by Nick Oldham
‘I know all about the bigger picture, but in this case there is no bigger picture than finding out who killed an innocent teenager,’ Henry responded.
The line went silent.
Beckham said, ‘Maybe when we’ve finished with him, you can have him.’
‘And what will be left of the poor misguided bastard?’
‘Not much, but that’s the best I can do. And if you want my opinion, he didn’t kill her.’
‘What about Akram? Don’t forget his sperm was also found inside her.’
‘How would I know?’
‘When can I have him, then?’
‘To be determined, dear boy,’ Beckham replied, keeping up the patronizing tone.
Henry was almost crushing his mobile phone, but he controlled himself and asked, ‘There is something else. I also asked you to check the items that you seized from Sadiq’s flat to see if there were any DNA traces of the dead girl on any of the stuff.’
‘There was no trace of anything relating to the girl,’ Beckham said. ‘It looks like she was never there. In fact there wasn’t really much of anything there.’
‘OK,’ Henry said, and he ended the call.
‘Nada?’ Rik said, as Henry placed his phone down on the table.
‘Zilch,’ Henry confirmed, wishing he knew a way around the situation. He paced the small office. It was an extreme idea, but the media was a possibility. Go to the papers, slag off MI5? He dismissed that. Apart from the fact it was likely the story would be suppressed from the highest level, he would find himself deep in the mire — shit that would probably follow him into retirement. His anger subsided — a little — and he checked his watch again. ‘I think I’ll go and see if I can collar Mark Carter. I need somebody to shout at. Coming?’
Rik shook his head. Henry handed him his pen back, not having used it, grabbed a set of keys for a CID car and headed down to the police garage. There was no way he was going to drive his Mercedes around the hellhole that was Shoreside estate. He wasn’t bothered if the wheels disappeared from a police car.
They decided on a new location for their next meeting later that evening.
Donaldson made certain he wasn’t followed and insisted Edina did the same. Trouble was, Donaldson knew that the ‘Watchers’, as the surveillance branch of MI5 was called, were the best in the world. They could tail even the most surveillance conscious target without ever revealing themselves. However, basic precautions could be taken, such as stopping abruptly, false window-shopping to look at reflections rather than the display, doubling back and looking at faces, as well as ducking into shops through one door and leaving via another. Edina was unfazed and said she knew what to do.
When she appeared at the Spanish restaurant in a medium-sized shopping arcade just off Victoria Street, Westminster, at eight that evening, she looked beautiful and relaxed. She had strolled the mile or so from her apartment close to the Home Office, overlooking the Thames.
They shared paella, food that Donaldson loved. It was a good one, a mix of seafood and chicken, freshly prepared. The accompanying Spanish beer complemented it perfectly. As Edina scraped a spoon across the paella pan for the tasty burned layer on the bottom, Donaldson asked, ‘Can we talk now?’
She had drunk the best part of the bottle of Rioja. Her eyes glistened as she placed the spoon into her mouth and chewed the burned rice that coated the pan.
‘I can’t actually answer the question you asked about Blackpool, but I can tell you one thing. There were three of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not two, but three.’
Donaldson sat back.
‘Three boys, not two.’ Her words were slightly slurred but clear. ‘The two you caught — Sadiq and Rahman — and another one who had been brainwashed or radicalized or whatever it’s called. As far as I can gather, his whereabouts are unknown, as are the whereabouts of Jamil Akram. But they believe this little escapade isn’t yet over. That’s why they’re keeping a tight reign on Sadiq, but so far he’s told them nothing useful.’ Edina chuckled. ‘A teenage boy is holding out against some of the world’s most experienced interrogators.’
‘I saw you run,’ she said accusingly. ‘You left me to die.’
‘Could you possibly point that thing in another direction?’
Steve Flynn was sitting on the bench seat in Shell ’s cockpit and the woman after whom the boat had been named was perched on the fighting chair, a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun resting across her lap, but loosely aimed at Flynn’s groin. If it had been discharged, even if he had survived the blast, he would be minus his genitals.
‘You left me behind, ran off,’ she said. ‘I saw you climb back on to the quayside. Then you ran away.’ The aim stayed the same.
Flynn said, ‘I couldn’t have helped, Michelle. I’d been shot
… may I?’ He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to do this, but he eased up his T-shirt and peeled back the dressing to show the ugly red, raised scar across his ribcage. ‘I was unarmed. I thought I might be dying anyway. I could hardly move. I would’ve been no use. As soon as I made a move, I would have been killed. I was too slow. I knew Boone was dead. I just had to hope that they wouldn’t kill you as well, because I knew even then, that if I lived, I’d be coming back.’ He replaced the dressing and pulled his shirt down.
Michelle raised the shotgun and trained it on Flynn’s chest. The double hammers were cocked and her finger was curled across both triggers.
Flynn stopped breathing. ‘Michelle, I’m back. I came back,’ he whispered.
‘You left me,’ she accused him. ‘You left Boone.’
‘He was dead. Don’t forget, I saw him die, too.’
Flynn recalled the first time, not so very long ago, that he’d seen Michelle. It had been on the day he and Boone had returned from a day’s tarpon fishing. He had been stunned by her radiant, free beauty. He also remembered those moments before Boone had hurtled back with the devil on his tail, how Michelle had unashamedly leaned over him at the laptop, naked, her breasts nuzzling his shoulder blades. A vibrant, beautiful woman. Now completely changed by recent events. Her chocolate brown skin had lost its lustre, her face gaunt, bearing the faded marks of a brutal beating. Her eyes seeped terror. Her whole body seemed shrivelled and wasted. Everything had somehow been battered out of her.
‘Do you know what they did to me?’
Flynn shook his head, nostrils flaring, eyes flickering between the double-O barrel ends and Michelle’s face. A tear formed at the edge of her left eye. A perfect, glinting droplet that rolled down her cheek, leaving a track.
‘They beat me and they raped me,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry.’ Flynn swallowed. His voice croaked.
‘They beat me and they raped me… again and again.’
Flynn swallowed drily now, his mouth and throat like acid. Michelle’s forefinger jittered on the triggers.
‘But that didn’t matter.’ She removed her finger from the trigger and wiped away the tear with the back of her hand. ‘Rape doesn’t matter to me. I’ve been raped a thousand times. I was a prostitute, you see. A good one. Men have always had their way with me, and as far as I was concerned it was always rape. But I learned to live through it. I’ve been abused since I was seven. By men. Eventually it meant nothing. I have been beaten, too. Many, many times, by angry men.’ Another tear formed, trickled down. She wiped it away. ‘Beating means nothing, either, because no one could ever beat the spirit out of me.’ She lifted her chin challengingly.
‘Shell,’ Flynn started to say, and moved slightly.
She jerked the gun at him. He became rigid again.
‘Those men raped me. They did it on the jetty and in the houseboat. They held my face over the side of the jetty and fucked me from behind so I had to look at Boone’s body floating in the bloody water. His face was looking up at me, what was left of it. The fish had already started to eat him.’
‘Shell,’ Flynn said again.
>
‘What those men took from me was my hope. Boone was my future. He was my way out. He saved me and I loved him for it. They took him from me… and you — YOU — left me…’
‘Shell,’ Flynn said again for the third time. ‘I’m back. I couldn’t save Boone and I couldn’t have saved you.’
Her head began to shake from side to side, then her chin fell and her whole body sagged as though, this time, the spirit had left her. The gun fell out of her hands on to the deck.
Flynn swooped down and knelt in front of her, encircling his strong arms around her now frail body, which shook and juddered uncontrollably. He held on and her thin arms went around his neck, crushing him ferociously. She started to howl and Flynn kept a tight hold as she broke down completely, her head buried into his chest. He stroked her hair, now coarse and straggled and stale, cooing, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ softly, and other useless words into her ear. Such as, ‘I’m here now.’
As if that was any sort of reassurance to her.
‘I prayed you’d come back,’ she said, her voice muffled and broken. ‘Prayed hard, prayed to God you hadn’t truly deserted me.’
‘Tell me who these people are,’ Flynn whispered. ‘Tell me their names. Tell me where I can find them.’
‘Will you destroy them?’
‘Oh yes.’
The evenings were getting longer and on Shoreside the gangs had started to gather again. Henry drove on to the estate in the CID Focus and was instantly spotted and ID’d by the four youths on the first corner he drove past. They had been pushing and shoving each other, generally larking around. When they saw him, they ended their boisterous shenanigans and eyed him fiercely. Two of them fished out their mobile phones. One started to text, one took his photograph. Henry knew these guys were the sentinels for this entrance to the estate, a bit like lookouts for the Hole in the Wall gang — and this estate was pretty much as lawless as the Wild West. In fact a lot of cops referred to it as Dodge City.
Henry gave the hoodies a broad smile and drove on.
He was looking for Mark Carter, who lived on the far perimeter of the estate in a house once occupied by his mother, which, Henry had learned to his surprise, had been bought by her from the council and the outstanding debt on it had been paid by a mortgage insurance policy when she’d been murdered. Mark now lived there alone.
He drove past the fenced off remnants of a parade of shops that had been systematically razed to the ground by local vandals. Then past the house owned and occupied by the Costain family who presided over the estate like warlords, controlling most of the criminal activity therein. Henry was sure that his photo had been beamed to one of the Costains.
Then he was on the avenue on which Mark lived.
He drew up outside the house, which was in darkness. Didn’t seem like anyone was at home. Still, Henry never took anything for granted. He walked up to the front door, eyeing the windows all the time for signs of movement, then tapped on the front door and rattled the letterbox. The door opened slightly at Henry’s touch. He pushed it fully open and called out, ‘Mark? It’s me, Henry Christie,’ from the threshold.
Behind the door was a stack of unopened mail. Henry switched on the hall light and bent down to pick it up. Scanning through it he saw quite a few official looking envelopes that smacked of final demands, which made Henry wonder how Mark survived. The house might have been paid for, but bills still came in and a two-bit job at a fast food restaurant wouldn’t go far in paying for its upkeep. Could well be on benefits, too, Henry thought.
‘Mark,’ he called again.
He checked the downstairs rooms, found no sign of the lad.
He was upstairs on top of his bed. The bedroom floor was littered with beer cans and a couple of supermarket own-brand whiskey bottles. Henry stood on the crunchy crust of a half-eaten meat pie — hard, like stepping on a cockroach — and wafted away the aroma of exhaled booze, sweat, urine, farts and vomit, smells Henry readily associated with cell blocks.
Mark was fully clothed, lying in the recovery position, on his side, one knee drawn up, clasping a can of cheap lager. He was snoring and dribbling at the same time.
Henry walked across to him, raised his right foot and prodded him with his toe. No response. He prodded a little more firmly and said, ‘Mark.’ The lad groaned, rolled on to his back and quarter-opened his eyes, which seemed to be stuck together by some kind of mucus. He looked dreadful. ‘Jeez,’ Henry muttered and managed to step smartly back out of range.
It was the stomach heave that gave him the warning. Mark spun back on to his side and his projectile vomit splattered on the bedroom floor like a pan of thick vegetable soup being hurled across a kitchen.
Henry half-dragged Mark out of his room, sidestepping the reeking pile of vomit, and into the bathroom. He heaved him into the shower, fully clothed, then turned it on full blast. The icy rods of the water jets shook Mark, semi-conscious up to that point, into some sort of life, demonstrated by a scream and a scramble to get out of the cubicle with a lot of cursing and swearing. Despite getting his sleeve wet, Henry held him back easily as the water gradually lost its chill and warmed up, then became hot, and the struggling teen gave up the fight with a resigned but vicious glare at Henry, who he called a bastard repeatedly. Then he said, ‘OK, OK, let me get my stuff off.’ Henry released him and backed away.
‘Get your sorry arse showered and get into some new clobber.’
Henry reversed out, closing the shower door as he went.
Mark rubbed two round holes in the steamed-up glass door and looked balefully out through them.
Edina hadn’t actually said much, Donaldson mused as he walked back down Victoria Street after they’d finished dinner, but what she had revealed set the American’s mind chugging. He rewound back to the morning he had managed to prevent a suicide bomber causing death and destruction in the middle of Blackpool, and almost caught one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, whilst another suspected bomber had been shot dead on the motorway.
So there had been three of them.
Three would-be suicide bombers? Is that what Edina meant? Was that what she had heard in passing?
He flagged down a cab and instructed the driver to get him to the American embassy.
‘Look what the cat kicked out,’ Henry said at Mark’s eventual appearance in the kitchen doorway.
Mark scowled and sloped across to the sink where he ran the cold tap for a few seconds before bending over and angling his mouth underneath the flow, swallowing and then spitting out a mouthful of water. He wiped his face with his hands and said, ‘What are you doing in my house?’
‘You’re under arrest for not answering your bail.’
‘Oh, fuck.’ He held himself up against the sink. ‘Completely forgot.’
‘Forgot you were on bail for murder?’
Henry had filled the kettle, which he switched on, and found two clean mugs on the drainer. Mark sank on to a chair by the unstable breakfast bar.
‘Yeah, forgot.’ His head was in his hands.
‘Got pissed instead?’ Henry heaped some instant coffee into the mugs. ‘How long have you been asleep?’
‘Dunno. Started drinking at three this aft, after I finished work. Probably zonked out about six.’
Henry watched the kettle boil.
‘I didn’t do it, you know.’
‘Well, that would be the point of answering bail, wouldn’t it? So we can have a chat about things in more detail.’
Mark, head still in his hands, eyes closed, had changed into fresh clothes. ‘I need to clean up that spew.’
‘Oh yes,’ Henry said. He poured the boiling water into the mugs, then handed one to Mark who sniffed it; his head reared away from the aroma.
‘Ugh — hate coffee.’
‘Take a sip.’
Mark did so, tentatively. ‘Yuk, needs sugar, lots of it.’ He stood up, unsteady, and crossed to a work surface on which there was a sugar bowl. He heaped a lot of sugar int
o the coffee, Henry watching him as he did so. Mark managed to drink some of the resultant mixture.
‘I’ve got to come with you, have I?’ he asked Henry. ‘I didn’t do it, honest. Ask one of the brown musketeers,’ he mumbled.
‘What?’
Mark shook his head. ‘Nowt.’
‘Right, tell you what. I’ll do a deal with you.’
Mark eyed Henry suspiciously. ‘Like with the devil?’
Henry sighed. ‘Get your room cleaned up, get yourself some food down you, watch a bit of telly, go to bed and then turn up at the nick at nine tomorrow morning, bright, sober, ready to roll.’
‘That’s your deal?’
‘Second option — I drag you down to the nick right now and trap you up for the night. You’ve had a skinful and I’d say you’re not fit to interview, so maybe a night in the cells would do you some good. And, as horrible as it might seem now, your vomit will be easier to clean up while it’s still wet. Once its dried, it’ll be a complete nightmare.’ Henry cocked his head at Mark.
Mark sighed. ‘I’ll take option one.’
‘Good.’ Henry pointed at him. ‘If you’re a minute late, I’ll drag the whole thing out for the day, understand? Be on time and we’ll sort it, OK?’ Mark’s mouth curved downwards. ‘I’m doing you a favour here.’
‘I haven’t left the boat since…’ Michelle started to say. She was in the front passenger seat of Boone’s old Land Cruiser, a vehicle that had seen much better days, but kept going. Flynn was driving and they were entering the environs of Banjul, the Gambia’s capital city. The streets teemed with people and traffic, fairly typical of an African town. Progress was slow, the heat tremendous and the air-con unit knackered. Flynn sweated heavily.
‘I understand,’ Flynn said for the umpteenth time, coaxing her gently along. He’d explained he had fleetingly seen the man that Boone had returned with from wherever, and that he thought that person would probably be well gone by now. But he expected that the small man who had helped the man off the boat, and the heavies — the ones who had returned to wreak havoc and death — would still be local.