Nadif’s body, what was left of it, came into view as I moved up the stairs. He lay sprawled across the small landing. There wasn’t that much blood on the carpet but his sweatshirt was covered with it. A tea-towel had been rammed into his gaping mouth, probably to stop him being heard as one of his steel ballpoint pens was forced through his right eardrum and driven into his brain.
The rooms had been ripped apart. My bundle of cash was scattered across the carpet, along with the papers, books and Mac screen. They’d been after something more important.
I checked Nadif’s pockets for the keys and his mobile. Nothing. The rubber gloves were now wet and red as I lifted his right arm and turned him over. He had been punctured seven or eight times with a narrow blade into the lower stomach. Some of his gut had spilt out. Ant and Dec weren’t fucking about. They knew exactly how to inflict maximum pain.
The second steel pen was embedded in his left eye. The eyeball was still in place but the vitreous fluid had drained out.
Why hadn’t Ant and Dec locked the door? The keys were in his jeans pocket, in a thick pool of blood. They must have thought the door was on a latch instead of lever locks, and only realized once they had closed the D-lock. Or maybe they just didn’t give a fuck.
I went and locked both doors. Because of the shitty double-glazing I didn’t have any other way of escaping now, but if Ant and Dec decided to come back at least I’d buy myself a few minutes to reflect on how badly I’d fucked up.
Avoiding the blood, I climbed over Nadif. He didn’t smell yet. But that wouldn’t take long.
First things first. I checked the kitchen. The teapot wasn’t on the tray, but the glasses were. They, too, went into the bag inside my sweatshirt. One of them carried my DNA.
I got to my knees and started pulling out the shit from under the sink that Ant and Dec hadn’t already pulled out during their search. It hadn’t taken Nadif long to retrieve that phone last night. It had to be close to hand.
I pushed at the panels round the sides and the back of the unit, then lifted the once-white Formica sheet at its base. I was rewarded with a Tupperware box containing three small grey mobiles and a charger. There were also five Lebara SIM cards, still embedded in their credit-card-sized plastic mounts. They’re cheap. Immigrants use them to phone their families back home — or to call their clan leaders.
I hit the power button on each one in turn. They were SIMed up and had a bar or two of signal. I checked my iPhone and got ready with the numbers.
I called Crazy Dave on one of the phones. It rang several times before transferring to his messaging service. I cut away. I rang again. Still no answer.
I tried Jan next. That went straight to voicemail too. I cancelled.
Then I keyed in Jules’s number.
It rang three times.
‘Anything on those names yet, mate?’
He was even more hesitant than yesterday. ‘Not yet, but I’m checking every day.’
‘OK, can you keep on it? Got to go. Just thought I’d check.’
No point getting him sparked up for nothing. Ant and Dec didn’t know about him. They hadn’t been in-country in time to cover our meet at Cheapside. But they had been with me in Hereford. Even if they hadn’t seen me with Jan, they would now have her number. It had to be on the mobile that was missing. They wouldn’t have mine. It was a blocked number. But had they followed me to Crazy Dave’s? They must have.
I hoped Jan was waking up in someone else’s bed on the other side of town, and Crazy Dave was rattling down an autoroute in his Popemobile.
I pressed the tools on all three machines until I found Calls Made. They’d all registered international calls, and to one area. The code was 252. It had to be Somalia. I’d know soon enough, but right now I was looking for a call made at about two o’clock this morning. I scrolled down on the third and finally found it. 252 again.
I switched it off and slid it into my jeans, then fished out the carrier bag and added the other two to the Shrek and rubber-glove packaging. I had to tuck my sweatshirt into my jeans to take the weight.
A baby screamed in one of the nearby houses and a mother screamed back just as loudly.
I took a badly stained, almost stiff tea-towel and wiped down the bike lock and the grille door. I felt sorry for Nadif. We’d only had one brew together, but I’d quite liked the poor fucker.
Ant and Dec wanted what I had. They appeared to be the only things of value in this shit-heap, now that the Mac had bitten the dust. I certainly wasn’t hanging around to see if there was anything more. That phone number was all I needed.
I unfastened the security gate and unlocked the front door. I stood for a moment inside the threshold, listening for voices or footsteps.
Nothing.
It was fuck-it time.
I opened the door just enough to slip through, relocked both barriers and wiped the outside as best I could. The tea-towel and washing-up gloves went into the carrier bag too.
Head down, hands in pockets, I walked back the way I’d come. I didn’t know or care where I was going. I just wanted to be lost in the maze of terraces and alleyways.
21
Back in the 911, I headed across the Severn Bridge into Wales. A service station had fitted me out with a thin green fleece and a blue acrylic jumper.
The bag of goodies was on the seat next to me. The car was in Tiptronic mode so I could focus on sorting out the mobiles. I turned them both on, to identify which one I’d used to call Jan and Crazy Dave. I kept the one with the Somali number in my pocket.
I was soon through Chepstow and on the Pontralis road. The car swung from side to side. I needed to make distance but only had one hand on the wheel.
I rang Crazy Dave.
Still nothing.
I tuned in to Radio Wyvern. Hereford was now about nine miles away. I caught the nine a.m. news. No doleful announcements of the violent murder of a Hereford woman or a disabled man in the early hours of this morning.
I tried Crazy Dave once more. This time I got a dial tone. Non-UK.
‘What?’
Simon and Garfunkel wailed in the background. Something about Cecilia breaking their hearts.
‘Dave, it’s Nick.’
‘What?’
‘Where are you?’
‘I fucking told you, didn’t I? What do you want?’
‘Nothing, mate.’
‘Well, fuck off, then.’
Jan’s phone went straight to voicemail again. Perhaps she was doing what Cecilia had done.
I crossed the bridge towards Ross-on-Wye and parked up at Asda by the river. It was a five-minute walk to the flats. I’d done it a million times before the old camp at Stirling Lines had made way for an executive housing estate.
I redialled Jan a couple more times on Nadif’s mobile, with the same result. If she wasn’t at home, I was going to have to start searching.
St Martin’s Church stood at about the halfway mark. Many of my friends were buried there. I always thought about them when I passed, but not today. I needed another word with Crazy Dave.
‘What?’
‘Dave, it’s me again.’
Bob Dylan had taken over from Simon and Garfunkel.
‘Yeah?’
‘Jan? You know, Tracy’s sister? You know where she works, or where she might be today?’
Dave didn’t miss a beat. ‘Who the fuck do you think I am? The fucking Yellow Pages?’
‘What about her mates — do you know any of them?’
‘I’m trying to have a new life here. Remember what I said?’
‘What?’
‘Fuck off.’
The flats, a collection of three-storey rectangular blocks, were on an uphill stretch to my right. The grass around them was neatly trimmed. The cream rendering looked in much better condition than I remembered.