by Tom Weaver
'Daniel, I need to speak to you.'
Again, with my ear pressed to the door, I could hear a noise. The same one: a creak, or maybe a click. When it came again, it sounded more like a click.
'Daniel?'
I leaned in again and tried to separate out the sounds. There was a constant buzz; possibly a fridge. Some peripheral noise from outside the flat. Behind that, whatever was making the clicking sound. Except this time it was preceded by a gentle whirr.
'Daniel?'
Click.
Distantly, there were police sirens. I stepped away from the door and waited until they got closer, until the noise started to cover some of the other sounds inside the building. Then I took another step back — and launched a foot at the door.
It cracked and swung open, hitting an adjacent wall and bouncing back towards me. I stopped it with a hand. Paused. Looked along the corridor.
Then I stepped into the flat and closed the door.
Immediately to my left was a bathroom. Next to that was the bedroom door. In front of me was a short hallway, feeding into a living room and open-plan kitchen. It looked like someone had half moved out and never returned. Dust clung to walls. Windows had been whitewashed, but not very well. Through one, I could see out to the path leading up to the flats, and the entrance itself. It was a good position for Markham: he'd be able to see if anyone approached the building.
'Daniel?'
Silence. There was a two-seater sofa in the living room. A lamp next to that. A half-filled bookshelf. Otherwise, the flat was empty. No TV. No music centre. No games consoles, satellite decoders or DVD players. Nothing a single man should have owned.
The kitchen had been mostly cleared out as well. Only a few things remained. A kettle. A couple of plates stacked in a drying rack. A fruit bowl. A refrigerator in the corner, humming. It was on, but it had been defrosted. The doors were open to both the fridge and the freezer. There was no food in either. Same story in the bedroom: a bed base, a mattress, no sheets, no duvet. Built-in cupboards, all open. There were some clothes inside, but not many. A couple of shirts. Some trousers.
Click.
That noise again. I moved out into the hallway. Looked around. There was very little sound now: no noise from the flat, no noise from outside. Heading into the bathroom, I turned on the light. Toilet. Bath. Basin. Bathroom cabinet with a small mirror on the front. Above me, the extractor fan kicked into life. I opened up the cabinet and looked around inside. A can of deodorant, a razor, some shaving cream. Nothing else. I pushed the cabinet shut - except now it wouldn't close. When I tried again, it just slowly crept back open. I leaned in and looked at the catch. It was broken. The moment I'd pulled the cabinet open, the catch had come loose.
As if it had been set up to break.
And someone was trying to draw attention to it.
I stepped in closer to the cabinet and looked inside. In the corners, it had been attached to the wall with four screws. I placed a hand on either side of the cabinet and levered it away. It stuck for a moment, the screws clinging to the holes that housed them. But when I applied more pressure they began to come out as it shifted off the wall.
It had been deliberately left loose.
Dust spilled out from around the screw heads, landing inside the cabinet. Plaster made a scraping sound behind it. And then, a couple of seconds later, the cabinet came away.
In the space behind it was a patch of cream paint - the original colour of the bathroom - and the holes that had once housed the screws.
In the centre was a message, written directly on to the wall.
It said: Help me.
Chapter Thirty-three
Back at the car, rain continued falling. I started up the engine and left the heaters running. In the pop-out drinks holder was a takeaway coffee. Steam rose from a hole in the lid.
I grabbed my phone. On it was a picture of the message I'd found on the wall. I'd placed the cabinet back as best I could and wedged the front door of the flat shut with a folded piece of card. If someone returned to it, it would only take a second for them to realize there had been a break-in. But that was if they returned. It felt like a place that had gone a long time without being lived in.
As I exited the photo again, the phone started buzzing in my hand. The number was withheld.
'David Raker.'
'David, my name's Corine. I'm a friend of Spike's.'
'Corine — thanks for calling me.'
After he'd translated the writing in the photograph for me, Spike had offered to put me in contact with a friend of his who had some sort of science degree. He was deliberately vague. He didn't involve the people he liked in his work.
'Spike said you had some questions.'
She sounded English; softly spoken with a slight northern twang. I wondered how she'd come to meet an illegal immigrant who never went outside.
'Yeah. I was hoping you could tell me about formalin.'
'Formalin?' She paused. 'What do you want to know?'
'It's what they use in embalming, right?'
'Not so much any more. Formaldehyde's kind of frowned upon these days. In fact, some European countries have banned it altogether.'
'Because it's carcinogenic?'
'Right. Formalin's only thirty-seven per cent formaldehyde. The rest is methanol and water. But it's still ridiculously good at what it Does. Drop an animal into a vat of it and you've got an instant tissue preserver. Just ask Damien Hirst.'
'How's it work?'
'Basically, the formaldehyde hardens you up. It eats away at the cell tissue, drying out the protoplasm and replacing the fluid with this firm kind of gel-like compound. So it not only solidifies the cells and maintains the shape of the skin, but disinfects the tissue at the same time. And even better than that - it's incredibly resistant to bacteria.'
'Where would I get some?'
'Formalin?'
'I'm talking theoretically — and on the quiet.'
'Well, because it's carcinogenic, it's heavily policed, so your best bet would be to import it from outside Europe — or from somewhere inside Europe that isn't properly regulated. You're taking a chance whichever route you decide. And you'd obviously need someone who'd be willing to bring it in for you, with all the associated risks. I don't know where you'd find those kind of people.'
An hour later, I pulled into Kensal Green Cemetery: seventy-two acres of gravestones, mausoleums and parkland, rolling across the city like a blanket. Nosing the car around to a long colonnade, I bumped the BMW up on to the grass beside the pillars and killed the engine. A face looked out briefly, and then disappeared again. I got out and headed across. Beneath the colonnade it smelled old and musty. About twenty feet to my right, a skinny black guy wearing a yellow beanie and a shiny green bomber jacket was moving towards me.
His name was Ray Smith.
Smith was a small-time crook the police had got their hooks into after a botched bank job in Mayfair five years ago. He'd been the getaway driver, but hadn't got away fast enough. Smith actually wasn't a bad guy — he'd just got in with the wrong people. In exchange for a new life as a paid informant, he got to roam the streets a free man. That was when I got my hooks into him and told the paper to double whatever the Met paid him. He was small-time, but he had a good pair of ears. Which was how he got his name. Ray wasn't short for Raymond. It was short for Radar, as in, he always knew what was going on.
I looked him up and down.
He was a ten-stone bundle of energy, powered by a mixture of adrenalin and paranoia, and known for his appalling fashion sense. His bomber jacket was a nuclear explosion, and on the middle finger of his right hand was a huge, diamond-encrusted ring.
'You travelling incognito, Ray?'
He rolled his eyes and looked around him. 'Fuck you.
'I shouldn't even be here talkin' to you, man. You're a bad luck charm.'
'How do you figure that?'
You remember the last time I helped you out?'
'Sure. Must have been about two years back.'
'Correct. And you know what happened the next day? I get my face kicked in. And then my fuckin' dog dies. You got the Medusa touch.' He was looking to the side, but his eyes flicked back to me. 'Listen,' he said. A pause. 'I, y'know… heard about your girl.'
I nodded. He turned and looked along the colonnade behind him, turning his back to me. I let him have a moment. That second of eye contact was Ray trying to tell me he was sorry about Derryn. It was about as poignant as our relationship had ever got.
I changed the subject. 'So you still bleeding taxpayers dry?'
He turned back to face me. Yeah, still doin' it. And the only reason I'm still standin' here breathin' is 'cause my boy keeps me outta the limelight.'
About fifteen years ago, the police started asking detectives to register their confidential informants, which as most of them would tell you was one of the worst ideas in the history of law enforcement. As soon as CIs thought details of their snitching was available somewhere to find or pass on, the intel dried up. What most detectives did instead was log two or three CIs they knew they'd never use, and keep their best ones off the books. Radar was one of the best ones.
'You do much for them?'
'Yeah, a fair bit,' he replied, shrugging. 'Gotta be done.
'It's either that or the boys in blue turn up at my front door and slap the chains on me. And I don't much fancy a bumming in Pentonville.'
'Really?'
He frowned. 'You sayin' I'm bent?'
I laughed, but tried not to make too much of it. Ray had never killed anyone in his life, but he still maintained a strict code of conduct as if he was the world's most dangerous hitman. And like most criminals, it was a code all twisted up. No women. No children. Anything to do with drugs was fair game, as long as the product didn't end up in the hands of kids under sixteen. Guns were out, but knives were in. And no jokes about him deliberately dropping the soap in the showers as homosexuality was against God.
'So, I need your help.'
He nodded. Stepped closer to me.
'I'm an importer looking to bring some chemicals into the country on the quiet. Nothing that's going to flatten a city, but bad enough that they'd be too difficult to get hold of in the UK.'
'What kind of chemicals we talkin'?'
'Formaldehyde.'
'What the hell's that?'
'It's what they'll coat you in when you die.'
'Like dead people and shit?' 'Right.'
'Not ringing any bells.'
'It probably came in as a liquid. Would have been called formalin.'
Ray stopped jigging about momentarily, his eyes fixing on mine. Then he started up again, but didn't make a move to say anything.
'What is it, Ray?'
Another dramatic pause. 'There's this guy. Got a building over in Beckton, near the airport. He's from up north. Manchester. Somewhere round there.'
'And he Does what?'
'Imports shit — but ninety-nine per cent of it's legit. He runs a clean company outta his place. I think he's, like, a supplier for restaurants. Some of the stuff is actual food, but most of it's plates and engraved bowls and all that kinda shit.'
'So what's the other one per cent?'
'The way I hear it, he's got some serious connections. He's like a fixer. You go to him with what you want and he gets it; brings it in with the bowls and the china plates.'
'I'm still waiting for the bonus ball.'
He rolled his eyes. You hearin' anythin' I'm sayin' here? He ain't handin' me a fuckin' inventory every week. The guy ain't a personal friend of mine. But if there's chemicals comin' into the city, you can bet your arse they're comin' through him.'
I didn't reply. His eyes flicked to me. His face seemed straight: no movement, no obvious sign that he was hiding anything.
'Okay,' I said. 'What's the name of the business?'
'Drayton Imports.'
'That's the guy's name as well?'
'Yeah, Derrick Drayton.'
I took a pen out of my pocket and wrote the names on the back of my hand. 'So, who's been using him?'
'I don't know.'
I sighed and looked up at him. 'Stop feeding me bullshit, Ray.'
'I ain't.'
'I don't believe you.'
'I ain't holdin' back!'
'I don't believe you,' I said again.
This time there was a brief hesitation and then that movement in his face I'd been waiting for. He knew something.
'Ray?'
Another pause. 'Okay. I shouldn't be tellin' you this.'
'Telling me what?'
'The police came askin' about all this shit a few months —'
'Wait a sec, wait a sec. The police?'
'Yeah.'
'What were they asking about?'
'If I'd heard anythin' about this Drayton guy.'
'They tell you why they were asking?'
'No.'
'What did they say?'
'Nothin'. Just asked me if I'd heard anythin' about this guy, Drayton, who ran it. When I told 'em what I knew, they said I needed to keep my trap shut if anyone asked.'
I paused. Let my mind return to the photograph and the formalin in the background. 'Did the police ever ask you if you'd heard anything about a missing girl?'
Radar frowned. 'No.'
'They just asked about Drayton?'
'Yeah.'
I paused. 'So if they know he's on the take, why haven't they closed him down?'
'He disappeared. Most people think he bought a one-way ticket out of the country when he could smell pork on the wind. And the business is squeaky clean. So his family run the place over in Beckton in his absence. You'd have to dial 999 to find out what the police have got planned for him if he ever returns. Especially after the…' He trailed off.
'The what?'
'Doesn’t matter.'
'The what? He didn't respond. 'Speak up, Radar.'
He sighed; slid a couple of fingers beneath his beanie and tried to rub his frown away. Eventually he took the hat off altogether and dragged a whole hand across his head, his shaved hair bristling beneath his palm. Another sigh, this time louder.
'Especially the what, Ray?'
This Drayton guy, he's got a series of properties all over that part of the city. Not just the place at Beckton. And in one of them… somethin' got fucked up.'
'What are you talking about?'
'It's why the police were interested. Way I hear it is that Drayton sourced some guns for some OC outfit and allowed 'em to use one of his buildings as a pick-up point for the weapons.'
'Organized crime?'
'Yeah. Russians. The police got wind of it and sent in the cavalry. Only it went wrong' He paused. Looked at me. 'And a couple of coppers got a bullet in the face.'
I looked at him, struck into silence.
Bloody hell.
He's talking about the night Frank White died.
Chapter Thirty-four
The Frank White file was sitting inside the boot of the BMW, still in the envelope Tasker had mailed it in. I'd brought it with me in case I found the time to skim-read it while chasing leads back to Megan. But now, somehow, Frank White had moved in from the periphery - and he'd tethered himself to her disappearance.
I slid in at the wheel, closed the door and tried to clear my head. The cemetery was quiet. I put the wipers on intermittent, listening to them sweep across the glass. For the moment, there wasn't a direct connection that I could see. There was a line running from Frank's death, to the Russians, to Drayton Imports, to the formalin, and on to the girl in the photograph. But the circle wasn't complete. It felt like something was at work — like on some level the two of them were bound to one another - but even if Megan was the girl in the picture, which wasn't even certain, the only thing that connected her to Frank White was the fact that the formalin in the background of the shot had probably been imported by Drayton - the man who owned the warehouse Frank was shot
in.
And yet I didn't like the convenience of it all; the coincidence. Because I didn't believe in coincidences. I believed in structure and meaning. I believed in connections.
People connected. Events connected. Everything tied up.
I started going through the file. It echoed exactly what Tasker had already told me over the phone. The task force was spotted early on by Russian lookouts, and the operation descended into a shoot-out. Three specialist firearms officers had accompanied White's SCD7 team to the scene, and one of them had managed to hit the surgeon's getaway vehicle, a stolen black Lexus. But he still got away. At 11.17 p.m., Frank White was declared dead. Another detective, Kline, was already gone. Two of Akim Gobulev's men made it through the firefight. One died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital; the other refused to talk. There were five separate attempts by detectives to interview him, and the five transcripts included in the file weren't more than a page long.
So all they had was the surgeon.
And they didn't even have him.
Pathology, fingerprint lifts and ballistics confirmed what Tasker had already told me, but the evidence inventory was one of the longest I'd ever seen. The lack of a smoking gun — and the fact that two police officers were lying dead on the floor of the warehouse - had galvanized the forensic teams. It looked like every fibre in the building had been processed. For the people working there, it had become personal the moment White and Kline stopped breathing.
I leafed through the list. Everything bagged at the scene had been catalogued, and it all quickly became a blur: numbers, names and descriptions rolling down one page and on to the next. Hairs. Mud. Dust. Powder. Skin. The eleventh and twelfth pages listed evidence recovered from Gobulev's men - dead and alive — at the scene. More fibres. Fingerprints. Illegal firearms, the serial numbers removed. Below that, there were two entries for the two 9mm bullets that had killed Frank White. Both were hollow point, which meant they'd expanded in his chest and head as soon as they'd made contact. He would have died quickly.
I moved on through the rest of the file — interviews, photographs of the scene, what they knew about the surgeon — and when I got to the end dropped it on to my lap and looked out at the cemetery again. It was still quiet. No people. No cars. Only the gentle wheeze of the wipers.
