Eleven Days

by Stav Sherez

  There’s something very wrong here. He refuses to admit it, refuses to even have that conversation and the few people we do stumble on seem to share his reticence. He keeps telling me how much he hates it here. Hates everything about it – the food, the backpacks digging into our sides, the miles of stumbling up and down hills, the endless sun-baked hours waiting for a truck or car to come by.

  But I don’t feel like that at all. This thin meagre air suits my lungs perfectly, the twisting hills and treacherous slopes strip the fat and drift I accumulated in the city. It’s as if every part that was not a true part of me is finally slipping free into the high clean air. I feel something strange and exciting and I don’t quite know what it is or how to express it. With each place we stop at, with each broken conversation and whispered warning, with each new story, I begin to understand what is happening here and why.

  I try to interest him. In London this is exactly what would goad him into action but here, in Peru, Nigel has become remote and distant and as different from his normal self as this landscape is to the glass and concrete of the city.

  There is barely any life here at all. It is almost like the surface of another planet. Barren and cold and stark. The thin air and rocky ground deter everything but the hardiest weeds, the animals all look like shrinkwrapped skeletons and the people too seem stunted, closed in on themselves, each like a fist. Their mouths are tight but their eyes give them away. The shrugs and grudging smiles hide a deep unreckonable desperation and you feel that anything can happen at any time.

  But people like to talk. People like to tell stories. We are such a curiosity to them we may as well be from another galaxy and, eventually, words are spoken, stories told.

  We hear about the mines. That’s all we hear. How the mines have taken over the region. The foreign mines where no one understands what the foreman says but they all understand the cruel smack of his stick. We sit and listen as they tell us of rivers that float with death and strange shiny chemicals that swallow the sun. They say men come at night and take their children. That there are things in these mountains woken up out of millennia-long slumber. They talk of seeing the paramilitaries again, the rumble of boots and cruel smiles and bloodstench. How they thought these days would never come again but here they are.

  Everywhere we go we hear whispers and rumours of a fenced compound high in the mountains and people say the days of war and blood are coming back and I can tell from their faces and the agitation in their muscles that they’ve waited their whole lives for this. They tell us about death threats and assassinations. They speak of the disappeared, ghosts walking the silent hills, demons roaming the Inca night. They complain about their persistent bloodcoughs, the black dust they bring forth every morning from their lungs, and they shrug and look up at the sky as if it owed them an answer and then they look back down at the holy ancient ground that has been stripped from their very feet and it makes me feel mad and restless and pale-eyed and he’s not even interested, he just skulks in corners and sits on the backpacks and smokes his cigarettes.

  He makes me sick. I can’t stand to be near him any more. Even the way he moves his hand up to his jaw, that slow deliberate gesture, repeated through hours and days, in buses and sleeping bags, drives me crazy.

  But he makes me understand myself better. He’s like a mirror in which I can see my former life. All those long and wasted years behind me. The posturing and pretending in small hot flats as if we, us, were the ones who were going to change the world. In the light of other people’s suffering our own seems so petty and small and pointless. In London we got angry about library closures and low pay rises. In London we protested against health cuts and housing benefits – but here in the wind and blood it is easy to see what is important and how, even in our worst moments, our lives are a million times better than these people’s. They would swap with us in a heartbeat.

  I left Nigel in that village last night. He’ll wake up, shrug, catch tomorrow’s bus and be in town by nightfall where he can go back to his act and tell his stories and drink his beer and feel good about himself.

  Without him I feel free. Without him I feel new and unknown to myself. A mystery slowly unravelling after so many years of blindness. I talk to people in the villages, people on the highway, people out in the stony fields. They all tell the same story. They keep mentioning the compound in the hills. Their faces shade and they look behind them as they say this. A place where gunfire is regularly heard, and chanting, and the cries of strange animals. They moan about the mine diverting their water for its machines, the constant blasting of the dynamite, the last fish seen in the river several months ago. They talk of doing something. Of getting back at the bosses. But you can see in their sunken eyes and defeated mouths that there is nothing left in them but talk.

  I collect rumours, stories, and outrageous fabrications from each village I stop at. Are the men from the compound responsible for this? Are they soldiers? I ask them, but they pretend not to understand or not to hear or not to care. But I knew I was getting close to the compound when people became less willing to talk, when doors got slammed in my face or the ground in front of me flecked by spittle. They say it lies on a hill. A gated fortress. A palace. A monastery. A torture centre. Take your pick. The stories varied but the fear and apprehension didn’t.

  A young man in a bar made of aluminium siding and old beer cans told me where it was. He was slow and hunchbacked and seemed to be retreating into himself even as we spoke. Around us farmers stared into their drinks, flies buzzed, the world went on. I paid him his price and wrote down the directions he gave me.

  I can see it long before I reach it. Twenty-foot walls surround the building and stand stark and ugly against blue sky and silver peaks. The trail is well used and it doesn’t take me long to make my way up the hill, through a pass in the mountain and onto the headland.

  Two armed guards track me from their watchtowers. They swivel their mounted guns lazily and follow my progress up the hill. I can feel my heart beat, my skin itch, but I put one foot in front of the other because there is nothing else I can do.

  The soldiers are no longer slouching against their guns. They are up and jabbering into walkie-talkies and sighting down their barrels at me. I keep walking and taking deep breaths, trying not to stumble on legs that feel as though they’re made of rubber.

  I hear the squawk and crackle of their radios, the eerie howling of the wind as it skips through the trees, and then a great wrenching as the main gate to the compound swings open.

  I stand, ten feet from the entrance, and wait. The soldiers are right above me, their guns pointing down at my head, but I ignore them and keep my eyes fixed ahead.

  I expect more soldiers. More guards. But there is only an old man with a straggly white beard, a priest’s collar, and a mischievous smile on his face. He holds his hands out and says in English, ‘Welcome, my dear. My name is Father McCarthy and I’m so glad you found us.’

  34

  Carrigan called an emergency briefing. Constables came in from days off or paperwork or street patrol. There was a sense of purpose and anticipation in the air as they took their seats. There was none of the usual moaning, bickering and fidgeting.

  Carrigan tapped his pen against the table as he waited for everyone to settle.

  ‘Emily Maxted met Father McCarthy in Peru last year.’

  It got their attention the way he’d known it would. He remembered the look in Geneva’s face when she’d finished reading the diary, a stunned comprehension creeping into her features. ‘Father McCarthy was in charge of some kind of gated compound in the San Gabriel region. We don’t know yet what this compound was up to, what it was for, but it seems almost certain this is where the convent’s funds were being channelled.’ Carrigan stopped and waited for them to finish writing their notes. ‘We now know what connects Emily Maxted to the convent, but whether this has anything to do with the fire, I’m not so certain.’ He glanced briefly at Geneva and continued. ‘
We’re maybe a step closer to understanding what the convent was involved in but, given that, I’m not sure we should be concentrating so hard on Emily Maxted. I think she’s a red herring. Yes, she knew the nuns. Yes, she was there that night. But that could be all there is to it.’

  No one said anything, all trying to take this in, to realign the case along new parameters.

  ‘I really think that’s a bad idea,’ Geneva ventured. ‘We’ve just found the connection between Emily and the nuns and it all links back to Peru – the money, the visits, the missing nun. I think we should be focusing more on Emily, not less. I don’t think the nuns pissing off some dealer is enough to explain all this.’

  He could feel them waiting for him to answer but he took his time, measuring what she’d said, testing it against logic and probability. ‘That’s all well and fine, Miller,’ he finally replied, lowering his voice. ‘But we have only a limited amount of resources, as you know, and we have to choose. We have to go with the odds.’ He wanted to see how she was taking this but her eyes were glued to her notebook.

  Carrigan pointed to the photos of Viktor and Duka pinned to the whiteboard behind him. ‘We know the nuns had run-ins with local dealers in the alleyway behind the convent. We know the nuns were organising neighbourhood watch schemes and were leafleting outside known drug houses. A few weeks before the fire we have a lieutenant in Duka’s organisation visiting the convent three times. That same man was also watching the fire and assaulted me the next day in the ruins. Duka and Viktor are our main suspects and remain so. They have motive, means and opportunity, and we know from experience that this is how these kinds of organisations tend to settle their problems.’

  He turned back to the whiteboard and unscrolled a large-scale map of W2. He pinned the map to the wall, then stuck four red pins into it. ‘I talked to someone in Organised Crime and what he tells me about Duka fits the profile of the type of killer we’re looking for.’ He pointed at the pins, a rough square marking the perimeter of Queensway. ‘Duka owns four properties on our patch, each a suspected stash-house, according to the drug squad. They don’t know which house he’s using at the moment. The Albanians change up every month or so to avoid being tracked. That said, if we can find which house Duka is using, it’ll get us closer to Viktor. If nothing else, a raid will rattle Duka, cut into his profits, and maybe make him realise that giving us the firestarter makes more sense than having us come back every week.’

  ‘Yeah, fine, but how are we going to find out which house is the current one?’ Karlson asked.

  Carrigan shot him a dark look. ‘That’s the problem. We haven’t got the resources to hit all four simultaneously, and if we get the wrong one, it’ll give Duka and his men plenty of warning to clear the real house.’ He studied the map. ‘Four houses. All standard terraced properties on quiet streets. All single residences. One on Gloucester Terrace, one on Queensborough Terrace, one on Hatherley Crescent and one on Prince’s Square. Now, if we . . .’

  ‘Shit.’

  Everyone turned to stare at Geneva. She looked down at her notes but there was nothing there. She flashed back to those moments outside the house and gathered her thoughts together.

  Carrigan leaned forward, a curious concern darkening his face. ‘Miller?’

  ‘Hatherley Crescent. You said Hatherley Crescent, right?’ Geneva thought of the man behind the door, his silver teeth and black eyes.

  Carrigan nodded.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Geneva said. ‘That’s the house we’re looking for.’

  Now it was Carrigan’s turn to be surprised. He looked at the map, the red pin on top, as Geneva explained about the parking tickets issued to the SUV. She told them about ringing the doorbell the previous day, the expensive security set-up, the man who’d answered the door.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Carrigan asked.

  ‘It would be a pretty big coincidence if it wasn’t.’

  Carrigan agreed. ‘Karlson? Get a surveillance team set up outside the house. I want them in place by tonight, when activity’s likely to be at its highest. If Viktor makes an appearance then we’ve got him.’

  *

  Geneva sat at her table and went through the convent files as the team mobilised and gathered, their excitement suffusing the incident room but making it hard for her to concentrate. She hoped the answer would lie behind those flaked painted doors on Hatherley Crescent but she felt the tug of the information at her fingers, the Peruvian connection now made real and immediate by Emily’s diary. She knew she couldn’t let it go just yet. There were more things to uncover, more stories and secrets and hidden lives to unravel. She thought about Father McCarthy visiting the convent a couple of hours before the fire, his sudden decision to check into rehab, and picked up the phone.

  The editor of the Catholic Tribune remembered her and she remembered that something in his voice which had so beguiled her the first time.

  ‘We’re trying to locate a Father Callum McCarthy. The diocese told us he’s checked into a rehab centre and I was thinking the church must have its own facilities? They wouldn’t use public ones, right? I don’t suppose you would happen to know of any such centres or where I could find this kind of information?’

  ‘No . . . that can’t be right . . .’ Staples said, sounding faraway and confused, as if she’d just woken him from deep slumber.

  ‘What? They use public facilities?’

  ‘No, not that,’ Staples replied. ‘It’s just, well, I don’t see what Father McCarthy would be doing in such a place. As far as I know he’s teetotal.’

  35

  Carrigan got to the incident room early the next morning, avoiding the chattering constables and ever-growing pile of messages, and shut himself off in his office. He scanned through last night’s serials, scheduled the day’s actions, then picked up the phone.

  He hadn’t heard the voice on the other end of the line for a long time, but the laughter that greeted him instantly erased all the lost years. They got through the pleasantries quickly, both knowing that Carrigan would only call if this was important.

  ‘You’re stationed in North Yorks now?’ Carrigan asked, though he already knew the answer.

  ‘Swore I’d never come back . . . but here I am.’ DI Lesh laughed but it was one of those laughs that held an edge to it, as much incredulity as mirth.

  ‘I need you to look at a name for me.’

  ‘Work or personal?’

  Carrigan said nothing.

  ‘One of those, then?’ DI Lesh replied, the coded assent contained in the ensuing silence. ‘What’s the name?’

  Carrigan looked down at the page in his notebook where he’d written Geneva’s ex-husband’s name. ‘Oliver Jones . . . anything you have on him, even rumours, suspicions . . . anything at all.’

  ‘I’ll call you back.’

  Carrigan thanked him and put down the phone. He felt slightly bad for what he’d done, a little ashamed and grubby, but he knew that would pass. Geneva had told him she would deal with it herself, and that was fine and as it should be, but there was no harm in having a little back-up, just in case.

  He began sorting through his in-tray, reams of useless leaflets and best practice lists, all the things he hadn’t got round to doing or had forgotten to, and then he saw what Berman had left for him, the convent’s donor list, several sheets of print-outs, the type smudged and barely legible. There was a further note attached, Berman saying he’d been looking deeper into the convent’s financial records and that the account the nuns were transferring the money to was held by something called the Tomorrow Foundation. Carrigan peeled off the Post-It note and went back to the donor list.

  The list was made up of over four hundred names and the amounts donated were more often than not in the thousands. Holden had been right about that, at least. The convent had a lot of influential friends and deep pockets they could count on. Carrigan ran his eyes down the list, making a mental tally of the amounts, figures multiplying in his head, and he reali
sed they’d been wrong in thinking that the convent’s finances were the result of some illegality – it was all here in black and white, legitimate and accounted for. As he went down the list, he recognised some of the names – names glimpsed in the society pages of the Standard, names of prominent backbenchers and sports stars, newspaper editors and property tycoons – a cross-section of London’s Catholic hierarchy, and then one name stopped him dead.

  He stared at it, feeling his mouth go dry. The amount was not particularly high nor particularly low, but in keeping with the donor’s salary, a generous but not overly extravagant tithing. Carrigan separated the page from the others and read it once more as if unsure of his own eyesight, then folded it neatly in half and put it in his pocket.

  He was thinking about what to do with this information when Geneva burst into his office.

  ‘Yes?’ He looked up from the screen, his eyes taking a moment to focus.

  She took a step forward, a smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. ‘The surveillance van outside the house on Hatherley Crescent just spotted Viktor entering the premises.’

  Carrigan got up from his seat, loose papers fluttering to the floor, his shirt catching on the end of the table. ‘Are they sure it’s him?’

  Geneva nodded.

  Carrigan crossed the room and picked up his jacket. He was about to put it on when he noticed a long jagged tear he’d not seen before. ‘Get a car and some uniforms.’

  ‘Already done it,’ Geneva said. ‘I told the surveillance unit to arrest Viktor if they see him leaving the premises but otherwise to wait for us to get there.’