He could re-date it, print it out, sign it and submit it, and would probably be pulling a police pension in six weeks. Get out of this mind-blowing situation. Draw the pension — half his salary, more than most other people earned — draw the lump sum and simply fuck off. Maybe go live with a woman who owned a very nice pub in a nice village that got snowed in every winter.
He sighed, glanced at the board again and thought about what Donaldson had said to him. And knew he would have to be pushed to leave the job.
He closed the file just as his office door clattered open — no knock — and FB bundled in without warning. Henry, who had a view from his office window across to the front of headquarters, was a little miffed. He’d been so engrossed in his internal monologue that he’d failed to spot the chief trundling across. If he had done, he would have made certain he wasn’t in the office.
‘Henry.’
‘OK, boss? Come to fire me?’
FB chortled, his double chin wobbling. He took a seat opposite Henry. ‘No such luck, but I’m working on it.’
‘Cheers,’ Henry said flatly. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Having known FB for such a long time, some of the formal barriers were blurred and, up to a point, Henry knew he could get away with being relaxed and a bit cheeky, certainly during a one-to-one.
‘Bit of a result from our friend Beckham down at the Box.’ Box being an informal term for MI5. Henry perked up. ‘As you know MI5 has basically taken control of everything related to the flat and Sadiq and Rahman, and that includes the results of the DNA tests.’
Henry’s mouth twisted. ‘I know.’ That MI5 had commandeered the blood sample taken from the seat of the plane from Las Palmas and the one taken from the dead Rahman made him seethe. Donaldson was also fuming, but even despite formal protestations from the FBI, the British security services had not budged. They were like a kid in a classroom, covering their work so no one else could copy it. They were also keeping the result of the DNA test on Sadiq to themselves, and consequently Henry was banging his head against a brick wall in his efforts to trace Natalie Philips’s killer. At some point he assumed that MI5 would have to relent to the pressure and allow access to the results and to Sadiq, wherever he might now be. Even if the lad’s DNA did not match what had been found inside Natalie, Henry wanted to speak to him.
Henry waited for FB to reveal all.
‘It’s better than nothing,’ FB said, preparing him.
‘Go on…’
‘Sadiq’s DNA matches one of the sperm samples from Natalie.’
Henry’s ring piece constricted, as did his throat.
‘And the DNA sample taken from the blood on the plane matches another of the sperm samples.’
‘So Sadiq and Akram had sex with Natalie sometime before she was murdered,’ Karl Donaldson said. ‘Jeez.’
‘That’s if the blood from the plane actually belongs to your friend Akram — yes,’ Henry confirmed.
‘You know it does,’ Donaldson said. ‘So three out of the four samples have now been identified — Mark Carter, Sadiq and Akram?’
‘Leaving one unidentified,’ Henry said. ‘As yet.’
‘When are you going to interview Sadiq?’
Henry paused. He was on the phone to Donaldson, bringing him up to speed with developments. The American was back in London — had been for over a week now — and was still making representations to MI5 without success. He had been warned by his superiors to back off and not make waves. Henry’s unexpected news caused a resurgence of hope within him, as he’d almost swallowed his anger and was about to get back to his day job, hoping that Akram would step into his cross hairs some other time. This chance, he’d thought, had passed him by.
Henry’s voice was blunt. ‘I’m not.’
‘What? What the hell?’ Donaldson stopped, unable to believe his ears. At that exact moment he was walking along in the sunshine on the River Thames embankment, threading his way through the tourists in the vicinity of the London Eye. He leaned on the wall by the river and stared across at the Houses of Parliament.
‘Whilst they confirm the DNA matches, they say I still can’t interview Sadiq face to face. I can e-mail down a list of questions and one of the MI5 interview teams will put them to him. That’s the best I can do, and while it’s bollocks, it’s the only way I’ve got at this time.’
‘I’m staggered.’
‘Karl,’ Henry said pointedly, ‘he’s obviously more to them than simply a murderer. You’ve lectured me about the bigger picture before now and that must be what all this is about. National security… maybe he knows a lot of… stuff… and having him dragged through the courts to face a murder charge isn’t what they want. If in fact he did kill Natalie. He might have had sex with her, but didn’t necessarily kill her.’
‘But it needs the detective on the case to get into his ribs, not some detached dick brain reading from a cue card.’
‘Tell me about it…’
Donaldson went silent for a moment, then said, ‘They’re up to something.’
‘Yep.’
‘Bastards,’ Donaldson whined. ‘They don’t have the right to…’
But his words were cut short as his phone signal died.
Henry looked quizzically at his phone but nevertheless completed the sentence, speaking into a disconnected phone. ‘The right to what? Treat us like mushrooms and feed us on shit. Sorry pal, but they think they do.’ He hung up.
Standing under the shadow cast by the London Eye, Donaldson jiggled his phone, feeling that his line to Akram was receding with each passing moment. He wasn’t enjoying the sensation.
He had pretty much done what he could, even flying out to Las Palmas to grill the detective at the airport and make his own enquiries as to how Akram might have got off Gran Canaria and what the onward destination might have been. He had found nothing. The terrorist could easily have left the island by any number of air or sea routes. Donaldson’s nosing around the few private airstrips yielded nothing, nor did any information come from the sea ports he visited. Problem was the island was dotted with numerous tiny ports and it was impossible to keep tabs on everyone who came and went. Donaldson’s educated guess was that Akram had left by sea, which meant there was the likelihood he’d gone to the African mainland and then back to the Middle East. Impossible to track down.
Donaldson leaned on the embankment wall and stared at the water of the Thames. His mind tossed everything around and he knew he was missing something in his equation, the something that had come to him when he and Henry had visited Sadiq’s flat in Blackpool. But he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint what it was.
He stopped shaking his phone, checked a signal was back — yes — and tapped out a text message, paused thoughtfully before sending it — should he, shouldn’t he? — but then pressed send and it flew away into the ether: ‘ MESSAGE SENT ’.
‘Shit,’ he winced, suddenly wishing he could recall it. Too late. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered, ‘I hope I haven’t screwed this up.’
He made his way to a riverside cafe, ordered a filter coffee, sat out in the sun, and waited. If it was going to happen, it would be in the next half hour. He could afford to wait that long, but no longer. Then a text landed on his phone. One word: ‘ COMING ’.
She arrived fifteen minutes later. Donaldson had an iced coffee waiting for her.
‘Karl, darling,’ she said, and leaned across to kiss his cheeks, before sitting down opposite him. Edina, his discreet contact at Whitehall, smiled at him, always with a hint of lust in her eyes. Donaldson thought she must be a lonely woman and that it would be nice to see more of her as a friend, but he did not want to compromise her any more than their relationship did already. He guessed she got some excitement from seeing him occasionally, in a James Bond sort of way, and passing on the odd snippet of information was perhaps a bit thrilling. Then she said, ‘It’s just a feeling, nothing I can prove, but I think they’re on to me.’
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make life difficult for you. You didn’t need to come.’