by Nick Oldham
‘I could try.’
She told him to fuck off.
Six hours later, as refreshed as she would ever be after three hours’ sleep and a long bath, she was back at work.
Much to her surprise she was allowed to pull the murder squad together and run with the investigation – and she was promoted there and then to DI to do it. She was, in fact, astounded by the faith her superiors put in her and her view of them changed somewhat. Maybe they weren’t as dumb as they seemed?
This gave her an extra surge of energy and she was even more invigorated when the lazy detective from Nicosia called her and asked her to make to the capital pronto. An arrest had been made.
Two hours later she was driving through the gates of Nicosia.
‘I hear you and Tekke have split?’ the detective half-enquired of Georgia. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘News travels fast,’ she said stiffly.
The detective was in his mid-thirties, but was already sporting a Greek moustache and had the florid complexion of a drinker and the moth-eaten looks that reminded her sharply of Tekke. He was also, like many other Cypriot cops, always on the lookout for a score, even though he was married and had two daughters. Georgia could read it in his eyes.
‘Don’t,’ she warned him. His face fell abruptly. ‘I’m here to work, to solve the murder of a colleague, not to flirt or make dates – OK?’
He held up both hands defensively. His mouth became a thin, unpleasant line under his overgrown moustache.
‘Now what have we got?’ she asked brusquely.
Pulling himself together the detective said, ‘This young guy was in a dirty fight last night. He ended up in hospital semi-conscious, drunk too. Head injury, but not serious. Uniform cops went to speak to him and he pulled a gun on them, held them at bay for half an hour before he fell over and shot out the ceiling of the emergency room.’
‘And?’ she demanded. ‘What’s the connection?’
‘Says he knows something about a cop being shot at.’
Georgia made her way to the cells in the police station where the man was now detained. Accompanied by the detective, she flung open the heavy metal-framed door and stepped into the oppressive space that was the cell. It – he – stank badly. She took two strides over to the prisoner, who was sitting propped up in a corner of the bench bed. The man looked sneeringly up at her, his face a mass of cuts and bruises from the scrap he’d been involved in.
His mouth moved into a painful smile, revealing a gap where a front tooth had been slammed out, but his eyes still glowered at her. Georgia knew a bit of his background, knew of him from her time in the city, but had never met him before. He was very low down the criminal food chain, a dealer, a gang member, a low-level enforcer, pretty much living hand to mouth. But like all punks he wanted to be the leader of the pack, hence the previous night’s fracas, which was gang-related, albeit at a low level.
‘This is funny,’ he chortled as he looked at Georgia.
‘Actually, nothing’s funny … I’m investigating the murder of a police officer, so nothing’s funny, get me? You said you knew something about a cop being shot.’
‘Nah.’ He hacked up horribly, swallowed back. ‘Being shot at, not shot dead … big difference.’
‘Meaning?’
He looked at her derisively, a half-smile on his face. ‘I could’ve killed you, but I didn’t.’
Georgia took a pace back, unsure, but with a very cold feeling inside her.
‘Don’t you remember me?’
‘Why should I?’
He raised his right hand, pointed his first and middle fingers at her and used his thumb to simulate a hammer. ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead.’
‘What?’
‘Check the gun you took from me and the slugs you found at the scene in Coral Bay. I’m saving you time, babe.’
‘The scene of what?’
The prisoner shrugged. ‘I could’ve killed you,’ he said again, ‘but I was paid to miss, just to scare the hell out of you – and if I’m going down, so is the bastard who paid me.’
Suddenly Georgia’s insides went to mush as the words he was saying suddenly made sense.
At that moment, she did the best thing she could have done. She stopped talking to the prisoner. Even in Cyprus, interviews conducted in cells are inadmissible in a court of law, so she arranged to talk to him in a proper interview room, recording and videoing the interview and offering him legal representation.
She was assisted by the male detective, who sat quietly by whilst she interviewed coldly and clinically, extracting the information she needed whilst at the same time holding herself together from splitting apart. At the end of the session, the prisoner was returned to his cell and after making her fellow detective swear a vow of silence, she got in her car and headed back to Pafos, driving as though in a tunnel all the way.
Despite the detective’s assurances that he would keep quiet, Georgia suspected, rightly as it happened, he would tip off the man she was on a mission to see. The world of the male detect-ive is a very closed, defensive one as she well knew, and so, instead of making her way to Pafos police station as might have been expected, she went to an apartment in the residential part of town first. By then a searing rage was burning through her veins with the heat of a volcano.
She had a key, let herself in silently.
Tekke emerged from the bedroom with a heavy holdall in his right hand, surprised to see Georgia waiting for him in the lounge. He stopped abruptly, fear and resignation in his tired eyes, but also a determination in his orbs.
‘Don’t try to stop me,’ he warned her.
‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll just say you weren’t here.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘The hurt’s been done,’ she whispered and swallowed. ‘Why?’ she asked hoarsely.
He shrugged. ‘Because I was – am – jealous of you; because I wanted you to see it’s not a job for a woman. I wanted to be your saviour, to be there for you; because I wanted you to be my wife and because I love you.’
The words resonated falsely around her mind. ‘So you arranged for someone to take pot-shots at me, to scare me in the hope I’d stop being a cop and be your wife? Not a well-thought-out plan, was it?’
‘On reflection, no.’
‘You’re a dinosaur.’
‘And you’re in the wrong job. So excuse me.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘To the north, then Turkey. I have relatives there. I’ll be untouchable. Please don’t stand in my way.’
Georgia emitted a heavy sigh. ‘You know I can’t let you go, don’t you?’
Tekke shrugged. ‘Don’t try to stop me.’
He shouldered past her, barging her out of the way and made it to the door. He opened it and turned before stepping into the corridor outside. ‘You could have been my wife.’
‘I don’t think so. Part of being married is supporting the dreams and aspirations of each other. You could never have done that.’
He twisted out into the corridor, Georgia a few steps behind him, but as soon as he went to the stairs, three uniformed cops emerged from the shadows and surrounded him. He stopped, dropped his bag and turned slowly towards her. He looked sadly at her for a moment, then launched himself at her, screaming, ‘Bitch!’
Tekke never laid a hand on her, because she was ready for the attack. She reacted instantaneously and her bunched, steel-hard fist crashed into the side of his head. He was sent spinning into the arms of one of the uniforms, who tossed him back across to the other two who swiftly handcuffed the detective and forced him down to his knees.
Georgia leaned down and whispered in his ear, ‘What a way to end a relationship.’
‘Time to talk,’ Georgia said. Facing her across the desk was a sour-faced Tekke, defiant and uncooperative. ‘I’m not interested in what you did to me,’ she stated. ‘Someone else will deal with that. What I need is a lead to get me on the trail of a
cop-killer, a man who is capable of shooting a man from over half a mile away, and I know there won’t be many of those in the world, let alone on Cyprus. You obviously have excellent contacts – so give me a name, someone I can start with who will put me on the right path. What’s between us now is purely professional,’ she concluded, then added, ‘If you do this I might be able to help you.’
‘The hunter has become the prey,’ he snorted, sat back and wiped his tired face, stretching his sagging skin.
‘I want a name. I want to move quickly. I want to make an arrest. I want to capture a cop-killer. I hope you want the same, Tekke – or is your mind now too twisted and despoiled to do the right thing?’
He didn’t answer.
It was 2 a.m. when she got the call. She was awake, hadn’t been sleeping, her mind flashing and regurgitating images, encounters and conflicts; Tekke, Henry Christie, the shooting on the plane, being shot at … a multitude of things all vying for space in her mind. She desperately needed to drink heavily, but knew she could not afford to even let a drop pass her lips. She needed to be right on top of her game because she was under real scrutiny.
Her mobile phone chirped as she sat in front of the TV watching a satellite-beamed British cop show from the eighties. A cup of cold coffee was on the table in front of her.
‘DI Papakostas,’ she answered. It sounded strange in her mouth, the new rank.
‘He wants to talk.’
She was already dressed, even if it was the same set of clothes she’d been wearing forever, it seemed. She arrived at the police station in ten minutes. Five minutes after that she was sitting opposite Tekke in an interview room.
‘I’ll give you a name.’
Her tummy muscles contracted.
‘On one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘This was all one big mistake, a fabrication, all lies designed to sully my good name by a scumbag hoodlum with a grudge. Discredit what he says, let me go and I’ll move to Larnaca, take up the new job and we’ll never meet again. I walk out of here, reputation intact. You say it was just an unfortunate happening.’
She pretended to think about it. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because I deserve a second chance?’
She almost wet herself at that one.
‘Because of us,’ he added.
She could smell his body odour from where she sat. Could see his rough-looking face, was amazed she had ever fallen for him.
‘Only if the name leads to something.’
‘You’ll have to work at it, but it will,’ he promised.
As much as Georgia Papakostas knew she was forging a path through the Cypriot police force which other women might follow, she was realistic enough to be aware that a woman alone, albeit a newly promoted detective inspector, however sassy and tough she might be, was still swimming against a cultural tide, particularly in the criminal underworld, which could easily drown her. As far as crims were concerned she was just a woman and possibly not to be taken as a serious threat. Because of this she did the only sensible thing available to her: she employed some muscle.
She hand-picked two tough, uniformed cops, re-dressed them in plain clothes and headed back to Nicosia the following morning. With these guys in tow, towering behind her in shades and with folded arms and oozing seriously bad attitudes, she barged her way through doors, into betting shops, pubs, bars, clubs, following the name Tekke had given her. She was like a mini-tsunami, surging with power and purpose.
One name led to another, then another and so on. Finally she was given a name – whispered to her with fear and trepidation – in a seafront bar in the resort of Polis. She was also given a location and a heads-up that the man was on the move.
With no time to organize a proper squad, the three of them, armed with Glocks and protected by Kevlar body armour, found themselves back in Nicosia, cautiously climbing the stairs of a notorious tenement block until they reached the fourth floor. They turned quietly along the landing strewn with the discarded paraphernalia of drug use.
As is often the case, the arrest that is expected to be the most problematic turns out to be easy. As Georgia’s two companions in crime took up positions on either side of the target apartment door and she faced it, ready to flatfoot it off its hinges, it opened unexpectedly.
A man appeared, maybe thirty-three, a haversack slung over his shoulders, and was as startled as Georgia. But she was first to react. She charged him shoulder-first into the breastbone with a scream of a banshee which also incorporated the fact she was a police officer and that he was under arrest.
He recovered well, contorting away like a dancer in the tight confines of the vestibule, but backed up by the two burly cops, he was soon pinned to the floor. Even if he’d been a martial-arts expert he would have stood no chance.
Georgia straddled him, her crotch across his chest, knees pinning his shoulders down. The other cops spread over the rest of him. Georgia’s gun was pointed directly into his face, over his left eye.
‘You,’ she panted, ‘are under arrest for murder.’
She then read him his rights.
A sniper rifle and ammunition for the same, together with maps of Pafos airport and photographs of the location were found in the haversack. Questions poured at him as detective after detective tried to elicit a confession. Nothing came.
The man was positively identified after his fingerprints were forcibly taken and entered on the International Fingerprint Recognition System.
Fourteen hours after his arrest, Georgia entered the interview room and sat down opposite, a sheaf of paper rustling in her hands. She was close to exhaustion, but the prospect of a major breakthrough, assisted by caffeine in the form of coffee and energy drinks, kept her on track.
The man averted his eyes.
‘I know you are Bernardo Rosario, twenty-four years of age. Born in Naples. Emigrated alone to the United States of America ten years ago to escape the heat of the Neapolitan cops who were on your heels following the shooting of a judge in Naples. Since then,’ she consulted the papers briefly, ‘you have worked in various capacities for the Tantini family in New York and Miami. Most recently your talents have been channelled into working as a gofer, delivering what needs to be delivered, where and when it needs to be delivered, to whom it needs delivering. You deliver weapons and other goods. Am I right?’
Rosario shrugged, gave nothing away.
‘So I have to make an assumption here – that you have also become a killer.’ This remark made his eyes twinkle slightly – a reaction. ‘You have been found in possession of a firearm which has been used to murder a Cypriot police officer, together with ammunition for that weapon. The bullets found at the scene and in the body of the dead cop can be proved to have been fired by the weapon in your possession. Your fingerprints are on the weapon, yours alone. So what I have is you, a dead cop and a murder weapon – a complete triangle.’
She gazed unblinkingly at the prisoner. ‘Think about it.’
He did. Stewed for two hours. Then she went back to see him.
‘I have no doubt in my mind that I can send you to prison for life and in this country, life means life. Think about it.’
More stewing.
Two hours later she was back again. She smiled and said, ‘You’ll die in prison.’ Then she stood up and left him again.
Twenty minutes later he was buzzing desperately to see her.
‘I’m all ears.’
He looked as though he’d been hyperventilating, was trying to control his breathing and his mental and physical state.
‘But just one more thing before you start,’ she cut in before he could speak. ‘You have managed to avoid extradition to Italy for the murder of that judge, but I can assure you if by some freak of fate you manage to walk free from a Cypriot court – which you won’t – then I’ll ensure you get taken back to Italy to face that murder charge.’
Before he could say anything, she left the room again.
He was screaming for her within five minutes, pounding the cell door, jamming the ball of his hand on the call button.
She sat him down, calmed him. His eyes were wild. He was sweating profusely.
‘I need protection,’ he panted. ‘I need my freedom.’
‘In exchange for what?’ she asked blandly.
‘A name.’
‘Just a name?’
‘By telling you this, I’m bringing a death sentence down on me.’
She regarded him with disbelief, sat back, her eyes running over him.
‘I don’t know who the sniper was, but it wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I just delivered and picked up the weapon. Nothing more.’
‘In that case you’re no good to me. I think I’ll prosecute you for murder. I will make it stick.’
‘But you know I didn’t do it.’
She pouted. ‘Justice isn’t about the truth, but I tell you what, if – if – you can answer my questions to my satisfaction I might be able to get you on to a witness-protection programme. But do not misunderstand the balance of power here. I call the shots. I say how it goes.’ She jabbed a finger into her chest. ‘Me. It’s not a negotiable thing and at the moment I feel you’re not pulling your weight, I pull the plug and we go back to square one.’
He looked at the floor. ‘I’m a dead man,’ he muttered.
Georgia shrugged. ‘Your decision – a full life sentence or a witness-protection programme followed by a new identity, a new life – on the run, obviously, but that’s what you are anyway. A fugitive. It’s just that other people will be after you rather than cops.’
He raised his eyes. They played over Georgia’s face.
‘Walter Corrigan,’ he said.
SIXTEEN
They were back at the Tram and Tower, Henry Christie, Karl Donaldson and the person who, uninvited, had jumped into the back seat of Henry’s Rover in Lord Street, Southport – none other than Georgia Papakostas.
She had brought them up to date with the developments in Cyprus and they’d listened intently with hardly a question or murmur, both men’s eyes transfixed on this Eastern Mediterranean beauty. Annoyingly for Henry, her eyes kept wandering to Donaldson and it was plain to see she was taken in by the good-looking bastard. He wanted to interject, ‘He’s happily married, you know?’ but managed to keep his trap shut knowing that Donaldson had never strayed, even when his marriage had hit a rocky outcrop.
