James Craig - Never Apologise, Never Explain

‘Maybe.’ Carlyle said. ‘I think so.’

Monica looked at him carefully. ‘Can you prove it?’

He smiled grimly. ‘That’s not the question.’

‘Oh,’ she said shakily. ‘What is?’

‘The question is — will I have to?’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Good.’

‘Will he come after me?’

Yes. ‘Maybe.’

She ran her hands through her hair and shivered. ‘Will I be safe?’

Maybe. ‘Yes.’

‘Will you protect me?’

Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, he told himself. ‘I will stop him.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Is there somewhere you can stay for a little while?’ he asked. ‘Out of the way, preferably somewhere outside of London.’

She thought about it for a moment. ‘I’ve got some friends up in Glasgow.’

‘Good, then this is what we’ll do.’ Carlyle programmed her mobile number into his private phone then took down the details of the people she would be staying with. ‘I will call you once a day. If goes to voicemail, I’ll leave a message.’

They walked back to the lifts in silence. Downstairs, by the front desk, Carlyle shook her hand again. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Monica Hartson gave him a wan smile. ‘I’m not sure whether I feel better for our conversation, or worse.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘This is nearly over. Gori is a marked man. It will be done in a couple of days. Getting out of town is just an additional precaution.’

‘I hope so.’

‘One thing I was wondering, though…’

‘Yes?’

‘Why put yourself through all of this? Why go after someone like Gori?’

Hartson looked at him for a moment, as if deciding whether to tell him the whole story. ‘I was there,’ she said finally. ‘I saw what he did.’

‘What?’

‘We arrived in Ishaqi the day after Gori and his comrades had blown through,’ she said quietly. ‘I set up a Red Cross office under a makeshift awning by the side of one of the houses that hadn’t been burned out. I stood and watched a man in a black turban holding a hessian sack containing the remains of his son.’ She swallowed. ‘Only it wasn’t his son, just random scraps that had been recovered from around the place. The elders had already given away all the bodies, and even the limbs, to mourners who had got there first. Identifying anybody or anything was almost impossible. All that they could do was try and give each family something approximating the right number of corpses.’

‘Jesus.’

‘By the time this man arrived there were just a few pieces left. But he had to have something to take home. He just scooped up what he could and put it in his sack.’ Monica closed her eyes and stifled a sob. ‘The man went home to tell his wife that this was their son, so the family had something to bury while they said their prayers.’

Carlyle mumbled something that he hoped sounded sympathetic.

‘After that, I couldn’t get home quickly enough.’

‘I can understand.’

She was too polite to contradict him.

‘But,’ the inspector sighed, ‘there have been lots of killings, and doubtless there will be lots more. Even if you finally get him, if you bring Matias Gori to justice, will it have been worth it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Despite the death of your friends?’

‘The point is that they shouldn’t have had to die; just like those poor people in Ishaqi shouldn’t have had to die.’ She looked at him with a fierceness in her eyes that had been absent before. ‘If this was a decent country, something would have been done about Gori long before now. We wouldn’t even have needed to get involved — if the police had done their job properly.’

She waited for a response, but Carlyle said nothing.

‘But no one wanted to know,’ Hartson continued, ‘so we decided to take up the fight. All we wanted to do was bring one man — one murderer — to justice. We thought that was surely achievable — a small victory for decency. You’re right, many people get away with terrible things, but that’s no reason to give up. If everyone took your point of view, Inspector, the world would be an even worse place than it is now.’

Chastened, Carlyle held up a hand. ‘I didn’t say it was my point of view-’ But it was too late. Hoisting her bag on to her shoulder, she was already slaloming through the small knots of supplicants in the waiting room, and had almost reached the door by the time his words had got out.

After she had left, the inspector went through what they had. It was probably not enough to get Hartson police protection and certainly not enough to arrest Gori. But at least now Carlyle should be able to persuade Carole Simpson to let him see this thing through. He hoped so, at any rate. The Commander’s husband might still be making the news, but she remained at work. He rang her office and left a message with her PA, who promised to get Simpson to call him back as quickly as possible.

Ending the call, Carlyle looked around. What to do next? Scratching his head, he finally reached a decision; he would break his duck for the week and finally work up a sweat at Jubilee Hall.

Matias Gori stood in the shadows of the doorway of the long-since closed Zimbabwean High Commission, underneath a faded poster advertising trips to the Victoria Falls, and watched Monica Hartson as she walked down the front steps of Charing Cross police station and headed for the Strand. It was approaching rush-hour and the streets were crowded, so her progress was slow and Gori was able to stay close, no more than five or six yards behind her, without any danger of being detected.

Hartson then crossed the Strand, picked up a free newspaper and ducked inside Charing Cross train station. Dropping a little further behind, Gori watched her buy a coffee before heading down into the Tube. Realising that he didn’t have a ticket, he followed her down the escalator and jogged over to the nearest machine. Grabbing a handful of change from his jacket pocket, he pushed in front of a group of Chinese tourists and dropped enough coins in the slot to get a standard single. He rushed through the barriers just in time to see the top of Hartson’s head disappearing down another escalator, heading for the Northern Line. Skipping down into the bowels of the Tube station, he watched her turn right at the bottom of the escalator, stepping on to the platform for trains heading north. Slowly, he counted to five and followed.

The platform was full, but not packed, with sweaty, tired and frustrated-looking travellers. A voice on the tannoy was apologising about interruptions to the service, caused by signalling problems, and the electronic board was signalling a four-minute wait for the next train. Faced with a sea of blank faces, Gori made his way carefully down the platform, always moving, never making eye contact. He found her about three-quarters of the way along, standing just behind the yellow line, sipping her coffee and staring at a poster advertising Errazuriz Chardonnay. The board now showed two minutes until the next train. Over the tannoy came an announcement about planned engineering works on the Circle Line. Keeping out of her line of vision, Gori walked past Hartson, to the end of the platform, placing himself behind a pair of women intently studying a copy of the A-Z.

The next train was due. Gori walked cautiously back along the platform until he was standing about two feet behind Hartson and slightly to her left, on the opposite side of her from where the train would arrive. He could hear it now steadily getting closer, until there was a sudden blast of air and the harsh clatter of metal on metal as it emerged from the tunnel. As she looked up, Gori stepped forward. The train was halfway into the station now and he could see the driver yawning in his cab. Leaning forward, he gave her a firm shove in the small of the back as he walked past. Without making a sound, she involuntarily stepped over the yellow line and off the edge of the platform, disappearing under the front wheels with the gentlest of thuds.