Authors: Graham Hurley
Faraday studied it, Imber behind him. Not five
messages at all but bits and pieces from an ongoing email exchange. Meredith had disinterred another sheet of paper from the file.
‘This is how it works date-wise,’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee it but it’s the best I can do.’
Faraday scanned the dates. The first email had arrived on 14th July. It appeared to have come from a member of Lajla’s family. There was a reference to ‘Papa’ never going out because of the summer heat. In another part of the message, after a series of blank spaces, a name: Dragan. Dragan, it appeared, wanted to get in touch with Lajla. He was due in Germany for a church conference. He might find the time to come to Berlin. The message, all too abruptly, petered out.
‘Berlin?’ Faraday looked up.
‘That’s where most of the emails come from. There’s a registered domain name: Autos Bosna. You want the address?’
Meredith was looking pleased with himself. Even Imber was impressed. Another sheet of paper appeared from the file, a Berlin address, neatly typed.
‘Muharem Mujajic?’
‘He’s the subscriber, owns the domain. He’s also the one who sends the emails.’
‘Lajla’s brother.’ Imber was peering at the translation. ‘He’s lived in Berlin with the father since they fled during the war. He must be running some kind of garage there. Germany’s full of Bosnian refugees. Enterprising guy. Must be.’
‘OK.’ Faraday was trying to make sense of the next message. ‘These are all incoming emails, right?’
‘Yes.’ Meredith nodded.
‘Nothing from Lajla’s end?’
‘Not that I can find.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Dunno.’ Meredith was scrolling through the text on the screen. ‘I asked myself the same question. Maybe it’s just a statistical quirk. The fifty per cent we can’t retrieve just happens to include all her stuff.’
‘Or she never replied at all.’
‘Exactly … Look at this one.’ Meredith had paused on the fourth message: 16th September. The sender this time had a different email address.
‘Ba?’ Faraday was looking at the suffix.
‘Bosnia. There’s no domain on this one. Just a subscriber address with an ISP. There’s no way I can get past that. Maybe you guys have the right connections …’
Faraday and Imber exchanged glances. Prising subscriber information out of the likes of Freeserve or Yahoo often took months.
Faraday wanted to know which of his translations corresponded to the message on the screen.
‘This one.’ Meredith pointed out three lines near the bottom of the page. There were more gaps than words but Faraday could just tease out the essence of the message. The sender had obviously been trying to talk to Lajla by phone. She was never there – never at home, never returned his calls, never gave him an answer.
‘To what?’
‘Could be anything … look.’ Imber was already on the last message. Muharem again, 27th September, and the message intact enough to suggest a tone of mild reproof. The priest’s friend was a good man, he’d written. If you couldn’t believe Dragan, then who in this world could you ever trust?
Dragan? The priest’s friend? Lajla’s evident reluctance to even acknowledge this series of messages?
Faraday got to his feet. He wanted to know how
much more Meredith thought he might be able to retrieve.
‘Maybe another ten per cent. Maybe not even that.’
‘So this is all we have to go on?’
‘Afraid so. But the Berlin address must help, surely.’
Imber had slipped onto Faraday’s stool. Now he reached for the mouse. Returning to the first message, he scrolled slowly down, trying to match the Serbo-Croat to the au pair’s translation, hopscotching from one blank space to another. Finally, he folded the translation into his pocket and glanced round at Faraday.
‘One question we haven’t asked.’ He nodded back at the screen. ‘Just why would anyone want to delete these?’
Winter didn’t bother Suttle with the details of his hospital visit. Denial, after all, had its uses. The Bone was waiting for them in a café-bar in Port Solent. He’d rung twice already, demanding to know where they’d got to.
La Esperanza offered five kinds of espresso plus designer lager at £3.50 a bottle. The view across the Boardwalk towards the yacht basin could have come straight from a brochure. Bit of decent weather, thought Winter, and he’d buy an apartment there himself.
The Bone was sitting alone at a table at the back. The tab for two beers lay beside his empty glass. Winter’s shout.
‘Got a name for us?’ Winter wasn’t in the mood for small talk.
‘No, Mr Winter.’
‘Why all the drama then?’ Winter nodded at the mobile on the table.
‘Just a little whisper I thought you might be interested in. I put the word out about your Nigerian friend. Manager in one of the pubs here told me the bloke had a bit of a reputation with the ladies. They thought he was a nice fella. Generous, too. Put lots of it around.’
‘We’re talking money?’
‘Yeah. Plus he was shagging a couple of women round here. Showed them a really nice time. I’ve only talked to one of them but she was extremely pissed off when he died on her. She’s got a house over the water there, part of a divorce settlement. She used to have chummy over for meals in the evening. Bit of a cook. Apparently she was on a promise of Christmas on the Virgin Islands. She’d even bought herself a new bikini.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘She told me he was wheeling and dealing. She thought it was drugs at first but it turned out he was shopping for boats – big stuff, some kind of bulk order. She hasn’t got a clue about the details but she says he went to Norway a lot. Told her it was business. You can’t move in the house for aquavit. Everytime he came back he brought her a bottle. It’s everywhere. She hates the stuff. Never touches it.’
‘How come she told you all this?’ Suttle didn’t believe a word.
‘I said I was a mate of his. The bloke in the pub told me the Nigerian fella played five-a-side football, decent standard. Joined a team of locals; turned out every Thursday night. I told her I was on the team and she was kushti with that. Especially when I handed over the necklace he’d bought for her.’
The Bone produced a receipt and gave it to Winter. A silver cross with matching chain had come to £39.99.
‘Special offer down Gunwharf.’ He laughed. ‘I told her I’d been trying to get her address for months. I’d had the key to his flat and nipped round before they cleared it out. I knew the necklace was for her because he’d told me about it. Made her cry when I gave it to her.’
Winter beamed at him. Lately, he’d been having his doubts about the Bone but a ruse this elaborate restored his faith. The man was a truly devious little shit.
‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing you’d want to know about.’ He paused. ‘Except one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
His eyes went to the receipt. Winter, with some reluctance, picked it up. When the Bone asked for readies, Winter counted out four £10 notes. For a moment Suttle thought he was going to ask for change.
‘What about the beers?’ The Bone pocketed the money.
‘Jimmy’ll settle up in a minute.’
‘And a drink for afterwards?’
‘Depends.’
The Bone looked at him a moment, then got to his feet. Winter caught him by the door, spun him round, marched him back towards the table. The girl behind the bar had turned away and was watching them in the mirror.
‘Don’t fuck around, son. Just tell me.’
The Bone looked hurt. He spent a while trying to restore the creases in his shirt. Then he glanced up again.
‘This is the woman again,’ he said. ‘Couple of nights before the guy gets killed he tells her he’s being watched. Bloke in a four by four. It’s pitch bloody
dark. The bloke’s waiting for him in a lay-by down the other side of the hill, outside that village, Southwick. Follows him up the lane he takes home on his bike. Happened twice. Third time?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Bingo.’
Monday, 1 March 2004
The message was waiting for Winter when he got home. He stepped into the gloom of his bungalow, dumped his dripping coat by the door, and padded down the hall towards the living room at the back where he kept the telephone. The tiny red light was winking on the answerphone and he stood for a moment, paralysed by the remorseless pattern of events beginning to unfold. The red light drew him in, on/off, on/off, and he stared at it, unblinking, chilled by the comfortless knowledge that answering machines and smoke detectors would very probably outlive him. Had Joannie stood here? Anticipated the receptionist’s voice? The abrupt summons to discuss whatever the radiographers had conjured from their CT scans? Had she felt like him? An otherwise cheerful bloke shafted by the traitor in his brain? Utterly fucking helpless?
He bent to the machine, pressed
PLAY
. It was Maddox. She wanted to know where he was, how it had gone. She was back in the flat. Ring me.
Please
.
Winter began to laugh. Minutes later, carrying the tray of tea back from the kitchen, he was still laughing.
He lifted the phone.
‘Me,’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t you come over here?’
She arrived within the hour with an armful of flowers
from a petrol station down the road. Already, in the shape of Jimmy Suttle and Cathy Lamb, Winter had sensed the shadow that serious illness casts around the invalid. People in the job, he thought, are tongue-tied, awkward; don’t know how to voice their concern. Too many direct questions invite a conversation they don’t want to have. Ignoring the subject completely is a bit of a cop-out. And so they tiptoe round you, over-cheerful, bright-eyed, burying their embarrassment under a mountain of clichés. It’ll be OK. You’ll survive. Just you wait and see.
Not Maddox. She put the flowers on the table, shed her coat and flung her arms around him. She wanted to know exactly what had happened at the hospital. She demanded a minute-by-minute account. With her bluntness and her curiosity, she made him feel he’d been somewhere immensely exotic, a traveller returning from a foreign land.
At the mention of the second set of scans, she looked troubled.
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘No.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’m fucked.’
‘Does that bother you?’
It was a wonderful question. Winter found himself laughing again. He loved this woman and when she was around – this close, this honest – he didn’t much care about anything else. The prospect of terminal disease, he thought ruefully, isn’t just terrifying. It can also bore you to death.
He gave her a hug. She wanted to know whether his head still hurt.
‘No.’ He gave it an exploratory shake. ‘Wouldn’t fucking dare.’
‘So what happens next? Only we’ve got some tickets to book.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Try me. We can fly Ethiopian Airways to Addis. It’s buses from then on. Change your life.’
‘So where are we going?’
‘Harar. They used to call it the Forbidden City.’
The name triggered a memory deep in Winter’s brain. Hararian, he thought. Maddox’s email address. All those messages in Wishart’s in-box.
‘Arthur Thingy.’ He beamed at her. ‘Am I right?’
‘Rimbaud.’ She kissed him again, then tugged him off the sofa. ‘You should be a detective.’
Later, with the steady drumming of rain at the bedroom windows, Winter asked Maddox about Wishart’s wife. Where did she live?
‘Wimbledon. They’ve just moved.’
‘You know the address?’
‘No, but I can tell you what the house looks like.’ Wishart, it turned out, had been looking for the right property since the back end of last summer. His wife, who was evidently well organised, had trawled the local estate agents, sending her busy husband a regular selection of likely prospects. These, Wishart would share with Maddox at Camber Court – part of the process, she now realised, of trying to get their relationship onto an altogether less professional footing.
‘He wanted
you
to help him choose his next house?’
‘It was a boast. Everything was a boast. It wasn’t the look of the place or the number of bedrooms or whether or not it had matching saunas, it was the asking price. Maurice wouldn’t give it a glance unless
there were seven figures across the bottom of the page. A million pounds plus and he might be interested.’
‘And you?’
‘I played along. Told him what an amazing opportunity he had – all that choice, all those period features. In the end I think it was his wife who made the real decisions. Which is why he played fantasy house with me. People like Maurice are often less secure than they like to think. For eight hundred pounds I could turn him into Mr Powerful.’
‘But he
is
Mr Powerful. Or that’s what you’ve told me.’
‘Overbearing, yes. Greedy, definitely. Impatient, irrational, single-minded – all those things. When you first get to know him, it all seems to add up, and that’s definitely sexy, like I’ve said. But get to know anyone and you start to figure out the real picture. He couldn’t handle this, for instance.’ She touched Winter’s head. ‘Show him a hospital and he’d run a mile.’
‘So would I. If I had a choice.’
‘But you’re different.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I do. Because I’ve sensed it from the start. In the end you think it’s all nonsense, don’t you? That’s nice. That’s me. That’s why I’m here. The boat’s gone down. We’re on the same life raft.’ She grinned at him, white teeth in the darkness. ‘So how good is that?’
Winter was lost but she was right. It didn’t seem to matter. He pulled her closer, felt himself stirring again. ‘You never told me about that new house of his.’
‘It’s a big place: sweet dormers in the roof, lovely windows, three storeys. There’s a wall at the front and big gates that he’s just had replaced. The photo I saw must have been taken in spring. There’s a huge
chestnut tree in the front garden, lovely old thing, full blossom.’
‘Wimbledon, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the name of the street?’
‘Home Park Road. He was always banging on about it. Backs on to the golf course.’ She propped herself on one elbow, looked down at him. ‘Why the questions?’