In the week after Slippery's death, I took divers out every day, enjoying the opportunity to immerse myself in the island's warm, clear waters and forget the torments that were beginning to wear me down. It's easy when you're underwater. It's quiet, for a start. There's no one to hassle to you, and there are enough breathtaking sights amongst the fish-covered reefs and canyons to take your mind off even the largest of troubles. The only problem is there's only so much time you can spend down there before your air runs out and it's time to come back to reality. And reality for me meant remembering Malik as a living, breathing, talking person, and remembering what had happened to him, and my own very indirect part in it.
I couldn't get it out of my head, no matter how hard I tried. One night in the week after Slippery's death, I had a dream. It was an almost exact replica of an incident that had occurred not long after Malik and I had started working together, about four years back. At the time, I hadn't been too sure about my new recruit. A five-foot-eight, slightly built Asian university graduate, who was already shooting up the ranks even though he was barely in his mid-twenties, I'd already come to the conclusion that he was only there to make up the ethnic numbers. So when we did our first op together, a raid on the home of a habitual burglar named Titus Bower, I decided to test my new partner's mettle and see if he was more than just a prime example of affirmative action and Met Police political correctness.
Bower lived in a small, terraced house with a shoebox-sized rear garden that backed onto an alley. I was leading the team sent out to arrest him, which sounds a bit more glamorous than it actually was, as there was only Malik, me, and two of the station's uniforms. Since I knew that Bower might well make a run for it, I decided to post an officer at the rear of the property to intercept him. Ordinarily, I'd have used one of the bigger guys for this, but instead I chose Malik, much to his surprise and the surprise of the other two on the op. He didn't complain, though, I remember that. Just did what I'd asked, and when the rest of us had knocked on the front door and Bower had opened it a few inches, realized who we were and made a dash out the back, Malik had been there to greet him.
It had been a one-sided contest. Running through Bower's cluttered hallway in hot pursuit, I watched as our suspect tore open the rear door and charged straight into Malik, knocking him down onto his back and literally running right over him like something out of a cartoon, his Nike trainer trampling Malik's face as the poor sod tried without success to tell him he was under arrest. Bower was a big guy, and he'd run from us before, so I knew I'd been unfair on my new partner, but the thing that I remember about the incident was that Malik hadn't given up. Although shocked and probably in a lot of pain, he'd grabbed hold of Bower's ankle as he'd come past, and had refused to let go. Bower had staggered along the garden, struggling to shake Malik off, and had even tried to kick him in the head (an act that had caused him to lose his balance and fall over, much to our mirth). But Malik had grimly held on to that ankle right up until the moment we'd had Bower in cuffs, and I thought that there probably weren't that many coppers out there with that level of determination. He'd had to go to hospital for treatment to the injuries he'd suffered, which included a fractured cheekbone, and though I never apologized for putting him in the firing line (and he never held it against me, either), I always treated him with respect after that.
In my dream that night, the whole event played out exactly like it had happened that cold winter morning four years ago, except for one thing. As I'd come out the back door and seen Malik holding on to Bower's ankle, I'd produced a gun from my pocket and had started shooting. I'd hit Bower four, five, six times (I can't honestly remember the exact number), killing him instantly, but somehow one of the bullets had gone astray and hit Malik in the head, killing him too. He hadn't even screamed. Like Slippery Billy West, he'd simply fallen on his side and lain still. Then everything had stopped and I'd stared at what I'd done for an extremely long moment while the two uniforms stood silently on either side of me, one with his gloved hand on my upper arm as if effecting an arrest, before finally and mercifully I'd woken up.
I don't know how an expert would have interpreted that dream, but I knew exactly what it told me. That I was going to be tormented for God knows how long if I didn't do something about what had happened to him. For all Tomboy's arguments – and there were many – I simply couldn't let it go.
It was still there at the back of my mind a week after that. Every day I checked the Internet for news of a breakthrough in the case. Whenever I could, I checked the papers. But there was nothing, and I had little doubt that by shooting Billy West I'd severed the last thread of an investigation six thousand miles away. Here I was, living it up in paradise, staring at the same gorgeous scenery day in, day out while Malik rotted in the ground, Les Pope counted his money, and whoever had wanted my former colleague exterminated in the first place walked round scot-free.
I also wanted to know why he'd had to die. What did he know, or had he done, that had put him on a collision course with Pope's clients, the same people who'd wanted Slippery Billy out of the way? Plainly, they were people with power and influence, as well as access to intelligence; people who thought they could do whatever they pleased.
I wanted to find them.
I wanted to find them, and I wanted to kill them.
I knew it would be dangerous to go back home – there was no getting around that – but not impossible. Three years had passed. A lot of water had flowed under the bridge; a lot more killers had emerged into the public consciousness; September the Eleventh had left the watchful amongst us looking in different places for our villains. Three years was a lifetime in the multimedia click-on-a-button world that I'd left behind, and Dennis Milne, copper turned hitman, was part of a dim and distant past that no one was keen to resurrect.
So I made my decision.
Late on a Wednesday evening twelve days after the death of Billy West, and with the balance of the money for that contract now paid, I found Tomboy sitting in near darkness at a table facing the sea in the lodge's empty open-air restaurant, the remains of a San Miguel in front of him. He'd been working the bar that night so I knew he wasn't drunk. Joubert, one of the kitchen staff, was cleaning some glasses out of earshot. I could have got a drink if I'd wanted one, but I didn't. Instead, I sat down next to Tomboy and said I was going home.
Tomboy shook his head wearily and gave me a look of deep disappointment that seemed to accentuate every line on his face. It made him look five years older. The same conversation we'd had on the day of the Billy West killing then began to play out, but it didn't last anything like as long because this time he could see that I'd made up my mind. He called me a fucking idiot. 'Look what you've got here,' he declared, waving his arms expansively.
The night was calm and peaceful and the fronds of the coconut palms above our heads flickered and drifted in the gentle breeze. Stars swarmed and swept in a majestic canvas across the clear black sky, with only the faintest hint of man-made light to the north in Manila. The sea lapped gently against the shore; the joints on the older outriggers in the bay creaked in time with it; and from somewhere in the village behind came the bark of a dog and the faint but enthusiastic shouts of locals involved in a pool or card game. It was paradise, there was no question of that, but at that moment it was nowhere near enough. It struck me then that I was sick of nice weather. And healthy food. I wanted the next fish I ate to be in batter and sitting next to a pile of greasy chips.