Blindside Read online

  Irvine wrote some more. At the top of the page she wrote the operation name, looked up at Fraser.

  ‘Why Operation Red Square?’ she asked.

  ‘There are stories out there that the Russians used a fentanyl-heroin derivative against some terrorists, kidnappers, in Moscow a while back.’

  ‘You think these guys are Russian?’

  ‘We don’t know. Haven’t ruled anything out as yet.’

  Warren stood, taking control of the meeting.

  ‘This fourth death is the one we want to focus on for now. Young girl found like that will get lots of ink in the press. Let’s see if we can get any better leads on it than we have from the others. I’ve asked for CID input not just because the deaths are unlawful, but also to give us a different perspective on the investigation.’

  He looked at Irvine.

  ‘If you and DS Armstrong could wait behind after we break up, DC Irvine, we’ll take you through how we want to do this.’

  Irvine nodded, feeling a little surge of excitement now – the buzz of the job.

  13

  When the meeting finished, Irvine and Armstrong waited while the room cleared, then went to the front of the room.

  Warren came around the table and stood in front of them, leaning back against the table edge.

  ‘Now you know what we’re dealing with,’ Warren said to Irvine. ‘Kenny’s been immersed in this for a while and doesn’t think that we’re going to get anywhere by focusing on our usual sources.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Armstrong said.

  Warren smiled, like a parent dealing with an irascible child. Irvine wondered if there was tension in the relationship between the two men.

  ‘My view’, Warren said, ‘is that we need to look at this from all angles. Leave no stone unturned, if you know what I mean.’

  Irvine didn’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of a fight.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I want Kenny to brief you on the local drugs scene, the supply chain and the like. Give you a feel for what we’re dealing with. Then he’ll take you on a tour of the earlier crime scenes. How does that sound?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Good,’ Warren said, straightening up.

  Warren left the room and Irvine followed Armstrong to the table where the coffee was, picking up a shortbread biscuit and taking a bite.

  ‘You don’t like the DG?’ Irvine asked.

  Armstrong looked sideways at her.

  ‘He’s all right for a boss. I mean he’s a purist, you know. A bad bastard, if you’re a criminal. And he didn’t take the DG job for political reasons.’

  Irvine had always assumed a job like DG of the SCDEA was a way to make a career splash. A politician’s job, not a real cop.

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘Because he wants to do something about the shit that flows through this country. The drugs, I mean. He’s about as straight a cop as you’ll find anywhere.’

  ‘How did this thing start?’

  ‘I flagged it up to my syndicate leader, DI Fraser, and from there it went up the chain fast. The DG likes to keep his hand in on operational matters. Doesn’t like sitting behind a desk all day.’

  ‘He came up with the name of the op?’

  Armstrong nodded. ‘He wants people to think he has all the big ideas. Fine with me.’

  Irvine took another bite from her biscuit and put the remains back on the plate. She liked shortbread but this stuff was cheap and not particularly good.

  ‘What about your DI?’ she asked. ‘What’s he like?’

  Armstrong picked up her half-biscuit and put it all in his mouth. Irvine didn’t know what to make of that.

  ‘Now, he is a politician. More concerned about his next promotion than anything else.’

  Armstrong scrunched his cup before throwing it into the bin.

  ‘Look, never mind me. I’m crabby today because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about a week and we’re getting exactly nowhere with this investigation. And then the girl this morning …’

  He didn’t finish that thought.

  ‘I’m not normally like this,’ he told her.

  He tried to smile, but it wasn’t convincing.

  Irvine didn’t mind crabby, so long as there was good reason. She kind of liked him, in spite of his poorly developed social skills.

  ‘Where to now?’ she asked.

  ‘Want a tour of my nightmare?’

  Part Two:

  Soldiers

  1

  Denver, Colorado

  Monday morning

  Seth Raines went to the kitchen in his apartment on Capitol Hill, poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it in one go. He switched on the coffee machine and sat at the table rubbing sleep from his eyes. The images from a dream ran through his head: a dream of war and death. The details precise and the sounds and smells resonating like it was only yesterday.

  Back in another life, Raines had served in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan as Staff Sergeant for Third Platoon, Charlie Company, First Reconnaissance Division of the US Marines. That was before a simple mission two years ago to monitor the eradication of an opium poppy field. Before his convoy was ambushed on the trip back from the field to the British camp outside the city of Lashkar Gah – brigade headquarters for Four-Two Commando, the Royal Marines.

  In his dream, he saw only brief, fractured images of that day: the ragged stump of a severed leg and blood soaking into desert sand. But now that he was awake, the memory of it all rushed back, hitting him like a physical blow.

  Raines was sitting next to one of his men – Private First Class Matthew Horn. They were sweating heavily under body armour listening to a briefing by the commanding officer of the British Marine brigade. He was a very British soldier, immaculately uniformed with a neatly clipped moustache and a deeply tanned face.

  The door of the room was open and Raines saw a Union flag fluttering outside in the low wind. Two marines were standing at the base of the flagpole taking custody of the now deposed Stars and Stripes from their British counterparts. Raines nudged Horn and nodded for him to look at the exchange taking place outside.

  ‘Most of you already know the lieutenant,’ the British officer said, pointing at a young-looking woman in the front row of the briefing room. ‘She is our Civil Military Ops Cell representative today and will communicate with the ANP contingent through our interpreter.’

  If there was one thing that both armies had in common, Raines thought, it was their love of TLAs: Three Letter Acronyms.

  ANP – Afghan National Police.

  ‘This is a hearts-and-minds job for the local population,’ the officer went on. ‘The ANP will burn a designated opium poppy field in a very public manner and our job is to ensure that nothing untoward happens while this is taking place.’

  The Brits were good at that sort of thing, Raines knew – hearts-and-minds jobs. They’d had plenty of practice during the troubles in Northern Ireland.

  ‘We also have two colleagues from the US Marine force today. Sergeant Raines and PFC Horn.’

  There were a total of twelve soldiers in the room for the operation and Raines and Horn were the only Americans. The Brits turned to look at them. Raines nodded his head in greeting.

  Raines knew what kind of first impression he made on people. He had identical, Maori-style tattoos on his shoulder blades – all loops and curls with pointed ends – and they extended up on to his neck. The very topmost points curled around on to the sides of his neck and were visible even above his body armour. His hair was shaved down to a fine bristle and his eyes were so dark in colour that even from a modest distance they looked almost black.

  Next to him, Horn was like a choirboy with his razored blond hair and fresh face.

  ‘They will travel in the lead Snatch,’ the British commander continued. ‘With the lieutenant and Corporal Johnson of the Royal Military Police. Everyone clear on what they have to do? G
ood, let’s get going. It’s going to be bloody hot today so the quicker we get this done the better.’

  Raines stood with Horn, both men lifting their helmets and rifles and moving with the other soldiers out of the room and towards the heat that they could feel as they neared the open door.

  Outside, Raines saw the three Land Rovers that were going to be used for the op: two ‘Snatches’ – lightly armoured versions of the vehicle – and a WMIK – an armed Land Rover. The latter had a .50 calibre machine gun mounted on top.

  ‘You boys up for this, today?’

  Raines and Horn turned as the female lieutenant approached behind them. She was wearing regulation desert camo fatigues, body armour and helmet. She had a sidearm in a holster on her hip but no rifle. Loose strands of dark hair fell from under her helmet.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Raines said. ‘Happy to help.’

  ‘Good. How long have you got left?’

  ‘We’re done end of this month. Twelve months in.’

  ‘Lucky you, eh? I just got here.’

  ‘It’ll go quick,’ Raines told her.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  She walked ahead of them heading for the lead Snatch. Raines looked at Horn, seeing his young private watching the lieutenant. Horn looked sheepish when he saw that Raines had caught him.

  ‘She seems nice,’ Raines said.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. She does.’

  It always ended the same way for Matt Horn: in dream or memory.

  Raines forced himself to think of something else, ran his hand over the rough scar of the bullet wound on his shin and watched the coffee start to drip into the pot fixed under the machine.

  The apartment was sparsely furnished: a simple table and two chairs in the kitchen, a couch and TV in the living room and a bed with a table beside it in the bedroom. Raines didn’t think of it as home. It was a place to live. That was all. The furniture was second-hand, bought mainly from ads he found in local shops and newspapers. He could leave it all behind and never give it a second thought.

  The place was perfect for what he wanted: a one-bed, one-bath apartment in a big, Victorian redstone building. He was the quiet, dangerous-looking guy with the tats who lived alone and didn’t have anything to do with anyone else. He said hello to all his neighbours and smiled but didn’t know any of them by name. It was how he liked it. No one invited him to parties and no one stopped him to talk about work or football or anything else.

  Raines didn’t think of himself as having a home anywhere any more. Not the apartment and certainly not the place in the mountains outside of the city.

  The phone rang and Raines went to the counter to pick it up.

  ‘It’s me,’ a man’s voice said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you hear?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Stark got on the plane last night.’

  Raines said nothing, scraping his nails at the stubble on his face.

  ‘The plane that went down,’ the man said.

  ‘You saw him get on? You’re sure of it?’

  ‘He was on it. But he wasn’t using the name Stark. The ticket was under the name John Reece.’

  Raines listened to the hiss and burble of the coffee machine.

  ‘There’s nothing more to be done about it, then,’ he said.

  He hung up and went to the window, opening the blinds. Sunlight slanted in through the narrow slats.

  He felt numb. It was all he had ever felt since coming back from the war.

  2

  Raines drove into Lower Downtown Denver, glancing at a sign welcoming him to ‘LoDo’. He passed by converted Victorian warehouses housing bars and shops and parked his pick-up truck on the street outside a diner at the corner of Seventeenth and Market.

  Inside, he told the waitress that he was meeting someone and needed a table for two. She grabbed a couple of menus and led him to a table set against a bare brick wall. The place was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary – anonymous.

  Raines liked anonymous.

  He rubbed at his jeans where the scar was on his leg, feeling an ache starting to throb.

  He stared out of the window fronting the street, light from the sun reflecting in the glass of the shop fronts across the road. Remembered the baking heat of the sun that day at Lashkar Gah. Remembered the oven-like interior of the Land Rover they travelled in to get to the poppy field.

  Raines and Horn got to the Land Rover and waited at the rear door with the British lieutenant and the RMP corporal. Two privates came over from the body of British soldiers, unlocked the rear doors and went round to the front.

  The corporal looked no older than Horn, who was twenty-three. Raines still found it hard to believe that Horn had left college, where he was studying chemistry and physics, to join the army and come to this god-awful place. Plus, he’d had his shaggy, student hair shaved off in a regulation military cut. Raines had turned forty on this tour and for the first time in his military career was starting to feel old.

  The lieutenant motioned for Raines and Horn to get in the back of the Land Rover. They climbed in and sat facing each other on parallel benches immediately behind the front seats. They shifted, trying to get comfortable in the heat, swatting at flies that buzzed in from outside. Horn wiped his sleeve across his face, smearing sweat on his uniform.

  ‘Christ it’s hot,’ the British RMP corporal said, climbing in and sitting next to Horn.

  The lieutenant sat next to Raines and pulled the rear door shut.

  ‘Yeah,’ Horn said. ‘Wait till next month, then complain.’

  The corporal stared at Horn as though he had insulted his mother. He caught himself and tried to smile. It was less than convincing.

  Raines knew the type: way too much testosterone and always on the verge of a fight. Even the most innocuous of comments or a look out of place was likely to set him off. He knew, because it was how he used to be.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’ Raines asked him.

  ‘Andy Johnson, Sarge.’

  The lieutenant leaned towards the soldiers in the front of the vehicle.

  ‘Let’s get this moving, please, gentlemen,’ she shouted over the sound of the diesel engine starting up.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the driver replied.

  ‘Hold on to your hats,’ Raines said. ‘We’re heading for bandit country.’

  A man sat opposite Raines in the diner and put his newspaper down on the table; waved at the waitress to bring him some coffee. He was a stocky man with dark hair cut military short.

  ‘Penny for them?’ the man asked.

  Raines said nothing and waited for the waitress to finish and leave. He thought about Matt Horn. About how it all went so wrong.

  ‘How did it go last night?’ the man asked.

  Raines put his hand on the newspaper and turned it to read the headline on the front page about the crash. The man waited.

  ‘He was on that.’ Raines tapped the photo under the headline. ‘Stark, I mean.’

  ‘That won’t be the end of it. You know that, right?’

  ‘Of course I know.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean, it’s business as usual. I’ve got my meeting with the … investor tomorrow.’

  The man looked at Raines for a long beat, leaning back in his seat.

  ‘You know if that’s the way you want to do it I’ll go along with it. So will everyone else. But it’s risky.’

  Raines snorted.

  ‘Like it was all fun and games up to this point.’

  The man held his hands up.

  ‘I’m just saying, is all.’

  Raines remembered another man doing the same thing in very different circumstances. A British field medic in an operating theatre at the camp in Afghanistan. The man’s hands covered in Matt Horn’s blood. His hands up like he was giving in, letting Horn go. Raines didn’t care much for surrender. Made that plain to those medics.

  Raines looked at the man
across the table.

  ‘We can’t stop now,’ he told the man. ‘And I don’t want to anyway. I’m owed. We all are.’

  The waitress came over and they ordered breakfast, Raines staring at the photograph of the downed plane on the front page of the newspaper.

  Now they’ll really come after me hard, he thought.

  Bring it on.

  Part Three:

  Secrets

  1

  Nobody was talking.

  Cahill tried Scott Boston again at the Secret Service in Washington. Couldn’t get his call taken. Boston dodged him every time.

  It was the same for Tom Hardy’s contacts. They had all clammed up. Not that they had been talkative that morning. But it was worse in the afternoon. As though a communications smart bomb had been detonated. Don’t talk about Tim Stark. It was working.

  Hardy even tried to see if he had could get anything via their contacts in the British Government. Same story.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ Cahill told Hardy at four-thirty. ‘Clear my head.’

  Hardy watched him go. Didn’t say anything. Knew that there was nothing that would calm Cahill.

  Cahill sat on a stool by the window of a café on Buchanan Street. A teenager walked by nodding his head in time to music on his iPod, oblivious to all around him. He had long hair and wore a vintage AC/DC T-shirt advertising a tour from 1984. The kid wasn’t old enough. Probably bought it on eBay. He reminded Cahill of Bruce, CPO’s resident ethical hacker and IT director. Bruce had a quite astonishing collection of rock band tour T-shirts. All of them purchased at a gig on the tour. Cahill couldn’t remember the last time he saw Bruce wearing anything to work other than jeans and a tour T-shirt.

  ‘Yo,’ Bruce answered when Cahill called him.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Boss. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Can you run a check on the names Tim Stark and John Reece for me?’

  ‘Sure. Are there likely to be flags on the names already? I mean, if I run a search will it come back at us?’