caused a resurgence of hope within him, as he’d almost swallowed his anger and was about to get back to his day job, hoping that Akram would step into his cross hairs some other time. This chance, he’d thought, had passed him by.
Henry’s voice was blunt. ‘I’m not.’
‘What? What the hell?’ Donaldson stopped, unable to believe his ears. At that exact moment he was walking along in the sunshine on the River Thames embankment, threading his way through the tourists in the vicinity of the London Eye. He leaned on the wall by the river and stared across at the Houses of Parliament.
‘Whilst they confirm the DNA matches, they say I still can’t interview Sadiq face to face. I can e-mail down a list of questions and one of the MI5 interview teams will put them to him. That’s the best I can do, and while it’s bollocks, it’s the only way I’ve got at this time.’
‘I’m staggered.’
‘Karl,’ Henry said pointedly, ‘he’s obviously more to them than simply a murderer. You’ve lectured me about the bigger picture before now and that must be what all this is about. National security… maybe he knows a lot of… stuff… and having him dragged through the courts to face a murder charge isn’t what they want. If in fact he did kill Natalie. He might have had sex with her, but didn’t necessarily kill her.’
‘But it needs the detective on the case to get into his ribs, not some detached dick brain reading from a cue card.’
‘Tell me about it…’
Donaldson went silent for a moment, then said, ‘They’re up to something.’
‘Yep.’
‘Bastards,’ Donaldson whined. ‘They don’t have the right to…’
But his words were cut short as his phone signal died.
Henry looked quizzically at his phone but nevertheless completed the sentence, speaking into a disconnected phone. ‘The right to what? Treat us like mushrooms and feed us on shit. Sorry pal, but they think they do.’ He hung up.
Standing under the shadow cast by the London Eye, Donaldson jiggled his phone, feeling that his line to Akram was receding with each passing moment. He wasn’t enjoying the sensation.
He had pretty much done what he could, even flying out to Las Palmas to grill the detective at the airport and make his own enquiries as to how Akram might have got off Gran Canaria and what the onward destination might have been. He had found nothing. The terrorist could easily have left the island by any number of air or sea routes. Donaldson’s nosing around the few private airstrips yielded nothing, nor did any information come from the sea ports he visited. Problem was the island was dotted with numerous tiny ports and it was impossible to keep tabs on everyone who came and went. Donaldson’s educated guess was that Akram had left by sea, which meant there was the likelihood he’d gone to the African mainland and then back to the Middle East. Impossible to track down.
Donaldson leaned on the embankment wall and stared at the water of the Thames. His mind tossed everything around and he knew he was missing something in his equation, the something that had come to him when he and Henry had visited Sadiq’s flat in Blackpool. But he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint what it was.
He stopped shaking his phone, checked a signal was back — yes — and tapped out a text message, paused thoughtfully before sending it — should he, shouldn’t he? — but then pressed send and it flew away into the ether: ‘ MESSAGE SENT ’.
‘Shit,’ he winced, suddenly wishing he could recall it. Too late. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered, ‘I hope I haven’t screwed this up.’
He made his way to a riverside cafe, ordered a filter coffee, sat out in the sun, and waited. If it was going to happen, it would be in the next half hour. He could afford to wait that long, but no longer. Then a text landed on his phone. One word: ‘ COMING ’.
She arrived fifteen minutes later. Donaldson had an iced coffee waiting for her.
‘Karl, darling,’ she said, and leaned across to kiss his cheeks, before sitting down opposite him. Edina, his discreet contact at Whitehall, smiled at him, always with a hint of lust in her eyes. Donaldson thought she must be a lonely woman and that it would be nice to see more of her as a friend, but he did not want to compromise her any more than their relationship did already. He guessed she got some excitement from seeing him occasionally, in a James Bond sort of way, and passing on the odd snippet of information was perhaps a bit thrilling. Then she said, ‘It’s just a feeling, nothing I can prove, but I think they’re on to me.’
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make life difficult for you. You didn’t need to come.’
‘No, darling, it’s OK. It’s not like I’m a double agent for the Russians. You are the only one I ever say anything to, and that’s because I like you, and because it’s only ever about one man that everyone wants to bring down — Jamil Akram. I know why you want to catch him and if I can do anything to help you, then I will.’
Donaldson stared at her for a few moments. She was more than good-looking, one of those women whose appearance took a bit of time to permeate, but when it did, the effect was lasting. ‘You don’t need to do anything more,’ he said. ‘Let’s just have coffee and say bye.’
‘No, no, I do.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I’m going to resign anyway. We, Hugo and I, have a pile in Monaco that needs some TLC. I’m going to go and supervise the renovation.’
‘When you say a place…?’
‘Well, slightly more than a place… more a villa… a big villa. A palace, really. So those are my plans. So what can I do for you? One last thing?’ She held his gaze meaningfully.
‘Why is MI5 not sharing anything about Blackpool?’
Mark Carter was due in to answer his police bail that evening, as a result of which Henry Christie decided to meet, greet and re-interview the lad together with Rik Dean. His plan was to get a long, detailed interview completed this time, put some pressure on Mark and if nothing came of it — such as a confession to killing Natalie — Henry would release him with the warning that if any other evidence came to light that fingered Mark, he would be rearrested. Keep the sword hanging over him. Always a good police tactic.
During the afternoon, Henry brought himself up to speed with his other ongoing investigations and spent some time with Rik, who Henry had decreed would take on the serial rapist case.
It was one of those jobs that was beginning to bubble and rouse some media speculation. Henry, having had it thrust on him, wanted to do something about it before it blew up in his face, as such things often did. If not dealt with immediately and seen for what it was, the police could end up looking like idiots in about ten years’ time, still trying to chase their tails and solve a hundred offences instead of just three.
He and Rik tossed around a few strategies, mostly coming back to resources and the lack of them. If they could throw resources at it, then they’d have a good chance of getting a result. That was the problem with everything, though. No resources.
‘At least we know they were all committed by the same individual,’ Henry said, looking at the report on the DNA samples. One man had indeed carried out the three reported attacks. Henry raised his face to Rik, who was sitting across from him. They were in Henry’s office at HQ reviewing exactly where the investigation stood — up to the point where the original DI investigating had gone sick — and, as ever, coffee was being consumed. ‘I’m surprised this offender isn’t on the database, being such an obviously violent person. Surely he must have some previous.’
‘Wouldn’t be sitting here if he was on the database,’ Rik pointed out.
‘OK, it was a pretty obvious point to make,’ Henry conceded. ‘Any pattern to the attacks?’
Rik scanned the analysis of the crime reports. ‘Night-time, between eleven and one. Lone women, young ones, teens, early twenties, attacked in areas where there are no CCTV cameras.’
‘Deliberately chosen, or just lucky?’
Rik shrugged. ‘An area he knows, I suspect. All in the vicinity of Garstang Road on the way out to Poulton. Two of the women were dragged into Boundary Park, one on to some playing fields. No independent witnesses to speak of.’
‘Dates?’ Henry frowned.
‘One a month for the last three months… well,’ Rik scrutinized the reports more closely, ‘that’s one every four weeks
… each progressively more violent, but each woman threatened with a return visit and a horrific murder if they reported the assaults. This is a guy we need to catch.’
