Her tone suggests she doesn’t like the police. I shake my head. ‘I heard that.’
‘I understand they need to investigate what happened to Kate, of course, but he’d just lost her. Seems cruel to put him through an interrogation.’
I edge towards the front door. I need to leave before she wonders how I got access to the building without Mart to let me in. ‘I should—’
‘It’s a terrible thing, though. And I must have been right here, in my home, when it happened. I dread to think what that poor girl went through.’
I need to leave, but this woman knew the victim. It’s an opportunity I can’t miss. ‘You’re friends with Kate and Mart?’
She laughs. ‘Don’t sound so surprised, I’m not that old! They moved in here just after I lost my husband. Kate was such a sweetheart, checking in on me to make sure I was OK. Mart does any odd jobs I’ve got. I mean, he needs a bit of nagging sometimes, but he’s a good lad.’
‘So you don’t think he’s involved?’
Her expression darkens. ‘Of course not.’
‘But the police seem to have him as a suspect. I don’t understand.’
‘Good job I didn’t tell them what I saw, then,’ she mutters.
‘What you saw?’
‘I want to mention it to Mart, though if he’s gone away, I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. Yesterday, on my way in after the bingo, I saw a man going into Kate and Mart’s flat. It was just as I was unlocking my door, and he was on the landing below so I didn’t get a proper look. He looked a bit like Mart: slim, wearing those tight jeans he likes, but he had his back to me and his hoodie up so it’s hard to tell.’
If it wasn’t Mart, it could be she’d seen the Lover. ‘What time was it?’
She thinks for a moment. ‘Well, I left the bingo at eight, it wasn’t my night, so I must have got back here about quarter to nine.’ She shakes her head. ‘At the time I thought it was Mart. I said good evening, but he didn’t respond. It was only this morning, after hearing the terrible news about dear Kate, I realised Mart would have normally been at work at that time.’
I clutch the carrier bag in my hand tighter. ‘But you haven’t told the police?’
‘I can’t really tell them anything. It was a man in a hoodie, that’s all I saw.’ She lowers her voice. ‘After the way they treated my son Duncan when he got into a bit of bother, I don’t really trust them anyway.’
I nod. I know that feeling. I learnt that lesson the hard way too.
The police are rotten, right to the core.
19
DOM
I’ll make you dinner, Chrissie had said, we’ll have a few drinks. You can relax. You need a break from the case. He’d said OK. Hadn’t wanted to let his sister down. But now he’s here, in the two-bed new build flat near Twickenham that she shares with Darren Harris, Dom feels anything but relaxed.
‘So what’s going on with you?’ Chrissie says, as she slides the pasta bake into the oven. ‘You’ve been so remote these past few weeks.’
‘Sorry, little sis.’ Dom takes a swig of his beer. It’s going down too easy and he knows he needs to pace himself. He puts it down on the wooden countertop. ‘It’s the case. I can’t seem to make any headway. It’s driving me nuts.’
‘You always let your cases become all-consuming. Just like Dad.’
Dom nods. Their dad had been Fraud Squad. He’d worked cases until two weeks before he died. Bowel cancer, diagnosed too late. ‘I always wanted to be just like him.’
Chrissie tucks the blue-striped oven gloves away. ‘And you are. But sometimes you need to look up from the case you’re working and remember there are other things, good things, in your life.’
Dom knows she’s right. When Dad died he’d already started in the Met. He was too caught up in work and his own grief to see the warning signs; how his mum had taken to her bed, how there was never any fresh food in the house. Three weeks later, Mum was dead; officially it was suicide, a razor in the bath. In reality, Dom knew she’d died from a broken heart.
Chrissie was the one who found her. The shock turned her into a full-on wild child. When a video surfaced of her having sex with a group of men three times her age in the toilets of a seedy club, Dom was shocked out of his own grief. The pubs and clubs where he used to drink became places he’d trawl to find Chrissie if she didn’t come home. The low-rent drug dealers he’d bust in his job became the first people he’d call if the school phoned to say she’d missed registration. He cooked, cleaned and put his own love life on hold while he devoted himself to saving his little sister. It wasn’t easy, but he got Chrissie back. Unfortunately she was already pregnant by then.
‘Dom?’ Chrissie flaps a dishcloth at him. ‘Don’t go zoning out on me.’
He rubs his eyes. ‘I’m just tired. Sorry.’
‘You’re working too hard.’ Chrissie uses the cloth to wipe down a chopping board. ‘It’s not healthy. You need some balance.’
Dom doesn’t meet her eye. ‘I can’t let him do it again.’
Chrissie brushes away a stray curl that’s flopped over her eyes. Tilts her head to one side. ‘You sure it’s just the case? Nothing else going on?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘So how’s the secret romance going?’
Dom doesn’t say anything. He grabs for his beer. Drains it. Feels worse.
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’ Chrissie puts her hand on his arm. ‘When?’
‘A few weeks ago.’
‘Did she—’
‘Mum, I need to do my story,’ Robbie, Chrissie’s son and Dom’s godson, shouts from his bedroom. ‘The bean one.’
‘Coming,’ Chrissie shouts to Robbie. She gives Dom her serious look. Squeezes his arm. ‘Don’t think you’re getting off this easy. When Robbie’s asleep we’re going to talk about this more. And don’t shake your head. You’ll just bottle everything up otherwise.’
Dom knows he won’t tell her about Therese, but he smiles anyway. She’s come a long way from the teenage tearaway that used to drive him crazy. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
Chrissie gives him a half-smile and shakes her head. ‘Don’t get all gushy on me, bro. Just turn up a little more often.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘That’s all I ask.’
Dom grips his beer tighter. Through the thin wall he can hear Chrissie reading to Robbie – Jack and the Beanstalk – her voice rising and falling as she adopts different accents for each character. Dom can hear Robbie laughing. Here in the lounge the atmosphere is very different.
Darren’s just got home. He sits at a right angle to Dom at the other end of the grey corner sofa. He’s clutching a beer, too, but he’s not drinking it. So far they’ve avoided eye contact. It’s been five weeks since they’ve seen each other. The last time was a few days after the Operation Atlantis raid, when Darren had turned up at Dom’s flat to see how he was doing.
Spaced out on painkillers and bruised from the beating he’d taken, Dom had barely followed the conversation, but he remembered Darren saying Internal Affairs suspected there was a mole, that one of their team had been on the take and that Darren had looked as shifty as fuck. He’d asked Dom who he remembered seeing in the house. Dom said his memory was wrecked and asked Darren what he’d seen, but Darren said he’d never gone inside, never saw the target. Dom had let it go, not pushed Darren further. But even through the fogginess clouding his mind, he couldn’t shake the feeling Darren was hiding something.
Darren clears his throat. ‘Got interviewed by the IPCC today.’
Dom nods. Takes a swig of beer. Doesn’t want to talk about it.
Darren does though. ‘It was really fucking unpleasant.’ He’s picking at the label on his beer, shredding it from the bottle. ‘Three of them roasted me. Holsworth and his henchman, henchwoman.’
Dom listens to Chrissie’s voice next door, trying to work out how far through the story she is; Jack’s climbing up the beanstalk. Dom wishes he could climb a bloody bea
nstalk out of here.
Darren leans towards Dom. His pupils are pinpricks, like he’s high or stressed or both. ‘What happened in there? How did it go to shit? It was supposed to be our moment of triumph.’
Yeah, thinks Dom. It should have been the high point to end the eighteen-month op – arresting the players at the top of the Mohawk gang and disabling a sex trafficking ring operating across the capital. For Dom it was the last hurrah of his secondment south of the river, a chance to gather extra bonus points with the brass before heading back to the MIT in the north. ‘I dunno, mate.’
Darren is staring at him. A muscle above his eye is twitching. ‘Was the intel bad? You were on the inside, haven’t you heard anything?’
All these questions; this was the reason he didn’t want to come round. Dom feels his hands starting to shake. His stomach lurches, and he feels the nausea rising. He doesn’t want to discuss what happened with Harris, but he can still hear Chrissie reading the story next door, not giving any signs of finishing. Putting his beer on the table, he gets up. ‘Just going for a piss, mate.’
In the bathroom he puts the toilet seat down and sits. He’d had no clue they were being set up, and he doesn’t know who by, but he has his suspicions, and that’s what’s making him feel sick. The lavender plug-in air freshener makes the nausea worse. Yanking it from the wall, he rests his head in his hands, blotting out the Nemo bath mat and shower curtain, and tries not to vomit.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters, as the memory of the operation comes flooding back.
It went down at ten; a prearranged meet at a large end-terrace house not far from the power station. Therese set it up, her undercover identity established through months of fieldwork, trust building and witnessing some nasty shit. Dom was with her, acting as her muscle. He’d played the role a good many times over the past eighteen months. It felt almost normal. Almost.
They parked a street away and walked the rest, partly to get a feel for the place, partly to give the rest of the team and their armed response colleagues the chance to get a fix on their position. The location had changed at the last minute, the house a switch-in for the original place, an old warehouse they’d had under surveillance for the previous forty-eight hours. Here they were going in blind.
It was raining. Dom and Therese strode towards the house, brisk enough to look like they knew where they were going, not so fast to make them look nervous. Markus Genk, the head of the Mohawk gang, had a reputation for getting easily spooked. Anyone acting twitchy around him tended to wind up dead in the river. With this guy, appearance was everything.
As they walked, Dom noticed how uneven the pavement was along this stretch. Cracks zigzagged through the slabs making them tilt beneath his feet. He glanced at Therese. Dressed in a black leather jacket, skinny jeans and low-heeled boots, her clothes weren’t so different from how she dressed as DI Weller from the Organised Crime Squad, but she had on more make-up than usual, her lips painted red rather than natural, and her shoulder-length blonde hair was loose rather than tied back.
He remembered their argument the previous night; how she’d wanted to keep things between them casual and he didn’t. She’d refused to talk about it that morning, said the subject was off limits, for now. Instead she’d tried to distract him from thinking about the future. She was good at distracting him. Her hair had tickled across his belly as she’d taken him deep into her mouth and—
‘You ready?’ She stared at him, her green eyes narrowed as though she’d guessed what he’d been thinking.
‘Yep.’
‘So let me do the talking. Usual drill, you’re the help as far as Genk’s concerned. Whatever’s said, let me handle it, OK?’
‘I was at the briefing, Therese, I know—’
‘Good.’ She pointed to an alley on their right. ‘This runs along the back of the houses. The text said to enter that way.’
They turned into the alley at a brisk walk. Taking care to dodge the dog shit and split bin bags spewing rubbish across the path, they strode the last twenty yards to the back gate. Dom tried to look relaxed and in character; tried not to think about last night, when he’d told Therese he loved her and she’d told him she wished he’d not said that. He needed to get his head in the game. From here on in, they had to play their roles just right.
As she lifted the latch, Therese turned to him. A streetlamp a few yards away illuminated her face. She looked serious. Gazing up at him through her thick mascaraed lashes, she said, ‘Keep your mouth shut.’
Meaning: are you ready?
‘Yeah.’ Undercover was all about trust; you lost that, you were screwed. Therese was the lead in the field on this operation, she’d got them this far, Dom knew he should trust her decision. When he opened his mouth to say more Therese had already turned away. She opened the gate and advanced on the house. He followed.
They ascended the steps to the back door in single file. Reaching the top, Dom glanced behind. He saw nothing, but knew that lurking out there in the darkness would be Lindsay and Harris, listening in on the comms channel. The armed response bunch should have eyes and MP5s trained on the building, ready to back them up on Lindsay’s say-so, if it came to that.
He glanced at Therese. Hoped she realised the danger. Genk was one hell of a slippery bastard. Operation Atlantis had got closer to him and his business than any previous attempt. When the team was put together, they’d had to start from scratch. Genk never left survivors.
As if sensing his concern, Therese caught his eye and gave him a brief smile. Then she opened the door and stepped inside. Dom followed.
Therese turned. ‘Shut the door.’
Code for ‘we’re in’.
From the tiny magnetic earpiece nestled deep inside his ear, Dom heard Lindsay say, ‘Acknowledged. Have fun.’
Being sure not to angle his head towards the button mic sewn onto his shirt pocket, Dom said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’
The room was in darkness. The windows had been lined with cardboard, blocking the view and the light. The open door behind them allowed a dim glow from the streetlamp to illuminate the doorway. Beyond that the room was black and silent.
Therese flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.
Dom felt the hairs along the back of his neck rise to attention. Why cut the power if you’re planning a meet after dark?
‘Come on,’ Therese said, switching on a small aluminium torch. ‘This way.’
Dom took a torch from his pocket and turned it on. They advanced through what, in the small discs of light, looked to be a tatty kitchen, and towards a door at the far end. In the silence, each sound seemed magnified: his breath, his heartbeat, their footsteps. As Therese moved to open the door, he put his hand out and stopped her from turning the handle. ‘Let me.’
Code for ‘something’s wrong’.
‘It’s fine.’ She batted his hand away, shoved the door open and stepped forward. ‘Remember your place.’
Meaning: proceed.
He followed. In the gloom he saw a hole-riddled sofa and four mattresses with sheets, unmade. Getting closer, he glimpsed a roll of duct tape and three syringes discarded on the nearest mattress. No sign of Genk or his people.
Dom didn’t like it. He knew Genk would be careful, take precautions, but careful was extra bodies and more guns, not dark rooms and silence. Dark and silence was a set-up.
Therese is wrong. I need to give the amber code word, tell the gang to get prepped.
‘It’s—’
Crack, the pain in the front of his skull was instant, immediately followed by the urge to vomit. His vision blurred. He staggered, off balance, arms spread wide as he tried to regain control. Suddenly Therese seemed a long way from him.
The second attack came from his right. He saw the bat swinging towards him too late. Took the blow to his ribs before he’d a chance to defend himself. Fell left, his torch clattering to the ground. It felt like every ounce of breath had been pushed from him.
Lying prone on the must
y-smelling rug, Dom couldn’t see his attacker. All he could see was Therese up ahead standing silhouetted in the doorway. Behind her was the bright glow of a working bulb. Illuminated in the light was Genk.
Dom coughed, spitting blood. He slid his hand across the dirt-crusted rug, trying to claw his way to Therese. ‘Eclipse,’ he croaked.
Code red. Danger. Send in armed response.
In his earpiece he could hear Lindsay talking crap with another of the team, some shit about a girl. They hadn’t heard him.
Dom’s vision morphed in and out of focus. ‘Eclipse,’ he repeated. ‘Bring the rain.’
Lindsay kept prattling on about the girl’s tits.
They can’t hear me.
A bang on the bathroom door makes him jump. He hears Chrissie’s voice on the other side, ‘Dinner’s up. Come and get it, bro.’
He can’t spend any longer with Harris. He just bloody can’t. He’ll want to keep talking about the investigation, the interview he had and the one that Dom will have tomorrow. He’ll want Dom to tell him it’ll be fine, that it’s routine; that because of what happened to Therese they need to pay due diligence. He’ll keep asking Dom questions.
Dom shakes his head. He won’t tell Harris anything, so there’s nothing he can say that won’t sound trite or total bollocks. All he has are some incomplete memories and a head full of suspicions. Tomorrow Holsworth wants answers – he wants someone to point the finger at. Tomorrow he’ll be asking Dom the questions, and Dom knows he’ll be forced to give up what he knows, even though it’s incomplete.
‘Dom, come on, you been in there ages.’ Chrissie sounds worried. ‘What’s going on?’
He flushes the loo. Unlocks the door and opens it.
She smiles when she sees him, then frowns. ‘You look like shit, bro.’
‘I feel it,’ he says, and it’s the truth. Someone set them up, made the raid fail, and one of them will hang for it. If that’s Darren it’ll kill Chrissie – he’s the first man she’s allowed herself to love since a drug-pushing bastard left her pregnant at fifteen. Darren is the only dad that Robbie, Dom’s godson, has ever known.
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