‘So, what – he killed them all?’
‘And then he killed himself.’
‘Guilt?’
‘Who knows?’ Holland gestured at the Japanese armour. ‘He was obviously a sick fantasist. Doubt we’ll ever really know what was going through his head. He says he was confronted with what he really was, according to his suicide note, and couldn’t deal with it any more.’
‘Very Japanese.’
The chief inspector nodded. ‘Looks like he was a big fan of the culture.’
‘And the fingers?’ asked DI James.
Holland shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Japanese again,’ said Kirsty Webb. ‘The Yakuza. They have a tradition of cutting off a finger if one of them does something wrong.’
‘You seem to know a lot about this stuff.’
Kirsty shook her head. ‘Only from films. Robert Mitchum was in a movie about it. Cut off half his finger in it.’
‘Seems particularly appropriate in this case, then,’ said the chief inspector.
‘Sir?’ asked DI James.
‘Kiddy-fiddlers,’ Holland said, anger sparking in his eyes. ‘It’s not all I’d cut off.’
Chapter 90
SUZY WAS LEANING against the wall by the door to the three girls’ apartment.
Tim Graham was sitting on the couch, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose. He was glaring at me.
‘You’re not going to get away with this.’
‘You threatening me, Tim?’ I asked.
‘I’m promising you.’
‘Because if you want Suzy here to …’
He shrank back into the sofa.
‘He didn’t want to wait to meet you, Dan. I had to persuade him.’
‘You didn’t have to break my nose.’
‘He took a swing.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s a girl to do?’
‘You want to tell us what you are doing here, Tim?’ I asked.
‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’
I sighed. ‘See, this isn’t one of those good cop, bad cop situations. We’re both bad cops.’
‘Right,’ he snorted derisively. ‘You’re not even cops.’
I took three paces across the room and hit him. Hard. Backhanded my fist to the left side of his head. He flew off the sofa and landed on the floor, whimpering. Tears starting in his eyes.
I was glad. Truth was I was tempted to bust him on the nose again – finish the job that Suzy had started. But I needed to get some answers first.
‘Let me explain something to you, Mister Graham,’ I said, squatting down on my heels and speaking patiently. ‘Laura and Hannah drugged my god-daughter. She was clubbed with a baseball bat like a baby seal and was left to die in the gutter.’
I bent down, grabbed him with both hands, picked him up and threw him back onto the sofa.
‘Do I have your attention now?’ I asked.
Graham nodded, holding a hand to his nose which was running with blood and drool.
‘Because of them she is lying in intensive care, fighting for life.’ That last bit wasn’t strictly true any more but I had no intention of letting the maggot squirming on the sofa know that.
‘I had nothing to do with any of it.’
I turned to Suzy. ‘I’m going outside for a cigarette. Why don’t you see if you can loosen his memory some?’
I headed for the door. He wasn’t to know that I didn’t smoke.
‘Wait!’ He practically shouted it.
I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want Suzy putting the hard question to me, either. And I’m a professional tough guy.
‘She wasn’t supposed to get hurt.’
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘Chloe. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. Laura slipped something in her drink. It should have knocked her out of things for a while. Not enough to do any damage.’
‘Where did she get it?’
Graham shifted nervously on the sofa. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Where do you live?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Suzy, ask him again for me.’
‘Sure, boss.’ She stepped forward from the wall.
‘Okay, okay. Just keep that mad bitch away from me!’
I saw Suzy’s upper lip twitch a fraction and figured that young Tim would pay for that remark sooner or later.
‘I live across the hall,’ he said.
I hauled him upright. ‘Lead on, MacDuff.’
At the end of the corridor we entered a living room much like the one where we had just been. Only this one was littered with the kind of detritus you would expect from a bunch of male students.
Tim Graham was making a show of looking for the key to his bedroom door. Patting his pockets. I raised my right leg and kicked the door off its hinges.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Who are you people?’
I pushed him inside.
Suzy followed us in, wrinkling her nose. ‘For Christ’s sake, Tim, you ever think of opening a window sometimes?’ she said and crossed to do just that.
I was glad she did. If the outer room was a mess, this was a midden. I pushed the student onto his unmade bed and started going through his chest of drawers. Third drawer down I found what I was looking for.
Chapter 91
‘STUDYING TO BE a pharmacist?’ I asked.
‘Media studies, actually,’ Tim Graham replied petulantly and Suzy slapped him around the head.
‘What was that for?’
‘If there’s one thing I hate more than students,’ she said, ‘it’s bloody media-studies students.’
I tipped the contents of the drawer over him. Folded packets of paper. Bags of dope. Lumps of resin. Bottles of pills. I guess Tim Graham was your go-to guy on campus for recreational chemicals.
‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with,’ he said angrily.
‘Are you threatening me again, Tim?’
‘It’s not me you have to worry about.’
I knew who he was talking about. I’d get to him later. I picked up a DVD that had landed on the floor and put it in my pocket.
‘You got no right to take anything.’
‘You want to wait here with him, Suzy, while I phone this through to the police?’ I said.
‘No. Don’t do this, man. We can work something out.’
Man? Was he living in the 1960s?
‘Start talking.’
‘It was all supposed to be a joke.’
‘Some joke.’
‘Well, not a joke. Payback for Hannah’s old man. She was always ragging on about him. We were just going to wind him up. You know?’
‘I haven’t got the faintest idea.’
‘Laura asked me to get some of the guys to help.’
‘And you just went along with it.’
‘Laura said she’d make it worth my while, you know what I mean.’
He gave me a conspiratorial nod. I felt like smashing my fist into his face.
‘So it was all supposed to be an elaborate joke. Hannah getting back at her father. What went wrong? How did my god-daughter end up in hospital?’
Graham stood up from the bed, holding his hands out apologetically. ‘Like I said, Chloe wasn’t supposed to be there. Laura brought someone along. A real heavy dude.’
I had a fair idea who the ‘dude’ was and I had a fair idea who had introduced him to Laura Skelton.
‘Collect that stuff up,’ I said to Suzy.
‘Hey, come on, man.’
‘That’s “Mister Carter” to you.’
‘I told you all I know.’ Graham looked over nervously at his stash. ‘I need to move that on.’
‘Not going to happen.’
Suzy upended a kitbag that was lying on the floor and then scooped the drugs into it.
‘I got to sell that to pay for it. You know how this works. They’ll kill me.’
‘Hopefully,’ I said.
‘Shit,’ Graham said. I thought he was going to star
t crying again.
‘Where’s Laura Skelton now?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know. Honestly. She hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Nobody knows where she is.’
‘Come on,’ I said to Suzy and walked to the door.
‘They’re going to hurt me bad,’ Graham called out to me.
‘Get used to it,’ said Suzy and kicked him full in the nuts.
He really shouldn’t have called her a bitch.
Chapter 92
‘WHERE TO NOW, then, Mister Carter?’ said Suzy with decidedly ironic deference.
‘What?’ she said then, puzzled by the look on my face.
‘I’ve been ten kinds of idiot, Suzy.’
I hurried down the corridor and back to the apartment that Chloe shared with Hannah and Laura. In Laura’s bedroom I picked up from the floor the bathrobe that she had been wearing earlier. It pretty much confirmed what I had suddenly realised. I sniffed it.
‘You going to tell me what this is all about, or am I just putting you down as another typical male pervert, Dan?’ said Suzy.
I tossed her the bathrobe ‘Do you smell that?’
‘Perfume?’
‘Chanel No. 5.’
Suzy held the robe closer and smelled again. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said.
I knew I was. I’d spent enough on the stuff for my ex-wife over the years.
‘I wouldn’t have put Hannah down for that,’ said Suzy.
‘She wasn’t wearing it,’ I replied. ‘Look at the collar.’
She looked at a faint red smudge. ‘Lipstick.’
‘Right.’
I knew exactly who wore Chanel No. 5, the colour of lipstick that could leave such a mark and who also insisted on calling me ‘Mister Carter’. I remembered the hand that she had stroked Hannah Shapiro’s cheek with. It hadn’t been a maternal gesture as I had imagined.
It had been the caress of a lover.
Chapter 93
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER and we were back in front of Adrian Tuttle’s computer screen.
Adrian ran the kidnappers’ phone message to me through an audio sequencer and displayed a section in a waveform graphic.
Below the first graphic he ran a second piece of recorded audio and displayed it. This was the time Hannah had called me without benefit of voice distortion. The exact same phrase. Adrian aligned the two and they matched perfectly.
If I was enough of a contortionist I would have kicked myself. I had been puzzling over what had changed between Saturday night and Sunday morning and realised what it was. Harlan Shapiro was making the trip over. They hadn’t thought he would, given his past form. When he did, the goalposts were moved. The only person I had told that he was coming, outside of our own people, had been Professor Annabelle Weston.
I drummed my fingers on the table. Thinking. She had said she was going away on a conference. That was a lie. She was obviously moving Harlan Shapiro somewhere. And where was Laura Skelton?
I punched Del Rio’s number into the phone and told him to put Hannah on. Her voice was querulous, subdued.
‘I know what’s been happening, Hannah,’ I said. ‘And I know you had your reasons.’
‘You don’t know the half of it!’
‘I know I don’t. What happened to you was awful.’
‘Awful?’ She laughed, but it was a far from happy sound. ‘You really don’t know anything, do you?’
‘I know about you and Professor Weston, Hannah. I know she took advantage of you.’
She laughed again. It was a brittle sound.
‘She didn’t take advantage of me. I love her, Mister Carter.’
‘She was your tutor.’
‘She was my tutor and my counsellor and my lover and my friend! And I don’t expect you to ever understand.’
‘We need to know where she is. We need to get your father home safe.’
‘That’s exactly what we don’t need. That was what the million pounds was for. I was never going home.’
‘So what changed?’
Hannah hesitated. Not quite so strident now. ‘We figured it wasn’t enough. We figured five million was more like it.’
I doubted that she had done any of the figuring at all. She was just a pawn in somebody else’s game. I felt sympathy for her, for that much at least.
‘So where are they now, Hannah?’ I asked pointedly. ‘And why aren’t you with them?’
‘Plans change.’
I pictured her on the other end of the line, cradling the phone on her shoulder, rubbing her abraded wrist. Remembering how things had changed suddenly for her.
‘They hurt you, Hannah,’ I said softly. ‘They can’t be allowed to get away with that. They can’t be allowed to hurt your father.’
‘My father hurt me.’ The voice was almost a whisper. Under all the make-up and the clothes and the womanliness she presented to the world, she was still a small frightened girl at heart. A girl I had promised – and failed – to look after.
‘I know he did,’ I said. ‘And he’s sorry – he put his life on the line today for you. If he could go back to that other time he would do everything differently.’
‘I’m not talking about him not paying the ransom, Mister Carter. I’m not talking about him letting my mother be raped and butchered.’
Hannah’s voice had gone hard again and I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.
‘He used to come to my room, Mister Carter,’ she said. ‘At night. We had to comfort each other, he said. There were just the two of us now … And he hurt me.’
I gripped the phone tight in my hand.
Seemed I had been wrong about pretty much everything.
Chapter 94
I GOT ADRIAN to hack into the personnel records for Chancellors.
It seemed that Annabelle Weston had done her original degree at Cambridge University but had studied for her Master’s at Harvard.
I phoned Jack again. He was still holed up in a hotel and being babysat by the FBI. But he had his phone and he had his people standing by round the clock. I filled him in and ten minutes later he phoned me back. I hadn’t thought that the case had anything to do with America. But I was wrong. It had everything to do with it.
‘I got my contact in Homeland Security to run Annabelle Weston’s name through their system,’ he said. ‘And he got a hit. She’s on their watch list.’
‘Why?’
‘She had a relationship with a guy called Jesus Ferdinand. His mother is Kareema Ferdinand, an exiled Palestinian poet and political activist. Kareema was visiting relatives in the Gaza Strip in 1987 when the First Intifada kicked off. She stayed behind to protest against armed action. Urging the Palestinians to protest peacefully. On Christmas Eve 1987 she was murdered for her pains. The masked gunmen who shot her down as she walked home were never identified.’
‘Israelis?’
‘That’s what the Palestinians claimed. But most people think she was murdered by her own people for collaborating with the Israeli forces.’
‘Ironic.’
‘Isn’t it? But her son Jesus back in America puts the blame squarely on the Israelis. He converts to Islam, becomes highly radicalised. Over the years he has been the prime suspect in a number of incidents. Never been proven.’
‘And Professor Weston kept up her relationship with him?’
‘Yes. He was killed last year when Israeli marines boarded a ship trying to break the blockade and run humanitarian aid into Gaza.’
‘So she’s out for revenge?’
‘She found out who Hannah was, who her father was and, yeah … it looks like payback time.’
‘She operating on her own?’
‘Our intel says Jesus Ferdinand had links with Hamas and other paramilitary organisations.’
‘Shit.’
‘You need to get Harlan Shapiro back, Dan.’
Chapter 95
PROFESSOR ANNABELLE WESTON lived in an expensive mews-style two-bedroomed house not far from Ma
rylebone High Street – and she hadn’t paid for it with her earnings from Chancellors.
She’d inherited a fortune when her father, an oil and steel billionaire, had died. So she certainly didn’t want for money. Which was what baffled me most about the whole thing. Until Jack Morgan told me what Harlan Shapiro had been working on before he was taken.
I leaned on the doorbell again. No response.
I hadn’t expected any.
I stood with Del Rio at the professor’s door and looked at Hannah Shapiro who was sitting with Sam Riddel in the back of my car. She was gazing at me through the window with an expression on her face that I couldn’t read.
Somewhere in there was the girl I knew. Somewhere was the woman she had become.
I thought of the consequences of these sequences of events. I thought of my lovely god-daughter Chloe. I remembered the tubes attached to her. I remembered the bandaging around her head. I remembered the beeping noises the monitors made as they checked her vital signs. I remembered her closed eyelids, the eyes flicking behind them as though she were trying to find her way home from the darkness.
I remembered the promise to her dad that I had made as he lay dying in my arms in a dust-blown wreck of a town in Iraq.
Then I picked up the police-issue battering ram and smashed Professor Annabelle Weston’s front door in.
Chapter 96
DEL RIO WENT in first.
He held his gun in a two-handed grip, sweeping the room for hostile targets.
I dropped the ‘enforcer’, as it was known, to one side. It landed with a heavy thud on the polished wooden floor, taking large chips out of it. I didn’t feel guilty.
Luckily, no alarm bells had gone off. Score one for the good guys.
Expensive rugs were positioned around the room. A small TV in the corner. Matching burgundy leather sofas with tartan fabric trimming, and assorted throw cushions. The kitchen beyond was neat, pristine. Polished chrome and pale white wood.
An open door to the side led upstairs, and another ground-floor door was closed. I was about to open it when Del Rio shook his head and raised his pistol once more.
He kicked the door open. A downstairs bathroom. Empty.
Upstairs, Annabelle Weston had converted one of the two bedrooms into a small office. The venetian blind covering the window and the plain wall looked all too familiar. She had filmed Hannah’s pieces to camera for us there.