by Jack Gatland
‘What happens when we solve this case?’ Jess asked, walking to the counter and taking over tea making duties. ‘Because you’re going to be facing the man or woman who killed your parents. My grandparents.’
‘What would you do?’ Declan turned the question onto Jess now. ‘What would you want me to do to them?’
Jess sat silent for a moment as she thought about the question.
‘I’d want you to flip the coin,’ she whispered. Declan nodded at this.
‘And that’s the problem,’ he replied. ‘I want justice. You, however, want vengeance.’
‘And you don’t?’ Jess stirred the mugs now, allowing the tea bags to soak into the hot water, keeping her attention fully on the task. Declan could see however that she was shaking as she did this; whether from shock or anger, he couldn’t tell.
‘Of course I do,’ Declan passed Jess her mug and took her by the shoulder, grabbing his own mug as he did so, leading her back into the living room and the sofa. ‘But you have to remember, you’re fifteen—‘
‘Almost sixteen.’
‘You’re almost sixteen, and you’ve not seen this world properly before. All you saw are crime documentaries and old case notes. I’ve been living this life since I was eighteen and in the army. That’s over twenty years of this, both in the Military Police and in the Met and City police.’ He sipped at his own tea as he tried to frame his next response.
‘You granddad hated it so much that he quit,’ he continued. ‘I almost quit too, several times over the years. ‘
‘You were almost fired several times too,’ Jess forced a smile. Declan joined her.
‘A lot of that was because of my frustrations,’ he admitted. ‘And if you follow the family path and join up, you’ll likely have those frustrations too.’
Jess nodded silently, staring into her herbal tea as she gently blew on it, sending small ripples across the surface.
‘Mum doesn’t want me to become a copper,’ she eventually replied.
‘Your mum’s an intelligent woman,’ Declan leaned back, sipping his own tea. ‘And I think tomorrow you can have a day off.’
‘You’re benching me?’ Jess almost spilled her tea as she spun to face her father. ‘Come on! That’s crappy!’
‘No,’ Declan stared at the ceiling. ‘I’m just limiting your exposure to all this… all this police shit,’ he muttered. ‘You’re still a girl, Jess. You shouldn’t be traipsing around crime scenes and talking to friends of the victim, you should be playing console games or watching TikTok videos.’
‘I’m going to join up when I pass my A levels, dad.’
‘You haven’t even done your GCSEs. And then you’ll be at University.’
Jess shook her head. ‘I’m doing A Levels and then, when I’ve passed I’ll do a Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship.’
Declan knew about the PCDA. Before they recently introduced it, any potential police officers had to complete a learning and development programme over two years before being signed off as ready to patrol the streets. In fact, this is what De’Geer had recently done. However, any wannabe constables could instead complete a three-year apprenticeship, the PCDA, which was equivalent to a bachelor's degree, with apprentices awarded a degree in professional policing practice and designated as fully qualified constables at the end. Which meant that in six years, Jessica Walsh would be a serving police officer.
Declan was a little proud of that.
‘If you do, I’ll ensure you get some glowing recommendations,’ he said.
‘I’d get better ones if I actually caught a serial killer,’ Jess sulked.
‘And your mum would murder me if I allowed that,’ Declan laughed. Jess shrugged.
‘Then I’ll just solve that one then,’ she replied.
Declan and Jess sipped at their teas silently.
‘You can stay in the Library with Billy,’ Declan eventually offered. ‘Learning cybercrime is probably easy for you, anyway.’
‘I’d rather be with Morten,’ Jess muttered.
‘I know,’ Declan patted his daughter on the head. ‘That’s why you’re with Billy.’
Billy and Anjli were in The Olde Bell’s main bar, having recently finished their immense pub dinners. Doctor Marcos and PC Davey were back at Maidenhead going over forensics, De’Geer had gone home for the day and Monroe had returned to London to pack for his early morning flight to Germany.
‘Tell me you don’t miss this,’ Anjli leaned back in her chair. ‘I saw you on the computer today, asking questions and making suggestions. Why the hell would you go to Rufus Harrington?’
‘It’s a good job,’ Billy protested. ‘It’s got stock options, and I’d be making a lot more than what I did as a Detective Constable.’
‘You’d also be a lot more bored,’ Anjli replied. ‘Is this because you think it’ll make your family like you again?’
‘That boat’s long sailed,’ Billy sipped at a whisky and American ginger ale. ‘I think I might enjoy boring, anyway.’
‘Nobody enjoys boring.’
‘They do if they don’t die—‘ Billy stopped, mid response.
‘Is that what this is?’ Anjli asked, leaning forward now. ‘Is it fear?’
‘So what, I’m a wussbag now?’ Billy looked away.
‘Christ, no,’ Anjli placed a hand on Billy’s arm. ‘It means you’re probably suffering from PTSD.’
Billy nodded. ‘Probably,’ he whispered. ‘I have a dream, a recurring one, where I’m being shot at. It’s changed recently, but it’s always the same locations. I’m outside Devington House and I’m facing SCO 19. I’m in a warehouse and Frost and his guys are there. We’re even in that training exercise.’
‘All stressful situations,’ Anjli admitted. ‘And then what happens?’
‘Declan appears,’ Billy looked to the drink now. ‘Declan appears and then he shoots me.’
Anjli sipped at a wine as she tried to work out what the hell she could say to that. Luckily for her, Billy continued.
‘I know, he’s the one that saved me,’ he smiled faintly. ‘Without him leaping in front of me, Frost would have killed me a week ago. But somewhere, deep in my subconscious, I blame him for this.’
‘That’s PTSD talking,’ Anjli replied. ‘It’s looking for someone to blame. When in the end—‘
‘I should blame myself?’ Billy snapped. ‘Great talk.’
‘You should,’ Anjli snapped back. ‘Take responsibility. I mean, you did when you were almost fired, so why not now? You did these things. You chose to be the Judas before I could offer. You ran in front of the SCO 19 response on your own accord at Devington House. You did these things because you’re a good man, Billy. A genuine hero, and a credit to the badge.’
Billy nodded, but his expression still looked conflicted.
‘Computers are safer,’ he said.
‘Tell that to Nathanial Wing.’
Billy looked to Anjli, but stopped.
‘Remember, I’m just the tech guy,’ he whispered.
Anjli went to ask what he meant by this, whether this was more of the argument they were having, but then saw Ilse Müller walking over to their table, a half pint of lager in her hand.
‘Would you mind if I joined you?’ she asked. ‘My brother’s working and it’s boring alone in my room.’ She looked at Billy as she said this. Anjli hid a smile.
So barking up the wrong tree, love.
‘Sure,’ Billy was all smiles now. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Kapoor. She’s one of the officers doing the case in the Library.’
‘Anjli, please,’ she held out a hand. Ilse shook it.
‘I’d give my own name, but I assume you already know it,’ she smiled.
‘As you probably knew mine.’
‘Actually, I didn’t,’ Ilse’s smile never slipped. ‘My brother’s the one for all of that.’
‘You work for him, right?’ Anjli asked. ‘I have a sister, a couple of years older than me. The thought of worki
ng for her breaks me out in hives. A rash.’
Ilse nodded. ‘It’s not the easiest of jobs,’ she replied. ‘But I was a PA before this, and I’ve dealt with worse.’
‘Police PA?’
‘Pharmaceutical firm,’ Ilse sipped from her lager. ‘I prefer this though. Less travelling.’
‘Ilse and her brother are hunting a war criminal,’ Billy said excitedly, as if never having mentioned this before. Anjli raised her eyebrows.
‘Really?’ she asked, but Ilse’s smile dropped.
‘Please, let’s not play these games,’ she asked. ‘You know why we’re in Hurley, and I know why you’re in Hurley. We should be helping each other, not hindering.’
‘Okay, in that case, maybe you could answer a question for me?’ Anjli asked.
Ilse nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Why did you tell Nathanial Wing not to pass on his hard drive findings to your brother a day before he died?’
Ilse shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I didn’t know the boy would kill himself.’
‘Technically he didn’t, but go on.’
Ilse looked around the bar, as if checking for her brother. ‘Rolfe, he has a… what do you call it? A bee in his hat.’
‘Bee in his bonnet?’
‘Yes. He’s obsessed with his father.’
‘Hauptmann Müller.’ Anjli asked.
‘Yes.’
‘The Reaper of the Berlin Wall.’
Ilse shook her head. ‘I know the rumours, the stories,’ she said. ‘Wilhelm Müller wasn’t the Reaper. These were lies, spread after the fall of the wall.’
‘Why should someone do that?’
‘Why would someone do anything?’ Ilse shrugged. ‘It was a terrible time. We were nothing more than babies, children even. We didn’t see the people spitting at him, laughing at him, hating him for doing his job. Do you know what the Staatssicherheitsdienst, the Stasi, our secret police would have done to him if he hadn’t followed his orders, no matter how abhorrent?’ She shook her head. ‘Wilhelm was a broken man. He was torn between honour and duty. When they burned the files he stole them, used them to ensure that terrible people were captured and punished. But he made enemies and had to leave. That’s when Rolfe began this hero worship. He believed that Wilhelm Müller was out there hunting a killer, a noble quest in a way. But I worried what’d be found, if the hard drive he wanted opened revealed the truth.’
‘Was it Patrick Walsh’s hard drive?’ Billy asked. Anjli knew Billy had already confirmed this, so looked to Ilse. To her surprise, the German woman nodded.
‘Rolfe was consumed with hatred for one man. And that man was friends with Walsh.’
‘Rolfe hates Karl Schnitter, doesn’t he?’ Anjli asked softly. ‘He told my Detective Chief Inspector today that he believes that Karl’s the man that had an affair with your mother.’ She took a calculated gamble. ‘The man that’s your actual father.’
‘How do you know that?’ Ilse asked, genuinely surprised by this. Anjli shrugged.
‘You mention your mother, but when you mention Müller, you say his name rather than call him father,’ she explained. ‘And, we know that a couple of months back, you visited Karl here in Hurley, without your brother. But I was under the assumption that you’d both kept it a mystery?’
Ilse nodded. ‘I learned by accident,’ she said. ‘I found I had breast cancer, or I should say a tumour. It was removed, and I’m healthy, but I was told that it was the BRCA2 gene, and that it was hereditary, from either my father or mother.’
‘But neither had it,’ Anjli mused.
‘No,’ Ilse replied. ‘And in doing the testing, I learned that although a DNA match of my mother, I wasn’t a match of my father.’
‘So why come here?’ Billy asked. ‘I mean, when you came the first time.’
‘I needed permission to gain Karl Schnitter’s DNA,’ Ilse explained. ‘I needed a… paternity test. And, as BCRA2 is a hereditary condition, I wanted him to get checked. It was never to bond with a stranger, to call him Papa.’
Anjli nodded at this, while a sliver of ice slid down her spine. Her own mother had been fighting breast cancer recently, and Anjli had also wondered whether the gene had passed on to her as well.
‘So you learned Karl is your father, I’m guessing,’ she said. Ilse nodded. ‘And I’m assuming that Rolfe meanwhile is on a vendetta against him.’
‘I was a fool,’ Ilse replied. ‘I mentioned to my brother that I’d travelled to England with my company, but I’d forgotten he’s a good detective. He learned I met with Karl, the man he had hunted for as Karl Meier, a guard who destroyed our family with an affair. Rolfe looked deeper into this, saw the same Red Reaper cases as you had. We call it a different name, but the result was the same. Rolfe came to England to face him and gain his revenge.’
‘So why wait?’ Billy asked. ‘It’s been two weeks.’
‘Because my brother is thorough, and when he arrived, we learned that Patrick Walsh was dead,’ Ilse sighed. ‘Rolfe wanted concrete evidence. He believed that this’d be found on the hard drive.’
‘Which he stole.’
‘No,’ Ilse shook her head. ‘I don’t know how he found it, but he didn’t break into your friend’s house. On the day of the theft, he was in London, following another lead.’
Anjli frowned at this. If Rolfe Müller didn’t steal the iMac, then Karl Schnitter was lying. ‘So why keep the information from him?’
Ilse turned and looked Anjli directly in the eye; it wasn’t a power play, or a way to hide anything. In fact, it opened her up like a book as she spoke, the raw emotion showing in every word.
‘Because if he knew what was on that hard drive, if he knew that Patrick Walsh and Karl Schnitter claimed they killed his father, I don’t know how many people he would hurt, or even kill. But I know he would definitely take revenge on Karl, your Detective Inspector Walsh and his teenage daughter for Patrick Walsh’s crime.’
Monroe had returned home and gathered together enough items to last him a couple of days in Berlin, and the following morning he’d arrived at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 bright and early for his morning flight to Brandenburg Airport. As he was only using hand luggage, his trip through check in and security was quite simple, and apart from a quick stop in the departure lounge duty free to buy some water and chocolate, he made it to the departure gate with plenty of time to spare.
A woman was waiting for him.
In her late fifties or early sixties, her short blonde hair peppered with flecks of grey, she wore a navy blue suit worn over a white blouse, a small cabin bag beside her and a neck pillow already in position.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Monroe smiled, shaking her hand. ‘I’m probably okay and all that but with the concussion, I’m a little worried about being alone in a foreign country if I have a… well, you know.’
‘Not a problem,’ replied DCI Sophie Bullman, checking the departure gate screen. ‘I’m between jobs now anyway.’
‘Fired?’
‘Christ no,’ Bullman snorted. ‘Promoted. But enough of that. Tell me, Alex… What damn fool adventure have you got me into this time?’
18
Berlin Station
It was midmorning by the time that Monroe and Bullman reached Berlin; the Flughafen Express had brought them to downtown Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and from there they had paused on checking into a hotel, instead moving straight on to the headquarters of the Bundeskriminalamt, the federal police, on Treptower Park, a street lined avenue around four or five miles southeast of the train station.
The flight itself had been eventless, and was a chance for Monroe to explain what they had discovered so far during the case, as Bullman noted down the salient facts. Once done, Monroe had leaned back in the seat and watched out of the window. He’d offered Bullman the window seat, but she’d taken the aisle seat instead, saying that she had a hatred of having to ask people to move if she needed to stretch her legs. Monroe smiled, saying that he understo
od, while secretly wondering if this was because Bullman had a hatred of asking people for anything. Looking back to her, he cleared his throat, nervous to the question he was going to ask.
‘Just get on with it,’ she muttered while closing the book that she was reading. ‘I can just feel the urge to talk flowing out of you.’
‘I just wondered how you were doing,’ Monroe asked. ‘I heard they had the DI White inquest.’
Detective Inspector White had been one of DCI Bullman’s team in Birmingham, but had turned out to be corrupt, and had been the officer that gave the unconscious Monroe to Macca Byrne; a transaction that cost White his life and ended with Monroe waking up in a basement of a Manor House near Milton Keynes. Bullman had been unaware of this betrayal, but there had to be an investigation by an Anti-Corruption Unit to ensure there were no unseen connections between Bullman and White. And, when Malcolm Gladwell had been arrested, Bullman had returned to Birmingham to be interviewed.
‘Just a formality,’ Bullman leaned back in the seat. ‘They had brought me in to cover maternity leave, so there was no connection between White and myself.’
‘Good,’ Monroe replied. ‘You’re too good an officer to lose.’
‘Glad you think that,’ Bullman replied, but the tone seemed off somehow, as if Bullman knew something that Monroe didn’t. He almost went to reply, but decided that discretion was the better part of valour here.
‘How are the headaches?’ she asked, returning to the book, as if not that important a question to her. Monroe knew better though; she wasn’t asking about his wellbeing, she was checking on how effective a partner he was going to be while in Berlin.
‘Barely noticeable,’ he admitted. ‘Not the crushing pain that they used to be. Top of the bonce is still tender, and it weirdly hurts to wear a hat, but I’ve not had a crippling migraine in a week.’
‘When do you have your next medical?’
‘In a week,’ Monroe looked back out of the window again, ensuring that Bullman couldn’t see the concern on his face. ‘If they see no improvement, there’s a chance I’ll be benched until retirement. Or, maybe even given early retirement on medical grounds.’
