The Operative (10 page)

The man beating his victim unconscious on the sidewalk stepped back, and straightened his shirt and jacket, as if he had finished for the time being. ‘Next time I cut your legs and arms off, you understand? You got twenty-four hours, then we don’t talk no more,’ he said. The brute was as tall as his friend Leka but broader. He appeared to come from the same part of the world.

Sally looked around, hoping for help. Although there were a handful of people looking on with interest, none of them appeared to want to come any closer.

Sally pushed on the horn once again and this time held it down.

‘Turn that off!’ Leka yelled venomously. ‘Turn it off!’ he repeated, kicking out at the car again. Then something in the man snapped. He walked between the parked cars to a pile of rubbish on the sidewalk, picked up a large chunk of concrete and came back with it.

Sally released the horn to try and start the car once again but the engine was dead. Leka raised the concrete slab above his head and brought it crashing down onto the windscreen, cracking it so that it crazed in all directions. Sally screamed and leaned on the horn once more.

Leka raised the slab and brought it down again, this time shattering the windscreen completely and showering Sally with glass. Desperate and beside herself with fear she grabbed her handbag and fumbled inside. She found her phone and struggled to hold it steady while she hit the keys.

Leka reached inside the car and grabbed hungrily for her like
a wild beast. ‘Come ’ere, you fucken’ bitch!’ he yelled as he clutched a piece of Sally’s clothing which tore as she pulled back.

Stratton was asleep in his hotel room when he heard his mobile phone chirping in the pocket of his jacket, which hung across the back of a chair by the bed. He looked at the window and saw that it was dark outside. Then he reached for his jacket and pulled it onto the bed. He took the phone out of the pocket and when he saw the name on the phone’s screen he hit the receive button swiftly. What he heard sent a chill through his entire body. A woman was screaming hysterically and in the background he could hear a man’s voice shouting.

‘Sally! Sally!’ he shouted as he leaped out of bed. But it was evident that Sally no longer had the phone and was probably fighting for her life.

Sally had dropped the phone and was scrambling over the back of the driver’s seat to protect her son. But Leka was already halfway in through the destroyed windscreen and reaching for her with his long, powerful arms. He caught hold of her ankle and yanked her back with brutish force, ripping her grip from the back of the seat as he pulled her towards him. He grabbed her by the hair with his other hand and with the same awful violence kept dragging her back, twisting her painfully so that she was now on her back halfway out through the windscreen and feeling as if her spine was about to break. She could no longer scream, the position of her body making it difficult even to breathe.

‘You still wanna fuck with me?’ Leka shouted, sliding down off the hood and dragging her to the side of the shattered wind-screen, his face close to hers. The other thug walked over calmly and joined his partner to look down on Sally’s contorted face. ‘What you wanna do with her, Ardian?’ Leka asked. Obviously his friend was the dominant one of the two. ‘Shall we fuck her,
or fuck her?’ He laughed at his sophisticated use of the language that was not his mother tongue.

‘Bitches don’t get outta line,’ Ardian said coldly. He brought his fist up into the back of Sally’s neck with such force that something snapped. She went limp in Leka’s arms and he released her.

Sally remained still, dangling awkwardly halfway out of the windscreen, facing the sky and gurgling gently.

‘Guess we fucked her,’ Leka said, smirking.

‘Guess we did,’ Ardian agreed. The two men looked along the street. The handful of youths who had remained at a distance to watch turned to head away, some of them moving at a run. The two men were neither fazed nor panicked by what they had done. They walked calmly back to their car, climbed in, and drove slowly away.

Josh was covering himself and crying in the back seat. He looked up once it had gone quiet to see that they were alone. He stood up, climbed over the seat, and looked at his mother. ‘Mummy,’ he sobbed. But she did not move. He took hold of her leg and shook it. ‘Mummy!’ She remained still. Josh wrapped his arms around her and continued to sob heavily and inconsolably.

Stratton impatiently paced the small waiting area at the end of the corridor that led back to the entrance to the Santa Monica Police Department. A few yards away a line of people waited outside a glass window built into a wall behind which a police officer stood dealing with enquiries. Stratton checked his watch and tried to calm his growing frustration that threatened to turn into uncontrollable anger. It had been twenty minutes since the desk officer had told him that a detective would be down to see him in a few minutes since the officer himself knew nothing about Sally or Josh.

Stratton had no doubt that the call had been from Sally but he had not been able to get a reply from her phone since. Sally’s parents had given him her cousin’s number though Stratton had not said why he needed it so urgently. The cousin in Sacramento had not seen or heard from Sally and did not expect to until the following day. Stratton had been unable to contain himself and had caught the first available flight that morning. From the second he’d put down the phone in the hotel room in Salzburg everything had been done with maximum haste. The flight had been unbearably long and he had called Sally’s number a dozen times, using the on-board payphone. Stratton was usually a patient man but now that he was finally in LA and, he hoped, within reach of finding out what had happened to her the waiting was starting to get to him.

A door halfway along the corridor opened and a portly man
in civilian clothes stepped through, holding a file. He walked to the waiting area, stopped short of Stratton and looked around. ‘Is there a John Stratton here?’ he asked.

‘I’m Stratton.’

The man, in his forties, was without doubt a cop: he looked as though he had been in the job for most of his life. He glanced at Stratton over the rims of his glasses, weighing him up. ‘How can I help you, sir?’

Stratton held his frustration at bay. He had pain stakingly explained every detail of his concerns to the desk officer and now this guy was acting as if he knew nothing. ‘I’m looking for a woman named Sally Penton and her son, Josh. I believe she was in some kind of trouble and she may be hurt.’

‘And where are you from, sir?’

‘England.’

‘And how long have you been here in the United States?’

‘I flew in today.’

‘You can prove that?’

Stratton dug into his pocket and pulled out his UK passport. The stub of his boarding pass was inside it and he handed both items to the officer, who inspected each page. ‘They also took my fingerprints and photograph at Immigration.’

The officer ignored him until he got to the end of the passport and compared Stratton’s photograph with the man himself. ‘Are you a relative of this woman, sir?’

‘No. She’s a close friend.’

‘Why do you think she’s been in some kind of trouble?’

‘She called me on my phone. She was screaming. It sounded like a scuffle, a fight, then all I could hear was crying which I think was Josh, her son.’

‘She called you at your home?’

‘My mobile phone.’

‘What’s the number of your phone?’

Stratton dug it out of his pocket, hit a key, and showed the face to the officer who took it and wrote the number in the file. ‘Do you know anything about her?’ Stratton asked.

‘And you flew in from England, you said?’

‘No. Austria.’

‘You got here pretty quick.’

‘There’s a nine-hour time difference between Central Europe and the USA’s West Coast. Look, do you know anything?’

The officer removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers as if he was tired. ‘I’m afraid your friend …’ He paused to check the name on the file. ‘Your friend Sally Penton is dead.’

The statement hit Stratton like a bolt of lightning although outwardly he remained unmoved. More than a decade and a half of wars and violent conflicts had hardened his reaction to any kind of bad news but this revelation stretched his control to its limits. ‘How?’

‘Was Sally into drugs?’

‘What?’

‘Drugs. She was driving through a pretty rough neighbourhood.’

‘She was not into drugs. What happened?’

‘We don’t know much. Looks like gang-bangers.’

‘Was she raped?’

‘Doesn’t look like it. This ain’t official, but the initial report on the scene was that her neck was broke. Looked like someone bust in the windshield and dragged her outta the vehicle onto the hood.’

Stratton was shocked. This was very different from a friend dying in combat. ‘What about Josh?’

‘The boy’s okay. Shaken up but he wasn’t hurt.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Child-protection agency.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘You gonna be in town long?’

The thought had not occurred to Stratton but the way things looked the answer was obvious. ‘As long as it takes to get Josh home,’ was all he could think to say.

‘Where you staying?’

‘I don’t know.’

The officer took a card from his pocket, scribbled something on the back and handed it to Stratton. ‘That’s the protection centre. It ain’t far from here. I’m Sergeant Draper. Those are my numbers. Let me know where you’re staying.’

The officer’s mobile phone rang in his pocket. He took it out and put it to his ear. ‘Draper here.’

Stratton walked over to a chair where his backpack was, picked it up, and walked away.

‘Hey, check back in a day or so and we may have something,’ Draper called after him, but Stratton was already halfway along the corridor and heading for the exit.

Half an hour later, Stratton climbed out of the back of a yellow taxi, carrying his backpack. He faced a gate in a high fence that ran along the front of an open grassy area beyond which stood a large 1960s-style single-storey building. The taxi pulled away as he approached the gate and pushed it open.

Lights were on inside the building that had bars on all of the blind-covered windows. But there was no sign of life.

Stratton checked his watch. It was after six p.m.

As he approached the wooden entrance doors they opened and a young, conservatively dressed woman walked out, carrying a laptop case over her shoulder and an armful of files. She glanced at Stratton as she closed the door behind her. Then she made a point of checking it was firmly locked, as if she had decided that he was a suspicious character.

‘Excuse me,’ Stratton said.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a serious tone, looking him up and down.

‘I’m here to see a boy who was brought in today or last night, I don’t know which.’

‘The facility is closed to visitors right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

‘Do you work here?’

‘Yes,’ the woman said, sounding tired and eager to get going.

She was attractive despite her frumpy clothes. Her fatigued eyes made her look older than she probably was.

‘Could you just tell me if you know anything about a young English boy who was brought in today or last night?’ Stratton asked, restraining his temper.

‘We get a lot of children brought in every day. Like I said, you’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ she replied, impervious to his persistence. She was not a tough woman by nature but years of practice dealing with hostile parents and guardians had inured her to confrontations.

Stratton could see that he was up against a wall because of the way he was handling this so he took his attitude down a couple of notches. ‘I know it’s late but I’ve come a long way – is it too much for you to tell me if he’s okay? That’s all I want to know and I’ll go. He’s six years old, English, his name’s Josh—’

The door to the centre opened and a stout black lady wearing thick bifocals leaned out. ‘Oh, Vicky, you’re still here. Do you know where the DCS 4334 forms are? I’ve looked everywhere.’

Vicky looked around at her.

‘They’re the court medical-consent emergency worksheet forms,’ the black lady said.

‘I know what they are, Dorothy,’ Vicky sighed, frustrated at her unsuccessful efforts to get away from the building. ‘Have you tried the bottom drawer of the second filing cabinet to the right of my desk?’

‘Uh-huh. They ain’t in there.’

‘I’ll come and look,’ Vicky said, heading back to the door.

‘That’s okay,’ Dorothy said. ‘It can wait till tomorrow. You run along and have yourself some fun. You spend too long in this building as it is.’

‘I’ll look for them,’ Vicky said as she reached the door.

‘No,’ Dorothy said, trying to act firm though she was obviously a subordinate. A grin crept onto her face. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’

‘Dorothy,’ Vicky said, feigning anger through clenched teeth.

‘Okay, okay,’ Dorothy said, stepping aside to let her through. ‘Sorry. She won’t be a minute,’ she said to Stratton, the grin remaining on her face as she checked him out.