The Boy from Berlin

by Michael Parker

  ‘Did your wife take all the necessary details when the accident happened?’ he asked the doctor.

  ‘Of course, but they were false.’

  ‘Was the driver of the other car a man or woman?’

  ‘Woman.’

  ‘And would your wife know her again if she saw her?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘Probably not. And it’s been such a long time now, I doubt if she ever would recognize her.’

  ‘They were telling you that they could lift your daughter at any time.’

  ‘It’s like having your pocket picked,’ the doctor said. ‘You know you’ve been touched but have no idea how or by whom.’ He shuddered. ‘And you know they can do it to you whenever they want.’

  Amos considered his next step, living in hope that something could be developed from this. ‘You couldn’t have conducted the autopsy on your own, so who was with you?’

  Robertson drew a deep breath. ‘Young doctor. It was his first.’ He shook his head. ‘He didn’t stand up too well. I told him to take a break; leave it to me.’

  He turned and looked at Amos with a philosophical look on his face. ‘You can tell them anything, you know. They have an inordinate fear of seniority for some reason.’

  ‘So why did you wait until now to tell me?’

  ‘It’s been on my conscience too long. I needed to unburden myself. I’ve known you a long time, Amos. I know I can trust you.’ He put a hand on Amos’s arm. ‘I don’t want the truth to come out. If it does, I will go to prison.’

  ‘If the truth comes out, Doc.’

  Robertson shook his head. ‘I hope not. But I was protecting my daughter and my wife as any father and husband would, and I’m not ashamed of that.’

  ‘OK, Doc. I’ll keep tabs on the case. It’s officially closed, but I’ll see what I can come up with.’ He turned the ignition key and started the car. ‘You go home now and don’t worry; I’ll think of something, but whatever you do, don’t talk to anyone about this.’

  Robertson thanked him and slid out of the car. Amos watched him hurry across to the Lexus and wondered how the hell he was going to find the senator’s killer without revealing the doctor’s complicity in the case. He pulled the small, digital voice recorder from his pocket and switched it off. Then he put the car into gear and pulled out on to the highway.

  Gus Mason pulled up outside his father’s house just as Bill Mason was coming off the porch to greet him. He thought his father looked in pretty good shape for a man who had turned seventy and subconsciously wished that he had his father’s genes. People often remarked that he didn’t look at all like him.

  Bill Mason’s ranch had known better days when his wife was alive. The ranch, or spread, as he liked to call, it covered about four hundred acres. His wife had bred horses there, but that had been her passion, not Bill’s. He supported her financially but was not much good when it came to horses. Now his wife was gone, so too were the horses. All sold. The ranch had been left to nature over most of the acreage, but Mason kept the immediate area around the house and his stables in good condition.

  Bill Mason put his hand up as Gus stepped out of the car. ‘You’re looking good, Gus. They keeping you busy in the legislature?’ His shoes crunched on the gravel as he walked towards his son.

  Mason shook his hand and put his arm on his father’s shoulder as they walked towards the house.

  ‘Can’t grumble, Dad. This is what I’ve wanted for a long while now. Most of what I do is committee work. Get to meet a lot of influential people. All hoping we can make the city a better place between us. I’m doing good.’

  Bill Mason was noticeably taller than his son. In their stockinged feet, Mason’s father was probably six or seven inches taller. Gus Mason was a creditable five feet ten inches, which gave him a small advantage over others, but not over his towering father.

  ‘I hear you’re chairing one of the judicial committees.’

  Mason smiled at his dad. ‘Sounds important, eh? But it’s a load of baloney in most cases. Just catching up with work others don’t want to do.’

  ‘If it’s to do with the law, Gus, it’s important.’

  They walked into the lounge and Bill Mason offered his son a drink.

  ‘Soda will do fine, Dad.’

  Mason senior grinned. ‘Never did like the hard stuff, did you?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I’m having bourbon.’

  ‘Straight, no doubt,’ Gus Mason called out, but his father didn’t appear to hear. Gus knew his father liked a drink, and did worry about his state of health, but there was no stopping the old boy.

  He slumped into a soft chair and picked up a copy of the car magazine, Classic American. His father was an adherent to classic cars, particularly those of his youth, and was extremely proud of his 1947 Buick Super Convertible. He spent most of his waking hours lavishing all kinds of attention on it and if he drove the car into Hutton, the local town, it was washed and dried lovingly once he had returned home. Any time he wanted to drive into Newark, his father would use his Toyota Land Cruiser. The irony was that he would always drive along the old, dirt road into Hutton with the Buick, but took the modern highway when driving the Toyota to the city.

  Bill Mason returned with the drinks. Gus looked up at the clock. It was in the shape of an old ’57 Buick, naturally. It was a little after 4.30; too early for a hard drink, but his father was carrying a good measure in his whiskey glass. He said nothing as he took his soda.

  ‘How long do you plan to stay in the Senate?’ Bill Mason asked as he took a seat.

  Gus made a small, waving motion with his free hand. ‘No more than a year I hope.’

  ‘So I guess its Congress you’re after?’ His son nodded. ‘When?’

  Gus shrugged. He looked a little coy. ‘We’re hoping to cut some corners. Maybe get into Congress earlier than planned.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My supporters, Dad,’ he answered drily. ‘We all need them.’

  Bill Mason’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Seems a mite quick to me, Gus. You’ll need some powerful backers, not just supporters. Got any in your pocket yet?’

  Mason laughed. ‘I don’t call it like that. I have people who will back me, put it that way.’

  ‘Good Republicans?’

  ‘Powerful Republicans.’

  Bill Mason put his glass on the small table beside him. Gus knew he usually did that when he was about to make a point.

  ‘Et tu, Brute? Beware the Ides of March.’

  Gus grimaced and shook his head. The quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar about being knifed in the back often rang true in the seedy world of politics.

  ‘They are not plotters; just people who want what’s best for America.’

  ‘And you believe you’re the man to give the Americans what they want?’

  Mason dipped his head. ‘Sure do.’

  His father shifted forward in his chair. ‘Remember this, Gus; a politician’s career ends in failure one way or another. Stay too long and you’re thrown out. Stay too briefly and you haven’t been successful enough. The guys who back you are the faceless ones. They will get what they want from you simply by putting you where you think you want to go.’

  ‘But I know where I want to go. I want to be president.’

  Bill Mason relaxed and settled back in his chair. ‘So do a million other Americans.’ He picked up his glass. ‘I wish you luck, but watch your back.’

  Lieutenant Amos opened his desk drawer and looked at the syringe for about the tenth time that day. It had been in his drawer for about a year now. He used to look at it most days and wished he could use it as evidence, but the case was closed and he knew he would have one helluva job persuading Captain Holder to reopen it. Holder was just about confirmed as the new police director of the New Jersey State Police Department, and the last thing he was about to do was allow Amos to jeopardize his future.

  The syringe was retractable. It had a needle that withdrew into the body of the syring
e after use. This was to prevent accidental spiking and reduce the risk of contamination. Ordinarily, the syringe would have been discarded in the proper receptacle after use, but it was not always the case, particularly when drug addicts had used them. Amos knew who manufactured this particular syringe and that it was distributed all over the United States, so there was little chance of tracking down the destination to which a consignment of them would have been sent. But he did know that the large, pharmaceutical firm, Corr Chemicals who were based in Newark, had employed Babs Mason in their chemical engineering department.

  Once again, Amos was using gut instinct to reach a conclusion on which there was little but circumstantial evidence, but everything pointed to Babs Mason. He had irrefutable proof that this syringe had been used to administer succinylcholine because the DNA of Senator Ann Robbins had been found on the needle. The fact that the needle had been retracted meant that the sample had not been washed off by rain, or destroyed by the weather as it had lain, undetected in the undergrowth about thirty yards from where the senator had been murdered. Babs Mason had admitted to seeing the senator the same morning although denied having a conversation with her, despite a not very reliable witness statement to the contrary. And during the one and only interview he had conducted with her, Babs Mason had said that Ann Robbins’ objection to her husband being voted into the state legislature was ‘an obstacle that had to be overcome’.

  Reluctantly, Amos closed the drawer and locked it. Time would tell whether he would ever be able to bring Babs Mason to justice. At the rate her husband was climbing the political ladder, and while people like Captain Holder were in place, he doubted it.

  The phone rang and broke into Amos’s train of thought. He picked it up and grunted into the handset. A squad officer across the other side of the room lifted his hand up to attract Amos’s attention. He glanced out of his open door.

  ‘What is it, Jeff?’

  ‘Got a report coming in, Amos. Body found in a burnt out Lexus. It’s a homicide. Looks like it’s Doc Robertson, the chief medical examiner.’

  SIX

  MARION ROBERTSON’S FACE was a picture of death, almost. Her skin was ashen and her cheeks seemed to shrink into her cheekbones. She was sitting on the edge of a leather armchair, her legs drawn close so that her knees were touching. In her hand she held a small handkerchief that was now wet with her tears. She was quite a demure woman, not big in stature and had aged considerably since being told of her husband’s death barely a week ago.

  Her daughter, Nicole sat beside her. The girl’s face was puffed and swollen through crying. She had her arm linked through her mother’s and kept her gaze fixed on her mother’s face. The two of them looked forlorn and pathetic, torn from the comfort of a life that held so much promise but that had now been ripped apart by violence.

  Amos tried to frame his questions with as much sensitivity as he could muster, but the anger in him wanted to bully some kind of truth and explanation from Doc Robertson’s widow. He had no right to feel that way, except the right one might expect from certain knowledge that he alone held.

  Amos could see a sinister pattern emerging, although the structure of that pattern had yet to reveal itself. He knew there had to be a link between the death of Senator Ann Robbins and the murder of Doctor Robertson, and his experience was opening up avenues that he knew he needed to follow, but avenues that could lead to disaster.

  ‘Had your husband’s manner changed at all lately?’ he asked.

  Marion Robertson shook her head in a sharp, quick movement, finishing almost before it had started. Her daughter looked up at her and Amos caught the nuance of that upward glance.

  ‘Any new friends or acquaintances in his life?’

  Again the short, sharp, silent reply.

  ‘Did your husband have an illness that might have been troubling him?’

  This time he was met with a patronizing stare.

  ‘Look, could we talk without your daughter here?’ he asked.

  Nicole’s mother looked down at her daughter. She seemed to think about it briefly. Then suddenly she unhooked the little girl’s arm from hers and whispered softly to her.

  ‘Go and get a soda in the kitchen, sweetheart,’ she told her. ‘Wait for me there until the detective has gone.’

  Amos waited until they were alone.

  ‘Your husband came to see me,’ he began. ‘It was quite a while back. Told me how your daughter had a piece of her hair cut off.’

  It was intended to shock the doctor’s widow and shake her out of herself. Her eyes widened as she took in exactly what Amos was telling her.

  ‘He told you that?’

  Amos nodded. ‘He was scared. Had no one he could trust. No one he could turn to except me. So tell me; what did your daughter think of all this?’

  Robertson shook her head. ‘We kept it from her; the things that had happened that she wouldn’t have known about. She knew about her hair being cut, of course.’ She paused for a moment, and then her expression changed. ‘Are you saying this is connected?’

  ‘Difficult to say,’ he lied. ‘But there’s a possibility your husband was being intimidated by someone for some reason. Your daughter’s hair and your husband’s death may not be connected, but we have to keep an open mind on it at the moment.’

  She put her handkerchief to her face, thought better of it and stood up. Amos watched as she walked across to a sideboard and took some tissues from a drawer. She came back to the armchair and sat down.

  ‘He told me everything. Why he had been to see you. How scared he was.’ The tissue went up to her eyes again. Amos waited. ‘He couldn’t trust the police, except you, of course, so he went to Judge Lawrence.’

  Amos stiffened at this revelation. ‘I told him not to talk to anyone.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ she snapped suddenly. ‘You weren’t frightened out of your wits when you told him to keep quiet. He knew your hands were tied, although he couldn’t understand why. He felt the police had let him down. It played on his mind for months. That’s why he went to the judge.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  She shook her head. ‘Two months ago, I think.’

  ‘No contact since?’ There was no reply so Amos asked her again. ‘Did your husband have any contact with Judge Lawrence after he had seen him that first time?’

  She looked up. ‘Couple of weeks ago. He was on his way to see the judge when he was murdered.’

  Amos had met Judge Lawrence several times in the course of his police duties and often when he found himself in court giving police evidence during a case. So it was something of a surprise to him when the judge refused to see him for almost a week. He didn’t see the delay as prevarication on the judge’s part, only that Lawrence was genuinely too busy, even though Amos had informed him that he was investigating the death of the chief medical examiner.

  Amos was ushered into the judge’s office by a court official and sat in the comfortable, leather chair facing the desk. Lawrence appeared within a couple of minutes and apologized for the lengthy delay in getting round to seeing him.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ Lawrence asked as he settled himself in his large, leather chair.

  Amos shook his head. ‘Thank you, Judge, but no thanks.’

  ‘Right,’ Lawrence began with the one word, clutching his hands together and placing them on the desk blotter in front of him. ‘Sad business, Doc Robertson.’ He shook his head solemnly. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said as he arched his eyebrows and looked directly at Amos.

  ‘He came to see you on the day he was murdered.’

  Lawrence looked genuinely surprised. ‘Did he? My word.’ He shook his head again and cast his eyes down. ‘I can’t remember. But then, I did see quite a lot of the doctor.’

  ‘Can you recall anything of that meeting?’

  Lawrence opened the large diary that graced his desk. He thumbed through it, turning the pages back until he found the entry he was lo
oking for.

  ‘Let me see; two weeks ago.’ He laid the tip of his finger on an entry. ‘Yes.’ The word slid out of his mouth. ‘I was in court at ten. Had the doctor pencilled in at twelve. Then I chaired the …’ He paused. ‘Helps me to remember if I see what I’ve been up to,’ he explained. ‘But I’m damned if I can remember what it was the doctor wanted to see me about.’

  ‘Can you remember how he was that day?’ Amos asked him. ‘Was he confused, nervous? Was it a medical matter? Perhaps an autopsy report?’

  The judge leaned back in his chair and fixed a spot somewhere above Amos’s head. He looked as though he was racking his brains to recall something about the meeting. Eventually he gave up.

  ‘No, I’m sorry Lieutenant, I can’t remember.’

  His expression conveyed to Amos that there was little to be gained by continuing, but Amos wasn’t to be denied.

  ‘Did he say anything about the death of Senator Ann Robbins?’ The judge’s expression altered a little and he shook his head. Amos went on. ‘He wasn’t happy with the autopsy report he had signed.’

  Lawrence frowned. ‘I don’t understand. Why should he be unhappy about a straightforward death by heart attack? After all, he carried out the autopsy.’

  ‘He didn’t think she had suffered a heart attack; he believed she had been murdered.’

  Lawrence sniffed. ‘How?’

  ‘By lethal injection.’

  ‘How do you know this, Lieutenant?’

  ‘I have the syringe in my office that was used to kill Senator Robbins.’

  The judge sat motionless, his eyes fixed on Amos. The large, expansive room seemed to close in on him. The sounds that drifted in from beyond the double glazed windows invaded the office.

  ‘I don’t think you should be telling me this, Lieutenant. If you have evidence that can prove the senator was murdered, why haven’t you produced it?’

  ‘I can’t explain that, Judge,’ Amos admitted, ‘not yet, anyway. The case has been closed and filed away. But the chief medical examiner signed the autopsy report knowing that the senator had been murdered. I really need to know why he came to see you because it might be possible that he had this on his mind. He might have even confided in you.’