Blood Red City

by Rod Reynolds

  No one answered. She hammered the button, knowing it would make no difference.

  Then the train pulled in behind her, an overload of noise and light. When the doors opened, she wheeled around and jumped on.

  CHAPTER 28

  Lydia slammed the communal door shut and ran up the stairs. She unlocked the flat and went inside, double-locking the door behind her before turning around and bracing herself against it. After a minute she let herself slide down, drawing her knees to her chest as she hit the floor.

  The flat smelled of clean washing. Chloe’s room was shut, but she could see the clothes horse covered in laundry in the hallway next to the kitchen. It should’ve felt familiar and safe. The tremors had stopped, but her neck and throat were starting to ache and she felt sick.

  After a few minutes she gathered herself up and went to her bedroom, reaching around the doorway to flick the light on before she went inside. She sat on the bed still wearing her bag across her chest. What the fuck is happening?

  Her thoughts jumped and short-circuited. The woman: not Paulina Dobriska. All their communication had been through Facebook, so these people must have control of her account. The man who’d grabbed her – one of the ones from the video? She couldn’t picture him now, but her gut feeling was that he’d been more heavyset.

  Then there was the second man. On the face of it he’d saved her life. But nothing about that made sense. What was more plausible – that a white knight had appeared out of thin air, or that he was part of it? Was she supposed to walk off with him and spill her guts? The whole thing was too insane to process.

  No. He said he’d seen the video. She’d seen him talking on his phone when she was waiting at the station entrance. He looked like a lawyer or an accountant, or any other commuter heading home in a suit. But he said he’d seen the video. No coincidence – he’d been there because of her. Watching her.

  What else did he say? Had he used her name? He’d said they should talk, she remembered that. Where did he go after? No, she hadn’t seen. All of it so fast, memories dissipating like steam.

  She took her bag off and let it fall to the floor, turning the light out before she went to the window. She stood to one side to crack the blind and look out. Past midnight. There were cars on the street but the pavements were empty. She rolled away to lean against the wall and took out her phone, but didn’t look at it at first, thinking about the police again.

  When she lifted it up, the DM was still on the ruined screen. A new tremor rattled from her chest down her arms as she typed her reply:

  GO FUCK YOURSELF

  Stringer ran the registration from the black Saab through a website and got the result he expected: nothing found. He had a contact who could get a proper DVLA check done, but it would take time and money to confirm the obvious: whoever they were, they were smart enough to use false plates.

  He stood at his kitchen counter, the white-blue glare from the laptop the only light in the room. He toggled to another window, Milos’ CCTV cache still downloading. The dialogue box said forty-three minutes to go – and had done for the last five.

  He stepped away from the screen. Almost 2.00 a.m. He walked to the balcony doors that looked out over London. The sky was a grey-purple, light pollution ensuring the darkness was never complete over the city. His thumbs were poised over his phone, still hedging over how to word his approach. He had a draft email in the works, and he started typing again.

  I was there tonight – the guy in the suit. I have seen the video. I’m no threat to you, and I don’t know the people who attacked you. I realise you must be shaken but we can help each other if you’ll talk to me. Don’t stay on your own tonight if you can avoid it.

  He pressed send and watched it fly off to Lydia Wright’s work email address. He had a feeling she’d be awake still, unless the adrenaline had burned her out completely.

  He wanted to warn her about her dead former colleague, but there was no way he could say anything without looking guilty. The last thing he could afford now was to spook her any worse. When he’d got clear of the scene in Kentish Town, he’d used a throwaway to call the police to report a disturbance at Hodgson’s address. He reasoned now that he’d done all he could.

  What it meant was another matter.

  He went back to the laptop and started the protocol to access Jamie Tan’s Outlook calendar – but a red cross flashed up on the screen, Access Denied. That was new; if Tan’s bosses at the bank had locked it down, the police must have been in touch. That boxed him in more than he already was.

  He opened up the archive version he’d downloaded to his hard drive. Tan had been a frequent traveller for business, mostly to Frankfurt, but also Paris, Moscow and Cyprus. He’d never shadowed him on one of those trips because there’d been no need – Tan provided plenty of material to work with on these shores, in the form of a fierce recreational cocaine habit. He’d found out about it early on. Far from unique among his colleagues, Tan’s biggest problem was that he was generous with it – doling it out with gusto. Even though he rarely accepted money for his generosity, it was enough to fit him up for possession with intent to supply, which would cost him his Financial Conduct Authority licence, and therefore his job – especially if someone with Suslov’s influence was the one dangling it over him. For any normal coercion sting that would’ve been sufficient, but Suslov’s instructions at the outset had been explicit: ‘I want him on strings’. So Stringer kept watching until he was told otherwise, setting up to ensure he had everything he could on Tan.

  Somewhere in it all, he’d lost his way.

  What he discovered was that Jamie Tan had a secret second life, one he kept hidden from his colleagues and friends: he volunteered at two homeless shelters, sometimes working through the night and going straight to the office the next morning, only stopping long enough to shower at the gym. He worked with a charity in Hackney, ReachOut, mentoring underprivileged kids in maths. He gave money to Christian Aid with increasing zeal, almost as if he sensed his time was short. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he put fake lunch meetings in his work calendar, a cover so he could slip into a nearby church to pray. Stringer followed him inside once. He sat in a pew at the back and watched Tan spend forty minutes on his knees, hands clasped and head bowed. On his way out, he lit half a dozen candles. Whatever Tan was doing, the toll it was taking on his conscience was plain to see.

  It was a few days later that Stringer had fucked up. His own conscience the cause. He still had no explanations for it.

  He’d fronted him after an all-night surveillance session. Blaming it on no sleep was a cop out, but there was no doubt his judgement had been impaired. He’d waited for Tan to come out of his office, then walked up to him in silence, his phone held out in front of him. The picture onscreen showed Tan in a bar handing a baggie of white powder to a colleague, neither man making any attempt to conceal what they were doing. Stringer said nothing at first, waiting until he was sure Tan recognised what the image showed.

  ‘I’ve got hundreds more like it, enough to destroy you. The people I work for are coming for you. I don’t know if you deserve it. Drop everything and disappear.’ He walked away before Tan had a chance to say a word.

  It didn’t make him feel any better, then or now. Rash actions never did. And he’d fucked up Andriy Suslov’s plans, and put his own neck on the block in the process.

  His phone buzzed on the counter, rattling itself in a quarter-circle. It was a reply from Lydia Wright, the message so short it drew his eye immediately.

  So talk.

  CHAPTER 29

  Midday in Soho Square, clear blue skies all over the city. Lydia found a bench half in the shade and sat down, sweltering from being on the Tube and the short walk after. Familiar streets that looked strange now, the heat blasting off the pavements.

  The lunchtime rush was still gearing up, but there were pockets of people on the grass already, a mix of creative types in ripped jeans and T-shirts, and the office set melting
in shirts with open collars. A man and a woman were playing ping-pong on the outdoor table.

  He appeared from the Oxford Street side of the square, and she took a deep breath when she spotted him, as if she could crush the butterflies in her stomach. She watched him move cautiously into the square, scanning around for her. He was wearing the same suit as the night before, or one that looked the same, enough to make her wonder if he’d been home in the hours between. He was tall with salt-and-pepper hair worn short but growing out. Looking at him now, he looked too slight to have taken down the bastard that grabbed her, even with a weapon.

  He noticed her from a way off and nodded as he approached. She kept her eyes on his, projecting a confidence that had nothing in common with how she felt inside.

  He stopped in front of her. ‘Can I sit?’

  She nodded.

  He lowered himself onto the far end of the bench, looking around the square. ‘Were you hurt last night?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  He adjusted his watch strap. It drew her eyes, and she got a glimpse of heavy scarring around his wrist. ‘My name’s Michael.’

  ‘Why were you following me?’

  ‘Let’s start with the video.’

  ‘No, let’s start where I fucking say we start. I saw you at the station, tell me why you were following me.’

  He laid his hands on his legs, his fingers jumping. ‘I understand your anger.’

  ‘You understand? You condescending prick.’

  ‘Look, we’re both here because of the video. We don’t need each other’s life story.’

  ‘And what do you know about it?’

  He looked away a moment, then to the front again, squinting in the sunlight. ‘The man who was attacked is an associate of mine.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I didn’t come to share information. I want to suggest that your way forward now is to leave this alone.’

  ‘Who were those two last night?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake…’ She put one knee on the bench so she could turn towards him. ‘You said we can help each other, so stop wasting my time or I walk.’

  ‘We can. The victim’s wife has authorised me to compensate you for your work so far. She’d like to ensure, though, there’ll be no future publicity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can provide you with a sum of ten thousand pounds. It’ll be passed to you in various forms to make it legitimate. It won’t tie back to anyone.’

  She stared at the side of his face. ‘“Legitimate”.’

  ‘I should add that this conversation is off the record.’

  ‘So it’s ten grand to look the other way.’

  ‘They’re your words.’

  She watched the ping-pong match, tracking the ball’s movement back and forth. The players were languid in the heat, laughing and jokingly blaming each other every time they had to chase down a loose shot. ‘What were you even doing, following me?’

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘Who were you expecting to meet last night?’

  She made a sound under her breath. ‘Yeah, I thought that might be it.’

  ‘The woman who took the video, right? That’s what you thought.’

  She didn’t answer. A group of teenagers passed them, and she eyed them as they spread a picnic blanket out on the grass.

  ‘Did you go to the police?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I told them about you.’

  ‘Good.’

  She snapped her head around to look at him, wrong-footed at seeing no sign he was rattled. ‘You’ll talk to them then?’

  ‘I couldn’t offer anything useful.’

  ‘You saw the man who tried to strangle me. That might be useful.’

  ‘I didn’t get a good look at him.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘You’d be mistaken if you think I’m afraid of their scrutiny.’

  ‘Really? I’m not even convinced you weren’t with those two last night.’

  ‘I already told you I wasn’t.’

  ‘Counts for fuck all.’

  ‘If you really believed that you’d have the police here now.’

  There was no emotion in his voice, in his face, in his stillness. Whatever parts he was lying about, his confidence underpinned the façade, as if all of it was truth in his world.

  ‘So what is it you do when you’re not offering bribes to journalists?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I watch their backs.’

  ‘Oh, do not even … I appreciate what you did last night, but don’t for a second pretend you were there with good intentions.’

  ‘I was there; isn’t that what counts?’

  He spoke quietly apart from the last word ‘counts’, coming out loud and abrupt, as if it was a thought he hadn’t meant to articulate. He closed his eyes and she watched him a second longer, but when he opened them again, his face was blank. ‘Are they assigning someone to protect you?’

  She stared at him, trying to gauge the motivation behind the question. She couldn’t, so she ignored it. ‘Let’s pretend for a second I believe the bit about the guy in the video being your client. Is he dead?’

  He gave no answer – the one she expected.

  ‘Because, missing or dead, surely his wife would want as much publicity as possible. To find him, and/or his assailants.’

  ‘Privacy is important to her.’

  ‘More than justice?’ Her hand was laid across the back of the bench and she raised her index finger to point at him. ‘This fiction is threadbare. Who’s really paying you?’

  ‘The police are investigating what happened to my client. His family don’t want it in the papers. Last night should’ve been a wake-up call – let the professionals do their jobs.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  He turned to face her for the first time. ‘If I wanted you cowed, I wouldn’t have intervened.’

  His voice was calm but hard, the implication enough to make her look away.

  ‘Give me the name and take the money,’ he said. ‘You’ve done enough.’

  She slipped her leg off the bench and stood up. ‘I’ll make it clear: you can’t buy me off, and you can’t scare me.’

  He looked up at her, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘What happens when they come again? I won’t be there next time.’

  ‘I’m sending the police your way. If you feel like helping for real, get in touch.’

  She left him alone on the bench, scorched by the sunlight.

  Stringer let her walk away across the square, shimmering in the heat haze. He waited out an impulse to get to his feet and go after her. Except there was no way to reason with her without exposing his own lies.

  Her turning down the money was no surprise. Nor was her evident rage. What he hadn’t counted on was how resolute she’d be. In that sense, the test had done its job – a gauge of where her head was at. But it hadn’t thrown up the result he wanted. He’d gone there hoping to find she was just scared enough that the money would make her drop it. A final nudge to move her out of harm’s way. Instead it might have backfired.

  And, besides that, he’d given up too much. The fuck was he doing trying to justify himself to her? Where did that come from? He got up and exited the square in the opposite direction, even though it meant taking a circuitous route back to the Tube.

  He rode the Underground back to Highbury and walked from there, his shirt sticking to his back. Holloway Road was a canyon filled with exhaust fumes. The fug clung to him and he could smell it on himself when he took the lift up to his flat.

  The laptop was open on the counter. He stripped his jacket off and threw it on the couch, then went to get a drink of water. He Googled for mention of a body found in a flat in Kentish Town, then again for Tammy Hodgson’s name. Nothing new displayed. Then he carried the computer to his desk and started reviewing the CCTV footage again.

  The files were broken down by camera, an
d again by time. He picked up with the feed he’d started that morning – the one looking back from the north end of the northbound platform at Woodside Park. He ran it at double speed, trains pulling in and out on fast-forward, passengers spilling off like something from a music video. Nothing caught his eye. It was the first of seven viewpoints Milos had supplied. But the time stamp showed the footage had only got as far as 10.00 p.m.; he didn’t expect Tan to show up until nearer eleven on the night he died.

  The silent monotony sapped him. His thoughts drifted. Lydia Wright – rattled but defiant. Her refusal to back down torqued his sense of guilt. He thought about the man who’d broken into her flat, and if he’d come again. His own words about the night before echoed in his mind: ‘I was there, isn’t that what counts?’ Hearing them for how hollow they were – no points for effort. If something happened to her now, he was just as culpable.

  He sat up as a figure blurred across the screen. He scrolled back, played it again at normal speed. The train pulled in and a woman burst off it. She ran along the platform, then disappeared up the staircase leading to the footbridge over the tracks. He bent close, about to watch again when another set of figures came off the train. Three men, the one in the middle being propped up by the other two. They had his arms around their shoulders, so he looked like a drunk being carried by his mates, his feet dragging along the ground. Stringer paused it and although the faces were indistinct, there was no mistaking Jamie Tan. One of the other two pointed towards where the woman had run, then they walked Tan across the platform and out of the gate he’d seen. He checked the time stamp: 22.47.

  He rewound it to watch one more time. The woman ran off the train. There was something in her hand, looked like her phone. She disappeared, then the three men stepped off. The light caught Tan’s face and he saw the duct tape was gone from his mouth.

  He minimised the window and clicked on the next few files, checking each viewpoint until he found one that covered the exit gate. He scrolled through but the file ended at 21.11, so he opened the next and then the next until he found one covering 22.47. He maximised it again and kept his mouse hovering over the pause button, waiting for the three men to cross its field of vision.