Hunter Hunted

by Jack Gatland

  They had murdered Kendis Taylor in Malcolm Gladwell’s family mausoleum.

  Now he had to work out whether it was by Gladwell himself.

  In fact, if Declan had waited another ten minutes he could have asked him, because no sooner had he gone before Malcolm Gladwell entered Brompton Cemetery like a man possessed. Wide eyed and desperate, he ran to his Mausoleum, pulling out his key as he did so. His day had taken a turn for the worse when he received a notification that his motion alarm had been broken. Looking at the building as he arrived, however, he could see that this was apparently because a branch had fallen from the tree above and pulled out the wire. On a normal day, Gladwell might have accepted this, but today was different. He stared at the large metal key in his hand, wondering whether Kendis had copied the key that she’d stolen from him, the one he now had back in his hand; but with the cemetery opening earlier now, anyone could have entered.

  Entering the mausoleum now, Gladwell paused. Someone had moved the cross on the table. He wasn’t sure, and the last time he’d been in here he’d been distracted, but it was angled away from the door, as if replaced haphazardly. Grabbing it, he levered the tombstone away, revealing the antique safe behind it.

  His father had told him about the safe one night years earlier, explaining the story behind it, and how his father, Gladwell’s grandfather, had positioned the safe in the mausoleum. And, in a world where digital technology was constantly hacked, the thought of an analogue hideaway was something Gladwell could really get behind.

  The safe was closed, and for a moment Gladwell believed he was just being paranoid, that everything was okay, however the voice in the back of his head told him he should check just in case, and so he twisted the dial; first to the T, then the O…

  When he finished, he realised the door hadn’t opened. Worried that he’d made a mistake during the eleven letter code, he tried again. And a third time. And then he fell to his knees, pulling at his hair.

  Someone had changed the combination.

  Which meant that someone had opened the safe which meant that someone had learned everything.

  Turning and walking silently out of the mausoleum, he pulled out his phone, dialling a number. With Kendis and Harrison dead and Baker scared of his own shadow, there was only one person who could have done this.

  He needed to get ahead of this, and fast.

  29

  CSI: Chelsea

  Billy hadn’t expected to return to Will Harrison’s apartment so quickly.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Frost said with a frown, pulling on his white PPE suit as he did so. ‘Let me guess. You’ve never really been to a solid, gory crime scene before?’

  ‘It’s not that at all. It’s that I was just here,’ Billy replied, pulling on his own PPE suit, zipping it up as he stared through the door at the bodies of Will Harrison and Laurie Hooper. He had been in that very room speaking to Harrison less than two hours earlier.

  ‘What do we have?’ Frost asked a forensics officer, a tall, elderly looking man as they walked past. ‘Give us the basics.’

  The officer paused, pulling off his mask. Billy didn’t recognise him, but then the only forensics he really knew were on the run or back at Temple Inn.

  ‘Name?’ he asked.

  ‘DI Frost, this is DC Fitzwarren.’ Frost seemed unimpressed at being called out, and had been miserable as sin since they’d arrived. ’And you?’

  The forensics officer equally didn’t look impressed at the DI in front of him as he pulled his hood off, running a gloved hand through his short, white hair. Billy went to comment on this, but then stopped; he didn’t think that commentating that the gloves were now compromised was the right thing to do in this scenario.

  ‘Brightman, Forensic Scene Investigator,’ he replied. ‘I don’t have a fancy rank like you, Detective Inspector. What I do have is years of experience on crime scenes, so giving ‘basics’, as you asked for isn’t really within my remit.’

  ‘We’re happy for more detailed explanations,’ Billy quickly interjected. Brightman sniffed at this.

  ‘We think that Mrs Hooper here visited and then fought with Mister Harrison, in the process stabbing him mortally in the chest with a letter opener, but not before he’d tasered her several times with the customised torch.’ He showed the taser torch, still in Harrison’s dead hand. ‘Probably got a few shots in on her before he died, enough to cause her an immense coronary spasm in the process.’

  ‘A what?’ Frost looked to Billy.

  ‘A massive heart attack,’ the younger man replied. ‘Basically Laurie Hooper killed Will Harrison, but he killed her too.’ He looked down at the bodies. ‘Which morbidly is good for us, I suppose.’

  ‘How in God’s name is this good for us?’ Frost exclaimed. Billy pointed at the letter opener, still in Will Harrison’s chest.

  ‘If she’d escaped alive, we’d most likely be blaming DI Walsh for this as well,’ he said. ‘I’d stake my salary on betting that’s a Montblanc letter opener with a metal Ruthenium finish. DC Davey sent me the reports for Kendis Taylor’s death and she believed that was the murder weapon.’

  ‘DC Davey’s an idiot,’ snapped Frost. ‘She couldn’t solve a crime scene if we gave her the answers.’ He stared down at the bodies. ‘So say for a moment that the same blade killed Kendis Taylor. How did Laurie Hooper get it?’

  ‘She might not have arrived with it,’ Brightman spoke up now, standing by the sideboard. ‘There’s a Montblanc box here, and a receipt from a year ago. Bought with a card, but I’m pretty sure the number will match one Will Harrison owns.’

  ‘Leave the detective work to the detectives, okay?’ Frost was visibly agitated. Billy watched him.

  ‘Did you know either of the victims, sir?’ Billy asked. Frost went to snap back, but stopped himself.

  ‘I’ve worked with Harrison before,’ he admitted softly. ‘When I was undercover, of course.’

  ‘Sorry for your loss,’ Billy replied, leaning over the bodies again. ‘So Laurie visits Will, which could match considering that last night she was saved from being questioned by Anjli and Bullman by him.’ He looked around the room. ‘She comes back here this morning, after I visited…’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Brightman asked.

  ‘Because he wasn’t dead then,’ Billy replied.

  ‘She may not have killed him, but she might still have been in the apartment,’ Brightman suggested. ‘Perhaps they were having an affair?’

  ‘No, she was sleeping with—‘ Frost stopped himself. ‘That is, the rumours were that she was sleeping with someone else. Possibly Malcolm Gladwell.’

  ‘The MP? That’s a bit soap opera, isn’t it?’ Billy looked back to the box on the sideboard. ‘So either way, she’s here or she comes in later. They have a row, and they fight. She grabs a letter opener from a box on the sideboard. He grabs a taser device that frankly shouldn’t be allowed.’

  ‘He works in politics,’ Frost was examining the torch now, his blue gloves glowing with a blue light as the end of the taser torch sparked. ‘I’ve seen people carry worse. You never know the crazies you meet out there.’

  He stood up. ‘Bloody idiot.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If you’re right, he should have taken her down well before she stabbed him. One shot is enough to restrain. He could have called—well, he should have called for help.’

  ‘Not if it was a surprise attack,’ Billy replied. ‘They were talking, she stabbed him, he got a shot in before he died.’

  ‘Multiple shots,’ Brightman added. ‘If he did do this, he spent a good minute repeatedly tasering her before he bled out.’

  Billy stepped back, looking around. ‘Well, there’s one thing this proves,’ he said. ‘If that’s the same weapon, Declan Walsh didn’t kill Kendis, but Will Harrison might have. When I spoke to him, he admitted he had a key for Brompton Cemetery, so he could have been in there that night.’

  ‘We need to see where Harr
ison was on that night,’ Frost reluctantly admitted. ‘But I’m not counting Walsh out of anything until we have him under questioning.’

  Billy nodded, staring down at the bodies. There was something wrong here, out of kilter, as if someone had placed them in this way. Just like Kendis Taylor had been placed back in Brompton Cemetery.

  Frost walked out of the apartment and Billy ran to catch him up.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked quietly. Frost looked to him, as if weighing up whether he could speak.

  ‘Look, Guv, I’ve already shown my loyalty to the department,’ Billy added. ‘And if Monroe comes back, I’m first out the door. So I’m tied to you, no matter what. So explain what the issue is.’

  Frost looked back to the room. ‘I saw her enter,’ he mumbled. ‘I saw you leave, and I was so busy wondering if I should follow you, I delayed in stopping her.’

  ‘Why were you here?’ Billy looked confused. Frost sighed.

  ‘I was following you,’ he explained. ‘I heard about your little trip with Sutcliffe last night.’

  Billy froze, as if caught in the headlights of a car. ‘I was going to speak to you about that,’ he said. ‘This kind of eclipsed it.’

  ‘He offered you a job, didn’t he?’ Frost asked. Billy nodded.

  ‘I didn’t say yes,’ he replied, ‘but you have to understand, I couldn’t turn him down or he’d know something was wrong.’ Billy looked around the room, leaning forward.

  ‘He knows you’re making a play for him,’ he whispered. ’Said that you’re—look, these are his words, not mine—not the sharpest tool in the box, and that you’re nowhere near as in to Rattlestone as he is. Said that when this is done he’d jump me up to Detective Inspector in his squad as there’s going to be a vacancy, if you know what he means.’

  ‘Treacherous bastard,’ Frost muttered. ‘You did good in letting me know. Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Billy pulled out his phone. ‘He sent me something last night.’

  Frost looked at the messages that Billy now showed. It was from Sutcliffe’s number.

  Tomorrow, after we arrest Walsh stay by my side. We’ll block Frost from the questioning. He’s too close, and we can pin this all on him.

  Are you sure, sir?

  He needs to be removed from the equation. Forcibly, if possible.

  ‘Bastard!’ Frost hissed. ‘He’s as deep in this as I am! How dare he throw the blame on me!’

  ‘Deep?’

  ‘Look, you’re a bright kid. You’ve probably worked it out. I work for—well, I worked for Will Harrison,’ Frost said. ‘So does Sutcliffe. And a lot of the police, in small ways. Rattlestone’s integrated everywhere. And Will was the voice behind it.’

  ‘I thought Baker was?’ Billy was confused. Frost smiled for the first time that morning.

  ‘That’s what you’re supposed to believe,’ he replied. ‘But it was always Harrison and Gladwell.’

  ‘Malcolm Gladwell?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s at the top of the chain, it looks like.’ He looked back at the apartment. ‘Harrison swung for him and missed.’ Frost considered the text message again.

  ‘We need to keep this under wraps until we capture Declan today, Okay? We can screw over Sutcliffe afterwards. You’re sure of this location for the meeting?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Billy nodded. ‘Fitzrovia, two thirty.’

  Frost nodded back in reply. ‘We capture Walsh and then work out what he did or didn’t do,’ he explained. ‘And in the meantime, we let Sutcliffe take the blame for everything.’

  Charles Baker was sitting at his desk, his head in his hands, when Malcolm Gladwell burst into his office.

  ‘Was it you?’ he screamed. ‘Did Harrison tell you where the safe was?’

  Slowly, his eyes red rimmed with tears, Charles looked up at Gladwell with a face that was drained of all emotion.

  ‘What the hell are you on about now?’ he asked. ‘And can it be sorted later?’

  Gladwell paused, rattled by the answer. ‘It wasn’t you? That broke into my mausoleum? Changed the password?’

  ‘What bloody mausoleum? What bloody safe?’ Charles was completely lost. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re not making a run for head of Rattlestone?’ Gladwell was now thrown off balance.

  ‘Do I look like I’m in any state to do that?’ Charles hissed. ‘Will and Laurie are dead! They say he killed Kendis and possibly Donna! When the press gets hold of this, I’m ruined! They’ll ask how I didn’t see this, how I didn’t know!’

  Gladwell sat in the chair on the other side of the desk from Charles now, nodding sympathetically, as behind the eyes he tried to work out what was really going on.

  ‘We can get you out of this,’ he said. ‘We can change the narrative, show that you were trying to stop this, perhaps?’

  Charles Baker simply stared at Gladwell, but it felt that he was looking straight through him.

  ‘Maybe it’s time for me to resign,’ he said. ‘Maybe Kendis was right when she wrote about me.’

  ‘You’re on the Star Chamber, man!’ Gladwell hissed. ‘Grow a spine!’

  ‘To hell with the Star Chamber!’ Charles stood as he shouted. ‘Look at what I’ve got around me! My Special Advisor killed a journalist! He tried to frame a police officer for terrorist crimes!’ He stopped, as if his common sense was finally returning.

  ‘You know, I told him to get you a present back when you said you’d help me with the Leadership,’ he whispered. ‘Something nice. Rare. Like a Montblanc letter opener in Ruthenium.’

  ‘Did he? I can’t remember.’

  Charles Baker’s face was now dark and foreboding.

  ‘If I find you did anything here, that you were to blame for any of this, I will destroy you,’ he hissed. ‘We took the flack for your Balkans error, but I still know where the papers are.’

  ‘You do?’ Gladwell laughed. ‘In a safe in a mausoleum, perhaps? Good for you! Go get them! Let’s see how you do!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that someone beat us to it!’ Gladwell rose now, facing Charles. ‘They changed the combination! We can’t get into the bloody thing!’

  ‘Walsh,’ Charles replied softly. ‘He saw Francine last night. He knew Kendis well. Maybe he knew about it?’

  Gladwell went to reply, but then stopped.

  ‘Dammit,’ he hissed, pulling out his phone. ‘I need to make a call.’

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘You could say,’ Gladwell muttered, texting as he left the office. ‘I’m about to have him executed.’

  30

  The Sting

  Declan stood in front of The Fitzroy Tavern, in the heart of Fitzrovia, and took a deep breath.

  Royal Bastard. Gallifrey. Dentist.

  He’d understood the message the moment he heard it; the Royal Bastard was Henry Fitzroy, the first Duke of Grafton and illegitimate child of King Charles II; the surname FitzRoy was a term meaning ‘bastard child of a royal’.

  Fitz-Roy.

  And his great grandson, Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton had bought the Manor of Tottenham Court, building Fitzroy Square to the east, and Fitzroy Street had been named after him, the area gaining a lot of interest from Bohemians in the 1930s, in the process earning the nickname Fitzrovia.

  Gallifrey was because of Declan’s first meeting here with Alex Monroe; when he first joined the force from the Military Police, his father had arranged a drink for Declan with Monroe, then just a DI himself, to go over some basics in the new field. They’d arranged it for an evening during the week, meeting in the downstairs bar only to discover that they’d coincided with the monthly meeting of a group of Doctor Who aficionados. They’d not stayed long, but the memory was strong.

  And finally Dentist could only mean the terrible joke that Doctor Marcos had told him, of tooth hurty being the best time for one, and so it was at two thirty in the afternoon that he stood on the junction of Windmill Street a
nd Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, staring at the bar and willing himself to enter, hoping that it wasn’t a setup.

  Taking a deep breath, Declan adjusted his coat to cover his face a little and then entered the bar through the side entrance.

  On Whitfield Street, running parallel to Charlotte Street and directly attached to Windmill Street, Billy and DI Frost sat in an unmarked police car, watching the pub across the road as a man in a long coat entered.

  ‘Was that him?’ Frost asked. Billy shrugged.

  ‘It could have been, but I couldn’t tell for sure,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we should go in and look?’

  ‘And you’re sure this is where the meeting was?’ Frost picked up a radio as Billy nodded.

  ‘Henry Fitzroy’s the Royal Bastard, and tooth hurty is the best time for dentists,’ he explained. ‘Doctor Marcos told me the joke, and she was the one leaving the message.’

  ‘And the Gallifrey line?’

  ‘They had some kind of monthly comic thing there,’ Billy smiled. ‘Never was my thing, so when Monroe mentioned it I kinda turned off. But it’s definitely the right place, and that has to have been Declan.’

  Frost clicked his radio on. ‘All units, be prepared. Suspect is believed to have entered the location, and we’re going to check it out.’

  ‘That’s a negative,’ a voice spoke through the radio, surprising Frost. ‘Stay in your vehicle until we accurately identify whoever is joining him. I want all of them.’

  ‘This is my sting, DCI Sutcliffe,’ Frost replied into the radio. ‘I didn’t realise you’d be on the frequency.’

  ‘I’m taking this over,’ Sutcliffe’s voice showed a hint of anger. ‘I don’t trust your judgement right now.’