A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘God is a myth. People are born, people die. They have whatever time they have to make a difference or not. We do what we do because we believe that people have a right not to be oppressed by Fascism and Communism. CIA operatives gave their hearts and souls to the Agency. They said they would do the job, they said they would protect the security of the nation, and then they found out something that upset them and they wanted to tell the world. A few dozen people. It was a few dozen people, that’s all. You really think that the stability and security of this nation can be jeopardized because a handful of people lost their nerve?’

  ‘You should record yourself and listen back to it . . . you have any fucking idea how insane you sound?’

  Thorne waved aside Miller’s comment. He put his hands in his pockets and turned towards the windows. ‘So we are done?’ he asked.

  ‘What are you going to do about Robey?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Robey? Robey will show up at some point and someone will kill him.’

  ‘That simple,’ Miller said.

  ‘Why on earth would it be any more complicated? There are certain interests that have to be protected, and those interests are an awful lot more important to the wellbeing and security of this nation than the lives of a few dissenters.’

  Thorne walked to the desk and lifted the phone. He punched a number. ‘Security . . . Detective Miller is ready to leave.’

  It was as Thorne put the receiver down and looked at Miller that Miller realized what was going to happen. He realized why Thorne had been so willing to talk - not because no-one would believe Miller, but because he would never have the chance to repeat it.

  The man who had collected him had taken Miller’s gun; it was even now secure in the reception building, ready for his return.

  But Miller would never return.

  ‘John Robey might have assisted you thus far,’ Thorne said, ‘But John Robey is a man of narrow loyalties.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about him,’ Miller said, gauging the distance between himself and door, between himself and the French windows, wondering whether the windows were locked, how high the wall was, what was beyond the wall. The street perhaps? Another part of the same Judiciary Square complex? Were there further security measures on the other side?

  His pulse was racing, he felt the blood draining from his face. This was how he’d felt when Brandon Thomas had turned on him, when he realized that Thomas didn’t care that he was a cop. Thomas was going to kill him, just as Thorne would now do. But Thorne would not be involved. He would direct one of his people, who would speak to someone else, and that someone else would take Miller and shoot him in the head, or throw him off a high-rise . . .

  ‘I know more about John Robey than John Robey himself,’ Thorne said. He moved to the left and stood with his back to the windows, almost as if he had read Miller’s mind and intended to prevent any escape. Though Thorne was smaller in height and build, he would slow Miller down long enough for security to reach the office.

  ‘Because?’ Miller asked, stalling for time, trying to think of something, anything. The telephone on the desk. The heavy glass decanter from which Thorne had poured the Armagnac. There were any number of things he could use to attack the man, but what then? He knocked him down, he ran from the building. He would be seen. He would be guilty of assault. People would follow him. He had no gun, no means to defend himself, and if all that Thorne had told him was true, if Oliver had been murdered in his place, then such people would have no concern or consideration for the fact that he was a Washington police detective.

  ‘Because?’ Thorne echoed. ‘Because I trained him, Detective Miller . . . I trained Robey and Sheridan and Carvalho, and dozens more like them.’

  ‘And your name isn’t Walter Thorne, is it?’

  ‘Walter Thorne, Frank Rissick, Edward Perna, Lawrence Matthews . . . I am all of them and none of them, detective. I am whoever I am supposed to be whenever that person is required. The fact that you came across the name Donald Carvalho in connection with United Trust is neither here nor there. You have any idea how many names exist for how many façades and businesses and operations that are simply faces we wear for the world?’

  Miller’s every sense was alert for the sound of people in the hallway beyond the office. He didn’t know which way to go - out to the door? Or try and get through the yard and over the wall beyond . . .

  ‘So if Robey was so much trouble—’

  ‘Why didn’t we just dispatch him?’ Thorne finished the question for him. ‘Because dealing with the John Robeys and Catherine Sheridans of this world is not the same as dealing with Margaret Mosley and Ann Rayner and Barbara Lee and the Joyce woman, Detective Miller. There are certain issues that had to be addressed.’

  ‘What did he do? Did he have evidence about all of this? Did he have evidence that would have gone public in the event of his death?’

  ‘He had evidence, detective, and we had something of his. It was a stand-off, a stalemate . . . and nothing moved for a very long time.’

  ‘You had something of his? What? What did you have on Robey?’

  ‘Not so much a what as a who.’

  ‘A who?’ Miller asked, and then he nodded his head. ‘Catherine Sheridan, right? You threatened him with the death of Catherine Sheridan if he—’

  ‘No, detective . . . John Robey was not so concerned with the welfare of Catherine Sheridan that her death would have stopped him.’

  ‘So who then? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I am talking about—’

  The fact that there was no discernible sound as the bullet punctured the upper right pane of the left-hand French window gave the moment a sense of surreal disquiet.

  Thorne was speaking. I am talking about—And then he was not speaking.

  There were words coming from his mouth, and then there was nothing.

  He seemed to stand there for quite some time, but it was merely seconds, less than seconds, but those few seconds stretched out eternally, and Miller waited for Thorne to start speaking again . . .

  Judge Thorne moved sideways awkwardly, like he’d had a sudden shock, the delivery of some terrible news.

  It was then that Miller saw the tiny hole in the window pane.

  And once he saw the hole in the window pane, he knew why Judge Thorne was trying to hold himself upright against the bookshelf, why the light in his eyes seemed to have gone flat and black and hollow, why the sound coming from his mouth wasn’t speech, but some kind of strangled hiss, like steam escaping a lidded pot . . . and then there was the needle-thin trickle of blood making its way from the corner of his right eye and down his cheek . . .

  Miller felt his heart stop, and then start again double-time.

  Walter Thorne dropped to his knees, and as he swayed to the left his head collided with the corner of the heavy mahogany desk. He went down like a stone.

  Miller lurched forward, immediately and instinctively, a futile effort to catch Thorne, but Thorne rolled sideways as soon as he hit the carpet. Miller was on his knees, trying desperately to turn him over, his hands holding the man’s head as blood oozed between his fingers.

  Miller leaned back on his haunches, held his hands up, the blood trickling down his wrists towards the cuffs of his shirt.

  The swelling lake of blood on the carpet belied the small, nickel-sized wound in Thorne’s right temple. There was no exit wound on the left. The bullet was still inside his head.

  It was then that Miller reacted. He opened his mouth to say something, to shout, to scream for help - a medic, someone, anyone that could do anything - even though he knew it was far too late . . .

  But not a sound emerged from his lips.

  He started shaking violently. He tried to stand, but fell sideways. He reached out and grasped the arm of the chair where Thorne had sat, got to his feet, and when he let go he saw the scarlet handprint he’d left behind.

  He was overcome with nausea and a sensation of sudden and u
nrelenting terror. He reached for his gun but came back with nothing.

  Miller stepped to the side of the window, and through the gap between the frame and the edge of the drape he looked out into the yard.

  What had he expected to see?

  The empty yard, almost monochromatic, its stillness juxtaposed now against the madness that was occurring inside Walter Thorne’s office . . .

  Miller could barely stand. He leaned against the wall, once again leaving a bloody handprint behind.

  He had spoken to at least two people. The receptionist had his name, Thorne’s assistant had his gun. He was here. He had been alone in the room when Walter Thorne was killed . . .

  Miller was in deep, deeper than he had been over Brandon Thomas.

  He started hyperventilating, talking to himself. He walked to the window again. He looked down at Thorne’s body. He knelt on the ground and touched his fingers to Thorne’s neck. There was nothing.

  He wanted to kick Thorne. He wanted to beat his fists into the man’s face and scream obscenities. He wanted to shout at him, to challenge everything that the man had said. He wanted to tell him what he thought of his view of the world, that people like him were the reason the world was so fucked, that people like Walter Thorne were the reason for drugs and crime and war and . . .

  But he said nothing.

  Robert Miller felt all the pent-up emotion from the previous weeks back up in his chest like a fist. He felt like he was going to choke, that his heart would seize up from the pressure and fear and pain, that he would collapse across the dead body of Judge Walter Thorne and the two of them would be found in the same room, door locked, a small hole in the window, and no-one would be any the wiser as to what had taken place between Detective Robert Miller and Judge Walter Thorne on the afternoon of Monday the 20th November, 2006.

  And no-one would ever know.

  And John Robey would go back to work at Mount Vernon College, and he would lecture students about literature and poetry, and the students would watch him, hear what he was saying, and never even guess that the man who spoke with them every day had killed more people than they could ever comprehend . . .

  Miller did not know; he was so disoriented he did not know what to believe . . .

  Except that he was fucked.

  That much he knew, and he knew it with certainty.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It was in some brief hiatus between the Judiciary Square security chief arriving, between the call made for an ambulance, that call becoming a request for the coroner . . .

  Some brief hiatus when Robert Miller stood in the yard beyond the French windows with the security chief, both men looking for any signs of who might have fired a single shot through the window of Judge Thorne’s office . . .

  Some brief moment of silence when nothing else was in his mind that the image came back to him.

  The image on the screen of the computer in John Robey’s apartment.

  Catherine Sheridan.

  Put it down for God’s sake.

  The image of Catherine Sheridan as she waved her hand at whoever was filming her. There were trees in the background. She had on a turquoise woollen beret, her hair tucked beneath it.

  Catherine Sheridan laughing . . .

  John, for God’s sake . . . put the camera away.

  Unable to stand, he sat on one of the wrought-iron benches in the walled yard behind Judge Walter Thorne’s offices in Judiciary Square, and he watched as the security chief tried to maintain some sense of order, and then at some point he heard that Marilyn Hemmings was arriving, and for some reason he did not want to see her . . . not again, not like this with another dead body on the floor, another vague smile of recognition, another moment they would both remember as something traumatic and frightening, as if all their shared moments had to have something ugly to define them - some act of evil, some act of murder, some act of betrayal . . .

  Miller spoke with the security chief, a man whose name he never did learn, and told him that he would return to the Second Precinct, that he would write his report, that he would speak with the assistant district attorney immediately and would ensure that whoever was available was assigned to assist in the investigation of the murder of Judge Walter Thorne . . .

  The man asked why Miller had been with the judge. He needed to know for his own report. Miller told him it had been something to do with an outstanding warrant, nothing of great significance. The security chief seemed satisfied.

  Miller went back to reception. He got a secretary to direct him to where his gun was secured. He signed it out, hurried from the building, reached his car and drove away from Judiciary Square, away from the dead body of Walter Thorne, away from everything that Thorne had told him.

  He did not head for the Second Precinct; he headed directly for the Brentwood Park Ice Rink.

  Forty-five minutes later Robert Miller stood in silence in the foyer of the Brentwood Park building. The place was officially closed, but the presentation of his ID to a janitor had been sufficient to gain him entry. He walked straight on through to the rink, out along the lower ranks of seats, scanned the tiers one after the other.

  John Robey raised his hand and smiled.

  Miller said nothing until he’d walked much of the rink’s perimeter. He came to a stop in the aisle twenty feet beneath where Robey sat.

  ‘Professor Robey.’

  ‘Detective Miller.’

  ‘I’ve come to ask you about the murder of Judge Walter Thorne.’

  ‘The murder of Judge Walter Thorne will appear to be something entirely different tomorrow.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Miller walked up a few steps. He was alert for any sudden movement on Robey’s part. Alert for Robey reaching for a gun.

  ‘Meaning whatever you wish it to mean,’ Robey replied. ‘How it is and how it will appear are not necessarily the same thing . . . as is always the case in my line of work.’

  Miller took another step upwards. ‘Enough now,’ he said quietly. He could hear the fatigue in his own voice. He sounded like a man whose life had been smashed to pieces. ‘I know a great deal about what has happened . . . I just spent a considerable time with Walter Thorne and he told me—’

  ‘What did he tell you? Did he do the speech? The one about the way the world is, how there are certain people who carry a responsibility to protect the nation?’ Robey smiled understandingly. ‘You don’t need to tell me . . . I listened to the whole thing.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I’ve had an ear in Thorne’s office for months . . . I’ve known what was going on for a very long time . . .’

  ‘So you appreciate how much there is that I still don’t understand,’ Miller said.

  ‘He was not Walter Thorne,’ Robey said. ‘He has lived with that name for years, but that was bullshit. His real name was Lawrence Matthews, and I met him at Virginia State University a long time ago.’

  Miller walked the few remaining steps and took a seat beside Robey. He withdrew the envelope from his pocket, the photograph inside.

  ‘This one . . . I don’t know who this is.’

  Robey smiled, took the photograph from Miller. ‘Patrick Sweeney,’ Robey said. ‘You ever hear that name?’

  Miller looked at Robey. There was something different in his eyes. ‘Sweeney? I don’t know . . . rings a bell. I’ve heard that name somewhere.’

  ‘His real name was Don Carvalho. He was Sarah’s trainer. That’s what he did, believe it or not. He was an ice-skating trainer.’

  ‘I remember . . . before Per Amundsen.’ Miller frowned. ‘But she told me that Sweeney had died.’

  ‘One thing you learn in this business . . . unless you see the body, you can never be sure who’s dead. And even if you see the body it doesn’t necessarily prove anything.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘He was Don Carvalho for a long time, and then he became Patrick Sweeney. He tried to lead a normal life, but then he was drafted back into duty and he be
came Don Carvalho once more. He and I worked together in Nicaragua. We came out of there determined to do something about the cocaine that was still coming into the U.S., about the people that were dying. I sent documentation to three separate and individual CIA operatives, people I believed I could trust; documentation that was meant to alert them to what Don and I knew. They reported it to their section chiefs, the section chiefs reported it to their controller, and the controller issued the order to Don that these operatives were to be killed . . .’

  ‘Mosley, Rayner and Lee,’ Miller said. ‘That’s who you sent the information to?’

  ‘Right . . . and that’s when Don Carvalho came to me and told me that he’d been ordered to kill all three of them.’

  ‘And you told him not to kill them?’

  ‘No, Robert . . . I told him to kill them. Kill them brutally. Beat them and strangle them and tie ribbons around their necks and cover them in lavender. Do it in such a way as the world would take notice. Give the world something that they could not ignore.’

  Miller’s eyes were wide in disbelief. ‘So Thorne was right,’ he said. ‘Carvalho was the Ribbon Killer . . .’

  ‘Not everything Walter Thorne told you was untrue. We exist in a fragile state of apparencies. Something that appears one way is almost certainly something else. Patrick Sweeney, Don Carvalho, it doesn’t matter what name you use . . . he was a killer. He killed people for the government. That’s what he did. That’s what he’d been doing for years. Same as me. We decided a long time ago that certain lives were expendable, that certain people could be sacrificed for the common good.’ Robey smiled. He seemed to be growing more tired as he spoke. ‘I can’t hope that you’ll understand . . . people never want to understand, and the only analogy I can draw is that of a cure for some terrible disease. Cancer perhaps, you know? And in developing that cure, a cure that will save countless millions of lives, there might be a thousand, even five or ten thousand who have to die while it’s being tried and tested and tried once more. Eventually they get it right, and then people don’t have to die anymore.’