by Andy Maslen
Their real estate agent, Yvonne Wallace, not only sorted them out with the house on W Webster Avenue, which as an added bonus faced a large wooded park, she’d also helped them buy a car. As Eddie had said, her brother-in-law ran the local Ford dealership, Fox Ford, and she’d driven the Colliers over there after their final viewing of the morning. On the way, Lynne had reminded him of their agreement to go for something sensible. A sedan, she said, smiling at him as she used the proper word. But then, as Yvonne pulled into the lot, Lynne pointed at a bright, fire-engine-red Mustang convertible.
“Changed my mind,” she said. “I want that one.”
Yvonne’s brother-in-law – “Call me Stokie, everyone around here does. Only my Mom calls me John” – was only too happy for them to take the Mustang out for a test drive. With the roof down and the engine note making both Colliers smile, Stokie must have been chalking up the sale the moment they drove off the lot, Collier thought. And then he thought, who cares?
They signed the credit agreement as soon as they got back. Stokie assured them he’d happily buy the car back when – if – they decided to return to England. He just didn’t think they’d want to. “Kinda rainy over there’s what I heard.” They bought a second car without a test drive, a black Explorer SUV for Collier to drive to work.
Collier had dressed the part, in a new deep-blue suit, white shirt and sober, navy tie, despite Eddie’s telling him that, “things have eased up on the dress-code front. Some of the guys even come to work in sport coats.” He liked the match between his G-man look and the severe black SUV in which he navigated the morning traffic on N Halsted Street and N Ogden Avenue.
He found his way to the field office without incident and parked the Explorer between two virtually identical black SUVs. Eddie was right. The architecture screamed, “American corporate efficiency.” A lot of right angles, glass, stone and steel. Five minutes later, he was giving his name to a smiling receptionist named Natalya, staring at a monitor-mounted webcam and having his visitor pass assembled.
Waiting for Eddie, he observed the people coming and going through the vast, brightly lit Atrium. Made the right call on the clothes, he thought. A voice made him spin round.
“Adam! Welcome to the FBI.”
44
A Burial
The funeral for Stella Evelyn Roberta Cole took place at Kensal Green Cemetery on a brilliantly sunny Thursday morning. No mourners attended the interment.
45
A Sad Story
Kirsty Noble, born out of wedlock to a fifteen-year-old, crack-addicted prostitute, had bounced around the British care system from the age of eighteen months until her sixteenth birthday. At which point, having been regularly molested by her latest foster father and his friends in the full knowledge, and with the connivance, of her foster mother, Kirsty had run away for the final time on March 17, 2011. Within hours, she had been swept off the street outside Victoria coach station by a well-dressed young Arab man who called himself Rick. Within a week, she had been repeatedly raped by Rick and his friends, introduced to heroin, installed in a flat in Pimlico with barred windows and three heavy-duty locks on the door, and put to work in the evenings. Within months, she had learned that her life had no value whatsoever, except as a source of income for Rick. She tried running away again. Was beaten for her troubles. When her jaw had healed, she was put back on the street, with a warning that further disobedience would lead to her mutilation, and then her death. Figuring, correctly, that she was out of options, she opted for the lesser of two evils and drowned herself in the Regent’s Canal, behind a supermarket carpark. Her body was spotted by a dog walker.
The lungs of the body, when examined, had been found to be full of water. Other than this feature, and evidence of multiple and frequent, violent sexual activity, plus intravenous drug use, no physical peculiarities were noted in the coroner’s report. No long, brownish scar on the right shin, for example, where a person might have sustained an injury in a motorbike crash aged 23. And no tattoo on the right shoulder, of a mongoose that could easily have been named Mimi.
Once the coroner for Greater London, Inner West London District had released her body, the question arose of who would take responsibility for her. With no living relatives, and no-one to claim her mortal remains, she remained in the care of the state. In her particular case, the state meant the Metropolitan Police.
She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on a brilliantly sunny Thursday morning. No mourners attended the interment.
No mourners, but a single figure did watch the proceedings. Callie McDonald wasn’t mourning Kirsty. She hadn’t known her. She was, however, paying her respects. And offering a small prayer of thanks for her service, in death, to a greater cause.
46
Money Launderer
After a home-cooked dinner of Thai fish curry and coconut rice, Stella was loading the plates and cutlery into Vicky’s dishwasher when the doorbell rang. Vicky looked at Stella, her eyes narrowed with tension. Stella picked up a carving knife from the still messy chopping board and gestured with it to the kitchen door.
“Check the spyhole. If it looks OK, answer it,” she murmured. “I’ll be just off to the side in the front room with the door open.”
Saying this, she crouched, squat-walked her way along the hall, and hid just inside the front room, out of sight of anyone coming into the hall. Vicky approached the front door as if a monster lurked behind it, which, Stella reflected, had once been a very real possibility. She watched as Vicky put her right eye to the spyhole and, for a split-second, imagined a pointed steel weapon shooting through the brass tube and spearing Vicky through her skull. The image dissolved as Vicky pulled her face back and turned to her.
Stella’s heart was racing.
Vicky spoke in a low voice.
“It’s a woman. She looks OK. Slim, nice hair. I’m not getting ‘murderer.’”
She smiled and opened the door.
Stella tensed and brought the red-pepper-smeared knife out in front of her.
“Can I help you?” Vicky asked, in the very English way that can mean, “How may I be of assistance to you?” but can also mean, “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing on my property?”
“Vicky Riley?” a soft Edinburgh voice asked.
Stella relaxed and dropped her knife hand.
“I’m sorry, you are?” Vicky asked, making it perfectly clear which of the two possible meanings she’d attached to her previous question.
“Callie McDonald,” Callie and Stella chorused.
Stella came out of hiding.
“It’s OK, she’s a friend,” she said to Vicky, then rounded the door to welcome Callie, who held a bulging supermarket carrier bag in one hand and a tissue-wrapped bottle in the other.
As usual, Callie had dressed for business. Today that meant an all-black outfit of tailored trousers and a sharply cut jacket that accentuated her lean physique.
“Come in, Callie. Sorry, we’ve both been a bit on edge the last few days, as you can imagine.”
Callie smiled at Stella, then at Vicky and held out the bottle.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you. Here. Peace offering?”
With the Prosecco poured, and some tortilla chips and dips spread out on the table, the three women established who each one was and what role she was playing in the unfolding drama. Vicky was speaking.
“So, just to get this straight, Callie, you faked Stella’s death using a Jane Doe then you told her whole team?”
“That would be the size of it, yes.”
“So you’re thinking, hoping, that whoever’s working for him at Paddington Green will leak it and he’ll drop his guard.”
Stella interrupted.
“Which is brilliant. I know him. And I’m almost a hundred percent certain I know who’ll have been on the phone minutes after you made the announcement.”
Callie bent and lifted the carrier bag – from Tesco – onto the table.
“Do y
ou still have the money you took from Freddie McTiernan’s place?” she asked.
“Eight grand in used twenties. Very used twenties.”
“I need you to go and get it. In exchange, I can offer you the contents of this handsome plastic carrier bag.”
Whatever Stella had been expecting Callie to finally bring out from the bag, bundles of obviously used US currency weren’t it. She watched, her surprise morphing into amusement then frank admiration, as Callie stacked the bundles of bills on the table, making a block almost three inches thick.
“I didn’t realise Tesco’s price promise extended to money laundering,” Stella finally said.
“Aye, well, it’s a special one-off promotion. Never to be repeated, you might say. There’s twelve thousand, eight hundred US there. Finance used today’s spot rate. One-point-five-nine. Technically that would have been twelve-seven-twenty but the kind wee souls rounded it up to the nearest hundred.”
“And this is legal?” Vicky asked, gesturing at the bundles of dollars with the rim of her glass.
“Off the record?”
“Off the record.”
“It’s legal enough. Gordon has been meeting some extremely senior law officers and they have produced various documents and seals that cover our actions. Speaking of which—” She reached into the inside pocket of her blazer and withdrew a folded sheet of stiff paper, pre-printed in pink, white and green. She handed it to Stella as Vicky looked on.
“What’s this?” Stella asked as she unfolded it.
“Travel insurance.”
As she flattened out the document and saw the heading at the top, Stella smiled.
“Well?” Vicky said, impatiently. “What is it?”
“We call them cash cards. Basically, an Interpol customs waiver. It means although we don’t want me to be stopped by customs, if they find the cash, I wave this and they waive the charges. So to speak.”
“We use them for undercover work, normally,” Callie said. “I mean, obviously it’s not very clandestine to flash it in itself, but it allows undercover cops to play their roles to the hilt. Drug dealers, terrorists and people traffickers tend to avoid banks.”
Stella refolded the cash card and stuck it in her own jacket pocket.
“How are you going to get into the States? Is Miss Stadden going to be making a reappearance?” Callie asked.
“I don’t think so. Not unless I need her. Vicky and I have worked out a plan. I’m going in via Canada.”
Stella spent the next twenty minutes answering Callie’s questions about the proposed route. Then, together with Vicky, they worked through a set of contingencies, contact rules, codes and, the nuclear option, what Stella would do if her cover was blown at any point, or if Collier got wind of the plan and decided to run, or, worse, attack.
Two hours later, Callie’s mobile buzzed. She glanced at the screen.
“My cab’s here,” she said.
She turned and stretched out a hand to cover Stella’s. She opened her mouth to say something else, then shook her head, smiled and just squeezed. It was an eloquent gesture. Stella understood perfectly what it meant. Be careful. Don’t get hurt. Get him and then get out. I believe in you. Who knew what else? Stella smiled back. Vicky showed Callie out, Stella following them down the narrow hall. At the front door, Callie turned, the still-bulky Tesco carrier bag dangling by her side.
“Don’t get mugged,” Stella whispered into her ear as they hugged each other goodbye.
“I don’t intend to. But just in case, Gordon authorised me to carry this.”
She lifted her jacket away from her left side to reveal a brown leather shoulder holster from which a black pistol butt emerged.
“Jesus! Are there any cops on the UK mainland not carrying?” Stella asked with a grin.
“Oh, there are. Just not the ones fighting off Pro Patria-fucking-Mori!”
And with that rejoinder floating in the air between them, Callie turned on her heel and left, walking down the path at a brisk clip back towards the cab waiting for her at the side of the road.
Back inside, Stella and Vicky sat at Vicky’s laptop and found a travel website.
The morning after Callie’s visit, Stella called her sister-in-law then drove over to the big house on Putney Heath. She told Elle she was taking a holiday in the States so not to worry if she didn’t hear from Stella for a while. Under the pretext of using the upstairs toilet, Stella slipped into the guest bedroom and placed a package on top of the wardrobe, right at the back.
Back in Hammersmith, she and Vicky spent the morning slicing the guts out of a thick paperback and packing the cavity with bundles of twenty-dollar bills. Stella slid the book into the big rucksack she’d packed with her clothes for the trip.
“One more thing,” Vicky said. “Maybe we should dull your hair down a bit. You stand out a bit too much for my liking.”
An hour in Vicky’s bathroom later, Stella’s striking look had gone, obliterated by L’Oreal Casting Crème Gloss Chocolate, which had dyed her blonde hair a reddish brown.
“There,” Vicky said, when she’d finished with the hair colouring and disposed of the thin disposable gloves. “Less Stella the blonde punk, more Stella the lesbian librarian.”
Stella widened her eyes in mock outrage.
“How dare you! I need a safe space!”
They both laughed, although Stella found herself thinking that a safe space right now wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. She reached round to the back of her head and felt for the shaved patch. The hair was beginning to grow back; it felt like fur. She shrugged, short of a weave, she couldn’t do much to disguise it. I’ll just say it was brain surgery. That should get the pity vote.
47
Illegal Immigrant
Stella’s journey from Vicky’s house to her destination in Canada took a full twenty-four hours. The first leg took her from Heathrow to Pearson International Airport in Toronto, an eight-hour flight.
After killing two and a half hours in Toronto, she boarded an Air Canada De Havilland DHC-8 400 twin-engine turboprop for the two-hour-eight-minute flight to Thunder Bay Airport in Ontario. There, she picked up a hire car and drove four hours to Lac La Croix, a town of 810 souls in a largely unpopulated area of the province, just north of the border with the US.
The rental contract called for her to return the car the following day. That wasn’t going to happen. But they’d get it back in the end. She saw to that by leaving a note stuck to the windscreen under the wiper. And good luck chasing a dead woman for the late fee.
She checked her watch – 1.30 p.m. – and realised she was hungry. The town’s main street boasted a single restaurant: a rundown-looking diner called Franklyn’s. Stella pushed through the door, setting a brass bell jangling on its steel spring. A couple of the other patrons, burly guys in T-shirts, jeans and work boots, looked up from their mounded plates to see who’d disturbed their lunch. Obviously not finding the stranger sufficiently interesting to be worthy of note, they turned back to their meals.
Stella approached the stainless steel counter. To the rear of the serving space, a short-order cook wielded gleaming kitchen implements to fry eggs, burgers and onions, and rattled a basket full of French fries in an industrial fryer. His bald head gleamed under the lights set into the ceiling. Just as Stella was wondering whether she should try to attract his attention, a plump woman wearing white plimsolls and a pink-and-white, candy-striped work dress appeared from a side door. She bestowed a motherly smile on Stella.
“Yes, honey? What can I get you?”
Stella looked up at the menu, which was picked out in old-fashioned, white plastic lettering on a black pegboard above the counter.
“Er, can I have a Franklyn burger with everything on it, large French fries and a Coke, please? And a slice of coconut cream pie. And a coffee. With cream. And sugar.”
The woman smiled.
“Take a seat, honey. I’ll bring it over. Skinny thing like you, I got to wonder where yo
u’re gonna put it all.”
“My mum said I had hollow legs,” Stella said, returning the smile, and enjoying some human contact that clearly hadn’t come from a company training manual.
“So did mine,” the woman replied. “Only I guess I musta filled mine up.”
Stella laughed. “Looks good on you.”
She sat at an empty table by the window and stared through the glass at the town. Behind her, the woman called out her order to the cook, even though they were separated by no more than six feet of space and the restaurant was quiet.
“Burn one and drag it through the garden, double frog sticks.”
While she waited for her food, Stella watched the comings and goings of the townspeople. Most were driving pickups. Here and there, she noticed darker-skinned people, who she realised must be Indians or, what was the correct term round here? First Nations, that was it. One man, dressed much the same as the guys who’d checked her out, broke away from a small group who were smoking on a street corner and made his way across the road towards the diner.
Her observation was interrupted by the arrival of her food. It covered half the table. The motherly woman smiled down at her as she arranged the plates, glass and mug.
“There you go, honey. Enjoy!”
Stella set to, stuffing great mouthfuls of the excellent burger down and realising just how hungry she was. She quenched her thirst with half the Coke, smothered a belch, and returned to the food. As she ate, the Ojibway man pushed through the door as she had done not so many minutes earlier, setting the bell jangling again. He looked to be about fifty. In good shape physically, thick black hair tied back in a ponytail like the one she used to sport. He approached the counter, ordered a coffee and took it to an empty table at the far end of the restaurant.
