Breaking Bad: 14 Tales of Lawless Love

by Koko Brown

  He shook his head and made a note of the e-mail address, along with the IP registered to the e-mail. He could trace that—yet another link to Gael and Sybilla. All the numbers would have to be taken down and traced, if they weren’t all burner phones.

  He glanced up to Atarah. “Are you okay now? I’m not going through those photos any more. Promise. Can you come back here? See if you recognise any of these numbers?”

  She exhaled heavily. “Probably not. We changed phones so often.”

  “What about e-mails?”

  “Same. Just deleted them repeatedly.”

  Xiu handed over the phone for her to read the e-mail sent from QS. She handed it back to him just as quickly. “I remember that one to the letter. Last request I received. Have you looked at text messages?”

  “Nothing in there. Everything—again—is deleted. All we have is the lone e-mail.”

  Atarah lifted her shoulders. “Can’t you follow that on with the station?”

  “Not if I’ve got someone on my back. How do I know who to trust?”

  Atarah thought briefly and snapped her fingers. “Voicemail. You’d recognise the voice of someone in your team, right?”

  Clever girl. “Yeah, I would. Okay, voicemails.”

  He put the phone on speaker and they sat back to listen.

  Message received at 2.42 a.m.

  Nico where the fucking hell are you? You should have been here with us an hour ago. Call me. Immediately.

  Xiu looked at Atarah. “That’s our dear friend Gael. Next.”

  Message received at 4.17 a.m.

  Nico, it’s me. I’m worried, darling, call me.

  “That’s not Sybilla,” Atarah said, tucking her hands between her denimed thighs. “Carry on.”

  Message received at 8.26 a.m.

  Excuse moi, monsieur, je suis Camilla, je suis la femme de service. Je suis venu nettoyer. Au revoir.

  Atarah shook her head, and he continued through the messages.

  Message received at 9.49 a.m.

  Nico. Call me.

  Atarah breathed out slowly. “That’s Sybilla.”

  Xiu couldn’t quite see the red telephone symbol on the phone, the length of the call ticking in increasing figures.

  How? How could she?

  Atarah touched a hand to the back of his neck. “What’s the matter?”

  “Your Sybilla sounds an awful lot like my chief.”

  TWELVE

  He wandered back into the station, his stomach in knots and his breathing erratic.

  Atarah coached him before he got into his car and repeated everything she told him until it was burned into his tongue. If you feel as if you’re staring, look down at your feet to centre yourself and then carry on. Try not to think about funerals. I know, but it works. Don’t give up the phone. Keep Wen safe. Whatever address you have for him, change it, immediately.

  That was his first order of business. Keeping Wen’s details off the system.

  Chambers slapped her hands on his shoulders as he hovered over his desk.

  He nearly shoved her across the incident room in shock. She looked so normal. Yes, her hair was polished and smooth. Her lashes looked unnaturally long. She had a deep tan, he thought from a holiday in early winter.

  Finally, he looked down at her hands. No age spots. Immaculate fingernails. It could be done on a chief superintendent’s salary, easily. But she looked far too well-maintained. That, or he was looking at her through glasses no longer tinged with rose, but with horror.

  What the fuck have you been doing?

  “Everything all right? Listen, I know you put a child in touch with one of your solicitor friends. We’re going to need to follow up with him.”

  Xiu removed his notepad and tapped it on the table. “I’m going to type out his statement now. What more will you be needing?”

  “Let me read your statement and I’ll make some notes. I just want to make sure we get the people that run this trafficking show.”

  Xiu nodded. “Me too, ma’am. Me too.”

  She patted him on the back and moved away.

  Xiu sat down and thought about what he needed to do to build his case against his boss. His own boss.

  Fuck me, he thought. How do I build a case against my boss? He wasn’t sure where on earth he could start.

  Glancing up, he saw to his left the picture of Nicodeme’s body. He should start at the centre and work his way backward to the very top.

  There wasn’t anything that Atarah could do to help Xiu.

  He didn’t want any more advice from her, except on how to keep himself and his whole demeanour neutral. If anyone had a degree in fake, it was her. It was always disappointing to discover people on your moral compass are devils in disguise. Xiu had been distraught by the discovery.

  But she’d warned him. From the moment she’d met him and he revealed his profession, she’d warned him that he was amongst those who walk in the light, yet contributed nothing but darkness. He’d laughed at her, calling her dramatic and overly poetic about a pretty hard life. Why do you think coppers can’t maintain long-term relationships? They walk in the darkness.

  Those were the worst. The ones who pretended to be good and were helping themselves to the spoils of war.

  Sybilla—or Chambers—had everything at her fingertips. Why would she stay in the force, except to enjoy the thrill of maintaining two lives? There had always been something off about the older woman. As if she didn’t quite belong in the world they inhabited.

  Sybilla had been the slowest to warm to Atarah. She’d initially put that down to an older white woman mixing with the ‘hired help’. Then it occurred to her that Sybilla didn’t fit in as well as she made out.

  Sybilla gave commands, ran the organisation over and above her husband, who had the connections, or at least Atarah thought. The connections clearly had been sourced by Sybilla and exploited by what she knew about them.

  She placed her iPad on her lap and began by tapping the name into Google.

  God, Sybilla in uniform. How extraordinary… She looked regal and authoritative in a tabloid article, presenting the laughably diverse face of the Met. Ridiculous.

  She flicked through some more articles. Sybilla wanting to encourage people to report crimes. The same woman who directed four women under twenty-one to a brothel without batting an eyelid. Sybilla, the woman who told Atarah to brand a man who begged to return to his own home.

  Nicodeme had taken the reins on that, thrusting Atarah to the side, who hadn’t been able to do anything but accept the brutality meted out to keep the cattle, as Sybilla referred to them, in check.

  “Once they get ideas, they get brave. And when they are brave, they are utterly foolish. They will put all of us at risk. If they were that concerned about their home country, they’d have fucking well stayed there.”

  Harsh, and so very typical of the person who exploited others regularly. There was so much Atarah wished she could tell Xiu, but he was already struggling significantly with what she’d done, and how she’d tainted his mother’s house with it. She wrote out a list of what he could do and where he needed to start. Only to tear it up, knowing it would lead to a hundred and one questions that she wasn’t prepared to answer. Now or ever.

  She set the piece of paper on fire in the sink and set about baking a cake. She fancied cake and since Marks and Spencer was a thousand miles away, and absent of a car or a lift from her friendly, “let-me-throw-you-out-of-my-house” neighbour, she’d have to make do with what was in her pantry.

  The kitchen had old fashioned weighing scales which irritated the hell out of Atarah. Each time she stepped to either the left or right of the scales, the needle tipped backwards.

  “Skip the Victoria Sponge then,” she said aloud, looking in the pantry for other things. She found buttermilk and retrieved her phone to look up a decent red velvet cake recipe.

  A knock sounded on the rear door of the cottage. Her heart jumped, blood rushing through her st
omach. Grabbing the closest knife from the wooden block, she called out, “Who is that?”

  “Saoirse!” the little girl piped up.

  Atarah’s shoulders dropped. The knife went back into the block and she unlocked the back door. Stepping to one side, Saoirse rushed inside.

  “This looks like ours!” she announced.

  “Erm, child, does your father know you’re here? You’ve got to stop running away from him.”

  She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder.

  “I am not running away. That’s not what I’m doing, I am visiting my friend.”

  Lord, the girl clearly wanted Atarah to be murdered in her bed by her father. Irony. “Does he know, Saoirse?”

  “He’s working again,” she said with an irritated huff. Her eyes lit on the mixing bowl. “What are you making?”

  “Red velvet cake.”

  “What’s that?” Saoirse asked, blinking up at Atarah.

  There’s something wrong with me or that little girl is a witch.

  “Chocolate cake with red food colouring,” she answered. “Can you go home before your dad accuses me of kidnapping you.”

  Saoirse’s face changed rapidly, morphing from interest in the baking to anger. “He’s being horrible. He shouldn’t be so mean.”

  “To who?” Atarah asked, crouching to Saoirse’s height.

  “To you. He can’t tell me who my friends should be.” She folded her arms across her chest and her bottom lip stuck out. “And we didn’t finish baking.”

  Atarah rubbed her arms affectionately. “Can I just run across the road and let him know you’re here?”

  “No. Or I’m going to Mrs Phillips, who lives near the pub.”

  Atarah fought a grin. “How do you know Mrs Phillips?”

  Saoirse smiled, a smile that made her look so much like her father. Atarah hadn’t really figured how much they mirrored each other, until Saoirse’s lips curved. Genetics were an incredible thing. It made Atarah wonder how much of Saoirse’s mother was in her. Sometimes a father’s DNA carried so strongly it wiped out everything else.

  “Mrs Phillips shouts at Dada. She calls him something beginning with an i.”

  “Immigrant?”

  “Inter… Something.”

  “Interloper?” Atarah suggested. Saoirse nodded and Atarah snickered. “That’s not very nice.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Someone who isn’t wanted in a nice neat community. It’s like having a private conversation with your best friend and someone you’ve never met comes along and puts their face in the middle of your conversation and asks what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh.” Saoirse looked distant. Her eyes returned to the mixing bowl. “Can we make the cake?”

  “Why not? Do you know your dada’s number?”

  Saoirse shook her head. “He doesn’t want me to have a phone.”

  Atarah knew she was lying, but on the other hand she couldn’t really let the girl out of her sight, before she did pop to Mrs Phillips. That racist old bitch had called Atarah worse than an interloper and the things she said about Xiu… Good God.

  She stretched up to her full height and agreed. “Fine. But you have to wear an apron and you have to do as you’re told.”

  Saoirse brightened immediately. Together they mixed the cake. Atarah found a strange satisfaction in watching the girl measure the ingredients at the correct amounts and how she handled the big wooden spoon with both small palms. She delighted in the cooking spray to stick the greaseproof paper to the two tins. As the cake baked, Atarah made them both a cup of Spanish hot chocolate with crisp, freshly-made caramel biscuits.

  With her legs swinging from the chair, Saoirse dipped her third biscuit into the chocolate and complimented Atarah on her baking skills. “Dada doesn’t bake.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t done so for a while.”

  “Mummy did all the baking.”

  Atarah tried to not react to the mention of Saoirse’s mother. “There you are. Maybe he thinks of baking and he thinks of your mummy.”

  Saoirse shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about her. And all her pictures are in my room. I miss her. It’s hard to not talk about her.”

  “What do you want to say about her?” Atarah asked, her voice soft and as low as Saoirse’s.

  Saoirse looked up, chocolate in the corner of her mouth. “She was pretty. Dada said she was too pretty. And she shouldn’t have left us.”

  Excuse me. “Where did she go?”

  “She went to prison after she let the bad man take me from Dada.”

  Holy shit. Mummy was still alive. Who knew…

  The way the pair of them acted, Atarah was absolutely convinced that the mother had died some tragic death, protecting Saoirse from the bad man. “What do you mean?”

  “Dada said she went to prison because she handed me to the bad man to protect herself. I know she was worried, but I don’t think she knew what the bad man was going to do. Do you?”

  “I didn’t know your mummy to know what she would have done.” Atarah had to answer honestly. Would she have sacrificed her child to save her own skin? It was laughable to even consider, as she sat in her lover’s mother’s kitchen scarred, battered, and bruised that she wouldn’t have let a man slit her throat before allowing him to touch her daughter, especially the virus that Nicodeme had been. “Do you write to her?”

  Saoirse picked up her cup with both hands to slurp at her hot chocolate. “I don’t know which prison she’s in. And Dada made us change our surnames to make sure she couldn’t find us.”

  Funnily enough, Atarah did her own checking and found that the cottage was in someone else’s name. Lonán probably rented it to absolutely ensure that no one would be able to find them. Harder to trace a rental property since there was no central register for tenancy agreements.

  At the very least, her name wasn’t connected with Xiu’s. Whichever name she was going with for the current portion of her life. Lonán was suspiciously sly for a man who just did translations. Yes, he wanted to protect his daughter, but to move so thoroughly, to change names, to not even acknowledge that the mother of his child remained alive. It smacked of someone who was doing exactly the same thing as she was; hiding from a life that had all the smatterings of wrongdoing.

  “If I wanted to write to Mummy, would you help me?”

  “Oh Saoirse, I’m already in enough trouble with your father…”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, I didn’t tell him the truth. Listen, Saoirse it doesn’t matter. Sometimes adults disagree on what they say. In my opinion, I didn’t know your father to tell him all my deep dark secrets.”

  She blinked at Atarah. “I’ve told you my secrets.”

  “You know that you’re a better woman than me.”

  Saoirse laughed at being called a woman. “If you say so. I want to watch a film. Do you have Netflix?”

  “No, sweetheart, I don’t. But I can find something for us to watch.”

  The entire television generation relied on providing so much information. The companies would say it was to provide all the perfect films and television programmes for the purchaser’s viewing pleasure.

  Atarah knew it was the best way for anyone to be found by the government. Better stick to pirate sites where films could be streamed. Atarah located Beauty and The Beast for Saoirse, and set it up on the television, allowing the little girl to sit back and relax on the sofa. While the girl watched the film, Atarah removed the baked cakes from the oven and set them to the side to cool. She glanced at the door and thought, I could just run across and tell him. He’d kill me, but at least he’d know where his child is.

  “Rae, don’t you want to watch with me?”

  I’m going to get into so much trouble, she wanted to yell. Instead, she set the cake aside and cuddled up with the girl to watch Stockholm Syndrome in hi-def and colour.

  Eventually, Atarah knew dinnertime was fast approaching. She told Saoirse t
o pick another film, while she microwaved some large potatoes to masquerade as jackets. Covering them in baked beans and cheese, along with a hastily thrown together salad, Atarah shoved it under Saoirse’s nose, as the sky and cottage darkened around them.

  It almost surprised her that Lonán didn’t storm over, kick in her door and demand she hand over his child. But he didn’t.

  Saoirse wolfed down the jacket potato, demanded a slice of the red velvet, and announced it was now her favourite cake. In front of The Princess and the Frog, Saoirse passed out. From a carb coma, most likely. She had been overloaded.

  This is why you’re not ever going to be a nanny. It’s not for you.

  Atarah scooped the girl from the sofa, carried Saoirse across the road and gently knocked on Lonán’s front door. There was no way to explain why his daughter kept coming to her.

  And moreover, that his daughter wasn’t safe with her, either.

  THIRTEEN

  Lonán wrenched open the door with his phone pressed to his ear. His face crumbled with relief and he threw the phone to the side to take his daughter in his arms.

  “Thank you.”

  Atarah shrugged. “No problem.”

  He caught her arm with one arm still wrapped around Saoirse’s resting figure. “Come in. Please.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears and followed him inside, closing the door.

  “I’m just going to take her to bed and I’ll be back. Help yourself to a drink.”

  A marked difference from the man who threw her out of his home a week ago.

  Keeping her hands in her pockets, Atarah wandered into the kitchen. She felt for Lonán, she really did, but he had to let his daughter breathe or she would never, ever find peace within herself. God forbid, if anything happened to Lonán, the poor girl wouldn’t know anything about self-sufficiency or independence.

  She turned the kettle on and removed two mugs from the kitchen cupboard to make them both a drink. Tea. Nothing could go wrong with tea.