; and public confidence in the British system of justice would suffer; and that would be all.
It wouldn’t bring the girls back. It wouldn’t bring their killer before the courts. It might embarrass the government, but it had survived worse and would survive this. Nothing would change. It would cite ‘wholly exceptional circumstances’ and ‘the public interest’; and express confidence that the Saudi authorities would deal appropriately with Siddiq back home; and add parenthetically the annual value of British trade with Saudi Arabia and the number of jobs dependent on it; and that would be the end of the matter. There was nothing she could do to affect the outcome, which was that Ibn al Siddiq was going to get away with murder.
But she didn’t have to stay in the same building while he did it. She gritted her teeth, and turned with a stamp that she hoped they might hear inside Shapiro’s office, and plunged down the stairs again. ‘If anybody wants me,’ she flung at Sergeant Bolsover in passing, ‘I’ll be in Peterborough. Trying to explain to Sergeant Donovan that he damn near died for nothing.’
Chapter Eight
The drive did something to restore her sense of perspective, even a little grim humour. It was a low ebb, she thought, the day she had to visit her superintendent and her sergeant in different hospitals.
She wasn’t sure how Donovan would be. She knew he was on the mend and would be discharged within a day or two. What she was anxious about was his state of mind. It had been a trying week for all of them, but Donovan had been hunted like an animal and then had to watch a murder he was helpless to prevent. Knowing him, knowing how much he invested in his job, Liz understood that his spilt blood was only part of what he’d lost, that the hope of a conviction was about all he’d salvaged from the wreckage. When she took that away too …
She wondered if she should defer telling him. But she didn’t want him hearing it elsewhere. If he needed someone to yell at, better her than Hilton or Superintendent Giles. They knew one another well enough, and owed one another enough, that he didn’t have to hide his feelings in front of her.
She found him dozing, a blood pack dripping into the back of his hand. He looked pale and thinner than ever, drained and insubstantial under the white sheet. Rather than disturb him she thought she might go and get some coffee; but he stirred, his eyes flickered open and his lips twitched an acknowledgement. So she pulled up the chair and sat down.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘OK.’ She waited for more, and finally it came. ‘Sick.’
Liz nodded. ‘It’ll pass.’
His eyes flared and flicked up at the drip stand. ‘I don’t mean this!’
‘I know what you mean.’
His breathing came ragged and uneven for a moment. Then he said, ‘He killed her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Like - it was nothing. Like switching off a light.’
‘A professional,’ said Liz. Her expression was tight, her voice acid.
‘Twice. He shot her twice. He didn’t need to, once was enough, but he was a professional. And it was only a little gun - he had to be sure.’ He heard the sob in his voice and stopped abruptly.
‘Donovan …’
‘I know: it wasn’t my fault. I know.’
‘So do I.’
For a second his eyes were grateful. Then he shook his head. ‘I can’t believe I watched somebody kill her.’
‘There was nothing more you could do. You couldn’t have done any more if he’d decided to kill you.’
‘I thought he was going to,’ admitted Donovan. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t.’
Liz gave a little shrug. ‘Professional respect. He didn’t have to, and after the job you’d done he didn’t want to.’
‘Respect?’ A shudder ran the length of his body. ‘I let her die. I watched her die.’
‘You couldn’t have saved her. If you need someone to blame, blame me. I didn’t take her fears seriously enough, and I told the one man who could stop us what we were doing! The first was an error of judgement, the second was downright stupid. After that an Armed Response Unit wouldn’t have got her through. Men with crack bodyguards still get assassinated, it just takes a better mechanic. Siddiq could afford the best.’
Donovan stared at her. ‘You know who it was?’
‘Ibn al Siddiq,’ said Liz, ‘some Saudi princeling. It seems two wives back home weren’t enough: he wanted to sample the local talent. Kendall fixed him up, and covered for him when it all went horribly wrong.’ She told him what she knew, ending short of Siddiq’s arrest; in return Donovan told her what Maddie had told him.
‘So we’ve got Kendall.’ He looked for some comfort in that, but there was no sense of the anger within him abating. ‘It isn’t enough. It’s like - prosecuting the monkey after the organ-grinder’s skipped the country.’
He had to know the truth some time. Liz steeled herself. ‘Donovan - no one skipped the country. He should have done, but he was so bloody confident he went on with business as usual, and we got him. Siddiq. And just about now we’re losing him.’ She told him the rest.
For what seemed a long time Donovan hardly knew how to react. He was too tired to shout up a storm, and nothing less seemed adequate. Distantly, as if from a void, he said, ‘I heard the phone. In the car. I was pretty well out of it, but I heard the phone go and I heard him answer it. He just said, “It’s too late.” I don’t remember any more.’
‘There wasn’t any more,’ said Liz. ‘I was with Siddiq at the other end. I thought he’d killed you both. It was another hour before we heard you were safe.’
‘And now he’s on his way home?’ He couldn’t get his head round it. From the bottom of his reserves he was dredging up enough energy to get angry. ‘We know what he did, but we’re letting him go? Jesus Christ! - is that what we risk our necks for? To bring down only those who can’t afford to buy us off? I got shot! The chief got shot. Why didn’t we just stick our hands out at the start and set a price for looking the other way?’
Liz tried to mollify him. It felt like tinkering with the weights on top of a pressure cooker. ‘I know: it’s a sickener. Frank warned me it might happen. I didn’t believe him.’
Donovan shook his head, his breathing rough enough to threaten his stitches. ‘So nobody pays for them. Two dead girls, and Wicksy, and nobody pays. Maybe they weren’t Citizen of the Year material, but they were worth more than that.
‘I wish you’d met her, boss. Maddie Cotterick. She was a nice girl. I don’t care what she did for a living, she was a nice girl. Straight, and decent. She was pretty scared most of the time, but she kept going as long as she could and she didn’t complain. I liked her.’
He looked at Liz then, surprised, as if he’d just remembered, or just understood, something. ‘She could have got away. He was down to this little pop-gun with an accurate range of about a metre and a half, and she was behind the wheel. If she’d put her foot down, he couldn’t have stopped her. But he had his pop-gun in my ear, and she wouldn’t buy her life with mine. He said he only wanted the car, but she couldn’t have believed that. She traded her best chance for my neck, and it cost her her life. And she knew it would.’
These two people had worked together for three years in a business which was occasionally so intense it left them closer than friends, almost
like lovers. They had seen one another stripped to the soul. Each had been and would be again a kind of refuge for the other, a place where it was all right to be afraid, to hurt and to heal. They were still what the signs on the doors said they were, a Detective Inspector and her Sergeant; it wasn’t a personal relationship. Yet there were times when they needed contact with another human being who knew how it felt out here in the dark.
Liz touched the back of Donovan’s hand with her fingertips, carefully avoiding the catheter. ‘What goes around comes around.’
He didn’t understand. He looked down at her hand, then at her face with a puzzled frown.
She smiled sombrely. ‘Donovan, all the time I’ve known you you’ve taken risks for people. You do it so automatically you hardly notice you’re doing it at all. But it’s rare enough that people notice. That girl can’t have known a lot of kindness - the genuine article, that comes with no price tag. It would matter to her that you kept your word: you looked after her, you didn’t walk away when the going got tough. You’re right, she was a decent person. She wasn’t going to do any less for you.’
‘I was only doing my job,’ objected Donovan.
Liz shook her head. ‘The job doesn’t ask that much. But you never know when to quit, when to say you’ve done enough. Then you’re surprised when someone wants to return the favour.’
His eyes widened. ‘By committing suicide? Yeah, that does tend to make an impression.’
Liz shook her head. ‘It wasn’t suicide. Either she believed him, that he’d take the car and go, or she thought she was dead anyway but maybe you weren’t. Either way, she thought you’d done enough and it was her turn.’
Like most of his countrymen, Donovan had a sentimental soul. Tears pricked his eyes. ‘You expect trouble. You expect to get hurt sometimes. But you don’t expect to go through all that only to have the sods actually bloody win. You watch enough television, you start thinking that right triumphs in the end. Maybe bloody, maybe even a little bowed, but by the time they run the credits the good guys’ll have won and the bad guys’ll be talking to their lawyers.