by Joel Hames
Ninety-nine per cent sure, at least.
Back in Roarkes’ office we sat in silence staring into space, a pair of plastic gnomes fishing an empty pond. I cast my mind back through the day, event by meaningless event, until I hit my morning call to Claire, which probably had more meaning in it that I wanted it to. I wondered what Roarkes was thinking, whether he was considering the case, or his wife, or just what he was going to have for his dinner. He looked tired, strained, more than just the usual unhappy, and I’d opened my mouth to ask if he was OK when my phone rang. I answered without looking at it.
“Mr Williams? Mia Arazzi, Daily Mirror. I know you don’t want to get into some long conversation but can you just confirm one thing for me?”
I was about to kill the call without saying a word, but something stopped me. I didn’t have to confirm anything. But it wouldn’t hurt to hear what she had to say.
“Go on,” I said. “I’m not promising anything.”
“I’ve been hearing there’s a chance this Carson thing is all to do with planning and development.”
I nearly dropped the phone. How had she heard that?
“Mr Williams? Is this true?”
“What have you been hearing, then?”
“I gather there’s some suggestion of impropriety. People taking money to make certain decisions. And, of course, other people being very unhappy about that.”
I nearly asked her what her source was, and then I stopped. Daniel Cullop, probably, or someone like him. All too eager to talk to the press. That plus some digging through the local papers and the planning application records. She might have a source, a proper one, but I didn’t think that was likely.
“I’m sorry, Miss Arazzi.”
“It’s Mrs.”
“Either way, I’m afraid I can’t comment on that. Sorry.”
I ended the call. I hadn’t learned anything. But I hadn’t given anything away, either. Planning could get people angry, sure, but cold, calculated murder? It was a very long shot.
Roarkes had heard my side of the call and guessed the rest. He was muttering under his breath about fucking Folgate cops can’t keep their stupid mouths shut. I hadn’t considered that possibility. Maybe it wasn’t Cullop at all. What better way to get Roarkes off your back than getting the press onto his?
I was thinking about Mia Arazzi, and Betterson, and Tarney, and what Serena Hawkes might make of it all, and then, entirely by accident, about Serena Hawkes in general, when my phone rang again and there she was on the other end.
“We need to talk,” she said, which wasn’t what I expected at all.
“OK,” I replied. “I’m at the station. When can you get here?”
“Forget that. I’m starving. Meet me at the Maharaja. It’s on Turner Street. Should take you about fifteen minutes from Folgate.”
I looked at my watch. It was nearly eight and I hadn’t noticed myself getting hungry. Suddenly, I felt very hungry indeed, and that had nothing to do with the fact that the woman I was going to break bread with was someone I very much wanted to see.
“Is this a date, Serena?” I asked.
“I don’t give a stuff what you call it, I just want a chicken jalfrezi, a keema nan, and a pint of Kingfisher.”
I might have been talking to myself.
“See you in fifteen,” I said.
I was there in ten, waiting at a table when she walked in looking a lot brighter than the last time I’d seen her. I’d been thinking about how I should play this, what I should say, whether I should really be here at all. I’d decided to park that last one. I was having a meal with a colleague, we had important matters to discuss about the case we were working on, and the fact that I was in a long-term relationship with a woman who wouldn’t talk to me two-hundred-and-something miles away in London was entirely irrelevant.
I’d almost convinced myself that was true.
She smiled at me as she hung her jacket on her chair, sat down, and ordered a beer. I decided to jump straight in.
“What’s up, Serena?”
She smiled again, and shook her head.
“Let’s order some food and have a drink before we get down to business, Sam.”
I wasn’t arguing with that.
This was a different Serena from the one who’d sat in my car and looked like she had every case in the world weighing her down. This was a Serena Hawkes who could knock back a pint of Kingfisher like it was water, order another, and manage half an unusually-hot chicken jalfrezi before the drink arrived. I knew it was unusually hot because I was eating the same thing, but a lot more slowly and cautiously than she was, the heat filling my mouth and rushing up and into my head. I could taste every last sliver of chilli. She spotted me trying to pick the red bits off my fork as subtly as I could, and grinned.
“Bit much for your southern stomach?”
“No,” I protested, “it’s just—”
“Just what?”
I sat back and returned her grin.
“Just nothing. You win. You can take it spicier than I can.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“Excellent. You’ve made me feel half the man I was. Happy now?”
“Delighted.”
She told me where she was from and how her life worked. Her father had disappeared when she was four, and her mother had brought the two of them up alone, Serena and her sister, kept them out of trouble, landed herself a job at the biggest law firm in town as a receptionist, trained by night and turned herself into a legal secretary. She’d saved enough to send the girls to university. Pauline was a doctor, now. Serena had followed her mother into a legal career.
“She must be very proud of you.”
She shrugged. “You wouldn’t know it to hear her talk. It’s all about the next thing, the next case, why aren’t I representing this one, she keeps seeing lawyers on TV, why am I not on TV, all that.”
I laughed. She joined me.
“What about you, Sam Williams?”
It was my turn to shrug.
“Nothing much to say.”
She gave me one of those looks, face down, eyes up, who the hell are you trying to kid?
“I looked you up, you know. You’re not the chump you pretend to be, Sam.”
Chump. I raised an eyebrow. There was a compliment buried in there somewhere, but it would take a big spade to dig it out. Serena ignored the eyebrow and went on.
“No, really. The case against Mauriers, that wasn’t bad, was it? And back in oh-four? They were calling you ‘one of the brightest legal stars of the future’, weren’t they?”
I couldn’t help smiling at that one. The zenith of my career. We’d freed a man who’d served twenty years for a murder someone else had committed, and I’d been the one who found the key to get him out. But I’d seen the parents, their faces, at the moment of my victory I’d turned and looked at Bill and Eileen Grimshaw watching the release of the man they’d spent twenty years blaming for their child’s death. The faces of people going through the whole thing all over again. I’d tried to forget those faces and stuck the cutting on the inside of my desk drawer, and I’d looked at it whenever things weren’t going so well, which was once a month, then once a week, then a couple of times a day as Brooks-Powell turned his own screws until they kicked me out of the firm and I said goodbye to that desk for good. The faces of Bill and Eileen Grimshaw had stuck around a lot longer.
I looked up from my food and saw Serena was grinning at me, expectant, so I gave a modest shrug.
“It’s better than the bloke who can’t take a chicken jalfrezi.”
“It could be worse,” she said, and laughed, and I laughed too, and we slid back into an exchange of easy, comfortable truths and disclosures. Nothing important. Nothing dangerous.
Once we’d finished our main courses – or once she had, with mine pushed to the side and still half a dozen forkfuls to go – the conversation started to lag. I took a long, deep drink and sat back.
&nb
sp; “So what did you want to talk about?”
The change was so swift you’d think they were two different women. One moment she was laughing, teasing me, chatting happily about her life, the next she was frowning, smile gone, the frustrated sigh of someone resigned to discussing something she really didn’t want to.
“It’s Roarkes. I think he’s trying to block me.”
I hadn’t really known what to expect, something about the case, probably, something about Carson, no doubt. But not this.
“Really?”
“I – I think so. He’s not getting very far, is he? He hasn’t got any leads and if he has he’s not sharing them with me. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be on the other side, but this case is so fucked up I don’t think there are any sides. And then he calls you up – and no offence, Sam, but I still can’t figure out why. He tries to question the suspect without me there, like he thinks I’m blocking him when all I’ve done so far is be as cooperative as possible.”
I thought about it for a moment. I thought about what Roarkes had done since I’d arrived. Not a lot, I decided. There was a lot of waiting around and reacting to events, which wasn’t like the Roarkes I knew, and not very much of anything else. He’d brought me in to help, the so-called expert, but I knew Roarkes well enough to realise he’d never expected a miracle. Even a genius couldn’t get inside Carson’s head. And as for leads, maybe she had a point. I’d asked to speak to Tarney, got nowhere. I’d asked him about Argentina and he’d told me to drop it. I’d mentioned the planning angle to him and he’d pretty much laughed in my face. I’d given him Maloney’s line on Carson’s background, or lack of it, and he’d shut me down so fast I didn’t have time to blink. I’d come within a couple of feet of being run over, and he’d told me to get a grip.
And he’d found Brian Betterson, a dead end with a mobile phone.
It wasn’t that Roarkes didn’t have any leads. It was just that he wasn’t following up the leads he did have. Maybe Serena was right. But it only made sense if he had something of his own.
I took a sip from my drink and realised what I was thinking. It was ridiculous. I knew Roarkes. He might not be the most charming copper out there, but he was on the level. Serena wasn’t right. She couldn’t be right. I sure as hell hoped she wasn’t right. But whatever the truth, arguing with her wasn’t going to help.
“Maybe. I think he’s under a bit of stress himself. The locals aren’t making it any easier for him. And don’t worry. I don’t blame you for questioning my involvement. But I promise I’ll tell you everything I find out. Think of me as your assistant, OK?”
She smiled.
“I think I can live with that. But I wish I’d never taken this case on.”
Even behind the smile, I could tell she meant it. We’d already had this conversation, in my car. I took a deep breath and prepared to revisit the arguments I’d made last time round, and opened my mouth to kick things off, and her phone rang.
She flinched, again, the same flinch she’d given when it had rung in my car. The phone was sitting face-up on the table. She looked down and registered the caller ID, then back up at me.
“Sorry,” she said. “Won’t be a minute,” and I gave her what I hoped was a winning smile. She picked up the phone.
“Pauline? Everything OK? Is Bella OK?”
I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but clearly everything was OK, and so was Bella, whoever Bella might be, because the next thing Serena said was, “Listen, hon, I’m just talking to a colleague about the case. Can we chat in the morning?”
A short pause.
“Good. Give me a call between patients, OK? Bye love.”
She put the phone down and grinned apologetically at me.
“Sorry. She’s been having trouble with her daughter. Just wanted to make sure there was nothing serious going on.”
Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t, but the way Serena reacted every time her phone went off reminded me of someone with too many things on her mind. She was nervous, I decided. On edge. Tense. She needed a break.
“You need a break,” I said, and her head flew up. She fixed me with a glare. I’d seen that glare. She’d used it on Roarkes. I didn’t like it on me.
“Why? Want to take the case on yourself?”
Her eyes were narrowed. I was reminded of a cat. And not a sleepy, friendly one. I put one hand up in a gesture of conciliation – the same gesture, I realised, that Tarney had made as he’d reached into his pocket.
“No. Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re on edge. You need to get this case done, which it will be soon, seriously, and you need to take a break. You’re like a rabbit in headlights.”
I glanced down at the table. Her hands were resting beside her empty glass, her fingers curled into fists. I’d gone too far. I never had learned to stop myself.
“What are you, some kind of bloody psychiatrist?” she spat.
“You’re jumping at shadows, Serena. I’m just trying to help. I’m serious.”
She relaxed, suddenly, looked down at her near-empty plate for a long time, long enough for me to register the full insipid horror of the music they were piping in. When she looked back up there was a rueful smile on her face.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I do need a break. I just wish all this was over.”
“Me too. It will be soon. Count on it. That’s a promise. A cast-iron, Sam Williams promise.”
14: Initiative
BY NOON NEXT day I was regretting that promise already. The evening had begun to peter out as our plates had been cleared away, and had floundered on an awkward moment where the waiter had asked if we wanted coffee “or something a little stronger”, and we’d sat watching one another try not to be the one who said no first. It had ended five minutes later with the two of us walking out to our separate cars and a handshake – a damned handshake – as she thanked me for coming and assured me, with that big, warm smile, that it had done her the world of good.
I didn’t believe her, smile or no smile. I drove back to the hotel and tried to congratulate myself for not ending up in bed with someone who wasn’t Claire, but I didn’t believe that, either. The car park was full, which meant I had to park on the other side of the road, and that shouldn’t have meant a thing, but I still found myself looking both ways before I crossed and waiting longer than necessary for an innocent taxi to crawl past. Back in my room, with the air still cold and the window still open, I fell quickly into an uneasy sleep and dreamt about Claire, but halfway through she turned into Serena and I woke up late, a dull ache in the arm Tarney had rearranged, and more tired than I’d felt when I’d gone to bed.
There was a missed call from Michael Slaney, my contact at the Home Office. When I called him back he answered on the first ring and laughed loudly for a full ten seconds before he managed to say anything.
“Hasina Khalil!” was what he said when he finally finished laughing, and then he filled me in.
Hasina Khalil’s husband had been a minor bureaucrat in the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture under the Mubarak administration. He’d been arrested – not for his views or his allegiances, but because he’d been caught with his hand in the till. He hadn’t been executed, either. He was currently in prison, awaiting trial.
I called her immediately and confronted her with what I’d learned.
“Is it true, Hasina?” I asked, and she stopped sobbing long enough to admit that yes, it was, all of it.
“And the reason you don’t want to go back is because you’ll be arrested for helping your husband steal from the state?”
“Yes,” she muttered.
“How much money are we talking about here?”
“A lot of money. I am sorry. I should have told you. But I was so afraid. It is not like England, over there, it is not like your prisons, it is like death.”
I sat on the bed as she painted me a picture of the Egyptian penal system, and tried to work out what I was going to do. She’d li
ed to me, sure, but that wasn’t reason enough to send her back. And there was that thing about the money. A lot of money. If I was going to act for a crook, at least I might get paid for it.
I interrupted her and told her I’d need a little time to consider whether I could continue to represent her. I expected another outburst, but all I got was a quiet, resigned, “Yes, I understand.”
As I hung up I saw a text had come through and felt a brief moment of fear and elation, but the number wasn’t Claire’s. It was a number I’d seen recently and it took me a moment to place it. Mia Arazzi. The journalist. There was no message, just a web link. I pondered the possibility of malware, decided the phone had survived long enough already, clicked the link and found myself reading an article on the Daily Mirror website. She’d written the article and texted me to tell me about it, and if I couldn’t figure out why straight away, it was clear as neat vodka by the time I’d read it.
The article focused on the planning angle, which seemed more of a dead end the more I thought about it. But not to Mia Arazzi. Hints, suspicions, sources, nothing concrete, of course, because there couldn’t be anything concrete unless she was prepared to simply make it up. And a nasty sting in the tail: the police weren’t getting anywhere. So-called experts had been brought in from London. Roarkes was named, fully, Gideon and all; I, thankfully, wasn’t. All he’d achieved so far was to put his own chief suspect in hospital. Roarkes was right, I realised. If anyone was spilling the beans to Mia Arazzi, they were doing it from under a Folgate police uniform.
The text was a threat. She hadn’t named me yet. She might, if I didn’t give her anything. I added Mia Arazzi to the list of things I didn’t like about Manchester.
The easiest way out of Manchester was getting Carson cleared. He might be guilty; he probably wasn’t. The important thing was the evidence, and there wasn’t any, just a bunch of half-leads that led nowhere. I decided I wasn’t going to let the dead ends get to me any more. I decided to embrace them. Planning applications. Glaciers. Tarney. Sod Roarkes. He was probably right about the leads, he was usually right, which didn’t make him any easier to work with. But that wasn’t the point. I’d follow each lead to its inevitable locked door, try the handle and say fuck it, I did my best. I got in the car and drove to Folgate, where I met Detective Sergeant Priya Malhotra, who blew all my plans to hell in five minutes.