by Alec Peche
Just as they saw DI Jones approaching them, Jill’s laptop pinged that the second search was complete. The detective had a mixture of emotions on his face. He appeared to be anxious and excited to look at their findings, but there was chagrin that his department lacked the software that Jill had so easily used. He had pride that his department used the latest techniques and technology to solve a crime and yet these amateurs from the United States were proving to provide the quickest leads in this case.
Jill gave a brief overview of the software and how it searched. Pointing to her laptop screen she said, “We see Nick approaching the castle from that direction. We’re not familiar enough with Cardiff to guess where he was coming from.”
“I’d say he was coming from the train station,” DI Jones remarked.
Jill continued pointing at the video and said, “You can see he purchases an admission ticket and then walks around the castle grounds. He looks at his cell phone, at probably a text, and immediately heads over to the tower. We see him enter the tower and that’s the last we have of him on video. None of your cameras are aimed at the front façade of the tower.”
“That’s amazing technology you are using. It would have taken my department hours to collect that same feed that you did in I’m guessing fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, I think the technology is pretty special. After this case is over if you’d like more information about the technology, just ask. I did a second search looking for adult males. This will be a lot of faces to sort through. My computer pinged that the report was completed just before you arrived, so I’ve yet to look at it.”
Jill paused and pulled up the results of the search. In total, inside the grounds of the castle, the technology identified sixty-two males for Jill to follow up on as potential suspects. She held her laptop out to DI Jones and said, “I’ll begin sorting through these sixty-two males for someone that meets the physical profile to have the strength to shove Nick out a window. I’ll follow the path of perhaps my top five candidates based on that criterion to evaluate their behavior. Maybe I'll see a guy sending a text within a minute or so of the time that Nick reads the text on his phone. Can you think of anything else to do with this technology?”
Jones paused a moment thinking about the crime scene, but try as he might he couldn’t think of another way to approach identifying the murderer other than the one that Jill was taking. He said out loud, “I can’t think of any other way to get a handle on our suspect. I do think he likely surveyed the castle to determine where he wanted to murder your friend so he may have visited earlier in the day or the previous day to determine the perfect spot. Also, we’re both focused on men as one of the witnesses heard two male voices; but I think a woman with the right skill set and voice could have been the murderer.”
Jill nodded and said, “I know what you mean. I have my green belt in tai chi, and my boyfriend has his master black belt in Hapkido, and there are women in both of those martial arts that can toss a far bigger man out a window using the right mechanics, but I think it makes sense to focus on men first.”
Jones nodded and agreed. Jill provided him copies of the footage of Nick’s movements as well as the sixty-two males so they could work it on their end and they parted for the night. Jill returned to their hotel room to find that Angela had refined another picture of Nick and forwarded it to Henrik. They went to bed that night with heavy hearts and a deep shadow cast on a vacation that’d planned for the past year. This trip to the United Kingdom would always be remembered first and foremost by the death of their dear friend, Nick Brouwer.
Chapter 6
The next morning at breakfast they discussed their steps on the path to finding Nick’s killer. Both Marie and Jo exhausted their angles of the investigation. Jo had been unable to find much more information about his company than they already knew, and Marie without Nick’s real identity had found little on the Internet to frame the picture of Nick and his life. Jill was being picked up by DI Jones and Davies to head over to the medical examiner for Nick’s autopsy. It was going to be weird as she’d never participated in an autopsy on anyone she remotely knew. She needed to find her detached, clinical mind in order to Nick best.
Angela, Jo, and Marie agreed to split up the sixty-two males, and within a short time, they had their top five picks for potential murderers of Nick Brouwer. Then it was a matter of putting the five pictures through the facial recognition software to get their identities. A second run was done to see if they were seen entering the tower close to the time of Nick’s death. Four of the five names came back positive. Marie and Jo did a background check on the four men while Angela traced the path of the four men through the castle.
Jill was waiting at the curb in front of the hotel when the detectives pulled up. The coroner would be joining them for the autopsy at University Hospital which Jill guessed was where the pathologists were located. She’d read up on the department and felt quite confident that Nick’s autopsy was in good hands.
They arrived, and introductions were made before they departed for their respective locker rooms. While Jill didn’t expect to get physically involved with the examination, she changed into scrubs just in case any blood or guts landed on her street clothes as those substances would have to stay there until she returned home. She met the detectives in the hallway dressed in protective gowns covering their suits and proceeded into the autopsy suite. Whether she was in Sacramento or Cardiff, the room looked the same with stainless steel tables and sinks and the accouterments of her trade – saws, scales, and a variety of tools to peer inside the human body.
They started with a visual examination of Nick’s skin noting scars, tattoos, bruises, and scratches. With the scratches on his face, it pointed to his traveling out the window face first as though he was pushed in the back. This explanation didn’t make sense from the witness statements as they reported a scuffle before hearing the sound of breaking glass, but perhaps Nick was surprised by someone sneaking up behind him and shoving him before he had a chance to avoid going out the window.
He also had an old scar on his shoulder that appeared to be a bullet wound. Jill couldn’t remember him favoring an arm, so the injury hadn’t limited his mobility. There was another wound on the side of his hip that had the appearance of a knife wound. His teeth showed excellent dental care, and then they found an odd tattoo. It was tucked under his hairline in the back, but it was quite detailed. Jill took a picture and sent it to her friends so they could begin tracing the tattoo’s origins.
Nothing else was remarkable. The pathologist tested Nick’s eyes as it would be used to determine his exact age. Pathologists had discovered that the amount of carbon contained in the crystalline of the eye correlated to age within a year. Since they were at a University, students would perform the testing, and they would have his age within a few hours unofficially. A pathologist would later review the calculation to place his age officially in the autopsy report, but it was additional information to collect and use to identify who Nick Brouwer really was. Nick had many broken bones, and his brain was surrounded by blood – a massive brain bleed caused his death, and a fractured skull. The spinal cord was severed as well so if the brain bleed hadn’t killed him the spinal cord injury likely would have. His body would remain in the Cardiff mortuary as they still hadn’t found a family to claim him.
Jill exited the autopsy room and entered the locker room to change back to her street clothes. Her thoughts focused on identifying the significance of the tattoo as well as the other clues to Nick’s background – prior wounds, proper dental care, and later today they would have an age for him. She had guessed forty-two to forty-eight years of age. They didn’t know his real age, name, marital status, and ethnicity. All they knew was that he had defended their lives on numerous occasions and that was enough to chase his killer to the ends of the earth.
Jill met the detectives in the hallway after changing into her street clothes. On their end they were pursuing the real identification
of Nick. It was strange how he appeared out of nowhere about eighteen months prior to when they met him for the first time. She had some ideas she wanted to discuss with her friends outside of the listening range of the two detectives. She was also very interested in the tattoo. She’d seen many strange tattoos in her life as a medical examiner. They were usually full of meaning to the deceased, and she hoped that was the case with Nick.
“Was anything different from an autopsy that you performed in the United States?” DI Jones asked.
“No,” replied Jill. “The facilities and processes were remarkably similar. I suspect that both forensic science and police science are the same the world over. There are technological enhancements that develop and marginally put one police department in front of the other, but I can say that after my experiences in the various states of America and now with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Wales, that we pretty much all operate the same and under very similar judicial requirements. Gun ownership varies from country to country, but that’s about it.”
“That would be about my sense of the world,” agreed Jones. “What are you doing the rest of the day? What are your plans for staying in Cardiff?”
Jill gave the detective kudos for asking the questions. A good detective would want to know if Jill was pursuing a different thread of investigation from the one he and Davies planned to take.
“I’m going to check in with my friends to see what they’ve accomplished with the list of males at the castle. I also asked them to work on tracking down the tattoo. As far as how long we’ll be in Cardiff, we reworked our vacation schedule to spend additional time here before moving on to Scotland. We’ll continue the case from there, but at a certain point in every investigation, there’s no need for us to be in the city of the murder. My team uses forensic findings and technology to solve murder cases. We do some first-person interviews, but those always seem to be at the outset of a case rather than an ongoing need. What are you detectives working on?”
One good question deserved another thought Jill. She wondered if the two detective inspectors were pursuing an angle she and her team hadn’t thought of chasing.
“Like you, we’re tracking down the video faces and tattoo. We also expect results back from our crime lab on the fingerprints we dusted for at the scene and on Mr. Brouwer’s body. We’ve also got our searches going with British intelligence and Interpol to find the identity of our victim.”
“Let’s keep in contact then, and I wish you good luck with this case, detectives,” Jill replied. While they were discussing the case, the detectives had been driving her back to her hotel. A short time later she was reunited with her friends and teammates in one of the hotel rooms.
Angela had enlarged the picture of the tattoo near Nick’s neckline. It was surprisingly easy to find information on Google of such a tattoo and once they located the significance of the tattoo that generated furious research into the tattoo’s origins by her friends. The source didn’t make sense as it pointed to an organization that to the best of their knowledge ceased operations in the early 1990s. Nick had probably been in high school at the time. Since they didn’t know his real age yet, it was hard to judge that aspect.
Chapter 7
“What are you talking about?” Jill asked her friends.
“Operation Gladio,” replied Marie.
“What’s Operation Gladio,” asked Jill. A quick search of her memory turned up no reference to a word, “Gladio,” but it sounded Italian.
“It’s an organization that allegedly disbanded in the early 1990s, but it makes for fascinating reading. There’s even a YouTube video produced by the BBC on the subject,” replied Jo.
“Okay I get that it's something that was supposed to have dissolved in the 1990s, but what is it?” Jill asked frustrated.
“Oh, well it’s a spy organization,” replied Angela.
Jill’s friends all had this look of intense concentration and excitement. Their emotions failed to transfer to her given that she didn’t know enough about the organization to be excited about it. She wondered what had flipped the switch for her friends; she couldn’t recall this zeal for research in another case. Perhaps her problem was where she’d come from; Nick’s autopsy had been very sad for her.
Jo must’ve caught that glimpse of sadness in her eyes as she patted the seat next to her and said, “Jill, come look at my computer screen and I’ll explain. I’m so sorry you had to witness the autopsy of our good friend Nick.”
Jill replied, “I’ve been doing autopsies for nearly two decades and yet today was the first time I knew the person laying on the stainless steel table. I’ve assisted family members in identifying their dead loved ones, but I had never walked in their shoes before today. Let me get a cup of coffee, and I’ll shake these grim thoughts off, and you can tell me all about Operation Gladio.”
Jill left the hotel room in search of said coffee, she was joined by Marie a few steps behind her, and she said, “I could use another cup of coffee too, I think we’ll be spending hours trying to understand the spy operation. Where’re you going for coffee?”
“Sadly, given that we’re in the United Kingdom, the closest place with coffee that I know is that McDonald’s at the end of the block and much as I hate to admit it, they have great coffee.”
“At home, if I can’t find a Starbucks for coffee, McDonald’s is my second choice,” Marie said. They finished the coffee run in silence and soon returned to the hotel room.
Jill sat down and looked at her three friends each sitting with a computer of some sort and said, “Tell me about Operation Gladio.”
“I think it would be best if I explained the context in which it was created in the 1940s, then I’ll move on to what it is and why it’s believed to have been disbanded in the 1990s. That will help you understand why it doesn’t make sense for Nick to be involved with this group,” Jo said.
Taking a deep breath, she started with the explanation, “At the end of World War II, the United States and Europe were worried about the power of Russia. Essentially it was felt that the far right needed to prevent the far left from taking over the world. There was a great deal of paranoia inside the world’s governments and military leaders, and so they planned for a hypothetical invader and created a small but invisible army left behind in countries believed to be susceptible to communist forces.”
Jill had such a skeptical look on her face that Jo had to pause and say, “I know this sounds crazy, but we didn’t live in those times and people that did always feared another World War. They feared a World War III, and they thought the greatest threat was coming from the Eastern Bloc countries. It was a time of the Cold War. France, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States placed very secret Special Forces in these countries to monitor communications and stash arms should they sense threats from Russia. And these left behind forces continued for the next forty years until the Italian Parliament exposed them in 1990. These forces were outside of the control of NATO but rather were believed to be run by the CIA and MI6.”
“Maybe I should’ve gone out for a few shots of whiskey instead of coffee. This explanation is sounding like a Tom Clancy novel with spies and conspiracies, but continue as it’s a fascinating story,” Jill murmured.
“These secret special agents are rumored to have caused fabricated terror attacks such as a car bomb in Peteano, Italy, and a massive bomb in the waiting room of the Bologna rail station. The theory being that if it looks like a leftist government was gaining power, then these agents on the ground needed to create political diversions to make those leftist governments lose the support of the people.”
“Okay, in summation, the super-secret agents were supposed to cause problems for governments appearing to lean to the left so that the world could stay balanced in the view of the United States and Europe by having mostly democratic nations. I can sort of see how this happened. I was amazed the first time I saw the remains of the Berlin wall which the West saw as evidence of
a communist East to be feared. I know that families were kept apart for twenty-five years or so while East Germans were confined basically to Berlin and supported by Russia. I always remember how well they did in the Olympics and was amazed that they had such an athletic machine training people for brilliance and yet they sought to confine them inside a wall. It’s hard for me to grasp as an American those limits on your freedom. But let’s get back to the discussion at hand. I get the creation of Operation Gladio, but why would Nick twenty-five years later, be connected or even have a tattoo representing that organization? Has some new group taken over that symbol?”
“Maybe a motorcycle club or something like that appropriated the tattoo as their logo?” Angela suggested. “Once we figured out the context of Operation Gladio it seems even more far-fetched that Nick was connected to such an organization. However, given that we have no history on him older than three years, then something secret is in his background, but I don’t see how it could be this, given the time in history that it occurred.”
“Unless the Operation didn’t go away,” Marie suggested. “Maybe the European and American governments are lying about their spying activities. Actually, they probably are as that’s basic for spying 101, I think. Then again what’s the need for preventing Russia from taking over the rest of the world? I for one don’t fill threatened.”
Her friends grinned at her analysis. At heart, they were optimists, unable to understand how people lived by believing the sky was about to fall.
“I think our bigger threats are North Korea or ISIS terrorists; any whack jobs with access to bombs or missiles, but that’s neither here nor there,” Angela declared.
“Perhaps we should discuss this finding with Henrik. As a German, he may have an entirely different view of Operation Gladio and spying in general,” Marie suggested.
