Agent of the State (34 page)

‘Who are the end users?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Well, it’s the London end you should be worried about,’ Robyn said, then seemed to check herself. ‘But fuck off trying to change the subject. We’re here to talk about Gabi. Promise me you’ll speak to her.’

‘Next time she drops by.’

‘No. Call her. Be a father. Take the initiative.’

‘I promise. And I mean it, Robyn, it really is good to see you.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Well, I haven’t come here to shag you, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Can we talk sex trafficking again for a minute?’

‘Seriously?’ Robyn laughed.

‘Everything you’ve got.’

‘You don’t stop, do you?’ Then she slid her glass aside and frowned, gently chopping the table top with both hands while collecting her thoughts. ‘For starters, you need to read the report we did for the EU. But there are several routes into the UK, as you probably know.’ She waited for Kerr to reply but he was studying his shoes. ‘A couple of weeks back we had a tip-off from a Dutch drugs trafficker who said a British police officer services one of the London connections, drives the truck himself.’

Kerr’s head shot up. ‘What sort of police officer?’

‘A corrupt one, stupid,’ she said, with a lopsided look. ‘Why is your profession so full of deceit?’

Flashbacks to the siege in Hackney seared his brain. The rubber-heelers had tasked Melanie against a corrupt undercover officer. The mission to identify and trap this individual could so easily have resulted in her death. Suddenly Kerr was back in the stronghold again, ice cold, wanting to kill Melanie’s captors. He tried to keep the urgency from his voice. ‘I mean, is he in the Met?’

‘No, and for once just listen. This particular trade route originates in Turkey, with girls snatched from the street to be sex workers in London. He’s absolutely specific about that. The cop makes the pick-up in Holland, hides them in metal coffins beneath the truck for the ferry trip to England and gets a free pass through Customs. The girls must be half dead by the time they get here.’

‘Why would a drugs trafficker tell Amnesty this?’

‘Because he deals drugs with the cop on the side but draws the line at this kind of abuse.’

‘What kind of drugs?’

‘High-quality cocaine, mainly,’ Robyn said.

‘What did Amnesty do with this? Who did they tell?’

‘Above my pay grade. One of our workers has a friend she calls a rubber-heeler, whatever that is.’

‘Anti-corruption Unit. Jesus, this is important, Robyn.’

‘Said she was going to call him off the record.’

‘Did she? Do you know if she made the call? Can you get me a name?’ pressed Kerr, sitting forward.

Robyn exhaled. ‘All I know is that the bad guy is unusual because he’s got a licence to drive those massive bloody beasts that shouldn’t be allowed on the roads.’

‘So, probably HGV-qualified to drive thirty-two-tonners,’ said Kerr. ‘Which narrows the field. Anything else?’

‘She thinks he works in some sort of crime-fighting unit, one of those useless bureaucratic monsters they refer to by its letters.’

Kerr’s jacket pocket was buzzing.

Robyn scowled. ‘Don’t you ever turn that bloody thing off?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Go on.’

‘Cosa something, as in Cosa Nostra.’

‘SOCA? Does that sound right?’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yeah, it does. Whatever it stands for.’

‘Serious Organised Crime Agency. It’s the old name for the National Crime Agency. Their boss just offered me a job to investigate this kind of shit. He’s a good man, a friend, and I want to look out for him. Can you get me some more, Robyn? It’s really important.’

‘So you keep saying. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘You’re a one-off,’ said Kerr, kissing her on the cheek and checking his BlackBerry in a single movement, ‘and I have to make a call.’

‘Another woman?’

‘It is, actually,’ he chuckled, reading Melanie’s surveillance update, ‘but it’s just work.’

Robyn laughed, almost choking on her wine. ‘Yeah, just like me.’

Thirty-nine

Wednesday, 19 September, 21.53, Kerr’s apartment

Kerr arrived home to find Justin high up in the hallway on his step-ladder. ‘Help yourself from the fridge,’ he said, flicking on the kettle.

‘Already did.’

Kerr saw the three miniature microphones as soon as he returned to the living room. ‘Where the hell did these come from?’ They were lying on the sofa, where Justin had lined them up like exhibits.

‘Telephone, table lamp and TV. Usual places,’ said Justin, scampering down the ladder. ‘I’m sorry, boss. They got here first, but I’m installing the camera anyway.’

‘Jesus. When did you find them?’

‘The scanner was beeping like crazy as soon as I walked into the room. They weren’t hard to track.’

Without touching it, Kerr bent down to examine the nearest device.

‘They’re not your bog-standard Met issue,’ said Justin, apparently reading Kerr’s thoughts, ‘but not hard to find.’

‘Jack and I searched Marston Street Monday night,’ said Kerr. ‘So let’s assume they’re bugging me because of that. Which means they broke in during the last forty-eight hours. I’ve hardly been home. Made no calls from here. All they’ll have is me snoring.’

‘Let’s not assume anything, boss. We had the meeting here Sunday, remember? That was a pretty free and easy discussion, as I recall. No holds barred. Including my ducking and diving inside Jibril’s safe-house and Julia Bakkour’s office.’

‘Which gives them what? The fact we know about Omar Taleb calling Julia on the day of the bombings.’

‘Plus the code – you know, the ED dash TA stuff – and the fact I found Jibril’s Sim card.’

‘Right,’ said Kerr, frowning as he rewound Sunday afternoon’s get-together. ‘And the dodgy history of that safe-house linked to Syrian terrorism in London.’

‘If the bugs were in here on Sunday they’ll have the lot, for sure,’ said Justin. ‘And there’s something else you have to think about as well, boss.’

Kerr was looking around, as if he might find another microphone Justin had missed. ‘Go on.’

‘Your daughter. They’ll know Gabi stays here.’

‘Yeah, of course.’ Kerr sounded as if he had already considered that possibility, but his eyes were still scanning the room. ‘I’ll give that some thought. So you think I’m clear now?’

‘As of this moment completely sterile. I’ll do another sweep in a couple of days.’

‘And they’ll know we found them.’

‘Yeah,’ said Justin. ‘Looks like we just upped the ante.’

Kerr showered, changed into jeans and a white T-shirt and made mugs of ginger and lemon tea. He handed one up to Justin and padded, barefoot, into the living room, checking the late headlines on Sky.

The frenetic pace since the bombings meant Kerr had a late night of catching up ahead of him. Now he set his laptop on the dining-table, with papers and other surveillance photographs scattered around it. Alan Fargo had been examining every detail he could steal about the bombing investigation and checking every hour of the surveillance logs. Kerr would work late into the night, going over the data, checking for anything 1830 might have missed and hunting for new leads.

After a few minutes he heard Justin packing away his tools. ‘All done, boss,’ he called, folding the step-ladder.

‘Cheers, Justin,’ said Kerr, walking over to give him a hand. ‘I owe you a pint.’

Justin pointed up at the camera, buried deep in the plaster cornice. ‘Tape’s on a thirty-six-hour loop,’ he said, picking up his toolbox, ‘and I left a couple of spares in the kitchen. If they risk a return visit we’ll have them.’

When Kerr sat down again there was a message in his inbox with an attachment. The sender was simply ‘A Friend’, the subject ‘VERITAS VOS LIBERAVIT’. Kerr opened the envelope. The attachment was a single colour photograph of a man raping a young woman on a couch. Both bodies were naked, with the man on top holding onto the arm and back of the chair. The attacker was heavily built, in his late forties, and visible only from behind and the left side. The girl, in her mid-teens, was arching her head back in a scream, and tears poured down her face.

In the background, almost out of the picture, there was a narrow black iron fireplace, the type that belonged in a bedroom. The mantelpiece was plain but there were tiles down each side in the shape of a trailing plant Kerr did not recognise, edged in small red diamond shapes.

Searching for identifying marks, Kerr spotted a gold signet ring on the man’s left hand, reflected in a mirror on the facing wall. He zoomed in on the image and could just make out some italicised letters. Squinting at the screen he immediately called Fargo in 1830 and put him on the speaker while he forwarded the email and talked through options around researching names of the great and the bad. ‘I have to know who this guy is, Alan.’

‘I’m looking at it now,’ said Fargo, and Kerr could hear him cursing under his breath. ‘And we need to find out who the hell sent it. I’ll get it out to Justin.’

‘He just left here,’ said Kerr, ‘so he’ll still be on the road back to the workshop.’

Waiting for Fargo to get back to him, Kerr played with the laptop, fruitlessly trying to identify the originator, before conceding it was a job for Justin’s team. Then he wasted fifteen minutes zooming into every fragment of the image, studying each detail of the bodies and surroundings, before the solution hit him like a train and sent him speed-dialling Jack Langton.

Langton was with Melanie in the OP in East Ham. ‘Jack, cast your mind back to our visit to Marston Street, when you had a look upstairs.’

‘What’s up?’

‘I’m trying to place a photograph. Go to the smallest room.’

‘I’m there. And it’s creepy.’

‘Was there an old sofa-bed?’

‘No. Completely empty, like I said.’

‘How about a fireplace?’ He could almost hear Langton’s brain whirring and, in the background, Melanie’s voice as she spoke quietly into the electronic surveillance log.

‘Yup. With honeysuckle painted on square tiles. They stood out because the room was so bare. There was a mirror too.’

‘That’s my next question.’

‘Fixed to the wall. I remember that because the actual glass was in rubbish condition, you know, kind of mottled with the silver backing coming through. But the frame was ornate, all swirly gold, looked like it deserved better. Oh, and there was a crack in the glass, bottom right, I think. How’s that?’

Kerr studied the photograph again, confirming the detail he had already memorised. ‘Spoken like a true surveillance professional.’

‘So what’s the story?’

‘I think we just found our victim.’ Kerr’s BlackBerry showed an incoming call from Alan Fargo. ‘Let me get back to you.’

‘John, I think we’re onto something here,’ said Fargo, straight away. ‘The marking on the ring was a set of initials: “RGA”. I tried Googling it, then gave up and got into the commissioner’s library for the old copies of
Who’s Who
. Had to go back a few years but
there’s a Ralph Godfrey Attwell QC, born 1929.’

‘Too old . . .’

‘. . . and very dead,’ said Fargo, ‘but he has a son, Robert James, under-secretary of state in the Foreign Office.’

Kerr was suddenly alert. ‘Who wears his father’s signet ring?’

‘I reckon so. Hang on a sec.’ Kerr could hear Fargo shuffling books on his desk. ‘I’ve borrowed the lawyers’ list. Robert James Attwell is also a barrister, left Gray’s Inn on secondment to the Civil Service and stayed. And listen to this, he was in the Ministry of Defence for a while but made his name in the Foreign Office. The man’s a specialist in international law, John.’

Forty

Friday, 21 September, 10.43, New Scotland Yard

On Friday morning, Paula Weatherall sat at her desk behind a thick blue ring binder stuffed with briefing papers. Meetings of the Terrorism Committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers, known as ACPO, took place quarterly, each UK region hosting the meetings in rotation. For Weatherall, the expensive dinner in a local hotel the evening before the meeting, usually after a long drive from London, was always a drag. The toasts, vacuous speeches and male pecking order gave it a cliquey, quasi-Freemasonry feel. A glance at the seating plan warned her to expect an evening of sly politicking and red-faced your-room-or-mine sexual harassment.

Next Wednesday’s meeting in Birmingham, she could tell from the agenda, would be even longer than the dinner. She was less than a third of the way through the papers when Donna buzzed. ‘I said no calls.’

In the outer office Donna had Weatherall on the speaker. She raised her eyebrows and winked at Kerr, on his way to see Bill Ritchie next door. ‘It’s the chairman of the National Crime Agency,’ she replied, as Kerr disappeared into Ritchie’s office. ‘Shall I say you’re too busy?’

Weatherall could tell from the echo that Donna was up to her usual games. ‘Of course not. I’ll take it now . . . Sir Theo. Good morning.’