by L. A. Larkin
My notes tell me I have had keys to the communal door and Olivia’s flat since 23 October. It was warmer then, the leaves golden, the muddy grass littered with prickly conkers. Ditsy Daisy took her rubbish to the bins, leaving her flat door wide open. She got chatting to a good-looking bloke two houses down, who’s a graphic artist, and was so busy flirting she didn’t notice me slip inside and take the keys marked ‘Liv’ hanging on a rack just inside the door. I got my own set cut and, within half an hour, dropped hers through the communal letterbox, where they lay on the black and white hall tiles until Daisy found them. She assumed she’d dropped them, and, of course, didn’t tell you. She so wants to be a reliable friend, but that takes someone with half a brain and I suspect she has little more than I have left. And if she’d caught me in her flat? I’d have simply shown her my medical ID bracelet and looked vacant, telling her I’m lost. Works every time.
There Daisy is, looking nothing like the photos on her website, except for her waist-length brown hair. No leather, no corsets, no whips, no canes. No sleazy glamour on a weekday morning. She’s tall, probably five nine, and takes long strides in baggy yoga trousers and pale pink coat, clutching a purple roll mat as she heads towards Tooting Bec Tube.
I don’t have much time. When I rang your office, the receptionist told me you had just left the building. Checking my instructions once more, I slide my tablet into my khaki satchel, pull on gloves and, from my coat pocket, take out your keys.
I cross Elmbourne Road at a casual stroll. A female cyclist in yellow reflective jacket rides past, heading towards the low rumble of heavy traffic on the main road, her rusty back wheel squeaking. I wait until she is further down the road, then open the fire-engine red communal door, its top two panels of vintage parti-coloured stained glass. On either side of the doorframe are further panels of red wood and stained glass, making the door appear extra wide. Several copies of the local rag, the Wandsworth Guardian, have been shoved through the letterbox. Ahead is a staircase leading up to flats three, four and five, inhabited by two ambitious solicitors, a researcher for the British Museum, and an estate agent. To my right is the door to Daisy’s flat. A solid black door. To my left is a plain white one. With a turn of your key, the five-lever mortice deadlock bolt slides back with a solid clunk.
My arm brushes the door chain as I enter. Closing the door, I lean my back against it, calming my breath, inhaling the scent of leather and household bleach and pine-scented shower gel. These smells should be familiar, but I only know that from my notes. It’s warmer inside your flat: you leave your heating on timer when you’re overseas (two hours in the morning and three at night) so your water pipes don’t freeze. Keeps it nice and cosy for me. I savour this moment when the air is still, the house empty, and nobody knows I am here. Even when you’re home, you don’t have visitors, or dinner parties, or lovers. You only have one love: your job. You used to keep your address a secret and I expect you still do. Hardly surprising given how many powerful and ruthless people you’ve pissed off. Yet here I am.
To my left is a wall cupboard that’s concealed when the front door is open. I look inside. Part hanging space, part shelving. Your coats obscure a deep shelf upon which one black forty-litre backpack, packed and ready to go, lies on the right. Your warm climate bag. On the left, the shelf is empty, because you took your cold climate backpack to Afghanistan. When you are home, which isn’t for long, the two Go Bags, as you call them, sit side by side and look identical, like twins in a double crib. And these are your babies, aren’t they? One of them is always with you. The contents of each bag are known to me, logged in my diary like every other detail about your life, even the contents of your bathroom cabinet, what food you eat, what brand and size of clothes you wear. But I can’t resist unzipping the bag’s main compartment and stroking your rolled-up cotton shirt, imagining it on your smooth skin. I inhale the apple smell of your laundry detergent, then put it back just as I found it. Below, next to your motorcycle helmet and leather gloves, is a pile of your post, placed there by Daisy. Twenty-three letters. I’ve steamed them open, read them all, re-sealed them and returned them to this spot. There are two new letters: one is an electricity bill, the other from the Prison Service. I pocket the second one and close the cupboard door.
The narrow hallway is made barely navigable by your black Harley-Davidson Sportster 883. I run my gloved finger over the seat. Two steps down, and I’m in your sitting room, wondering, as I must do every time I come here, why your home is so strikingly monochrome. I have reams of photos of your flat on my iPad, shot in colour, but they might as well have been taken in black and white. The bedroom has white walls, black wooden platform bed with austere white bedding, white faux-fur rug on floorboards, painted white. In the lounge room, a square-armed, square-backed, Corbusier black leather sofa and matching armchair face a wall-mounted TV and a black and white cube that serves as a coffee table. In one corner is a glass desk, resting on black wrought iron legs, and behind it an Aeron chair. The galley kitchen is grey granite and stainless steel with white cupboards. There are no photographs of you or your family, no mementoes or school certificates or childhood keepsakes. I could only find your birth certificate in a desk drawer, wedged between the pages of a book on journalism. Your home reveals virtually nothing about you.
There is just one collection that hints at what you care about. Behind your desk, the wall is covered in black and white photos, in identical black frames. But you do not appear in any of them, only people you’ve met on your travels who’ve touched your heart. They do not smile. Their eyes show fear, grief, pain, desperation. They are the victims you write about. Nooria Zia is on your wall, her face in close-up as she looks straight at the camera from behind prison bars. A child with no hope.
I look around at the security grilles on your windows and French doors; this place feels like a prison. But it is your refuge. Somewhere to rejuvenate between assignments. Drop your guard. Here, your privacy and security are inviolate. But not any more.
I leave you a puzzle.
7
With backpack slung over one shoulder, you jump down from the black cab in your scuffed Harley-Davidson leather jacket, the skull insignia visible when you turn to pay the cabbie. It never ceases to amaze me that, despite your petite frame, you wield such destructive power, whirling through people’s lives, leaving misery in your wake.
Your army surplus boots slap the damp paving stones. You open and slam shut the communal door and you’re gone, keen to find Ditsy Daisy, who arrived home eleven minutes and twenty-one seconds ago. I bet her text message had you drilling your fingers on the cab armrest, pestering the driver to go faster.
Leaning against a low wall, hood up, busy messaging on my phone, of course you haven’t noticed me. As soon as you’re inside, I move closer, concealed by a neglected privet hedge that’s grown both tall and wide, a hazard to footpath users. To hear you better, I lower my hood. Through the stained glass of the main door, I see you suddenly freeze. It’s like I’m peering down a kaleidoscope watching oranges, greens, yellows and blues shift into different patterns as your dark form moves through it. Then you turn and thump on your friend’s door.
‘Hello, Dais,’ I hear you say. ‘You alone?’
‘Yeah. Come ’ere and give us a hug,’ Daisy says.
Your shapes merge and separate, the kaleidoscope turns. Daisy mumbles in your ear something about her text message.
‘What happened to your face?’ she says, her deep voice androgynous. There’s nothing daisy-like about Daisy.
‘Got into a spot of trouble in Kabul. At least nothing’s broken.’ You turn and look at your flat door. ‘What happened?’
‘Got back from yoga and found that.’
Spray painted across your door in red are the words, ‘YOU WILL PAY’.
‘You didn’t call the police, did you?’
‘You asked me not to.’
‘How did they get in?’
‘Dunno. Must’ve buzzed
their way in, I guess.’
‘This wasn’t there when you left for yoga?’
‘What? You think I wouldn’t have noticed?’
‘And you’ve still got my spare keys?’
‘Sure.’ Daisy goes into her flat and reappears. ‘Here.’
You both drop out of sight and must be kneeling near my ‘welcome home’ message.
‘Paint’s barely dry,’ you say.
Time to move. I sprint across the road and duck behind a parked silver Citroën Dispatch van. You burst out of the main door and stand on the pavement, peering up and down the road and into the park, but you don’t see me.
Wolfe knows that insistent intercom ring. He keeps his thumb on the button until she answers. Her search for proof of an intruder is cut short. She scrapes sleep from the corners of her tired eyes, then sniffs an armpit. She’ll do.
‘All right, Mr Impatient,’ she says into the intercom and opens her door. ‘Hold your horses.’
Through the stained glass door panels of the communal entrance she sees a man she knows to be DCI Dan Casburn. At five eight and of stocky build, Casburn always stands stiffly, chin up as if he’s still in the SAS, even though, these days, he wears suits and ties. His jacket is never creased, his tie is always perfectly centred and his shoes polished - a habit from his army days.
Wolfe opens the communal door.
‘You took your time,’ she says, forcing a jovial tone. There are few people who make her nervous, and Casburn is one.
Wolfe leans against the door frame, arms folded, as she looks into Casburn’s gunmetal grey eyes, which somehow seem fitting, given he was one of the SAS’s best snipers. He keeps his hair short with a flat top cut, and has enough stubble on his chin to sand back the peeling paintwork on Wolfe’s windowsills. His jaw is in perpetual motion as he chews Nicorette gum.
‘Didn’t know I was expected,’ he says in an East London accent, and tilts his head to one side.
Wolfe doesn’t move out of the way. ‘Of course you are. You’ve seen today’s Post and you want to know everything I’ve learnt about Lalzad’s drugs operation. Right?’
‘We both know it’s more than that.’ He smiles, but his eyes don’t.
Casburn’s job is to prevent terrorist activity in the United Kingdom and threats to UK interests overseas. Wolfe’s article doesn’t mention Kabir Khan or Lalzad’s suspected link to Isil because she needs proof Nooria is correct.
‘You going to let me in or are we doing this on the doorstep?’ Casburn asks.
‘Just so happens I need a detective.’
‘That’ll be a first.’
A hint of a smile, then his face muscles resume a neutral position, his expression unreadable again.
Wolfe steps aside and Casburn brushes past her, deliberately giving her shoulder a nudge, asserting his authority. In the communal lobby he turns left. He knows his way, but stops abruptly when he sees YOU WILL PAY scrawled across her door. Casburn bends his knees to take a closer look.
‘Shit paint job,’ he says.
‘Very funny, Dan.’
He frowns. ‘Any sign of a break in?’
‘I haven’t had a chance to look. Just got in myself.’
‘Well, do it now.’ It’s an order.
Casburn inspects the chunky deadbolt without touching it, then steps into the hall, closing the door with his elbow so as not to disturb possible fingerprints, then follows her into the sitting room. The window locks are intact. As he scans the French doors for signs of forced entry, his focus flits to the wall behind her desk where her only photographs are displayed. Some were shot by a professional, others by Wolfe on the fly. But the common theme is conflict. Casburn seems drawn to one of an Iraqi woman and two young children - filthy, frightened, standing in front of a pile of rubble that once was their home.
He shakes his head. ‘Cheery, aren’t they?’
‘They’re not meant to be cheery. They’re there to remind me why I do what I do.’
‘You mean poke your nose in where it’s not wanted?’
‘I mean write about injustice and oppression, tyranny and terrorism. We’re on the same side, Dan. It’s our methods that differ.’
He studies the photo taken in 2014 of Hong Kong police clearing a protest camp demanding democracy, a man on the ground being beaten by three officers.
‘So why aren’t you in any of these?’
‘Because they’re not about me.’
Casburn swivels on his heels to face her.
‘Want to report the vandalism?’
‘Not worth the hassle.’
‘I warned you.’ It sounds more like a threat, than I-told-you-so.
His eyes drop to the backpack she took to Afghanistan, lying on the sofa.
‘What did Ghaznavi’s wife tell you, Olivia?’
She holds his gaze. ‘Tell me what you know about Lalzad’s link to terrorist activity and I’ll give you what I know.’
He shakes his head. ‘Who’s Lalzad’s right-hand man here?’
‘I have a name.’
Casburn nods. Waits.
‘But . . . ’ she says.
‘There’s always a but with you, Olivia.’
‘You want the name? You tell me what you know.’
‘I don’t play stupid games.’
‘Fine.’ Wolfe shrugs and picks up her backpack. ‘I need you to leave, Dan. I’m heading for Antarctica tomorrow and I’ve things to do.’
Casburn doesn’t budge. ‘You’re no longer working the story, Olivia.’
A flush of anger. Did Cohen tell him?
‘For now,’ Wolfe says. ‘Look, Dan, if I can help you bring down a terror cell, I will. But I’ve done all the hard yards on this one, so give me something in return.’
‘Depends what you’ve got.’
‘A name and his intention to bomb London.’
Casburn doesn’t seem surprised. Nooria was right. ‘And in return?’
‘When you find this man, I get an exclusive.’
‘Is Nooria Zia your only informant?’
‘No. I have another. Local. But I don’t yet know if he’s trustworthy.’
He chews his Nicorette for a long moment, staring at her white floorboards.
‘I’ll have to clear it with my superior. And I’ll need your source.’
‘You know me better than that.’
Wolfe is careful not to fiddle with the chunky ring she wears on the middle finger of her left hand, the three centimetre-long, oblong centrepiece resembling black onyx. Concealed beneath the gem is a USB stick holding the details of all her sources.
‘I can get a warrant.’
‘You won’t find anything.’
There’s a flash of anger in his eyes.
‘Dan, it doesn’t have to get nasty. We’ve worked together before. Make the call.’
‘And there was me thinking our paths would never need to cross again. How wrong I was.’ He pulls out his phone and dials.
She heads for the bedroom, dumping her pack on the duvet. White, fitted, mirrored wardrobes run the length of one wall. She slides back a door and opens her jewellery box, then systematically opens and closes the drawers beneath, checking all her possessions are there. If she keeps moving, she won’t betray how shaken she is: first Nooria’s murder, now the threat on her door. Casburn’s visit is the toxic icing on a bitter cake. He hasn’t noticed her hands trembling. Her bravado is a mask.
At the hall cupboard now, she scoops up the mail Daisy collected for her while she was away. She shuffles the letters like cards, searching for anything linked to the threat.
Casburn stops talking into his mobile. Silence. Then he is behind her. Close behind her.
‘He’s calling back.’
Casburn peers over her shoulder. His cheek is so close it almost touches hers. She smells the mintyness of his breath and feels its warmth on her cheek. He has deliberately invaded her personal space.
‘He wants you to arrange a meet between me and you
r local informant.’
He places a hand on her shoulder and breathes on her neck. He is trying to control her. His touch is light, but she flinches and immediately regrets it. He will think her frightened. Instinctively, she bends her arm and moves her elbow forward, ready to jab him in the ribs. But he knows her too well.
‘Don’t,’ he says, grabbing her arm.
‘The last time you met one of my sources, he disappeared.’
‘He chose to disappear.’
Sources in law enforcement talk about his ruthless pursuit of a suspect with awe and a touch of fear. He’s not a man to be crossed. Rumours abound, but nothing she can prove. He gets what he wants, no matter the means.
‘Back off,’ she demands.
He releases his grip, but leans closer, their bodies touching as if they were lovers.
‘Who punched you?’
Casburn has changed tack. His voice is soft, as if he actually cares.
‘Ahmad Ghaznavi. After murdering his wife, his men tried to rape me.’
It is little more than a whisper. The horror of it is still very real.
Wolfe leaves the letters in a neat pile on the shelf and places her hands there to steady herself. She suddenly feels exhausted. She sees Nooria Zia in her mind’s eye, lying in a pool of blood, her miserable life ended violently at only sixteen.
‘She died because of me.’ Wolfe’s voice cracks.
She struggles to control her gut-wrenching guilt. Casburn will see her moment of weakness. And once he knows she cares, he’ll use it against her.
‘It’s not your fault.’ She feels the scratch of his stubble against her ear. ‘Make her death worth something,’ he whispers. ‘Give me the name.’
Her stomach churns. ‘Not without a deal.’
Casburn’s mobile rings and he backs away. She steps into the bathroom and locks the door, removes her ring and runs the cold tap, throwing water over her face with trembling hands, blinking hard to banish the image of Nooria’s bloody face. She dries her face with a towel and takes some deep breaths. Their relationship is like two bordering countries with similar ideals, reliant on each other for their survival, but history has driven a deep wedge of distrust between them. Even when they have a common cause such as Lalzad, their differing approaches land them on opposing sides. Wolfe doesn’t want to go to war with Casburn.
