Death Games

by Chris Simms

  ‘Da.’ He reached into his rucksack and took the router from the top of it. After pointing to the nearby bin, he handed it over.

  ‘OK.’ She stepped out into a treacly fug. Donuts or crepes. The aroma brought back memories of fairgrounds. After dumping the router, she walked over to a notice board that gave the layout of the place: not far away was a phone retailer. As she weaved her way through the slow-moving throng, she checked the logos on the bags hanging from people’s hands.

  Fossil. Levis. Superdry. Diesel. Timberland. Nike. Jack Wills.

  Once, not long ago, she would have cared. She would have wondered what deals she could have found for herself. None of it mattered now.

  The sales assistant tried to engage her in a process she soon realised was funnelling her towards a monthly contract. One that lasted eighteen months. She stayed firm: pay-as-you-go, ready charged, on a deal that gave maximum internet access. Calls and texts were irrelevant. She withdrew her bundle of notes when he tried, once again, to convince her of the advantages of what he was offering. ‘Listen, I’m in a hurry. If you can’t help me, fine. There’s a Tesco not far away. They do phones.’

  ‘No, no – it’s not a problem,’ he said, lifting both hands. ‘Let’s head over to the till and get you up and running.’

  She stepped back out of the shop and couldn’t help feeling slightly elevated. A plastic bag hung from her fingers. It was always the same when she acquired something new. She could see the same emotion reflected in the faces of those passing by; a shine in their eyes, flecks in their cheeks.

  A rapidly-speaking voice drew nearer. Someone on their phone discussing options for a forthcoming holiday. Not Tunisia. Not Turkey. Declan, I don’t care how cheap the flights are. I’m not going. Those places aren’t safe, you seen the news. No, we want somewhere safe. All inclusive. Why not the Canary Islands, like last time? Why? I told you, you are not listening!

  Elissa saw the woman as she stepped round a stationary couple. She was gaunt, with an angular face and slashes of smoky blue above her eyes. Hair too big for her head and too blonde to be natural. The hand holding the phone was covered by a garland of flowers. The tattoo stretched down her forearm. Elissa thought of Kelly, of pressing the blade into her chest cavity. Nausea surged through her. The woman went past, no pause in her stream of words. Elissa’s gaze moved to other people. Two teenagers, college age. Three lads, all carrying bags from Under Armour. A middle-aged man checking his phone as what was probably his wife and friend discussed lunch venues. Wagamama’s or YO! Sushi.

  Elissa pictured them all dropping to the ground, their bodies twisted, blood pumping from rips in their flesh. The scything throb of blades in the sky as the helicopter gunship brought its racks of cannon to bear on the wooden shack doling out scoops of caramelised peanuts. The queue of people started jerking, limbs being flung out by the impact of rounds. People screamed with terror as wood splintered and jars of peanuts blew apart. The block paving felt like it was undulating as she tottered over to a bench and sat. The vision of carnage faded. Normality gradually returned. People like these, she thought, will die like my brother did. It might not be a helicopter that kills them. It might not be when they’re out shopping. But their deaths are what the people I’m helping want. It’s what they’re trying to make happen, anyway they can.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’

  She looked up to see the woman who wanted Wagamama’s.

  ‘Do you need any help? Can I call someone for you?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ She used the sides of her forefingers to wipe the tears away. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Well...if you’re sure?’ The friend was next to her, also looking on sympathetically.

  ‘It was...just...a silly thing.’ Elissa smiled. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  She watched the trio wander away. Concern caused the woman to look back one more time. Elissa gave her a nod. I’m not part of those plans, she said to herself. To maim and kill indiscriminately. All I want is for the people who helped cause my pain to know what it feels like. That is all.

  Doku was now in the front seat. His dark eyes tracked her approach to the car. She sat back in the driver’s seat and took the phone out of the bag. ‘Got it,’ she said, sliding the outer-sleeve off the box.

  As they waited for it to start up, Doku hardly moved. Every so often, he brushed a finger against the side of his nose. The third time he did it, she realised he was nervous.

  ‘Here we go.’ She scrolled through the menu to the web browser icon. When Google Translate appeared, she immediately noticed the little microphone symbol. Even better, she thought. No need to type anymore. She selected English to Russian and touched the screen. The phone emitted a beep. She asked, ‘Am I doing this correctly?’

  Bringing the handset away from her face, she looked at the screen. It gave a double-beep and, a second later, a robot-voice said, ‘Ya pravilno delayu?’

  He accepted the phone, tapped the screen and opened his mouth. But he then lowered it, seeming to change his mind. Head bowed once more, he thought for a while. With another glance at her, he lifted the phone back up and spoke.

  Two beeps and the robot voice said, ‘I cannot remember.’

  Unsure what he meant, she waited for more.

  He made another comment. ‘From before the car crash my memory is not there.’ Then, ‘I cannot remember how to make contact. I don’t know what I am meant to do.’

  She leaned across and spoke at the screen. ‘The Xbox is how you make contact?’

  ‘Yes. My password is gone. It is not possible without that.’

  Retrograde amnesia, she thought. It wasn’t necessarily permanent. Especially for information that had been mentally stored some time before the incident that had caused it. ‘How long did you know this password before the crash?’

  ‘A few days. It was sent to me on the phone that I destroyed.’

  ‘It will be in your head. You can still remember it.’

  ‘How? I have tried many times.’

  ‘I’m not sure. But do not worry.’

  ‘Because you’re a nurse, you know this?’

  ‘Yes.’ She decided to lie. ‘I have seen it happen many times.’

  ‘Memories arriving back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The troubled look on his face eased slightly. He cleared his throat and spoke once again. ‘After it is done, come with me.’

  She looked at him, unsure if the comment had been translated properly. Lifting his hand, she spoke into the phone. ‘Come with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To where?’

  He leaned forward, hand still gripped in hers. ‘France. I have a boat. People are waiting.’

  CHAPTER 34

  The message left on Iona’s phone asked that they go straight to briefing room two. When she opened the door they found it jammed with officers.

  DCI Weir waved them forward to where a couple of chairs had been kept free. ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said as soon as they were seated.

  Iona looked at Jon, who tipped his head in reply. You go. She gave a light cough. ‘The owner of the shop facing flat 17a on Fairbourne Road says, when he went to open up on Saturday morning, the Porsche was already on the drive. It wasn’t there when he had cleared stuff away at eight o’clock on Friday evening.’

  ‘Any sightings of who was actually in the flat?’

  ‘Yes – a female. Dark haired, about five-feet-three.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘She drove the Porsche away at about nine fifteen on the Saturday night.’

  ‘So it had to have been Elissa Yared.’

  ‘Yes – we showed him the photo of her. It tallied,’ Iona responded. ‘She was also loading up a different vehicle at about eight forty this morning. A white hatchback. Micra or similar. He didn’t see when it actually left.’

  ‘So we don’t know if Mystery Man was with her.’

  ‘She put several items in. A rucksack and a cardboard box. Plus a holdall
and a bag of shopping from Aldi. I reckon, his gear was amongst it. Maybe he just missed him getting in.’

  ‘OK. Ed – this tallies with what you were saying: carry on.’

  A droopy-faced detective with a flop of brown hair spoke. ‘Elissa returned to the MRI this morning. She got in through an entrance that wasn’t being watched and went into the staff rest area. There, she asked to borrow a car from a colleague – something she’d previously done when her own car had been off the road. She left with the keys for it at about seven thirty. The car is a white Toyota Yaris.’

  Weir addressed the room. ‘We ran the registration through the ANPR system. Cameras along the M56 clocked it. Unfortunately, the last camera is where the motorway merges into the A55. However, they didn’t carry on at that point. Instead, they took the M53 north.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘That was twenty-eight minutes ago. Traffic police have been alerted along with local units.’ He turned back to Iona. ‘You mentioned a magazine earlier?’

  Iona placed it on the table, poly wrapper still intact. ‘The manufacturer – XiC – specialises in larger sea-going vessels. Twenty-thousand quid and more, just for the boat. They’re all built to handle powerful motors, which add a few thousand more to the cost. The smaller end of the range you’d use for towing water skiers, the bigger ones are good for going further out to sea: fishing trips, that kind of thing.’

  ‘And this was in the empty flat next door?’

  ‘Yes, among a whole pile of junk mail. This was the only item that had been delivered through the wrong door, though. Addressed to a Mr H Omari.’

  ‘The flat is registered to a Mr Hassan Omari,’ Weir said. ‘Which appears to be an alias of Bilal Atwi. When was this magazine sent?’

  ‘Eight days ago. The way we reasoned it is this: the uncle makes a purchase. He has to give valid details to pass their credit checks, so he gives the Fairbourne Road address. Those details were then automatically fed to the company’s marketing department. He probably missed the microscopic box on the form that said, “Do not mercilessly bombard me with crap for the rest of my life”. Either way, this magazine gets spewed into the post.’

  Weir swivelled round to the only other female in the room. ‘Mary, see how many places in the north west deal in this particular make of boats. I’m thinking not many. We need to know if a Bilal Atwi or a Hassan Omari have visited any – and if they bought one. This is definitely looking to me like something very naughty is being planned.’

  ‘The Wirral peninsular, sir – where they’ve headed: it’ll have loads of places for launching boats.’

  Weir glanced at the officer who’d spoken. ‘Marinas, docks, boat clubs – anything like that. We need to know of any new members who’ve turned up with one of these things in the last few weeks.’ He tapped the magazine then consulted his notes briefly before looking at Jon. ‘How long had this Kelly girl been dead for?’

  ‘They thought twelve hours, or thereabouts. Single stab wound to the heart.’

  ‘Unlucky there, Jon: you did well working out as much as you did. An earlier spotting of the Porsche and things could have been very different.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Weir roused himself. ‘OK. A few other things you all need to know. Computer guys have been going over Bilal Atwi’s financial arrangements. The flat on Fairbourne Road doesn’t feature in any of his existing records and, as mentioned, had been registered under a false name. If a twenty grand powerboat has been purchased, where did that money come from? Same for the drone and other equipment. Someone’s funding all this, and I want to know who.’

  Iona considered her senior officer’s comment. From her training she knew many clandestine groups moved money about the world by means of an informal banking system known as Hawallah. And if Bilal Atwi was using it to receive payments from an overseas source, they stood little chance of ever discovering who was involved.

  Weir was consulting his file once again. ‘We’ve now got a Cross Border Policy in place, so we can send Armed Response Vehicles into Merseyside and North Wales. Gold command stays with us, here. Officers for the field: Evans and Coe, Mitchell and Green, Spicer and Khan. You lot head over to the Wirral. While you’re en route, we’ll draw up a list of places where this boat might be. Any which need a face-to-face visit, that’s you. Everyone else, back to your desks and keep at it.’ He slapped his file shut and the room started to empty.

  Jon turned to Iona and muttered, ‘The Wirral doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘How come,’ she said, lips barely moving.

  Checking Weir’s back was to them, he said, ‘Have you ever been out there?’

  ‘No. Only Liverpool.’

  ‘The Wirral’s where Scousers move to when they’ve got enough money to escape from Liverpool.’ To his surprise, she started jotting his words down. Didn’t she know this stuff? He wondered how sheltered – or studious – her upbringing had been. ‘Apart from a load of posh houses, there’s not a lot there. A couple of decent rugby clubs; heard of New Brighton?’

  She shook her head, pen bobbing across the page.

  ‘And the other thing: it’s taking you in the wrong direction for Anglesey and that power station. The drone footage? That was taken not far along the coast from Wylfa. Wirral’s bloody miles away from it.’

  ‘You two hatching a plan?’

  Jon looked round to see, apart from their senior officer, they were now the last two in the room. How much had Weir overheard? Deciding not to try and fob him off with some kind of non-comment, he took a breath in. ‘I was just wondering, sir, if we shouldn’t have someone on or around Anglesey. Closer to where the last bit of drone footage was shot.’

  ‘Even though we know they drove into the Wirral?’

  ‘It could have been a diversion – or even a tactic, if they’re aware of the ANPR cameras.’

  He assessed them both. ‘And you’d like to cover Anglesey off yourselves?’

  Jon picked up the distinctly prickly edge to Weir’s voice and responded quickly. ‘First off, sir, this is my reasoning here – I was just running it past Iona. But if someone needed to do it, then yes, I’d like it to be us.’

  His attention swung to Iona. ‘DC Khan. Your thoughts?’

  Crap, Jon thought. If she doesn’t back me up, I’ll be left high and dry. He avoided looking at her.

  After a moment, she said, ‘I agree with Jon.’

  Weir cocked his head. ‘Why?’

  ‘The drone footage suggests there’s a good chance Anglesey is their ultimate destination.’

  The other man sucked in air through his nose and, eventually, shrugged. ‘We need to cross off the Wirral first. Let’s see exactly what that will entail. If it looks like the other two teams can cover the face-to-face stuff, you can do the follow-up on Anglesey. Deal?’

  Jon shot a glance at Iona who raised her eyebrows in encouragement. He turned back to Weir. ‘Definitely. Thanks, Sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Weir turned to the door, the start of a smile on his face. ‘You two. You make me laugh.’

  Once he was gone, Jon looked at Iona. ‘Was that good? That we make him laugh?’

  There was a puzzled expression on her face as she considered the door he’d gone through. ‘I think so.’

  CHAPTER 35

  As Elissa negotiated the succession of roundabouts bordering Cheshire Oaks, she took a wrong turn and ended up threading her way along a minor A road. Eventually, it brought them out on the A55, a few miles past the final junction of the M56.

  The onward journey to Anglesey took another ninety minutes. Once over the Menai Bridge and on the island, he jabbed a finger as soon as the turn-off for the A5025 came into view. The road took them north towards the top end of the island. The countryside was largely agricultural; beyond the thin hedges bordering the road, waist-high dry-stone walls criss-crossed the fields. They’d almost reached a small coastal village when Doku began to look about. Sensing they were close, Elissa slowed the car down. The road dipped then rose to a small c
rest at which point he pointed to the right. All she could see was a gnarled pine tree off to the side.

  A small lane came into view and Doku gestured with his entire arm. ‘Tam!’

  She turned down it, aware the sea now couldn’t be far off. A small humpback bridge came into view. On the other side of it some kind of work had been taking place: a digger and a dumper truck were parked just beyond a gate that gave access to a narrow field. An ugly trench had been carved into the grass. She glimpsed a stack of green pipes beside the digger.

  Doku waved a hand for her to stop. He was out of the car before it came to a halt. Moving cautiously, he skirted round the work vehicles. Then he approached the truck, climbed up to the cab and peered in through the side window. After a few seconds, he jumped down and returned to the car.

  ‘OK?’ Elissa asked as he got back in.

  He regarded the vehicles for another second, gave an uncertain nod and pointed to a driveway further up on the left. She pulled in, and as she came to a halt on the gravel, the first thing she saw was a generously-sized garage.

  Immediately to its right was the stone cottage. It had a huge chimney at one end and Elissa could only imagine the size of the hearth inside. It would probably be large enough for roasting a cow in. She wondered how long her uncle had hired it for. Maybe a long-term let to guarantee no disturbances.

  She took the phone out of the cup-holder and checked the signal. Three bars. ‘How do we get in?’ The Russian words sounded a moment later.

  For a few moments it seemed like he didn’t know. Then his head turned towards the front door and he narrowed his eyes. ‘Tam...’ Gently, he twisted her hand so the screen pointed towards him before he spoke. She waited for the translation. ‘The keys are above the door.’ He seemed surprised. ‘I did not remember that, then I did.’

  ‘See? Your memories are not all lost.’

  Over at the porch, he reached up to a hook at the side of a rafter in the roof. There was only one old-fashioned door key among the Yales. He inserted it and opened the solid-looking wooden door. The kitchen was modern and in perfect condition. On the wall by the door was a laminated sheet of various instructions.