Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Kevin Brooks
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Copyright
A Dance of Ghosts
Until the Darkness Comes
FIRE DEVOURS. IT consumes, destroys, obliterates. It lays the world to waste. Fire deforms. It craves disorder, its only purpose to burn and burn and light the skies until all that’s left is dust. Fire has no limits. Everything burns: wood, plastic, stone, metal, flesh, bone, blood. And everything will burn in the end. Today, tomorrow, a thousand million years from now . . . at some point in time, fire will reduce everything to nothing.
But not tonight.
Tonight the fire is just another house fire.
The house stands in a secluded avenue at the edge of town. It’s a pleasant area – broad pavements planted with lime trees, well-tended gardens, security lights, block-paved driveways – and the house is comfortable and spacious. Grey stone walls, rolling lawns, mullioned windows, a solid oak door set in an old stone porchway. Beyond the front door, a rolling cloud of thick black smoke is beginning to fill the hallway. At the far end of the hall, the kitchen is ablaze. The fire has spread quickly. Fuelled by the boiling cooking oil spilled across the floor, fierce flames have engulfed the kitchen in minutes. The old linoleum is melting, bubbling, smoking. Wooden cupboards are alight, the kitchen table is burning. Flames erupt from a plastic waste bin, a smouldering rug bursts into fire. The smoke thickens and billows, the heat feeding upon itself, and within a short while everything will be alight – sockets and plugs, ornaments, cookery books, the old oak beams, the smoke alarm fixed to the ceiling . . .
The smoke alarm is silent.
But even if it wasn’t, even if the kitchen was filled with the shrieking siren of the alarm, the old man lying face-down on the floor wouldn’t hear it. He’s senseless, motionless, aware of nothing. He doesn’t hear the roar of the fire, the crash of breaking glass as a crystal vase falls from the table. He doesn’t see the heavy saucepan resting beside his head. He doesn’t smell the acrid stink of his own scorched hair. And as his clothing burns, and the flames begin to blacken his skin, it can only be hoped that the old man feels no pain.
‘WHAT DO YOU do if a bird shits on your windscreen?’
The man standing beside me at the bar was the kind of man who tells you a joke as if he’s doing you a favour. The joke itself, to this kind of man, is neither here nor there. It’s a joke. It’s funny. It makes people laugh. And that’s how this kind of man defines himself. He’s a funny man. He tells jokes, he makes people laugh. He’s a real character, this fellow. He’s the kind of man who says, ‘Cheer up, mate, it might never happen.’
And I fucking hate people like that.
But as I looked more closely at him, already weighing up how to brush him off, I realised that as well as being the kind of man who happily tells jokes to complete strangers, he was also the kind of man whose natural response to any perceived slight is to shove a broken glass in your face. He was, without doubt, a nasty piece of work. He wasn’t particularly big – in fact, physically, he wasn’t up to much at all – it was just that everything about him exuded violence. From the way he was standing at the bar – taking up far too much room, almost inviting someone to bump into him and spill his drink – to the lunatic gleam in his slightly off-kilter eyes, he was clearly a mean little bastard. He even had tough-looking teeth. So instead of just blanking him, or giving him a fuck-off look, I decided it was best to play safe and go along with him.
‘Sorry?’ I said, half-smiling at him, affecting a kind of harmlessly preoccupied look. ‘I was miles away there . . .’
‘What do you do,’ he repeated, in exactly the same tone as before, ‘if a bird shits on your windscreen?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you do if a bird shits on your windscreen?’
He grinned. ‘You don’t ask her out again.’
I’d been preparing myself to force a smile whatever the punchline was, but the little snort of laughter I let out when it came was actually quite genuine.
‘You like that one, eh?’ the joker said.
‘Yeah, not bad,’ I admitted.
‘I got plenty more.’
I bet you have, I thought.
Thankfully, I saw the barman approaching then, and by the time I’d caught his eye and ordered two pints of Stella, paid for them and got my change, the joker had found someone else to talk to – a big lunk of a man with a massive head, an equally massive neck, and arms like two legs of pork. From the way the joker was leaning in towards this man, the man bowing down to let him whisper in his ear, I guessed they weren’t complete strangers. I should have left then. I should have just walked away. But I made the mistake of glancing at the joker and giving him a see-you-later nod, and just as I was doing that, he dismissed the lunk with a slap on the shoulder and turned his attention back to me.
‘So,’ he said, grinning his grin again, ‘who do you fancy in the next one then?’
We were in a place called Juno’s, an upmarket fitness and leisure complex on the south side of Riverside Business Park. It was a relatively new venture, having opened up just over a year ago, and it marketed itself as ‘a high-class lifestyle experience’ that catered for all the needs of an exclusive, membership-only clientele. As well as the usual state-of-the-art gymnasium and fitness facilities, it boasted an Olympic-size swimming pool, squash courts, saunas, spas, jacuzzis, a sports hall, a fancy restaurant, several bars, a high-tech conference hall, and a dozen or so private rooms available to members at daily or weekly rates.
I’d never been to Juno’s before – I feel sick if I go anywhere near a gymnasium – but I’d seen it in passing quite often, and from the outside it looked fairly anonymous. A three-storey pale-brick building set in three barren acres of concrete, metal fencing, and prefabricated warehouses, it had always reminded me of the kind of place where you’d find the local tax office or a citizen’s advice centre or something. But on the inside it couldn’t have looked less like a tax office. The top two floors were cordoned off for the night, and the only areas of the ground floor open to the public were the lobby, the sports hall, the bar, and the toilets, so admittedly I hadn’t seen all that much of the place, but what I had seen was all quite luxurious, albeit in a tacky kind of way. Thick red carpeting, marble pillars, brass railings, gilt-framed oil paintings on the walls. Several of the paintings were of the same female figure – a stern and rather portly woman dressed in layers of white robing, with a garland of flowers in her hair – and there were more representations of female figures dotted around the lobby, this time in the form of sleek silver statues set on squat stone pillars. The statues depicted a series of artistically naked women, all of them impossibly lean and large-breasted, and they all seemed to be gazing upwards, with their hands raised and their backs arched, thrusting out their metallic hips as if their silver lives depended on it.
It was a strange mix of decor – part plush hotel, part gentlemen’s club, part brothel – and in view of the entertainment on offer that night, it somehow seemed quite appropriate.
Tonight was Juno’s inaugural ‘Big Fight Night’.
According to the advertising, it was to be the first in a regular programme of ‘action-packed evenings featuring some of the biggest names in professional boxing’, and for one night only, non-members were ‘invited to enjoy the exclusive facilities of Hey’s most prestigious leisure complex’. Which wasn’t strictly accurate, of course, as the only facilities available were the bar and the toilets, and the only really big-name fighter on the card that night was a so-so heavyweight whose only claim to fame was that he’d broken the jaw of a well-known sports presenter in a bad-tempered post-fight interview on live TV. That said, though, the fights had all been pretty good so far, and everything seemed about as well run and professional as boxing ever gets, and although Juno’s was no Caesar’s Palace, and the attendance was no more than a few hundred at best, there was definitely something about the place, and the kind of people who were there, that somehow felt just right.
The undercard was almost over now, and a lot of people had left their seats to go to the bar while the ring was being prepared for the final preliminary bout before the main event of the evening, the one featuring the so-so heavyweight. I wasn’t bothered about the main event. It was the final preliminary fight that interested me. So when the joker asked me who I fancied in it, I was torn for a moment between finding out what he knew about it, if anything, or getting back to the ring to make sure I didn’t miss the first round.
I glanced across at the sports hall. The ring was still empty, and there was no sign yet of the boxers making their entrance. I scanned the ringside seats and saw Cal – my nephew-in-law and colleague – sitting where I’d left him. He seemed happy enough, staring intently at the screen of one of his many mobile phones while his thumb skipped rapidly over the keys. I took a sip of beer, thought for a second, then turned back to the joker.
‘What do you think?’ I asked him.
His answer, in essence, was that the next bout was so one-sided that it wasn’t even worth betting on.
‘Everyone knows the black kid’s got it,’ he said. ‘I mean, last I heard the odds were ridiculous, 10–1 on or something. Which is all right if you’ve got a couple hundred grand to spare, but otherwise it’s just not worth the bother, is it? And there’s no point putting anything on the gypsy kid because he’s got no chance.’ The joker shrugged. ‘Might as well save your money for the big one.’
The ‘black kid’ was an up-and-coming young fighter from Hey called Hassan Tan, and the ‘gypsy kid’, as far as I knew, was an Irish-born boxer from Liverpool who billed himself as Joe ‘Boy’ Rooney.
‘Is Tan really that good then?’ I asked the joker.
He nodded. ‘He’s the best young featherweight I’ve seen in years. Only turned pro about six months ago, and he’s already making a name for himself. Two fights, two KOs, both in the second round. Six amateur fights, six wins inside the distance . . .’ The joker shook his head. ‘I tell you, the kid’s going to be fighting for titles in a year or so. I mean, Rooney’s no mug, he’s been in with some good fighters and had a couple of decent results, but he’s just not in the same league as Tan. I can’t see him lasting three rounds, if that.’
‘Sounds like you know your stuff,’ I said.
The joker grinned. ‘Well, you got to know what’s what, don’t you?’
I nodded, gazing casually around the bar. ‘This is where Tan trains, isn’t it? In Juno’s, I mean. This is where he works out.’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘Looks like a good set-up.’
‘It’s the best.’
‘And I hear he’s got a good team behind him too – top trainers, ambitious management . . .’ I looked at the joker. ‘Do you know Curt Dempsey?’
The joker’s smile suddenly went cold.
I said, ‘He owns this place, doesn’t he?’
The joker shrugged. ‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Right,’ I said, nodding again. ‘I was just wondering, that’s all . . .’
‘Wondering what?’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking of joining, you know . . . applying for membership of Juno’s.’ I grinned, patting my stomach. ‘I really need to get myself in shape.’ I smiled at him. ‘Are you a member? I mean, could you put in a good word for me or something?’
He stared emptily at me. ‘Ask at reception. They’ll give you a form.’
‘Right . . . and you think it’s worth it, do you? Becoming a member, I mean. Are the facilities really as good as I’ve heard?’
The joker looked away for a moment, gazing round the bar, then he turned back and stepped towards me, his eyes fixed coldly on mine. ‘You know what really pisses me off?’ he said quietly.
I almost said, ‘Is this another joke?’ but I quickly thought better of it. Instead, I just kept my mouth shut and stared back at him.
‘What really pisses me off,’ he went on, leaning in even closer, ‘is people who ask too many questions. It makes me start wondering who they really are and what they really want. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ I said meekly, holding up my hands and backing away. ‘I didn’t mean anything. Honestly, I was just asking—’
‘Well, fucking don’t, OK?’
‘Yeah, of course . . .’
He carried on staring at me for a moment or two, and I carried on looking as submissive and spineless as possible – which wasn’t all that difficult – and then eventually, seemingly convinced that I wasn’t worth wasting any more time on, he just gave me a final tough-guy look and said, ‘Go on then, cunt, get the fuck out of my face.’
And I wandered away, smiling contentedly to myself.
After I’d gone outside for a quick smoke, I went back into the sports hall, sat down next to Cal, and passed him his beer.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the pint from me without looking up from his phone. ‘You took your time.’
‘I was talking to someone at the bar.’
‘Yeah? Anyone interesting?’
‘Not really.’ I drank some beer and looked around. The hall was filling up again, people coming back from the bar carrying trays of drinks, finding their seats, sitting down. I turned back to Cal. ‘He told me a joke,’ I said.
‘Who did?’
‘The man at the bar.’
‘Was it funny?’
I told Cal the joke. He laughed. I said, ‘It’s not a bad joke, is it?’
‘Not bad at all.’
‘Do you think it’s OK to like it?’
He looked up from his phone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know . . .’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Is it acceptable?’
‘Acceptable?’
‘Yeah. I mean, is it offensive or anything?’
Cal thought about it. ‘No, I don’t think so . . . it’s just a play on words, isn’t it? You assume that the bird in question is a seagull or something, a real bird, because that’s the kind of bird that’s known to shit on windscreens, but then you find out that in this case the word “bird” is being used in its slang sense, meaning a girl or young woman, and you’re suddenly presented with the image of being out on a date with a girl or young woman who for some reason shits on your windscreen.’
‘Which is funny.’
Cal grinned. ‘Yeah.’
‘But actually,’ I said, looking at him, ‘if you were out with a girl, and she did shit on your windscreen, she’d probably be suffering from some kind of mental illness, wouldn’t she? I mean, a sane person wouldn’t shit on your windscreen, would they?’
‘They might if they were really angry with you about something.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘They might shit in your car, but they’re not going to bother climbing up onto the bonnet or the roof to shit on your windscreen, are they? Only a certified lunatic’s going to go that far.’
Cal was laughing now.
‘We should both be ashamed of ourselves,’ I said, keeping a straight face. ‘Laughing at people with mental problems . . . it’s disgraceful.’
‘You’re right,’ Cal agreed, still laughing. ‘There’s nothing remotely funny about it at all. I can see that now.’ He looked at me, grinning madly. ‘You’re a wise man, Uncle John. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.’
I smiled back at him. ‘Have you heard the one about the tiny piano and the twelve-inch pianist?’
The Tan–Rooney fight was delayed. No reason was given for the hold-up, and no one seemed too bothered, we all just sat there waiting patiently until eventually things started to get moving again. The MC got back into the ring, the two ring-girls reappeared – both over-tanned, over made-up, and barely dressed in tight shorts, tight spangly vests, and ridiculously high heels – and eventually the boxers were introduced. There were no big fanfares, no special effects or dramatic entrances, the MC simply announced the fighters by name – Rooney first, then Hassan Tan – and once they were both in the ring, he read out their respective details: age, weight, fight record, home town. There was a smattering of boos and jeers for Rooney, and Tan’s introduction was greeted with loud cheers and some half-hearted chanting from the back of the hall – Has-san! Has-san! Tan raised a gloved hand in appreciation, but he didn’t make a big deal of it. He was too focused to get involved with the crowd – bobbing up and down, throwing punches, keeping himself nice and loose. I was watching him closely, and even at this stage it was obvious that he was a class act. He looked calm and confident, perfectly in control, totally unfazed by everything around him. Not once did I see him so much as glance at his opponent. He wore plain black shorts, no tassels, no fringes, nothing fancy. And although he was fairly slight, and a good two inches shorter than Rooney, he looked to be in really good shape – strong, powerful, well balanced. He had a light olive complexion, high cheekbones, and a very faint oriental look to his eyes.
The MC had left the ring now and the referee was giving his last instructions to the two fighters. They nodded their heads, touched gloves, and went back to their respective corners.
As the trainers climbed out of the ring, and the expectant buzz of the crowd grew louder, Cal leaned over to me and said, ‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘I’m working,’ I reminded him. ‘It’s just part of the job.’
‘Yeah, but you’re still enjoying it.’
I smiled. ‘It’s the sport of kings, Cal. The noble art, the sweet science—’
‘It’s two guys beating the shit out of each other.’
The bell rang, and I turned my attention back to the ring.
As soon as the fight started it was obvious that the joker was right about Hassan Tan – he was in a different league. Rooney was the more aggressive fighter – constantly barrelling forward, his head down, shoulders hunched, fists pumping like pistons – but very few of his punches actually landed, and those that did were mostly on Tan’s arms and shoulders. Tan, meanwhile, was just biding his time, effortlessly moving around the ring, happy to let Rooney tire himself out, while at the same time taking every opportunity to catch him hard with a straight left jab to the head. Unlike Rooney’s punches, Tan’s were telling and accurate, and by the end of the first round there was a cut over Rooney’s right eye and a visible swelling under his left. He was struggling for breath too, and as he went back to his corner and sat down, he already looked like a beaten man. Tan, on the other hand, was unmarked and barely even sweating.
As one of the ring-girls climbed somewhat ungracefully into the ring and began strutting her stuff – to the inevitable chorus of whistles, hoots, and crude comments – I gazed around the seats nearest the ring, trying to spot Curt Dempsey. From what I knew of him, he rarely missed a chance to show his face in public if he thought it would benefit him in any way, and as this was his club, and Hassan Tan was supposedly his protégé, the least I would have expected from Dempsey was a ringside appearance at this fight, if not at any of the others. But so far I hadn’t seen him all night, and as I looked around now, there was still no sign of him.
In the second round, Tan began stepping things up. He started throwing more jabs, working on Rooney’s cut eye, and as Rooney reacted to the barrage of left jabs by raising his guard more and more, Tan suddenly unleashed a devastating volley of body shots – four or five clubbing punches that caught Rooney just below the ribs. He staggered to one side, clearly hurt, and when Tan hit him again with a perfect right hook to the head, Rooney almost went down. I was expecting Tan to finish him off then, but Rooney was an experienced fighter, and he knew how to buy time – blocking, clinching, boxing dirty, using his head – and somehow he made it to the end of the round. I couldn’t see him surviving another one though, and I began to wonder if the joker’s prediction that Rooney wouldn’t last three rounds was more than just an idle guess. Maybe he really did know what he was talking about. Maybe it wasn’t so much Rooney’s experience that had got him through the second round as the fact that Tan had been holding back, because maybe Tan knew – as the joker did – that all the clever money was on a Rooney KO in the third. This was boxing, after all. And boxing isn’t exactly the straightest business in the world. So it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if Rooney had gone down in the third. But he didn’t. In fact, if anything, as the round went on, it was Rooney who began to get the upper hand. Which really was surprising. Especially as he didn’t seem to be doing anything different. He was still using the same basic tactic he’d used in the first round – barrelling forward with his head down, throwing as many punches as he could in the hope that one of them might do some damage – but Tan seemed to have forgotten how to deal with it. Instead of skipping out of Rooney’s way and constantly stinging him with a sharp left jab, or switching his attack to his body, Tan was just defending himself now – backing off, blocking, clinching. And he seemed to have lost his air of self-belief too. He no longer looked in control.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I muttered.
‘What?’ Cal said, looking up from his mobile.
‘He’s not fighting any more.’
‘Who isn’t?’
‘Tan . . . there’s something wrong with him.’
Cal glanced up at the ring. ‘Maybe he’s hurt.’
I shook my head. ‘He’s not hurt.’
In fact, it struck me then that he looked more confused than hurt, as if he had something on his mind, something that troubled him. A couple of times I saw him glance over at his corner, and towards the end of the round, as Rooney had him backed up against the ropes, he quite clearly turned his head and looked out over the crowd towards the back of the hall. Rooney landed one then, a short right hook to Tan’s chin. It wasn’t a killer punch, but it was enough to remind Tan that he was in a fight, and for the next ten seconds or so he actually threw a few punches himself. But there was no real venom to them, and by the time the bell rang there was no doubt that Rooney had won the round.
I was watching Tan really closely now, and as he went back to his corner and sat down on his stool, it was clear that he was seriously bothered about something. As soon as his gum shield was out of his mouth he started arguing with his trainer, whispering furiously in his ear. His trainer snapped back at him, hissing through his teeth. Tan glared at him, cursing and shaking his head, and when his cutman tried to give him a drink he angrily swatted the bottle away. More words were exchanged, and then the trainer said something that seemed to stop Tan in his tracks. As the bell sounded, Tan gave his trainer a resigned-looking nod, the trainer shrugged sadly and patted him on the cheek, and Tan got to his feet, blew out his cheeks, and got ready to carry on fighting.
He didn’t last very long.
The round started off promisingly enough, with Tan reverting to his skip-and-jab routine, and for a while I thought he’d sorted himself out, but after about thirty seconds he mistimed a jab and momentarily lost his balance, and as he stumbled to one side Rooney caught him with a left hook to his belly. It didn’t look like much of a punch, but Tan gasped and doubled over, and Rooney was onto him in a flash. A vicious uppercut to the chin, a clubbing right cross to the side of his head, and Tan was down and out. The referee jumped in and started to count, but everyone knew it was already over. Tan was flat out on his back, his trainer was rushing across the ring, and Rooney was up on the ropes, his arms raised in triumph. The crowd, meanwhile, were jeering and booing.
‘What’s going on?’ Cal said, looking round.
‘He threw it,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘What?’
‘Hassan Tan . . . he threw the fight.’
Cal looked at me, puzzled by my annoyance. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘It is for me,’ I sighed.
‘Why?’
‘Because now Ada’s going to kill me.’
MY INTEREST IN Hassan Tan had begun four days earlier when his aunt had showed up at my office in Wyre Street. It was a cold January morning, the rooftops opposite my second-floor window still glittering with frost, and nothing much was happening. Things had been quiet since the lengthy Christmas and New Year break, and although it was the middle of January now, there was still no sign of any work coming in. Times were hard, and the private investigation business, just like everything else, was struggling to survive.
That morning, as usual, I was sitting with Ada on the battered old settee beneath the window in my private office, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, chatting idly about this and that, just passing the time, waiting for something to happen. Ada is my only full-time employee. An overweight and perpetually grumpy old woman, with very poor social skills and the dress sense of a bag lady, she does almost everything for me. She’s my secretary, my receptionist, the office administrator. She looks after all the paperwork, the contracts, the finance, and – in her own special way – she looks after me. And despite all her faults, and maybe even because of some of them, I’m inordinately fond of her.
For the last couple of days we’d been trying to work out if there was anything we could do to get the business going, but so far we hadn’t come up with much.
‘No one’s got any money,’ Ada said simply, ‘that’s all there is to it. The economy’s fucked, the banks aren’t lending, businesses are cutting back, and everyone’s maxed out their credit cards to pay for Christmas.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘It’s not just us, John. I was talking to someone at Mercer’s the other day, and they said their business is down at least 50% on last year.’
I nodded. Mercer Associates is a large corporate investigation company based in Hey, owned and run by two old friends of mine, Leon Mercer and his daughter Imogen. When times were better, Mercer would often subcontract some of their smaller cases to me, but that hadn’t been happening for a while.
‘The whole country’s fucked,’ Ada went on. ‘The only people making any money at the moment are pawnshops and loan companies.’
‘That’s what I like about you, Ada,’ I said. ‘You’re always so full of optimism.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m just being realistic, that’s all. There’s no point in pretending everything’s OK when it’s not.’
‘Yeah, well . . . maybe if things get really bad there’ll be some more riots, only this time the entire social order will start to break down and we’ll descend into a state of anarchy. Then I might get some work.’
Ada shook her head. ‘If we descend into a state of anarchy, no one’s going to bother hiring a private investigator, are they? In a lawless world, if you thought your wife was having an affair, all you’d have to do was follow her yourself, catch her with her lover, and then kill them both. Problem solved.’ Ada looked at me, a glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘No one would need you any more. You’d be redundant.’
‘Yeah, but I’m your employer, don’t forget. So you’d be redundant too.’
She smiled. ‘I’d get by. I’m resourceful.’
‘What, and I’m not?’
‘You wouldn’t last ten minutes.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because—’
It was at that point that the door to the main office swung open and a sad-eyed black woman wearing a thick woollen coat and a bright red headscarf came in.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked her, getting to my feet.
‘I’m looking for Mr Craine.’
‘I’m John Craine,’ I told her. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘My name’s Ayanna Osman,’ she said. ‘And I’m hoping you can put my mind at rest.’
After asking her if she’d like some coffee, which Ayanna politely declined, Ada left us alone in my office and I showed Ayanna to the chair in front of my desk. She had the kind of face that doesn’t give much away, but I guessed she was probably in her early forties, and I got the impression that she’d been through a lot in her life. She had the world-weary look of someone who’s learned the hard way that showing your true feelings can sometimes be dangerous.
As she settled herself down in the chair, and I sat down opposite her and took out a pad of writing paper, I found myself wondering where she came from. Her English was excellent, but it clearly wasn’t her first language, and my best guess was that she was originally from somewhere in Africa but that she’d been in the UK for quite some time. Even as the phrase ‘somewhere in Africa’ entered my head, I realised what a ridiculously inept and narrow-minded description it was, and that if I’d said it out loud my ignorance could quite possibly be taken as an insult. And for a second or two I actually felt quite uncomfortable with myself. But then I thought – well, firstly, you didn’t say it out loud, did you? And secondly, all it really means is that you’re reasonably sure she comes from an African country, but that your knowledge of African countries is insufficient to allow you to be more specific.
‘Before we start,’ Ayanna said, refocusing my attention, ‘can I ask if there’s a fee for this?’
‘For hiring me?’
‘No, I mean for the consultation. Do you charge for the consultation?’
I shook my head. ‘You only have to pay if you hire me. We usually ask for a part-payment in advance, and then we’ll bill you for the remainder of the payment when the job’s finished.’
‘Right . . .’ she said, a touch hesitantly. ‘And whatever I tell you now, is that in confidence?’
‘If you do decide to hire me,’ I explained, ‘we’ll draw up a contract that guarantees your confidentiality, but until then I can’t promise anything.’ I smiled. ‘There’s no one else here though, it’s just the two of us, and unless you confess to some heinous crime, I’m quite happy to respect your privacy.’
She nodded. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking.’
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘It’s just . . . well, it’s always best to know where you stand, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is.’ I looked at her. ‘So, Ms Osman—’
‘Ayanna, please.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘And I’m John, OK?’
She nodded again.
‘So, Ayanna,’ I went on, ‘how can I put your mind at rest?’
She started off by telling me about her nephew Jamaal, but then all of a sudden she went off on a tangent and began talking about her sister, Sudi, and how it wasn’t really Sudi’s fault that she’d abandoned her children soon after leaving Somalia . . . and within a minute or two I was totally lost.
‘Hold on a second,’ I said, holding up my hands. ‘I’m getting a bit confused here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that it’s a long and quite complicated story, and I’m not really sure how much you need to know and how much I should leave out.’
‘All right,’ I said, picking up a pen. ‘Well, the first thing I need to know is what it’s actually about.’
‘Right . . .’
I looked at her, waiting for her to go on, but she still seemed unsure what to say. ‘Is it about your sister?’ I asked.
‘Not really . . .’
‘Your nephew then?’
‘Yes . . . yes, it’s about Jamaal.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘So let’s start with him. He’s your sister’s son, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Full name?’
‘Jamaal Tan.’
I wrote it down. ‘And his mother’s full name?’
‘Sudi Tan.’
‘How old is Jamaal?’
‘Seventeen . . . or rather, he was seventeen. He died last year.’
‘How did he die?’
‘He was killed, murdered.’
I stared at her. ‘Murdered?’
She nodded.
I said, ‘And where did this happen?’
‘Here . . . in Hey.’
‘When?’
‘27 August last year,’ she said. ‘It was a Saturday.’
I paused for a moment, thinking back to last year, but I couldn’t remember hearing anything about the murder of a teenage boy, and I found that hard to believe. Hey has its fair share of violence and death, but it’s no worse than any other medium-sized British town, and any murder is still rare enough to be a big deal, let alone the murder of a teenage boy, so I should have heard something about it, especially as it’s part of my job to know what’s going on in this town.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked Ayanna.
‘Jamaal’s body was found in one of the underpasses down by the river,’ she said quietly. ‘He’d been badly beaten, sexually assaulted, and stabbed to death. A man walking his dog called the police early on Sunday morning.’
I frowned. ‘And this was definitely in August last year?’
‘I know when my nephew was killed, Mr Craine.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just that I don’t understand why I haven’t heard about this before.’ I looked at her. ‘I mean, as far as I know, there hasn’t been anything about Jamaal’s murder in any of the papers, local or national, and there was nothing on the news, TV or radio . . .’
‘There was one newspaper reporter,’ she said. ‘A young man, he came round to my flat with a photographer a few days after Jamaal was killed. He said he was from the Hey Gazette and was writing a story about my son’s murder.’
‘He thought Jamaal was your son?’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t want to speak to him. I told him to go away. He carried on asking me questions, but when the photographer took a picture of me, I just slammed the door in their faces.’
‘Did the reporter try getting in touch with you again?’
‘No.’
‘What was his name?’
She closed her eyes, trying to remember. ‘I think it was Morton, or Morgan . . . something like that.’
I wrote down the names. ‘And nothing about Jamaal was ever published in the Gazette?’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen anything in any of the papers.’
I thought about that for a while, wondering if it really was as unusual as it seemed, and it did cross my mind for a moment that maybe I was wrong, maybe some murders just don’t make the news, for whatever reason. Maybe it happens all the time? If something doesn’t make the news, you’re not going to know, are you?
I shook my head. A seventeen-year-old boy, beaten, raped, stabbed to death . . . and that doesn’t make the news? It was definitely unusual.
I looked at Ayanna. She was sitting very still, just staring down at her lap, a picture of long-suffering patience.
‘What about the police?’ I asked her.
She looked up. ‘They aren’t being very cooperative with me.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s what I was hoping you could find out.’
I paused, staring at her, momentarily reminded of a woman called Helen Gerrish who’d come into my office just over two years ago. I could see Helen now, sitting in the same chair as Ayanna, telling me of her dissatisfaction with the police, asking me to see what I could find out . . .
I’d found out a lot for her.
And even more for myself.
I’d awoken ghosts, some of which were still haunting me now, and I wondered for a moment if it was happening all over again.
‘All right,’ I said to Ayanna, shaking the memories from my mind, ‘tell me everything you know about Jamaal’s death.’
She knew he’d been stabbed twenty-two times, and that at least four of the knife wounds would have been fatal. She knew he’d been punched and kicked repeatedly, and brutally beaten around the head and body with some kind of blunt object, most likely a baseball bat. He’d suffered a fractured skull, three broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen. He’d been found with his trousers pulled down, and there were indications that he’d been raped. Twenty-eight wraps of heroin and thirteen rocks of crack cocaine were found in his pockets. Ayanna also knew that as yet no one had been arrested or charged in connection with Jamaal’s murder.
I wrote all this down, and then I asked her to take me through her dealings with the police. She told me that the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Inspector Gavin Lilley, had spoken to her and Jamaal’s older brother, Hassan, at some length on the day Jamaal’s body was found, and that at first Lilley had seemed reasonably understanding and sympathetic.
‘He apologised for having to ask us so many questions so soon after Jamaal’s death, but he said it was vital to gather as much information as soon as possible in order to find out what had happened.’
I nodded, noting down Lilley’s name. I didn’t know him personally, but I’d heard of him.
‘I did my best to answer all his questions,’ Ayanna went on, ‘but it was . . . well, it was difficult. I have to be very careful.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, as I said, it’s a long and complicated story . . .’
I smiled. ‘I’ve got the time if you have.’
She sighed. ‘My sister and I were brought to this country in 1999 to work as domestic staff for a wealthy Russian businessman. When we arrived in London, the man who’d arranged everything for us took away our passports and told us they wouldn’t be returned until we’d paid off the fee we owed him for bringing us over and arranging our accommodation and employment.’ Ayanna shook her head. ‘The fee was so large that even if we’d earned any money it would have taken us years to pay off, but the Russian never paid us a penny.’
‘You worked for nothing?’
She nodded. ‘We weren’t the only ones. Most of the others were either African or East European, and we were all in the same position. We’d all had our passports taken away, so we had nothing to prove we had a right to be in the country, and it was made perfectly clear to us that if we went to the authorities without any documents, the best we could hope for was a long spell in prison, and for those with children, like Sudi, they’d never see them again. But there were stronger threats too, stories about those who had tried to contact the authorities, or those who’d decided to leave the house and try their luck on their own, and how these people had simply disappeared without trace.’ Ayanna sighed again. ‘So we all just did what we were told. We cleaned, cooked, served drinks at parties. We kept our mouths shut. We worked all day and slept at night in an annexe building at the back of the house . . .’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Two or three times a week, some of the younger women would be collected from the annexe in the early evening and we wouldn’t see them again until late the following day. Sudi was almost always one of those taken. None of us talked about it, but everyone knew what was happening.’
‘Forced prostitution?’ I said.
Ayanna nodded. ‘It was all too much for Sudi. She’d already been through an incredibly abusive marriage in Somalia, and part of the reason she was so desperate to leave in the first place was to get away from her husband, and now here she was being violated and abused all over again . . . it was just too much for her. She stopped caring altogether – about herself, her children, me . . . she just gave up on everything. She started spending more and more time away from the house, sometimes with the Russian, but more often with friends of his, or business colleagues . . . she was passed around like a favoured toy. They played with her, dressed her up, did what they wanted to do, then had her taken away when they were done. On the rare occasions when I did see her back at the house, she was almost always drugged-up on something. I didn’t know at the time it was heroin, all I knew was that whatever she was taking, or being given, it was slowly sucking all the life out of her. I was looking after the two boys by then, and sometimes they went weeks without seeing their mother, and even when they did see her . . . well, Sudi was in no state to be anything to them.’ Ayanna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Even when we finally managed to get away from the Russian, things didn’t get much better, especially for Sudi. She was too far gone by then.’
‘How did you get away from him?’ I asked.
‘He just abandoned the house one night, cleared everything out in a hurry, then drove off and left us behind.’ She shrugged. ‘We assumed he’d been tipped off that some kind of raid was imminent – the police, the Inland Revenue, rival gangsters – but we didn’t hang around to find out. The four of us left with a Nigerian woman who said she knew someone in Southend who might be able to help us, maybe even find us all somewhere to stay for a while . . .’ Ayanna smiled. ‘We didn’t even know where Southend was at the time, let alone how we were going to get there, but we made it in the end.’ Her smile faded. ‘But, as I said, it was already too late for Sudi. She was heavily addicted to heroin by then, and the only way she knew how to get it was by selling her body. I did everything I could to help her, but it was hopeless really. She was never going to make it. She died from an overdose five years ago.’
I nodded, saddened but not surprised.
‘I did my best for Hassan and Jamaal,’ Ayanna went on, sniffing back a tear. ‘I worked as hard as I could, I made sure we had somewhere to live, I even managed to get the boys into school now and then . . . but it’s hard to live a normal life when you have no right to be in the country. You can’t get a decent job, everything has to be cash in hand, and if you don’t pay the rent on time or your landlord just wants you out, there’s nothing you can do about it.’ She sighed. ‘We must have lived in a dozen different places over the last few years – Southend, Chelmsford, Harwich, Jaywick . . .’
‘Couldn’t you have gone to the relevant authorities?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, if you’d told them how you came to be here, explained the whole situation . . .?’
She smiled wryly. ‘And what do you think the authorities would have done with us?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Do you know anything about Somalia, Mr Craine?’
‘Not really,’ I admitted. ‘I read the newspapers and watch the news, so I’ve got some idea of what it’s like, but I wouldn’t say that I really know anything about it.’
‘Sometimes it’s best not to know,’ she said sadly. ‘There’s so much cruelty and violence in the world, so many atrocities taking place every day, every hour, so many unspeakable things . . . if we knew about all of them, if we were made aware of every single act of human monstrosity, we simply couldn’t cope.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there, quietly moved, and waited for her to go on.
‘Somalia is my home, Mr Craine,’ she went on. ‘It’s my country, my birthplace. But I have no love for it, and despite everything I’ve been through here, I don’t want to go back there. And it’s certainly no place for a young man like Hassan.’
‘Right,’ I said, ‘so you had to be careful what you told DI Lilley because you were worried about getting deported.’
She nodded. ‘I told him as much as I could, but when he began asking me detailed questions about our history, I kept my answers as vague as possible. I couldn’t really see why it was relevant anyway. But Mr Lilley seemed to think it was important, and it was obvious he was getting annoyed with me. And then, when he started asking me about Jamaal’s day-to-day life, and I told him that neither of the boys lived with me any more, so I didn’t really know what Jamaal got up to every day . . . well, that’s when he turned his attention to Hassan, and that didn’t go very well at all.’ Ayanna looked at me. ‘Hassan doesn’t like the police. He doesn’t like anyone in authority, full stop. He doesn’t trust them, doesn’t respect them, doesn’t want anything to do with them. And although, on this occasion, the police officer in question was supposedly trying to help him, Hassan’s instinctive response was to tell him as little as possible. He was happy enough answering the straight-forward questions – where did your brother live? where did he work? – but when Mr Lilley moved on to Jamaal’s lifestyle – who were his friends? what did he get up to? did he have any enemies? – Hassan became very surly and defensive. When Mr Lilley brought up the subject of the drugs that had been found in Jamaal’s pocket, and he asked Hassan if he knew that his brother used drugs, Hassan just shrugged off the question at first, saying he had no idea what his brother got up to. But when Mr Lilley asked him outright if Jamaal had been a dealer, and if he’d had any connections with the local gangs, Hassan completely lost it.’ Ayanna shook her head at the memory. ‘He just started yelling at Mr Lilley, telling him that it was obvious the drugs had been planted after Jamaal had been killed, it was just so obvious, why couldn’t he see that? Why would anyone beat him up and stab him to death but not steal the drugs from his pockets, especially if it was a gang-related killing?’
‘I was wondering about that myself,’ I said.
‘Hassan eventually calmed down a bit, but I could tell he was still seething inside. He told Mr Lilley, in no uncertain terms, that yes, his brother had used drugs – who doesn’t? – but he’d never been a dealer, he’d never had anything to do with gangs, and that whoever had killed him had also planted the drugs on him. When Mr Lilley stared at Hassan and asked him why he thought the killer would do that, Hassan just stared back at him and said, “You tell me.”’
I smiled to myself. I was beginning to like the sound of Hassan.
‘After that,’ Ayanna said, ‘Mr Lilley suggested that we call it a day for now and give ourselves a chance to cool off.’
I jotted down some notes, a few initial thoughts, then I turned back to Ayanna. She looked tired, physically and emotionally drained.
‘Are you all right carrying on?’ I asked her. ‘We can stop now if you want, finish off another time. Or just take a quick break if you’d prefer.’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Do you want a cup of tea, coffee? A drink of water?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘So what happened next?’
She didn’t see very much of DI Lilley after that first interview. As far as Ayanna knew, he was still in overall charge of the investigation, but most of her subsequent dealings, such as they were, were with two younger officers: Detective Sergeant Alan Proven and Detective Constable Jessica Scales. DC Scales was supposed to be the Family Liaison Officer.
‘She came round to see me a couple of times,’ Ayanna said, ‘but I wouldn’t say she liaised with me all that much. All she ever had to say about the investigation was that they were “following up leads”, or they were “looking into things”. She was very reluctant to go into any real detail about anything.’
‘What about DS Proven?’ I asked. ‘Was he any help?’
‘Not especially. Every time I rang him up to find out how things were going, there was always some kind of hold-up – they were waiting on forensics, they were trying to trace a possible witness – and he kept assuring me that someone would be in touch as soon as there was any definite news. So I’d leave it for a while, a week or so, waiting for someone to get in touch, but no one ever did. So then I’d call back, and it’d be the same old story all over again – we’re still waiting on this, chasing up that . . . we’ll get back to you as soon as we know anything – and then another few weeks would go by without hearing anything . . .’
‘When they told you they were “looking into things”, did they ever elaborate at all? Did they tell you what kinds of things they were looking into?’