The Dead Sea Deception

by Adam Blake

  Since she didn’t offer him the key, he tried to take it from between her fingers. She slapped his hand away, hard.

  ‘It’s not negotiable, Kennedy.’

  She folded her arms, putting the key well out of reach. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. I promised Ros I’d keep this low profile. I’m happy to cut you in, if that’s what it takes. But we go under the radar. If we find something, fine. Then we come back, we open it to the team, and we decide how we’re going to play it. Until then, nobody hears word one about this. Nobody else dies on my watch, Combes.’

  He let out a loud, pissed-off sigh, rubbing the back of his neck as he stared at her hard: a stare that said, ‘What the hell am I going to do with you?’ Kennedy felt a strong urge to bring her knee up into his crotch, but realised with regret that this might not be the best time. Particularly as they were now deep into a mutually incriminating discussion as to the best way to falsify the case file. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then we do this. We go down there together – but we tell Stanwick before we go. He doesn’t write it up, but he knows where we are in case this goes tits-up on us.’

  Kennedy pondered this – particularly the ‘we’ and the ‘together’. It stuck in her throat like a fishbone, but there seemed no way of cutting Combes out now that he knew about the farmhouse and the key. And it seemed as though, in his own patronising way, he was trying to do the right thing. The plural pronoun couldn’t have been any easier for him than it was for her.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I agree. But Stanwick has to keep it quiet. If he goes to Summerhill as soon as we’re out the door, he gets a brownie point, we get to stand in the corner and Ros Barlow maybe gets her throat cut or a bullet in the head. Are you sure you can get him to keep his mouth shut?’

  ‘Stanwick wouldn’t fart without my blessing,’ Combes assured her. ‘He’s a total arse-licker. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.’

  Combes led the way back up the stairs. Kennedy was tempted to ask why he employed the same tactics with Summerhill that he despised in Stanwick, but she didn’t want to endanger the precarious understanding they seemed to have reached.

  Stanwick was still in the bear pit, as it turned out working his way through another list of European hotels that might once have welcomed Michael Brand as a guest. He had his phone to his ear and was in the middle of a loud and probably bilingual conversation.

  ‘Well, is there anybody there who can speak … No, is there anybody there who speaks English a little better than … What? No, I know you can speak English, sir, but your accent … If I could speak with …’

  Combes made a hang-up-the-phone gesture. Stanwick only hesitated for a moment. Then he dropped the handset back into its cradle and made an obscene gesture. ‘Screw it,’ he said. ‘There’s no way this guy uses the same name twice.’

  ‘You might get lucky,’ Combes said, consolingly. ‘Listen, Stanwick, Kennedy got a lead from Barlow’s sister. She needs someone to go check it out with her.’

  Kennedy wouldn’t have gone so far as to say she needed Combes, but she looked out of the window and kept her own counsel as he explained to Stanwick about Dovecote Farm. Stanwick really seemed not to get it. He obviously felt that if Combes was going to drive down to Surrey in pursuit of a lead, the privilege of riding shotgun belonged to him. He didn’t say that: it was just implicit in the way he kept asking – with only slight variations in wording – what he should say if anyone asked him about this, given that he didn’t really know anything about it.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kennedy said, breaking in at last. ‘You say nothing. It’s not in the file yet, Stanwick, okay? It doesn’t exist yet. That’s the point.’

  ‘And if it turns out to be nothing,’ Combes agreed, in a more emollient tone, ‘then it never did exist. No harm, no foul. But if there’s something to it, then we all share the glory. Equal split, twenty-five per cent each.’

  ‘Three times twenty-five is only seventy-five,’ Stanwick objected.

  Combes shrugged. ‘DCI gets his cut, obviously. Look, Stanwick, we just need an anchor here, that’s all. If everything goes okay, we’re back before the end of the afternoon and nobody’s the wiser. Then we write it up so it happens in real time, take the treasure to Jimmy. Everybody’s happy. But if we hit trouble, if we go off the grid for any reason, you know where we are.’

  ‘Yeah, but how do I know?’ Stanwick said. ‘How does this not come back on me?’

  ‘Note on the desk,’ said Kennedy, writing it as she spoke on the top sheet of his scribble pad. ‘Keep it in your pocket. Find it if someone tries to call us and we don’t answer.’ She gave Stanwick the note, which read, Dovecote Farm. Following up information from civilian informant. ‘Okay? So you’re off the hook whatever happens.’

  ‘But nothing is going to happen,’ Combes added. ‘And most likely there’s nothing down there in the first place. We’ve just got to tick it off.’

  Stanwick gave in finally, managing to get his puppy dog stares of reproach under some degree of control, and they hit the road. They took Combes’s car, a smoke-grey Vectra V6, and he held open the passenger door for her with cold courtesy. Kennedy ignored it and climbed into the back seat.

  ‘Fine,’ Combes said.

  ‘For the first few miles,’ Kennedy told him. ‘I don’t care how stupid it looks. I’m trying to be invisible on this.’ She lay down across the back seat, and drew her mac – brought along for the purpose – over herself. If anyone was watching the street ramp, she’d look like nothing much: a payload of old laundry or a rolled tarp in the back of the car.

  Combes started the V6 and eased it into motion. Kennedy closed her eyes and willed herself into immobility. She found that she didn’t mind the cramped conditions, but lying down across the back seat stirred potent memories. It gave her the feeling of being a child again, surrendering to a journey defined by omnipotent others. She sat up after ten minutes or so, and when Combes stopped for a longer-than-usual red light she took the opportunity to switch into the front passenger seat.

  Kennedy would have bet money that Combes would turn out to be the boy-racer type she so despised, but in fact he was a reasonably safe driver, staying just above the speed limit most of the time and not using the siren at all, even on a couple of occasions when she might have been tempted herself. Maybe he was on his best behaviour on her account.

  They didn’t talk much until they got out of the city. Combes gave most of his attention to manoeuvring through the traffic, and when it thinned out seemed to be taken up with his own thoughts. Kennedy was more than happy to leave him there. She checked the rear-view once or twice a minute, making sure there were no vehicles hanging in their wake, following them south.

  Once they hit the A3, Combes took a glance at the petrol gauge, flicked it with his thumbnail. ‘That moron Stanwick left the tank three-quarters empty,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to fill up.’

  ‘Fine,’ Kennedy said. ‘I’ll see if I can pick us up an ordnance survey map. Ros wrote some directions, but they’re a bit vague.’

  They drove on in silence for a while and then Combes pulled in at a service station that called itself Travellers’ Haven: big words for a breezeblock shack and three petrol pumps. While Combes filled up, she went to the small pay kiosk and asked if they sold maps. The adolescent on the other side of the counter shook his head rapidly, wide-eyed, as if she’d asked whether he had any kiddie porn or hard drugs.

  She bought some chewing gum and headed back to the car. When she was almost there, Combes hung up the pump and stared at his two hands, raised in front of his face. ‘Can you get this?’ he asked. ‘I’m drenched here. Damn thing leaked.’

  Kennedy went back to the kiosk and handed her credit card across the counter. ‘Number three,’ she said. She was tapping in her PIN when the sound of the car engine coughing to life made her stop and turn round again. Combes was pulling out of the forecourt, back into the traffic, already moving fast.

  ‘Son of a bi
tch!’ Kennedy yelled.

  She started to run, but then slowed and stopped again immediately. There was no way she could catch up to him: the car was almost out of sight already.

  Combes had had time to think it out and he’d decided that he didn’t need the key to the door at Dovecote – just the address, which she’d already given him. And he didn’t need her. He knew she couldn’t complain at being cut out of the action: the only way to drop any heat on him was to draw it down on herself, too. She couldn’t even call anyone in Division and ask for a rescue.

  With that realisation came another.

  Tillman.

  She dialled the new number – the one she’d jotted down on her wrist. Tillman didn’t pick up and there was no voicemail option, but as Kennedy was pacing backwards and forwards on the narrow forecourt, trying to come up with a plan B, he rang her back. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was working on something. What’s up? Are you at the farm yet?’

  ‘Nowhere near.’ She told him about Combes’s double-cross, steeling herself for some bitingly sarcastic put-down. She knew how stupid she’d been – first of all letting Combes drive and then falling in with his half-arsed stitch-up like a trained puppy. But Tillman took it in his stride.

  ‘You want to leave him to it?’ he asked.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Well, he’s in your team, right? Anything he gets, he’ll pass on to you. Maybe the best bet is to let him get on with it. We can always go back and have a skirmish around later, if we think he’s missed anything.’

  ‘No.’ Kennedy had the decency to feel ashamed, considering how ready she’d been to cut Tillman out of this find, but she knew she was better at reading a scene than Combes was on the best day of his life, and the thought of him getting to open up the Dovecote treasure chest by himself was more than she could bear. ‘We can’t stop Combes from getting there first, but I really want to get the measure of this place now, while it’s fresh. And the way things are in the department, I wouldn’t get the clearance to come out here once it’s reported in. This might be my only chance.’

  Again, Tillman didn’t waste any time arguing the point. ‘Okay. I’ll grab a car and come out and get you. Where are you?’

  She told him where to find the Travellers’ Haven, and he hung up with a curt ‘See you soon.’

  She had ample time to wonder, as she waited, what he meant by grabbing a car. Forty minutes later, when he turned up in a fourteen-wheeler, caparisoned in bright green and yellow livery, she had her answer.

  They were driving down to Dovecote Farm in a stolen truck.

  32

  About forty minutes after Kennedy and Combes left, the phone on Kennedy’s desk in the bear pit started to ring.

  Stanwick was still in the room, along with McAliskey and a few DCs, who were busy with their own stuff. They all ignored the phone, and it cut off after a while as the call diverted to Kennedy’s voicemail. Then it rang again. This procedure was repeated five or six times.

  Nobody else seemed to be keen to take a message, but it occurred to Stanwick that it might be Kennedy herself calling in. Maybe they needed a third man after all or they wanted him to call in forensic or IT support. Maybe they just wanted to check the address or needed him to get some kind of clearance from the DCI.

  Finally, he picked up.

  ‘Hello?’

  A cultured, slightly foreign-sounding voice said, ‘I need to speak with Sergeant Kennedy, please.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Whitehall exchange. Sergeant Kennedy can verify the number, and my ID: alpha zebra seventeen.’

  Stanwick was impressed. Whitehall exchange meant MI5, most likely, although it could also be one of the parliamentary intelligence liaisons making an enquiry on behalf of a government committee or quango. It could even be Downing Street. However you cut it, it was serious.

  ‘Sergeant Kennedy is away from her desk,’ Stanwick said. ‘I’m DC Peter Stanwick. Can I help?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Is Sergeant Kennedy working a case right now?’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘The Barlow murder.’

  ‘Umm … I’m not really at liberty to answer that, sir.’

  ‘If it’s the Barlow murder, there’s nothing in the case file to indicate where she’s gone or what she’s doing.’

  Stanwick was even more impressed now. Whoever he was talking to, the guy had stratospheric clearance: real-time access to case files was a privilege given to very few people outside of Division. You more or less had to be God or a close personal friend of his. Suddenly Stanwick’s own position – right in the Whitehall line of fire – was starting to look a little invidious.

  ‘It’s … something that just came up,’ he said. ‘Suddenly. She and DS Combes decided to check it out right away, and I’m … I’m updating the case file now.’

  ‘Please do so,’ the other man said, curtly. ‘It’s possible that Sergeant Kennedy and Sergeant … Combes, did you say? … are walking into an operation we already have set up. That would be far from desirable and we’d want to do our best to head them off if there’s still time.’

  ‘I’ll make the entry right now,’ Stanwick promised. ‘The refresh might take five minutes or so, but—’

  ‘I’m not concerned about the refresh. Thank you for your assistance, DC Stanwick. We’ll refer to the file – and I hope it won’t be necessary to call again.’

  Stanwick hoped that too, very fervently. He cursed Combes for putting him in this stupid position, and himself for agreeing to be the fig leaf on their balls-out privateering. He updated the file to indicate that they were at Dovecote Farm, near Godalming, Surrey, pursuant to a suggestion made by Rosalind Barlow in a couriered package delivered at 11.20 a.m. After a moment’s hesitation, he timelined the entry at 1.43 p.m. Bastards already had him, if they wanted him. But he was far from the epicentre of whatever shitstorm was coming, and if he kept his head down he might not even get wet.

  Kuutma put the phone down and thought.

  It was very fortunate that he’d had his people set up a visual feed from the Detective Division at New Scotland Yard, which included in its field of vision the desk at which the rhaka, Kennedy, spent most of her time. When she disappeared from the feed, but failed to emerge from the building (the followers assigned to her would have reported contact), his suspicions were aroused. He had waited for almost three quarters of an hour – she could be elsewhere in the building, even though the rest of the inquiry team had all been accounted for – but finally he’d reached a decision and made the call. He was devoutly grateful that he had.

  He called Mariam and gave her the glad tidings. Her failure to make a kill on her previous deployment, against Tillman on the ferry, had left her distressed and ashamed, and her team demoralised. It was part of Kuutma’s duty to consider the heft and the sharpness of the tools he used, and to whet them, wherever he could, against the rough edges of the world.

  This would be good for them. They would take it for a blessing, which it was.

  33

  ‘It’s here,’ Kennedy said. ‘The next left. Look, there’s the sign.’

  Even in the gathering dusk, it was impossible to miss the sign. About three miles out from the last village they’d come through, it looked exactly as Ros Barlow had described it: the golden wing rising from the ‘D’ of Dovecote in a ridiculous, melodramatic flourish, reducing the whole effect to bathos. The squat, thatched building and scatter of tumbledown barns beyond couldn’t live up to that bombastic declaration. You needed the god Hermes descending out of a clear sky, maybe on wires.

  The gravel drive in front of the farmhouse was far too short for the truck. Combes’s grey Vauxhall Vectra was immediately visible, parked right out in front of the building in defiance of good search protocols and common sense. With the driveway blocked, Tillman swung to the right and drove over waist-high weeds to a broad open space to the right of the main building, where he rolled to a halt. Kennedy looked around for Combes,
but it seemed that he was still inside. That meant he’d found something: he’d had at least a half-hour’s start on them and had probably made better time on the roads. So whatever else it was, it seemed unlikely that Dovecote Farm was a dead end.

  Fighting down her excitement, Kennedy got out of the cab. She scanned the ground. Apart from the gravel bed, the whole space around and between the farmhouse and its satellite buildings had become overgrown with weeds and scrub: no way to tell if tyre prints or footprints lay under there, although if the weather had been wetter she might have knelt down, parted the weeds and taken a look.

  The farmhouse and the overgrown fields around it were absolutely silent. And there were no other houses or farm buildings in sight. Dovecote itself had half a dozen derelict-looking barns and outhouses, which crowded close around the main building like conspirators. If Barlow had set up this site as a secret base camp for his Rotgut project, he’d chosen his ground well. He’d also left no trace behind him: to judge by appearances, they – and Combes, of course – might be the first people to come here in ten years or more.

  The farmhouse looked both dilapidated and deserted. All the windows but one had crude particle board shutters nailed over them. The one that was visible was broken. The wood of the window frames was scabrous with peeling paint, and a decorative porch roof over the front door had fallen in on itself like a dropsied stomach.

  Tillman stepped down out of the truck on the driver’s side, and, like Kennedy, stayed still for a moment or two. Where she checked the ground for sign, he scanned the outhouse buildings, presumably looking for any signs of life. He gave her a look, shrugged, shook his head very slightly and headed for the door. Kennedy fell in behind him.