Bone Machine (31 page)

‘Why doesn’t someone say something? Do something?’

‘Get real. Who wants to get involved with that lot?’ She looked at Turnbull. ‘Not very bright, your mate, is he?’

‘No,’ said Turnbull, ‘he’s not.’

She handed the photos back to Donovan. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s OK.’ Donovan pocketed them.

‘Maybe you should try the other side of the water. Plenty of girls there. Mind, sometimes they seem further away than Eastern
Europe or Africa.’

Donovan nodded his thanks.

Claire looked around. ‘Listen, I’d better be gettin’ back. Nice to see you, Paul.’ She gave Turnbull a kiss on the cheek.
He gave her a hug that, Donovan thought, he would rather not let go from. She pulled away, made her way down the street on
her tottering heels.

‘Oh, well,’ said Donovan when she had rounded the corner, ‘it was a good try.’

Turnbull nodded, his eyes pools of private sadness.

‘How d’you know her, then?’ asked Donovan.

‘Mind your own fuckin’ business.’ He began to walk away.

Donovan decided to leave it. He hurried along, caught up with him.

‘Fancy a pint?’

Turnbull nodded.

‘Come on, then.’ They walked off. Further along the street, a thought occurred to Donovan. ‘Disappearing girls.’

‘What?’ grunted Turnbull.

‘Disappearing girls. I wonder if it’s anything to do with the case you were working on.’

Turnbull shrugged.

Donovan made a mental note: ask Katya. When he next saw her.

Turnbull stopped walking, looked at Donovan, something building inside him. ‘What d’you want? Ay? Now. What d’you want?’

Donovan looked at him, taken aback. ‘Now?’ he replied. ‘I want to find Michael Nell, or at least the girls in the photos.
Then I’ll have done my job. Then I can go home.’

‘That’s it? Do your job and go home?’

Donovan shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘Thought you were one of those glory boys. Want to be there in the thick of it, showin’ us how to do our jobs, getting the
adrenalin rush. That’s how you used to be. How you were when I first met you. You’re tellin’ me you don’t want to be out there,
huntin’ for Nell? Findin’ the killer?’

It was an honest question and it deserved an honest answer, Donovan thought. About past cases he had worked on. The adrenalin
rush he had experienced from them. From being tied to a chair facing a killer.

Then he thought of David, his lost face swimming into vision.

Then Jamal, the boy he had to look after now, bring up as best he could.

‘Just do my job and go home,’ he said.

Turnbull looked at him as if not trusting in the answer he had heard. ‘Thought you had passion. Commitment. Whatever else,
thought you had that.’

‘I do,’ said Donovan. ‘But I’ve also got responsibilities.’

Turnbull stared at him.

‘You don’t believe me?’ Jamal’s face dancing before his eyes.

Turnbull shrugged. ‘Let’s go to the pub.’

Donovan nodded.

They kept walking, each in their own silence.

Donovan thinking about Turnbull’s words, wondering whether the answer he had given had been the true one.

Turnbull thinking about something too deep for Donovan to fathom.

Peta looked up and down the corridor, checking for security guards, students, lecturers. Anyone who would find her actions
suspicious. Her actions of breaking into a lecturer’s office.

When night had fallen, the campus had emptied as if in response to an unspoken curfew. Outside, occasional beams from security
guards’ torches swung over the courtyard, like searchlights in an old Second World War POW film.

Peta had sat in the refectory, watching the main door until activity around it had eventually ceased, including the departure
of the Prof. In what had been a moment of almost
Casablanca
loneliness she had been the last to leave. Chairs were placed on tables, the floor mopped, meaningful glances were exchanged
between herself and the serving staff. All the scene needed was some minor chorded Hoagy Carmichael tinkling piano and it
would have been complete. The fact that the furniture was all plastic and Formica, the
mop stank of some industrial cleaner that was probably declassified MoD baby deformer from the Gulf War and the server was
one of two scowling migrant women who just wanted to finish up and go home all spoiled the illusion somewhat.

She had left the refectory and, dodging the searchlights, made her way to the main building. Inside, the corridor was striplit
and long-shadowed. Peta’s footsteps had given out lonely echoes as she had walked slowly and warily up and down, satisfying
herself that she was alone in this stretch of the building.

She turned off the overhead lights in the section containing the Prof’s office, continued in darkness. Seen from outside,
the darkness would look accidental – a power failure or a blown bulb. She stood outside the door, lightly perspiring, shaking
slightly from adrenalin. She took deep breaths, controlled herself, channelled the adrenalin, worked with it.

The Prof hadn’t been back to his office in all the time she’d been watching it. He had gone home, she was sure of it.

She hoped she was sure of it.

Her fingers dexterously worked the lockpick. A career burglar she had once been professionally acquainted with had provided
her tools. He had felt she had been honest and fair with him and had taken a bit of a shine to her. When he found himself
facing a sizeable stretch, he had asked her to take care of his tools for him. She had been surprised at the request but pleased
and even honoured to do so. When the burglar had died after a year in prison from a particularly virulent cancer, she had
held on to them, teaching herself how to use them, for fun at first but eventually in memory of him. She had an aptitude for
it. And she enjoyed it, carried them in her bag always.

And she had never been locked out again.

She slowly and delicately probed, felt metal move against metal, teeth fall gently into place. She tried the handle. It turned.
She opened the door and was in.

She looked around the room. It was as she had last seen it: a pop culture/psychology car crash shrine. She checked the desk:
nothing out of place. She checked the drawers: locked.

She scanned the room, unsure what she was looking for: something that would jump out at her, something that would feel wrong.
She didn’t find it.

Taking out the lockpicks again, she crossed to the desk and sat down at the chair. Putting the desk lamp on and pulling it
close to minimize any light seeping into the corridor, she opened the top drawer. Stationery, Post-It notes, pencils and dust.
The usual top-drawer clutter. She worked her way down, tried the second drawer. Papers, work-related files, assessments. She
resisted the temptation to look at her own. The third drawer. More of the same. The fourth.

Something different.

A file, the elastic bands around it setting it apart from everything else. A typed label on the front cover:
THE HISTORIAN
.

Curious, she looked at it. Was it a plan for a novel? Case notes? She drew the file out, undid the band wrapping, settled
back and began to read. A shiver ran down her spine as she did so. This was something important. This could even be the smoking
gun.

The first page detailed the first victim. Lisa Hill. A photo snipped from the paper was clipped to a detailed description
of the girl, her background, her life, her disappearance and her death. There were even psychological notes as to her state
of mind. The whole thing read like a report combining analysis and forensics. Peta took a while to think who this girl was.
She remembered. There had been speculation after
Jill’s abduction that this girl had been the killer’s first victim but no official confirmation. This was more than speculation,
Peta thought. This looked to her like evidence.

Her heart was beating fast, her breathing becoming laboured. She turned the page.

Just as Peta had suspected, Ashley Malcolm was next. The familiar, cheerful face from so many newspaper reports. She flipped
it over, read what was underneath. Another detailed description of another life and death.

Peta was beginning to feel light-headed. This was a kind of sensory overload. Almost too much to take in.

She turned the page.

Jill Tennant. The same thing again. The only difference: the piece about her death more hastily written, unfinished. As if
he had been disturbed.

Very disturbed, she thought.

She turned the next page, almost too scared to read what she would find there.

She never got to look at it.

‘Enjoying yourself? Found something worth reading?’

Peta looked up, startled. There stood the Prof, in coat, hat and scarf, silhouetted in the doorway, like a shadow detached
from the darkness. His eyes glittering with cold, hard anger.

He closed the door behind him.

Her heart was pounding, her chest hammering. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

He made his way towards her.

Katya rounded the corner. And there it was. Perfect. Just as the map had said it would be.

The street names were unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce; saying them aloud made them sound like stones or lumps of clay
in her mouth. Likewise the symbols and descriptions. But she had persevered, committing them to memory, ignoring the looks
from the staff in the bookshop, and then begun what she had hoped would be the last part of her trek.

As instructed, she had taken the Metro. It was a risk, as she had no money left after the coffee for a ticket, and potentially
ruinous if she had been caught, but there was no other option. She had watched from the window as the train had emerged from
the tunnel into the electrically illuminated evening darkness, going first over a huge bridge, past some high-rise housing
that seemed to be constructed from one long brick wall. Cranes had appeared next, towering over streets of poor old houses,
etched against the night sky like the skeletal remains of huge lumbering beasts from an earlier era.

The doors opened and closed, people got on and off. The areas stayed poor-looking. They seemed hard-faced, these northern
people, she thought, short-haired and not given to smiling much. Wearing leisurewear to accentuate their lack of employment.
Overweight yet still looking malnourished. They looked like any peasant stock anywhere in Europe. They looked like her own
people at home.

She shook her head, looked out of the window, waited for her stop. It arrived.

North Shields.

She stepped off, exited the station and looked around. Shops and businesses had closed up for the night. Papers, fast-food
wrappers and other detritus blew down the streets. It was low-level; it was poor. People hurried home as if not wanting to
risk some invisible curfew. In doorways and on corners youths were beginning to congregate, watching from beneath their hoods,
their eyes reflecting the streetlights in razor glints, looking like apprentice wizards casting spells of dark magic.

Katya knew that their sharp eyes were on her, could almost feel their ugly thoughts being transmitted. She turned away from
them, got her bearings from the street names, walked off. She hoped they weren’t following, but she didn’t look back to check.
She didn’t want to show weakness, be marked out as a victim. There had been enough of that in her life.

She followed the street names, comparing them with the memorized grid in her head. Her walk led her to a row of old terraced
houses down an unspectacular street. Flat-fronted, some of them had been pebbledashed and painted in an effort to distinguish
them from each other. Two storeys tall but the dark, flat expanse of sky above still seemed to bear down on them oppressively.

She checked for the number she wanted, thought of going around the back, finding a way to break in, but thought better of
it. The time for stealth, for creeping around in shadows, was over. The time for confrontation was on her. She dragged her
weary body to the front door, rang the bell.

Anita lay there on the bed. It hurt to move her body. But hurt, she was beginning to feel, in a good way.

They had had to move, Michael had told her, and the hotel was old, run down. The greasy old couple who ran it had stared at
them when they had booked in, the fat man running his eyes up and down her body. He obviously found her to his liking because
when he gave her his rotten-toothed smile the corners of his mouth were gummed with white, oily spittle.

He had given them their room key, followed them up there and stood in the room not in any hurry to leave. She had expected
Michael to say something, do something, but he hadn’t. Eventually the man had left, but she could still feel his fetid breath,
see his bloodshot eyes looking at her from every corner of the room.

Michael hadn’t seemed to notice. They had sat on the bed.

And had sex.

And now she hurt. Again.

Her bruises, wounds, were still raw. Michael wouldn’t allow them to heal. He poked them, prodded them, played with them until
they changed colour or the blood trickled once again from them. His hands were all over her, in her, his body pressed against
her, her own forcibly restrained, bound up. Until she was no longer the person she used to be, until she had given her will
up to him. Until she had no option but to take whatever he flung at her and love him for it.

Then she came.

Later, lying side by side in bed, they had talked.

‘So why are we running?’ she had asked.

Michael Nell had smiled. Anita felt something sharp and hot stir within her when he did that.

‘I’m a wanted man,’ he said, relishing the words. ‘Haven’t you seen the papers?’ He laughed. ‘No, of course you haven’t.’

She frowned. ‘Wanted for what?’

‘Murder.’ The smile widened, his eyes glistened.

‘They want you for murder?’ she had asked, inching away from him across the bed.

He stayed where he was, shrugged.

‘Did you … did you do it?’

He looked at her, eye to eye. ‘Do you think I did? D’you think I could kill someone?’

She moved her body, felt her bruises ache, saw fresh blood as she rubbed against the sheets. ‘I … don’t know …’

He laughed.

‘Did you?’

‘Well, they think I did. That’s why they’re chasing me. That’s why I’m on the run. And you’re with me. My moll. Like Bonnie
and Clyde. Outlaws. Cool, isn’t it?’

‘What if … if they catch you?’

He leaned over towards her. ‘We’ll have to make sure they don’t, won’t we?’

He saw she had retreated into her own thoughts. ‘Don’t run out on me, Anita. I’ve waited a long time to find you. You’re perfect.
I won’t let you go.’

‘No, no, I am not … But what do we do for money? How do we live?’

Michael Nell laughed. ‘Well, I can’t go out to work, can I? It’ll have to be you.’

She frowned again. ‘What can I do?’

He moved up close to her. She felt his stale breath, his sweat. His need of her. He was turning her on despite the situation.
‘What you were doing when I met you.’

Her heart sank. She closed her eyes. ‘No. No.’

His hands were on her, holding her down. He straddled her, becoming unmistakably erect.

‘Yes. We’ve all got to contribute. Bring something in. And you can do that. Be a whore. My whore.’

He was fully erect now. She said nothing.

‘You can start with the old bloke downstairs. Bet his wife hasn’t serviced him in years. Bet he’d let us stay here for free
if you did that.’

‘No.’

‘It’s just a start. Just to help out. You can go back out on the quayside. Service all those high-flying, well-paying businessmen
again.’

She shook her head.

She felt him holding her down harder, his body pressed tight against hers. ‘We’ve both got to contribute, Anita. Now, I’ve
been waiting for you all my life but if you’re not prepared to contribute to the family finances, you’re not one of the family.
And then where would you be?’

Anita saw herself back on the plane to Lithuania, stepping off, her family hurt and disappointed. The end of a fairy tale.

Michael Nell smiled. ‘What’s your answer?’

She nodded, eyes averted from his.

‘Good.’ He smiled. Put his hands behind his neck. Undid the chain that was hanging there, placed it around her neck, fastened
it. Sat back and smiled at her. ‘There. We’re engaged. My princess.’

And as his body moved over hers, she thought she could forgive him anything.

Because he had just said the right word.

Decca checked the house in front of him against the one on the list and the one in the A to Z, made sure they all matched.
They did. He sighed. This wasn’t what he had signed up for. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t what Clint would do. He was a man
of action, a gangsta. Not some creep who ticked off names on a piece of paper. Christ, anyone could do that.

But still, he wanted to prove himself. Show he had the
smarts to be a major player. And if this was what it took, then this was what it took. He could play the game Kovacs’ way
if he had to.

He looked over at the front door in a row of boring, nondescript old houses. The kind he had grown up in. The kind he had
run away from. The kind he had vowed never to go back to.

He looked again at the list, saw all the crossed-off addresses. The safe houses he had checked out looking for Dario Tokic.
As he looked down the list he thought of the ways he had tried to get information out of the people who had answered the doors
to him. He had been cunning, he had used guile, as they said in
Match of the Day
. He smiled at the thought, remembered the clipboard, the fake marketing questions. Gas supply, electricity supply. He had
bought a daily paper, read the headlines, clued himself up. Asked what they thought of the government’s approach to whatever.
There had been some who wouldn’t say anything no matter what he said to them, but in general he had been surprised at how
much people had wanted to talk. A question here, a question there, a bit of flattery, a twinkly smile and he had them eating
out of his hands. He was good, even if he said so himself. But they were mostly women. And he knew how to talk to women. Get
what he wanted out of them.

A few questions about how many people lived in the house, were there any lodgers. If not, then they were off the list and
he was out the door. A few weren’t in, and he noted them down for a callback, and a couple of lonely housewives had even given
him their number. Maybe he would call. He liked older women. They always seemed more grateful.

But that was for later. This was about work. The place in front of him was unremarkable in every way. Even its pebbledashing
to distinguish it from the other houses in the
street was mundane. He stifled a yawn, got out of the car, crossed the street.

Rang the doorbell. And waited.

He heard noise from within. Someone was there, but they were in no hurry to answer the door. Voices were raised as if in argument.
Perhaps the TV was on too loud. Perhaps they were eating.

He rang again.

Footsteps came down the hall. A light was put on. The door was opened. A timid face looked out. A woman, late twenties, Decca
reckoned, with mousy-brown hair, stared at him. He looked back. It wasn’t timidity he saw in her face, he thought. It was
fear.

‘Ye-yes?’ she said in a voice that matched her features.

Decca, smile in place, began to talk. ‘Hi, we’re doing a survey on …’

The door was yanked open wide, almost knocking the woman off her feet. She gave a yelp and jumped out of the way, losing her
footing and falling backwards into the hallway. Decca moved forward to help her up. Stopped in his tracks when he felt a knife
at his throat.

‘In.’

He moved inside. The door was slammed shut behind him. He heard it being locked.

He looked at the man who had spoken. Dark-haired, dark-eyed. Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He looked familiar. Then it clicked
into place.

Dario Tokic.

‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ Tokic said, keeping the knife pressed at Decca’s throat. He gestured with his head towards the
kitchen. ‘Hands on your head. Move.’

Decca did as he was told, walked down the hall. He was aware of the automatic in his jacket pocket, equally aware that there
was no move he could make to get it out.

‘No tricks.’

‘How did you know I’d be coming here?’ asked Decca.

‘You’ve been looking for me. For us. Even broke into their offices looking for us. It was only a matter of time.’

Decca said nothing, kept walking. Into the kitchen. The table had been laid, and a smell of spoiled food was in the air. Katya
Tokic was holding another sharp-looking kitchen knife to a man’s throat. Two young children cowered in the corner.

Tokic kept the knife pressed hard on Decca’s throat, addressed the family.

‘I am truly sorry to have to do this, believe me. Truly sorry. We mean you no harm. This is the man we wanted. We knew he
would come. As soon as they moved me here I knew he would come.’ The knife was pushed harder. Decca wanted to swallow, felt
he would break the skin if he did, so refrained. ‘Please accept my deepest apologies. We will be going soon. Gun.’

Katya moved over towards Decca, began searching his pockets.

This was the moment, he thought. When Clint would make a move, when Bond would distract her, get the gun out and shoot them
both. The moment. He tensed, ready to move.

‘Don’t.’

The knife was pushed harder. A small pain, then Decca’s neck felt wet. His breathing became heavier, his legs too. He stayed
where he was. She found the gun, stood back, pointed it at him.

‘We will leave now,’ Tokic said. He stood back beside his sister, looked at Decca. ‘Your car. You will drive. We will be behind
you. No funny business or we shoot you.’

‘Then …’ He tried to find a brave voice. ‘Then you’ll die too.’

Tokic shrugged. ‘What’s death when you’ve been through what we have been through?’

Decca said nothing. Knew he meant it.

Tokic turned to the family. ‘Please accept my apologies once again. We are not bad people. Just good people driven to do bad
things. We will bother you no more. Please, I implore you, do not phone the police. Please. And I know you may not believe
me, but I thank you for your hospitality.’

He turned to Decca, indicated that he walk down the hall. Decca did so. Katya handed her brother the gun, opened the front
door.

They crossed the street, got into the BMW, Decca in the driving seat, Katya and her brother behind him.

‘Whuh – where’re we going?’

Decca felt more than saw Tokic smile.

‘To see Kovacs. And make him pay.’