Instinct

THIRTEEN

They had been too late.

After the HQ dining room meeting with the chief constable, Henry, Rik Dean and Donaldson had driven quickly back to Blackpool and to the flat that Sadiq and Rahman had been using in North Shore. It had been stripped clean, like vultures had been on a wildebeest carcass. Everything had gone, every scrap of furniture, every strip of carpet ripped up and taken away, along with all the food, crockery, cutlery and toilet rolls. All that remained were the bare bones.

Henry had not been surprised. The forensic scientists who worked for the security service would take all the stuff and recreate the rooms based on their notes, photographs and videos, at some secret location outside London, and they would be able to take their time in assessing what they had. Everything would be combed, read, tested, analysed and the results fed back to MI5.

He had wandered through the tiny lounge, the one bedroom, the kitchenette, the toilet, hoping that something had been missed. He tried pulling up floorboards, easing skirting boards away from the wall with his fingertips, looking into what fitted cupboards remained, those things that were part of the fabric of the flat that could not be removed.

Donaldson, exasperated, simply stood at the door with his hands on his hips, shaking his head and continually telling Henry that it was no use. He had experienced the scientific thoroughness of the security services before and knew, to their credit, they were beyond excellent. They wouldn’t have missed anything. Where their professionalism fell down was on the operational side of things, the intelligence gathering, dissemination and use. That was where it all turned to shit.

‘I know, I get the picture,’ Henry said when, for the zillionth time, Donaldson had said, ‘It’s no good.’

Donaldson had eventually mooned around the flat, as though someone had stolen his puppy. In the tiny toilet he had leaned on the wash basin and looked at the square above it on the wall where a mirror had been fixed, but had also been taken away, leaving an unpainted rectangle of paint. He blinked as something crossed his mind, but was then gone. He tried to chase it, but the thought was elusive and probably meant nothing.

They left the flat muted, returning the key to the landlord, who said he hadn’t even been in it himself since and wasn’t looking to re-let it any time soon. Apart from anything else, he wanted the furniture back from the spooks.

‘Well,’ Henry breathed, ‘what next?’

The ‘What next?’ turned out to be frustration upon frustration. Despite FB’s representations, Beckham, the MI5 man, refused to let anyone near Sadiq, who he described as a prized and vulnerable asset. There was also the suspicion that he wasn’t even being held at Paddington Green police station any more.

FB, to his credit, did keep up the pressure until Beckham relented slightly a week down the line.

Henry had been sitting in his own office in the FMIT block at headquarters, looking forlornly at the dry-wipe board on the wall. The problem for him was that, although Lancashire wasn’t the murder capital of the world, people still had a nasty habit of killing other people, as well as committing other serious crimes that came under the remit of FMIT.

Since Natalie Philips’s body had been discovered, Henry was now dealing with two other murders and what looked to be a series of brutal rapes that seemed to be connected. Each of these offences required time and effort, and a very straight dose of panic-free thinking. It was just as important to find the villains in these new cases as it was to discover who murdered Natalie.

And Henry was wobbling a bit.

It did not help that he was being distracted, in a good way, by Alison Marsh. He had met up with her a couple more times and they had ended up fucking each other like the world was about to end. He was still very confused about his feelings for her, and although both of them were simply happy shaggers at the moment, he suspected that in the not too distant future there might be the requirement to ratchet the relationship up a notch, from lust to lurv. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that and as such their trysts had remained clandestine.

He was also having constant run-ins with Leanne and her on-off boyfriend. His daughter wanted the ‘lowlife shit’ — Henry’s description — back in her life, but Henry was dead against it. He refused the guy access to his house and it was getting to the point where he was going to have to ask her to up sticks and move out. It was another thing he didn’t really want to have to deal with because Leanne had been totally there for him after Kate’s death.

And now there were new cases to deal with. The murders were fairly straightforward domestic ones, but still needed steering and overseeing. The rapes he had inherited from a DI in Blackpool who, the rumour was, on discovering he had a serial rapist operating on his patch, had gone on stress leave never to return to work. Henry thought there would be a need to jack up a full-time team to crack them… which seemed like a good job for Rik Dean.

He looked back down at his computer screen, logged on to his e-mail. It showed eighty-five unread messages, many tagged with ‘urgent’ flags. He ignored them, minimized that screen and opened a file on the desktop marked ‘Retirement’.

He opened it and read the few lines.

He could re-date it, print it out, sign it and submit it, and would probably be pulling a police pension in six weeks. Get out of this mind-blowing situation. Draw the pension — half his salary, more than most other people earned — draw the lump sum and simply fuck off. Maybe go live with a woman who owned a very nice pub in a nice village that got snowed in every winter.

He sighed, glanced at the board again and thought about what Donaldson had said to him. And knew he would have to be pushed to leave the job.

He closed the file just as his office door clattered open — no knock — and FB bundled in without warning. Henry, who had a view from his office window across to the front of headquarters, was a little miffed. He’d been so engrossed in his internal monologue that he’d failed to spot the chief trundling across. If he had done, he would have made certain he wasn’t in the office.

‘Henry.’

‘OK, boss? Come to fire me?’

FB chortled, his double chin wobbling. He took a seat opposite Henry. ‘No such luck, but I’m working on it.’

‘Cheers,’ Henry said flatly. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Having known FB for such a long time, some of the formal barriers were blurred and, up to a point, Henry knew he could get away with being relaxed and a bit cheeky, certainly during a one-to-one.

‘Bit of a result from our friend Beckham down at the Box.’ Box being an informal term for MI5. Henry perked up. ‘As you know MI5 has basically taken control of everything related to the flat and Sadiq and Rahman, and that includes the results of the DNA tests.’

Henry’s mouth twisted. ‘I know.’ That MI5 had commandeered the blood sample taken from the seat of the plane from Las Palmas and the one taken from the dead Rahman made him seethe. Donaldson was also fuming, but even despite formal protestations from the FBI, the British security services had not budged. They were like a kid in a classroom, covering their work so no one else could copy it. They were also keeping the result of the DNA test on Sadiq to themselves, and consequently Henry was banging his head against a brick wall in his efforts to trace Natalie Philips’s killer. At some point he assumed that MI5 would have to relent to the pressure and allow access to the results and to Sadiq, wherever he might now be. Even if the lad’s DNA did not match what had been found inside Natalie, Henry wanted to speak to him.

Henry waited for FB to reveal all.

‘It’s better than nothing,’ FB said, preparing him.

‘Go on…’

‘Sadiq’s DNA matches one of the sperm samples from Natalie.’

Henry’s ring piece constricted, as did his throat.

‘And the DNA sample taken from the blood on the plane matches another of the sperm samples.’

‘So Sadiq and Akram had sex with Natalie sometime before she was murdered,’ Karl Donaldson said. ‘Jeez.’

‘That’s if the blood from the plane actually belongs to your friend Akram — yes,’ Henry confirmed.

‘You know it does,’ Donaldson said. ‘So three out of the four samples have now been identified — Mark Carter, Sadiq and Akram?’

‘Leaving one unidentified,’ Henry said. ‘As yet.’

‘When are you going to interview Sadiq?’

Henry paused. He was on the phone to Donaldson, bringing him up to speed with developments. The American was back in London — had been for over a week now — and was still making representations to MI5 without success. He had been warned by his superiors to back off and not make waves. Henry’s unexpected news caused a resurgence of hope within him, as he’d almost swallowed his anger and was about to get back to his day job, hoping that Akram would step into his cross hairs some other time. This chance, he’d thought, had passed him by.

Henry’s voice was blunt. ‘I’m not.’

‘What? What the hell?’ Donaldson stopped, unable to believe his ears. At that exact moment he was walking along in the sunshine on the River Thames embankment, threading his way through the tourists in the vicinity of the London Eye. He leaned on the wall by the river and stared across at the Houses of Parliament.

‘Whilst they confirm the DNA matches, they say I still can’t interview Sadiq face to face. I can e-mail down a list of questions and one of the MI5 interview teams will put them to him. That’s the best I can do, and while it’s bollocks, it’s the only way I’ve got at this time.’

‘I’m staggered.’

‘Karl,’ Henry said pointedly, ‘he’s obviously more to them than simply a murderer. You’ve lectured me about the bigger picture before now and that must be what all this is about. National security… maybe he knows a lot of… stuff… and having him dragged through the courts to face a murder charge isn’t what they want. If in fact he did kill Natalie. He might have had sex with her, but didn’t necessarily kill her.’

‘But it needs the detective on the case to get into his ribs, not some detached dick brain reading from a cue card.’

‘Tell me about it…’

Donaldson went silent for a moment, then said, ‘They’re up to something.’

‘Yep.’

‘Bastards,’ Donaldson whined. ‘They don’t have the right to…’

But his words were cut short as his phone signal died.

Henry looked quizzically at his phone but nevertheless completed the sentence, speaking into a disconnected phone. ‘The right to what? Treat us like mushrooms and feed us on shit. Sorry pal, but they think they do.’ He hung up.

Standing under the shadow cast by the London Eye, Donaldson jiggled his phone, feeling that his line to Akram was receding with each passing moment. He wasn’t enjoying the sensation.

He had pretty much done what he could, even flying out to Las Palmas to grill the detective at the airport and make his own enquiries as to how Akram might have got off Gran Canaria and what the onward destination might have been. He had found nothing. The terrorist could easily have left the island by any number of air or sea routes. Donaldson’s nosing around the few private airstrips yielded nothing, nor did any information come from the sea ports he visited. Problem was the island was dotted with numerous tiny ports and it was impossible to keep tabs on everyone who came and went. Donaldson’s educated guess was that Akram had left by sea, which meant there was the likelihood he’d gone to the African mainland and then back to the Middle East. Impossible to track down.

Donaldson leaned on the embankment wall and stared at the water of the Thames. His mind tossed everything around and he knew he was missing something in his equation, the something that had come to him when he and Henry had visited Sadiq’s flat in Blackpool. But he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint what it was.

He stopped shaking his phone, checked a signal was back — yes — and tapped out a text message, paused thoughtfully before sending it — should he, shouldn’t he? — but then pressed send and it flew away into the ether: ‘ MESSAGE SENT ’.

‘Shit,’ he winced, suddenly wishing he could recall it. Too late. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered, ‘I hope I haven’t screwed this up.’

He made his way to a riverside cafe, ordered a filter coffee, sat out in the sun, and waited. If it was going to happen, it would be in the next half hour. He could afford to wait that long, but no longer. Then a text landed on his phone. One word: ‘ COMING ’.

She arrived fifteen minutes later. Donaldson had an iced coffee waiting for her.

‘Karl, darling,’ she said, and leaned across to kiss his cheeks, before sitting down opposite him. Edina, his discreet contact at Whitehall, smiled at him, always with a hint of lust in her eyes. Donaldson thought she must be a lonely woman and that it would be nice to see more of her as a friend, but he did not want to compromise her any more than their relationship did already. He guessed she got some excitement from seeing him occasionally, in a James Bond sort of way, and passing on the odd snippet of information was perhaps a bit thrilling. Then she said, ‘It’s just a feeling, nothing I can prove, but I think they’re on to me.’

‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make life difficult for you. You didn’t need to come.’

‘No, darling, it’s OK. It’s not like I’m a double agent for the Russians. You are the only one I ever say anything to, and that’s because I like you, and because it’s only ever about one man that everyone wants to bring down — Jamil Akram. I know why you want to catch him and if I can do anything to help you, then I will.’

Donaldson stared at her for a few moments. She was more than good-looking, one of those women whose appearance took a bit of time to permeate, but when it did, the effect was lasting. ‘You don’t need to do anything more,’ he said. ‘Let’s just have coffee and say bye.’

‘No, no, I do.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I’m going to resign anyway. We, Hugo and I, have a pile in Monaco that needs some TLC. I’m going to go and supervise the renovation.’

‘When you say a place…?’

‘Well, slightly more than a place… more a villa… a big villa. A palace, really. So those are my plans. So what can I do for you? One last thing?’ She held his gaze meaningfully.

‘Why is MI5 not sharing anything about Blackpool?’

Mark Carter was due in to answer his police bail that evening, as a result of which Henry Christie decided to meet, greet and re-interview the lad together with Rik Dean. His plan was to get a long, detailed interview completed this time, put some pressure on Mark and if nothing came of it — such as a confession to killing Natalie — Henry would release him with the warning that if any other evidence came to light that fingered Mark, he would be rearrested. Keep the sword hanging over him. Always a good police tactic.

During the afternoon, Henry brought himself up to speed with his other ongoing investigations and spent some time with Rik, who Henry had decreed would take on the serial rapist case.

It was one of those jobs that was beginning to bubble and rouse some media speculation. Henry, having had it thrust on him, wanted to do something about it before it blew up in his face, as such things often did. If not dealt with immediately and seen for what it was, the police could end up looking like idiots in about ten years’ time, still trying to chase their tails and solve a hundred offences instead of just three.

He and Rik tossed around a few strategies, mostly coming back to resources and the lack of them. If they could throw resources at it, then they’d have a good chance of getting a result. That was the problem with everything, though. No resources.

‘At least we know they were all committed by the same individual,’ Henry said, looking at the report on the DNA samples. One man had indeed carried out the three reported attacks. Henry raised his face to Rik, who was sitting across from him. They were in Henry’s office at HQ reviewing exactly where the investigation stood — up to the point where the original DI investigating had gone sick — and, as ever, coffee was being consumed. ‘I’m surprised this offender isn’t on the database, being such an obviously violent person. Surely he must have some previous.’

‘Wouldn’t be sitting here if he was on the database,’ Rik pointed out.

‘OK, it was a pretty obvious point to make,’ Henry conceded. ‘Any pattern to the attacks?’

Rik scanned the analysis of the crime reports. ‘Night-time, between eleven and one. Lone women, young ones, teens, early twenties, attacked in areas where there are no CCTV cameras.’

‘Deliberately chosen, or just lucky?’

Rik shrugged. ‘An area he knows, I suspect. All in the vicinity of Garstang Road on the way out to Poulton. Two of the women were dragged into Boundary Park, one on to some playing fields. No independent witnesses to speak of.’

‘Dates?’ Henry frowned.

‘One a month for the last three months… well,’ Rik scrutinized the reports more closely, ‘that’s one every four weeks

… each progressively more violent, but each woman threatened with a return visit and a horrific murder if they reported the assaults. This is a guy we need to catch.’

‘Bastard,’ Henry whispered. They looked at each other. ‘So if this pattern continues, when would he be due to strike again?’

‘This week,’ Rik calculated. ‘Although he hasn’t done so far, unless it hasn’t been reported.’

‘No set days?’ Henry asked. Rik shook his head. Henry pouted. ‘Could it be a shift worker of some sort, out on a break?’

‘That’s something I’ll check, see what businesses are operating around that area twenty-four hours.’

‘I wonder how many he’s actually carried out?’ Henry mused.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The reported ones are always the tip of the iceberg… the terror factor makes a lot of victims clam up. Any chance of pulling an operation together for a couple of nights this week?’ Henry asked in vain hope.

Rik screwed up his face. ‘I could possibly muster a few bodies tonight, but it’s a late request. Maybe more tomorrow, but then we hit the weekend and everybody’s stretched.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but don’t hold out much hope.’

‘We need to plan something for next month.’

Rik nodded and gathered all the paperwork together. ‘I’ll get home for some tea, then I’ll see you at Blackpool for Mark Carter, seven thirty?’

Rik left. Henry picked up the phone to call a detective sergeant at Preston who was dealing with one of the domestic murders Henry was overseeing. He needed an update… and that was how the rest of Henry’s afternoon unfolded, checking up on progress. Then it was six and he had a sudden, gut-wrenching thought that he hadn’t called Kate to let her know he would be late home.

It was only as he unthinkingly tapped the first digit of his home phone number that he remembered. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a feeling of despair and emptiness, heartbroken by the realization that it was a call he would never have to make again.

In the same time zone, about three thousand miles to the south on the west coast of Africa, Steve Flynn steered Faye2 out of the deep Atlantic Ocean and into the wide mouth of the Gambia River. The journey from Gran Canaria had been uneventful, even his overnighter in Nouadhibou. Here Flynn had refuelled, taken on fresh supplies and had a long, uninterrupted sleep.

The Gambian capital, Banjul, was on his starboard side and he sailed past with disinterest, his eyes cold as granite under the brim of his baseball cap. He angled Faye2 upriver and cruised slowly past many creeks, surveying them with binoculars, until he found one he wanted. It was deep enough and contained a badly constructed wooden quayside against which he manoeuvred and tied up his boat. He had noticed it on his previous visit to the country, but had never imagined he would be returning to use it.

The heat was heavy and cruel in the early evening, although the sun had virtually disappeared over the western horizon.

Flynn poured himself a long, iced cola and rolled his hips as he drank it, still feeling the pain of the gouge-line ploughed by the bullet along his ribcage, nicking bone as it went. The wound was healing well but had a way to go yet. But he was mobile enough to return to the country from which he had fled like a rat being chased by dogs.

He had abandoned a dead friend and left that friend’s lady in a horrifying situation, and did not even yet know if she had survived it. She could well be as dead as Boone, and that was what Flynn expected.

His guilt was gut-wrenchingly physical. Tearing him up.

Boone had been dead for certain, his body kicked like a dog into the creek. But Michelle had been alive and maybe she had survived. He knew he could not have helped her at the time, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

Which is why, after a horrendous return to Gran Canaria and some convalescence there, he was right back in the Gambia as soon as he was fit, with one thing on his mind.

He downed the last of the cola, the ice chinking against his teeth, then vaulted off the boat, tucking the 9mm Glock 17 into the waistband of his three-quarter length trousers, pulling his shirt over it and pushing the silencer into his pocket.

Henry did not bother going home, unable to face the house, empty or otherwise. He’d spent about half an hour staring into space at his desk, his mind empty and dull. Eventually he clicked into action, roused himself with a sorry shake of his head and pushed himself up from his chair, which was like trying to lift a lead weight. He gathered his stuff and made his way to his car, sat in it for a while and experienced more guilt at having acquired such a fancy machine for what, it seemed, was the cost of Kate’s life. He knew he would not have owned such a beast if she was still here. It would never have entered his head. The Mondeo had been more than adequate.

The Mercedes engine barely made a noise as he drove up the avenue away from the FMIT block, towards the HQ building. At the junction he was faced with a slight dilemma: turn right and exit, or go straight on to the sports and social club, aka The Grovellers’ Arms. The beer was cheap but at that time of day, between five and seven, it was full of office staff and bosses, none of whom he cared to mix with. He rarely socialized with other cops, other than a few close friends, and was a bit worried now that he’d reached the rank at which others might want to brown-nose up to him. The thought worried him. He had always disliked rank and authority, yet was now part of the establishment. Sort of like Mick Jagger accepting a knighthood.

With that in mind, he selected a very old Rolling Stones album from the in-car iPod, from the days when they were the bad boys, and swung the car right, spurting under the rising security barrier quickly, because he never quite trusted it. Then, to the strains of Gimme Shelter, he hit the road.

He joined the traffic heading into Preston, bearing left after crossing the River Ribble, out towards Blackpool, past Preston docks. He enjoyed the drive in the new car, although his left shoulder was giving him some gyp, the one which had been peppered with shotgun pellets during the blood-soaked stand-off in Kendleton, where he first met Alison. A slight sweat came at the memory of his lucky escape.

As he drove he did his retirement sums again. The house was now paid off. The pension would be good. He could buy a dog… Or maybe just keep going until they forced his hand? Then he could come back as a cold case consultant on half the salary, no responsibility and all the fun.

In Blackpool he turned into the KFC on Preston New Road and parked in one of the wide grill bays. Once inside he stood at the back of a long queue and kept an eye out for Mark Carter, who was nowhere to be seen. He ate in the restaurant, glumly avoiding standing on the chips on the floor, having had to wipe the table before sitting at it. But the food was OK and gave him that short energy burst he needed.

At seven thirty he was at Blackpool nick in the CID office with Rik, awaiting a call from the public enquiry desk to say that Mark Carter had answered his bail.

He chatted with Rik about the serial rape inquiry, and whether he had sorted anything out for later. The DI looked sheepish.

‘Singularly unsuccessful. Tomorrow night, maybe, plenty of bodies about, but tonight, too short notice.’

‘Which means?’

‘Uh, well, after we’ve finished with Carter, I’ll get changed into my scruffs, grab the crappiest CID car I can find and troll about myself until midnight.’

‘Yourself?’

Rik nodded.

‘Keeping obs for a rapist?’

‘Yep.’

‘Not exactly the well-resourced operation I had in mind,’ Henry sighed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come with you. Wouldn’t expect you to do it alone.’

‘Seriously?’ Rik sounded doubtful. ‘Only thing is, every time I go out on a job with you, I seem to end up getting injured.’ He was referring to the times when he’d been stabbed once and shot once, each time out with Henry.

‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

‘Just.’

Henry winked, checked his watch and picked up a desk phone, dialled the front desk and asked if Mark had shown his face. Negative. Cradling the phone, Henry checked his watch again and decreed, ‘I’ll give him until half eight, then I’ll go looking.’

‘Probably done a runner,’ Rik said. ‘Guilty and all that.’

It was a ten minute walk to the creek in which Boone’s houseboat was moored. As Flynn turned on to the unstable quayside, his insides seemed to drop from a great height. The tropical evening had drawn in and his way was illuminated by lamp posts along the quay which varied in strength. Some flickered, some glowed dully, others cast intense white light. Even so, Flynn could clearly see the big shape that had once been the Ba-Ba-Gee, Boone’s houseboat and home.

The old concrete barge was tilted at a forty-five degree angle away from the quay, like an immense, dead, beached whale. It had been completely gutted by fire and everything that had been so lovingly and expensively refurbished by Boone — upper and lower decks, the outside seating area, the galley, the bedrooms — was all destroyed. All that remained was the seemingly indestructible concrete hull, half sunk in the water.

Flynn approached the wreck slowly.

Inside he was cold and raging. Outside his skin had tightened on his skeleton, and now his breathing was laboured and he started to dither.

He walked alongside the barge and up to the point on the quay where the fleeing Boone had been shot in the back of the head. His body draped across the old railway sleeper that was still there.

Flynn stooped to one knee and touched a bullet hole in the planking, slipping his little finger into it. Then he looked up sharply, his face distorted by venomous anger. He came upright slowly, carried on walking along the banking to the next inlet where Boone’s fishing boat Shell had been moored. Flynn had originally moored Faye2 alongside, such a long, long time ago. A light year away. Since then he had been shot, and managed to make it back to Gran Canaria, where a discreet Spanish doctor had treated the wound and taken an excessive amount of money to keep quiet. During his recovery, Flynn had done his research, remembering the Internet pages that he had briefly looked at on Boone’s laptop in the seconds before the man himself had rushed back, pursued by desperate killers.

Splattered all over the news pages that Flynn had accessed back in Gran Canaria was the face of the man he’d watched getting off Boone’s boat. The man who had been injured, the same man suspected of involvement in the planning of terrorist activities in the UK. The man who was now wanted by the authorities and whose name was Jamil Akram.

Flynn had only seen his face briefly from his hiding place behind some oil barrels, but he was convinced it was Akram. His eyes were as good as they’d ever been, honed by five years of searching sun-glistening waves for the sight of blue marlin on the move.

It wasn’t a difficult equation for Flynn to work out.

Boone was clearly still in the cargo trade. He had brought Akram back to the Gambia from wherever — the news reports, Flynn noticed, were sparse on the details of where Akram might have gone to. But Boone was involved. Old habits and all that shit, Flynn had thought. Boone was just keeping his hand in, making money as and when. It was in his blood. That’s what he did. And it had led to his death because the men who came after him were the ones who had been guarding Akram.

So what had Boone done to incur their ire?

He’d delivered the package. But then what? The fact was that Boone had been browsing pages on his computer about a man who, it was alleged, had been helping some young Islamic fundamentalists to cause carnage in Blackpool, a place Flynn knew well. He’d been a cop there once. Had lived with his wife there — until it had all gone wrong.

Flynn concluded that Boone hadn’t known who he was transporting at first. Then he’d found out. And had that knowledge killed him?

Flynn asked himself again — what had Boone done to bring about his death?

The answer was a guess. Boone was a hothead, a guy with an eye for the main chance and not above blackmail.

Could that be it? Had he discovered the true value of his cargo and gone to demand more money, or had he threatened to go to the authorities? Or both? Flynn could imagine Boone combining the two with the subtlety of a bull elephant’s charge.

What Flynn had also found interesting in the news reports he had read was a name that cropped up a few times — that of Detective Superintendent Henry Christie who had been at the scene of the police shooting of one of the suspected terrorists. Henry Christie — a name Flynn could conjure with all day. But, interesting as the name was, Christie was peripheral to Flynn’s own investigations and intentions.

Flynn had healed quickly, one of the benefits of being fit and healthy. The gouge the bullet had taken out of him had been closed, meshed and bandaged by the tame, money-driven doctor. Then, with the assistance of liberal doses of good painkillers, sunshine and alcohol, and a festering desire for retribution, Flynn had reached a stage where he thought he could act.

And now he was back in the Gambia. He didn’t care what the reason was for Boone’s death, he just knew that he didn’t deserve to die in that terrible way. And what of Michelle? Not knowing her fate had been gnawing away at Flynn intensely.

He turned into the creek and stopped abruptly.

Boone’s boat was still tethered there, apparently unscathed. Flynn’s heart whammed in his chest. He truly had not expected this, especially having just seen the wreck of the houseboat. At the very least he thought he would find a burned-out husk or no boat at all.

But here she was, Shell, rocking gently in the creek water alongside the other boats moored here.

Had she been commandeered by Boone’s killers? Did she now belong to someone else?

He moved quietly in his soft-soled deck shoes, his right hand snaking to the small of his back, fingers clasping the handle of the Glock which he extracted slowly and held down by his hip.

There was no sign of life on board, but the boat looked OK.

Instinctively he dropped into a defensive crouch as he approached the stern, where he stopped and listened. Heard nothing.

It was a short leap on to the aft deck, sidestepping the fighting chair. He landed with hardly a noise and stood completely still, listening again. He approached the sliding door that led into the cockpit and tried the handle. The door slid open an inch. He opened it further, wide enough for him to step through into the cockpit. To his right were the wheel and controls, to his left the bench seat and bait area. Ahead was the door, beyond which were the steps leading to the galley and living accommodation.

He crossed to this door and tried the handle. This was locked.

Flynn swore under his breath, took a step back to weigh up the door which was made of thick UPVC in a frame, rather like the back door of a house. In his time as a cop Flynn had booted down many doors, although it had become progressively harder. As a drugs branch detective, entering premises through locked doors was a regular occurrence. In the old days, most doors could easily be removed by size elevens and determination. But as UPVC and multi-lock doors became more common, the cops had become more sophisticated, in a rough sort of way, in their attempts to batter them down. The door Flynn faced that evening was of the newer variety, and even though it was on a boat it was still substantial. He doubted his ability to kick it open using the flat-footed method — but was going to give it a try anyway.

He angled himself side-on to the door, gritted his teeth, and got into the mental attitude required to boot down the door.

But at that moment he felt a gun barrel pressing into the back of his neck, just below his trimmed hairline, at the point where his skull connected with his spine. Flynn did not move an inch, other than to open his fingers when a voice said, ‘Drop your gun.’