Instinct

FOURTEEN

Mark Carter had not answered his bail and Henry was fuming, convinced he could be doing better, more interesting things than hanging around in a grotty police station. Although when he analysed that thought, he wasn’t exactly sure what. As Alison was back at her pub in Kendleton, he wouldn’t be with her, so the probability was that the only place he would be right now would be alone, splayed out on the settee at home gripping a beer and trying to get his head around why Kate had loved soap operas so much. Or maybe propping up the bar down at the Tram amp; Tower, his local, bending the ear of Ken, the landlord, who’d become a bit of an unwilling listening post for him.

Maybe being annoyed at the police station, waiting for someone to answer bail, wasn’t such a bad option.

He checked his watch for the umpteenth time and looked across at Rik Dean, who was busying himself with paperwork. Then his mobile rang and the display read, ‘Unknown Caller’. Henry said, ‘Bet this is him

… Henry Christie.’

‘Detective Superintendent Christie?’ came the crisp, upper-class tones that Henry recognized instantly: the spookmeister, Martin Beckham. Henry snatched the pen from Rik’s fingers.

‘Mr Beckham, hello — at last.’

‘Mm, this is only a courtesy call.’ Beckham sounded unwilling even to speak and Henry guessed he was doing so under pressure from some other quarters. ‘You sent a list of questions and some requests concerning Zahid Sadiq.’

‘Oh yes… when was that? I’d almost forgotten.’

‘Sarcasm will get you nothing,’ Beckham’s voice hardened. ‘Just to say that our interviewers questioned him on your behalf and he made no comment, so I’m afraid that’s where it ends.’

‘He made no comment?’ Henry asked incredulously. ‘His ejaculate was found inside a female murder victim and you allowed him to make no comment?’

‘That is the situation.’

‘In that case, I need to come and interview him properly, like I should have been allowed to do in the first place.’

‘Are you suggesting that my interviewers are less than competent?’

‘What I’m suggesting is that an investigator with a feel for the brutal murder of a teenage girl needs to speak to this guy, who must be seen as a prime suspect until I’m satisfied otherwise.’

Beckham gave a harsh laugh. ‘I may point out to you that the ejaculate, as you so delicately put it, is only one of four specimens found inside a girl who, it would appear, was of loose morals and may well have been the author of her own downfall.’

Henry tugged his collar, feeling the redness of anger shoot up his neck. ‘Can I quote you on that?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice level. ‘She is a murder victim and I have a job to do, and, as far as I can see, you are obstructing justice.’

‘The bigger picture, Superintendent. I assume you’ve heard that term before?’ Beckham said patronizingly. ‘Sadiq is an asset in the war against terrorism and you will not have access to him.’

‘I know all about the bigger picture, but in this case there is no bigger picture than finding out who killed an innocent teenager,’ Henry responded.

The line went silent.

Beckham said, ‘Maybe when we’ve finished with him, you can have him.’

‘And what will be left of the poor misguided bastard?’

‘Not much, but that’s the best I can do. And if you want my opinion, he didn’t kill her.’

‘What about Akram? Don’t forget his sperm was also found inside her.’

‘How would I know?’

‘When can I have him, then?’

‘To be determined, dear boy,’ Beckham replied, keeping up the patronizing tone.

Henry was almost crushing his mobile phone, but he controlled himself and asked, ‘There is something else. I also asked you to check the items that you seized from Sadiq’s flat to see if there were any DNA traces of the dead girl on any of the stuff.’

‘There was no trace of anything relating to the girl,’ Beckham said. ‘It looks like she was never there. In fact there wasn’t really much of anything there.’

‘OK,’ Henry said, and he ended the call.

‘Nada?’ Rik said, as Henry placed his phone down on the table.

‘Zilch,’ Henry confirmed, wishing he knew a way around the situation. He paced the small office. It was an extreme idea, but the media was a possibility. Go to the papers, slag off MI5? He dismissed that. Apart from the fact it was likely the story would be suppressed from the highest level, he would find himself deep in the mire — shit that would probably follow him into retirement. His anger subsided — a little — and he checked his watch again. ‘I think I’ll go and see if I can collar Mark Carter. I need somebody to shout at. Coming?’

Rik shook his head. Henry handed him his pen back, not having used it, grabbed a set of keys for a CID car and headed down to the police garage. There was no way he was going to drive his Mercedes around the hellhole that was Shoreside estate. He wasn’t bothered if the wheels disappeared from a police car.

They decided on a new location for their next meeting later that evening.

Donaldson made certain he wasn’t followed and insisted Edina did the same. Trouble was, Donaldson knew that the ‘Watchers’, as the surveillance branch of MI5 was called, were the best in the world. They could tail even the most surveillance conscious target without ever revealing themselves. However, basic precautions could be taken, such as stopping abruptly, false window-shopping to look at reflections rather than the display, doubling back and looking at faces, as well as ducking into shops through one door and leaving via another. Edina was unfazed and said she knew what to do.

When she appeared at the Spanish restaurant in a medium-sized shopping arcade just off Victoria Street, Westminster, at eight that evening, she looked beautiful and relaxed. She had strolled the mile or so from her apartment close to the Home Office, overlooking the Thames.

They shared paella, food that Donaldson loved. It was a good one, a mix of seafood and chicken, freshly prepared. The accompanying Spanish beer complemented it perfectly. As Edina scraped a spoon across the paella pan for the tasty burned layer on the bottom, Donaldson asked, ‘Can we talk now?’

She had drunk the best part of the bottle of Rioja. Her eyes glistened as she placed the spoon into her mouth and chewed the burned rice that coated the pan.

‘I can’t actually answer the question you asked about Blackpool, but I can tell you one thing. There were three of them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not two, but three.’

Donaldson sat back.

‘Three boys, not two.’ Her words were slightly slurred but clear. ‘The two you caught — Sadiq and Rahman — and another one who had been brainwashed or radicalized or whatever it’s called. As far as I can gather, his whereabouts are unknown, as are the whereabouts of Jamil Akram. But they believe this little escapade isn’t yet over. That’s why they’re keeping a tight reign on Sadiq, but so far he’s told them nothing useful.’ Edina chuckled. ‘A teenage boy is holding out against some of the world’s most experienced interrogators.’

‘I saw you run,’ she said accusingly. ‘You left me to die.’

‘Could you possibly point that thing in another direction?’

Steve Flynn was sitting on the bench seat in Shell ’s cockpit and the woman after whom the boat had been named was perched on the fighting chair, a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun resting across her lap, but loosely aimed at Flynn’s groin. If it had been discharged, even if he had survived the blast, he would be minus his genitals.

‘You left me behind, ran off,’ she said. ‘I saw you climb back on to the quayside. Then you ran away.’ The aim stayed the same.

Flynn said, ‘I couldn’t have helped, Michelle. I’d been shot

… may I?’ He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to do this, but he eased up his T-shirt and peeled back the dressing to show the ugly red, raised scar across his ribcage. ‘I was unarmed. I thought I might be dying anyway. I could hardly move. I would’ve been no use. As soon as I made a move, I would have been killed. I was too slow. I knew Boone was dead. I just had to hope that they wouldn’t kill you as well, because I knew even then, that if I lived, I’d be coming back.’ He replaced the dressing and pulled his shirt down.

Michelle raised the shotgun and trained it on Flynn’s chest. The double hammers were cocked and her finger was curled across both triggers.

Flynn stopped breathing. ‘Michelle, I’m back. I came back,’ he whispered.

‘You left me,’ she accused him. ‘You left Boone.’

‘He was dead. Don’t forget, I saw him die, too.’

Flynn recalled the first time, not so very long ago, that he’d seen Michelle. It had been on the day he and Boone had returned from a day’s tarpon fishing. He had been stunned by her radiant, free beauty. He also remembered those moments before Boone had hurtled back with the devil on his tail, how Michelle had unashamedly leaned over him at the laptop, naked, her breasts nuzzling his shoulder blades. A vibrant, beautiful woman. Now completely changed by recent events. Her chocolate brown skin had lost its lustre, her face gaunt, bearing the faded marks of a brutal beating. Her eyes seeped terror. Her whole body seemed shrivelled and wasted. Everything had somehow been battered out of her.

‘Do you know what they did to me?’

Flynn shook his head, nostrils flaring, eyes flickering between the double-O barrel ends and Michelle’s face. A tear formed at the edge of her left eye. A perfect, glinting droplet that rolled down her cheek, leaving a track.

‘They beat me and they raped me,’ she whispered.

‘I’m sorry.’ Flynn swallowed. His voice croaked.

‘They beat me and they raped me… again and again.’

Flynn swallowed drily now, his mouth and throat like acid. Michelle’s forefinger jittered on the triggers.

‘But that didn’t matter.’ She removed her finger from the trigger and wiped away the tear with the back of her hand. ‘Rape doesn’t matter to me. I’ve been raped a thousand times. I was a prostitute, you see. A good one. Men have always had their way with me, and as far as I was concerned it was always rape. But I learned to live through it. I’ve been abused since I was seven. By men. Eventually it meant nothing. I have been beaten, too. Many, many times, by angry men.’ Another tear formed, trickled down. She wiped it away. ‘Beating means nothing, either, because no one could ever beat the spirit out of me.’ She lifted her chin challengingly.

‘Shell,’ Flynn started to say, and moved slightly.

She jerked the gun at him. He became rigid again.

‘Those men raped me. They did it on the jetty and in the houseboat. They held my face over the side of the jetty and fucked me from behind so I had to look at Boone’s body floating in the bloody water. His face was looking up at me, what was left of it. The fish had already started to eat him.’

‘Shell,’ Flynn said again.

‘What those men took from me was my hope. Boone was my future. He was my way out. He saved me and I loved him for it. They took him from me… and you — YOU — left me…’

‘Shell,’ Flynn said again for the third time. ‘I’m back. I couldn’t save Boone and I couldn’t have saved you.’

Her head began to shake from side to side, then her chin fell and her whole body sagged as though, this time, the spirit had left her. The gun fell out of her hands on to the deck.

Flynn swooped down and knelt in front of her, encircling his strong arms around her now frail body, which shook and juddered uncontrollably. He held on and her thin arms went around his neck, crushing him ferociously. She started to howl and Flynn kept a tight hold as she broke down completely, her head buried into his chest. He stroked her hair, now coarse and straggled and stale, cooing, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ softly, and other useless words into her ear. Such as, ‘I’m here now.’

As if that was any sort of reassurance to her.

‘I prayed you’d come back,’ she said, her voice muffled and broken. ‘Prayed hard, prayed to God you hadn’t truly deserted me.’

‘Tell me who these people are,’ Flynn whispered. ‘Tell me their names. Tell me where I can find them.’

‘Will you destroy them?’

‘Oh yes.’

The evenings were getting longer and on Shoreside the gangs had started to gather again. Henry drove on to the estate in the CID Focus and was instantly spotted and ID’d by the four youths on the first corner he drove past. They had been pushing and shoving each other, generally larking around. When they saw him, they ended their boisterous shenanigans and eyed him fiercely. Two of them fished out their mobile phones. One started to text, one took his photograph. Henry knew these guys were the sentinels for this entrance to the estate, a bit like lookouts for the Hole in the Wall gang — and this estate was pretty much as lawless as the Wild West. In fact a lot of cops referred to it as Dodge City.

Henry gave the hoodies a broad smile and drove on.

He was looking for Mark Carter, who lived on the far perimeter of the estate in a house once occupied by his mother, which, Henry had learned to his surprise, had been bought by her from the council and the outstanding debt on it had been paid by a mortgage insurance policy when she’d been murdered. Mark now lived there alone.

He drove past the fenced off remnants of a parade of shops that had been systematically razed to the ground by local vandals. Then past the house owned and occupied by the Costain family who presided over the estate like warlords, controlling most of the criminal activity therein. Henry was sure that his photo had been beamed to one of the Costains.

Then he was on the avenue on which Mark lived.

He drew up outside the house, which was in darkness. Didn’t seem like anyone was at home. Still, Henry never took anything for granted. He walked up to the front door, eyeing the windows all the time for signs of movement, then tapped on the front door and rattled the letterbox. The door opened slightly at Henry’s touch. He pushed it fully open and called out, ‘Mark? It’s me, Henry Christie,’ from the threshold.

Behind the door was a stack of unopened mail. Henry switched on the hall light and bent down to pick it up. Scanning through it he saw quite a few official looking envelopes that smacked of final demands, which made Henry wonder how Mark survived. The house might have been paid for, but bills still came in and a two-bit job at a fast food restaurant wouldn’t go far in paying for its upkeep. Could well be on benefits, too, Henry thought.

‘Mark,’ he called again.

He checked the downstairs rooms, found no sign of the lad.

He was upstairs on top of his bed. The bedroom floor was littered with beer cans and a couple of supermarket own-brand whiskey bottles. Henry stood on the crunchy crust of a half-eaten meat pie — hard, like stepping on a cockroach — and wafted away the aroma of exhaled booze, sweat, urine, farts and vomit, smells Henry readily associated with cell blocks.

Mark was fully clothed, lying in the recovery position, on his side, one knee drawn up, clasping a can of cheap lager. He was snoring and dribbling at the same time.

Henry walked across to him, raised his right foot and prodded him with his toe. No response. He prodded a little more firmly and said, ‘Mark.’ The lad groaned, rolled on to his back and quarter-opened his eyes, which seemed to be stuck together by some kind of mucus. He looked dreadful. ‘Jeez,’ Henry muttered and managed to step smartly back out of range.

It was the stomach heave that gave him the warning. Mark spun back on to his side and his projectile vomit splattered on the bedroom floor like a pan of thick vegetable soup being hurled across a kitchen.

Henry half-dragged Mark out of his room, sidestepping the reeking pile of vomit, and into the bathroom. He heaved him into the shower, fully clothed, then turned it on full blast. The icy rods of the water jets shook Mark, semi-conscious up to that point, into some sort of life, demonstrated by a scream and a scramble to get out of the cubicle with a lot of cursing and swearing. Despite getting his sleeve wet, Henry held him back easily as the water gradually lost its chill and warmed up, then became hot, and the struggling teen gave up the fight with a resigned but vicious glare at Henry, who he called a bastard repeatedly. Then he said, ‘OK, OK, let me get my stuff off.’ Henry released him and backed away.

‘Get your sorry arse showered and get into some new clobber.’

Henry reversed out, closing the shower door as he went.

Mark rubbed two round holes in the steamed-up glass door and looked balefully out through them.

Edina hadn’t actually said much, Donaldson mused as he walked back down Victoria Street after they’d finished dinner, but what she had revealed set the American’s mind chugging. He rewound back to the morning he had managed to prevent a suicide bomber causing death and destruction in the middle of Blackpool, and almost caught one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, whilst another suspected bomber had been shot dead on the motorway.

So there had been three of them.

Three would-be suicide bombers? Is that what Edina meant? Was that what she had heard in passing?

He flagged down a cab and instructed the driver to get him to the American embassy.

‘Look what the cat kicked out,’ Henry said at Mark’s eventual appearance in the kitchen doorway.

Mark scowled and sloped across to the sink where he ran the cold tap for a few seconds before bending over and angling his mouth underneath the flow, swallowing and then spitting out a mouthful of water. He wiped his face with his hands and said, ‘What are you doing in my house?’

‘You’re under arrest for not answering your bail.’

‘Oh, fuck.’ He held himself up against the sink. ‘Completely forgot.’

‘Forgot you were on bail for murder?’

Henry had filled the kettle, which he switched on, and found two clean mugs on the drainer. Mark sank on to a chair by the unstable breakfast bar.

‘Yeah, forgot.’ His head was in his hands.

‘Got pissed instead?’ Henry heaped some instant coffee into the mugs. ‘How long have you been asleep?’

‘Dunno. Started drinking at three this aft, after I finished work. Probably zonked out about six.’

Henry watched the kettle boil.

‘I didn’t do it, you know.’

‘Well, that would be the point of answering bail, wouldn’t it? So we can have a chat about things in more detail.’

Mark, head still in his hands, eyes closed, had changed into fresh clothes. ‘I need to clean up that spew.’

‘Oh yes,’ Henry said. He poured the boiling water into the mugs, then handed one to Mark who sniffed it; his head reared away from the aroma.

‘Ugh — hate coffee.’

‘Take a sip.’

Mark did so, tentatively. ‘Yuk, needs sugar, lots of it.’ He stood up, unsteady, and crossed to a work surface on which there was a sugar bowl. He heaped a lot of sugar into the coffee, Henry watching him as he did so. Mark managed to drink some of the resultant mixture.

‘I’ve got to come with you, have I?’ he asked Henry. ‘I didn’t do it, honest. Ask one of the brown musketeers,’ he mumbled.

‘What?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Nowt.’

‘Right, tell you what. I’ll do a deal with you.’

Mark eyed Henry suspiciously. ‘Like with the devil?’

Henry sighed. ‘Get your room cleaned up, get yourself some food down you, watch a bit of telly, go to bed and then turn up at the nick at nine tomorrow morning, bright, sober, ready to roll.’

‘That’s your deal?’

‘Second option — I drag you down to the nick right now and trap you up for the night. You’ve had a skinful and I’d say you’re not fit to interview, so maybe a night in the cells would do you some good. And, as horrible as it might seem now, your vomit will be easier to clean up while it’s still wet. Once its dried, it’ll be a complete nightmare.’ Henry cocked his head at Mark.

Mark sighed. ‘I’ll take option one.’

‘Good.’ Henry pointed at him. ‘If you’re a minute late, I’ll drag the whole thing out for the day, understand? Be on time and we’ll sort it, OK?’ Mark’s mouth curved downwards. ‘I’m doing you a favour here.’

‘I haven’t left the boat since…’ Michelle started to say. She was in the front passenger seat of Boone’s old Land Cruiser, a vehicle that had seen much better days, but kept going. Flynn was driving and they were entering the environs of Banjul, the Gambia’s capital city. The streets teemed with people and traffic, fairly typical of an African town. Progress was slow, the heat tremendous and the air-con unit knackered. Flynn sweated heavily.

‘I understand,’ Flynn said for the umpteenth time, coaxing her gently along. He’d explained he had fleetingly seen the man that Boone had returned with from wherever, and that he thought that person would probably be well gone by now. But he expected that the small man who had helped the man off the boat, and the heavies — the ones who had returned to wreak havoc and death — would still be local.

Flynn had described the small, besuited man. Immediately Michelle exclaimed, ‘That’s Aleef.’

‘Aleef?’

‘Mamoud Aleef… he’s a fixer, a middleman, makes deals, takes a cut.’

This conversation had taken place a little earlier on the deck of Shell. Michelle had sobbed heavily for what seemed like a very long time before it had all subsided and Flynn had pushed her gently away from him, wiped her tears with his thumbs, reassured her and listened to her story. The fear, watching them destroy the houseboat, the rapes, the beatings. And also how, when the police came later, they simply sneered at her, dragged Boone’s body out of the water and that was the last she saw or heard.

‘I need you to help me find these men,’ Flynn insisted. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. You need to point me in the right direction.’

She nodded. ‘I will.’

Flynn had described to her what he’d seen when he’d gone to meet Boone arriving back from his hurried, mysterious journey. How he’d hidden behind barrels and watched the tough guys lounging by the big old Mercedes, the little man — Aleef — helping to transfer the injured man from the boat into the car. He had seen all their faces, they hadn’t seen him, and he had since managed to identify the injured passenger.

‘Who was he?’ Michelle asked.

Flynn then told her about the computer pages Boone had been browsing and when he’d got back to Gran Canaria, he’d found the same pages — and more.

‘A man on the run from the British cops on terrorism charges. I’m certain it’s a guy called Jamil Akram.’ He watched Michelle’s face as he said the name, but saw it meant nothing to her.

‘Boone brought a terrorist back from somewhere?’ she mused thinly.

‘Seems so.’

‘The utter fool. But why did they come after him? Surely he had done what they wanted?’

Flynn sighed, knowing Boone’s character of old. ‘I don’t know for sure, but my guess is he didn’t know who his cargo was until he read the news and saw pictures of Akram. Then suddenly he puts it all together… and…’ Flynn’s voice trailed off.

‘He went for more money. Blackmail,’ Michelle said, showing that she too knew Boone pretty well. ‘I’m sure the small man you describe is Aleef. He’s been around a long time, but in the shadows… he’s a businessman, got lots of henchmen. But I’m shocked he’s linked to a terrorist.’

‘Money,’ Flynn said. ‘How do you know him?’

‘Just do. He flits around the clubs, where he does a lot of his business… where I used to do my business. Until Boone gave me a future,’ she concluded resentfully.

‘Take me into town and find this Aleef. I’ll take it from there.’

The prospect of stepping foot off Shell and going into town clearly scared her. ‘I haven’t left the boat since,’ she said then, and when Flynn finally got her into the Land Cruiser, which he’d found to still be in working order, she continued to repeat the mantra all the way into town. She was plainly terrified of being out and about again.

‘They threatened to kill me,’ she said, turning her face to Flynn, half-hidden in the shadows, but her eyes were wide open. He swerved the Land Cruiser to the side of the road and said gently, ‘I’ll take you back. I’ll try and find them myself.’ He was being honest, not manipulative.

‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘I’m doing this for Boone. They destroyed him and though I am saddened to say it, I want this, I want them dead, Flynn.’ She then looked forward, jaw set hard, a totally different woman to the one he’d met less than two weeks before, now transformed and changed for ever by the trauma she’d experienced. ‘Do it,’ she said.

Donaldson was back at the American embassy. Alone in his office, he was watching the DVD of the video that had been released by al-Qaeda of Rashid Rahman, the young man who had been shot dead on the motorway, who was ranting on about how he would take the fight to the infidel.

His wish — ‘To take as many unbelievers as possible so they may go to hell and I to heaven… and this is only the beginning, the big one is yet to come.’

The words, as ever, sent a shiver through Donaldson’s bones.

‘What a waste,’ he sighed and skipped the disc backwards and watched it again, leaning forwards, closely studying the image, this time with the sound turned down, his head shaking sadly at the terrible loss of a life. Then he noticed something that made him sit upright and think back to the moment he had spotted the other would-be terrorist, Zahid Sadiq, walking along Blackpool promenade, showing all the outward signs of being a suicide bomber. Inappropriate clothing. Robotic walk. The mouth chanting, mumbling his last prayers. Eyes fixed, staring ahead. And something else…

Donaldson shot forwards again, froze the image and pressed print screen.

‘You didn’t find him, then?’ a smug Rik Dean asked.

Henry had driven back to Blackpool police station to drop off the CID car, which had made it unscathed off Shoreside. He’d bumped accidentally into Rik, who had changed into some rough clothing and was making his way to the police garage with the keys for, as he described it, ‘the shittiest police car in there’. A turn of the millennium Nissan, tucked away in a dark corner, which no one used unless absolutely necessary. It should have been changed long ago, but cost cutting meant that if it had gone, there would have been no replacement, so the CID clung on to it as a last resort. It came in useful for jobs like tonight — keeping obs — but it wasn’t something you turned up in if you were out to impress.

‘I did, actually, but he needed to sleep it off.’

‘Pissed?’

‘His life’s going down the pan — literally,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve arranged for him to come in first thing in the morning.’

‘And you think he’ll turn up?’ Rik’s voice said he didn’t.

‘Yep.’

‘Henry, you’re too soft with that lad. It’s not your fault his sister OD’d, his brother’s a dealer and his mum got whacked.’

‘I know, but I think we have some sort of obligation to him.’ Henry sighed. It was an old conversation.

They were face to face in a narrow, poorly lit corridor just outside the custody office. A section van reversed in and two uniformed cops dragged a belligerent drunk out of the back doors. Another body for Blackpool police station’s prisoner sausage machine that processed over 12,000 each year.

‘Anyway, I’m going to give it a couple of hours.’ Rik dangled the car keys at Henry. ‘Until midnight, then I’ll find somewhere for a nightcap. You still coming?’

‘If you want some company,’ Henry said.

‘So long as you don’t go all social worker on me about Mark Carter.’

‘Promise.’

‘And I drive you home to get changed. Not certain a suit is the best attire for observations.’

‘OK… and I thought we could talk about shagging, y’know, like blokes do.’

Rik said, ‘I’ll go for that.’

Flynn and Michelle drifted from bar to bar, drinking soft drinks and sitting in dark alcoves from which they could keep watch for Aleef. It was hit and miss, no guarantees, but at least they were doing something. Flynn felt better about that. He was a man of action and some violence and moping about did not suit him. He needed this. Inside him, the desire for revenge was like a caged beast wanting to be set free. Even if Boone hadn’t been killed, had somehow escaped, Flynn would still have gone after the men who had shot him.

He and Michelle sat close to each other, knee to knee. She kept her face lowered in the shadows as much as possible. The hot, dusty streets of Banjul were thronging with bodies, quite a few white faces in amongst the Africans, so Flynn was not too obvious. No one paid him any heed. Banjul drew in holiday-makers and he was simply a man in a crowd who might have picked up a whore. Nothing unusual about that.

Except Flynn could not even start to visualize Michelle as a prostitute, even though she had once been one. It was very hard for him to make that mental leap.

However, there was only a handful of clubs that tourists frequented and these were not the ones Michelle guided him into. These were dark, dingy, basement hovels, hotter than the streets, crammed with people, the smell of sweat and dope overpowering. The music was loud and African, with driving beats and an air of menace.

Michelle clung to him as she steered him into a club that had no name over the door and had two evil looking bouncers guarding the place. Inside it was a crush, impossible to move other than by sliding intimately past other customers. A haven for groping accidentally on purpose, and pickpockets. There was a minuscule dance floor, which was heaving, and a long bar at which Michelle and Flynn chiselled out a space. Flynn shouted his order, then rotated to rest his back on the edge of the bar whilst Michelle tucked herself tightly alongside him. Flynn’s eyes roved, spotting the pimps and hookers on the prowl, drug dealers too, and lots of clients.

Michelle tiptoed up so her mouth was at Flynn’s ear. ‘Boone liked this place. It’s where I met him.’

Flynn nodded, somewhat surprised at the admission.

‘He took me away from it,’ she added, and dropped back on to the flats of her feet.

Flynn’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the flashing disco and strobe lighting, and he saw a line of alcoves along the wall opposite, deep recesses in which couples groped, and glimpsed occasional flashes of male ecstasy, female hands tucked down men’s trousers, the jerk of gratification.

He turned away from the sight and faced the bar as the drinks came. Michelle’s arms encircled his waist and she clung to him. He draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug, then glanced diagonally across to the far corner of the bar where a man sat on a stool, a beer in his hand, a woman in a shiny dress dancing slinkily on the spot in front of him as he watched with lustful eyes.

Flynn tilted his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth so Michelle could hear his words.

‘That’s one of the men,’ he said, his lips hardly moving. He turned her slightly. She saw him and Flynn felt her convulse and spin back into him with a moan of anguish. It was one of the men from the Mercedes. One of the ones who had killed Boone, shot at him, then raped her. He could have been the one who had winged Flynn.

‘What do we do?’ Michelle asked.

‘We leave, I watch, I wait… I follow. Get the drift?’

‘And me?’

‘You go back to the car, lock yourself in and wait for me. If I’m not back within an hour, go back to Boone’s boat and wait there. I’ll be back. Sometime.’