Mark’s empty guts wound sickeningly. He closed his eyes momentarily and thought himself back to the town centre alley, seeing the old man get mown down, then seeing the face of the gunman as he turned to look at Mark and Rory, startled. It had been night-time and the face had only been illuminated by orange street lights, but Mark had seen him clearly with his young, sharp eyes and was certain that if he came face to face with him again, he would be able to ID him.
Good enough reason to do a runner, Mark thought. He spun away, almost stepping into the path of a car pulling up at the front of the shops.
‘Stupid kid,’ Alex Bent said, slamming on the brakes.
‘Eh — what?’ Henry glanced up from the paperwork he had been studying, only catching a fleeting glimpse of the back of the youth who’d nearly been flattened by Bent.
The moment was gone and forgotten as the two detectives got out of the battered ‘Danny’, the old slang term for a plain car used by detectives — in this case an ageing Ford Focus that looked as if it had never seen better days.
They walked to the front door of the chip shop and rattled the handle.
‘Need to find the owners,’ Henry said unnecessarily.
Next-but-one along was a newsagent owned by an Asian, Mr Aziz. He was lounging at the door of his shop. Henry and Bent asked him a few pertinent questions but he didn’t know anything about the incident or the chip shop owner, who was new. Aziz thought he lived somewhere in Preston.
Henry thanked him and went to the scene out back.
He intended to have half an hour here, then head across to the other murder scene in town and start to build up any connections between the two.
Suddenly, Mark was no longer hungry. Suddenly, he was as paranoid as hell as the thought hit him, the same one he’d had last night, that murderers always go back to the scenes of their wrongdoing. At least that’s what they said in TV cop dramas. They liked to gloat, enjoyed the power and Mark realized he was stupid to go anywhere near the scene again. If the murderer was there, milling about with the onlookers, keeping his head down, Mark was a sitting duck.
Hence his thoughtless step in front of a car, almost resulting in him getting flattened.
And then the glimpse of the driver, who he did not recognize, and the even quicker look at the passenger who he did recognize and never wanted to see again.
The horrible feeling was that if Henry Christie was running this case, then it would only be a matter of time before he and Mark came face to face.
SIX
‘ You don’t understand,’ the man pleaded desperately. ‘Firstly I cannot tell you anything because I know nothing.’ He was using expressive hand gestures as he spoke. ‘And even if I did, I could still say nothing because I would be dead within days, possibly hours, of speaking to you.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Don’t think that because I will be held inside a Maltese prison that I am unreachable. They can get to me anywhere, so I say nothing, keep myself alive.’
Karl Donaldson tried to look sympathetically across the interview room table, but cared little for the man’s predicament. He was on the trail of a killer and this individual was the best lead he’d had in three years of chasing shadows.
Donaldson shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair, sweat dripping from his scalp, down his neck and all the way to his backside. The heat was oppressive, even here in what were literally dungeons below the streets of Valletta on the island of Malta. He glanced at the stern-looking Maltese cop standing rigidly by the heavy steel door, arms folded, face grim.
‘Any air-con in here?’ Donaldson asked.
The cop shook his head and allowed himself a wry smile. As if. Much of the police station above ground level had been modernized, but the money had not stretched as far as the underground cell complex. There was still a medieval feel to them, as though it was only days since the Knights of Malta might have incarcerated their Turkish prisoners before beheading them with their scimitars.
Which was an irony, albeit a small one, as the man sitting opposite Donaldson was a Turk, though he had left his homeland many years before and ditched Islam along the way. His name was Mustapha Fazil.
‘I need a cigarette,’ Fazil demanded.
Donaldson checked with the guard, who nodded, and Donaldson handed Fazil a pack of Camels and a lighter. Apparently, no smoking policies hadn’t reached Malta just yet, which was good, Donaldson thought. Tobacco was always a useful interview tool.
Fazil lit up, inhaled deeply, then exhaled the acrid smoke with a shudder of pleasure. Donaldson tried not to cough. He was anti-smoking but did see its uses as Fazil visibly relaxed in front of him.
‘In other words,’ Fazil said, picking something from his tongue, ‘I’m a dead man if I talk, so don’t expect me to say anything.’
After a beat of silence, Donaldson leaned on to the table, his eyes searching the young man’s face — the deep-set eyes, the hooked nose, the thick black moustache, the swarthy suntanned features — all mixed together to make up the stereotypical Turk. And also the face of a young man deeply embroiled in a life of organized crime that spanned international boundaries.
Donaldson vividly remembered the call-out three years earlier, the reason for him being here now, sweating in an ancient cell, desperately trying to extract information from a very unwilling source
…
Midnight. Donaldson had been at work since seven a.m. that day, at the beginning of a manhunt to track down one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Mohammed Ibrahim Akbar, a man who had almost managed to assassinate the American State Secretary who had been on a visit to the north of England at the invitation of the British Foreign Secretary. The attempt had failed — just — but the terrorist had escaped. Donaldson had then been asked to become part of a multi-agency team dedicated to hunting down and apprehending, or neutralizing if necessary, the wanted man.
In the very early days of this manhunt, much of Donaldson’s time had been spent with the other team members collecting, collating and sifting intelligence and information just to get a sniff of the whereabouts of their prey. Long days at the computer, on the telephone, and reading reports from agents across the globe, trying to pinpoint their guy and work out his next move. So they could be there, waiting for him.
On the day he got the call-out he’d been in his office for almost seventeen hours. His eyes were grit-tired and he knew he needed a shower, shave and about twelve hours sleep, the latter option being the most unlikely to happen.
He was in his cubbyhole of an office in the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, where he had worked for over ten years as a legal attache for the FBI. It was one of the most prestigious jobs in that organization and something he did well.
Just before the witching hour, he closed his computer down, stretched, yawned and rubbed his eyes, when one of the other team members appeared by the door, leaning on the jamb. This was Jo Kerrigan, a CIA operative who was the only female to be drafted on to the team. Donaldson had struck up a good rapport with her. She was a six-foot blonde, a fantastic athlete who had once made the US cross country skiing team in the winter Olympics. In physical terms she was more than a match of Donaldson, who himself touched six-four, was broad-shouldered, fit and all-American handsome.
He knew that the relationship between him and Kerrigan could easily become intimate. But — and it was a very big ‘but’ for Donaldson — even though his marriage was going through a rocky phase, he would never allow himself to be unfaithful to his wife Karen, tempting though the prospect was.
‘Long day,’ she said.
‘Yup — and getting nowhere fast.’ He clicked shut the lid of his laptop.