03.The Last Temptation

by Val McDermid

  Tadeusz hit the mute button. He’d heard all he needed to know. When Krasic finally arrived five minutes late, complaining about the traffic, he launched straight in. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

  ‘What do you mean, Tadzio?’ Krasic stalled. It was clear from the troubled look in his eyes that he knew exactly what his boss meant.

  ‘Fuck it, Darko, don’t play stupid games with me. What possessed you? Having Kamal taken out on the steps of the fucking police station? I thought we were trying to take the limelight off this investigation, not turn it into the lead story across the country? Jesus, you couldn’t have gone for a more public display.’

  ‘What else was I supposed to do? There wasn’t enough time to stage a convenient road accident…’ His voice tailed off as he realized what he’d said.

  The colour drained from Tadeusz’s face. He looked terrifying in the shadows cast by the subtle lighting of the room. ‘You insensitive bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t think you can divert me away from this fiasco by reminding me of Katerina.’

  Krasic turned away and scowled. ‘That’s not what I meant. I just meant that I didn’t have enough time to set something up that would look accidental. So I reckoned if it was going to end up looking like murder, it needed to look like a domestic, not something to do with the business. So I got Marlene to do the dirty. She’s been working for us, shifting product in Mitte for the past couple of years. She’s not a user herself. And she’s smart enough to play the distraught girlfriend, deranged with grief. She’ll get away with next to nothing when it comes to court. And she won’t grass us up. She’s got a six-year-old girl I’ve promised we’ll take care of. She knows me well enough to understand what that means. One word out of place and the kid gets taken care of, though not in the way she wants. Boss, it was the only way. It had to be done, and it had to be done like this.’ There was no plea in Krasic’s voice, just a convinced finality.

  Tadeusz glared at him. ‘It’s all going to shit,’ he complained. ‘This was supposed to go away. Instead, Kamal’s whole life is going to come under the microscope.’

  ‘No, boss, you’re wrong. It’s Marlene they’re going to be looking at. Before we’re done, we’ll have turned her into the heroine who rid the city of some vile drug-dealing scum. Like I told you, she’s not a user. Her life looks clean. And we can put up plenty of people who’ll make her sound like Mother fucking Teresa. Photographs of the six-year-old looking lost. Stuff about how she was trying to get her boyfriend off the junk. Besides, now they’ve seen how we dealt with Kamal, nobody else is going to say a thing to the cops. Trust me, Tadzio, it’s for the best.’

  ‘It had better be, Darko. Because if it all goes to shit, I know exactly who to blame.’

  11

  Tony glanced at the clock as he left the seminar room. Five past eleven. Carol would almost certainly have embarked on her quest by now. He wondered where she was, how she was doing, what she was feeling. Her visit had unsettled him more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t just that she had disturbed him on a personal level; he’d been expecting that and had done what he could to armour himself against the turbulent currents he knew would be swirling beneath the surface of any encounter between the pair of them.

  What he hadn’t anticipated was how she would stir him up on a professional level. The pleasure he’d taken in the preparation they’d done had been the mental equivalent of a cold shower. It had snapped his synapses to attention in a way that no interaction with undergraduates had ever done. It had reminded him that he was operating at about half his capacity here at the university, and while that might have been sensible as a kind of convalescence from the harrowing he’d undergone at the hands of Jacko Vance, it was no way to spend the rest of his life. If he’d needed further reinforcement, it had just fallen into his lap.

  He’d always feared this moment. Deep down, he’d known the siren call of what he did best might rise again to waken him from the slumberous existence he’d chosen. And he’d done everything in his power to guard against that moment. But the combination of the news of Jacko Vance’s appeal and the return of Carol Jordan had been too strong for his fortifications.

  Things had changed since he’d last been in the front line, he knew that. Quietly, privately, the Home Office had taken a sideways step from using professional psychologists as consultants on complex serial murder investigations. The publicity that had been generated by their earlier policy had given them too many sweaty-palmed moments for them to be willing to continue it indefinitely. Not everyone was as talented as Tony; and few were as close-mouthed. Although there were still a handful of experts who were called in on an ad hoc basis, the police had been busy behind the scenes building their own skills base at the National Crime Faculty at Bramshill. Now there was a new breed of criminal analyst, officers trained in an impressive mixture of psychological skills and computer navigation. Like the FBI and the Canadian RCMP, the Home Office had decided that it was better to rely on police officers trained in specialist areas than to call on the sometimes questionable skills of clinicians and academics who, after all, had no direct experience of what it took to catch a criminal. So, in one sense, there was no longer a place for Tony doing what he believed he had a unique talent for. And after the last debacle there was no way any politician would agree to give him any training or developmental role.

  But perhaps there was something else he could offer. Perhaps he could find a niche that would allow him occasionally to flex his analytical muscles in pursuit of the profoundly disturbed minds who committed the most unreadable of crimes.

  And perhaps this time, with Carol almost certainly moving to some new role in Europol, he could escape the turmoil that had accompanied his last two excursions into the minds of serial killers. It was certainly worth thinking about.

  The only question now was who he could reach out to in a tentative approach. The Vance appeal would have reminded people of his existence. Maybe this was the perfect time to jog their memories a little more, to persuade them that he alone had something to throw into the ring that nobody else had. Not only did he understand how the mind of the serial offender worked; he was one of the few people on the planet who had actually been responsible for putting some of them where they could do no more harm.

  It wouldn’t hurt to try.

  That Monday morning in Berlin, Petra Becker was also thinking about serial offenders. It would be a terrific boost to her career if she managed to be the person who made the links that demonstrated there was a serial killer working across European borders.

  But first she had to find the case she’d been reminded of. Petra sat and frowned at her computer, the severity of her expression a sharp contrast to the spiky exuberance of her short dark hair. Parallel lines furrowed her broad forehead and her eyebrows shadowed her blue eyes, turning them navy. She knew she’d read about it relatively recently, but she’d dismissed it as being of no interest. Petra worked in intelligence. Her team were responsible for gathering information on organized crime, building a basic case, then passing it on to the appropriate law enforcement bodies. With European borders allowing free passage to the criminal as well as the law-abiding following the Schengen Agreement, that frequently meant colleagues in other countries, often using Europol as a conduit. In the past three years, Petra had investigated areas as diverse as product tampering, drug running, credit-card fraud and human trafficking. Murder wasn’t normally on her beat, except when the investigating officers thought there might be a connection to organized crime. It was, she thought cynically, a way of handing off any difficult case that looked remotely like a scum-on-scum killing, the sort of scuzzy case that most police forces didn’t lose any sleep over if they couldn’t nail a culprit.

  So the case she was looking for would have come in as a possible gangland killing. But if it had been tossed aside because it didn’t fit any of their parameters, it wouldn’t be in any of the holding files on the computer. It might even have been deleted from the main
system, on the basis that it was just clutter.

  Petra, however, was too anally retentive to dump case information without a trace. You never knew when something written off by everyone else might just feed into a subsequent investigation. So she’d developed the habit of taking brief notes even on the apparently irrelevant. That way, she could always go back to the original investigating officers and pull the details again.

  She called up the folder that contained her notes and checked the recent files. There were four murder cases from the past seven weeks. She dismissed a drive-by shooting in a small town between Dresden and the Polish border and the murder of a Turk in Stuttgart. He’d bled to death following the amputation by machete of both hands. Petra had thought it was probably more to do with some domestic settling of scores than any organized criminal activity, since the local cops hadn’t come up with a single thing to connect the dead man to anything more illegal than an expired visa.

  That left two cases. A very strange murder in Heidelberg and the crucifixion of a known drug dealer in Hamburg. Her notes said nothing about pubic scalping, but she seemed to recall it had featured in one or other of those cases. She checked the reference numbers and sent e-mails to both police divisions involved. With luck, she’d have an answer by the end of the day.

  Petra headed for the coffee machine, feeling very pleased with herself. She was emptying a sachet of sugar into her cup when her boss, Hanna Plesch, joined her. ‘You’re looking cheerful,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re going to put a stop to that, right?’ She cocked an eyebrow at her.

  ‘That shooting over at the GeSa on Friesenstrasse – I want you to do a bit of digging, see what you can come up with.’ Plesch leaned past her and pressed the button for a black coffee.

  Petra stirred her coffee thoughtfully. ‘It’s hardly our area, is it? I heard it was being written up as a personal thing. The shooter was the girlfriend of one of the doctored heroin victims, wasn’t she?’

  Plesch gave a sardonic smile. ‘That’s the official line. Me, I think it stinks. She’s on our files, you know, the woman who did the shooting. Marlene Krebs. We had intelligence that she was dealing in Mitte. Small fry, so we left her alone. But we heard she’s tied in to Darko Krasic’

  ‘Which means she might be a way through to Radecki,’ Petra continued. ‘So you want me to talk to her?’

  Plesch nodded. ‘It could be worth our while. She probably thinks she’s looking at a light sentence if she plays the sympathy card – woman insane with grief takes revenge on the evil drug pusher who destroyed her lover. If we can persuade her that’s not going to happen …’

  ‘She might just give us something we can use to build a case against Krasic and Radecki.’ Petra sipped her coffee, wincing at the heat.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘I reckon as soon as she finds out who I am and what I know about her, she’ll realize she hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of making the deranged lover defence work. Can you let me have whatever we’ve got on her?’

  ‘It’s already on your desk.’ Plesch began to move away.

  ‘Oh, and Hanna …?’

  She paused and glanced over her shoulder. ‘You want something else.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Someone else. I need someone out on the street in Mitte. We need to establish that the dead guy really wasn’t Marlene’s man.’

  ‘Hard to prove a negative.’

  ‘Maybe so. But if we can nail down who Marlene has been shagging, it might rule out a connection to the dead guy. Likewise, if we can establish whether he was involved with anyone on a long-term basis …’

  Plesch shrugged. ‘Probably worth a try. The Shark’s got nothing pressing on his plate. Send him out for some red meat.’

  Petra’s heart sank as she walked back to her desk. The Shark was an ironic nickname for the most junior member of the squad. He’d earned it because he had no taste for blood and was incapable of moving backwards to reassess new data in the light of experience. Nobody thought he would last long on the squad. He wasn’t the person she would have chosen to trawl the bars and cafés of Mitte, probing their sources to find out what was to be learned about Marlene Krebs. It showed what a waste of time Plesch thought that was. Still, it was better than nothing. And she could always head out there herself that evening if she’d not managed to pry something useful out of Krebs in exchange for a deal on her sentence.

  It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.

  Even though it was a raw, damp day, Carol was sweating. She’d carried out the first part of her assignment without a hitch, but she knew she was a long way off being home and dry. The detailed brief had arrived by courier just after seven. She’d ripped open the thin envelope, almost tearing the contents in her haste. There was a single sheet of paper inside. It informed her that she should be at the address she had previously been given by ten a.m. There, she would be provided with the rest of her instructions.

  Her first instinct was to arrive right on time at the rendezvous, an anonymous terraced house in Stoke Newington. But that might be the first test in itself. Perhaps she was supposed not to do what was expected of her. Hurriedly, she showered and dressed in the clothes she’d decided Janine Jerrold would have worn for such an assignment. A short black lycra skirt, a white T-shirt with long sleeves and a scoop neck under a fitted fake leather jacket. In her shoulder bag she carried everything she needed to change her look. A baseball cap, aviator frames with clear glass lenses, a pair of denim leggings and a lightweight waterproof kagoule in a nasty shade of pale blue. Also in the shoulder bag was an illegal CS gas spray and a metal comb with a sharpened tail. They were both relics of her days in CID in the port of Seaford, items she’d confiscated and never got round to handing in. She wasn’t quite sure how her watchers would react if she had to resort to them, but she was supposed to be showing initiative and acting like a real drugs courier. She could always argue the point afterwards.

  Having decided to arrive early, Carol set out from her flat just after eight. She took a circuitous route to her destination. There would, she was sure, be followers, but she had no intention of making it easy for them. Taking advantage of the rush-hour commuters would be one way of improving her edge. Even so, she still jumped off the tube at the last possible moment, doubling back three stops before emerging at street level and catching a bus.

  When she turned into the quiet side street, there was no one on her heels. But that didn’t mean there weren’t keen eyes on her. She climbed the three steps to the front door she’d been directed to. The paintwork was filthy with London grime, but it looked in reasonably good condition. She pressed the doorbell and waited. Long seconds passed, then the door opened a couple of inches. A pale face smudged with stubble and topped with a spiky crest of black hair peered at her. ‘I’m looking for Gary,’ she said, as instructed.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jason’s friend.’ Again, following her orders.

  The door swung open, the man taking care to stay out of sight of the street as he let her in. ‘I’m Gary,’ he said, leading the way into the front room. He was barefoot, wearing faded 501s and a surprisingly clean white T-shirt. Dingy net curtains hung at the window, obscuring the street. The carpet was an indeterminate shade between brown and grey, worn almost to the backing in front of a sagging sofa that faced a wide-screen NICAM TV complete with DVD player. ‘Take a seat,’ Gary said, waving a hand at the sofa. It wasn’t an appetizing prospect. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  He left her alone with the home entertainment centre. There was a stack of DVDs by the player, but that was the only personal touch in the room, which otherwise was about as welcoming as a police interview room. Judging by the titles, Gary was a fan of violent action movies. There wasn’t a single movie Carol would have paid money to see, and several she’d have parted with hard cash to avoid.

  Gary was gone less than a minute. He returned with a plastic-wrapped pack
age of white powder in one hand and a roll-up trailing a streamer of unmistakable dope smoke in the other. ‘This is the merchandise,’ he said, tossing the package towards her. Carol grabbed it without thinking, then realized this meant her fingerprints were now all over it. She made a mental note to wipe the surface as soon as she got the chance. She had no idea whether she’d be carrying the real thing, although she doubted it. But the last thing she needed was to get a tug from some eager copper who wasn’t part of the operation and be nailed with a half-kilo of cocaine with her prints all over it.

  ‘So where am I supposed to deliver it?’

  Gary perched on the arm of the sofa and took a deep drag from the skinny joint. Carol studied his narrow face, itemizing the features as she habitually did. Just in case. Thin, long nose; hollow cheeks. Deep-set brown eyes. A plain silver ring through the left eyebrow. A jutting jaw with a definite overbite. ‘There’s a café-bar in Dean Street,’ he said. ‘Damocles, it’s called. The guy you’re meeting will be at the corner table at the back by the toilets. You hand over the package and he’ll give you a wad. You bring the cash back here to me. That clear?’