Bex Wynter Box Set 2

by Elleby Harper

  Her breath hissed and her frown deepened at what she interpreted as his patronizing tone. “In that case I’ll be ‘gobsmacked’ if Felix Nutkin’s DNA actually matched Lander Dresden’s shooter. In fact, I’m willing to bet my badge that’s too big a coincidence. I want the truth, Cole. What the hell have you gotten involved in?”

  “Please stop asking me for details,” Cole groaned. “I can’t tell you. Not just because we work for different organizations but because it wouldn’t be safe for you.”

  “If it’s not safe for me then Sophie Dresden’s involved!”

  Sophie Dresden had been the detective superintendent of Bridesmead, both Bex’s and Cole’s superior officer. Bex knew Dresden had cherry-picked her to be the head of the Youth Crimes Team because she thought, as an exchange officer, Bex would be too much a fish out of water to realize that Dresden was using the team as a hunting ground to find her next prey. Dresden’s victims were teenaged offenders, providing young, healthy body parts that she sold for huge profits.

  “Waving Lander’s shooting in Dresden’s face is like waving a red flag. That shooting left Lander paralyzed and was the catalyst behind her serial killing spree. Why would NCA do that? Unless…”

  “Stop pacing, Bex, you’re making me dizzy.”

  Bex halted in front of him and tightened her arms across her chest.

  “I’m not going to let this rest. You knew Sophie Dresden well so you must’ve realized that announcing Felix Nutkin was guilty of Lander’s shooting would place Nutkin in Dresden’s crosshairs. Did you deliberately risk his life to draw Dresden back to London? Did Dresden bomb the van to get to Nutkin?” She shook her head, straining to figure out the jigsaw. “That’s reprehensible! Didn’t you once tell me you almost convicted the wrong man for a crime? You just did the same thing to Nutkin.”

  Cole’s shoulders slumped.

  “Lord knows, it wasn’t my idea. My superior struck a deal with Nutkin. For keeping his mouth shut that he wasn’t involved in that bungled shooting case, we would wipe out his current charges.”

  “I’ll bet he had no idea the danger NCA he was in! Did your superior tell Nutkin they were using him to lure Sophie Dresden out of hiding? The woman’s got a massive manhunt looking for her and —”

  “Stop! Do you think I don’t feel badly enough about what happened today?!” he lashed out. “Three years ago I swore I would never put another innocent life on the line without doing my due diligence. My God, that investigation still haunts me! If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in grief and guilt over Lara’s suicide and looking to foist the blame onto someone else, I would’ve checked more carefully into Entwhistle’s alibi before he went to trial.”

  His head dropped into his hands.

  Bex stilled at Cole’s revelation. She abstained from office gossip so she knew next to nothing about this man she had taken to her bed. Now it appeared their common ground might just be how well they harbored pain and guilt. Maybe they each reminded the other of what was missing from their lives? She knew she should leave his revelations alone, but, like an aching tooth, she couldn’t resist probing.

  “Who’s Lara?”

  Cole lifted his head, running a hand through springy black hair sprinkled with grey. There was a desperate edge to his voice when he spoke.

  “My dead wife. We lost a baby. Lara was near her due date. She was worried about the baby’s movements, or lack of them. Her obstetrician said, given the size of the baby, its movements wouldn’t be as strong because there was so little room. No one seemed worried. But Lara insisted they check, so they consented to do an ultrasound scan. That’s when they realized there wasn’t a heartbeat.

  “They immediately induced labor, but our baby was stillborn. Apparently the umbilical cord got wrapped around her neck. I didn’t even realize things like that could happen these days. There was nothing they or we could do. Except hold our little girl in our arms and say goodbye. The grief was unbearable. I lost myself in my work. It was the only time I felt sane. But Lara…” he paused before his voice cracked.

  She could hear the pain riffling beneath the steady rhythm of words. She could see the sheen of tears in his eyes and knew her own reflected his sorrow. She understood a pain undiluted by time.

  “I thought Lara was coping. I honestly did. I was too blinded by my own selfish concerns to notice she was an emotional mess. I came home one night and found her hanging in our bedroom. Her jewelry was missing, items she always wore. I immediately suspected a robbery and set to work investigating.”

  “You were too close to the case, Cole. You shouldn’t have been involved in the investigation.”

  “My name wasn’t on the brief. But I couldn’t stay away from it. I discovered her jewelry in a pawn shop and traced it to a man named Entwhistle who had pawned it. That confirmed my theory that robbery was the motive. I didn’t rest until I tracked down Entwhistle. Believe me it wasn’t easy finding a homeless man in London, but I did. His excuse was this strange woman had stood listening to him busk. When he finished, she stripped off all the jewelry she was wearing and gave it to him. Entwhistle said she’d told him his music ‘spoke to her.’ I laughed in his face. I fed the evidence I’d gathered to the police team and led them to my conclusion. I found out two days into his trial that it was the wrong conclusion.”

  “What made you change your mind about his guilt?”

  Cole poured himself another gin, throwing it back like a thirsty man in the desert. When he spoke again it was with exaggerated slowness, as though his words were weighted with heavy stones.

  “She had left a note for me on the mantle. Only it had fallen down behind a picture frame. It was months after her death. I was packing up Lara’s things. And there it was, a proper suicide note. She wrote that she didn’t blame me and she was sorry but she couldn’t bear to go on living without our daughter. In hindsight she was suffering from grief and postnatal depression, in fact a whole cocktail of depressive emotions that lead to her actions.

  “As soon as I read her note I went cold. A man was on trial for murder because of me. I went back through his testimony and the evidence and looked at it objectively. I had him tied to the pawnbroker within an hour after Lara’s death, but the dealer admitted after further questioning that it could have been earlier, before she died. So I dug until I had the evidence that proved Entwhistle had been busking at Baker Street Station at the time of Lara’s death. We stopped the trial and he was exonerated. But it was a close call.

  “I swore then I would never be in the same position again. Yet a man lies dead for a crime he didn’t commit and I didn’t do enough to stop it!”

  He sloshed more gin into his glass until Bex’s grip on his wrist stopped him. She placed the bottle out of his reach. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “I’m sorry for being a blathering eejit. It must be the booze. Most days I’m okay. Still, every now and then it’s as fresh as if it happened this morning. The memory of finding Lara, I mean.”

  Bex knew too well the impossibility of exorcising a grief wrapped securely in guilt. She lifted her face to his. “I have a better solution for you, Cole. Just take me to bed.”

  She watched his hazel irises deepen to a mossy green as he considered her words. A crooked smile played with his lips, while he ran his fingers down the side of her face.

  She felt the warmth of his palm against her skin as he cupped the back of her neck. It was a reminder of why she had cropped her long hair after Zane’s death, the beautiful blonde mane that Zane had so loved running his hands through. She would never be that woman again. Would Zane even recognize the woman she had become, the woman who went to bed with Cole?

  “Difficult as it is to say no to a proposition like that, I’m going to take you to the airport instead.”

  “I can take the Tube.”

  “Indulge me, woman,” he said with a mock growl. “I’ll feel better if I see you get to Heathrow safely.”

  “Then I am right!” Bex crowe
d with triumph. “You’re worried about me because Dresden’s in London and she means business. Nutkin’s proof that she’s not prepared to let grudges go. You think she’ll have no bigger grudge than the one she holds against me. But I’m not the one chasing her, Cole, you are. I don’t think I’ll be Dresden’s target, I think you’d better worry about yourself.”

  Chapter 6

  National Crimes Agency

  Monday, 23 April

  It was close to 11:00 p.m. when Cole rode the elevator up to the third floor of the red brick and steel-framed NCA building and headed for the Operation Bluebird project room. The brisk night air worked to clear his head from his earlier emotional turmoil and the gin he had consumed. He had hoped the alcohol would numb his pain, instead it had brought it bubbling to the surface. After spilling his sordid secrets, he wondered why Bex didn’t turn tail and run from him like he was carrying the plague.

  Instead she had stayed and offered him the only form of comfort that would help. He hadn’t accepted her proposition because there had been something too vulnerable about her slender, pale neck and the way her short, slicked-back hair exposed rather than hid her pale features. With her head tipped up, those cool, gray eyes of hers seemed to see deep into the crevasses of his soul, yet offered no judgment.

  He couldn’t name his feelings for her, couldn’t explain his attraction to her, he only knew he didn’t want to screw up whatever it was they had. And he certainly didn’t want to lose her. That was why relief washed over him when he watched her disappear beyond Heathrow’s security barrier and Dresden’s reach.

  Bex had been intimately involved with the woman code-named Bluebird. She had faced her in a deadly game of cat and mouse before Dresden escaped, leaving her minions to take the fall and face justice instead. Bex’s evidence had banished the former superintendent from the police force and he had no doubt she would be high on Dresden’s persona non grata list. To keep Bex safe he had to reel Dresden in and drag her before the court system.

  It was Cole’s involvement in the serial killings that brought Dresden to national prominence that accorded him higher status within the project team. Now it was crunch time and he had to earn his place, otherwise he would be pushed down the ladder.

  From outside, blackness seeped through the bank of windows lining one entire wall of the room. Belying the lateness of the hour the space buzzed and hummed with the murmur of voices and computers. Fausch’s team was racking up the overtime.

  Entering the project room, he became aware of a sour smell permeating the air, but didn’t know if it was a result of too many bodies spending too long in one area or simply an aspect of the room itself.

  He noticed Nolan Weaver at a computer terminal and approached.

  “Anything new?”

  Without lifting his eyes from his screen, Nolan said, “Blast report’s come through. It’s in the folder with today’s date.”

  Nolan had a pursed mouth and currant eyes in a pale, doughy face. His body looked more at home in a padded chair than out in the field. He was one of the intelligence boys Fausch had brought into the operation.

  Cole shed his jacket and slung it on the back of his swivel chair. He had chosen to sit beside Nolan because he was the chattiest agent on the team, the one easiest to draw out.

  “How about a summary?” he asked, sure that Nolan would have the details locked in his head.

  “The source of the blast came from a large, black cylinder, 26 centimeters long. Remnants of the tube were found under the prison van. The blast radius measured 1.85 meters. It looks like it was a quick and dirty manufacture, probably a home made incendiary device.”

  “So essentially the explosive was a big bloody fire cracker! Do they have any idea how the bomb was planted under the van? The entire Shoreditch Court block was staked out from the day Fausch announced Nutkin was being charged with Lander’s shooting. How could Bluebird have planted it in the driveway when no one could access the area without us knowing? The prison van was swept twice before leaving prison so how did she get it under the van? And sniffer dogs patrolled the street just that morning.”

  “Bomb disposal found remnants of a remote controlled car. The theory is it had the bomb strapped to it. Detonated remotely using a phone.”

  “Bloody hell! I was parked on the street and I never saw a thing,” Cole said, a sudden sweat breaking out as he wondered if the team knew he’d stuffed up.

  “Relax. Fausch isn’t blaming you or Banks. Yet.” Banks had been the agent parked at the other end of the street. “We’ve pulled the CCTV footage from the street. It’s in the same date folder, so you can check it for yourself.”

  Cole’s fingers pecked at the keyboard as he found and opened the relevant file.

  “What am I looking for, Nolan?”

  “The object’s marked on the footage.”

  Cole swept through a view of the street not much different to what he’d seen that morning, showing parked cars and passing pedestrians. After several minutes his darting eyes discovered what Nolan was referring to.

  He freeze-framed the prison van in place on the driveway, waiting for the electronic gates to open. Frame by frame he played the tape, observing at the very edge of the screen a compact, black object. It bounced over the lip of the curb and trundled under the stationary van. It was in view for less than ten seconds. In the next frames the van exploded.

  “Our theory is the RC vehicle was navigated along the street. It’s black color made it difficult to distinguish from the tarmac unless you were looking down for it,” Nolan said.

  “Clever. If it had been driven over the pavement it would have bowled pedestrians over so it would have been noticed long before it reached its target. Travelling with the traffic on the road would’ve been tricky though. It could have been squashed like a bug. But if it reached its target it was low enough to the ground to pass easily under the van, which became a sitting duck once it reached the court. How far away could Bluebird be and still be able to detonate the bomb?”

  “It could’ve been reliably controlled from up to several kilometers away and the same range for the detonator. With a camera relaying pictures back to the controller, every move could have been planned. Bluebird could have easily been well outside the cordon Fausch set up.” Nolan dropped his voice. “Fausch is pissed as a mad hatter. His clever scheme to draw out Bluebird yielded three deaths and multiple wounded. He’s been answering to the higher ups all day.”

  “Fausch couldn’t have foreseen this. It must’ve taken some expertise to plan and execute so quickly.”

  “He should’ve done his homework more thoroughly. A background check on Dresden would have revealed she spent five years with the bomb squad before transferring to general duties and then criminal investigation. According to our resident bomb expert, this particular bomb showed the hallmarks of the Firecracker Bomber from the 90s. The way the components are pulled together, the explosive device used is like a signature. But it can’t be the Firecracker Bomber because he’s dead.”

  “In other words the explosive used at Shoreditch was a replica of one of the Firecracker’s bombs?”

  Nolan nodded. “It’s there in the records—Sophie Dresden was instrumental in disarming and dismantling one of his bombs when she was on the squad. She probably has expertise in dozens of different bomb types. That’s information Fausch should have used to get a warrant to shut down the phone towers in the district or at least used a jammer to white noise phone signals to prevent detonating any possible incendiary devices in the area.”

  “Shit! Where does this leave us now?”

  “Fausch wants all the buildings within a five kilometer radius of the court searched to see if we can pinpoint where she might have been staked out during the attack.” Nolan yawned. “But that’s a job for tomorrow. I’m packing up for the night. What about you?”

  Cole shook his head, too distraught to relax. If he had spotted that remote controlled car he would have saved three lives and mult
iple injuries!

  “I just need to check a few things before I call it quits.”

  Cole sat back and released a sigh. He compartmentalized Nolan’s information for another time. Right now he had some irons in the fire that needed tending.

  Before Dresden disappeared from London, she had revealed to Bex that the reason behind her crimes was to amass enough money to fund medical research into her husband’s paralysis. Her aim was to get Lander mobile again.

  Cole had spent the week leading up to today’s operation checking into medical facilities that specialized in treating spinal cord injuries through cutting edge technology. He dismissed those dealing with acute injuries whose patients usually received treatment within days if not hours of being injured. There were fewer facilities specializing in chronic or long term paralysis, and of these the majority relied on the generosity of private or corporate supporters to fund research into biomechanical solutions or nerve regeneration. In his mind that made them likely candidates for Dresden’s purposes.

  He had narrowed a list to ten institutions that had the potential to treat Lander’s spinal cord injury or SCI. They were spread around the globe. His eye ran over the list of cities.

  Bern.

  Cambridge.

  Dallas.

  Glasgow.

  Los Angeles.

  Moscow.

  New York.

  Okinawa.

  Seoul.

  Toronto.

  Cole’s exhaustive examination of Dresden’s bank accounts hadn’t uncovered any large deposits or brought to light any financial dealings with medical institutes. The logical conclusion was that Dresden had established an alternate identity through which she had squirreled away her ill-gotten gains. It was probable she had used that fake identity to escape London when a massive manhunt to catch her was initiated.

  He was hopeful Dresden had used the same false identity to return to London to kill Nutkin. His idea was to cross check passenger names on flights out of London the day Dresden escaped with passenger names on incoming flights from the past four days to see if they could get a match.