Eleven Days (27 page)

‘It’s the only way we’re going to find Father McCarthy,’ he replied, opening the bottom drawer. ‘And that’s more important than confidentiality issues right now.’ He went to the next cabinet, stopped and looked at her. ‘You have a problem with this?’

She shook her head and he turned back to the cabinet.

The files were arranged alphabetically. There were several Father McCarthys and it took Carrigan a couple of minutes to find the right one. A burst of footsteps sounded from the corridor outside. Carrigan quickly replaced the file and waited until they receded, holding his breath. Geneva stuck her head out the door, then gave him the all-clear.

The folder was thick and bulging with stray papers, photos and official documentation. It would have undoubtedly made for very interesting reading. A door slammed somewhere outside, followed by raised voices echoing down the corridor, getting closer. Carrigan flicked to the back of the file and looked at the last entry. It was a transfer form for Father McCarthy, dated 15 December and signed by Roger Holden. Carrigan scanned the photocopied sheet until he saw the address stamped in the bottom left-hand corner. He took out his notebook and started copying it down. Geneva glanced out the door and immediately popped her head back in, signalling that someone was coming. Carrigan finished writing and replaced the file in the cabinet. He crossed the room and showed Geneva the address.

She stared at it for a long moment and was about to say something when her phone rang. Carrigan’s beeper went off at the same time. They looked at each other silently. Geneva scanned the text Jennings had sent. She saw Carrigan fiddling with his phone, trying to access his inbox, and turned towards him. ‘They’ve found Nigel.’

They sat and waited on the cold metal benches while the pathologist got the body ready. Carrigan had booked their train tickets to Yorkshire for tomorrow and he was impatient to talk to Father McCarthy, his feet tapping the tiled floor. Orderlies came and went, their faces turned into blank expressions of boredom as a shield against the mounting horror of their days. Like emergency rooms, Christmas was the busy period in the morgue.

Geneva’s phone broke the silence. She ignored the sharp looks and narrowed glances and checked the display. There were no messages from Oliver. There were no messages from Lee. She’d sent Lee a text in reply to his. And then she’d sent another one because the first wasn’t quite what she’d wanted to say. But he hadn’t answered and she wondered if that part of her life was over too.

Milan was waiting for them downstairs, drinking from a large mug of milky coffee and flicking through a book in French. A radio was sitting on a shelf behind him, blaring fuzzy football commentary in what sounded like Serbian, a shock of cracking consonants and garbled imprecation, spluttered, spoken and shouted.

‘Ah, Mr Carrigan,’ Milan said, brushing back his hair and getting to his feet. ‘I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon. I sent your superior the latest . . .’

‘This is about the body that came in a couple of hours ago,’ Carrigan interrupted, his eyes scanning the humped tables, each corpse a mystery to itself and others.

‘Of course, I should have known that would be one of yours too,’ Milan said. ‘They all like this, your cases?’

‘That’s what your predecessor thought.’

‘And look where that got her.’

Carrigan closed his eyes. He felt frazzled and enervated, so tired he could barely stand straight. He knew it wouldn’t be long. Could feel it in every twitch and ping of muscle. Too much coffee, too little sleep and the spiralling data from the case all burning through his synapses like runaway horses. ‘Just tell me what you’ve got.’

‘Okay. Yes. Very interesting. I only managed to have a quick look but that tells me almost all I need to know. Your man did not die easy, someone certainly had their fun with him.’

Geneva exchanged glances with Carrigan, the giddy exuberance of only an hour ago replaced with a raw dread in her eyes as Milan walked over to the nearest gurney and pulled the sheet. Both Carrigan and Geneva had to swallow down their revulsion as they stared at what remained of Nigel the Nail.

It didn’t look much like a human body any more. There were small red marks and huge black swellings dotted across his torso and legs. He was missing two fingers, four toes and his right eye. His mouth had been sewn shut with fine white thread and in the dazzle of lights it looked as if he’d swallowed a spider-web. He vaguely resembled the man in the mugshots and photos. He barely resembled a man.

‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Carrigan asked.

Milan laughed disdainfully and lifted the corpse’s arms, the skin quivering like jelly as the broken bones settled within. Milan turned the arm around and they could see that the burns and marks stopped at Nigel’s fingers. ‘They made sure to leave his fingertips untouched,’ Milan said, ‘the fingers they left him with, that is.’

‘How long has he been dead for?’

‘Between twelve and twenty-four hours.’

Carrigan noticed the pathologist seemed distracted even as he was talking to them, his head tilting in a tell-tale gesture towards the radio whenever the announcer’s voice suddenly rose in pitch as it did now. Milan’s whole body stiffened. The radio blared and roared and the announcer shouted –
GOAL!
– a punctured holler that almost blew the speakers, the one word repeated like a burst of machine-gun fire, transcending all language and culture. Milan squeezed his eyes shut and sighed and turned back towards the body.

‘They took their time with him,’ he said, pointing to the long serrated ridge of scars and wounds along Nigel’s torso, a tapestry of burn and blister, the colours blending from pink to yellow to stark black. ‘This was done over a period of days, not hours, understand?’

Geneva’s head was spinning. ‘Tell me exactly what they did to him,’ she said, her voice distant and brittle.

‘What didn’t they, young lady?’ Milan sniffed, his lips disappearing behind his bushy black beard. ‘The people who did this, they were artists in their field. The Tintorettos of torture. The Picassos of pain. See those black and brown marks?’ Milan pointed to a set of curiously uniform wounds on Nigel’s torso. ‘Best guess is they used a cattle prod, and they used it repeatedly, mainly down below,’ he said, indicating Nigel’s groin. ‘There is not much left of the private areas,’ he pointed to the dark smear of bruises spiralling up both thighs. ‘They spent a lot of time on this region . . .’

‘Jesus.’ Geneva looked away but the bright gleaming metal surfaces and gargled sound of blood sluicing down the drain wasn’t much better. ‘How can anyone’s body stand so much pain?’

‘You’d be surprised at how much the body wants to survive even long after the soul has given up,’ Milan said. ‘Of course, it helps that whoever did this kept reviving him.’

‘Reviving him?’ Carrigan leaned forward, shocked by his own capacity to still be shocked by the acts of men.

Milan indicated a faint line of bruises along Nigel’s chest. ‘Those are from a defibrillating machine. This man was artificially revived several times so that he could face more torture. He was . . .’ Milan blinked, cocking his head towards the radio, his attention snared by the commentary. Carrigan glared at the pathologist, walked over and turned it off.

‘There’s only ten minutes left,’ Milan protested.

‘Good,’ Carrigan replied. ‘Gives you an incentive to hurry up and tell us what we need to know.’

Milan stared at Carrigan, then shook his head and turned towards the corpse. ‘They tortured this man with a variety of instruments. We’ll send the tool marks off to the lab but there’s not much doubt they’ll find these men used screwdrivers, chisels and pliers, as well as more sophisticated electrical devices. We’ll know better once I open him up, but it’s not going to be pretty in there, that I can tell from the outside.’

‘They did all this to get information?’ Geneva asked.

Milan shook his head, his eyes almost disappearing behind the black bags of skin couched underneath his lids. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? This has nothing to do with information. This kind of torture is way too extreme for that, the man wouldn’t have been able to speak. No, this was for fun, or for what some people call fun, or for something I don’t even want to think about.’

‘You’ve seen this kind of thing before, though?’ Carrigan said.

Milan looked down at the floor. ‘I thought that by coming to this country I wouldn’t see such things again . . . but nowhere is really different from anywhere else, is it?’

‘It was a professional job, then, in your estimation?’

‘Oh yes. Whoever did this has had plenty of practice.’

Carrigan flashed back to videos he’d seen of what the Mexican cartels did to their enemies – faces of children flayed and stitched to soccer balls left in their parents’ front garden, men naked and mutilated hanging from underpasses in the city centre, rows of severed heads in the desert. The cruelty and level of sophistication Milan was describing fitted. It felt like Duka’s work and it made him wonder if they’d underestimated Nigel’s role in this all along.

‘There’s something else,’ Milan said as he walked over to a silver wall-mounted table and picked up a small pair of scissors. ‘We did an initial X-ray and that’s when I noticed it.’ He squeezed his fingers through the tiny hoops and began to cut the thread which held Nigel’s mouth closed. His movements were delicate and fleet, belying his size and bearing. He unsnipped the last piece of thread and gently lowered the jaw, then angled the lights until he was satisfied. He bent over the gurney and carefully inserted his fingers into the corpse’s mouth. Carrigan and Geneva watched as he pulled his hand back out and opened it to reveal several burnt matches. 

She sat in the canteen and tried to focus on the food in front of her but all she could see in the red tangles of pasta were the twisted and torn remains of Nigel, the smell coming off his body, sour and earthy, the pathologist’s last words as he flipped the corpse over. She pushed the plate away, finished her coffee and went back upstairs.

Carrigan was in his office, the door shut. She checked on the constables and uniforms, making sure they each had their assigned tasks and duties for the day, then made her way to her desk.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what the Peruvian policeman had told her over the phone, that last whispered comment of his. She thought about the particular words he’d used and emphasised –
incidents
and
federal –
and then she was typing into the search box, her finger hitting the return key with a satisfying thunk.

She scrolled down the search results, surprised at how many there were. She opened a separate window for each article and spent the next hour reading about strikes and sabotage – pipelines vandalised in the high mountain night, mine equipment monkey-wrenched into obsolescence, bombs strapped to the backs of donkeys in the marketplace. There were articles saying that the Shining Path were back and the old ways about to resume. Other articles argued that the Shining Path were a spent force and that these incidents were nothing but random grievances played out under hot sun and pale sky. She read about corpses dipped in battery acid and children’s skulls placed along the highway like traffic markers. She learned about the cocaine corridors running across the dark jungle and threading through the ancient mountains, rival gang shoot-outs, army incursions, the endless and familiar spiral of blood and revenge.

She wrote down dates in a separate page in her notebook. Bombs, strikes, assassinations, kidnappings, drug hauls. She ordered the dates chronologically, then brought up the file for Sister Glenda’s trips in a new window. She remembered the dates she’d noticed in the pub before Oliver had turned up, before . . . she shook her head, took three deep breaths and focused back on her task. Her eyes flicked across the screen. Her pulse strained against her skin. Her mouth went dry. She felt the tug and urge for a cigarette but she ignored it as she compared the two sets of dates.

During the week of Sister Glenda and Sister Rose’s trip to Peru, a mine in the San Gabriel region had been shut down for three days due to a sabotaged generator. On Sister Glenda’s first return trip, a pipeline in the remote Acarilla range had been destroyed by a home-made explosive device. Sister Glenda’s third trip coincided with the kidnap of a company executive.

Geneva double-checked the dates. Each of Sister Glenda’s subsequent visits fell during a week in which an incident had occurred in the province. She looked up the incidents and saw they were all directed at mine and logging operations. She began to discern a pattern – a peaceful strike broken with hoses and tear gas and bullets, followed by an act of sabotage against that company’s property. She saw the gradual escalation, the inexorable drift from strikes and walk-outs to vandalised equipment to murder, and she wondered, once again, just what on earth had the nuns been up to?

The city never ended. You could look in any direction and there it was, chasing the horizon. And yet Carrigan could think of no other place he’d rather be than up here on the roof, alone, in the spray and slash of wind, twelve floors of activity below him and only the dark sky above.

He’d hated the new building when they’d moved in last year. The ergonomically planned cookie-cutter offices, the persistent smell of new carpet and paint, the constant hum of the air conditioners and computer monitors. And then he’d found the roof. No one else seemed to know about it, or care. You took the lift to the top floor, past Branch’s office and up a set of stairs, then through a door that said Do Not Open, and suddenly the city was gone and you found yourself alone in sky and wind.

He’d spoken to Karen again, a conversation rendered in hushed tones and silent expectation, and they’d made a tentative arrangement to meet up for Christmas dinner at her flat. It left him feeling a bit better as he unwrapped a bar of chocolate and watched London lying hidden under a soft blanket of snow. Days like these, you could almost forget the daily evils and petty feuds which occurred in the city’s shuttered houses, the lost and broken people dragging themselves through its cold closed streets.

The snow had begun again, small round fluffs falling at his feet and turning the air into a random dance of particles. Behind him, cars flashed on the elevated motorway, fleet and shiny, on their way to somewhere else. He remembered how Louise had always insisted he come outside with her at the first sign of snow. They would huddle in the hallway, donning thick coats and hats, and God, how he missed the electric sting of her excitement as they stepped out onto the street, her eyes and heart instantly ensnared by the wonder of falling things.

But he couldn’t make the memory last. The case came roaring back, scuttling his thoughts. The girls hadn’t talked. They’d had to release the suspects from the brothel raid for lack of evidence. Carrigan had contacted immigration and detailed Jennings to make sure the girls would be processed and fed and sent back to their own country and kin. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.

He thought about Geneva, how the state of Nigel’s body had shocked her – he could tell by her silence in the morgue and the way the skin above her cheekbones rippled as she stared at the torn remains. The torture bore all the hallmarks of Duka and the matches seemed a message directed at them. But what kind of message was Duka sending? Were the matches an indicator of Nigel’s guilt, Duka having heard about the raid and wanting no further interruption of business? Or were they a big fuck-you from the Albanian boss? And what did Duka and Nigel the Nail have to do with each other? Carrigan didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that if Nigel was indeed the arsonist then the trail and the case were, literally, dead.

But Nigel didn’t make sense. And he didn’t make sense just when things were beginning to make sense. If the nuns had been sheltering escaped women then the fire was an act of retribution and a warning to others. But Nigel kept poking at Carrigan like a stray burr. Nigel and Emily – the two pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit. Tomorrow he would go with Geneva to a small monastery high up on the North Yorkshire moors and finally talk to Father McCarthy and maybe he would understand a little more. He finished his last piece of chocolate as the stairwell door slammed shut, a harsh burst of sound ripping through the clean crisp air. Carrigan turned and saw DS Byrd coming towards him, a dark deranged figure flecked by blowing drifts of snow.

‘You bastard,’ Byrd yelled when he was twenty feet away, ‘you fucking bastard.’ Byrd was speeding up now, feet slapping against the asphalt, his face twisted and canted, arms raised wildly at his sides. ‘Idiot.’ Byrd leaped and threw himself against Carrigan.

Carrigan flew backwards, his arm scraping painfully against the rough gravel, pain shooting up his back, his vision blurring.

‘Get up, you cunt,’ Byrd screamed.

Carrigan’s head was a foot away from the twelve-storey drop down into the waiting snow. The wind felt like razor wire as it whipped across his torn skin. He rolled over on his side, away from the yawning ledge, and got to his feet warily, fighting a burst of dizziness and straightening his collar. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

‘I should be asking you the same question.’ It was obvious that Byrd had been drinking and that he’d been drinking for a long time. His face was flushed, his jacket flung open, his zip half undone. His breath was sour and rank and his hands were curled into tight fists.

Carrigan slowly moved away from the edge and steadied himself against the adjoining wall, getting his breath back, all the time keeping his eyes on Byrd. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Byrd hovered over him, the muscles under his shirt popping and flexing, his eyes blinking rapidly. ‘All fucking innocent now, aren’t you? You piece of shit.’ Byrd dived at him and Carrigan managed to sidestep most of the impact but not all. Byrd’s shoulder caught him on the collarbone and sent him spinning against the wall. The hard concrete crashed against his spine as Byrd pressed his left arm crosswise against Carrigan’s throat.

‘You screwed everything up. Jesus! Where the fuck was your head? I told you to tell me if you were going to do anything like this and what do I get? Fuck all from you and then I read the serials and see you’ve gone and busted one of the places we had under surveillance, one of the places I told you we had under surveillance.’ Byrd jammed the side of his arm deeper into Carrigan’s throat, the bone pressing hard against his Adam’s apple.

Carrigan was about to say something, then stopped.

‘You wanted me to go in, didn’t you?’ The realisation ran down his body in soft shuddered jumps. ‘You wouldn’t have been so free with the addresses otherwise.’ He looked for Byrd to deny it. ‘What? You couldn’t get enough for a warrant? You knew that once I spotted Viktor I’d go in, didn’t you? You were hoping I’d rattle Duka’s cage for you.’

Byrd pushed against him harder, his knee pressing deep into Carrigan’s thigh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You screwed up a major operation and you got everyone killed. Happy?’ He backed off and Carrigan managed to get his breath back, doubling over, his hands planted on his knees so that Byrd wouldn’t see them shaking.

‘What do you mean, I got everyone killed?’

Byrd shook his head, depleted by his efforts or by Carrigan’s ignorance, it was hard to tell which. ‘What the fuck’s the point now? They’re dead and you killed them.’

‘We closed down a brothel with thirteen-year-old sex slaves in it. That’s what matters. That’s what I care about.’

Byrd turned and spat on the ground, his breathing heavy and laboured. ‘Those bouncers you arrested – you know what’s going to happen to them? Haven’t talked, have they? Kept their mouths shut, denied everything, right? You’ve probably already had to let them go – tell me, how am I doing?’

Carrigan didn’t need to nod, the expression on his face confirming everything Byrd had said.

‘You know what’s going to happen to them the minute they’re released? Duka’s never going to be sure how much they said or didn’t say in that interview room. Better safe than sorry is how Duka got where he is. They’re probably dead already or strapped to a chair in a warehouse somewhere, getting more intimate than they thought possible with a Black and Decker. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about them, it’s what they deserve. But they’ll do the same to the madame, can’t trust her now, can they? Maybe she made a deal with you.’

Carrigan shook his head but he knew that Byrd was telling the truth and that he’d been too rash or too naive or just too damn stupid to realise this before he’d gone charging in. He thought of the madame’s son locked away somewhere in Albania and the way she couldn’t stop tapping her fingernails against the table as if she needed a constant reminder that this was all real and not some nightmare conjured up from fear and ancient dread.

‘We saved the girls,’ Carrigan protested. ‘While you were doing your surveillance and gathering evidence, those underage girls were being raped in there. We got them out and we’re going to make sure they get back home.’

Byrd seemed almost sorry for him when he replied. ‘Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to those girls when they get home?’ He laughed, a cruel derisive wheeze scraped from the back of his throat. ‘Home is run by these thugs. Guess what they’ll do to them when they reach Albania?’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Well, fuck that, this is on your head.’ Byrd grabbed Carrigan’s collar and cinched it between his fists. ‘Those girls will be picked up from the airport. They’ll be taken to a safe house somewhere in the country. They’ll be beaten and tortured for a month, maybe two, both as punishment and to see what you guys said to them, what they may have said to you. Then comes the good part. They’re damaged goods now, so they’ll be sold off for the hard stuff – you know, the guy who likes to bite off nipples when he comes, the one who likes to get inventive with instruments, to use animals and get off on the screams – they’ve entered the lowest rung of whore hell, thanks to you. Believe me, they’ll wish they were back there in the brothel.’

Byrd shoved Carrigan hard against the wall, shook his head in disgust and walked away, disappearing into a blind haze of dirty snow.