Bone Machine (26 page)

The bruises still showed. Even underneath all the make-up. She looked in the mirror, sighed. Maybe it didn’t matter, she thought.
Maybe they were just the first in a long line. Something she should get used to.

Anita sat in her dingy room in the hostel in Shieldfield, took a drag on her cigarette, flicked the ash into a saucer. Sighed
and exhaled.

The room was basic, almost office-supply functional. Bed. Table. Mirror. Wardrobe. All chipped Formica and cheap boxwood and
none of it new. Her bed linen had been washed but still retained traces of previous occupants. It told its own history, the
aromas trapped in the fabric like ghosts in an old haunted house.

She was lucky to be in there. That’s what she told herself. That’s what the staff told her. Lucky to be in there.

Lucky.

She stood up, smoothed down the front of her skirt, undid another button on her blouse, pushed her breasts up. She checked
her watch. Five o’clock. Too early. They wouldn’t be out yet. Drunk enough and brave enough to attempt to take out their rage
on her body.

Another drag, another exhalation. The radio played songs she sang along to in words she didn’t fully understand. It made her
feel more alone than she had ever felt in her life. The songs were catchy and poppy and bright, but her heart felt like lead
in her chest.

She sat down again, drank another mouthful of vodka
and tonic. A large mouthful. Rinsing out any fairy-tale champagne residue that she might still be harbouring. She sighed.

Alone.

She had to do something, get out of the room. Look around the shops, even, before going to work. She stood up, grabbed her
handbag, checked it had everything she needed, the tools of her trade. She drained her vodka and tonic, ignored the shaking
of her hand, resisted the temptation to pour herself another one just for luck.

Lucky.

Took one last, deep drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the saucer, crushing it down hard like it was a dream that
needed to be broken.

Closed the door softly behind her. The radio still relentlessly churning anodyne chirpiness into the dead, empty air.

Katya had waited. Planned. She knew what to do. Her chest was tight, her breathing hard. This was the night.

She looked around her room, pacing the floor, measuring, unconsciously counting steps.

The safe house. She had tried to memorize the journey from the Albion office to where she was now, somewhere in a place called
Shiremoor. A grim, desolate place, she thought. The kind she had wanted to go to university to escape from. It was flat land,
open, spare, semi-industrialized. Dying. Not at all like the countryside surrounding Donovan’s place.

The couple downstairs were watching TV. One of the soap operas that seemed common the world over. They were being paid by
the lawyer, Sharkey, to look after her, keep her safe. He had mentioned they were a couple who owed him a favour after some
legal work he had undertaken for them. A couple who could care for her and keep their mouths shut.

‘Look at them as foster parents,’ he had said on the drive there.

She didn’t know what he meant but had smiled anyway.

She gingerly pushed open her bedroom door. It creaked slightly: old, like everything else in this draughty old terraced house.
She stepped carefully on to the landing, hoping the carpet would muffle her footsteps. She was wearing a new pair of trainers
that she had bought on her shopping expedition with Peta; jeans, a sweatshirt and a heavy leather fleece-lined jacket. She
didn’t know how cold it was outside or how long she would be out there, but she wasn’t taking chances.

She moved, step after careful step, down the stairs, stopping each time the wood creaked beneath her, listening for any response
from the closed door of the living room. None. The TV was on loud, cockney voices loudly venting stunted emotionalism on each
other. She moved quickly, almost at the bottom.

She looked around, deciding quickly which door to take: front or back. Back.

Katya turned away from the front room, with its blaring TV, and walked cautiously down the hall towards the kitchen. It was
warm in there, the smell of the evening meal still hanging in the air. Spaghetti bolognese. Or at least a local version of
it. She crept over to the back door. It led out into a small rectangle of concrete with a wooden shed at the side and a double
gate at the far end. The back door, she had noticed previously, tended to stick in the frame. She turned the handle and pulled
hard, trying not to overexert herself and pull the door so far back that it clashed against the wall. With a small grunt of
effort, the door gave way and opened. She sighed her relief then stepped outside.

The night air was cold, wind biting immediately at her face. She pulled the door to, not closing it completely but jamming
it in the frame, and walked towards the back gate.

She turned the handle. Locked. And she didn’t know where the key was.

Katya swore in her mother tongue, looked up at the top of the gate. It was about seven feet tall. She could climb it easily.

She pulled herself up, using the angled wooden bars as leverage, trying not to rattle it too much. Reaching the top, she risked
a peek over into the back lane. Up and down, both ways. No one there. Not waiting for the situation to change, she pulled
herself up and over, landing easily and safely on the other side.

She looked around. Working out which way to go. She took Donovan’s stolen mobile from the inside pocket of her jacket, speed-dialled
a number she had memorized and inputted. The person answered.

‘I’m out,’ she said to the voice at the other end.

The other person spoke. She listened.

She nodded. ‘OK, I’m on my way. See you soon.’

She ended the call, turned the phone off, pocketed it. Looked around again.

Remembered the route they had taken to get there, began to walk back towards Newcastle.

Anita sat in the same bar she had sat in for the last few nights. Not her personal choice, but one that catered for business
people staying at the hotel opposite.

The barman walked past on the way to serving someone, winked at her. She returned a smile. He had barely tolerated her presence
at first, threatening to throw her out after her second appearance there. Now he couldn’t be more different. He even gave
her the nod for potential clients. Supplied her with free drinks. Amazing what a couple of blow jobs in a dank pub cellar
could do.

She looked around the bar, scoping for customers, hoping
for good-looking, high-paying ones. It was near closing time and it had been a slow night. She had only had two punters. Neither
of them good-looking. One with breath and body odour that stank like the devil’s own. But they had paid her adequately and
not hurt her. That, she was beginning to believe, would have to be enough for her.

She would have to live with that.

She looked over into the far corner. It was kept deliberately dark there, perfect for couples who weren’t necessarily with
their own partner and could enjoy a bit of semi-private alcoholic foreplay before moving over the road to give the hotel bedsprings
a good pounding.

But there were no couples there tonight. Only a single drinker. Tall, thin and young, as much as Anita could gather, who seemed
content to let the shadows claim him. His hair hung down over his face but occasionally he would look over at her and his
eyes, catching a steely reflected glint from the bar lights, would connect with her.

This sent a
frisson
through her. Her heart skipped a beat the first time it happened. She didn’t know why, just felt like there was some kind
of connection.

She watched him on his rare excursions to the bar. His lanky, black-clad frame moving slowly, almost ghost-like through the
half-empty bar. Like he didn’t want to be touched or seen. He would silently pay for his drink, then resume his position in
the shadows. Taking slow sips. Pulling on a cigarette, the glowing tip like a demon’s eye in the gloom.

Watching Anita.

She went out with her two punters, returned. He remained there throughout. She should have been scared, she thought the way
he was looking at her. But she felt no fear. Only a sense of thrilling inevitability.

She downed the last of her drink, placed it on the bar.
The barman was hovering nearby, hopeful for another freebie, she thought. She gave a small shake of her head. Not tonight.
He shrugged, walked away.

She got off the bar stool, gathered up her cigarettes and lighter, put them in her bag. Two punters. Good in one respect,
not in others. She walked to the door, then outside.

The cold air hit her but the alcohol inside her body both warmed her and numbed her. She walked along the street towards the
Tyne Bridge, thinking she would treat herself to a taxi home. Maybe stop for some food on the way.

The street was weekday-deserted. The only sounds she heard were the faint music trails coming from closing bars, distant cars,
the occasional rumble of a Metro train overhead and her own shoes clacking along the pavement.

And something else.

She stopped, sensing more than hearing another person behind her. She turned, knowing, in a way she couldn’t explain, who
it would be. There, tall and lanky and smelling of cigarette smoke and alcohol, was the young man from the bar.

‘Hello,’ she said, slipping into business mode. ‘Did you want me?’

He thought for a few seconds, then nodded.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Your place or a hotel?’

He laughed. She didn’t know what at. Must have been a private joke.

‘What about your place,’ he said.

She thought for a moment. They often tried that one. She usually had a few quickly learned lines she could trot out to put
them off. But not this time. He was different somehow. Again she couldn’t explain. It was something she just sensed.

‘OK,’ she said, surprising herself as the words came out. ‘Mine.’

He looked at her. She returned the look. She felt that if she touched him electricity would arc between them. She wasn’t even
thinking of money. Neither of them moved.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Michael,’ he replied.

And Michael Nell smiled.

Nattrass was tired. Beyond tired. She should have gone home hours ago, as she had been told several times, but she couldn’t.
There was something on her mind, something infuriatingly beyond her grasp. A connection, a solution. Every time she reached
for it, tried to bring it forward, it danced off into the dark recesses.

She sat at her desk, poring over witness reports. Statements. The results of door-to-door enquiries, eyewitness accounts taken
from homes, volunteered from passers-by, anyone. All of this came through the inquiry coordinator, DC Stone, and he was a
very good gatekeeper, but Nattrass couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he had missed. Something everyone had
missed, including herself.

She didn’t know what it was, wouldn’t know until she found it.

She sat back, rubbed her eyes, stretched her arms over her head. She wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t go home;
this would just haunt her, stop her relaxing.

She picked up the next statement, started to read. Not expecting this one to yield more than the last, beginning to believe
she was imagining things.

She read down. And there it was.

She read over it again, checked it against another statement she had pulled from an earlier pile.

There it was.

She sat back, light-headed, the information buzzing
through her. She made notes in a pad at her side. She kept going.

It was going to be a long night.

But, she felt, a fruitful one.

Antony sang, his plaintive, haunting voice filling the car with songs of loss and desolation, asking questions of hope. The
music matched the landscape: dark, spare. Denuded winter trees sketched charcoal black before grey night skies.

Donovan sighed, kept his eyes on the road. He was on his way home, winding through the B-roads of Northumberland. Late. Well
past midnight.

He was tired, and it had been a fruitless night. Trailing around the brothels of Newcastle, clutching pictures of beaten-up
prostitutes, clutching at straws. His mind wasn’t on the job; his heart wasn’t in it. What with the boy who wasn’t David,
the break-in, his behaviour with Katya and Jamal’s and Peta’s reaction, he couldn’t give the task his full attention. Phrases
he would have normally used, incisive questions he would have usually asked, charm that he thought never failed, all deserted
him. He was stonewalled at every turn, doors slammed in his face, women refusing to talk.

He had tried explaining, saying who he was and what he was doing, but the women, the pimps, sensed vulnerability about him
and closed down. No one talked. Eventually he gave up, came home.

He pressed a button, ejected the CD, paged along to find something else. Beautiful though the music was, he felt he needed
his dark mood lifting, not reinforcing. He chose the Magic Numbers, waited for the upbeat, retro 1960s guitar combo sound
to kick in and lighten him up. Even their songs of loss were upbeat. The music started but it didn’t lighten him, just irritated
him. With another sigh he turned the CD player off, continued in silence.

His house wasn’t far off, and he looked forward to getting inside, pulling the door closed behind him. Collapsing on the sofa
with a generous measure of Black Bush. Keeping the night out, the darkness at bay.

He approached the ridge before his house, crested it and continued down. He could see it now, a welcoming light glowing from
behind the curtains of the sitting room.

Donovan’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t right. He hadn’t left a light on and Jamal, he recalled, was still at Amar’s flat.

He remembered: Decca Ainsley had taken his file. Knew everything about him.

Donovan had argued against moving out, against his house being put under surveillance. Once Decca Ainsley had taken his details,
Donovan had claimed, they would have obviously moved Katya somewhere else. He wouldn’t be a target.