by Stav Sherez
He was pulling out his handcuffs when the man spoke.
‘Second pocket, right.’
Carrigan held the man’s arm up against his back and pulled to tighten the pressure. The man just grunted and tried to ease the strain on his arm.
A couple of school kids watched as Carrigan reached in and extracted a thin wallet from the man’s pocket. He flipped it open with his teeth and was surprised to see the face of the man he was holding against the wall staring back at him from a police warrant card.
‘How about my arm?’
Carrigan let go, gave DI Spencer back his warrant card and apologised. He explained about the man he’d seen following him.
‘It’s ’cause I’m black, right?’ Spencer eyeballed him, his face rigid as rock. Carrigan averted his gaze.
And then Spencer couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst out laughing. ‘Just fucking with you,’ he said, big saggy pouches under his eyes as if they held a reservoir of tears he’d been unable to cry. ‘Damn, it was worth it to see your reaction.’ He shook his hand vigorously, letting the blood flow back into circulation.
‘You were at the AAC meeting.’ They stood opposite each other in the small dank alley. Carrigan felt that peculiar after-effect of adrenaline, the enervation and relief coursing through him.
DI Spencer straightened his fleece, lit up a cigarette. ‘I’m looking into them, part of a case we’re working on. When I saw you and your partner I thought you were going to fuck everything up for us. I wanted to know why you were interested in the AAC, so imagine my surprise when I get this call yesterday from a DI out west who wants to meet and then when I get here I see you.’
Spencer explained that his team, based in Hackney, were looking into the AAC. ‘Reports of troublemaking, sending threatening letters, that sort of thing. But what really interests us is how did this Gabriel Otto get his funding. He’s just a student but this is a well-organised and well-financed group.’ Spencer finished his B&H and ground it under his size-fifteen shoe.
‘Well, I’m glad you agreed to meet me,’ Carrigan said.
Spencer laughed, a deep and resonant sound that Jack could feel in his chest. ‘Couldn’t let you come out here all by yourself, they’d eat you alive.’ He pointed to two skinny kids standing lookout on a corner. ‘You don’t exactly blend in.’
All around him Carrigan could hear the whirling maelstrom of voices, the hard and soft staccato of Swahili, the languid tones of Luganda, the eerie musicality of Arabic, a mix of accents and intonations that felt as strange and otherworldly as the smells of spices and herbs saturating the damp air. There was a density and concentration of shops and people found nowhere else in the city, every available surface crammed with a bustle of colour and language.
Yet there was also something desperate about this place and he felt an overwhelming pity for everything – the shops with nothing anyone wanted to buy, the immigrant owners’ hopes faded like the once-bright signs adorning their storefronts.
‘We headed anywhere in particular?’
Spencer stopped, lit another cigarette. ‘There’s a house round the back of the high street, a lot of ex-child soldiers doss down there.’
‘Child soldiers?’
‘I’ve worked up a basic profile on your guy from the info you faxed me yesterday.’ Spencer pulled a sheaf of folded papers out of his jacket.
‘Thanks.’ Carrigan took them, placed them in his own pocket. ‘Give me a quick rundown.’
‘Well, I didn’t have too much to go on,’ Spencer replied, ‘but from the information you gave me I think your informant is right: the man you’re looking for is an Acholi from northern Uganda.’ Spencer paused. ‘Which is bad news in the scheme of things. Not sure this morning’s press conference would have helped.’
Carrigan mumbled something Spencer didn’t catch.
‘Saw your girl on telly. Looked good but the whole thing might have scared off your suspect.’
Carrigan flashed back to the press conference, the killer’s face flickering across millions of TV screens. He’d watched it in a small cafe while eating breakfast. Geneva had looked composed and radiant under the flash-pop of camera lights. She stood behind the big Met logo, Branch and the ACC flanking her, but her eyes were centred on the camera and her voice was steady and calm. She was assured and convincing – Carrigan could tell she’d go far if only she would allow herself to. ‘Wasn’t my decision,’ Carrigan replied, giving Spencer one of those looks that said everything in the curl of an eyebrow.
‘Yeah,’ Spencer replied, ‘never is, is it? Always the people furthest from a case think they know best how to investigate it. Anyway, in all likelihood, this man you’re after is an ex-child soldier, or ghost soldier as they’re known. From looking over the post-mortem report I don’t think there’s any doubt; the level of violence certainly fits. This is a growing problem we’re having to deal with. Look,’ Spencer pointed through the steamed and grease-rimmed windows of a closed-down greasy spoon. Inside, a huddle of men, skinny as spiders, sat crouched around a large table. Their skin shone under the light, their eyes bloodshot, all of them chewing with serene concentration then spitting out strings of thick green juice. Carrigan remembered the bitter taste of Khat that first day in Kampala, the white rush that came after the juices sank into your gums and then the instant need for more.
‘They’re kidnapped from their homes when they’re very young. They’re forced to either watch or more often participate in the killing of their own family, then they’re shackled and marched to one of Kony’s camps up in the north, taught to fight, beaten and bullied until there’s nothing left in them but hate. The girls are taken for use as sex slaves. Your man will not stop, will not listen to reason or compromise, you have to realise this. They come from war and just because they’re in London now doesn’t mean anything changes. War is all they know. They’re brutalised at such a young age that this is what they’ve become.’
Carrigan shook his head as he stared at the cafe’s interior, the lost vacancy in these men’s eyes.
‘Those scars,’ Spencer pointed to the photo of Grace’s source, the asymmetrical lines carved into the man’s face, ‘they’re typical of people who’ve been fighting in the bush. It’s the teeth I’m more worried about.’
‘The teeth?’
‘Some African tribes still use teeth filing as an initiation rite but not in this part of Uganda. We’ve heard stories. An elite group of child soldiers, Ngomo’s shock troops, survivors of countless bush skirmishes, their teeth filed to resemble the name they chose for themselves – the Wolves. If your man’s an ex-Wolf then you’ve got a big problem.’
Spencer led him to a gutted house standing on a corner two streets down from the market. A recent fire had painted its facade black and sooty, making it resemble some old Gothic greystone from the nineteenth century. The windows were missing and in their place grey Sitex screens had been mounted by the council to prevent squatters. But there was smoke and noise coming from inside, a sense of movement and life.
‘You sure about this?’ Carrigan asked as they climbed the stairs and Spencer prised open the door.
‘The ones in here are too fucked up to do anything.’
But this didn’t reassure Carrigan in the slightest as he ducked under the splayed door and into a dark unlit hallway reeking of sweat, ammonia and the bright acrid tang of burning crack.
They entered the main room. The smell and stench of bodies, of toilets that no longer worked, of drug sweat and fear and sex and hopelessness, made Carrigan gag. He’d smelled it once before and his life had never been the same since. On the floor, wherever they looked, prone bodies, thin and delicate as Giacometti sculptures, lay on flattened-out cardboard boxes.
‘Give me the photo,’ Spencer said and Carrigan didn’t argue. He knew he was totally out of his element. This was his city but this was not his city, not here. He tried to breathe slowly through his mouth, to be invisible, a white man in this room of misery and su
rrender. He watched as Spencer bent down and gently talked to the few who were still awake or lucid enough to even note his presence. Carrigan wondered about their homes, their villages, the mornings waking up under the glaring African sky, the endless plains and hunting grounds and now they were here, poor, bedraggled, and lost in a civilisation that didn’t understand them and didn’t want to. So, like spiders they found the dark corners, the out-of-the-way places, the waiting rooms where their hours leaked out slowly until there was no difference between death and life.
Spencer approached him, grabbing his arm, bringing him back to the present. ‘I got something.’ He led Carrigan to an empty corner. ‘A few of them definitely recognised him,’ he said, handing back the photo of Grace’s source. ‘They looked scared shitless when they saw it. One told me that your suspect used to hang out at the Drillmaker’s.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A nasty pub across from here. Not the kind of place you’d go for a quiet drink.’
Carrigan smiled. ‘What are we waiting for?’
The Drillmaker’s Arms was once an old-fashioned London pub. That was apparent from the sign hanging loosely at the front but nothing inside resembled any pub Carrigan had seen since the mid-seventies. The heavy plush sofas were ripped and worn and of a colour not easily identifiable. The pall of cigarette smoke hung over the tables though it’d been a while since the smoking ban came into force. There was a raised stage to the left of the bar, and on it, under a splash of gaudy lights, a middle-aged bleached blonde was slowly taking off her clothes.
A group of young African men sat around the stage, staring into bottles of Primus, pulling on long white-tipped cigarettes and watching the floorshow. Carrigan felt a sharp pang of sadness, this whole scene, the stripper that no one in his right mind would want to see stripped, the dark and gloomy bar, the measure of cigarettes and spark of bottles being opened in the musty air.
The woman took off her bra to reveal scars and stretch marks. The crowd cheered listlessly like it was something they’d been instructed to do. It was only two in the afternoon, a bright glaring October day, but in here it could’ve been the middle of the night. The stripper smiled and tripped, falling over her own discarded clothes. No one looked up from their beers.
Carrigan found a seat as Spencer went round trying to get some sort of reaction from the customers, shoving the photo under their eyes, standing in front of the stripper, blocking their view. Carrigan felt the mood change in the bar like a sailor could feel the tiniest splash of rain in a cloudless sky. Men were shuffling in their seats, some looking nervously behind them, others shaking their heads and raising their voices. They all shared a certain expression despite their differences, a surly nonchalance bubbling at the surface, a wariness like that of predatory birds.
Carrigan moved next to Spencer, waiting for the first flare of fist or knife, but everything was muted here, the rage and violence distilled into stares and shrugs and monosyllabic rebuttals. The stripper continued her act but no one was really watching or they were only watching in the way you look at something but don’t see it.
‘What kind of black are you?’ One of the young men challenged Spencer.
Spencer leant down into the youth’s face. ‘The kind you’ll never be.’
It happened so fast Carrigan was caught completely unprepared. Suddenly‚ Spencer was surrounded. Fists flying and the silver flash of something worse. Carrigan stepped into the swirling mass of bodies, pulling out his baton, hearing the click of its extension as he slammed it into one man’s forearm.
The crack of bone splintered cleanly and the man fell to the floor sobbing and massaging his useless arm. Carrigan turned and hit another assailant in the face but the man barely reacted, just smiled and jumped on top of Carrigan. Their bodies crashed to the floor. Carrigan felt the man’s breath on his face, twisted, and shot his knee into the man’s crotch. The African’s eyes bulged but he didn’t relax his grip on Jack’s neck. Carrigan saw black skies explode in white star showers, then heard a sharp tattoo of cracks.
Blood from his attacker’s head began streaming down onto his own face. He pulled away to see Spencer standing with a truncheon in his hands, wide smile plastered on his face.
Spencer pulled him up. The room tilted and span. Carrigan grabbed a table to steady himself, saw the men bloodied and bruised slowly taking their seats, Spencer leaning over them like their own shadows unloosed. He was taking out his handcuffs and notebook.
‘Assaulting a police officer’s something we take very seriously around here.’ Spencer’s voice boomed across the afternoon pub but there was no reaction on the men’s faces. They stared at each other, at their useless hands, the mess surrounding them. ‘But assaulting two policemen . . .’
‘You gonna put us in jail?’ one of the men sneered, massaging his jaw, blood and spit curling at the edge of his lips. ‘We’ve been there before.’
Carrigan sat down next to Spencer, felt the heat of the table, the amassed looks and imperceptible nods and tells. He took the photo of Grace’s source out of his pocket. ‘We have a fast-track programme for you.’ His voice was unrattled, calm and modular despite the pain he was feeling in his ribs and skull. ‘Prisons being overcrowded here and you not being legal residents and all.’ Carrigan watched their faces as he let the words hang in the smoky air. ‘So, for something like this, as serious as this, we just fill out a form and pass it on to your embassy.’ He scanned their eyes, saw tiny flickers at the mention of the word embassy. ‘Which means, practically speaking, forty-eight hours from now you’ll be on a plane back to your beloved homeland. What they do to you there, it’s up to them.’
He leant back in the chair, watched their eyes fall on the photograph, silent looks exchanged across the long table. ‘A nice surprise for your families, I should think, having you back for Christmas.’
Someone reached for the photo. One of the younger men, scars like ripples across his cheeks, long skinny fingers caressing the edges of the paper. ‘You only want this man?’
Carrigan nodded.
Silence. No one looking at each other. The man who’d taken the photo sent it spinning back across the table. ‘Haven’t seen him for a few weeks. He used to hang around with Solomon Onega.’ The man looked to his friends but they avoided his gaze.
‘And where can we find Onega?’ Carrigan kept his voice soft and low.
‘The Church of the Blood of the Redemption,’ the man mumbled. ‘He works there most days.’ He looked up at Carrigan. ‘What about us?’
Carrigan put the photo back in his pocket, snapped his truncheon back onto his belt. ‘Lucky you,’ he said, pointing to the stripper who was still gyrating on the stage. ‘You get to keep watching Marilyn over there to your heart’s content.’
25
Geneva waited as the SOAS registrar continued some private conversation on the phone. She stared at the sterile room, the cold white lights, the framed photographs of old alumni, feeling unreasonably tetchy. She’d made the appointment after her meal with Carrigan last night but this morning it seemed the registrar had more important things to do. Finally, tired of waiting, the case going on without her somewhere in Peckham, Hackney, Streatham, she walked up to his desk, loudly slamming her Coke can down on the table, watching his eyes follow the liquid as it splashed onto the wood.
‘Yes?’ His voice sounded weary and tired but when he looked up and noticed her something in his expression softened and he coughed, apologised, put down the phone and smiled. ‘What can I help you with?’
She flashed her warrant card, noticing his surprise, the way he looked from the card back up to her face as if convinced of some deception.
‘I need to see your records for Grace Okello, East African History, third year.’
The man’s eyes lingered on her chest before he nodded and turned to an old computer, his fingers hovering hesitantly over the keyboard. Geneva stood there and waited. She wanted to be out in the streets following their new lead y
et Carrigan had expressly told her to come here today. She felt that after last night something had changed between them and she’d woken this morning feeling better than she had in a long time.
‘That’s strange.’ The registrar swivelled his seat, his eyes hovering over her breasts as if drawn there by gravity. ‘Are you sure she was a registered student?’
Geneva looked blankly at the man, mid-forties, balding, his life sequestered behind a computer screen, having to watch young boys and girls blossom into their lives in front of him year after year, and she suddenly felt sorry for him, a snap twinge she quickly had to bury. ‘Of course she was,’ she replied a little too sharply. ‘Can you please check again?’
The registrar nodded, turned back to his computer, shaking his head. ‘We don’t seem to have any records for a Grace Okello.’ He turned back to Geneva, his face a mess of confusion. ‘I’m sorry, the system’s normally airtight.’ He saw Geneva’s expression and blushed. ‘But I can check the basement. Even if somehow it got deleted from the server the original documents will be stored there.’
Geneva flashed him her best smile. ‘I’d be extremely grateful.’
The man shuffled off, taking one last look at her breasts, promising he’d be back within five minutes. Geneva sat back down in the chair trying to understand what this could mean – had someone expunged Grace’s records or was it only a technical glitch? She was jolted out of her thoughts by the vibration of her phone. She picked it up, hoping it was Carrigan, but the voice on the other end was the last person she’d expected.
‘Hello, Geneva.’
Her hand tightened against the phone. She swallowed but her mouth was desert dry. ‘Oliver.’
‘Been trying to get hold of you,’ her soon-to-be ex-husband replied. The voice that had once sent her body into shuddering delight now made her feel like something was crawling up her arm. ‘Wanted to have a chat, no lawyers, none of that, just you and me like old times.’
