Silent Predator (34 page)

‘If you take the word’s original meaning, the
askaris
look after the old one, the important one. They are his eyes and his ears as he gets older. Their job, like ours, is to protect.’

‘So? What are you trying to say, Sannie?’

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but it works two ways for the elephants. The younger ones look out for the older one, but at the same time they learn from him, and they benefit from his patronage. They become a formidable team. When the old one eventually dies, the younger ones are stronger, wiser because of their time with him.’

‘You’re saying I’m a better person because Robert Greeves is dead?’ He laughed out loud.

‘Not better, but wiser. Tougher. Tom, everyone needs an
askari
watching out for them.’

Tom hung up the phone and rested his head against the bedroom wall. He wondered who his
askari
was, and who was looking after Sannie these days.

He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. As he rinsed his face and brushed the taste of Scotch and cigarettes from his mouth, he remembered what she’d said about leaving a message on his answering
machine. He’d ignored the blinking red light as he’d stumbled through the door last night, thinking it was yet another reporter trying to get him to tell his side of the whole sorry story. That was journalist speak for giving him enough rope to hang himself.

In lieu of a comb he ran a hand through his hair and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Checking his messages was the closest thing he had to a chore today.

He delayed the inevitable by taking a half-empty carton of orange juice from the fridge and draining it. It was days old and bitter. He coughed as he pushed the play button.

‘Tom, it’s Sannie. I’m calling from South Africa – well, I guess you know that – but I’m coming to England for …’ Tom let the message play, simply because he liked hearing the sound of her voice again.

The next message started. ‘Hello, Detective Sergeant Furey, it’s Mary Whitbread from Channel Four again and I’d just like to –’

‘Sod off,’ Tom said to the machine and stabbed the erase button.

The next message was from another woman and Tom was about to get rid of it before realising the person’s accent was so thick it was doubtful she was a British reporter. ‘Mr Furey, if that’s what I call policeman in this country, it is Olga Kamorov here.’

Olga? Russian, maybe? He didn’t know an Olga, but her voice did sound familiar.

‘We met in club, in Soho, few weeks ago. Oh, sorry, you know me as –’

‘Ivana,’ Tom said aloud. The stripper he had
interviewed when he’d been looking for Nick Roberts. Tom strained to hear the woman’s voice as there was music playing in the background; perhaps she was calling from the club where she danced.

‘I suppose you heard about Ebony – you are policeman, after all – but I wanted to talk to you about the man who used to come and see her dance all the time. Other police are not interested in talking to him, but I not so sure. Call me.’

Ivana – or Olga – left a mobile phone number and that was the end of his messages. Tom replayed the message and wrote down Olga’s details.

He sat on a stool at the stainless-steel topped breakfast bar and tapped his front teeth with the end of the pen as he thought. When he and Shuttleworth had discussed it on his return to England, they had assumed Nick had been set up by the black stripper, Ebony, and that it was she who had lured him into the terrorists’ clutches. Subsequent inquiries had showed that she never returned to work or her flat. She had simply disappeared.

Tom knew from Carla of Nick’s predilections for African women. Carla had presumably also passed this on to her comrades and they had used Ebony as bait to capture Nick.

Why, he wondered, was a black South African table dancer in league with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? There hardly seemed a less likely fit, and the same went for the promiscuous Carla. Money would surely have been a more likely motivator for both women.

Tom tore off the page with Olga’s number and started making notes on a fresh sheet. He wrote
Money
at the top, then underlined it. Next he wrote the following:

Kidnap/ransom.

Why Bernard?

Why the Iraq angle?

A cover?

It didn’t make sense to him, and he scored a line through all of the points. He had talked himself out of the idea that Greeves had been abducted for money, though he was still unsure about the women’s roles.

He played Olga’s message back once more. ‘
I suppose you heard about Ebony
.’

He hadn’t heard a thing about the dancer. What did she mean by that? Tom walked back upstairs, his stomach protesting all the way at its lack of food and coffee, and grabbed his cell phone off the bedside table. As he walked down again, he scrolled through the saved numbers until he came to the one he was looking for.

‘Morris,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.

‘Dan, it’s Tom Furey. All right, mate?’ Detective Constable Dan Morris was another protection officer. He’d been one of the officers who was following up leads on Nick’s disappearance when Tom had left for Africa.

‘Oh, Tom. Hi. Hang on, I’m driving. Let me pull over.’

Tom waited, taking his seat at the breakfast bar again. He flipped the pad over to a new page and kept the pen in his free hand.

‘Sorry, mate. How’s life, anyway? Keeping your chin up?’

‘Just about. It’s no barrel of laughs, Dan, but I’ll know more after the inquiry.’

‘Well, you know all the lads are on your side.’

It was a statement rather than a question, but Tom thought it sounded like Morris was just going through the motions. ‘Dan, are you still following up this end on what happened to Nick?’

‘Um, you know Shuttleworth told everyone that you were no longer working the case or any part of it?’

‘Yeah. Look, this might help you, Dan. Don’t mess me about and I won’t mess you about.’

‘All right. Yeah, we’re trying to find out more of what he was up to, but, I’ll tell you the truth, all we’re getting is dead ends.’

‘You mean literally or figuratively,’ Tom said, writing the word dead on the notepad.

‘Do what?’

Dan was a plodder. A good copper, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘You mean dead as in bodies?’

There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Maybe,’ Morris said.

‘The strip club you and Chris visited – remember it?’

‘How could I forget it? Wish every job was like that one.’

Tom thought the laugh was forced. He knew he was getting close.

‘She’s dead. The stripper I told Shuttleworth about.
Ebony, the black girl Nick had been seen talking to a couple of times. The one who did a bunk from work.’

‘Tom, that information hasn’t been reported to the media. In fact, it’s subject to a D-notice. How did you know about it? If Shuttleworth finds out you’ve been poking your nose into the Minx club he’ll have your guts for garters.’

Tom wrote Ebony’s name on the piece of paper, followed by
D-notice?

‘Tom? You still there?’

‘Got to go, Dan. Thanks, mate.’

‘Thanks? What for? You said you had something that might help us.’

‘Bad line. You’re dropping out, Dan.’ Tom pressed the end button.

He shuffled the pieces of paper in front of him and dialled Olga Kamorov’s cell phone number. As it rang he checked his watch. He wondered if she would be sleeping in, if she’d been working late at Club Minx the previous evening. Too bad if she was.

When she answered, it was in a whisper. ‘Hang on,’ she urged him.

Tom tapped the pen on the benchtop while he waited. ‘Sorry, I was in class.’

‘Class?’

‘I am student.’

Student as well as stripper. She wouldn’t be the first to pay for her studies by working in the sex industry. ‘Olga, we need to talk about Ebony’s death.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Other policemen don’t want anyone to talk about it. They tell all girls at club no one is to talk to friends or journalists about Ebony. But that
is problem, and I try to tell them that but they don’t listen to me.’

He wasn’t sure what she meant by that last rambling remark, and was about to tell her to slow down and explain when she cut him off before he had a chance.

‘I must get back inside for lecture. I meet you at lunchtime, yes? One o’clock?’

She was setting the ground rules and he didn’t like being in that position, but he had little option save to play along. Besides, he had nothing else in his diary for the day. ‘Okay, where?’

‘There is a Burger King in Euston Road, opposite St Pancras, near Kings Cross. You know it?’

‘I’ll find it.’ He hung up and walked over to the refrigerator. Inside was a single egg in a soggy carton and a half-pack of bacon. He put the frying pan on the gas hob and dropped in some oil. His stomach rumbled, so he put all the bacon in and cracked the egg. In the pantry was half a loaf of stale bread. He selected the least mouldy piece and chucked the rest in the bin, along with an assortment of pizza boxes and takeaway curry containers from the benchtop.

He continued to clean up while breakfast sizzled mouth-wateringly nearby. Working back from one o’clock he mentally planned his day. It would take him the best part of an hour to eat and get clean and dressed. He’d booked the Jag in for a service on his first day of suspension. He’d discounted the idea of going away anywhere and figured – correctly, so far – he would spend most of his time either drunk in a pub or drunk at home. He hadn’t been wrong
until now. He would have to take the tube to meet Olga.

He scooped the bacon and egg from the frypan, added another half-inch of oil and dropped in the slice of bread. He devoured the lot in seconds. Cooked breakfasts always seemed like a lot of effort for little return. He hoped that wasn’t an omen for the rest of the day.

Upstairs he showered and scraped three days’ worth of growth from his face, put on his charcoal-grey suit pants, black brogues and socks, and took a clean white shirt downstairs to the laundry to iron. Olga wouldn’t know he was suspended – unless, of course, she had read a newspaper in the last week. Tom figured that if she had, she wouldn’t have called him. He mightn’t be on duty officially, but he wanted her to think he was. He wondered if the dancer would give him anything that might help Sannie’s investigations back in Africa. He doubted it, but perhaps the South African police could run a check on Precious Mary Tambo.

Before leaving the house, he stopped to straighten his tie in the hall mirror and pull on his suit jacket. It felt good to have a sense of purpose again. It might come to nothing, but would keep his mind off Greeves, Joyce and the impending inquiry for a few hours.

Outside it was a perfect autumn day. The chill in the air helped clear his head, and he felt virtuous walking off some of his breakfast down Southwood Lane towards Highgate tube station.

Two young mums pushed their children in prams, chatting and laughing at something. It was a reminder that life went on, even though his world had been
turned upside down. He wondered how Greeves’s wife and children were faring, and if Bernard Joyce had family.

There were already Christmas decorations in some of the shop windows. He wondered what it was like for Sannie’s kids at this time of year, without their father.

Tom entered Highgate Underground station and descended the long escalator to the platforms, his nostrils filling with the unnaturally warm, humid air. A Euston-bound tube train arrived within minutes and he nipped through the sliding doors into the hot, stuffy carriage. Only the drivers got airconditioning.

On the seat beside him was a copy of the
Metro
, the free newspaper handed out to commuters. He opened it and on page five found the news Sannie had already told him.

SOUTH AFRICAN BODYGUARD TO GIVE EVIDENCE AT GREEVES INQUIRY

A South African police officer is being flown to the UK to testify at the inquiry into the abduction and killing of the former Minister for Defence Procurement, Robert Greeves.

Inspector Susan van Rensburg was assigned as the protection officer for Mr Greeves’s South African government counterpart during two days of meetings between the two politicians.

Tom skimmed the recapping of the events, and looked for the ‘why’ in the story.

Mr Greeves’s former spokesperson said the government had decided to invite Inspector Van Rensburg to appear at the inquiry in order to better understand security arrangements which had been put in place prior to Mr Greeves’s visit, and to outline the events leading up to the minister’s abduction.

‘Shit,’ Tom said aloud. An old lady sitting opposite in a plastic mackintosh looked up from her magazine and raised her eyebrows at him. Sannie’s appearance was part of the government’s efforts to set him up as the patsy for Greeves’s death. He could have guessed it. He wondered what she would make of the story and if it would affect her evidence. All she could do was tell the truth – and that would be enough to have him dismissed.

He felt the fog of depression start to settle on him again, almost wilting the creases in his freshly ironed shirt.

‘Only ever bad news in those things.’ The old lady was looking at him, smiling as she nodded to the newspapers beside him. ‘Stick with
OK!,
that’s my philosophy.’

He laughed and nodded as she held up the glossy celebrity gossip magazine.

At the end of the noisy, jolting journey, he gratefully slid onto the crowded tube platform at Euston. Making his way out of this subterranean world, Tom surfaced in the brightly lit main-line station.

He left the bustling terminus, turning left into Euston Road and passing the gothic splendour of the recently restored and enlarged St Pancras International
station. Just before King’s Cross station, Tom weaved across the busy road to the Burger King.

He was half an hour early. He felt like buying a packet of cigarettes, but knew he shouldn’t. His brain hadn’t been at full speed when he’d spoken to Sannie on the phone, but he remembered now there was something he wanted to ask her.