The Killing Tide

by Lin Anderson

  Calling her before a date was settled on felt odd. At least that’s what he’d told himself. After all, they were no longer officially a couple. That thought reminded him of the existence of Baldy in their story. He’d told Ellie he was a stalker, which wasn’t actually true, although he was on the system for something along those lines. Baldy’s claim to fame had been for cyber flashing. Sending dick pics via AirDrop to unsuspecting nearby females, usually when on public transport.

  Maybe I should have told her the truth, McNab thought. Maybe I still will, he decided as he entered the IT suite in fighting mode.

  For a brief moment he thought it must be over between Ollie and the lovely Maria due to the alacrity of Ollie’s acceptance of the paper bag.

  ‘Maria says if you bring me something, then that’s okay. I think she’s a fan,’ Ollie told him. ‘Anyway, I need the energy.’

  ‘You and me both,’ McNab said, helping himself. ‘So what do we have?’ he asked, catching a scent of Ollie’s excitement.

  ‘The two memory sticks hold essentially the same material, but not quite. As you are probably aware, most of the sites Mark gave a link to have been shut down already. Checking on dates, this started happening from the night he disappeared.’

  So Ava was right when she’d maintained that the contents of the memory stick were the reason Mark had died.

  ‘There is one difference between the two sets of data,’ Ollie said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘There’s a hidden list of contacts embedded in the final material given to you. Together with dates and times when Mark spoke to someone either online or in person.’

  ‘I never spotted that,’ McNab said.

  ‘It wasn’t obvious. In fact, it took me until now, and having access to both drives, to discover it.’

  McNab knew better than to rush Ollie by demanding to be told what this hidden diary had revealed. Eventually Ollie was ready with his declaration. ‘Mark had a meeting arranged the night he died.’

  ‘We know that already,’ McNab couldn’t stop himself from saying.

  ‘That meeting, I suspect, was arranged after he’d met with both you and Ava. However, he did make a note of it on the memory stick he’d left with Abu-Zar to give to you . . . should anything happen to him.’

  Which suggested that Mark didn’t trust the person he’d arranged to meet.

  ‘Who was it?’ McNab said.

  Ollie’s expression was a mix of concern and distaste. ‘He says it was a Met officer.’

  ‘The name?’ McNab demanded.

  ‘That’s just it. There isn’t one. Just a time and a location.’

  79

  Sitting in here, Ava could still feel the power of Mark’s presence. It was as though he had merely left the room to fetch a refill of coffee or select a favourite sweet cake from the cafe counter.

  It reminded her too of their apartment in Kabul. Above her, in the main household, food was being prepared, the scents of which transported her back to their time in Afghanistan.

  Then, danger had been always present, heightening their desire to live, and to love.

  Firash had taken Nadia upstairs. As well as the aromatic scents wafting down, there was also the sound of music, chatter and laughter. It was difficult to imagine how long a time it had been since Nadia had been free to enjoy such things.

  Extracting her laptop from her bag, Ava set up her own centre of operations where Mark’s had been. Her mobile she kept switched off; a sequence of burner phones would be what she would use from now, until she’d deemed the job complete.

  Her first task was to speak to her brother. By now Erling would have visited Dougie to tell him of their disappearance. Dougie would be anxious to know if they’d arrived safely at their destination.

  A text would have sufficed when they’d finally got here, but Ava wanted to hear his voice, and for him to hear hers.

  After all, they only had each other now.

  She’d arranged that her call from an unknown number would stop after a couple of rings. When she rang again shortly after, he would know it was her.

  She imagined him sitting in the kitchen, Finn at his side, waiting to answer. When he finally did, she could hear the catch of relief in his voice.

  ‘You got there?’ he said.

  ‘Safe and sound,’ she told him, trying to sound normal. ‘I slept a lot of the way. So did Nadia. She’s upstairs now with the family. There’s laughter and chat and an excellent smell wafting down.’ She hesitated before asking if Erling had been.

  He told her yes. ‘He brought Magnus Pirie with him.’

  So, she’d been right about that, suggesting McNab hadn’t completely bought her story regarding the shopping trip.

  ‘How did it go?’ she said.

  ‘I played fearful and angry,’ he told her in a worried tone. ‘I think. I hoped it worked.’

  Magnus would have smelt fear, or the lack of it, but Ava didn’t mention that because she could hear the worry in Dougie’s voice, even now, when he knew they were safe.

  For the moment.

  They chatted briefly about farm matters before she confirmed she’d call again with any developments.

  At this point, Firash popped his head round the door. ‘We’re ready to eat. It’s all set up in the cafe. Afterwards we can talk with my father.’

  ‘Is there any news from the hospital?’ she said.

  ‘He will see me tomorrow.’

  Ava allowed herself a small sigh of relief.

  They were all there, the people who had taken Mark and her under their wing in Kabul. Looking round at the welcoming faces of Abu-Zar’s extended family, Ava could only think of the one that was missing.

  When the meal was over, Abu-Zar indicated that he and Ava should go with Harim and Firash to Mark’s room to talk.

  ‘You,’ he told Nadia, ‘will go to bed. This part of the story is ours alone.’

  Nadia conceded without argument, heading upstairs to her room.

  ‘I asked Firash not to reveal this until we brought you here,’ Abu-Zar said. ‘When Mark went out to meet someone the night he was killed, he did not tell us where he was going or whom he was seeing. As you know, the police took most of his things, but not everything. He left a memory stick in our safe to be given to the Scottish detective if anything should happen to him. We passed that on as promised.’

  ‘McNab never told me that,’ Ava said, thinking about her recent interview. ‘Even when I gave him the one I had from Mark.’

  Abu-Zar looked serious. ‘Mark trusted the Scottish detective. I believe his aim is to do his job and to keep you from harm.’

  Like Mark, was left unsaid.

  Abu-Zar turned to Firash now and asked him to explain what they’d discovered about the night Mark had died.

  ‘When he didn’t come back, we tried to look for him, but we had no way of knowing where he had gone. After he was found in the river, we began to receive news of sightings of him from people in the community. None of this we reported to the police because we knew that they’d been trying to prevent him from doing his job. Anyway, we believe we now know where he went that night. We also believe he met with a police officer.’

  ‘Who was Mark meeting? Was his name Cleverly?’ she demanded when Firash didn’t immediately answer.

  He shook his head. ‘We believe it was the man in the hospital. The man McNab rescued.’

  ‘You think Jack Winters killed Mark?’ Ava couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  ‘Mark believed he was going to meet Jack Winters that night. We need to find out if that was true.’

  It would have been the perfect set-up. If Mark thought he was meeting a police plant inside Go Wild, he would have gone without a moment’s hesitation. It was also why he wouldn’t have revealed his possible source to anyone, even Firash.

  Had Winters been playing both sides? Or was he just being used? If so, by which side in the game?

  There was another name in all of this.
A name Firash had acknowledged but not spoken about as yet.

  ‘Mark distrusted DI Cleverly. Do you know why?’

  Firash nodded. ‘DI Cleverly has a son, who Mark believed was connected to Go Wild in some way. He thinks the policeman was trying to cover for him.’

  80

  Ava glanced at the large clock in the hospital entrance hall, aware that Firash had been gone for at least half an hour.

  Surely that meant he’d been allowed in to speak with Jack Winters?

  The presence of two armed officers on patrol in the main concourse suggested that the police were taking security seriously. Swallowing a mouthful of cold coffee, she averted her eyes as they made yet another circuit, while chiding herself that it only made her look suspicious.

  Had she forgotten everything Mark had taught her about being undercover?

  The officers having now passed her by, she attempted a quick scan of the crowd, only to find Firash at her side.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said as he took a seat at her table.

  ‘What do you mean, gone? Gone where?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say.’

  Firash had caught sight of the police patrol and gently angled his chair round to face towards the queue at the cafe counter.

  Ava voiced the unthinkable. ‘Might he have died?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Firash said quietly. ‘Or they’ve moved him elsewhere in the hospital. I texted Jenny to ask if she knows what’s happened to him.’

  Ava’s heart was bumping so loudly, she thought the armed duo now en route past the cafe must be able to hear it.

  ‘How long do we sit here and wait?’ she said.

  Firash, his face drawn, indicated he didn’t know. At that moment his phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he nodded to Ava and mouthed ‘Jenny’ before answering.

  The interchange was brief and, by the look on Firash’s face, positive.

  ‘He’s been moved, Jenny says. She’s not sure where, but he left a message for her with the ward sister. It’s the phone number we can reach him on.’

  ‘What if it’s a trap?’ Ava said.

  ‘Why would he want to harm the man who rescued him?’ Firash said.

  Ava had been in too many situations where people were playing multiple sides. Sometimes they survived; sometimes, like Mark, they didn’t.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he said, studying her expression.

  ‘We’ll call from my burner phone,’ she said. ‘You’ll open the conversation then hand the phone to me.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Would you recognize his voice?’

  ‘He was barely conscious by the time we got there, so no, I wouldn’t.’

  If McNab had been here, it would have been easy. Maybe it was time to call him? No, she thought, I’m not ready for that yet.

  ‘Is there a question you could ask that only he would know the answer to?’ she said.

  Firash considered this. ‘I know what McNab did to save his life. And since there was only the two of them there at that point . . .’

  Once out of the hospital grounds, Firash chose a spot and drew the car over.

  ‘Okay?’ he said.

  When Ava nodded, he accepted her phone and dialled the number, switching it to speaker.

  The phone rang three times before a male voice answered, ‘Yes?’, without giving a name.

  Ava nodded to Firash to ask the question they’d agreed on.

  There was a short silence before the voice responded. ‘I assume I’m talking to Firash, one of the men who rescued me. The answer to your question is that McNab plugged the hole in my stomach with his rolled-up shirt and fastened his belt around me. That’s the reason I stayed alive long enough for you to get me to a hospital.’

  As he spoke these words, Ava felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Taking the mobile, she said, ‘Mark Sylvester had a meeting with you the night he was murdered.’

  ‘Not me,’ the voice said.

  ‘It’s in his diary.’

  Silence, then, ‘He wasn’t meeting me. Whoever arranged it must have said it was.’

  ‘Then that person killed him.’

  ‘Very probably,’ he said, his tone serious. ‘How was this meeting arranged?’

  Firash shook his head at Ava, indicating he didn’t know.

  ‘The police seized his possessions from his workplace, including his laptop and phone. If they’re doing their job properly, they would be able to find that out.’

  Winters’s breathing sounded laboured as he answered. ‘You’re Ava Clouston, aren’t you? You broke the story that almost got me killed.’

  ‘You told McNab he could trust DI Cleverly, when Mark had warned him not to. And Mark was killed. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

  ‘Does McNab know you’ve contacted me?’

  She didn’t answer his question. Instead, she said, ‘Mark discovered that Cleverly has a son, who is involved with Go Wild.’

  Ava could taste the thick silence that now fell between them.

  ‘The Met weren’t investigating Mark,’ she said. ‘DI Cleverly was, because he’d found out that Mark had something on his son.’

  ‘You have proof of this?’

  ‘It was in the material taken by the Met.’

  ‘Can I get back to you on this number?’

  Ava told him he could, and ended the call.

  Entering the cafe, they found Nadia helping Bahnam behind the counter.

  ‘How did it go?’ she said, her face lighting up when she saw them.

  ‘Okay,’ Ava told her, knowing she would have to eventually explain this part of the story to the girl, but only when it was safe to do so.

  ‘Are you sure she should be out here?’ she said to Firash as they went behind the curtain.

  ‘She’s hiding in plain sight. Plus Bahnam’s been telling everyone that she’s my current girlfriend.’ Firash smiled at that.

  ‘And is she?’ Ava said.

  ‘We’re friends, supporting one another in extremity,’ he told her with a serious expression. ‘I too know what it’s like to be a refugee, who no one will take responsibility for.’

  When they reached Mark’s office, he said, ‘What do you plan to do now?’

  ‘I have some calls to make,’ Ava told him.

  81

  McNab knew that the only thing to do now was wait.

  It was the aspect of the job he hated most. There were other tasks he disliked, even hated, like the endless reports always waiting to be written.

  But even those paled beside the waiting game.

  Everything now depended on other people, instead of him. The momentum that had swept him to this point was no more. All he had left was fear of things going wrong. Of failure in his plans. Of the wrong ending.

  Having reached his destination, he looked up, seeking a light at a window and finding one.

  So, she was home, but was she on her own?

  There was only one way to find out, he thought, pressing the buzzer. When the door was released at the mention of his name, his heart lifted a little, hoping she was in fact alone.

  The door to her flat stood ajar and, as he crossed the threshold, he heard no voices from the kitchen. As he closed the door behind him, the cat appeared like a flash to accompany him.

  She was seated at the kitchen table, a pizza box and glass of wine alongside her open laptop.

  ‘If you’re not on duty, there’s beer in the fridge. Or,’ she said, reading his expression, ‘whisky in the usual place. Plus there’s pizza left. I always order enough for two.’

  She went back to studying her screen while he helped himself to a slice of pizza. Eventually she shut the laptop down.

  ‘I was planning on giving you a call,’ Rhona said.

  ‘That makes me feel better about the intrusion. Thought I might be interrupting your evening.’

  ‘There’s no one here but Tom and me.’

  Many of their exchanges over the years had been fractious, sometimes outright furious, espe
cially if or when they’d strayed from work and into their private lives. He wondered which of the two her proposed call had been about.

  ‘Bill checked in about the forensic material we had on Steven Willis,’ she said. ‘We can put him in the room, and we have evidence of him on the handle of the bag and the credit card. The semen retrieved from the victim is not a match. I understand Willis has given you a lead on the Go Wild man who rented the flat from him?’

  McNab nodded. ‘That’s why the boss let us set up the sting for later tonight.’

  ‘So that’s not why you’re here?’ she said, meeting his eye.

  He indicated it wasn’t. ‘It’s about Ava Clouston.’

  ‘I thought it might be.’ She fell silent for a moment, then said abruptly, ‘Why didn’t you pursue Mark’s warning about Cleverly? And don’t say it was because of what Jack Winters told you. You didn’t trust Cleverly before, and with good reason. Why would anything Winters have said change your mind?’

  Stung by that interpretation of events, he came back at her. ‘It didn’t. Mark was killed because of what he unearthed, and that included what he’d found out about Cleverly.’

  She nodded, as though accepting his response. ‘Ava called me shortly before your arrival,’ she said. ‘They’re both well and staying with Firash’s family at the cafe.’

  Relief threatened to swamp him, revealing, even to him, how truly worried he had been.

  ‘Ava said that Mark’s diary indicated he was meeting with a police officer the evening he was murdered,’ she told him.

  ‘I know,’ he blurted out. ‘I just don’t know who.’

  ‘She believes it was DI Cleverly. I recorded what she said.’

  McNab listened as Ava’s voice rang out, strong and determined, ending with, ‘Cleverly has a son who’s involved with Go Wild. That’s who he’s covering for.’

  He began to absorb the significance of this as the pieces of the jigsaw started fitting together.

  ‘Cleverly said when he was younger he’d had a girlfriend up here. Came to Glasgow all the time, until she chucked him out. Maybe they had a son together?’

  Cleverly, he registered, had come to Glasgow determined to find out everything they had on the fire death; on the victim, on possible suspects. He’d even given old Jimmy a bad time. Accused him of being an unreliable witness when Jimmy mentioned he’d seen a male figure at the entrance to the back court.