Last Room

by Reah, Danuta

  ‘I know that. Was there anything else?’

  ‘We talked about a lot. What did you have in mind, exactly?’

  ‘The recording’s been cut. She can’t have missed that.’

  ‘She didn’t. But that’s in her report.’

  ‘It’s…?’

  Cathcart went through the out tray on his desk and found a sheaf of papers that were stapled together. He flicked through them then held them out to Will, folded back to show a specific page. ‘There. At the bottom.’

  Will realised he had never seen Ania’s report on the case. He read through the paragraph Cathcart had indicated: there is evidence that small sections of the recording have been cut. These relate to cuts in the video that has been lightly edited to remove unwanted material. ‘Why didn’t the defence go after this? It’s wide open.’

  ‘They did a lousy job. They thought the case against Haynes was so weak, they didn’t expect the recording evidence to carry much weight. They thought the fact you can’t pin a voice to an individual would be all they’d need. But if they had gone after it, Ania was ready for them. She’d worked on the video as well. She’d got an expert opinion that the recording wasn’t dubbed. Cuts or no, it was still Haynes’ voice and the jury would have to wonder why the cuts had been made – because the killer came into shot, that was Ania’s opinion, or because the kid named him.’

  ‘So it’s still Haynes. You’ve got him. And you’ve got another expert to identify him. Where’s the problem?’

  ‘Your new expert doesn’t agree. He’s had the whole thing checked, and the so-called cuts turn out to be a complete fake. The voice on the recording was superimposed after the video was made. Not the kid, the abuser. The voice may well be Haynes. He might have been there, but the recording doesn’t prove it. You’ll understand I don’t put a lot of faith in anything your daughter told me now.’

  A complete fake. How in hell had she missed it? But Haynes had been involved in Sagal Akindès abduction. Blaise had told him that. Haynes had been a key figure because both the mother and the child trusted him. He remembered the photographs of Sagal dancing. She had looked happy and carefree, not a child acting under any kind of duress.

  ‘You know why the whole thing was set up?’ He felt no obligation of secrecy to Blaise.

  ‘I’ve been advised that I don’t need to look into that too closely.’ Cathcart’s tone was flat.

  ‘Haynes was involved, for God’s sake. If he wasn’t there, if he wasn’t in on the death, why didn’t he start talking once he was charged?’

  ‘That’s a good question, Mr Gillen, but one that I’m not getting the chance to ask. If you ever find out, let me know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things I need to get on with.’

  Will didn’t move. ‘Ania knew. By the time she died, she knew. She didn’t kill herself, she died trying to get the information out to someone like you, because she thought you needed to know. She thought you’d do something.’

  For a moment, Cathcart’s face showed regret, then he was the professional police officer again. ‘Like I said, if you find anything, we’ll do what we can.’ From his voice, Will knew that Cathcart believed all the routes into the investigation were now blocked.

  He could feel the pieces of the story starting to fall apart in his head. York’s report had removed any chance of Haynes being found guilty again. The trial would not even take place. Maybe that was Blaise’s way of handling it – leaving Haynes to live with what was effectively a not-proven verdict hanging round his neck. York was Sarah Ludlow’s expert, and she was in Blaise’s pocket. He felt the familiar weariness engulf him. Had Blaise tangled him in a web of deceit that he would never escape?

  Cathcart was watching him, waiting. Cathcart, too, had his own agenda. There was no one Will could trust – just himself, possibly Dariusz Erland, and…

  Occam’s razor, Dad.

  There was one other person.

  Chapter 73

  It was early evening when Will left Cathcart’s office. The city centre was a maze of lights, orange, green and red against the night sky. The full moon hung pale and remote above him. As he drove away from the centre, the streets became darker. The streetlights were intermittent, shops were barricaded and locked up. He saw a group of people spilling out of a brightly lit chip shop, and later, a small group of smokers huddled in the dim light of a pub sign. He drove on past rows of terraced houses with shut doors and dark windows. Then the houses were boarded up, and the signs of demolition were all around him.

  He pulled in at the kerb and got out, wondering briefly as he locked the car if it would still be there when he came back, then dismissed the problem. It wasn’t important.

  The FLS building looked derelict now. The sign above the door was broken, the carved Infants on the lintel fully exposed. Will wasn’t certain if he would find anyone here. The move might be complete, the staff might be gone. He had come to find the last link in the chain.

  Occam’s razor…

  He picked his way round piles of discarded junk to the main entrance and tried the door. It opened. Someone was here. It was probably just a security guard. The place wouldn’t have been left to the mercy of the local vandals. He went in.

  The reception window was shut and the office behind it was in darkness. The gallery of staff portraits was still on the notice board. The pictures were dusty and starting to curl at the edges. He could still see the lighter square where Ania’s photo had been. He let his fingers drift across the space, then he reached into his pocket. He took out the picture of Ania he carried in his wallet and, using a spare pin from the board, put her image back in its rightful place.

  There was no one to stop him, so he went on through to the back of the building, past rooms that were empty apart from discarded furniture – a battered plastic chair, a desk with a broken top, an old phone – until he saw the closed door of Oz Karzac’s office. Light leaked from under the frame.

  He pushed the door open without knocking. The books had gone from the shelves and the filing cabinet drawers stood open and empty, but the desk was still there, and the high backed chair. Karzac sat at the desk, his forehead resting on his hand. He looked up as Will came into the room. ‘Gillen.’ He spoke as if Will was expected. ‘I heard.’

  ‘About Ania?’

  Karzac nodded. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What do you think? Jerzy Pawlak murdered my daughter.’

  ‘I... It’s weird. I must have seen the guy a hundred times, but don’t remember...’

  ‘You don’t remember him?’

  ‘Who notices caretakers, people like that? What happened? Did he come onto her or something?’

  ‘She was murdered because she had something he wanted. Something someone wanted. Pawlak’s job was to get hold of it.’

  ‘Look, Gillen, I’m out of the loop on this one. You’re going to have to explain it.’

  ‘Then you don’t know she’s been exonerated? That she didn’t fabricate anything?’

  ‘How do you...? Oh, I get it. You found the tape.’

  ‘You’re not surprised? You were sure she’d done it.’

  ‘Nothing surprises me about this any more. I’m sorry. I should have trusted her.’

  ‘So should I.’ And he should have listened more carefully. She’d tried to tell him.

  Karzac’s hand covered the lower part of his face. His voice, when he spoke, was muffled. ‘So what’s it all been about? If there was no fabrication, Haynes’ conviction stands. Why did anyone care?’

  ‘Oh, there was a fabrication. It was done long before the recording ever landed on Ania’s desk.’

  Karzac shook his head. ‘And she missed it. If she’d picked it up at the time, none of this... I blame myself. I should have insisted on taking the case. She wasn’t focused on the work. If she had been, she would have spotted there was something wrong with it. Well, I guess that’s...’

  ‘Maybe she did. Maybe she talked to someone about it.’

  Kar
zac was silent.

  ‘Who would she have gone to if she wasn’t sure, if she wanted some advice?’

  He could see Karzac’s tongue move to moisten his lips as if his mouth was suddenly dry. ‘I don’t know. Any of us.’

  ‘No. Not anyone. She’d have come to you. You were her mentor, weren’t you? You were the person who had picked her out, started her off in her career. If she had worries about that recording, she would have come to you.’ It was getting clearer as he spoke, as if he’d finally found the loose end, and as he pulled, it started unravelling into a long, straight thread – a thread that led to Ania’s death.

  ‘What are you saying, Gillen?’

  ‘I’m saying Ania came to you with the Haynes recording. She knew who the speaker was, but she could tell the recording had been cut. She wanted to know if there had been any funny stuff with the video. You were the film expert. She wanted to know if her speaker profile would stand up.’

  ‘I know you’re having a hard time, Gillen, but there’s only so much I’m going to… I wasn’t here, remember?’

  ‘And Cathcart wanted Ania on the case. You tried, didn’t you, to get that changed. I thought it was an ego thing.’

  ‘I understand why you’re doing this, Gillen. Believe me, I do, but you’ve got to accept what happened.’ Karzac pressed on, urging Will to listen to him. ‘Yes, I wanted to take the case over. I wanted to do it because she wasn’t coping. My concern was for FLS. If she got it wrong, it would be bad for us, and I have a lot of people relying on this company, Gillen, in case you’ve forgotten. I spent years building this place up, and Ania’s mistake nearly sent it down the toilet.’

  The thread was starting to tangle. Why would Karzac have put his own company in jeopardy by misleading Ania? Will kept his face expressionless, not wanting Karzac to see his doubt. Occam’s razor. First principles.

  François Akindès had been subject to extraordinary rendition. He had been sent to Côte d’Ivoire, apparently as a failed asylum seeker. He had been taken into custody, and probably transferred to another country where the interrogators were waiting.

  Unfounded fear. The photographs were supposed to be Blaise’s message to Akindès: we have your child. Sagal and her mother trusted Haynes, who had befriended them. Had Haynes known what he was doing, or was the story Nadifa had told the court true, that Haynes was working – or thought he was working – for Nadifa’s supporters? With the photos maybe, but the video? Haynes must have known.

  The images were as vivid as if he held them in his hands: the dancing child, twirling round, caught at the moment her skirt snapped round, with the teasing flash of lace – so much innocence and so much promise.

  Attagirl! That’s right.

  Haynes’ voice, callous in its spurious note of encouragement as a child pleaded for breath.

  Please. I can’t...

  You’re a star.

  Blaise said the video was supposed to be of the child dancing, not a film of abuse – an innocent image whose sinister overtones would only be clear to the man it was targeted at: François Akindès, who knew only too well what Blaise was capable of.

  The thread began to run free.

  ‘What happened to the first video? The one of the dancing child? The one the images came from.’ He slipped back into the interrogation techniques he knew so well. Don’t ask questions, don’t let them know you aren’t certain. Present your suspicions as facts.

  Haynes’ encouraging voice was just that – he had been calling to Sagal as she danced, cautioning her when she got too boisterous, a man interacting with a child he knew well.

  Karzac’s mouth opened to speak, then closed again. He shook his head. ‘You’re crazy, Gillen. You need help.’

  ‘I have help. Ania called someone the night she died. If she’d called me, I might have understood, but I don’t think the phone she was using would make international calls. She’d worked it out, you see, what had happened with the Haynes recording, and she wanted to let someone know. Even then… I wonder if she ever realised how much danger she was in.’

  Karzak’s gaze met his. ‘Worked it out? Worked what out?’ His tongue flicked across his lips again.

  ‘She tried to leave a message with a friend’s father. But she spoke Polish with an English accent and he couldn’t understand her. He thought she said, Oskarżać. To accuse. She didn’t. She said, ‘Oz Karzac.’ She said, ‘Tell Dariusz it’s Oz Karzac.’

  Chapter 74

  Karzac sat in frozen silence. ‘She can’t have…’ he said again. He looked directly at Will, challenging him. ‘It’s Haynes’ voice on that recording!’

  ‘It’s Haynes voice, but it doesn’t belong with that video. It belongs with the one of the child dancing. It would have been simple enough – for someone with your skills – to take Haynes’ voice from the first video and put it onto the second one. It’s over, Karzac. They’re taking the whole thing apart right now.’

  Karzac’s hands moved over the surface of his desk, as if he was searching for a piece of paper he had just mislaid. ‘I’m not prepared to listen to this. I want you to leave. I’ll call the police if I have to.’ But he didn’t move.

  ‘Nadifa Akindès claimed Haynes was working for her supporters, that Haynes said he’d handed the child over to them. The investigating team thought she was lying but maybe she wasn’t.’ Will kept his voice calm, a simple recitation of obvious facts that were not in dispute. He’d done this before and he’d trained others to do it. ‘He was there when the first video was made – you can see the child looking at someone who’s just off camera – but he wasn’t the one doing the filming. The question is, how involved was he with the second video? That video… I haven’t seen it. I never will. But I saw a still. That scene was made by someone who knew what he was doing, someone who knows about those films.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it, behind that camera.’

  Karzac was on his feet, his hand moving like lightning, gripping something, sweeping towards Will’s chest. Will sidestepped in a movement that came back to him from his time as a young policeman, and pulled Karzac’s arm up behind him, immobilising him. Something clattered to the floor. Will glanced down and kicked it out of the way. ‘A paperknife. Did you really expect to stop me with that?’

  ‘Let me go!’ Karzac was struggling. ‘You were threatening me. I had to defend…’ Will pulled his arm further up his back. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Does it hurt? Does it hurt as much as having your fingers broken, one at a time? Do you want to know?’

  ‘Gillen, for Christ’s sake, you’re crazy, you’re…’

  ‘You’re right, Karzac. I am crazy. I can do what I like. You need to cooperate with me.’ He yanked Karzac’s arm again, hard.

  ‘Shit! What do you want? What do you want to know?’

  ‘First question: you knew Pawlak. You recognised the name at once. Right?’

  ‘Yes. Christ, Gillen, go easy. Yes, I knew him.’

  ‘See. It’s simple. Now the next one. Pawlak was a fixer. He was ex-SB, he’d fallen on hard times but he still had all his contacts. He got stuff for you, didn’t he?’

  Karzac didn’t reply. Will gave his arm another twist. ‘OK! You don’t have to... Give me a chance.’

  ‘What? What did he get you?’

  ‘Nothing much. Cheap booze, cigarettes... Shit!’

  ‘Don’t lie, Karzac. I’ll break your arm, then I’ll break your neck. Was it drugs? Coke? Heroin?’

  ‘Yes. Yes! I have a bit of a habit...’

  ‘You have a lot of habits. Expensive habits. How do you afford them? The car? The drugs? FLS doesn’t bring in that much. How much do you get for those Home Office contracts? The ones that never give them an answer they don’t want to hear? I don’t care about the drugs. That’s your problem. It’s your other habit I’m interested in. Pawlak was able to supply stuff for that as well, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I... I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Karzac’s sudden panic was as good as an a
dmission. ‘Haynes...’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you, Oz, confession is good for the soul? Don’t lie to me. I know. I know exactly what you are. It wasn’t Haynes. It was never Haynes. He knew about the asthma. He’d never have let her die. ’

  Karzac’s breath came in sobs.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve almost done. It’s the last bit I’m not sure about. Were you making the second video for the same people, or was it a bit of private enterprise? They must have known. They did the cover up. You were in the clear. Until images from the dancing video appeared on the net. How did that happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t... Christ, Gillen. OK! OK!! Pawlak. It was fucking Pawlak put them there.’

  The thread was running free now. The original plan had gone horribly wrong; but Karzac had been left in possession of a valuable commodity. He must have doctored the video to remove any evidence of his own presence and put Haynes there – a safeguard before he passed on the material to whoever had commissioned it.

  How much money did Karzac owe to Jerzy Pawlak? Or had Pawlak been blackmailing him? Will didn’t know, and he didn’t care. What mattered was the video had a particular and perverse value. Sagal Akindès might have died before any abuse took place, but Ania’s instincts had been right. She had said to him: Haynes probably filmed her death.

  Only it hadn’t been Haynes, it had been Oz Karzac, her mentor, the man she trusted. Karzac had sold a copy of the videos to Pawlak who had cashed in, and the dancing images had been discovered.

  Nadifa had told Cathcart the truth, that Haynes was taking her daughter to ‘Dave.’ No one had believed her and Haynes had been convicted. Even so, Karzac must have lived in dread of discovery.

  Karzac was talking freely now. ‘Ania told me she had the audio cassette, and she was going to get that authenticated so she could show she hadn’t tampered with anything. I told her we’d have to be careful, we didn’t want stuff going astray. I suggested she get out of the way, go to Łódź at once and do her analysis there. I told her to leave the audio tape with me – I’d deal with it – and she said she would. She knew things were going to get very nasty. She told me to be careful, and said she was going to keep her head down. I thought we were in the clear then.’