‘Okay, good. Let me know as soon as we have him. I’ll get in touch with firearms, put them on standby and talk to Jain.’
With the call in to SCO19 Ray went in search of Prabhat and found him in his office, deep in conversation with a woman slightly older than he was, her short hair also greying, not dyed as many women he knew would do, and sensible shoes on her feet. He obtained all this information through the glass window in the office wall. Prabhat looked up and saw Ray standing outside, looking in. He held his hand up, held him back while he finished his conversation. The woman turned to see who was waiting. The flicker of recognition he felt, that tip-of-the-tongue feeling that he knew her from the side without seeing her face, was gone in an instant – because he’d now seen her face and it had thrown him.
He attempted to go through the files in his head for the identity of the woman in the chair. She didn’t have a coat with her so she was internal staff, he should know her. But he was tired, and without context it didn’t drop into place. He couldn’t make another mistake when she walked out, as he’d done in the incident room last week.
He’d talk to her as if he knew her. After all, he had figured out she was staff. All he had to do was be polite.
‘Afternoon, sir.’ A young male in a suit walked past.
‘Afternoon.’ No idea.
Hurry up, Prabhat.
The door opened and the woman walked out; Prabhat stood behind her. ‘Thanks for that, Julie. I’ll get you the updated figures by the end of the week.’
‘I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.’ She turned and smiled at Ray. ‘DI Patrick. It’s good to see you back at work.’
‘Thanks, Julie.’ And thanks to Prabhat for using her name. ‘It’s good to be back. They certainly make sure they get their money’s worth.’ He returned her smile and she walked towards the secure outer office doors.
‘What is it, Ray?’ Prabhat walked back into his office, folded himself back into his chair. Ray followed and seated himself in the chair opposite.
‘We’ve had a hit on the DNA on the cigarette found outside the garage where the silver BMW was burned. It’s a Romanian guy. Close to where one of the guys we arrested is from. It looks like we’re on the right track. We’re trying to locate him now, but it may be more difficult than we want. It’s not like he’ll register himself anywhere, but all resources are on it. SCO19 are aware and ready to go. We’ll hit him as soon as we can.’ He hadn’t paused for breath. He wanted this guy.
Prabhat looked at him. Didn’t speak.
Ray waited for him to say something.
He didn’t.
‘What is it?’
Prabhat steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘I know. That’s why I phoned you. The main reason I wanted to talk to you though, is that you know you can’t go with the team to bring him in even when we know where he is, don’t you?’
‘What? No.’ Ray stood. Pushed back the chair with his legs. ‘Why?’
‘We need you to do the ID procedure, Ray. You might not have thought you saw him enough to do a photo-fit on the day, but you were the one who chased him, so you’re the one who will have to do the identification. To make that secure, you can’t go and arrest him. It can’t be said that you picked him out because you were a part of the arrest team.’
45
The look on her face when she opened the door reminded Ray how late it was. It had been like wading through treacle trying to locate Vova Rusnac, but eventually Ray had told the team to go home and that they’d pick this up again first thing in the morning. It wasn’t as though they had the identity and location of a voting-registered nominal from the UK. This was a killer who had entered the country and purposefully kept his head down. It would be a more difficult task to establish his whereabouts.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he had to say as she stood aside and let him in. ‘The kids in bed?’
She gave him a look. ‘Of course they’re in bed,’ he answered himself.
She didn’t respond, just walked on through to the kitchen. He followed. Helen was already pulling a bottle of wine out of the fridge when he walked through the door behind her.
‘You driving?’
‘No. I walked.’
‘Sarcasm?’
Ray shrugged.
‘You might have been desperate for a drink and got a taxi over.’
‘And made presumptions?’
She pulled two glasses down from the cupboard and began to fill them. It was a good half-hour drive over to Church Langley and Ray had thought the drive would blow out the tension that ran through his head.
It hadn’t worked.
He gladly took the glass from Helen.
‘What brings you here at this hour … again?’ Her voice held no malice. No anger. It was a straight question. She was calmer this time, calmer than the last time he’d turned up on her doorstep.
After the bottle was back in the refrigerator, she took the seat that faced him. The fall of her hair just touching her shoulders was the only familiar and recognisable detail. That and her voice.
He could close his eyes.
‘Work. It’s work.’ He did close his eyes.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry I came again, Helen.’ He meant it.
She shook her head. Her hair gently swishing along her shoulders.
‘It’s a mess, a real mess. I’m screwed, Helen, and I don’t know what to do. I’m about to screw up the whole investigation and Billy’s death will have been for nothing, and that fact will all be down to me.’ He shook his head also, unable to take in how much he’d screwed up.
He sucked in a breath.
‘Ray?’ A hand touched his. Light. Gentle. Warm. And rested where it dropped.
He opened his eyes. The pounding lessened. The clamminess remained.
‘What did I do, Helen?’ He searched her face for a connection to the past. It was lost.
‘You didn’t do anything. But maybe failing to disclose this condition to work wasn’t the smartest move. What’s happened?’
‘They’ve identified someone.’
‘That’s good. No?’
‘Prabhat wants me to ID him after arrest.’
‘Oh, Ray.’ She squeezed his hand.
He looked her in the eyes and she let go as though burnt.
‘I won’t pick him out.’ In all his career, he had never felt such helplessness.
‘I know.’
‘We need more concrete evidence, not the flimsy shit we have now. It’s so thin that they’ve pinned all their hope on me picking him out. Even after I said I didn’t see him. The case needs to be stronger. We need to worker harder. Smarter. Not this.’ His voice had a hard edge to it. His eyes flashed. He was no longer clammy. He felt cool, yet fired up.
‘Then do something about it, Ray. Don’t lie down and give in because of this. Do what you do best and work the case. Find the evidence and get him with a strong case. If anyone can do it, I believe you can.’ She smiled. ‘This is what you do, Ray. This is what you spent all those hours doing when you weren’t spending time with me. Do it now.’
‘Helen …’
‘Don’t, Ray.’
‘You know –’
‘We’re past it, Ray. Leave it in the past. Focus on the now. Focus on this, here and now.’
He wanted to reach out, touch her face, thank her. But the time for all that was behind him. He’d lost the right to do that when he left her home alone while he spent hours at work. And he had Celeste now. So why was he feeling churned up about Helen? Was it simply because she was the one who knew his secret? There was something about that safety net she provided, no matter how reluctantly, that drew him to her.
‘Ray?’ She was watching him. Her voice quiet.
‘What is it? One of the kids?’ His stomach twisted.
‘No. No. Not the kids.’ A weak smile. ‘But I do have something to tell you.’
The twisting in his stomach wasn’t doing much in the way of let
ting up. He hated conversations that started with any phrase similar to “We need to talk”.
‘Okay.’ He stretched the word out. Maybe it could fill the gap enough that she wouldn’t have to speak next.
‘I’ve started seeing someone.’
It was like a gut punch. He didn’t know why. They were divorced. He had Celeste. Helen was fine with Celeste. He had to be okay with this. For her. ‘You’re not letting him meet the kids yet though, are you?’
She looked at him. A reprimanding look. Damn. He didn’t mean to say that.
‘I mean, we don’t want to upset them, if it’s new, and they get attached … Wait until you know he’s going to be a permanent fixture for them.’
Helen nodded.
‘Where did you meet him?’ Did he really want to know?
‘You know I go to a book group once a month; well, he just started going and, well, we hit it off. He asked to take me out and I, well, I said yes.’
Ray nodded.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, Helen allowing him to digest the information she’d given him.
‘Just don’t let him hurt you, okay?’
She smiled at him. ‘Okay. But – back to you: you’re going to work this case, right.’
It wasn’t a question.
He watched her as she drank from her glass after she’d encouraged him to push harder on the case, her dark eyes dancing in the light of the kitchen, and he knew she was right. He had to do something. He had to push this case harder because he was about to throw it off a cliff.
Walking through the door, Ray threw his keys onto the kitchen worktop, listened as they clattered across the laminate, grabbed a cold can out of the fridge and took a deep long draw. Savoured the cool velvet nectar as it slid down his throat. He pulled at his tie, loosened it and left it to hang unevenly as he dropped into the chair in the living room.
He was exhausted. Not just physically but mentally. Keeping up this charade took it out of him. But he knew he could train himself to manage better. Better than he was doing now at least. What had happened with Billy was an extreme circumstance. No copper in his lifetime usually ever had to experience that. And Ray would never have to experience it again – so there was no reason that once this was over he should have to disclose the condition. Now he’d decided to hide it, he had to stick to that. He just had to do something about the situation he found himself in.
But it was more than a situation, it was a life, and he felt so damn helpless. No matter how much he told himself that this could never happen again or that the murder would have happened with or without the diagnosis, the fact that he was unable to bring the killer to justice was eating him up inside and he didn’t know how he would be able to keep up the façade if they couldn’t bring a prosecution soon.
Ray didn’t expect Celeste to come by. They’d exchanged a few text messages throughout the week and she’d said she was going to spend a few days at her own place. She didn’t give any reason. She didn’t blame him, or give their relationship as a reason, and nor did she say she had other plans; she simply said she wanted to spend a few days on her own at her own place.
Ray knew he could take that whatever way he wanted. He could choose to believe she was pissed at him, or that she was giving him some space because she loved him; she might even need a couple of days’ space herself, for other reasons. There was no point trying to figure it out. She was a woman; men were never meant to understand women.
The can he’d pulled from the fridge was cool. Damp to the touch in the warmth of the room. He drank a third of it, then put it at the side of his laptop. He’d had to buy a new laptop. There was no using his last one after he’d thrown it in temper the other evening. So, rather than spend a fortune on repairs, he’d splashed out on a cheap new model.
Finally the screen was awake. This would lead him somewhere or it wouldn’t. He downloaded the TOR browser again.
Alice through the looking-glass.
He pulled up the list of dark net sites he had found, his eyes tracking down the names and descriptions. A world even darker than the name gave it credit for.
He was about to give up hope – it had been a long shot anyway … But then there it was, looming out of the gloom like an iceberg in front of the Titanic.
Dedit.
Dedit was the name of a dark net site that organised living transplants.
They traded in the sale of human organs.
Ray picked up his can, the cool condensation slipping between his fingers. He finished the can. His mind swirled at the implications of what he had found. They’d not had anything back from eCrime yet; he didn’t know if they were even looking in the right place.
Knowing that it was wrong to go in and potter around on his own, and not doing so, were two different things. Ray needed to find the answers for Billy. He needed to right the wrong he was doing to the investigation. This, more than anything, was what drove him forward. He placed the empty can back down and directed the dark net browser to the Dedit site using the long, obscure mix of numbers and letters that was the site address.
The unusual thing about the dark net sites was how normal they looked in comparison to many of the internet sites people use on a day-to-day basis.
Dedit had a clear and welcoming home page that invited you to search the site, read, ask questions. If you were in need of a life-saving transplant, then there was a redirect to another page, and if you were there to offer to save someone’s life there was a redirect to a different page.
Ray clicked through to the About page for needing a transplant. Again it was warm and welcoming. Looked to all intents and purposes like any above-board web page. But this one, this page, informed you that if you were tired of waiting for the government-run NHS to find you a liver or kidney, or you were running out of time, then you had come to the right place, because, for a fee and with some simple tests, a match could be found and a new organ transplanted.
Ray leaned back in the chair. Wrapped his hands behind his head and let out a deep sigh.
He’d found it. He’d actually found it.
But what now?
Could he go into work tomorrow and hand over what he’d found? Tell Prabhat that he’d unlawfully nosed around the dark net without proper authorities in place? On his own time. He wasn’t even sure if they could identify anyone through the site. Finding this was only the beginning. These places were notoriously difficult to infiltrate, to identify the owner of the website, to bring it all to a close. Yes, it had been done with a few, but they had been long-running cases and a lot of hard work and man hours had gone into them to crack the hard shell around heavily protected, heavily encrypted sites. All Ray had done was find a location. Nothing more. Nothing to get excited about, in policing terms.
But still he was excited.
He felt a sliver of that excitement burst into life in the pit of his stomach as he laid his head back on the chair and contemplated. Felt it fizz as it grew from a seed into a new entity. It welled up in his chest.
He’d found the door.
Now all he had to do was find the key.
46
The corridor was narrow. A single light bulb swung from the ceiling and cast little in the way of light. Shadows crept up the walls, which were lined with closed doors.
Ray stood alone staring down the length of the corridor. He had a familiar feeling but couldn’t place it. He had no memory of how he’d got here. With no one with him there was no context. How would he recognise anyone he might come across?
A piercing scream split the air. It came from behind one of the doors but he couldn’t figure out which one. He’d have to try each in turn.
With his right hand he reached out and pulled on the handle of the door he was standing beside. It opened easily. A male stood there. There was nothing remarkable about him. He didn’t speak, just shook his head. Ray mirrored the action, confused.
The scream came again, this time more desperate.
Qui
ckly Ray stepped over to the door opposite and opened it. Another male. Again, the inability to identify him. He may or may not have known him. Work with him, be a friend of his, have arrested him. Any of these could be true and he wouldn’t know it.
Tension started to crawl under his skin.
The male shook his head.
Ray moved to the next door, opened it; this time, a female. Same result. She shook her head. The penetrating scream went up again. It wasn’t her. He moved again to the opposite door. Frustration started to fill his head like an echo of the screaming.
A moth must have flown to the bulb in the ceiling, as a flickering shadow boomeranged back and forth above his head while he moved back and forth between the doors.
Suddenly the screaming became frantic. Ray started to run down the corridor. He pulled open the next door and the next and the next, with the same results at every one.
The moth continued to zip around. The screaming pierced his skull. Ray was beside himself. Then he saw the blood pooling under the next door.
The screaming was louder now. Insistent.
He placed his hand on the handle. A small charge ran up his arm. He kept hold and turned.
The door was locked.
Ray pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t give.
He took a step back, lifted his leg and pushed his foot hard into where the locking mechanism would be. It held fast. He booted it again and again, barely keeping his balance. The door stayed closed.
The screaming stopped.
The corridor was silent.
Then a single shriek pierced the air, cleaving straight through his head.
It was then Ray realised that it was his alarm. He threw his arm out from under the duvet and smashed his hand down on the phone, prodding at the screen to try to make it stop. His head was spinning. He felt disorientated.
With the alarm off Ray lay for a moment, in the quiet. Still. Gathering himself.
It was not yet light and he felt cocooned by the darkness. Enveloped and safe where he was. He knew that today he faced the possibility that they’d locate Rusnac and he’d fail the ID procedure.
Dead Blind Page 15
