by Nick Oldham
‘Had a new boyfriend,’ Donaldson corrected him. ‘Ditched him.’
Henry digested this titbit.
‘Look, H, I gotta lay it on the line and hope you won’t be offended by this.’ Donaldson cleared his throat. ‘I’m here to see you for two reasons: one is professional and I’ll come to that soon; the other is personal. When Kate learned I was coming north she specifically asked for me to deliver a message to you, one for you to think about.’
Henry’s throat constricted and went very dry. His stomach churned, and it wasn’t with wind.
‘She wants you to ring her, see her, contact her somehow – but make contact.’
‘To what end?’
‘She wants to talk things through, sort things out,’ Donaldson said quietly. ‘She misses you, the girls miss you. Their lives are all upside down without you . . . maybe there’s a way ahead.’
Henry swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘I’ve given her too much to forgive.’
‘Speak to her, Henry,’ the American urged, ‘can you say you’re happy here?’ Donaldson flashed his hands around the room. ‘I mean it’s –’ He struggled to find adequate words. ‘OK but not exactly home from home.’
‘Yeah, I get the picture.’ Henry stopped him.
‘And if you still have any feelings left for Kate, if there’s any chink of light there for her, you owe it to yourself and her to talk. Just talk – you never know what might come of it.’ Donaldson slapped his thighs and sat upright. ‘Here endeth the lesson. I now wish to turn to more pressing, professional matters.’
The heavy key clunked in the lock on the cell door and turned the bolt back.
Kit Nevison, laid out on the plastic mattress on the bench-bed, opened his eyes and sat up, wiping his face on the rough blanket.
‘OK, Kit, how’re you feeling?’ PC Standring asked.
Nevison had been asleep. It had been short, deep and untroubled, made all the better by the methadone which was now well into his blood stream. He was dithery, and feeling weak, but otherwise on a fairly even keel. He twitched his shoulders in response to the officer’s question, unable to get his brain to engage his mouth to speak.
‘Time for court.’
Nevison grunted something and swung his legs off the bed.
‘Can you fold the blanket, please?’
Nevison complied. As he carried out the instruction he was able to utter a sentence, ‘What d’you think’ll happen to me?’
Standring grinned wickedly. ‘Put it this way, Kit – you assaulted some poor guy in a club with a broken glass, you slashed open a cop’s face and you held a solicitor hostage. You are obviously a danger to society, so what d’you think’ll happen?’
‘’Aven’t got much chance, have I?’
‘No, probably not,’ said Standring. ‘Still, stranger things have happened.’
The conversation had moved on, but what Donaldson had said to Henry about Kate lingered in his mind. He had to concentrate hard on what the American was saying to keep his thoughts from drifting back to her.
‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to you in as much detail as I would have liked,’ Donaldson explained to Henry. He laid a briefcase on his lap, clicked open the catches but did not lift the lid. ‘I told you about the bomber operating across the States, if you recall.’
‘New Offender Model Terrorist,’ Henry nodded.
‘You were listening,’ Donaldson said, impressed.
‘I’ve read about him in the papers – big spread in the Sunday Times recently. I’ve got my plans to distribute photos and some warning posters to the gay bars tonight.’
‘Yeah – that’s good. One of the things I wanted to share with you was the up-to-date intelligence on this guy, but I was told not to by FB in case of panic – but I’m gonna tell you anyway because I think you should know. I trust you not to blab.’
Henry sat up. ‘Sounds interesting.’
‘It is,’ Donaldson said wearily, ‘and you’ll probably understand why we really want people to be on their guard this week. One thing the newspapers haven’t yet picked up is that the bombs used for the four bombings in Europe in the last two months were all built by the same person. It’s pretty hot news and we’ve only just put it together.
‘All the bombings are claimed by right-wing groups. Two in Germany, one in France and one in Spain. All were targeted at minority communities and all took place either immediately before or during major political conferences. It’s only now that the scientific side of things has been linked together that it shows that the bomb-maker is the guy from the States.’
‘You’re saying your man has gone international? He’s offering or selling his services to right-wing organisations across the world?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, though he’s probably doing it for free or at cost price. These organisations don’t have a lot of money to spend on freelance assassins.’ Donaldson opened his briefcase and removed a large envelope. ‘Here are some photos of the damage and injury he’s caused.’ Granite-faced he handed the package across to Henry who shuffled the photographs out onto the coffee table. They were vivid images of bomb scenes across America. Full-colour death and destruction.
The devastation was incredible. As ever, Henry was astounded by the extent of damage that such small amounts of explosive could bring about. Whole building fronts had been blown out and destroyed, the insides of buildings ripped out. The horror was unthinkable. Henry shook his head in disbelief.
One series of photographs showed CCTV footage of an explosion. First there was a still of the street in question going about its normal, day-to-day business. The time in one corner of the frame showed 18.03.30. Next there was a massive fireball bursting out of a bar frontage. Time: 18.03.30. Then a raging fire and dense smoke filling the street: 18.03.31. Then just black smoke and devastation: 18.03.32.
‘Two people died in that one,’ Donaldson pointed out. ‘Eight injured.’
Two deaths, two seconds, Henry thought.
The next pictures were of bomb victims. Henry did not want to see these because they chilled his blood, yet at the same time he found them fascinating and revolting. He sifted slowly through them, a testament to a calculating murderer. The devastation that could be caused to a human body was awful in the extreme.
‘Not nice,’ he said in understatement. ‘Who’s claimed responsibility?’
‘No one, which is where the lone terrorist theory comes in. However, all the right-wing terrorist groups thoroughly approve.’
Henry gave him the photographs back. ‘You think this guy might be in town?’
‘There’s no firm intelligence,’ Donaldson admitted, ‘but if you look at the MO of the last four bombings in Europe – high-level government conferences and an attack on a minority group – it’s a worrying possibility. If nothing happens, great. Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief.’
‘Well, thanks for that . . .’ Henry stretched. He needed to get back into his pit. ‘It has been good to see you, pal.’
Donaldson hesitated. ‘There is one more thing.’ He slid the photographs back into his briefcase and took another envelope out. ‘If this guy is in the country and he does hit us, I want to catch the bastard if I can.’ There was venom in his voice. He tapped another set of photos out of the envelope and offered them to Henry.
Henry looked at the top one, then quickly up at Donaldson.
‘I want him bad, because he killed an old friend of mine.’
Another blood-soaked Technicolor photograph of two bodies. Both male, lying side by side in a pool of deep, almost black, blood. Both had massive gunshot wounds. Henry was transfixed by the image.
Donaldson went on, ‘For this one he had a major change of MO. He hit a gay bar in downtown Miami, usual style. Then he exploded a bomb underneath the FBI RV point, killing three agents. Next he kills the two agents who found him on a nearby rooftop.’
‘Why the change of tactics?’
Donaldson shrugged. ‘Anybody
’s guess. Maybe to show us who’s boss . . . I just don’t know. How do these guys’ minds operate?’
‘How did he manage to plant a bomb at the RV point?’ Henry asked curiously, trying to get his head round the scenario. ‘Surely the RV point would have been established after the bomb had gone off in the gay bar?’
‘It was planted in a drain before the RV point was set up.’
Henry scratched his head. ‘He definitely didn’t have the opportunity to sneak it in?’
‘Nope.’
‘How did he know where the RV point would be set up?’ Henry’s tired mind cleared of its fuzziness as he worked through this one, the photo of the two dead law enforcement officers and the RV point bomb being the catalysts.
‘Good question: knowledge of FBI tactics at the scene of such devices, plus a thorough recce of the area which would have given him a good idea where we would be likely to set up. It’s possible he planted bombs at other possible RV points, we don’t know.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to send you a message.’ Donaldson looked quizzically at Henry as he twisted the photograph round in his fingers, tilting his head sideways.
‘The one on the left is my pal, Col Briscoe. We were partners for a while when I worked the Miami Field Office. He was a close personal friend and a damned good agent. I’m still shocked how he got caught like that. He left a wife, two kids, one grandchild. Fucking tragedy. Amazingly he was still alive when our guys got to him. Died minutes later in the ambulance, but couldn’t talk or communicate anything before he died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry mumbled. His attention was fixed firmly on the photograph. ‘I hate to suggest this, but have you and your colleagues considered that the perpetrator, as you call ’em, could be a rogue agent? Or an ex-agent, fired, maybe with a grudge.’
‘Considered: dismissed,’ Donaldson said crisply.
‘Really?’ Henry sounded surprised. ‘Not some disaffected ex-agent, or serving agent with a downer on the organisation and minorities; someone recently fired or under investigation or disciplined?’
Donaldson said no. He sounded a little annoyed at Henry’s persistence.
‘Stick with me here, Karl. Have you ever seen a word puzzle which, when you first see the word, looks just like a few disjointed blocks, shaded grey. Then someone says to you what the word is and you go, “Hell, yes, I see it now!”’
‘Can’t say I have.’ Donaldson’s brow creased.
‘The one I’ve seen is where the word is “TIE”, written in capital letters. All you see at first on the paper are a few square, grey shaded blocks, then when your mind fills in the lines for you, the word becomes obvious. It’s all about perception and some people will never be able to see the word, even when it’s blindingly obvious to other folk. You’ll definitely have seen that famous one that looks like a Grecian urn one minute, then two faces staring at each other the next. Or the old woman/young woman one – yeah? It’s a matter of a bit of mind adjustment.’
‘I know ’em. They’re very well-known ones, always cropping up in training – but haven’t you lost the plot here, pal?’
‘Possibly.’ Henry gave the photo back. ‘Have a look at the blood next to your friend’s body, hold the photo the right way up to start with.’
Donaldson peered closely, then held it further away from his face. ‘Looks like he slipped and slid in it, tried to stand up, maybe.’
‘Could well be,’ Henry admitted. ‘Now start to turn it round very slowly – you said this guy was a good agent?’
‘One of the best.’ Donaldson rotated the photograph as instructed, tilting his head too.
‘Keep your head still.’
‘Naw . . . nothing.’
‘Well, maybe it is nothing, perhaps my exhausted brain going into overload, y’know, the one with three hours sleep, now a blubbering jelly. Give it here,’ Henry took the photograph back and laid it on the coffee table. ‘But, I’ll lay a pound to a pinch of shit – an old, northern saying,’ he said in answer to Donaldson’s expression of incomprehension, ‘meaning I’ll give you good odds, that no one has looked with a really critical eye at the pattern of the blood, but if you look at it and tell yourself it’s not blood you’re looking at, it’s ink, what do you see?’
‘I think I’m being dim here.’
‘No, you just need to open your mind a bit.’ Henry placed his fingertip on the photograph. ‘I know it’s rough and I could be wrong, but I’d say your old pal wasn’t a good agent – he was an exceptional one right up to the end.’
Henry traced a shape in the blood with his finger. Then another.
‘Anything yet?’
Suddenly Donaldson gasped and sat bolt upright. ‘Jesus – unbelievable.’
‘The very last efforts of a dying man to identify his killer, maybe,’ Henry finished cautiously.
‘Once you see it, it’s so obvious!’
‘He probably couldn’t finish it off – fatally injured, shot in the head, that’s not a surprise.’
Donaldson could not stop shaking his head in disbelief. Now he could clearly see the letters ‘F’ and ‘B’ written in blood next to Col Briscoe’s body.
‘Unless he’s saying that ACC Fanshaw-Bayley is the killer – which would be fantastic because I’d love to lock the twat up – could he have been trying to write FBI? And if so, why?’
Kit Nevison stood in the dock of court number one at Blackpool Magistrates Court, hardly even listening to the heated exchange between prosecution and defence. It meant nothing to him. Words. Garbage. Either he’d get bail or he wouldn’t. Eventually the magistrates retired to have a private conflab, returning about fifteen minutes later.
‘Stand in court,’ the cloaked usher said loudly.
Everyone rose, including Nevison. He was flanked by security guards from Group 4.
‘Mr Nevison,’ the chief magistrate addressed him. ‘We have reached a decision concerning the matter of your bail.’ Nevison swayed slightly. ‘You will be released on bail on the condition that you report daily to Blackpool Police Station at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. prior to the next hearing on the fourth of next month.’
‘Eh?’ Nevison replied dumbly, scratching his head.
‘In other words, once you have signed the bail forms, Mr Nevison,’ the magistrate said testily, ‘you are free to go.’
Two minutes later, Nevison staggered unsteadily from the court having had his property returned to him. He stood at the top of the flight of steps outside the court building and with dithering fingers rolled himself a ciggie. He lit it and sucked deeply. He patted his pockets in the forlorn hope of finding something. They were empty. Shit. He needed to score. But without money and feeling incapable of even robbing a granny, things were pretty desperate. Then he had an idea: he would go and see his friend. Yeah, that was it. Davey was always a soft touch. ‘And,’ Nevison thought, ‘I have a key to his flat somewhere – where the fuck did I put it?’ His eyes narrowed. If he could find it, he could let himself into his friend’s flat and help himself. Davey was always leaving shit lying around.
Thirteen
David Gill was shivering. He was becoming colder, the more he held himself back from walking out of his little flat onto the streets, picking up the first dark-skinned person he saw and butchering them. He was desperate to kill, but knew that if he did so, everything would be put in jeopardy because it would be unplanned, careless and he would probably make a mistake. A thoughtless kill could ruin years of meticulously planned work; but he had spilled so much blood over the last two days that he had become addicted to it and longed for more. He had to pull himself away from it, but he knew he could not do it alone. He needed help. There was only one person capable of giving it.
Gill picked up his mobile phone and keyed in the letters V I N. The phone at the other end rang and was answered.
‘It’s David.’
There was no response.
‘Vince, it’s David,’ Gill whispered desperately. ‘I’ve done it, done what
you asked––’
‘You should not call me,’ Vince Bellamy said. He had picked up the inflection in Gill’s voice. He had heard it before and knew what it meant.
‘I need help.’
‘Not here, not now – it’s too dangerous for us all,’ Bellamy said worriedly. ‘I can’t see you this week for both our sakes.’
‘You must. I’ve done what you asked, extra. Now I need to see you.’
‘No.’ It was short, sharp. Bellamy hung up.
Gill closed his eyes. He began to rock back and forth, trying to catch his breath. Then his eyes clicked open. He knew what he had to do.
He changed quickly into his bicycle leathers, revelling in the sensation of the animal skin against his own. One day, he thought, I’ll kill and skin a cow and wrap myself up in its hide. One day. Promise. He pulled the full-face helmet on and clamped down the black visor, ensuring no one could see his face.
Outside the flat, the walkway was deserted, as was the narrow stairwell leading down to the lock-up garages at the back. He saw no one, no one saw him.
His motorbike was inside the garage, just as he had left it: fuelled up, ready to go. He pushed the bike out of the garage and stood it on its stand while he went back inside where, despite himself, he unlocked the big chest freezer which was pushed along the back wall. The cold, escaping air misted his visor for a few moments, then it cleared.
Gill smiled grimly at the contents of the freezer, then slammed the lid shut and re-locked it. He secured the garage door and mounted his bike which fired up first time. He throttled back gently.
Time to get some counselling, he thought.
The Berlin Hotel was on Bairstow Street, running at right angles off the promenade, south of Central Pier. As had many establishments in the town, the Berlin had been through many incarnations, name changes and hands, finally being bought for a knock-down price five years earlier by its present owners after eighteen months on the market.
They were a man and wife with extreme right-wing leanings. Both had been minor political activists in their younger days, and also Hell’s Angels. They had bought the Berlin (as they named it) intending to make a living by providing an environment which pandered to that particular right-wing niche in the market. Being fanatical Nazis, they had spent money decorating the hotel accordingly, even down to the carpet which had been specially made, with a swastika pattern repeated throughout. They also opened a sleazy beer cellar, claiming that it was authentic German – and it did sell real German lagers. The boisterous evenings attracted the leather-clad biking fraternity as well as right-wing activists; closed political meetings became common and an affiliation to the ‘Right Wingers’ grew up and, through Vince Bellamy, the splinter group Hellfire Dawn. During this particular week of the conference, Hellfire Dawn used the Berlin as their own conference headquarters.
