A Dark Redemption (11 page)

The clip ran for two minutes and twenty-three seconds. It was obvious both from the extent of her injuries and the jumpy transitions that the footage had been edited down from a master copy. The clip seemed to have been filmed on a high-quality mobile, possibly an iPhone. The camera framed Grace’s face and nothing else. The killer had remarkably steady hands. The lens held a tight close-up, the ends of Grace’s hair and chin nudging the edges of the screen. She wore a gag of blue checked cloth. Her lips were pushed back and looked as if they’d been peeled to reveal the skeleton grin of her gums. Every time something happened to her off-screen her face jumped and buckled, the eyes bulging as if trying to escape the confinement of their sockets. That you couldn’t see the things done to her, that you could only hear it off-camera, the heavy breathing, the laughter, the slash of knife against flesh – made it worse and even though everyone sitting in that room knew what had happened they couldn’t stop their imaginations from gliding away, seeing things even more grotesque than what they knew to be so.

Grace still had a lot of life left in her, that was clear from the violence of her struggle. She hadn’t hit that point yet when you realise you’re not getting out of this, when you see something in the killer’s smile, or the way he looks at you, and you know, know for sure, that the real and only reason you are here, tied to a bed – bleeding and wounded and screaming in pain – is so that someone can watch you die.

For two minutes and twenty-three seconds Grace writhed against her restraints, her face draining of blood, glistening in the camera-glare. Then came the moment everyone watched the clip on repeat for. The moment everyone told their friends about when they forwarded the link.

Three fingers appeared on screen. They were visible for maybe two seconds but that was all the time needed to remove the gag. Grace lurched forward, her face shaking with muscular spasms, the breath spilling out of her as if she were vomiting air. Branch turned the volume all the way up and Carrigan and Geneva could suddenly hear the heavy breathing in 87 King’s Court, the sound of a fire engine outside, the opening and closing of windows in the courtyard, people coming home from dinner and taking off their clothes, running baths and greeting their spouses. Then all they heard was Grace – a massive intake of breath, her eyes focused on the camera, her lips parted, her voice weak and parched.

‘Daddy!’

Just that one word, then a cut, her face appearing at a slight angle to the previous frame and, as she opened her mouth, for a split-second you could catch her life – who she was, the things she’d done – and then it was gone and she uttered her last words.

‘Help me, Daddy. Please help me.’

The clip ended abruptly, leaving a window asking you if you’d like to watch it again or see similar items.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Carrigan’s voice was dry and raspy, choked by the thought that this clip was being watched by hundreds, maybe thousands of people, not only here, but across the entire world.

‘We got a call from YouTube,’ Branch said, his face red and veined like someone about to experience a massive stroke. ‘They yanked the video after receiving several complaints. Christ, it had been on the site for nearly three hours by then. They thought it was a fake but they called us just in case.’

Geneva blinked, trying to rid herself of the dread images she’d witnessed. ‘Why us? How did they even know this happened in London?’

It was a good question, Carrigan realised, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it.

Branch hung his head, his thick fingers covering his skull. ‘The video’s labelled
Murder in Queensway
.’ He looked up at them, his eyes turning black and opaque.

‘We knew this would eventually leak out,’ Geneva offered, trying to soften her voice against what she’d seen, against the flood of fire snickering up her synapses and rushing through her blood.

‘You knew someone taped the killing and would post it on YouTube?’ Branch shot up, the chair tumbling from under him. ‘You’re obviously a better detective than I ever was, DS Miller – since my career is pretty much crucified because of this video, maybe you want to step in and take my place?’

‘She didn’t mean that,’ Carrigan interrupted, his voice as firm and unyielding as his stare. ‘Forget the fucking politics for a minute and you’ll see it’s better this way. The video will help us. We’re not seeing anything now but that’s because we’re looking in the wrong place.’

Branch moved forward so that he was less than two inches from Carrigan’s face. Geneva saw his hands curled into fists, held rigidly at his sides. ‘Where in Christ’s name
are
you looking?’

Carrigan didn’t blink. ‘Her boyfriend was seen arguing with her the night of the murder,’ he said slowly. ‘We’re concentrating everything on finding him.’

Geneva started to say something then stopped, her eyes darting down to the desk.

Branch turned towards her. ‘Spit it out, Miller, for God’s sake, if you have anything else to add.’

‘I think we should be looking at what she was working on, her dissertation; see if she offended anyone, wrote something that made her enemies.’ Her gaze remained fixed on the desk, unable to meet the super’s glare.

Branch stood up and walked towards the window. He stared at the grey sky then turned back. ‘A waste of time, Miller. Find the boyfriend. We’re not that desperate we have to chase up long shots yet.’ He looked down, seemed to be thinking about something. ‘At least I hope to Christ we’re not.’

The mood wasn’t any better in the incident room, the assembled detectives silently hunched over the small computer monitor, the light flickering on their faces as they watched Grace die.

Carrigan waited until they were finished, seeing his own thoughts wheeling like dark crows in their eyes; the anger, frustration and fury of the last few days exploding in ‘Fuck!’ and ‘Christ!’ and other, more imaginative, epithets. He wanted to give them some good news, a promise that this case wouldn’t end up unsolved, a silent rebuke filed away in a dark cabinet somewhere, but his eyes could not hide the truth.

‘From here on, everyone’s watching us.’ His voice was measured, calm and controlled, but inside he felt himself shaking. ‘It’s already made the TV news. The press will be all over this by tonight, the tabloids will go wild with it tomorrow.’ He didn’t need to explain to them the nature of a case conducted in the public eye, the way it warped procedure, geared up pressure, turned the death of a young girl from tragedy into politics. ‘Branch is apoplectic, as you can well imagine.’ Some laughs and nods of complicity from his men; even Karlson, he noticed, was quieter and less bullish than usual. ‘And that means he’s had the ACC screaming down the phone to him all afternoon. Which means we’ve now got targets painted on our backs. But, having said that, we have to continue as before, pretend none of this matters.’ He took a deep breath, knowing that such a thing would be impossible. ‘We’ve got to look at this video as a break in the case, we’ve now got something to work on. Berman . . .’

DC Berman raised his head from the computer screen, his eyes blinking hard like some nocturnal desert habitant. ‘Already on it, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’m running the clip through an enhancement program. We should be able to improve the image quality once that’s done, maybe see something we can’t see now.’ He spoke in a strange, lilting rhythm, the words breaking off now and then into mumbles and stutters. Carrigan watched him nervously fingering some kind of prayer shawl he wore under his uniform as he returned to his keyboard.

‘Karlson, I need you to talk to Scotland Yard, see if they have any kind of skin or finger database. The killer showed us his fingers. We must be able to learn something from that.’

‘From a three-second flash?’ Karlson was sitting backwards on the chair, slouching into the frame and running a finger through his elegantly manicured stubble. ‘I doubt it. All they can tell us is that he’s black, and that’s bleeding obvious.’

Carrigan turned his head sharply. ‘Do it. I’m not asking for your opinion.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We know from the clip that the killer is an IC3 male but that’s it – ask them if there’s anything about the shade of his skin, anything we can use to narrow this down.’

Karlson grumbled and noisily slurped his tea as Carrigan continued. ‘Also, can we find out what type of phone was used to film it?’

Berman looked up. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem once we figure out the resolution and coding parameters, though I can’t see how much help it’ll be; bound to be a common one.’

‘Everything we know about this man will help us find him. Everything. We all know what he did to Grace, what he’s capable of, the rush he must have experienced during the killing. Uploading the clip is probably his way of trying to replicate it but soon that won’t be enough, he’ll want more. They always do. Do we even have a clue where he uploaded it?’

Berman fingered his prayer shawl. ‘I’m onto it.’

Carrigan smiled – it was time for some good news. ‘We now have a lead on the boyfriend courtesy of Grace’s best friend, Cecilia Odamo. His name is Gabriel Otto. According to Cecilia he runs a group called the African Action Committee. There’s an AAC meeting in Hackney tomorrow night, which me and DS Miller will be attending.’ He stopped, noticed the dark hooded glare that Karlson gave Geneva, ignored it and continued. ‘Jennings and Singh, I want you to go back to SOAS, find out what you can about this group and about our friend Gabriel.’ He looked around the room. ‘This is what we have to deal with now. It’s not the way any of us would have liked it but it’s the way it is. Let’s use the video to help us catch him. Uploading it was his first mistake.’

A small upstairs room of the Queen’s Arms just off Mare Street. Carrigan and Geneva paid their two pounds entrance fee and climbed the narrow stairs to the weekly meeting of the African Action Committee.

They were greeted by a room so packed it felt as if the floor was moving. People sitting on chairs, on the floor in between the chairs, cramped into corners and up against walls like Mannerist effigies. The heavy smell of sweat, beer and impatience hung like weather in the room. Other smells too, fainter but more unusual – roots and herbs and strange green drinks swigged from unlabelled bottles.

But it was the screaming and shouting that gave them pause, made them feel as if they’d stepped into an alien world. A wailing chorus of remarks, insults and exultations. Some in English, others in languages unknown to them, others still in hybrids where English words poked between Swahili and local dialects, their owners shifting from one to another as if some were better suited for particular forms of expression. Carrigan could see Geneva fidgeting and tight-lipped and knew he should feel the same way too, here among people who’d lost so much to policemen in other countries, their eyes locking on the two white intruders, seeing in them past injustices and fresh indignities. But he was enjoying it, the noise and chaos and heat. The utter strangeness of it, here in the heart of London.

A young man stood by a chipped wooden lectern. Behind him was draped a large red flag with a crossed-through clenched fist on a white target at its centre. The man’s eyes popped and rolled as he addressed the crowd. It was obvious he was loving every moment of it. The catcalls and insults, the exhortations, hollers and electric sting of the room. With each cry from the crowd his voice rose and glided across the massed heads, alternately enraged and calm, his hands reaching out as if promising salvation or something better.

‘And I say it again, brothers, we are not brothers, we are not them and we are not the others. We are our own people.’ A cheer rose from the packed huddle. The temperature was soaring, an electric fan spinning elliptically but to no effect in the corner of the room. ‘They, these people who call themselves our brothers, they are the ones killing our sons, raping our mothers, destroying our villages. All in the name of brotherhood. Of progress. Of God.’

Another loud cheer crested by a stream of booing and insults. The young man smiled and continued, his voice seemingly feeding off the crowd, filling with urgency. ‘Yes, as Jesus declared, each man must atone in his own heart for that which he is not and each man’s heart is a darkness that no other man can hope to penetrate.’ He took a pause, more for effect than to catch his breath, then continued. ‘We will give them the chance to atone but if they do not take it then we must be ready. We must learn from them, these killers, these godless men who try to impose God in our hearts through the sword. If they will not repent we must use their own ways against them.’

Another cheer, more booing. Carrigan felt the atmosphere in the room suddenly shift, a subtle variation in the air like at a football game when trouble is about to kick off.

‘We must make our land a graveyard for all intruders. There is no other way. This is the way of God and the way of man.’ Booing. Screaming. Insults. Jeers. ‘We must take the Lord to Kony as he has taken it to us. No more . . .’ Gabriel Otto stepped back, watching with delight as the crowd erupted. ‘No more blood. No more villages burned to the ground. No more of our children recruited for his war.’ Booing and cheering filled the packed room until it was hard to distinguish one from the other. Two men, both dressed in ill-fitting grey suits, started fighting near the front, punches were thrown, glasses crashed to the floor, blood streaked the wall. Carrigan saw Geneva’s eyes flicker with fright, wondering what they’d got themselves into.

It had now been twenty-four hours since they’d seen the YouTube video. Twenty-four hours of flashed images, scrolling film, echoed screams. Twenty-four hours of newspaper headlines and breathless news reports. By the time they’d seen the video, it was being watched all over the world. Branch explained that although YouTube yanked the clip, a host of mirror sites were already streaming it, an exponential splash of horror bouncing across the web from one site to the next. Atrocity sites. Sites where you could watch the flicker of your sickest nightmares. Carrigan had spent an hour going through these sites earlier that morning, entering a realm that fed on and relished what the normal world abhorred. He’d thought he’d seen the worst in his years as a detective‚ but he now realised he’d seen nowhere near the worst; with each click of the mouse there were darker worlds and blacker provinces yet. It had started with photos of car crashes, DIY accidents and impaled bodies on park fences. From there it was both inevitable and logical that smuggled photos of torture and executions in South American prisons should appear, that people filmed their friends overdosing rather than trying to help them.

The morning’s newspapers had all carried Grace’s face, frozen mid-frame, splashed across their front pages, the headlines each trying to trump one another:
WEREWOLF OF LONDON STRIKES
,
THE IPHONE KILLER
, and the one Carrigan liked the best,
THE VALENTINE SLAYER
. People’s faces on the Tube were rapt with a deeper concentration than usual as they scanned the latest edition of the
Standard
, the steady pulse of their lives hiccuping for just one moment and then returning to normal. Phone calls had come in like artillery barrage; impossible sightings and hoaxes, fake confessions and religious ravings.

Carrigan could feel the case starting to slip away from them. There was so much they didn’t yet know. So many moments lost to them. The only thing they knew for sure was that the man standing on stage, Gabriel Otto, head of the African Action Committee, was probably the last person to see Grace Okello alive.

Carrigan had obtained a copy of Gabriel’s photo from SOAS and shown it to Mrs Najafi in King’s Court. She had confirmed that Gabriel was the man who’d been shouting and cursing outside Grace’s door the night she was killed.

Carrigan stared at Gabriel. His hair was cut tight against the skull, his eyes unnaturally bright as if a fire smouldered silently beneath them. He wore a neatly tailored brown suit. He was short and wiry yet gave the impression of someone bigger, something in the way he moved, a feral sort of calm and poise. Could this be Grace’s killer? Was it possible to look someone in the eyes and see the residue of their history illuminated there?

‘Next time they come for our children – we will be ready.’ Gabriel’s voice had soared above the maelstrom, effortlessly enunciating each syllable, the sibilants crackling against the microphone like lightning strikes. ‘Not just Kony and his men but Museveni too.’ A loud cheer rippled across the room. Several men stood up and shouted in Swahili, their arms outstretched, making shapes in the air as if too incensed for language. ‘Yes, our president who helps us with our milk and babies. Our president who hires mercenaries and sends them into the northern jungles to hunt for Kony. Who tells them,
Anything you come across on the way is yours
. And where are we in all this? Where do we fit in between one madman armed with the ten commandments and a machete and another armed with UN resolutions and IMF funding? It is time to take action. We must arm each and every villager. The old man who does nothing but stare at the river. The young girl who only wants to meet her boyfriend in the bush. This is the true gospel, brothers and sisters, the gospel of blood and retribution. This is how we will earn our place in heaven.’

Gabriel bowed theatrically as the room exploded into clapping, booing, the smack of fist against flesh, a rushed and cramped pandemonium that brought a huge smile to the young man’s face.

Carrigan watched as a group of men immediately surrounded Gabriel. Black-suited, his bodyguards or disciples, it was hard to tell which. People got up from their seats still arguing with their neighbours, trading insults in both word and gesture, gathering their things, making their way out into the frozen London night. Some tried to shake Gabriel’s hand or say something to him but the bodyguards kept him inviolable. He spoke to his congregation through the curtain of bodies like John-Paul II in his Popemobile.

Carrigan and Geneva waited until the crowd thinned out. They scanned the room, watching the people, all of them averting their gaze except for one man, standing against a side wall, a big rangy brute with bloodshot eyes, cropped black hair and white beard. Every time Carrigan looked, the man was staring directly at him, unabashed and with a smile on his face. It wasn’t the man he’d seen outside King’s Court and near Cecilia’s flat, he was certain, but there was something vaguely familiar about him, a feeling that made the back of Carrigan’s neck itch.

He crossed the hall, Geneva at his side as every face turned to watch them, immediately making them for what they were: white and police. As they approached Gabriel, the bodyguards seemed to contract like a curtain being pulled shut. Carrigan flashed his warrant card but the bodyguard in front of him didn’t even glance at it. He stood, arms crossed, his head round and shiny as a bowling ball, a look of surly indifference learned from the bouncer’s rulebook, plastered across his face.

‘We’d like to talk to Mr Otto,’ Carrigan said, his voice flat, brooking no argument, but the bodyguards didn’t budge until Gabriel himself tapped the two in front of him lightly on the shoulder.

‘You don’t like what I’m preaching?’ he said to Carrigan, ignoring Geneva, his accent pure North London sass and glare.

‘I couldn’t care less about that,’ Carrigan replied. ‘This is about Grace.’

He caught the slight squint in Gabriel’s face and the one-word command that sent the bodyguards back into formation, impenetrable as a concrete wall. He saw Gabriel disappear through the stage door, flanked by two massive acolytes. He pushed against the curtain of bodyguards, calling after Gabriel, but it was like trying to walk through a brick wall. He began to reach for his truncheon when he felt two hands, cold and hard as steel, clamp themselves around his arms and then, before he could take another breath, his feet were off the ground. The bouncer lifted him until they were eye level.

‘Mr Otto does not want to see you,’ he said, his breath dank and rotten like something found under a rock. Carrigan tried to twist out of the bouncer’s embrace but it felt like his arms were trapped in a vice.

‘Get your hands off him, now!’

The bodyguards looked at Geneva and laughed. Carrigan stared at the bouncer’s eyes and twenty years peeled back like a curtain as he felt the blood filling his mouth again, the stench of the cell, the broken teeth scattered across the floor. The bouncer’s voice snapped him back to the present.

‘Please, go home, this is no place for you. This is our affair, our history, our future. None of this is your business.’

‘A girl has been murdered. That’s our business.’ Geneva stood to the right of Carrigan, fingers cradling her can of pepper spray, trying to slow her heart so that her voice wouldn’t tremble and falter.

The bodyguard put Carrigan down and examined Geneva as if she were a strange dish he was surprised to find on his plate. His voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly gentle. ‘Our girls are being murdered every day back home. Kony’s troops come and rape them until they die. Then the government comes and those that have survived are accused of collaboration. This happens every day, for every week and every month of every year, and here you come and tell us a girl has been murdered and you’re all concerned and you want to talk to Mr Otto. Well, one girl is nothing. You do not live every day with death. You do not know how death becomes your life, how it loses its power when you rub shoulders with it every moment of your existence.’

Carrigan couldn’t help thinking he’d just summed up what it was like to be a murder detective while Geneva looked stymied by the bodyguard’s eloquence and reasoning. Carrigan could see her weighing options, her hand fidgeting her belt. There was no way past the bodyguards. Gabriel was probably long gone via a back door, vanished into the London night. All Branch needed now was a race riot, accusations of racial insensitivity. He looked at Geneva and with relief saw that she’d come to the same conclusion.

‘Every murder. Every single body we take seriously here,’ he said. ‘Maybe if you did that over there things wouldn’t have got so out of hand.’

The bodyguard’s fist came so fast he had no chance to duck or flinch. The blow landed square on his jaw and suddenly the world was black and silver.

‘Tell Gabriel I’ll be waiting for him,’ Carrigan said through a mouth filled with blood and pain. He rubbed his jaw and nodded to Geneva. They turned and walked slowly through the now empty hall, waiting for the lunge of a knife, another fist, but there was nothing, and when they entered the chill evening air it felt as if they’d been trapped inside that room for ever.