Price to Pay, A (19 page)

‘OK, I’ll look out for it. Anything else? I need to—’

‘That’s all, thanks.’ O’Dowd cut the call and immediately turned to Sullivan. ‘I want two officers on the next flight over to Islamabad. No way I’m leaving this with that clown. You can decide who goes. Now, DS Fairfield, what is it?’

He moved round the table. ‘CCTV from the lobby of the sheltered housing place where Libby Williams lived.’

O’Dowd looked hopeful. ‘Does it show Haziq?’

‘Not Haziq. Someone, but not Haziq.’

Officers shuffled to the side so Fairfield could sit next to O’Dowd. Immediately, people were out of their seats and crowding round behind him. The acuteness of the angle Iona found herself at meant the screen was little more than shifting patterns of light.

Fairfield clicked the pad. ‘Here he is, entering the lobby at seven thirty-six, that’s eight minutes ahead of us.’

Iona’s teeth clenched. Eight minutes.

‘Now watch, see that? The bastard walks in and gives the camera his middle finger; he knew this footage would be viewed.’

O’Dowd’s elbows came down on the table with a bang. ‘Play it again.’

‘Sir?’ A detective spoke up on the far side of Fairfield. ‘Can you freeze it as he’s approaching the doors? Before he keeps his head down. I might know who that is.’

Fairfield fiddled with the keyboard and moved his hand away. The officer moved closer, regarding the screen intently. ‘I think … I don’t know. I worked for Stockport Division before here. We had a serial burglar – and that really, really looks like him. Bloke called Liam Collins. A total shitbag.’

I
ona was shutting down her computer. The two officers chosen from Sullivan’s team had each gone home to hastily pack a bag. At least they can get some sleep on the flight, she thought as waves of emotion washed through her. Strongest among them was a nagging sense of doubt. The investigation just didn’t feel right. O’Dowd seemed to her more and more like a man blundering about in the dark, hands hopefully scrabbling for a light switch.

Now the theory was Haziq was working with Collins. Between them, the two men were murdering people like it was a competition between them. Iona could see Collins as a killer – a miserable childhood spent between Manchester and Blackpool, spells with foster parents and in care homes, school drop-out, long record for burglary, assault, racial abuse, ABH, GBH. He’d then kept out of trouble for almost five years, only to reappear in the old people’s home lobby, all his old defiance back.

What Iona had a problem with was someone like Haziq working with someone like Collins.

A disconsolate sigh from across the table broke her thoughts. Martin. Did he feel it, too? This impression of having taken a wrong turn, of going off track. She looked across to see his head was bowed. His green biro was balanced between his finger and thumb, waggling back and forth as he struggled over something. She was still surprised he’d chosen to move to the desk opposite her while they were working together: as the more junior officer, she’d assumed that inconvenience was coming her way.

She cocked her head. He was looking down at a copy of that day’s paper. He was on the puzzles page.

‘You any good with these things?’ he asked, glancing up once the question was out.

‘What is it?’ she replied noncommittally.

‘Su-bloody-doku. I keep having a crack at them. Always end up giving up.’

‘Which paper?’

He flipped it over to check. ‘
Manchester Evening Chronicle
.’

She sat up. It wasn’t like Martin to ask for help. Even if it was just a newspaper puzzle. ‘They can set quite nasty ones. Regional papers don’t, normally.’

‘You sound like an expert.’ He gave her a quick grin. ‘It’s the top row. My mum always says if you can crack one row, it all falls into place.’

She wanted to say that depended on a few other factors. ‘You realize it’s not far off three in the morning? It’d probably be quicker to wait outside the all-night garage and get today’s edition – it’ll have the answers for that one inside.’

He laughed. ‘Lateral thinking. I like it. But seriously, this’ll just bug me.’

‘Let’s have a look, then.’

He folded it over and spun it across. She stopped it with one palm, scrutinizing the numbers before her. As she suspected, it wasn’t hard. But telling Martin that would probably only dent his ego. He’d mucked it up straightaway by putting a three in at the corner. No way was that right. ‘Whoever sets these things is so sneaky.’ She pretended to agonize over it for a few seconds longer. ‘How about if you swap the three in the corner for a five? Will that help?’ She quickly completed that corner for him and passed it back. ‘Does that work?’

He looked at it for a while and eventually smiled. ‘Eight goes in on the other side. I think we’re winning. Nice one.’

‘My pleasure.’ She could feel his eyes lingering on her.

‘So, we’re checking out this care home first thing tomorrow?’

She met his eyes. ‘Yup.’

He checked around: only a few other detectives were at their desks. None was in earshot. ‘Do you think we’re wasting our time? I can’t help feeling we are.’

Now he’s confiding in me. Was it for real? ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked quietly.

He moved the paper to one side. ‘Nirpal Haziq.’

‘What about him?’

He hunched forward, voice low. ‘He doesn’t feel right to me.’

She raised her eyebrows. Then why the hell, she thought, did you cut me down back there when I raised the question of how he got to Poynton?

‘I’m sorry.’ He briefly fluttered a hand. ‘That comment in the progress meeting just popped out.’

‘Even though you also doubt he’s the person we should be looking for?’ She recalled his condescending tone when he’d spoken up. ‘You just wanted me to look clueless in front of everyone?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ His face altered slightly. ‘Well, I did a bit. But you were only too happy to make me look a twat in the offices of CityPads.’

She frowned. What was he on about?

‘When I made that joke? The woman asked where our uniforms were and I said it was a dress-down day. At which point you said not to listen to me. You were all a regular team, I was an oddball. Full of it, according to you. Remember?’

She couldn’t dredge up exactly what she’d said. Wasn’t it just banter to set the women at ease? ‘You took that to heart? Really?’

Now he looked cross. ‘Iona, this isn’t my team. I’m with Palmer, normally. The others don’t know me. You left me looking like a right prat.’

Guilt took hold. So this was what it was about. My God. Part of her wanted to laugh at how ridiculously sensitive he was being. But at least he could be sensitive, unlike so many of the blokes in the unit. She found herself looking at him in a new way. ‘Well … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I thought it was just mucking about, trying to release a bit of the tense atmosphere when we all came trooping in.’

‘It was – but you didn’t need to start making me the butt of your jokes. You of all people: you know what it’s like being the new kid. Not easy, is it?’

She felt her throat tighten. That was a reference to when she’d joined the unit under DCI Wallace. Her boss who, it transpired, had done his best from the very start to make sure her career in the CTU never got the chance to even start. And all because he was racist. Probably a misogynist, too. ‘I think that was a bit different.’

‘Was it? I don’t know … I mean, the odd whisper goes round, but I’ve never really heard what actually happened between him and you.’

She started gathering her things as quickly as she could. ‘Yeah, well. It was different, OK?’ Her voice was raw and she could feel a prickling in her eyes as it all started coming back. Damn it!

‘So what did happen? Tell me.’

The tricks he’d played to turn opinion against her. She could see once again the little Blu Tack figure he’d fashioned of her. Its oversized head and tiny, pointy breasts. All her colleagues laughing as – afraid to appear like she couldn’t take a joke – she placed it on top of her own monitor. She stood, bag in hand. ‘It’s not something I want to talk about.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘Iona?’

The softness in his voice drew her eyes back to his.

‘I’m not accusing you of anything. Really I’m not. You understand that, don’t you?’

With a single nod, she turned and made for the doors. She wanted him to know the truth. She wanted to describe how Wallace had dug out a newspaper clipping that mentioned the nickname from her school hockey team: The Baby-Faced Assassin. Only Wallace had pared it down to just Baby. The runt of the team. The token female, half-Pakistani, at that. Their little mascot, never to be taken seriously. Certainly never to be one of the team. Never confided in, relied on, accepted.

She was halfway across the car park when her phone started to ring. Martin’s mobile. She toyed with ignoring it. But his parting comment had – what? Showed a little empathy? Perhaps she had misjudged him. Maybe he wasn’t such a backstabber. ‘Iona here.’

‘Hey, listen, sorry if I upset you.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘You seemed pretty pissed off when you shot out the door.’

She came to a stop. ‘It wasn’t you, all right? It’s what you were talking about. It’s still hard for me, you know, to deal with it.’

‘OK, that’s fair enough. I just wanted you to know that, from what I can gather, the bloke was an utter bastard to you.’

His words brought fresh tears to her eyes. Blinking them back, she sucked in a lungful of air. It was still night, but a bird was singing somewhere. A starling or something. Fooled by the perpetual dawn of the streetlights, the thing was warbling with all its might.

‘Iona?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re still there?’

‘Still here.’ She closed her eyes. And you don’t know how much you saying that means. ‘See you bright and early.’

‘You know, Iona, us two working together? I reckon we could make quite a team.’

The pair of binoculars trained on Iona from the darkened office building on the other side of the main road were lowered. ‘I think that’s Detective Constable Iona Khan.’ The man traced his finger along the row of photo identities. ‘She’s in DCI Roebuck’s team, reporting to Superintendent O’Dowd.’

The man in the Redskins baseball cap kept the lens of the camera on her. ‘She’s cutting the call. Did you get it?’

The matchbox-sized device concealed at the base of the perimeter fence of Orion House’s main car park was no more than thirty feet from where Iona stood. While she’d been speaking, her mobile phone signal was being relayed to the TETRA scanner on a table in the back of the unlit office. Numbers flickered on the glowing panel on its side.

‘We had long enough,’ the man sitting beside it murmured. The apparatus he was gazing at had been made in America and was authorized for use only by its intelligence services and certain other countries it chose to equip.

A moment later, the encrypted signal had been cracked. ‘We’re in,’ he announced. ‘Her number and the one she was just connected to.’

After capturing the registration of the car the female detective unlocked, the man in the baseball cap turned round. ‘Then let’s hear what was being discussed.’

T
he headlights of Liam’s car shone briefly through the kitchen windows as he swung on to Nina’s drive. She immediately stubbed out her half-smoked Sobranie in an ashtray already crowded with filters. He’d rung ahead to say the visit had been a success – but only just. Her Dell had been in the old woman’s flat which, fortunately, was on the ground floor; he’d been forced to escape through a window when someone had started knocking on the door.

Back in his car, he’d passed a police vehicle racing in the direction of the home. So he’d turned round and driven back past the house. His suspicions were correct: blue lights were flashing on the driveway and, even before the care home was out of sight, two more, unmarked, vehicles had raced up the short drive. It meant the police were closing in. They needed to get out of the country as fast as possible. He opened the kitchen door and walked towards her.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she hissed, snatching the laptop from his hands and placing it on the breakfast bar. It was hers. Absolutely no doubt about it. Her eyes lifted to the ceiling with relief.

He watched her as she breathed out, arms dangling limply at her sides, fingertips twitching minutely. Like she was tapped into another world, communicating with the gods. Finally her head turned to him and she smiled.

‘You’ve done well, Liam. We’re safe.’

‘You wanted to know where I’ve been?’ He shook his head. ‘Driving through country lanes shitting myself. I nearly didn’t come back, Nina. Nearly just did one. We’re not safe. They’ve almost worked this out. I didn’t know if they might already be here when I drove up the drive.’ He felt a muscle in the corner of his mouth spasm and tried to turn it into a bleak smile. ‘I did her as well, Nina.’ He regarded the laptop as if some element of her lived on within the machine. The organ music. ‘They can’t catch me for this. I’ll not die in prison.’ His cheek muscle fluttered again and he pressed his thumb against it, crushing the flesh against his molars. ‘I fucking won’t.’

She stepped up to him, brushed his hand away from his face and gently cupped his cheek. Her thumb moved back and forth across the spot of skin that had taken on a life of its own. ‘Do not worry. Everything is arranged.’

‘What’s happening with the flights?’

She lowered her hand to gesture at a stack of bags by the dining table, the holdall full of hair extensions balanced on the top. ‘You need to pack some things. Not much; you won’t need much. A plane is coming for us tomorrow at four, the private airfield out near Woodford.’

He looked out of the window. ‘A private flight. You arranged that?’

She nodded. ‘All the paperwork from the office I’ve put in the firepit by the patio. There are boxes of files there, too.’ She opened the laptop and turned it on. The wallpaper image was different. She tried her password but it didn’t work. How silly to think she could check the hard drive for the information that meant so much. She closed it. ‘Burn this, too. Take a hammer to it, then burn it. Along with all the files. Everything.’