The Murder Loop, page 23
None of the three spoke for a few moments, the only sounds the wind and rain continuing to hurtle incessantly against the car. Eventually, Finnegan looked at Ryan and said: ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s circumstantial but can’t be coincidence. The note at the very least suggests all three of them were in contact at some point. Cass has enough to get a warrant for this place and we can bulletin the ports and airports. But we can’t use the DNA exhibit she took.’
Finnegan turned her face away from them and towards the church, as if weighing a decision. ‘Noel, you start the ball rolling tonight. Bulletin, warrant – the works. I want Brady held for questioning and I want to be drinking my breakfast coffee inside this fucking place tomorrow morning. Cassidy, you’ve nothing more to do with this unless I tell you, understood?’
‘But I’m central to this,’ she protested.
‘And that’s exactly the problem. Central to it in ways that, frankly, make this a bit of a mess. So now that you’ve notified me, we’re going to follow every fucking last line of procedure from this point, understood?’
I fucking hate when she says that. ‘Understood,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Good. And that fork you lifted from his kitchen – you can’t be sure if he saw you or not?’
‘No. Possibly – probably.’
‘Then if anyone ever asks, it was for self-defence, not to take his DNA. Got it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, in the absence of a better answer.
‘Last thing. You’re not going home tonight, not until we know where this guy is. We’ll pay for a room at the Glencale. Ryan will be in the room next door. No ifs, no buts.’
‘That’s not necessary. I think we’re bett–’
‘I’m not asking you for a view on what’s necessary or not.’
In the rear-view mirror, Cass caught Ryan looking back and giving her a slight shake of the head. Don’t challenge her. Accept it.
Somehow, it shook Cass from the unyielding tunnel vision of her pursuit, and she was suddenly quite moved. Finnegan considered her a basket case, Ryan owed her nothing, and yet both had raced to be at her side in a moment of potential danger.
‘Understood,’ she said softly. ‘And thank you for your concern.’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ Finnegan replied. ‘Room service is on yourself. Don’t think I’m going to feed you too.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Ryan drove them back into town, Finnegan contacting colleagues and executing orders along the way, including to set up the national alert. Despite her thoughts being squarely on Brady, Cass couldn’t help notice the slight twitching in Ryan’s hands on the steering wheel.
She felt a surge of sympathy for him, and asked herself why she felt so little for her ex-husband, and knew the answer: because she had been generalising, lumping Ryan in the same category as Hugh, when they were nothing alike. If she could find a way to apologise to Ryan without being intrusive or patronising, she would. They took her back briefly to her apartment to pack an overnight bag, and then to the station, where she provided Ryan with a fuller debrief. Then she was cut loose, with directions from Finnegan to stick to the hotel and get some rest.
I’d get more peace of mind if I could work the case, she thought.
Upon check-in at Glencale House, the friendly receptionist began to list the various amenities and services the hotel had to offer, including the pool and spa. Politely, Cass cut him short, saying she was familiar with the hotel. In fact, she realised that in all the time she’d lived in Glencale – originally and upon return – she’d only ever visited the bar and restaurant, and never actually stayed there.
Her mind drifted back to childhood visits to the hotel, and the afternoon teas. A part of her wished she was back there, with her mother for company and madeleines on demand; instead she was alone in an expensive hotel room, a personal and professional failure without an anchoring point in her life apart from the job.
She cursed her self-pity, took the card key and made her way to her room. They’d given her a small suite – Finnegan’s doing or the hotel’s, it wasn’t quite clear – and even in her weary state, Cass could acknowledge its elegance, if not appreciate it. Carved mahogany four-poster bed and furniture, plush carpet and thick curtains, a welcoming array of fresh fruit, artisan chocolates and mineral water, and numerous other small touches.
If the suite was old-school luxury, the bathroom was modern chic. Its centrepiece was a freestanding bath which, to Cass’s eye, looked the size of a small dinner table. She ignored it all, slipped off her shoes, and lay on the bed, running through every interaction with Brady she could remember, asking herself how she had got things so terribly wrong.
She woke to the sound of a strange ringtone, and realised it was the hotel phone rather than her mobile.
Groggy, and surprised that she had fallen asleep, she fumbled for the receiver.
‘Noel?’ she asked, assuming her colleague had some update.
‘No, it’s me.’
She sat bolt upright, terrified that he had somehow tracked her. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I didn’t. I rang the restaurant – we were supposed to be meeting there, remember? They checked with the front desk who put me through to your room.’
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘In transit.’
‘In another county or another country?’
‘It all looks the same to a soldier.’
She looked at the time: just after 9pm. She had been dozing for less than fifteen minutes. All told, fifteen hours had passed since she had fled the church in his car.
Not sure how he arranged transport, but assuming he had some kind of a backup plan – a second car stashed somewhere, a rental, whatever – two hours give or take from his place to the nearest airport, or four hours to Dublin airport which offered more frequent routes. An hour to fly to London; two hours to Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt; any number of options from one of those hubs. Or he could have flown direct from Dublin or Shannon to the States – seven or eight hours to New York or Washington – but he would have needed good fortune with flight times. So, best bet: he’s still in Europe somewhere.
She fumbled with her mobile until she found the voice memo function, pressed record, and held it as close as she could to the receiver. She remembered her plan from earlier in the day – to come at Brady sideways rather than with a full-on frontal assault.
‘I like what you did with the car.’
‘Old military trick. Take a – what was your word? – “banger” that blends in and fine-tune it to within an inch of its life. Less conspicuous than the armoured Cadillacs and diplomatic vehicles. Much safer to travel in.’
‘A trick you used in Benghazi?’
The interrogation proper has started, he thought, and she’s recording it for sure. Now we’re in combat with each other. ‘Here and there. I guessed you probably had my records. You seemed to understand what I’d been through, even though I couldn’t–’ Tell you, he thought. I couldn’t tell you precise details of what I’d suffered – and where it happened – because it would have potentially exposed me.
‘What you’d been through?’ Cass said through gritted teeth. Is this fucking guy for real? He kills two people and is still looking for sympathy for whatever personal trauma he suffered? He’s going to use that as an excuse to justify what he did? Theft and murder?
Brady stayed silent, and Cass remembered his composure when giving a statement in the station on the first day they’d met.
‘Tell me how you picked Nabila.’
‘Nabila?’
‘You’re going all coy on me now?’
‘I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone for years.’
‘A woman’s murder is a pretty big omission.’
‘You’re talking about that unsolved case from last year?’
‘Yes, I’m talking about Nabila Fathi, the twenty-four-year-old woman brutally murdered and dumped in woodland in the Loop. An area which you’re intimately familiar with.’
‘And you think I murdered her?’
‘You’re going to tell me you didn’t?’
‘I arrived in Ireland after she was killed, just in case you have your timeline wrong.’
‘A convenience we’ll be examining closely.’
‘That’s why you got close to me? Because you had me as a suspect?’
‘You’re reinventing history, my friend. You deliberately drew me in to try and get close to the investigation. I see that now.’
‘I didn’t even know you were investigating that fucking case! I know nothing about the woman.’
‘Nabila,’ Cass said.
A stand-off ensued: Cass thinking furiously whether she had any avenue to trace the call in real-time and realising with frustration she hadn’t; Brady wondering how to answer clearly without implicating himself and struggling to see a route through.
‘I didn’t kill Nabila,’ he said eventually. ‘I was aware of her murder, of course – who in Glencale wasn’t? But I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Either Akeem Issa killed her or you did, but either way, it amounts to the same thing. You were in league. We’ve got his car, the same car in which Nabila travelled the day she tried to exchange money for the two of you. The forensics will tell us the rest.’
‘What money?’
‘The money we found in Nabila’s rucksack,’ Cass replied irritably. ‘Two notes from a batch you know all about – damaged by flooding in a bank vault in Benghazi.’
Now he finally knew what had frightened Cass earlier that morning in the church. Jesus H Christ, what were the chances? The media reports about the dead woman’s murder had never mentioned the discovery of notes. The cops had done a good job of safeguarding that crucial bit of information.
‘And Nabila tried to exchange it somewhere?’ he asked, while trying to piece the rest of the puzzle together in his mind.
‘You know she did. In the Currency Comptroller in Dublin in December 2020. Staff there asked her for details and she panicked and fled. And you or Issa killed her for it.’
He had convinced himself there was nothing in the church to link back to what he’d done. But of course, there was, because he’d kept one trophy, a souvenir, a testament to completion of a very personal mission: he’d kept the note. Not thinking for one moment that anybody would ever realise the significance of that trophy but him.
‘I was in Benghazi, and I did know Akeem Issa,’ he relented. ‘You’re right about that much but wrong about everything else. I never knew, met or had any connection to Nabila, and I wasn’t involved in her murder.’
Cass held back, waiting to see if Brady would continue. Brady appeared willing to do so.
‘One of the warlords carried off millions from the central bank in Benghazi – but that much I assume you know already. My unit was tasked with supporting intelligence-led efforts to recover the money. God knows why, given the country had bigger problems. But we had our orders.
‘We got a tip-off one day about a portion of the money being moved from Benghazi for dispersal to tribal allies in another region. So we moved immediately to see if we could intercept it.
‘But the hostiles had their own tip-off. Long story short, we were supposed to ambush them but they ended up ambushing us. Two of us were taken hostage. Having realised what happened, headquarters sent a separate unit to extricate us. They rescued me but were too late for Pitch.’
‘Pitch?’
‘Stewart Shapiro. Pitch was what we called him cos he had a lousy throwing arm in the pick-up games at base. To think we ever laughed about anything… Anyway, they were too late for him. I had a few broken bones but the mental damage was much worse. Everything I told you about that is true. I came home, sought help, couldn’t heal, then tried to do it my own way.’
‘And Akeem Issa?’
‘He was our translator.’
Cass’s mind was whirring, trying to assemble the picture he was painting.
‘Now do you understand?’ he asked.
Yes, I see it now, and I think I believe him.
‘So you suspected Issa provided the tip-off that led to your ambush. He was rewarded with some of the money from the bank raid – easy to do, because the gang had more of it than they possibly knew what to do with – and he sought a route out of Libya. Issa was the one who came to Ireland with the money. You came to Ireland hunting Issa.’
This is the point where mental reservation resumes, Brady told himself.
‘I came to Ireland to rest and recuperate. What Issa was doing here, I’ve no idea.’
‘But you found him and killed him – as an act of revenge?’
‘I found peace here. If Akeem Issa found trouble, that’s his problem.’
You believed this would be the chief route to recovery, Cass thought, executing the person who had betrayed your unit, got your colleague killed. You thought this would settle the night-time screams in your head, disperse the shadows at your shoulder. You took that note from Issa’s body and pinned it to that dartboard to say: ‘Mission accomplished.’
‘The note was proof of kill, wasn’t it?’
‘As far as I know, a note’s just a unit of currency.’
‘Did you know Issa had killed Nabila?’
‘I didn’t make that leap. She was Egyptian, right, not Libyan? And from what the papers had reported, it seemed like some kind of sexual assault that had ended in murder. The papers mentioned nothing about a Libyan suspect, or banknotes, or anything like that.’ I didn’t make that leap, Brady thought, because I’m just a soldier executing a mission, not a detective. I’ve the physical capability to kill, but not the deductive capacity to have figured out that connection.
Whatever mental scarring he suffered, Cass thought, it didn’t impact on his ability to track his target halfway across the world and kill him while leaving no traces. And then remaining cool enough to hide in plain sight for months on end. His mental acuity must be off the charts. He was miles ahead of me – of everyone.
‘You know we’re getting a warrant to search the church, right? We’ll do a forensic sweep of your car while we’re at it. We’ll put out a European arrest warrant. And Ireland has an extradition agreement with the States. We’re going to hunt you in the same way you hunted Issa.’
‘Then you’ll be wasting your time. Akeem Issa killed Nabila and I didn’t – you know that now. What else have you got? You don’t even know Issa is dead – you don’t have a body. So you have nothing to charge me with.’
‘I’ll find something to charge you with.’
‘You’ll find nothing in the church, apart from a shotgun which, I’ll confess, is unlicensed but, as ballistics will demonstrate, hasn’t been fired in a long time. Other than that, you have possession of a stolen euro banknote, the theft of which I had nothing to do with. What’s the punishment for being in possession of an unlicensed, unused shotgun and a single stolen note? I’ll send you a cheque to cover the fines, because I’m a good citizen.’
He laughed, but not cruelly, almost as if inviting her to see the funny side too. But she was in no mood to.
‘If you’re such a good citizen, why did you run this morning?’
‘I needed a change of scenery.’
‘The church – it was your penance, right? A way of seeking absolution? You kill Issa, and in return you renovate an old church – you figure you’ve balanced the ledger.’
‘You’re stretching, Cass. If you weighed the sins of Issa and mine, I’m pretty confident God would be on my side.’
‘You’re an asshole, Brady. And I will find Akeem Issa’s body.’
‘Best of luck with that. A guy like him? Could be anywhere now. Back in Libya for all you know.’
‘I won’t let this go.’
‘I know you won’t, Cass. That’s what we have in common – we don’t let things go.’
‘We have nothing in common.’
‘I don’t know about that. We both blamed ourselves for things in our lives that weren’t our fault. And we tried to make amends in our own way.’
‘Your idea of making amends is pretty fucking sick and twisted.’
‘Akeem Issa was fucking sick and twisted, Cass,’ he said, voice rising for the first time. ‘He got Pitch killed. He killed Nabila. Who knows what other evil shit he was part of? Believe me when I say I’m not going to lose a moment worrying about Akeem Issa’s fate.’
Because you know exactly how he met his fate, she thought. You burnt his car in one place to eliminate forensic traces and disposed of his body in another to make it look like Issa had vanished.
I nearly lost it there for a moment, he thought. But the worst part of all, I’ve lost her. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said, sounding suddenly subdued.
‘Don’t worry – I’ll find you.’ I’m not going to yield a fucking inch to you.
He ignored her hostility, and instead made another attempt at bridging the gap between them. ‘You know now you’ve nothing to fear from me?’
When her colleagues in the station listened later to this curiously intimate section of the recording, they counted a full fifteen seconds of dead space before Cass answered.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you need to tell me where I can find Akeem Issa’s body.’
‘Goodbye Cass,’ he said, and hung up.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
She slept as if in a fever, tossing, sweating and hearing the church bell swinging in the wind. She saw her ex-husband driving their old car, mounting a footpath and ploughing into a faceless soldier whose fatigues bore the name tag ‘Pitch’. She saw Hugh in a prison corridor, defeated and decrepit, oblivious as Mason Brady slid alongside him with a shank, ready to wreak revenge for his friend. She saw Nabila race across the corridor to intervene, but arriving too late.
She woke up roaring at Brady to stop.
And when the terror in her chest subsided, she realised she knew where the body of Akeem Issa was.
She shuddered deeply at the thought of it.
‘It’s circumstantial but can’t be coincidence. The note at the very least suggests all three of them were in contact at some point. Cass has enough to get a warrant for this place and we can bulletin the ports and airports. But we can’t use the DNA exhibit she took.’
Finnegan turned her face away from them and towards the church, as if weighing a decision. ‘Noel, you start the ball rolling tonight. Bulletin, warrant – the works. I want Brady held for questioning and I want to be drinking my breakfast coffee inside this fucking place tomorrow morning. Cassidy, you’ve nothing more to do with this unless I tell you, understood?’
‘But I’m central to this,’ she protested.
‘And that’s exactly the problem. Central to it in ways that, frankly, make this a bit of a mess. So now that you’ve notified me, we’re going to follow every fucking last line of procedure from this point, understood?’
I fucking hate when she says that. ‘Understood,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Good. And that fork you lifted from his kitchen – you can’t be sure if he saw you or not?’
‘No. Possibly – probably.’
‘Then if anyone ever asks, it was for self-defence, not to take his DNA. Got it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, in the absence of a better answer.
‘Last thing. You’re not going home tonight, not until we know where this guy is. We’ll pay for a room at the Glencale. Ryan will be in the room next door. No ifs, no buts.’
‘That’s not necessary. I think we’re bett–’
‘I’m not asking you for a view on what’s necessary or not.’
In the rear-view mirror, Cass caught Ryan looking back and giving her a slight shake of the head. Don’t challenge her. Accept it.
Somehow, it shook Cass from the unyielding tunnel vision of her pursuit, and she was suddenly quite moved. Finnegan considered her a basket case, Ryan owed her nothing, and yet both had raced to be at her side in a moment of potential danger.
‘Understood,’ she said softly. ‘And thank you for your concern.’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ Finnegan replied. ‘Room service is on yourself. Don’t think I’m going to feed you too.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Ryan drove them back into town, Finnegan contacting colleagues and executing orders along the way, including to set up the national alert. Despite her thoughts being squarely on Brady, Cass couldn’t help notice the slight twitching in Ryan’s hands on the steering wheel.
She felt a surge of sympathy for him, and asked herself why she felt so little for her ex-husband, and knew the answer: because she had been generalising, lumping Ryan in the same category as Hugh, when they were nothing alike. If she could find a way to apologise to Ryan without being intrusive or patronising, she would. They took her back briefly to her apartment to pack an overnight bag, and then to the station, where she provided Ryan with a fuller debrief. Then she was cut loose, with directions from Finnegan to stick to the hotel and get some rest.
I’d get more peace of mind if I could work the case, she thought.
Upon check-in at Glencale House, the friendly receptionist began to list the various amenities and services the hotel had to offer, including the pool and spa. Politely, Cass cut him short, saying she was familiar with the hotel. In fact, she realised that in all the time she’d lived in Glencale – originally and upon return – she’d only ever visited the bar and restaurant, and never actually stayed there.
Her mind drifted back to childhood visits to the hotel, and the afternoon teas. A part of her wished she was back there, with her mother for company and madeleines on demand; instead she was alone in an expensive hotel room, a personal and professional failure without an anchoring point in her life apart from the job.
She cursed her self-pity, took the card key and made her way to her room. They’d given her a small suite – Finnegan’s doing or the hotel’s, it wasn’t quite clear – and even in her weary state, Cass could acknowledge its elegance, if not appreciate it. Carved mahogany four-poster bed and furniture, plush carpet and thick curtains, a welcoming array of fresh fruit, artisan chocolates and mineral water, and numerous other small touches.
If the suite was old-school luxury, the bathroom was modern chic. Its centrepiece was a freestanding bath which, to Cass’s eye, looked the size of a small dinner table. She ignored it all, slipped off her shoes, and lay on the bed, running through every interaction with Brady she could remember, asking herself how she had got things so terribly wrong.
She woke to the sound of a strange ringtone, and realised it was the hotel phone rather than her mobile.
Groggy, and surprised that she had fallen asleep, she fumbled for the receiver.
‘Noel?’ she asked, assuming her colleague had some update.
‘No, it’s me.’
She sat bolt upright, terrified that he had somehow tracked her. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I didn’t. I rang the restaurant – we were supposed to be meeting there, remember? They checked with the front desk who put me through to your room.’
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘In transit.’
‘In another county or another country?’
‘It all looks the same to a soldier.’
She looked at the time: just after 9pm. She had been dozing for less than fifteen minutes. All told, fifteen hours had passed since she had fled the church in his car.
Not sure how he arranged transport, but assuming he had some kind of a backup plan – a second car stashed somewhere, a rental, whatever – two hours give or take from his place to the nearest airport, or four hours to Dublin airport which offered more frequent routes. An hour to fly to London; two hours to Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt; any number of options from one of those hubs. Or he could have flown direct from Dublin or Shannon to the States – seven or eight hours to New York or Washington – but he would have needed good fortune with flight times. So, best bet: he’s still in Europe somewhere.
She fumbled with her mobile until she found the voice memo function, pressed record, and held it as close as she could to the receiver. She remembered her plan from earlier in the day – to come at Brady sideways rather than with a full-on frontal assault.
‘I like what you did with the car.’
‘Old military trick. Take a – what was your word? – “banger” that blends in and fine-tune it to within an inch of its life. Less conspicuous than the armoured Cadillacs and diplomatic vehicles. Much safer to travel in.’
‘A trick you used in Benghazi?’
The interrogation proper has started, he thought, and she’s recording it for sure. Now we’re in combat with each other. ‘Here and there. I guessed you probably had my records. You seemed to understand what I’d been through, even though I couldn’t–’ Tell you, he thought. I couldn’t tell you precise details of what I’d suffered – and where it happened – because it would have potentially exposed me.
‘What you’d been through?’ Cass said through gritted teeth. Is this fucking guy for real? He kills two people and is still looking for sympathy for whatever personal trauma he suffered? He’s going to use that as an excuse to justify what he did? Theft and murder?
Brady stayed silent, and Cass remembered his composure when giving a statement in the station on the first day they’d met.
‘Tell me how you picked Nabila.’
‘Nabila?’
‘You’re going all coy on me now?’
‘I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone for years.’
‘A woman’s murder is a pretty big omission.’
‘You’re talking about that unsolved case from last year?’
‘Yes, I’m talking about Nabila Fathi, the twenty-four-year-old woman brutally murdered and dumped in woodland in the Loop. An area which you’re intimately familiar with.’
‘And you think I murdered her?’
‘You’re going to tell me you didn’t?’
‘I arrived in Ireland after she was killed, just in case you have your timeline wrong.’
‘A convenience we’ll be examining closely.’
‘That’s why you got close to me? Because you had me as a suspect?’
‘You’re reinventing history, my friend. You deliberately drew me in to try and get close to the investigation. I see that now.’
‘I didn’t even know you were investigating that fucking case! I know nothing about the woman.’
‘Nabila,’ Cass said.
A stand-off ensued: Cass thinking furiously whether she had any avenue to trace the call in real-time and realising with frustration she hadn’t; Brady wondering how to answer clearly without implicating himself and struggling to see a route through.
‘I didn’t kill Nabila,’ he said eventually. ‘I was aware of her murder, of course – who in Glencale wasn’t? But I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Either Akeem Issa killed her or you did, but either way, it amounts to the same thing. You were in league. We’ve got his car, the same car in which Nabila travelled the day she tried to exchange money for the two of you. The forensics will tell us the rest.’
‘What money?’
‘The money we found in Nabila’s rucksack,’ Cass replied irritably. ‘Two notes from a batch you know all about – damaged by flooding in a bank vault in Benghazi.’
Now he finally knew what had frightened Cass earlier that morning in the church. Jesus H Christ, what were the chances? The media reports about the dead woman’s murder had never mentioned the discovery of notes. The cops had done a good job of safeguarding that crucial bit of information.
‘And Nabila tried to exchange it somewhere?’ he asked, while trying to piece the rest of the puzzle together in his mind.
‘You know she did. In the Currency Comptroller in Dublin in December 2020. Staff there asked her for details and she panicked and fled. And you or Issa killed her for it.’
He had convinced himself there was nothing in the church to link back to what he’d done. But of course, there was, because he’d kept one trophy, a souvenir, a testament to completion of a very personal mission: he’d kept the note. Not thinking for one moment that anybody would ever realise the significance of that trophy but him.
‘I was in Benghazi, and I did know Akeem Issa,’ he relented. ‘You’re right about that much but wrong about everything else. I never knew, met or had any connection to Nabila, and I wasn’t involved in her murder.’
Cass held back, waiting to see if Brady would continue. Brady appeared willing to do so.
‘One of the warlords carried off millions from the central bank in Benghazi – but that much I assume you know already. My unit was tasked with supporting intelligence-led efforts to recover the money. God knows why, given the country had bigger problems. But we had our orders.
‘We got a tip-off one day about a portion of the money being moved from Benghazi for dispersal to tribal allies in another region. So we moved immediately to see if we could intercept it.
‘But the hostiles had their own tip-off. Long story short, we were supposed to ambush them but they ended up ambushing us. Two of us were taken hostage. Having realised what happened, headquarters sent a separate unit to extricate us. They rescued me but were too late for Pitch.’
‘Pitch?’
‘Stewart Shapiro. Pitch was what we called him cos he had a lousy throwing arm in the pick-up games at base. To think we ever laughed about anything… Anyway, they were too late for him. I had a few broken bones but the mental damage was much worse. Everything I told you about that is true. I came home, sought help, couldn’t heal, then tried to do it my own way.’
‘And Akeem Issa?’
‘He was our translator.’
Cass’s mind was whirring, trying to assemble the picture he was painting.
‘Now do you understand?’ he asked.
Yes, I see it now, and I think I believe him.
‘So you suspected Issa provided the tip-off that led to your ambush. He was rewarded with some of the money from the bank raid – easy to do, because the gang had more of it than they possibly knew what to do with – and he sought a route out of Libya. Issa was the one who came to Ireland with the money. You came to Ireland hunting Issa.’
This is the point where mental reservation resumes, Brady told himself.
‘I came to Ireland to rest and recuperate. What Issa was doing here, I’ve no idea.’
‘But you found him and killed him – as an act of revenge?’
‘I found peace here. If Akeem Issa found trouble, that’s his problem.’
You believed this would be the chief route to recovery, Cass thought, executing the person who had betrayed your unit, got your colleague killed. You thought this would settle the night-time screams in your head, disperse the shadows at your shoulder. You took that note from Issa’s body and pinned it to that dartboard to say: ‘Mission accomplished.’
‘The note was proof of kill, wasn’t it?’
‘As far as I know, a note’s just a unit of currency.’
‘Did you know Issa had killed Nabila?’
‘I didn’t make that leap. She was Egyptian, right, not Libyan? And from what the papers had reported, it seemed like some kind of sexual assault that had ended in murder. The papers mentioned nothing about a Libyan suspect, or banknotes, or anything like that.’ I didn’t make that leap, Brady thought, because I’m just a soldier executing a mission, not a detective. I’ve the physical capability to kill, but not the deductive capacity to have figured out that connection.
Whatever mental scarring he suffered, Cass thought, it didn’t impact on his ability to track his target halfway across the world and kill him while leaving no traces. And then remaining cool enough to hide in plain sight for months on end. His mental acuity must be off the charts. He was miles ahead of me – of everyone.
‘You know we’re getting a warrant to search the church, right? We’ll do a forensic sweep of your car while we’re at it. We’ll put out a European arrest warrant. And Ireland has an extradition agreement with the States. We’re going to hunt you in the same way you hunted Issa.’
‘Then you’ll be wasting your time. Akeem Issa killed Nabila and I didn’t – you know that now. What else have you got? You don’t even know Issa is dead – you don’t have a body. So you have nothing to charge me with.’
‘I’ll find something to charge you with.’
‘You’ll find nothing in the church, apart from a shotgun which, I’ll confess, is unlicensed but, as ballistics will demonstrate, hasn’t been fired in a long time. Other than that, you have possession of a stolen euro banknote, the theft of which I had nothing to do with. What’s the punishment for being in possession of an unlicensed, unused shotgun and a single stolen note? I’ll send you a cheque to cover the fines, because I’m a good citizen.’
He laughed, but not cruelly, almost as if inviting her to see the funny side too. But she was in no mood to.
‘If you’re such a good citizen, why did you run this morning?’
‘I needed a change of scenery.’
‘The church – it was your penance, right? A way of seeking absolution? You kill Issa, and in return you renovate an old church – you figure you’ve balanced the ledger.’
‘You’re stretching, Cass. If you weighed the sins of Issa and mine, I’m pretty confident God would be on my side.’
‘You’re an asshole, Brady. And I will find Akeem Issa’s body.’
‘Best of luck with that. A guy like him? Could be anywhere now. Back in Libya for all you know.’
‘I won’t let this go.’
‘I know you won’t, Cass. That’s what we have in common – we don’t let things go.’
‘We have nothing in common.’
‘I don’t know about that. We both blamed ourselves for things in our lives that weren’t our fault. And we tried to make amends in our own way.’
‘Your idea of making amends is pretty fucking sick and twisted.’
‘Akeem Issa was fucking sick and twisted, Cass,’ he said, voice rising for the first time. ‘He got Pitch killed. He killed Nabila. Who knows what other evil shit he was part of? Believe me when I say I’m not going to lose a moment worrying about Akeem Issa’s fate.’
Because you know exactly how he met his fate, she thought. You burnt his car in one place to eliminate forensic traces and disposed of his body in another to make it look like Issa had vanished.
I nearly lost it there for a moment, he thought. But the worst part of all, I’ve lost her. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said, sounding suddenly subdued.
‘Don’t worry – I’ll find you.’ I’m not going to yield a fucking inch to you.
He ignored her hostility, and instead made another attempt at bridging the gap between them. ‘You know now you’ve nothing to fear from me?’
When her colleagues in the station listened later to this curiously intimate section of the recording, they counted a full fifteen seconds of dead space before Cass answered.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you need to tell me where I can find Akeem Issa’s body.’
‘Goodbye Cass,’ he said, and hung up.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
She slept as if in a fever, tossing, sweating and hearing the church bell swinging in the wind. She saw her ex-husband driving their old car, mounting a footpath and ploughing into a faceless soldier whose fatigues bore the name tag ‘Pitch’. She saw Hugh in a prison corridor, defeated and decrepit, oblivious as Mason Brady slid alongside him with a shank, ready to wreak revenge for his friend. She saw Nabila race across the corridor to intervene, but arriving too late.
She woke up roaring at Brady to stop.
And when the terror in her chest subsided, she realised she knew where the body of Akeem Issa was.
She shuddered deeply at the thought of it.
