The Sea Detective (36 page)

Don’t behave as if you’re expecting someone.

He returned to his chair, checked for more emails. There were none. He pushed away his key board, leant back and rested his feet on the edge of the table. He remained like that, casting back, wondering, analysing. Which of them would it be?

When it grew dark he switched on his desk lamp. He went to the bathroom door and turned on the overhead light. He walked past the windows once more. He saw his reflection in the glass and the colourless silhouette of a fading city skyline behind it.

The waiting had taken away his appetite. But he looked in the fridge and along the kitchen shelves anyway. It was something to do. He boiled the kettle, put a teabag in a mug but didn’t pour in the water. He didn’t want a drink.

Don’t keep all the lights on all the time. Mix it up.

At 11pm, he turned off the bathroom light and turned on his bedside lamp.

At 11.20pm he turned off his desk light.

At 11.55pm he turned off his bedside lamp.

His apartment was now lit only by the pallor of the street lights reflecting off the white of his ceiling. He pushed his arm chair underneath one of the big windows in the living area. He sat back into it, making sure the top of his head was below the window sill. His desk lamp was on the small table beside him. He checked the plug and pushed the table forward so the lamp’s arc of light would leave him in shadow. He tested it once before turning it off.

His phone was in his hand. He checked it. Four bars.

Cal feels a sense of purpose; a mixture of determination and recklessness. Someone has betrayed him. It’s time for him to discover who. One o’clock. Two o’clock. The hours pass. He’s drowsy, falling in and out of sleep, waking at the sound of a car, or at passing pedestrians, their shouts and laughter drifting up to him.

When his phone rings he is asleep. He fumbles to answer it but instead, all thumbs and fingers, cancels the call. He swears. The phone rings again. It’s Jamieson.

‘They’re here.’

‘How many?’

‘Four that we’ve seen. There’s one in a car, one at the front door and two just going inside. So get out on to the roof now. Go.’

Cal says nothing. He cuts the call.

Don’t mess about. Just get the hell out of there.

Chief Inspector Beacom is watching the monitors in the mobile police control centre. Two night vision cameras are streaming pictures; one is in an unmarked van parked along the street from The Cask. The other, which gives a view into Cal’s apartment, is on the roof of the old flour mill.

‘Can’t see him moving?’ Beacom stares at the second screen again.

He studies every dim detail. He can see the long back wall of Cal’s living area, what looks like a group of posters, the front door to their right, the spiral staircase to the roof.

He asks for more zoom. He watches again for movement. He doesn’t see any.

‘Chris’ sake Helen, is he still in there?’ By now McGill should be climbing the spiral stairs. Beacom wishes he’d fixed a camera inside the apartment. But there was a risk the building was being watched.

There’s always a risk.

‘I don’t know sir,’ Jamieson replies. It means she thinks Cal is still inside. ‘I’ll ring again sir.’

It’s really a question. She waits for his answer. Beacom is operating blind.

He doesn’t know why Cal isn’t moving.

He doesn’t know where in the building the two men are.

He doesn’t know whether they’re close enough to Cal’s door to hear a phone ringing. ‘Do it,’ he says.

Jamieson lets it ring four times before Beacom says, ‘enough.’ He is watching the second monitor again, asking for more focus on the door. He expects two men to burst through it any moment now.

He says under his breath, ‘Get out, get
out
for Chris’ sake, get
out
.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘What the fuck’s he playing at.’ He bangs his hand against the wall. ‘Shit.’

He orders his waiting men to move on the driver of the car and the look-out by the front door. Another risk. Will they tip off the men inside before they’ve committed any crime?

Another group of officers has moved up to the back of the building. He gives the order for them to go on to the roof. None of this is what he wants. What he wants is to see the two men inside the building force entry into the flat. He wants them to commit a crime, any crime, before he makes his moves. Otherwise the advantage shifts from him to them. There’s no law against visiting someone you email occasionally about flotsam and ocean currents, even if it is at 2.40 in the morning. There’s no law against sitting in a parked car while your mate visits an acquaintance, or against smoking a cigarette in the shelter of a block of flats while you wait.

Beacom can’t take his eyes off the second monitor. Will the camera on the old flour mill soon be relaying Cal’s murder?

Beacom knows he cannot let that happen.

A call comes through. The driver and the look-out have been detained. Beacom gives the order for police to enter the front door of The Cask. He checks the progress of his men on the roof. Two minutes, he’s told. Two minutes isn’t fast enough.

‘What the fuck’s he playing at Helen?’

He’s turning back to the monitor when the door bursts open. It’s what he wants to see but not with Cal still inside. This is his nightmare. Two shapes run through the open door, low and fast.

There’s a smell, like petrol. Cal remains in his chair, below the window. He registers the landing beyond the swinging door is dark. The men have blacked out the lights. Everything goes quiet. Then Cal hears their breathing. They’re crouching. There’s a movement to his right, towards his bed and the bathroom. The other man stays where he is, watching. Cal is still. The darkness conceals him. A shadow moves left. The two men are together again. He hears their hurried whispers. Both men stand. There’s the sound of liquid pouring on to the floor. Cal clicks on his desk lamp, lighting them both. They wear masks with slits.

The man on the right raises his hand towards the light. It holds a gun, but Cal doesn’t move. The man can’t see him. There’s a crash of glass breaking. The man with the gun cries out and falls backward. His companion runs for the door. When he reaches the dark of the landing he flares a cigarette lighter, sets light to something which he lobs back inside. The air ignites before it lands. The flame races in front of Cal. He jumps up, pulls his table over to protect his papers and books. The photograph of his grandfather is in his backpack behind his armchair. He doesn’t think about his computers. They crash to the floor. There are shouts outside, a tussle. Suddenly police are everywhere: at the door; on the spiral staircase. Two officers wearing goggles see Cal and hurry him from the burning apartment.

‘Were you trying to get yourself killed?’ Jamieson asked.

Cal said, ‘I had some personal issues.’

‘My boss has a few personal issues with you too. He’ll kill you himself given half a chance.’

Cal shrugged, smiling weakly.

Jamieson said, ‘You knew we’d have to shoot, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You’d be dead if we hadn’t.’

He shrugged again, as if to say it didn’t matter to him. ‘Then you’d have had him for murder,’ he said. She’d already told him the dead man was Mack, the leader of the Omoo group. How police were already taking his home apart, looking for clues. How they’d already found some email print outs addressed to Mack.

All Cal had said was ‘served him right, the bastard.’

‘The other guy was muscle, doesn’t seem to know anything,’ Jamieson said.

Cal rubbed his face. ‘I’m tired. I want a shower, a clean bed.’

‘We’ve booked you into a hotel for the night.’

‘When will I be allowed to get some things?’

‘Couple of days … Forensics will need the place to themselves until then. I’ll let you know, ok?’

Cal thanked her. ‘By the way, there’s an email in your Bembo account. Ignore it.’

Rosie Provan pulled at the cuffs of her calf’s leather Armani bomber jacket. She unfastened and fastened the third top button. She couldn’t make up her mind: too much cleavage, not enough cleavage. She shook her blonde hair and reapplied her lip gloss. Her taxi pulled into the parking bay in front of The Cask. The media pack had moved on and so had the story. It was everywhere, page after page of it: police raids on paedophile hide-outs; the secret double life of ‘Mack’ Crosby, the customs officer who moonlighted as a sex trafficker; the sordid twilight trade in child prostitutes; how the rest of the gang had operated offshore; how they’d gone to ground; how the police had leads to India, Albania and North Africa, places where children were cheap.

So far nobody in the media had got to Cal McGill. Rosie had tried his hotel but his police guard had turned her away like the other reporters. Unlike the others, she’d gone back every few hours. She’d phoned his father. She’d emailed Bembo, her mysterious and well-connected contact who told her about Cal solving the severed feet mystery. ‘Can you help with access to McGill?’ A day or two passed before Bembo replied. ‘McGill’s going to his flat this afternoon. Be there 2.30pm. Re the severed feet, you scratched my back. Re McGill, I scratch yours. Now we’re quits. Bye.’

She was late. It was 2.34 when she paid off the taxi and walked towards the uniformed policeman at the door of The Cask. He was speaking to an overweight woman having a bad hair day, a bad everything day. (Rosie registered an involuntary internal gasp of disapproval. The woman’s skirt was too tight
and
too short.)

Rosie wasn’t sure what to say so she tried up-front and obvious. ‘Rosie Provan from the Reporting Factory … to see Cal McGill.’

The officer asked for her ID. Rosie flashed her press card at him and a smile.

It irked Rosie the way the fat woman clocked her card too. (She was a paper bag job if Rosie had ever seen one.) What surprised her was the woman saying with a quiet authority, ‘It’s ok; let her in.’ The uniformed officer pushed the door open, Rosie went inside and went to the top floor where another policeman was waiting by the lift door. ‘Miss Provan is it?’

Rosie flashed a smile.

‘He’s expecting you.’

‘Who was that, the woman at the front door?’ She’d almost said ‘fat woman’.

The officer said, ‘That’ll be Helen Jamieson.’

‘Who’s Helen Jamieson?’

‘Detective Sergeant Jamieson; just been promoted.’ He tapped his nose with an index finger. ‘One to watch, I’m told.’

She
couldn’t be Bembo, Rosie thought; too subordinate despite her promotion; too ugly to have
that
kind of access and information. Whoever
was
Bembo had opened doors, had told the fat officer to let Rosie in. That was the way the world worked.

The policeman watched after Rosie as her high heels click-clacked down the landing, the lights flicking on ahead of her. Cal’s door was ajar, like the first time she visited him, and as she approached she heard what sounded like someone moving furniture. Just like the last time. It was weird, like seriously weird, like oh-my-God weird.

She made to knock on the door but instead put her head through the gap. Cal was sitting on the floor, gathering up papers. She took in the scene: books and burst files scattered everywhere; the window behind him boarded up; that familiar smell, one Rosie recognised from the many flat fires she’d covered as a trainee reporter; a smell Rosie had grown to associate with poor people.

‘Wow,’ she said, ‘Who said lightning never strikes twice?’

‘Hello, Rosie.’ Cal looked up at her quickly and then back at what he was doing.

‘Hi.’ Rosie took a step into the room, noticing the scorch marks on the wall, the bubbled paint on the skirting, the charred black floor boards, the water stains – had the blood been washed away? Keep it light and easy, Rosie. ‘Well what’s been keeping you busy since we last saw each other?’

Re-establish the relationship, Rosie.

Cal didn’t reply.

In Rosie’s view journalism was similar to warfare: it was all about taking territory. She glanced at Cal. This was a man who wanted to talk if ever she saw one, contemplative, solitary, in need of a friend. She crossed the room to his arm chair and sat on an arm. After a long silence, Cal stopped sorting through papers.

‘Why did you do that?’ He spoke so softly, so accusingly, that it caught Rosie off guard.

‘What?’ Rosie said.

‘Take a photograph of my grandfather without my permission.’

‘Oh I didn’t realise.’

Now Cal stared at her with an intensity she hadn’t seen in him before.

Rosie said uneasily, ‘It must have been a misunderstanding. I’m sorry.’

‘Stop the pursuit, Rosie. I’m not going to talk to you.’

She made a show of disappointment. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’ Rosie pretended hurt at a false accusation.

‘Goodbye, Rosie,’ Cal said, starting to sort through another file.

Rosie shrugged. ‘Ok.’ She picked up her bag. ‘Nice to hook up again.’ She held up her left hand and waggled her fingers stiffly. ‘Bye Cal.’

Rosie pulled the door shut and scribbled notes as she went along the landing. It’d make a story all right: Cal McGill, the sea detective, sitting in the wreckage of his life, in the apartment where Mack, the scout for the sex trafficking operation had been shot by a police marksman. She’d seen the scrubbed boards where the blood had been. Who needed an interview with colour like that?

When the noise of Rosie’s heels had gone quiet, Cal wandered about the flat, distractedly picking up books, flicking over pages; touching some of the artefacts he’d collected, feeling their texture, searching for reassurance in them. For the next hour or two, he packed the turtle shell and his other flotsam and jetsam, including the Mary’s Bean, into storage boxes. He gathered salvageable papers and books into piles and tied them with sash cord. Everything undamaged would be taken away tomorrow and stored in the room at the top of the back stairs in his parents’ house. His computers were already packed for pick-up by a specialist data recovery company. A flat clearance company would remove the rest. Cal had put some books, maps and sea charts on his mattress. They were for his small backpack. His clothes went into his rucksack. He hooked it on to his shoulder; the small backpack hanging from his right hand, its straps trailing the floor. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him.