by Nick Oldham
It had been a terrible thing to leave Michelle behind. The expression on her face as the men approached her was already etched in Flynn’s mind. As was the image of Boone’s face as it exploded after being shot in the back of his head. Flynn cleaned himself mechanically, thoroughly… knowing that he would return to the Gambia sooner rather than later, and that his friends would be revenged.
THIRTEEN
They had been too late.
After the HQ dining room meeting with the chief constable, Henry, Rik Dean and Donaldson had driven quickly back to Blackpool and to the flat that Sadiq and Rahman had been using in North Shore. It had been stripped clean, like vultures had been on a wildebeest carcass. Everything had gone, every scrap of furniture, every strip of carpet ripped up and taken away, along with all the food, crockery, cutlery and toilet rolls. All that remained were the bare bones.
Henry had not been surprised. The forensic scientists who worked for the security service would take all the stuff and recreate the rooms based on their notes, photographs and videos, at some secret location outside London, and they would be able to take their time in assessing what they had. Everything would be combed, read, tested, analysed and the results fed back to MI5.
He had wandered through the tiny lounge, the one bedroom, the kitchenette, the toilet, hoping that something had been missed. He tried pulling up floorboards, easing skirting boards away from the wall with his fingertips, looking into what fitted cupboards remained, those things that were part of the fabric of the flat that could not be removed.
Donaldson, exasperated, simply stood at the door with his hands on his hips, shaking his head and continually telling Henry that it was no use. He had experienced the scientific thoroughness of the security services before and knew, to their credit, they were beyond excellent. They wouldn’t have missed anything. Where their professionalism fell down was on the operational side of things, the intelligence gathering, dissemination and use. That was where it all turned to shit.
‘I know, I get the picture,’ Henry said when, for the zillionth time, Donaldson had said, ‘It’s no good.’
Donaldson had eventually mooned around the flat, as though someone had stolen his puppy. In the tiny toilet he had leaned on the wash basin and looked at the square above it on the wall where a mirror had been fixed, but had also been taken away, leaving an unpainted rectangle of paint. He blinked as something crossed his mind, but was then gone. He tried to chase it, but the thought was elusive and probably meant nothing.
They left the flat muted, returning the key to the landlord, who said he hadn’t even been in it himself since and wasn’t looking to re-let it any time soon. Apart from anything else, he wanted the furniture back from the spooks.
‘Well,’ Henry breathed, ‘what next?’
The ‘What next?’ turned out to be frustration upon frustration. Despite FB’s representations, Beckham, the MI5 man, refused to let anyone near Sadiq, who he described as a prized and vulnerable asset. There was also the suspicion that he wasn’t even being held at Paddington Green police station any more.
FB, to his credit, did keep up the pressure until Beckham relented slightly a week down the line.
Henry had been sitting in his own office in the FMIT block at headquarters, looking forlornly at the dry-wipe board on the wall. The problem for him was that, although Lancashire wasn’t the murder capital of the world, people still had a nasty habit of killing other people, as well as committing other serious crimes that came under the remit of FMIT.
Since Natalie Philips’s body had been discovered, Henry was now dealing with two other murders and what looked to be a series of brutal rapes that seemed to be connected. Each of these offences required time and effort, and a very straight dose of panic-free thinking. It was just as important to find the villains in these new cases as it was to discover who murdered Natalie.
And Henry was wobbling a bit.
It did not help that he was being distracted, in a good way, by Alison Marsh. He had met up with her a couple more times and they had ended up fucking each other like the world was about to end. He was still very confused about his feelings for her, and although both of them were simply happy shaggers at the moment, he suspected that in the not too distant future there might be the requirement to ratchet the relationship up a notch, from lust to lurv. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that and as such their trysts had remained clandestine.
He was also having constant run-ins with Leanne and her on-off boyfriend. His daughter wanted the ‘lowlife shit’ — Henry’s description — back in her life, but Henry was dead against it. He refused the guy access to his house and it was getting to the point where he was going to have to ask her to up sticks and move out. It was another thing he didn’t really want to have to deal with because Leanne had been totally there for him after Kate’s death.
And now there were new cases to deal with. The murders were fairly straightforward domestic ones, but still needed steering and overseeing. The rapes he had inherited from a DI in Blackpool who, the rumour was, on discovering he had a serial rapist operating on his patch, had gone on stress leave never to return to work. Henry thought there would be a need to jack up a full-time team to crack them… which seemed like a good job for Rik Dean.
He looked back down at his computer screen, logged on to his e-mail. It showed eighty-five unread messages, many tagged with ‘urgent’ flags. He ignored them, minimized that screen and opened a file on the desktop marked ‘Retirement’.
He opened it and read the few lines.
He could re-date it, print it out, sign it and submit it, and would probably be pulling a police pension in six weeks. Get out of this mind-blowing situation. Draw the pension — half his salary, more than most other people earned — draw the lump sum and simply fuck off. Maybe go live with a woman who owned a very nice pub in a nice village that got snowed in every winter.
He sighed, glanced at the board again and thought about what Donaldson had said to him. And knew he would have to be pushed to leave the job.
He closed the file just as his office door clattered open — no knock — and FB bundled in without warning. Henry, who had a view from his office window across to the front of headquarters, was a little miffed. He’d been so engrossed in his internal monologue that he’d failed to spot the chief trundling across. If he had done, he would have made certain he wasn’t in the office.
‘Henry.’
‘OK, boss? Come to fire me?’
FB chortled, his double chin wobbling. He took a seat opposite Henry. ‘No such luck, but I’m working on it.’
‘Cheers,’ Henry said flatly. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Having known FB for such a long time, some of the formal barriers were blurred and, up to a point, Henry knew he could get away with being relaxed and a bit cheeky, certainly during a one-to-one.
‘Bit of a result from our friend Beckham down at the Box.’ Box being an informal term for MI5. Henry perked up. ‘As you know MI5 has basically taken control of everything related to the flat and Sadiq and Rahman, and that includes the results of the DNA tests.’
Henry’s mouth twisted. ‘I know.’ That MI5 had commandeered the blood sample taken from the seat of the plane from Las Palmas and the one taken from the dead Rahman made him seethe. Donaldson was also fuming, but even despite formal protestations from the FBI, the British security services had not budged. They were like a kid in a classroom, covering their work so no one else could copy it. They were also keeping the result of the DNA test on Sadiq to themselves, and consequently Henry was banging his head against a brick wall in his efforts to trace Natalie Philips’s killer. At some point he assumed that MI5 would have to relent to the pressure and allow access to the results and to Sadiq, wherever he might now be. Even if the lad’s DNA did not match what had been found inside Natalie, Henry wanted to speak to him.
Henry waited for FB to reveal all.
‘It’s better than nothing,’ FB said, preparing him.
&n
bsp; ‘Go on…’
‘Sadiq’s DNA matches one of the sperm samples from Natalie.’
Henry’s ring piece constricted, as did his throat.
‘And the DNA sample taken from the blood on the plane matches another of the sperm samples.’
‘So Sadiq and Akram had sex with Natalie sometime before she was murdered,’ Karl Donaldson said. ‘Jeez.’
‘That’s if the blood from the plane actually belongs to your friend Akram — yes,’ Henry confirmed.
‘You know it does,’ Donaldson said. ‘So three out of the four samples have now been identified — Mark Carter, Sadiq and Akram?’
‘Leaving one unidentified,’ Henry said. ‘As yet.’
‘When are you going to interview Sadiq?’
Henry paused. He was on the phone to Donaldson, bringing him up to speed with developments. The American was back in London — had been for over a week now — and was still making representations to MI5 without success. He had been warned by his superiors to back off and not make waves. Henry’s unexpected news caused a resurgence of hope within him, as he’d almost swallowed his anger and was about to get back to his day job, hoping that Akram would step into his cross hairs some other time. This chance, he’d thought, had passed him by.
Henry’s voice was blunt. ‘I’m not.’
‘What? What the hell?’ Donaldson stopped, unable to believe his ears. At that exact moment he was walking along in the sunshine on the River Thames embankment, threading his way through the tourists in the vicinity of the London Eye. He leaned on the wall by the river and stared across at the Houses of Parliament.
‘Whilst they confirm the DNA matches, they say I still can’t interview Sadiq face to face. I can e-mail down a list of questions and one of the MI5 interview teams will put them to him. That’s the best I can do, and while it’s bollocks, it’s the only way I’ve got at this time.’
‘I’m staggered.’
‘Karl,’ Henry said pointedly, ‘he’s obviously more to them than simply a murderer. You’ve lectured me about the bigger picture before now and that must be what all this is about. National security… maybe he knows a lot of… stuff… and having him dragged through the courts to face a murder charge isn’t what they want. If in fact he did kill Natalie. He might have had sex with her, but didn’t necessarily kill her.’
‘But it needs the detective on the case to get into his ribs, not some detached dick brain reading from a cue card.’
‘Tell me about it…’
Donaldson went silent for a moment, then said, ‘They’re up to something.’
‘Yep.’
‘Bastards,’ Donaldson whined. ‘They don’t have the right to…’
But his words were cut short as his phone signal died.
Henry looked quizzically at his phone but nevertheless completed the sentence, speaking into a disconnected phone. ‘The right to what? Treat us like mushrooms and feed us on shit. Sorry pal, but they think they do.’ He hung up.
Standing under the shadow cast by the London Eye, Donaldson jiggled his phone, feeling that his line to Akram was receding with each passing moment. He wasn’t enjoying the sensation.
He had pretty much done what he could, even flying out to Las Palmas to grill the detective at the airport and make his own enquiries as to how Akram might have got off Gran Canaria and what the onward destination might have been. He had found nothing. The terrorist could easily have left the island by any number of air or sea routes. Donaldson’s nosing around the few private airstrips yielded nothing, nor did any information come from the sea ports he visited. Problem was the island was dotted with numerous tiny ports and it was impossible to keep tabs on everyone who came and went. Donaldson’s educated guess was that Akram had left by sea, which meant there was the likelihood he’d gone to the African mainland and then back to the Middle East. Impossible to track down.
Donaldson leaned on the embankment wall and stared at the water of the Thames. His mind tossed everything around and he knew he was missing something in his equation, the something that had come to him when he and Henry had visited Sadiq’s flat in Blackpool. But he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint what it was.
He stopped shaking his phone, checked a signal was back — yes — and tapped out a text message, paused thoughtfully before sending it — should he, shouldn’t he? — but then pressed send and it flew away into the ether: ‘ MESSAGE SENT ’.
‘Shit,’ he winced, suddenly wishing he could recall it. Too late. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered, ‘I hope I haven’t screwed this up.’
He made his way to a riverside cafe, ordered a filter coffee, sat out in the sun, and waited. If it was going to happen, it would be in the next half hour. He could afford to wait that long, but no longer. Then a text landed on his phone. One word: ‘ COMING ’.
She arrived fifteen minutes later. Donaldson had an iced coffee waiting for her.
‘Karl, darling,’ she said, and leaned across to kiss his cheeks, before sitting down opposite him. Edina, his discreet contact at Whitehall, smiled at him, always with a hint of lust in her eyes. Donaldson thought she must be a lonely woman and that it would be nice to see more of her as a friend, but he did not want to compromise her any more than their relationship did already. He guessed she got some excitement from seeing him occasionally, in a James Bond sort of way, and passing on the odd snippet of information was perhaps a bit thrilling. Then she said, ‘It’s just a feeling, nothing I can prove, but I think they’re on to me.’
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make life difficult for you. You didn’t need to come.’
‘No, darling, it’s OK. It’s not like I’m a double agent for the Russians. You are the only one I ever say anything to, and that’s because I like you, and because it’s only ever about one man that everyone wants to bring down — Jamil Akram. I know why you want to catch him and if I can do anything to help you, then I will.’
Donaldson stared at her for a few moments. She was more than good-looking, one of those women whose appearance took a bit of time to permeate, but when it did, the effect was lasting. ‘You don’t need to do anything more,’ he said. ‘Let’s just have coffee and say bye.’
‘No, no, I do.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I’m going to resign anyway. We, Hugo and I, have a pile in Monaco that needs some TLC. I’m going to go and supervise the renovation.’
‘When you say a place…?’
‘Well, slightly more than a place… more a villa… a big villa. A palace, really. So those are my plans. So what can I do for you? One last thing?’ She held his gaze meaningfully.
‘Why is MI5 not sharing anything about Blackpool?’
Mark Carter was due in to answer his police bail that evening, as a result of which Henry Christie decided to meet, greet and re-interview the lad together with Rik Dean. His plan was to get a long, detailed interview completed this time, put some pressure on Mark and if nothing came of it — such as a confession to killing Natalie — Henry would release him with the warning that if any other evidence came to light that fingered Mark, he would be rearrested. Keep the sword hanging over him. Always a good police tactic.
During the afternoon, Henry brought himself up to speed with his other ongoing investigations and spent some time with Rik, who Henry had decreed would take on the serial rapist case.
It was one of those jobs that was beginning to bubble and rouse some media speculation. Henry, having had it thrust on him, wanted to do something about it before it blew up in his face, as such things often did. If not dealt with immediately and seen for what it was, the police could end up looking like idiots in about ten years’ time, still trying to chase their tails and solve a hundred offences instead of just three.
He and Rik tossed around a few strategies, mostly coming back to resources and the lack of them. If they could throw resources at it, then they’d have a good chance of getting a result. That was the problem with everything, though. No resources.
‘Wouldn’t be sitting here if he was on the database,’ Rik pointed out.
‘OK, it was a pretty obvious point to make,’ Henry conceded. ‘Any pattern to the attacks?’
Rik scanned the analysis of the crime reports. ‘Night-time, between eleven and one. Lone women, young ones, teens, early twenties, attacked in areas where there are no CCTV cameras.’
‘Deliberately chosen, or just lucky?’
Rik shrugged. ‘An area he knows, I suspect. All in the vicinity of Garstang Road on the way out to Poulton. Two of the women were dragged into Boundary Park, one on to some playing fields. No independent witnesses to speak of.’
‘Dates?’ Henry frowned.
‘One a month for the last three months… well,’ Rik scrutinized the reports more closely, ‘that’s one every four weeks
… each progressively more violent, but each woman threatened with a return visit and a horrific murder if they reported the assaults. This is a guy we need to catch.’
‘Bastard,’ Henry whispered. They looked at each other. ‘So if this pattern continues, when would he be due to strike again?’
‘This week,’ Rik calculated. ‘Although he hasn’t done so far, unless it hasn’t been reported.’
‘No set days?’ Henry asked. Rik shook his head. Henry pouted. ‘Could it be a shift worker of some sort, out on a break?’
‘That’s something I’ll check, see what businesses are operating around that area twenty-four hours.’
