by Peter McLean
She got a bit incoherent after that, which wasn’t really surprising to be fair. I was feeling a bit incoherent myself. My little girl, my beautiful Olivia, had been… taken?
A moment later a different voice came on the line, another woman.
“Mr Drake? This is PC Newland, Inverleith Police family liaison. I understand you’re the father?”
“Yeah,” I said, conscious of how my voice was trembling. “What the bloody hell happened?”
Of course she wasn’t going to tell me, was she? As the estranged father I was probably the fucking prime suspect. I’m sorry, but there might not be time to cock about with alibis and proof of who was where and when and with who and all of that shit. I concentrated, forming an image of PC Newland in my mind.
I only had her voice to go on but I’m pretty good at this, if I do say so myself. She’s older than me, I thought. Late forties. Blonde hair pulled back under her uniform cap. An old scar on her forehead, a strong chin. The scar’s from before she was a copper, maybe when she was in her early teens. She’s lived a bit, definitely.
That was a good start. Keep going, go deeper than the image. Who is she?
First name is Sarah. She’s been twenty years on the force and she’s seen it all before. Tried for sergeant twice and failed the exam. Stopped trying. She still cares, though. A good copper, doing her best.
I didn’t have to be right, of course, or at least not accurate anyway. I just had to convince myself that I was right. That’s how this kind of magic works – once you’ve got a connection to someone you can fill in whatever details feel right to you, whatever it takes to flesh them out in your mind until you can see that someone as a real actual person. I just had to convince myself that this was really her long enough to form an astral link with the disembodied voice on the end of the phone.
Go deeper. Why is she?
She’s been married for eighteen years. He drives a lorry for a living. Name’s Dave. He doesn’t really like her being a copper but they rub along all right, and they need the money. They still love each other. They’ve got two kids, both boys. One plays football, the other one’s badly disabled. Brain damage at birth. She still blames herself. Her overtime helps to pay for his special school.
Yes. There. There she is. That’s Sarah Newland, right there.
Got you.
I focused down the phone and gave her an almighty stab of my Will.
“Tell me,” I said.
Yeah I know, I know, all right? I try not to do this to people, I really do – it’s hardly bloody healthy, is it? All the same, added to the long list of other things I had done what did it fucking matter?
Do not ask, command. That is the true way to power.
I remembered Adam saying that once, and I shuddered. Adam was hardly a fucking role model, after all. That and poor PC Newland was probably going to get suspended for this if her guv’nor found out about it. Which he wouldn’t from me, admittedly. Whatever, I had done it now and this was far too important to fuck around with worrying about karma.
“Three masked IC1 males came to the house in the early hours of this morning armed with unspecified handguns, and demanded the child be handed over,” she said. “They left in a black van, index unknown. One was heard to address another as ‘Dimitri’. No witnesses apart from the mother.”
“That’s it? That all you’ve got?”
“So far sir, yes,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Thanks. Look after Debbie.”
I hung up, breaking the mental connection and no doubt leaving poor PC Newland of the Inverleith Police wondering what the bloody hell she had just done. Still, so long as she had the sense to keep quiet about it there was no real harm done, as far as I could see.
I stared out of the window and thought about it in the moment of icy calm before the rage hit me. “IC1 male” was police-speak for “white bloke”, I knew that much. And one of them was called “Dimitri”. The Russian had a Dimitri on his crew, a big ugly bugger who liked to hurt people.
I’ll hurt you for this, I remembered the Russian telling me.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
My sweet little Olivia had been taken away from her home by these animals? Away from her bunny rabbit? With guns?
No.
Hurting me was one thing but this was fucking way out of line.
We might all basically be criminals but there are certain unwritten codes of acceptable practice, you know what I mean? You didn’t go after people’s families. Not over the small shit, anyway. You certainly didn’t take their kids, not ever.
You didn’t do this!
No!
I was on my feet, I realized, breathing hard and fast through clenched teeth. I don’t think I’d ever been so fucking furious in my life. A strangled scream of rage escaped me, and brought Trixie running from the kitchen.
“Don, what is it?”
I forced in a shuddering breath and I told her, all the while fighting the burning heat in my hands that threatened to explode into flames at any moment. Trixie’s mouth set in a hard line, and she nodded.
“Where do we find this Russian?” she asked.
That, of course, was a bloody good question.
“All I’ve got is a phone number,” I admitted.
Trixie nodded and went over to the sofa to get her handbag. She reached inside and pulled out a cheap plastic mobile phone, the sort you can get for twenty quid from the supermarket that come with a prepaid phone card and look like they’re from 1998.
I gave her the Russian’s number and she dialled, holding up a hand to tell me to be quiet.
“Put him on,” she said, in a thick accent I’d never heard her use before.
A moment later she started speaking fluently in what I could only assume was Russian. She paused, nodded.
“Da,” she said, and hung up.
She tossed the phone onto the sofa and smiled at me.
“Remind me to throw that away when we go,” she said.
I stared at her. Trixie constantly amazed me, she really did. Not only did she apparently speak Russian and understand the concept of burner phones, but she actually had one. Wonders never ceased.
“Right,” I said. “Where and when?”
I had calmed down a bit now, which was probably for the best. Trixie had a sort of soothing effect on me like that. When we weren’t yelling at each other, anyway.
“Stockwell Park estate,” she said, “and as soon as we can get there. He has a car dealership there, apparently”
I winced. Oh joy.
The Stockwell Park, in case you didn’t know, isn’t exactly what you’d call one of the more desirable parts of London to live in.
“How the fuck did you get him to agree to see us, anyway?” I asked as I put my coat on.
Trixie gave me a disarming smile and completely ignored the question.
“Me, not us,” she said.
“You what?”
“For heaven’s sake Don, you’re not thinking straight. These people know you by sight. If they see you, they could hurt the child.”
I sighed. She was right, I knew she was.
“And if she’s not there? If they’ve got her somewhere else?”
“Then you can come in and discuss it with them,” she said. “But we need to do this carefully. You’ll have to wait in the car.”
All right, I’d give her that one. The Burned Man wasn’t exactly what you’d call careful, I had to admit. I called Mazin and had him come and pick us up. Trixie tossed her burner phone in the dustbin outside Mr Chowdhury’s shop without breaking stride, and got into the car. She had obviously done that before.
I got in beside her and let Mazin drive us to the delights of Stockwell. It wasn’t really the sort of place you went in a limousine, and I wasn’t sure how safe we’d be parked up round the corner without Trixie there. I told him so, but he just nodded.
“All will be well, Lord Keeper,” he said. “I am armed.”
&nbs
p; Fuck me, are you?
I’d never figured Mazin for the type to carry a gun, but I supposed I shouldn’t really be surprised. He was the head of an organisation that served a sodding war goddess, after all. I shut my eyes and just tried to stay calm.
That didn’t go very well, I have to admit.
* * *
Mazin and I stayed in the car like we had been told while Trixie went to speak to the Russian on whatever pretext she had given him. She had her hair up and was wearing her long black leather coat over smart black slacks and a white blouse, and she had produced a pair of big black sunglasses from somewhere. I have to admit she actually looked Russian, in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. She really was a woman of many talents.
I watched her cross the street and stroll across a thoroughly unwelcoming looking garage forecourt. The place was littered with fifteen-year old motors with optimistic prices on the stickers in their windscreens. There was a shabby prefab building at the end of the lot, one of those things that are halfway between a trailer and a static caravan. The badly illuminated sign over the door said “Grigoryev Quality Cars”. I’m sure they were quality, too. Low quality, to be precise. This place was so obviously a front for something else it was ridiculous. Whatever other businesses the Russian might be involved in, he wasn’t here to sell cars.
I drummed my fingers nervously on the armrest. I knew Trixie was more than capable of looking after herself, but I couldn’t help fretting all the same. If they had Olivia in there, could she get her out safely and fight the Russian’s gorillas at the same time?
Ten minutes passed in uneasy silence, and nothing happened. I nearly jumped out of my seat when a great spray of blood suddenly exploded across the inside of one of the prefab’s windows.
Mazin’s mobile rang.
“Yes, Madam Guardian,” he said a moment later, and hung up.
He turned around in his seat and looked at me.
“She says to go in,” he said. “There is no child there. I will watch the car.”
I got out and hurried after Trixie, weaving between the shabby cars on the forecourt. I couldn’t help staring at that window, at the blood slowly running down the inside of the plastic pane. I shoved the door open and walked in.
A dead man lay on the floor in front of me, face down in a spreading pool of red. I stepped carefully over him and coughed to announce myself. The last thing I wanted was a foot of burning steel through my guts.
“In here, Don,” Trixie said from the office at the end of the corridor.
I followed her voice, and stood frozen in the doorway. There was blood splattered up the walls and across the window and even on the ceiling, and three more dead bodies on the floor. One of them was missing his head, which I suppose explained why there was claret everywhere. Trixie had been busy.
The Russian himself was on his knees in front of an overturned desk, his eyes wide with terror and sweat glistening on his unshaven face. There was blood all over his face and suit, but it didn’t look like any of it was his. Trixie was standing over him with her sword held loosely in one hand, more blood dripping from the blade.
God but I loved that woman.
“I want a fucking word,” I said.
He stared up at me, shaking his head and blathering something in Russian. Trixie cuffed him across the face with the back of her free hand and barked something back at him in the same language. I caught the word for “English”, one of the few Russian words I recognized.
“Drake, whatever I do to offend you, I–”
I lost my shit all at once.
Whatever he had done to fucking offend me? I crossed the space between us in two long strides, my right hand bursting into flames of pure rage as the Burned Man caught my mood. I grabbed the front of the Russian’s bloody shirt with my left hand and yanked him up, holding my burning fist in front of him.
“Where’s my daughter?” I bellowed in his face.
“What daughter?” he said.
I belted him, knocking him off his knees and into the overturned desk in a shower of loose papers. He screamed and beat at his face, swiping at stray flames that were trying to catch in his greasy hair.
“You kidnapped my little baby daughter!” I roared at him.
“I didn’t know you had fucking baby daughter!” the Russian wailed, spittle flecking the corners of his mouth.
He looked from my burning hand to Trixie’s glistening red blade and back again, and he wet himself.
I was so surprised, the rage went out of me at once. He just sprawled there on the filthy floor, the crotch of his grey suit turning darkly wet. The Russian was a hard, evil bastard, but there was no way he was that good an actor. He was scared out of his mind, and he quite obviously had no idea what I was talking about.
Fuck.
“Fuck!” I threw back my head and bellowed with helpless, impotent rage. “Where’s my fucking daughter?”
“I don’t know!” the Russian blubbered.
“Where’s Dimitri?”
“Dimitri is gone,” he said. “He look at my woman, I fire his dirty arse. Four, five weeks ago.”
He stared up at me and lapsed back into Russian again.
I had no idea what he was saying now but it sounded like he was praying. Trixie didn’t seem to be taking any notice of whatever it was, anyway.
I stepped back and took a long, shuddering breath. It was like an abattoir in there. Four men were dead for no good reason, and I was no nearer finding Olivia. I looked at Trixie, and winced. She met my eyes with a cold blue stare, and said nothing.
Oh God, what have I done?
I had jumped to an almighty conclusion, that was what I had done, and these poor bastards had died for it. Trixie had killed for it, for that matter. I swallowed. She had just taken my word for everything, and look what had happened. Not that I had asked her to paint the place with blood, admittedly. All the same, I should have known that was going to happen once she got involved.
We really ought to be leaving. Someone was bound to notice the state of that window soon, and whatever sort of reputation the Russian had around here I knew it was only a matter of time before someone got nosey and called the Old Bill.
“We should go,” Trixie said, as though reading my mind.
I nodded. She made her sword disappear and I followed her silently out of the prefab. We left the Russian behind us, sobbing and praying on his knees in a puddle of piss.
Mazin opened the car door for Trixie without a word, as though he couldn’t see the blood splatters all over her white blouse. Nothing seemed to surprise Mazin, you had to give him that I suppose. I got in the other side of the motor and slammed the heavy door behind me.
“Home,” I said. “Now.”
The late morning traffic was terrible. We sat in hostile silence for a very long time.
Chapter Seventeen
I couldn’t get rid of Mazin quick enough once we got back to my place. Trixie stalked into the bathroom and closed the door, and I sagged onto the sofa with a defeated sigh. That couldn’t have been more of a clusterfuck if it had tried.
Oh fucking hell, whatever was Trixie going to say when she finally started talking to me again? More to the point, where was Dimitri? Where the hell was Olivia?
I put my head in my hands. How long was it going to be until the Old Bill turned up, wasting my time and theirs satisfying themselves that I hadn’t arranged to have her snatched myself? I would hardly have been the first estranged father to do something like that, after all. I could only pray that Debbie had managed to convince them that was the last thing I was likely to do.
I turned around to see Trixie standing in the doorway, staring at me. She had changed out of her blood-splattered clothes into clean jeans and a brown jumper, I noticed. Her face was unreadable.
“Look, Trixie…” I started.
I had no idea what to say to her. She had killed four innocent men for me this morning. Well not exactly innocent men, granted, but they ha
dn’t been guilty of this particular thing at least.
“Yes?”
“About those blokes… I’m so sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Finding Olivia is the important thing. The steps we have to take along the way don’t matter, as long as the objective is met. We have eliminated one line of enquiry, and narrowed the search. The morning hasn’t been a complete waste.”
I stared at her.
The ends justify the means, don’t they Trixie? Every bloody time.
Some of her means were getting to be pretty fucking questionable these days, I had to admit. I spared a glance for her glowing white lie of an aura, and wondered what state she was in underneath it. I knew if I asked her to show me we’d only end up having another fight. She would stop hiding when she was ready to, I supposed, but definitely not before.
She seemed rational enough at the moment, I’ll give her that. Too rational, if anything, almost cold. Six months of being bullied and beaten by Menhit probably hadn’t done her a power of good, after all, and now there was this.
Yeah Don, there’s this, I told myself. This was your fucking doing more than hers. Don’t you feel anything?
I didn’t though, not really. They had been scumbags and even if they hadn’t taken Olivia I was pretty damn sure they had done more than enough other things over the years to… to what? Deserve to die? Really, Don?
Fucking really?
Jesus wept, what am I turning into?
I wondered just how much of my soul the Burned Man had eaten by then. What the fuck was I turning into? I put my head in my hands and sighed. I was not the man I wanted Olivia’s father to be, that was for fucking sure.
I decided to worry about that later, and forced myself to stop thinking about it.
“I still have to find Dimitri,” I said.
Diabolists go to Hell, Don.
Shut the fuck up.
Trixie nodded. “Yes. And now that we know one place where he is not, there are fewer places to look.”
Well there was that, I supposed. If you really squinted at it, anyway. I shook my head. It was no good, I couldn’t be worrying about her as well. Not now, not with everything else that was going on.
