He and Michelle sat close to each other, knee to knee. She kept her face lowered in the shadows as much as possible. The hot, dusty streets of Banjul were thronging with bodies, quite a few white faces in amongst the Africans, so Flynn was not too obvious. No one paid him any heed. Banjul drew in holiday-makers and he was simply a man in a crowd who might have picked up a whore. Nothing unusual about that.
Except Flynn could not even start to visualize Michelle as a prostitute, even though she had once been one. It was very hard for him to make that mental leap.
However, there was only a handful of clubs that tourists frequented and these were not the ones Michelle guided him into. These were dark, dingy, basement hovels, hotter than the streets, crammed with people, the smell of sweat and dope overpowering. The music was loud and African, with driving beats and an air of menace.
Michelle clung to him as she steered him into a club that had no name over the door and had two evil looking bouncers guarding the place. Inside it was a crush, impossible to move other than by sliding intimately past other customers. A haven for groping accidentally on purpose, and pickpockets. There was a minuscule dance floor, which was heaving, and a long bar at which Michelle and Flynn chiselled out a space. Flynn shouted his order, then rotated to rest his back on the edge of the bar whilst Michelle tucked herself tightly alongside him. Flynn’s eyes roved, spotting the pimps and hookers on the prowl, drug dealers too, and lots of clients.
Michelle tiptoed up so her mouth was at Flynn’s ear. ‘Boone liked this place. It’s where I met him.’
Flynn nodded, somewhat surprised at the admission.
‘He took me away from it,’ she added, and dropped back on to the flats of her feet.
Flynn’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the flashing disco and strobe lighting, and he saw a line of alcoves along the wall opposite, deep recesses in which couples groped, and glimpsed occasional flashes of male ecstasy, female hands tucked down men’s trousers, the jerk of gratification.
He turned away from the sight and faced the bar as the drinks came. Michelle’s arms encircled his waist and she clung to him. He draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug, then glanced diagonally across to the far corner of the bar where a man sat on a stool, a beer in his hand, a woman in a shiny dress dancing slinkily on the spot in front of him as he watched with lustful eyes.
Flynn tilted his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth so Michelle could hear his words.
‘That’s one of the men,’ he said, his lips hardly moving. He turned her slightly. She saw him and Flynn felt her convulse and spin back into him with a moan of anguish. It was one of the men from the Mercedes. One of the ones who had killed Boone, shot at him, then raped her. He could have been the one who had winged Flynn.
‘What do we do?’ Michelle asked.
‘We leave, I watch, I wait… I follow. Get the drift?’
‘And me?’
‘You go back to the car, lock yourself in and wait for me. If I’m not back within an hour, go back to Boone’s boat and wait there. I’ll be back. Sometime.’
FIFTEEN
‘ It comes to something when officers with our length of service and rank are sitting in a crappy police car at bloody near midnight, keeping obs. Surely we’ve got something wrong somewhere? This is a job for the younger, keener, more energetic end of the policing family. Not old lags.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Rik Dean said. ‘You’ve got a lot of years on me, pal.’
‘But you know what I mean,’ Henry whined. ‘The principle of two relatively high ranking detectives doing what we’re doing… I dunno… unseemly, not right.’
‘I’ll have it sorted for tomorrow night.’
Henry slouched down in the passenger seat of the Nissan, which had springs that had collapsed completely and others that stuck in his spine like corkscrews. It wasn’t far off midnight and now it was all wearing a bit thin. Conversation had started sprightly enough. Not, as it happened, about sexual intercourse, but the other usual things that cops talked about on boring obs. The physics of the universe, how insignificant human beings were in the grand scheme of things, the power of the moon, the credit crunch and other such mind-blowing topics. Heavy stuff, about which they knew very little but spouted a lot. However, that had petered out as they drove fairly aimlessly around the north shore area in which the rapes had taken place.
It was pretty hit and miss and Rik had already decided that the officers who were due to be out tomorrow night would be more specific in their tasks.
Not much was moving. Not many cars. Not many people.
As they drove out in the general direction of Poulton-le-Fylde, they spotted a car coming in the opposite direction that Henry recognized as they passed side by side. He got a look at the driver, who he also recognized.
‘Corrie run,’ he said.
‘Eh?’
‘That car,’ Henry jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘It’s the plain car from Poulton.’
‘And how would you know that?’ Rik asked. He hadn’t clocked the car.
‘Because even though I had a mini collapse at the scene of Natalie Philips’s murder, I did notice the car that the PC who had found her had been driving.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t remember the PC’s name, though I sort of recall talking to him. He was pretty upset.’
‘Paul Driver. He found her by the crematorium gates.’
‘That’s the one.’
They continued their slow patrol, parking up here and there. A few kids were out on the streets. A couple of lads, a couple of girls, maybe walking home from a pub. Then they saw one lone female walking swiftly and with purpose. Not really many targets for an opportunistic rapist, if that is what the offender was. But maybe a quiet night was the best. Fewer targets, even fewer witnesses.
Henry checked his phone — again — slightly disappointed he didn’t have anything from Alison. Maybe she’s just used me, he tried to rationalize. But he knew that wasn’t true. She was honest, genuine, quite bloody gorgeous and wonderful.
Points which suddenly hit the nail on the head for him. His guts lurched as he suddenly realized how lucky he had been to meet Alison and get into a relationship with her. He knew he couldn’t afford to lose her.
‘Once more round the block,’ Rik said, ‘then let’s call it quits.’
Henry nodded. He was concentrating on sending a text. It began, ‘ SORRY ITS LATE. CAN WE TALK? B HOME IN BOUT AN HR ’. As an afterthought, he added, ‘ XX ’ so it could not be interpreted as one of those, ‘We need to talk, it’s time to end it’ texts.’ If he got one back without a kiss, he would be worried.
He found Alison’s number in his phone’s contacts list and after a moment of hesitation, pressed send, then raised his head from the task to see where Rik was taking him.
And then he saw the car parked up.
‘What’s he doing here?’ he said. He craned around to look as Rik drove on past the car that was parked on the roadside, in amongst a line of other cars. Henry did not see anyone in the car and Rik obviously did not know what Henry was talking about.
‘Who?’ Rik said. He’d reached the next junction. They were on a nice, well-established housing estate just off Garstang Old Road. If Rik drove straight across the junction, he would reach a T-junction at which a left turn would take him out towards Poulton, and right back into Blackpool.
Henry, ignoring his questions, said, ‘Go across here, pull in and switch everything off.’
‘Eh?’
‘Just do it.’