Ten minutes later she heard the sound of a footstep, the creak of a door, and felt a slight tremor go through the boat. Then the workshop door swung open and Mickey was standing there, wearing a black leather jacket and gloves. He glanced around the room.
‘Kathy, hi. What’s going on?’
She looked at his face, searching for some sign that she might have picked up before, but all she could see was the old Mickey, quiet, calm, self-possessed.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
‘Huh? I tracked your phone.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s been turned off. You tracked my chip, didn’t you? You’ve been tracking me all the time.’
He looked surprised for a brief moment, then gave a dismissive shrug. ‘So where’s Ollie Kovacs?’
‘I found a witness. Someone who saw Gudrun’s killer coming out of her boat that night. They got a clear view, and I showed them some pictures. They identified you, Mickey.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, they were very convincing.’
‘You’re crazy!’
‘Mickey Schaeffer, I’m arresting you for the murder of Gudrun Kite. You know the caution.’
He looked stunned. ‘Kathy!’
‘I want you to accompany me to Paddington police station where I shall formally lay charges.’
He stared hard at her, calculating. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. I think you’re sick.’ He nodded at her arm in the sling. ‘You’ve been through so much. It’s affected your judgement.’
‘We’ll see. You were on Gudrun’s boat that night, and the next morning you said nothing, and did your best to block my investigation. When did you really start working for Suzy Russell?’
‘Oh, Kathy . . .’
‘It won’t be hard to find out.’
He sighed, pulled a stool out from the bench and sat down. ‘She’s been looking for people to join her team. When she saw I’d got a computer science degree she approached me, a couple of months ago. I didn’t mention it to Brock at the time because I wasn’t sure it would come off.’
‘Did she want you to prove yourself? Was that it?’
He sighed. ‘She had a problem. She needed a job done by someone who was tech-savvy, but also could handle themselves, like a cop. She had a word to me.’
‘Go on.’
‘Gudrun Kite, or Vicky Hawke as she was calling herself, was being a naughty girl. She’d been downloading confidential documents from Paddington Security Services relating to the Raven project. She was going to pass them on to Ollie Kovacs and an outfit called Digital Anarchy, which would have been a disaster for Raven. Time was short. Someone had to go on board her boat that night and track down all the possible devices on which she might be storing the data and erase or remove them. So I agreed to do it.
‘It was all pretty straightforward. Gudrun had taken a big dose of sleeping pills and was out for the count. I was given a key, let myself in and carried out a sweep of the boat. She had a disc hidden behind a print of a raven, would you believe. And I took her phone and laptop and an external hard drive. That was it. Job done.’
‘She was alive?’
‘Sleeping like a baby.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About three.’
Kathy shook her head. ‘No, that doesn’t work. She was dead by four. How could the flue have come unstuck in that time?’
‘I don’t know. I got a hell of a shock when we got called out there the next morning.’
‘Also, you had to remove the microchip that she’d had implanted into her hand. You couldn’t do that while she was alive. That’s what Russell really needed, wasn’t it? Someone who could make a murder look like an accident. Who better than a homicide detective? Come on, Mickey. Let’s go.’
Schaeffer rose to his feet and stood blocking the doorway.
‘You’re making a fool of yourself, Kathy. You won’t be allowed to go through with this. There’s too much at stake. Raven is far more important than Gudrun Kite, or you and me for that matter.’
‘We’ll find out. Come on.’
He hesitated a moment, then glanced down at a hammer lying on the bench by his side. ‘Where is Ollie Kovacs, anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, it looks like you met him here and he went into one of his rages.’
Kathy watched Schaeffer’s hand close around the shaft of the hammer. As he raised it she said, ‘Put the hammer down, Mickey.’
‘Sorry, Kathy,’ he said. ‘I just can’t let you mess everything up.’ He came at her, reaching out his other hand to grab the front of her coat. As he did so she ducked, drew the ASP baton from her pocket and hit him hard across the knees. He roared in pain, and Kathy, eyes fixed on his right hand holding the hammer, didn’t see his left fist as it slammed into the side of her face. She fell to the floor, stunned, while he stood over her cursing, rubbing his leg.
‘Bitch,’ he gasped. ‘You’ve just made this a lot easier.’ He raised the hammer high above his head.
‘You’re under surveillance,’ she gasped.
He hesitated a second, then smiled, ‘Sure.’
‘The camera’s up there.’ She nodded desperately at the shelf. ‘It’s transmitting pictures back to the team.’
He turned his head and saw the lens, glinting in its hiding place, and swore softly, then dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Where’s the team?’
Kathy shook her head, transfixed by the expression of sheer hatred on his face. He grabbed her good arm and yanked it, dragging her half under the bench. He tugged a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket and locked her wrist to one of the bench legs, then got to his feet, kicking her savagely in the hip.
She’d made a terrible miscalculation, she realised. The important thing had been to get him to confess on video to what he’d done, but to do that she’d put herself in an impossibly vulnerable position. What had she been thinking? That he’d go easy on a woman with a broken shoulder? That she could subdue him with her baton the way she might a callow teenager?
She watched him as he peered cautiously at the camera from one side, then the other, pulling away the boxes beside it, while she looked around her for something, anything that she could use to defend herself with. She could see nothing within reach except a coil of wire half covered in a pile of shavings and cobwebs beneath the bench. Holding her breath, she eased her left hand out of the sling and stretched it out, slowly, painfully, until her fingers reached the wire and tugged it free, revealing a slim metal tube attached to one end of the coil. She had seen an illustration of something like this before, a blasting cap, such as Desmond Kite would have used to detonate Ollie’s dynamite. The bomb squad must have missed it when they cleared the explosives from the benchtop. She drew it back into her sling, closing the fabric around it.
Above her, Schaeffer gave a grunt, lifting the camera down onto the bench and peering at it. Kathy began to shift upright into a squatting position, and froze as he turned on her.
‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded. ‘Not from tech support.’
He turned back to the camera and began to open it up.
Kathy eased herself shakily to her feet and placed the coil on the workbench, then, leaning over towards Schaeffer, took the detonator tube and slipped it into the belt at the back of his jacket.
‘This isn’t transmitting anything,’ he said. ‘This is just an ordinary video camera.’
He turned and saw Kathy sprawled across the bench as she tried to reach the electric socket above the bench with the other end of the wires. ‘What the hell do you think you’re—?’
Her shoulder was a burning agony as she jammed the leads in. There was a deafening bang, and she turned to Schaeffer and saw his mouth open in shock as he fell to the floor.
34
Commander Lynch groaned and reached for the mouse. He had been sitting at his desk with his face in his hands, eyes wide, staring through his fingers at Kathy’s video on
his computer.
‘Dear God. What are we going to do?’
Brock had spent some time thinking about that. Lynch had withheld vital information, repeatedly put Kathy in danger, and had planned to let a major felon escape justice. Brock could destroy Fred Lynch. But if he did, he would not be forgiven, and he too would probably be forced out. Alternatively, he could hold his hand, and work with a boss over whom he would now have some leverage.
‘What the hell do I do now?’
So Brock, seated on the other side of the desk, proceeded to tell him. First, a glass of ex-Commander Sharpe’s single malt, which had survived the change of administration. Then the list of interrogations and arrests—Superintendent Russell and her staff at DiSTaF, Vernon Montague and his staff at Pewsey, the Harvest Group.
‘I can’t do that,’ Lynch said, wincing. ‘Too many people signed up to it all.’
‘You must. We’ll draw up a plan together. The whole rotten applecart. It was a bad idea that got out of control. If you don’t act decisively now, you’ll go down with them.’
Lynch sipped morosely at Sharpe’s whisky. They sat in silence for a while. Then Brock said, ‘When’s Jack Bragg’s funeral?’
The change of tack threw Lynch for a moment. ‘Um, next Tuesday, I think.’
‘Mm. He said a funny thing to Kathy when he was holding her at his house in Sevenoaks. He told her that you were his little brother.’
Brock watched Lynch go rigid, clutching the whisky glass so tight it might have cracked.
‘She told me. She won’t tell anyone else.’
‘God, Brock,’ Lynch whispered. ‘Somebody warned me to get rid of you two when I took over. I should have listened to them.’
Brock chuckled.
‘Half-brothers,’ Lynch said finally. ‘Same mother, different fathers. Our parenting was what you’d call single-mother, multiple-partners. Jack was three years older than me, and he looked after me, kept me safe in the bad times. I wouldn’t have survived without him. I suppose I hoped that the microchip would be my way of looking after him, keeping a close eye on him without locking him up.’
‘You were going to let him get away?’
Lynch sighed. ‘I owed him that. I was going to tell him that I would know every step he took, wherever he was, and he must never come back.’
‘But you hadn’t told him.’
‘Not yet. We wanted him to lead us to his old cronies first. But it was impossible to control Jack.’ He took another sip. ‘You think they deliberately killed him at Pewsey? It wasn’t just a failed operation?’
‘Yes. I think they, or rather their bosses at Harvest, decided he was just too dangerous and unpredictable.’
‘Yes, that was Jack all right. So, what do you want, Brock?’
‘I want the very best care for Kathy. She has to have that bloody chip removed.’
Lynch nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘And I want to run my own cases with my own team without being micromanaged by you or D.K. Payne or anyone else.’
Lynch took a deep breath, grunted, ‘And?’
‘And I want you to clean up this mess.’
‘Raven?’
‘Nevermore. That’s all.’
‘That’s all . . .’ Lynch echoed gloomily. He stared at the image frozen on his screen, of Kathy standing over Mickey Schaeffer. ‘One-handed! She’s a piece of work, isn’t she? Is she all right?’
‘She’ll survive. So will Schaeffer, apparently, though he’ll never walk again. His spine is a mess.’
Kathy stepped into the bar, feeling exhausted and desperately in need of company and a drink before she headed home. She’d just heard from the surgeon that he would operate on her in the morning, if she still wanted to go ahead with it. She said she did.
The place was throbbing with sound, laughter, music. She made for a free stool at the counter and a man in front of her turned suddenly and thumped into her left arm. She gave a pained gasp and the man saw the empty left sleeve of her coat and blinked.
‘Oh hell, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’ She made to move on to the bar.
‘No, really, I’m so sorry.’
She looked at his face, pleasant, embarrassed, a bit of a tan, perhaps an Australian accent? ‘It’s nothing.’
‘But I should have looked. Let me buy you a drink at least.’
‘No thanks.’
‘I insist. I’ll buy you a drink and then I must go.’
She shrugged. ‘All right.’
She sat down on the stool and he stood beside her, gesturing to the bar staff.
‘What’ll you have?’
‘Scotch.’ Kathy unfastened her coat and he glanced down at her arm in the sling.
‘Ouch. How did you do that?’
The question seemed so ludicrous that she laughed.
‘I couldn’t begin to tell you.’
‘Long story?’
‘Too long.’
‘A saga.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘A saga, exactly.’
One of the barmen came over and he ordered her a double. ‘My name’s Justin by the way.’
She didn’t reply, thinking about Brock, wondering about how his meeting with Lynch was going. Then she registered his words and said, ‘I’m Kathy.’
‘Hello, Kathy.’ He checked his watch. ‘What do you think is the quickest way to the British Museum at this time? Should I try for a cab or the tube?’
‘A cab. But it’ll be closed, won’t it?’
‘Oh, there’s a late function that I’m supposed to be going to.’
Her drink came and Justin handed over a note, waited for the change.
‘Thanks,’ Kathy said. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers. You look as if you’ve had a hard day.’
‘A bit rough.’
‘What do you do?’
Usually she would say that she worked for the Home Office, or in human relations, but tonight she couldn’t be bothered. ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘Really?’ He looked again at her arm. ‘And you got that . . . ?’
She nodded.
‘Oh dear. Are you a detective?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, serious stuff? Murder?’
He saw the expression on her face. ‘Sorry. I had to ask. You see, I’ve just discovered a murder.’
She gave him a look.
‘Yes. A young man, probably about twenty. He’d been hit in the back of the neck, probably with an axe. I think it was a religious killing.’
‘Religious?’
‘Yes, I think so. Like an execution, but extrajudicial.’
Kathy couldn’t decide if he was having her on. ‘You reported it to the police?’
‘Yes, of course. You have to, don’t you? But they weren’t very interested.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, he died a long time ago. About seventeen hundred years ago.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘You’re an archaeologist or something.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Near St Albans—Verulamium—a Roman villa we’ve been excavating. I’m putting the date of the murder at around 304 AD.’
‘That’s very precise.’
‘Well, that’s when the Emperor Diocletian ordered all Christians to be persecuted, and Alban became the first Christian martyr in Britain. I’m guessing that my man was one of his followers . . .’
Kathy let him ramble on while her mind filled with flashbacks from the boat, the slight tilt in the floor when Mickey Schaeffer stepped aboard, the sudden look of clarity in his eyes when he decided that he was going to have to kill her.
‘Sorry, I’m boring you. I’ll say goodnight.’
‘Oh, okay. Thanks for the Scotch.’
He half turned away, then hesitated, looking suddenly embarrassed. ‘The thing is, we were saying only this morning how fantastic it would be if we could get a proper detective to help us interpret the
crime scene. I mean, was he killed there, behind the stables where he was buried, or had he been brought there from elsewhere? That kind of thing. We have a forensic anthropologist helping us, but a real-life detective might notice something. And I just thought, if you’re on sick leave and felt like an outing . . .’
Kathy laughed. ‘Well, I’ve heard a few lines in my time, Justin, but that’s original.’
He grinned back. ‘No, I didn’t mean—’
‘Actually, it does sound interesting.’
‘Really? Well look, I must go, but let me give you my card with my email address. Contact me if you’d like to know more.’
He hurried away and she examined the card. She’d been right, an address in Sydney. He seemed all right. She smiled to herself. Time to move on.
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