By that time, Tope had sat up and swung his legs out of bed, the phone to his right ear, his left hand scrunching his face into life.
‘I can’t talk to you, Flynn, you get me in shit,’ Tope whined.
‘If you don’t talk to me, you’ll be in real shit — personally and professionally, guaranteed.’
Tope glanced at the sleeping mound in the bed, exhaled wearily and said, ‘Give us a second.’
He stood up and padded out of the bedroom in his PJs, his top tucked neatly into the bottoms, cursing the fact he had ever become involved in a cover-up with Flynn.
Way back they had been police buddies, colleagues verging on friends, in the halcyon days before Flynn fell out with the police hierarchy and became a pariah. After a particularly riotous night out in Preston, a Tuesday, on one of those nights known colloquially as ‘Grab-a-granny’, when it was alleged that slightly older and more experienced women were out on the razz and were easy prey, Tope, amazing himself, had done something very silly with a lady who was actually a grandmother — at the ripe old age of thirty-four. It was a sordid tryst that ended up with Tope pleading with Flynn to provide a cover story for him in order to put his highly suspicious wife off the scent. Flynn had done him the favour, saved the marriage and Tope had learned a very salutary lesson.
What neither man expected was that Flynn would eventually use this piece of knowledge to prise information out of Tope after leaving the police. Flynn had only done this on a couple of desperate occasions and, in truth, got no joy from doing it. But it was certainly handy to have a lever on someone like Tope who worked as a DC on the Intelligence Unit, which gave him a position of great knowledge. It also helped that Tope was also a highly skilled interrogator of computers. A hacker, in other words.
‘What is it?’ Tope asked bluntly, sitting down heavily on the settee in the lounge.
‘Serious stuff. I need some information.’
‘I will lose my fucking job,’ Tope hissed. He looked around to check he wasn’t being watched by the surveillance branch.
‘Not on this one, you won’t. This time it’s commendations all round.’
‘Not with you, Steve.’ Tope’s voice rose towards hysterical.
‘OK — how does this grab you as an opener? Where is Jamil Akram?’
The phone went silent as Tope digested this. ‘Who?’
‘Don’t fuck with me, Jerry, or I’ll catch the next flight to Blackpool and come knocking on your door.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘Does anybody?’
‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’
‘He managed to get out of the UK and disappear, didn’t he?’
‘Common knowledge.’
‘After he’d set up two stupid lads as suicide bombers.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Look, I’m not screwing around here,’ Flynn growled. ‘What would you say if I told you I knew where he’d run to, where he was less than forty-eight hours ago and where he probably is now?’
‘I’d say talk to Henry Christie.’
‘That twat?’
‘First name that came to mind… er… er… yes, him. If you purport to know so much, you’ll know he had some serious involvement with one of the suicide bombers. He’s a good port of call.’
Flynn closed his eyes in despair. Being told to speak to Henry Christie was like being told to stuff razor blades into his mouth — painful. Ever since he had left the cops under a cloud of suspicion, Flynn had harboured a festering dislike and distrust of Henry, who he saw as the person who’d pushed him out of the job. Not that Flynn really had evidence to back that up, but Henry was a good target for his ire.
‘Give me his number.’
Tope did so and Flynn ended the call.
Flynn was still in the bedroom of the house in Banjul. Four dead men lay in spreading pools of blood in the living area and Aleef, the middleman, sat shaking in one corner of the room, his face a bruised, swollen and bloody mess. He nursed his left hand, the little finger of which had been bent backwards and snapped like a dry twig by Flynn. He had been prepared to go for every single finger, one at a time, but Aleef had screamed, pleaded for mercy and promised to tell him everything he knew. Just let him live.
Flynn turned slowly back to him like the devil and Aleef whimpered under his gaze.
Over three thousand miles to the north of Flynn’s position, a communications operative/intelligence analyst based at the government listening station, GCHQ, in Gloucestershire sat back in his comfortable chair and removed his earphones. He held up a finger and signalled to his supervisor, who rushed down from her raised dais and leaned over his shoulder.
‘What’ve you got?’ she asked.
Interview room one. Henry and Rik sat on one side of the bolted down table. On the opposite side sat Driver and the duty solicitor. The audio and video tapes were running, the camera recording the interview was fitted high in one corner of the room, protected by a fine mesh grill. Rik had done the introductions and made it clear that the interview was being carried out at this time of day with the consent of the accused and his solicitor.
Henry watched this introductory phase. His mobile phone was in his jeans pocket. It vibrated. He removed it and surreptitiously checked it, but the caller ID said, ‘Unknown number’.
He frowned, slid it back, then focused on what was being said, before remembering he’d told Alison he’d be home by now.
Rik folded his arms. ‘You know why you’ve been arrested, you’ve agreed to talk to us; what would you like to say?’
Driver was in the spacious zoot suit, the billowing paper forensic suit and slippers, provided for him after his clothing had been seized. He sat with his hands clasped between his thighs, rocking slightly, a hunted expression in his eyes.
‘No doubt you’ve found it,’ he said.
‘Found what?’
‘The scarf.’
‘Which scarf?’
‘The one in the holdall.’
‘You need to explain its significance,’ Rik said, revealing nothing. It was always better to let the prisoner do the talking. Let them fill in their own gaps.
‘It’s the one I took from Natalie Philips.’
There was a beat. Henry’s arse twitched. Rik said, ‘Go on.’
Driver shrugged pathetically, beaten and knowing it. ‘I was on a corrie run — ’ he uttered a little snort — ‘I saw her sitting on the kerb, carrying her shoes, barefoot.’ He sounded wistful. ‘She looked upset. I stopped to see if I could help her, y’know, me being a cop and all that.’
Henry’s chest cavity seemed to tighten up as if a corkscrew was winding his insides around. His phone vibrated again.
‘Anyway, she got in the car. I said I’d take her home.’ Driver’s voice was now monotone and emotionless. ‘I knew I was going to rape her.’
Silence in the room.
‘And after I raped her, I knew I had to kill her. You see,’ he raised his face as though he was explaining something simple and straightforward, ‘she was the only one who knew I was a cop. That’s why she had to die. The rest didn’t know — like her tonight. She wouldn’t have known I was a police officer. Change of clothing. Plain car. Radio off. Mask on.’ He tapped his nose conspiratorially and Henry had to stop himself from flying across the table and beating the little shit to a messy pulp.
‘How many more are we talking about?’ Rik asked.
‘Seventeen.’
Flynn looked at his phone angrily, then at the still cowering Aleef, nursing his finger, now swollen to tennis ball size around the joint.
‘So what happened?’ Flynn said.
‘I need medical attention,’ Aleef bleated.
