Donovan and Turnbull exchanged a glance, nodded.
‘Thanks for your time,’ said Donovan. ‘You’ve really helped us a lot, er …’ He frowned. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’
Fire flashed in her eyes as she stared at him. Like she was a different person. An angry one. ‘Fuck’s it to you?’ She looked between Donovan and Turnbull. ‘Yous ganna pay me, then?’
Donovan drew out his wallet, peeled off two twenties, handed them over.
She took them, and they disappeared about her body with practised ease. ‘That it?’
Donovan opened his wallet again. Turnbull interjected.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It is.’
He turned away from her, walked off. Donovan followed.
‘Bit harsh on her there?’ said Donovan.
‘Junkie,’ said Turnbull, as if that explained everything. ‘Only smoke it, stick it in her veins. Time they’ve reached that stage there’s not much you can do.’ He looked back. She was still standing there. ‘Don’t know who’s got it worse. Her or them who wants to fuck her.’
They found the pub, entered.
‘Who you phonin’? You’re meant to be takin’ me to Tyne Dock. Now.’
‘I’m calling Peta. Since our plans have changed for the evening I’m asking her to pay a visit to the photographer’s studio.’
Turnbull snorted, eager to dismiss it, ready to go. ‘Think she was telling the truth? She was so fuckin’ raddled she could hardly remember who we were. Or who she was. Come on. Tyne Dock.’
Turnbull had called it in. Asked for an armed response team, gave them his name. Told them, with a sly look towards Donovan and a casual glance down at his Kurt Cobain T-shirt and combats, that he was working undercover. Told them exactly what was going down. Told them who they would catch red-handed. Hung up and was ready to go. Wanting to be part of the action, eager for that righteous adrenalin rush. Donovan knew that and still he wouldn’t get up.
‘It’s a lead,’ Donovan said. ‘Probably better to look at it in the daytime. Doubt there’d be anyone there now, but it wouldn’t hurt. Peta’s probably in the area. Just ask her to swing by.’
Turnbull drained his pint, gathered his coat about him, made impatient gestures behind Donovan. The phone was answered. Donovan started talking. Peta cut him off, told him what she had discovered.
‘I’m with the Prof now,’ she said. ‘Just phoned Nattrass. Told her.’
Donovan was stunned. ‘That’s incredible. You sure it’s genuine?’
‘I think so. Only one way to find out.’
‘So you sure he’s not …’
‘I’m sure. Well, I think I’m sure.’ There was a pause. He could imagine her smiling. ‘Pretty sure.’
‘Good. Well, look. Got something for you when you’ve done that.’ He told her about the studio, Turnbull huffing and puffing behind him. Donovan took the hint and started walking. They left the pub. He imagined a huge, collective sigh of relief as they went.
He walked to the car, Turnbull trying to make him hurry, talking into the phone all the while, exchanging information. The rain had started, painting the shabby streets with a greasy sheen. They reached Donovan’s Mondeo, got inside.
Donovan finished his conversation, turned to Turnbull. ‘Guess what?’
‘Tell me when you’re drivin’. Come on.’
Donovan put his hands by his side.
Turnbull looked ready to explode. ‘What’s the matter with you? Come on!’
Donovan passed him the phone. ‘You’ve got to call someone first.’
Turnbull could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘The fuck you on about? Come on, we’ve got to go!’
‘Di Nattrass. I think she deserves even a courtesy call. Don’t you?’
Turnbull was tightly wound, looked like he was ready to lash out. But the words hit him, connected. ‘Fuck off, Dear Deidrie, I’ll do it later.’
‘Longer you put it off, the harder it’ll get. Phone her now while that undercover story you invented still stands up. Tell her what’s happening. Damage limitation, Paul. You’ve got to do it. Sooner or later. Sooner’s best.’
Turnbull looked at the phone as if it might bite his hand off if he touched it. Reluctantly, with a sigh of resignation that sounded like an angry growl, he picked it up, punched in a number he knew by heart. Waited.
Donovan turned on the ignition, put the car in gear.
The phone was answered.
‘Hello,’ he said in a voice that seemed too small for his body. ‘It’s me.’
Donovan drove away, trying not to listen.
But not able to help himself.
40
Jamal was crying like he had never cried before.
‘Hold on, man, just hold on …’
He held Amar’s body, pressing his jacket against the bullet wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Amar’s face was twisted in pain, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was shivering from more than just the cold. Shock was setting in.
‘Come on, man, it’s me. It’s Jamal. You can’t die, man, you can’t die …’
Jamal had watched Amar get shot from the other side of the road, powerless to do anything about it. As soon as he saw what had happened, he had jumped behind the steering wheel of the Volvo, revved it up, hit the headlights and, in his best Grand Theft Auto style, moved it forward. Tokic had been poised to fire again but had run back to his car on hearing the noise. Leaving Jamal cradling Amar.
‘Jamal …’ Amar tried to grip Jamal’s arm. Jamal took his fingers, held them tight.
‘I’m here, man, I’m here. I’m not goin’ nowhere.’
Amar’s breathing became heavier. Jamal held him harder.
‘Don’t go, man, don’t go. Stay. Stay with me.’ He clung on to him, tried to find the right words. Words that would comfort, soothe. Heal. Save his life. ‘Who’m I gonna play Grand Theft Auto with, eh? Who?’
Amar gave a weak smile.
‘That’s it, man, hold on. Hold on.’ Impotent emotion welled inside him. He looked at his friend lying there, helpless. Willed him to get up. ‘Come on, Amar. You can do it, man. I made a promise, didn’t I? A promise to Joe. That I would look after you. Let no harm come to you. I made a promise …’
He heard sirens: distant, getting quickly nearer.
‘Just hold on, man, hold on. They’re coming …’
Donovan sat in the Mondeo, stared at the road in front of him. The rain rendered the windscreen liquid, making what few cars went past little blurs of wet, rushing sparkle against the night.
Tyne Dock. The Port of Tyne Authority car park. This far, for Donovan, and no further. Low-level, red-brick administration offices behind him, interior lights sparse. The dock itself a huge, sprawling complex with areas for containers, rail, an enormous amount of warehouse space and a sea service that covered, among other places, Scandinavia and the Baltic. And all the action, Donovan thought, was happening on the dock front itself. It felt like it was miles away. It could have been miles away.
He sighed. Played Turnbull’s last conversation again in his head.
‘Fuck off.’ Donovan was getting out of the car.
‘I said you’re staying here. Last thing we need is a fuckin’ civilian messin’ everythin’ up.’
‘Oh, so I’m a civilian now, am I, is that it? You were keen enough for my help earlier. When no one else wanted to know you.’
Turnbull reddened slightly. ‘Sorry. But that’s the way it is. You have to wait here.’
‘OK,’ said Donovan. ‘Makes sense. After all, you’re in enough trouble already without me turning up. Might say something embarrassing. Don’t want that, do you?’
Turnbull got hurriedly out of the car, actually growling. Donovan couldn’t let that one slip past.
‘Were you growling? Actually making bear noises?’
He received a mumbled ‘fuck off, wait there’ as his reply, and Turnbull walked off.
So Donovan had waited. And he wasn’
t happy.
He looked around, saw nothing, heard nothing. The adrenalin rush was still there, running around his system, waiting to be utilized. He had to do something. He hadn’t come all this way to sit in a car park.
The security guard in the gatehouse looked as bored as Donovan felt. He had seen Turnbull talking to him, assumed he was issuing him with instructions not to let Donovan into the main area.
Well, fuck that.
He pulled his old mobile out of his pocket, put it to his ear. Started the car at the same time, swung it towards the barrier. The guard was a round, grey-haired cheerful man smelling of mints, on the wrong side of middle age and with a strawberry nose to match. He got up from his portable TV, crossed to the window. Donovan stopped, held up the mobile.
‘Detective Sergeant Turnbull,’ he said. ‘Just got a call from him. Got to go through. Now.’ He revved the car up.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the guard began. ‘I’ve got orders …’
Donovan extended his arm, waved the phone out of the window, pumped up the urgency in his voice. ‘Do you want to tell him? He said now.’
The guard, obviously not one for confrontation, opened the barrier. Donovan waved the kind of thank you a man would if he was in a hurry and went through.
Once inside, he realized he had no idea where he was going. It was massive, much bigger than he had imagined, with long sheds down one side of the road, great piles of scrap metal on another. Tractors and JCBs parked further along, what looked like metal feed silos behind them. He tried to think rationally: where would Turnbull be?
Containers. That would be how they were getting the girls in. Import–export, wasn’t that Kovacs’ official job title? Containers. And cranes to get them off and on the ships. That’s what he would look for.
He would drive around until he found them, decide what to do next when he was there.
Turnbull sat in the observation room at the Port of Tyne Authority. In front of him was a bank of screens relaying, at regular intervals, CCTV pictures from around the dock. He had particularly asked for attention to be focused on the container areas.
Beside him sat Bob Grant, a sandy-haired, fit-looking DI in his mid-thirties. Dressed in combats and an army parka, he was off duty but on point. Turnbull had been put through to him with his information. Turnbull was impressed: Grant had been off duty, but in the time it took Turnbull to drive from Bensham to Tyne Dock he had managed to get permission for and assemble an armed rapid-response unit and position them at strategic places, with the help of several Port of Tyne staff, around the docks on standby.
The security manager had gone to great lengths to describe how it was impossible for smuggling to take place on a modern dock such as this one. Anxious to be believed, he had repeated the information over and over until Turnbull had asked him, politely but firmly, to shut up. He had done. The two policemen then concentrated only on the screens.
‘You sure this tip-off is genuine?’ asked Bob Grant, not for the first time.
‘Absolutely,’ replied Turnbull. ‘No doubt about the source.’
Grant had already asked how it could be coming in at this time. There was no workforce, no one to unload. No ship down to be unloaded.
‘Maybe they’re bringing their own help,’ he had said, becoming irritated. ‘Look, you believe it or you wouldn’t be here.’
Grant, having no reply, had fallen silent.
Turnbull’s call to Nattrass had gone surprisingly well, he thought. Donovan, he grudgingly admitted, had been right. He was glad he had done it. There was still some way to go, some serious bridge building to be done, and she hadn’t for one minute believed him when he had said he had gone undercover and been working on his own initiative. He hadn’t believed that himself. But it was something to be worked out later. Right now, he had a job to do.
He and Grant kept concentrating on the screens.
In the surrounding darkness, the containers, stacked neatly on top of one another, colour and size coded, and with road-width alleyways in between, looked like a city in miniature. Both simultaneously permanent and temporary. Half brutally futurist, half shantytown. The rain, the overhead lighting, the screen relay, increased the feeling of grimness and foreboding. Looking from screen to screen, the containers were stacked for what seemed like miles, the driveways and alleyways offering a variety of shadowed concealment.
Turnbull wondered how long some of those containers had been there. Wondered just what might have been left inside. Secrets lost or buried.
They kept looking, eyes flickering from one screen to another.
Grant sighed, rubbed his eyes. Getting ready to speak again.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Are you sure …?’
Here we go, thought Turnbull.
*
Decca was finally on the right road.
It had taken some time, unfamiliar as he was with being south of the river, but more by luck than judgement he had seen a sign pointing to Tyne Dock and followed it, like a drowning diver clinging to his final air line.
He had driven up to the gates, aware all the time of Tokic’s gun sticking in his back. BMWs were good, he thought, but he doubted that their upholstery would stop a bullet. He stopped, leaned across to the glove compartment, opened it. Felt cold metal on the back of his neck.
‘What are you doing?’ Tokic’s voice.
‘Getting my security pass,’ Decca said in a voice that he didn’t recognize as his own. ‘Won’t let me in without it.’
‘No tricks.’
No tricks, thought Decca. Did people really say that?
He got his pass out, let the window slide down. Ignored the rain being blown on to his face. He showed the pass to the elderly guard, smiled.
The guard nodded, then leaned closer and said, ‘Who’ve you got with you?’
Decca blinked at the fumes. Whatever the guard was drinking it clearly had clinical applications. ‘They’re with me,’ he tried to say in as breezy a manner as possible. ‘No problems.’
‘They need passes too,’ said the guard.
Decca felt the gun being moved away from his back, heard a click. Knew it was pointing at the guard in his box.
‘OK,’ said Decca, trying to quell the panic in his voice. ‘Have you got some I could use?’
The guard smiled. ‘You gotta check with the office for them. An’ they’re closed.’
Decca felt the gun being moved, the target being focused in the sights.
Decca reached into his pocket, brought out a crumpled twenty, handed it over. ‘What about that? That OK?’
The guard laughed. ‘That’ll do nicely, sir.’
The barrier was raised. Decca put the car into gear, drove through.
Felt the gun being repositioned against his back.
Thought seriously about seeking another career.
41
‘So what d’you think?’
Peta looked between the two detectives, waiting for an answer.
She sat next to the Prof in DCI Fenton’s office, papers, books and files spread out before them. The Prof had just finished explaining his theory to both Fenton and Nattrass. The two glanced at each other, faces impassive.
‘You say,’ began Nattrass, not proceeding before receiving a nod from Fenton, ‘that there should be some kind of ritualistic aspect to the way the bodies were left?’
The Prof nodded. ‘If my hypothesis is correct, it would make logical sense.’
‘And what do you think that would be?’
The Prof shrugged, looked uneasy. He had talked with Peta on the way there. Reluctant to divulge his source to Fenton and Nattrass, he had decided to claim that the whole thing was his idea. ‘I can only speculate,’ he said. ‘As I said, pennies over the eyes, mouth sewn shut. Some kind of embalming, mummification, I don’t know.’
Another glance between Fenton and Nattrass.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ said Fenton, ‘do you have a contact on this investigation?’
The Prof looked down, shook his head. ‘No.’
Peta was beginning to share the Prof’s uneasiness; they exchanged glances of their own. Peta had called Nattrass, asked her over to the university. Nattrass had insisted they meet at Market Street police station as she couldn’t leave her desk at present. Peta had put that to the Prof. Reluctantly, and after much persuasion, he had agreed to come to the station. But she knew he was unhappy about it. More than unhappy.
‘You know how some people have a fear of hospitals?’ he had said to Peta in his office before leaving. ‘How they think once they go into hospital they’ll never come out again?’
She had nodded.
‘I feel the same about police stations.’
Peta had thought that was just an old stoner’s paranoia, but listening to the way the questions seemed to be going, she wasn’t so sure.
Fenton sat behind his desk, hoping, it seemed to Peta, that it would give him a natural air of authority. ‘And the night of Jill Tennant’s disappearance,’ he said, ‘you were … where, exactly?’
The Prof cleared his throat. ‘At a Wilco concert. Waiting for Jill. As you know. As I’ve been cleared for.’
Another look between Nattrass and Fenton.
‘There’s quite a file on you here, Mr McAllister,’ said Fenton, his gaze steely and even. ‘From way back.’
‘Look, are we suspects here?’ asked Peta angrily.
‘Suspects?’ said Fenton. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You just seem to be ignoring what we’ve actually brought you. And wasting our time with pointless questions.’
‘Those questions aren’t pointless,’ said Fenton. He seemed to regret the words as soon as they escaped his lips.
‘Yes they bloody are,’ said Peta, jumping on them. She stood up. ‘There’s a killer out on the streets. We’ve brought you something that could be a big help in catching him. And all you can do is sit there behind your desk and play “My Cock’s Bigger than Yours”. Well, fuck you. We’ll go.’ She began gathering the papers on the desk together. ‘Take our theory somewhere else if you’re not interested. The papers, perhaps.’
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