Her Nightly Embrace Page 19

  “He hasn’t started stinkin’ up the place yet.” Benjamin sniffed. “So it’s only been a few hours.”

  I was amazed at how calm and blasé Benjamin was. Then again, I realized I was, too. Granted, Benjamin had warned me about this before I got here. He was mischievous, our Benjamin, but without malice. But still.

  “Something bothering you?” he asked.

  “I’m bothered that I’m not shitting myself or freaking out over this. I might have recoiled and vomited, but I haven’t. How are you so calm?”

  “Ehh.” Benjamin shrugged. “You work for Roger long enough, a stiff will pop up from time to time.”

  We started to look around. It was an expensive flat, full of the latest furnishings Darren must have paid for with his bonuses and salary before spending the rest of his disposable income on the recreational drugs we saw him and his colleagues indulging in on Sandra’s videos.

  Darren’s computer was gone, along with any accessories like a hard drive. On the desk, we could see little dust patterns around the clean gap where his laptop used to be.

  I heard coarse, guttural laughter echo through the living room and saw a trio of Rakshakas, the same ones I saw on the rooftop of Holloway-Browner, eyes glowing, demonic as ever, grabbing Darren as he struggled and begged, hauling him up on the chair and getting a noose around his neck.

  Why the hell was I seeing demons from Hindu mythology? Why was I seeing human murderers represented as demons?

  “Hang on,” I said. “If he tied his own wrists up, how the fuck could he tie a knot that tight by himself, even in front of his chest?”

  “Used his teeth, maybe?” Benjamin said.

  “Not a knot this complicated or this tight. Someone did this to him. They could have just hung him without this ‘autoerotic’ bollocks. They tried to be clever and got sloppy.”

  “Why the hassle? Why not just fake a suicide? They could have forced him to write a note to say he was depressed or totally stressed out and couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Distraction,” I said. “If everyone thinks he died by accident because he was a perv, there’d be fewer questions asked. At least until an inquest susses out what we just did. Buys the killers time. By the time there’s an inquest, they could be long gone.”

  “Crafty bastards. I almost admire that.”

  What fucked me off was the sheer malice behind it, the shame and humiliation that Darren’s family was going to go through.

  Benjamin and I searched the flat, looking through the cupboards, the kitchen, the fridge, not convinced we were going to find anything.

  “If they were professionals,” Benjamin asked, “they would have looked where we looked.”

  “Well, there was nothing to find. Sandra already took the thumb drive. But if they interrogated Darren, they’ll know she has it now.”

  We got out of there, left the door to the flat slightly ajar so that a neighbor might be concerned enough to take a look inside. Just to be safe, as we drove off, Benjamin took out one of the cheap burner phones he always carried around for emergencies like this to call 999. He even put on a fake posh accent.

  “Hullo, police? I think something awful’s happened to my neighbor. His name’s Darren. Darren Cowley. Yes. His door’s ajar, and a few hours ago, there were some strange sounds coming from his flat. I didn’t dare go in. Yes. Prospect Tower. Yes. Flat 10C. Yes. Please hurry. Ta-ra.”

  He switched off the phone, took out the SIM card, and tossed it out the window. Then he tossed the phone out the window as well. He didn’t take off his rubber gloves so there would be no prints on it.

  I hoped we weren’t too conspicuous in the surveillance cameras on the streets that night.

  SIXTEEN

  We reconvened at the office the next morning to sort out what to do next. Darren was already on the news. The police had gone to his flat and found the body. I’d called Ken and Clive and told them the news, but it was best to let Sandra sleep. The gods were gathered at the back watching us. I continued to do my best to ignore them.

  “Two bodies now,” Roger said. “This is getting well tasty.”

  “Any more and the police start sniffing around,” David said. “We’re going to need to be clear where we are legally if they find out we’re involved.”

  “Now, if we do this right, the filth will never get a whiff of us at all,” Roger said.

  “Any luck on unlocking that drive?” I asked.

  “You wanted me to brute-force an encrypted drive.” She sniffed. “Yeah, sure, let’s cure cancer. That would take less time.”

  “So how long is this going to take?”

  “Anywhere between a few hours and NEVER.” She pouted.

  “Christ.”

  “Look,” Olivia said. “The weak link in an encrypted drive is usually a weak password, but this one’s turned out to be pretty strong.”

  “Can’t you feed it through a password sorter or, or write a program or a bot to crack it?”

  “Most sorters go through combinations of numbers and single words. We were hoping Darren was crap at passwords, but it looks like he actually got a clue and decided on a combination of words or a phrase as the password; no bot can truly predict that, and we’re buggered.”

  “Well, perhaps Ms. Rodriguez knows the password and is just holding it close to her chest,” Roger said.

  “Let’s hope so,” I said.

  My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Mr. Chandra Singh?” Slight nasal whine in the voice.

  “Speaking.”

  “Paul Mullins, Morning Post. Sandra Rodriguez gave me your number. We need to talk.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Just what I needed, a journo from one of the tabloids.

  I met him at a pub not far from the office, a watering hole for a lot of journalists and one of the last holdouts from the old Fleet Street days.

  Paul Mullins was only in his late thirties, but the booze and fags made him look older than that. The closest he ever got to exercise would have been the times he ran for the Tube, which I suspect he avoided doing as much as possible.

  He’d already ordered a vodka tonic, so I didn’t have to get him one. I wasn’t expecting there to be another round.

  “Ravi, yeah?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “We got a little prezzie in the post from your client Sandra Rodriguez today. It was postmarked two days ago. She said you would act as our liaison.”

  The day we first met. She must have sent it from work after David gave her my number and before we picked her up outside Holloway-Browner. Shit.

  He held up a thumb drive, a duplicate of the one we already had in the office. She must have made a copy.

  “What’s this?” I said, stalling.

  “You don’t know? That’s how you’re going to play this?”

  I looked blank.

  Mullins laughed.

  “Oh, nice one. All right. I get it, mate. I do. Your client wants a deal. But we can’t do that until we know what’s on this drive. And she neglected to tell us the password.”

  “It needs a password? What’s supposed to be on it?”

  A flash of irritation crossed Mullins’s face, but he played it cool. Or as cool as a resentful alcoholic was able to muster, anyway.

  “Are you approaching other papers? Is that it? The Times? Guardian? The Mirror?”

  Again, I didn’t answer.

  “All right, here’s what I propose: give us the password and we’ll leave out any mention that incriminates Golden Sentinels.”

  Here we go. Blackmail. Roger would be pleased.

  “I really don’t know what you’re on about,” I said.

  “We’ve had dealings with you lot before. Your boss, he’s a slippery one. But this. Stolen bank documents, am I right? That’s worthy of criminal prosecution, don’t you think?”

  Since I honestly didn’t know what was on the drive, I didn’t even need to fake ignorance here.

 
“Are you sure that’s what’s on it or are you just casting about here?” I asked.

  “Come on. Your client’s a banker. Doesn’t take a genius to put it together. Why don’t you take my proposal to your boss? And remember, we’ve got techies, too. It’s only a matter of time before we crack it.”

  Yeah, good luck with that, sunshine.

  “And you better hope it’s before anyone links this with two dead bankers, maybe more, dropping like flies from the same bank within a day of each other. Interesting coincidence, innit? You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

  Mullins even winked as he walked out.

  Lord Vishnu sat at a table in the corner, watching and tweeting on his phone. The more chaotic this got, the more they were going to turn up.

  Great.

  EIGHTEEN

  It was nearly noon by the time I got to the safe house. Sandra was still in bed recovering from the cocaine Ken and Clive told me she was snorting the night before as she watched shows about buying and decorating houses and shouting at the screen.

  “Arrrgh! Turn it off!” she cried when I threw open the curtains in her room to let some light in.

  “It’s the sun. It can’t be turned off.”

  “Shit, what time is it?”

  “Sandra, I have some bad news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Darren’s dead.”

  She froze.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She sat up, face blank.

  “What?”

  “Darren’s dead. It was made to look like an accident.”

  “FUCK!”

  Well. Not quite the display of shock and grief I was expecting.

  “Is there anyone you’d like me to call?”

  “No. No one. Fuck!”

  She was lost in thought. No pain, no grief, just gears churning in her head. I didn’t need to be delicate or spare her feelings, then.

  “There’s another thing. The Morning Post contacted us. You made a copy of the drive and sent it to them?”

  She froze again.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  “You might have told us about that.”

  “I did it the day before Tim died. Darren made two, one for me and one for himself to keep us safe. I took his and sent it to the Post. I didn’t know it needed a password then.”

  “Why did you send it?”

  “Look, after this I can never work in finance again, yeah? I need to make money.”

  “Sandra, if you wanted to sell your story, we could have helped you, though we would probably have advised against it. Now the Post are in a position to dictate terms.”

  “They wanted proof! I was under pressure! I’m sorry!”

  Like a kid throwing a tantrum. Textbook borderline personality disorder.

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  “No, that’s everything.”

  I looked at her, unconvinced.

  “I’ve told you everything!”

  “Are you sure you don’t know the password?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I just need to be sure you’ve told us everything.”

  “I don’t believe it! The man I loved has just been killed and you stand there and accuse me of lying! Get out! GET OUT!”

  She burst into a very theatrical gust of tears. I didn’t buy it, but I wasn’t getting anything out of her, so I walked out.

  “Don’t let her leave,” I told Ken and Clive before I left the safe house. “Don’t let her out of your sight. And don’t let her make any calls. We don’t need any more surprises.”

  NINETEEN

  The rest of the day turned up fuck-all. Fortunately, there were no more surprises. I put in a call to my mum to see how she and Dad were doing.

  “He’s still a bit weak, a bit groggy from the drugs, but getting along,” she said.

  “And how’s everything else?”

  “Oh, your sister and I are still arguing over the wedding arrangements. Vivek is as disturbingly compliant as ever. And Mrs. Dhewan has been very nice. She thinks so highly of you.”

  “Because I’ve been making the payments on time.”

  “Oh, Ravi, don’t say that. It won’t be that much longer.”

  “Hopefully the final payment will be right before Sanji’s wedding.”

  “I’m sure we’re all looking forward to that,” Mum said.

  Me more than everyone else.

  I put the phone down and glimpsed Lord Shiva lounging in the sofa in the reception area, waiting for something, anything, to happen. For a moment I thought of Julia and wondered how she was doing, and quickly stopped thinking about her. Olivia was working on a forensics case of her own, so she wasn’t bothering with trying to crack a password she knew was a waste of her time. Roger and Cheryl were in his office on a conference call, with David giving legal pointers. Benjamin was logging the videos on Sandra Rodriguez’s computer just in case any of them ended up becoming used as evidence later on. As for me, I was waiting. No leads to chase up, no one to interview.

  The odd, abstract feeling of limbo, with two dead bodies and a bunch of killers out there, and nothing to do. I suppose it was something the gods understood better than us. That was probably why they were hanging around more than ever. How bored they must have been to come here for this show.

  I clocked off early and went to Ariel’s hotel. When she opened the door to her room, I could tell she was in a post-spa state of radiance.

  “Long day?” she said.

  “Aren’t they all?”

  She took my face in her hands and kissed me.

  I let the day and the case melt away in her embrace.

  TWENTY

  We ordered room service, left our clothes on the floor, lounged naked in bed for the rest of the evening. God, it felt good to escape from my life for bit, into this fantasy of sex and hanging out. We talked about spiritual journeys and gods. And how some people saw gods.

  “I’ve been avoiding the gods for a long time,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re trying to tell you something,” Ariel said.

  “I wish they’d come out and say it, then. The question is, are they projections, extensions of our desires and fears? Or are they really entities poking their heads in from outside Time and Space?”

  Ariel studied me and arched her eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re a private eye?”

  “My coworkers are a bunch of brilliant fuckups with nowhere else to go. They’re ex-coppers, lawyers, hackers, tech geeks. I feel underqualified next to them. I’m not sure I belong, but I have nowhere else to go, either.”

  “I think sir protests too much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you really like swimming in the chaos. It makes you feel alive. I’ve been there.”

  “As a result of that, my karma’s like a minefield. Worst path to enlightenment ever.”

  “So why did you give up the religious studies in the first place?”

  “Burned out. I realized it was what my father wanted, not what I wanted. It was all too abstract for me. What good was pondering the big moral questions about life and how we should live life from the ivory tower of academia? After that I got my teaching qualification and taught secondary school for a number of years.”

  “No way! You were a high school teacher?”

  “That was another life ago.”

  “Did you like it? Was it, like, your vocation?”

  “Not really. Paid the rent, kept me in the world. Maybe helped some kids, that was it.”

  “So why did it end?”

  I didn’t tell her about the scandal that had gotten me sacked.

  “Cutbacks. I got made redundant. So I was cast adrift. Again.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Six months with no luck. My overdraft ballooning. Then my friend David, who’s the legal counsel for the detective agency, got me an interview. They hired me, trained me, I started making decent money. The insane shit we got up to, tho
ugh! It’s like the gods have dropped me in this new, clichéd detective story for a laugh.”

  “Do you hate the job? You sound awfully ambivalent about it.”

  “What? No. I like it. It has long stretches of total boredom when you’re just waiting for someone to show up, or when you’re following someone and they’re doing the most boring things ever just so you can photograph them, but the rest of it, I find out interesting things about how the world really works. And I’m in a position where I can actually help people. In some cases the police can’t help, but we can.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “What?”

  “You’re a knight in shining armor!” She started laughing.

  “Oh, stop it!” I was laughing, too.

  She thought about it for a moment, then came out with it.

  “Hey, why don’t you come with me?”

  “To India?”

  “Why not? You got one foot out the door, as it is. You’re worried about the bad karma you’ve been racking up. Why not leave it all behind for a little while? Get away from it all?”

  “And do what? Travel with you, smoking some quality drugs and seeking answers like a pair of Sramanas?”

  “You’re thinking about it right now. You got the image in your head.”

  “Thing is, India isn’t an exotic escape for me like it is for you. It’s my native culture as much as Britain is. I still have family there.”

  “But it’s huge! You can still disappear.”

  I thought about it. The case. Dad. Mum’s debt. Sanjita’s wedding.

  “I can’t. I still have things to take care of and people depending on me.”

  She smiled sadly, like she knew what I would say.

  “Know what you remind me of?” she said. “Hanuman the monkey god. Loyal, faithful, and selfless.”

  “I’m no god. I’ve got enough of them swimming around in my head as it is.”

  “I’d love to meet your gods some time.”

  I looked at her Kali tattoo. Maybe she had been sent by Kali, after all.

  “Did you know,” I said, “your name means ‘Lion of God’? But what I see is a playful mischievous spirit, like the Ariel from Shakespeare’s Tempest.”