Incinerator (23 page)

“What?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Yeah, I’m OK, I think. It was him or us.”

“Yes, it was,” said Nicky. “He and his friends would have done the same to you if we’d been caught. He was a thug, Finn. Just yesterday he was boasting to me how he’d run down an
old couple on his boss’s orders. He actually laughed about it.”

Old couple? I thought.
Winnie and Delroy!
My blood ran hot and cold at the same time, and I felt an insane urge to tell Nicky to turn back, so I could revive Tony and kill him again—properly this time, so he’d know what was happening to him and why. Maybe I’d been wrong to kill him, maybe it wasn’t what Winnie would have wanted, but when I searched my conscience all that bothered me was the thought that the others might have discovered Tony’s body already and be closing the gates before we managed to reach them.

But at the end of the drive the gates lay open as wide as when I’d arrived, and the divided highway beyond was empty and silent in both directions, like in one of those zombie-apocalypse movies. All the same Nicky slowed at the exit and checked for traffic before joining the nearside lane, even indicating before moving smoothly off. Then she floored it, the acceleration pushing me back in my seat, until she hit seventy-five. From that point she eased back on the pedal and held her speed steady,
still glancing in her rear-view mirror every few minutes to ensure no one was pursuing.

“I’m sure this thing can go faster,” I said. Dad had explained to me about back-seat drivers, and I was trying to be tactful.

“We don’t want to get stopped by the police,” she said.

“We don’t?”

“Not until we’re far enough away. Tony said they’d bought every cop for miles.”

“You think he was telling the truth?”

“No, but I don’t want to risk it. Oh God, oh God, that place!” Her voice was suddenly shrill and I saw tears in her eyes. “I thought I’d never …” Her knuckles were livid on the wheel, and I realized just how much terror and tension she had been keeping bottled up.

“Hey, Nicky, it’s OK. You’re safe now. Relatively, anyway.”

That worked, and she laughed, despite herself. She shook the black thoughts out of her head and took a deep breath.

“Thank you for coming, Finn. I hoped you would. I can’t believe you actually found me.”

“It was mostly dumb luck,” I said. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“They snatched me off the street. Not off the street, from the park near my house. I’d been running, late. I should have avoided that park—it’s always so dark and deserted … I thought they were going to kill me. Rape me first, then kill me.”

“Who were they? What were they after?”

Nicky thought for a while. “Honestly, Finn,” she said at last, “the less you know the better.”

A sign flashed by, way too fast for me to read, but I knew it would be a long time before we hit London, and after all I’d been through on her account I wasn’t going to settle for a pat on the head.

“Those threatening emails and tweets you’d been getting on your phone,” I said. “They were from Gabriel Bisham, Joan Bisham’s kid. He’s a deeply sick little fuck. It was him who torched that old pub, burned that man alive. He let his dad go to prison for it and was planning to do the same for his mother.”

Nicky tore her eyes away from the road and the mirror long enough to look at me in disbelief.

“But I think he was trolling you for kicks—he had no connection to Tony’s crowd.”

“Finn, how the hell did you …?”

“And that copper, DS Lovegrove? You were right about him being bent. He’d promised your friend Reverend Zeto he’d screw up the trial evidence, in return for blowjobs in the front seat of his cop car.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You got hold of my client files?”

“Vora was worried about what had happened to you,” I said. “I was worried about what had happened to my money.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nicky. “They made me do that after they grabbed me. Transfer the client account to the Cayman Islands. I didn’t want to, but then I thought, maybe you’d come looking for me. Asking questions like you did after your dad died.”

I would have looked for you even if you hadn’t taken the money, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

“I thought once I’d done that, they’d kill me. Instead they took me to—that place.”

“What were all those cells for?”

“They bring in girls from all over Europe. Auction them off on video over the net, like cattle. Some tried to escape while I was there.
Tony brought them back …” She made an effort to steady her voice. “I think they’re buried in the grounds somewhere.”

“Jesus. We have to tell the police.”

“Not yet. I have to get home, warn Harry, before he pays the ransom.”

“Ransom? That’s why they were keeping you alive?”

“They said if he didn’t, they’d hand me over to the boss.”

“I saw him,” I said. “The big guy with the rings.”

“That’s Kemal,” said Nicky. “He’s not the boss.”

“So who is?”

Nicky checked her rear-view mirror again. “I don’t know his name,” she said finally. “They called him the Turk.”

The Turk?
The new face Sherwood had talked about, and DS McCoy? I fell silent, thinking. Something stank about this. If Harry had been worried sick about his kidnapped wife, but hiding it while he got a ransom together, he deserved an Oscar for his performance. Maybe he’d only been snorting that cocaine to soothe his nerves.

“Nicky …” I said. “The women who came through that place … did any of them look like you?”

She frowned. “They brought a girl into my cell, not long after I arrived. To see if she was my height, my build. I never figured out what that was about.”

“They needed a decoy,” I said. “They gave her your passport and sent her to Paris, so me and the cops would stop searching for you.”

“But she didn’t look that much like me.”

“They beat her first. That way the border guards wouldn’t look too closely at her face.”

“Oh God,” groaned Nicky. “I hope she got away. I mean, properly, so those men can’t find her again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s not the point. How did they get hold of your British passport?”

Nicky glanced at me, unwilling to follow where this might be leading. “They must have stolen it.” But her voice was tinged with doubt.

“Nicky, I know about Harry. About the gambling, and the coke.” By now nothing I said seemed to surprise her.

“He’s getting help,” said Nicky.

Harry owed Sherwood money, I thought.
Sherwood sold the debt to the Turk, and boasted about it. The Turk cut him open to shut him up. And to frame me, because I knew about Harry.

“Is he?” I asked. “Getting help?”

“I told him if he didn’t, I’d talk to Hennessey’s. The bank where he works.”

Jesus, I thought. That was why the Turk’s people had snatched her.

“Who knew?” I asked. “Who knew you’d gone running in the park?”

She shook her head as if that would stop her hearing what I was saying, but I persisted. “How did the Turk know you were going to be there, that night?”

“Finn, Harry’s my husband. Yeah, we have problems, but he’d never—that’s just insane.” She was staring hard at the road ahead, as if unwilling to meet my eye.

“But you were going to leave him, weren’t you?” I said. “You were going to stay with your sister.”

“Susan?” she said, perplexed. “Who told you that?”

“Susie did,” I said.

“Susan’s mixed up in this?” She seemed incredulous.

“She was worried about you,” I said. “She helped me with the files …” I couldn’t believe how my face was suddenly burning, like it wanted to give me away, but Nicky didn’t seem to notice.

“Susan would never have me to stay,” said Nicky. “She hates my guts.”

It was my turn to look perplexed. “But you’re sisters,” I said. “I mean, half-sisters, but—”

Her laugh was brief and bitter. “Oh, right,” she said. “You’re an only child, aren’t you?”

“But you’re so alike,” I said.

“We didn’t used to be,” said Nicky. “She had surgery, dyed her hair, just so she’d look more like me. I know how screwed up it sounds, but … she hates me and she wants to be me. Everything I’ve ever done for her, she’s resented. Everything I’ve ever had she’s wanted for herself.”

Including me?
I thought.

“If she was helping you look for me,” said Nicky, “it was probably to make sure I was dead.”

Suddenly I didn’t know what to believe. I was confused and exhausted and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep.

We had reached the eastern fringes of London without my even being aware of it, just as the city was starting to stir into life. Buses and commuters were heading in, huge articulated trucks heading out after stocking up the supermarkets. Nicky killed her speed, driving slowly and steadily to avoid drawing any unwelcome attention. The black Merc, I knew, was the sort of flash car that was always getting pulled over by London cops, especially if the man at the wheel was black. Some coppers couldn’t grasp the concept of a black guy driving a motor like this and not being a drug dealer or a car thief …

“Shit,” I said.

“What?”

“They’ll have fitted a tracker to this car,” I said. “We need to dump it, quick.”

Without a word Nicky indicated, turned deftly into a cul-de-sac, pulled up on a single yellow line and killed the engine.

“We can take the Tube from here,” she said. “Have you got any money?”

“I have enough,” I said.

The nearest Tube station was a short walk away and I used a lump of Tony’s wedge to buy Nicky and me single tickets across the city. Out in the hinterland at this time of a Sunday morning there were plenty of empty seats, and we found ourselves a double bench facing forwards. We sat staring into space, as wordless as one of those married couples who have run out of things to say to each other, while we tried to make sense of everything that had happened. If I’d been wrong about Susan, maybe I’d been wrong about Harry. Maybe he was planning to rob his own bank to pay the ransom … but surely as soon as he paid up, this Turk would kill him and Nicky both?

And why had Susan been helping me if she and Nicky hated each other that much? Because
they’re still family, I thought. Then it occurred to me that I of all people should know the cruelty families are capable of.

As the ancient Tube train rattled and banged through the gloomy cuttings the carriage slowly filled with Sunday workers and nervous tourists clutching flimsy maps and checking the Tube diagrams every three minutes. One girl with wavy blonde hair still wet from her shower glanced at me and turned away. I realized I’d been staring at her hard enough to make her uncomfortable, but I honestly hadn’t been ogling her. It was just that seeing her made me long for a shower—I couldn’t remember the last time I had washed. I abruptly became aware of how badly I smelled, of dirt and sweat and violence and death. Oh well, I thought, at least it will stop the tourists crowding my space.

If I did stink it didn’t seem to bother Nicky. It must been a long time since she had bathed too. She looked as dazed and shell-shocked as I felt, which was understandable after all that time locked in a windowless box wondering if any moment she might be violated and murdered and dumped in a pit. Yes, she was free,
but then I’d said those things about Harry. She must have been wondering now if it was even safe to go home. And I couldn’t help her—I had no home to go to. The last haze of days had been all about finding her or finding out what had happened to her, and now I had, it didn’t seem to have fixed anything or solved anything or answered any questions.

The clatter of the train’s wheels as it dived deeper into the tunnel rebounded and echoed inside the carriage until it was almost painful to my ears, but somehow I still felt sleep creeping up on me. I lost all track of time, the way you do in dreams, and I felt myself falling into a pit, and as the floor rushed upwards I knew it was strewn with the bones of others who had fallen before me, tangled with the entrails that had burst from their bellies on impact.

Nicky touched my hand, and I woke with a jolt. We were at Embankment station, where the darkness and thunder were displaced by the blue glare of striplights and the tramp of travellers’ feet and the squawking electronic burble of platform announcements. Semi-comatose I followed Nicky past the bustling bodies through the warren of stairs and
elevators onto yet another Tube train, until we finally emerged onto the concourse of Waterloo, Nicky leading me through the ticket barriers onto a platform for the next overland train to West London. Beyond the station roof I could see cheery blue sky and innocent white clouds cavorting miles above our grimy crowded circus.

As we waited I noticed a copper staring at us—not a real copper, I realized, but a ticket inspector, or revenue protection officer, or whatever they were called—clearly trying to decide whether Nicky and I were fare-dodgers who’d been sleeping on trains for a week or just seriously partied-out lovers. But when the train pulled in Nicky walked right past him and her air of blithe self-assurance seemed to change his mind about challenging us. Maybe she’d teach me that trick someday.

As the train carried us rocking gently across the Thames the sunshine gleamed off the wrinkled grey river below, dazzling us both so much we turned away, shading our eyes. Heading out of the city this early on a Sunday the train was almost empty, and only the cheery chime of the doors at each station and
the hiss of them sliding open and shut again marked our progress west. I watched Nicky staring at the endless gritty bricks and slates of London’s suburbs speeding past our windows, and I wondered if she had finally started to believe me, but her thoughtful silence repelled every question I could think of.

The doors chimed again and she rose to her feet.

“This is us,” she murmured, and without looking at me stepped down onto the platform.

“Nicky, wait,” I said. “What are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to ask Harry if it’s true,” she said.

As we approached the smart black railings separating her house from the street I glanced around, trying to see if any of the Turk’s people were watching her house from a parked car. One sleek soft-top was parked a little further up, but it was empty. There was no passing traffic—not many churchgoers in this prosperous neck of the woods—so nobody saw us arrive, and I still hadn’t decided if that was a
good thing or not when we walked up to the front door and Nicky started digging among the flowerpots. I couldn’t believe she’d hidden a key there. A house like hers surely needed better security than lazy idiots like me would use, but it didn’t feel like the moment to point that out.