Here Be Dragons: A Short Story

by Sharon Bolton

  He leaves early the next morning, while the light on the river is silver and Lacey’s hair gleams a dark gold on the pillow. He thinks about leaving a note, but notes are a messy trace that he can’t risk and, besides, how could he even begin? Instead, he puts his hand inside the open packet of sugar and lets the tiny white grains trickle from his hand as he draws a simple shape on the table that he hopes will say everything she needs to know. A heart.

  Then he takes the borrowed boat and heads downstream towards the abandoned dredger he spotted last night. It won’t be the most comfortable place to spend the next few days, but mobile phone reception is good, no one will think to look for him there, and at nights he’ll be able to sit on deck and look across the water at Lacey’s boat.

  3

  ‘YOU DAFT GIT,’ whispers the elongated stone head in the enormous tank of water. ‘You’re on the run. Everyone you care about thinks you’re a killer and in five days you’ve learned nothing.’

  Can’t argue with that.

  A slender gunmetal-grey creature with black-tipped fins lifts slowly through the water and heads towards where Joesbury is sitting. For a second, he and the shark make eye contact. Then a cluster of smaller fish emerges from behind the stone head and takes fright at something in the silvery water. They dart in a dozen directions before floating together again and sinking down towards the gleaming white sand. In the darker corners of the tank, a large ray is moving in a creeping, furtive way, like the secrets in Joesbury’s new world that seemed destined to stay forever out of reach.

  Someone joins him on the bench and they watch the fish in silence, until the newcomer takes a cigarette packet out of his jacket pocket. Philips cannot smoke in here, but he will slide the smooth cardboard packet through his fingers all the time they are talking. Joesbury’s boss is a bundle of nervous energy. Or possibly – and this has never occurred to him before – just when he’s with Joesbury.

  ‘Not sure what Accounts are going to say about an expenses claim for the London Aquarium.’ Philips taps the packet down on his thigh.

  ‘Code it to personal therapy. The place soothes me.’

  ‘If you’re going to get mushy on me I’ve got paperwork up to my neck back at the Yard. What’s been happening?’

  ‘Other than going out of my mind with boredom, bugger all.’

  In the five days since he shot Nathan Townsend, Joesbury has been doing what so much undercover work boils down to. Killing time. Every morning, he buys papers at a different newsagent and combs through them in a different café while he eats the same breakfast, keeping up to speed with events in the UK, and in London in particular, because there might just be something that will give him some clue.

  He reads the foreign news too, because what is happening in other parts of the world can impact upon the activities of terrorists at home. He knows that the arrival of summer always heralds an influx of Taliban fighters in the Zhari district of Afghanistan, because the thick summer vegetation makes it difficult for thermal imaging cameras to see hiding insurgents. He knows that the US President’s apparent softening towards the Palestinians is angering the Jewish lobby, both in the US and overseas. He is becoming something of an expert on Middle Eastern and South Asian politics.

  ‘Have they called you in at all?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve been along to the club a couple of nights, just to show my face. They’re polite enough, but they don’t have anything for me yet. Oh, and I met the other two that Beenie seems to think are part of the inner circle. What are they called again – Safar? Kouri? Those two are devout Muslims, that much is for sure. They don’t drink, they disappear off to the mosque when the call to prayer rings out. The other three, not so much.’

  ‘And Rich?’

  ‘Difficult to say. No obvious religious leanings, but he does look a lot like the others. He could be Palestinian.’

  ‘How’s Beenie doing?’ Philips says.

  ‘Holding up. I tell you what I did want to run past you. I’ve been going through the reports he’s sent in and there was one last November that made me sit up.’

  At his side, Philips is instantly more alert. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He said the club took a delivery late one night. Van arrived, several blokes went outside to unload, but when he showed his face he was told to go back in. Whatever it was went into the basement.’

  ‘I remember. He hasn’t seen it being moved again. Trouble is, the basement’s always kept locked and he can’t be there all the time. And I’m not asking him to take any risks.’

  ‘I might be able to get in. If Beenie can get me a key to the back door, I can pick the lock to the basement.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want you taking any risks.’

  ‘This job needs a kick-start. I’d say it’s worth a small risk.’

  ‘OK, but I want you back online.’ Philips hands over a slim white envelope in which several small objects are clinking together. ‘The watch has a short-range recording device in it and the GPS transmitter goes in your pocket at all times. By the way, I had a chat with Dave Cook today.’

  Dave Cook is head of the Marine Unit. Lacey’s boss.

  ‘That girlfriend of yours – Lacey Flint, is she called? She’s been stirring up the shit again.’

  Just hearing her name hurts. She’ll know by now that he shot a police officer, will believe him to be a murderer. ‘Nobody does it better,’ he says. ‘What’s she up to now?’

  ‘She and her crew intercepted a small boat of illegal immigrants late last week. She thinks Asian girls are being smuggled up the Thames, then held somewhere around the Greenwich area before being moved into the city. She thinks some of them are ending up dead and in the river.’

  ‘Sex slaves don’t live long. That much isn’t news.’

  ‘Might your gang be responsible?’

  Joesbury thinks for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t rule it out, but the women I’ve seen in that place look more Eastern European to me. And wasn’t there something a bit ritualistic about the floater Lacey found? I’ve seen nothing to suggest those sort of shenanigans.’

  ‘We’re no closer, are we? And every day increases the chance of you being spotted and recognized. Even if you do look and smell like a hobo.’

  ‘Give me a couple of days. I can look round the place. We might find something that’ll give us a clue.’

  ‘Well, let’s frigging hope so. Because as things stand, we’ve got nothing.’

  4

  THE NIGHT AIR is thick with exotic spices, petrol fumes and the stench of bins that have gone too long without being emptied. In the darkness of the back alley, away from the harsh neon lights of the main street, Joesbury steals along the line of shadow in the lee of the high brick wall. There are no CCTV cameras either in or just outside the strip club, but he isn’t taking any chances.

  Thanks to Beenie and his recently discovered talent for petty theft, he has a key to the back door.

  Inside the club, he heads for the cellar. The building is as quiet and still as stone at just after four in the morning. Even the women upstairs will be asleep, or in whatever drug-addled state passes for it. He needs to watch it, though. Three members of Rich’s security staff sleep in the club.

  It takes him longer than he would like to pick the lock, but he gets in eventually and shines his torch down the steps. He isn’t entirely confident that he won’t find people down here, and people – especially those who have been held captive – are unpredictable.

  There is no movement in the darkness, no scuffling, panicking sounds. He can smell nothing that suggests bodies – living or dead. He steps carefully down, and looks around at the gym equipment, the tools, the beer barrels and the shelves of crisps and canned drinks.

  Shining the torch on to shelves and into corners, he makes his way around the room, looking for anything that might give him some clue. Drugs. Guns. Counterfeit cash.

  There is nothing down here but bar supplies and old furniture. A broken mirror makes him jump,
but only for a second.

  He is about to leave when he steps on something that hurts, even through the sole of his shoe.

  On the linoleum of the cellar floor is a cluster of nails. He bends down. Assorted nails, screws, nuts, and several shards of metal. There is even a ball bearing. It could be nothing, an accident with a maintenance man’s tool kit. Or it could be the shrapnel that accompanies a homemade explosive device. He picks them up and drops them in his pocket.

  Closing the basement door carefully, he makes his way back upstairs and then on to the upper floor. This, at the far side of the building from the girls’ rooms, is where Rich has his office.

  It is locked, of course, and getting past this lock takes him ten precious minutes. Once inside, he closes the door and takes stock. Four filing cabinets and three drawers in the desk. Rich does not keep a computer in this room. When he needs to use the internet or send an email, he uses a laptop which never leaves his side. If there is anything to be found here, it will be on paper.

  Joesbury finds the spare keys where Beenie told him they’d be, hanging on a hook on the underside of the desk, and he slides open the first cabinet. He starts with the top drawer. Instruction manuals. Nothing of interest. The next drawer down has stationery. The next has receipts for goods and services, all neatly alphabetized, all of them for the current financial year.

  Movement on the floor below. He freezes, not entirely sure whether he imagined it or not. He waits for seconds that stretch to a minute. Nothing else.

  The next cabinet has maps of London in the top drawer, including several charts of the river. The next drawer down has tide charts. The bottom drawer has paperwork relating to the ownership and mooring of a yacht in St Katherine’s dock.

  Footsteps are coming up the stairs.

  As gently as he can, Joesbury slides the drawer closed and checks that there is nothing in the room that looks out of place. Then he squeezes himself into the space beneath the desk.

  He will have no excuse for being found in here. If he is found, and taken, he is unlikely to live. Five months ago, the body of a man was found floating in the river at Bermondsey. His teeth had been broken beyond recognition and his hands cut off. The post-mortem said that he’d drowned, that the mutilations had been ante mortem.

  As the footsteps draw closer, Joesbury shuts his eyes; he can see Lacey on duty in the morning, pulling out her second floater in two days and recognizing him immediately, because no matter what they do to him, she’ll know him.

  Christ, if there were a pill that could cure an overactive imagination, he’d be taking it. He opens his eyes and sees a small, silver key hanging on a hook screwed into the underside of the desk. Further under than the others, one that Beenie doesn’t know about.

  Outside in the corridor, the footsteps pause. The handle is turned, but the Yale lock is stiff enough to give the impression that the door is properly locked, and whoever is out there moves on. After several more minutes, Joesbury can hear footsteps descending.

  He squeezes out and makes for the final cabinet. This is where Rich keeps invoices for the business, and salary slips for the people who work for him legitimately. By the time Joesbury has flicked past the last delivery note for wine, beer and spirits, he is losing hope.

  Just the desk to check. The drawers are locked, but he retrieves the small hidden key from under the desk. The first drawer contains a small bundle of cash, some cheque- and bank-deposit books and some larger items of stationery.

  The second drawer has an assortment of pens, pencils, paper clips, drawing pins. Nothing. This has been a dangerous waste of time.

  And then, something else. An embroidered velvet case, about the size of a large jewellery box, but masculine-looking. Flicking it open, Joesbury sees narrow, black-leather straps, tightly coiled, and two square, leather objects that appear to be small, thin boxes. He recognizes them immediately, knows their significance, but is at a loss to understand their place in the puzzle.

  And one last thing, tucked away right at the back. Or rather, two things, fastened together with an elastic band. Passports. The first is an EU passport, Union européenne République française, in the name of Richard Richman. The second is dark blue, with Hebrew script and the distinctive emblem of a seven-candle Hebrew lamp surrounded by an olive branch. The emblem of Israel. Rich is a French national with an Israeli passport.

  The black-leather boxes are Tefillin, Jewish religious paraphernalia, aids to prayer for Orthodox Jews. One box is to be attached to the forehead, the other to an arm. Rich is Jewish.

  5

  ‘NOT ONLY IS he Jewish, Mark, he’s a passionate supporter of the State of Israel. His family were Holocaust survivors; several of them campaigned for decades to have Nazi war criminals hunted down. This is not a guy who will tolerate any opposition to Israel.’

  Phone clamped to his ear, Joesbury stands in the shadow of the dredger’s wheelhouse, watching Lacey paddle her slender white canoe back to her own boat. He still can’t work out whether catching the occasional glimpse of her hurts more than it helps. Back at Scotland Yard, Philips is still talking.

  ‘He’s made massive personal donations over the years to Likud – that’s one of the most right-wing of Israel’s numerous political parties. And he’s believed to be a sympathizer of the Jewish Defence League.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘A Jewish far-right religious political organization with the goal of protecting Jews from anti-Semitism by whatever means necessary.’

  ‘So why are a bunch of young Arab men, who are believed to have terrorist connections, working for a wealthy, pro-Israel, Orthodox Jew?’

  ‘We can only assume they don’t know he’s Jewish. We didn’t, until you found his passports, and I like to think we have the edge when it comes to finding stuff out. As for what’s motivating him, he wouldn’t be the first terrorist to throw the blame on to another group entirely to provoke a response. Point is, we’ve been brainstorming potential Muslim targets. We’re going to look at that one again now.’

  ‘Anything on that bag of shrapnel I gave you?’

  ‘Nothing. Tests came back empty. I tell you what, Mark, we could bring the lot of them in now. Search that place. If explosives have been kept in the basement, we’ll find traces. One of them will tell us where they are.’

  ‘And if you don’t? If they don’t? We don’t have enough. You have to give me more time. You have to hold your nerve.’

  Behind him, he hears footsteps coming along the deck.

  ‘Got to go. Beenie’s just arrived and I need to fire up the barbecue.’

  He cuts the call on his boss’s cursing and joins Beenie. There is a pile of tyres on deck they can sit beside. And the beers have been sitting in a cool bag for the last hour. He opens two bottles and hands one over.

  The younger man lowers himself to the steel deck, wincing at the heat of it, and looks around. ‘Love what you’ve done to the place.’

  Joesbury chinks his bottle against Beenie’s. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

  Beenie is serious again. ‘I went into Rich’s office the other night. Rich, Assaf and Haddad were in there. They weren’t expecting me and I think I caught them off guard.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They were looking at plans. You know, those big architectural plans that builders and surveyors use?’

  Joesbury nods. ‘A building? Don’t suppose you recognized it, by any chance?’

  ‘Actually, I think I did. I think it was the Barrier.’

  Joesbury spins round on his bum to face east. The Thames Barrier isn’t visible from Deptford Creek, but everyone who lives and works on the river is conscious of its presence. ‘That’s a frigging big piece of engineering, mate.’

  ‘It is, and tell me if I’m talking bollocks, but you wouldn’t need to take the whole thing out, would you? Just incapacitate the gates, stop them lifting?’

  The gates – huge curved steel shells – sit for most of their lives on the riverbed. When r
aised, they can hold back the tide.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’ve been looking into it today. On the website. I’ve even driven down, gone into that visitors’ centre they have there.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I was thinking, how would I do it, if I wanted to make the Barrier ineffective? The piers themselves are massive, the gates are under the water, so almost impossible to get at, but the weak point of the whole operation has to be the – what are they called? – the big levers that lift the gates.’

  Joesbury has been on the Barrier several times. The big levers are hydraulic cylinders. ‘Makes sense. If you want to attack anything, you go for its weakest point.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking. Relatively small explosives at the most vulnerable point of each lift mechanism. There are ten, by the way. I’m not an engineer, I couldn’t do it, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who could. And you know that mate of Assaf’s? The quiet one?’

  ‘Chiraq Malouf?’ A tall, thin, bearded man, who hasn’t hidden the fact that he despises Joesbury.

  ‘That’s him. He studied chemical engineering at Imperial College.’

  ‘I don’t know, buddy. Even with ten boats packed with C4 and ten suicide drivers willing to aim directly at the cylinders, you still couldn’t get close enough to do any real damage.’

  ‘I agree. The explosives would have to be in direct contact with the cylinders.’

  ‘And that’s impossible. The public can’t access the Barrier. Say you stage an armed hijack of the place. It would take hours to put that much explosive in place.’

  ‘What if it’s already there?’

  Joesbury turns back to face the younger man. ‘Come again?’

  ‘Something else I overheard. It was Rich. He said something like, “We did the hard work back in January, my friend. That’s when we planted the seed. We have been tending it carefully ever since and now is the time to pluck the ripe fruit. A good farmer does not walk away at the time of harvest.” Mate, these guys have been working on this for months. That’s why we haven’t been able to find any trace of explosives or detonators or anything. The bomb – the bombs – they’re already in place.’