The Divinities

by Parker Bilal

  All quiet on the reservation. The Freetown estate felt like the calm before the storm. For whatever reason, Pryce appeared to have pulled his men back. The van full of sleeping riot-squad officers was nowhere to be seen. Daylight was fading fast. Already the distant glow of streetlights rose over the city. A siren moaned and blue lights reflected back off windows high up. A couple of kids seemed to recognize Drake’s car. They waved him by with the familiar cry of ‘Five-oh’ as he passed the corner where they sat astride their bicycles. A couple of scooters revved up and flitted away. A black Mercedes with aluminium wheels and an airfoil on the back slid slowly by, heavy bass reverberating through closed windows.

  The middle of the square had once had grass on it, but it had long since been covered over with cement that was now cracked and pitted with weeds. On one side there was a stand with a rising row of steps. Drake sat himself down in the middle of one of these. It wasn’t long before he heard the whirr of bicycle chains. Four kids on bikes. One spun past him, did a sharp turn and skidded to a halt.

  ‘Looks a bit of a mess.’ The kid nodded at the driver’s door where a faint pink cloud marked where the graffiti had been. He’d had a go at removing the paint from the side but hadn’t been entirely successful.

  ‘It’s not easy to get the stuff off.’

  The kid was watching Drake as if he didn’t know what to make of him. He was about twelve. Buck teeth and bushy wild hair that looked knotty and unkempt. He wore a sweatshirt with a character wearing green armour that carried the words Jango Fett, Bounty Hunter.

  ‘I used to live here,’ said Drake. The kid drew to a halt.

  ‘You a Fed, int ya?’

  ‘Waste of paint if I wasn’t.’ Drake nodded at the others. ‘Is that your crew?’

  He got a shrug in reply.

  ‘Is Chalkie still running the estate?’

  ‘Chalkie?’ Jango Fett was curious now. ‘Chalkie died.’

  ‘Then who, one of his boys?’

  ‘Wynstan.’

  Drake remembered Wynstan as a skinny youth back in the day. He had to be in his fifties by now. ‘They used to call him Crazy Wynstan. Had a temper on him.’

  Jango waited for more.

  ‘I watched him throw a kid off that walkway up there.’

  Trying to look unimpressed the kid stamped on the pedals and spun a few turns. Behind him, his posse circled like sharks. They were all mixed race. A smattering of Asian, African and Arab features.

  ‘So why you ’ere then?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone. A man named Akbar Hakim.’

  ‘You come here lookin’ for a snitch, innit?’ The kid was shaking his head. ‘Forget it, bro.’ Drake watched him pedal away.

  The interior of the Alamo resembled a sunken wreck. None of the chairs and tables matched. The bar counter listed to one side. In its lifetime, the tartan carpet had probably soaked up enough beer to sink a frigate. The tables were scarred and the upholstery looked like a pack of ravenous cats had been let loose on it.

  Shabby furniture aside, what had really changed since the old days was the number of screens they had acquired. There seemed to be one whichever way you cared to look. They were overshadowed by one enormous television that took up most of one wall, no doubt to bring in the Saturday football crowds. Right now it was tuned to the local news. There was a murmur of excitement as the Birch Lane mosque came up. The blackened doorway was still cordoned off with crime-scene tape. Drake saw a woman with hair the colour of rhubarb backed by a crowd carrying white crosses and union jacks. Alongside her was the man he’d seen in the pub last time he was here, Stephen Moss. The placards read things like, TAKING BACK OUR COUNTRY, and STOP ISLAMIZATION.

  ‘Hard to know whether to laugh or cry,’ said a voice behind him. Drake turned to find Doc Wyatt standing behind the bar. ‘So what murder and mayhem brings you around here this time?’

  ‘You know how it is, a little of this, a little of that.’

  Doc looked as if he didn’t believe a word, or didn’t care, both of which could be true. Finally, he rolled his shoulders in a gesture of reconciliation.

  ‘You still drinking rum or what?’

  Without waiting for a reply, Doc found a bottle and two glasses and poured them each a large shot. Drake looked down into the dark liquid. Drinking always summoned up the image of his mother, crouched forwards in the armchair that had been ripped to shreds by a succession of cats over the years. Her face lit by the glow from the electric fire, her voice a low, smoky purr.

  ‘You’re no better than me,’ she used to whisper. ‘You’ve got it too. One day you’ll realize that, and then it will be too late.’ She would dissolve into harsh, hacking laughter.

  The news had switched to a demonstration outside Westminster, where protesters stamped their feet against the cold. Mostly men. All white. In shell suits and bargain-basement jeans, they had the look about them of the long-term dispossessed. Placards bore slogans like, BRINGING BRITAIN TO HER SENSES, and NO SHARIA. Along the bottom of the screen, the lead line was, MAGNOLIA QUAYS: PROTEST AGAINST RITUAL KILLINGS.

  ‘You’ve seen this?’ Doc asked. ‘They’re saying it was some kind of sharia thing.’

  ‘You put ideas into people’s heads and they’ll say anything.’

  ‘Same old story, right? All of this stuff is just a distraction.’

  Drake had to smile. ‘You haven’t given up on your conspiracy theories, then?’

  ‘Laugh, but you know it’s true. I don’t expect you to agree. Hell, you’re a part of it.’

  ‘Because I’m a copper?’

  ‘Whatever,’ shrugged Doc. ‘Never understood why you did that.’

  ‘That’s funny, I always thought you of all people would get it.’

  ‘Maybe I’m too thick.’

  ‘You always used to say that if we don’t try to fix things we can’t expect nobody else to.’

  ‘That’s what you’re doing, fixing the system?’ Doc refilled their glasses. ‘How’s that working out for you?’

  ‘It’s like everything else,’ said Drake. ‘There are good days and bad.’

  Doc nodded. At least he seemed to be thinking about it.

  ‘So, what are people saying?’ asked Drake.

  ‘About the killings? Yeah, people round here are more concerned about what’s going to happen to the estate.’

  ‘How’s that then?’

  ‘Well, all of this development that’s going on. Rumour has it that they’re planning to flatten the place, turn it into some kind of luxury complex, shopping, high-end living spaces.’ Doc nodded his head. ‘Remember the old swimming baths? They’re already drawing up plans to turn it into a mall. Can you imagine? Money, money, money. It’s all about getting us to spend what we don’t have, then we all in debt.’

  ‘I hear another conspiracy lecture coming up.’

  ‘Go ahead, laugh, man. I’m telling you, it’s going to happen real fast.’

  As Doc slid along the bar to serve another customer, Drake turned to survey the room. He had never thought of Freetown as a prime piece of property, but of course it was. They were sitting in the middle of a gold mine. A gold mine that could only be accessed by people with money. Investors. Property developers. People like Howard Thwaite.

  What was it that he wasn’t seeing? Something told him there was a connection between this place and Magnolia Quays. On the map he had drawn a short line between the site and Freetown. They still had no idea of how the killer or killers had got away from the crime scene, but the most likely explanation was that he had been working there. And that led him back to Akbar Hakim, Waleed’s friend.

  ‘Let me ask you something else,’ Drake said when Doc returned.

  ‘That’s what I’m here for, man.’ Doc made a show for the old timers down the other end of the bar. ‘Cooperate with the long arm of the law!’

  ‘Akbar Hakim.’

  ‘Yeah, you asked me about him already. What can I say?’

  ‘The name does
n’t ring a bell? He used to be Duwayne Jones.’

  Doc shook his head. ‘Can’t say it does. What did he do?’

  ‘He was friends with Waleed, the imam’s son from the mosque.’

  ‘Ohh, him I know.’ Doc rolled his eyes. ‘Now that’s one mixed-up kid. You catch my drift? He’s madder than a sackful of hatters. Ya aks me it comes from all that religion.’ He was shaking his head. ‘The parents give the boy a complex. Tell him he no good, that he have to pray to stay on the good side of the Almighty. No drinking and no pussy. But what’s a boy to do? It’s all around him.’ Doc stretched out a hand to demonstrate. ‘All his friends are getting busy. He wants the same, but he knows that brings damnation. Mark my words, religion don mess up his head. You know what I’m talking about.’

  Outside, Drake leaned on the car and took a long look around him. A helicopter hovered overhead, the single eye of its searchlight playing a jagged pattern over the rooftops. He watched it for a time, feeling the tension drain from his heart as the beam moved off and the buzzing sank into the distance. Then Drake’s eye caught something and he wandered over towards the north end of the square. There was a large, elegant red-brick building on the corner. The old Victorian swimming baths. It had been closed down years ago, but nothing could be done to the place. It had fallen into disrepair. He could remember swimming there as a kid. Now he noticed an advertising hoarding had been put up. It showed a computer-simulated image of some kind of commercial centre, all glass and smiles. Beautiful people who had just landed from Planet Perfect. THE FUTURE IS NOW read the tagline.

  CHAPTER 31

  Ray worked up a light sweat on the heavy bag. Over the years she had trained in a number of martial arts. As in so many other aspects of life, she wasn’t orthodox or loyal in her tastes. How do you find a method that is perfectly suited to you? The answer is, you don’t; it hasn’t been invented, yet. So she switched and mixed. Taekwondo, Wado Ryu, Wing Chun, Muay Thai. She trained hard, learned new techniques, gained a degree of proficiency and then moved on. What emerged in the end was a kind of personal mix, and that was what she was most content with.

  Now she threw a flurry of kicks, punches, elbow and knee jabs, circling the bag with light, fluid footwork. She practised barefoot, in a singlet and sweatpants, her hair tied back in a pony tail. She paused to drink water from a bottle and to towel herself down, then she went at it again.

  An hour later she was showered and dressed and back at her desk.

  She picked up the folder containing the crime-scene photos along with a map of London. She circled Magnolia Quays. The question of whether the killer was trying to make some kind of statement intrigued her. If her interpretation of the high-angle photograph was correct then these killings could be seen as an attack on the city. Meaning what? The corrupting power of capital? Western civilization?

  Ray had the sense that she was working in the dark. She felt she had the formal support of Wheeler and, to some extent at least, Cal Drake. Beyond that she was on her own. Not that this bothered her too much. Ray had spent most of her life pursuing unlikely interests. Her whole upbringing had, in that sense, been a mixed bag of influences and experiences.

  It went back to her parents, this history of striking out into unknown territory. Her mother, Golnar, had grown up in Tehran dreaming of a glamorous, bohemian life in Paris and yet wound up in London with a man who was her diametric opposite. Where she was light and open, he was dark and secretive. Where she talked, he brooded in silence. Ray imagined they had connected in some reckless moment where they saw in the other a promise of freedom from the limitations of their separate upbringings. Edmund Crane had separated from his family because he wanted none of their entitlement: money, land, property. He went as far as he could in the opposite direction, bringing home a Muslim bride knowing they would disown him, which they did.

  With a sigh, Ray brought herself back to the present. It felt as if things were moving swiftly, which in turn made her worry that she was missing something. That was the danger, that your own fascination took you further away from the facts, leading you along a deceptive path. It might feel right, but unless you were careful you would be sucked in by your own ambition, blind to other possibilities.

  Trying to get into the mind of a killer was like trying to make sense of a kaleidoscope. The colours and shapes tumbled and changed. It transformed itself from one moment to the next. It was all about the angle, the intensity of the signal, the light and colour. Every killer left a trace of what drove them. Little clues that could not be picked up by a forensic officer. Hints that came through decisions, the strategies employed. Every choice told you something.

  Often it was about not losing sight of the fact that there was a stable centre, a spider at the centre of the web. That was her job, to identify the pattern, register the form, create a relationship between pursuer and the pursuit. To see where, in the slow spin of the wheel, the investigator might get lost. Turning the viewfinder until all the pieces fell into place. It was about understanding that each one was different, each had their own characteristics. Sometimes the difficult bit was holding on, believing that there was an end in sight, that it would all eventually make sense.

  If Ray had an area of specialization then this was it. She had spent years studying the myriad shapes into which the human mind can twist itself to believe its own madness. Evil is not an absolute. It is everywhere. In some people it took root, became a means to an end, a way of life. It clung to the landscape, grew like weeds in the cracks. A person could become trapped in one moment of time. Some part of them that grows in abnormal proportion to everyone else. Evil creates its own nature.

  Placing the high-angle picture at the centre, she spread the others around it, and stood up to get a better look. There was something different about it, to do with the light. She checked the time as she reached for her phone. She was in luck, Milo answered straight away.

  ‘I wasn’t sure I’d catch you.’

  He was in fact on his way home. In the background she could hear the garbled squawk of a train announcement.

  ‘I didn’t realize this was your personal number.’

  ‘It’s no problem.’ He didn’t seem to mind her calling after hours. In fact, he seemed quite happy to hear from her.

  ‘Milo, it’s about one of the pictures you gave me.’

  ‘Oh, yes. DS Drake mentioned it.’ His voice sounded a note of dismay.

  ‘Exactly, the one he couldn’t find.’ She lifted it from the desk in front of her. ‘The thing is,’ she went on, ‘I’ve been trying to pinpoint what it is that makes it different. At first I thought it was just the angle, but then I realized that the light is also not quite the same. Did you notice that?’

  ‘I did actually. I sent the copy you mailed me to forensics to try and find out which of the technicians took the picture, but they haven’t managed to pin it down yet.’ Milo was silent for a moment. ‘Do you really think this is important?’

  ‘I’m not sure what it means, but there is something.’

  ‘The odd thing is that yours is the only copy of that picture we have. It wasn’t in the original set that I had, or in the second set that I requested.’

  ‘How do you explain that?’

  ‘That’s just the thing,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  Ray put down her phone and spread the photographs in a pattern in front of her. The light and the angle were distinct. It was almost as if the picture had been taken on another day, by someone else. Finally, with a feeling of frustration she gathered up the rest of the prints and replaced them in the folder, leaving that picture on top.

  Her eye fell on the file Stewart Mason had given her on Goran Malevich. Leader of a former Serbian militia, the White Knights, who were officially disbanded in 1995 when the war in the Balkans ended. He resurfaced in London nearly ten years later. Malevich and his men moved into the local crime scene, taking over large chunks using the kind of techniques they had perfected in the war: intimidation, ki
dnapping, extortion, rape. There was still a question mark hanging over Drake, even though in her heart she felt it was hard to reconcile him with a person like Malevich.

  On her laptop she clicked open Drake’s Special Branch file, also provided by Mason. She was already familiar with its contents, but still she went over it again. Drake’s parents had met at art college in Camberwell. Both had dropped out around the time Cal was born. Drake’s father had been an exchange student. They split. Mother and son moved around a lot. No fixed address. Trouble with social security over benefits. The father overstayed his visa but eventually gained British nationality. Those were the days. Drake’s mother had struggled with substance problems. Cal was in and out of care on a regular basis. By the time he was in his teens he had begun to make a mark on police records. Minor crimes and misdemeanours. Destruction of property. Breaking and entering. Possession of drugs with intent to sell.

  At that point his life seemed to take a sharp turn. The juvenile criminal activity faded away overnight. The next series of reports were redacted documents that charted Drake’s involvement with radical Islam. His attendance at Finsbury Park Mosque, meetings run by organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir, and lectures by key figures identified as imams promoting hate.

  By sixteen Drake was attending meetings of Al-Muhajiroun, a salafist group that was later banned in the UK after they began praising the 9/11 hijackers. Then a sudden about turn. In late 2005 he joined the army. In early 2006 he was posted to Basra with the Royal Anglian Regiment. He was wounded when a helicopter he was in crashed. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions. After that he retrained for work with the Royal Military Police in the Special Investigation Branch. On his return he was fast tracked through Hendon training college into the police. He was everything the Met were looking for to fill their diversity quota. Wheeler brought him into the organized-crime task force, which was jointly headed by Drake and Pryce; that was the beginning of their problems.