by Parker Bilal
‘Oh, it’s not intentional. All my stuff has been shipped over to Frankfurt. The firm is relocating.’
She remembered that he had told her what he did. Something immediately forgettable to do with finance and transferring funds in and out of various locations around the world. However you tried to dress it up, he was a glorified stockbroker. She sensed that if she allowed him to go on about his job her interest in him would wane pretty fast. Why was it that men who worked in finance thought they were geniuses, simply because they could move other people’s money around in sufficient quantities to make a huge profit? It wasn’t complicated, but since everything nowadays was judged in terms of monetary gain perhaps it wasn’t surprising.
Things were moving along smoothly until she laughed at some comment he made. Something related to the current political turmoil. He pulled back.
‘It wasn’t that funny.’
‘No, it’s just that it sounds like something my partner would say.’
‘Partner?’
‘Business partner, nothing more. Colleague.’
‘Doesn’t bother me.’
Either way, the damage had been done. She appeared to have hit a nerve. His manner had changed from one moment to the next. He was still smiling, but the warmth had gone from his eyes, replaced by a gnarly jealous flare.
‘Believe me, there’s nothing between us.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘His name? Cal.’
‘Cal? What is that, Irish?’
‘No.’ Crane sensed danger and started to get up. He put out a hand to grab her wrist.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m not sure this is working out.’ She twisted her hand free and got to her feet.
He laughed. A cold, cynical cackle. ‘So, one mention of the boyfriend and you’re off.’
‘I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.’ Ray located her jacket and pulled it on as she headed for the door. He blocked her way. The smile was back. Now she wondered what she had ever seen in him. The bad lighting in the club had done its magic.
‘Come on,’ he purred, reaching out to stroke her arm. ‘I was joking. Let’s just chill. Sit down, relax and have another drink.’
She placed the flat of her hand on his chest and held him in check.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
She didn’t see the blow coming. She was moving past him, half turned away, as his hand came up from down by his side. She wasn’t expecting it. His fist hit the side of her head, just below her left ear. The force of the blow spun her sideways, away from him and into the door. The double impact left her dizzy. She felt herself being pulled backwards, folding to the floor.
There was a ringing in her ear and she couldn’t quite understand what was happening. She was face down with the weight of him on top of her, his hands moving around over her body. She wriggled to get away from him but that only seemed to increase his efforts to subdue her.
‘Come on, don’t fight it.’ His breath was hot in her ear. ‘You know you want it.’
One hand held her down while the other was busy at her waist, reaching round to unfasten her jeans. She rocked from side to side, feeling that she had no strength and hearing his chuckle in response. His right hand was pulling, trying to get her jeans down over her hips. He had to raise himself up off her to do it and that gave her all the opportunity she needed.
As his weight lifted she bucked upwards and managed to twist round halfway. Pressing her elbow just under his chin, she pushed back, but her boots were slipping on the polished wooden floor and he was strong. His only response was to laugh.
‘Feisty, eh?’
Then her foot touched the wall and suddenly she had purchase. She bent her knee, then thrust herself back, bringing her elbow up hard into his jaw. He cried out and tumbled off her. She rolled onto one knee, facing him. He had his hand to his mouth and there was blood coming through his fingers. He must have bitten his tongue.
‘Bitch!’
He tried to get up, but she beat him to it. She ground her heel into the hand that rested on the floor. He swore and clutched it to him. That’s when she hit him, the pointed toe of her right boot connecting neatly with his left temple. It was a nice, clean strike and flattened him nose down to the floor. He lay there for a minute and then began crawling away from her.
She fixed her clothes and ran a hand through her hair. Then she opened the door and stood there for a moment.
‘Enjoy Frankfurt,’ she said over her shoulder.
25
The view from the window was depressing. Couples going by with their ergonomically designed pushchairs and their carefully distressed clothing to downplay their obvious affluence. These new arrivals were transforming the neighbourhood. Beards and wholefood shops were proliferating like a bad rash, selling things he neither wanted nor could afford. Old places, familiar faces, it was all being displaced.
Maybe it was the weather that was getting him down. Dark clouds snapped by like ragged flags. They spat out their icy spume before flying on to parts unknown. It felt like it could turn to snow at any time. He watched an old couple struggling with an umbrella as they crossed the street, dodging buses and bicycle couriers. The umbrella whipped over their heads like a toy palm tree in a typhoon.
Drake was discovering that one of the advantages of private work was that you were unburdened of all the minor cases, the petty bureaucratic tasks, the accountability. You could devote all your energies to a particular investigation. Basically, it meant you had more time on your hands. Right now, he was thinking about Marco Foulkes and trying to get past his natural hatred of silk scarf-wearing pseudo-intellectuals driving expensive cars. Foulkes carried himself with an unapologetic sense of privilege. But Drake told himself that wasn’t why he didn’t trust him. It went beyond that. The whole story of why he came to Crane in the first place had struck him as odd. Not having faith in the police was fair enough, but it suggested that perhaps he had other reasons for not doing so. Quite what these reasons might be Drake couldn’t say.
So far Foulkes had not stepped out of line. He had done nothing at all to indicate that he was worthy of such suspicion. On the contrary, he had gone out of his way to appear an upstanding, concerned friend. Perhaps it was this earnestness that made Drake wary.
Drake was aware that focusing on Foulkes was also a way of letting go of the matter that was really on his mind. The tangled details surrounding Zelda and the circumstances of her death. He still couldn’t bring himself to think of her by her real name, Esma Danin. Somehow it was easier to think of her by her stage name, her working name, the alias she had adopted when she had wound up in this country trying to make a new life for herself. When they had first met, Drake had asked her about her name, but she had been coy.
‘What difference does it make who I was? What matters is who I am now.’
‘We all have a past. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘I’m not ashamed,’ she told him, sternly. ‘This is London. Here you can become anything or anyone you want, right?’
He couldn’t argue with that. She had every right to believe it was possible to become whatever she wanted to. And perhaps she might have made it if she had managed to get away from Goran. Only someone had put a stop to all of that and Drake was going to find out who that someone was.
Across the street he watched Foulkes and the solicitor come out of the pub entrance. Today they were in Fitzrovia, a stone’s throw from the writer’s flat in Rathbone Square. The pub had flower pots hanging over the entrance and the two men shook hands under one of these before turning and walking in opposite directions.
Drake tailed Barnaby Nathanson north. He was walking slowly, his head bowed. In his left hand a battered leather briefcase thumped against his thigh. He seemed tired, weighed down by the world, unaware of his surroundings. He took the occasional misstep, which suggested that perhaps he’d had a couple of drinks too many. A woman in a business suit stepped smartly ou
t of his way to avoid collision. Drake crossed the road to get a better look. He was watching Nathanson, but then something else caught his eye.
The sun had come out and the wind was whipping at the flags and standards hanging over an entrance. It took Drake a couple of seconds to realise that he remembered the place. It looked different. Like so many places in London, it had changed hands more than once. It had undergone some fundamental refurbishment. It had another name. One that he didn’t recognise. But it was definitely the same place.
Nathanson was temporarily relegated to the back burner. Drake watched him reach the end of the street and turn in the direction of Russell Square tube station. He was pretty sure he was on his way to the office in Dalston Junction. He could catch him up later, either there or at his home address in Pimlico, which Drake was eager to take a closer look at. In the meantime, he found himself transported, momentarily, to a time four years previously.
Stepping down from the pavement, Drake crossed the street to walk through the wide entrance of the hotel. Everything in there had changed. He had a vague recollection of a low ceiling and corner lighting. Bland beige wallpaper and long flat sofas of varnished wood. Back then it had been crying out for a facelift and by the looks of things it had got one. A menacing-looking chandelier shaped like a killer drone floated over the centre of the lobby area. Guests wandered by oblivious. The furniture was now black leather and hard marble, which made Drake feel an odd fondness for the old days, a sentiment that was unusual for him.
Those were the days when Drake was inside Goran’s operation. Like Zelda, he went by another name. He was Terry Nash. Not yet inside the inner circle. That was reserved for Goran’s old pals from the White Knights, the Serbian militia he had been leader of back in the nineties. Nash was part of a loose network of new associates who connected Goran with the London set-up. Drake had lived in constant motion, never settling, cutting off all contact with his old life, afraid of his cover being blown at any moment. To protect his identity he had to stay away from places where he was known. It wasn’t all that difficult, he found. Just a new pad across the water on the Isle of Dogs. Staying away from known acquaintances wasn’t hard. Drake had always been a loner, so he didn’t have a long list of family and friends who would wonder where he was. Most people would have found it a little difficult to cut off all ties and slip into that twilight frame where he was what he wanted to appear to be: an ambitious and ruthless small-time drug dealer trying to move up in the world. He was smart and kept appointments, held up his end of the bargain, whatever that was. He made himself known as a reliable guy, someone you could trust to solve a problem whatever came up. Goran came to trust him, and he didn’t trust a lot of people. Outside of work Nash kept his distance. It was important to respect how deep the bonds between Goran and his men were. Many were war veterans, fighters. They had lost mates and family back home and that brought its own loyalties. Push too hard and you hit a wall.
As Nash, Drake would allow himself to be followed, sticking to his assumed identity, never letting it slip, night and day. Contact with the team in the Met’s Organised Crime Unit was old school: handwritten messages exchanged in plain sight; burner phones that were changed every three days. This wasn’t standard procedure. This was the system Drake had insisted on with Vernon Pryce, who was supposed to be his outside contact, only Drake never trusted Pryce, not completely. Drake knew that it was only a matter of time before someone put two and two together, or they made a mistake, or some poor copper with a drug habit and a mortgage to pay fell into Goran’s pocket.
They were trying to build a case against Goran and so far all they had was a list of gambling clubs, strip joints, protection rackets, prostitution. Nothing solid enough to convict him for anything like a substantial period of time. Goran was smart. He kept his organisation divided up into watertight compartments. Nobody knew what was going on right next to them. There was a maze of false trails, shell companies and smokescreens, empty flats, containers that brought in nothing but garden furniture or tyres. They switched up their communications regularly. There was nothing to tie Goran himself to the money that was flowing in. He never touched it personally.
Then Drake had a stroke of luck. He met Zelda and sensed in her a restlessness. She was unhappy with her lot and she had evidence that Goran was backing a trafficking ring. People were being brought in through ports on the south coast from Spain and Portugal. They were shipped in from Eastern Europe and North Africa. Mostly they were young women, who were passed through one club to another, picking up papers along the way. Increasingly, the people being brought in were getting younger – children, catering to a darker market. According to Zelda, Goran wasn’t happy with the way this was going, but he was a businessman, and he wasn’t going to turn a profit away. That’s where he and Zelda parted ways.
According to her, Goran had a weak link. The other outfits he was working with were less disciplined, unreliable. The one thing that let Goran down was his temper. He was known to throw a hissy fit when someone didn’t do what they were meant to, didn’t get rid of telephones, bills of lading, or worse, tried to pressure him for more money or a bigger cut. According to Zelda this gang had tapes of Goran they intended to use as leverage.
Drake first met Zelda when he stepped in to do Goran a favour. One of the regular drivers didn’t show. He was to take a girl from one of the clubs to a client who was waiting at a hotel. The client had paid specially and, though this wasn’t what she did normally, Goran made sure that the money was so good she couldn’t afford to refuse. That should have been the end of it. Someone else would pick her up. But Drake was curious. He wanted to know what was going on. So he parked the car and went inside after her. He spent the next hour circling the lobby. He picked up a newspaper and studied everyone in there. He sat at the bar and ordered a gimlet.
He was hoping for a chance to talk to her quietly, alone, away from the usual set-up, from the other girls, from Goran. But it was taking longer than he expected and he was starting to think that perhaps he was wasting his time. Then he looked up and saw her coming out of the lift. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. The way she was walking, in slow, awkward steps. He crossed the lobby to intercept her, putting out a hand to steady her as her knees buckled. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, catching her before she fell. He spotted a trickle of blood running down the back of her left leg. Over her shoulder he saw the receptionist watching them. When their eyes met he returned to the ledger in front of him. No doubt he was also on the payroll. Drake led Zelda out through the front door and down a side street to where the car was parked. He helped her inside. There was a bruise on her cheek and her eye was swollen.
‘You should see a doctor.’
‘No doctor. Just drive.’
‘Should I take you home?’
‘Home?’ The thought seemed to make her sadder. ‘Not home. Just drive.’
They drove. Drake took his time, not sure which direction to take. In the end he let the traffic decide, taking the line of least resistance. They drove west, across the river.
‘I live not far from here,’ he said, watching her in the mirror. ‘You could rest there for a while.’
‘What is your name again?’
‘Nash. I’m Terry Nash.’
‘You’re not the regular driver.’
‘I’m not a driver at all. I’m just filling in, doing someone a favour.’
‘Right.’ He saw her nod. ‘Everybody is doing someone a favour.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I can’t go home. If he reports me, Goran will do worse to me than this.’
‘You mean the man in the hotel?’ He watched her face in the mirror. ‘Is he the one who did this to you?’
‘He said he wanted to do it in the ass. I said no, I don’t do that, so he forced me. It hurt. After, I said to him that he should pay extra. He spat on me. He say I have enough already. So I told him that men who want to do it that way is because they are gay.’ She laughed quietly to herself. ‘He
didn’t like that.’
Drake parked the car and helped her into the building. They got up to his flat and he drew a bath for her. He laid out a sweatshirt and tracksuit pants. She held the clothes in one hand. Her eye was swelling.
‘You’re very sweet, but I need to know, why are you doing this?’
‘Does there have to be a reason?’
‘With men, there’s always a reason.’ Then she fell silent, letting her question fall away. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’
He went to the kitchen and fetched a bottle of dark rum and some ice. He poured her a glass and wrapped some of the ice in a handcloth.
‘Hold that to your eye. It’ll help with the swelling.’
He left her to it. Afterwards she came out in the baggy outfit and settled herself on one of the sofas. Drake sat opposite. He refilled their glasses. Zelda admired the view.
‘Such a beautiful city, and so big. It feels as though you could just disappear into it and never come out again. But I can’t.’
‘Why do you want to disappear?’
She turned to look at him. One eye was swollen and her cheek was turning blue, but her gaze was steady.
‘Are you serious? You think I like this life? I dance in a club, waving my ass at men whose heads are filled only with dirty thoughts. They think they own me because they throw money at me.’ She was shaking her head. ‘They don’t own me. I own them.’
‘I get it that you want to get away from this life.’
‘I don’t know you. I know nothing about you.’ She reached for the bottle and refilled her own glass. ‘From the look of this place you’re in the same shit as me. In fact, I would say you are in a worse position. The difference is that you don’t know you’re being fucked.’
‘I have plans. I’m in business.’
She laughed. ‘You do business with Goran. Who do you think is going to come out on top? You and I are in same position. Only difference is I know when I’m being fucked.’ She looked into her glass and revised her words. ‘That’s not what I do.’