Blood Red City Read online

  A man answered. Lydia briefly described what she’d seen, but it was obvious this was the first he was hearing about it. He pressed her for more details, serving only to highlight how little she actually knew, and finally took her number so he could usher her off the line with a promise to look into it.

  She tapped her nail on the desk, the still picture on the screen blurring as she let her gaze slip out of focus. Beyond the monitor, floor-to-ceiling windows reflected the office back on itself, only the red lights capping the skyscrapers piercing the black glass. An attack like that on the Tube, and no one had picked up on it. There were CCTV cameras everywhere; the men in the video acted without hesitation, and gave no outward impression of anger or impetuousness. If they were that calculated, why take a risk like that? And who was the victim to warrant that risk?

  Her work mobile rang, vibrating into life on the desk. The number was withheld.

  She snatched it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Lyds, it’s me.’

  Tammy.

  ‘Did you get my email?’

  ‘The video?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sent that?’ Lydia said. ‘Why the anon—’

  ‘Did you watch it?’

  ‘Yeah. Yes. Are you alright?’

  ‘Alright?’

  ‘You sound a bit shaky.’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m just … Can you talk?’

  ‘Yeah. What am I looking at here?’

  ‘I meant in person. Can you get out?’

  ‘Now? Where are you?’

  ‘I’ll meet you in front of the building in five. Okay?’

  ‘You’re outside?’

  ‘I will be.’

  Lydia glanced around the empty office, unsettled. ‘Okay.’

  She spotted Tammy across the plaza, standing against the inside flank of one of the pillars at the base of the office tower opposite. Her hair was coming loose from a ponytail and she was holding a cigarette. A flicker of guilt reared up at seeing her there; it was nine months since the paper had let her go in the last round of layoffs, and Tammy was still out of work. Coming out of the building, security pass clipped to her belt, it felt like the fact she still had a job there was rubbing it in her face.

  Lydia offered a smile as she got close. ‘I thought you gave up, missus?’ She grabbed the cigarette from her hand, took a drag, and whipped it away across the plaza, the taste reminding her why she’d quit herself.

  Tammy followed the orange tip with her eyes as it hit the concrete and rolled away down the gentle slope towards the street. ‘It was so easy the first time, I thought I could do it again. Seems not.’

  Lydia came around in front of her, a hand on her arm. ‘Are you OK? What’s going on?’

  Tammy pushed her hair out of her face. ‘You watched the video?’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know the killers.’

  ‘Okay. But…?’

  ‘The victim.’ She looked up, meeting her eyes. ‘I met him three days ago.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘He contacted me a couple of weeks ago saying he worked in finance and had information on money laundering – would I be interested? He didn’t give much away. I mean obviously I was, but I wasn’t sure if he was serious or a timewaster, so I told him he had to meet me in person. I was a bit surprised when he turned up, to be honest.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say. He told me his name was Joe and he was a banker. He’d obviously done his research, because he asked me about my work on the Panama Papers leak and the financial crisis in 2008 and all that stuff. After that, I was the one doing all the talking, so I was thinking about sacking him off, but then he said he had inside knowledge about the biggest money-laundering scheme out there.’

  ‘Jesus. And did he?’

  ‘He talked around it. I think he was feeling me out.’ Tammy turned sideways and pressed her back against the pillar.

  ‘“Inside knowledge” – so that means he was involved.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Then why was he looking to come clean to you?’

  She shrugged, shaking her head. ‘The only thing I can say is that he looked like he hadn’t slept for a year. I mean, he was smartly dressed and everything, but he honestly looked on the verge of a breakdown. Maybe the pressure…’

  ‘Did he give you anything to go on?’

  She shook her head again. ‘We agreed to meet next week. He swore he’d elaborate and bring some evidence with him – that was my condition.’

  Lydia puffed her cheeks up, blowing out a breath. ‘And now this.’

  ‘Someone didn’t want him to talk.’

  ‘Seriously? You think that’s what this is?’

  Tammy opened her hands, signalling her uncertainty. ‘Either way, I didn’t want to risk putting you in danger, hence the cloak-and-dagger stuff with the email and—’

  ‘What, are you saying you’re in danger?’

  ‘No, no, not that I know of. But the timing makes me very nervous.’

  Lydia steepled her fingers in front of her mouth, twisting her head to glance around. ‘This is nuts.’

  ‘I know.’ Tammy opened her bag and took out a packet of Silk Cut, then seemed to forget she was holding them. ‘It happened tonight.’

  ‘Yep. Somewhere on the Northern Line.’

  ‘You worked that out?’

  ‘The pattern on the seat fabric.’

  Tammy nodded in appreciation.

  ‘You don’t know where though?’ Lydia said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the police?’

  ‘That’s next. I’ll take them the video.’

  ‘Where’d you get it from?’

  ‘Facebook. It was in one of those local groups, The Finchley Network. It was posted there…’ She trailed off, as if she was embarrassed about something.

  ‘You don’t live in Finchley.’

  Tammy hesitated, running her hands over her cheeks before she spoke. ‘I’ve joined loads of them, all over London. They’re good for finding stories. Local-interest stuff is easier to pitch sometimes.’ Her face flushed as she said it, and Lydia looked away, pretending not to see. Tammy Hodgson had been a minor legend in the newspaper industry, at the forefront of some of the biggest journalistic investigations of the 2000s. Now she was reduced to trawling local Facebook groups for stories.

  ‘I nearly dropped my glass when I recognised him,’ Tammy said. She flicked her nail back and forth over the corner of the cigarette packet, building to something. ‘The thing is, no one’s reporting this yet.’

  Lydia caught her meaning. ‘You know I’m still stuck on the showbiz desk…’

  ‘So? This looks like a professional hit on the Tube.’

  ‘Then you should write it up. That’s got to be worth a few quid.’

  ‘If this guy was telling the truth, there’s more than a one-off piece here.’

  ‘And if he wasn’t?’

  ‘Either way, there’s too much work for one person.’

  ‘Tam…’

  Tammy pushed herself off the pillar and circled around to face her. ‘No one wants to look twice at a fifty-three-year-old woman. Every interview I go to, I’m in a waiting room with kids willing to work for nothing. I’m applying for jobs I was doing fifteen years ago and I get told I’ve got too much experience. I can’t afford not to work, Lyds, and this is my chance to get back in. But I can’t do it on my own.’

  Lydia held her stare, the desperation in her eyes eating her up.

  ‘Please?’

  CHAPTER 2

  The day’s penultimate job was an easy one, comparatively. He’d ordered things that way. The self-help manuals he used to read would advise tackling the hardest tasks on your list first; fine in theory, not so easy when there were lives at stake.

  So that came next. For now, Michael Stringer had the home of London Assembly member Nigel Carlton in his sights. A nice semi on a nice road in Finchley, the st
reetlights casting the bay windows in amber relief. He’d done business in worse places.

  His skin itched, waiting. Carlton had arrived home ten minutes prior, the house unlit before that. Stringer’s information was that Carlton’s wife was in Brussels for business – a regular occurrence, in his estimation the cover for an affair. Not Stringer’s concern in this matter, but professional rigour wasn’t something he could just turn on and off.

  Ten minutes was just long enough. Carlton had showed up in a cab, so the chance of anyone else arriving separately was slim – but not zero. A mistake he’d made once before: on that occasion, Stringer had tailgated a target into his flat after watching him arrive alone, only to have the man’s secretary let herself in minutes later with her own set of keys, just as he was getting to it. Transpired the woman and the target took separate cabs from their office to keep their trysts under wraps.

  But ten minutes was enough time to discount that possibility. Any longer ran the danger of a takeaway order showing up, or even the target leaving home again – a late-night urge for a bottle of Pinot or a bag of coke, or who fucking knew what.

  Stringer rang the doorbell. The hallway light went on, and then the door opened without a sound. Carlton looked him over, the caution in his expression fading when he took in the wiry man in the charcoal-grey suit on his doorstep. Stringer didn’t immediately speak.

  ‘Yes?’ Carlton said.

  Stringer raised the blue plastic document wallet in his hand. ‘We need to talk about these.’

  Carlton squinted. ‘Sorry, have we met? Who—?’

  ‘The girl you’ve been emailing is fourteen years old. Did you know?’

  ‘What? What girl?’

  ‘Jennifer Tully – [email protected]. Her Facebook picture is her with glitter all over her face; I’m told it’s something the kids are into these days. If you swore to me she was eighteen I’d probably believe you, but I wouldn’t bet my career on it.’

  Carlton dug into his pocket, produced his phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  Stringer waited, staring at him doing nothing. ‘Well? You don’t need my permission.’

  ‘I don’t know … Look, you’ve got your wires crossed somewhere so why don’t you bugger off before…’ He swiped the phone to unlock it.

  ‘“Assembly Member”. That your title?’

  Carlton looked up.

  ‘Awkward as honorifics go, so I’ll use Nigel. Nigel, have a listen to some of this.’ Stringer dipped his head, mimicking reading even though he had it memorised. ‘“I’ve been thinking about you all night, I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t sleep … I can smell you on my shirt and I just want to eat you up … I haven’t felt this way about anyone since I was a teenager … I don’t know what’s come over me.”’ Stringer handed him the email printout, pointing to the sender details at the top. ‘That’s you, yes?’

  Carlton skimmed the page, his mouth coming ajar. ‘I’ve never … This is not me. I’ve never seen it in my life, I’ve never heard of this girl…’

  ‘Let’s go inside.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Stringer jutted his chin. ‘Inside.’

  Carlton backed up, staring at the printout as if he could wish it into thin air.

  Stringer made his way down the hall and into a large kitchen, the rest of the house in darkness. The room was centred on a walnut-topped island unit and was straight out of a design catalogue: black bi-fold doors to the garden, brushed steel fridge, gleaming pans hanging above the counter. A cooker that looked like it’d never been lit. A faint smell of cleaning products.

  Stringer took two glasses out of a cabinet above the sink and filled them with water. He set one down for Carlton and watched him inch down the hall, flipping the page to read the full email trail as he came.

  ‘I’ve been hacked.’ Carlton looked up, his face as pale as hypothermic flesh. ‘Where did you get these?’

  Stringer pushed a glass towards him. ‘Word of advice: no one buys “I’ve been hacked” anymore. You’re supposed to use WhatsApp for this shit, Nigel. Snapchat.’

  Carlton set the sheet of paper on the counter, the spotlights in the ceiling so bright it gave off a glare. ‘I’ve never seen any of these emails. Those are not my words, these are fakes.’

  Stringer sipped his water. ‘You didn’t give me those, so where else would I have got them from?’

  ‘How the hell should I…?’ The penny dropped. ‘The girl?’

  He frowned in confirmation.

  Carlton rubbed his face. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘That’s irrelevant.’

  ‘No it fucking isn’t. Why are you doing this to me?’

  ‘I’m just a fixer.’

  ‘Then who are you working for?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong questions.’

  As he brought the glass to his mouth again, Stringer’s shirt cuff gapped, flashing the melted skin on his arm. Carlton snapped his gaze to the counter, his discomfort a sure sign he’d noticed. Ten years ago Stringer would have made something of it; now he put the glass down and let his hand fall to his side. Not embarrassment; just taking away the distraction. ‘The question you need to ask is what am I going to do with these?’

  ‘I’m not having this.’ Carlton snatched up his phone again.

  Stringer took out his own mobile and tapped the screen twice, Carlton’s phone vibrating a second later when the message came through. He stared at the image, his eyes flaring wide.

  Stringer pointed to the picture, upside down from his viewpoint but more than familiar. It appeared to show a man and a girl at the start or end of an embrace. ‘As you know, that’s Jennifer Tully.’

  ‘No … no, I don’t know her…’ Carlton screwed his eyes shut, a memory coming back. ‘She dropped her purse, I picked it up for her and she gave me a hug. A thank-you thing, I was as surprised as anyone. I was on my way into Pret, for god’s sake.’

  To Stringer, the snap looked too professional – the image a higher resolution than the average phone camera could manage, a red flag to anyone paying attention. But Nigel Carlton was a newborn baby, wiping his own shit out of his eyes in the harsh new world he found himself in.

  ‘There’s a dozen emails here, Nigel, and the photos. My guess is the Standard will put you on page five, but you might make the cover. And then the nationals will grab it, and that will be that. Fourteen years old … Christ.’

  Carlton deleted the picture, visibly shaking. ‘This is a bloody setup.’

  Stringer took his time putting his phone away, then stretched the silence to breaking point, taking a sip of water. ‘On Tuesday of next week, you’ll meet a gentleman named Jonathan Samuels at an office in the city. You’ll get a message telling you exactly when and where. Mr Samuels will have some suggestions for you to take back to your colleagues on the planning committee.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘That’s Mr Samuels’ business. Miss the meeting and the story goes to the papers that afternoon. Speak to the police or anyone else about this and copies of everything go to your wife.’

  Carlton planted his fists on the island. ‘No one would believe this of me. Least of all my wife.’

  Stringer put his hands in his pockets, calling time on proceedings. ‘You sure about that?’ He moved closer to Carlton. ‘Absolutely sure?’ He stepped around him and made his way out of the house.

  The car was a hotbox, nowhere for the day’s heat to go when the night wasn’t much cooler. Stringer got behind the wheel and looked at the picture of Carlton and the girl on his phone. For a second he felt pity for the man, but he let it go with the reasoning that it was on-the-job-training for a rising pol with ambitions of getting to parliament. Based on what he’d seen tonight, Carlton wouldn’t make it anywhere close.

  He checked his messages and opened Google maps. He’d overstayed at Carlton’s, but he’d left slack in the schedule to cover that eventuality. He allowed his thoughts to turn to the next job – the e
nvelope in the boot – and felt his guts lurch for the first time in years. The reasons were many, or so he’d convinced himself, but sitting there in the silence of the night, there was only one that mattered: it was the first time he’d worked for a killer.

  The client was a reclusive Ukrainian financier, Andriy Suslov. Implicated in at least two suspicious deaths over the years, Suslov had the worst kind of connections. His instructions had been straightforward: rake up every piece of dirt Stringer could find on a London-based high-finance whizz named Jamie Tan. He didn’t say why, and Stringer wouldn’t ask – he never did. It was a standard sort of job, made exceptional only by the client.

  He worked it for three months solid. Regular in-person surveillance on Tan, combined with a full data trawl into every nook of the man’s life. He hacked his emails and his phones. He got a peek at his bank accounts. He ran background checks as far back as he could get. The picture he got was contradictory but unenlightening: a work-hard, play-hard city boy with a recreational cocaine habit, who went to church with his wife most Sundays and gave generously to an eclectic array of causes – Cancer Research, WWF, CAFOD – figure them guilt-payments for his lifestyle. Seeing Tan in person, there was nothing to mark him out as a target for this kind of gig. A man who wore sober navy suits and had his hair trimmed every two weeks. Quick to laugh, a face padded with puppy fat that belied his forty-two years. Wealthy, yes, but a pauper compared to Suslov – surely ruling out simple extortion as the client’s motive.

  Now, it all came to a head. Suslov’s front man had called that morning: ‘Today’s the day’ – reveal your work to Tan, make him understand that we own him now. Tell him further instructions will follow.

  Stringer acquiesced without enthusiasm. Most of his gigs boiled down to money and power, but as serious as they were, no one died. Putting Tan in hock to Suslov, to unknown ends, felt like crossing a line. And the danger wasn’t just to the target; he couldn’t shake the thought that if Tan played it smart and ran to the authorities, the easiest way for Suslov to stay buffered was to eliminate the messenger – keeping his deniability watertight.