Last Room

by Reah, Danuta

  He opened the images Strąk had sent and looked at them again. They were the way he remembered them. Overtly, they were innocent enough, a little girl dancing in her party clothes, but they carried the same disturbing overtones as the video. The fear was missing, but the promise of further revelation was implicit.

  He let his mind work at the problem, listening all the time for movement outside, his ears attuned to the slightest sound on the stairway.

  Images of child abuse were all over the web for those who went looking. The hardcore sites had to offer some level of security to their users who wanted to view images, to exchange images, to share incidents of live abuse on request, an à la carte of perversion and cruelty. How were people with such tastes guided to the sites?

  Photographs such as these might do it. To the casual observer, they were innocuous enough, but to a paedophile the skimpy top, the swirl of the skirt revealing lace on the child’s panties would tell them all they needed to know.

  Even her smile… It wouldn’t have been hard to coax that look of promise into a child’s eyes. He had seen it in Beata’s eyes when she was small and trying to wheedle her way round their father. He had seen it in the eyes of his nieces as they tried to persuade him to buy them sweets or take them to the playground or the fair, an innocent precursor of one of many adult behaviours, one he had, until now, found engaging rather than disturbing.

  He couldn’t remember all the details of the case. Ania had talked about it, but mostly in relation to her anger at men like Haynes, not the specifics. He began opening the other files Strąk had sent: newspaper reports, miscellaneous texts that he must have collected in case the story went big in Poland.

  He found an article about the trial the day the pathologist gave evidence. The child’s body was too badly decomposed to establish the cause of death. There was no evidence of stabbing or blunt force. Sexual assault could not be confirmed, but it could not be ruled out either.

  He remembered the feeling he had had when Will Gillen had told him about mysterious Facebook sites and cryptic references to old stories, the feeling that someone was sending up smoke, was trying to make him look in the wrong direction.

  It wasn’t just the Facebook link that was a con. The whole thing was a con. Nothing was what it seemed. The only constant, the only thing that mattered, was that two people had died. He stared at the screen in fierce concentration, trying to force the images to give up their secrets. He was so focused that he missed the faint sound of footsteps in the corridor outside the door, moving along the passage and fading away into silence.

  Chapter 67

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sarah was standing in the doorway, tying the belt of her robe round her waist. She looked dazed with sleep, but her daytime face, more guarded, older, harder, was in place. When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘Will, you are seconds away from me calling security. What are you doing?’

  He met her gaze. ‘If it comes to that, they won’t get here in time.’ He pressed the button to put the phone on loudspeaker. ‘John Blaise,’ he said.

  She sank down onto the sofa. She must have seen the capacity for murder in his face. She was very pale, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. ‘This is… different. This is something else.’

  ‘Is it? I’m going to need some convincing. Let’s start with Blaise. What’s his involvement with this?’ He spoke at the phone. ‘Are you hearing me?’

  ‘Loud and clear, Will. I trust you not to do anything stupid.’

  He kept his gaze on Sarah. ‘I’ll ask you again. What’s his involvement with this?’

  ‘I’ve been in contact with him since I started representing Nadifa. Her husband…’

  Nadifa’s husband had been suspected of terrorist activity. That fitted. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Blaise wanted to find out how much Nadifa knew. Cooperating seemed like a good strategy.’

  ‘Where was her husband?’

  ‘He’d been deported by that time.’

  ‘And Nadifa?’

  ‘She was in detention. She and the children would be gone by now if Blaise hadn’t put a hold on it.’

  ‘And Sagal would still be alive.’

  ‘Don’t lay that on me, Will. If they’d gone back, they’d all be dead by now.’

  ‘Like her husband?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he must be. No one’s heard anything of him since his deportation.’

  ‘I very much doubt that.’ Will knew he had very little time. He addressed Blaise. ‘Who took François Akindès into custody? Where is he?’

  ‘That’s information I don’t have.’

  ‘OK. Where was he? What happened to him after he was deported?’

  ‘My jurisdiction ends at our borders. You know that, Will.’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more.’

  He heard Blaise sigh. ‘It was in the hands of the authorities in Côte d’Ivoire. Will, where is all this going? What’s the point of this?’

  ‘Ania was murdered. I don’t think she was the main target of this. I think she was collateral damage, but she’s still dead. Someone planted a faked recording on Derek Haynes’ computer. Ania was the fall guy who identified his voice. Then the appeal came along. Ania held the only evidence that showed when the fake had been made.’

  Blaise’s voice was flat. ‘Go on, Will. I’ll need more than that to convince me.’

  ‘It starts when François Akindès was accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation. He was a Christian convert to Islam, and he’d had contact with some radical groups. He hadn’t committed any offences in this country, and my guess is, he wasn’t amenable to bribery. You offered his family immunity in return for his cooperation, right?’

  ‘You’re assuming I have that kind of clout. Go on.’

  That was bullshit. Blaise had all the clout he chose to take. ‘We’ve already established that Akindès was an exceptional man, who would go a long way to protect his family. So what happened next? He agreed to help you and they were given leave to remain.’

  ‘They had a good case. Akindès had a good case. The wife and the children weren’t so clear cut. Go on.’

  ‘He became your informer. He had the contacts, he had the credentials. He kept an eye on the radicals in…’ The implications of what he was saying hit him. ‘He was your informer in Birmingham, wasn’t he? The raid. Akindès was the source of that intelligence.’

  The misinformation that had led to the Birmingham raid had had repercussions beyond the death of the young man at the station. The way the information had been used had revealed structures in the network that had left other informers vulnerable. British intelligence and British policing had been made to look incompetent. As Blaise had said at the time: if someone had set out to damage us deliberately they couldn’t have done a better job.

  He was feeling his way now. ‘Your people thought Akindès had set them up. After the raid, he was taken into custody. A few weeks after that he was deported. Did he ever arrive in Côte d’Ivoire? Or was he sent somewhere else? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Jordan? Syria? Egypt?’

  ‘If that’s what happened…’ Before Will could interrupt, Blaise said, ‘And it may have done. I’m not disagreeing with you, Will. I want to know why you think I’m involved.’

  Because you’ve been looking over my shoulder from the start. ‘Who else?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have hurt Ania. Christ, Will, you worked with me for long enough. Do you really think I’d have run such a botched-up, amateur operation?’

  That was the rub. If Blaise had been in charge of whatever it was that had led to Ania’s death, there would have been no trail of evidence to follow. Will looked out of the window. Two cars had drawn up in the road outside the apartment block. He looked at the door, and at the window opposite wondering who was waiting outside. He was perfectly framed for a shot: Will Gillen, driven mad by his own mistakes, by the disgrace and death of his daughter, caught in the coils of his own conspiracy theory and shot when he tried to hold a woman hos
tage.

  ‘Akindès was taken from the detention centre and disappeared. Did someone at the detention centre see him go? Haynes? Did he see too much? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘It’s about a murdered child and the death of your daughter. That’s all it’s ever been about. Leave it Will. It’s not your investigation.’

  ***

  Dariusz sat in the dark in the computer room. The temperature was dropping. A cold draught was coming from somewhere. It was a freezing night outside, and the building had been constructed in days when insulation had not been a priority. The huge windows leaked warmth, and they were ill-fitting and poorly maintained. His fingers were starting to lose feeling at their tips. He could feel the heaviness in his eyes that said he needed – desperately – to sleep. The draught swirled round his ankles.

  It was like a river of ice in the darkness. He came alert.

  That wasn’t there before. Something’s changed.

  Something was causing the draught. Someone had opened a door or a window to make that current of air flow. He sat up, listening to the small sounds that were part of the silence around him. He switched off the computer monitor, and he was blind. His fingers wrapped round the knife in his pocket as he waited for his eyes to adjust. He slipped the blade open and felt it lock. I’m ready for you, you bastard. The darkness and the silence were complete.

  He stood up and moved towards the door, treading carefully, testing the floor before he put his weight down to make sure he didn’t stumble. The key turned silently. He let the door swing open onto the windowless corridor. He could feel the current of cold air more strongly now. To the right was the way out to the landing and stairway. That door was shut, and he was pretty sure it would be locked.

  To the left… The door to the small office stood open, a pale outline in the darkness.

  It was here. Ania had walked along this corridor in this darkness all those nights ago. It was almost as if he could see her there in the cold night, her arms held out, drawing him on. There was no point in running away. He had stepped into this trap deliberately.

  He let the adrenaline and the fury hold him, then he walked along the corridor and through the open door to confront Ania’s killer.

  Chapter 68

  Jerzy Pawlak was sitting by the desk, waiting. The window behind him was open to the night, and the cold air flowed in, flooding round Dariusz’ ankles, chilling his body to the bone. The gun in Pawlak’s hand was small, but it was pointed directly at him.

  ‘It’s going to make a sad story, isn’t it Erland? Drunk and disgraced and you follow your girlfriend out of the window.’

  ‘It’s not going to look very convincing if I’ve got a bullet through my chest.’ He hadn’t anticipated a gun. His legs felt like water, but he managed to keep his voice steady. Pawlak? Why would Pawlak have killed Ania?

  ‘The jump would be better but you probably haven’t got the guts. You came here with the gun. You blew your own brains out.’

  ‘From a distance?’

  ‘I can get close enough if I have to. Don’t move!’ He had seen Dariusz brace himself for a lunge. The gun stayed steady, the gun was the only thing that mattered. He could feel the weight of the knife in his pocket, as useless as if it had been a hundred miles away. He hadn’t expected the gun.

  ‘I’ll take the tape first.’

  Dariusz understood why he was still alive. ‘I haven’t got it, not here. What did you think? That I was going to bring it as a present?’

  ‘You aren’t drunk either, are you?’

  ‘No. I filled the bottle with water. It still smelled of vodka, but…’ He shrugged. He might as well have got drunk. Maybe an erratic, roaring charge would have worked. Sober, he couldn’t make himself do it, not into certain death.

  ‘Wherever you’ve put it, no one’s going to be looking for it now. Gillen’s left. It doesn’t matter anyway. Not really.’

  ‘I’m not going out of that window. You’ll have to shoot me. They might have covered up Ania’s murder, but they won’t cover up this one.’

  There was something strange about the light. It seemed to come and go, a pale, sickly glow in the night that cast almost no illumination. Pawlak made a sound that was more like a titter than a laugh. His rat-like face contorted into a gleeful grin. ‘I didn’t murder your girlfriend. She jumped, Erland, just like they said.’ He pushed the gun forward. ‘Don’t!’

  ‘She… you lying piece of shit!’ But Pawlak’s voice held the note of truth. For the first time, a terrible doubt began to fill his mind. Kiciu?

  ‘She wasn’t going to tell me where that tape was. That’s what I wanted, the tape. I had to give her some encouragement. She knew she couldn’t hold out. She knew she’d tell me in the end.’

  Pawlak had been a member of Służba Bezpieczeństwa the SB, the secret police. He would have known the techniques of swift, harsh interrogation. What had he done to her, up here, alone in the vast, empty building?

  He could see the retrospective frustration in Pawlak’s face. ‘She got away from me and she went out of the window. I didn’t expect that. She tried to climb across to the fire escape.’ Then he grinned. ‘She screamed. When she fell, she screamed.’

  He knew he was going to die, but he was going to destroy Pawlak first. He was across the room before the words were out of Pawlak’s mouth. He saw the gun jump and it was as if he had hit a brick wall. He was thrown backwards and a rod of agony rammed itself through his arm. All the strength drained out of him and he was on the ground.

  ‘Stupid cunt!’ Pawlak spat. ‘Look what you made me do. Doesn’t matter. You attacked me. I had to defend myself. That’s it. You’re dead, you’re…!’His head whipped round and he froze.

  Dariusz’ ears were ringing, but he could hear it too, voices calling, as if they were cheering him on. As the darkness bloomed at the edges of his vision, he though he heard Ania saying his name. Dariusz. It was her voice. She was there. He tried to reach out, but his arm was too heavy. Pawlak lifted his gun, and in the light that glowed and then waned, Dariusz could see the weapon was shaking. The shouting rose towards a crescendo and Pawlak jumped onto the desk, his eyes fixed on the door. ‘Dead,’ he spat, ‘like your fucking whore, you’re...’ The crash echoed in Dariusz’ ears.

  Time stopped.

  Then there was nothing.

  Chapter 69

  The drive from Hale to Birmingham took Will just over an hour. It was early in the morning and the roads were quiet. He’d left Sarah without any further discussion – there was nothing left to say – and headed south. Face to face, Blaise would tell him what he knew. Will had nothing left to lose. Now it was too late, now it didn’t matter any more, he had all the power he needed.

  He arrived at Colmore Circus shortly after seven. He parked under the glass cube of the shopping plaza where the day’s commuters were already starting to gather, and walked across to the blank-faced building that was the West Midlands Police HQ. Blaise would be there – he would be expecting Will. In all the years Will had known Blaise, he had never been able to surprise him.

  He went to the desk and gave his name, getting a respectful Sir from the young constable on duty. The security here was low key but no less rigorous for that. He knew that CCTV cameras were focused on him and that his every action was being observed and analysed.

  Five minutes later, he was escorted into the main building, taken quickly and efficiently through the various security procedures and found himself on the familiar staircase leading down to the below-ground offices from where Blaise ran his operation. Blaise’s office door was open. There were no flunkies or flappers to impede Will’s progress. Blaise didn’t play power games. He had no need to.

  Blaise stood up to greet him. ‘That was quick, Will. You must have had a good journey. Coffee? It’s been quite a night one way and another.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’ The last time he had been in this office it was to accept the offer of early retirement, an offer that, at the time, he
could see no way of refusing.

  Blaise nodded at the constable who had accompanied Will, and the man vanished, returning a couple of minutes later with two polystyrene cups. Once the door was shut and they were alone, Blaise leaned back in his chair and studied Will over steepled fingers. ‘You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory this past twenty-four hours,’ he said.

  ‘I’m doing what I have to do to find out what happened to my daughter. I’m getting close.’

  ‘You are, Will, and closer than you think. Actually, I was thinking about Sarah. She didn’t deserve all that. She doesn’t know anything about Ania’s death. She’s just trying to protect her client.’

  ‘She could have trusted me more.’

  ‘Like you did her?’

  Will shrugged. Touché.

  ‘You’d better tell me what you know.’

  This was where the bargaining began. ‘I can pick up the story when François Akindès was deported to Abidjan. He was arrested as soon as his plane touched down there. Officially, he’s still in Ivoirian custody, but my guess is he was flown from Abidjan to somewhere he could be questioned more efficiently.’ He looked at Blaise, but the other man’s face was unreadable. ‘I can take it that far, but I’m not sure I understand.

  ‘You do, Will. But before you go on, there’s information I have that you need.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Get me Piotr Król,’ His gaze met Will’s. ‘There’s been another death in Łódź.’ He waited with the phone held to his ear then grunted in some kind of acknowledgement. He put the phone on loudspeaker and handed it to Will.

  Will took it, a sense of foreboding clenching his stomach. ‘Will Gillen.’

  ‘Gillen. It’s Dariusz Erland. I’m under arrest. I don’t know why they’re letting me talk to you.’ His voice sounded lifeless, like someone who had experienced an immense shock.

  Will was surprised by the flood of relief he had felt as he heard Erland’s voice. ‘They told me someone was dead. I thought it was you. What’s happened.’