The words, as ever, sent a shiver through Donaldson’s bones.
‘What a waste,’ he sighed and skipped the disc backwards and watched it again, leaning forwards, closely studying the image, this time with the sound turned down, his head shaking sadly at the terrible loss of a life. Then he noticed something that made him sit upright and think back to the moment he had spotted the other would-be terrorist, Zahid Sadiq, walking along Blackpool promenade, showing all the outward signs of being a suicide bomber. Inappropriate clothing. Robotic walk. The mouth chanting, mumbling his last prayers. Eyes fixed, staring ahead. And something else…
Donaldson shot forwards again, froze the image and pressed print screen.
‘You didn’t find him, then?’ a smug Rik Dean asked.
Henry had driven back to Blackpool police station to drop off the CID car, which had made it unscathed off Shoreside. He’d bumped accidentally into Rik, who had changed into some rough clothing and was making his way to the police garage with the keys for, as he described it, ‘the shittiest police car in there’. A turn of the millennium Nissan, tucked away in a dark corner, which no one used unless absolutely necessary. It should have been changed long ago, but cost cutting meant that if it had gone, there would have been no replacement, so the CID clung on to it as a last resort. It came in useful for jobs like tonight — keeping obs — but it wasn’t something you turned up in if you were out to impress.
‘I did, actually, but he needed to sleep it off.’
‘Pissed?’
‘His life’s going down the pan — literally,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve arranged for him to come in first thing in the morning.’
‘And you think he’ll turn up?’ Rik’s voice said he didn’t.
‘Yep.’
‘Henry, you’re too soft with that lad. It’s not your fault his sister OD’d, his brother’s a dealer and his mum got whacked.’
‘I know, but I think we have some sort of obligation to him.’ Henry sighed. It was an old conversation.
They were face to face in a narrow, poorly lit corridor just outside the custody office. A section van reversed in and two uniformed cops dragged a belligerent drunk out of the back doors. Another body for Blackpool police station’s prisoner sausage machine that processed over 12,000 each year.
‘Anyway, I’m going to give it a couple of hours.’ Rik dangled the car keys at Henry. ‘Until midnight, then I’ll find somewhere for a nightcap. You still coming?’
‘If you want some company,’ Henry said.
‘So long as you don’t go all social worker on me about Mark Carter.’
‘Promise.’
‘And I drive you home to get changed. Not certain a suit is the best attire for observations.’
‘OK… and I thought we could talk about shagging, y’know, like blokes do.’
Rik said, ‘I’ll go for that.’
Flynn and Michelle drifted from bar to bar, drinking soft drinks and sitting in dark alcoves from which they could keep watch for Aleef. It was hit and miss, no guarantees, but at least they were doing something. Flynn felt better about that. He was a man of action and some violence and moping about did not suit him. He needed this. Inside him, the desire for revenge was like a caged beast wanting to be set free. Even if Boone hadn’t been killed, had somehow escaped, Flynn would still have gone after the men who had shot him.
He and Michelle sat close to each other, knee to knee. She kept her face lowered in the shadows as much as possible. The hot, dusty streets of Banjul were thronging with bodies, quite a few white faces in amongst the Africans, so Flynn was not too obvious. No one paid him any heed. Banjul drew in holiday-makers and he was simply a man in a crowd who might have picked up a whore. Nothing unusual about that.
Except Flynn could not even start to visualize Michelle as a prostitute, even though she had once been one. It was very hard for him to make that mental leap.
However, there was only a handful of clubs that tourists frequented and these were not the ones Michelle guided him into. These were dark, dingy, basement hovels, hotter than the streets, crammed with people, the smell of sweat and dope overpowering. The music was loud and African, with driving beats and an air of menace.
Michelle clung to him as she steered him into a club that had no name over the door and had two evil looking bouncers guarding the place. Inside it was a crush, impossible to move other than by sliding intimately past other customers. A haven for groping accidentally on purpose, and pickpockets. There was a minuscule dance floor, which was heaving, and a long bar at which Michelle and Flynn chiselled out a space. Flynn shouted his order, then rotated to rest his back on the edge of the bar whilst Michelle tucked herself tightly alongside him. Flynn’s eyes roved, spotting the pimps and hookers on the prowl, drug dealers too, and lots of clients.
Michelle tiptoed up so her mouth was at Flynn’s ear. ‘Boone liked this place. It’s where I met him.’
Flynn nodded, somewhat surprised at the admission.
‘He took me away from it,’ she added, and dropped back on to the flats of her feet.
Flynn’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the flashing disco and strobe lighting, and he saw a line of alcoves along the wall opposite, deep recesses in which couples groped, and glimpsed occasional flashes of male ecstasy, female hands tucked down men’s trousers, the jerk of gratification.
He turned away from the sight and faced the bar as the drinks came. Michelle’s arms encircled his waist and she clung to him. He draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug, then glanced diagonally across to the far corner of the bar where a man sat on a stool, a beer in his hand, a woman in a shiny dress dancing slinkily on the spot in front of him as he watched with lustful eyes.
Flynn tilted his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth so Michelle could hear his words.
‘That’s one of the men,’ he said, his lips hardly moving. He turned her slightly. She saw him and Flynn felt her convulse and spin back into him with a moan of anguish. It was one of the men from the Mercedes. One of the ones who had killed Boone, shot at him, then raped her. He could have been the one who had winged Flynn.
‘What do we do?’ Michelle asked.
‘We leave, I watch, I wait… I follow. Get the drift?’
‘And me?’
‘You go back to the car, lock yourself in and wait for me. If I’m not back within an hour, go back to Boone’s boat and wait there. I’ll be back. Sometime.’
FIFTEEN
‘ It comes to something when officers with our length of service and rank are sitting in a crappy police car at bloody near midnight, keeping obs. Surely we’ve got something wrong somewhere? This is a job for the younger, keener, more energetic end of the policing family. Not old lags.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Rik Dean said. ‘You’ve got a lot of years on me, pal.’
‘But you know what I mean,’ Henry whined. ‘The principle of two relatively high ranking detectives doing what we’re doing… I dunno… unseemly, not right.’
‘I’ll have it sorted for tomorrow night.’
Henry slouched down in the passenger seat of the Nissan, which had springs that had collapsed completely and others that stuck in his spine like corkscrews. It wasn’t far off midnight and now it was all wearing a bit thin. Conversation had started sprightly enough. Not, as it happened, about sexual intercourse, but the other usual things that cops talked about on boring obs. The physics of the universe, how insignificant human beings were in the grand scheme of things, the power of the moon, the credit crunch and other such mind-blowing topics. Heavy stuff, about which they knew very little but spouted a lot. However, that had petered out as they drove fairly aimlessly around the north shore area in which the rapes had taken place.
It was pretty hit and miss and Rik had already decided that the officers who were due to be out tomorrow night would be more specific in their tasks.
Not much was moving. Not many cars. Not many people.
As they drove out in the general direction of Poulton-le-Fylde, they spotted a car coming in the opposite direction that Henry recognized as they passed side by side. He got a look at the driver, who he also
