by Nick Oldham
‘Karl — how goes it?’
‘Can we get a coffee somewhere?’
‘Sure — Rik’s office has a machine on the go. Rik, that OK?’
Rik’s eyes rose from the e-mail, wide and astonished. ‘Yeah, yeah
…’ he said absently, then, ‘fucking hell, Henry. Now I see your point of view about Carter.’ He stabbed his finger at the piece of paper. ‘According to this she had sex with at least three other men before her death — and oral sex with one of them. She’s got four lots of sperm in her.’
‘Yep — and we don’t know who they are.’
Donaldson took the coffee gratefully, then sat in one of the comfortable chairs in Rik’s office. Henry, also coffee in hand, perched on the corner of the desk.
‘You look jaded.’
Donaldson held up his mug in a ‘cheers’ gesture. ‘Love you too.’
‘Been a slog?’
‘Feel like I’m hitting my head against a shithouse wall.’
‘I thought you Yanks called them restrooms?’
‘Getting too English for my own good. I even queue without complaining these days. Even skipped complaining altogether about anything.’
‘Jamil Akram,’ Henry guessed.
‘Mm.’ Donaldson looked despondent. He sighed, ‘Part of the problem I have is that I foisted — foisted? — myself on Beckham, the spookmeister, and he don’t want me around because I annoy him. I know more than he does, but they — your security service — seem content with what they’ve got.’
‘Two suicide bombers, one in custody, one dead?’
‘Hey — a victory in the war on terror.’
‘A good victory, Karl,’ Henry assured him. ‘And you played a major part in it.’
‘Hell, yeah… but it could be so much better… and not only that, this goes real deep, Henry. Feel it in my bones.’
‘Feel what?’
‘Instinct, Henry, instinct. You know what the hell that is?’
‘The dictionary definition or the gut-wrenching feeling you have when you just… just know? That can’t be defined.’
‘That’s the one.’ Donaldson stifled a yawn. ‘We missed him by a gnat’s todger. I picked that up from one of your Met guys.’
‘A midge’s dick.’
‘Same difference.’ He sipped his coffee. It was good, slightly bitter and with a subtle kick to it. ‘Jamil Akram is a fanatical terrorist,’ he said forcefully. ‘He runs training camps that teach stupid kids how to make bombs, shoot guns, stick knives into people and he has the ability to brainwash people, too. Simple kids who are disaffected and want something… his bombs have been planted in war zones and shopping malls. People he’s brainwashed have walked up to military checkpoints, superstores, and blown themselves and hundreds of others to pieces. His bombs were used in the American Embassy blast in Kenya in 1998 where I lost a good pal. Mostly, though, he doesn’t come out of hiding. But when he does, it precedes something major.’
‘Do you have evidence of that?’
‘Intelligence over the years, yes. Which is why I have a very bad feeling.’
‘As to why he put in an appearance here?’
Donaldson nodded.
‘What does Zahid Sadiq have to say on the subject?’ Henry asked, naming the young man entombed in the depths of Paddington Green police station.
‘Not a lot… I haven’t been allowed in to torture him yet. Haven’t been allowed near him, come to that,’ he said wistfully.
A deep tremor zinged through Henry’s veins. Donaldson — FBI agent, husband, father of three incredible kids — gave the impression of being a simple, straightforward bloke, good at his job and a bit naive in the ways of the world. But if this veneer was peeled away, Henry knew there was much, much more to this man. He could be a violent operator, in a controlled way, and had no qualms in making bad guys suffer. Over the years, Henry had pieced bits together and was fairly certain that his friend carried out clandestine jobs for the US government and certainly wasn’t averse to torture if he thought it necessary. Henry had witnessed some of Donaldson’s interview techniques first-hand and they had shocked him, even though he understood the purpose behind them. And his little offhand remark, Henry knew, was more than a joke or a flight of fancy. If he could have Sadiq to himself, Henry had no doubt that the misguided youth would soon be begging to confess all.
A text message landed on Donaldson’s phone. He shuffled it out of his chinos pocket, read it, then said, ‘You got Internet access here?’ Henry pointed to the computer on Rik’s desk. Donaldson handed his phone to Henry and said, ‘Can we have a look at this?’
The knocking woke Boone. He jerked awake, almost falling off the bench in the cockpit. Rubbing his eyes and making a dry clacking noise with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, he stood sleepily and took in the figure standing at the cockpit door.
It was a hunched, desperate looking, grey-faced man, gaunt and wild, and for a moment Boone did not recognize him. Then he did, just in the moment before he said, ‘What the fuck’re you doing on my boat?’ But the words, though formed, did not come out because he realized this frail individual was the man he’d taken to Gran Canaria a few days earlier, and transferred to another boat. Boone also recognized there was something very wrong with him now, hence the appearance.
‘I’m here,’ the man said. He stepped forwards and then, seemingly for no reason, he stumbled. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, so that they now resembled yellow billiard balls, and he fell. Boone’s tired mind clicked into place and he caught the guy before he, literally, hit the deck.
Boone dragged him roughly through the cockpit into the stateroom and heaved him on to the bed. As his hands came away, they were wet and, when he looked, covered in blood. Boone swore.
The man opened his eyes, gasped.
‘Jesus, man,’ Boone said. He removed the man’s zip-up jacket and saw that the area around the top of his right arm and chest was soaked in blood. The man moaned. Boone gagged slightly, tossed the jacket to one side and peeled the man’s shirt off, blowing out his cheeks as he saw the equally blood-sodden bandages around the man’s bicep.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘You do not need to know,’ the man whispered.
‘OK. Nor do I know what’s underneath those bandages, but I do know you need medical attention.’
‘I’ve had some. You must take me back to the Gambia.’
‘After you’ve seen a doctor.’
‘No. Just take me back. That is what you have been paid for.’
‘I haven’t been paid to take a dead man on my boat.’
The man’s eyes were cold and he meant it when he said, ‘If I die, then throw me to the sharks.’
Boone and he regarded each other. Boone ground his teeth noisily. The man exhaled and winced. Boone weighed up the odds — and saw the blood starting to stain the duvet cover.
‘I want extra money. I’m not a fucking paramedic.’
‘OK. There’s money in my wallet. Sterling. But I need the wound re-dressing, I think. The bullet has been removed, so you don’t have to worry about that.’
Boone sneered and knew that there and then he should have set sail and hoisted the man into the Atlantic, dead or alive. But the money lured him and he was also proud that — up to a point — he was a man of his word. He had been contracted to do a job and he would do it to the best of his abilities.
He nodded and realized why Aleef had given him the first aid kit, in which he’d found half a dozen morphine ampoules amongst everything else. He knelt down and peeled the blood-soaked bandages from the arm, revealing a truly ugly wound underneath, most likely caused by a gunshot that had entered the back of the bicep. He looked into the man’s eyes; his head was angled down as he watched Boone.
‘Jesus,’ Boone said again.
‘Your prophet, not mine,’ the man said. ‘Although I doubt you have a religious bone in your body.’
‘Strictly an unbeliever.’
/> ‘Then why blaspheme?’
Boone shrugged and dropped the bandages into a plastic waste bin, where they landed with an unedifying splat. With distaste on his face, Boone inspected the wound closely. Under normal circumstances it looked like a pretty treatable wound, if getting shot could be considered to be normal. Something any half-competent ER doctor would have eaten up. But it was blatantly obvious that this man did not wish to turn up at a casualty department.
‘Who took out the bullet?’ Boone asked.
‘A friend.’
A friend who hadn’t really cleaned up after the mess. It needed disinfecting, though the blood oozing from it appeared to be nice and clean at the moment. But wounds like this had to have proper treatment in Africa because it was a continent of disease. At least it didn’t whiff just yet.
So far the guy had been lucky.
Boone wiped around the hole with antiseptic pads, then squeezed a tube of antiseptic cream into it, before covering it with a clean plaster and a bandage. He broke one of the morphine ampoules, filled a syringe and jabbed it into the man’s thigh through his trousers, then thumbed the plunger down slowly.
‘I’ll get you a mug of tea and a bottle of water. You need to keep yourself hydrated. Then we’ll be on our way.’
The man nodded. ‘Thank you.’ His eyes became dreamy as the morphine took effect. He laid himself out on the bed and closed his eyes.
Ten minutes later they were underway and Boone was easing Shell carefully out of port, past the ships in the graveyard, and heading out to open sea, sailing south. He had slipped the man’s passport and wallet out of his jacket without him noticing and had them both resting on the angled console in front of him.
By the dimmed cockpit light, he inspected both documents.
The passport, in the name of Ali Karim, meant nothing to him, other than it was British and looked genuine enough. The leather wallet, soaked in blood, was much more interesting. It contained five hundred pounds sterling and three hundred and fifty euros. Boone flicked through the wads, thinking, these guys certainly have money behind them. He visualized the cash he’d peeked at, stashed up in Aleef’s safe. He eased three hundred pounds and two hundred euros out of the wallet and slid the notes into his back pocket, wondering what the wounded Ali Karim had been up to, if that was his real name — Boone doubted that — and who might be after him.
They watched the computer screen in silence, Rik Dean joining them and standing quietly behind, still holding the e-mail.
A bearded young man sat cross-legged in front of a draped Islamic flag with a green crescent moon and five-pointed star, wearing a turban, a grubby white galabiyya and rubber slippers, telling the world in a regional English accent just why he was prepared to give his life for Islam, why he hated Western infidels and why his death was easy in the fight against the oppressors. Laid across his lap was a Kalashnikov rifle and unfolded in front of him was a waistcoat packed with blocks of explosives.
Henry’s nostrils flared as he watched the rant. A chill came over him to see such alienation coupled with brainwashing. But much worse, the thing that made it all the more chilling, was the English accent. Pure Lancashire.
This was the video posted on-line, made by Rashid Rahman, the young would-be suicide bomber who had been shot dead on the motorway. The fact he hadn’t had a chance to detonate the bomb that had been strapped around his middle was not the point. That he hadn’t taken fifty other innocent people with him, as he clearly stated was his intention — ‘so they may go to hell and I to heaven’ — did not matter. He was to have died an Islamic hero’s death, but now, of course, he’d been murdered by the hand of the infidel. Then he added, ‘And this is only the beginning, the big one is yet to come.’
Henry paused the screen and looked at Donaldson, then back at the grainy image.
‘That guy, that lad,’ Donaldson said, ‘was born in the UK, educated here, was at college in this town until a couple of months ago — when apparently he quit for no reason… but now we know why, don’t we?’
‘What about his parents?’
‘I haven’t met them,’ Donaldson said, ‘but they own a shop in Bispham and from all accounts they’re devastated.’
‘What about the parents of the lad in custody, the one you stopped?’
‘Zahid Sadiq?’ Donaldson wiped an eye with a finger. ‘His parents are both doctors from Preston, one in a practice here in Blackpool. I have briefly met them. They are… it’s beyond words, really
… cannot believe their precious son had been radicalized. Seems both boys lived double lives. They didn’t even know they’d been to Yemen. Which is where this was probably shot.’
An overwhelming sadness descended on the three of them.
‘Intelligent lads, nice lads — outwardly,’ Donaldson said. ‘And although it sounds cliched, in the hands of a manipulator like Jamil Akram, they didn’t stand a chance. He’s sent so many people, kids like these, to their pointless deaths.’
‘And when he appears on the scene, it’s usually a portent,’ Henry said.
‘Yep.’
‘So how did they come to meet him in the first place?’ Henry asked.
Donaldson shrugged. ‘Probably via a local mosque. Dunno.’ He sounded completely depressed.
Henry clicked the mouse and dragged the video back a few seconds as Rahman, now dead, finished his triumphant speech about his planned glorious death with the words, ‘And this is only the beginning, the big one is yet to come.’ The screen went blank.
Henry felt slightly guilty about having to abandon Donaldson that evening. It was clear his friend wanted to talk things through, mull it all over, but Henry had other plans. First of all the murder squad had to be debriefed. Everyone was due in for an update and a download at nine p.m. Then, from what was gleaned, Henry and Rik had to work out the strategy and tasking for the next day. There was no way he would be finished before eleven.
When he explained this to Donaldson, the American had instantly suggested a late night whiskey in Henry’s conservatory, but Henry had bluffed his way out of that. At least that is what he thought he’d done until Donaldson tilted his head and gave him a squinted look of suspicion. ‘Have you got a date?’ he said. ‘Or are you seeing a hooker? Which one?’
‘Just a rendezvous with a friend,’ Henry said tightly.
‘A kissin’ friend?’
‘None of your business, pal.’
‘So you’re getting back on to the hey-ho?’
‘Just a friend.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Why would you?’
Donaldson shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I need an early night, anyhow. I’m bushed.’
‘Good idea.’
‘Hey, pal,’ Donaldson said. The two men locked eyes meaningfully. ‘If I’m right, it’s fine with me. No judgements from this neck of the woods.’
‘I know.’
‘But I still want to talk to ya, brainstorm a bit, yeah?’
‘Fine.’
The debrief went smoothly. Each pair of investigating detectives pooled their accumulated knowledge of the short and, as it was turning out, rather sordid life of Natalie Philips. Not that her lifestyle made any difference to Henry. He particularly hated it when young people came to sticky ends, hated the thought of a young life snuffed out and the death of possibility. In any murder inquiry, he gave his all. In the case of a youngster, he pushed even harder.
Some good stuff came up. Ex-boyfriend Lewis Kitchen had been found and was due to be pulled in tomorrow. The name of the teacher who supposedly had the hots for Natalie had been unearthed and was also going to be spoken to next day. Some of her friends had been interviewed and a clearer picture of her life was emerging, in that for the past few weeks she had withdrawn from her mates and was being secretive about who she was seeing. There was a stumbling block with her computerized social network contacts, the detectives being unable to access her Facebook account, from which she had recently de-friended
most of her contacts. Henry took the opportunity to reveal what had been found inside Natalie and that DNA tests were in the database queue for the three unidentified sperm samples. He told everyone that although Mark Carter remained a good suspect, this investigation was by no means over.
Afterwards he and Rik did next day’s tasking and Henry brought the murder book up to date, which in turn brought him to eleven fifteen p.m. Uneasily he picked up his mobile phone and sent a text, receiving a reply only moments later that said, ‘YES’.
She was waiting for him in the bar of the Hilton Hotel. It was quiet, just a few lonesome looking businessmen staring glumly into spirit glasses, and Alison Marsh sitting in a corner reading a novel. She closed it as he walked across the bar and they smiled warmly, but uncertainly, at each other. Internally he had a very warm glow and a sudden sense of euphoria, even though his throat seemed to close up. She laid the book on the table in front of her, her eyes playing over the weary Henry, now slightly dishevelled after another long day. There was a glass of red wine on the table and Henry asked her if she wanted another, finding his voice sticking in his closed throat and unable to form any coherent words.
Seeing his discomfort, she said, ‘JD on the rocks?’
‘Coming up,’ he declared after a cough. He made to turn to the bar, but Alison rose to her feet and touched his arm.
‘In my room,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s all prepared.’
They looked at each other.
‘The time for talking’s over, Henry.’
And he realized it probably was. When they had met the other night for a drink in the same location, he had poured out, for the first time to anyone, his grief about losing Kate. Alison had listened, allowed him to download, and for him it had been an incredible release. For the first time he had told someone about Kate, their ups and downs, the bad way he’d treated her, the fact that although they had divorced she stuck with him through it all and eventually they had remarried. And been happy. Then she had been struck down by something evil and ferocious which was more than a match for her grim determination to stay alive. He spoke for almost an hour, non-stop, then had suddenly looked into Alison’s eyes before melting into her arms and holding her tightly. After that they talked about her husband, Robert, the soldier killed in Afghanistan.