The Raven's Eye

by Barry Maitland

  The house phone rang, Brock perhaps. She picked it up, but a woman’s voice spoke.

  ‘Mrs Bragg? This is Marele from the Pewsey Clinic.’

  Kathy was astonished. How had they got this number? And why did they keep calling her that? She answered carefully, ‘Yes, Marele?’

  ‘Dr Partridge has asked me to phone you to arrange for you to come in to the clinic for a consultation. Can I arrange a car to come and pick you up?’

  ‘What, today? I have an appointment with him next week.’

  ‘He wants to see you earlier, because of a problem with your medications. Dr Partridge says it’s important.’

  Kathy thought about it. Perhaps this was to do with her memory loss. Maybe the medications were aggravating it.

  ‘Yes, all right. I’m down in Sussex at the moment, near the coast. I suppose I could get a train up to town . . .’ The timetable was lying in front of her.

  ‘Where does it come in?’

  ‘Charing Cross.’

  ‘I can arrange a car to meet you there and bring you out to Pewsey.’

  ‘That would help.’ Kathy was impressed. Perhaps her dark reflections on the clinic had been misplaced. She checked the timetable. ‘I could catch the train that gets in at eleven-oh-three this morning.’

  ‘Let’s see . . . Yes, Dr Partridge will be free for you at twelve. Someone will meet you at Charing Cross, under the clock. I’ll give you a number in case you need to contact us.’

  When she rang off Kathy thought, Oh well, nostalgia can wait. She might go on from the clinic to her flat to pick up a few things she needed. She checked her watch and set about getting ready. But how had they known to contact her on Suzanne’s home number? Brock, she thought. They must have phoned him.

  It was a pleasant journey, up through the Sussex and Kent countryside, and then across the south-east suburbs into the city. At Charing Cross she threaded her way among the crowds towards the clock suspended under the balcony, where she spotted a man in a black leather jacket holding a piece of cardboard on which the name MRS BRAGG was printed.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  He nodded at her and led the way out to the forecourt. He had the build and battered looks of a boxer, and there was something disturbingly familiar about him, but she couldn’t place it. The waiting car was a black Mercedes with tinted windows.

  The man held the passenger door open for her, then went around to the driver’s side. As she worked the buckle of the seat belt she was aware of him getting in beside her, and then of a sudden sharp prick on her right thigh. She looked round quickly and saw the needle, and just had time to think, Oh no, before the vehicles and people milling around outside the windscreen blurred and faded away.

  She woke gently, as after a very restful sleep, to find herself sitting in a comfortably solid padded chair in a well-appointed living room. She made to rub her face, but found that her right hand was fastened tight to the arm of the chair with a leather strap. Her left arm was also immobilised in the same way, as were her legs. She looked around the room, thinking that she recognised it, the dark timber door in front of her and the picture rail, the tasteful fabric of the curtains, the plump leather sofa . . . The plump leather sofa on which PC Lister had been lying with his throat cut.

  Kathy swallowed bile. Her eye went down to the carpet, where a rug lay across the place where his blood had spread. What was she doing here? A flutter of panic rose in her chest and she thought she might throw up.

  ‘You awake?’

  She twisted in her seat to see a man sitting behind her in an armchair. He put down the newspaper he was reading and came across to examine her face, the straps. He was the man who had met her at Charing Cross, the boxer.

  ‘I need a drink of water,’ Kathy said, voice croaky.

  He went out and returned with a cup of water which he held to her mouth. She gulped it down, coughed, and said, ‘I’m not Mrs Bragg. I’m a police officer. My name is Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla. I can give you a phone number to—’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, bored, and went back to reading his paper.

  After a while he got to his feet again and wandered out. Kathy tried to ease her right wrist out of the strap, but it was too tight. The man returned after ten minutes with a sandwich in his hand, and stared at her impassively as he chewed.

  ‘Have you met Mrs Bragg?’ Kathy tried, but he just walked past her to his chair, and a large TV on a unit to her right came to life with a sports channel. After perhaps an hour the man’s mobile began to play a tune and he switched the TV off.

  ‘Yep . . . Yeah . . . Okay.’

  The TV came on again, and when Kathy tried to speak to him he turned the volume up. After a little while he switched it off and went to the window, staring morosely out as if expecting someone. Suddenly he straightened and moved quickly to the door, closing it behind him. Kathy heard the crunch of wheels on gravel, the muffled sound of voices in the hall.

  Then the door in front of her swung open and Jack Bragg came limping into the room. Behind him, like a medieval torturer’s assistant displaying the instruments, a man with the physique of a bodybuilder was holding a leather apron and a meat cleaver.

  25

  In a fold of hills on the Kent–Sussex border, Brock pulled into a car park in front of a barn bearing a sign reading Coggins Lakes. He made his way round to the entrance to the barn and went inside. To one side was a small café, on the other a bait and tackle shop, and in front of him a counter at which a ruddy-faced man looked quizzically at the way he was dressed, in suit and tie.

  ‘Afternoon. Not here for the fishing, sir?’

  ‘No. I’ve come to meet one of your regulars—Mr Sharpe?’

  ‘Ah, Dominic, yes, he’s here, at North Lake.’

  The man produced a map showing a string of small lakes. ‘Probably at swim number eight or nine—those are his favourite spots.’ He marked the place with a cross and traced the path that Brock should follow. Brock thanked him, wondering what a ‘swim’ was.

  He set off on a woodland trail. The air was still, pleasantly warm in the sun, and the valley silent apart from the twitter of small birds and the distant murmur of a tractor. He skirted one lake, then another, seeing isolated anglers motionless among the trees that lined the shores. On the hillside beyond, a cluster of conical oast house roofs stood out against the sky.

  The former commander, wearing boots, coat and hat, was sitting in a folding chair at the water’s edge, surrounded by a surprising array of angling gear, intently studying a patch of dark water a little way off.

  ‘Any luck?’

  Sharpe swung round and jumped to his feet. ‘Brock, good to see you.’

  He moved with a sprightly energy, his face fresh with healthy colour, not at all the gloomy, grey-faced spectre he had become towards the end. Brock imagined him in those interminable meetings at headquarters, dreaming of afternoons by the lake just like this.

  ‘What are you after?’

  ‘Carp or wels catfish. Carp mainly. I caught a forty-two-pounder last week.’

  ‘Good heavens, a monster.’

  ‘Oh, the catfish go up to seventy-five, would you believe.’

  Perhaps this was the perfect pastime for an old copper, Brock thought, both hunter and executioner, with not a lawyer in sight to get in the way.

  ‘I’m stiff from sitting here,’ Sharpe said. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

  ‘You’re looking really well,’ Brock said, stopping himself with difficulty from saying ‘sir’.

  ‘It’ll take me a while, so I’m told, to really disengage, but I must admit I haven’t missed a thing. You should try it.’ He shot Brock a shrewd glance. ‘According to all the press reports, Fred Lynch has been achieving miracles. So how are you finding the new regime?’

  ‘Exactly as you predicted, Dominic.’ There, he’d used the first name. He’d called him Dominic once before, when things had been getting a bit fraught, but it felt unnatural, vaguely improper.

>   ‘Tell me all.’ He gave a greedy little lick of his lips. ‘Strictly between these four hills, of course.’

  So Brock told him about Lynch’s obsession with Bragg, his need to micromanage everybody’s activities and his budget stringencies.

  ‘Oh, the budget I can understand,’ Sharpe said with a benign smile at a passing cloud. ‘Not of his making. Severe pressure from above.’

  ‘He believes that the cuts are an opportunity to move faster towards some radical new form of policing.’

  ‘What kind of new form?’

  ‘I’m not sure, except that it will be heavily into ICT.’

  ‘Ah! Suzy Russell!’

  ‘Yes. You know about her?’

  ‘Of course. Have they made DiSTaF public yet?’

  ‘Yes, it’s up and recruiting, and seems to have played a key part in tracking Bragg.’

  ‘Lynch and Russell have been grooming each other for a while now. That’s where your vision of the future is coming from. You’ll find that Suzy Russell’s budget is ring-fenced—except that you won’t, because I’ll bet it isn’t published. I got a glimpse of it once, DiSTaF’s five-year budget plan, and it was pretty impressive. She’s persuaded a lot more people than Lynch that she’s the future.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘As for Bragg . . .’ Sharpe paused, gazing across the lake to where another angler could be seen wrestling a large fish ashore. ‘Well I’m blowed. Geoff Warrender! And I was sure my swims were the only viable ones at this time of year. The bloody man’ll be impossible now.’

  So there was a downside to anglers’ paradise. Brock waited while Sharpe stood there, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Yes, Bragg’s been the focus of everything since Lynch took over, almost as if he’s turned the whole command into a vehicle for some personal campaign.’

  Sharpe nodded, refocusing. ‘Interesting. There was a rumour, years ago, when Lynch came up for a promotion, that he was connected in some way with Bragg.’

  ‘Connected?’

  ‘Mm. Not corruptly, necessarily, and I doubt there’ll be anything on the record, but something . . . maybe personal? I don’t know.’

  They strolled around a copse of wintry silver birch, talking, exchanging information, until there was nothing more to say. When they got back to Sharpe’s fishing spot they shook hands.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t give you anything more concrete, Brock. My advice is, keep your head down. These storms will pass.’ Brock nodded and said, ‘So what do you do with forty-two pounds of carp?’

  Sharpe made a face. ‘I usually throw it back. Taste’s pretty foul, Penny can’t stand it, refuses to cook it. The dogs love it, of course.’

  ‘Who the hell is this?’ Bragg stood in front of Kathy, glaring down at her.

  The boxer frowned. ‘Er, it’s your missus, Mr Bragg.’

  ‘No it’s not!’

  ‘I am a police officer, Jack,’ Kathy said calmly, although the sound of his voice was sending panic signals thumping through her. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla. I advise you to release me immediately.’

  Bragg rounded on the boxer, who backed away a step, holding up his hands. ‘I just did as I was told, boss. She met me at Charing Cross, blonde lady, just like you said.’

  ‘You searched her?’

  The boxer shook his head.

  ‘Well do it now!’

  Kathy held Bragg’s eyes as the boxer groped her, handing her wallet to Bragg, who swore again as he opened it and saw her ID. He thought for a moment, then waved the third man over and took the cleaver from him. Then he moved to the side of Kathy’s chair and pulled the little finger of her right hand flat against the arm, positioning the blade over the knuckle. ‘Who’s your boss?’

  ‘DCI Brock, Homicide and Serious Crime.’

  ‘And who’s his boss?’

  ‘Commander Lynch.’

  Bragg stared at her. ‘Bastard!’ he swore softly, spittle dribbling down his chin. Kathy had the impression he wasn’t referring to her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was here in the house when you came back that night, impersonating your wife. You broke my collarbone with that . . .’ She stared at the cleaver suspended over her hand.

  ‘No, it was her, I recognised her perfume.’

  ‘I found that upstairs in your bedroom when I arrived, and helped myself.’

  For a long moment Kathy held her breath, watching the anger burn in his eyes. Then he muttered, ‘Go on.’

  ‘They sent me to the Pewsey Clinic, hoping you would try to get to me there. I was registered as Patsy Bragg . . .’

  ‘That bastard!’ Bragg repeated.

  ‘. . . so when the clinic phoned me this morning and asked for Mrs Bragg I just said yes. How did you get my phone number? Someone at the clinic gave it to you?’

  But Bragg wheeled away, thrusting the cleaver back at the other man.

  The boxer said, ‘What’ll we do, boss?’

  ‘I need to think,’ Bragg muttered. ‘I’m going to take a swim. Put her in the cellar.’

  ‘Let me come to the pool,’ Kathy said quickly. ‘Maybe I can help you work this out.’

  Bragg looked at her, then shrugged. ‘All right.’ He nodded to the others. ‘Carry her down in the chair.’

  The pool room was a lavish space, with a twenty-metre pool, a bar, sun lounges and gym equipment with a view out over the garden. They heaved Kathy in and set her up against one wall. She felt both vulnerable and absurd on her throne. When Bragg came in, wearing trunks and a white robe, he barked, ‘Move her to the edge and tip her in if she gives any trouble.’ Then he threw off the robe and dived in.

  As Kathy watched him furiously ploughing up and down the length of the pool she tried to work out what had happened. Why was Bragg here? Surely not on bail. Had he escaped from custody? And wouldn’t they then at least come and check his home? She tried to think of some angle she could use, but all she could think of was his impulsive anger and violent paranoia. He finally came to a stop and, as he stretched to haul himself up the steps, she noticed something that made her think.

  He wrapped himself in the robe and took a towel from the boxer and rubbed his head. Then he threw the towel back at the man and said, ‘Sorry, love, you’re going to have to disappear.’

  ‘That’s not a good idea,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Best I can come up with.’ He went over to a table and picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit up and began to murmur to the boxer, who leaned close to him to listen.

  ‘How did you get that mark on your back?’ Kathy said loudly.

  Bragg paused, but didn’t turn round.

  ‘It was at the clinic, wasn’t it? Did they tell you what they’d done to you?’

  He turned and stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Kathy saw the hint of angry suspicion in his eye and wondered how far she could push this. ‘They did it to you while you were under, didn’t they? And it hurt for a couple of days, didn’t it?’

  He took a step towards her, his expression torn between irritation and doubt. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because they did it to me too.’

  ‘So? It was an injection, that’s all.’

  ‘Hell of a big needle. Like an epidural, my own doctor said later, when he had a look at it, only in the wrong place. Directly behind the heart.’

  Bragg stiffened and like a reflex his hand came up to his heart, as if to reassure himself that it was still beating. ‘Go on. What did your doctor think?’

  ‘He couldn’t make it out. But I’ll tell you something else. Remember your mate Ashur Najjar? He was hurt when you bombed Fantasyland, and taken to . . . where do you think? The Pewsey Clinic. Then he was released, and they followed him here and supposedly shot him dead right out the front here.’

  ‘What do you mean, supposedly?’

  ‘I’ve seen the post-mortem report. The shots weren’t fatal. But when the regular pathologist opened him up
, another doctor, one brought in specially, insisted on removing his heart.’ She watched Bragg’s eyes widen. ‘It was taken away. No one’s seen it since.’

  As a hastily woven conspiracy theory, Kathy thought it painfully thin, and yet it had the ring of improbable truth, because of course much of it was true.

  ‘You’re making this up.’ Bragg had fixed her with a mad stare. Without looking away he said, ‘Bennie, throw the witch in the pool.’ The boxer took a step forward.

  ‘I wish I was making it up, Jack,’ Kathy said quickly. ‘You see, I think that you and I, like Ashur, have seen too much. I think it would suit a few important people if we both suffered fatal heart attacks in the not too distant future. Don’t you?’

  Bragg glared at her for a moment, then stretched out his hand to the boxer. ‘Give us your knife.’ The man took a long flick-knife from his pocket and handed it over. Bragg took it and the blade sprang open. He advanced on Kathy, walking round behind her so that she couldn’t see what he was doing. She winced as she felt the cold blade slide down the back of her neck, then there was a sudden rip of cloth as Bragg sliced down through her jumper and shirt to expose her back. In a mirror on the far side of the pool she watched him stare at her back, then raise his eyes to the ceiling and give an angry roar. ‘Freddy! I’ll kill you!’

  Freddy? Freddy Lynch? Kathy said, ‘You know Fred Lynch, do you, Jack?’

  ‘Know him?’ he bellowed. ‘He’s my treacherous little fucking brother!’

  26

  As he was driving back up to London, Brock’s phone rang. There was background noise on the line and he didn’t recognise the caller’s voice. The man repeated his name. ‘Desmond Kite, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Oh, Professor Kite, how are you?’