Three weeks later
The phone rang, waking him. He looked at the red LED display of his clock radio and saw that it was nine in the morning. He coughed, and was punished by the smell of stale Scotch.
‘Furey,’ he said into the handset, after retrieving the phone from the floor. His voice was croaky, as he’d started smoking again.
‘Tom, it’s Sannie.’
He raised himself on one elbow, earning himself a giddying head spin. He coughed once more. ‘Sannie, this is a surprise.’
‘Are you okay? You sound like you’re ill.’
‘Got a cold coming on,’ he lied. ‘Bloody London weather. Where are you, at home? I can call you back if you like.’ He remembered the references to her tight family budget, trying to raise her two kids on one income.
‘No, Tom, I’m at work. This is semi-official so they don’t mind me calling overseas.’
‘Oh, right. Of course.’ Not everyone had lost their job over the debacle in Mozambique. He chided himself for his oversight. ‘So this is business?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line and he regretted his last words. Did he sound petulant, as though he had thought she might be calling for personal reasons?
‘Yes, it is business, though I’ve been wanting to call you, to make sure you’re okay. That everything’s all right with you.’
All right? The man he’d been sent to Africa to protect was dead. Another had killed himself in shame, leaving Tom feeling like he should have done the same thing, and he was suspended from his job indefinitely, pending the outcome of an official government inquiry into Greeves’s death. ‘I’m fine. Enjoying the break.’
‘Tom, I know how hard this must be for you, but you’ll pull through.’
‘Right. Um, what is this about, Sannie?’
‘I’m coming to England.’
That made him sit up in bed. ‘When? Why?’
‘I’ve been called to give evidence at the inquiry and my police service — and our government — has agreed to release me. It should be for about a week, they say. I’m arriving tomorrow morning.’
‘Oh,’ he said. He, too, had been called. He figured it would be the last nail in the coffin of his career. It irked him that while details about his late arrival on the morning that Greeves and Joyce had gone missing — and speculation about his drinking on duty the night before — had already been leaked to the media, there was no mention of the nation’s elite counter-terrorist unit storming a house full of primates. It was a good pointer to how and by whom the behind-the-scenes information battle was being waged.
Tom had been inundated with calls from journalists on his return home, and had even had to suffer the ignominy of a few of them being camped on his doorstep until his resolute silence had finally had an effect. He would answer for his sins at the public inquiry, but he wouldn’t lower himself by trying to plead his case or slander anyone through the press. He would take his punishment and do the best he could to find a new way to live out his remaining years. And that was that.
The resolve he’d felt in the immediate wake of the failed rescue mission, to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice, had disappeared with the plume of blood that flowed away in the receding tide of the Indian Ocean on that beach in Mozambique. Bernard’s revelation, that he had tried to raise the alarm and called Tom’s name in the night as the abductors grabbed him, still haunted him. There was no escaping the fact that he had failed in his duty. Even though Greeves had told him to have a nightcap, he shouldn’t have taken the beer Carla poured for him, or let her into his room.
‘Tom? Are you still there?’
‘What? Oh, yeah. Well, it’ll be good to see you again, even if the circumstances are hardly ideal. Where will you be staying?’
Sannie gave him the name of a hotel near Waterloo. He said he knew it and waited for her to make the next move.
‘Perhaps we could get together,’ she said after a brief pause. ‘To talk about things.’
‘Get our stories straight?’ He forced a laugh, but she didn’t reciprocate.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Sightseeing, shopping?’
‘I know it must bother you, Tom — what happened to them, where they went afterwards, why no one’s heard from them since then.’
If there was anything left in the bottle lying on the floor beside the bed he would have taken a deep swig right there and then. He hadn’t yet begun drinking before midday, but there was no time like the present.
‘They’ — the Islamic African Dawn or whoever the hell they were — had killed him, as surely as they had put bullets into Nick and Greeves, and as surely as their evil had driven Bernard Joyce to his death. The only difference was that Tom was doomed to a long, lingering death.
They’d taken Tom’s gun from him when he’d returned home, but he had a shotgun in the house. It had belonged to his father, who’d been fond of grouse shooting. On the first night after his official suspension, Tom had swallowed half a bottle of single malt and loaded the gun. He’d taken off his right shoe and sock — to use his big toe to pull the trigger — and put his lips around the barrel, but he couldn’t go through with it. Too much of a coward — unlike Bernard Joyce.
Of course what had happened fucking bothered him. It had eaten away at his soul, at his mind and body, over the past three weeks, like a high-speed version of the cancer that had devoured Alex. ‘Yeah.’
‘Tom? What’s wrong. Are you drunk, man?’
‘Wouldn’t like to get in a car for another couple of hours.’ He tried another laugh, but all his jokes were failing this morning, it seemed.
‘Well, whatever. I just thought I’d let you know I’m coming over. If you want to talk, you have my cell number. Just SMS me, if you like. I should let you get back to sleeping it off, I suppose.’
He waited to see if there was anything else, but she didn’t say goodbye or hang up.
‘Tom?’
He sat there, not knowing what to say to her next.
‘Well, okay. This is too weird. Goodbye and — ’
‘Wait. Sorry, Sannie. I’m not drunk. Tell me what time your flight arrives. I’ll come get you from the airport.’
‘You don’t have to do that. They’ve booked a hire car for me.’
‘I could come out on the tube and help you navigate your way to Victoria. On your own, and without a GPS, it could be more dangerous than the African bush.’
She laughed, and he flashed back to how pretty she looked when she smiled. He wouldn’t find salvation with Sannie van Rensburg — her visit was merely confirmation that he would be dragged through everything once again in a few days’ time — but it would be good to see her, whatever the circumstances. He didn’t want her to hang up. He’d thought about her a lot lately, even through the bouts of drunkenness and sleepless hours. If… if he hadn’t let Carla drug him. If he had caught up with the abductors sooner. If Willie hadn’t been wounded. If it had all turned out differently, he might have retired with his dignity intact and maybe pursued Sannie. There’d been a connection between them that transcended the professional on that wild drive through Mozambique. When he closed his eyes, he saw hers.
‘Okay then. Thanks. If it’s not too much trouble, that would be lekker.’
‘So, if you’re calling from work, you obviously didn’t get suspended?’
‘I did,’ she said, and he could hear her relief that the conversation was starting to move beyond one-sided-ness. ‘But it was just for a week. My captain gave me an official reprimand for taking off with you across the border, but privately commended you for having the guts to do what you did. Hey, last night I left you a message on your phone. Didn’t you get it?’
‘Um, no, I got in pretty late.’ He’d been at his local pub until closing time. ‘Sorry. How are your kids?’
‘They’re fine, and thanks for asking. Christo asked me the other day if you and I would be working together again.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘About what?’
‘Are we still working together, Tom? I’ve been running some leads at this end. I’m on a small task force that is working with your people to try to pick up the trail of the terrorists. I’ve been checking national park entry permits from five days before the abductions happened. It’s tedious work, but so far I haven’t found a registration number that matches the Isuzu they used.’
He thought he knew what she meant. She wanted to know if he was working on anything privately, from his end, even though he’d been suspended. He felt almost ashamed that he hadn’t been, that he’d followed Shuttleworth’s orders and kept his head down. What had happened to that determination he’d had in Mozambique, when his blood had still been up? It had disappeared; ironically, by doing what Bernard would have termed ‘the right thing’.
‘I’ve been told to stay away.’ This sounded even lamer than he thought it would.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anyway, perhaps I can run some ideas past you when I see you.’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you think you’ll keep your job?’
‘No chance. Besides, who’d have me as a protection officer, even if I did survive?’
‘Someone with brains, Tom. Someone who’d look at the lengths you went to, the risks you took to try to get Greeves back. A good person, which I know is rare in our line of work. But we don’t get to choose who we take care of, do we?’
He sat there, in his bed, and again looked down at the empty bottle on the floor, the dirty clothes strewn about the room.
‘You remember what I said to you? When we crossed back into Kruger after it was all over?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then don’t forget it, Tom. I’ll see you in a few days.’
Fraser and the SAS men had taken Bernard’s body with them and departed in the Oryx helicopters. Tom was offered a ride but begged off, saying he had to stay with Sannie and wait for the Mozambican police to arrive.
The special forces guys had no wish to stay and share with a foreign police force their part in the disaster. ‘Suit yourself,’ Fraser said dismissively, then he ran for the helicopter.
Shuttleworth was furious with Tom when he called in. Tom reckoned his boss needed him by his side to act as a lightning rod when he returned to the UK. Tom liked the guy, but could see no point in hurrying back to England to meet his fate.
Bernard’s death had sapped his will. He was like a man in limbo, merely existing in the hours following the failed rescue mission. Sannie had done her best to keep his spirits up during the drive back to South Africa through the bush, retracing their earlier route.
After they crossed the border, back into the park, Sannie slowed as they approached a trio of bull elephants. Tom had lost his taste for game viewing and was mildly annoyed when she stopped.
‘Look at them, Tom. What do you see?’
‘Apart from the obvious?’ He’d had virtually no sleep in the previous forty-eight hours.
‘Bodyguards. Protection officers.’
He was confused, his mind dulled. She pointed out the two smaller bulls flanking the largest one, whose long, curved tusks reached almost to the ground. ‘Those two, the younger ones, are askaris.’
‘What does that mean?’
It was a Swahili word, she explained, for sentry or guard, which had come into common use throughout the rest of Africa during colonial times. It had often been applied to native African troops employed by white armies and, in South Africa, to black agents working undercover for the white government in the days of apartheid.
‘If you take the word’s original meaning, the askaris look after the old one, the important one. They are his eyes and his ears as he gets older. Their job, like ours, is to protect.’
‘So? What are you trying to say, Sannie?’
‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but it works two ways for the elephants. The younger ones look out for the older one, but at the same time they learn from him, and they benefit from his patronage. They become a formidable team. When the old one eventually dies, the younger ones are stronger, wiser because of their time with him.’
‘You’re saying I’m a better person because Robert Greeves is dead?’ He laughed out loud.
‘Not better, but wiser. Tougher. Tom, everyone needs an askari watching out for them.’
Tom hung up the phone and rested his head against the bedroom wall. He wondered who his askari was, and who was looking after Sannie these days.
He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. As he rinsed his face and brushed the taste of Scotch and cigarettes from his mouth, he remembered what she’d said about leaving a message on his answering machine. He’d ignored the blinking red light as he’d stumbled through the door last night, thinking it was yet another reporter trying to get him to tell his side of the whole sorry story. That was journalist speak for giving him enough rope to hang himself.
In lieu of a comb he ran a hand through his hair and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Checking his messages was the closest thing he had to a chore today.
He delayed the inevitable by taking a half-empty carton of orange juice from the fridge and draining it. It was days old and bitter. He coughed as he pushed the play button.
‘Tom, it’s Sannie. I’m calling from South Africa — well, I guess you know that — but I’m coming to England for…’ Tom let the message play, simply because he liked hearing the sound of her voice again.
The next message started. ‘Hello, Detective Sergeant Furey, it’s Mary Whitbread from Channel Four again and I’d just like to — ’
‘Sod off,’ Tom said to the machine and stabbed the erase button.
The next message was from another woman and Tom was about to get rid of it before realising the person’s accent was so thick it was doubtful she was a British reporter. ‘Mr Furey, if that’s what I call policeman in this country, it is Olga Kamorov here.’
Olga? Russian, maybe? He didn’t know an Olga, but her voice did sound familiar.
‘We met in club, in Soho, few weeks ago. Oh, sorry, you know me as — ’
‘Ivana,’ Tom said aloud. The stripper he had interviewed when he’d been looking for Nick Roberts. Tom strained to hear the woman’s voice as there was music playing in the background; perhaps she was calling from the club where she danced.
‘I suppose you heard about Ebony — you are policeman, after all — but I wanted to talk to you about the man who used to come and see her dance all the time. Other police are not interested in talking to him, but I not so sure. Call me.’
Ivana — or Olga — left a mobile phone number and that was the end of his messages. Tom replayed the message and wrote down Olga’s details.
He sat on a stool at the stainless-steel topped breakfast bar and tapped his front teeth with the end of the pen as he thought. When he and Shuttleworth had discussed it on his return to England, they had assumed Nick had been set up by the black stripper, Ebony, and that it was she who had lured him into the terrorists’ clutches. Subsequent inquiries had showed that she never returned to work or her flat. She had simply disappeared.
Tom knew from Carla of Nick’s predilections for African women. Carla had presumably also passed this on to her comrades and they had used Ebony as bait to capture Nick.
Why, he wondered, was a black South African table dancer in league with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? There hardly seemed a less likely fit, and the same went for the promiscuous Carla. Money would surely have been a more likely motivator for both women.
Tom tore off the page with Olga’s number and started making notes on a fresh sheet. He wrote Money at the top, then underlined it. Next he wrote the following:
Kidnap/ransom.
Why Bernard?
Why the Iraq angle?
A cover?
It didn’t make sense to him, and he scored a line through all of the points. He had talked himself out of the idea that Greeves had been abducted for money, though he was still unsure about the women’s roles.
He played Olga’s message back once more. ‘ I suppose you heard about Ebony.’
He hadn’t heard a thing about the dancer. What did she mean by that? Tom walked back upstairs, his stomach protesting all the way at its lack of food and coffee, and grabbed his cell phone off the bedside table. As he walked down again, he scrolled through the saved numbers until he came to the one he was looking for.
‘Morris,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.
‘Dan, it’s Tom Furey. All right, mate?’ Detective Constable Dan Morris was another protection officer. He’d been one of the officers who was following up leads on Nick’s disappearance when Tom had left for Africa.
‘Oh, Tom. Hi. Hang on, I’m driving. Let me pull over.’
Tom waited, taking his seat at the breakfast bar again. He flipped the pad over to a new page and kept the pen in his free hand.
‘Sorry, mate. How’s life, anyway? Keeping your chin up?’
‘Just about. It’s no barrel of laughs, Dan, but I’ll know more after the inquiry.’
‘Well, you know all the lads are on your side.’
It was a statement rather than a question, but Tom thought it sounded like Morris was just going through the motions. ‘Dan, are you still following up this end on what happened to Nick?’
‘Um, you know Shuttleworth told everyone that you were no longer working the case or any part of it?’
‘Yeah. Look, this might help you, Dan. Don’t mess me about and I won’t mess you about.’
‘All right. Yeah, we’re trying to find out more of what he was up to, but, I’ll tell you the truth, all we’re getting is dead ends.’
‘You mean literally or figuratively,’ Tom said, writing the word dead on the notepad.
‘Do what?’
Dan was a plodder. A good copper, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘You mean dead as in bodies?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Maybe,’ Morris said.
‘The strip club you and Chris visited — remember it?’
‘How could I forget it? Wish every job was like that one.’
Tom thought the laugh was forced. He knew he was getting close.
‘She’s dead. The stripper I told Shuttleworth about. Ebony, the black girl Nick had been seen talking to a couple of times. The one who did a bunk from work.’
‘Tom, that information hasn’t been reported to the media. In fact, it’s subject to a D-notice. How did you know about it? If Shuttleworth finds out you’ve been poking your nose into the Minx club he’ll have your guts for garters.’
Tom wrote Ebony’s name on the piece of paper, followed by D-notice?
‘Tom? You still there?’
‘Got to go, Dan. Thanks, mate.’
‘Thanks? What for? You said you had something that might help us.’
‘Bad line. You’re dropping out, Dan.’ Tom pressed the end button.
He shuffled the pieces of paper in front of him and dialled Olga Kamorov’s cell phone number. As it rang he checked his watch. He wondered if she would be sleeping in, if she’d been working late at Club Minx the previous evening. Too bad if she was.
When she answered, it was in a whisper. ‘Hang on,’ she urged him.
Tom tapped the pen on the benchtop while he waited. ‘Sorry, I was in class.’
‘Class?’
‘I am student.’
Student as well as stripper. She wouldn’t be the first to pay for her studies by working in the sex industry. ‘Olga, we need to talk about Ebony’s death.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Other policemen don’t want anyone to talk about it. They tell all girls at club no one is to talk to friends or journalists about Ebony. But that is problem, and I try to tell them that but they don’t listen to me.’
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that last rambling remark, and was about to tell her to slow down and explain when she cut him off before he had a chance.
‘I must get back inside for lecture. I meet you at lunchtime, yes? One o’clock?’
She was setting the ground rules and he didn’t like being in that position, but he had little option save to play along. Besides, he had nothing else in his diary for the day. ‘Okay, where?’
‘There is a Burger King in Euston Road, opposite St Pancras, near Kings Cross. You know it?’
‘I’ll find it.’ He hung up and walked over to the refrigerator. Inside was a single egg in a soggy carton and a half-pack of bacon. He put the frying pan on the gas hob and dropped in some oil. His stomach rumbled, so he put all the bacon in and cracked the egg. In the pantry was half a loaf of stale bread. He selected the least mouldy piece and chucked the rest in the bin, along with an assortment of pizza boxes and takeaway curry containers from the benchtop.
He continued to clean up while breakfast sizzled mouth-wateringly nearby. Working back from one o’clock he mentally planned his day. It would take him the best part of an hour to eat and get clean and dressed. He’d booked the Jag in for a service on his first day of suspension. He’d discounted the idea of going away anywhere and figured — correctly, so far — he would spend most of his time either drunk in a pub or drunk at home. He hadn’t been wrong until now. He would have to take the tube to meet Olga.
He scooped the bacon and egg from the frypan, added another half-inch of oil and dropped in the slice of bread. He devoured the lot in seconds. Cooked breakfasts always seemed like a lot of effort for little return. He hoped that wasn’t an omen for the rest of the day.
Upstairs he showered and scraped three days’ worth of growth from his face, put on his charcoal-grey suit pants, black brogues and socks, and took a clean white shirt downstairs to the laundry to iron. Olga wouldn’t know he was suspended — unless, of course, she had read a newspaper in the last week. Tom figured that if she had, she wouldn’t have called him. He mightn’t be on duty officially, but he wanted her to think he was. He wondered if the dancer would give him anything that might help Sannie’s investigations back in Africa. He doubted it, but perhaps the South African police could run a check on Precious Mary Tambo.
Before leaving the house, he stopped to straighten his tie in the hall mirror and pull on his suit jacket. It felt good to have a sense of purpose again. It might come to nothing, but would keep his mind off Greeves, Joyce and the impending inquiry for a few hours.
Outside it was a perfect autumn day. The chill in the air helped clear his head, and he felt virtuous walking off some of his breakfast down Southwood Lane towards Highgate tube station.
Two young mums pushed their children in prams, chatting and laughing at something. It was a reminder that life went on, even though his world had been turned upside down. He wondered how Greeves’s wife and children were faring, and if Bernard Joyce had family.
There were already Christmas decorations in some of the shop windows. He wondered what it was like for Sannie’s kids at this time of year, without their father.
Tom entered Highgate Underground station and descended the long escalator to the platforms, his nostrils filling with the unnaturally warm, humid air. A Euston-bound tube train arrived within minutes and he nipped through the sliding doors into the hot, stuffy carriage. Only the drivers got airconditioning.
On the seat beside him was a copy of the Metro, the free newspaper handed out to commuters. He opened it and on page five found the news Sannie had already told him. SOUTH AFRICAN BODYGUARD TO GIVE EVIDENCE AT GREEVES INQUIRY
A South African police officer is being flown to the UK to testify at the inquiry into the abduction and killing of the former Minister for Defence Procurement, Robert Greeves.
Inspector Susan van Rensburg was assigned as the protection officer for Mr Greeves’s South African government counterpart during two days of meetings between the two politicians.
Tom skimmed the recapping of the events, and looked for the ‘why’ in the story.
Mr Greeves’s former spokesperson said the government had decided to invite Inspector Van Rensburg to appear at the inquiry in order to better understand security arrangements which had been put in place prior to Mr Greeves’s visit, and to outline the events leading up to the minister’s abduction.
‘Shit,’ Tom said aloud. An old lady sitting opposite in a plastic mackintosh looked up from her magazine and raised her eyebrows at him. Sannie’s appearance was part of the government’s efforts to set him up as the patsy for Greeves’s death. He could have guessed it. He wondered what she would make of the story and if it would affect her evidence. All she could do was tell the truth — and that would be enough to have him dismissed.
He felt the fog of depression start to settle on him again, almost wilting the creases in his freshly ironed shirt.
‘Only ever bad news in those things.’ The old lady was looking at him, smiling as she nodded to the newspapers beside him. ‘Stick with OK! that’s my philosophy.’
He laughed and nodded as she held up the glossy celebrity gossip magazine.
At the end of the noisy, jolting journey, he gratefully slid onto the crowded tube platform at Euston. Making his way out of this subterranean world, Tom surfaced in the brightly lit main-line station.
He left the bustling terminus, turning left into Euston Road and passing the gothic splendour of the recently restored and enlarged St Pancras International station. Just before King’s Cross station, Tom weaved across the busy road to the Burger King.
He was half an hour early. He felt like buying a packet of cigarettes, but knew he shouldn’t. His brain hadn’t been at full speed when he’d spoken to Sannie on the phone, but he remembered now there was something he wanted to ask her.
There was an internet cafe a few doors down and Tom went in thinking he might find his answer there. A long-haired man looked up from his screen and directed him to a machine. Tom took out his notebook and typed ‘primates of southern Africa’ into the browser. He filled two pages and left the cafe at five minutes to one.
There were a dozen people inside the Burger King when he arrived but none he could recognise as the alluring young exotic dancer. He walked back outside onto the footpath. Perhaps she was late.
‘Hey, Mr Policeman.’
He turned around and looked down. The girl who was talking to him had Ivana’s — Olga’s — voice, but he could have been looking at a different person.
She stood about five feet tall, much shorter than he’d remembered. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail and her lack of makeup revealed traces of acne scarring. She wore a baggy grey sports top with a hood attached, faded jeans and old trainers.
‘You didn’t recognise me.’ Olga craned her neck back and peered up at him through rimless Coke-bottle glasses. ‘You walked right past me.’
‘Sorry.’
She shrugged. ‘Not surprising. I have clothes on now and no five-inch stiletto heels.’
He smiled. ‘And the glasses?’
‘It should have been me not recognising you, instead of other way around. In club I can barely see the men who come in. All my time there is like in a — what do you say… haze.’
‘Probably better that way.’
She nodded. ‘We eat?’
They stood side by side in the queue, making small talk about the weather while they waited to be served.
‘What are you studying?’
‘Medicine at UCL,’ she said. ‘No jokes about anatomy or biology, though, please. I get enough of that from fellow students.’
The University College London campus at Bloomsbury was nearby. Tom was a little surprised she told her peers about her job.
‘Is legal and is not money for sex, like some people think. You would be surprised what some students do. Not all of it is legal, either.’
He muttered an apology and said nothing more until they were served and took their food to a red laminate-topped table.
‘Why you come alone? You not have partner, like TV policeman? Even in Russia, where government has no money, militia detectives have partner.’
Tom didn’t want to lose the initiative before the interview began. He wanted to remind her, as much as himself, who was who in this exchange.
‘What have you got to tell me, Olga, that you didn’t tell the investigating officers?’
‘So you talked to them?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘I thought that since you were suspended from duty over African business that other police would not cooperate with you.’
‘So you know why I don’t have a partner.’ As a medical student her IQ was no doubt higher than his. Still, he had a lot more experience in asking questions than she did. He placed his burger back in the paper bag and started to stand. ‘I’m wasting my time here.’
‘No, wait!’
He saw the panic in her eyes. ‘Don’t mess me about, Olga. I haven’t come here to hear conspiracy theories or to indulge your fantasies of being an amateur detective.’
‘Look, I know about you but I also remember that you came to club by yourself. This is personal for you. Something is going on here that is not right.’
Tom folded his arms, ignoring his food, and said nothing.
‘Other detectives say not to talk to media about Ebony’s death, right?’
He nodded.
‘But journalist is the one who did it, even though police say they have questioned him.’
Tom took the hamburger back out of its wrapper and took a bite. He washed it down with a mouthful of cola. He knew that if he stayed quiet Olga would keep talking, and he was right.
‘You remember when you come to club that I tell you about geeky-looking man with red hair who used to come often to see Ebony dance — in private shows.’
Tom nodded again.
‘Well, he come back night after you were there. He was asking for her, but boss told him Ebony not show up for work. He start coming on to all other girls, including me, asking where she is. I say she is not here and he starts to get angry — what you say… agitated. He even offer me fifty quid to give him Ebony’s home address, but I say no way.’
‘Doesn’t sound like he’s the killer, then, if he’s drawing attention to himself,’ Tom said, wiping his mouth and feigning a lack of interest.
‘Aha. That is what other policemen said. But can’t you see that it was act? He was doing this deliberately to look like he didn’t know where she was, but he was stalking her for two weeks before she disappear!’
Tom took another drink. ‘Stalking? I thought you said he was a regular customer. Presumably you have men who come to see you dance more than once.’
Olga nodded and finally started to eat her food. She pinched small chunks from the burger bun and chewed each one methodically, over and over, while she thought about her next response. ‘Yes, but Ebony met this guy outside of work.’
Tom sat back in his plastic chair. ‘You didn’t tell me this when I came to the club.’
‘You were asking about Ebony and other man — the policeman you were looking for — not Ebony’s stalker man.’
Tom nodded. At that stage he had been working on a theory that Nick and Ebony might have done a bunk together, not that she had been murdered by a nutter. ‘How do you know this, did she tell you?’
Olga shook her head, and seemed to hesitate, picking again at her burger bun, but leaving the meat untouched.
‘Well?’
She looked up at him. ‘Geeky guy left his card when he couldn’t find Ebony and when no one would give him her address. His name was Fisher, Michael Fisher. He is — ’
‘He’s a journalist, from the World.’
Now it was Olga’s turn to lean back, arms folded, in a parody of Tom. ‘Aha! So you know this man.’
Tom shook his head. He recalled the somewhat obnoxious, persistent reporter from the media conference Greeves had given at the defence contractor’s offices prior to their flight to South Africa. Fisher was the one who was pursuing the line of questioning about Greeves’s frequent visits to Africa.
Olga gave up trying to outwait Tom and resumed her confession. ‘Ebony had a diary in her locker.’
‘You broke into her locker?’ Tom wiped his hands on a paper serviette.
‘Lock was broken. I started to worry about Ebony after your visit and that night I opened locker to see if she had left suicide note or something.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Not unknown in my line of work. Yours too, if anything like Russia.’
Tom let that pass unanswered.
‘Anyway, I look in Ebony’s diary and last entry is note to ring Michael. She wrote cell phone number down. I check with Fisher’s card and is same Michael.’
‘So, she was talking to him, outside of work.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when she didn’t call him, presumably because she’d been killed, Fisher came to the club and was “agitated” that he couldn’t find her and hadn’t heard from her.’
‘Exactly!’ Olga slapped the tabletop, causing another couple of diners next to them to look over. ‘Perfect cover.’
It would be easy, Tom reasoned, to get Ebony’s mobile phone records and find out if she had been called. He presumed Morris and Burnett would have done this as a matter of course, so he wasn’t as convinced by this theory as Olga was.
‘But what makes you so sure that Fisher had anything to do with her death?’
She shrugged. ‘Is hard to tell you — to explain. I see lots of men in that place, and I know the looks in their eyes. There are the drunk ones, out looking for fun; there are the desperate ones who could never get look at naked girl any other way; there are the chauvinist ones who like the power of having girl do what they tell them… and there are the scary ones.’
‘Scary ones? The stalkers, you mean?’
She nodded. ‘The ones who are there with something else on their mind. You can see it in their eyes. Fisher was one of these. He was man on mission, and I think that mission was Ebony.’
Tom regarded Olga. She was bright — she had to be in order even to be admitted to study medicine — and she knew men. He thought she was being a little paranoid, but there was obviously something going on between Fisher and Ebony — aka Precious — that transcended the normal ogler-stripper dynamic. It was worth a closer look. He pulled his notebook out of his suit pocket.
‘Presumably you told Detective Morris all this?’
She nodded. ‘Morris — he is your friend?’
‘None of your business. He is a colleague, though.’
‘He is ignoramus.’
Tom kept the smile at bay. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said he would call Fisher, but his eyes told me that he thought I was crackpot.’
Tom let the next smile through.
‘Don’t mock me. You are smarter than Morris.’
Flattery would get her nowhere. He said nothing.
‘Morris and other policeman came back to club yesterday and tell all girls and management that no one is to talk to media. I tell them, again, that media is where they should be looking and that Fisher came back to club again asking about Ebony and police investigation. Morris says to me, “You let me worry about Mr Fisher, darling.” Pah! I give him, “darling”. Creep.’
Tom held up a hand. ‘Sounds like they’ve checked him out at least.’
‘What happened to your policeman friend, the one you were looking for in first place.’
‘He’s dead.’
Olga placed a hand on the table and for a second Tom thought she might be about to reach out and touch him, in the same way Sannie had done on a couple of occasions. Perhaps there was something about him that inspired pity. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was tortured to death by terrorists. The same people who abducted Robert Greeves, the defence procurement minister, in Africa.’
Olga frowned, and Tom could see she was processing the information he’d just given her. She shook her head. ‘Ebony not working for Islamic terrorists. You were looking at wrong girl for that if you think she was involved in kidnap plot.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She was devout Christian.’
‘Christian stripper?’
Olga looked offended again and folded her arms with an ‘harrumph’. ‘I am trainee doctor exotic dancer. Why not Christian stripper?’
Tom was stumped. Olga resumed her defence of the dead girl. ‘She was more Christian than any other person I know. Church every Sunday and sent money home to Africa to mission where she was educated. Of course, she don’t tell missionaries what she was doing in England. She tell people in Africa she was working as nurse’s aide. I was trying to help her get job like this in hospital.’
Tom’s gut feeling was still that Ebony, having played her part in luring Nick Roberts to a location where he could be abducted, had been killed by the people who had used her. ‘Perhaps she did it for money.’
Olga shook her head vigorously. Most of her burger was untouched and she wrapped it up in the paper bag it had come in. Tom looked down at her hands. He figured he didn’t have to give a medical student a lecture about eating disorders. It did make him wonder, however, if Olga had some psychological problems.
‘Ebony was good person,’ she continued. ‘Fisher was up to something with her, though, and that’s where you should be looking.’
‘I’ll talk to Morris again,’ Tom said, pushing back his chair. ‘Did you find anything else in her diary?’
‘Not much. It looked new — like she had only been keeping it for last two weeks.’ Olga pulled a scrap of paper out of her handbag. ‘I found one other name, on same page as number for “Michael”. Other name was D Carney.’
She passed the paper over, and Tom copied the name and cell phone number into his phone book. He’d seen the name Carney before, but couldn’t quite remember where. He knew that once he had a few moments to himself it would come to him.
‘Thanks for your time, Olga. Do you know who this Carney is?’ Even as he asked the question he remembered where he had seen the name and number before.
She shook her head. ‘Talk to Fisher. He is one you need to put this puzzle together, Mr Policeman.’
Tom stood. ‘You probably know enough about my situation and police procedure to understand that Fisher has already been questioned and that it would be highly inappropriate for me to go harassing him when I’m suspended.’
She nodded. ‘But I know you will anyway. You are good person. Morris, Fisher, they are creeps.’ Olga tucked the remains of the burger in her day pack, shook Tom’s hand and started to walk out the door. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Maybe I see you in club again some time?’
Tom shook his head. ‘Maybe I’ll see you in a hospital one day.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe my turn to see you naked.’
What Tom couldn’t tell Olga, of course, was that there was a definite link between Nick and Ebony in the form of the message the dancer had left on Nick’s answering machine. Somehow he doubted that Nick had been planning to go to the club to hand over a donation to a Christian mission in South Africa.
After Olga left the restaurant, Tom stayed at the table and took out his notebook and pen. He wrote the name Ebony in the centre of a page and circled it. He drew a line off to the left to Nick and then extended out further to another circle containing Greeves. Off to the right of the stripper’s stage name he wrote Fisher. He tapped his chin with the pen and then returned to the page and linked the journalist and the politician with a stroke of his pen. A circle. But was it mere coincidence that the dancer had something going on with the reporter as well as with the minister’s protection officer?
There was only one way for Tom to find out — two, if he went through official channels but he doubted the latter would work. Dan Morris would be suspicious now, and Tom wouldn’t put it past him to grass on him to Shuttleworth. Either way, he was unlikely to cough up the notes of his interview with Fisher.
As the train clattered back towards the city, Tom took out his mobile phone and notebook. He called the number for D Carney, though he recalled now that it was a man and his name was Daniel. A recorded voice answered the phone, though it wasn’t Carney: it was a message telling him the phone was switched off or out of range.
Next he dialled directory assistance. ‘Could I have the number for the World newspaper, editorial department, please?’