George McConnell eased the car into Lorne Street, a minor side road off the Oxford Road, found a space, parked, turned to his colleague. ‘Ready?’
‘Are you, George? That’s what I want to know.’ DC Bola Odunsi didn’t look like he was going anywhere until he had a satisfactory answer.
‘Meaning?’ George snapped.
Bola sighed. ‘Come on, George, you’re wound up like a spring.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Don’t let him get to you.’ Bola shook his head. ‘He ain’t worth it.’
George leaned back in his seat, rested his head. Bola meant well, he knew that.
‘Besides, he’s got his promotion. He could be gone soon.’
‘You think?’
‘Sure.’ Bola nodded. ‘Collingworth’s got no sense of loyalty. Except to himself. He’ll apply for the first post that comes up, you watch.’
‘I can handle him,’ George said.
‘You just got to let it wash over you, that’s all.’
‘Easier said.’
‘I know, man. I know. Listen,’ Bola’s face radiated concern. ‘How is she? Any change?’
Change. George had been waiting for the smallest sign. But, as yet, Tess Martin hadn’t given the slightest inkling that she even knew who he was. He shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘There will be, man. She’ll come out of it, you’ll see.’
‘Sure. Thanks.’
‘You want to talk about it, anytime, OK?’
‘Yeah. Thanks. Anyway,’ George masked his discomfort in bluster, ‘shall we?’
‘Lead on, Macduff.’
‘That’s a rival clan. Careful, now.’ George allowed himself the briefest flicker of a smile.
‘Woah.’ Bola’s hands went up. ‘McConnell. Sorry, no offence.’
‘None taken.’ The smile was still playing around George’s mouth as he double-checked the house number. ‘Numero eleven. Here we go.’
The house was one of twenty or so conjoined terraces. There was no front garden. A set of mossy stone steps led down to what appeared to be a basement flat, while three rather more worn steps led up to the front door. A series of buzzers confirmed what George had already anticipated. He gave Bola a look. ‘Bedsits.’
Bola nodded. He knew what George meant, especially in this area. Bedsit land. Itinerant residents. Drugs, probably. He ran his finger down the labels. ‘Here you go. Marley.’ He pressed the buzzer.
‘Nothing,’ Bola said after thirty seconds.
‘Lived on his own.’ George was scanning the other names. ‘First on the list, let’s give it a whirl.’ He pressed the button next to the label which read Turner.
Twenty seconds passed before the sound of footsteps on bare boards caused the policemen to exchange glances. The door opened to reveal a young guy in blue overalls, his hair flecked with white paint, roller in one hand and cigarette in the other. ‘Yes?’
George showed his warrant card. ‘DC McConnell, and this is my colleague, DC Odunsi. Thames Valley Police. This your place?’
‘I’m the owner – landlord, yes. What’s up?’
‘Bedsits are they?’ Bola cast his eyes to the upper storeys.
‘Yeah.’
‘Could I have your name, please, sir?’ George asked politely.
‘Turner. Nick Turner. What’s up? I’ve done nothing wrong.’ He inhaled smoke and let it out in a thin stream.
Bola coughed. ‘We’d like some information regarding one of your tenants, a Mr Isaiah Marley.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s he done?’
‘Mind if we take a look around his flat?’
‘Sure.’ Turner sniffed, stepped aside to let them into the narrow hallway. ‘First on the right. Dunno if he’s in or not.’
‘He’s out.’ George said. ‘But you’ll have a key.’
‘Sure. Hang on.’
He went to the stairwell, called down. ‘Win? Bring up the keys, love, would you?’
A petite blonde woman put her head around the stairwell, ducked back, and then a bunch of keys came flying up towards them. Turner snagged them from the air.
‘My missus.’ Turner told them, as he led them into the building and worked his way through the jangling bunch of keys. ‘Doesn’t like the police much.’
‘We’re used to it,’ George said.
‘I bet. Here you go.’ Turner selected a key and opened the door to their right. ‘All yours.’
‘How long has Mr Marley lived here?’ Bola asked.
Turner tapped ash onto the bare boards. ‘Couple of months.’
‘And did he seem … all right to you?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Was he agitated, nervous, would you say?’
‘Didn’t see a lot of him, to be honest. We’re busy doing the rest of the place up. Not much time for chit-chat.’
‘As long as the rent gets paid, right?’
‘Yeah. Exactly. What the tenants get up to is their business. And he’s a good payer, anyway.’
‘Oh yes?’ George pricked up his ears.
‘Six months up front. I’m not complaining.’
Bola and George exchanged looks. ‘OK, thanks, Mr Turner,’ George said. ‘We’ll give you a shout when we’re finished.’
Turner shrugged. ‘Sure.’
The room was tiny. A sofa bed, a small table, a Belling two-ring grill, bare walls. The sash window looked out on an unkempt garden. Bola rubbed grime from the glass. ‘Nice.’
‘Bloody depressing.’ George poked around in the only cupboard, a second-hand cabinet that had seen better days. ‘Leastways, he doesn’t have to come back to this.’
‘So better off dead, is what you’re saying?’ Bola pulled up a chair cushion, looked underneath. Nothing but dust.
‘Well, maybe. I mean, just look at this room,’ George waved his hand in the air. ‘I mean, you’d top yourself after a couple of weeks, let alone months.’
‘Maybe he didn’t spend much time here.’
‘Maybe not.’ George was down on his hands and knees, checking under the sofa-bed. ‘Hello. What’s this?’ He fished around in the dust, withdrew a slip of card. ‘Train ticket. Edinburgh to Reading. January.’
‘Couple of months old.’
‘Right. So, our friend has recently moved south.’
‘Could’ve been visiting friends?’ Bola said.
‘Naw. If you were visiting, you’d have a Return, wouldn’t you? Not a Single.’
‘The man has a point.’
George bagged the ticket. ‘Anything else?’
‘Guy travelled light,’ Bola said. ‘Lived light.’
George nodded. Couldn’t deny that; there was next to nothing in the room. No spare clothing, not even underwear. Nothing of a personal nature at all.
‘Worth getting forensics over?’
‘I suppose,’ George replied. ‘Not much to check over, though, is there?’
‘Mr Anonymous.’
‘Isn’t he just? What about his iPhone?’
‘I had a quick flick. His FB friends list falls well into the ‘sad’ category.’
‘Like, under ten?’
‘Yep – even less than you.’
‘Ha ha.’
Bola grinned, ran his finger along the mantelpiece, inspected the resulting grime and made a face. ‘So, I don’t think that level of social media engagement will tell us much, but that won’t stop me pulling it apart anyway. One thing I did notice, though.’
They went into the hall, George closing the door behind them. ‘Oh yes?’
‘He’s got a VPN app set up on the iPhone.’
‘So?’
‘His IP address’ll be masked. Which means he doesn’t want his online activity tracked.’
‘So, he’s just paranoid, or–’
‘He’s scared someone might trace him.’
George worried at a hangnail. ‘Uh huh. So … he’s scared. Very little in the way of personal effects. Zero social media activity – bare minimum. Anonymous bedsit. VPN. What’s that sound like to you?’ He went to the stairwell. ‘We’re going, Mr Turner,’ he called into the void, but the only response was the blaring of a radio, the sound waves wafting on a heady aroma of paint and turpentine. George shrugged, called over his shoulder, ‘We’ll let ourselves out.’
A group of teenagers watched them suspiciously from further up the street. One made an inaudible comment and pointed. The two detectives heard their laughter rise and fall until it was drowned out by a passing motorbike.
‘It sounds,’ Bola said, as George pulled out onto the Oxford Road, ‘like Mr Marley was someone who didn’t want to be found.’
A sabbatical. Well now, Moran admitted to himself, there was an idea he hadn’t fully considered. He’d surprised himself, the way he’d confided in Charlie, the way his thoughts had shaped themselves, unbidden, into words. Truth was, his mind, overactive at the best of times, had been working overtime on his … problem since the strange night of Liam Doherty’s arrival – and unpredictable departure.
A sabbatical. He turned the word over, playing with its syllables. Trendy, these days, to take time out. Often to travel, or work with – or for – some charitable cause. But was he not a little long in the tooth to be taking time out? Higginson would find it odd – and he didn’t intend to appraise his boss of the details. Trouble was, he’d still be formally attached to the Thames Valley Constabulary. Anything that happened during a period of time out would automatically affect his job, career, life, whichever way he looked at it. But if he made a clean break – well then, whatever happened would fall firmly into the ‘post-career’ silo, and therefore wouldn’t reflect badly on what had gone before – for his team, or for himself.
But where to start? Moran went to his internal window, lifted the corner of the blind. A hive of activity, earnest conversations, eyes glued to screens. All searching for the keys to unlock the secrets of a dead man’s killer. They’d succeed, Moran had no doubt; Charlie was back on top form, her recent illness behind her. She was sharp, respected by the team, keen to get the job done. A possible successor. There was a thought: to be succeeded. Replaced.
He watched the team at work, and an unexpected stirring of emotion washed through him.
Pride.
Yes, he was proud of them. And why shouldn’t he be? The team’s results spoke for themselves. So many complementary skills under one roof, a strong sense of camaraderie, a cohesion of like-minded detectives, all focused on one goal: to get the job done. They’d manage without him, no problem.
No one is indispensable, Brendan…
But could he really imagine life outside the Force? He’d faced this beast before, had always been the first to blink. But that was understandably, surely, with such unfocussed prospects? A lonely retirement, another house move, perhaps. But where? Why? Life would still be repetitive, meaningless, wherever he lived. A pint down the local of an evening. A walk along the river. Everything behind him, very little ahead, except illness, decline. Death.
Furthermore – increasingly so, these days – Moran felt as though his role had settled into a predictable routine, that he was merely biding his time. He’d reached that part of a song where the chorus simply repeats till fade, until eventually the needle skates off the last groove into an eternal loop of crackling silence.
His case involvement these days was mostly consultative, the paperwork endless. Reports, statistics. Meetings. Sure, he still allowed himself a little involvement when an opportunity presented, but only when and where he felt he wouldn’t be cramping Charlie’s style. Infrequent chances to get out and about, get his hands dirty; the occasionally autopsy – but, these days the opportunities were fewer and farther between. Or so it seemed.
He let the blind down with a snap. Retirement. No. Not for him. Not yet. There must always be something ahead. As, in fact, there was now. He had a ‘situation’ on his hands. A mystery – an adversary too, in all but name. An old friend who had forfeited the right to that title.
Joe Gallagher. Politician, terrorist sympathiser and facilitator. Was it Moran’s job to stop him? Must it fall to him to embark upon what amounted to a personal crusade?
Moran returned to his desk, sat down and rested his head on his swanky new chair’s comfortable headrest – one tangible benefit of his recent (and still much talked-about) brush with an onsite assassin. The office had been refitted and refurbished – after a fashion – but, from this angle, he could see that the light shade was nevertheless well past its sell-by, and the cobweb he’d noticed a few weeks ago was still casting delicate tendrils as far as the top of the bookcase, a precarious bridge for any spiders with ambitions above their station.
Moran sat quietly, gave his thoughts some space.
No, it wasn’t inappropriate ambition that was driving him, but rather a sense of fair play. What had happened was wrong, and he wanted to…what?
Fix it.
Which was, he knew, quite impossible. What was done, was done, but then…but then…
…but then, he had the recording.
And he didn’t know what to do with it.
He’d considered taking it to MI5, but to whom? Could they be trusted? What would they do with it? He couldn’t be sure. Maybe his hesitation, procrastination, whatever, was merely the product of loyalty to an old friend, whatever that friend had now become. In his mind’s eye he could still see Joe Gallagher’s irate expression, the fanaticism in his eyes as the politician held court in Moran’s own lounge and nailed his Republican colours to the mast. Moran knew every word. Could repeat it back verbatim, he’d played it so many times. What had prompted him to retrieve his voice recorder from his coat pocket as it hung in the hallway? He only used the machine from time to time, to record his thoughts, case notes, trivia, anything that came to mind.
Something had prompted him to turn it on, though.
Now, he almost wished he hadn’t.
And then there was Samantha Grant’s abrupt disappearance to consider. Last seen in a riverside car park, being bundled into a car. A vigilant neighbour had taken photos and Moran had studied the prints, so he had the registration, clear shots of the two guys. ANPR had found a match which had led to the Russian Embassy, but from that point onwards he had met with a wall of impenetrable silence.
So there it was: four parts of a problematic puzzle. Joe Gallagher, recently elevated to the post of Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade; a missing MI5 operative; the Russian Embassy; and a voice recording of Gallagher’s own admission of support for Republican terrorism.
And the fifth part? A senior detective on the cusp of retirement, who didn’t take kindly to being threatened in his own home, who wanted to help someone he’d considered – and still did consider – a friend. But how could he help Samantha Grant? She could be anywhere.
You have no idea, Brendan. None.
Moran tapped his fingers on the desk in a repetitive pattern that swiftly escalated in volume until his left hand brought the ostinato to a crescendo with a thump that toppled the teetering top layer of his in- tray.
But you have to try…