Eleven Days (30 page)

Donna was sitting at a corner table staring blankly at the snow, a cup of coffee going cold in her hands. When she saw Carrigan enter the cafe, her eyes softened and she brushed back a twist of stray hair as she got up. She was wearing a blue-and-white jumper and a brown skirt that curved and clung to her figure. They stood there for a long moment not saying anything, their eyes locked together, and then Carrigan coughed and broke her stare. ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

Her smile was deep and warm. ‘I was so glad when I got your call,’ she said, and stepped aside to let him sit down. Their bodies brushed lightly against each other as he shuffled past her.

They sat and sipped their coffees and watched the people stop and drink and make jokes with the baristas and wish them happy Christmas. He told her about Emily and what she’d been up to. ‘She was trying to do good in her own way and she was killed because of it.’

Donna wiped her eyes and smiled and took a sip of her coffee. Carrigan rested his palm on her elbow. ‘I’m sorry.’

Donna shuddered, a slight tremor that Carrigan could feel leaking through her arm. ‘Thank you for telling me about Emily. I know it’s a small thing but you don’t know how much it means to me.’ Her mouth was close to his, her breath sweet with coffee.

‘She was a brave girl,’ Carrigan said and, before he could react, Donna leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek, her lips soft and warm and wet against his skin. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, leaning back, her face blushing. ‘You know, that day by the pond, that was my only good day since . . .’

‘I know.’ Carrigan smiled softly, got up and walked away.

He waited for the bus but was too impatient to stand around so he started walking, trying to burn off the excess energy in the gathering storm. He could barely see a few feet in front of him but he didn’t mind, enjoying the sting and melt of the snow against his face and thinking about Donna’s last words, the residual heat of her kiss on his cheek. He didn’t notice the SUV stopping fifty feet ahead of him nor see the man get out.

He looked down at the man’s hands and all thoughts of Donna’s long hair and shy smile were instantly erased. The gun was pointing at his stomach and Viktor’s eyes were hard and sharp. ‘Get in.’

Carrigan stood frozen.

‘I said get the fuck in.’ Viktor used the gun to gesture to the passenger seat. Carrigan saw that it had been pushed back to its limit. He felt the barrel press up against his flesh and he leaned in and was about to sit down when Viktor shouted, ‘On the floor!’

He crouched down on his knees in the scant space of the SUV’s footwell, knowing that this was the crucial moment. Once they were both in the car his chances of escape were virtually zero. His only opportunity would be when Viktor made his way across to the driver’s side.

Carrigan steadied himself and rehearsed how he would do it. Wait until the Albanian sat down, when his body and aim were out of line. He started a deep breathing cycle to calm his heart and still his hands.

Viktor looked down into the car, smiled as if he’d just read Carrigan’s mind and smashed the butt of the gun against his head.

The feel of the gritted road beneath him. The swelling pressure in his head. The smell of crushed cigarettes and cracked leather.

Carrigan opened his eyes and looked around. He was crouched in the footwell, squeezed into a space too small for a man half his size. His wrists had been secured with a plastic snap-tie, his fingers already numb and swollen.

‘Viktor.’

The man didn’t flinch or react to his own name. The effort to speak caused a new wave of nausea to rise through Carrigan’s throat and he fought hard against the weight of his own body as it tried to sink back into blackness. The dark smeared sky stretched above him. He could see individual snowflakes smash against the passenger window and dissolve like tears.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

Viktor turned towards him for a split second and hissed, ‘Shut up!’

Carrigan tried to ignore the pain creeping up his legs. His knees were almost touching his chin and the enforced position was starting to pull at muscles he never knew existed, torquing his spine and chest, making each breath something to be gasped and fought for. He could taste his own blood in his mouth. He thought of what had been done to Nigel and wondered if they had a special place for that sort of work and if that was where Viktor was taking him.

The sudden pull of gravity told him they were ascending a motorway ramp. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he realised they must be heading out of London, the ramp most probably the M40 scrolling out to the darkened west. He tried to identify the buildings as their roofs passed in a blur through the passenger window, but they were only flashes in the night, dim and unrecognisable.

The road levelled and their speed picked up. Carrigan felt the sour taste of vomit in his throat and swallowed it back down. His heart was hammering away, a deep rumble through his chest. He remembered the feel of Donna’s kiss on his cheek, the sadness weighing down her eyes, the way he’d walked into Viktor’s trap.

‘The police will be following you,’ he said but he knew they wouldn’t even realise he was missing until morning.

‘Shut up,’ the man repeated.

The fact that Viktor was unconcerned about showing his face made Carrigan uneasy – he remembered DI Byrd’s warnings about what Duka and the Albanians were capable of and that snowy morning in the pub, the smell of beer and damp wood and old men, seemed like a lifetime away.

The car began to decelerate, a deepening hum as Viktor spun the wheel, and they were suddenly bumping along an unpaved track, the darkness swallowing everything.

Viktor stopped the car, looked down at Carrigan and gestured with the gun.

‘Get out slowly,’ the Albanian said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ he added. ‘Don’t make me have to shoot you.’

Carrigan wondered if this was the moment, if this was to be his last and only chance. He uncurled slowly and stepped out of the car. He lost his footing on the soft ground, expecting concrete not earth, and righted himself just in time, about to make his move, when he felt the cold kiss of the gun against his head and he didn’t know how Viktor had got out of the car and across so quickly.

‘Over there.’ Viktor pointed towards a dark form at the edge of their vision. Carrigan began walking towards it, the man at his back, the snow falling softly on his face.

They were in an allotment in the middle of a large field. Carrigan could see the dividing fences and square lots to either side. He saw the shed they were heading towards, a rickety wooden structure pitched at the end of the allotment. He felt the snow melt through his shoes and soak his feet, the chill wind cutting through his clothes. He walked slowly, grudgingly, knowing he’d been wrong, and that the chance had come and gone and now there was only him, the man, the gun‚ and the dark interior of the shed.

‘Stop here.’ Viktor took a step forward, reached into his pocket and pulled out a long serrated knife. He thrust the blade at Carrigan and cut. The blood flowed back into Carrigan’s fingers in white-hot needles as the broken snap-tie fell to the ground.

‘Open it and step inside slowly,’ the man commanded and Carrigan did what he said.

The shed smelled of wet soil and mould, a deep fungal stench. Viktor closed the door behind him and suddenly the world was muted and all Carrigan could hear was his own heart.

‘Sit on the floor. Cross your legs underneath you and sit on your hands.’

Carrigan winced as he followed the Albanian’s orders. In this position it would be almost impossible for him to make any quick movements or try to escape. Viktor knew exactly what he was doing. All around them tools were hanging on the walls, rusty scythes and pruning shears, spades and rakes and hammers, root vegetables black with mould stacked up high in one corner.

‘What do you want from me?’

Viktor pulled a folding chair from where it was propped up against the wall and sat down opposite him. ‘I want you to listen,’ he said, his voice slow and measured.

Carrigan dropped his head, his eyes searching the floor for anything he could use, a loose nail, a piece of garden equipment, a sliver of broken glass, but there was only the bare earth.

‘You need to stop this thing you’re doing,’ the Albanian said. ‘You need to stop right now.’

‘Stop what?’ Carrigan stalled.

‘This investigation of yours. The raid on our premises. We had nothing to do with the fire, understand? You’re getting in the way of business and no one is happy about this. Now you plan to do more raids, more trouble, this is something I think you need to reconsider.’

Carrigan wondered how Viktor knew about the forthcoming raids, planned only that morning. ‘I have a job to do and I’m going to do it until it’s done.’

‘I thought you’d say that.’ Viktor sounded exasperated as the wind shook the timbers of the shed, moaning and whistling through the cracks. ‘But maybe you care for your partner more? The blonde woman? She can be halfway across Europe by tomorrow morning if I give the order. The men back home in the villages, they will greatly appreciate her, I think.’

Carrigan said nothing, his tongue frozen, his eyes hooded. He looked up at Viktor. ‘You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with the fire and yet you threaten me? We know what happened. We know what you did and why you did it.’

‘You know nothing,’ the man sneered.

‘We know that the nuns were sheltering escaped women. Women your organisation was selling and raping. We know you made several visits to the convent, we even have you on tape. Emily Maxted and the nuns were helping girls escape from your clutches and you couldn’t bear that, could you? Women getting the better of you, ruining your business? So, you sent one of your men to the convent and solved your little problem.’

Viktor’s laugh was deep and sonorous as it reverberated around the dark interior of the shed. ‘That’s what you think?’

‘That’s what I know.’

‘Really?’ Viktor shook his head. ‘This Emily you talk about, your victim, well, did you know that she killed one of my men?’

Carrigan’s eyes widened. ‘What did you just say?’

‘Your victim, your
innocent
victim, is a murderer. She killed Bratislav and she had to pay.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Carrigan thought back to Father McCarthy’s words, how things had gone wrong, the blood on Emily’s clothes.

‘These nuns and this girl, you were right, they were helping women who’d escaped. But that was not enough for them. They decided to take it a step further. Emily and her friend jumped my men twice and took the girls from them. We started using two-man teams. Emily and her accomplice appeared outside one of our properties on Old Street. They surrounded my men and demanded they release the girl. As you can imagine, my men refused. Then, this Emily of yours, from nowhere she leaps forward and suddenly she has this knife in her hand, this big kitchen knife, and she stabs my man. Not once, but several times.’

‘How do you know this?’ Carrigan said, feeling his stomach drop.

‘I was there. I saw my friend get stabbed, holding himself in, his guts pouring out, and Emily didn’t stop. Her mouth was open and she was grinning. Her eyes were blazing as she plunged the knife in again and again. Her accomplice held me, the woman ran off, but Emily wouldn’t stop until her friend had to grab her, wrestle the knife away and slap her face to calm her down. Bratislav crashed to the ground. Emily picked up the bag he was carrying, then ran back to the van. I stood there and watched my friend die because of her.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yes, this is your innocent little victim. This is the kind of woman she was. I do not get scared of much but I was scared of her. She was crazy, she loved it, you should have seen her face.’

‘The bag? What was in the bag?’

‘Cocaine,’ Viktor replied. ‘For the customers. Bratislav was dropping off the brothel’s weekly supply.’

‘You’re not exactly convincing me of your innocence,’ Carrigan said, the images whirling through his brain, half-remembered conversations with the priest and the Maxteds. ‘Everything you’ve told me just gives you more reason to have wanted her dead. If you’re so innocent, what were you doing in the ruins of the convent the night you attacked me?’

Viktor shrugged. ‘Duka had us watching the convent. He wanted to know what was happening, what the police were doing, whether there was anything there that could lead back to us. We saw you that night, we didn’t know who you were, it was too late for an official visit and you were alone. We thought you might be Nigel, the man who’d helped Emily.’

‘You’re digging yourself a deeper hole as we speak.’

‘Wrong, my friend. You think we’re stupid? You think we’re
that
stupid? We wanted the girl, this Emily, and we wanted the man with her, but the nuns were not our concern.’

‘The nuns were helping shelter your women.’

The Albanian laughed. ‘Girls are cheap, detective, in fact you could say they are less than cheap, they’re free. So what if a few escape? This is the price of business. It is much easier for us to get ten new girls than chase down one escaped whore.’

‘But you would want to teach them a lesson? Isn’t that how you work? You would want to teach the nuns a lesson so that others don’t get the same idea.’

‘Believe me, if we had wanted to teach them a lesson, you would know about it. We would not give them the easy option of dying in flames. We would make their deaths long and drawn out and we would leave much evidence of suffering on their bodies.’

‘Like you did with Nigel?’

‘He was involved in the killing of one of our men, he got exactly what he deserved. But to burn down a convent? It would be a stupid business decision, put the spotlight on us and bring us unwelcome attention. We went and talked with the nuns. We told them we knew what they were doing but that we were prepared to forget that. We talked to the old one, the head nun, and we told her what Emily had done. I thought we would have to convince her of the truth of this but she needed no convincing. I could see that she had feared exactly such a thing. Yet she refused to give up the girl. We visited three times but she wouldn’t budge. We knew it didn’t matter, we have long memories and a lot of patience. We would wait and Emily would show herself, then we would take back what we were owed.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘I can see that you already do,’ Viktor said. ‘Whoever set the fire stole Emily from us. She belonged to Duka. If we find this person before you do, I can promise you he won’t be bringing his lawyer with him.’

‘Why all the charade of kidnapping me and bringing me here?’

‘If someone sees me with you, detective, then I am dead and my family back home are dead. It is that simple.’

‘Then why do it?’ Carrigan asked. ‘Why tell me all this?’

‘Because we are businessmen and your crusade is bad for our business.’

‘Bullshit. You wouldn’t take such a risk if that were true. Kidnapping a police officer is much worse for business than a few raids.’ Carrigan stopped. He thought about how Viktor had known about the upcoming raids, a stray sentence Byrd had said a couple of days ago, the risk the Albanian was taking being here, and then he knew.

‘You’re not really one of them, are you? You’re working with Byrd. That’s why you know about the raids.’

Viktor looked at him without blinking. ‘Repeat those words ever again and I will find you and I will kill you, understand?’

Carrigan smiled. ‘I understand.’

Viktor walked away, leaving himself unprotected, the gun hanging loosely at his side. As he opened the door, he turned back towards Carrigan. ‘You want to know what happened that night? Then I suggest you think about what Nigel was trying to tell you.’ He nodded once, then shut the door behind him.

Carrigan didn’t get up. He sat and tried not to think about what Viktor had said. Because if Viktor and Duka weren’t behind the fire, then he’d been wrong all along.