Lost Girl (16 page)

The officer exhaled noisily, then drank from the flask. Passed it back to the father. ‘What you got?’

‘Not much. Until today.’

The man stared at him hard, as if to bore out the information, and the father told him what Rory had said. After hearing the story, his saviour resumed staring into the distance, but at least he
seemed to be taking the testimony seriously. ‘It’s thin. But that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Bowles grassed up Rory after you shot Nigel Bannerman?’

The father nodded.

‘And if Rory said it wasn’t a sex offender who snatched your girl, you’d better hope he wasn’t bullshitting, because he’s no longer available for cross-examination.
And you drew a blank on the others? Your handler told me about the first three nonces you visited, Malcolm Andrews, Bindy Burridge and Tony Crab. Were there others?’

‘A man called Robert East.’

‘He dead?’

‘No. He never reported me.’

‘A slow process of elimination through the most likely leads that your handler pitched out. You do realize that this whole area could be underwater by the time you’ve door-stepped
the last of them?’

‘The names. The Russians. They mean anything?’

‘Nothing. But believe me, I’m very familiar with the outfit he’s talking about. King Death.’ The officer screwed up his face with distaste. ‘They’re like
nothing we’ve ever seen before.’

‘That bad.’

‘Worse. With them, it’s . . . even a religion, you know? Some kind of religion mixed with the worst kind of human behaviour. Like the jihadists, but without an ultimate goal that we
can see, besides filling their pockets.’ The officer scratched through his thoughts to find the right expression. ‘Bristol. Remember Bristol years back? Chantilly Road. All those people
beheaded in a turf war.’

The father nodded.

‘We’ve had it down here too. Decapitations, and the rival shite have been vanishing all over. These guys move in and local gangs move on, or are moved out of the land of the living.
All the bodies of their enemies that we’ve found, or
they
have left for us to find, don’t have heads.

‘The symbol of King Death is part of some mumbo-jumbo mystery about where they draw their power from. But they mostly prefer to remain enigmatic.’

‘This symbol. A thing dead, but in rags. I’ve seen it. On walls.’

‘It’s in plenty of places. All over the coast now. Foot soldiers put it on their bodies to signpost membership too. They don’t worry about us. But that sign is a fuck-right-off
in prison, and on the streets. Some of them completely cover themselves in ink. They’ve got a kind of philosophy going on too, or so we were told by serious crimes. It dribbled down to the
street criminals from somewhere else, abroad maybe, the cartels in South America, with some old medieval stuff from here in Europe. It’s a mash-up, but they embrace chaos. That’s their
bag. They claim to draw their power from chaos and death itself. And they like these bold gestures, these ritualistic killings. Sprinkling bits of Latin here and there as if their cause is holy,
foretold, that kind of BS. Everyone’s at it, Temple of the Last Days, Church of the End of Days, same thing. All the traditional churches have had a field day too, a right old comeback. But
some of these Kings are really big on superstition, omens, stuff like that. There’s this reverence they like to cultivate around themselves, especially in prison. They brought in an expert to
help us understand them and he said it was all about the romanticism of death. Marks them out down here, makes them even more sinister.

‘They’ve mixed in Santeria, Buddhism, Catholicism, Satanism, witchcraft, all of it and more, even physics. And they reckon we’re destined for chaos, everything is, and
they’re preparing to survive in it. They might have a point, eh? And they reckon that all of this, the world and us in it, right now, is the
fin du monde
, the end of time.

‘Most of these guys are thugs, but there are a few, the more dangerous ones, who are really into this philosophy, and they don’t fear death at all. They just think it’s some
kind of passage. You know what the shaman nuts, their spiritual guides, want? They want to ascend to become the “special dead”, that’s what we were told, so that they have some
insight after a “transcendence into the long night”. They want to still be around, in the everlasting “afterdeath”. But that’s already close, all around us apparently,
and getting bigger by the day. Only some of them can tap into it. These seers. But afterdeath is going to swallow us all soon enough, while they’ll command some kind of privileged position in
it. That’s the gist of it, I think. The murders are part-ritual. Signs, they say, that light up in another place, so their patrons, or something nasty over there in afterdeath, can bless
them, or something like that. There’s no judgement, no heaven or God, not for them. Death itself is the entity and also the place that they’re connecting with. Something like a force,
but cold, totally indifferent and as chaotic as deep space. But they’ll be all right over there. It’s all nuts. Can you believe what some chumps will kill for these days?’

‘You can’t do anything about them?’

The police officer shrugged. ‘Not much. They’re like an army now. They’ll take the worst head cases from every nationality and there’s no shortage of volunteers.
They’ve been giving the jihadists in the north-east guns and explosives, as well as the nationalists in the south. They’ve all the trafficking and the vice here, all franchised through
affiliates. Men like Rory. It’s the disruption, the chaos, they like. Tactical, see. That’s what I reckon. Like politicians and terrorists, they create diversions, spread resources
thin, then capitalize, exploit the weaknesses. And I don’t think they’ve ever had it so good as over the last decade.’ The officer looked at the sun as if to curse it.

The father nodded. He’d read many of the same things online, but much of the information about their culture had seemed too fantastical for him to readily believe, so he’d skimmed
it. ‘They really killed all those judges?’

The officer laughed, but not pleasantly. ‘That’s not all they’ve done. They’re suspected of a shitload of high-profile disappearances. They’re getting into
everything legit too. Politics, councils, the emergency government, law, refugee groups, food, transport, us. Lot of
respectable
people are watching their backs for them and are in their
debt now, or so we assume. But you never heard that from me.’

‘Could they—’

‘Have taken your girl? They’d have no qualms if it paid well, or if it served their interests.’

‘We had no money.’

The officer pursed his lips, rolled his head. ‘You got any enemies?’

‘Not that bad. Would . . . what about child prostitution?’ The father became faint, imagined Rory’s grinning face, Bowles’s attic, the thin silhouettes sitting up in bed,
the lock on the door. All of the blood in his body seemed to run into the soil and leave him feeling cold on a day when the sun was hot enough for its surface to be nudging the earth’s
troposphere.

‘They are certainly not above that, but she doesn’t fit the profile. They’ve snatched a few from the camps and care homes to top up the specialist brothels. But your case
isn’t a fit for that profile. Too risky unless it was bespoke, so it’s doubtful. If they were involved, I’d say they were paid very well to do it for someone else. A
contract.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

The officer shrugged, but not with indifference. ‘I . . .’ He stopped himself.

‘Tell me.’

‘When it happened. Your girl, when she was taken, I was drug squad. My gut told me it was a paedophile. Loner. Cased you and your family and then just couldn’t help himself. In and
out. Biggest day of his life. Whether she’s . . . still with
him
or not is anyone’s guess. We don’t bloody know. But whoever took her would have to slip up, or get copped
trying it on again, or suffer a breach in his security, to give you any chance at all of finding her. And his secrecy must be pretty bloody airtight if he’s kept her hidden for two years.
That’s the angle your handler’s been working on too. Not saying I’m right, but that’s what my gut told me was probable. Child protection is the worst bloody job there is and
they have no choice but to outsource.’

‘I thought the same, until I met Murray Bowles.’

The officer nodded. ‘Stands to reason. But in the unlikely event this outfit are involved, the Kings . . .’ He held his hands up.

‘Where do I go? Who do I speak to?’

‘You don’t. You’d need to re-mortgage the house you don’t own any more, just for one of them to consider giving you information. And that was before you whacked
Rory.’

‘Informers? Don’t you have them?’

‘Of course, but do they inform on this lot? Never. Where would they hide after they’d told us something we could use? In prison they blind snitches with toothbrush handles. If what
Rory said was even half true, you and he would have got it in the neck, literally. Out here, they seal the leaks with machetes. Trademark.’

‘Someone would talk. They always talk. They always say something to someone . . . They can’t keep it inside their criminal skulls.’

‘Rats do squeak.’

‘It’s all I have.’

‘It ain’t much. And it’s a death sentence the moment you stick your beak in, or a very severe beating. Trust me, you’d never walk again. They’ll smash your
vertebrae with a hammer. Seen it a few too many times. You’ll wish they’d cut your head off. Rory probably only gave that much up because he thought you weren’t leaving The
Commodore alive. Did he go for you?’

‘Twice.’

‘Knife?’

The father nodded.

‘He’s got form. He’s been fingered for two murders. We didn’t even know he was living in there.’

‘It’s why he had to kill me. Bowles had put him in the frame for my daughter, which put his gang connections in the frame for her abduction.’

‘Long shot. Real long shot. And let me be the detective, OK? How many others bought it down there today?’

‘A younger one, a teenager. About eighteen, nineteen. He was on a bike outside and had a gun. He nearly killed me. I don’t know how he missed. He . . . was standing right behind me.
And there was a man . . . a man behind a fence in one of the yards on the hill. Who fired at me. I think I hit him. And then another one with a shotgun in the street near where you found
me.’

The officer whistled. ‘I’m counting six on your account in two weeks. A spree, my friend. They saw your face too, dozens of them.’

The father took a deep breath.

‘You’re done in this town. You can never risk setting foot anywhere south of Gloucestershire again. Even that’s no guarantee of your safety. Or your family’s. And
there’ll be an investigation and that will eventually lead to Bowles and Nige, known offenders, both done with the same shooter as Rory and his mates. They’ll get DNA out of the blood
you splashed everywhere. But I’m going to assume your daughter was also at the heart of the earlier
discussions
. So if those other nonces you visited pipe up, when your mug shot gets
circulated, you’ll be charged for them too.’

The father nodded.

‘Grief-stricken father starts knocking over sex offenders. The whole country will be cheering again. Nonetheless, you can see how this shit works. How deep you can get so quickly, and now
you’re probably wondering if you need to go back and cover your tracks by whacking the first nonces you visited. And they’ll be thinking the same thing. Is he coming back, the man in
the mask? I know your methods. I’ve been briefed by your handler, and you’re in the game now and the game never ends. This isn’t for you. This isn’t your game. But
there’s little point in me confiscating your weapon because you’ll get another, won’t you? Maybe you got a taste for it too. Execution.’

‘I never . . . it wasn’t execution. Nigel Bannerman tried to kill me. That was self-defence.’

‘Bowles?’

‘He ran. I wasn’t thinking. I saw the kids in his loft and I lost it. Lost control. Rory I only wanted to speak to.’

‘How did you think that was going to work out? I don’t know whether you’re a good liar or a bloody amateur who’s been very lucky, though your hand may be telling you
different right now. There might be nothing in Rory’s information at all. He was thinking on his feet, giving you something so he could add value to himself. And what was it, some hearsay
from a pub that no longer exists, from two men whose second names we don’t even know? You’ve got to listen to your old movie star, Scarlett Johansson, because what you have is thin.
Very thin, but four men died for it today. How many more d’you plan to rub out on a rumour?’

‘It’s something. More than I’ve ever had.’

‘Slightly more than fuck all, if I am going to be honest with you.’

The father ground his teeth. ‘Why are we here?’

The officer considered his answer for a long time. ‘Because if I was you I’d be sitting right where you are now. I wouldn’t take a break from shovelling the shite into hell, if
I had the slightest chance of bringing my boy back.’ He looked away from the father. ‘I’m sure you’ve done your homework and I’m sure it’s made everything worse
for you. The way you feel. You might have lost your mind because you know what can happen to a child. But I know more about what happens to these kids than you ever will. So let’s just say
that I have sympathies at a time when it’s hard to see the lines that separate the good from the bad.’ The officer looked at the father again. ‘What’s the end game? Ask
yourself.’ The officer swept his hand to indicate the field, the sky, the terrible sun. ‘It’s more of this, getting worse and worse every bleeding year. If we don’t blow
each other up, the climate will see most of us off. Food and water, that’s what it’s all about now. That’s not going to change, is it? There’s the potential of another
pandemic now too. Something very nasty. Difficult to treat. Inoculations are a long way off too, or so they say. As a public official, I have been told not to cause alarm, so I’m giving you
that lead on the QT, but it’s already here. And it could be big.’