by Val McDermid
She slouched in her chair and logged on to her internal e-mail. She wasn’t expecting anything interesting, but it was better than staring at the wall. She scanned the short list of new mail. The only thing that piqued her attention was a reply to her request for information from the police in Heidelberg. Given the way things had been panning out for her over the past couple of days, she refused to allow herself to feel eager, but she opened the e-mail anyway. Her eyes flicked down the screen, taking in the key details: Walter Neumann, 47. Lecturer in psychology at the Ruperto Carola University of Heidelberg.
Petra felt a blip on her mental radar. Another academic, another psychologist. This was promising. She scrolled on down. Three weeks previously, he’d been found by a student in his apartment near the Altstadt campus. His computer had been smashed to the floor and he’d been spread-eagled on his back across his desk. The details were identical to the information Marijke had given her about de Groot’s murder in Leiden, right down to the cause of death – drowning – and the cutting away of the pubic hair and the skin attaching it to the body.
‘Bingo,’ she said softly. OK, the rules said it took three to make a series when it came to murder, but two killings with such an off-the-wall MO couldn’t be coincidence. What puzzled her was why this had ever crossed the desk of the organized crime unit. She carried on reading, and found the tenuous explanation at the very end of the document.
Initial investigations have produced no personal motive for this murder. However, according to our intelligence, Neumann was involved in the drugs scene. He had allegedly been a long-time user of cannabis and amphetamines, and the narcotics squad responsible for dealing with the university had heard rumours that Neumann dealt drugs to his students. Although we have no firm evidence of his involvement in drug dealing, it seems possible that so bizarre a murder may have come about as a result of his involvement with the organized crime that exists in the drug culture. In short, that this may be an execution designed to send a message we cannot read to others who might be tempted to transgress the unwritten codes of such people.
‘Pompous bullshit,’ Petra muttered as she read the final paragraph. ‘Translation: we can’t make head nor tail of this, so let’s offload it to someone else.’ Nevertheless, she was for once glad of the buck-passing of her colleagues in the provinces. Without their laziness and incompetence, she’d never have been able to make the connection between this murder and Marijke’s case in Leiden.
The question was, what should she do now? There was no effective operational co-operation between the police forces of separate countries in the European Union. Interpol had no role to play here. Europol was for intelligence-sharing and the development of policing strategies, not cross-border operations. If she made this official, it would get bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and departmental politics.
But if she and Marijke worked the two cases together, sharing information and pooling leads … Since the Radecki investigation looked set to be snatched from under her, she needed to find another path to glory. This might just be it.
Petra hit the reply button. Please send full pathology and forensic reports re Walter Neumann. We would prefer hard copies if possible. This matter is both urgent and highly confidential.
She sent the message then sat back in her chair, a small smile of satisfaction on her face. If Plesch was right and there was a place for her in whatever was planned against Radecki, all well and good. But if she was only humouring her, this would be her insurance policy.
16
Three days really wasn’t enough. Carol stared into her wardrobe, frowning. Some of her clothes would work, but most of them wouldn’t. Morgan had given her a budget for new outfits that had made her eyebrows climb, but shopping to spend it was going to take her the best part of the day. Then she’d have to pack for her new identity, making sure she didn’t include anything that would give a hint of her reality.
Her brother Michael had already agreed to take care of Nelson; he planned to drive down that evening from his home in Bradfield and take the cat back to the stylish loft apartment they’d once shared there. At least Michael hadn’t asked awkward questions, like why he was being asked to cat-sit indefinitely while his sister went off to some unspecified destination; as soon as she’d said she couldn’t explain for operational reasons, he’d dropped the subject.
The one thing she wished was that she’d had the chance to confide in Tony. She knew his insights would be helpful, and, more than that, his support would give her confidence. But an assignment this sensitive wasn’t something she could trust either to the phone lines or to electronic communication. She had called him after her briefing session with Morgan, and had hated having to hold out on him. She’d made it clear that her reluctance was based purely on her misgivings about the security of their means of communication and, like Michael, he hadn’t pressed her.
Carol flicked through the hangers, selecting possible garments and throwing them on the bed behind her. She was grateful that she would have to abandon most of what she had chosen to reflect her own personality. The thought that Carol Jordan might have much in common with this new creation, Caroline Jackson, even on the most superficial level, was not something she felt comfortable with. It bothered her slightly that the names were so similar, even though Morgan had explained the operational reasons for it. ‘We like to keep the first name as close to your own as possible, so you don’t get those horrible moments where someone says your name and you don’t connect at all. And we’ve found it helps if the initials are the same too. Those who know about these things say it makes it all psychologically easier and less likely that you’ll trip yourself up.’
Carol reached the end of the possible choices from her wardrobe and closed the double doors. She walked around her bedroom, stroking the familiar objects on her dressing table and bookshelves as if the action of her fingers would imprint them on her memory, accessible whenever she needed to touch base with who she really was. She paused in front of three photograph frames that faced her bed. Michael, his arm around the woman he’d been living with for the past two years, his expression open and delighted. Her parents at their silver wedding party, her mother’s head on her father’s shoulder, a look of indulgent affection on her face; her father, looking directly into the camera, his familiar quirky smile lifting the corners of his eyes. And finally, a snatched snapshot of her with Tony and John Brandon, her former boss, taken at the police party that had celebrated the resolution of the first case they’d worked together. They all had the slightly bleary look of people who were heading towards drunk but hadn’t quite got there yet.
Her reverie was interrupted by the rude blurt of the entryphone buzzer. Carol frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She walked through to the living room and grabbed the handset. ‘Hello?’ she said.
Through the crackle of static she heard a tinny voice say, ‘Carol? It’s me. Tony.’ She held the phone away from her ear, staring at it as if it were an unfamiliar artefact. Her free hand automatically moved to the door release button while she tried to get her head round what she’d just heard. Like a sleepwalker, she replaced the handset and crossed to open her front door. Outside the excellent soundproofing of her flat, she could hear the whine of the lift machinery.
The lift door slid open and she tensed herself for the familiar jolt that came with the sight of him. The harsh lighting bleached his skin tones to wood ash, turning him monochrome. Then Tony stepped forward and recovered his humanity. His hair had been cut since she’d seen him last, she noted as he walked towards her, looking unusually pleased with himself. ‘I hope this isn’t a bad time,’ he said.
Carol stepped back and waved him in. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, unable to suppress the laugh bubbling under her voice.
Tony walked in, touching her gently on the elbow and leaning forward to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘Forgive me if I seem presumptuous, but you sounded on the phone like a woman who could use a little moral suppo
rt. And from what I know of you, I didn’t imagine you would be opening yourself up enough to be getting it anywhere else.’ He spread his hands out in a gesture of munificence. ‘So, here I am.’
‘But … shouldn’t you be at work? How did you get here? When did you get here?’
Before he could answer, Nelson appeared, alerted by a familiar voice. The cat wound himself round Tony’s legs, sinuously shedding black hairs all over his blue jeans. Tony immediately dropped into a crouch to scratch the cat between the ears. ‘Hello, Nelson. You’re looking handsome as ever.’ Nelson purred, narrowing his eyes and watching Carol as if to say he could teach her a thing or two. Tony looked up. ‘I flew down on the shuttle from Edinburgh this morning. I don’t have any teaching commitments today, so I thought I’d take a chance on catching you at home.’
‘An expensive chance,’ Carol said. ‘You could just have phoned, made sure I’d be home.’
Tony stood up. ‘Sometimes I get fed up with being prosaic’
Before she could stop herself, Carol said, ‘And what does Frances think about that?’ As soon as her words landed, they altered the landscape of his face. It was as if a physical shutter had closed down behind his eyes.
‘What I do is no longer any concern of Frances,’ he said. His tone of voice deflected discussion as effectively as armour plating.
Carol couldn’t help a squirm of delight in her stomach. It couldn’t be coincidence that Frances had been consigned to history so soon after her visit. Which meant… all sorts of things she couldn’t begin to permit herself to consider. It should be enough that he was here now, with her; his choice, not her request. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘Coffee, yes?’
‘Oh, please. They can map the human genome, but they still can’t make a decent cup of coffee on a plane.’
‘Make yourself at home,’ Carol said, gesturing towards the twin sofas that sat at right angles, making the most of her view. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She headed for the kitchen.
Rather than settling down, Tony roamed the room. Much of the contents were familiar, but some were new. There were a couple of large Jack Vettriano prints from his film noir series in heavy distressed gilt frames that would have been totally out of place in the cottage where Carol had been living previously but which looked strong and moody on these high white walls. The CD collection had expanded to include a tranche of contemporary guitar bands whose names he recognized but whose music was completely alien to him. He’d never seen the brightly coloured gabbeh that dominated the centre of the room either.
But there was nothing that didn’t chime with his understanding of Carol. She was still the person he knew. He stood at the window and gazed down at the old church, incongruous among the modernity of its surroundings. He wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, coming here like this. Sometimes, however, risks had to be taken. Otherwise, how would he know he was alive?
Carol’s voice cut through his introspection. ‘Coffee,’ she said, placing a cafetiere and two mugs on the low glass table.
He turned to face her and smiled. ‘Thanks.’ He took off his jacket, revealing a black V-necked sweater in fine wool; a more fashionable look than he used to go for, Carol noted. They settled down with their drinks, each on a separate sofa, but close enough at the angle between them to have touched if they’d felt able to. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Carol tucked her feet under her and cradled her mug in both hands. ‘I’m dying to talk about it. They’re sending me in deep. Total immersion undercover.’
‘This is Europol?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly. It’s a UK operation. To tell you the truth, the lines are a bit blurred. I’m not sure where Special Branch ends and Customs and Excise begins on this one. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence services have got a finger in the pie too.’ She gave a wry little smile. ‘All I know for sure is that my own chain of command goes through Superintendent Morgan, who is attached to NCIS. And that’s all I’m supposed to need to know.’
Tony was experienced enough as an interviewer of serial offenders not to let his unease show. But already he didn’t like the sound of this. In his limited experience of British policing, grey areas always heralded deniability. If the time came when someone had to be shot down in flames, the only person visible in the sights would be Carol. That she wasn’t admitting this even to herself was worrying. ‘What’s the assignment?’
Carol relayed everything Morgan had told her about Tadeusz Radecki. ‘Morgan said that when he saw my Europol application, he couldn’t believe his eyes,’ she continued. ‘Katerina was dead, but here was her double, applying to work at the sharp end of intelligence. And so he came up with the idea of mounting an operation using me as the bait to sucker Radecki in.’
‘You’re going undercover to try to seduce Radecki?’ Tony felt the ground shift under his feet. He’d thought the honey trap had died with the Cold War.
‘No, no, it’s much more subtle than that. It’s a sting. According to Morgan, Radecki used to have a sweet little deal going with a gangster in Essex, Colin Osborne. Osborne would funnel Radecki’s illegal immigrants in via a couple of clothing sweatshops he ran in the East End. Every few months he’d tip off a contact in Immigration and get them hustled away to detention centres. Then he’d replace them with the next shipment from Radecki. He managed to keep his own nose clean, because the sweatshops were always set up using false names and credit references.’
‘Neat,’ Tony said.
‘Very. Anyway, Osborne got himself killed in a gangland shooting about six weeks ago. And everybody’s still squabbling over who gets which piece of turf from his nasty little empire. Meanwhile, nobody is providing a convenient refuge for Radecki’s illegals.’
‘And that’s where you come in?’
‘That’s exactly where I come in.’ She grinned. ‘I turn up in Berlin with a proposition for Radecki. I’m Caroline Jackson.’ She gestured with her thumb towards the small office that opened off the living room. ‘I’ve got a file half an inch thick with Caroline’s back story. Where she went to school, when she lost her virginity, when her parents died and how, where she’s lived over the years, how she’s made a living. Now, she’s a wealthy businesswoman with some very dodgy contacts.’
Tony raised an admonishing finger. ‘Not “she”, Carol. It has to be “I” from now on.’
Carol pursed her lips in rueful acknowledgement. ‘I own the lease on a former US airbase in East Anglia. I have a factory producing hand-made wooden toys on the site, as well as the former barracks. I also have a source of forged Italian passports. I knew Colin Osborne and knew he was getting workers from Radecki. And now Colin’s dead, I’m here to take up the slack. I need workers and I can offer them an even better deal than Colin. They work for me for free for a year and they get legal EU papers. And Radecki gets a market for his illegals.’
Tony nodded. ‘I can see how that would appeal to him. So why do they need the added incentive of someone who looks like his dead girlfriend?’
‘Well, Morgan said it wasn’t the first time they’d thought of putting someone in to pull the scam I’m going to be doing. But there were some reservations because the chances were they’d only be able to get evidence on the final stage of the racket. So, although they would probably net Radecki, they might not be able to roll up his networks behind him. Then I came along. The general idea is that he’ll open up further and faster to me than he would to someone else. Assuming I can gain his confidence, I should be able to find out exactly how his operations work. If I play my cards right, we could close down his drug smuggling, his gunrunning and his people trafficking. And that would be a result worth having.’
Her eagerness worried Tony. He knew that to succeed in so difficult an assignment Carol would have to maintain a high level of confidence. She’d be thrown on her own resources for most of the time and, without self-belief, she’d sink like a stone. But it wasn’t like her to be blind to the per
ils of a task so fraught with jeopardy. ‘It’s obvious that they’re right, psychologically speaking,’ he said. ‘Radecki’s bound to be attracted to you. And his emotional investment will make it easier for you to maintain your undercover story. He’ll find it hard to be as suspicious of you as he would be of any other stranger. Still, you’re really going to be out there on a limb. If your cover does get blown, he’s going to be far more dangerous to you than if you were just another undercover cop. It won’t be enough to eliminate you. He’ll need to make you suffer. You do know that?’
‘It crossed my mind, yes. But you know I don’t like to brood.’
‘You need to be aware of the potential pitfalls. I wouldn’t be any use to you if I just sat here uttering anodyne platitudes about how terrific you’re going to be at this. Undercover is the hardest job in policing.’ He leaned forward, his face earnest. ‘You’re never off duty. You can’t afford to be homesick for who you really are. You have to live it, and it’s the loneliest place there is. And you’re going to be in a foreign country, which will only compound that feeling of isolation.’
His words hung in the air between them, the intensity speaking of something beyond their superficial meaning. Carol suddenly understood that he was telling her about himself and the way he had chosen to live. ‘You sound like you’ve been there,’ she said softly.
Passing for human, he thought. This wasn’t the time or the place to get into that one. ‘Been there so long I gave the T-shirt to Oxfam,’ he said, striving for lightness. ‘Academic life is not my natural habitat.’ Carol looked disappointed. She had every right, he thought. She deserved better than that from him. ‘Nor was Frances,’ he added. ‘But I didn’t come here to talk about me. Will it be possible for us to be in touch?’
