Chapter 48
Leaving Samuel to unpack, change, and asking him to join them at the Hyatt later, Mark and Lypsick decided to walk to their hotel. Mark wanted to burn off some of his annoyance and frustration.
“What are you going to do now?” Mark asked Lypsick.
“Honestly?”
“What else is there?”
“I don’t know, Mark. I’ve got to bring her in.”
“But you still don’t have a warrant, do you?”
“No, I don’t, and that’s only because I convinced the Deputy Director to let me talk to her first. As soon as she acknowledges being on that boat, I’ll have to ask the Vancouver police to arrest her, with the warrant that would have been then issued in Florida. After that, it’s just a matter of extraditing her back to the US.”
“You know she won’t lie, don’t you?”
“I know, Mark, and there again, the evidence we’ve got are circumstantial at best. We haven’t got the knife she used, and the bills of lading she recovered from the trawler only prove she was there.”
“And you will need me to corroborate her statement, won’t you?” Lypsick nodded. “Did you ask Gibson for my collaboration already?”
“Not yet.”
“Good, because you may not have to.”
“Why?” Lypsick turned his head to Mark. “The only reason I wouldn’t have to ask for your collaboration would be if you had something to do with Al Nadir’s death.”
“Exactly. You all assumed Talya killed Al Nadir, but she didn’t—I did!”
Lypsick stopped. “Who did she knife then?”
“We never got a chance to ask his name before I heaved him overboard.”
“But that changes everything...”
They resumed walking. “Maybe, maybe not,” Mark said. “But the point is that if you get her to trial, she’ll acknowledge knifing a man who was about to attack me.”
“I’ll have to see who this second guy was and how he fits into the picture. And the sequence of events as the Florida coppers described is all wrong then?”
“I don’t know what they said, but it’s all in my report.”
“Why didn’t you call the police at the time?” Lypsick asked.
“Simple. I didn’t want any of us to be arrested when we knew Slimane was on the run and we had nothing to show for our troubles. All we had were these bills of lading. And all they proved was that some crates had been shipped from Miami.”
“And those would have been evidence that you were looking for something on the trawler.”
“Same as they do now, yes.”
Only their footsteps resounded on the pavement. Both men seemed to be lost in thought.
“What about Sadir?” Mark asked, crossing an intersection.
“What about him?”
“You expected him to do something, didn’t you? He wouldn’t have come all this way for nothing. What did you really suspect?”
“The thing we don’t know is why he rented that apartment.” Lypsick paused. “We only presumed he wanted to come here to help Samuel eliminate both Ms Kartz and Prince Khalid.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.” Lypsick shot a glance at Mark. “Samuel didn’t need any help to do that. You saw him. If he was ordered to eliminate either of them, he would have done it without blinking.”
“I agree, as far as the prince is concerned, but not Ms Kartz.”
“There must be something else... When he said that he was suggested to come here and bring back Talya to the fold, there was no mention of eliminating Khalid.”
“Yes, but Sadir didn’t know that.”
They continued walking in silence until Mark said, “We’ve got to find out what the guy is up to and have him admit that he’s responsible for Slimane’s killing and Talya’s shooting.”
Lypsick nodded.