‘You’re wrong,’ Riaz said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He doesn’t do this for the money.’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ Muldoon let his head fall back. ‘You’re telling me he’s another one like you, is he? Does it because he thinks it’s right? Another fucking… zealot?’
Riaz stiffened in his seat; breathed out slowly.
‘Sounds like he’s another one needs to hear my joke.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe you can tell him, when we see him.’ Muldoon slammed his hand against the dash. ‘Second thoughts, I’ll tell the fucker myself, while I’ve got my hands around his neck.’
Riaz quickly checked the rear-view. There was still a car between his own and the policeman’s. He scanned the road ahead.
‘What’s the most difficult thing for a religious fundamentalist who’s killing his daughter?’ Muldoon grinned.
Riaz knew there was no way to prevent Muldoon repeating a punchline he had heard several times before. His hands tightened a little more around the wheel.
‘Hiding the hard-on.’
Muldoon had begun laughing before he’d even said it, but stopped abruptly when Riaz hit the brakes and dragged the car off the main road, on to an unlit driveway.
‘Hell we going?’
‘Dump the car.’
‘Then what?’
‘We need to split up.’ Riaz threw another glance at the rear-view, then craned forward towards the sprawl of rusted skips and darkened buildings ahead. ‘He can’t go after both of us.’
Muldoon pointed to Desai, groaning on the back seat. ‘What about her?’
‘Leave her,’ Riaz said. ‘You’re the one I’m worried about.’
‘Ah, boss… that’s sweet.’
‘Some people don’t know when it’s time to shut up.’
The boy racer ahead of him accelerated away in time for Thorne to see the Astra’s tail-lights swinging off the road. By the time he reached the entrance to the industrial estate there was no sign of them, so with little choice he accelerated down the rough, unmarked driveway in an effort to catch up. He pushed the BMW hard past a builder’s merchants as big as a football pitch, a timber supplier, a car-repair yard; the track lit only by emergency lights on top of each warehouse and industrial unit.
He stopped at a T-junction.
He knew that heading left would eventually bring him back out on to the main drag, but guessed that they had not turned off the road in an effort to shake him off.
He spun the wheel right and drove further into the estate.
He flicked on his main beams as he bounced over a series of grids and speed bumps, slowing just a little to peer into each car and van parked in front of a sheet-metal workshop, a tool-hire company, a joinery warehouse. He had no option but to take the car left and he accelerated again as he followed the road around to the rear of the estate, navigating the fists of darkened loading docks and weaving through a fleet of branded lorries. As he rounded the final corner, Thorne saw the Astra’s tail-lights; watched them brighten, because the car was slowing.
Because they had run out of road.
He pulled up fifty feet behind the car, which had come to a stop with its engine still running. He got out when he saw the driver’s door open and watched the Asian clamber out and bolt into the darkness.
Arms punching, shoes slapping the concrete.
There was a moment when Thorne felt the adrenalin kick in, when he was ready to give chase, but it was only a moment, because his first thought was for Charita Desai; had to be.
He had only taken a few steps towards the car when the rear door opened and the DC emerged.
He shouted her name and she raised an arm. Shouted back, ‘I’m good.’
Before he could get any closer, Desai was running after the driver. He watched as she sprinted into the shadows, towards the black outline of trees beyond. He shouted after her, ‘He’s still got a knife,’ but there was no acknowledgement that she had heard him.
Out on the main road, he heard a siren scream, then slowly fade.
Thorne walked towards the Astra, spitting out the acrid taste of metal and breathing against the tattoo beating in his chest. Slowly, because who knew what other weapons might have been stashed under the seats or in the glovebox.
Because the Irishman was still inside the car.
SEVENTY-ONE
The milky beams of the Astra’s headlights were reflected by the water puddled in ruts, picking out the weeds and smears of oil against the dusty concrete. An indicator was flashing. Moving carefully through the livid red wash of the tail-lights and circling in a wide arc around the passenger side of the car, Thorne began to get a clearer picture of exactly where they were.
It was a small triangle of semi-enclosed waste ground. Ranks of graffiti-covered metal shutters stretched behind him and to the left a chain-link fence ran along the edge of a building site. On his right was the thick line of trees into which Desai had chased the driver. There were lights in several windows of the houses beyond and Thorne knew that if the driver had made it through one of the gardens and across the street on the other side, he would be away into the grounds of Southgate cemetery.
He hoped that Desai had given up the chase.
With front and rear doors open, the car’s interior light was on too. Stepping closer, Thorne could clearly see the stitching on the cover of the steering wheel and the green glow of the dashboard. A satnav unit, and a string of beads hanging from the rear-view mirror.
So, why couldn’t he see the passenger?
He had been watching the driver heading for the trees, Desai running after him. Was it possible that, in the darkness and confusion, he had missed seeing the car’s other occupant jump out and slip away in the other direction?
He didn’t think so.
Thorne opened the door and stared down at the figure slumped low in the passenger seat, his legs buckled in the footwell.
The blood explained everything.
The Irishman’s hands were thick with it, clasped across his belly. The sweatshirt was sodden where it was pumping through his fingers. It ran down the edge of the seat and had begun to pool in the sill of the door, to drip.
Thorne said, ‘Well.’
The Irishman gasped and smiled, blood between his teeth. ‘Fucker knifed me.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Can’t take a joke.’
Blood was running down the man’s chin. Thorne watched him try to heave himself up in his seat and cough a red cloud on to the windscreen. He listened to him grunt and swear for a few seconds.
‘You… got a phone?’
Thorne reached into his jacket pocket and took out his mobile. He held it up. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘Christ’s sake, call an ambulance, will you?’
Thorne looked at his phone.
‘You don’t call someone, I’ll bleed to death.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Thorne said.
‘Do you not think I know what I’m talking about? Look at me… I’m bleeding to death here.’
‘OK.’ Thorne looked at the blood, the puddle that had now formed outside the car, and thought that the man was probably right. There was not a great deal of time. Chall or one of the SO19 boys would have called for support as soon as Thorne began the pursuit, but being as far as they were from the main road, there was no saying how long it would be until back-up arrived.
Unless Thorne phoned in to let them know where they were, of course.
‘Call the ambulance.’ The Irishman grimaced with the effort of shouting. ‘For the love of God…’
Thorne looked at his phone again. He had a full signal and plenty of battery, but he was thinking about the real reason the Irishman’s partner had decided he could not risk leaving him alive.
‘You need to talk to me first.’
‘What?’
Thorne crouched down and leaned towards the dying man, scrolling through the
apps on his phone until he found the voice recorder. ‘I want to know about Meena Athwal, OK? About Amaya Shah and Kamal Azim. I want to know exactly what you did and where Kamal Azim is buried. Then, you need to tell me which members of their families paid to have them killed, and last of all, the name of the person who organised it. I want to know who the broker is.’
The man turned his head to look at Thorne, then shook it and sputtered out a string of blood and curses.
‘You’d rather die, would you? Bleed out like a stuck pig, protecting the people that got you into this?’
The man squeezed his eyes closed.
Thorne held the phone close to the man’s mouth. ‘Just tell me, and I’ll call the ambulance, get you sorted out.’
‘You swear?’
Thorne tapped the record button and nodded.
It took about a minute and a half, the words spewed and spat between hacking fits and moans; the breaths wet and rattly. By the time the man had finished, had given Thorne the information he wanted and spluttered out a familiar name, his jeans were black with blood and his eyes had begun to roll back in his head.
Satisfied, Thorne clicked the voice recorder off, then stood up and calmly slid the phone back into his pocket.
‘The fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ The Irishman reached out a hand slick with gore and flapped at Thorne’s leg.
Thorne stepped away.
He said, ‘The honourable thing.’
SEVENTY-TWO
The detached Edwardian house in Enfield was testimony to how well Arman Bannerjee’s business was doing. Thorne had discovered that the company specialised in purchasing job lots of used office furniture, doing it up, and selling it on through their own showrooms and others. Desks bought for a tenner each were stripped, waxed and sold on for ten times that. Gunmetal grey filing cabinets were dipped into acid, then polished until they were every bit as shiny as the Lexus on Bannerjee’s driveway, and could fetch three hundred pounds a pop in Islington and Notting Hill.
A shame how things had panned out, Thorne thought, as he rang the bell.
He quite fancied jazzing up his office.
There were a number of symbols painted on a wooden board above the front door: several letters in a language Thorne did not recognise; a lotus leaf; something that looked like a Christmas tree but probably wasn’t; and the one he’d seen on that website Tanner had shown him, that he’d thought was a swastika. A symbol of the god Vishnu, Thorne had since discovered, as well as of the Hindu sun god, Surya.
A charm to bring good fortune, though this one was clearly not doing its job.
Bannerjee’s wife wore a simple blue sari and her hair was tied back to better display the jewelled bindi on her forehead. She said, ‘Yes?’ though the polite smile that went with it slid from her face when Thorne produced his warrant card.
‘Sorry to disturb you so late,’ Thorne said.
The woman did not appear to need telling who Thorne had come to see. She was all but bowing as she backed away from the front door, then gently ushered Thorne along a thickly carpeted corridor towards another. She stepped in front of him to put her head around it, and Thorne could not quite make out the whispered exchange before she waved a hand to invite him into the room and closed the door behind him.
Bannerjee was watching what appeared to be a nature documentary on a huge wall-mounted Samsung. Thorne just caught sight of a large insect scuttling towards a smaller one before Bannerjee switched the TV off and sank back with a sigh into a deep, cream settee. He was wearing jeans with a perfectly ironed crease and a collarless white shirt. When he held out his arms, helpless, as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders, Thorne saw the fancy buttons and the details picked out in red on each cuff.
‘You are certainly a piece of work.’ Bannerjee’s smile was almost as polite as his wife’s, but there was no trace of courtesy in his voice. ‘Not content with disturbing my lunch, or interrupting an important meeting with offensive theatrics, you now come into my home.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said, though he was anything but.
‘I think I’m right in saying that unless you have a warrant, I can ask you to leave.’
‘You can ask.’
Thorne walked across to an armchair, the same cream leather as the sofa, and sat down. Looking past Bannerjee, he could see a small shrine set up on a gleaming sideboard against one wall. There were pictures of Hindu gods in wooden frames, though Thorne only recognised the one with an elephant’s head. There were plastic flowers arranged carefully around a bowl of fruit. In the centre sat a large metal tray holding candles in each corner; a bowl, a spoon and what looked like a small handbell.
‘So?’ Bannerjee sat forward. ‘Have you just come to gawp at my sitting room?’
‘It’s very nice.’ Thorne smiled. ‘But I’m here because of a significant development in the case I’m working on. Those offensive theatrics you mentioned?’
‘Your pair of so-called honour killers.’
‘Bang on.’ Thorne could taste adrenalin for the second time in twenty-four hours, but for a very different reason. ‘The fact is, we caught them.’
Bannerjee blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Well, we caught one of them, but in the end we only needed one. He told us everything we wanted to know.’
Thorne heard the sound of footsteps, quick and heavy on the stairs. He waited, until a second later the door burst open and Bannerjee’s son Ravi stood glaring at him from the doorway.
‘Seriously?’ Ravi looked to his father. ‘Why are you even talking to him?’
‘Same old story,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m harassing your father. What can I tell you?’
‘Yeah?’ The young man’s weight shifted from one expensive training shoe to the other, his hand still on the doorknob. ‘Well I can tell you that we’ve had just about enough of this. You can’t keep treating my father like this, like a criminal, and getting away with it.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Ravi.’ Bannerjee was irritated suddenly, the skin tight around his mouth. ‘Shut up and go away or come in and shut the bloody door, one or the other.’
Ravi nodded, acquiescent, and closed the door quietly. He crept into the room, keeping tight to the wall until he moved across to sit at the other end of the sofa from his father.
‘Go on,’ Bannerjee said.
Thorne nodded, grateful. ‘I was just saying that we’d apprehended one of the men who carried out the series of killings we’ve been investigating. Amaya Shah and Kamal Azim, Meena Athwal, and several others here and overseas. This man, who we’ve now identified as Martin Muldoon, gave us all the information we needed to make several more arrests. All the names —’
Ravi sat up, about to speak, but his father quickly raised a hand to silence him.
Thorne stared down at the patterns on the carpet. A series of red and yellow swirls against an emerald green background. ‘So… I’m here because I now know that you are the person responsible for arranging all these killings. For making the deals with the families and paying the men who carried them out. I’m here because you’re the broker.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Ravi Bannerjee sat forward again and pointed. ‘How dare you march in here and accuse my father of this? Where’s your evidence?’
Thorne looked up. ‘I wasn’t talking to your father, Ravi. I was talking to you.’
The colour drained from the elder Bannerjee’s face. He turned to watch his son fall back against the thick cushion; a hiss between the teeth, a shrug, as though he’d just been accused of stealing pocket money and knew that it could not possibly be proved.
‘What?’
The boy waved his father’s question away, took his own turn at studying those colourful swirls at his feet.
‘Sadly, Mr Muldoon is no longer with us.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘Killed by his partner, would you believe? But he was very keen to get things off his chest before he died.’ He set down his mobile phone on the glass-topped table betwe
en them. He opened the voice recording and pressed PLAY. ‘A confession, I suppose you’d call it…’
When it was finished, Thorne picked up his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. ‘Sorry the quality’s not great, but he wasn’t at his best. Clear enough, though.’
Arman Bannerjee was breathing heavily, his hands clenched into fists and banging against his knees. He stood up suddenly and walked to the far end of the room. Thorne heard a noise low in the man’s throat and wondered if he was crying, but saw no tears when Bannerjee turned and walked back again, stopping finally to brace himself against the sideboard, clearly in need of physical as well as spiritual support.
His head shaking slowly, lowered above the fruit and plastic flowers.
‘What do you know?’
‘Sorry?’ Thorne turned to look at the young man whose anger he knew had been a disguise. A useful smokescreen. He and Tanner had put the showy, self-righteous claims of offence on behalf of his father down to youthful posturing, but now he understood – as far as he could understand any of it – that they hid something far darker and more determined.
‘What do you know about anything? Men like you… without faith, without a belief system that goes beyond the whims of judges and the pantomimes of overpaid lawyers. You really think there is nothing higher than the law of the land? If that’s the case, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t see beyond that, because part of them will always be empty and ignorant.’
Thorne listened, happy enough to let things play out. Ravi Bannerjee leaned towards him and, for the first time, Thorne heard a voice that was not being manufactured for effect.
Soft and certain; appalling.
‘You don’t seem to understand just how many people can’t depend on people like you, the laws you claim to uphold. They aren’t our laws. A community needs to protect itself, and it does that through a shared belief in what’s really right and wrong. In what matters.
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