by Stav Sherez
‘You should do it for your mother, Geneva, if not for me.’
The sudden change in topic threw her off balance and she wrapped her fingers tightly round her empty glass. ‘What’s Katrina got to do with it?’
‘How much money do you have in your savings? How long do you think it’ll last?’ Oliver asked. ‘I can drag this through the courts for months and if I win, which I will, you’ll be liable for all costs and, since your mother was your guarantor on the house, what you can’t pay will be taken from her.’
She stared at him, stunned. ‘You looked into our finances?’
‘It’s what I do, Geneva, remember? It’s my job.’ He leaned forward across the table and she could smell his breath and see the curl of satisfaction on his top lip.
She closed her eyes and felt her stomach lurch. She thought of her mother fleeing from Czechoslovakia, working nights behind the counter of a cheap hotel to save for a flat. She picked up the contract and ripped it in half. Then ripped it in half again. ‘Good enough for you?’ She threw the shredded paper across the table, oblivious to the stares and startled looks she was receiving from the other drinkers. ‘Take me to court if you want,’ she said. ‘Bring as many lawyers as you can, but I’m telling you now, watch your back.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Oliver said in mock outrage, the tone he’d increasingly used in those final months of their marriage.
Geneva smiled a thin pale smile. ‘Yes. Yes I am. You do one thing wrong, you slip up in any conceivable way, and I’ll make sure you’ll go down for it. I may not have your money or connections but I have friends up there in North Yorks as well as the Met. They’ll be watching you, remember that.’
The wet slap and pound of her shoes on the pavement beat in time with her heart. She’d come to the meeting prepared and unwilling to lose her composure and yet five minutes with Oliver could undo all her best intentions. She felt a rippling fury running through her body, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off. She stopped at the corner of the high street, pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. She dragged hard and felt her heart rate slow, the buzzing in her brain begin to settle. She watched the clasped forms of couples drifting in and out of pubs or huddling in freezing bus stops, their arms wrapped tightly around each other, and she looked away. She had no one she could turn to for advice, no one she could tell.
There was a dive bar a few streets away and it made a whole lot more sense than going back to her empty living room and falling asleep on the sofa again. She walked past the swarming pubs and all-night grocery shops, then cut down an alley which connected the two high streets, thinking about the case so that she wouldn’t keep thinking about Oliver. She knew Carrigan had been right when he’d said that the intersection of the nuns and Emily would prove to be the key. How had they made contact? Geneva couldn’t even begin to imagine. They came from such different backgrounds but at some particular moment in time they had met and that meeting had resulted in eleven dead bodies. She was still thinking about this when she looked up and there he was.
Fifty feet ahead of her, motionless, blocking the alley.
She squinted against the bright streetlights but could make out only his shadow. She should have known Oliver wouldn’t let her get away so easily, that had never been his style, but this was something else, an escalation she’d glimpsed in his face earlier – sending letters, bombarding her phone, and now following her out here.
She stopped and waited for him to move but he did not move. She waited for him to speak, to light a cigarette, pull out his phone, anything that might explain why he was standing still in the middle of an alleyway, but there was no tell-tale flicker of light or comforting series of digital beeps. Sirens wailed and faded into the night behind her. She felt for her belt but there was nothing there, she’d checked in her truncheon and mace when she’d signed off for the day. ‘Oliver?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
She took a couple of steps forward. The angle of the streetlights shifted. The man standing in the alley wasn’t Oliver.
She stood struck and still as his shadow emerged from the blinding glare and she saw that he was both shorter and wider than her ex-husband. Her heart started beating in her ears, a loud tidal pulse she tried to drown out. The man hadn’t moved but he was looking directly at her, a faint smile on his face. She turned around, ready to retreat, and saw that another man was blocking her exit. He was much taller than the first man and he was coming towards her.
She spun around and froze and looked at the short man, the eagle tattoo spreading down his neck. He returned her look, grinned and took a step forward. She glanced up at the fences bordering the alley, topped with glass or razor wire, impossible to scale, and knew that her only chance was in making the first move.
The men were getting steadily closer, taking their time, teasing it out, knowing she had nowhere to run. Eagle-neck looked fast and vicious but the other man looked slow and clumsy despite his height. There was no time to reach for her phone. No one to hear her screams.
She tensed her legs and fists and ran at the tall man, seeing a gap to his side, her feet slipping on the pavement as she faked right and ducked left, but the man had anticipated her and he twisted and shuffled and blocked her run. She felt as if she’d slammed into a brick wall, all the air exploding from her lungs in one crushed breath. She swung uselessly with her fist but the tall man effortlessly trapped it in his palm, gently crushing all the resistance out of her.
Eagle-neck’s breathing turned erratic and heavy as he approached, the hot animal smell of his presence making it all seem suddenly very real. Geneva looked in his eyes and could tell that her life didn’t mean anything to him and that he would just as soon snuff it out as he would a burning match and she realised she was scared, scared as she’d never been before in the job, knowing she was looking at a new kind of adversary.
The tall man let go of her fist and secured her arms, making it impossible for her to move. Eagle-neck came to a stop beside her and lit a cigarette, the smoke curling through his dark stubble and disappearing into the night.
‘Let go of me!’ She struggled and writhed and twisted but the tall man’s grip didn’t falter. ‘I’m police.’
The two men both laughed, a thick guttural sound that echoed through the alley. A million horror-film deaths flashed through her brain and it was too late to wish she’d never seen all those movies as her vision filled with chainsaws and blood, the sharp glitter of knives and fragile delicacy of human skin.
Eagle-neck leaned in until his nose was almost touching hers, and inhaled deeply as if drinking the air. Geneva tried to scream but he placed his oily palm across her lips and she could suddenly taste his cigarette and smell his breath, garlic and beer, the rough feel of his skin against her own. He held her mouth and moved her head from side to side as if assessing a dog’s pedigree.
Gently, he inserted three fingers into her mouth, pushing past her teeth and gums. His fingers probed and stroked the inside of her cheeks, his thumb holding down her tongue so forcefully that she could feel his pulse beating in her mouth. She flinched at the sharp rub of his stubble as he pressed his face against hers and then she saw him reach down and unzip his fly.
She could hear buses hissing to a stop down the high street, only a hundred yards away, TVs blaring game shows from the flats above her, raised voices shouting into mobile phones, and then all she heard was a faint trickling on the pavement and suddenly her right leg was warm and wet.
She opened her eyes and looked down to see the short man directing a long stream of piss at her legs. It smelled rank and sour. It seemed to go on forever. She closed her eyes but she could still feel the hot gush of his urine and hear it splashing against the pavement under her.
When he was finished, he shook off the last few drops and zipped himself back up. He let out a long sigh of relief then took a step closer, his face less than an inch from hers. ‘There are no second ch
ances.’
She spat in his face, and was glad to see the shock and fury in his eyes. He grabbed her hair and used it to pull her head down, twisting the strands until she thought she was going to pass out. He punched her once in the stomach. The other man let go of her arms and she fell heavily to the floor, her eyes fluttering and fading from focus as her face hit the cold pavement.
30
The relentless muffled drumming of the shower echoed through the walls of the flat. Carrigan stared out the window at the falling snow and tried to ignore the sound. He made himself instant coffee in the kitchen, rooting through the unfamiliar cupboards and products of another person’s life, made her tea, turned on the heating and kept his mouth shut.
He’d found her in the alley, crouched into a ball, shaking and holding tightly onto the phone she’d called him from. She couldn’t meet his eyes as her voice trembled, stumbled and stuttered, telling him what had happened, the men in the alley, the fight with Oliver, and he’d said it was okay, putting a finger to her lips, lifting her off the wet floor and placing her into the back seat of his car.
She’d been in the shower for nearly an hour. She’d had several successive showers. Every so often he could hear the wet scamper of her feet and cessation of noise, only to be replaced by the swirling rush of water rolling down the drain as she brushed her teeth over and over again.
It had seemed rude to leave. It had seemed wrong. And so he’d sat and watched the snow swirl and spin, and made hot drinks, trying to swallow the red hot spike burning through his chest – the fact they would do something like this to one of his officers. The fact they would do this to Geneva.
She came out towel-wrapped and skin-wrinkled and looked at him and looked at the flat and went back into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. There were copies of the convent investigation file spread across her coffee table, scribbled notes, typed reports, photos from the morgue. She wasn’t supposed to have made copies or brought them home with her but Carrigan understood.
‘Thank you.’
Her voice startled him, the way it didn’t sound like her at all. She was wearing a red robe and her hair was loose and smeared wet across her face. ‘We should call this in . . . if you’re ready,’ he said and it was too late for him to take it back as he saw a sharp flicker ignite the corners of her eyes.
‘I can’t do that.’
He didn’t want to push her. He knew these moments were not like other moments, but he also knew that if she were to change her mind and report it later, vital forensic evidence would be lost. ‘No one will think any different of you.’
The look she gave him made the words die in his throat, useless and empty.
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ She went over to the fridge, her wet feet slapping against the floor, and took out a litre of duty-free tequila that looked like bottled starlight. She picked up two mugs and poured herself a large measure and swiped it back, her eyes turning fuzzy for a brief moment.
‘Everyone will be super nice to me, which is fucking terrible, but worse, behind my back, when I’m not there, in the canteen or the pub, they’ll be talking about the incident – you know that as well as I do. They’ll start with how awful it is, then they’ll get to speculating what really happened, what those brutes did to me, and then they’ll have had a few drinks and start wondering was there something I could have done to help myself, because no one, least of all cops, wants to admit that there are some situations where there’s nothing you can do.’ She refilled the mug and took three quick sips. ‘And don’t forget I’m a woman. They’ll use that as their excuse. This is what happens when we put women on the front line and all that crap. I’m not going to report it and I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ She slumped down on the sofa beside him and passed him the other mug. ‘I want to drink away the fucking memory of tonight, all of it, the taste of his fingers, Oliver – I want to forget it happened – for a few hours, at least. If you want to join me that would be nice.’
They drank the alcohol neat and fast. It burned and flamed as it rolled down their throats. ‘Can we talk about it, at least? Just you and me?’
She refilled the mugs. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Did you recognise them?’
Geneva turned towards Carrigan and nodded. She lifted the mug to her lips but her hand trembled and most of it spilled down the front of her robe and she didn’t seem to notice. ‘The one with the eagle tattoo . . . he was the one who did . . .’ She looked down at her legs. ‘Who did this. The other man I didn’t recognise.’
‘Shit.’ Carrigan slammed down the drink, coughing and shaking and gripping the edge of the sofa. ‘What did they say to you?’
Geneva tucked her feet underneath a small tartan blanket as if she could make herself disappear within its folds. ‘There are no second chances.’
‘It must mean we’re getting close,’ Carrigan said, looking down at the floor.
‘You’re still hanging on to the theory this is over the nuns’ involvement in cleaning up the neighbourhood?’
He looked at her sharply, then muted his eyes. ‘We know Viktor works for Duka, an Albanian crime boss who runs drugs in our area. The nuns were mobilising the community against drug dealers and petty crime. Viktor and Eagle-neck attacked me in the ruins. Eagle-neck just assaulted you. I think that speaks for itself.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘I know you disagree and that’s fine. It’s always dangerous to stick to only one avenue of investigation. That’s how mistakes get made. But we also need to judge the evidence accordingly. Viktor has to be our main priority and, through him, Duka. We have to get him before something like this happens again.’ He saw her body shake at the mention of what had occurred earlier. ‘Twenty years I’ve been doing this and this is the first time something like this has happened.’
She looked at him as she poured another drink. ‘You say that like there’s a code? A line even criminals shouldn’t cross?’
‘I used to think there was.’
She raised an eyebrow at that, and said, ‘You think things are getting worse?’
Carrigan nodded.
‘Every generation thinks that.’
He took the bottle from her clenched fingers and held it between his hands. ‘Maybe every generation’s right and it’s getting steadily worse all the time.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ she said, intrigued and a little unsettled by the resignation in his voice.
‘We have these great new technological advances – DNA, CCTV, all the rest – but none of it stops the crime. It’s only good to us afterwards. Sometimes I think all we are is janitors, clearing up the mess after everyone else has gone home. At least the nuns were doing something.’
She leaned across the sofa and reached for an ashtray. ‘God, you approve, don’t you?’ she said, unable to hide the surprise in her voice.
‘The neighbourhood improved after they began their community work. Residents became more involved. Property prices went up and street crimes were down fifty per cent until the nuns decided to stop it all a year ago. They were putting into practice what they believed in. In their minds, they weren’t breaking any laws. The laws they subscribe to, ultimately, are God’s laws, not man’s.’
‘But that’s exactly the justification everyone uses – vigilantes, illegal downloaders, terrorists . . . you name it.’
Carrigan nodded in agreement. ‘We have to face up to the fact people don’t trust our laws any more. There’s a growing discontent, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? A disillusion with the prevailing structures of law and government the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Look at how many empty shops there are on every high street, construction projects left unfinished, people sleeping in doorways and bus stops. Look at people’s faces and you see a stunned desperation there – it all happened so quickly, money fell and no one understands quite how or why it did, only that their lives had been staked and lost over a financial roulette wheel.’
‘I don’t know if you’re being extremely cynical or extremely prescient.’
Carrigan shrugged and Geneva watched him as he worried the dulled ring on his left hand, seemingly unaware of what he was doing, turning it between his fingers as if it were a rosary. ‘How come you still wear it?’ she said before she could think twice about it.
‘Never had a reason to take it off.’ He glanced down at the small gold band and twirled it twice more to ease the pressure.
‘You loved her a lot,’ Geneva said, and it wasn’t a question.
‘Far more than I thought I did . . .’
‘What happened?’ she asked, then quickly brought her hand up to her mouth. ‘I can’t believe I just said that. I’m so sorry. I must be a lot drunker than I realise.’
‘Don’t be.’ Carrigan knocked back the remainder of his tequila, his eyes burning fierce and bright. ‘Louise made a decision. That was all there was to it,’ he said, thinking of the days following her death, the way the flat seemed both larger and smaller, expanding and contracting with the hot burning shock of his loss. ‘She’d planned it carefully. I only found out later when I talked to her doctor. A couple of months previously she’d been to see him about an ache she kept having. He sent her for tests. The tests returned and he sat her down and talked to her and gave her two years as his best prognosis. She went home and thought about it for a month and made her decision. She wanted to spare me the agony of watching her slowly wither and die.
‘I had no idea. The last year had been such a good one, and then I came back from a conference and she was gone, instantly and for ever. She’d made sure to tie up all the loose ends and make it as easy for me to deal with her affairs as possible, and then she took a handful of pills and died.’
Geneva looked at Carrigan and didn’t say anything for a long while. ‘You found her?’
