by Chris Simms
‘Naive, judging from what she may have done next.’
‘That being?’
‘Well, she drove to the store from the direction of the city centre. When she left, she had two bags of shopping. We’re hoping she crossed the road and got a bus from the stop directly opposite – back to where she came from. While at the scene, we put a call in to Transport for Greater Manchester. They control the CCTV system across the network.’
‘There’s a camera in the bus shelter,’ Jon added. ‘Six different services stop there over each half-hour period. We know that, if she did hop on one, it would have been at about ten in the evening.’
His eyes shifted between them, before settling on Iona. ‘Good work. How long before they get back to you?’
‘They said it should be later this morning,’ she replied.
‘And the Porsche?’
‘It’s gone for forensics. They’ll go over it properly at their facility.’
‘Right. Obviously, you missed the eight a.m. briefing, so I’ll fill you in on overnight developments. Russian security services have yet to respond to our request on the fingerprints removed from the mobile phone. I don’t think we’re top of their Christmas card list these days. Anyway, a more senior member of our consular team is trying to inject a bit of urgency.’ His eyes went to the report on his desk and he gave a sigh. ‘Aside from that, we no longer have sole control of the case.’
Jon had been wondering how long before the potential hostage situation with Kelly caught the attention of the wider force.
‘There’s still no sign of the working girl who’s missing. And now the vehicle she was taken in has shown up, minus her. It looks very likely that aspect of how the operation runs won’t be decided by us.’ He held up a hand as Iona started to say something. ‘I know – but it’s just the way it is. I’ll make sure you still play a part in things, don’t worry. OK, let me know what happens with the Transport people.’ He interlinked his fingers to signal that was it.
‘Will do, Sir,’ Iona replied, rising to her feet.
‘Oh, Iona? Two more seconds of your time.’
As Jon stood, Weir gave him the slightest of nods. He left the room sensing a faint thaw in the DCI’s attitude. On the floor below, he made for the canteen area and selected a cup of black coffee from the machine. Of the few officers in there, he recognised a couple from down in the gym. Their heads were down in conversation and he couldn’t tell if they’d clocked him or not. No sign of Lambert.
He carried on to the main operations room and did a quick check for any sign of the other officer. The only familiar thing he spotted was the ginger of Kieran Saunders’ hair. ‘Morning.’
The Welshman glanced round. ‘Spicer! All good with you?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ He perched on the edge of the other man’s desk and lowered his voice. ‘Lambert’s not called in sick or anything, has he?’
Kieran chuckled. ‘No – he was here, acting like nothing happened.’ He play-coughed into his hand. ‘Though we know different, don’t we? Your face isn’t too bad, I see.’
‘And you’re sure nothing will get to the grown-ups?’
‘It might do, but they’ll do fuck all about it. Unless Lambert lodges something official – which he’ll never do if he wants anyone to speak to him in this place ever again.’ He grinned for a second then craned his neck to see past Jon. Lifting his voice, he announced, ‘So, they got you working with the Baby-Faced Assassin, hey?’
Jon looked towards the doors. Iona was heading towards her desk. She raised a hand to Kieran. ‘I’ll try to be gentle with him.’
He laughed delightedly. ‘You do that, Iona. A sensitive flower, he is.’
Jon stood up, took one look at the crap still covering his workspace and decided to join Iona. As he pulled up a chair beside her, she glanced at his coffee. ‘Welcome to planet Selfish, population one.’
‘I didn’t know how long you’d be. What do you want? I’ll get it.’
She shook her head. ‘Just joking. I’m fine.’
‘You’re sure? I don’t mind.’
‘No – really.’ She turned on her computer then ran her fingers down her throat and coughed, dryly.
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Jon got up with a smile. He thought back to the Aldi manager’s office. ‘Tea, no sugar?’
‘Yeah, thanks. By the way, you were right.’ She bounced a glance off the ceiling. ‘Weir wanted to know exactly what I’d said to Elissa Yared, when we crossed paths at her Aunt’s.’
Jon turned back to look at her properly. ‘And?’
She adopted a formal tone. ‘I was able to give him a very succinct and accurate account of my exemplary conduct.’ Her shoulders relaxed. ‘Thanks for the advance warning on that one.’
‘My pleasure. Now, you’re sure you want this tea?’
She frowned. ‘Yeah...’
He started walking away. ‘No, that’s fine. You know, I just thought, maybe you weren’t really thirsty. Not after the brew the lovely manager at Aldi was so keen to make you.’ Glancing back, he fluttered his eyelashes at her.
Kieran’s head came up. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing to do with you,’ Iona said quickly, cheeks starting to flush.
Jon chuckled to himself as he headed out the door.
When he got back with her drink, she was in the middle of her emails. She looked up at him. ‘Transport for Greater Manchester are on the ball: they’ve replied already.’
Jon retook his seat.
‘A female matching the description we gave them boarded the 183 to the Christie Hospital at two minutes past ten. Onboard footage shows her disembarking at a stop on the A6010, just before it crosses the A34. They even ask if we want copies of the footage.’ She looked at him, her bright blue eyes sparking with excitement.
As Jon lifted a palm so they could slap hands, Weir came through the doors. ‘Everyone on Operation Stinger? Word’s just back from our security forces out in Afghanistan. Last night’s strike on the warehouse facility was called off. It was just about to happen when the gates were opened up and a lorry departed.’
Someone on the next row of desks spoke up. ‘They have eyes on the vehicle?’
‘They do. It drove to a private residence with a secure compound in the east of the city. They’re working out the best way in, as it’s a very crowded neighbourhood.’
‘And us?’ someone else asked. ‘We carry on?’
Weir nodded. ‘It’s all we can do. Primary objective now is to lay hands on the Mystery Man.’
Iona raised a hand. ‘Sir? We have something that should help with that.’
CHAPTER 29
Doku Zakayev was squatting on his haunches before the television, knees forming a fulcrum beneath the elbows of his outstretched arms. On the screen was the start-up page for the dragon game. As cartoonish creatures flapped silently about in the background, the cursor blinked patiently in the field that read username.
Down the corridor, the toilet flushed.
He immediately rocked forward so he could eject the disc.
By the time Elissa came into the room, the game was back in its case and he was in his previous position on the sofa.
She looked at her watch. Just after nine. He’d been sitting there for so long. The sling had been discarded and the controller for the Xbox was beside him. We need to go, she thought. Aldi opened at ten on a Sunday. But staff must arrive earlier to get the store ready. She now regretted leaving the Porsche there; she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Catching a bus from so close to the store had probably been stupid, too. Which meant they should get going. Now.
Her holdall and his rucksack were on the floor by the door, alongside a single Aldi bag crammed with all the food. She decided to do another check of the flat. The room he’d slept in was stripped bare: discoloured mattress exposed to view. The chest of drawers and wardrobe contained only bits of fluff and a single hairpin. Probably had been there when Uncle Bilal had bought it at some cheap second-ha
nd furniture place on Hyde Road.
Unable to even look at the door to the other bedroom, she went straight into the bathroom. White walls and an empty shelf above the sink. The left hand tap released a single drip. She was about to try and tighten it when she registered the elongated yellow watermark stretching down the porcelain. The thing had obviously been leaking for weeks. Months.
She strode through to the kitchen. Everything was cleared away and back in its place, including the knife. She could see its black handle, hovering in the corner of her eye.
In the front room, she looked out on to the road. A man was raising the awning of the mini-supermarket opposite. The world was stirring, starting to get busy. They needed to go. Linda’s car was parked on the drive, three-quarters of a tank of petrol. ‘Doku?’ She pointed at the window and gripped an imaginary steering wheel in her hands.
He got up, went to the corner of the room and unscrewed the lead for the router. Placing it to one side, he then peeled the carpet and underlay back. Resting against the wooden floorboards was an A4 size sleeve with a piece of paper inside. He lifted it up, walked back over and placed it on the coffee table.
Tentatively, she approached. It was a property profile from an estate agent, Morgan Lettings. ‘We’re going here?’ She pointed at it. ‘You and me?’
He nodded.
She sat down and opened the sleeve. A panel of small photos. The cottage boasted its own boat house, sea views and a private jetty that stretched about fifteen metres out from the shore. The place looked lovely: two dormer windows set into the steeply-angled roof. Elaborate white gables. A porch. Separate garage, almost a bungalow in itself. There were no other properties visible beyond the generous garden.
She searched for a location. Somewhere called Burwen, north Anglesey.
At the doorway to the corridor, she surveyed the front room once more. Something nagged at her. What was it? The router was in the top of his bag. The Xbox had been unplugged and returned to its box. They had everything. The only thing she’d written on was the back of the game console’s user manual; that was already in the box with the dragon game that had come with it.
She carried her bag down to the front door. Best thing, she’d decided earlier, was for her to pack the car. By leaving a rear-door open, he could slip out the flat and into the back seat of the vehicle when no one was passing.
She turned and saw him standing with the Xbox in his arms. It was amazing how his shoulder didn’t seem to bother him. Most people needed a sling for days. Sometimes weeks.
Her hand was almost on the latch when the sight of the letterbox triggered a thought. The note! The note she’d pushed through it. What had happened to it? ‘Oh my God.’
She hurried back into the front room and looked frantically about. What the hell had... She dropped to her knees and bent forward to see beneath the sofa. A slither of white was just visible. She reached into the gap and pressed her fingertips down. The carpet made a faint rasping noise as she dragged it out. Temples throbbing, she straightened up.
He saw what she’d found and his mouth opened slightly. Holding it before her, she went into the kitchen, lit a gas ring and touched a corner of paper to the bluish flicker.
As yellow flame took hold, she held the note above the sink and watched her crude image of a helicopter, piloted by a man who wore a crown, start to blacken and buckle and turn to ash.
CHAPTER 30
‘I’m still not convinced there was a better way,’ Jon said, following the police van out of the station on Plymouth Grove. As the vehicle turned left, he could see the rows of uniformed officers inside.
The decision to flood the area had caused mutterings among his new colleagues. The CTU liked to operate below the radar: surveillance, covert tracking, research quietly conducted in the virtual world. Not dozens of bodies tramping up and down streets, banging on doors and thrusting mug-shots in everyone’s faces.
‘Well,’ Iona said from the passenger seat, ‘it guarantees one thing: they’ll know we’re on to them.’
‘I think they were aware of that anyway,’ Jon replied. ‘And I can’t see any quicker way than this.’
‘There’s a team of geeks back at base,’ Iona protested. ‘Going through all of Bilal Atwi’s financial arrangements. They could uncover something at any moment that cracks the whole thing open.’
‘Could,’ Jon stressed. ‘Meanwhile, Kelly is still missing and the pair of them are free to move on to their next safe house whenever they feel like it.’
‘We’ve got surveillance outside all the family homes. We’ve got people making discreet enquiries at her workplace. Her bank accounts and phone: they’re being monitored. This,’ she flicked a hand at the van, ‘is as subtle as a flying brick.’
Jon thought back to the meeting at the CTU facility. Once Iona had declared they had a possible location, a map of that part of the city was swiftly laid out across the meeting room table.
First, bus stops for the 183 were marked out on it: if Elissa had disembarked at the top of Hawthorn Street, the chances were she was heading to a property in a radius within the next and previous stops on the route. Those two places were the A34 on one side and the A6 on the other. The two roads were used to define the side boundaries of the search area. Between them was a cramped mass of residential streets. Going north, Weir went as far as the police station on Plymouth Grove.
‘Bed sit city,’ someone announced glumly. ‘A cousin looked for digs there when she got a place at The University of Manchester. It’s grim, to say the least.’
With basic parameters established, attention had turned to possible targets.
‘Shops – of the variety that sell food.’
‘She stocked up in Aldi. Could be local places are being deliberately avoided.’
‘Take-away places, possibly?’
‘Worth trying.’
‘Garages and car rentals. Assuming they need a vehicle.’
‘The train station.’
‘How about the coach station in Manchester while we’re at it?’
‘Houses with a garage? For keeping that Porsche out of sight.’
‘Chemists – Mystery Man could be needing more than Ibuprofen.’
‘OK,’ Weir said. ‘We need a grid.’ He placed a ruler over the defined area and starting scoring off blocks of streets with a black pen.
The car park behind a disused church had been commandeered as the rendezvous point. As they followed the van in, Iona was studying the enlarged map section that covered their portion of streets. It only stretched for about one-hundred-and-twenty metres in each direction, but within that area were seventeen different roads.
Two police vans were already in the car park, along with six marked cars. A gaggle of uniformed officers had gathered in the middle of the asphalt. Overwhelmingly males, white and under thirty, they reminded Jon of a sports team about to go on tour. He parked on the opposite side, next to the unmarked vehicles from the CTU.
Within minutes of locking his car, they’d been allocated four uniformed officers and were off.
‘How long before the local press gets a whiff of this?’ Jon asked, eyeing another pod of officers heading off in the direction of the A6.
‘I imagine they’ve had words already,’ Iona said, leading the way towards the turn-off into their area. ‘Come to an arrangement to keep the cameras away.’
As they tramped along the A6010, Jon’s gaze took in the tall Georgian houses fronting the street. Judging from their size, it had obviously been a well-to-do neighbourhood. An area for wealthy cloth merchants, from when Manchester was the industrial capital of the world.
How times changed.
The officer who’d made the comment about bed-sit city had been right: untidy clusters of wheelie bins clogged every front garden. Most bore untidy paint-strokes on their sides: Flat 1, Flat 2, Flat 3. Where any lawn still existed, long grass fringed the bins’ bases. Concrete was the more common choice of surface. He saw old sofas, a mattress,
unidentified bags of rubbish, a pale red kids’ scooter with a wheel missing. A mangled carousel washing line. Many of the windows still had their curtains drawn. Brown cables trailed like lianas down the walls. He doubted any of the landlords lived close by – most had probably moved out to the countryside to count their pennies in peace.
On the opposite side of the road, the ground floors of the houses had been converted into commercial premises.
Clear Cut Accountancy.
Accident Specialists. Workplace. Slip, trip or Fall. Finance Guaranteed.
Ahmad and Co. Solicitors.
MWA Immigration Advisers.
M Lazeera, Financial Adviser.
‘This is us.’ Iona turned to the group shadowing them and pointed down the side street. ‘We’ve got the right-hand side. Down to that shop half-way along.’
‘The one with the green awnings?’ A young officer in a stab-proof vest asked, eyes flitting between Iona and Jon, even though Iona held the map.
Jon looked at her for confirmation.
‘Correct,’ she replied. ‘You’ve all got copies of the two sheets? Photos of the Porsche Cayenne and the female called Elissa Yared, plus a written description of the woman known as Kelly.’
All the officers nodded.
‘OK. Any male fitting the description you were given back at the station, you do not engage with. Instead, move on as normal and shout for me or DC Spicer first opportunity you get. Both our mobiles are on the back of your second sheet. If no one answers, make a note of the number of that property. Let’s get started.’
The group fanned out, each pair heading towards a front door. The first Iona and Jon reached was sheltered by a cavernous front arch. Greying shades of sodden newspaper lay crumpled in one corner. On the wall beside the front door was a panel of twelve buttons. Six were just blank numbers, six had a name.
Mrs J Lato
Sidi Moallim
Mr L McNair
Shwan Khesro
Mr Kuklys
