Eleven Days

by Stav Sherez

  ‘Oh yes. Whoever did this has had plenty of practice.’

  Carrigan flashed back to videos he’d seen of what the Mexican cartels did to their enemies – faces of children flayed and stitched to soccer balls left in their parents’ front garden, men naked and mutilated hanging from underpasses in the city centre, rows of severed heads in the desert. The cruelty and level of sophistication Milan was describing fitted. It felt like Duka’s work and it made him wonder if they’d underestimated Nigel’s role in this all along.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Milan said as he walked over to a silver wall-mounted table and picked up a small pair of scissors. ‘We did an initial X-ray and that’s when I noticed it.’ He squeezed his fingers through the tiny hoops and began to cut the thread which held Nigel’s mouth closed. His movements were delicate and fleet, belying his size and bearing. He unsnipped the last piece of thread and gently lowered the jaw, then angled the lights until he was satisfied. He bent over the gurney and carefully inserted his fingers into the corpse’s mouth. Carrigan and Geneva watched as he pulled his hand back out and opened it to reveal several burnt matches.

  41

  She sat in the canteen and tried to focus on the food in front of her but all she could see in the red tangles of pasta were the twisted and torn remains of Nigel, the smell coming off his body, sour and earthy, the pathologist’s last words as he flipped the corpse over. She pushed the plate away, finished her coffee and went back upstairs.

  Carrigan was in his office, the door shut. She checked on the constables and uniforms, making sure they each had their assigned tasks and duties for the day, then made her way to her desk.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what the Peruvian policeman had told her over the phone, that last whispered comment of his. She thought about the particular words he’d used and emphasised – incidents and federal – and then she was typing into the search box, her finger hitting the return key with a satisfying thunk.

  She scrolled down the search results, surprised at how many there were. She opened a separate window for each article and spent the next hour reading about strikes and sabotage – pipelines vandalised in the high mountain night, mine equipment monkey-wrenched into obsolescence, bombs strapped to the backs of donkeys in the marketplace. There were articles saying that the Shining Path were back and the old ways about to resume. Other articles argued that the Shining Path were a spent force and that these incidents were nothing but random grievances played out under hot sun and pale sky. She read about corpses dipped in battery acid and children’s skulls placed along the highway like traffic markers. She learned about the cocaine corridors running across the dark jungle and threading through the ancient mountains, rival gang shoot-outs, army incursions, the endless and familiar spiral of blood and revenge.

  She wrote down dates in a separate page in her notebook. Bombs, strikes, assassinations, kidnappings, drug hauls. She ordered the dates chronologically, then brought up the file for Sister Glenda’s trips in a new window. She remembered the dates she’d noticed in the pub before Oliver had turned up, before . . . she shook her head, took three deep breaths and focused back on her task. Her eyes flicked across the screen. Her pulse strained against her skin. Her mouth went dry. She felt the tug and urge for a cigarette but she ignored it as she compared the two sets of dates.

  During the week of Sister Glenda and Sister Rose’s trip to Peru, a mine in the San Gabriel region had been shut down for three days due to a sabotaged generator. On Sister Glenda’s first return trip, a pipeline in the remote Acarilla range had been destroyed by a home-made explosive device. Sister Glenda’s third trip coincided with the kidnap of a company executive.

  Geneva double-checked the dates. Each of Sister Glenda’s subsequent visits fell during a week in which an incident had occurred in the province. She looked up the incidents and saw they were all directed at mine and logging operations. She began to discern a pattern – a peaceful strike broken with hoses and tear gas and bullets, followed by an act of sabotage against that company’s property. She saw the gradual escalation, the inexorable drift from strikes and walk-outs to vandalised equipment to murder, and she wondered, once again, just what on earth had the nuns been up to?

  42

  The city never ended. You could look in any direction and there it was, chasing the horizon. And yet Carrigan could think of no other place he’d rather be than up here on the roof, alone, in the spray and slash of wind, twelve floors of activity below him and only the dark sky above.

  He’d hated the new building when they’d moved in last year. The ergonomically planned cookie-cutter offices, the persistent smell of new carpet and paint, the constant hum of the air conditioners and computer monitors. And then he’d found the roof. No one else seemed to know about it, or care. You took the lift to the top floor, past Branch’s office and up a set of stairs, then through a door that said Do Not Open, and suddenly the city was gone and you found yourself alone in sky and wind.

  He’d spoken to Karen again, a conversation rendered in hushed tones and silent expectation, and they’d made a tentative arrangement to meet up for Christmas dinner at her flat. It left him feeling a bit better as he unwrapped a bar of chocolate and watched London lying hidden under a soft blanket of snow. Days like these, you could almost forget the daily evils and petty feuds which occurred in the city’s shuttered houses, the lost and broken people dragging themselves through its cold closed streets.

  The snow had begun again, small round fluffs falling at his feet and turning the air into a random dance of particles. Behind him, cars flashed on the elevated motorway, fleet and shiny, on their way to somewhere else. He remembered how Louise had always insisted he come outside with her at the first sign of snow. They would huddle in the hallway, donning thick coats and hats, and God, how he missed the electric sting of her excitement as they stepped out onto the street, her eyes and heart instantly ensnared by the wonder of falling things.

  But he couldn’t make the memory last. The case came roaring back, scuttling his thoughts. The girls hadn’t talked. They’d had to release the suspects from the brothel raid for lack of evidence. Carrigan had contacted immigration and detailed Jennings to make sure the girls would be processed and fed and sent back to their own country and kin. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.

  He thought about Geneva, how the state of Nigel’s body had shocked her – he could tell by her silence in the morgue and the way the skin above her cheekbones rippled as she stared at the torn remains. The torture bore all the hallmarks of Duka and the matches seemed a message directed at them. But what kind of message was Duka sending? Were the matches an indicator of Nigel’s guilt, Duka having heard about the raid and wanting no further interruption of business? Or were they a big fuck-you from the Albanian boss? And what did Duka and Nigel the Nail have to do with each other? Carrigan didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that if Nigel was indeed the arsonist then the trail and the case were, literally, dead.

  But Nigel didn’t make sense. And he didn’t make sense just when things were beginning to make sense. If the nuns had been sheltering escaped women then the fire was an act of retribution and a warning to others. But Nigel kept poking at Carrigan like a stray burr. Nigel and Emily – the two pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit. Tomorrow he would go with Geneva to a small monastery high up on the North Yorkshire moors and finally talk to Father McCarthy and maybe he would understand a little more. He finished his last piece of chocolate as the stairwell door slammed shut, a harsh burst of sound ripping through the clean crisp air. Carrigan turned and saw DS Byrd coming towards him, a dark deranged figure flecked by blowing drifts of snow.

  ‘You bastard,’ Byrd yelled when he was twenty feet away, ‘you fucking bastard.’ Byrd was speeding up now, feet slapping against the asphalt, his face twisted and canted, arms raised wildly at his sides. ‘Idiot.’ Byrd leaped and threw himself against Carrigan.

  Carrigan flew backwards, his arm scr
aping painfully against the rough gravel, pain shooting up his back, his vision blurring.

  ‘Get up, you cunt,’ Byrd screamed.

  Carrigan’s head was a foot away from the twelve-storey drop down into the waiting snow. The wind felt like razor wire as it whipped across his torn skin. He rolled over on his side, away from the yawning ledge, and got to his feet warily, fighting a burst of dizziness and straightening his collar. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I should be asking you the same question.’ It was obvious that Byrd had been drinking and that he’d been drinking for a long time. His face was flushed, his jacket flung open, his zip half undone. His breath was sour and rank and his hands were curled into tight fists.

  Carrigan slowly moved away from the edge and steadied himself against the adjoining wall, getting his breath back, all the time keeping his eyes on Byrd. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Byrd hovered over him, the muscles under his shirt popping and flexing, his eyes blinking rapidly. ‘All fucking innocent now, aren’t you? You piece of shit.’ Byrd dived at him and Carrigan managed to sidestep most of the impact but not all. Byrd’s shoulder caught him on the collarbone and sent him spinning against the wall. The hard concrete crashed against his spine as Byrd pressed his left arm crosswise against Carrigan’s throat.

  ‘You screwed everything up. Jesus! Where the fuck was your head? I told you to tell me if you were going to do anything like this and what do I get? Fuck all from you and then I read the serials and see you’ve gone and busted one of the places we had under surveillance, one of the places I told you we had under surveillance.’ Byrd jammed the side of his arm deeper into Carrigan’s throat, the bone pressing hard against his Adam’s apple.

  Carrigan was about to say something, then stopped.

  ‘You wanted me to go in, didn’t you?’ The realisation ran down his body in soft shuddered jumps. ‘You wouldn’t have been so free with the addresses otherwise.’ He looked for Byrd to deny it. ‘What? You couldn’t get enough for a warrant? You knew that once I spotted Viktor I’d go in, didn’t you? You were hoping I’d rattle Duka’s cage for you.’

  Byrd pushed against him harder, his knee pressing deep into Carrigan’s thigh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You screwed up a major operation and you got everyone killed. Happy?’ He backed off and Carrigan managed to get his breath back, doubling over, his hands planted on his knees so that Byrd wouldn’t see them shaking.

  ‘What do you mean, I got everyone killed?’

  Byrd shook his head, depleted by his efforts or by Carrigan’s ignorance, it was hard to tell which. ‘What the fuck’s the point now? They’re dead and you killed them.’

  ‘We closed down a brothel with thirteen-year-old sex slaves in it. That’s what matters. That’s what I care about.’

  Byrd turned and spat on the ground, his breathing heavy and laboured. ‘Those bouncers you arrested – you know what’s going to happen to them? Haven’t talked, have they? Kept their mouths shut, denied everything, right? You’ve probably already had to let them go – tell me, how am I doing?’

  Carrigan didn’t need to nod, the expression on his face confirming everything Byrd had said.

  ‘You know what’s going to happen to them the minute they’re released? Duka’s never going to be sure how much they said or didn’t say in that interview room. Better safe than sorry is how Duka got where he is. They’re probably dead already or strapped to a chair in a warehouse somewhere, getting more intimate than they thought possible with a Black and Decker. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about them, it’s what they deserve. But they’ll do the same to the madame, can’t trust her now, can they? Maybe she made a deal with you.’

  Carrigan shook his head but he knew that Byrd was telling the truth and that he’d been too rash or too naive or just too damn stupid to realise this before he’d gone charging in. He thought of the madame’s son locked away somewhere in Albania and the way she couldn’t stop tapping her fingernails against the table as if she needed a constant reminder that this was all real and not some nightmare conjured up from fear and ancient dread.

  ‘We saved the girls,’ Carrigan protested. ‘While you were doing your surveillance and gathering evidence, those underage girls were being raped in there. We got them out and we’re going to make sure they get back home.’

  Byrd seemed almost sorry for him when he replied. ‘Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to those girls when they get home?’ He laughed, a cruel derisive wheeze scraped from the back of his throat. ‘Home is run by these thugs. Guess what they’ll do to them when they reach Albania?’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Well, fuck that, this is on your head.’ Byrd grabbed Carrigan’s collar and cinched it between his fists. ‘Those girls will be picked up from the airport. They’ll be taken to a safe house somewhere in the country. They’ll be beaten and tortured for a month, maybe two, both as punishment and to see what you guys said to them, what they may have said to you. Then comes the good part. They’re damaged goods now, so they’ll be sold off for the hard stuff – you know, the guy who likes to bite off nipples when he comes, the one who likes to get inventive with instruments, to use animals and get off on the screams – they’ve entered the lowest rung of whore hell, thanks to you. Believe me, they’ll wish they were back there in the brothel.’

  Byrd shoved Carrigan hard against the wall, shook his head in disgust and walked away, disappearing into a blind haze of dirty snow.

  43

  Carrigan and Geneva picked the car up in Leeds. The train station was swarming with young men wearing tight white T-shirts, their arms clasped around tawny blondes in pencil skirts and impossible heels. They were coming in from the outlying towns to buy presents, get drunk and fight. Carrigan thanked God he was no longer working street patrol.

  The car was tiny, not at all what he’d booked over the Internet. It looked more like a rich kid’s toy than something that could get them to Burnham monastery.

  Carrigan was squeezed into the driver’s seat, the steering wheel crashing against his knees with each bump of the road as Geneva smoked quietly out the side window. They left the high-rise apartment blocks and grey flyovers behind them and entered a blank and featureless world, devoid of form and shape, as if some creator had wiped the slate clean, unsatisfied with his creation.

  As they climbed away from the city the snow started falling in heavy spiralling drifts, the wipers working frenetically, screaming and squeaking against the windscreen. Carrigan saw Geneva texting, reading an incoming message and smiling, then trying to hide it, her brows knotted together in a tight squiggle above her eyes. He was glad there was someone whose texts could make her smile and clutch her phone a little tighter but the look in her eyes was complicated by a fleeting shadow that crossed her face.

  They drove in silence for the next thirty minutes, the motorway deserted as it humped and straddled the rolling sea of moors. It was a landscape without feature, made doubly so by the thick layers of snow. Silence enveloped them so that all they could hear was the wet slap of the tyres and their own ragged breathing.

  A few minutes later Geneva pointed to an unmarked road curving off from the motorway and Carrigan swerved into the narrow opening. The car heaved and groaned as the surface of the road deteriorated. The snow had been cleared overnight, great ridged humps on either side of the tarmac, but the wind was blowing it back in slanted drifts that twirled and scurried along the surface of the road.

  The monks had seen their approach for miles, a tiny black speck on the horizon steadily growing in size. One of them was standing by a big wooden door built into the surrounding wall. Carrigan got out of the car, put on his jacket and rubbed the feeling back into his hands. They trudged through deep drifts, the trees sleeved with snow, the wind howling at their backs, forcing them to walk bent over, and he was out of breath by the time they reached the gate.

  ‘Bit far from home, ar
en’t you?’ the monk said, peering through old-fashioned Coke-bottle glasses at his warrant card. Despite the thin robe and bitter wind, he didn’t seem at all affected by the weather.

  ‘We’re here to speak to Father McCarthy,’ Carrigan said, watching his breath cloud and fog in the frigid air. ‘We’ve come up from London.’

  ‘You’ll be wasting your time, then,’ the monk replied, not discourteously. He looked like some minor functionary in a vast system, an apparatchik without conviction, grey and remorseless. ‘We don’t allow visitors.’

  ‘We’re not visitors, we’re investigating a murder.’ Carrigan’s feet were beginning to turn numb and he could feel the first dull throb of a bad headache. ‘Roger Holden gave his express permission,’ he said, his voice steady, eyes unblinking.

  ‘This is a private facility. There’s no visitors.’ The man tried to sound firm but the jitter in his eyes gave him away.

  ‘Call Holden,’ Carrigan said. ‘Ask him yourself. I don’t have time to waste.’

  The monk was undecided for a moment, then, surprisingly, plucked a mobile from the folds of his gown. He looked up at Carrigan and dialled. Carrigan watched as the man talked to Holden’s secretary, his voice turning deferential and unctuous.

  ‘Mr Holden’s in a video conference and unavailable all day,’ the monk said, a smile appearing on his face. ‘And without talking to him, I can’t let you in.’

  Carrigan took a step forward, until they were breathing the same air. ‘This is a murder investigation,’ he said. ‘This is about ten dead nuns and whether we find out who killed them or not, do you understand?’

  The monk gave the slightest of nods.

  ‘You can let me in,’ Carrigan continued in his most reasonable voice. ‘Or you can come back with me to the nearest police station on an obstruction charge.’