post for him.
Maybe being annoyed at the police station, waiting for someone to answer bail, wasn’t such a bad option.
He checked his watch for the umpteenth time and looked across at Rik Dean, who was busying himself with paperwork. Then his mobile rang and the display read, ‘Unknown Caller’. Henry said, ‘Bet this is him
… Henry Christie.’
‘Detective Superintendent Christie?’ came the crisp, upper-class tones that Henry recognized instantly: the spookmeister, Martin Beckham. Henry snatched the pen from Rik’s fingers.
‘Mr Beckham, hello — at last.’
‘Mm, this is only a courtesy call.’ Beckham sounded unwilling even to speak and Henry guessed he was doing so under pressure from some other quarters. ‘You sent a list of questions and some requests concerning Zahid Sadiq.’
‘Oh yes… when was that? I’d almost forgotten.’
‘Sarcasm will get you nothing,’ Beckham’s voice hardened. ‘Just to say that our interviewers questioned him on your behalf and he made no comment, so I’m afraid that’s where it ends.’
‘He made no comment?’ Henry asked incredulously. ‘His ejaculate was found inside a female murder victim and you allowed him to make no comment?’
‘That is the situation.’
‘In that case, I need to come and interview him properly, like I should have been allowed to do in the first place.’
‘Are you suggesting that my interviewers are less than competent?’
‘What I’m suggesting is that an investigator with a feel for the brutal murder of a teenage girl needs to speak to this guy, who must be seen as a prime suspect until I’m satisfied otherwise.’
Beckham gave a harsh laugh. ‘I may point out to you that the ejaculate, as you so delicately put it, is only one of four specimens found inside a girl who, it would appear, was of loose morals and may well have been the author of her own downfall.’
Henry tugged his collar, feeling the redness of anger shoot up his neck. ‘Can I quote you on that?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice level. ‘She is a murder victim and I have a job to do, and, as far as I can see, you are obstructing justice.’
‘The bigger picture, Superintendent. I assume you’ve heard that term before?’ Beckham said patronizingly. ‘Sadiq is an asset in the war against terrorism and you will not have access to him.’
‘I know all about the bigger picture, but in this case there is no bigger picture than finding out who killed an innocent teenager,’ Henry responded.
The line went silent.
Beckham said, ‘Maybe when we’ve finished with him, you can have him.’
‘And what will be left of the poor misguided bastard?’
‘Not much, but that’s the best I can do. And if you want my opinion, he didn’t kill her.’
‘What about Akram? Don’t forget his sperm was also found inside her.’
‘How would I know?’
‘When can I have him, then?’
‘To be determined, dear boy,’ Beckham replied, keeping up the patronizing tone.
Henry was almost crushing his mobile phone, but he controlled himself and asked, ‘There is something else. I also asked you to check the items that you seized from Sadiq’s flat to see if there were any DNA traces of the dead girl on any of the stuff.’
‘There was no trace of anything relating to the girl,’ Beckham said. ‘It looks like she was never there. In fact there wasn’t really much of anything there.’
‘OK,’ Henry said, and he ended the call.
‘Nada?’ Rik said, as Henry placed his phone down on the table.
‘Zilch,’ Henry confirmed, wishing he knew a way around the situation. He paced the small office. It was an extreme idea, but the media was a possibility. Go to the papers, slag off MI5? He dismissed that. Apart from the fact it was likely the story would be suppressed from the highest level, he would find himself deep in the mire — shit that would probably follow him into retirement. His anger subsided — a little — and he checked his watch again. ‘I think I’ll go and see if I can collar Mark Carter. I need somebody to shout at. Coming?’
Rik shook his head. Henry handed him his pen back, not having used it, grabbed a set of keys for a CID car and headed down to the police garage. There was no way he was going to drive his Mercedes around the hellhole that was Shoreside estate. He wasn’t bothered if the wheels disappeared from a police car.
They decided on a new location for their next meeting later that evening.
Donaldson made certain he wasn’t followed and insisted Edina did the same. Trouble was, Donaldson knew that the ‘Watchers’, as the surveillance branch of MI5 was called, were the best in the world. They could tail even the most surveillance conscious target without ever revealing themselves. However, basic precautions could be taken, such as stopping abruptly, false window-shopping to look at reflections rather than the display, doubling back and looking at faces, as well as ducking into shops through one door and leaving via another. Edina was unfazed and said she knew what to do.
When she appeared at the Spanish restaurant in a medium-sized shopping arcade just off Victoria Street, Westminster, at eight that evening, she looked beautiful and relaxed. She had strolled the mile or so from her apartment close to the Home Office, overlooking the Thames.
They shared paella, food that Donaldson loved. It was a good one, a mix of seafood and chicken, freshly prepared. The accompanying Spanish beer complemented it perfectly. As Edina scraped a spoon across the paella pan for the tasty burned layer on the bottom, Donaldson asked, ‘Can we talk now?’
She had drunk the best part of the bottle of Rioja. Her eyes glistened as she placed the spoon into her mouth and chewed the burned rice that coated the pan.
‘I can’t actually answer the question you asked about Blackpool, but I can tell you one thing. There were three of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not two, but three.’
Donaldson sat back.
‘Three boys, not two.’ Her words were slightly slurred but clear. ‘The two you caught — Sadiq and Rahman — and another one who had been brainwashed or radicalized or whatever it’s called. As far as I can gather, his whereabouts are unknown, as are the whereabouts of Jamil Akram. But they believe this little escapade isn’t yet over. That’s why they’re keeping a tight reign on Sadiq, but so far he’s told them nothing useful.’ Edina chuckled. ‘A teenage boy is holding out against some of the world’s most experienced interrogators.’
‘I saw you run,’ she said accusingly. ‘You left me to die.’
‘Could you possibly point that thing in another direction?’
Steve Flynn was sitting on the bench seat in Shell ’s cockpit and the woman after whom the boat had been named was perched on the fighting chair, a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun resting across her lap, but loosely aimed at Flynn’s groin. If it had been discharged, even if he had survived the blast, he would be minus his genitals.
‘You left me behind, ran off,’ she said. ‘I saw you climb back on to the quayside. Then you ran away.’ The aim stayed the same.
Flynn said, ‘I couldn’t have helped, Michelle. I’d been shot
… may I?’ He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to do this, but he eased up his T-shirt and peeled back the dressing to show the ugly red, raised scar across his ribcage. ‘I was unarmed. I thought I might be dying anyway. I could hardly move. I would’ve been no use. As soon as I made a move, I would have been killed. I was too slow. I knew Boone was dead. I just had to hope that they wouldn’t kill you as well, because I knew even then, that if I lived, I’d be coming back.’ He replaced the dressing and pulled his shirt down.
Michelle raised the shotgun and trained it on Flynn’s chest. The double hammers were cocked and her finger was curled across both triggers.
Flynn stopped breathing. ‘Michelle, I’m back. I came back,’ he whispered.
‘You left me,’ she accused him. ‘You left Boone.’
