by John Barlow
But the Super hardly hears him. She’s thinking, and a strange silence invades the room.
Den, she tells herself. Den is his alibi. I should’ve pulled Baron off the case as soon as I heard…
Two years ago, Police Constable Denise Danson was in a very well-concealed relationship with Steve Baron. Superintendant Kirk knew about it only because Baron had confided in her, more out of guilt than professionalism, she reckoned. No one else had the slightest suspicion, a small miracle at Millgarth.
Then Joe Ray was killed, and Den met John Ray. That was not concealed at all. Den immediately requested an integrity interview about the relationship which had developed between her and John Ray. The Super did the interview herself. Soon afterward Den moved over to CID, by which time Baron’s marriage was over. But so too was his affair with Den.
Shirley Kirk studies John Ray’s features, strong nose, high forehead, thick black hair. A heavy-set man with faded good looks. Attractive? Up to a point, but there’s something else. A frisson of excitement with him, the fact that he comes from serious criminal stock, old school crims, love their mothers, all that shit. It’s not his fault, but it’s not as if he does anything to hide it. We’re all playing somebody, she tells herself, and this is how Mr Ray has chosen to play it. But he’ll find today’s audience a tricky one. He’s in a room with at least two people who hate his guts. Especially Steve Baron.
“Why did Donna Macken die?” she asks, breaking the silence.
John exhales, wishes he could see an ashtray in the large, neat office, but knows there won’t be one.
“On Friday night Donna went ballistic,” he says. “Something about fake money she’d been given. The Ukrainians must have paid her in fakes. She goes back to the hotel, raises hell, and somewhere down the line she gets killed. Perhaps she was threatening to come to the police. I just don’t know.”
“Freddy was there in the hotel room with the Ukrainians,” Baron says. “Why not Freddy?”
“I don’t think Freddy killed Donna. But I do know what he was doing there.”
He pauses.
“They wanted to make it look like my dad and I were involved. Give the police an obvious lead. The Rays? Family of counterfeiters. Freddy works for us. It’s an easy connection.”
He glances at Steele, who grins.
“And he’s making collections for them for what reason?” Baron asks.
“He’s gonna have to explain that one himself. But my information is that he was in love with Donna.”
“They’ve been seen together,” Steele says. “We already know.”
Mike Pearce. Of course. The half-pissed loser.
“My guess,” says John, “Freddy was trying to keep her safe. Young girl in a secluded hotel room with two unknown thugs? He was worried about her. I dunno, perhaps there’s a macho thing going on as well. Freddy the big shot, mixing it with the underworld. I’ve seen enough of that shit to know it’s true. Young lads, they get drawn in. He’ll have to answer for himself on that. Donna was important to him, though. From what I’ve been told he’s a bloody nervous wreck.”
“Murder can do that to a person,” Steele says, a little too cheerfully.
John holds up his hands.
“My feeling is if you get him to admit to the pick-ups, he’ll tell you what the Ukrainians were doing. He was involved, I accept that. It’s his first time. Got no record. Could I please stress that?”
“Trying to tell us our job?” Steele says.
“I’ve been bloody doing yours for you the last few days.”
Steele laughs right at him. “You just keep thinking that, my friend!”
“Have you informed Freddy’s solicitor that you are telling us this?” the Super asks.
“Yes. I just phoned him.”
Baron, meanwhile, is shaking his head.
“I don’t see it. The boy’s told us a hundred times. When he leaves the room she’s still alive. Drunk, high, roughed up and raped by Fedir. But still alive. When they get called back to the hotel she’s dead.” He stands, turning to his boss. “Whatever. We go on this, right?”
She nods, fingers pressed together, thinking.
“Presumably you think these Ukrainians are behind the fakes that have turned up in other cities?” she asks John, as Baron and Steele prepare to go.
“Bilyk told me as much.”
“And what about the notes in the car? Was that part of the latest shipment, got left behind? Simple as that?”
Baron stops, and for a split second his eyes betray him. But Steele? He doesn’t react.
That’s it. Steele doesn’t know.
The notes in the car were different from the ones currently flooding the city’s streets. Baron knows it, and his boss must know it too. But they’re not making it common knowledge.
Then Baron’s gone, giving orders as he walks, calling for cars and men, ready to steam up the York Road, where he’ll discover that Mr Bilyk has just left town.
The office is suddenly quiet.
She smiles.
“Got five minutes?”
John nods.
“Tell me what you know about importing counterfeit money.”
Forty
He picks Connie up from her apartment and they drive up the York Road. They see two patrol cars and several unmarked cars outside the Eurolodge. Sending Baron on a wild goose chase was not the way John would have chosen to play it, but there hadn’t been much choice.
Andriy Danyluk, aka Bilyk, will be gone by now. New identity, new city. He’s come out of this pretty well. His last shipment of fakes was sold-on and he’s free to set-up again somewhere else. Meanwhile, Fuller will have got his rake-off, and all the changers, a whole string of them. Everyone got paid. A young woman lies in the morgue, and who give a toss? Lanny Bride does.
They reach Harehills Lane and turn left. His stomach is churning.
You’ve got no choice, John. Like Dad in 1958, arrives in England, no education to speak of, no family, no easy way into work. What choice did he have?
Up a side street. Lines of old red-brick terraces, the kind that Joe used to buy and stuff full of illegal immigrants. What choices did Joe have, growing up with Lanny Bride and a bunch of thugs? Not a lot, when you think about it.
No, the choices were all mine. Kept away from the family business. They allowed me to have a normal life…
Was it a plan? Did his parents deliberately protect him from crime, from the blood-rush of the illicit, the thrill of taking whatever you fancied? If so, they did a pretty good job. But he got the taste for it anyway. Dad never knew, but it was Joe who supplied him with those fake tenners when he was a kid. One brother’s gift to another.
They park a few doors down and sit in the Saab.
“There it is,” he says.
He dials Craig Bairstow’s number.
No answer.
“You ready?” he says, grabbing his laptop from the back seat, his nerves fizzing, his breathing heavy but irregular.
She nods.
***
“Plastic,” she says as they get to the front door, pulling a small crow bar from inside her leather jacket. “Good.”
They ring the bell for the upstairs flat and wait.
Nothing.
“Right.”
She gets her shoulder against the door and leans on it, working the tip of the crow bar into the gap between the door and the frame, just below the lock. One gentle shoulder-push, another, and the door springs open.
“It’s that simple?” John says as they walk inside.
“uPVC. Shit.”
The lobby is cramped and smells of damp cardboard, just like Joe’s rented houses used to.
“Ground floor, yes?” she asks, and gets to work.
A Yale, chest-high on an internal door that’s been covered with hard-board painted white gloss.
“Six pin…” she whispers, inserting a thin metal bar into the lock then using what looks like a dentist’s pick to explore the innar
ds of the lock’s mechanism.
A minute passes, punctuated by the odd sigh. Another minute, and John thinks he hears letterboxes rattling further down the street. Postman? Junk mail?
“There,” she says as the door swings open.
“Right. You wait in the car,” he says. “If anyone comes, ring me. If it’s a skinny kid with ginger hair, keep him talking outside as long as you can.”
“No problemo.”
***
The flat smells of dust and flowers. Potpourri? A decrepit vacuum leans against the wall next to the door, and the room is tidy, its dull fawn carpet recently vacuumed. Pushed up against the bay window is a cluttered wooden desk, an empty space right in the centre just big enough for a laptop.
There’s an elaborate bank of metal shelving running down most of the wall to his left. The shelves are stocked with hi-fi equipment, rows of DVDs, chunky computer manuals and a printer. At the other side of the room sits a large plasma TV in front of an old, low-slung sofa draped with a maroon and gold throw of an Eastern design. The place looks like a home, but it feels bare. Why?
The walls are bare, painted Magnolia. He stops, looks at each one in turn. There are faint thumb-sized smudges on them all, Blu-Tack stains. Not from posters, though. The spaces are too small, mostly A4 size, but some smaller, the size of photographs. A previous tenant? He looks around again. Something’s not right. Craig buys a Turkish throw for the sofa but leaves the walls bare?
He puts his laptop on the sofa, then takes the gloves from his pocket.
Another gift from Joe.
The leather is almost imperceptible against his skin, just a hint of coolness, as if his hands are dangling in a calm river on a summer’s day.
Over on the desk there’s no computer. But there was one. A cable on the floor behind runs neatly around the wall as far as the metal shelves, where it connects to the printer. The printer itself looks like a good one, and next to it several packs of photographic paper in different sizes.
Right. He starts looking, living room first, then the small, miserable bedroom, and the kitchen. He looks on top of cupboards, in drawers, behind the fridge, anywhere he can think of. But it’s not here. There’s no laptop in the flat.
Back in the living room he notices a box on the floor beneath the desk: an old time-lapse VCR recorder, like the ones at the Eurolodge. A thick RCA cable is curled up on top of it.
He brings her home in analogue! Old-tech, Craig. Perfect.
Inside the drawer of the desk is an array of junk, fuses, keys, plugs, coins, a small craft knife, a screwdriver, a pack of playing cards, a roll of scotch tape, some scissors… He picks up the scissors, holds them close to his face. A thin sliver of clear tape is stuck to one of the blades, half an inch long, and about an eighth of an inch wide.
Putting the scissors back, he considers his options. The laptop is not here. Is that why he needed the memory stick? Has he dumped his computer?
There’s only the bathroom left. It’s tiny, no windows and a small extractor fan high up on the wall above the toilet. The bathroom suite is olive green, early seventies, and spotlessly clean. The floral smell is more intense in here. But it’s not potpourri. There’s citrus and sweet fruit, spice, notes of incense and sandalwood… Opium. A small bottle of the perfume sits on the sink, along with a spray-can of shaving foam, several disposable razors, and a tube of Aquafresh.
But the smell is not coming from the bottle. It’s coming from the radiator behind the door, which has been left on low. He peers down behind it and sees something lodged there. Stooping, he reaches underneath and pulls out a white handkerchief. The sudden intensity of the perfume makes him cough. Opium on a handkerchief? He holds it up to his nose. There is no doubting it: the cloth has been sprayed with the perfume. With the heating turned up higher, it would permeate the entire flat.
Is it to remind him of her? Or to pretend she was here, her presence in every inch of the place? He sits down on the bathroom floor, the strength gone from his legs at the realisation of what he’s discovered. A bloody shrine. Craig’s shrine to Donna.
Then he sees it, poking out from below the radiator, something else that’s fallen down there, its white corner touching the floor. A photograph, taken from video footage, printed on glossy photographic paper. A photo of Donna Macken.
She’s smiling, looking back over her shoulder, dark hair off her face, eyes wide and radiant, staring at someone. The smile? It’s playful, innocent, honest. But in the curl of her lips is something wildly, almost grossly sexual. Jesus, no wonder they were all nuts for her. She was amazing.
There are more Blu-Tack smudges on the wall above the radiator, and on all the other walls of the bathroom. The whole flat was a pervert’s shrine to her. But the bathroom was the inner sanctum. Friday night, Craig gets home and strips every last trace of her from the walls. He’s panicking, and he knows it all has to go, every last image of her. But in the rush, one of the photos drops behind the radiator, taking the handkerchief with it.
Getting slowly to his feet, John puts both the handkerchief and photo back behind the radiator. Moving into the living room he gets a screwdriver from the desk and returns to the bathroom, unscrewing the panels around the bath and searching every last square inch of the dark, dusty space within. Nothing. He peels back the carpet, looking for loose floorboards. He rifles through the dirty clothes in the red plastic laundry basket and works his way methodically through a pile of towels in a narrow cupboard. By the time he’s done there’s nowhere in the bathroom he hasn’t looked. Still, he’s found nothing.
He escapes the lingering smell of the perfume, pacing up and down the living room to think. The bathroom: the beating heart of Craig’s obsession with Donna. That’s where he feeds his fantasies, where he feels the most urgent desire, nostrils full of her aroma as he strips naked every night, Donna looking on, the two of them together in their private world. On Friday he tried to erase as much of this as he could, but it won’t have been every last trace. She’s dead. You might destroy the shrine, but you don’t destroy what’s most sacred. You hide it. There’ll be something left.
He studies the neat rows of DVDs and books on the metal shelves. Standard male classics, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Sopranos, most of them illegal downloads, the artwork laser printed, cut to size for the plastic boxes. Meticulous work. The Godfather box set, though, is genuine. He removes the case and examines the inserts.
The Godfather.
It comes to him like the punch line of a joke.
The gun. The gun that Michael Corleone uses in the restaurant…
Back in the bathroom. Standing on the toilet seat, almost losing his balance. He reaches up to the old-style cistern close to the ceiling. On tip-toes he just about gets half a hand behind it, works his fingers along, his body off-balance.
There it is. No bigger than a pack of chewing gum, wedged in hard between the wall and the tank. He wiggles it back and forth and eventually it comes loose. The memory stick is wrapped in clear plastic, a sandwich bag it looks like, then taped up tightly with Sellotape. He does his best to peel away the tape without tearing the plastic, finally making enough of an opening to ease out the contents.
Around the memory stick a twenty pound note has been wrapped. It takes him less than thirty seconds to recognise the note as a fake, the one Donna gave Craig, must be. It’s one of Bilyk’s fakes, the ones she was paid in, the ones that are all over town.
He copies the contents of the memory stick to his laptop. Dozens of video files, sixty-four gigas’ worth. There’ll be copies of these somewhere else too. Craig is meticulous; he won’t have risked leaving only one copy, even on Friday night, heart racing, scared to death. It doesn’t matter. What matters was that he left these files in his flat. In his shrine.
They seem to take forever to copy. The memory stick is full. Is there more than this? How much more? Are there any limits to human desire, to obsession? He waits impatiently as the files copy across, only one question in his
mind: can I do what comes next?
By the time he’s standing in the bathroom again, the memory stick ready to be rewrapped in its plastic swaddling and pushed up behind the cistern, he still doesn’t know.
Can I really do this? Think about it, John. The evidence is on the memory stick. The fake note doesn’t change that. Craig’s story will be the same. She was angry about the fakes. She gives one to Craig. Here it is, in his shrine. The fifty grand in the car? It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t matter to anyone.
Apart from you, John.
It matters to you.
He takes the envelope from his jacket pocket and removes the note that he’s been keeping in the office, hidden in that framed picture of a fake Subaru. It’s the only note he keeps from his supplier, just in case he ever detects a decline in quality. And now it’s gonna save his skin.
He wraps it around the memory stick.
Thanks, Craig.
Forty-one
“Are you ready?”
“I suppose,” she says.
They’re in the Saab, several streets away, the laptop open on John’s legs.
He presses play.
*
The recording starts at precisely midnight, Thursday night.
Routine. Routine…
Fast-forward almost to the end of the file.
*
Friday, 11:00 p.m.
Fedir comes out of the hotel room, staggers up the corridor, a bottle of Champagne in his hand. He enters the bar, yanks a bottle of scotch off the wall. Craig Bairstow is standing behind the bar and does nothing. Fedir makes his way back to Room Twelve.
*
11:11 p.m. Donna, short fur jacket and not much skirt showing beneath, falls through the revolving doors, she staggers over to the bar, flops onto a bar stool. Craig gets her a vodka and tonic. She starts talking to him, ranting, her head all over the place. Reaches into her handbag and pulls out a bank note, waving it in the air then letting it fall onto the bar. Craig says something, puts a hand on her forearm. She’s still talking as she drinks, downing the vodka in one. Then she hoists herself off the stool and makes a winding path towards the double doors behind the counter.