Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller

by Charles Harris

  I seem to be filling up with darkness. ‘Gerry Gardner.’

  ‘I thought it advisable not to have his name down in print. Given his senior status.’

  ‘So he’s eight. Who’s number nine?’

  ‘That would be me, sir. I’d come on duty at ten and was catching up with filing in the main office. I didn’t actually know you were in hospital, but it wouldn’t have been difficult for me to have found out – sooner or later you’d have realised this for yourself.’

  24

  After Becks has finally left, I ask O’Shea and Toth to help set up a desk with a working computer for me in the side room. When we’re done, I send them back to the main office, close the door and listen for sounds of movement in the corridors, but other than my own little team, there’s nothing to be heard.

  Then I log into the computer with my warrant number as instructed, and everything opens up. Emails fill the screen with frightening speed, full of false urgency – internal memos for DI R Blackleigh demanding detailed answers and filled with acronyms, PACE, PCSO, PNC, PESTELGO, like encrypted messages to a spy behind enemy lines.

  But do any of them lead to the man who tried to knife me last night? Or the copper who tipped him off?

  I find minutes from a Bengali community meeting, addressed to ‘R’. The reply is signed ‘R’, but the language is odd, stuffed with jargon – ‘a firm and even-handed commitment to a diversity perspective, driving forward a new policing agenda…’ Who wrote that?

  There’s an invitation to an art gallery viewing in Kentish Town Road, illustrated with six aggressively painted nudes. Not my taste. I’d sometimes force myself to go to such local events out of duty, but ‘R’ has accepted enthusiastically, looking forward, in his words, to ‘seeing the aesthetic interrogation of street violence against women’.

  I search through last week’s calendar – routine meetings, briefings and debriefings – with an increasing feeling of dislocation. A week I can’t remember at all. Tomorrow, ironically, I’m booked for a routine annual medical. ‘R’ sent a remarkably rude email, saying to stop sending reminders – he will be there on time.

  Was this me? I go back over the most recent emails. They’re by turns manipulative, angry, emollient and aggressive. These can’t have been written by me.

  It’s a mad idea but could I have been possessed? Am I still? Am I about to speak in strange tongues, with my head revolving 360 degrees? The idea first makes me laugh but then chills me, as if even thinking about evil can make it come to life in this stuffy little office on a drab Sunday morning. Who was he, this R, who I hardly recognise? This truly scares me.

  And yet as I sit and look at the emails, R grows more real in my mind, a person who used my computer ID and had his own memories, values and feelings – and his own enemies.

  Somewhere in all this mess is information about me and my past year and a half. Information that will tell me what’s going on. But where and what? I feel I’m diving into a dark sea, feeling for rocks invisible under the surface. I try to control my fear – my terror about what I’ve forgotten, what I’m supposed to know – and concentrate on finding out who wants me dead. Details, details, that’s what Paul used to say. Details solve crimes. Maybe details will also help me get my memory back.

  As a first step, I take the list Becks gave me and do a Crimint search on each of the nine colleagues who knew I was in hospital, cross-checking any possible connections with Amy Matthews, but get nowhere. Nothing about her either in the many reports on local gangs that R filed. Instead, I find angry asides from him about how young the kids are that they recruit – hardly eleven or twelve – and how they’re tossed aside.

  Here, at random, is a report on an eleven-year-old Bengali kid who ran errands for the older pushers on his bike, until he was run over by rivals outside Euston Comprehensive, and left paralysed from the waist down. I see the boy’s picture in the file, his cocky, pinched face filled with disgust at life. For all his right-on jargon, R was, it appears, one of the few people who considered him worth even noticing. The reports grow increasingly frustrated. His fury burns through. But what, if anything, has this to do with Crystal and Amy Matthews or a young man with a knife?

  Next, I search the system for Rahman and find him with his men – the Bhangra Crew. He’s photographed two hundred and fifty-nine times in clubs and outside, getting into and out of his Range Rover – shaven head gleaming in the street lights – and among his crew I recognise the three men that were with him in the club early this morning. Pages of hearsay follow: about his violence, his drug running, his web of relations extending back to Bangladesh. There are even a few clips of video, grabbed by brave informants on their phones, showing him buying drinks and relaxing at a barbecue. And on and on. None of it remotely useful.

  I go back over my notes and then I remember Rahman confronting me in his office at Lonely’s. What was it precisely that he asked? What happened to the third KB…? Third BK…? I search on Crimint but find nothing, so I open up Detective Inspector Google again and try permutations. I find BK – a music producer – the BK virus and Burger King. I doubt a Bengali gangster worries much about viruses in 2010, or burger outlets, so I scan a few articles about the producer. It seems he’s had some hits, written music for movies and his third song came out in 1999, called ‘God The Devil’. Nice for him, but I don’t read Rahman as a collector of obscure hard house.

  Nothing seems to connect. On a whim I do a search on DI Winstanley, who is no doubt sitting right now with the Matthews murder team doing a search on me. She doesn’t cross-match with any cases dealing with the gangs and I don’t have the authority to access her personal record, but I can use Google, and here I find two dozen news reports. As I predicted, Winstanley gives good interview. She’s in the BBC archive talking about the murder of a black teenager, stabbed last year in a street in Islington. She arrested a man within a day and made a big press splash about it. I look at her on the screen, smiling happily at the massed cameras and journalists. Shame that, six months after he was convicted, new DNA evidence showed he was innocent.

  But what good is any of this? Drained, I close my eyes and rest my head in my hands. There’s a growing smell of damp in the little office, an acrid smell, and outside in the incident room, I can hear the team working away, talking quietly, laughing a little. I can hear the gentle tapping of keyboards and, in the distance, children playing in the snow, growing louder.

  25

  A phone rings nearby, but no one answers. The thin morning light hardens on the office wall. The children sound closer. They must be right by the station.

  A snowball hits me on the arm. I laugh and hurl it back through the open window. But it wasn’t a child who threw it. It was Paul. He’s outside laughing and tosses one back at me, straight at my head. I duck – and smack my forehead on the desk.

  I open my eyes, startled, and check the time, but it doesn’t register.

  I can hear a child crying outside. And there’s that phone ringing again. Ringing and ringing. Why isn’t anyone picking up? I’m about to go and complain, but at last someone answers. I can hear a young woman’s voice, muffled and distorted.

  A brief shower of hail shivers the office windows. I don’t open my eyes.

  I hear her.

  I hear her, although I don’t want to.

  After the day I’ve had, this is the last thing I need. I’m tired and afraid. That voice.

  I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the urgency, the danger, just as he did: the voice of Amy Matthews.

  I lift my head from the desk. I’ve just heard the voice of Amy Matthews as R heard her. Or did I simply dream it?

  I shake myself. This I mustn’t forget.

  I feel dazed, my nerves still on edge from the phone call, as if I just received it a minute ago, which in a sense I did.

  What does this mean? What have I learned? In one sense, nothing – I already recalled that Amy Matthews called me in fear last night. In another sens
e, everything. There’s all the difference between being told a fact and remembering it. It’s the difference between seeing the incense smoke in church and smelling it. What did I hear? What did R hear? Is he there then, inside my head? Can he speak back to me?

  But no words come.

  Then, looking down, there’s a pink Post-it next to my right hand, alongside a broken blue biro, two words scrawled on it, faint and barely legible, in the very angular writing I found in my notebooks. The first word seems to be The, but I can’t quite make out the second. I hold the paper up to the light, angling it to read it more clearly. After a moment, they resolve themselves into a single phrase: The other.

  The other…? What does it mean? The other nurse? The other crime? What?

  I try to think back. What was I doing before? I was searching through the Bengali gangs and that led me nowhere. But according to R’s decision logs, they’d been fighting a turf war with the Lithuanians. The other gang?

  Urgently, I search for anything on the Lithuanians, punching down at the keyboard, diving into thousands of folders.

  Of all the names I find, two stand out: Karolis and Petras Kleiza. Thirty-year-old twins from Kaunas, a city with a rugged reputation, they’ve built a successful business over the past ten years exporting Lithuanian agricultural products to Western Europe. Three years ago, they moved to the UK, initially to live in Nottingham. They acquired houses in nice areas, brought over their families, sent their kids to nursery school. I find their photos in local East Midlands newspapers, handing over cheques to popular charities. They look almost identical, the same tightly curled black hair and heavy eyes, and that slightly eerie unsettling feeling that twins often leave you with. Yet there are differences. Karolis slightly taller, harder, and Petras smoother, more thoughtful.

  Towards the end of last year, though, R makes his first mention of them. His contacts had started talking about a Lithuanian crew called the Kaunas Gang moving from the East Midlands into Camden. Tough and determined, the Kaunas Gang went beyond Svalya cheese and bottles of vintage Dainavy to drugs and prostitution, and were fighting the existing local gangs such as Rahman’s. Nobody had any doubt that the Kleiza twins were in charge and the more R learned, the more concerned he grew, but to his frustration he could never prove it.

  He even made a point of talking to them in their new London office in a Lithuanian community centre off Camden Road. Then ten days ago, it seems, one of the other detectives received an anonymous call. R arranged for the Crime Squad to mount a raid on the Kleizas’ office, and hidden in the community centre toilet they found two guns and two one-kilo batches of heroin, wrapped in bags with the Kleizas’ prints all over them. The twins were arrested, along with their senior gang members.

  My first thought is that the twins sent out orders for R to be killed in revenge – the kid who tried to stab me in the hospital seemed to have an East European accent, though he could have been faking it. But killing coppers doesn’t seem to be the Kleizas’ style. According to R’s reports, they prefer to bribe police rather than knife them.

  I check all the suspected gang members caught in surveillance snaps and grabs from CCTV, looking for my attacker, staring at the screen until I can hardly see straight. This dark-haired twenty-three-year-old is said to be one of the Kleiza’s lieutenants. That teenager with a buzz cut might be a gofer. I spot the three men I saw at Lonely’s. However, nowhere can I see the youngster who tried to kill me. I’m growing angry with myself, wasting time chasing shadows.

  In desperation, I try Lithuanian shop owners, journalists, diplomats. Still nothing. I’m about to give up when I come across a new name in a piece of reported gossip. Not much more than an aside. A crackhead, keen to cut a deal, refers to a distant second cousin of the Kleizas, a student called Darjus Javtokas, but insists the kid is clean.

  It turns out that R ran a quick check. Javtokas arrived in London six months ago to take a BSc degree course in engineering at Imperial College and found himself a small flat only a short distance from the police station, which is possibly why last October, R gave him a ring and arranged to meet up in a local Kentish Town pub. So it seems I saw him. I look for a photograph, but there isn’t one. However, R’s interview note is clear.

  Nineteen. Friendly, if a bit awkward. Limited English, he writes. Keen on his beer and chasers, he adds somewhat caustically, so either R was paying out of his own pocket or was having to deal with internal complaints about his expenses.

  Both parents died in a train crash when he was seven, the note continues. After that, he went to live with an aunt in Vilnius.

  R wanted to find out how much Javtokas was involved with his twin cousins, but the young man insisted he didn’t know them. Never returned to Kaunas, which he thought of as a dull armpit of an industrial town. Was brought up by his aunt to be God-fearing and studious, knows little about his cousins’ real activities and has even less interest. He simply wants to get a good degree, go home and build bridges, motorways and airports.

  Didn’t believe him at first, R added the following day, but have since checked with Imperial. They confirm he has a few close friends but works hard. The note concludes: Genuine, a student who wants to keep his nose clean.

  I paste his name into the PNC and Crimint, but there’s nothing else. I try all the other databases with growing frustration. No convictions, no mentions. I push my chair back and wonder what to do next. Something makes me want to know more about this diligent God-fearing student, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to find. Why am I bothering?

  One last throw. I search Facebook and discover fifteen Javtokases – including four basketball players, three businesswomen and a girl with a webcam who’d love to meet me online – and then there he is.

  Darjus Javtokas.

  A Facebook page he’s created, dedicated to Anglo-Lithuanian football and written in fractured English.

  He ‘very like cats, clubbing, mending his motor scooter and talking to girls’. He ‘do volunteering’. He ‘member from Greenpeace and keenly Liverpool supporter’. He shares pictures of friends.

  He’s posted a proud selfie, perched on his 125cc Viper and wearing bright red Liverpool replica gear. He comes over as wary and determined, with a thin half-smile. He stares straight out of the screen at me. And I stare back in shock.

  I look at those pale eyes to make absolutely sure. Because I don’t want to be wrong. And I’m not wrong. Darjus Javtokas – passed as clean by R just four months ago – tried to kill me last night with a knife.

  The jury shift uncomfortably in their seats. They think they know what’s coming. They’ve been listening to the prosecution case for the past two and a half weeks. The question is, how much have they already made up their minds?

  Stone clears his throat. He still looks anxious. However, there’s a great deal they don’t yet know.

  But before we can continue, the judge interrupts and suggests – well, instructs – that this would be a good time to break for the day. He’s middle-aged, vaguely Oriental as far as I can tell, and has been writing assiduously from the start.

  I warm to him. He seems to be trying to be as fair as he can be. However, the interruption irritates me. This is not a good place to stop, but it seems we have no choice.

  The court rises, and I dread the ride in the van back to my cell. I’m not going to sleep well tonight.

  26

  10.50am

  I snatch up my mobile as Becks returns.

  ‘There’s a problem with Laura’s Prius–’ he begins, but I put my hand up and write Javtokas’ phone number on a Post-it.

  ‘I need to track that mobile.’

  Catching Gerry at home, I tell him about Darjus Javtokas. His voice is low. It seems I’ve interrupted a discussion with his elder daughter about maths homework and he doesn’t click back into work mode as fast as he used to.

  ‘This is definitely the toerag who attacked you?’

  ‘I’m certain. I have his address.’

&
nbsp; ‘Leave this gig to one of the other teams. You’re too close.’

  I breathe in deeply. I don’t know why he’s taking this attitude. ‘This is my case.’

  ‘And if he shot Matthews, then he’s Winstanley’s,’ Gerry says heavily. ‘Who, by the way, has been bending my ear trying to find you. Are you avoiding her? Ring her. She’ll be easy to find, just choose one of the three hundred unanswered calls on your phone.’

  He’s right, of course. There’s no need to make her into more of an enemy than she already is. It’s time (to quote Tina) to be a grown-up.

  ‘I promise,’ I say, ‘I’ll speak to Winstanley as soon as you give permission for the raid. This is the man.’ What I don’t say is that in October I reported the kid clean and don’t remember any of it.

  But Gerry has a detective’s nose. ‘What else should I know?’

  ‘Trust me to do my job, boss.’

  He’s silent for a long time, then says, ‘I trust you. You’d better get on with it then.’

  Hardly have I started telling the team the news, than O’Shea picks up his phone to Territorial Support Group for a raid. He’s that eager for some action, it gives me heart. I ask how soon they can be ready.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ he says, holding his hand over the receiver. (But it’s Sunday… snow…)

  ‘That’s too long. Make it ten. And nobody else must know.’

  Then Becks asks, ‘What about firearms, sir?’ And O’Shea stops. We all know that Amy Matthews’ killer had a gun. But we also know that a firearms squad will take two hours to get approved for a raid and mobilised. I don’t want to wait two hours. I want to go now, while I still can. I don’t know how long I can keep this act up, and then my memory loss will come out and whoever it is in this station who wants me dead will know.