The Dead Sea Deception

by Adam Blake

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘My password doesn’t work. What counts as exactly?’

  ‘It’s an administrative hiccup, Heather. Nothing more. When you’re the subject of a committee of inquiry, all your operational files have to be scrutinised by HR and the IPCC. That inevitably means your security is compromised. All passwords are deactivated and all access codes are revised. You’ll get a new password in a day or so.’

  ‘And in the meantime, you turn me into the lady who comes round with the goddamned tea.’

  ‘I don’t know what you—’

  Kennedy slapped the print-out down on his desk and he looked at it for a moment before realising what it was: a page from Combes’s notes from the day before, added into the file with a date stamp of 7.30 p.m.

  ‘Combes saw Ros Barlow yesterday afternoon and she told him to go piss over a five-bar gate,’ Kennedy summarised.

  Summerhill nodded. ‘Yes. Well. Your suggestion of asking her if her brother had ever talked about his work was worth following up. But she proved less than cooperative.’

  ‘Jimmy, she asked for me.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘She refused to talk to Combes and she specifically asked for me. When were you thinking of telling me?’

  He met her stare, unapologetic. ‘If you read the rest of Sergeant Combes’s notes, you’ll see that he didn’t feel Rosalind Barlow had anything further to add to the testimony she’d already given. He recommended against a follow-up visit.’

  ‘Screw that!’ Kennedy exploded. ‘She asked for me. Do you think that meant she had nothing to say or do you think it meant she thought Combes was a jumped-up little cartoon prick-and-balls with a squeaky voice and she preferred to talk to a human being?’

  ‘Kennedy, I’d advise you to moderate your language. I’m not prepared to overlook outbursts against fellow officers.’

  Kennedy shrugged helplessly. ‘For the love of Christ,’ she said, her voice strained, ‘am I on this case or am I in the toilet? If you refuse to give me anything substantial to do, Jimmy, what’s the point of my being here?’

  Summerhill seemed to perk up at this, as though he’d seen it coming a long way out and felt glad it was finally here. ‘Are you requesting a transfer?’ he asked. He pushed his chair away from the desk back towards the filing cabinet behind it – which Kennedy knew contained run-off copies of all divisional paperwork, including the PD-012 form that she’d advised Harper to fill in with respect to herself. Officer requesting transfer because of personal factors affecting work effectiveness.

  She laughed.

  ‘No,’ she said, and Summerhill’s hand, half-lifted, fell into his lap. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Jimmy. I’m not asking for a transfer. I thought we already had this discussion, and I thought we understood each other, but that was just me being naive, wasn’t it? No, you carry on. And in the meantime, get Rawl to cut me a temporary password. You can keep me on a leash if you like, but do not try to hood me as well.’

  She stood, and he shot her a look full of suspicion and dislike. ‘You’re not to speak to Ros Barlow, Heather,’ he told her. ‘That’s not a productive use of your time, and her hostility to this office and this investigation makes her an unreliable witness.’

  ‘I think it makes her a soulmate, but you’re the boss.’

  ‘Try to remember that.’

  ‘If I forget, I’m sure you’ll remind me.’

  She left quickly, so that if the urge to punch something overwhelmed her self-control, Summerhill’s face wouldn’t be so temptingly close to hand.

  At her desk again, she thought it through.

  Summerhill was determined to keep her at the margins of things. Probably, in his own way, he felt absolutely at ease about doing so: she’d had her chance with the case and proved at Park Square that she couldn’t handle it, leaving an officer dead on the ground. Her last-ditch play after the incident committee met had got her back on to the team, but the DCI was telling her in his own charmless way that this was as far as she was going to get.

  That left her with three options.

  She could shut up and watch the world go by from the comfort of her desk. In which case, she might as well be dead.

  She could dust off her earlier ultimatum and try to twist Summerhill’s arm a little further. But she hadn’t been bluffing the first time around, and this time she would be. She had just that little bit more to lose now that she had her job back.

  Or …

  She took out her mobile, slid it open and thumbed through the call log. She found Tillman’s number easily enough: it was the only one she didn’t recognise at once. She keyed CALL BACK.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Tillman.’

  ‘Sergeant Kennedy.’ He didn’t sound surprised, but there was an edge of anticipation in his voice; an implied question.

  ‘This isn’t an all-or-nothing deal, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. We pool information, that’s all. I’m not asking you to work with me – just to tell me what you know. Let’s agree on one rule, though: no lies, even by omission. No holding things back to get an edge.’

  ‘And you’ll do the same for me?’

  ‘You’ve got my word.’

  ‘Okay.’ She shifted to McAliskey’s desk, where the case file was still open. ‘I’ve got something for you, first off. A freebie because I feel like I owe you one.’ She told him about the other two women – names, places, dates and times. She could hear him scribbling the details down, probably so he could check them with his own contacts. He didn’t react to the news, though, or not in any way that she could read over the phone.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Got all that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tillman said. ‘What now?’

  ‘Twenty questions. You go first.’

  For an hour, he grilled her about the case. She started with Stuart Barlow, went on to the other known victims: cause of death, the Ravellers connection, Barlow’s secret project (which as a pretext for multiple homicides sounded just as ridiculous as it always had), the unknown stalker and the shape of the investigation so far. Tillman asked focused and circumstantial questions at every stage. The sort of questions a cop would ask. What had made them decide that Barlow’s death was murder? Had the killers left any fingerprints or DNA traces at any of the crime scenes? Failing that, had they found any physical evidence at all that proved the link, or were they just working from the fact of a suspicious cluster of deaths? Kennedy gave him what answers she could, and admitted her ignorance wherever she had nothing to offer. When Tillman had run out of questions – or at least, had fallen silent – she interjected some additional points of her own.

  ‘We’re still working in the dark when it comes to motive, but I’m thinking it’s significant that Barlow and his team felt the need to be so secretive about what they’d found – what they were looking for, even.’

  ‘Significant how?’

  ‘I have no idea. But there’s an overlap between legitimate historical research and treasure-hunting. You remember those big Anglo-Saxon finds last year – Viking gold, worth millions? It becomes treasure trove if you declare it. Finders and landowners get a reward, state gets the property. Suppose Barlow had stumbled on something like that? And then someone else found out what he had?’

  ‘It works as a motive for murder,’ Tillman allowed.

  ‘You don’t sound all that convinced.’

  ‘Neither do you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Heather. It’s Heather, Tillman. Heather Kennedy. This isn’t a cop talking to you right now. I took it as far as I could as a cop. You’re talking to a concerned citizen.’

  ‘Okay. Heather. I’m Leo.’

  ‘I know. I looked you up. And you’re right, I don’t buy that this is just about money. That’s a big, all-purpose motive, and people will do more or less anything to get it, but those people in Luton – they behaved more like soldiers than anything else. And they killed three people over the space of t
wo days, in three different ways. They’ve got reach, and trained muscle.’

  ‘Organised crime cartels can operate like armies.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. But correct me if I’m wrong, don’t they also operate like businesses? Import-export, distribution, sales divisions, reliably sourced product and massive turnover. If it weren’t for the fact that the things they’re selling are illegal, they’d be in the Fortune Top 100. Would they be chasing stolen antiquities? I don’t think so. It would be another kind of criminal. The kind who doesn’t have worldwide infrastructure.’

  ‘So where does that leave you?’

  ‘It leaves me wondering about Michael Brand, Leo. That’s one reason why I called you. I think maybe this case doesn’t crack open by inductive logic, like something out of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe we need what you’ve got.’

  ‘One reason? What’s the other?’

  ‘I’ll get to that. Tell me about Michael Brand.’

  ‘If you’ll tell me one thing first.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘I notice you don’t have Brand pegged as Barlow’s stalker. You refer to them as two different people. Why is that?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She had to think before she answered. She’d made the assumption very early on, and it had been a while since she’d thought about it. ‘It’s mainly because Barlow already knew Brand online. At some point – not long before Barlow was murdered – they met. Obviously that gives us a connection, but why would Brand take the trouble to set up this fake persona of an interested academic, if he’s going to follow Barlow around like a cheap gumshoe?’

  ‘So it’s two different approaches to the same problem,’ Tillman said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kennedy said. ‘I think it’s exactly that. We know someone’s been turning over the victims’ stuff – houses, offices, computer data. So they’re looking for something and they keep coming up blank. Brand cosies up to Barlow. That’s the softly-softly-catchee-monkey side of the equation. But he’s got one of his people sitting on Barlow’s ass in case they can find what they want by following him or frisking him.’

  ‘And when both approaches fail, they kill everyone.’

  ‘And go over their possessions with a fine-toothed comb.’

  ‘Okay.’ Tillman was silent for a while. Kennedy waited. Brand was the centre of everything for Tillman, had to be, because of what he’d told her the last time they met. She guessed he was about to touch again on the agonising knot that had become the centre of his life. So she was completely unprepared for what he finally said.

  ‘Brand is a buyer.’

  ‘He’s a what?’

  ‘Or a procurer, maybe. Someone who sources and obtains things on behalf of someone else.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Anything. Everything. There’s no pattern to it. Weapons and medicines are the two constants, but all kinds of other stuff mixed in with that. Computers and motherboards. Software. Machine tools. Electronic surveillance equipment. Timber. Vitamin supplements. And … in among all that …’

  Kennedy filled the static-laced silence. ‘Women with exactly three children.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right. So let’s assume that what’s happening now is part of the same pattern. Brand is trying to get his hands on something else – something that Barlow and his people found, or made, or just knew about. He moved in. He moved his people in. He sweet-talked Barlow, then killed him and ransacked his house. But he didn’t find what he wanted because the team didn’t leave yet. They’re still looking.’

  She heard nothing but Tillman’s breathing for a few seconds. ‘They’re still looking,’ he agreed. ‘But your scenario doesn’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they didn’t try to talk to Sarah Opie, they just shot her down. I don’t think this is procurement. I don’t think it’s business as usual. I think it’s something else, and that makes me think maybe we’ve got a chance here. Brand is an expert at coming into a place out of nowhere, getting what he wants and then disappearing again. He never sticks around and he never leaves a trail. But it’s, what, getting on for a couple of months now since Barlow was murdered? And Brand’s people are still here. So the situation isn’t entirely under his control. It’s—’

  Kennedy filled in the missing words again. ‘Damage limitation.’

  ‘I’m thinking. Yeah. Look, you said there was something else you wanted from me.’

  She told him about the knife and her failed efforts to identify it. He sounded happy to engage with a discrete and concrete problem. He made her hang up so she could take a photograph of her own sketch and send it to him via the phone. Then he called her back.

  ‘I met a knife like that just recently,’ he said.

  ‘Met it? Met it how?’

  ‘Someone threw it at me.’

  ‘Are you sure it was the same kind?’

  ‘I had to cauterise the wound by setting fire to myself to stop it from bleeding.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kennedy admitted. ‘It was the same.’

  ‘It never occurred to me to chase the knife itself,’ Tillman said, sounding maybe a little unhealthily animated. ‘You see? This is why it’s better to have two minds on the problem.’

  Kennedy laughed in spite of herself. ‘But we’re both clueless,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Agreed. But I know someone. An engineer.’

  ‘An engineer? Tillman, my point is that the weapon’s origin might—’

  ‘He knows a lot about weapons. He’s a real oddball. His name is Partridge. Let me talk to him and get back to you.’

  Tillman hung up, and Kennedy gathered her things. Right then, she felt a sort of weird kinship with the mysterious Michael Brand. If he was involved in damage limitation, trying to corral a difficult, messy, intractable situation back under control, then so was she: compensating and correcting for other people’s mistakes, and her own; trying to find the one safe course through a minefield she had helped to lay. Then again, there might not even be a safe course.

  But she knew where she had to start.

  28

  ‘I don’t mean to be difficult,’ Ros Barlow said. ‘I just have a low tolerance for bullshit. Your colleague kept lying to me. And he wouldn’t stop, even when I asked him to point blank. So I told him to leave.’

  She cut a Danish pastry into slices, spaced them out on the plate with what Kennedy considered an obsessive-compulsive level of care. The plate bore the logo of the restaurant where they’d agreed to meet, in the City, a hundred yards or so from the Gherkin building where Ros worked: Caravaggio. It was an unfortunate choice, in several ways: the price was one, the unwelcome reminder of knife fights another.

  ‘I don’t think Sergeant Combes would have told you any outright lies,’ Kennedy answered, scrupulously. ‘But perhaps he didn’t give you the full picture.’

  Ros snorted. ‘He didn’t even give me the preliminary sketches. He came in with a lot of self-important blather about how the investigation was a lot wider now than it had been, and it was really important that he went over my earlier statements to make sure I hadn’t missed out anything … what was the word he used? … anything material. But when I asked what had happened to change things, he wouldn’t give a straight answer. I said I thought you were leading the case, and he laughed and said no. Just no – but as though he could say a lot more if he wanted to. I asked what no meant, and he tried to slap me down like a schoolgirl: that wasn’t really my concern, and he was there to go over my statements, and he only had a limited amount of time, and – this was the one that did it – if I cared about catching my brother’s murderer, I’d do as I was told and let him do his job. So then I dug my heels in.’

  Kennedy nodded. It wasn’t unpleasant at all to imagine that scene. ‘It’s true about the investigation getting wider,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. She told Ros about the other deaths – most of them anyway. She found herself skirting around what had happened to Harper. Ros had read abou
t it in the papers, though, and knew the rough shape of what Kennedy was leaving out.

  ‘Were you there?’ she asked. ‘When the other man died? This Constable Harper?’

  ‘I was there,’ Kennedy said. ‘Yes. Sarah Opie was the last member of your brother’s project team left alive. We didn’t know that when we got there, but it became clear as we talked. We decided to take her into protective custody, but we’d left it too late. They got her, too.’

  ‘Right in front of you,’ said Ros, looking at her searchingly.

  ‘Right in front of me,’ Kennedy agreed. She knew this was sympathy, not accusation, but it was still hard to keep her voice level, her emotions locked down. Ros seemed to see the strain she was under. She didn’t say any more about Harper.

  ‘Why go after Dr Opie just then?’ she asked instead. ‘After so long a wait, I mean? I thought the other deaths were all …’ She hesitated, leaving a gap for Kennedy to insert the technical term.

  ‘Clustered? Yes, they were. And I think the answer is that she died because we went to see her. It can’t have been a coincidence that the killers were there at the same time as us. They were watching us – either to figure out how much we knew or to fill the spaces in what they knew.’

  ‘Or both.’

  ‘Yes. Or both.’

  With admirable composure, Ros polished off half the Danish – three slices, each consumed in a mouthful, in the way people eat oysters, straight down. She touched the sticky tips of her fingers together.

  ‘So there’s more than one of them,’ she said. ‘Killers, plural, not one killer.’

  ‘I saw two,’ Kennedy told her. ‘And there’s a third man floating around in the background – the man your brother met as Michael Brand. We still don’t know what his role is, but it’s hard to believe it’s entirely innocent.’

  ‘And you don’t know why they did it? Why they killed Stu, and all these other people?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll come after me now?’

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ Kennedy admitted, frankly. ‘But I don’t think so. They didn’t come after you the last time we talked. If we’re right, and your brother’s research project is the key factor, the real link between the victims, then the only way you’d be at risk is if they thought you knew something. And for the moment, they seem to have decided that you don’t. Of course, we still don’t really have any idea what they’re trying to achieve – what their motive is. Until we know that, we can’t quantify the risk in any meaningful way.’