Promises of Blood

by David Thorne

  ‘No problem.’

  Jack hangs up and Hicklin and I look at each other for some moments. Eventually he sighs, scratches the side of his head.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ he says.

  ‘I know where the bodies are buried,’ I say. ‘Think I do. Where Duncan Gove had his meltdown. Want you to dig it up.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t recognise sarcasm?’ says Hicklin. ‘You want me to start digging in the grounds of one of Essex’s richest families. Just like that?’

  But this is no longer my problem. I have handed it to Hicklin, landed a whole mess of trouble in his lap. I shrug. He must hate me.

  Hicklin walks me out and I can feel the resentment radiating off him. It takes a lot to rile this man and part of me cannot help but feel sorry for him, for what I have asked him to do. Still, he is the police. It is his job.

  ‘One other thing,’ I say.

  ‘Yes?’ Hicklin says this with an air of fatalism.

  ‘Know a man called Kane?’

  Hicklin closes his eyes briefly, his lips moving as if he is offering up a prayer to whichever deity he places his trust in. ‘I know a Kane.’

  ‘Young, always laughing. Knows how to fight.’

  ‘You want to keep out of his way.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  Hicklin taps his lips with three fingers. ‘Why is it, Mr Connell, that when there’s shit around, you can’t help but step in it?’

  ‘So go on.’

  ‘Used to be a boxer, did our Kane. Until he lost his licence. Kept ignoring the bell. Beat a man half to death after the fight had been stopped. I heard the guy still can’t eat without help, can’t hold a spoon.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Moved into mixed martial arts; that didn’t last either. Don’t know the details, but…’ He shrugs, shows the palms of his hands. ‘You’ve seen what goes on in those things. What you have to do to get thrown out.’

  ‘So. Bad news.’

  ‘He did a couple of years for assault. Young offenders’. His psychological evaluation reads like a horror story. Stay well away.’

  I thank Hicklin, leave the police station. There. I have done all I can for the missing women from William Gove’s will. It is in the hands of the police now. I should be happy, proud of the role that I have played in seeking justice for them. But I have other things on my mind. It is time to go after Halliday, and Kane. Although I have Gabe by my side, it is not something I am looking forward to. Violence has a way of gathering its own momentum. Where it will take us, I have no idea.

  27

  WHAT GABE’S PLAN for dealing with Halliday lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in sudden, explosive violence and a level of uncompromising barbarism which I am more than uncomfortable with. He has been following Halliday for days now and knows where he lives, what route he takes to his places of business, his flats, his bar. It is something he has done time and time again in the army, gathering intelligence, working out enemy movements, devising strategies. All in a day’s work.

  Which is why Gabe and I are sitting in a Ford Transit van parked at the side of a country road, two miles away from where Halliday lives in a modern brick mansion behind huge iron gates and a high brick wall topped with broken glass. Gabe stole the van the night before, just one more skill the British Army apparently teaches their cavalry captains. We are parked just before where the road takes a sharp left turn. Gabe’s plan is for me to wait two hundred metres up the road, send him a text as soon as I see Halliday’s car. Halliday slows for the corner, Gabe rams him with the Transit. I join him, we get Halliday into the van, take off. So far, so simple. Nothing Gabe has not done before, on more than one occasion, he tells me. Piece of cake.

  It is the second half of Gabe’s plan which gives me pause. To get a man like Halliday to do what we want, call off Doolan and Akram, will take a lot of persuasion. I know that the military has techniques for coercion: stress positions, sleep deprivation, methods of disorientation, psychological disintegration. But I suspect that Gabe knows of other techniques, techniques which fall outside the Geneva Convention. I think of extraordinary rendition, flights routed through Poland, Egypt, Syria. I think of Kane waterboarding my father, how my father thought he was going to die, had never been so afraid in his life. I do not know that I have the stomach for what will come next.

  Gabe has not spoken much, outlined his plan in broad strokes. He is staring out of the windscreen of the Transit van, his cold blue eyes focused.

  ‘You’d better go,’ he says.

  ‘Black Mercedes.’

  ‘Personalised plate. H4 DAY.’

  ‘You okay?’

  Gabe turns to look at me. ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘What are we going to do to him?’

  ‘We?’ Gabe smiles but it does little to alter his expression, which is cruel and bleak. ‘Nothing. Leave that with me.’

  ‘Just…’ I do not know how to frame what I want to say.

  ‘The morality worrying you?’ says Gabe.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can leave now. Don’t get involved.’

  I think of my comfortable life, of Maria, CJ, my home. Think of Gabe facing two decades in prison due to my past deeds. ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’m in, whatever.’

  ‘So go.’ Gabe turns back to the road, dismissing me. I open the door, climb out. I am about to kidnap and probably torture a violent criminal. My legs feel strange as I head up the road: light and numb. I hear birds, walk beneath trees, but despite these prosaic details there is something unreal about what is happening. I take a deep breath, try to focus. Fuck it. Whatever Halliday’s got coming, he’s earned it. I reach my position, step back from the road, and wait.

  I cannot explain why Hicklin does what he does. I know that he is a good policeman; I also know that, whatever disagreements we have recently had, he respects me. Perhaps also it is because he has a son in the forces, the Paras, and feels that Gabe is owed a debt for the sacrifices he made in the army. Whatever, I have been waiting for half an hour when I feel my mobile vibrate. I take it out and look at it. Hicklin has sent me a message. Just three words, but three words which change everything:

  Jahani is dead.

  Rafiq Jahani is dead. He will never be able to change his statement; will forever accuse Gabe of causing the injuries which killed him. Doolan and Akram will have no choice but to rearrest Gabe, this time for murder. Gabe will not get bail. Gabe will not see freedom for another twenty years. Rafiq Jahani is dead. And Gabe’s life, from this point on, is effectively over.

  I stand by the side of the road for some moments, listen to the overhead murmur of the breeze ruffling the leaves, take a few seconds to enjoy the peace. Then I run down the road, pull open the door of the Transit. Gabe looks over at me, raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Change of plan. Jahani’s dead. You need to disappear.’

  Gabe does nothing for a second, three, five. ‘The police will be coming for you,’ I say. ‘We haven’t got time.’

  ‘Need to go home.’

  ‘No. You need to disappear.’

  ‘Need to get some things.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Danny. Everything I have is there.’

  He is right. It is the only home he has ever known, the home he grew up in. In the army he had no permanence, moved from barracks to barracks. By the time he left the army, his parents were dead and he had inherited their house. It is all he has.

  ‘At least a photograph. And money.’ He takes a breath. ‘Might never be back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Christ, Gabe, I’m sorry.’

  Gabe does not reply, reaches beneath the steering column, starts the Transit. We take off down the road, head straight for trouble.

  We drive past Gabe’s house three times but we cannot see anything, no police, no cars parked up with people inside, watching; nothing. Still I cannot shake the feeling that I am being watched, that so
mewhere Doolan and Akram are looking on, laughing, marvelling at our stupidity for coming back here.

  We park, get out, head for his front door. I walk part of the way backwards, looking around, ready to run. Gabe’s street is quiet, nobody around. It is ten in the morning, rush hour over, deserted. A cat slinks across the street, belly low, paws deliberate. Gabe puts his key in the door, heads upstairs.

  ‘Wait,’ he says.

  I am in the hall. It is quiet, already feels abandoned. I have been in this house so many times, thousands, welcomed by Gabe’s parents, the sounds of life and happiness, the warmth of the kitchen. I will miss it, feel a pull of grief at the past we have shared, now gone, all gone. I hear a car slow outside and look out of the front door, but it is nothing, a Ford heading away. I close the door, walk through to the kitchen, one last look. There is a cup beside the sink, everything else put away, tidy, the legacy of Gabe’s years in the army. I put my hands on the back of a chair. I am nervous. Wonder what Gabe is doing upstairs. He needs to hurry.

  There is a laundry room past the kitchen and the door to it is open. Beyond is a door to the back garden. There is something about the door, something not right about its angle. I walk closer and see that it is slightly ajar, not closed properly. It is still silent in the house.

  I walk back into the hall, stop at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Gabe?’

  I stand for a moment, look up into the darkness above. No answer. I go back into the kitchen, look for a weapon. Something heavy, not too big. Can’t find anything. Try the laundry room, pick up a hammer. Head back to the stairs. There’s still no sound, as if the house is holding its breath. Waiting. I take the steps slowly, back against the wall as I climb. I can see the landing. It is empty. Where would Gabe have gone? His room. I walk as quietly as I can. Third door on the left. The landing is carpeted and there is no sound. His door is open. I take a breath, take a grip of the hammer. Edge to the door frame. Turn, rush in.

  Gabe is on his knees in the middle of the room, facing the door. There are three other men in the room and one of them is Rafiq Jahani’s father. He is holding a large knife to Gabe’s throat. Gabe does not look scared but he looks furious. He grimaces in disgust when he sees me.

  ‘Fucking jokers,’ he says.

  ‘My son is dead,’ Jahani’s father says.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But this man, he had nothing to do with it.’

  Jahani’s father shakes his head. ‘Yes he did.’

  ‘Put that down,’ one of the men says to me. I recognise him from the car wash. The other one is the man whose wrist Gabe broke.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You’ll have to take it from me. And good fucking luck.’

  Gabe cannot help but smile at this, although I can see that Jahani’s father is putting so much pressure on the knife at his throat that the skin is broken, a thin line of blood soaking into the top of Gabe’s T-shirt. I do not know what to do. Nobody moves. I hear a car outside. Gabe smiles again, winks at me. ‘Danny—’

  But he does not have time to say more. There is a bang on the door downstairs and a man’s voice calls out, ‘Police.’

  The only person in the room who keeps his head is Gabe. He puts both hands on Rafiq Jahani’s father’s wrist and bends it, making him drop the knife, call out in pain. I cross to Gabe, hold out one hand to pull him to his feet, throw the hammer at the man nearest to me with the other. The hammer hits him in the face. I threw it hard and he has both hands to his head, staggers backwards.

  ‘Go,’ I say to Gabe. ‘Back door’s open.’

  Gabe looks at me and I say, ‘Fucking go,’ stand there in the room surrounded by three men, one with a broken wrist, one a broken cheekbone and the other a grieving father cradling his damaged arm. I can handle them.

  I hear Gabe take the stairs and then the sound of an impact. I walk out on to the landing to see the front door burst open, uniformed police run in, noise and shouting as they run from room to room. I stand at the top of the stairs, watch them. One of them sees me.

  ‘Up here,’ I say.

  I have to give them their due, the Kurds do not give up without a fight. The man whose face I damaged comes out swinging the hammer, catches a uniformed officer in the temple, another on the shoulder before he goes down under the weight of numbers. The man with the broken wrist makes it to the bottom of the stairs before he is stopped. But there is no fight left in Rafiq Jahani’s father. He takes one last look up at me as he is walked downstairs, his expression as hopeless as any I have seen. I cannot help but feel sympathy for him. He has lost everything.

  I explain to the officer in charge that I am Gabe’s lawyer, that I was looking for him and came across these men in his house, that no, I have no idea what is going on. He takes my card, tells me he’ll be in touch with more questions. I ask him about the damage to Gabe’s house, what will be done about it, and he shrugs, tells me it’s not his problem. I walk out through Gabe’s shattered front door. It is bright outside and it takes a moment for my eyes to accustom themselves to the light. Across the road a car is parked and Doolan and Akram are standing against it, watching me. Doolan is on the far side of the car, arms folded on the roof. He has sunglasses on and he takes them off slowly, smiles at me. Akram is standing at the open passenger door and he too smiles, a lazy lift of his lips. Then he walks to the back door of the car and opens it up. There is a man in the back seat and it is Gabe. He is sitting with his back straight, hands cuffed behind him. He does not look at me, stares directly ahead.

  Akram closes the door and gets into the car, closes his door. Doolan waits a moment, raises a hand in a gesture of greeting or farewell or simply to mock me, I do not know which. Then he gets in too, starts the engine. They pull from the kerb, drive away. I watch the car to the end of the road, watch it take a right. Watch Gabe disappear from view.

  28

  FOR THE NEXT three days I did not visit Gabe, made no effort to intercede in his case. By any objective standards it was a monstrous act by a man who was both his lawyer and his friend. I denied him, refused to acknowledge him when the police called, pretended that I was too busy although during those three days my phone barely rang and nobody stopped by to visit, no new cases turned up at my door. Or perhaps they did; the truth is that I was hardly there. I had better things to do.

  Regardless, my sense of culpability weighed on me like an illness; opening my eyes in the morning and facing the day seemed a burden I was physically unequal to. Gabe was now in the system, plucked out of the day-to-day and inserted into a process which would end, inevitably, in his being jailed for life, a minimum of twenty years. This was my fault; one hundred per cent on me.

  The afternoon after Gabe was arrested, I took my car and headed into the countryside, looking for empty fields, a horizon, space to think. There was not a cloud and the clarity and serenity of the sky seemed an affront, in counterpoint to the confusion and darkness in my mind. Machinery was at work in the fields, huge combine harvesters mindlessly tearing through corn, distant tractors driven by men with nothing more to worry over than the likelihood of rain. The further I drove the less I felt like turning around, but the narrow lane I was on ended at a T-junction and I could go no further forward, head no further east. I thought about Gabe, what he would do in my position. Something spectacular, I did not doubt. But he was not here, and I had no plan. I backed my car up, turned around and headed back to town.

  When I got in Maria was home and she looked worried when she saw my face. I told her what had happened; told her that Gabe was looking at twenty, thirty years. She sat down at the kitchen table, traced patterns on the surface with a nail.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing. Except that my best friend is up on a murder charge.’

  ‘I know you, Daniel.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Something’s up. You need to tell me.’

  Where to begin? I did not know what to say to her. She had forced me into a promise, one th
at it seemed I could not keep. For weeks, violence had been gathering around me like wolves around a fire, and it was just a question of time before the first onslaught. She would not understand. Neither could I expect her to.

  ‘Nothing’s happening. Cut me some slack.’

  She looked away briefly at this, turned her head almost as if I had slapped her, hurt by my curt tone. I thought of her request, that I avoid violence, turn the other cheek. Something I was intrinsically incapable of doing. But not Maria. She turned back to me.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she said, ‘but the way you are behaving is beginning to make a joke of what we have. Do you understand this?’

  I did not reply, did not agree or disagree. Perhaps she was right. But what could I do? I picked up my car keys.

  ‘You’re going?’

  ‘Somebody I need to see,’ I said. I turned to go, and standing in the kitchen doorway was CJ. She was watching us as if we were a stage performance that she did not understand.

  ‘CJ,’ I said, but she shook her head and ran from the doorway, and I heard the front door open, close. Looked back at Maria, who would not look at me. I had lost my best friend. How much else was I risking?

  After I left Maria in the kitchen, I drove to see a man who both Gabe and I knew, a man named James Petroski, ex of the British Army, now recluse. I needed to see a friendly face, needed somebody to talk to who would understand the situation and not judge me. The truth is, I needed help.

  Petroski lived in a near-ruined farmhouse on the north Essex coast, at the end of a road that could go no further without plunging into the sea. When I got there, the sun was setting and the water was black; offshore wind turbines were silhouetted against the orange light, the blades still as if already obsolete, carelessly left to rust into the ocean. No other person lived within a ten-mile radius and at this time of the day it felt like the end of the earth, a forgotten place, beyond our imagining.

  He was expecting me, opened his door when I pulled up. He was a man I knew well, but still my first sight of him almost made me flinch, avert my gaze. His ruined face, his missing lips, exposed teeth and sightless eye, caused me to take a second, come to terms with what I was seeing. I hoped that I managed to hide it. During a patrol in Afghanistan Petroski’s vehicle had tripped an IED and he had been trapped inside while it went up in flames, giving him terrible burns, costing him a hand. I knew that he had the bravery, the moral courage to face the world, despite his injuries. The tragedy of his situation was that his scars were so dreadful that the world refused to countenance him, turned away in horror. He rarely went out, preferred to stay alone rather than horrify the very people he had fought for, for whom he had sustained his injuries. There were occasions when life was so tragic it could also seem, at the same time, absurd.