‘How did you find out you were just friends?’
‘We revealed everything to each other,’ said Boxer, ‘and found we were too alike. There was no attraction of opposites. We had nothing to hide and nothing more we were desperate to know. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t protect her with my life if it came to it, but it means we could never be lovers.’
‘And you found that out before Amy was born,’ said Isabel. ‘So what’s Charles Boxer been doing for the last seventeen years?’
‘I’ve had girlfriends, but being in the army, then homicide and then this job, which can send me to Mexico or Yokohama at a moment’s notice, has made a home life tricky. Women don’t like that. Or rather, they like it for a bit until they find plans destroyed, holidays in ruins, life on hold.’
‘So why do you do it?’
‘I’ve found that I need to be in situations where life really matters,’ said Boxer. ‘In the army I saw action in the Gulf War and after that normal life seemed monotonous and dull. So I became a homicide detective, which I soon realised was a mistake. Finding out why somebody had been killed was not the sort of intensity I was looking for. It was post-life. Historical. Redundant. The victim beyond help. Kidnappings gave me what I was missing. Everybody intensely wanting the victim to survive. The extreme pressure of ensuring that survival. The reward of the victim’s safe return to life and their family.’
‘And has that always happened?’
‘Almost always,’ said Boxer, mind shuddering at the thought of Bianca Dias.
‘And what about Alyshia?’ asked Isabel Marks, her face breaking apart with a sudden onslaught of fresh worry.
‘From what you and Frank have told me about her, she has the perfect profile for surviving well,’ said Boxer, serving up his professional patter rather than the brutal truth. ‘The gang is professional. They won’t harm her. All we have to do is keep calm, be patient and they will tell us what they want. We’ll take it from there.’
She came round the table to him, stood by his chair.
‘I know we hardly know each other,’ she said, ‘but would you mind holding me?’
He stood, put his arms around her. He was nearly a foot taller and her head fitted into his chest. Her arms hung by her sides at first, like a child in shock. Then they found his waist and she drew herself in.
8
11.45 P.M., SUNDAY 11TH MARCH 2012
Grange Road, London E13
‘What did I tell you?’ said Skin, who was wearing dark blue Umbro tracksuit bottoms, a red England shirt under his blue fur-lined jacket, and black trainers, which he had up on the dashboard of the van.
‘What did you tell me? You’ve told me so much shit over the last few days,’ said Dan, looking right, turning left, ‘I can’t remember.’
‘About it not being over?’ said Skin, smoking viciously. ‘And here we are . . .’
‘Tidying up loose ends,’ said Dan.
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Skin. ‘Think about it.’
‘You mean, at what point does someone decide that we’re loose ends?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘That would mean Pike would have to find someone to do you,’ said Dan. ‘And then someone else to do his killing for him.’
‘All I’m saying is that if he gets shot of us, there are no more connections to the leading players.’
‘And all I’m saying is that it’s not so easy for him,’ said Dan. ‘I know Pike likes having me around. Medical advice on tap.’
‘What use is medical advice if you’re back in the Royal Suite?’ said Skin. ‘Don’t underestimate Pike. Underneath all that fat there’s a skinny, ruthless little bastard, screaming to get out.’
‘Have you taken something?’
‘’Course I have,’ said Skin. ‘We’ve been told what we’ve got to do this time.’
‘What did you take?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I just want to know what I’m dealing with.’
‘A little dexy, that’s all,’ said Skin, lighting a cigarette from the one he’d just finished in less than a minute. ‘Got to be sharp for this.’
‘You worried about anything, Skin?’
‘Like what?’
‘I mean to do with this job?’ said Dan.
‘That fucker, the cabbie, he’s not going to be alone, not after what we did to those sheep the other night,’ said Skin. ‘He didn’t like that. I didn’t like that. He was having the same thought we were when we dumped them in the river: I’m fucking next.’
‘So you think he’s going to have company.’
‘I know he’s going to have company. Pike does too,’ said Skin. ‘Are you as handy with a gun as you were with the needle?’
Dan shrugged.
‘I thought not,’ said Skin. ‘In that case, you deal with the cabbie. Get behind him. Point blank in the back of the head. Don’t think about it.’
‘Don’t think about it?’
‘I can see we’re going to have a problem,’ said Skin.
‘And you?’
‘I’ll deal with the help,’ said Skin. ‘The unexpected help.’
‘Who’s going to give him the money?’
‘I will,’ said Skin, beckoning it over.
Dan gave him the money taped up in a plastic bag.
‘Just get behind him and pop. The money’s in plastic, so don’t worry about the mess.’
‘Right. Don’t worry about the mess?’
‘You’re thinking too much,’ said Skin. ‘Don’t.’
They pulled up, parked in the street outside the house in Grange Road, got out, walked past the cab in the driveway and down by the garage to the back garden. Skin knocked on the door. The cabbie opened it. Skin held up the money package.
‘Pay day,’ he said.
‘You’re not wearing your hoods,’ said the cabbie, unimpressed.
‘Didn’t think we had to now the girl’s out of the picture,’ said Dan.
The cabbie let the door fall open, saw the spider web tattoo on Skin’s neck and cheek, shook his head.
‘You should have seen the guy who did it to me,’ said Skin. ‘Had the spider crawling up his nose, the web all over his face. Everybody held the door open for that fucker, I can tell you.’
‘Go through to the other room,’ said the cabbie. ‘I’ll count it in there.’
‘Cuppa tea would be nice.’
They went through the kitchen, round the table and chairs, didn’t sit down. Skin dropped the money in front of the chair that had been pulled out, Dan stood behind it, leaned against the wall.
‘You can sit,’ said the cabbie, pointing to the chairs on either side of his.
‘Been driving all day,’ said Dan. ‘Need to stretch.’
‘Sit the fuck down, both of you,’ said the cabbie, hitting the table hard.
The door to Dan’s right flew open. A young guy stood there with a gun held out in front of him. Skin fell back as he reached inside his jacket. The young guy fired. There was a grunt as Skin hit the floor and he returned fire lying flat on his back. The young guy took the bullet full in the chest. It knocked him back through the door into the corridor where he hit the wall hard and slid to the floor. Dan had already taken out his gun, pointed the cabbie into the chair with it. He stepped behind him, put the barrel to the back of his head. His fist tightened around the grip. The cabbie’s neck was shaking.
‘Do him,’ said Skin, through gritted teeth from the floor.
The muscles tightened in Dan’s jaw. His ears were ringing because the young guy hadn’t used a silencer.
‘Don’t think about it,’ said Skin.
He fired. The cabbie slumped forward violently. Dan stood there blinking, couldn’t believe what he’d just done.
‘I’m hit,’ said Skin. ‘The fucker’s got me in the shoulder.’
Dan snapped out of the horror, put the gun away, went into casualty mode, dropped to his knees.
‘Left shoulder,’ s
aid Skin, hissing through his teeth.
‘Bone?’
‘Fuck should I know? You’re the nurse.’
Dan inspected the torn leather at the shoulder, saw the blood on the carpet. He put on latex gloves, opened the jacket, felt with his fingers around the wound.
‘Feels like flesh only,’ said Dan. ‘Let’s get your arm out of your sleeve.’
‘Fuck me,’ said Skin, wincing.
‘It shouldn’t hurt yet.’
‘You the one with the hole in his shoulder?’
Dan lifted Skin’s arm out, peeled the shirt back from the wound, pursed his lips.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s just a nick but you’re going to need stitches.’
‘A nick?’ said Skin savagely. ‘Fucking ruined my jacket.’
‘I can do it,’ said Dan, trying to tear a strip off Skin’s shirt for a bandage.
‘Leave off,’ said Skin, slapping his hands away. ‘That’s my England shirt. Use your own fucking shirt.’
Dan went into the kitchen, found a clean tea towel.
‘Look on the bright side,’ he said, ‘if it had hit the bone, I’d have spent the rest of the night getting fragments out of the muscle and you probably wouldn’t be able to lift your arm above your shoulder for the rest of your life.’
‘You’re back to your old cheerful self now.’
Dan bandaged up the wound, pulled Skin to his feet. He picked up the dropped gun, shook his head. Skin’s blood everywhere, in the carpet, soaked into the floorboards. Nothing to be done.
‘How does it feel, Alyshia?’
‘It’s good,’ she said.
‘Seeing the world with fresh eyes,’ said the voice.
‘Fresh eyes,’ she said, barely listening, wincing against the harshness of the light as she let her vision drink in the surroundings, which were nothing special, but after so long in the dark seemed visually palatial.
White walls, high ceiling with three caged strip neon lights. Her bed was in one corner. It was an old metal hospital bed with tubular legs and a bed-head whose thin bars provided complete discomfort for the human skull. The mattress was foam with a rubber covering and a white cotton sheet stretched over it. The wall next to the bed was solid but the one behind her head, a stud wall. The wall with the door in it had a large, full length mirror facing the bed. In front of it was the bucket latrine she’d used earlier. The floor was of roughly skimmed concrete. She thought she might be in a room constructed within a warehouse. Above her head was a vent of the sort seen in hotel rooms to provide heating or AC. She was not cold in just her bra and pants.
‘We have too much visual stimuli in this world,’ said the voice.
Now she saw what she’d missed. In two corners, about ten foot above her, were white speakers and, hanging in the centre of the room, a microphone.
‘We’re all in a permanent state of distraction, don’t you think?’
‘Could be,’ she said, distracted.
‘But now, for the first time, you’ve started to see things clearly.’
‘For the first time?’ she said, rolling her eyes.
‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, Alyshia.’
She started looking for the camera.
‘You’ve overcome your instinct for denial.’
‘I’m not a liar.’
‘Maybe not, but you massage the truth to suit your purposes,’ said the voice. ‘It’s quite a common psychological phenomenon.’
‘Is it?’
‘For some reason, you wanted me to think well of you. You wanted me to believe that, in moving to Dalston, you’d recognised the truth about your privileged life and rejected it. Whereas the real motivation was to get out from under your mother’s beady eye.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Why do you feel the need to be secretive with her?’
‘She’s made me the focus of her life. She wants to live her life vicariously through me. She wants me to go out with the sort of man that she would like to go out with . . . or at least, I think she would. It’s not healthy. All I’m doing is withdrawing a little from her world and trying to live on my own terms.’
‘Is that so?’ said the voice.
She shrugged her shoulders off the bed. The voice was annoying her.
‘I think we should do a “before” and “after” comparison,’ said the voice.
‘Before and after what?’
‘Let’s start with the here and now. Why Duane and Curtis? You’ve never had any black boyfriends before and now you’ve got two.’
‘I don’t sleep with either of them. They’re just friends.’
‘Curtis is unemployed and Duane’s a plumber’s mate.’
‘So what?’
‘These aren’t what you’d call natural mates for Alyshia D’Cruz BA, MBA.’
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to get at. Perhaps you need to tell me your prejudices before we carry on.’
‘My prejudices.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘You’re not being very forthcoming, Alyshia,’ said the voice. ‘Maybe we have to look at the “before”, which will inform the “after”. Tell me about Julian.’
‘Julian?’
‘Yes, Julian Maitland-Smith, that boyfriend you had when you were at the Saïd Business School in Oxford. He was at Christchurch doing a PhD on some weird bit of history. Bit older than you, wasn’t he? Twenty-nine to your twenty-three. Do you know where he is now?’
‘No. We split after I left to go to Mumbai.’
‘He’s in prison.’
‘What for?’
‘He got used to a certain lifestyle when he was with you. Couldn’t give it up. Had to finance a little addiction problem. He went to stay at a friend’s parents’ manor house outside Great Missenden, thought he’d lift a little Fabergé vodka cup from their collection to keep the bailiff from the door. He’d assumed he was alone in the house, but hadn’t banked on the au pair. She caught him in the act. He beat the crap out of her, left her for dead. You didn’t read about it?’
‘No.’
‘They did him for attempted murder,’ said the voice. ‘You were lucky there.’
‘What’s this got to do with anything?’ she said, feeling cold, rubbing her shoulders with her hands. ‘Can I have a blanket?’
‘There was an incident in Oxford, wasn’t there? Something that triggered your departure to Mumbai.’
‘An incident?’
‘Interesting,’ said the voice. ‘Before we had denial, now we have a classic case of tabula rasa.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Didn’t do Latin? What’s the world coming to?’ said the voice. ‘Clean slate. In this case, you’ve decided to wipe an unpleasant memory from your mind. Politicians, historians, businessmen and neurotics do it all the time. It makes life more tolerable.’
‘Remind me,’ she said, turning to the mirror now, certain that it was a viewing panel. ‘I’ve been through a lot tonight; my brain’s not working well.’
‘Abiola Adeshina. A Nigerian colleague of yours at the Saïd Business School.’
‘Yes, the Nigerian guy,’ she said, feeling something drop in the pit of her stomach.
‘Did you like him?’
‘He was all right.’
‘He was rather in love with you, wasn’t he?’ said the voice, ‘But then again, everybody was rather in love with Alyshia D’Cruz, weren’t they?’
‘He was out of his depth,’ she said, not meaning for it to sound so cruel.
‘Yes, I think that’s fair to say,’ said the voice. ‘But was he arrogant, prejudiced, brutal and stupid?’
‘No.’
‘Some of your friends would say that was unusual for a Nigerian,’ said the voice. ‘Was that why you singled him out? You spotted his weakness? I suppose the Saïd Business School had a module on the Law of the Jungle.’
‘I didn’t single him out, he singled me out.’
‘Oh, ri
ght, so you were the victim,’ said the voice.
‘I’m tired,’ she said.
‘You can go to sleep just as soon as you’ve told me what happened to poor old Abiola.’
‘He was besotted with me. There was nothing I could do about it.’
‘But you did do something about it, in order to get rid of him,’ said the voice. ‘You just overdid it, that’s all. Maybe you hadn’t expected Abiola to be quite so sensitive, although I think it would have taxed most young guys, what you did. You and Julian.’
‘The counsellor afterwards said it was nothing to do with me. If people are going to do that sort of thing, there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Their mind is made up. They’ve come to their own decision. The flaw is in their character.’
‘Hey, all right, Alyshia, all right. I can see this upsets you. So just tell me what happened. Maybe it will make you feel better to give me your version of events.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘It’ll be on with the sleeping mask again,’ said the voice, teasing. ‘And I know how much you hate the dark. Folds you in on yourself too much, doesn’t it? Let me talk you through it. He was in love with you. Let’s start there. How did you respond to his attention?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I think you did.’
‘How do you know about this?’ said Alyshia, glaring at the mirror now. ‘How do you fucking know?’
‘Investigative journalism.’
She threw herself back, stared up at the ceiling. Tears came. Her mouth crumpled and cracked. She cried in wracking sobs that lifted her bodily from the mattress.
‘What are you crying about?’
‘I didn’t mean for it to happen,’ she said, through the snot and saliva.
‘You meant for something to happen,’ said the voice. ‘I mean, there was premeditation. The design was for maximum humiliation. I assume it was Julian’s idea, that. Only he would have the insight into the young male psyche. Or perhaps not.’
Alyshia rolled over, turned her back on the mirror, shoulders shuddering.