by Mari Hannah
Putting them in the picture didn’t take long. The special agents listened intently without interrupting. When Kate had finished, she asked Garcia, ‘Do you have the passenger manifest handy?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘The name’s Kate.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Kate thumbed in Hank’s direction. ‘You should hear what he calls me.’ It was the first time she’d heard Torres laugh. The US machine had a sense of humour.
Torres’s mood was improving. ‘You guys seem tight.’
‘Give it time,’ Hank joked.
‘You’ve worked together a while?’
‘Years. If you look closely, you’ll see the scars.’ Hank moved a forefinger between the two agents. ‘How about you?’
‘We go back,’ Torres said.
In a matter of minutes, Hank had managed to get more out of their US counterparts than Kate had in days. Except, unlike Hank, she wasn’t fooled. Torres’s friendly banter was a front. Underneath the warm and fuzzy exterior lurked a cold and prickly heart.
Kate blinked, trying to clear the film that seemed to have fallen like a veil over her eyes. Special Agent Garcia was out of focus as she studied him. ‘I want the names of anyone travelling to Heathrow on a feeder flight from Newcastle.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Hank was staring at Kate, trying to read her.
Did she look as odd as she felt?
Could he see that she was struggling?
Looking away, she watched as Garcia moved to a desk beneath the window, opened up his laptop and logged on. With the others breathing down his neck, he hit the keys. Details of eight passengers popped up on screen: four adult males, three adult females, one child. The text dancing beneath each one made Kate feel dizzy. She drew up a seat, let out a heavy sigh and sat down beside Garcia. Apart from Jo, who they now knew didn’t travel, none of the names meant anything to her.
A non-verbal consultation with Hank resulted in a shake of the head.
He was every bit as clueless.
Torres said, ‘If the guy we’re after is as high-profile as your informant led you to believe, and not some lowlife peddling illegal narcotics, he’ll be travelling under a false passport, an assumed name. He’ll look more like a Swiss banker than a drugs baron: smart suit, good shoes, the best money can buy.’
She instructed Garcia to bring up their images.
He resumed typing.
The special agent was lightning fast.
They loaded in grid formation, one child and three women on the top line, four men beneath. Directly to Jo’s left was a young child with golden curls and the face of an angel: Jack Harper was five and a half years old. Kate felt sick. Seeing his name on a list was one thing; viewing his cherub-like photograph on Garcia’s computer screen was something else. It brought the events of the past week into sharp relief. She hadn’t forgotten that, for some, the heartache and pain, the hope and desperation, weren’t over. There were two other Harpers on the list who she presumed were the boy’s parents. Jack was the spitting image of his mother.
Unwell, tired and emotional, it made Kate want to bawl.
Sensing her unease, Torres placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘She’s worth stepping out of line for.’
‘Given the current state I’m in, she may not say the same about me.’ Kate swivelled in her seat, correcting Torres. ‘You misread me. The focus of my attention wasn’t Jo, it was Jack and his parents. I can’t imagine what their extended family must be going through.’
Torres back-pedalled. ‘Not so long ago, you were standing in their shoes. There’s no one better placed to investigate this appalling act of violence than you. That’s assuming you feel up to it. If you’re in any doubt, say the word. I wouldn’t want to take advantage.’
‘And I wouldn’t want you to take the credit.’ There was a wry smile on Kate’s face, but there was also some truth in what she had said, though she lied about how she felt physically. ‘I’m fine, so can we all relax? The families of civilians and crew deserve our best efforts. We need to pool all the resources at our disposal. If this turns out to be a linked incident – and I believe it will – my Northumbria unit is at your disposal, Gabriele. They won’t let you down and neither will we. Hank and I are in for the duration.’
‘Try keeping us out,’ Hank said.
Torres thanked him. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
Garcia didn’t exactly nod but Kate could tell he was in agreement. Of course he was – they both were – Torres had zilch until Brian stepped up. Kate had nailed the Ice Queen and her sidekick good and proper.
‘My tip-off makes sense to you?’ Kate threw it out there.
She’d rather know than not.
Garcia said, ‘Nothing our investigators recovered from the sea – not that there’s much debris – leads us to believe that the bomb on board 0113 was terrorist-related in the true sense of the word.’ He didn’t elaborate, and Kate didn’t ask.
‘He’s right,’ Torres said. ‘We’re on the clock. Are you two happy to work on?’
‘Any chance of room service?’ Hank caught Kate’s displeasure and added, ‘What? I’m bloody starving!’
‘Order the whole damned kitchen,’ Torres said. ‘It’s on the US dollar.’
68
They made some calls, working on into the small hours of Monday morning: Torres and Garcia liaising independently with Homeland Security, information crossing the pond digitally, in both directions. Kate placed a call to Bright at three a.m., her lead too hot to wait till morning. As Torres had been quick to point out, they were facing a race against time to find as much evidence as possible before the rats returned to the sewer.
Groggy from sleep, Bright’s voice sounded thick in his throat. It took a moment for him to make sense of what Kate was telling him. He gave her short shrift, rubbishing the new intelligence as ludicrous, his voice so loud that everyone in the London hotel room could hear him. Torres and Garcia stopped what they were doing and paid attention. Hank worked on, waking his contacts in the Northumbria drug squad, hoping they might be in a better mood. He was used to his guv’nor bending Kate’s ear.
He was still at it. ‘Are you saying that you have cast-iron proof that the incidents are linked?’
‘Not yet, guv.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh yeah?’ He muttered softly to Ellen to go back to sleep. ‘Then let me put you in the picture, since you obviously have no idea what’s going on up here. If you’d been liaising with Robbo, you’d know that nothing has come up that would suggest there’s any connection whatsoever to 0113. Find the evidence. When you have it, call me.’
‘Guv, I already discussed this with Homeland Security. They’re on board, prepared to accept that the lead I gave you is sound.’
‘Are they? Well, according to the press, even their own, they don’t know which way is up, so you can tell Torres that you work for me—’
‘She can hear you, guv.’
‘Then you’ve no need to tell her. I’ve made my decision. Until you can give me the rationale behind the course of action you’re proposing, I’m not linking the two incidents on the say-so of a snout you’ve picked up on your travels, no matter how reliable you think he might be.’
Torres rolled her eyes.
If her head was aching less, Kate might have returned the gesture. She didn’t. ‘I trust my source, guv. The question is, do you trust me?’
‘That’s a loaded question if ever I heard one. Hold on a moment …’ He whispered to his wife again: ‘Who d’you think? And, as usual, she’s not taking no for an answer. Go back to sleep. This won’t take long …’
It might if he didn’t listen.
He was on the move.
Kate imagined him hauling himself out of bed, leaving Ellen’s side, moving out of the room, a click as the door closed behind him, walkin
g barefoot down the stairs into the kitchen of his home, the scene of many difficult conversations she’d had with him over the years. Kate heard bottles rattle as he opened the fridge and closed it again, the hiss of a beer can being opened. Bright was a man of habit.
‘Do you trust my intuition?’ Kate said impatiently.
‘Ordinarily.’
‘Ordinarily?’
‘You’ve had a tough week.’
He didn’t know the half of it. ‘We’ve come through worse. Weren’t you the one who told Torres and Waverley that they were lucky to have me?’
‘They are, but let’s not pretend, eh? You didn’t go down there to lend a hand out of altruism. We both know you went to find Jo and nothing else mattered. Not me, your position as SIO, your father. I could go on—’
‘Point taken, but—’
‘But nothing!’ He raised his voice. ‘You barged your way into the Casualty Bureau without authority. You disobeyed orders and dragged Hank into this with complete disregard for his family and his role within the MIT. Kate, you’ve got what you wanted. Jo is safe, and I’m very pleased to hear it, but you need to come home, take stock and use the leave you booked before you lose her a second time.’
Kate could feel her face burning. ‘In the middle of this mess?’
She may as well have said, that’s never going to happen.
Across the room, Hank ended his call. He knew what Bright was like but Garcia didn’t. The special agent dropped his gaze, embarrassed that Kate was being ticked off so publicly. Not so Torres. She was listening intently; having no doubt mixed it with guys like Bright her whole working life, she could read the situation. Kate might be taking a verbal beating, but she was sticking it to her superior, unafraid to say her piece, committed to her point of view.
‘Guv, Jo wouldn’t want me to pull out now. You know she wouldn’t. Together, we have a chance to contribute. I have reason to believe that this is not over yet. If my source is right, the killing won’t stop here.’
‘Then find me hard evidence.’
Kate was beginning to lose her temper, but he wouldn’t listen if she tried to make out that her motivation in the early stages of the investigation into the fate of 0113 wasn’t exactly as he’d described. ‘OK, my hands are up. Our hearts rule our heads sometimes. Even yours.’ She kept it general, no specific references. No need to spell it out.
‘I called in a favour,’ she said. ‘And I’m not about to throw it in the faces of those who put me in a position where I might do some good. My lead makes sense. I’m begging you to run with it.’
‘It might help if you told me who your snout is.’
69
Torres locked eyes with Kate, wondering what the British SIO would do next. Kate wasn’t sure she knew. She asked Bright to hold on a second. Thinking time. Excusing herself, she moved into the next room for some privacy. She hadn’t revealed the identity of her informant to Homeland Security personnel, and was damned if she’d do so now. In talking to her, Brian had put himself in mortal danger, earning himself anonymity. It was up to her to see to it that he received it. Bright, on the other hand, deserved to know the full story. Since she was a teenage rookie in uniform, he’d been so much more than her senior officer; he might be a difficult man on occasions, but she could and would trust him with her life.
Holding onto her ribcage, she eased herself gingerly onto the bed, every bone in her body aching, her sight still cloudy. Consulting a doctor would have to wait. Lying back against soft pillows, she yawned, almost yelping with the resulting pain in her jaw. ‘Brian Allen is my source,’ she said.
‘What?’ It came out like an explosion. ‘Since when?’
‘He made contact with me two days ago—’
‘How in hell’s name did he manage that?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It does to me. Did you know he was in the UK?’
‘No, what do you take me for?’
‘Then how did he get your number?’
Steeling herself for another dressing down, Kate drew in a deep breath. There were times in her career when, for good reason – to protect his reputation rather than her own – she hadn’t been entirely honest with her guv’nor. Sometimes he’d found her out and reprimanded her for it, other times not. But she was hoping that if she told the truth now, it might sway him to back her point of view.
Tell him …
Get it over with.
‘Brian had access to my mobile when he confronted me in Spain.’
‘What? For fuck’s sake, Kate. Potentially, you’ve compromised every police officer in your contacts list as well as your private numbers and any communications you sent or received from the MIT while you were over there trying to locate him.’
‘There’s no evidence of that, Phil.’ She used his first name, hoping his attitude would soften. ‘I’ve not heard from him in two years. In Spain, he used the phone to get Hank’s attention, to ensure that he wasn’t followed. Five minutes later, he was gone, leaving it under the wheel arch of my hire car before making good his escape, as he said he would.’
‘That was big of him. Why am I only hearing about this now?’
‘I didn’t withhold it deliberately, I swear. I was tied up, physically. Hardly in a position to argue or make demands.’
There was a long silence. ‘OK, I’m listening. Have you had any personal contact with him since you were on the continent?’
‘Not until last night, no. You’d have been the first to hear of it if I had.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Believe what you like. Do you want to hear what I’ve got to say or not?’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’
‘Hank met with him first, but he wanted a face-to-face with me and wouldn’t tell him anything. I think he did it to protect Hank. Brian told me that I was looking in the wrong direction, that I should liaise with you and look closer to home. He mentioned a nasty piece of work in the deep freeze with half his head missing, or words to that effect, obviously referring to Nikolaev. He said that the people who killed him are off-the-scale heavyweights.’ Kate gave a brief summary, leaving out the fact that she’d been bundled into a car like a sack of shit and worked over by one of the Glaswegian’s men. ‘If you’d seen how spooked he was, you wouldn’t doubt the validity of his claims. He sent his crew packing. The fact that he wasn’t prepared to talk with any of them present spoke volumes.’
Torres eyed Kate as she walked through the door, a mixture of suspicion and respect from a special agent well versed in the craft of using informants from the criminal underworld. Penetrating and neutralising organised crime syndicates – on whatever scale – was never easy. It would be doubly difficult if Brian’s information turned out to be accurate. A lever, however small, against top-level personnel in the drug-trafficking world was useful to law enforcement.
‘Is your ball-busting chief onside?’ Torres asked.
A nod from Kate. ‘He is now.’
‘Your source must be major league—’
‘Yeah, and he’s put himself in the firing line talking to me. I’ll do anything to protect him, Gabriele.’
‘We’re on the same side.’ It was a gentle nudge to divulge her source.
‘It’s not that I don’t trust you.’
Torres said no more.
Kate was tempted to tell her why Bright had changed his mind so readily. She chose not to. If she slipped up and gave too much away, the SAC would look into it. If the roles were reversed, Kate would, too. It was in their DNA to get the low-down on anything connected to a case, including investigating the good guys, which Brian was on this occasion. If he got a whiff of outside interference, he’d go to ground. Kate would lose him. She couldn’t afford that.
Despite what he’d said, he might have more to give.
Since Kate left the location of their rendezvous, she’d not heard from him. They had not parted on good terms. After his spectacular demonstration of what he’d face i
f discovered feeding her intelligence, she’d flown into a rage that came from deep within. She’d almost thrown up as he pulled the trigger, expecting the firing pin to move forward, forcing the bullet out of the barrel, blowing out his brains. On seeing her reaction, the bastard laughed out loud.
I didn’t know you cared.
That was the problem.
70
Having transferred from Garcia’s hotel suite to the offices of the FBI’s legal attaché at the US Embassy in London, they were set up in a spacious incident room with all the equipment they required. As special agent in charge, Torres was right at home, as she might have been in any of the FBI’s fifty-six field offices across the United States. Based on Brian’s tip-off, they had been there exactly a week.
Working on the premise that Nikolaev’s death was tit for tat, that he’d killed a rival and was then executed for it, British detectives and US agents worked in tandem, each and every passenger on board 0113 undergoing forensic scrutiny. Picking over the minutiae of their lives, including background, family and known associates, the process they were hoping would identify Nikolaev’s target was slow, painstaking work. Day after long day, they had ploughed on, amassing a mountain of paperwork, ruling people out, digging deeper into others.
They had begun with the obvious: ten middle-aged males who, on the face of it, were legitimate businessmen, but whose passport information suggested they were either from, or had links with, areas where the trade in illegal narcotics was rife – South and Central America, Asia, Africa, Russia. Crime families were active in places like Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela, controlling the heroin and cocaine trade, shipping large quantities and weapons via mules into the United States and elsewhere, polluting society, increasing addiction and drug-related deaths.
The US, too, had its fair share of these Mafia-type figures who all had one thing in common. If the top dog was taken out, the head of an organisation chopped off, figuratively or literally, there was always a lieutenant waiting in the wings, ready to step in and take their place. Those that were imprisoned, rather than killed by a rival, were well looked after inside, resuming control the minute they swaggered in through the prison gates.
