34
Carrigan called an emergency briefing. Constables came in from days off or paperwork or street patrol. There was a sense of purpose and anticipation in the air as they took their seats. There was none of the usual moaning, bickering and fidgeting.
Carrigan tapped his pen against the table as he waited for everyone to settle.
‘Emily Maxted met Father McCarthy in Peru last year.’
It got their attention the way he’d known it would. He remembered the look in Geneva’s face when she’d finished reading the diary, a stunned comprehension creeping into her features. ‘Father McCarthy was in charge of some kind of gated compound in the San Gabriel region. We don’t know yet what this compound was up to, what it was for, but it seems almost certain this is where the convent’s funds were being channelled.’ Carrigan stopped and waited for them to finish writing their notes. ‘We now know what connects Emily Maxted to the convent, but whether this has anything to do with the fire, I’m not so certain.’ He glanced briefly at Geneva and continued. ‘We’re maybe a step closer to understanding what the convent was involved in but, given that, I’m not sure we should be concentrating so hard on Emily Maxted. I think she’s a red herring. Yes, she knew the nuns. Yes, she was there that night. But that could be all there is to it.’
No one said anything, all trying to take this in, to realign the case along new parameters.
‘I really think that’s a bad idea,’ Geneva ventured. ‘We’ve just found the connection between Emily and the nuns and it all links back to Peru – the money, the visits, the missing nun. I think we should be focusing more on Emily, not less. I don’t think the nuns pissing off some dealer is enough to explain all this.’
He could feel them waiting for him to answer but he took his time, measuring what she’d said, testing it against logic and probability. ‘That’s all well and fine, Miller,’ he finally replied, lowering his voice. ‘But we have only a limited amount of resources, as you know, and we have to choose. We have to go with the odds.’ He wanted to see how she was taking this but her eyes were glued to her notebook.
Carrigan pointed to the photos of Viktor and Duka pinned to the whiteboard behind him. ‘We know the nuns had run-ins with local dealers in the alleyway behind the convent. We know the nuns were organising neighbourhood watch schemes and were leafleting outside known drug houses. A few weeks before the fire we have a lieutenant in Duka’s organisation visiting the convent three times. That same man was also watching the fire and assaulted me the next day in the ruins. Duka and Viktor are our main suspects and remain so. They have motive, means and opportunity, and we know from experience that this is how these kinds of organisations tend to settle their problems.’
He turned back to the whiteboard and unscrolled a large-scale map of
W
2. He pinned the map to the wall, then stuck four red pins into it. ‘I talked to someone in Organised Crime and what he tells me about Duka fits the profile of the type of killer we’re looking for.’ He pointed at the pins, a rough square marking the perimeter of Queensway. ‘Duka owns four properties on our patch, each a suspected stash-house, according to the drug squad. They don’t know which house he’s using at the moment. The Albanians change up every month or so to avoid being tracked. That said, if we can find which house Duka is using, it’ll get us closer to Viktor. If nothing else, a raid will rattle Duka, cut into his profits, and maybe make him realise that giving us the firestarter makes more sense than having us come back every week.’
‘Yeah, fine, but how are we going to find out which house is the current one?’ Karlson asked.
Carrigan shot him a dark look. ‘That’s the problem. We haven’t got the resources to hit all four simultaneously, and if we get the wrong one, it’ll give Duka and his men plenty of warning to clear the real house.’ He studied the map. ‘Four houses. All standard terraced properties on quiet streets. All single residences. One on Gloucester Terrace, one on Queensborough Terrace, one on Hatherley Crescent and one on Prince’s Square. Now, if we . . .’
‘Shit.’
Everyone turned to stare at Geneva. She looked down at her notes but there was nothing there. She flashed back to those moments outside the house and gathered her thoughts together.
Carrigan leaned forward, a curious concern darkening his face. ‘Miller?’
‘Hatherley Crescent. You said Hatherley Crescent, right?’ Geneva thought of the man behind the door, his silver teeth and black eyes.
Carrigan nodded.
‘That’s the one,’ Geneva said. ‘That’s the house we’re looking for.’
Now it was Carrigan’s turn to be surprised. He looked at the map, the red pin on top, as Geneva explained about the parking tickets issued to the SUV. She told them about ringing the doorbell the previous day, the expensive security set-up, the man who’d answered the door.
‘Are you sure?’ Carrigan asked.
‘It would be a pretty big coincidence if it wasn’t.’
Carrigan agreed. ‘Karlson? Get a surveillance team set up outside the house. I want them in place by tonight, when activity’s likely to be at its highest. If Viktor makes an appearance then we’ve got him.’
*
Geneva sat at her table and went through the convent files as the team mobilised and gathered, their excitement suffusing the incident room but making it hard for her to concentrate. She hoped the answer would lie behind those flaked painted doors on Hatherley Crescent but she felt the tug of the information at her fingers, the Peruvian connection now made real and immediate by Emily’s diary. She knew she couldn’t let it go just yet. There were more things to uncover, more stories and secrets and hidden lives to unravel. She thought about Father McCarthy visiting the convent a couple of hours before the fire, his sudden decision to check into rehab, and picked up the phone.
The editor of the
Catholic Tribune
remembered her and she remembered that something in his voice which had so beguiled her the first time.
‘We’re trying to locate a Father Callum McCarthy. The diocese told us he’s checked into a rehab centre and I was thinking the church must have its own facilities? They wouldn’t use public ones, right? I don’t suppose you would happen to know of any such centres or where I could find this kind of information?’
‘No . . . that can’t be right . . .’ Staples said, sounding faraway and confused, as if she’d just woken him from deep slumber.
‘What? They use public facilities?’
‘No, not that,’ Staples replied. ‘It’s just, well, I don’t see what Father McCarthy would be doing in such a place. As far as I know he’s teetotal.’
35
Carrigan got to the incident room early the next morning, avoiding the chattering constables and ever-growing pile of messages, and shut himself off in his office. He scanned through last night’s serials, scheduled the day’s actions, then picked up the phone.
He hadn’t heard the voice on the other end of the line for a long time, but the laughter that greeted him instantly erased all the lost years. They got through the pleasantries quickly, both knowing that Carrigan would only call if this was important.
‘You’re stationed in North Yorks now?’ Carrigan asked, though he already knew the answer.
‘Swore I’d never come back . . . but here I am.’ DI Lesh laughed but it was one of those laughs that held an edge to it, as much incredulity as mirth.
‘I need you to look at a name for me.’
‘Work or personal?’
Carrigan said nothing.
‘One of those, then?’ DI Lesh replied, the coded assent contained in the ensuing silence. ‘What’s the name?’
Carrigan looked down at the page in his notebook where he’d written Geneva’s ex-husband’s name. ‘Oliver Jones . . . anything you have on him, even rumours, suspicions . . . anything at all.’
‘I’ll call you back.’
Carrigan thanked him and put down the phone. He felt slightly bad for what he’d done, a little ashamed and grubby, but he knew that would pass. Geneva had told him she would deal with it herself, and that was fine and as it should be, but there was no harm in having a little back-up, just in case.
He began sorting through his in-tray, reams of useless leaflets and best practice lists, all the things he hadn’t got round to doing or had forgotten to, and then he saw what Berman had left for him, the convent’s donor list, several sheets of print-outs, the type smudged and barely legible. There was a further note attached, Berman saying he’d been looking deeper into the convent’s financial records and that the account the nuns were transferring the money to was held by something called the Tomorrow Foundation. Carrigan peeled off the Post-It note and went back to the donor list.
The list was made up of over four hundred names and the amounts donated were more often than not in the thousands. Holden had been right about that, at least. The convent had a lot of influential friends and deep pockets they could count on. Carrigan ran his eyes down the list, making a mental tally of the amounts, figures multiplying in his head, and he realised they’d been wrong in thinking that the convent’s finances were the result of some illegality – it was all here in black and white, legitimate and accounted for. As he went down the list, he recognised some of the names – names glimpsed in the society pages of the
Standard
, names of prominent backbenchers and sports stars, newspaper editors and property tycoons – a cross-section of London’s Catholic hierarchy, and then one name stopped him dead.
He stared at it, feeling his mouth go dry. The amount was not particularly high nor particularly low, but in keeping with the donor’s salary, a generous but not overly extravagant tithing. Carrigan separated the page from the others and read it once more as if unsure of his own eyesight, then folded it neatly in half and put it in his pocket.
He was thinking about what to do with this information when Geneva burst into his office.
‘Yes?’ He looked up from the screen, his eyes taking a moment to focus.
She took a step forward, a smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. ‘The surveillance van outside the house on Hatherley Crescent just spotted Viktor entering the premises.’
Carrigan got up from his seat, loose papers fluttering to the floor, his shirt catching on the end of the table. ‘Are they sure it’s him?’
Geneva nodded.
Carrigan crossed the room and picked up his jacket. He was about to put it on when he noticed a long jagged tear he’d not seen before. ‘Get a car and some uniforms.’
‘Already done it,’ Geneva said. ‘I told the surveillance unit to arrest Viktor if they see him leaving the premises but otherwise to wait for us to get there.’
‘Good work,’ Carrigan replied, examining the lining and the rip, his fingers running along the stitching, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘So what are we waiting for?’
She looked down at his jacket and said, ‘You.’
36
Carrigan stepped back as one of the uniforms swung the enforcer and splintered the door open, the sound strangely muted in the chill air. The front hallway of the house on Hatherley Crescent was gloomy and dilapidated, the paint chipped and cracked, the carpet peeling and measled with stains but four brand new CCTV cameras were mounted at regular intervals along the ceiling.
There were three doors on the ground floor, indistinguishable from each other, another hallway branching off and a wide staircase leading to the upper levels. Carrigan studied the surveillance cameras and saw that they were all angled towards the staircase. He looked down at the carpet, noting it was far more worn leading up to the stairs. He heard something move, a faint whirring susurration and he snapped his head up and looked at the cameras. They were no longer pointing towards the stairs. They were all pointing at him.
They rushed the stairs, the uniforms following, all pretence of stealth discarded. The stairs ended in a solid wooden door. Just as he got there, Carrigan heard the lock being engaged on the other side. He gestured behind him and one of uniforms shuffled past and swung the ram in a long deliberate arc. The door was no match for the enforcer, the wood and metal shearing away like tissue paper.
Two men were standing on the other side of the door. Neither one of them was Viktor.
One had a shaved head, a drunken sleepy grin on his face, and his fly was undone. The other man was wiry and sinewed as an old piece of leather, with a widow’s peak that dipped towards his nose. Both men had their arms up high in the air. The only other person in the room was a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk and staring at a computer screen.
Carrigan was momentarily disoriented. Had they somehow got the wrong house? It looked more like a dentist’s waiting room than a stash-house. There was calm pastel wallpaper and dimmer lights, potted plants and deep couches. A variety of pillows and coloured throws had been added to soften the atmosphere. Framed reproductions of Manet and Picasso prints hung on the walls. The uniforms were all looking at each other, their confusion transmitted in raised eyebrows and puzzled frowns.
Carrigan turned and saw the man with the widow’s peak studying him with a mild amusement, as if he’d bumped into an old friend after many years in some unexpected circumstance. The man’s top row of teeth were capped in silver and looked like shiny bullets lined up in a magazine. He was looking at Geneva with an easy familiarity and smiling.
‘Where’s the other man?’ Carrigan said. ‘Viktor? Where the fuck is he?’
The two men stared at him as if they didn’t understand English.
Two of the uniforms came running up the stairs. The sergeant looked tired and confused and angry. He told Carrigan they’d searched the basement and ground floor but there was no sign of Viktor.
‘Did you find any drugs?’
The man shook his head.
‘Upstairs it is then,’ Carrigan said, addressing the uniforms. ‘You find anything that looks like drugs, don’t touch it, radio me or DS Miller immediately. And make sure no one gets anywhere near a toilet. We don’t want the evidence flushed away.’ He waited until he was sure they’d understood and started up the stairs. The smell of cheap perfume and bleach made his sinuses swell as he reached the second-floor landing. There were three doors to either side of him and a staircase leading up to another floor. Carrigan told one of the uniforms to watch the stairs, then pointed to the door on his left.
They stormed into the room and stopped, and almost walked straight back out again.
The room was small and narrow with a single bed up against one wall and an armchair against the other. Loud shrill pop music screamed and wailed from a small radio. A woman was kneeling in front of the bed. A man was sitting on the mattress, head flung back and eyes squeezed shut, still wearing his suit jacket, trousers bunched around his ankles. There was a stack of neatly folded towels on the edge of the bed and a box of tissues. The girl continued for a few seconds then stopped abruptly, turning her head and finally noticing the policemen. She blinked twice and gulped and scampered on hands and knees to the far corner of the room.
The other two rooms on the floor and most of the rooms on the floor above were also occupied. The men were surprised, then indignant, quickly turning solicitous and sorry when they realised what was happening. The girls cowered and whimpered, seemingly more scared by the police than anything which had occurred within the room.
‘Something’s seriously wrong here.’ Geneva stood next to him. He hadn’t heard her come up and the sound of her voice made him jump.
‘I know,’ Carrigan scanned the long dark corridor. ‘We haven’t found any drugs yet . . .’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
Carrigan took the last door on the third floor by himself as the uniforms led the women and their pale-faced clients down to the waiting patrol cars.
He knocked but there was no answer so he tried the doorknob. On first glance he thought the room was empty and was about to turn back when he saw a slight ripple disturbing the sheets. A young girl with short black hair slowly unfurled from the blankets, rubbing sleep out of her eyes with tiny hands and stifling a yawn. She looked about thirteen. There was a grey raggedy Snoopy under her pillow and she clutched it tightly with her outstretched hand. She managed a faint smile then cast her eyes down to her feet and began unbuttoning her pyjamas. Carrigan told her to stop, repeating it softly when he saw the look of confusion and panic spreading across the girl’s face.
‘You not like me?’ she said, looking up, her eyes small pleading things.
‘Please, stop that.’ He took a couple of steps back to give her some space and then he saw her pouting her lips, jutting out her chest, and he turned away and slammed the door behind him. He told Geneva to call in social services then saw the uniformed sergeant coming down the attic stairs.
‘Your man’s not up there but I think you’d better take a look,’ he said, a dark rage boiling in his eyes. He was gripping his truncheon so tightly it looked like the skin on his knuckles was about to pop and Carrigan couldn’t help but like him a little bit more for that.
‘He’s got to be somewhere,’ Carrigan said. ‘He can’t have just disappeared. Find him.’
The officer nodded sombrely and Carrigan climbed the last set of stairs alone.
The door at the top had two five-inch deadbolts affixed to it. The metal looked worn and flaked and well used. Carrigan slid the bolts back slowly, his hands shaking. There could be nothing good behind a door which locked from the outside.
The attic had been converted into the girls’ sleeping quarters. There were seven mattresses dotted across the bare wood floor and a cracked sink in the far corner. Next to it stood a portable toilet, the kind you would find on building sites or at music festivals. The smell was the same too, mulchy and rotten, hanging flat in the stale air. The mattresses were old and thin, overlaid with a patchwork of stains and bereft of sheets. The pillows still held the shape of their occupants’ heads and the blankets were worn and frayed. There were two skylights but both had been panelled over with thick planks of wood, the nails hammered in tight against the windowframes. The room smelled of bad bone-shaking nightmares and four-in-the-morning agonies and he tried not to breathe the thick air, tried not to notice the stuffed rabbits and plastic Madonnas standing guard next to each mattress, the rolls of band-aids and lubricants.
DC Jennings came up behind him and took one look at the room. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, his face turning red and bright and his eyes blinking rapidly. ‘We’ve been through the whole house,’ he continued, getting his breath back, ‘and no sign of Viktor anywhere.’
‘What do you mean no sign of him?’ Carrigan turned so quickly that Jennings had to take a step back. ‘He can’t have just disappeared, can he?’
Jennings looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m afraid that’s what it looks like, sir.’
Carrigan sighed and tried to control his breathing. ‘Fuck! How can that happen?’
‘But we did find the drugs,’ Jennings said, his voice rising in pitch.
‘How much?’
‘Maybe four or five ounces, all bagged in individual wraps, quite a haul.’
Jennings seemed pleased but Carrigan wasn’t. ‘That’s not what we’re looking for,’ he snapped. ‘There should be much more. Unbagged. There should be scales and cash. I want you to go through everything, especially the office, any computers, hard drives. They’re going to say fuck all unless we have something on them we can use.’ He watched as Jennings walked slowly down the stairs, his body folded in on itself as if all the air had been punched out of it.
Carrigan closed his eyes, took a deep breath then snapped on a pair of gloves and started searching the makeshift bedroom.
At least seven women had spent their nights here. The mattresses were crowded together in one part of the room as if the proximity would allow them some kind of protection against their keepers, or maybe it was just warmer that way. There were no heating appliances in the attic, the breath emerging from his mouth in thick foggy clumps.
The girls had tried to make it home with what little they could scavenge and it gave even the most quotidian of objects a sense of pathos. He tried to imagine the lives these girls had led, the constant dread and physical pain, the any-time-of-day call to go downstairs and do whatever some man who paid his money wanted them to do. They would close their eyes and think of the fields back home just before Christmas, their parents hunched over the stove, the pet dog they’d left behind. Then, when it was over, they’d fake one of a million fake smiles and silently trudge to the bathroom, rinse themselves, and go back to this drab and dusty room to drown themselves in their pillows.