by John Barlow
Down the corridor. She thumps her fist on the door of Room Twelve. It opens and immediately she’s screaming, eyes blazing, arms flying out, looking as if she’s gonna swing for somebody.
Craig remains behind the bar. He studies the note from Donna, then puts it into his pocket. Donna disappears inside the room.
*
Fast-forward to 11:46 p.m.
The Ukrainians come out, Fedir loose-limbed, grinning. They leave the hotel. A minute and a half later Freddy comes out of the same room. He hesitates, heavy and lethargic, his body overwhelmed with sadness. Then he too moves down the corridor.
*
“The tape that the police have stops here,” John says. “But when Craig took it home on Friday night to copy, there was more. Look, it’s not finished…”
*
11:48 p.m. Freddy goes out through the hotel’s revolving doors. A moment later Craig walks quickly down the corridor to Room Twelve and knocks. He presses his face to the door, speaking into it, then rests his forehead there and waits.
Finally it opens and Donna appears, her body swaying, on the verge of collapse. He says something, touches her chin, lifts it gently. Her mouth moves, but slowly. There’s some swelling on her cheek and her face is expressionless, her eyes almost closed.
Both his hands are on her now, his fingers running down her arms. Can she even hear him, feel him? He inches forwards until their bodies touch. He kisses her neck. She leans into him and his arms wrap around her.
They move into the room together and the door closes behind them.
*
“Rewind,” Connie says. “That last bit.”
They watch again.
Donna’s body sinks into his. He holds onto her easily. Then, just for an instant, she seems to flinch, to move back. But she’s on the verge of unconsciousness. He pulls her onto him, arms wrapping around her torso, face buried deep in her neck. He walks forwards, pushing her into the room.
“She doesn’t know where she is,” Connie says quietly as the door closes behind them. “She has no idea what’s going on. And then…”
*
They sit there in silence as two minutes of footage run on with no further movement. But now they know. Behind the grainy image of the door is Donna, helpless, dying.
*
11:50. Craig appears at the door. Dazed? Difficult to tell. He stops, seems to realise suddenly where he is. Panic sets in and he moves down the corridor. Fast, long strides, getting faster.
Just before he reaches the double doors his eyes flick up at the security camera. He turns, disappearing into the security room.
The recording stops.
“Craig Bairstow,” says John, his iPhone already in his hand. “Creepy Craig, the one with the Donna fixation and the wank-shrine to match. He pushed her into the room. And then?”
Will DC Steele take the tip-off, he wonders as he searches for Steele’s card. Course he will. He’ll get a commendation out of this. Promotion? Probably. And another thing, Steele will owe John an enormous favour. It’s tempting. But…
You wanted to be a copper once, John. What kind of copper did you want to be?
He gives it a split second’s thought.
Time enough to blink.
Dials.
“Detective Inspector Baron, please.”
Forty-two
They’re in a small, sparsely furnished studio apartment on the twentieth floor of a new tower block, a few minutes’ walk from Millgarth. It has stupendous views, which both men ignore.
“This better be good,” says Baron, leaning against what looks like a brand new a pale wood dining table.
“It’s better than good, it’s everything,” John says, with characteristic modesty.
“This is off the record, right?”
“Yep.”
“No, I want you to say it.”
“You want me to arrest you for wasting police time as well? It’s off the bloody record. Talk.”
A framed photo of twin boys is set in the middle of the table behind Baron. There’s another photo of the same boys on some pine shelves behind that, along with a handful of books and two small square speakers hooked up to an iPod port. And that’s about it.
John is sitting in an angular and slightly uncomfortable armchair that still smells of Ikea.
“The Ukrainians,” he says.
“Funny, Bilyk had just gone when we arrived.”
“I’m not surprised. Anyway, their fake money thing, you know about that. Fuller, manager of the Eurolodge. He was acting as the Ukrainians’ banker.”
Baron nods. He’s not shocked to hear it, although they’ve got nothing on Fuller so far.
“The money was distributed through the hotel’s fire exit. The security camera in the street outside? It wasn’t broken. It was unplugged. He got it going again smartish when you lot arrived. Remember?”
Baron remembers. Says nothing.
“Owner-manager of a failing hotel with next to no guests,” John continues. “And a couple of weeks ago he paid twenty grand for a motor from Scholes BMW. Cash.”
Baron’s eyes widen fractionally.
“That’ll be the same bloke,” John adds, “who the Ukrainians told to pay Donna out of the takings on Friday. I don’t know how much, but it must have run to thousands.”
“How did you get this information?”
“I’ll tell you what I know. Then we’ll never mention I’ve been here. Isn’t that what we agreed?”
Baron makes no reply.
“Now, Bilyk’s in this for the long haul. He’s got a whole set-up here. He wants a nice tidy exit, not some gobby lass threatening to go to the police. My guess? Fuller had invested in some of the fakes for himself, on the sly. Could have been Freddy who sold them to him. Freddy was being a bit daft with the distribution, from what I can make out. Inexperienced, a bit gung-ho. He’ll tell you, once you bail him.”
“Ha!”
“Oh, you’ll bail him. Prick back your ears, Inspector.”
He waits for Baron’s badly concealed anger to subside, then:
“Friday evening. The fakes are flooding into Leeds. Bilyk and side-kick Fedir are celebrating. It’s Fedir who has the thing going with Donna. Her wages’ll be coming off his end. And who has been looking after the money from the day’s sales? Fuller. The cash is kept in his office. Fuller was told to pay her what she was owed.
“Only he paid her with fakes that he’d bought for himself, pocketing the real money. No one’s any the wiser. The Ukrainians are finished, they’re ready to leave. It’s a nice little earner for Fuller. Thing is, though, Bilyk and Fedir don’t leave. They stick around longer than expected, have more to drink with Freddy, who’s still with them.”
“Why?”
Because he wanted to make sure they left, to know for certain that he and Donna were free.
“Dunno. Anyway, Donna stashes her money somewhere, then goes out. By the time she gets to the Majestic she’s shit-faced and stoned. Tries to buy a drink. But they’ve got scanners behind the bar at the Majestic. A note gets rejected. She knows more or less what Bilyk’s business is, and she puts two and two together: they’ve paid her in duds.”
“You’re making sense,” Baron says, “but it’s a story. I could’ve written it.”
John ignores him.
“She gets to the Eurolodge about eleven. And she’s angry. Craig Bairstow is working the bar. She gives him one of the twenty notes, says it’s useless. He gets her a drink, and then she goes through to confront Bilyk. All the shouting, the room getting smashed up, you know about that. There’s three men in there with her, the Ukrainians and Freddy. God knows what Fedir did to her, but all three of them come out a while later. It’s on the video.”
Baron nods.
“Right. So eventually they leave Donna on her own in the room. At that point the video stops.”
“Someone puts a new one in,” Baron says.
“Right. Then at midnight the night porter Mike
Pearce arrives, same as usual. He sees the dead body, panics, rewinds the new tape. That’s the key to it all.”
“No shit, Sherlock. He wiped the video evidence? Jesus Christ, I’d never thought of that!”
But John’s already shaking his head.
“No. What I mean is, if someone wants to conceal what’s at the start of a tape, they just rewind it. A few minutes disappear from the recording. What if Mike is telling exactly the truth? Man of fixed habits, our Mike. He arrives at midnight. Every night. And all he wipes is the footage of him finding he body, just after he arrives. The other tape, the one that apparently ends at 11:48 p.m., that one was also tampered with.”
“How do you know these timings?”
“I watched it on Saturday, at the hotel. Question: how do you conceal something at the end of a tape? Twenty-four hours of continuous footage, every frame carrying the precise time? You can’t just rewind. The answer: you take the tape home, cut out the footage you want to hide, and bring the tape back, a little bit shorter.”
“Pure conjecture.”
“Pure logic.”
“How so?”
“Sony.”
“Sony?”
“The tape that stops at 11:48 p.m. on Friday night was a Sony 180. That’s three hours normal running time, or twenty-four hours on the time-lapse machine at the hotel.”
Baron nods.
“Friday’s video begins at exactly midnight on Thursday, but it’s full at twelve minutes to midnight the next evening? That would mean it’s about twelve minutes short in time-lapse mode, or two minutes at normal speed. A 180 tape that runs for 178 minutes.”
“It’s a touch short. So what?” says Baron, but he’s listening. “Go on.”
“Blank tapes always run long. They all run a bit over, quite a bit sometimes, so nobody can say the manufacturer has short-changed ’em on tape. Plus, 11:48 is right when we need to know who went into the hotel room. My guess, someone took that tape out early, doctored it, then put it back. Someone with a bit of technical know-how.”
“Craig Bairstow,” Baron says, involuntarily.
“Normally it’s Pearce who changes the tape. That night Craig did it.” He looks up at Baron. “Whoever it was, they opened up the case and cut out the last few minutes of footage. Find the footage, find your killer.”
He sits back.
“That’s my story. Take it or leave it.”
“We can confirm it now,” Baron says snapping open his phone and moving over to the window.
After making the call, he looks around his flat. It has the atmosphere of a hotel room, ordered comfortable, but not the kind of place you’d want to spend much time.
“Not much, is it?” he says.
“Temporary?” John asks.
“I’m divorced,” he says, irritated.
“Sorry, I had no idea. Lot of that, is there, in the force?”
“Yes.”
Baron scratches a front tooth with his fingernail.
“You really didn’t know?”
“No. Why should I?”
Baron seems to consider this for a moment.
“Breakfasts are the worst, find yourself standing in a kitchenette eating Sugar Puffs on your own, and somewhere else there’s two kids growing further away from you every day.”
“You could go out for breakfast.”
“Pretty clever, aren’t you, Ray? A real smart alec.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was being serious.”
Baron snorts.
“I eat out a lot,” John says. “On my own more often than not. And wherever I go, I try and imagine sitting down and eating with my own kids, a couple of lads to boss about, tell ’em not to eat so fast, use their knives and forks, all that stuff. Picnics, candyfloss at the fair, stew and dumplings on a cold night, fish and chips out of the paper. I’m forty-three and single. It’s probably not gonna happen for me now. And I miss it.”
“You never had it.”
“I still miss it.”
Baron looks out of the window. The light is strong and grey, and low-lying clouds move with painful slowness across the sky.
“So your advice is to eat out more?”
“That’s what I do.”
Baron’s cell phone rings.
The conversation is brief.
“Right,” he says, slipping the phone back in his pocket. “The tape was tampered with. Looks like some footage was cut out. The remaining tape was stuck back onto the spool with a sliver of normal Sellotape. And it’s three minutes short. Well done Mr Ray. So now what you’re going to do is tell me everything you know. You tell me it all, right now, and you don’t leave anything out. Start.”
“Craig Bairstow. IT student. Mid-twenties. Loner. And he’s obsessed with Donna Macken. Love-sick, as in sick in the head, according to my info. He befriends her, lusts after her, worships her, but always from afar. Meanwhile, she plies her trade right under his nose, as well as the sweet thing she’s got going with Freddy, who I am pretty sure was not paying for it.”
“Quickly, please,” Baron says, glancing at his watch.
“Craig’s been hoarding video footage of Donna. Lots of it. He takes the security tapes home at night and copies them to his laptop. On Friday, he switches the tapes before Pearce arrives, then he’s off home with the tape. He copies it, like he does with all the videos, anything with Donna on. Next morning he pops the video back in the security room, no harm done. But by then the tape has been doctored.”
“How are you so sure about this?”
“Call it instinct. But if I were you I’d be looking for a CD-ROM or, I dunno, something easy to hide. He’d never destroy those files. Never.”
“Come on.” Baron’s already moving towards the door, already pressing fast-dial.
***
By the time they’re riding down in the lift, looking out through extra-thick glass at the city below, patrol cars are racing up to the university and across to Harehills in search of Craig Bairstow, and every copper in Leeds is on the look-out.
“How come the fifty grand’s worth of fake notes in your Mondeo don’t match the ones Bilyk’s been putting out?”
“No idea. All I know is that a lot of counterfeit money is swirling around at the moment. Freddy, the Ukrainians, Donna, Fuller… They were all near the motor, but it’s me who gets the finger of suspicion pointed at me. I don’t know where they came from.”
Baron isn’t convinced.
“The notes from the other floods were all the same. All Bilyk’s work, we assume. He’s got a steady supply. The notes in your Mondeo were better. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember. You showed me two fakes down at Millgarth. Wanted me to tell you they were different.”
“They are different.”
“The good one you showed me, from the Mondeo, was it?” John says, smiling.
“What?”
“It’s not like baked beans! You don’t turn up at the factory and load up, straight from the production line. Counterfeits come through intermediaries, a whole dark, unseen chain. You never really know where they’re from. Bilyk? He’s over here, living in a hotel. It’s too late for quality control. He takes delivery and sells the notes on. Probably never touches the stuff. That’s how the business works. Bilyk’s not gonna kick up a fuss if his shipments vary in quality or if there’s stuff from different presses coming across. He needs a supply. That’s all. Those notes were his.”
“I don’t believe it.”
You fucking will.
Forty-three
He takes a detour through Harehills. Slowing down as much as he dares, he sees several dark cars outside Craig Bairstow’s flat, one of them up on the curb. There’s already a uniform on the door, several others standing in the front garden talking.
The cistern? They’ll work it out.
***
“You again,” she says.
“Me again. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Says who?”
“Can I come in?”
She shuffles back from the door without another word. He follows her into the living room, a white carrier bag hanging in his hand. Her movements are slow and laboured, as if she’s walking through water.
They stand in the semi-darkness.
“You want to sit down?” she says, making no attempt to do so herself.
He recognises the signs. Guilt, bewilderment, anger… She’ll be struggling through the grief for months. Her only child, dead. Could it possibly be worse? What he’s about to do to her seems meaningless. No, callous.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Nobody’s stopping you.”
“On Friday, did she leave something here?”
Only now do the features on her face seem to come into focus.
“What’s it to you?”
His iPhone rings. It’s Den, her home number.
Jesus, that’s all I need…
He lets it ring.
“Not gonna answer that?” she asks.
“A friend. I’ll call back,” he says, dropping the phone into his jacket pocket. He is not going to pick-up in the presence of a bereaved mother. “Did Donna leave you something to keep safe? Money?”
“Get out before I call the fucking police. Touch me, I’ll scream. Young bloke next door? He’ll not stand by, if I so much as…”
“It’s fake. The money. Someone tricked her.”
She deflates, the fight gone from her in a heartbeat.
“Is that it?” she says, drawing her arms in on herself as if she’s cold. “Is that why she’s dead?”
“I think so. She got caught up in something.”
“So it wasn’t, y’know, what she’d been doing for a job?”