by Jack Gatland
‘An image of what?’ Anjli was getting exasperated now.
‘When Ilse Müller was here last time, she rented a workshop off the Thames, about half-a-mile west of Hurley, off Frogmill Lane.’
He looked to his partner.
‘Nobody knows about it,’ he said. ‘Nobody would think to search there.’
In the Library, Monroe stared in horror at the laptop as it burst into life.
‘I told you,’ he muttered. ‘The bloody things are sentient.’
‘It’s a remote login,’ Bullman said as she watched the screen. ‘Likely Fitzwarren. He’s found a receipt on Patrick Walsh’s drive, tracking it through his phone, most likely.’
‘You don’t mean car drive, do you?’ Monroe replied as he paused, a sudden thought coming to him.
‘Tracking. We can track Declan’s car.’
‘It’s still at the house,’ Freeman replied. Monroe shook his head.
‘We have that doorbell camera footage from across the road, right? Can you bring it up?’
Bullman nodded. ‘He seems to have logged off again,’ she replied as she brought up the image. It was a doorbell camera from earlier that night. Declan’s car wasn’t in the drive, so before he arrived. However, there was a car on that side of the road, parked in front of the house.
‘There,’ Monroe tapped the screen. ‘He’s in that car.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Freeman. Examining the screen, Bullman nodded.
‘When Declan was on the run, Karl loaned him a courtesy car from his garage. A Peugeot 308. That’s the same car.’
‘Okay, but that doesn’t really help us.’
‘It does, actually,’ Monroe smiled. ‘A lot of garages put trackers in their courtesy cars, so they can ensure they’re not nicked. And if Karl had Declan take this one, I’d bet a month’s salary that he’s got some way to track it, to make sure Declan didn’t do anything he shouldn’t. All we have to do is find the tracking signal, and we find the car. And when we find the car, we find Declan.’
In the car park of the Dew Drop Inn, Declan watched as Karl Schnitter drove in, parking up on the opposite side before exiting his vehicle and walking towards Declan’s car, lit up by the headlights of the Peugeot 308. Looking to the dashboard, he saw it was just shy of midnight.
Always punctual.
Climbing out to face him, Declan walked in front of the lights, casting a shadow across Karl as he stopped about twenty feet away.
‘I did what you said,’ Declan said. ‘I didn’t alert the police. I told them to stand down.’
‘Good man,’ Karl replied.
‘So let Jess go, yeah?’
‘In good time,’ Karl nodded. ‘First, we must do something together.’ He pulled out a coin from his pocket, holding it up, allowing the headlight to catch the face as it glinted in the lamplight.
‘First, we must dance with the Red Reaper one last time,’ he finished.
28
Midnight
Declan stared across at Karl with an expression of frustrated annoyance.
‘You’re bloody kidding,’ he snarled. ‘You want to play a suicide game with me? After all of this?’
‘I felt it would be the fitting way to end this,’ Karl replied with a shrug. ‘The end of the chase, so to speak.’
‘You can go to hell,’ Declan snapped. ‘All I want is Jess.’
‘She is not here,’ Karl waved a hand around the car park. ‘But my daughter is with her still, and she is waiting for a message from me. One that says to either release her, or execute her.’
Declan shook his head. ‘You were our friend,’ he muttered. ‘We broke bread with you.’
‘That is on you,’ Karl replied. ‘And for what it is worth, I am sorry, Declan. Your parents were good people. But they needed to move on. Their pain was simply too much to bear.’
‘What, so you were helping them? Like an angel of mercy?’ Declan laughed bitterly. ‘You’re insane. And you’re going to pay for what you did.’
‘Oh, I am well aware of this,’ Karl replied. ‘But not right now.’
Declan looked around the empty car park.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll play your stupid bloody game. But first, you’re answering some questions.’
‘I am an open book,’ Karl nodded. ‘Whatever you want.’
‘Did you kill Karl Meier?’
‘Yes. He thought he could cuckold me. I proved he was wrong.’
‘Why pretend you were him? Why all these lies?’
Karl shrugged. ‘When you spend so long pretending a lie, you believe in it,’ he explained. ‘For a while, I forgot I had been Wilhelm Müller, and genuinely believed that I was Karl Meier, reborn as Schnitter.’
‘Bullshit,’ Declan snapped. ‘You always knew who you were. A murdering sociopath.’
‘I murdered no one,’ Karl protested. ‘I gave them a choice.’
‘You gave them no choice!’ Declan shouted back. ‘You placed them into a corner! Told them that if they didn’t do this, you’d kill their loved ones slowly!’ He spat the words out at Karl, furious. ‘You may not have pulled the trigger or used the blade, but you killed every one of them.’
‘Not quite,’ Karl looked around the car park, still not fully comfortable about the setting. ‘I do not know if it was I or Ilse that helped Patrick to pass, and Ilse was the one to stand vigil over Nathanial.’
‘Stand vigil?’ Declan was appalled. ‘Is that what you call this? Watching a terrified teenager slash his own wrists open rather than see his parents die?’
Karl’s eyes darkened in the headlights.
‘I knew you would never understand,’ he said.
Ilse was pacing now, nervous, muttering to herself. Jess chuckled through the gag.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Ilse snapped, looking to her captive. ‘What do you possibly see as funny here?’
Jess continued to chuckle, shrugging before looking away, effectively dismissing Ilse with her eyes. Unable to accept this, Ilse stormed over to Jess, ripping away the tape, pulling the gag out of Jess’s mouth.
‘Tell me!’ She ordered. Jess looked up at her.
‘You’re supposed to kill me,’ she said. ‘But you’ve never done it before, have you?’
‘I killed Nathanial Wing,’ Ilse said proudly. ‘I helped—‘
‘Did you though?’ Jess raised her eyebrow at this. ‘I mean, I saw the reports. He killed himself, right? You just watched like some sick voyeur.’
‘Shut up,’ Ilse muttered, but she didn’t replace the gag. ‘You don’t know.’
‘I don’t know what?’ Jess laughed now. ‘How to scare someone into killing themselves, rather than doing the job itself?’
Ilse glared at Jess now, her eyes not moving from her gaze as she pulled out the sharp, folding knife once more, opening it up.
‘I’ll show you just how good I am at killing,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll slice up your pretty—‘
She didn’t finish the statement because at that exact moment, as she leaned close to her captive, Jess swung her right hand, now gripping the loosened and pulled free wooden arm of the chair as a weapon up and from the side, a solid right-hand blow that connected hard on Ilse’s head, busting it open, and sending her tumbling to the ground. Quickly grabbing the fallen blade with her also-free left hand, Jess moved down to her ankles, using the far sharper edge to quickly snap through the bonds. Then, rising up, she kicked the chair aside as she looked down at Ilse, still on the ground.
‘You picked the wrong Walsh to play with, bitch,’ Jess snarled. ‘You’re under arrest. A citizen’s arrest.’
There was a noise outside of the workshop; it wasn’t much, most likely a cat, or maybe a fox clattering past, knocking aside a metal tile, but the sound distracted Jess for a split second—and that was enough for Ilse to attack, blood streaming down the left side of her face as she rose from the floor in a charge, spearing Jess hard in the midsection, almost folding her in two as she followed th
rough, the two of them crashing back onto the floor.
Climbing back to her feet, Ilse spat to the side.
‘My turn now,’ she said.
Declan walked closer to Karl now.
‘So how do we do this?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got your gun, but there was no knife by Nathanial, so I’m assuming you still have that.’
Karl reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe, filled with some sort of liquid. This shown, he placed it onto the floor between them.
‘Heroin overdose,’ he explained. ‘They have accused you of many things over the years, Declan. I am sure junkie won’t be a surprise to anyone.’
‘You seem sure that you’ll win,’ Declan smiled. ‘But I suppose the coin always favours the tosser.’
Karl went to reply, unsure on whether this was an insult or not, but Declan continued.
‘Why did you give Nathanial a coin?’ he asked. ‘I’m guessing that Ilse gave him it to pass to Rolfe?’
‘No, I gave it to him,’ Karl admitted. ‘I intercepted him outside the inn, and said that it was Rolfe’s, that he’d dropped it outside. I then followed him in to watch and left when Ilse did.’
‘You wanted Nathanial’s prints on the coin,’ Declan nodded now. ‘When it was found on Rolfe, forensics linked the coin to Nathanial Wing’s death. It validated the letter.’ He smiled. ‘Shame you didn’t think of the CCTV watching this happen.’
‘I am not some kind of master criminal,’ Karl shrugged. ‘I cannot think of everything.’
‘No, you’re just a murdering scumbag, like all the others,’ Declan replied. ‘Who has an urge, every two years.’
‘That’s how you beat the urge,’ Karl explained as he backed a little away from Declan. ‘I could do this every day, there are so many people out there that need to be removed. But I gave myself boundaries. I could only serve justice on an even year.’
‘Serve justice,’ Declan snapped. ‘What bullshit you speak, Karl. And my parents?’
‘Your father was a good detective,’ Karl looked to the ground. ‘Your mother was sick, and I knew I could help her. Nobody else would, and the pain would be unbearable. And your father? He was following Ilse, he was learning the truth about her, and me. I could not have that happen. I am truly sorry about Patrick, Declan. We could have done great things together.’
Declan stared down at the syringe filled with heroin. ‘Tell me about the CIA,’ he breathed. ‘Tell me why they’ll save you, no matter what.’
‘When the wall fell, the files were burned,’ Karl replied. ‘The Stasi, they didn’t want the West to know what atrocities they had committed, or who they had in various gulags under faked names. There were, shall we say, rotten apples in the departments, and they needed to be stopped.’ He shrugged, as if embarrassed at this. ‘I had friends in high places. I could go into rooms that others couldn’t. The day the wall came down, there was confusion. Nobody knew what was going to happen, but I did. And I went to headquarters, went into these high places with a holdall bag, and I filled up with every secret I could find.’
‘And nobody stopped you?’
‘Of course not. Everyone there was trying to save their own skins. But, on the way back I bumped into Karl Meier. He’d followed me, wanted to kill me. But he did not realise that I had been waiting. Before he could do anything, I had stabbed him in the chest and moved on. It was liberating. I had ended evil.’
Declan shook his head. ‘You’re truly a monster.’
‘I took these folders and walked to the American Embassy,’ Karl continued. ‘Offered to trade for certain privileges. One was to keep me safe if they ever placed me under trial.’
‘Your get out of jail free card.’
‘Yes. And at the same time, I hid other folders, ones on politicians that I knew would escape the wall’s fall unscathed. And, as the years went on, I would contact them, letting them know that I kept their secrets safe for them. This way if the Americans decided not to play, I had powerful friends to remind them of the promises they made.’ He looked out of the car park, up the bridleway towards Honey Lane.
‘In fact, my American friends will be here soon,’ he said. ‘We should wrap this up now.’ He pulled out a coin; it was a one mark piece, similar to the one that Rolfe Müller had held.
‘Heads or tails?’ he asked.
Jess kicked out with her leg, connecting hard with Ilse’s shinbone, sending it backwards and Ilse back to the floor as Jess clambered back up, grabbing a wrench from the sideboard.
‘My dad trained me in self defence since I was five,’ she said, moving her head around, loosening her shoulders. ‘But I’ve never needed to use it before. But don’t think that means I don’t know how to.’
Ilse rose, her nose now joining the bleeding cut on her temple.
‘I’m going to skin you,’ she hissed. Jess backed away a little at this.
‘You have to catch me first,’ she said, tossing the wooden arm rest at Ilse. As the German ducked to avoid it, Jess ran for the door, pulling at the handle in frustration as she realised it was locked from the outside. Turning slowly, she faced Ilse again.
‘Okay, so maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,’ she said.
‘Child, you know nothing about me,’ Ilsa spat. Jess nodded.
‘True,’ she replied. ‘So show me what you’ve got.’
And with a scream she took the attack onto the offensive, rugby tackling Ilse hard at the knees, taking her back down to the floor with a resounding crash as the wrench went clattering into the toolbox to the side.
On the Thames towpath, Anjli looked to Billy.
‘Did you hear that?’ she asked, turning her head to see if she could narrow down the noise. Billy nodded, already running towards one of the buildings at the end of the small lane.
‘They’re in here!’ he cried out. ‘I can hear them fighting!’
Anjli pulled out her extendable baton and, preparing herself for a fight, she ran with Billy towards the workshop door.
On a country lane just south of Hurley, Doctor Marcos had her foot down as she drove her Mercedes A Class like a maniac. In the back seat, thrown around like a pinball was Freeman, the seatbelt he wore doing nothing to assist him against the sharp turns along the road, while Monroe held tight to the dashboard with one hand while he stared at his phone, held in the other.
‘The signal’s south of Honey Lane,’ he said, looking up. ‘It has to be the Dew Drop Inn.’
It had only taken them a matter of minutes to locate and contact the company that had installed the trackers into Karl Schnitter’s cars, and only a matter of seconds to convince the company to provide them with what they needed; Doctor Marcos had arrived while they were doing this, and between them, Bullman and Marcos had made quick work of it. This done, Monroe and Doctor Marcos ran for her car in the hotel car park, while Bullman took a call from Billy which gave the likely location of Jess as a lockup west of Hurley, and as they arrived at the Mercedes, they saw Bullman join De’Geer on his police motorcycle.
Personally, Monroe thought that Bullman just wanted to have a go on it.
The motorbike roaring off, Monroe and Doctor Marcos had clambered into the car, but paused when Freeman joined them, stating that this was his patch, and he’d be the one to represent Maidenhead.
Monroe was actually grateful for this; Freeman was probably the only legitimate, non-suspended officer they had in the car right now, and the last thing they wanted was to arrive, arrest Karl Schnitter and then see him released on a technicality.
As the car screeched to the side, to avoid a badger crossing the road, he screamed.
‘Don’t be a girl,’ Doctor Marcos chided as they continued. ‘It’s three minutes until arrival.’
‘I don’t really care,’ Declan said, moving towards Karl as he held the coin in the light of the Peugeot. ‘You call.’
‘Tails it is then,’ Karl said, as he flipped the coin—
Only to be caught mid air by Declan, who stepped back,
throwing the coin with all of his might into the woodlands beside the car park.
‘Not that coin, though,’ he said, pulling another coin out of his pocket. It was still in its clear plastic bag, an item of evidence he’d pulled from Maidenhead before leaving. ‘Let’s make it a fair fight, yeah?’
He opened the bag and slipped the one mark coin, the one that Rolfe Müller had in his pocket when he died into his hand, flipping it across the car park towards Karl, who caught it, ashen faced. As Karl stared at the coin, Declan smiled.
‘Have a good look,’ he said. ‘No trickery, just a fifty fifty chance of success or failure.’
‘We cannot—‘
‘Cannot what?’ Declan asked with mock innocence. ‘It’s the same coin you threw a minute ago, isn’t it? Slightly newer perhaps, but with the same equal chances you gave everyone else?’
He smiled; a dark, vicious one.
‘Unless you’ve never believed in the coin's luck, and you’re just a lying piece of shit.’
Karl went to speak, thought better of it, and then threw the coin back to Declan.
‘You can throw,’ he said, the bravado returning to his voice. ‘I choose tails.’
Declan nodded, but then paused.
‘Can you do me a favour first?’ he said, softly. ‘Could you phone your daughter, so I can say a goodbye to mine?’
Karl nodded, pulling out the phone, dialling.
‘No funny tricks, or she dies,’ he said as he waited for the phone to answer. ‘Come on, where are you…’ he disconnected and redialled, still to no answer.
‘Oh dear,’ Declan replied. ‘Looks like things aren’t going well there. The question is, did my daughter beat the snot out of your daughter, or did my team get in there first?’
