Blindside (15 page)

The driver held Raines’s gaze. ‘Sir, I think you’re the one that’s confused.’

‘How’s that?’

‘You were a soldier, am I right?’

‘I was. I put
my
life on the line for the likes of you.’

‘And why did you do that?’

‘To serve my country.’

‘I don’t think I’m making myself clear enough. Let me try again. Why did you pack up your gear, get on a plane and go to a country thousands of miles away to fight?’

‘Because I was ordered to do it by my Commander-in-Chief.’

‘You mean the President?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s not true, is it? I mean, the President himself didn’t come down to your base and address you individually to give you an order.’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘Exactly. The President set the mission and you followed the orders of your superiors. You did it without question because the chain of command is important. Because it is necessary.’

Raines regarded the man, watching to see if he was being taunted. There was no trace of humour in his eyes.

‘You’re trying to tell me that we’re the same?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what exactly are your orders?’

‘We watch you. We report back. Simple as that.’

‘And what is it that you think you’ve seen?’

‘Nothing so far. But it’s early.’

‘I don’t like being treated like a piece of garbage someone can throw away after it’s been used up.’

‘Look, sir. I don’t know what your gripe is and, honestly, I’m not paid to care. I’m paid to make sure you don’t do something that will hurt others.’

Raines wondered if he could get the drop on the two men – pull his weapon before they could. The thought of a gunfight in the close confines of the car got his heart pumping.

‘Do we understand each other?’ the driver asked.

Raines stared at him until the man looked away. You have no idea how close you are right now, Raines thought.

‘Let’s not do this again, okay? If you get on with your life as a respectful, law-abiding citizen of the United States, we can leave you alone. How does that sound?’

Raines put his hands on his lap.

‘Maybe it’s too late for that,’ he said. ‘Did you think about that?’

The man looked down at Raines’s hands and back at his face. Raines saw the realisation dawn that they had allowed a man into their car, a suspect, without searching him. Neither of the two men in the front of the car had any idea whether he was armed or not.

‘It’s never too late, sir,’ the driver said.

Raines let his hands drop to his sides. The driver shifted in his seat. Raines knew that he was trying to get into a position where he could reach his sidearm – figured he would have it in a shoulder rig like all the Feds do.

‘Sometimes it is, son. That’s why we go to war.’

The passenger seemed oblivious to what was going on and sat staring out of the windscreen. Raines wanted to do it so much it hurt. Take out some of his anger on these two men and all that they represented.

‘Sir …’

‘What?’

‘I think you better leave now.’

The strain in the man’s voice caused the passenger to turn to look at Raines. His hands stayed loose by his sides, palms now resting on the back seat of the car.

‘Maybe I don’t want to leave.’

The passenger’s eyes flicked between the two other men.

‘Some other time,’ Raines said eventually, reaching out to open the door. ‘It’s been a blast.’

3

The apartment felt emptier than when he had left. Raines went to the kitchen and dropped his keys on the counter before getting a can of Coke from the fridge and popping the tab. He drank half the can in one go and went to the living room, sitting on the couch and flicking aimlessly through twenty or so channels before happening on news coverage of some new military initiative in Afghanistan. He watched for a while until the various senior officers being interviewed blurred into one indistinguishable whole.

Light from the setting sun washed over the living room before fading to dark. Raines muted the sound on the TV and closed his eyes, the flickering light from the screen playing across his face.

Fatigue settled down through his flesh and into his bones. He took another sip from the Coke, not tasting it. He’d noticed in the last two weeks how food no longer held any pleasure for him. It was fuel for his body and nothing more than that. He hadn’t had a beer in weeks. Didn’t know any more what it was that used to give him pleasure.

Raines left the TV on and went to the bedroom, going straight to the wardrobe and pulling down a box from the shelf above the hanging rail. He took it back to the living room and set the box down on the table, taking the lid off and lifting out a rag. It was smudged and well worn and smelled of metal and gun oil.

Setting the rag down on the table, he placed his gun on top of it and
began methodically taking it apart and cleaning it like he had done a thousand times before.

Take care of your weapon and it will take care of you
.

When he was finished cleaning the gun, he put it back together and made sure that the mechanisms were all working correctly, slipping the magazine out of the handgrip and racking the slide.

He took the magazine out again and held it up, looking at the exposed bullet sitting on top of the magazine. It looked innocuous, like it was nothing at all. How could something that small be capable of doing so much damage?

The metal of the magazine felt cool against his forehead when he pressed it there. It slid smoothly back into the handgrip with a satisfying
click
and Raines jacked a round into the breech.

Ready to rock ’n’ roll
.

That’s what all the young guys said before they headed out on their first mission. Like it was a movie or something. Not real.

Then a mine took your leg off.

Your blood pumped out into the sand.

Real enough for you now?

And what happened when you got home? Thanks, son, for all your sacrifices. Here’re your papers. Now go find a real job and pay your own medical bills.

Can’t afford it?

Tough shit.

Suck it up, soldier. No one never promised you nothin’.

‘You reap what you sow,’ Raines said out loud, turning the gun and placing it at his temple.

He put his finger inside the trigger guard and touched it to the trigger. Felt it give.

Just a little pressure and it’ll all be over. No Feds watching your every move. No more deals with the Devil. Just the quiet.

He applied more pressure to the trigger. Wondered if he’d hear the explosion as the gun went off. Would he be aware of that split-second as the tip of the bullet passed through the barrel of the gun before shattering the bone of his skull and shredding his brain?

Wondered if he would feel the pain.

His leg started to ache under the scar.

He pressed the trigger some more. Realised that it was more than he had ever done before. Wondered if this time he would keep going until all the lights went out.

The phone rang through in the kitchen. Raines waited for it to ring out.

It started again as soon as it had stopped. He sighed, released his finger from the trigger and placed the gun on the rag spread out over the table.

Went to the kitchen to get the phone.

‘Sorry about earlier,’ Matt Horn said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you when you were here.’

‘I wasn’t upset.’

‘What are you doing right now?’

Raines rubbed absently at the welt by his temple where he had pressed the gun to his head.

‘Nothing much, you know. Watching TV.’

‘Anything good?’

‘No.’

‘Want to come over for a beer?’

He stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, looked at the gun sitting there on the table.

‘We could watch a game or something,’ Horn said. ‘Like we used to. I mean, we haven’t done that in a while.’

‘Sounds good.’ He hung up and went back to the table, looking down at the gun sitting there. He wondered if Horn was now a security risk and whether he should go over there again tonight and make sure he wouldn’t talk to anyone. But he couldn’t find it in himself to do that. Not after everything.

He switched off the TV, picked up his keys and went outside into the dark. The gun still lying on the rag on his table.

Part Seven:

Homeland

1

Wednesday

Wiping condensation from the mirror in her bathroom, Irvine leaned forward and looked at the side of her face. It looked worse than it had last night. She prodded gently at the stitches in the cut by her eye and winced at the pain.

She stood back a little and turned her face to the side so that she could see the full extent of the damage. The area around the wound was swollen and discoloured and her eye had closed a little overnight. A dull throb pulsed behind her eye so she took two painkillers from the drawer in the vanity unit beneath the sink and washed them down with water from the tap.

Irvine got dressed in her bedroom and was drying her hair when Connor wobbled into the room in his jammies and wrapped himself around her legs. She switched the dryer off and lifted her son into her arms.

‘Hey, little man. How are you today?’

He grinned at her and buried his face in her neck, putting his hands in her still damp hair and twisting it around his fingers. He pulled back from her and put a hand on her bruised face.

‘You hurt, Mummy?’

Irvine stroked his hair back from his forehead and kissed him.

‘No,’ she lied.

‘Good.’

She hugged him again.

‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

‘What do you want?’

‘Toast.’ His face contorted as he considered other options. ‘Juice.’

Irvine admired his ability to communicate his precise needs in as few words as possible – thought it would be nice if little boys could grow into men and not lose that trait.

After dropping Connor at the childminder, Irvine looked up and saw a jet high above her, fumes trailing behind it. She checked her watch and guessed that Logan and Cahill were probably sitting around the lounge at Heathrow waiting for their connection to Denver right now.

She got in the car and her phone rang. It was Armstrong.

‘How’s the face? Bet it looks like you’ve gone ten rounds with someone.’

‘I’ve looked better.’

‘You coming in today?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘No reason. Just that after last night, you know …’

‘Listen, why don’t you speak to Jim Murphy. See if the forensics people have come up with anything yet. I spoke with him last night. He said they had found Lewski’s clothes.’

‘Where?’

‘Not sure. Nearby somewhere.’

‘Intact?’

‘No. They’d been burned just like we thought. But there might be something they can get.’

‘Blood results back yet?’

‘Not as of last night. Ask him about that too.’

‘I’ll see if I can find him.’

Irvine started her car and tuned the radio to a news channel. There was a brief story about the body found in the river but there was nothing much to it. Basic information. She switched it off and drove into town.

Armstrong wasn’t around when Irvine got to her desk so she called the CCTV centre again and spoke to the shift supervisor, hoping he would tell her that the stuff was on its way to her already.

‘Dan Patrick,’ the supervisor said when he came on the line.

‘Dan, this is DC Irvine from Strathclyde CID. I’m looking to see if we can get anything from the last couple of days in connection with a murder investigation. I spoke to someone already about getting some recordings over here.’

‘Okay. We’re kind of short-staffed. But I’ll help if I can.’

She got the impression that no one had done anything about looking at the footage yet. Irvine went through the circumstances of Joanna Lewski’s death and the time periods that she thought would be crucial. Again.

‘We should have some coverage that might help,’ Patrick told her. ‘It’ll take a while to go through it, though. I mean, that’s a lot of hours.’

‘I don’t need you guys to go over it. And I need it now. Send it to DS Jim Murphy at Pitt Street. Today.’

There was a brief pause before he replied.

‘I’ll get someone on to it.’

2

After an hour, there was still no sign of Armstrong. Irvine picked up her desk phone and called his mobile.

‘Kenny, it’s me. How are you getting on? Any progress after the post-mortem yesterday?’

‘I’m over here at the mortuary with the pathologist. He’s finished with his report and I’ve got some samples from Lewski’s body. I thought I’d pick them up and rush them over to the lab. Let forensics get a head start on things.’

‘You should have told me you were going there.’

‘Just trying to move things on, you know?’

‘I told you that I’m fine, Kenny. You don’t have to treat me like an invalid.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘What kind of samples did we get?’ she asked.

‘A swab of semen and also some hairs.’

‘She had sex before she was killed?’

‘That’s what he says.’

‘If we’re lucky we’ll get a DNA hit on it.’

‘I’ll get the stuff up to Pitt Street, to the lab, then meet you back at your desk. What you been up to?’

‘I’m going to see the lawyer here, find out who owns Suzie Murray’s flat.’

‘It’s not hers?’

‘She said no.’

‘Okay. Let’s keep this thing moving forward.’

‘Hey, how did you get on with Jim Murphy?’

‘Yeah, they haven’t finished with the clothes yet. Don’t worry, I’m on it.’

Irvine went down the stairs to the ground floor of the building and through the main reception area to a corridor at the back. At the end of the corridor was a large, open-plan room with four desks. The force’s only full-time in-house lawyer was a middle-aged woman with a fondness for green tea and blueberry muffins who sat at the desk nearest the door. The muffin habit had not been kind to her waistline. She looked up as Irvine sat in the chair on the other side of the desk.