A Dark Redemption

by Stav Sherez

  ‘These are the property of the Met and they’re staying that way.’ He could feel the man’s muscles jumping under his touch, the cold steely eyes regarding him.

  They stood there like that for several seconds, the electricity in the room jumping from face to face as each decided what they were prepared to do and what they weren’t. Carrigan glanced down at Geneva, saw her shake her head, then looked back up as the other Ugandan flanked him and reached across the table. He knew there was no way he could keep them both away with force just as he knew that he would try as hard as he could to do exactly that.

  He never got the chance. The stand-off continued, Branch trying to explain to Carrigan the seriousness of the situation, chain of command, protocol. Carrigan turned abruptly and grabbed the letters off the desk, held them tightly in his fist, waiting for what was to come next.

  But it wasn’t a fist or rush or scrum for the letters but a man in a perfectly tailored pinstripe suit who walked into the room as if he’d been waiting in the wings, watching this play out, finally aware that he had to intercede like a referee in a boxing match gone too far.

  ‘I think it would be better for all of us if you handed over those letters.’ The man’s accent was sharp, his eyes cold and blue.

  ‘This is John Marqueson,’ Branch explained, trying to defuse the situation. ‘He’s come from the Foreign Office. I’m afraid he has all the paperwork, Carrigan. There’s no choice.’

  Carrigan stared at Marqueson. The man looked calm and collected, as if he were reading the Sunday paper on a park bench somewhere. ‘I’m sorry, Detective, but this case is about a lot more than a dead student.’ Marqueson checked his nails, smiled without revealing any teeth. ‘Of course, that’s not something you would have knowledge about, so please, take my word, we don’t want this to turn into something else.’ He watched Carrigan. ‘I’m sure that once the embassy have satisfied themselves, you will get all the material back.’

  Carrigan looked towards Branch but the super was looking away. Geneva sat quietly in her chair. The letters fluttered in his hand. He could smell the rancid breath of the Ugandan in front of him, see Marqueson’s gold cufflinks flashing in the fluorescent light.

  ‘Fuck it.’ Carrigan unclenched his fist and let the papers fall to the floor. ‘Take them,’ he snarled. ‘Keep protecting Ngomo.’ Carrigan kicked the letters across the floor. He could see Branch reddening like a man about to burst. ‘What the fuck did Ngomo give you for your loyalty?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ Marqueson replied.

  ‘Of course not.’ Carrigan picked up his jacket and tucked it under his arm as one of the Ugandans bent down and started collecting the letters, the other taking the pile of photographs. Carrigan eye-fucked Marqueson, shook his head and walked out of the incident room. Geneva got up and was about to follow him.

  ‘Miller!’

  She stopped, swivelled round to see Branch facing her.

  ‘My office. Now!’

  33

  Branch barely glanced at his secretary as he threw open the door and slumped down in his chair. Geneva sat down and watched him randomly flick through a pile of boxing magazines, his face tight and his eyes so small they were almost invisible, just pouches of baggy skin humped and swollen as if he’d been punched.

  ‘What just happened?’ She tried to keep her voice steady.

  Branch put down his magazines and cleared his throat. ‘Believe me,’ he replied wearily, ‘there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘That was our case. Those letters could have led us to Bayanga.’ She kept her hands at her side, the itch growing steadily worse with each passing second.

  Branch nodded. ‘I’m sure someone of your competence would have made copies.’

  Geneva looked down at her feet, annoyed that Branch had read her so easily. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Who do you think I am?’ Branch raised his hands in protestation. ‘I sit in this office with my secretary outside, I shout at you and Carrigan, I decide which cases we’re going to prioritise,’ he carefully took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a paper napkin, ‘but that’s it. I’m not the fucking chief constable, I take my orders just like you do.’ He put his glasses back on and his face softened. ‘You think I’m happy that someone else is interfering in our case? Some foreign government who should have no jurisdiction here? It makes me fucking mad but there’s nothing I can do, not when the Foreign Office calls and makes it clear I have very little choice in the matter.’ Branch hung his head and she could see the spreading whiteness of his bald patch, his fingers constantly worrying the few strands of hair left. ‘It stinks, I know, but you better get used to this kind of bullshit if you’re going to stay in the job, if you want to spend your career doing more than knocking on doors.’ He reached for a cigar lying dormant in the ashtray, rolled it between his fingers. ‘Anyway, that’s not why you’re here, is it?’ He looked at her sharply but Geneva was still staring down at the floor. ‘You said you wanted to see me about something important?’

  She’d been tearing herself up over it these last few hours. Running the facts and protocols through her head, each time coming up short. What would her mother think of this act of betrayal, what would happen when Carrigan found out? She’d known since the moment he told her the story of his African ordeal, known but kept making excuses for him, reasons why he’d kept it from her – but she no longer felt she had a choice. She had to inform the commanding officer of Carrigan’s possible conflict of interest, the history that turned his face into a mask every time Africa was mentioned. It had been the worst few hours of her professional life but in the end the case was more important than sparing Carrigan’s feelings or betraying his trust.

  ‘I don’t know how to put this . . .’ she began, but her voice faltered and cracked as Branch scrutinised her, a look of amusement lodged on his face.

  When she was finished there was an unexpected sense of relief as if a weight had been lifted, the words buzzing in her head these last few hours like maddened bees. She sat back in the chair and watched as Branch stared darkly down at the table, his hands cradling his head as if it were suddenly too heavy for his neck to support.

  ‘We know all about Carrigan.’ He put the cigar down and, using his nail, carved a sliver of ash off the tip.

  She thought she’d heard him wrong, her brain somehow making faulty connections. ‘You already knew?’

  Branch’s laughter caught her off guard. ‘You really thought we wouldn’t know about something like this?’

  ‘You knew?’ she repeated, all other words stripped from her.

  Branch nodded. ‘We’ve known for years. Christ, Miller, don’t you think I wish I could use this to crucify Carrigan, get him off the case?’

  She wondered if this conversation would get back to Carrigan, had no doubt that Branch would use it one day as he saw fit.

  ‘Concentrate on the investigation, Miller. Tell me what we have.’

  She cleared her head, rubbed the itchy patch on her wrist. ‘We believe that Gabriel Otto may have been the last person to see Ngomo alive – we’re out there looking for him.’

  ‘This is the same Gabriel you released two days ago?’ Branch replied.

  She nodded. ‘Neither Carrigan nor myself believe that Gabriel killed Grace or Ngomo.’

  Branch looked up at the wall, the blood-spattered faces gleaming behind glass. ‘But if you’d kept him in custody you’d know for sure? No – don’t answer that. So now you have to find him again, wasting valuable time and resources. What about Bayanga?’

  ‘We got a positive ID on him from a neighbour of Ngomo’s. The old woman was weeding her front garden and saw Bayanga ring Ngomo’s doorbell. Bayanga said something and Ngomo let him in. The neighbour’s evidence ties in with the time of death Myra Bentley gave us. I think we can say pretty certainly that Bayanga killed both General Ngomo and Grace Okello.’

  Branch sighed heavily, shook his head. ‘But
you have no actual evidence, and you’re no nearer finding him, I assume?’

  Geneva shrugged. She flashed back to the sight of the Ugandans leaving the incident room with Ngomo’s belongings. Was it possible that Bayanga was proving so hard to find because someone was hiding him?

  Branch snorted. ‘As far as I can see it’s been over a week and Carrigan’s got nowhere on this case.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Geneva retorted, surprised to find herself defending Carrigan the way she’d always defended one parent to the other following the divorce. ‘We have a name and a photo of our main suspect and we have fingerprints from both the Grace scene and Ngomo’s flat that will tie him unequivocally to the murders when we find him.’

  ‘And another dead body – you forgot to mention that.’ Branch coughed into his hand. ‘You have four more days to bring this case to a close, it’s out of my hands after that.’

  She felt the air leave her lungs, her skin itching madly. ‘What do you mean?’

  Branch looked down at his desk, picked up a file, put it down, picked up another. ‘Marqueson, the man from the Foreign Office – he’s going to be taking over the investigation then.’

  The words struck her like pellets of hail. ‘It’s our case, how can they justify taking it over?’ She snapped her head up, met Branch’s eyes. ‘Have you asked yourself who they’re trying to protect?’

  Branch slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Enough, Miller. I don’t want to hear this kind of shit. I’m disappointed in you. This isn’t some big conspiracy, this is a cluster-fuck pure and simple, a mess that the government have decided to clean up. Nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘That’s not fair, sir.’

  Branch stood up, his stomach popping and rolling within the constraints of his shirt. ‘Fair? What the fuck’s fair? You think anything in this world is fair? Jesus, I didn’t think you were such an idealist. This is the way it is.’

  ‘How long have you known that the Ugandan embassy have an interest in the case?’

  Branch’s face reddened, the veins pulsing at the surface as his eyes narrowed. ‘You should be careful with your accusations, Miller. Do you know that I can probably kiss my career fucking goodbye because I spent all morning arguing your case to that Marqueson prick? No you didn’t, did you? Smarmy fucker wanted to take the investigation over immediately. I had to fucking plead and beg and get nasty with him so you and Carrigan could have a few more days.’

  She avoided his eyes, cursing herself for letting emotion take over like that. It was just what the men above her wanted to hear, what they expected from a woman, ‘I’m sorr—’

  ‘I don’t want your fucking thank yous or contrition, just get me Bayanga or Gabriel or anyone we can arrest by Monday so that I don’t look like a fucking fool, so they don’t send me to Whitby or Lancaster or some other shithole for the rest of my career.’

  34

  The car was cold and damp, the battery too weak for him to sit with the heater on. He’d parked in the same spot, half a block down from Ben’s house, for two nights in a row. Nights of watching Ursula through a window, her body heavy with sorrow, her eyes hidden from him behind layers of glass and rain.

  After the fiasco of the rerouted surveillance car, going to Branch and asking for another would only have resulted in a very unpleasant conversation, and so he’d decided to do it himself, realising unexpectedly how much he began to crave these moments away from the case, alone in a car in the dark watching a woman pull the curtains on her day, the lights of the house going off one by one, the rain turning the street into a river of jewels.

  He looked at the photo in his hands, the one Geneva had given him, the fuzzy likenesses and strange dislocation of seeing yourself from another person’s perspective, and thought of the man he was back then and the man he was now. He remembered the first time he’d seen Ursula, the pale blue scarf she wore in class, the sound of her voice and ruffle of her jumper against his neck. Would he have led her to this house – this life with kids and garden and the river right outside the front door?

  He was thinking about that, thinking about the roads taken and the ones not, when he saw the splash of knuckles against his window, the harsh urgency of the knocking pulling him abruptly back into the night. He turned his neck to see who it was, felt a sharp crackle of electricity fizzle through his shoulders and rolled down the window. He didn’t even recognise her at first, she looked like some drowned thing, hair matted all across her face, shivering and soaked. He reached for the passenger door, took one last look at Ursula’s window and let Geneva in.

  The smell instantly wrenched him from his gloom. Geneva held two cups of coffee. ‘Thanks for inviting me in,’ she said, handing him the drink, crawling into the seat, the smell of coffee, rain and perfume suddenly flooding Carrigan’s senses.

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ He pulled the lid off the cup and took a long sip, burning his tongue but not caring.

  ‘Supposed to be a detective, remember?’ She widened her eyes and stirred her coffee. ‘You weren’t at the office, you weren’t at home, I knew you wouldn’t be in a pub. Didn’t leave many options.’

  Carrigan wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or glad for the company. He watched the house through the rain but there was no movement or light coming from inside. He knew Ursula would be up soon – two nights he’d been watching and she hadn’t managed to sleep through one of them. She’d wake, stare out the window at the dark then turn and head down to the kitchen. The light would go on and he imagined her pouring a strong drink, looking at the pictures of her life and wondering about the same things he was: fate and luck and how you end up as someone unrecognisable to yourself.

  ‘And, besides, I knew you wouldn’t leave a lady in distress alone.’ Geneva pointed to the house. Her fingernails had been cut and painted black and he wondered if she’d been on the way to somewhere, whether she had a boyfriend or family or friends, someone to take her away from everything they’d been through these last few days.

  ‘You and Ursula,’ she added.

  He stared down into his cup. ‘Ben’s my best friend; I’m just watching out for his wife.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Geneva laughed. ‘A woman can tell these things, you know.’

  He stared back up at the silent house and said nothing, there was no point in explaining. ‘You haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’

  She shuffled in her seat as if to draw herself in. ‘I went to see Branch,’ she said, her voice whispery and hesitant. ‘I told him about your connection to Africa.’

  ‘You should have told me first,’ Carrigan replied, his voice strangely muted. ‘I thought we’d established some kind of trust between us.’ He shook his head and looked out the window, knowing he was letting his emotions get the better of him. ‘Forget it, you did the right thing and that’s what matters.’ He looked to see how she was taking this but her face was gaunt and drooped. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She sipped her coffee, noticing the crisps littering the car, chocolate wrappers and crumbs stuck between the ridges of the seat fabric. ‘Branch gave us a deadline. Four days.’

  Carrigan stared out at the failing light. ‘I have a feeling it won’t take that long,’ he replied. He took a sip of coffee. ‘You were right about why Grace’s heart was taken, the connection to Ngomo, that was good work. I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention earlier.’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘But after all that it wasn’t Ngomo. I was so sure he killed Grace because she was going to expose him.’

  ‘The heart led us to Ngomo.’ It was good she’d come, good that she was here in the car on this wet dark night with him. ‘You were right about it being his signature only we understood it wrong.’ He turned away from the darkened windows of Ben’s house. ‘Suppose the signature was the same because someone wanted revenge on Ngomo? What better method than to kill his own daughter in that way? It certainly would have sent out the right message, one Ngomo couldn’t have ignored.’


  She felt the heat of his words as they crossed the small space between them. ‘You really think this is about revenge?’

  Carrigan nodded. ‘Yes and no. Revenge, but the heart was also used as a lure.’

  ‘To trap Ngomo?’ She could see where he was going with this, the disparate and contradictory threads of the case that had so perplexed them finally coming together.

  ‘Yes. Killing Grace was only the first part. Remember Bayanga’s email? I have the thing I promised to give you?’

  Geneva nodded, silently agreeing. ‘But why bother with the YouTube clip?’

  ‘Because he wanted Ngomo to watch his own daughter die and to know that all over the world people were doing the very same thing.’

  She picked at her dress. ‘Explains why Bayanga took off the gag at the end.’ She looked out at the drenched lanes, the hunched figures of commuters battling the wind and water. She had to agree it made sense of everything which until now had seemed contradictory – yet hadn’t Carrigan himself warned her about the seductions of narrative? ‘You still believe someone hired Bayanga to do it, that he wasn’t working alone?’

  ‘I can’t see Bayanga as the type to think that far ahead, to come up with something this complex. One the one hand Bayanga’s profile and the nature of the killings suggest that we’re dealing with a disorganised and chaotic killer, but the filming, uploading, luring Ngomo – this is the work of a killer who’s highly organised and controlled. The two impulses are contradictory.

  ‘Solomon Onega said that Bayanga bumped into someone from back home. I think whoever he bumped into knew Ngomo was living in London, someone with an old grudge to settle.’

  Geneva scratched her nails against the fabric of her dress and sighed. ‘Leaves us with pretty much the whole of Uganda as suspects.’

  Carrigan looked away, his eyes unfocused, a strange turbulence brewing behind them. ‘This is where I think Gabriel comes into this. I think he’s the key.’