by Tony Park
‘Sod off,’ Tom said to the machine and stabbed the erase button.
The next message was from another woman and Tom was about to get rid of it before realising the person’s accent was so thick it was doubtful she was a British reporter. ‘Mr Furey, if that’s what I call policeman in this country, it is Olga Kamorov here.’
Olga? Russian, maybe? He didn’t know an Olga, but her voice did sound familiar.
‘We met in club, in Soho, few weeks ago. Oh, sorry, you know me as –’
‘Ivana,’ Tom said aloud. The stripper he had interviewed when he’d been looking for Nick Roberts. Tom strained to hear the woman’s voice as there was music playing in the background; perhaps she was calling from the club where she danced.
‘I suppose you heard about Ebony – you are policeman, after all – but I wanted to talk to you about the man who used to come and see her dance all the time. Other police are not interested in talking to him, but I not so sure. Call me.’
Ivana – or Olga – left a mobile phone number and that was the end of his messages. Tom replayed the message and wrote down Olga’s details.
He sat on a stool at the stainless-steel topped breakfast bar and tapped his front teeth with the end of the pen as he thought. When he and Shuttleworth had discussed it on his return to England, they had assumed Nick had been set up by the black stripper, Ebony, and that it was she who had lured him into the terrorists’ clutches. Subsequent inquiries had showed that she never returned to work or her flat. She had simply disappeared.
Tom knew from Carla of Nick’s predilections for African women. Carla had presumably also passed this on to her comrades and they had used Ebony as bait to capture Nick.
Why, he wondered, was a black South African table dancer in league with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? There hardly seemed a less likely fit, and the same went for the promiscuous Carla. Money would surely have been a more likely motivator for both women.
Tom tore off the page with Olga’s number and started making notes on a fresh sheet. He wrote Money at the top, then underlined it. Next he wrote the following:
Kidnap/ransom.
Why Bernard?
Why the Iraq angle?
A cover?
It didn’t make sense to him, and he scored a line through all of the points. He had talked himself out of the idea that Greeves had been abducted for money, though he was still unsure about the women’s roles.
He played Olga’s message back once more. ‘I suppose you heard about Ebony.’
He hadn’t heard a thing about the dancer. What did she mean by that? Tom walked back upstairs, his stomach protesting all the way at its lack of food and coffee, and grabbed his cell phone off the bedside table. As he walked down again, he scrolled through the saved numbers until he came to the one he was looking for.
‘Morris,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.
‘Dan, it’s Tom Furey. All right, mate?’ Detective Constable Dan Morris was another protection officer. He’d been one of the officers who was following up leads on Nick’s disappearance when Tom had left for Africa.
‘Oh, Tom. Hi. Hang on, I’m driving. Let me pull over.’
Tom waited, taking his seat at the breakfast bar again. He flipped the pad over to a new page and kept the pen in his free hand.
‘Sorry, mate. How’s life, anyway? Keeping your chin up?’
‘Just about. It’s no barrel of laughs, Dan, but I’ll know more after the inquiry.’
‘Well, you know all the lads are on your side.’
It was a statement rather than a question, but Tom thought it sounded like Morris was just going through the motions. ‘Dan, are you still following up this end on what happened to Nick?’
‘Um, you know Shuttleworth told everyone that you were no longer working the case or any part of it?’
‘Yeah. Look, this might help you, Dan. Don’t mess me about and I won’t mess you about.’
‘All right. Yeah, we’re trying to find out more of what he was up to, but, I’ll tell you the truth, all we’re getting is dead ends.’
‘You mean literally or figuratively,’ Tom said, writing the word dead on the notepad.
‘Do what?’
Dan was a plodder. A good copper, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘You mean dead as in bodies?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Maybe,’ Morris said.
‘The strip club you and Chris visited – remember it?’
‘How could I forget it? Wish every job was like that one.’
Tom thought the laugh was forced. He knew he was getting close.
‘She’s dead. The stripper I told Shuttleworth about. Ebony, the black girl Nick had been seen talking to a couple of times. The one who did a bunk from work.’
‘Tom, that information hasn’t been reported to the media. In fact, it’s subject to a D-notice. How did you know about it? If Shuttleworth finds out you’ve been poking your nose into the Minx club he’ll have your guts for garters.’
Tom wrote Ebony’s name on the piece of paper, followed by D-notice?
‘Tom? You still there?’
‘Got to go, Dan. Thanks, mate.’
‘Thanks? What for? You said you had something that might help us.’
‘Bad line. You’re dropping out, Dan.’ Tom pressed the end button.
He shuffled the pieces of paper in front of him and dialled Olga Kamorov’s cell phone number. As it rang he checked his watch. He wondered if she would be sleeping in, if she’d been working late at Club Minx the previous evening. Too bad if she was.
When she answered, it was in a whisper. ‘Hang on,’ she urged him.
Tom tapped the pen on the benchtop while he waited. ‘Sorry, I was in class.’
‘Class?’
‘I am student.’
Student as well as stripper. She wouldn’t be the first to pay for her studies by working in the sex industry. ‘Olga, we need to talk about Ebony’s death.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Other policemen don’t want anyone to talk about it. They tell all girls at club no one is to talk to friends or journalists about Ebony. But that is problem, and I try to tell them that but they don’t listen to me.’
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that last rambling remark, and was about to tell her to slow down and explain when she cut him off before he had a chance.
‘I must get back inside for lecture. I meet you at lunchtime, yes? One o’clock?’
She was setting the ground rules and he didn’t like being in that position, but he had little option save to play along. Besides, he had nothing else in his diary for the day. ‘Okay, where?’
‘There is a Burger King in Euston Road, opposite St Pancras, near Kings Cross. You know it?’
‘I’ll find it.’ He hung up and walked over to the refrigerator. Inside was a single egg in a soggy carton and a half-pack of bacon. He put the frying pan on the gas hob and dropped in some oil. His stomach rumbled, so he put all the bacon in and cracked the egg. In the pantry was half a loaf of stale bread. He selected the least mouldy piece and chucked the rest in the bin, along with an assortment of pizza boxes and takeaway curry containers from the benchtop.
He continued to clean up while breakfast sizzled mouth-wateringly nearby. Working back from one o’clock he mentally planned his day. It would take him the best part of an hour to eat and get clean and dressed. He’d booked the Jag in for a service on his first day of suspension. He’d discounted the idea of going away anywhere and figured – correctly, so far – he would spend most of his time either drunk in a pub or drunk at home. He hadn’t been wrong until now. He would have to take the tube to meet Olga.
He scooped the bacon and egg from the frypan, added another half-inch of oil and dropped in the slice of bread. He devoured the lot in seconds. Cooked breakfasts always seemed like a lot of effort for little return. He hoped that wasn’t an omen for the rest of the day.
Upstairs he showered and scraped
three days’ worth of growth from his face, put on his charcoal-grey suit pants, black brogues and socks, and took a clean white shirt downstairs to the laundry to iron. Olga wouldn’t know he was suspended – unless, of course, she had read a newspaper in the last week. Tom figured that if she had, she wouldn’t have called him. He mightn’t be on duty officially, but he wanted her to think he was. He wondered if the dancer would give him anything that might help Sannie’s investigations back in Africa. He doubted it, but perhaps the South African police could run a check on Precious Mary Tambo.
Before leaving the house, he stopped to straighten his tie in the hall mirror and pull on his suit jacket. It felt good to have a sense of purpose again. It might come to nothing, but would keep his mind off Greeves, Joyce and the impending inquiry for a few hours.
Outside it was a perfect autumn day. The chill in the air helped clear his head, and he felt virtuous walking off some of his breakfast down Southwood Lane towards Highgate tube station.
Two young mums pushed their children in prams, chatting and laughing at something. It was a reminder that life went on, even though his world had been turned upside down. He wondered how Greeves’s wife and children were faring, and if Bernard Joyce had family.
There were already Christmas decorations in some of the shop windows. He wondered what it was like for Sannie’s kids at this time of year, without their father.
Tom entered Highgate Underground station and descended the long escalator to the platforms, his nostrils filling with the unnaturally warm, humid air. A Euston-bound tube train arrived within minutes and he nipped through the sliding doors into the hot, stuffy carriage. Only the drivers got airconditioning.
On the seat beside him was a copy of the Metro, the free newspaper handed out to commuters. He opened it and on page five found the news Sannie had already told him.
SOUTH AFRICAN BODYGUARD TO GIVE EVIDENCE AT GREEVES INQUIRY
A South African police officer is being flown to the UK to testify at the inquiry into the abduction and killing of the former Minister for Defence Procurement, Robert Greeves.
Inspector Susan van Rensburg was assigned as the protection officer for Mr Greeves’s South African government counterpart during two days of meetings between the two politicians.
Tom skimmed the recapping of the events, and looked for the ‘why’ in the story.
Mr Greeves’s former spokesperson said the government had decided to invite Inspector Van Rensburg to appear at the inquiry in order to better understand security arrangements which had been put in place prior to Mr Greeves’s visit, and to outline the events leading up to the minister’s abduction.
‘Shit,’ Tom said aloud. An old lady sitting opposite in a plastic mackintosh looked up from her magazine and raised her eyebrows at him. Sannie’s appearance was part of the government’s efforts to set him up as the patsy for Greeves’s death. He could have guessed it. He wondered what she would make of the story and if it would affect her evidence. All she could do was tell the truth – and that would be enough to have him dismissed.
He felt the fog of depression start to settle on him again, almost wilting the creases in his freshly ironed shirt.
‘Only ever bad news in those things.’ The old lady was looking at him, smiling as she nodded to the newspapers beside him. ‘Stick with OK!, that’s my philosophy.’
He laughed and nodded as she held up the glossy celebrity gossip magazine.
At the end of the noisy, jolting journey, he gratefully slid onto the crowded tube platform at Euston. Making his way out of this subterranean world, Tom surfaced in the brightly lit main-line station.
He left the bustling terminus, turning left into Euston Road and passing the gothic splendour of the recently restored and enlarged St Pancras International station. Just before King’s Cross station, Tom weaved across the busy road to the Burger King.
He was half an hour early. He felt like buying a packet of cigarettes, but knew he shouldn’t. His brain hadn’t been at full speed when he’d spoken to Sannie on the phone, but he remembered now there was something he wanted to ask her.
There was an internet cafe a few doors down and Tom went in thinking he might find his answer there. A long-haired man looked up from his screen and directed him to a machine. Tom took out his notebook and typed ‘primates of southern Africa’ into the browser. He filled two pages and left the cafe at five minutes to one.
There were a dozen people inside the Burger King when he arrived but none he could recognise as the alluring young exotic dancer. He walked back outside onto the footpath. Perhaps she was late.
‘Hey, Mr Policeman.’
He turned around and looked down. The girl who was talking to him had Ivana’s – Olga’s – voice, but he could have been looking at a different person.
She stood about five feet tall, much shorter than he’d remembered. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her lack of makeup revealed traces of acne scarring. She wore a baggy grey sports top with a hood attached, faded jeans and old trainers.
‘You didn’t recognise me.’ Olga craned her neck back and peered up at him through rimless Coke-bottle glasses. ‘You walked right past me.’
‘Sorry.’
She shrugged. ‘Not surprising. I have clothes on now and no five-inch stiletto heels.’
He smiled. ‘And the glasses?’
‘It should have been me not recognising you, instead of other way around. In club I can barely see the men who come in. All my time there is like in a – what do you say . . . haze.’
‘Probably better that way.’
She nodded. ‘We eat?’
They stood side by side in the queue, making small talk about the weather while they waited to be served.
‘What are you studying?’
‘Medicine at UCL,’ she said. ‘No jokes about anatomy or biology, though, please. I get enough of that from fellow students.’
The University College London campus at Bloomsbury was nearby. Tom was a little surprised she told her peers about her job.
‘Is legal and is not money for sex, like some people think. You would be surprised what some students do. Not all of it is legal, either.’
He muttered an apology and said nothing more until they were served and took their food to a red laminate-topped table.
‘Why you come alone? You not have partner, like TV policeman? Even in Russia, where government has no money, militia detectives have partner.’
Tom didn’t want to lose the initiative before the interview began. He wanted to remind her, as much as himself, who was who in this exchange.
‘What have you got to tell me, Olga, that you didn’t tell the investigating officers?’
‘So you talked to them?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘I thought that since you were suspended from duty over African business that other police would not cooperate with you.’
‘So you know why I don’t have a partner.’ As a medical student her IQ was no doubt higher than his. Still, he had a lot more experience in asking questions than she did. He placed his burger back in the paper bag and started to stand. ‘I’m wasting my time here.’
‘No, wait!’
He saw the panic in her eyes. ‘Don’t mess me about, Olga. I haven’t come here to hear conspiracy theories or to indulge your fantasies of being an amateur detective.’
‘Look, I know about you but I also remember that you came to club by yourself. This is personal for you. Something is going on here that is not right.’
Tom folded his arms, ignoring his food, and said nothing.
‘Other detectives say not to talk to media about Ebony’s death, right?’
He nodded.
‘But journalist is the one who did it, even though police say they have questioned him.’
Tom took the hamburger back out of its wrapper and took a bite. He washed it down with a mouthful of cola. He knew that if he stayed quiet Olga would keep talking, and he was right.
>
‘You remember when you come to club that I tell you about geeky-looking man with red hair who used to come often to see Ebony dance – in private shows.’
Tom nodded again.
‘Well, he come back night after you were there. He was asking for her, but boss told him Ebony not show up for work. He start coming on to all other girls, including me, asking where she is. I say she is not here and he starts to get angry – what you say . . . agitated. He even offer me fifty quid to give him Ebony’s home address, but I say no way.’
‘Doesn’t sound like he’s the killer, then, if he’s drawing attention to himself,’ Tom said, wiping his mouth and feigning a lack of interest.
‘Aha. That is what other policemen said. But can’t you see that it was act? He was doing this deliberately to look like he didn’t know where she was, but he was stalking her for two weeks before she disappear!’
Tom took another drink. ‘Stalking? I thought you said he was a regular customer. Presumably you have men who come to see you dance more than once.’
Olga nodded and finally started to eat her food. She pinched small chunks from the burger bun and chewed each one methodically, over and over, while she thought about her next response. ‘Yes, but Ebony met this guy outside of work.’
Tom sat back in his plastic chair. ‘You didn’t tell me this when I came to the club.’
‘You were asking about Ebony and other man – the policeman you were looking for – not Ebony’s stalker man.’
Tom nodded. At that stage he had been working on a theory that Nick and Ebony might have done a bunk together, not that she had been murdered by a nutter. ‘How do you know this, did she tell you?’
Olga shook her head, and seemed to hesitate, picking again at her burger bun, but leaving the meat untouched.
‘Well?’
She looked up at him. ‘Geeky guy left his card when he couldn’t find Ebony and when no one would give him her address. His name was Fisher, Michael Fisher. He is –’
‘He’s a journalist, from the World.’
Now it was Olga’s turn to lean back, arms folded, in a parody of Tom. ‘Aha! So you know this man.’