East of Innocence (23 page)

Now they are rowing back and I get up from the wall and take my shoes off and walk down the sand towards them.
The sand is still warm from the sun and it feels glorious, my feet sinking into its cool heat with every step. The men get out of the boat into the water and pull it awkwardly on to the beach. As I get closer, I can see that one of the men is perhaps sixty years old; he has black hair and dark skin and his face is deeply lined. The other man is pulling the boat with his head down, putting his back into it. When he reaches the shore, he looks up and he can’t make out my face and his eyes open wide in panic.

‘Terry,’ I call. ‘It’s okay, it’s Danny.’

I had taken a bus from Marbella to a port town called Algeciras and bought a ticket for the ferry that crosses the Strait of Gibraltar to Tangier; I had found myself in Africa before I had time to prepare for the different sights and sounds, the unnerving absence of anything familiar, the din and the pace. The local Hertz didn’t have anything left to rent, but a local had pointed me down an unpaved side street of peeling plaster two-storey buildings where I had handed over fifty Euros to hire a battered white Fiat Panda for a week. It had bald tyres and lacked a wing mirror on the passenger’s side, and I hadn’t liked the sound of the exhaust, but I figured if it broke down I could simply walk away from it; the man doing the hiring out had not asked for any identification when he asked for my name and address. He was a skinny young man wearing a Metallica T-shirt and he had only one eye; I suspected that the car was stolen and that he did not want it back. I didn’t care either way.

Andy had told me that the last they had heard from him, four days ago, Terry had been in Oualidia, a small town in
Morocco on the Atlantic coast. They hadn’t heard from him since, didn’t expect to; recently Terry had become convinced that Baldwin would come to Spain to find him, and just wanted to disappear. I could not blame him. I recognised the feeling.

Oualidia is five hundred kilometres south of Tangier and I followed the coastal road all the way, the sea a constant presence on my right. The scenery was monotonous, barren scrubby fields sectioned off by low stone walls, the occasional goat, the even less frequent person. At one point, the road disappeared and I drove on bare earth until, around a corner, I came across a road crew with a digger and truck full of hardcore who waved to me as I passed. I stopped off at a town along the way, spent the night in a concrete hotel, which served me a plate of couscous with vegetables, courgettes and carrots in a watery sauce under fluorescent lights. I left at nine the next morning and arrived in Oualidia just after lunch. I walked into the main square, which looked over the harbour; it was empty except for two boats which were being repaired, skinny men squatting down on their decks mending sails and rigging. One of the buildings on the square was a restaurant so I walked into it and asked a shy woman if she had seen a man with skin like me, pinching my skin up and showing it to her to make myself understood. But she didn’t, or wouldn’t, and scampered off to fetch a man with an important black moustache who spoke English and told me that the man I was looking for was out fishing with Walid. He took me by the elbow and walked me to the seafront and pointed, there. I could make out in the distance a small shape, so I’d walked down to the
beach and sat down on the low wall and waited for his boat to come in.

Terry walks with me back to the restaurant, where we sit at a table with a plastic cloth on it near the window and the shy woman I had first spoken to brings us mint tea, smiling uncertainly. I go to pour it but she waves a hand and pours it herself, lifting the metal teapot high in the air so the tea falls a foot and a half into the ornate glass cups she has set down on a silver tray. We are the only people in the restaurant, which has only four tables and a cash register near the door; it has the shabby, scuffed look of a down-at-heel corner store that has had all the units removed, leaving only the lino on the floor and the fluorescent tubes hanging on thin chains from the ceiling. A faded calendar showing the harbour is pinned on the wall behind Terry’s head. I have an end-of-the-season feeling, melancholic and lonely, as if we have been left behind by the rest of the holidaymakers, who have jobs and families and lives to return to.

‘New career as a fisherman, is it?’ I say.

‘How’d you find me?’ says Terry.

‘Your mate Andy. Bumped into him in Marbella, told him I needed to see you.’

‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘Drink your tea.’ Terry looks at me apprehensively and drinks. The bruises on his face are nearly gone but I am shocked to see how much weight he has lost. He is tanned and gaunt and he could almost pass for a local.

‘You really thought Baldwin would come looking for you?’ I ask.

‘I dunno, Danny. It’s like I can’t think straight any more. One morning I wake up and it’s fine, by dinner I’m shitting myself and looking round corners. Like I’ve gone mad or something.’

‘Obsessing.’

‘Yeah. Totally obsessed, dream about him, wake up in the night and can’t go back to sleep. I have these fantasies where I kill him. You know? So I won’t have to worry any more. He’s fucking crept inside my head and I can’t get rid of him.’

I do not know what to do or say. I came to share what I had found with Terry, but I am worried that any more pressure and he will lose what little sanity he has managed to keep. Already he is seeing demons that aren’t there; what will happen when I tell him that, actually, they are real and that Baldwin is more dangerous than he ever imagined?

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘That footage… How much of it did you watch?’

Terry frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you watch all the discs, all of it?’

‘No, just… Just the bits with me in.’

‘So you didn’t see anything else on the discs.’

‘What, it wasn’t enough, Baldwin kicking ten bells of shit out of me?’

He’s got a point; why would he watch more? I only went through it all after what Baldwin did to me, after his reaction became so excessive that it aroused my suspicions. ‘Just asking,’ I say.

But Terry, half-crazy or not, is still a policeman and he knows when somebody is lying; he has dealt with evasion
on more occasions than he can remember. ‘No. There’s something you’re not telling me. What? Danny? Fucking what?’

‘I watched it all,’ I say. ‘And what happened to you, that’s just the undercard for the main event.’

‘What? There was something else?’

‘Oh yes. There was something else.’

I had feared that finding out about Rosie would throw Terry into a panic; he was a man who was already on the ragged edge. But strangely, after hearing the news, he seems to calm down. He is no longer the central character in this story; it is about Rosie, not him, and this perhaps gives him a sense of perspective, helps him make sense of what has happened so far. I remind myself that he chose a career in the police and that he is, ultimately, motivated by the notion of justice, of bringing evil people to book. Hearing about Rosie gives him a cause; something to work towards, rather than something to run away from.

‘You think he killed her?’

I shrug. ‘Don’t know. Don’t know what happened. But if he didn’t, why hasn’t he said anything? Why does he want to keep the fact she came to the station a secret?’

‘Yeah.’ Terry’s quiet, thinking. ‘But why? Why would he? He’s a bent copper all right, but why would he kill that kid?’

‘Don’t know.’ I rub my face; I have not shaved in days.

‘Jesus, Danny, what happened to your finger?’ Terry says, pushing his chair back from the table in horror. He looks at me. ‘No.’

‘Doesn’t matter what happened to my finger,’ I say.

‘He do that? Baldwin do that?’

I look at the end of my finger. I need to take the stitches out, have been putting it off. It is bruised but no longer swollen, though it does not look pretty. ‘Yeah, he did it.’

‘Oh, Danny. Fuck, Danny, I’m so sorry, man. I brought this on you. I did.’ He chokes up and brushes the back of his hand over his eyes and when it comes away his eyelashes are glistening. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Forget it. It’s done. Over.’

‘Except it’s not, is it? We’re, ah…’ He snaps his fingers, trying to think of the phrase. ‘Loose ends.’

‘Probably not you,’ I say. ‘I’m the silly fucker who asked Baldwin if he killed her.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah. To his face. Rattled the horrible bastard.’

Terry looks out of the window of the restaurant. It is almost dark now; Oualidia has no streetlights and outside it is pitch black, the windows of the restaurant acting as mirrors. We could be the last people left in the world. But when Terry turns back to me he seems to have made a decision; his expression is determined and there is a bright excitement in his eyes.

‘So okay. It’s simple, right? We fucking do him. I’ll give the discs to my guv’nor; he’ll take it up the chain. ’Bye-bye Baldwin.’ He smiles at me. ‘No? We’ve got to do it, right? For that girl?’

Terry is not going to like what I am about to tell him; not one little bit. I put my fist to my mouth, knock it against my cheek. ‘I gave them back to him.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t mean to. Some little bastard called Dawson pulled a fast one. I thought I was giving them to his boss, turns out he’s Baldwin’s little pet.’

‘You don’t have the discs.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Oh.’ Terry frowns, looks at me in disappointment. ‘That was careless.’

‘Well the thing was…’ I begin, but Terry interrupts me.

‘I leave the discs with you and you lose them? What kind of a lawyer are you?’

‘Yeah, Terry…’

He holds up a hand, shakes his head in wonder that he could have made such a bad choice. He leans forward, across the table towards me. Beckons me in until our heads are almost touching.

‘You seriously think I wouldn’t make extra copies?’

The next morning, after spending a near-sleepless night in what I suspect was the shy woman’s daughter’s bed and for which she would not accept payment, I say goodbye to Terry and head for my car. Terry has told me who he gave the other copied discs to, an old friend who has long since moved out of Essex. I am still buzzing from the news that Terry made more copies of the discs, and cannot wait to get back to England and pick them up, to make Baldwin suffer. I feel as if I have had a last-minute reprieve, a new chance at life. But Terry is still not his old, defiant self; last night he told me that he did not want to come back to England with me, did not want to help me take Baldwin down. He said that he was sorry and I could see the fear and more,
shame, in his eyes; I told him that it did not matter, and I meant it. I selfishly wanted the pleasure of breaking Baldwin all to myself.

I am only a half hour out of Oualidia when my mobile rings. I do not recognise the number and pull off on to the dusty shoulder to answer.

‘Daniel Connell.’

‘You left me your card.’ It is a woman’s voice but, although it sounds familiar, I cannot place it. ‘You came to see my husband, Sean Conneely.’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. Hello.’

‘Mr Connell. I am sorry about your mother, about what happened to her. God knows I am.’ The words spill out as if they are too hot in her mouth, then she pauses.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Was there anything…?’

‘You must think me… I am not a bad person, Mr Connell.’

Standing by while your husband destroyed countless innocent lives, I think. Of course you’re not. But I do not reply. Perhaps she has been living with the guilt of what her husband did to all those women for too long, needs to unburden herself. I look into the distance, over miles of baked earth, and wait for her to get to the point.

‘Mr Connell,’ she begins again, her voice calmer. ‘Mr Connell, I remember your mother. I remember her to this day.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Was there anything…?’

‘And I know where she went. After she left us.’

26

‘DANIEL CONNELL.’

‘The fuck are you?’

‘Who’s speaking?’

‘Eddie, that’s who’s speaking. You was supposed to call three days ago. Now, again. Where the fuck are you?’

‘Out.’

‘Out. Your office is closed, nobody home. You done a runner?’

‘I’m away on business. I have other clients.’

‘Halliday, that’s your client. ’Til you’re finished, he’s your only fucking client.’

‘This conversation is over.’

‘No. Don’t you fucking dare hang up. I’ve got a message.’ I debate pressing the button, shutting Eddie up. But I let him continue.

‘Mr Halliday is not happy. Not at all. You’re making an enemy there, son, and you don’t want to do that.’

‘You have a message?’

‘Mr Halliday says, come back today, get it sorted, and he’ll forget that you took off for three days. You don’t come back? He’ll burn your fucking house down.’

My hand is gripping my mobile so tightly I wonder if I have the strength to crush it. I am in Manchester looking for the mother Halliday sold, yet he is threatening to burn my home. All fear of him has vanished; once again, as in Halliday’s bar, I feel that I am about to say something very unwise. But the depth of my anger is such that I do not care.