Blood Red City

by Rod Reynolds

  Then they appeared. All of them were in profile, Tan’s head bowed and the man furthest from the camera obscured by the other two.

  He froze it with the group in shot and studied the face he could see. The man had close-cropped hair, thick eyebrows and a nose with a big enough ridge to suggest it’d been broken at least once in his life. He was wearing a dark top and dark jeans, and Stringer put his age somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five.

  The CCTV camera had a wide-angle lens that took in one side of the turnaround outside the exit. The three stepped out of shot, but a few seconds later, a black SUV sped around the small roundabout and off towards the main road, disappearing from view before it got there.

  Stringer ran it back, his other hand distorting the laptop screen where he was gripping it so hard. He froze the image with the car in shot, the number plate legible. He typed it into Google but didn’t wait for the result, toggling back to the image and running it back further, to where the three had first appeared. He took out his phone and compared the image to the photo he’d taken of the man in Lydia Wright’s kitchen. But there was no resemblance.

  He jumped back to Google, which was showing a hit on the number plate – basic info: make, model, year. Which meant he could get the rest. Back to the CCTV footage, still frozen on Tan and the two men propping him up. He zoomed in and cropped the image to get a close-up of the man whose face was visible.

  Then he grabbed his phone and car keys and ran to the lift.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lydia sat at a high stool in the corner of the bar, her feet bouncing on the footrest. She laid her phone on the metal counter in front of her, next to her lime and soda, and read the message from Stephen again – Is everything ok? I heard you didn’t turn up last night?

  She hadn’t replied.

  Sam Waterhouse walked in right on the hour. She spied Lydia and made her way over, her expression becoming more serious as she came near. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Rough night.’

  ‘You didn’t have to bring the money in person, I’d have been happy to…’

  ‘It’s fine, I need to speak to you anyway.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This … thing is out of control. Someone tried to snatch me off the street last night.’ She flapped the collar of her blouse to show the bruising on her neck.

  ‘Good god, what happened?’

  Lydia walked her through it, a skim account covering just the basics. She left out meeting with the man in the suit that lunchtime; even as she did it, she wasn’t sure why. Adjusting his watch, the mangled skin on display – the image played out in the back of her mind as she talked.

  Sam took a breath when she was finished and craned her neck, looking away. ‘You could’ve been killed.’

  Lydia stilled her feet. ‘I know. And look at this.’ She showed her the last DM sent to her from Paulina Dobriska’s account.

  Sam handed her the phone back. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Actually…’ She reached into her bag and took out Stephen’s wad of money. ‘I wanted your advice.’

  Sam took it with a nod and tucked it away. ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘They’re coming to interview me this afternoon.’

  ‘Okay.’ She drew the word out.

  ‘At the very least, they need to focus on finding Paulina Dobriska.’

  ‘Sure, of course.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, I think you’ve done the right thing. It just leaves me in an awkward position.’

  Lydia shifted on her stool. ‘They don’t need to know anything about your involvement.’

  ‘I appreciate you saying that.’ She pulled out an electronic cigarette and took a drag, exhaling the vapour behind her and under the counter where the bar staff wouldn’t see. ‘If these people are posing as her, using her Facebook account … When was the last time anyone saw her?’

  ‘In the video, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Not encouraging.’

  ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t talk to the police?’

  ‘No, and I wouldn’t want you to lie to them either. It’s just not a great look if I’ve been asking around about this woman – but that’s for me to deal with.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do, Sam? If she’s alive, she must be in trouble.’

  ‘Tell them what you know.’

  ‘What about this message?’ She tapped her phone screen. ‘Can you get someone to trace the device it was sent from? Get a location? Or what about the CCTV from the station last night…’

  ‘They’ll look into all of that.’

  ‘I’m trying to get a head start.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Sam gathered her bag straps together and stood up. ‘But I really have to take myself out of this equation now.’

  ‘What? I told you, I’ll keep your name out of it.’

  ‘I hope you get this sorted.’

  ‘Sam, please?’

  ‘My best advice is that you be careful. For your own sake.’ She nodded once, as if it was a full stop, and then picked her way around the tables towards the doors.

  Lydia watched her go, the only customer left in the place. She drained the rest of her drink and stared at the bottles of wine in the fridges behind the bar. They looked like a mistake. She picked up her phone and unlocked it, opened up her inbox. The email from ‘Michael’ was already selected. His words were splintered and refracted in the shattered screen, muddled in her head with the ones he’d spoken.

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘Isn’t that what counts?’

  She pressed reply and stared at the blank email. The cursor blinked.

  He’d dropped that massive bastard as easy as anything. No fear in his eyes.

  The image of his mangled skin…

  A nagging refrain at the back of her skull: he saved my fucking life.

  She shook her head and closed it. She opened Twitter instead. Thanks to the Examiner retweet, she had more than two hundred notifications. She started to skim them, her concentration wrecked by thoughts of what to do now. It made her think of Tammy. Underneath the anger lay the feeling that she really needed her guidance. Before she could stop herself, she’d called her number. It went straight to voicemail. She sent her a text: Call me asap.

  The replies to her tweet asking for help to identify the victim in the video were all crap – Why u wanna bone him, come get with me; and Yeah – he used 2 play 4 Chelsea followed by half a dozen crying-with-laughter emojis. She gave up halfway through and clicked on her DMs instead. She kept them open like most of her colleagues, so getting random shit was nothing new. Now was no different – two separate dick pics, and some racist prick rearing up out of the social-media sewer to call her a Chink-loving bitch. But then there was a three-word message from someone she didn’t know. No profile pic.

  All it said: He’s Jamie Tan.

  Stringer called his DVLA contact from the car. The man answered after a couple of rings, saying, ‘Hold on a minute.’ He could hear muffled background sounds, movement, as if the man was making his way across an office. When he spoke again, he was somewhere quieter. Presumably more private.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Two plates: AP17 EPK and LD16 XPF. First one is probably false – seen on a black Saab near Brent Cross, north London. Second’s real, I think: black Honda SUV, also north London, but Woodside Park Tube. I need registered addresses for both.’

  ‘How hot are these?’

  ‘Unknown.’

  ‘Then I’m not interested.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last one I did for you was a vehicle of interest – fucking red flags everywhere. So no can do.’

  ‘I’m paying a grand. This is, what, thirty seconds’ work?’

  ‘A grand? That says it all, then, doesn’t it. Sorry.’

  ‘Someone will do it, when did you get so rich?’

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’ He hung up.

  Stringer smacked th
e steering wheel with his palm. He took the next turning off the main road and pulled over with his hazards on. He typed a message to Milos: Need to meet right now.

  Milos was at the same table in the same pub, wearing the same baseball cap. It irked Stringer, feeling like it was out of the same playbook as piercing his alias last time; another knowing jab that said: I see through your bullshit and I’m laughing at you. But the truth was more benign and somehow worse: they were more alike than he was comfortable with. Because admitting it opened up thoughts of all the liberties he’d be taking if the roles were reversed.

  He dropped heavily onto the stool opposite.

  ‘So what’s up?’ Milos kept typing on his phone.

  Stringer’s patience lasted one second before he reached his hand over the screen and forced him to lower it to the table.

  Milos looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘New job. I need addresses relating to two number plates. Can you sort it?’

  ‘Don’t know, bro – I can ask.’

  ‘What about your man from before?’

  ‘Think it was a chick done the CCTV for you, as it goes.’

  ‘Okay, what about her?’

  ‘Why’s it have to be the same person?’

  ‘She was fast.’

  ‘She might fuck you on the dollar.’

  ‘I’ll go to a grand – including your cut.’

  ‘Yeah, but if she knows you’re desperate, like…’

  ‘Then don’t tell her I am.’

  Milos flashed a fuck-you smile. ‘Go on then, what we got?’

  Stringer scribbled down the two plates and slipped them across the table. He waited for Milos to look up at him before he spoke again. ‘That address you found for me…’ He watched for his reaction. ‘The one the email came from.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You give it to anyone else?’

  He looked at Stringer like he was joking. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like anyone.’

  ‘Nah, bro. Why, who is she?’

  He stared at him a few seconds longer, getting more and more wound up that he couldn’t read him. He shook his head to dismiss the question. ‘How long for the number plates?’

  Milos opened his hands, eyes twinkling. ‘I’ll message you.’

  Back behind the wheel, the same drive he’d been on before, throwing the car all over the road trying to blow off his frustration. East along Seven Sisters Road, passing the fruit-and-veg stalls and the pubs where time had stood still, old men in houndstooth jackets, ties and black trousers, drinking Guinness and reading the Islington Gazette. He followed it to Finsbury Park, stop-start through the bottleneck around the station, then running parallel to the park’s boundary wall. Giant marquees filled the grass, setting up for some kind of music festival.

  The block that held his other flat rose into view, and he looped around into the small car park at the back. He checked his phone before he got out, but there was nothing from Milos yet. Wishful thinking on his part.

  He took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door. He heard soft footsteps on the other side and then Alicia Tan opened it halfway. She stood in the gap and looked him over. ‘Come in.’

  He followed her to the lounge and she took his spot by the window, turning to stare him down. The place was pristine, unchanged from when he’d first brought her there, as if she was living like a ghost.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘Just say whatever you’ve come to say. Good or bad.’

  ‘I don’t have any answers for you. I don’t want to give you false hope.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’d like to show you a couple more pictures. They’re nothing as bad as…’

  ‘Let me see.’ She bustled over to him, standing ready.

  He opened his phone and brought up the picture of the woman Lydia Wright had met with at Brent Cross. She was badly lit, one side of her face in darkness, her eyes half closed.

  Alicia Tan looked close and then shook her head, her mouth screwed up. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Someone who might’ve seen something.’ He swiped to the next image, the still from the CCTV that showed the getaway SUV at Woodside Park. ‘This?’

  She brought it close again, studying the registration number, but again shook her head. Her shoulders slumped a little, betraying her disappointment. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to establish.’

  ‘You know what I meant. What’s their relevance?’

  ‘I can’t answer that until I know who they are.’

  She backed away. ‘You show up with these pictures and videos and won’t tell me anything. Can you see this is killing me? I sit here going spare and I don’t even know what I’m waiting for. Who I’m hiding from…’

  ‘Did you go to the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re investigating.’ She locked eyes with him, defying the silence between them.

  ‘I get that you don’t trust me, but the more I know, the more I can help.’

  ‘Help? I thought you were just a fixer? Now you’re going to catch his killers?’

  He looked down at his phone, the blank screen somewhere to fix his eyes. ‘Did you tell them about me?’

  She sat down on the edge of a chair and shot him a murderous look. She drew out the moment, sensing his discomfort. ‘And say what? That a stranger kidnapped me and told me it was for my own safety – and I went with it because my husband was murdered?’

  ‘I didn’t kidnap…’ He closed his eyes. There was no sense defending his actions when her choosing to stay in the flat revealed the truth of her feelings – as confused as they must be. ‘Did you tell them what you’re afraid of?’

  ‘What, I had a bad feeling my husband was in trouble?’

  ‘I got the impression it was more specific than that.’

  She dropped her head into her hands, her voice muffled when she spoke. ‘You’re desperate for me to tell you something I don’t know. It doesn’t matter how many times and how many ways you ask me.’

  ‘Then what was it made you feel that way?’

  ‘His behaviour.’ She opened her hands in frustration. ‘He changed in the last few months.’

  His skin prickled; a timescale that fit loosely with Suslov’s interest. ‘In what way?’

  ‘He was just pushing everything to the limit. Even longer hours, going out five, six nights on the spin, drinking more, not coming home. And everything else.’

  There was a hint in the way she said it, an indication she wanted to say more. ‘Drugs?’

  She closed her eyes, caught halfway between a shrug and a nod. ‘Everyone uses. The pressure is insane. But he was going beyond anything I’d seen him do before.’

  ‘Is there a chance he was in debt to someone because of it?’

  She shook her head, but it was half-hearted. ‘Money was everything to Jamie. I monitor our finances, we never struggled.’

  ‘Even so…’

  ‘I would’ve known. He didn’t rub it in my face, but he never tried to hide it either. He’s used the same dealer for years.’

  Mention of Tan not coming home made him wonder if she knew about his nights volunteering at the shelter. ‘What caused the change?’

  ‘Work. Always work. You have to understand, traders thrive on competition. It wasn’t enough for Jamie to be winning, he had to know he was winning biggest. And that everyone else was losing by comparison.’

  ‘So something had changed with his job?’

  ‘He didn’t like talking about it at home. When he wasn’t in the office, he just wanted to blot it all out.’

  ‘And he never told you what was wrong?’

  She held out her hands, as if she wasn’t sure. ‘Like I said, it was just a feeling.’ She dropped them to her lap, the toll the conversation was taking starting to show.

  He drifted over to the window, seeing everything and nothing all at once.
Andriy Suslov. Coke pushers. He should’ve taken the registration of Tan’s dealer the nights he’d seen him pull up on his moped. Another slip. And then there was the police involvement; they’d be coming at it from two different reports, two different starting points – how long would it take to marry them up? His chance to thread the needle getting tighter all the time.

  He turned around and saw Alicia Tan holding her phone in both hands, swiping through her pictures. He could make out a shot of her and Jamie at a table with friends, both smiling. She stared at it as long as she could, then her head dipped and she dropped the phone on the floor. Sobs shook her whole body.

  He wanted to tell her about the mentoring, the charity work, the things her husband had seemingly kept from her. Only the sense that it would hurt her further kept him silent.

  He crept out of the room and out the front door, an intruder in his own flat.

  CHAPTER 31

  The tweeter’s office was near Liverpool Street, a modern glass-and-steel structure. Lydia stopped across the road and looked up at the letters emblazoned high above its entrance – HFB. She’d heard of it, but only today learned it was short for Hesse Frei Bank. Like BT or BA, another corporation that’d reduced itself to a set of initials to hide its national origins in a globalised world.

  She’d made no attempt to contact the man after his Twitter message naming the victim as Jamie Tan. Nothing was to be taken at face value now; that was the one conclusion she’d come to after spending the pre-dawn darkness in a nightmare of introspection. Hours of self-interrogation that did nothing to make her feel better or safer, and finally made her throw herself back into the work as a means of shutting her own voice out of her head.

  Googling ‘Jamie Tan London’ had brought up dozens of pictures of shoes – turned out it was a make of brogue. When she switched to a regular search, half a dozen Jamie Tans came up – a lawyer, a banker, a student, a DJ, and more.