The Black Shepherd

by Steven Savile

  He wouldn’t have recognized the driver but for the fact she said, ‘Get in.’ Out of her work wear she was a different person. He felt seriously underdressed in his jeans, shirt with plain white T-shirt underneath. She gave him the once over as he clipped his seat belt into place, but made no comment.

  ‘So, who are we going to meet?’

  ‘You can call him Ivan.’ Though she pronounced it Ee-vahn, he knew it was going to come out of his own mouth sounding much more British.

  ‘And that sounds like made-up name if ever I heard one.’

  ‘He only agreed to meet you on the condition you were not told his real name.’

  ‘But knows that I’m a cop?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘And he knows you’re a cop, too?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘So what’s the difference?’

  ‘He trusts me. He doesn’t know you. And given the treatment some of his fellow Russians who’ve spoken out against their countrymen over the last few years have received, I think we can forgive him, don’t you?’

  ‘Former KGB,’ Peter said. It wasn’t a question. It was a logical leap, and he wasn’t entirely sure what had tipped him off to it, but he was sure that’s what they were dealing with. It would explain a lot, including Mirjam’s role. She didn’t confirm or deny, which was confirmation enough for him.

  The KGB itself might no longer exist, at least in name if not nature, but there were plenty of former officers who had chosen to live out their lives away from the country they had once pledged themselves to when the alternatives included Novichok.

  ‘So, how much have you told him about me?’

  ‘Just that you work for a cross-border force, and that the scope of your investigations is on stuff that moves from country to country. He’s smart enough to work out what that means. He said he couldn’t understand why Europe would want to repeat the mistakes of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ha. No, not really,’ she smiled. ‘He said it was his duty to stop girls from his country being exploited by the West. I think you should hear the rest from his mouth. And don’t worry, his English is better than yours.’

  Peter smiled at that. ‘Are you sure you aren’t related to Laura?’ Before she could answer, he asked a second more realistic question, ‘Where are we meeting him?’

  ‘There’s a little Italian I know.’

  ‘Is it Frankie Dettori?’

  She turned to look at him, brow furrowed in confusion, not getting the joke.

  ‘Close?’

  ‘Almost there,’ she said.

  Peter was sure that he caught a glimpse of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

  SEVENTEEN

  Karl Tamm lived in a bedsit in the worst part of the worst part of town. Everyone around him was looking to get out. Not Karl. This place was a little slice of heaven for him.

  Kask hadn’t needed to look up his address, he had been there often enough on official business.

  Tamm had been out of prison for almost a year, but all that meant was that he’d had a year of giving them the runaround. The guy was a serial recidivist. He had a taste for girls he couldn’t have. Back in the old country he would have been gelded like a horse, but Kask wasn’t so sure the guy needed his balls to fulfil the kind of sick cravings he had.

  Estonia didn’t maintain a sex-offenders register, but that didn’t mean they didn’t monitor the activities of ex-cons who’d served their time if they’d done a certain kind of crime.

  Anything else would have been wilfully naive. They weren’t stupid. They knew what he had was a sickness and that he wasn’t about to suddenly be healed. There were no miracle cures for people like Karl Tamm.

  He was always one of the first they pulled in when a violent sexual assault took place.

  Kask was convinced Tamm was on the hook for the deaths of two women they hadn’t been able to prove – and almost certainly others they didn’t know about yet. Which was the whole reason for his visit now.

  Tamm’s battered yellow Volvo was parked up kerbside, a few metres away from Kask’s rear window. It had a thicker layer of rust than the last time he had seen it, he was sure.

  Kask waited in his own car.

  He took the time to carefully put on a pair of latex gloves from the box he kept in the glove compartment for crime-scene investigations. Sooner or later Tamm would leave his place. He wasn’t going to stay in there all night. He needed to eat, and Tamm didn’t cook. He was a takeaway junkie – though more often than not it wasn’t food he brought home with him. But then, this part of town had the broadest menu when it came to meat. Ten minutes in either direction he’d have his choice of Asian, Scandinavian, Russian, or local whores. Ladyboys and twinks cost a little more, because they were rarer. Paying someone to piss on them or fist them or whatever his kink was bought their discretion, too. None of the working girls complained about him, even if he liked the rough stuff. Last time, Kask had searched his computer and found all sorts of torture porn, the kind of stuff that made the gut churn. As far as Kask was concerned some of the stuff was one step from snuff, but it obviously did it for Tamm.

  The other thing about Karl Tamm was that he liked his mementos.

  That had stuck in Kask’s mind.

  He sat back, listening to the music. He caught words like sulphur, vultures, and the dark star of his heart in the lyrics and couldn’t be sure if the promise of ‘something good’ that the singer promised him wasn’t actually his own mind fracturing to create some sort of black personality to goad him on.

  The song changed, and changed again, before Tamm came down the steps to the street. At the bottom, he turned away from Kask’s car, showing him his back. He wasn’t sure Tamm would have recognized him, but fate removed that concern.

  He didn’t have long, but he didn’t need long.

  Kask watched the brute of a man turn the corner at the end of the street and gave it a silent count of thirty before he got out of the car. He crossed the road, heading for Tamm’s building.

  The man lived on the top floor, which increased the risk of him being seen going up and down the stairs, but that couldn’t be helped. The thing about places like this was that people kept to themselves. No one was big on eye contact. They didn’t tend to know their neighbours. It made sense. They all had their secrets and they wanted to keep them secret. Friendships almost always resulted in saying something you regretted in an unguarded moment – and with someone like Karl Tamm that regret meant cleaning up the mess. It was just easier if strangers kept away from their own door. They weren’t going to press their eyes up to the fish-eye lens of the peephole to spy on whoever was coming and going. No one wanted to be a witness.

  Kask kept his head down as he entered, heading straight up the stairs, taking the risers two and three at a time, like he belonged. No hesitation. No looking at the names on the board downstairs to work out who lived where.

  He heard someone moving about on the second landing.

  He hesitated, missing half a step, then heard a door slam and carried on up.

  There were only two doors on the top floor.

  Kask slipped a bump key off his wallet and was inside in a moment. That was the thing about places like this, they weren’t locked up tight. Most of the landlords fitted cheap locks because they were easy to break into without causing any damage, so when their tenants defaulted on their rent, getting them out was less hassle. The only people who fitted decent locks were the drug dealers, which always amused Kask because anyone breaking into their places was signing their own death warrant.

  He pushed open the door and slipped inside, closing it softly behind him.

  It had only been seven weeks since he’d last searched the room, and very little had changed because Karl Tamm had very little. Even so, his proclivity for collecting pretty much guaranteed there would be something tucked away here that would link him to another crime. It was habitual. There was no way he wasn’t doing what he’
d always done. Kask didn’t care. He’d care later, when he came back following the leads he was laying down. And he’d enjoy himself when he did, because people like Karl Tamm deserved all the shit the world threw at them.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and nodded.

  He was a good man. Getting Tamm off the streets was good for everyone.

  Dim amber streetlight filtered in through the grubby windows. He didn’t need to turn on a light. He hadn’t come to steal anything.

  He saw what he needed: a place to hide something.

  It didn’t have to be a good place, just somewhere Tamm wouldn’t look for a few hours.

  He squatted down in front of a battered chest of drawers, pulling the bottom drawer all the way out and putting it down on the floor beside him.

  He felt into the void beneath it, hoping he’d stumbled upon Tamm’s secret place, but there was nothing in there. It didn’t matter. He pulled the polythene evidence bag from his pocket and upended it, emptying its contents into the bottom of the chest before sliding the drawer back into place.

  Kask was done here.

  It would be more than enough to convince any judge that Karl Tamm had killed Annja Rosen.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘So you’re our fresh blood?’ the man said.

  ‘I guess I am,’ Frankie agreed. His personality was strangely compelling. She’d been in his orbit less than a minute, but already she had an idea of what it was that drew the lost and lonely to him. And he was smooth. Slick. She doubted they’d have a clue they were being manipulated. They taught this kind of stuff back in the academy for use in interrogation; it was harder to walk away from something you had agreed to than it was to say no in the first place, so the skill was in getting that first yes out of someone. It was how a lot of places, like gyms, recruited and held on to their members. It was a running gag how tough it was to leave a gym, but the same could be said for everything from mobile-phone contracts to satellite TV. They all used specialist customer-retention teams. It was almost cult-like in how they clung on to the not-so faithful.

  She wasn’t sure of his accent, but then it wasn’t always easy when it wasn’t your mother tongue. American? Maybe. Canadian? He’d addressed her in English rather than Swedish, and she knew she’d told Tasha she was Swedish, so despite being an accomplished polyglot he’d chosen the language he was most comfortable with. Was that telling?

  ‘That’s right. Ceska Volk.’

  ‘John,’ he said. ‘It really is a pleasure to meet you, Ceska. And it looks like you’re fitting in well.’

  ‘Just helping out,’ she said. ‘It’s good that there’s something like this around to help people. You can see how much we need it.’ By we she meant the lost. ‘And it’s so good that you’re helping to fund them.’

  ‘I agree. And I’m really glad you think so. I like to come down here and visit Tasha, to see her working on the front line, to see how much of a difference she makes every single night. She’s a special lady.’

  ‘She is,’ Frankie smiled.

  The more he spoke the more she was convinced that John was Canadian rather than American. The differences were subtle without him hitting any of those obvious tells like ‘aboot’, which were a dead giveaway.

  ‘May I ask you something, Ceska?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Had you heard of One World before you met Tasha?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, I’m sorry.’

  He waved away her apology. ‘Oh, don’t apologize, Ceska.’ She noted the repeated use of her fake name, like a hostage negotiator trying to form a bond between them. He was good. ‘Honestly. We don’t go out of our way to seek publicity. We aren’t doing this for thanks or praise. The work is enough.’

  Frankie had to stop herself from glancing at the stack of leaflets that Tasha had put on the table a few minutes before he arrived. She’d taken the time to read one, not surprised to find that it extolled the good work that One World did not only in Estonia but in many other countries around the Baltic States, along with vague but impressive-sounding statistics from the African nations.

  ‘Well, you know, maybe you should,’ she said. ‘If people knew how much you were doing it might shame the authorities into action.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ John said, holding her gaze for a moment. His piranha-smile even wider than it had been just a moment before. ‘You might have a point there, Ceska. It’s certainly food for thought. Tasha is right, you’re exactly the kind of person we need to help us make a difference here.’ He was nodding as he spoke, like he was having the best idea. ‘I really do hope we’ll see you again. There is so much that needs to be done. We run training camps to help our volunteers fulfil their potential. I have no idea if you’d be interested in that kind of thing, but if you think you might be, I’m sure Tasha will be able to tell you about them.’

  He shook her hand again and moved on to speak to a couple of the men still at their table drying out.

  One thing about John speaking to her in English, given the seeming communication barrier between her and the smokers, was she was almost sure they had no idea what she’d just been offered.

  Through the window, she saw a homeless woman, popsocks down around her swollen ankles, approaching the soup kitchen. She gave John’s driver a withering look as she waddled past him. Frankie remembered her from breakfast and greeted her with a warm smile as she came in through the door. She realized she wasn’t playing a part; she was genuinely glad to see her. She’d made it through the day, and for people like her every day was a win.

  For the next few minutes Frankie was deep in conversation with the woman. She spoke in faltering English and mainly had complaints about the stupid weather, burning up the countryside and drowning them at the same time. Frankie nodded along and almost missed John’s departure. The car was obviously some kind of hybrid, the engine was virtually silent as it was summoned into life.

  She watched him drive away.

  ‘I think he likes you,’ Tasha said as she placed a hand on Frankie’s shoulder.

  ‘Of course he does, look at her, she’s an angel,’ the old woman said, offering a toothy smile. She offered the two smokers a considerably less approving glower as they disappeared for another cigarette.

  ‘That she is,’ Tasha agreed. ‘You can see where she cut her wings off.’ She winked at the old woman as she waddled over to an empty table with her hands cupped around the bowl of thick stew.

  ‘John was right, though. Think about it. There’s a place for you here. And a bed. You could be a real asset. You’ve got a wise head on those shoulders of yours.’

  ‘If I had a wise head do you think I’d be sleeping on the streets?’

  ‘Sweetheart, not having a home doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It’s just circumstance. You see Leon over there? The guy with a ring of hair like a monk? He used to be a university lecturer. Smartest man I’ve ever met. And yet he’s down here eating my soup because without it he’d starve. Sometimes life just takes a wrong turn. A run of bad luck and you end up in freefall. Sometimes we can’t help people. We have two hundred suicides a year in this country, which doesn’t sound a lot for a country, but the reality is we have a relatively small population at 1.3 million people. By population size we’re the 157th largest country in the world, but with a rate of twenty suicides for every 100,000 people we’ve got the seventh highest suicide rate in the world.’

  ‘Jesus …’

  ‘It gets worse when you break it down. Ten per cent of all school children are reported to have suicidal thoughts. Think about it. Ten per cent. That’s the future of this country, and ten per cent of them don’t want to be here tomorrow. A third of all girls in Estonia are reported to have mutilated themselves in some fashion. The waiting lines for help are months long. The state can’t help. I just wish there was more we could do.’

  ‘John mentioned a training camp? Is that for counsellors and stuff like that? To help these kids? I’m not a psychologist,’ Frankie said,
hoping she wasn’t pushing too hard, too soon. It was a delicate balancing act between being keen and being natural. They’d expect her to have questions. But it was important she came across as the kind of person they wanted her to be.

  ‘Psychologists know nothing, not really, they’re charlatans. They pretend they can help you by getting you to share your secrets, but they’re not helping anyone but themselves get rich.’ She said it with surprising vehemence. ‘There’s a place in the forest, we call it the compound, but it’s more like a training camp where you take instruction and get to learn more about what One World does. The Shepherd helps us to truly grasp our full potential and realize the possibilities this life has to offer. I think you’d love it, Ceska. You get to share ideas, talk to people like you, brilliant, vibrant souls, you get to think about what you would do if you could change the world.’

  She resisted the temptation to make a crack about song singing and holding hands. Hanging out with Laura and Peter all the time was having an impact on the way her mind worked. ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘I have. A long time ago.’

  ‘How long do the camps last?’

  ‘A week or so usually. But if they see something special in you, a skill, or talent, you might be chosen to join a second group, for more intensive training.’

  ‘Can I think about it?’

  ‘Of course you can, there’s no hurry. But – and you might want to consider this, but don’t think I’m pushing you – John mentioned that there’s one starting tomorrow. I can ask him if there’s a space if you’re interested?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Tasha said with a smile. ‘It’s not now or never. They run a lot of these retreats. It’s just that if they’re short-handed some of the activities don’t work so well, you know?’

  ‘Can I sleep on it?’

  ‘Of course you can, Ceska. I can give him a call after breakfast if you fancy it. And if not, well, then we can worry about what we’re cooking tomorrow night. It’s all good.’

  Frankie nodded, noticing a few more stragglers shuffling their way towards the door.