A Dark Redemption

by Stav Sherez

  Geneva swivelled back on the chair, blood pounding through her fingers. She held her breath, released slowly. She had to double-check, verify, find out more before she could be sure, before she could go to Carrigan with this. She’d seen his reaction when she’d pulled out Ngomo’s photo in the interview room, his face falling as if they’d been friends and she’d betrayed him in some small but essential way.

  The door opened and Geneva jumped, gathering herself together as she saw DS Karlson come in, two mugs of tea in his hand. ‘Sorry, I’m late, was chasing something up,’ he said by way of apology, handing her a mug and taking a seat next to her. She pulled down the sleeves on her shirt to hide the red patches and began explaining what she’d just discovered.

  ‘You sure the dates match?’ Karlson was wearing one of his expensive suits, she could see the fine tailoring and raised stitching, the shoes polished until they resembled something made of onyx. She wondered how long he spent on grooming every morning – much longer than her, she was sure.

  ‘Both mention the Christmas holidays. Something happened to her during the break – it’s not just what people said but also the scope of her dissertation. There’s all these references to finding the “tapes” – she never fully explains this.’

  Karlson smiled one of those smiles; she couldn’t tell if it was directed at her or for his own benefit. ‘I take it, then, that you don’t buy Carrigan’s sex-predator theory?’

  She looked up from her notes, trying to read Karlson’s face, but it was inscrutable, the eyes hooded and bright. ‘The more I find out about Grace the less I like that idea,’ she replied, grateful for the opportunity to sound out her theories. She told him about Lee’s assertion that Ngomo was living in London. ‘You should have seen Gabriel’s face when I passed him the photo.’

  Karlson ran his fingers through the stubble on his head, the sound crisp and sharp in the still room. ‘So Grace was researching this General Ngomo and somehow he finds out about it; he’s been here several years, presumably living under the radar, and suddenly all this is going to disappear because of some student writing her thesis.’ Karlson looked up, thought about it, but she suspected he was thinking about something else. ‘Makes sense . . . more so than Carrigan’s theory that this is just about sex.’ He took out an unusually shiny apple and began eating it. ‘I don’t understand why he shut you down so quickly.’

  Geneva felt her skin itch, resisted the maddening impulse to scratch. ‘You know him better than I do.’

  Karlson laughed, almost choking on a piece of apple, coughing and righting himself. ‘Doesn’t like to be contradicted, our Jack,’ he replied. ‘We’ve all learned to keep our mouths shut.’

  She thought about the report she had to write for Branch, due on Monday. ‘Not the first time, then?’

  Karlson turned to her, his voice dropping low. ‘Not by a long shot.’ He smiled, moving his chair closer. ‘Why would he be so reluctant to follow all possible leads?’

  ‘I was asking myself the same thing,’ she replied, then caught something in Karlson’s look. ‘You’re not going to tell Branch, are you?’ She was suddenly aware that she might have said too much. She caught herself scratching her wrist, stopped.

  Karlson shook his head. ‘I think we’re better off giving Carrigan enough rope, eh?’

  ‘You don’t like him much, do you?’

  Karlson shrugged. ‘He used to be a good copper is what I heard, but he’s got sloppy these last few years. Makes our job that much harder. You remember the leaked government report on police profiling?’

  Geneva nodded, it had done more damage to the Met than any hectoring Independent editorial or police cock-up.

  ‘It was Carrigan who left the file in a coffee shop.’

  She recalled the ensuing scandal, the helpful member of the public who found the document and passed it on to a journalist. She could picture the whole scene in her head, Carrigan taking the last sip of his coffee, his mind elsewhere. ‘What did they do to him?’

  ‘Moved him to a different station but this was after his wife . . . they were feeling more generous than they ought to have been, a slap on the wrist, nothing more.’

  The mention of Carrigan’s wife piqued her interest. She continued going through Grace’s notes, flicking through sheet after sheet, trying to hide her expression from Karlson. ‘I noticed he wears a wedding ring – what’s up with that?’

  Karlson ran his fingers through his lapels, straightening them and flicking off imaginary lint. ‘Never took it off,’ he replied cryptically.

  ‘Divorced?’ She thought of Oliver’s voice on her answering machine, the years she wished could be erased from the ledger of her life.

  Karlson shook his head, his teeth glinting as he grinned. ‘Nah, killed herself, didn’t she? Can’t blame her, though, probably couldn’t stand Carrigan any longer, took the easy way out.’

  Geneva stared at the page in front of her but the words had become fuzzy. She wanted to turn and punch the smiling sergeant in the face. Her stomach dropped abruptly as she realised that while she thought she’d been grilling Karlson about Carrigan, it had actually been the other way round. What had she said? Would this come back to haunt her later? Of course it would, she told herself, everything you say is only stored away until the day it can be used to hurt you. She smiled thinly and chewed the end of her pencil, wondering what she’d just got herself into then, so that she wouldn’t think about that, she began thinking about what could possibly have happened to Grace over the Christmas holidays.

  She focused back on the pages in front of her, Grace’s elegant handwriting filling her vision while Karlson started on another apple. More than ever she felt the answers would be found somewhere in here.

  Grace’s notes from this year were focused exclusively on General Ngomo. There was a brief summary of his life previous to joining Kony, a short précis worthy of Who’s Who.

  Lawrence Ngomo was born in the Kitum district of northern Uganda sometime in the 1950s. Kitum was part of Acholiland, the ancestral home of the Acholi people. He grew up in the brave and terrifying new world of decolonisation. There were rumours he began a course at university, later to be pushed out during the crackdown on the Acholi people instigated by a president unsure of their loyalty and troubled by their strange ways, their beliefs in spirit mediums and dark angels. The next time Ngomo appeared it was as a senior member of Kony’s LRA, rampaging through the north-east of the country. There was no indication of what happened in between. It was up to her to connect the dots. One day Ngomo is a student, the next he’s a lieutenant in a rebel army. She knew no life was as simple as that, no trajectory so deliberate as when traced out in print.

  She imagined a young man setting out one morning like every morning before, making his way to classes, books in hand, some lunch packed in a small sack, another day of lectures and essay preparations, just another day. Then he’s turned away from the main gates or, even worse, called out of the classroom to attend the principal’s office. There’s the tense and confusing meeting with the head of the university who apologises profusely and then throws his hands up in the air as if saying, What the government asks, I can but do. The awkward moments when Ngomo is sitting there, the words tumbling through him, then the realisation that it’s over. There won’t be that walk tomorrow, there won’t be those books under his arm, no more packed lunches, no more essays. Does he argue? Does he shout? Does he try to persuade the principal that he has no politics?

  Then comes the blank time. The passage between diligent student and rebel commander. It was easy to trace a line where there was none. It was easy to say that his expulsion from university on the grounds of tribal origin put him on this road which ended with a green uniform and a crouching serenity in the bush, a path that would lead to the days of the Black-Throated Wind.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Geneva’s head snapped up.

  Karlson put his apple down and leant over. She could smell the heady scent of his aftershave as she r
an her finger down the page of scrawled transcripts. ‘Grace interviewed an ex-child soldier a few months ago; she quotes him in full – listen to this: General Ngomo liked to get close. He liked to participate when he could. He enjoyed looking into a man’s eyes and telling him that he was sorry for what he was about to do but souls needed saving and it wasn’t his to question the role that God had made him for. Then, while the soldiers held the captive down, Ngomo cut him open and extracted his heart. I saw this myself several times. He had a medium-sized leather bag with him at all times, into which he placed the heart. They say he kept the heart of every man he killed – that deep in the jungle he’d built some kind of temple and in the deepest room of that temple was a pit filled with thousands of dry and desiccated hearts. He called it his storeroom for the Rapture.’

  Karlson let out a deep plume of air, taking the transcript from her, rereading it, his eyes widening with every word, but Geneva was oblivious. She was on hands and knees, unpacking Grace’s boxes until she found what she was looking for. It was under all the other books and papers, a slim pamphlet hued in dark red lines. She pulled it out and stared at the cover. The Black-Throated Wind appeared across the top. Below that, the graphic that had so disturbed her when she’d first seen it: a severed human heart suspended in space, dripping streamers of bright-red blood.

  18

  He’d started to hate coming into the incident room, the pictures of Grace staring at him from the walls, the unspoken disappointment in her face magnifying day by day until he couldn’t bear to look at them any more. The rain was assailing the glass now that some of the gauze had been removed and he could hear the short sharp tattoo as each drop exploded against the window. He checked the daily incident logs, spoke to the HOLMES team and was back at the desk filling in some paperwork when he saw two men enter Branch’s office, both black, both wearing suits. He tried to concentrate on the evidence form in front of him but the sound of argument and raised voices coming from the super’s office kept distracting him.

  He began filling in the action sheets for the week then turned to his computer and saw that he’d received an email from Derbyshire CID. A young boy had gone missing two days previously. Carrigan had a request out for such information. In this new world of computerised policing it was no longer a matter of random phone calls and crossed fingers. He read the boy’s description, saw that it fitted with the rest. Private school, fifteen years old, a classical music geek with a good family and better prospects. Until he hadn’t returned from school. Carrigan saved the email, he had too much too think about with Grace and maybe, he hoped, the boy would turn up, nothing but a flash of teenage rebellion gone as quickly as it had flared.

  Ten minutes later the team began shuffling in for the evening briefing.

  ‘Anything?’ He could hear the sharpness in his tone, the brittle edge that the last few days had worked into his voice. He saw the constables looking down at their tables, the cups of tea in their hand, avoiding the walls, avoiding him.

  ‘You’re not going to like this,’ Jennings’s voice sounded thin and parched, ‘but we compared the video footage against the photos we took of Gabriel’s hands.’ Jennings stopped and stared down at his notebook.

  ‘And . . .’

  ‘Gabriel’s definitely not the man on the video clip,’ Jennings replied apologetically.

  Carrigan rubbed his beard, noticing the bristles had grown longer. ‘We’re sure about this?’

  ‘Gabriel’s skin colour is a lot lighter than the man on the video’s; also he doesn’t bite his nails, the man in the clip does. He may have done something to darken his skin but there’s no way he could have faked that. We also compared Gabriel’s fingerprints and they don’t match those found at the crime scene.’

  Carrigan put his head in his hands, rubbed the sore spot blossoming on his temple. It only confirmed what he’d already known. They hadn’t had enough evidence connecting Gabriel to the actual crime scene and had had to release him without charge a few hours earlier. Branch had been furious, calling Carrigan into his office, shouting and cursing before Jack had even had a chance to sit down. Carrigan explained that if they charged Gabriel with so little evidence it could seriously derail the chances of getting a conviction if he was indeed the killer. But Branch wasn’t interested in that. Branch wanted an arrest, a press conference, newspaper headlines and no more phone calls from the assistant commissioner.

  Carrigan turned to Berman. ‘Any luck with the video clip?’

  Berman looked up from his screen and hunched his shoulders. ‘The clip was definitely filmed on an iPhone. The software used to edit the footage is easily available for free on the web. I’d say by looking at the editing that we’re not dealing with a professional but at the same time this isn’t the easiest software to operate so we’re not talking about a beginner either.’

  Carrigan looked out of the window at the green sky, thinking how the planning and preparation of the video clip was so at odds with the frenzied and brutal way the killing itself had been effected.

  ‘Also . . .’ Berman continued, ‘all the scenes from the clip are from quite late on in Grace’s ordeal. It’s possible he only started filming it near the end.’

  Carrigan nodded, thinking this over. ‘Which makes you wonder did he plan this all along or did something happen while he was torturing Grace that caused him to take out his phone and film it? Are we any closer to finding out where he uploaded it?’

  ‘An internet cafe on Queensway, Wednesday afternoon. It’s one of those fly-by-night places; went down there this morning but they don’t have cameras and no one could remember anyone acting suspicious that day.’

  Carrigan hadn’t held out much hope but it had been necessary to check – problem was every time a lead came back dead he could see the disappointment slump his men’s faces as they realised it would only get harder from now on.

  ‘Sir?’

  Carrigan turned to see DC Singh tapping her fingers impatiently on the table.

  ‘Maybe we need to look at this in reverse.’

  ‘Explain.’

  Singh’s fingers stopped their metronomic drumbeat. ‘We’re assuming he killed Grace and made the video as a souvenir, but what if it’s the other way round?’ She paused, watching the others take this in. ‘What if the video is the point? What if he killed Grace expressly so that he could video it?’

  Carrigan hadn’t expected this from the usually demure DC. ‘You’re talking about a snuff film?’

  ‘It’s worth a look, right?’ Singh replied.

  Carrigan scratched his beard. ‘It’s a good point, but I don’t think it’s going to help us find this man. If it is something to do with snuff films then our best lead is still going to be focusing on the physical evidence. The “why” won’t tell us where he is.’ He hadn’t wanted to knock Singh down, was pleased at her initiative, but delving into alternative theories wasn’t going to help anyone now. The super had made that abundantly clear earlier in their meeting. Branch had seemed to know a lot about the details of the investigation, details Carrigan hadn’t supplied in his report. He looked around the room, hearing muffled shouts coming from Branch’s office. ‘Anyone know where DS Miller is?’

  ‘Pursuing a lead,’ Karlson smiled, teeth perfect as a dentist’s poster.

  Carrigan stared at his sergeant, knowing something had shifted in the dynamics of the team, something subtle yet fundamental. A week ago he would have said he didn’t care, that the job had lost whatever promise it had once held out to him, but now, enmeshed in this case, unsure of his team’s loyalties, he found with surprise that things had changed. ‘I didn’t see anything noted in the action book.’

  Karlson shrugged. ‘That’s probably ’cause she thought you’d shut her theory down if she told you about it.’

  ‘“Her theory” . . . is that what it is?’ Carrigan replied, annoyed at himself for rising to Karlson’s bait yet helpless to ignore it.

  ‘She thought you weren’t taking he
r seriously enough.’

  ‘Any problem I might have with DS Miller is none of your business. It makes me wonder if you really want to solve this case, Sergeant?’

  Karlson glared up from his mug. ‘Perhaps you should be asking yourself the same question.’

  Silence filled the room. Carrigan stared at Karlson, not sure where to take this or how far. Then Berman broke the silence. ‘Just spoke to someone at London Transport. Miller asked me to trace Grace’s movements through her Oyster card,’ he explained.

  ‘Yes?’ Carrigan said impatiently.

  ‘There was nothing unusual expect that she made regular trips, at least once a week, to Willesden Green.’

  ‘Willesden Green?’ Carrigan racked his brain trying to think of a connection. What was there for Grace in Willesden? Neither Cecilia nor Gabriel lived anywhere near there nor anyone else connected to the case. ‘Good work. Get some uniforms to show the photos, see if anyone remembers her. We should look at the possibility that she had a secret boyfriend there and . . .’ he paused, watching the uniforms scribbling notes, faces clenched in tight concentration, ‘. . . and find out where Professor Cummings lives.’

  He felt relieved to leave the incident room but when he passed Branch’s office things only got worse.

  ‘Carrigan. A moment please.’ The super’s face was red and spotted, his glasses smudged, his tie askew. Carrigan had little choice but to follow him in.

  The two men in dark blue suits he’d glimpsed earlier were standing in Branch’s office. Both looked hot and impatient. They watched Carrigan carefully as he entered and took a seat.

  ‘Just the person I wanted to see.’ Branch smiled genially; Carrigan knew from experience that this was a bad sign. ‘This is DI Carrigan,’ Branch explained. ‘He’s leading the investigation.’ He turned back to Carrigan and shrugged. ‘The Ugandan embassy is very interested in our progress. I told them that we’re close to finding out who did this. I wasn’t wrong, was I?’