Until Death (16 page)

‘That’s disgusting,’ Mo exclaimed. ‘You know how if the heating fails in an office and the temperature falls below a certain level, you can have the day off? Can we do that for smell?’

Anguish gave him a withering look. ‘If I was being mean, I mean really mean, I would make you guys search it.’

‘If that was pork, I’d be excused,’ Mo argued, voice muffled through his shirt sleeve.

Georgie didn’t dare breathe. The stench was making her stomach heave. This must be how human flesh smelled. It was a marvel how quickly it transformed and corroded.

‘Now let’s get back inside and you can tell me what’s happening with the Malamatos case.’

Mo looked at her with pity as they trailed back to Anguish’s office. Angus sat down behind his desk and stared at them, his bad mood radiating towards them.

‘I don’t think the wife is the tip-off. She told me pretty convincingly to eff off,’ Georgie said.

‘Charming.’

‘The charity he runs and that the mistress – but not the wife – is a director of, is opposite the drop for the wood.’

Angus looked up at her in surprise.

‘I’ve talked to the residents near the drop point and they say that there are never trucks pulling up and switching trailers. I drew a blank there,’ Mo added. ‘But the only time there’s activity in that yard is every six months when there’s a charity event and caterers and prop companies deck out the play centre and park up next to it. Perfect cover for another lorry to pull in and a waiting flatbed to drive away.’

Angus steepled his fingers. ‘So we think they’re doing deliveries every six months?’

Mo and Georgie nodded.

‘When was the last charity event?’

‘Early May. Their next charity event is Halloween – and one of Christos’s ships is docking here the day before: the
Saracen
, coming from Belém, northern Brazil,’ Mo said.

‘But if they’re shipping it every six months, why did we find this stuff two weeks ago? It breaks the pattern.’ No one had an answer. ‘We’ll have a good rummage over the
Saracen
when it arrives, of course.’ Anguish threw up his hands. ‘I don’t get it. Why is this stuff being imported into London? The market for illegal hardwood is China.’

‘There seems to be nothing hidden inside the wood, and anyway, you’d use cheap pine to hide stuff, not something illegal to start with,’ continued Mo.

‘We’re looking at a hell of a lot of wood,’ added Georgie.

‘So we’ve still got nothing.’ Angus’s voice was flat. He rubbed his forehead, trying to smooth away the tension lines. ‘If Christos
is
hiding something on the
Saracen
, we’ll find it.’ He nodded his head towards the tonnes of rotting meat outside on the dock. ‘I’ve even seen that used before. Smugglers might think they’re being original, but nothing is a surprise to us, absolutely nothing.’ He paused. ‘But find me something, get this thing moving. You’re not the only ones with a boss.’

They left his office and Georgie told Mo she wanted to have a look at something. She walked along the quay to one of the customs storage facilities, stacked with impounded goods from all corners of the globe. She had a quick chat with the man organising crates at the entrance and went to look at Christos’s container of logs. They were unsawn, still with their bark. Each trunk was about two metres across, giant, jungle-fixing trophies. She was looking at one of the most magnificent things the earth produced. Cut down in its prime and stacked in a cold metal box in a warehouse. What a waste. She hoiked herself over the first trunk and began to walk into a space along the side.

‘Ever seen what a weight like that’ll do to your bones?’

She turned too quickly and banged her head on top of the container. A man in his fifties with a serious weight problem and too little hair stood behind her. ‘Come out slowly. The whole thing’s unstable. Logs like that’ll crush you to death.’

‘I just wanted to have another look. It’s beautiful stuff.’

He blinked at her as if she had started talking Bantu. ‘I’ve got imitation Gucci jackets, fake Sony PlayStations, a ton of knock-off Marlboros, and you want to look at wood.’

She jumped down from the logs and held out her hand. ‘I should have introduced myself. Georgie Bell, Customs and Excise, from up in the offices.’

He didn’t take her hand. ‘One of the new ones.’ He said it without affection.

She put her hands in her pockets, pulled herself taller. If he wanted to play it this way, that was fine by her.

She saw that nearby was a small table where another man close to retirement sat on a swivel chair, a copy of the
Sun
in his hands. She could see a portable radio through the steam from two teas rising lazily in the warehouse draughts.

She ignored the first man and bent to look closely at the grain of the rosewood end-on. She traced a finger across it, the whorls and circles of life rough from where the teeth of the chainsaw had chewed through. The man didn’t move away.

She stood up, heard the banging of boxes being moved further across the warehouse. A young man was stacking crates in a corner by himself. He was the only one wearing the regulation safety hat. ‘Do you have a copy of the reports that were done on this wood?’

The two men looked at each other. ‘You’ve got those in the office, no?’ the first one said.

‘Can’t you find a copy here?’

He shrugged. ‘I could, but …’

You’re too bloody lazy to, thought Georgie.

‘You can get them when you go back upstairs.’

The man sitting by the table yawned as he turned a page of his paper. Now Georgie got angry. Laziness was an unforgivable sin in her eyes. ‘You read that page already. Or can’t you read?’

Both men looked at each other and burst into sniggers. ‘Feisty!’

The man turned the
Sun
, held up page four, pretending to read. The topless Page 3 teenager grinned through newsprint at Georgie.

‘Why don’t you two just fuck right off?’

Their smiles got broader, they held up their hands in mock surrender. ‘Can’t you take a joke?’

‘Yeah, don’t get so touchy …’

‘She’s a new recruit who likes smelly boxes.’ The two men roared.

‘You take orders from the office, right?’ Georgie said. ‘I want to see the dog handler’s report on this wood.’

‘It’s already been done.’

‘Do it again.’

They weren’t laughing now. The one holding the
Sun
had turned deadly serious. ‘Run along back to the office, little girl, this is where the big boys work.’

‘And I want the density check done again. I’ll come back in three hours.’

She left the warehouse, glancing briefly at the silent young guy by the crates. The word ‘bitch’ seemed to float on the drifting currents of air behind her.

I
t was strange for Ricky actually to talk to the woman who’d put him behind bars. He’d got her number from the London theatre and had just phoned her up. They were courteous with each other, amiable. Ricky found he quite liked lying, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He’d had to act tough to survive the worst that jail threw up, but he hadn’t been forced to change who he really was. Dawn’s passion for make-believe had meant convincing Kelly that he was a prospective client had been straightforward. He could talk the talk without struggle.

She didn’t offer to meet at her house, that would have been too much good fortune for Ricky, and he knew life wasn’t like that. She had a studio at the docks where she kept the large-scale pieces – a Chinese New Year dragon that was never used, a collection of Janus masks, two extra white rabbits from an
Alice in Wonderland
production. She talked a lot. Too much, Ricky thought. You revealed your weak spots if you talked a lot. Her location was interesting too; she couldn’t stay away from the big ships. Her husband had worked at Southampton docks before he died, along with her kid. A boating accident, his lawyer had said.

The studio was bigger than he was expecting, next to a row of low offices and a car park. He sat in the car and watched the doorway. She came on time, wrapped up in a large black coat and wearing a black beret. She unlocked the door and it banged shut behind her. Fifteen minutes later the pay as you go phone on the passenger seat rang and then beeped with a message. She was wondering where he was. An hour later she came back out the door. She had waited a long time for him, but then maybe others had got lost trying to get out to the docks. She walked to an Audi and drove off and he followed.

When she pulled into the underground garage at St Pancras he spent some time staring at the upper levels. She lived in a building with gargoyles on it. There had been a time when he had aspired to that, had felt that big and brash was how you judged worth. He had fancied himself a player, skimming off from deals at the docks, imagining his influence growing not steadily and slowly, but in leaps and bounds. Someone had plotted his fall, someone else had been there to move in when he was removed. That’s why he had been so full of rage, spouting about getting his contacts to kill the witness who had seen him, about getting his crook’s version of justice. How counterproductive. It had forced her into witness protection; they had obviously thought him dangerous enough to carry out his threats, and his shouty nature had cost the state a fortune and changed her life for ever.

But he had changed, too. His rage had died. He had taken a long look at himself and it had been hard. What he had been doing was illegal, after all. A lot of people did get hurt. He had become a model prisoner, whatever that was, got educated, took down the tension among the long-timers, encouraged the youngsters to keep going. His years inside had been catastrophic for his finances and that used to make him angry, that Dawn had to scrimp. But now he was less interested in clock towers and gargoyles. He preferred to read, do his Open University courses, work with young offenders, walk the dogs, listen to talk radio.

He had a greater capacity to change than he would ever have imagined. A life unexamined is a life unlived, he’d read somewhere. But he still had curiosity. He wanted to know, to understand why.

He drove away.

Kelly was alone in the flat. She was on edge; the man who’d rung about a potential job hadn’t shown or called, and she was nonplussed. She went into the bathroom and popped open her bottle of pills. She would take just one more today, just to keep the anxiety at bay.

The bottle was empty. She actually saw herself, as if disembodied, turn the bottle over and shake it, trying to make the small white pills reappear. She felt panic begin to climb her spine. She forced herself to think. She took two yesterday. Was that why there were none left? She couldn’t remember. A total blank.

She took a deep breath. Practical steps, think practically. She would go to the doctor’s, get a repeat prescription. She went down in the lift, five, four, three, two, one second. She opened the lobby door and stepped out into the street. The sun was struggling to break through the cloud cover, but she found it too bright none the less. She felt a headache beginning its rhythmic thump. She turned right and under a grand arch into St Pancras.

The station was rammed with people pushing trolleys teetering with suitcases and holdalls to trains and away to taxi queues. The walls were lined with more bags, stacked high on top of each other. What was all this stuff that got carted through life? she wondered. The other day she had left with just a handbag for her and her two children; these people couldn’t last two days without baggage they couldn’t physically carry.

In the main concourse a group of students was exploiting Halloween. There were ghouls and ghosts holding a high banner with a pumpkin drawn on it; two women dressed as witches danced and cackled nearby. They were shaking their charity collection buckets, and the chinking of the coins against plastic sounded like the grinding of heavy chains … Kelly took a deep breath and focused on walking forward. The crowd was large here; she turned this way and that, searching for a faster route. She looked over her shoulder and caught the face of a man in a fishing hat, who was staring at her as they moved past one another. Ten years fell away in an instant. He looked like Michael, was it Michael? Kelly whirled round, searching for the hat. She had to see him again, had to understand that her mind was playing tricks, that it wasn’t – that it couldn’t be – him. A ghoul was near her shoulder, the clanking of the charity bucket by her ear. ‘Hand over your pennies, or the dead will haunt you!’ One of the witches let out a mock scream. The ghoul put his hand on her shoulder as she saw the man in the fishing hat beyond the line of taxis outside the station. She ran after him, the hollering of a ghost chasing her out. She crossed the road and headed into King’s Cross Station. The concourse was being rebuilt, drills clamouring away unseen. A sign proclaimed that the enlarged and improved station could handle forty-five million passengers a year. There was a new roof soaring above her, making people look tiny in the huge expanse.

She stood in the concourse of King’s Cross among the thousands of commuters, residents, tourists and hustlers of a big city rail terminus. She saw the sign for Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾, the platform that didn’t exist, half a baggage trolley fixed to the wall as if disappearing into the brickwork. Two grinning children were having their picture taken beside it. She hunted with her eyes, scanning thousands of faces to find Michael, all similar and none of them the one she wanted. It seemed as if a tide of humanity were rushing past her, hundreds and hundreds of faces, and then the iron will she’d used to keep a lid on her emotions for all these years began to slide away. She started to look for Amber. She was rotating on the spot in the huge station, faster and faster she turned as the crowds pressed past her, little children everywhere, little girls with their hair in bunches, young girls with balloons, young girls dragging on their mothers’ hands. And the panic and the loss rose and rose until like a great wave it crashed over her and she was collapsing on the new floor of the station and she was screaming Amber’s name, screaming for her dead daughter and her lost husband, hollering for them, her voice louder and more insistent than the drills and the cranes and the cement mixers that were transforming the place into something she didn’t recognise. She sensed children being dragged away from her, bystanders gawping, people averting their eyes, lest she infect them with her madness and her grief.