The Mourner Read online

  The minder grasped the boy’s arm and dragged him out of the room.

  Sadik turned to Yasmin. ‘Clean this place up.’

  A look of relief spread over her face. ‘Thanks, Sadik. We’ll be up and running again before tonight, I promise.’

  ‘You better be. I got some business associates flying in. You do something special for them.’ He licked his lips and leered. ‘And for me, eh?’

  Yasmin nodded her head enthusiastically. Kaz watched her and mourned. The confident businesswoman had morphed into a girly hooker, deferential and totally compliant. Kaz knew enough about her mate’s past to know how hard it was for her to escape this world. But was Yasmin really so delighted at the prospect of giving head to an ageing gangster, whose pleasure was to humiliate her? She doubted it.

  Sadik turned his attention to Kaz. ‘Okay, Miss Student. You come and take a little ride with us.’

  Yasmin’s face froze. Fear consumed her. Desperate to avoid meeting Kaz’s eye, she busied herself picking up shards of glass from the floor and table.

  Kaz stood her ground. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’ Sadik seemed amused. ‘You got a lot of balls, I’ll give you that. But, sadly, as my nephew said, there are still some matters here we need to resolve.’

  Kaz glanced around her. Should she run? Not really a viable option. Even getting past Sadik to the door would be near impossible. She put her hands on her hips and feigned nonchalance. ‘I think before you make any rash decisions you need to know what you’re getting into here.’

  His mouth twisted into a smile but the eyes were hooded and cold. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. I was just on the phone to my brother.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Sadik smirked. ‘And why should I fear this brother of yours?’

  Kaz shrugged. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be him personally who came after you, because he’s currently in the nick for murdering two police officers. You know how it is though, the family business goes on.’

  There was a flicker in the hooded eyes. ‘What you say your name was?’

  ‘Phelps. Kaz Phelps. My brother’s Joey Phelps. I disappear, it’ll take our people a couple of hours to pick up your trail. Joey’s got a temper. Anything happens to me, he’ll wipe you out. You really wanna start World War Three ’cause your nephew can’t hold his drink?’

  ‘Joey Phelps, eh?’ Sadik nodded thoughtfully, pursed his lips, eyes boring into Kaz. He turned to Yasmin. ‘She telling the truth?’

  Yasmin’s hands were full of large broken chunks of glass that rattled with the trembling of her fingers. ‘Y-yeah, Joey’s her brother.’

  Sadik’s gaze came back to rest on Kaz. ‘Maybe I sell you back to him.’

  Kaz met his look with her own penetrating stare. She knew that in a game of bluff the essential thing was to remain casual, unconcerned even. She kept her tone neutral. ‘You could try it.’

  The Turk folded his arms. Kaz’s gaze didn’t waiver. Was he buying the story? The switch to defensive body language suggested he might be. But she knew that playing it out was still extremely risky. She waited, willing herself to stay calm.

  Sadik tilted his head to one side. ‘I got a relative in Basildon, my wife’s brother. He say Sean Phelps is running things now. That right?’

  Kaz blinked, the only indication of her surprise. Was it a trick question? There was no way of telling.

  ‘As I said, the family business goes on. My cousin runs the Essex end of it.’

  Suddenly furious, Sadik jabbed an index finger in Kaz’s direction. ‘You tell your fucking cousin from me to stay in fucking Essex! He think he can come up here, start taking over our turf. I know what he’s been doing. I don’t care how many fucking scumbag Ruskies he got – I don’t roll over for no one. You tell him that. I see you here again I send you back to fucking Sean in twenty fucking pieces. You got that?’

  He continued to eyeball her for about ten seconds to ensure the message had sunk in. Then he turned on his heel and walked out. The front door slammed behind him.

  Kaz and Yasmin stared at each other open-mouthed. Yasmin collapsed into an armchair. ‘Awww fuck me. For sure he was gonna do you, babes. I told you what they was like.’

  Kaz took a deep breath and raked both hands through her hair. She realized that her heart was pounding in her chest. ‘I need a drink of water.’

  She picked her way through the broken glass and headed down the hall to the kitchen. Yasmin followed. Lifting a mug from the draining board Kaz filled it from the tap. She drank half of it standing then slumped in a chair.

  Yasmin scrabbled in her bag, brought out a packet of cigarettes. Her hands were shaking so much it was all she could do to light it. ‘When he sent Tevfik to the car I thought he was gonna let it go. But I told you what they was like. Didn’t I? I told you.’

  Kaz glared at her. ‘If you know what they’re fucking like, then why work for them? All this businesswoman bullshit! Is this what you want your life to be? Living in fear of pricks like him.’ She drained her mug and slammed it down on the table.

  Yasmin drew deeply on her cigarette, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘You don’t understand, I—’

  ‘Yeah I do. You’d rather suck dick than stack shelves in Tescos. You think it’s easier. Maybe it is.’

  ‘I’m sorry, babes. I’m so . . . sorry . . .’

  Dumping the cigarette in an ashtray Yasmin buried her face in her hands. Kaz watched her for a moment. Yasmin had always played it so cool, pretended to be streetwise and tough, but this was the reality. Her spirit had been broken a long time ago.

  Kaz sighed then reached out and patted her friend’s arm. ‘Look, it’s okay. I’m sorry. This is not your fault. But I need to get my stuff and get out of here before they change their minds.’

  Yasmin dried her eyes on her sleeve and nodded. ‘Yeah. You gonna call your cousin, tell him about this? Get some protection.’

  ‘I’ll have a job.’ Kaz got up from the table. ‘Sean’s been dead for two years.’

  11

  Fiona Calder sat at her desk, fingers interlaced, staring into space. The Warner case: Nicci’s bland description made it sound like just another investigation. She wondered if she’d been too harsh, but the news that Nicci was now working for Simon Blake had completely wrong-footed her. Nicci was an officer, a very good officer, who’d suffered a terrible tragedy. She deserved help and support to get back on her feet. However, the death of Helen Warner was another matter entirely. It had presented the Met with the most serious challenge the service had encountered, certainly during Calder’s time in the job. But who was equipped to deal with it? No one.

  The Commissioner was a decent enough man – slightly old school and ramrod-backed – which was why the politicians had chosen him. For them it was all about media image. They treated policing as a brand and he was their Captain Birdseye. Unfortunately his entire career had been spent in the regions. In the capital it was a different game and he really didn’t get it. He thought he could run the MPS, as he insisted on calling it, like an old-fashioned chief constable, steady hand on the tiller, the occasional rallying speech to the troops. When it came to the web of lies and transgressions, the secret alliances that underpinned the organization, he was clueless.

  Calder had joined the Met at nineteen. She’d grown up in Enfield in a modest Thirties semi; for her, becoming a copper had been an escape from the typing pool. Her parents were proud as punch of their only daughter. She’d endured the years in uniform and being called a plonk, but she never let the culture get to her. In her experience, most of her male colleagues were simple, predictable and easy to manipulate. And being a small woman had worked to her advantage: the decent blokes were protective and the bullies underestimated her. She watched and listened and learnt, rising rapidly through the ranks at a time when promoting women had become a political necessity. Her entire career had been spent in London and when it came to the Met she understood the beast better than most; she
shared its scars, felt its fears and was privy to its nasty little secrets.

  London was a capital city of the twenty-first century, rich and poor cheek by jowl, and, as the divide widened, the nature of policing was being tested to the limits. She knew the public’s perception of crime rarely fitted the facts. Most people’s sense of safety was an individual matter, depending on personal psychology as much as experience. And the media was always ready to ramp up the drama.

  Telling Julia Hadley to hire a private investigator – had that been a mistake? Calder rarely acted on impulse. She’d wanted to do the right thing and had judged it safe at the time. Now she realized she’d been naive. The nucleus of power never stayed still, it was always shifting. And in an organization like the Met it was impossible for her to be on the inside track. Women could never be included in the cabal. But as an outsider it was easier to watch and predict, or so she thought. Warner’s death was just the tip of the iceberg. The whole process of government could be undermined, that was her real fear, and there was no telling where it would all end.

  Calder’s mind flitted back to Nicci and the Phelps case. After Joey Phelps’ arrest, the IPCC had carried out a thorough review. Nicci was one of the few officers who came out of it smelling of roses. She was smart, hardworking and thorough, and it was obvious to all concerned that she’d played a pivotal role in taking down a very dangerous villain.

  But that was before. Before a three-ton truck with dodgy brakes had wiped out her little girl.

  What was Nicci capable of now? Calder had no way of knowing. And were they about to end up on opposite sides? Calder had few qualms about using Simon Blake; he’d made his choice when he boarded the private security gravy train. But Nicci?

  Calder snapped out of her reverie. She was an assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Service and she was standing on the edge of a precipice; this was no time for sentimentality. She picked up her phone and summoned her staff officer. Two minutes later the young man in the blue shirt and the silk tie stepped into the room.

  ‘Put your thinking cap on, Jamie. Who do we know on the tabloids, middle-ranking, but good at whipping up a nice bit of moral outrage?’

  Jamie pondered, rubbed his chin. ‘Mail or the Express?’

  ‘Either.’ Calder swivelled her chair to gaze out of the window. ‘Okay, you can dress it up a bit, but here’s the gist. We’re shocked – no, extremely shocked – to learn that a firm of private investigators is looking into the tragic suicide of Helen Warner. And we’re particularly concerned that her grief-stricken family is being exploited by individuals whose sole motivation is private profit.’ She spun the chair back to face him. ‘And making a name for themselves.’

  Jamie was scribbling a note. ‘A source at Scotland Yard?’

  ‘Senior source . . . but I want plenty of distance from this.’

  ‘I’ll feed it through the Press Office, make sure they can’t track it back.’

  Calder smiled her assent. She thought of Nicci again, but only fleetingly. There were far bigger issues at stake. She was on dangerous ground and she knew it. But if she didn’t act, who would?

  12

  Joey Phelps lay on his back on the hospital-style gurney staring up at the bright strip light, which traversed most of the low ceiling. There wasn’t much pain, just a dull ache. He fingered the dressing; the wound was still oozing, but not much. Had any vital organs been hit? He was hoping not. Still, he didn’t feel that confident any more. Stupid to trust anyone, let alone some knob who wanted to be a raghead. It was all starting to feel like a huge mistake.

  He’d been in the prison system nearly two years, including time served on remand in Belmarsh. After his triple murder conviction he was sent north to Full Sutton in Yorkshire, which was judged to be a safe enough distance from his old sphere of influence. However, whilst there, leave to appeal against his sentence was refused. Joey was a brooding mass of anger and resentment; his high-priced lawyers had failed him and the reality of long-term incarceration was setting in.

  So he singled out one of the jail’s kingpins, a Mancunian drug baron, hard as nails, and beat him to a pulp. To avoid all hell breaking loose Joey was shipped out immediately and landed in the DSPD unit at Frankland. He looked around him, saw he was surrounded by a bunch of complete wackos, and that was when it dawned on him he needed to get a grip and change tack.

  Dr Fishburn, the psychiatrist assigned to him, was young and ambitious. Joey knew instinctively how to play him. He hooked Fishburn with his troubled gangster act and allowed the young doctor to tease out graphic tales of childhood abuse suffered at the hands of his father. These had the advantage of a ring of veracity because by and large they were true. He embellished the picture with details of his early teenage sexual liaison with his older sister. Then he let the doctor shepherd him through several cathartic outbursts, during which he gave a passable performance of grief and shame.

  In reality Joey felt nothing; he never had. Emotions didn’t bother him. In the back of his mind secret thoughts about Kaz lurked, but he kept them tucked well away. There were scores to settle on a number of fronts, but that would have to wait.

  On the psychiatrist’s recommendation, Joey was returned to the wing. He spent as much time as possible working out in the gym or playing sport. It soaked up his unruly energy and calmed his ire. He spent time in the prison library too; googled Fishburn and read his blog – pretentious crap mainly. He signed up for an alcohol and drug abuse programme, not because he had a problem but because he knew it was another way to get the system working to his advantage. In group-therapy sessions he quickly learnt to play the contrition game. It wasn’t hard to figure out the kind of bullshit the shrink and the offender management team wanted to hear. They lapped it up.

  While all these things helped Joey to survive from day to day, the prospect of serving a thirty-year tariff still hung over him. If he dwelt on it too much he could end up thinking he’d be better off dead. Lifers did top themselves; there were plenty of stories circulating and they gave him the creeps. To counter this he began to create a fantasy of himself as a PoW. He remembered the old war movies he’d watched on the box as a kid. Him and Kaz curled up in front of the big old Phillips telly. Steve McQueen was his favourite, trying to jump a barbed-wire fence on his motorcycle, the Krauts trying to machine-gun him, but he never lost his cool. Joey even persuaded a tame screw to smuggle him in a pair of aviator shades so he’d look the part.

  Giving free rein to his imagination, Joey moved mentally into a dream world where there was just no way he’d be spending the bulk of his adult life in jail. This in turn cheered him up, lightened his mood; he found the days passing more easily and fury at his situation abating. The prison authorities were really no different to the Krauts and Joey’s task was to outwit them. It was like any computer game he’d ever played: he was the hero and heroes always came out on top.

  Joey’s opportunity came much sooner than he expected when the governor and his senior offender manager had a discussion about Dr Fishburn. They were concerned that the young psychiatrist was too keen to build a reputation and, as a result, rather naive in his dealings with certain inmates – Joey Phelps in particular. In their mind, Joey was a straightforward psychopath. As a precaution they decided to transfer him to Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire.

  Joey arrived at Whitemoor to find the cell next door occupied by a nineteen-year-old Brummie lad who’d taken a machete to a rival in a gang feud. The lad fancied himself as a jihadist so he’d changed his name to Mohammed and converted to Islam. Joey immediately saw the potential and within a week of meeting they’d struck a deal.

  The pecking order amongst the Muslims on the inside was pretty strict. You had to have ‘gone over’ to training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan to be taken seriously. But the small clique who ruled the roost had all fought against Assad in Syria; they were respected and feared. Mohammed was of Caribbean parentage, had no radical cleric to vouch for him and was finding
the Qu’ran hard going. As far as his Muslim brothers were concerned he was a bit of a chancer, who’d yet to prove his credentials as a true believer. Then Joey walked into his cell and offered him the opportunity to change all that.

  Joey played the role of white, racist bigot to a tee. When Mohammed knifed him in a fight on the landing, witnessed by a dozen onlookers, everyone assumed it was the real deal. Mohammed looked like an avenging angel as he was hauled off the hapless Joey and marched to the cooler, with chants of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ ringing out from his admiring brethren. It was music to his ears.

  The problem for Joey was that Mohammed’s zeal for authenticity had got the better of him. It was after five o’clock and the day shift had clocked off when Joey was stretchered into the Healthcare Centre. The stab wound was in his mid torso but Mohammed had been a bit too keen and the blade had penetrated deeper than intended. Joey fingered the gash. There wasn’t much blood; he felt more like he’d been punched. But he was sweating profusely. Then without warning bile rose in his throat and he puked. He realized he must be in shock.

  The night nurse had just come on duty. She took one look at him and summoned the on-call doctor. Dr Papadakis was Greek and had only been in the UK for a month. His English was barely passable, but with the nurse’s help, he carried out an examination. It was difficult to judge the depth of the wound and, given its location, to determine whether any major organs had been damaged. Papadakis pondered his options, he had a wife and three kids in Athens and he needed to keep this job. The private company who provided the on-call service had made its policy clear when they recruited him: no mistakes, no come-backs, always err on the side of caution.

  A discussion was in progress between the nurse and one of the prison officers, much of which he didn’t understand. The prison officer wasn’t happy; he seemed to regard the patient with some suspicion, but that wasn’t Papadakis’s problem.

  He looked down at the young man. Whatever crime he’d committed certainly didn’t show in his face. His eyes were blue, his look almost angelic as he lay there trying to tough it out. Yet there was a rising sense of panic. Clearly in shock, his expression suggested the pain was getting worse, which could mean internal bleeding. Dr Papadakis decided it was an emergency and issued his instructions.