The Silent Games

by Alex Gray

  Lorimer sped across the last few yards, intending to throw himself at the bulky figure. If he caught hold of his leg they would crash together to the ground, he thought, imagining the man’s yell.

  It happened so quickly. His quarry stopped and turned, so close now that he could see the naked hatred in those eyes.

  Then, with an animal cry, McAlpin lashed out with both fists.

  Lorimer heard the sickening blow to his head, felt a blinding pain. The last thing he saw were tufts of grass as the ground came up to hit him.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  He had two choices: to charge the Nigerians with disposing of the dead girl’s body or to hold them as suspects in her murder. There was no possibility of questioning these men about a potential threat to Glasgow 2014. Whatever nefarious activities McAlpin had been up to in his spare time, Lorimer guessed they had nothing to do with his involvement in the terrorist plot.

  His head still throbbed from the big man’s blow. That he had let their chief suspect escape hurt more, though, despite the assurances from the surveillance officers that he had never stood a chance against the former weightlifter. They had seen his white van career across the parkland and out of sight, and now there were officers everywhere on the lookout for the fugitive.

  Lorimer watched as the doctor took a swab from the Nigerian’s mouth, noting the look of terror in the man’s dark eyes. The other Nigerian was being questioned in an adjacent room, the whereabouts of McAlpin being only one of the things that the interviewing officers were keen to ascertain.

  Now he could see that Okonjo was visibly trembling as he faced the tall policeman across the table. The duty solicitor sat tiredly by his side, a necessary figure in the small drama unfolding as the dawn came up on another Glasgow day.

  ‘There is the body of a young girl of African origin in the city mortuary,’ Lorimer began, shuffling the notes in front of him. ‘This was found in the same pond where you and your colleagues dumped the body of another girl last night,’ he continued, his voice deliberately flat as though he were reading out a shopping list. ‘Cathkin Country Park has been kept under some scrutiny since we discovered Celia,’ he went on, noting the alarm in the black man’s face as he spoke the girl’s name. It was a half-truth masked to let Okonjo believe that they had been spotted far from the city, not followed all the way from that tenement building in the East End.

  Okonjo’s eyes flickered, his back straightening a little. And was that a look of relief? Whom did he fear more, Lorimer wondered: the policeman sitting asking questions or the big man with the tattoos? Lorimer looked down, his own feeling of satisfaction at having successfully dissembled hidden behind the stack of papers that he held up in front of him for a moment. He tapped them on the table top then laid them down again, smoothing their surface as though he needed to have everything neat and tidy.

  ‘Your client is being considered in relation to this other girl’s murder,’ he explained, looking past Okonjo to the lawyer. ‘The cause of her death was thought by the consultant pathologist who carried out the post-mortem to be strangulation,’ he continued. Nodding as though this was an everyday occurrence, not worthy of any great dramatic flourish. From the corner of his keen blue eye he could see Okonjo relax, Lorimer’s voice lulling their suspect into a false sense of security.

  ‘There have been several attempts to identify the victim,’ Lorimer continued, ‘and we are fairly certain that, like the girl who was thrown into the pond tonight by your client, she is of Nigerian origin.’

  Okonjo looked at the man by his side as the lawyer gave an involuntary gasp. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this. ‘I would like to speak to my client alone,’ he said, rising from his chair.

  ‘All in good time, sir,’ Lorimer replied smoothly. ‘First we have to determine whether your client has a case to answer at all.’ He looked at Okonjo through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Where were you on the fourth of April, Mr Okonjo?’ Lorimer spoke quietly. Diffident, that was the way he wanted to seem. He was good at disguising his real feelings, like an actor . . . The thought brought him a sudden memory of Foxy, her sad eyes turned to his. But that had been real, hadn’t it? He banished the image of her; it had no place here inside this interview room where so many criminals had sat trying to lie their way out of future imprisonment.

  ‘I . . . I can’t re-remember,’ the man stuttered.

  ‘It was a Friday night,’ Lorimer said helpfully, wondering if the man across the table was replaying a murder in his mind.

  It was an evening he himself would never forget. That crowd of people in the old school hall, Foxy in her slim black dress, then the aftermath of it all when he had gone to her aid, Charles Gilmartin lying poisoned in his bed.

  It might be a long shot, but by Rosie’s reckoning that was one possible date for the Nigerian girl’s death. And he had to begin somewhere.

  ‘Ever seen this before, Mr Okonjo?’

  Lorimer’s voice was hard now, his blue eyes fixed on the man opposite as he slid the blown-up photograph of the triple spiral tattoo across the table.

  Okonjo’s reaction was immediate. He jerked backwards, hands sliding off the table as though the swirling pattern might actually burn his fingers.

  ‘Is that an affirmative answer?’

  Okonjo stared at him, then nodded slowly.

  ‘Please speak for the tape.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Nigerian choked as if the word had been drawn out of his throat.

  ‘Yes, you have seen this before,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘We have traced the tattoo artist who was commissioned to do this particular design and he remembers the girl who came into his salon. Celia, wasn’t it? The girl you dumped in the pond on Friday, April the fourth.’

  Okonjo stared at him, speechless, his lips parted.

  ‘The tattoo artist remembers the girl who came into his salon. And the Nigerian uncles who accompanied her. Perhaps you can give us more details. Starting with her real name.’

  Okonjo had lowered his eyes and was looking at his hands clasped on his lap instead.

  ‘Don’t know anything about it,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Oh, I think you do, Mr Okonjo,’ Lorimer shot back. ‘Right now we have several things in motion. A post-mortem to determine the nature of this second girl’s death. Looks like the first victim’s cause of death. Strangulation,’ he added, nodding at the lawyer, whose mouth was hanging open like a fish out of water. ‘And there will be test results back soon to see if any DNA from either girl’s body matches the sample we took from you tonight.’ Soon was probably pushing it, but the threat was real enough to make the Nigerian feel under pressure.

  Lorimer looked from one man to the other. ‘So in my opinion, gentlemen, you had better tell us the truth, because one way or another, facts are quickly emerging that place Mr Okonjo at both crime scenes.’

  He pulled the photograph back and replaced it with one from the post-mortem showing the Nigerian girl with her neck to one side, the wires cutting deeply into her dark throat.

  He could feel the lawyer recoil as he glanced at the photo, but Okonjo stared at it, anger burning in his eyes as though he wanted to kill the dead girl all over again.

  The detective superintendent put the original photo of the triple spiral back on top.

  ‘The girl whose body you disposed of tonight has no such tattoo,’ he went on. ‘Which brings me to another question.’ He looked long and hard at Okonjo, leaning forward so that the man had to meet his steely blue gaze.

  ‘Where is Asa?’

  It was the first night that the girl had slept on clean sheets and without the fear that some man would enter her room looking for sex. Asa had no inkling that the hotel was considered low-budget by Western standards. Nor had she questioned the Jamaican woman’s choice as she had been bundled in from the taxi. Here in this quiet room, its curtains blocking out the city’s light if not its constant noise, Asa felt something that she had thought to have lost: a sense of peace. It was like the st
illness before dawn; before the birds in the bush began to sing, before the chattering weavers awoke to fill the trees with their constant twittering. Sometimes Asa would lie on her sleeping mat and think about the way her life had unfolded: the loss of her family, the hard grind of daily survival. But mostly she would look ahead to the demands of each day and what she needed to do in order to bring food and water to the village.

  Now there was no way of knowing what lay ahead when the morning sun finally rose on this grey city with its heaps of buildings blotting out the yellow light. And yet she had escaped. Escaped the imprisonment of that terrible place, escaped the constant intrusion into her young body, and as she recalled the awful sight in that other room, there was no doubt in Asa’s mind that she had escaped death.

  The girl smiled as she heard the soft snores coming from the bed next to hers. Shereen was sleeping peacefully too. They had both escaped, though she wondered what the older woman had been escaping from. She had watched her at times, laughing and joking with the men in the kitchen, but seeing something like sadness in the big woman’s face whenever she turned away. Shereen had worn a mask, Asa thought to herself, a thing to hide behind so that the men never guessed her real feelings.

  But in the moment when she had come to the doorway, hearing Shereen’s scream of terror, she had seen that mask slip for good.

  ‘Four-thirty a.m. DI Grant entering the room,’ Lorimer said aloud for the benefit of the tape.

  Jo Grant motioned that he should come to the door, glancing meaningfully at the paper in her hand. There was an expression on her face that he recognised. Gotcha. And as Grant had been interviewing Boro, the other Nigerian, it looked as if that suspect had given the DI exactly what they wanted.

  Lorimer looked at the signed statement. It was all there. The address where they had kept the girls as prostitutes, the identity of both dead girls, McAlpin’s role as trafficker clearly outlined.

  Now was the time when he could really be dramatic, Lorimer thought, walking back to the table, a swagger in his step. He sat down brandishing Boro’s statement in his hand.

  ‘Odunlami Okonjo, I am charging you with the murder of a minor known as Celia. You are also being charged with trafficking and imprisoning underage girls, helping to run a brothel and falsifying documents.’

  He paused to look at the Nigerian, whose dark skin had taken on a sheen of sweat.

  ‘It will be easier for you to admit this,’ Lorimer said. ‘No fuss with a trial. Shorter time inside.’ He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mr Okonjo. I’m more than happy for you to talk to your solicitor meantime. Get your facts together.’ He grinned at the pair opposite.

  The duty solicitor’s eyebrows were drawn up, waiting for Okonjo’s response. Then the Nigerian nodded glumly.

  ‘My client requires a few minutes to prepare his statement,’ the solicitor sighed. It was a sigh of defeat, though in truth he had done little during the course of the interview to assist Okonjo, the revelations about the Nigerian’s crimes coming as something of a shock to the man who had been summoned to Stewart Street during the wee small hours.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It seemed to the young man standing on the street corner that something momentous was about to happen, and so it was with no little disappointment that he found himself being taken for a walk in the park.

  ‘Thanks for hanging back,’ the leader said, smiling politely, as if he was a different person from the one who had been mouthing all those clichés about freedom from tyranny and the need to rid the country of undesirable elements.

  If he was being entirely honest, Cameron was beginning to find these meetings a little tedious, and the idea that such a disparate group of men could wreak their planned havoc on the enormity of the Commonwealth Games no longer appeared to be feasible. Perhaps it was the rhetoric: the constant affirmation of why they were plotting to blow up the stadium hosting the opening ceremony. Cameron had been as enthusiastic as the rest of them to begin with, brought up as he had been by parents fervent about the need for independence. And now this nondescript man was ambling by his side talking about how nice the weather had been for the time of year!

  ‘Ever been on the boating pond?’ the leader asked suddenly as they rounded a corner.

  ‘Never been in this park before,’ Cameron mumbled, kicking a stone in his path and watching it skitter along the edge of the little lake.

  ‘Come on then.’ The leader was grinning like any schoolboy off on a jaunt, and before he knew it, Cameron was sitting in the stern of a small rowing boat while the man heaved on the oars, slicing through the oily waters. As the shoreline receded, Cameron could see that they were quite alone on this circle of water, the rest of the flotilla of little boats bobbing together at the quayside.

  They were nearing an island covered with thick shrubbery when the man drew in the oars and let the boat float along.

  ‘I’ve never really introduced myself,’ he began, holding out his hand. ‘Robert Bruce Petrie,’ he said. ‘And you are Cameron Gregson.’ He smiled warmly, as though this was the most natural thing in the world rather than a breach of what he had insisted was necessary security. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’ve always found given names a bit of a bore. Or maybe it was the expensive education.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Anyway, please just call me Petrie.’

  Cameron felt the clamminess of the man’s hand slip out of his own and then they were off again, oars cutting through the silky water as he ducked under an overhanging branch.

  ‘How did you know my . . .’

  ‘Name? Oh, I know everything about you, my friend.’ Petrie’s smile never faltered. ‘Did you think we met by sheer chance?’ He gave a laugh that was pure merriment. ‘Oh my goodness, you must have thought us a bunch of amateurs! No, Gregson, you were selected long before that day in the Botanic Gardens.’

  Cameron blinked as though he had been struck, yet he was intrigued to hear more from the man who was pulling on these oars as though it was something he did every day of his life.

  ‘We only took the best.’ Petrie nodded, looking over his shoulder at the island, keeping a safe distance from the bank. ‘Number Three and I,’ he went on. ‘I am not about to give you anyone else’s name, though,’ he warned, the smile fading a little.

  ‘How did you know about the car following Number Two?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘We have our own ways of finding things out, just as they do,’ Petrie replied enigmatically.

  ‘They?’

  ‘The police. MI6. The security forces are on high alert because they have wind of something.’

  ‘You mean they know about us?’ Cameron was horrified.

  ‘Of course they don’t know too many details. And,’ his smile was warm once again, ‘they certainly don’t know about you. Which is why I am giving you this very special task.’

  The rest of the boat trip passed in a blur as Cameron listened to what he had to do. It seemed at first that it was completely innocuous: taking care of a couple of elderly Australians and making sure that they enjoyed the Clan Gathering in Stirling before accompanying them to a Glasgow hotel and being their constant companion right up until the moment when they arrived at Parkhead Stadium for the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Then there was the matter of the sgian dubh.

  He had been quite aware of the white-haired explosive expert’s part in all of this, but until this moment Cameron Gregson had not known exactly what role the two Australians were to play in the attack. And as he listened to Petrie’s instructions, he was uncertain whether the chill that ran through his blood was excitement or fear.

  The journey back through Perthshire had exceeded all of their expectations, and now they were seated outside a country pub, enjoying a freshly made salad sandwich and a glass of the local beer. Peter MacGregor gave a sigh that summed up his feelings completely. It was indeed the trip of a lifetime and they had been extra lucky with the continuing fine weathe
r. Almost every day on the Isle of Skye had allowed them to see the towering mountains, their view disappearing only once behind a bank of low-lying mist. But even that had its own romance, the swirling white clouds doing nothing to dampen their appreciation of the landscape and the shifting patterns around the coastline. There had been sheep everywhere, this season’s growing lambs baaing at their heels whenever the car slowed down to allow them to cross from one nibbled verge to the other.

  The land had become gentler as Peter and Joanne had travelled south, though some of the places still held a fascination for the amateur historian: Sheriffmuir looked bleak even on a sunny day, the watery sound of curlews drifting over the fields as they had stopped at the roadside to gaze at a place where so much had happened in times gone by.

  Peter stretched out a hand and gave his wife’s fingers a friendly squeeze. ‘Stirling tonight, girl,’ he remarked. ‘Plenty to see in that old town.’

  Joanne smiled back. ‘It’s a city now, though,’ she remarked. ‘Says so in the travel guide.’

  ‘That right?’ Peter raised his bushy eyebrows, his eyes crinkling up at the corners as he returned her smile. Then a familiar ringtone made him twist around.

  ‘Wait up,’ he said, shifting in his seat to pull out the phone from his trouser pocket. He raised the mobile to his ear and turned away from this village street where traffic lumbered slowly along.

  Joanne watched as her husband nodded. There was no sign of recognition on his face, so the call was not from home. Nor was there a crease of anxiety between Peter’s brows, nothing to cause her any alarm, simply a routine call of some sort.

  ‘Okay. Pleased to speak to you, son,’ MacGregor said, then paused to listen to the response. At last he clicked the phone shut and turned back to his wife.

  ‘Change of plan,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘The guy who was to meet us has to go into hospital for an operation, poor sod. That was his replacement. Sounds a decent sort. Young.’