Blood of His Fathers (Sinners and Saints)

by Michelle Chambers

  “Just those.”

  Drew studied the contents of the bag. An oval pair of tortoiseshell-frame glasses completely shattered in the accident and a leather drawstring pouch, which had seen better days.

  “That’s all,” Adrienne said. She’d anticipated the question poised on his lips and was now pointing at the pouch. “In light of what I discovered, the coroner thought it prudent to wait for you to open that.”

  “What you discovered?” Drew’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, what you discovered?”

  “When is a body not a body, Drew?”

  Adrienne reached to grab the set of photos lying on the podium behind her and then returned her gaze to his.

  “When it doesn’t exist,” she supplied. She clearly wasn’t expecting him to give an answer. “Take a look at these.”

  Drew took the photos in his hands. He turned and viewed them every which way. Obviously a picture of the dead man’s face, but what was he looking for?

  Adrienne read his mind. “Scars, Drew. Scars,” she said. “This man has undergone extensive plastic surgery.”

  His interest peaked. “Cosmetic or corrective?”

  Approval and surprise sparked Adrienne’s eyes. “Cosmetic,” she answered. “All cosmetic. There are scars on his face and post mortem bruising as a result of the accident. But other than that, there’s absolutely nothing further to suggest any previous tissue trauma that would warrant extensive surgery.”

  “Like a burn,” Drew ventured. Again, his eyes met approval in hers.

  “Exactly. Thirty scars,” Adrienne cited. “All small, precise incisions hidden neatly in the natural folds of the skin, and in the obvious places. Behind the ears, in the hairline, under the chin.”

  She released a studied breath. “I’m still waiting for x-rays to confirm this, but I think his nose and cheek bones may have been surgically broken and then restructured.” Her brow creased and she pursed her lips. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say this man has had surgery that deliberately altered his appearance.”

  Drew peered closer to the dead man lying on the refrigerated rack whose features showed no obvious signs of decomposition, although the putrefied stench of decay filling his nostrils told him the body had to be in its final stages of autolysis.

  “The scars aren’t fresh, are they?”

  “No. Look at this.” With her gloved fingers, Adrienne maneuvered the skin beneath the right eye of the dead man, pulling the folds taut. “There’s a magnifying glass somewhere over there,” she said.

  She jutted her chin toward an autopsy table behind him. Drew promptly retrieved the instrument and held it above the flattened area of skin.

  “Do you see that?” Adrienne said. “As with the others, this scar is barely visible. There’s absolutely no sign of fibrosis and the skin itself has aged around it. If I release the skin…” She demonstrated. “You’ll notice no rigidity in the skin structure. There’s also no elasticity and an excess of skin. Look at the scar,” she directed. “If it was a recent eye correction, let’s say less than two years old, it would sit nicely there.” She pointed her gloved finger to a small area of skin beneath the lower lashes. “But gravity and the skin’s natural aging process have pulled it lower.”

  She paused and shrugged her shoulders. “Taking into account the texture of the skin, its discoloration and the position of the scars in relation to where they ought to be, I’d say the surgery is probably about twenty years old.”

  Drew met Adrienne’s challenging gaze. His fingers tightened about the leather pouch in his hand.

  Adrienne relaxed her features and smiled. “See. I knew you would like this.”

  “I’ll need your report as soon as possible. And a set of fingerprints.”

  “First thing Monday, Drew.”

  The mortuary door swung closed at his back.

  * * * *

  There’d been something about the dead man that not only kindled Drew’s interest and sparked his curiosity from the outset, but alerted his instincts as well. Still, not even his instincts could’ve prepared him for the piece of news he’d received. He glanced at the file marked “Confidential” lying across his desk, taking special note of the name stamped across it. Nicolae Nastase. General Nicolae Nastase.

  Drew focused once more on the two photos he held in his hands. One of the John Doe he’d received from Adrienne and the other of Nicolae Nastase that he’d requested from Interpol. He sucked in a meditative breath, held it a short moment and then released it. Two very different faces of purportedly the same man. There were similarities. Yet there was something about Adrienne’s John Doe that continued to warrant his attention.

  Either the John Doe had surgery to look like Nicolae Nastase, or the dead man was Nicolae Nastase who had surgery to change his appearance. But which was it? Fingerprints didn’t lie, but they could be switched.

  Drew breathed deeply in.

  A man who would use surgery to change his appearance conjured up questions, but a man who would use surgery to change his appearance and had an eighteenth century Spanish gold coin in his possession raised even more. The door to Drew’s office swung open and his Detective Sergeant burst in.

  “Drew, are you busy?”

  Colin’s curious eyes darted to the photos Drew held in his hands. Drew casually, yet consciously, placed the photos face down on his desk. There was no use involving Colin in a new case based purely on gut feelings. Besides, they were already up to their eyeballs in unsolved cases and in the middle of an intelligence report on Alexander McCormack, which was proving to be anything but routine and far from easy. The request had come directly from the Detective Chief Superintendent and took priority.

  He would have to follow his instincts on the John Doe later.

  “What is it, Col?”

  “There’s something you should know about Sean Wright.”

  Drew looked expectantly at his Detective Sergeant.

  “Sean has a sister.”

  Drew practically jumped from his chair. He reached for the dark green parka draped about it and rushed to the door.

  “Where is she?”

  Drew knew Sean Wright had worked for Alexander McCormack, but other than that legitimate and pertinent background information could never be found. Perhaps today he would get lucky.

  On other occasions Colin would be way ahead of Drew. He’d be tossing back snippets of information like tasty morsels to a dog just to keep him enthralled until they reached the parking lot. This time it felt different. Drew managed to stop himself in time from colliding into Colin’s stationary body. He caught his Detective Sergeant’s painful grimace. Something was definitely up.

  “What is it?” Drew said. “Come on, out with it.”

  “We don’t know where she is.”

  There it was, the bad news. Drew slid his hands from the collar of his parka. Today was going to be one of those Mondays. He returned to his seat behind his desk.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later he was driving across London to the local police station that had filed a report of a young woman in search of her brother. She’d apparently ID’d Sean, although not by name. Perhaps she could be the breakthrough he’d been waiting for.

  Sean Wright’s body had found five days ago and under different circumstances Drew wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. But it’d been Sean who’d unexpectedly brought him closer to Alexander McCormack.

  With the rise in football violence, Finsbury Town Football Club had been under surveillance for a number of weeks. Undercover policemen, or Spotters, sat among the fans during matches identifying troublemakers and gleaning information about prearranged fights. The undercover team had arrested Sean Wright nine days before his death. A key-figure in the football underworld, he’d been a long way from the Premier League Clubs where he normally operated.

  Sean had been a tough nut to crack. He’d divulged nothing of his reasons for being at the club that day or his dealings with Al
exander McCormack. It’d been another arrestee who’d mentioned McCormack was planning to sabotage his own club, although there’d been a lack of detail. But if Sean Wright had been called in for the job, then the police expected a bloodbath. The question was, why? They needed times, dates, places. Things only Sean would know.

  Sean had been retained for an added forty-eight hours while Drew searched for means to get him to talk. Still, what he discovered had come as more of a surprise to Sean than himself.

  The surveillance photos taken at Finsbury Town Football Club had been re-examined, but this time it was the obscure faces in the background that were scrutinized. Identities were checked and double-checked and faces compared against the thousands upon thousands of offenders in the police database. And one face in particular caught Drew’s attention.

  Bernard Greene. Right-wing extremist and member of the British National Party.

  Sean had remained impassive as he looked down at the file laid open in front of him. He didn’t know Bernard Greene, he’d said. Drew had enlightened him.

  “He’s a member of the British National Party. Their candidate for Islington in the forthcoming General Election.”

  Sean shrugged. “What’s he got to do with me?”

  Drew had thrown another photo on the table. It’d been taken outside the BNP’s headquarters in London.

  “Recognize anyone?”

  Sean had picked up the picture of Bernard Greene and Alexander McCormack.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “Your help,” Drew had said. “We need to find out what McCormack is up to because it sure in hell looks like a lot more than turning a blind eye to the hooliganism at his club.”

  “Why should I help you?”

  “You’re being used Sean. You have proof of that in your hands.”

  Sean had been released that very afternoon. Seven days later he’s dead after an organized post-match fight.

  “You must have found something,” Drew murmured.

  He slipped his car into gear and accelerated. He needed to find Sean’s sister before she started asking the right questions to the wrong people.

  * * * *

  Viktor Marinescu sat rigidly in the back of the metallic blue Lexus as it sped toward its destination. The name of Nicolae Nastase had brought him back to England, or rather, Detective Inspector Drew Mahon at New Scotland Yard had forced his journey. The detective had recently subpoenaed sealed records belonging to Nicolae Nastase and that unnerved a man like Viktor Marinescu. Fortunately, he could rely on a network of informers at the Romanian Interpol still loyal to the old Securitate. His Securitate.

  Viktor caught his reflection in the rear view mirror.

  The eyes staring back at him were his, but the face was not. Six months of painful surgery had given him a new identity and a new life. But after more than twenty years, was that all about to change?

  What kind of man was Detective Inspector Drew Mahon? Was he a thorough man? A persistent man? An observant man? Could he already be aware of the deception or its significance?

  They’d been furtively planning President Ceaucescu’s downfall for years. They being the many senior army generals and members of Ceaucescu’s own Communist Party. Some whose fathers and grandfathers had been a part of Romania’s Iron Guard in the thirties.

  Money had assured support, bought silences and incited once more the national pride that’d not only made the Iron Guard powerful in its heyday, but also feared.

  Viktor opened his hand slowly and looked at the iron and gold pin in the palm of his hand. The ancient Roman symbol of power, the fasces—a bundle of sticks bound to an axe. This would be the new symbol of a new power. His power. He would crush those who’d betrayed him. They, who’d once allied with his beliefs and then turned on him after Ceaucescu’s downfall to seize power for themselves. They, who had forced him to flee his homeland.

  The whole world had witnessed a revolution in nineteen eighty-nine and the sudden and rather too organized emergence of the Front of National Salvation that had promptly assumed control of a country in chaos.

  Yet, by quickly denouncing the killing of demonstrators in Timisoara and charging Nicolae Nastase responsible for those deaths, his former allies had succeeded in drawing the world’s attention from its speculation of a Coup d’état and focused it glaringly on him.

  He’d fled for his life. Viktor studied his features, aged with time. A drastic situation had called for drastic measures. He’d undergone months of painful surgery. He’d taken the face of another to hide his, and given his face to an old drunkard. Viktor frowned. His had been the tale of two men—Nicolae Nastase and Viktor Marinescu. He lifted a finger to his brow. The same and yet not quite the same. But was Detective Inspector Drew Mahon on the verge of discovering this fact?

  There was no room for error. Above his heart he bore a tattoo in the form of the fasces in his hand. The body in the morgue bore no such mark, except a face much altered to be his.

  An hour later Viktor sat at a table in the middle of a large room secreted in the basement of an exclusive country club. He looked around the table at the anonymous faces, the Captains of Industry who were his allies. Rich and powerful men whose wealth and influence had shaped past governments—their own and others. And they would shape those governments still to come…as long as money was to be made and power was to be had.

  This is what he’d offered them in Romania and in Bosnia. This is what he offered them now in England. Obstacles, both big and small, would be eliminated to achieve their goal.

  Which meant that Detective Inspector Drew Mahon would be taken care of when the time was right.

  Chapter Five

  Jess paced the sidewalk outside Aberdeen train station. Her mother and son sat on a bench watching her. In two days time she would become Jason’s wife.

  “Did he forget?”

  “No, Mum. We’re early.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “I know, Jake. Just five more minutes, okay,” Jess said.

  “Why don’t you call him?”

  “I can’t, Mum. I mean I can, but I wouldn’t want to impose—”

  “Impose? He’s your fiancé.”

  “Mum, please. He’ll be here soon.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Jake—”

  “Is that him?”

  Jess spun on her heel, following her mother’s gaze to the tall man climbing out the sleek black car parked a few feet away in the parking lot. He was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a black crew neck sweater and strolled with an easy gait across the forecourt toward them.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “That’s Jason.”

  “He looks like he just stepped off the catwalk in Milan. Rugged. Handsome. Athletic. And legally yours in two days time, Jess.”

  Jess snorted. For all the good that it would do her. “Thanks, Mum. As if I wasn’t already nervous enough.”

  Her mother swung her gaze to hers. “Nervous? First you don’t want to impose and now you’re nervous. Jess, are you sure you want to marry him?”

  “I-I mean, it’s too good to be true isn’t it? A man like him and a woman like me? He’s probably used to long-legged—”

  Before she could complete that sentence Jess felt strong hands around her waist and she was suddenly spun into Jason’s embrace. Her heart fluttered and her stomach felt light. She placed her hands on his biceps to steady herself. He flashed her a smile and then leaned in, brushing his lips against the corner of her mouth. He pulled back too soon.

  “I’ve missed you, Jessica,” he said.

  She raised a hand nervously to her pinned hair conscious of her mother’s scrutiny. The charade had begun.

  “I’ve missed you too.”

  There was a short, sharp tug on her coat and she looked down into her son’s shining eyes. She stepped back from Jason and put her hands on Jake’s small shoulders, maneuvering him gently to stand in front of her.

  “Jake,” she sai
d. “This is, um—”

  God, she needed to work on saying Jason’s name without having a seizure.

  Jason hunched down leveling his gaze on Jake’s. “Jason,” he supplied, extending a hand to the little boy.

  Jake took hold of his hand and shook it.

  Jess shifted uneasily and tried to calm pounding heart. She still couldn’t bring herself to look Jason fully in the eye.

  “This is my mother.”

  “Mrs. Wright,” Jason acknowledged politely. He stood and clasped her outstretched hand in his.

  Her mother replied in kind. “Jason. So good to finally meet you.”

  “Likewise, Mrs. Wright.”

  Jake moaned at her side. “Nana, I’m hungry.”

  “Then, let’s go buy a sandwich,” his grandmother answered. She took hold of Jake’s hand and led him away toward the station’s main doors. “We won’t be long,” she called over her shoulder.

  Jess helped Jason with the luggage. When the last case had been loaded, he closed the car trunk and turned to face her.

  “What have you told you mother about us?”

  “Nothing other than what we agreed on the phone.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up despite the chill wind blowing in her face.

  “We met at a café on the night of the reunion and it was love at first sight. Which she thinks is ludicrous by the way. She can’t understand how I can, one, marry again so quickly after just finalizing my divorce. And two, marry someone I’ve known for less than five days.”

  “Neither can my friends. I mean, minus the divorce bit,” Jason said.

  “So, when this is all behind us and we divorce everyone will be happy,” she mused.

  His eyes pinned her to the spot. “Not everyone, Jessica.”

  Her heart stopped. She didn’t want to know what he meant by that. There’d never been any pretense that their wedding would be anything other than that. A pretense.

  “Feelings and sentiment weren’t part of the deal,” she whispered.

  She turned to walk away, but his fingers curl about her wrist halting her flight.

  “I know you’re still hurting, Jessica, but tell me you feel nothing for me.”