by Nick Oldham
Flynn had described the small, besuited man. Immediately Michelle exclaimed, ‘That’s Aleef.’
‘Aleef?’
‘Mamoud Aleef… he’s a fixer, a middleman, makes deals, takes a cut.’
This conversation had taken place a little earlier on the deck of Shell. Michelle had sobbed heavily for what seemed like a very long time before it had all subsided and Flynn had pushed her gently away from him, wiped her tears with his thumbs, reassured her and listened to her story. The fear, watching them destroy the houseboat, the rapes, the beatings. And also how, when the police came later, they simply sneered at her, dragged Boone’s body out of the water and that was the last she saw or heard.
‘I need you to help me find these men,’ Flynn insisted. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. You need to point me in the right direction.’
She nodded. ‘I will.’
Flynn had described to her what he’d seen when he’d gone to meet Boone arriving back from his hurried, mysterious journey. How he’d hidden behind barrels and watched the tough guys lounging by the big old Mercedes, the little man — Aleef — helping to transfer the injured man from the boat into the car. He had seen all their faces, they hadn’t seen him, and he had since managed to identify the injured passenger.
‘Who was he?’ Michelle asked.
Flynn then told her about the computer pages Boone had been browsing and when he’d got back to Gran Canaria, he’d found the same pages — and more.
‘A man on the run from the British cops on terrorism charges. I’m certain it’s a guy called Jamil Akram.’ He watched Michelle’s face as he said the name, but saw it meant nothing to her.
‘Boone brought a terrorist back from somewhere?’ she mused thinly.
‘Seems so.’
‘The utter fool. But why did they come after him? Surely he had done what they wanted?’
Flynn sighed, knowing Boone’s character of old. ‘I don’t know for sure, but my guess is he didn’t know who his cargo was until he read the news and saw pictures of Akram. Then suddenly he puts it all together… and…’ Flynn’s voice trailed off.
‘He went for more money. Blackmail,’ Michelle said, showing that she too knew Boone pretty well. ‘I’m sure the small man you describe is Aleef. He’s been around a long time, but in the shadows… he’s a businessman, got lots of henchmen. But I’m shocked he’s linked to a terrorist.’
‘Money,’ Flynn said. ‘How do you know him?’
‘Just do. He flits around the clubs, where he does a lot of his business… where I used to do my business. Until Boone gave me a future,’ she concluded resentfully.
‘Take me into town and find this Aleef. I’ll take it from there.’
The prospect of stepping foot off Shell and going into town clearly scared her. ‘I haven’t left the boat since,’ she said then, and when Flynn finally got her into the Land Cruiser, which he’d found to still be in working order, she continued to repeat the mantra all the way into town. She was plainly terrified of being out and about again.
‘They threatened to kill me,’ she said, turning her face to Flynn, half-hidden in the shadows, but her eyes were wide open. He swerved the Land Cruiser to the side of the road and said gently, ‘I’ll take you back. I’ll try and find them myself.’ He was being honest, not manipulative.
‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘I’m doing this for Boone. They destroyed him and though I am saddened to say it, I want this, I want them dead, Flynn.’ She then looked forward, jaw set hard, a totally different woman to the one he’d met less than two weeks before, now transformed and changed for ever by the trauma she’d experienced. ‘Do it,’ she said.
Donaldson was back at the American embassy. Alone in his office, he was watching the DVD of the video that had been released by al-Qaeda of Rashid Rahman, the young man who had been shot dead on the motorway, who was ranting on about how he would take the fight to the infidel.
His wish — ‘To take as many unbelievers as possible so they may go to hell and I to heaven… and this is only the beginning, the big one is yet to come.’
The words, as ever, sent a shiver through Donaldson’s bones.
‘What a waste,’ he sighed and skipped the disc backwards and watched it again, leaning forwards, closely studying the image, this time with the sound turned down, his head shaking sadly at the terrible loss of a life. Then he noticed something that made him sit upright and think back to the moment he had spotted the other would-be terrorist, Zahid Sadiq, walking along Blackpool promenade, showing all the outward signs of being a suicide bomber. Inappropriate clothing. Robotic walk. The mouth chanting, mumbling his last prayers. Eyes fixed, staring ahead. And something else…
Donaldson shot forwards again, froze the image and pressed print screen.
‘You didn’t find him, then?’ a smug Rik Dean asked.
Henry had driven back to Blackpool police station to drop off the CID car, which had made it unscathed off Shoreside. He’d bumped accidentally into Rik, who had changed into some rough clothing and was making his way to the police garage with the keys for, as he described it, ‘the shittiest police car in there’. A turn of the millennium Nissan, tucked away in a dark corner, which no one used unless absolutely necessary. It should have been changed long ago, but cost cutting meant that if it had gone, there would have been no replacement, so the CID clung on to it as a last resort. It came in useful for jobs like tonight — keeping obs — but it wasn’t something you turned up in if you were out to impress.
‘I did, actually, but he needed to sleep it off.’
‘Pissed?’
‘His life’s going down the pan — literally,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve arranged for him to come in first thing in the morning.’
‘And you think he’ll turn up?’ Rik’s voice said he didn’t.
‘Yep.’
‘Henry, you’re too soft with that lad. It’s not your fault his sister OD’d, his brother’s a dealer and his mum got whacked.’
‘I know, but I think we have some sort of obligation to him.’ Henry sighed. It was an old conversation.
They were face to face in a narrow, poorly lit corridor just outside the custody office. A section van reversed in and two uniformed cops dragged a belligerent drunk out of the back doors. Another body for Blackpool police station’s prisoner sausage machine that processed over 12,000 each year.
‘Anyway, I’m going to give it a couple of hours.’ Rik dangled the car keys at Henry. ‘Until midnight, then I’ll find somewhere for a nightcap. You still coming?’
‘If you want some company,’ Henry said.
‘So long as you don’t go all social worker on me about Mark Carter.’
‘Promise.’
‘And I drive you home to get changed. Not certain a suit is the best attire for observations.’
‘OK… and I thought we could talk about shagging, y’know, like blokes do.’
Rik said, ‘I’ll go for that.’
Flynn and Michelle drifted from bar to bar, drinking soft drinks and sitting in dark alcoves from which they could keep watch for Aleef. It was hit and miss, no guarantees, but at least they were doing something. Flynn felt better about that. He was a man of action and some violence and moping about did not suit him. He needed this. Inside him, the desire for revenge was like a caged beast wanting to be set free. Even if Boone hadn’t been killed, had somehow escaped, Flynn would still have gone after the men who had shot him.
He and Michelle sat close to each other, knee to knee. She kept her face lowered in the shadows as much as possible. The hot, dusty streets of Banjul were thronging with bodies, quite a few white faces in amongst the Africans, so Flynn was not too obvious. No one paid him any heed. Banjul drew in holiday-makers and he was simply a man in a crowd who might have picked up a whore. Nothing unusual about that.
Except Flynn could not even start to visualize Michelle as a prostitute, even though she had once been one. It was very hard for him to make that mental leap.
However, there was only a handful of clubs that tourists frequented and these were not the ones Michelle guided him into. These were dark, dingy, basement hovels, hotter than the streets, crammed with people, the smell of sweat and dope overpowering. The music was loud and African, with driving beats and an air of menace.
Michelle clung to him as she steered him into a club that had no name over the door and had two evil looking bouncers guarding the place. Inside it was a crush, impossible to move other than by sliding intimately past other customers. A haven for groping accidentally on purpose, and pickpockets. There was a minuscule dance floor, which was heaving, and a long bar at which Michelle and Flynn chiselled out a space. Flynn shouted his order, then rotated to rest his back on the edge of the bar whilst Michelle tucked herself tightly alongside him. Flynn’s eyes roved, spotting the pimps and hookers on the prowl, drug dealers too, and lots of clients.
Michelle tiptoed up so her mouth was at Flynn’s ear. ‘Boone liked this place. It’s where I met him.’
Flynn nodded, somewhat surprised at the admission.
‘He took me away from it,’ she added, and dropped back on to the flats of her feet.
Flynn’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the flashing disco and strobe lighting, and he saw a line of alcoves along the wall opposite, deep recesses in which couples groped, and glimpsed occasional flashes of male ecstasy, female hands tucked down men’s trousers, the jerk of gratification.
He turned away from the sight and faced the bar as the drinks came. Michelle’s arms encircled his waist and she clung to him. He draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug, then glanced diagonally across to the far corner of the bar where a man sat on a stool, a beer in his hand, a woman in a shiny dress dancing slinkily on the spot in front of him as he watched with lustful eyes.
Flynn tilted his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth so Michelle could hear his words.
‘That’s one of the men,’ he said, his lips hardly moving. He turned her slightly. She saw him and Flynn felt her convulse and spin back into him with a moan of anguish. It was one of the men from the Mercedes. One of the ones who had killed Boone, shot at him, then raped her. He could have been the one who had winged Flynn.
‘What do we do?’ Michelle asked.
‘We leave, I watch, I wait… I follow. Get the drift?’
‘And me?’
‘You go back to the car, lock yourself in and wait for me. If I’m not back within an hour, go back to Boone’s boat and wait there. I’ll be back. Sometime.’
FIFTEEN
‘ It comes to something when officers with our length of service and rank are sitting in a crappy police car at bloody near midnight, keeping obs. Surely we’ve got something wrong somewhere? This is a job for the younger, keener, more energetic end of the policing family. Not old lags.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Rik Dean said. ‘You’ve got a lot of years on me, pal.’
‘But you know what I mean,’ Henry whined. ‘The principle of two relatively high ranking detectives doing what we’re doing… I dunno… unseemly, not right.’
‘I’ll have it sorted for tomorrow night.’
Henry slouched down in the passenger seat of the Nissan, which had springs that had collapsed completely and others that stuck in his spine like corkscrews. It wasn’t far off midnight and now it was all wearing a bit thin. Conversation had started sprightly enough. Not, as it happened, about sexual intercourse, but the other usual things that cops talked about on boring obs. The physics of the universe, how insignificant human beings were in the grand scheme of things, the power of the moon, the credit crunch and other such mind-blowing topics. Heavy stuff, about which they knew very little but spouted a lot. However, that had petered out as they drove fairly aimlessly around the north shore area in which the rapes had taken place.
It was pretty hit and miss and Rik had already decided that the officers who were due to be out tomorrow night would be more specific in their tasks.
Not much was moving. Not many cars. Not many people.
As they drove out in the general direction of Poulton-le-Fylde, they spotted a car coming in the opposite direction that Henry recognized as they passed side by side. He got a look at the driver, who he also recognized.
‘Corrie run,’ he said.
‘Eh?’
‘That car,’ Henry jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘It’s the plain car from Poulton.’
‘And how would you know that?’ Rik asked. He hadn’t clocked the car.
‘Because even though I had a mini collapse at the scene of Natalie Philips’s murder, I did notice the car that the PC who had found her had been driving.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t remember the PC’s name, though I sort of recall talking to him. He was pretty upset.’
‘Paul Driver. He found her by the crematorium gates.’
‘That’s the one.’
They continued their slow patrol, parking up here and there. A few kids were out on the streets. A couple of lads, a couple of girls, maybe walking home from a pub. Then they saw one lone female walking swiftly and with purpose. Not really many targets for an opportunistic rapist, if that is what the offender was. But maybe a quiet night was the best. Fewer targets, even fewer witnesses.
Henry checked his phone — again — slightly disappointed he didn’t have anything from Alison. Maybe she’s just used me, he tried to rationalize. But he knew that wasn’t true. She was honest, genuine, quite bloody gorgeous and wonderful.
Points which suddenly hit the nail on the head for him. His guts lurched as he suddenly realized how lucky he had been to meet Alison and get into a relationship with her. He knew he couldn’t afford to lose her.
‘Once more round the block,’ Rik said, ‘then let’s call it quits.’
Henry nodded. He was concentrating on sending a text. It began, ‘ SORRY ITS LATE. CAN WE TALK? B HOME IN BOUT AN HR ’. As an afterthought, he added, ‘ XX ’ so it could not be interpreted as one of those, ‘We need to talk, it’s time to end it’ texts.’ If he got one back without a kiss, he would be worried.
He found Alison’s number in his phone’s contacts list and after a moment of hesitation, pressed send, then raised his head from the task to see where Rik was taking him.
And then he saw the car parked up.
‘What’s he doing here?’ he said. He craned around to look as Rik drove on past the car that was parked on the roadside, in amongst a line of other cars. Henry did not see anyone in the car and Rik obviously did not know what Henry was talking about.
‘Who?’ Rik said. He’d reached the next junction. They were on a nice, well-established housing estate just off Garstang Old Road. If Rik drove straight across the junction, he would reach a T-junction at which a left turn would take him out towards Poulton, and right back into Blackpool.
Henry, ignoring his questions, said, ‘Go across here, pull in and switch everything off.’
‘Eh?’
‘Just do it.’
Rik complied, drove across, pulled in to the side of the road and parked about twenty metres along the next avenue, doused the lights and turned off the engine. Henry wound down his window — electric ones not being standard on the old Nissan — and adjusted his door mirror manually to give him a view back up the road.
‘What is it?’
‘That plain car from Poulton is parked back there in that line of cars.’
Rik jerked his head and squinted at Henry. ‘Your point being?’
‘What’s he doing there?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe he lives there. Maybe he’s popped home for a brew. Maybe he’s shagging, maybe-’
Henry held up his right hand. ‘Stop. Too many maybes. Whatever he’s doing, he’s off his patch.’
‘But he has to come off his patch to do the corrie run.’
‘I know that, but he’s taking the piss here, isn’t he?’
‘Henry — why are you bothered
? You’re not his sergeant. Did you never sneak off for a brew now and again — or something else?’
‘All the time. But I’m a superintendent now. I have double standards and I’m therefore above that sort of thing.’ Henry wasn’t actually too bothered what the PC was up to, simply curious.
Rik’s mouth snapped shut, then he sighed. ‘Do you want me to talk to the inspector at Poulton tomorrow? I’d kind of like to get that nightcap now, you know? I don’t get paid overtime.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘But you earn almost twice as much as me.’
‘Stop bickering, will you?’
Rik murmured something incomprehensible, but was annoyed.
Henry finely adjusted the mirror, slumping in the seat for a clear view back up across the junction, enough to see if anyone approached the car along the pavement, but not necessarily if they came at it from any other direction. Rik also slid down his seat and adjusted his door mirror, so between them, they pretty much had it covered.
‘This just seems absurd,’ Rik said.
‘Have you got the number of Lancaster comms in your mobile?’ Rik muttered that he had. ‘Then call them and ask them to radio PC Driver and ask him for his current location.’ Although geographically adjacent to Blackpool division, Poulton-le-Fylde was actually in Northern division, the HQ of which was Lancaster, where the divisional control room was situated. Logically it would have made more sense for Poulton to belong to Blackpool as it had much in common with the resort, but such were the vagaries of political boundaries on which policing areas were more or less based.
Rik found the number and dialled.
As he was speaking, Henry’s own mobile bleeped with a text landing. It was Alison. Nervously he tabbed it open.
It said, ‘TIME DONT MATTER. THINKING OF YOU. LOVE YOU. WANT TO TALK. XX’.
Oh my God, Henry thought, and a shudder ran through him.
Rik was speaking to Lancaster comms room. ‘Yeah, uh, can you tell him that DI Dean wants to see him at Poulton police station?’ Rik gave Henry a desperate what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-say expression. ‘OK, I’ll hold.’ Rik then snatched up his PR from the door pocket next to him and tuned it over to the radio channel used by Lancaster just in time to hear an operator call PC Driver’s collar number and ask for his location.