The Divinities

by Parker Bilal

  ‘Wynstan, you remember Cal?’

  The eyes were small and steady, like two obsidian beads shining in the darkness.

  ‘Yeah, man.’ He spoke with a slow Jamaican lilt. ‘Ain’t seen you roun here for a while.’

  Drake remembered ‘Crazy’ Wynstan from the old days when his dad, Chalkie, used to run the estate. Old-time Jamaican Yardies.

  ‘You two used to be like peas in a pod.’

  Wynstan’s long fingers splayed out. ‘Sit,’ he said.

  Drake waited while the two companions shuffled about and got to their feet to make space, then he slid onto the seat.

  ‘You drink rum?’ Wynstan gestured at the bottle. A glass was found. Wynstan poured. ‘What’s this I hear about you bein Babylon? That got to be a lie, I say when I hear.’

  ‘Just trying to do the right thing.’

  ‘Right. They never gwan let you be anything but lickle Indian, whadyacallim?’

  ‘Tonto?’

  ‘That him. Dey always de Lone Ranger.’ Wynstan studied Drake. ‘Not the same as when we as kids, nah? My old man would roll in him grave if he could see the state a tings. Ya feel me?’

  ‘It’s a brave new world.’

  ‘No, man, nuttin new here. This old, old world. This stone age.’ He tilted his head. ‘Dem ediats with dem flags and all? We seen worse, right?’ He looked around his companions, soliciting nods from them. ‘Remember Brixton? I’m talkin bout the uprising in eighty-one? Toxteth? Social unrest them call it. Irie. Babylon was burning in dem days.’ There were murmurs of agreement.

  ‘You know this mob?’

  ‘Seen dem roun’about.’ Wynstan sucked his teeth. ‘Most of them dey bus dem in from Coventry or somewhere.’

  ‘Who bussed them in?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Wynstan chuckled as he refilled their glasses. ‘Rent-a-clown or some shit like dat.’ There was a trickle of laughter from his two companions.

  ‘You know what they want?’

  ‘What they always wan, to push we black arse off dem streets.’ Wynstan leaned over the table. ‘Only dis time it all change. They dreamin of old times when Britannia rule de waves, nah? Nowadays we got de damn United Nations roun here, places I never hear of. An we don’t have them clever dicks what speak in ya ear, man. I mean, you got to be a damn Rubik’s cube to understand all dem tongue.’

  Drake didn’t get the reference, but the gist of what he was saying was clear.

  ‘You think you can pull your boys back?’

  ‘You get you Babylon boys to uproot Moss and him hoodlum from out my square and it done.’ Wynstan held Drake’s gaze steadily. ‘Can ya do dat?’

  ‘It’s done.’ Drake got to his feet and raised his glass in salute before draining it. As he made to leave he heard Wynstan calling him back.

  ‘Hey, Kemosabe, watch out they don’ deport y’rass, nah?’

  The laughter followed Drake out into the street.

  He had to push his way through a scrum of journalists and cameras to reach the command vehicle. Pryce looked round as Drake appeared.

  ‘Ah, glad you could join us.’

  Drake leaned over him to tap one of the monitors which showed Wynstan’s two companions coming out of the door of the Alamo.

  ‘They’re going to pull their side back, but we need to do the same.’

  ‘What does that mean? We don’t have a side here, Drake.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ Drake looked at Pryce. Every officer in the room was watching them. ‘Get Moss and his hoodlums out. Tell them we can no longer guarantee their safety.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re giving me orders.’

  ‘Relax, I’m just trying to do my job,’ smiled Drake.

  ‘Have you been drinking, DS Drake?’

  But he was already gone.

  Outside, the helicopter chattered its way overhead. Already, the police vehicles were pulling back, corralling Moss’s mob into the southwest corner of the square to lead them out. Things were calming down. The kids were getting ready to celebrate a victory. He even caught sight of a couple of them high-fiving it across the square.

  Drake turned his head, looking for the Kronnos Security van again, but it was gone. He stopped in the middle of the street and stared at the building the van had been parked outside. It was set back from the square. The old Victorian swimming baths. A new hoarding had been fixed to the brick wall. It showed a bright picture of a smiling family and the logo, YDH DEVELOPMENTS – YOUR FUTURE IS NOW.

  In the corner of the hoarding was another, smaller sign that read Kronnos Security. Drake ran his eye up over the building. He thought he glimpsed a wisp of white smoke coming from the flue of one of the old chimneys. The sky above was diesel black with an orange sodium lining. A deluge about to break. The helicopter had stopped moving. It hovered directly overhead, the down draught making the world flutter and shake, as if it was about to come apart at the seams.

  CHAPTER 46

  Dawn was breaking as Crane twisted the throttle grip and felt the power of the Triumph engine vibrating through her body, propelling her forward along the A4. The cold air was a deep leaden blue. Listening to the steady growl of the engine beneath her, she let her mind go back over the sequence of events that had led her here. After meeting Drake she had sped home and spent most of the rest of the night going back over her notes of the case. Everything she had on Magnolia Quays, about Marsha Thwaite and Tei Hideo. She went back through the boxes of old files from her time in Iraq. Much of that material was classified and Ray had copies of intelligence and military documents that she probably wasn’t supposed to have. She constructed a timeline to connect then with now.

  Somewhere around midnight she had risen from the table and stretched her arms to try to loosen up her neck. She went through to the bathroom and began to draw a bath. Returning to her desk she cleared away the material about Hicks and carried it down to the kitchen where she prepared herself a cup of ginger tea. On the long wooden table she spread out the material on the Magnolia Quays killings. A large map of the site. Photographs of the crime scene. Others of the two bodies. Close-up details of the victims. It was disturbing. She found herself recreating in her mind Marsha Thwaite’s last moments. She would have been conscious. From the tortured expression and open mouth it was clear that she must have realized that she was being buried alive. She was screaming; a last cry that nobody ever heard. The sheer brute force of the stone had ripped away the hood and the gag, battering her face and head in the process. According to the coroner’s report she had not been killed by the stonefall. Instead, she had suffocated slowly, her chest and lungs constricted by the stone casing she was set in. She died painfully and in utter terror.

  After studying the layout of the construction site and her own sketch of the positioning of the bodies, Ray sat back. What was the killer thinking? If the aim was merely to murder the victims why go to so much trouble? Again, she had to conclude that he was trying to make a point. She returned to the prints of the murder scene. The grey figures rising out of the mound of stone. It could have been a display in a particularly bizarre art show. The figures could have been carved from the same limestone rock they had been buried in. A living sculpture. It sent her to her bookcase, looking for a volume on the despotic architecture of Saddam Hussein. The image triggered a memory of some of the more eccentric roadside statues built in Baghdad: arms rising out of the ground brandishing giant swords, nets full of helmets of dead Iranian soldiers. Macabre. And this too appeared to be in the killer’s mind. A staged performance. The killer wants us to look, she thought, but what are we meant to be seeing? Two adulterers wrapped together as they receive their punishment? They had found no evidence that the victims were engaged in an affair – with one another. Ten years ago Marsha had been having an affair with the man who later became her husband, Howard Thwaite. So, was this some kind of moral message?

  The other question mark was Hakim. How did his death relate to the Magnolia Quays victims? Clearly the killer inten
ded there to be an ongoing progression. A deepening of his mission statement. So, how exactly? One was a stoning, and the other a double amputation. Where was the connection? Adultery and stealing. Was this just a list of sins? Both were punishments proscribed by the strict tenets of sharia law. She was lying in the bath when it hit her what tied the scene at Magnolia Quays to Hakim.

  Betrayal.

  Just outside Bristol she leaned the Triumph north and headed across the River Severn and up along the Wye Valley. The ride now became more pleasant as the motorway fell behind and she found herself winding along leafy country roads, passing small towns and villages. On the outskirts of one of these she paused and checked her GPS tracker before turning onto a small, muddy track.

  The farmhouse looked as though it had seen better days. Once upon a time. Now an air of disuse hung over the place. A rusty tractor and trailer stood off to one side. Dogs were barking inside a fenced enclosure. She kicked the stand out and parked the bike on a piece of flat ground, posting her helmet over the side mirror. As she approached the house, the front door opened and a woman appeared.

  ‘Mrs Hicks?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ She was in her fifties, hair going grey, wearing grubby jeans and a long, shapeless cardigan that she held tightly against her with folded arms.

  ‘I’m Doctor Crane. We spoke on the phone?’

  ‘Doctor, is it?’ Mrs Hicks ran an eye over her, sucking deeply on her cigarette. Her hair hung in ragged bunches about her face. ‘You look young for a doctor.’

  Crane turned to gaze out over the landscape that dropped away down into the valley where the glint of water could be seen winking through the trees.

  ‘Lovely place you have here.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mrs Hicks conceded. ‘You sure you’re not a journalist?’

  ‘I’m a psychologist.’ Crane produced a card from her inside pocket and walked up to hand it over. Mrs Hicks scrutinized both sides of the card.

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought all that business was over and done with.’

  ‘What business would that be?’

  ‘All that stuff about Iraq.’

  ‘This is just background research.’ Ray smiled.

  ‘I’ve had it with all that, the snooping around. Why don’t you just let him rest in peace?’

  ‘Believe me, I’d love to do just that. I know how you must feel, but understanding what happened to your son is important. It could help others like him in the future.’

  ‘It’s not right.’ Mrs Hicks stared firmly off into the distance. ‘You never know, do you, what’s going on in their heads?’

  Crane nodded agreement. ‘That’s why I’m here. We need to learn from this.’

  Mrs Hicks looked at her but said nothing.

  ‘Did you see him often when he came home?’

  ‘In the early days, but later . . .’ She unfolded one arm to point. ‘When he was here, he kept to himself. Locked himself away in there. It was scary. As if he had become another person. You can see he was obsessed, simply obsessed with the whole business.’

  Crane followed her gaze towards a white caravan tucked around the side of the barn.

  ‘He was proud of what he did, being a soldier, like. Fighting for queen and country.’ Her eyes were hard and cold, as if to imply this was something Ray would not be able to grasp.

  ‘Do you think I might take a look?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘Aye, I suppose it’s all right. Let me fetch the keys.’

  She disappeared inside. A man pulled aside the lace curtain to peer out through the window. An older man with receding hair. He glared at her before disappearing from view. Mrs Hicks returned bearing a string of keys in one hand and a fresh cigarette in the other. She had also exchanged her slippers for a pair of wellington boots. The ground was churned up and muddy and Ray gave up trying to keep her boots dry. The caravan was an old one. The tyres were flat and it was propped up on railway sleepers to prevent it sliding away down the hill. Mrs Hicks fiddled with the key.

  ‘He used to love this thing. Can’t think why. Damp in the winter. Too hot in the summer.’

  ‘Maybe it held special memories for him?’

  ‘Aye, well. We used to go on holiday in it, when he was small and his father was still alive.’

  ‘You lived in London then?’

  ‘That’s right. Moved out here. Couldn’t stand it any longer. The noise, people, crime.’

  The door squeaked open and she stepped aside to let Ray in. She remained outside, smoking her cigarette.

  ‘I’d like to get my hands on the people who sent him out there.’

  Ray turned on the steps. ‘You blame the army, the government?’

  A hand circled smoke in the air. ‘All of them. The ones who did it to him.’

  Inside the caravan the air was damp and reeked of mould. The windows had been pasted over with newspaper instead of curtains. It took a moment for Ray’s eyes to adjust. Facing the door was a small kitchenette with a washbasin and electric hotplate. The sliding cupboards stood half open. A bag of sugar and a jar of instant coffee. There was no word from Mrs Hicks, so Ray moved further inside. The bedroom was darker than the living room. Again the windows were covered. Between alarming headlines topless girls pouted at her from sheets of yellowed tabloid pages. A purple sleeping bag lay on the unmade bed. A mattress of raw yellow foam poked through a torn tartan cover. The air was thick and heavy. It took her a moment to realize that the newspaper didn’t just cover the narrow window at the far end, but continued all around the walls. From floor to ceiling sheets of newspaper had been taped roughly into place. As she leaned over to take a closer look she glimpsed through a tear the man she had seen in the kitchen window. Coming out of the house he began striding down towards the caravan. Crane guessed her time here was limited.

  ‘He lived here for a time, between jobs, like.’ Outside, Mrs Hicks was still rambling on. ‘He was never right, not after he came back. Then, one day he just took off again, said he was going back to the war. Well, you can imagine . . .’

  Her voice droned on in the background. Crane listened with half an ear as she studied the sheets of newspaper stuck to the wall. She noticed that some carried the same stories. The same pages repeated around the walls. Not randomly chosen, but selected. The garish headlines and models were a diversion from the stories about the rescue operation in Iraq and its aftermath. Free at Last! Daring Raid Pays Off! Hostages Flown Home! There were pictures of a young Marsha Thwaite, or Chaikin as she was then, walking down the steps of an aircraft. The story continued onto the next wall. Army Heroes Face Enquiry. Military Contractors to Be Held Accountable. Hawkestone on Trial. Underneath a picture of David Reese was the caption: Soldier Takes His Own Life. Crane was distracted by the voices outside.

  ‘I’m telling you she’s up to something.’ The man was whispering urgently.

  ‘She’s not a journalist.’ Mrs Hicks sounded irritated.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I asked her.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, woman! You don’t expect her to tell you.’

  Through the thin walls, Crane could hear them arguing. Ignoring them, she pulled out her phone and started taking pictures of the walls. She forgot to turn off the flash.

  ‘What did I say? She’s taking pictures.’

  The man stuck his head through the doorway. When she turned towards him he disappeared.

  ‘Mark my words, all of this is going to be in tomorrow’s papers. They’ll dredge the whole thing up again. You’ll see.’

  When she appeared in the doorway the couple looked up.

  Crane looked the man in the eye. ‘I don’t work for a newspaper. The pictures are for my own personal record. I hope you don’t mind?’ Ignoring him, she addressed herself to Mrs Hicks, who simply tossed her head as if it didn’t matter to her either way.

  As she took one last look round, Crane’s eye fell on an old photograph, the colours fading, that had b
een taped to the wall next to the door. When she touched it, it came away in her hand, yellowed strands of Sellotape trailing from it.

  ‘Who is this?’ She held it up to Mrs Hicks who smiled.

  ‘Who? Well, that’s Brian and ’is brother, Luke, when they were small.’

  Ray studied the picture. They were around ten or eleven years old. They had the same blond hair. One of them was slighter in build, the other had a more rounded face.

  ‘Luke was a year and a half younger. He always looked up to his brother, followed him around like a lost puppy. Tried to do everything Brian could, but of course he failed miserably.’ She took a long, thoughtful drag on her cigarette. ‘Pathetic really, when you think about it.’

  ‘Where is he now, Luke?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ A blank look came over her, as if reminded of something she didn’t want to remember. ‘I haven’t heard from him for a couple of years. Not since Brian . . .’

  Her voice tailed off. By now the man had had enough.

  ‘You have to leave now,’ he insisted. ‘You can’t just come around here upsetting people.’

  Crane faced him with a smile. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was upsetting anyone.’

  He took a step towards her. ‘If you don’t leave, I shall have to throw you out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t try that if I were you.’

  The man seemed to realize his mistake. He took Mrs Hicks by the arm and led her, rather forcefully, away. Ray trailed behind as the couple made their way back towards the house.

  ‘Did Brian seek pyschological help when he got back? Did he see a doctor?’

  ‘I can’t deal with this any more.’ Mrs Hicks moaned. ‘I just can’t!’

  ‘You heard her,’ spat the man. ‘Go on. Clear off!’

  Crane stood and watched the two of them disappear up the front steps and into the house. At the final moment, Mrs Hicks broke free and strode back down towards her. Ray stood her ground, preparing to defend herself. Mrs Hicks came to a halt and brushed her hair out of her face. She looked off into the distance for a moment before addressing Ray.