Souls of Men

by A. R. Ashworth

  Elaine hesitated before answering. “Yes, he used it with me. Told me that I deserve it, and I’ll get what I deserve. He could mean that he thinks it’s sweet to brutalize women, that he loves it. I think it’s more likely, though, that to him ‘strawberries and cream’ means red blood on fair skin. Notice how he says ‘for you but not me.’ He said something similar in his note to me. That’s my best guess right now.”

  She picked up the evidence bags and headed for the door. “Let’s do something about this.”

  Liz followed Elaine to Cranwell’s office. He was turned toward the window, reading a thick report. Elaine rapped on the doorpost.

  “May we have a word, sir.” It was a statement, not a question. She led the way into the office.

  Cranwell looked up and raised his eyebrows in a query, first at Elaine, then Liz, and finally back to Elaine. He motioned to the chairs. “Of course. What’s happened?”

  Elaine pushed the two notes in their plastic bags across the desk. Liz saw his face change from interest to horror to angry resolve in a matter of seconds. His hand was shaking when he put the bags down.

  “That’s . . .” He hesitated, then got himself under control. “Outrageous is the most polite term I can think of! How dare he threaten you! Get the letters to forensics immediately. You’ll need to be moved to a safe house. Is your self-defense training up to date?”

  Elaine answered. “I’m up to date. Liz may need a refresher. However, she’s being watched over closely by a constable who’s a former Royal Marine.”

  “Ah, yes. Bull.” He picked up his telephone. “I’ll get the rehousing approved. You each should find somewhere to stay tonight besides home. Be sure to stay in touch. I’ll arrange to have an ARV pass by each of your flats every half-hour or so. Meanwhile, see what you can do to catch this monster.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  It was a good thing the traffic was light and there weren’t many people out in this weather. Elaine flogged her car through the streets, driving wildly and unrelentingly. She arrived at Nelson’s Glory a few minutes early. The evening rush hadn’t begun, so the pub was sparsely populated and quiet. Thank God for that. She ordered two pints of stout and found a small nook in the back where the other patrons wouldn’t notice her fuming.

  Cranwell was right. Being threatened by that punk was outrageous. She’d see to him, though—once and for all. He’d pay for a very long time, but not before she reduced him to jelly. And that cold slab of evil, Anton. He’d put Nilo up to this, so he’d fall too. Nobody disdains me or my team. Nobody threatens us. In the end, I hold the power of justice over those kinds of scum. Before I’m done, they will know it.

  She needed to calm down before Peter arrived. How should she tell him about the threats and the rehousing? In theory, he would be supportive and recognize that she was the expert and she could take care of herself. In practice, however, he would probably revert to his male instincts and get protective and proprietary. She wouldn’t push him away, because it showed he appreciated her, and it was natural behavior for a man. But she would have to have a chat with him about life with a Met detective. This Met detective, anyway.

  Elaine snapped herself into the present. Her hands shook as she picked up her pint. Calm down and focus, Lainie. Being distracted isn’t safe. She took a deep breath and a small sip of stout before she began scanning the pub, careful to not let her eyes settle on one person for too long. Two businessmen stood at the bar, talking animatedly, which meant the conversation was about either money or football. A middle-aged couple, American tourists by the look of their “I Heart London” hats and inadequate coats, sat staring out the window at the rain, their barely touched pub meals cooling in front of them. The bargain trip to London in winter wasn’t turning out as they had hoped. An elderly man with a gentle smile sat in a nook across from Elaine, glancing at her. He nodded when her eyes scanned past him. She had no idea who he was.

  And here she sat again, in Nelson’s Glory, dissecting the people around her. Being the detective. The detective who couldn’t put down the job.

  Now her dedication to that job had set forces in motion that threatened her. She couldn’t remember all the threats she had received throughout her career from criminals she had nicked and who were spending much, if not the rest, of their lives at Her Majesty’s pleasure. They deserved what they got. Most of their threats were hollow.

  This was different. She directed the action now that she was a DCI. Professional needs aside, her decisions had placed someone she cared about in harm’s way. It didn’t matter that Liz had willingly shouldered the dangers of being a police officer. Elaine knew that, but she was still a woman who cared about people and their welfare. It was one reason she became a copper. Liz wasn’t ready . . .

  “Hi, there.” Peter’s voice brought her into the present. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and sat across from her. “You looked absorbed in something. I must have been standing there for ten seconds or so. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Damn, she had been daydreaming again. Elaine smiled in greeting and lifted her glass in a toast. “Sorry. You should have.”

  “You looked like you were second-guessing yourself. Was it anything you can share?”

  How did he know that? Elaine trailed her finger around the rim of her pint glass. “I was thinking about the fact that I’m never really off work because I’m in the middle of my perfect career.” She looked up at him. “I know you are too.”

  He tilted his head in thought. His blue eyes never left her brown ones. “We both spend enough time at them.” He took a sip of his pint.

  She shook her head. “It’s not the hours. It’s the way our brains work. Or rather the way mine works. It worked this way even when I was a kid. I think being a detective was inevitable.”

  His eyes fixed on hers. “You’ve never struck me as fatalistic. I can’t imagine you saying ‘it is what it is’ about something you think is wrong and then leaving it at that. I ought to know.” He placed his hand over hers. He had warm, dry, strong hands. His touch was always gentle, never tentative, and when he touched her, she felt safe. He moved around the nook to sit next to her.

  She smiled. “That sounds like someone I’ve come to know too.”

  Peter wrapped his arm over her shoulders, pulling her closer. Her head fit perfectly into the little hollow between his arm and his throat. He said, “As long as we understand each other,” and kissed her hair.

  She lifted her face and kissed his chin in return. His five-o’clock shadow scratched her lips. Quite nicely, in fact. “Can we go?” she asked.

  They left their unfinished pints on the table.

  * * *

  This time with Peter it was more urgent, more necessary. Elaine knew what she needed and where she wanted to go and took charge immediately. Each time the wave rolled through her, she cried out, whimpered, then cried out at the next crest, as if she had glimpsed some missing, vital part of herself, lost sight of it, and then glimpsed it again. Finally the waves stopped and she lay shattered in his arms. Peter embraced her, kissed her, and held her until her shaking ceased.

  He pulled the duvet up over them, asking, “Are you cold?”

  She was still breathless. “No. God no. It’s just . . .”

  He whispered. “I can’t describe what just happened.”

  “Don’t try.”

  She lay next to him in the moonlight that streamed through the large window.

  “Where to from here?” she murmured.

  “The here and now. I’ve been trying to find my way to a moment like this for years, so I want to stay in it.”

  She snuggled closer. “I feel like this has happened so quickly. At first, I thought you might be having me on. You know, revenge.”

  “Never. I’m not a vengeful person. I try to put things behind me. I think I truly realized it when you visited me that night. Did you really have questions for me?”

  She poked him. “Of course I did. Clarifications. A
nd you told me something important.”

  “Really, now. What was it?”

  “Can’t say. Police confidential. But that was one of the strangest first moves anyone has ever laid on me.”

  He laughed. “I meant every hint of it. I needed to get something going with you.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I had to find out if what I was feeling was real.”

  “Was it?”

  He wrapped his fingers in her hair and pulled her face to his until their eyes were inches apart. Then he kissed her. Deep and hard.

  Later in the shower, he took her again, with her face and hands pressed against the tile and the steamy heat swirling around them. Afterward she sat curled on his lap in the big chair, her arms around his neck, the duvet covering them.

  He stroked her hair. “I have to go in to work, but you’re welcome to stay here tonight.”

  “Thank you. I will.” She unwrapped herself and stood by the big window, looking out at the lights of the Docklands sparkling in the distance. “I need to tell you something first, though.”

  * * *

  “So you weren’t Daddy’s little girl, then.” They were sitting at the kitchen table. Peter spooned some jam onto a piece of toast and slid the jar across the table to Elaine, who scooped some out for herself. We both need some calorie replacement, he thought.

  She smiled across at him. “Good jam. That workout made me hungry.” Her face took on a serious cast. “No. That was Moira. Like I told you before, I was the Oops baby. Oops really meant Oops to him. He tended to blame things on me. He wasn’t violent; he never touched me. But he knew when to yell and when to give the silent treatment long enough to make me feel wretched. He might have been a good interrogator.”

  “Maybe you got it from him.”

  “Could be. Mum stood up for me when he yelled, and she paid attention to me during the silent times. Ailsa and Christine were already married and gone. I hardly knew them. Moira was still at home, mostly, when she wasn’t God-knows-where with one boyfriend or another. I knew he worried a lot about her. She had a drug problem, but I didn’t understand it then.”

  “You must have been just a child.”

  For a half minute or so, Elaine appeared to weigh something in her mind. “She, that’s Moira, was supposed to be watching me while Mum and Dad were off visiting his sister in Exeter. I was seven. She did watch me too. It was going okay until one of her boyfriends rang. I remember several. This one was named Jake, and I didn’t like him.”

  Elaine paused while Peter poured tea. “I didn’t want to go. She told me I had to come with her, cursed me for being a whingeing little shite. She scooped me up and off we went.”

  “You were a child.” Peter sat back in his chair, his arms extended on the table, his head cocked to one side.

  “She was such a sweet woman until it came to drugs. Heroin was the drug of choice in the Drum in those days. She couldn’t afford it on her own, but her boyfriends could get it at times, and they always called her when they did. No telling what it was cut with.”

  “The Drum?”

  “Drumchapel, where I grew up.”

  “Was it an overdose?”

  “I wish it had been as peaceful as that. No. Jake had a filthy little council flat. Filthy. She left me in the sitting room and they went in the bedroom. I don’t know what happened, but I heard him shouting, and then thumps, and Moira started screaming. I wanted to run away, but I was too scared to even move.” She was silent. Peter didn’t speak, so she continued.

  “Then it got quiet, and after a few minutes, I went to the bedroom door. He was sitting on the floor next to the bed. She was lying on the bed with a pillow over her face. I ran out of the flat. A woman on the landing stopped me and called the police. Jake got fifteen years, but he died in prison.”

  “And you’ve paid for it since then.” Peter offered the teapot.

  Elaine covered her cup with her hand. “My dad said I had let it happen. He said I was supposed to scream and run for help. That if I had, Moira wouldn’t have died. A few years later, he said that he forgave me, but I don’t think he ever did. For the rest of his life, I could see that look in his eyes, usually at holidays. He died sixteen years ago, after I became a cop.”

  “He stayed bitter, then?”

  “Right. I don’t think he ever let go of it.”

  “And you?”

  She swirled the tea leaves in her cup. “I’m okay.”

  FORTY

  Liz had stuffed the last pair of jeans into a suitcase when her mobile rang. She pulled it from her purse and answered without looking, thinking it was Bull. It wasn’t.

  A shaky female voice asked for her by name. “Detective Constable Liz Barker?”

  The voice sounded familiar, but Liz couldn’t place it. “Who is speaking?”

  “This is Ximena Abaroa. You left me your card, remember?” The young prostitute almost whispered. “You asked me to call you if the boss came here. He did.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “No. He was here and he hit me. He left, but he said he was coming back. I’m alone. I don’t know where to go. Can you help?”

  Liz thought for a moment. The woman sounded fearful. “It will take me about half an hour to get there. Leave the house and wait for me on the street. Try to stay out of sight. Either I or another police officer will be there to pick you up. If you see a police car, stand in the street and wave it down. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Leave the house and look for a police car.”

  “Right. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I promise.” Liz punched a speed-dial button.

  Elaine answered on the second ring. “This is Hope. Liz? Where are you? Are you at your hotel yet?”

  “No. Bull will take me as soon as he gets here. I got a call from Ximena, from the brothel. She said that Nilo had been there and had beaten her. He left, but he’ll be back later. She wants us to pick her up.”

  “Right. You and Bull meet me there. I’m on my way.”

  Liz rang off. Where the hell was Bull? She glanced at the time on her mobile. He should be here, unless he had been delayed for some reason. To save time, she could meet him next to the street. She grabbed her coat and purse and headed for the door. As she turned the lock, the door slammed against her with a force that drove her into the sitting room and tumbled her over the back of the sofa. Before she could regain her feet, a fist slammed into her midsection, forcing her breath from her. She bent in agony, and a blow to her back crumpled her to her knees. A third blow to the side of her head stunned her, and she collapsed sideways on the floor.

  Inside her brain, the world was turning over. A roaring sound filled her ears. She waited for another blow, but it didn’t come. She struggled to all fours, but a weight on her hips drove her facedown to the floor. She felt her arms being forced behind her back. She tried to rise, but a huge hand slammed her head into the floor and her world went black.

  Sounds filtered through her ears, growing closer, louder—crashing, banging, grunts, breaking glass. She couldn’t move her arms, so she wriggled to a sitting position in time to see Bull throw a large man across the room into the wall. Instead of retaliating, the man spun around and rushed out the open door. She heard Bull’s voice and felt his huge, strong arms around her.

  “Sweetheart! Can you hear me?”

  Liz nodded. “I . . . can’t move.” She felt him tugging at her arms and then her wrists were free. Bull’s face was in front of her. Blood ran from his nose and from a cut over his right eye. She tried to speak but could not form sentences.

  “Elaine . . . the women . . . go . . .”

  “Elaine? The women? What do you mean?” He said more, but his voice was distant and distorted. Liz told him to stop mumbling, but her voice didn’t sound right either. Someone said an ambulance would take too long. Now he was carrying her, placing her in a car. She didn’t feel this was right. She needed to tell Bull. They had to help Elaine.

  Liz fel
t as if she couldn’t breathe. She needed time to think. She found the switch that opened the window and gulped in the cold air. Finally she could speak.

  “Stop the car and let me think.” Liz scrabbled to find the seatbelt release. She pushed the button and she was free.

  “No!” Bull shouted. “We’re going to the hospital! What are you doing?” He pulled the car to the curb and reached over to fasten her seatbelt.

  Now or never. She reached up and shoved him back, then held her hands out to make him stay away. The cold air and urgency helped her thoughts clear.

  “No! Listen to me!” She took a deep breath, then another. “Nilo is at the brothel. Elaine’s on her way there. She was calling for backup. We have to go.”

  “I need to get you to a doctor. She knows to wait for backup.”

  “No! She’s our guv. My friend. Your friend! I said I would meet her there. If you won’t take me, I’ll get out! Let me out!” She felt like her head would split open.

  Bull’s voice was calmer. “All right. Please. All right. Put your hands down and let me fasten your seatbelt. We’ll go make sure Elaine’s all right. Then it’s to the hospital with you. No arguments.” He put the car into gear. “Do you have your phone? We need to call in.”

  Her fury had passed. She felt the pockets of her jeans. “No. It’s still at the flat. Give me yours.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket. It was bent, and the screen had been shattered in the fight.

  * * *

  Jenkins followed Nilo aimlessly through East London for much of the evening. Finally the kid turned onto a sleazy street lined with what appeared to be crack houses or twenty-pound knocking shops. It was hard to tell which was which, but it looked familiar.

  Ah, Jenkins thought, why is the kid back here? What’s he doing that I can use against him?

  Nilo parked, got out of the crappy Fiesta, and entered one of the less derelict houses. Jenkins found a vantage point about a hundred meters away and parked. From the athletic bag on the seat next to him, he pulled out his night vision binoculars, a cello-wrapped sandwich, an apple, and a water bottle. He ate and watched. Five minutes passed and another car cruised by the house. Jenkins slid lower in the seat and watched it pull onto the opposite pavement. A thug got out of the car, a real goon. Over six feet, probably fifteen stone of muscle. No one would complain to him about parking on the pavement. Lights flashed and an alarm bleeped as Goon locked the car and strolled to the same house Nilo had entered. They must have some dollies in there. He settled down to wait.