“They have strict rules Dex?”
“You had better believe it. Ten years. No appeal. Whilst diamonds maintain their market value that part will never change.”
“OK. Then what are we dealing with here?”
“The girl?” Dex asked as he took one surgical glove off and wrapped it inside the other.
“Educated guess DCI Roberts? This ain’t no knife-point robbery. Weapons, guns, arms, call them what you like but that is my guess.”
“Illegal trade from the UK?” Roberts frowned.
“Absolutely. You are hardly going to admit to supplying weapons to conflict nations, are you?”
“This kid came all this way as a courier? To die at the brutal hands of…who? A Brit? An African?”
“A Russian? An Albanian? An Arab? Take your pick my liege. In that shadowy and one might say shallow world money is the root of all evil, standards are set low and head lower, morals even more so.” He pressed his foot on a pedal, lifted the white metal lid and dropped the blood-smeared blue gloves into the bin.
Roberts and West did the same. West held his foot on the pedal for Clarke, who’d respectfully placed the girl back on a sliding steel tray mechanism and turned the handle on the four-door, sixteen-body chamber. They began to leave what Dexter Hodgkinson called his office when he stopped.
“Bugger! Here’s us, the present holders of the title of forensic pathologists in a place where there has probably been a coronial service for at least eight hundred years and damn it all Jackie we forgot to mention the most unusual scar on our Jane Doe.”
Equally flummoxed Clarke replied “We did, shall I?”
“Be my guest.”
Roberts looked straight at her. “You telling me that amongst all her scars there was one that stood out? I am intrigued.”
“Me too as I’ve studied the region for years. Never seen it before, but then we tend not to see many people from that area in Westminster. Rather than disturb her I’ll show you the photo.”
She scrolled through the images on the Canon 80D until she came to it.
“There you go gents. Feast your eyes on that and perhaps get back to us with your best guess. I’m really keen to know.”
Roberts stared at the screen, looked again and then at West who was doing his best to decipher the mark on her lower neck, between her shoulders.
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, guv, it looks like…”
“It looks like bugger all Andy.” Roberts smiled. “What we wanted to see was a bloody padlock. Just to prove the old man is onto something.”
“Care to enlighten us Jason?” asked an inquisitive Hodgkinson.
“At the moment Dex I can only tell you that this is possibly the first opening in a case that we’ve yet to open and someone has already removed a vital piece of evidence.”
“Ah, the old haystack without the needle!”
“If only. I don’t think we’ve even got a haystack.”
Chapter Fifteen
She had learned to grow up, alone.
Living by the side of a road, begging for food, finding shelter in a drain, blending into the background, stealing, appealing for help to the older women who knew her mother, pleasing men when they asked, which they did, often.
They liked that she was young. She hated it. And them. Kill them all if she had the chance.
The alternative was death, or a life of misery and she still held a dream, and since the good-looking boy from the next village had told her she would be just fine if she did what ‘the man’ told her exactly what to do.
He told her, ‘A man will appear – to help you and the others. When the time comes’.
And when the time came, she knew she could trust him. He had a friendly face, with deeply warm eyes, and a strong hand that lifted her up. He spoke to her, in English, it meant nothing, for she spoke only Maninka, Susu, basic Hausa and some French – it was just a random string of sounds, of lip movements and eyebrow raises and smiles.
There were so many dialects and languages in the region in which she had existed. It was a miracle that she understood any, let alone a smattering of the five hundred languages spoken in Nigeria alone.
It was a greater miracle that she was able to speak at all. For her, courage was a word that would have summed up her spirit and fight to survive.
“Baki Maciji” she said it once, then almost chanted it. Fear did that to a child.
He had no idea what she was saying.
“It’s OK. Come with me young lady, you will be safe. Come now, we have very little time lass.”
She stopped – there was something else. She pleaded with him through the window to her soul. He stopped too.
“What is it, lass? Show me…”
The young girl foraged in the nearby undergrowth, looked down, ran her hands over her face, wiped the tears away, spoke quietly then looked up at the sky then away before crouching down and collecting a bundle of rags; a rag-tag collection of old clothes, it was her worldly goods, all she physically owned.
And they ran, together, towards the old green truck with its wooden sides and sun-baked tyres all stained red with Bauxite. He lifted her up into the back, secreted her among the many varied items of local produce, hidden.
As they began to move off, he threw the bundle of rags up to her. She caught them as if they were the most precious thing on the planet. More precious than gold or diamonds.
He smiled as he jumped up, and into the cab, alongside a man he trusted.
“One more. To the port and let’s not hang around my friend.”
That was a long time ago. But it felt like yesterday.
In the garden in North Kent, thousands of miles north and many years later the couple shook hands. Then embraced. The old white man held the younger black girl close to him, whispering in her ear.
“I’m so glad I was able to make a difference Apiyo. I know you will always remember your sister, she was called Doto, it means second-born, but please know I couldn’t save both of you. I am truly…”
She placed a hand up to his lips.
“Kada ka ce kome.” Say nothing.
Cade stepped forward and shook her hand too. Wrote down his cell phone number. Told her to ring him, if things developed, if she feared that her life was in danger.
She said she’d be fine. They hadn’t found her yet. And she no longer feared any man. They had beat it out of her to such a point that physical pain no longer hurt. They had cut her too – beyond the cultural marks, the horizontal and diagonal scars, a few millimetres deep, back then, when she was young.
She had a more recent scar, far deeper, but she had survived – it still glistened red against her beautiful brown skin.
Her mother was long dead, mutilated in a different way, so close, yet so very far from home, operated on with a rusty dulled blade – the first of many such operations as they tried to perfect their dark art, whilst her father and her two older brothers were forced to watch, before being set upon by a pack of men who were worse than rabid dogs. They had no chance at all.
They needed to send a warning, the men that followed the most feared man in the region. A message to the people, and what the people needed to know was that no matter what you did, if you betrayed the man they called Baki Maciji, you never, not once, stopped looking over your shoulder. And if you were one of what they called Goma shah biyu you knew that day would eventually come. It might take years, nonetheless that day would arrive.
They got the old sailor to the side door and out into the rose garden. He walked at the same pace as always, why arouse suspicion? He ran his weather-beaten hand along the frame of the unicorn bench.
“Goodbye, love. Save a place up there for me.”
Cade walked ahead. Checking the ground, sweeping for threats. Nothing. This was too easy. Baby. Candy. Stolen.
Doctor Adaeze held the door open, also checking around her. It was, to an onlooker, nothing more than a doctor helping an old man into a car, it was probably his son, on
a pleasant day at the gateway to the rose garden of a hospice. Perhaps he was taking him out for a drive, whilst the sun shone?
“Jack, look after him. And you’ll need this.” She handed him a canvass bag which he took without examining and placed into the back seat.
“You’ll need this too. And that needs monitoring or he’ll get infections. Empty it every five days or so, or when the need arises. He’ll tell you. It should last a month.”
He looked at her over the roof of the grey car and nodded. They both knew. He didn’t have a month.
“Are we going lad? I’ve got things to do.” Ever the commander.
“Bye-bye Adaeze and thank you for everything. Before I go. I heard Tom say a few words, I guess they were in your mother tongue? Apiyo and something like shay biyou?”
“You did. Ever the cop.” She smiled, a smile that had no place in her current world, one where she would always be hiding, whilst trying to live a life.
“Apiyo is my real name Jack. I was one of twins. My mother chose me, I was the healthiest. She left my sister in the bush to die. Better for one of us to survive.”
“I’m so genuinely sorry.”
“Don’t be. It happens everywhere where I come from, back then, even now.”
“And, the other words?”
“That is more difficult. A loose translation means the twelve.”
“Twelve what?”
“People, Jack. In my case there are now possibly less, but I am one. There were eleven others who Tom helped to leave Guinea on that beautiful old ship. I have no idea where they are now.”
“Somewhere in the world?”
“No. Right here, in Britain.”
Cade held her hand a while longer. “You know where to find me, Doctor Apiyo. You should be so proud of what you have become. Your story is incredible.”
“It is. And I am Jack. Now you had better go whilst he is still alive!”
“Just ring, I’ll send help. You know, it’s not too late to come with me.” He didn’t hug her despite wanting to. He needed to keep it professional, you never knew who was watching.
“I will be fine Jack.” She let go of his hand, despite wanting to go with him. She smiled back but her eyes told a different story.
“You will have enough to do over the coming weeks. I was one of the lucky ones. Now go!”
She turned, blinking the tears away, composing herself. She knew she would never see the dear old man again.
Denby was almost shouting now. “Come on, lad let’s get out of this bloody place whilst I still can, I can’t stand being around the dying a moment longer.”
Cade selected first, indicated and accelerated out onto the main road, turning left, heading for the motorway. He didn’t look back.
He answered the phone via a simple thumb press of a green button on the steering wheel of the Audi. Bluetooth meet Samsung. He’d be sure to erase the phone data from the car when the time came to hand it back.
“Jason. How are we?”
“We? We are just fine my brother. Now look, anyone listening in?”
“Not to my knowledge – but you never can be too sure these days. What do you know?”
“You mentioned an albatross and a padlock. So far, the former has just brought back three fifths of fuck all – as my dear Uncle Dickie used to say. But the padlock…now, brace yourself.”
Cade looked to his left then into the rear-view mirror and then ahead, checking each junction as he approached, always ready.
“Go on.”
“What if I told you a young African girl turned up at Westminster Mortuary the other day?”
“I’d say that’s interesting Jason, now what does it have to do with me?”
“You would say that. And so would I. Because we were sent there to support another area with their knife crime. But this one is different, Jack. She’s covered in scars. On her face, her chest, all over mate. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Fresh?”
“No, old, almost as if she had them done when she was a kid. Like the one on my knee when I fell through my Auntie Edna’s shed roof. She wasn’t really my aunt, but you know how it was back then?”
Cade couldn’t help smiling. He adored Roberts’ way with people; underneath the bluff and bluster he was a simply superb street cop. It was, he said, how you talked to people that made a good copper great.
“I do – and the connection to us, to now, to this, whatever this is?”
“Brace yourself.”
“DCI Roberts, I’ve been bracing myself for the last five bloody minutes, spit it out, man!”
“The freshest scar of all? A padlock. As clear as the day is long. Whatever that means, I never did understand that saying.”
“A padlock? Physical, or cut into her body?”
“Yep cut – a scar. In between some scarification. Looked like someone had gone at her with a vengeance – but as I now know this is a cultural thing where this kid used to live it’s actually quite beautiful if you open your eyes, embrace it…”
“OK. In the words of my police tutor…so what?”
“Well, she’s from Guinea. West Africa. Give me a day or so and I could tell you the town too.”
“I bet you could. Or Wikipedia could at least. Do it. Find that out Jason. It may be important. How are we doing on the whole padlocks thing?”
“I don’t need Wiki my friend I’ve got an SME at the mortuary. Just happens to have a PhD in West African scars. As for padlocks, it’s still early days. But if you want to know anything about their history, I also happen to have a subject matter expert here at the Yard on my team. Lovely girl.”
“You’ve got an SME on scars and one on padlocks? I’m impressed. Any chance they might be able to unravel anything in the next week?”
“Next week? Jack? You OK? You’ve gone all serious again.”
“I am. But that man next to me might not be.”
“Man? I thought you said no one was listening mate?”
“I lied. Jason say hello to Lieutenant Commander Denby.”
“Retired,” said Denby in a voice that sounded disappointed.
Roberts was slightly frustrated but knew if Cade trusted the situation to go with it.
“Sir. It’s a pleasure. Now would someone like to brief me on just what it is I am letting myself in for?”
Denby looked at Cade. Cade nodded.
“Chief Inspector, it’s a rather long story so I’ll summarise.”
He spoke for ten minutes without taking a breath. The briefing was as professional as any Roberts had ever heard. It started in 1943 and ended at the Ministry of Defence. All in ten minutes. Bullet points. The last minute was the key to it all.
“And so we left Guinea with a load of valuable minerals and hundreds of people. The British government was sending ships back there, every year, loaded with new people, people who were willing to do anything for a better life – they supplied the Bauxite in exchange for weapons. It was a fair trade, and we kept quiet about it. Thoroughly un-British.”
“Incredible. Almost…”
“Unbelievable lad? Please, say what you like, but never doubt my word. I watched their parents, and their parents too and until it all came to an end I heard of their children and their grandchildren boarding that ship and heading for a new start, many of them knowing they might not make it.” Denby slowed slightly, stammered a little.
“You see back then it was all about the money Jason…and the best source of money for the people of that region was diamonds…”
“Sewn inside them?”
Denby caught himself looking in the tinted glass of the passenger door mirror. What had happened to him? He looked so old; his once brown beard now white.
“You know about this? This is so secret. Seriously. How?”
“That young girl at the mortuary? She was full of them. Conflict diamonds according to the mortuary team, well a few that her surgeon forgot to remove. They carved her open Jack, then left her to
die in between two old industrial buildings, among the nettles and fast-food wrappers. That’s no way for a kid to end their time.”
“It isn’t Jason. But it’s been happening for years, somehow your team have stumbled across this and this might be a good thing.” Denby sounded exhausted. It was clear the short journey to the car had already taken its toll.
“How can it not be a good thing, Lieutenant Commander?”
“Call me Tom please lad. My life isn’t long enough to waste time on protocols. How can it not be good? I’ll tell you. Back in the day, when we were getting Britain back on her feet there were ships all over the globe, laden with produce and commodities that had been so scarce, during the war and the wars that followed. And after a long period of selflessness men suddenly became greedy once more. The comradeship had counted for nothing when it came to cold, hard cash.”
“OK. What are we saying Tom? Dodgy companies, fly-by-night firms, all seizing the opportunity to cash in? It’s understandable to a point I guess. These days they’d call it entrepreneurship, or opportunity. Why shouldn’t the common man make hay whilst the sun…”
“You are not listening to me lad.” Denby’s voice rose an octave.
“Now pin back those bloody things on the side of your head and listen. I said men became greedy. I did not say the man in the street did I?”
“Well, no…”
“No. I didn’t. In England there were men alright, so far up the food chain, no one, not even a journalist with the appetite of a wolf would have guessed it. I am talking the elite Jason.”
“Royalty?”
“No!” He was adamant. “Never! No, by elite I mean a little further down the chain.”
“What earls and dukes?”
“Hardly, I mean white collar, public school educated, already wealthy and keen to exploit. Remember this was long before your Tweetbook stuff.”
“Facebook.”
“I don’t give a bloody monkey’s what it’s called lad. My point is, back then it took days or often weeks for news to get out, to spread, to cause an issue, and back then, if you were well-connected your daddy could just make a call to a Fleet Street editor and all would be right in the world once more.”
The Angel of Whitehall Page 13
