To the Death am-10

by Patrick Robinson

  VIRGINIA TOWN IN SHOCK AT COLD-BLOODED MURDER

  State Police Launch Dragnet in Hunt for Mystery Woman

  Detective Joe Segel retreated toward home. He had answered quite enough questions for one day. And with a major media outburst scheduled in the next few hours, he needed to be up early.

  Nonetheless, Joe walked rather disconsolately home, knowing he would be greeted by an equally disconsolate wife, Joanne, who would tell him she could hardly remember what he looked like, the way she always did when he was involved in a major case.

  Joe, who was forty-six, had married late in life, and Joanne, who was much younger, in her late twenties, was already showing signs of exasperation as the wife of a police officer. She had given up preparing a late dinner long ago.

  And there would be questions about this Mystery Woman, he knew that. Which was why he had stopped off for a drink at the Estuary. To get away from it all, just for an hour. To tell the truth, Joe was pretty fed up with the Mystery Woman himself. Where the hell was she? Still, he had a good chance of some answers tomorrow.

  At the time, the Mystery Woman was dead to the world, sound asleep in a luxury room, four thousand miles away, in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. She was beyond the dragnet, perhaps beyond the law, exactly the way she had planned it. The Virginia police did not even know her name.

  The late-night news bulletins on American television were full of it. The story had “more legs” than anyone realized, especially the bit about the Barker Pecker. By 10:30 P.M. on the East Coast, Detective Joe Segel’s name was a household word, more or less.

  The Fox Channel led with it. The newscaster, filmed standing outside the Estuary Hotel, announced: “This was the sex attack that went violently wrong. Right here in this rather sleepy little town, way down on the Rappahannock River, a highly regarded local businessman was found dead this morning with a jeweled dagger jutting from his chest.

  “He was in a state of disarray, and police believe, judging by his condition, he had been involved in some kind of sexual assault on another person.

  “He was found in the parking lot of the Estuary Hotel in the town of Brockhurst, Virginia, and police say he was killed around midnight. Right now there is only one suspect, the beautiful barmaid from the hotel, Carla Martin.

  “The dead man, Mr. Matt Barker, owner of a local garage, had been drinking there during the evening, and was believed to have asked Miss Martin out, but she refused. The two left the bar twenty minutes apart, and Miss Martin, say police, has vanished, leaving a perfectly ordinary little American country town in a state of shock.”

  At this point, the newscast switched to interviews, showing footage of the detective in charge of the crime, Joe Segel, stressing the importance of finding Miss Martin, who, he said, had taken a great deal of trouble in covering her tracks.

  Then they went to one of Matt Barker’s friends, Herb the photographer, who was unable to shed one scrap of light on the reason for Matt’s death, or indeed the whereabouts of Carla.

  The next lady had been saved by the news producers for the big payoff line. Mrs. Price, the hotel cleaning lady who had first discovered the body, said, “Well, it gave me a very nasty shock, I can tell you. Matt Barker lying there with that big thing sticking out of him.”

  Mrs. Price, I assume you mean the dagger?

  “Nossir. I do not mean the dagger.”

  Cut to studio. Smiling anchors, serious man, dazzling blonde. Really great television. Half the country was rolling about laughing. That’s what it’s all about, right? Leave ’em laughing. Even in the middle of a murder hunt.

  The morning newspapers tackled the Brockhurst killing boldly. The Washington Post made it the second lead on the front page under the headline:

  MURDER MYSTERY STUNS VIRGINIA TOWN

  Police Seek Vanished Barmaid.

  Other publications were more lurid. One of the tabloids came up with:

  SEX–CRAZED GARAGE MAN MURDERED BY BARMAID

  Another went with:

  SEX BRAWL IN HOTEL PARKING LOT ENDS IN DEATH

  So far as Joe Segel was concerned, the only thing that mattered was that they all carried the identity picture of Carla Martin. And they all stressed the importance of locating the Mystery Woman. Joe hoped that by lunchtime they would have some serious leads. This was the kind of high-profile local murder that could not be allowed to go unsolved.

  It was Wednesday, July 4, a national holiday, but murder hunts do not stop for those. Joe had set up a reception desk with three operators drafted in from another town to take the calls. And there were calls, dozens of them. But they were geographically hopeless. Joe had drawn a large circle on his wall map of the area, a sixty-mile diameter, with the town in the middle. That’s thirty miles in any direction.

  Almost all the calls named or identified suspects outside the murder zone, places too distant for Carla to have made it to work every day. She had stated to Jim Caborn that she wanted to live in or near Brockhurst. And in Joe Segel’s opinion, that absolutely ruled out anyone more than thirty miles away.

  There were leads that needed to be followed, but Joe’s policeman’s instincts, honed by a lifetime in the force, were telling him they were not yet on the right track. At least they were telling him that until the phone rang for him personally, and Mrs. Emily Gallagher informed him that she would very much like to see him at her house, something concerning Matt Barker’s murder.

  Mrs. Gallagher was a lady who commanded enormous respect in the area, with which she had a lifelong family association. There were also those who knew her daughter was married to one of the most important men in America. Joe Segel was rather proud she had called him, and he asked one of his team to drive him immediately to her house and wait.

  When he arrived, Mrs. Gallagher had recovered her decorum, having almost been pulled into the Rappahannock by Charlie an hour before. She had made some coffee, and now she was ready to talk to Joe about the pretty dark-haired girl who had suddenly vanished from her life, as thoroughly as she had from Joe’s.

  The detective listened wide-eyed to Mrs. Gallagher, who swiftly established that she knew more about Carla Martin than anyone else he had spoken to. Admiral Morgan’s mother-in-law recalled a conversation in which Carla had mentioned her “apartment,” and once her “doorman.”

  She also had a fleeting suspicion that Carla either may have been foreign or had lived abroad for a long time. She had never forgotten that sentence “I give you one little piece, if you behave.” Future conditional. The mistake of a foreigner. Joe Segel really liked that.

  Emily also recalled once asking what Carla had been doing on such a fine day, and she had mentioned that she just sat on her balcony and read some magazines. Apartment, doorman, balcony. Vital observations, not because they led to anything specific, but because they ruled out so much.

  But the key point Mrs. Gallagher raised was the conversation she had in the hotel, possibly an hour before the killing. “That Matt Barker was harassing Carla,” she said. “I saw him, and I heard him. I told her to be careful, he was entirely the wrong type of person for her to go out with.”

  “Careful, Emily,” said Joe. “He was successful, well-liked. And he did drive a Porsche.”

  “He also had some very rough edges, entirely inappropriate for my friend Carla,” she replied. “I just hope this is all sorted out soon. And that she can come back to help me with Charlie and Kipper.”

  “Who’s Kipper?” asked Joe.

  “Oh, he’s my daughter’s spaniel. She and Arnold are going to Europe for three weeks, and I’m in charge of the dog.”

  Joe smiled. He really liked Mrs. Gallagher, and he asked her once more, “You really have no idea where she lived?”

  “Absolutely none. But it could not have been very far away. She was always on time, and I presumed she left her car in the parking lot at the hotel. But I never saw it. Not here. She always walked.”

  So far as Joe was concerned, the mystery, if anything, deepened
. And Mrs. Gallagher should have been a detective. He was grateful to her, and interested in how genuinely surprised she was that Carla had left without a word.

  Noon, Wednesday 4 July National Security Agency Fort Meade, Maryland

  Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe was on duty. His boss, the director, Admiral George Morris, had been away since the previous weekend, visiting his son in New York. He would not be back until tomorrow morning.

  This left Jimmy at the helm. The agency had many more senior officials in residence, commanders, captains, admirals, colonels, and brigadier generals. But Ramshawe had the ear of the mighty, and everyone knew it. He punched far above his weight in his job as assistant to Admiral Morris, thanks in no small way to his known friendship with the Great One, Admiral Arnold Morgan.

  Everyone kept Jimmy posted, willingly and without rancor. Admiral Morris trusted him implicitly. If you wanted to get something urgent done, in any department, have a chat with young Jimmy. Everyone knew that rule. Indeed, most everyone believed that one day Admiral — or at least Captain — Ramshawe would occupy the Big Chair. Admiral Morgan said his protégé was the most natural-born intelligence officer he had ever met.

  The downside, of course, for one so respected, was you had to work on national holidays. Jimmy’s fiancée, Jane Peacock, the Aussie ambassador’s daughter, was particularly peeved because she had wanted to dazzle the local populace of Chesapeake Beach on her surfboard, Bondi beach goddess that she was. But Jimmy swore to God he’d be at her house for dinner by 7:30 P.M.

  Meantime, he had spent the morning catching up on the foreign papers. He never got to the local ones until quite late, and even then concentrated principally on overseas news.

  However, the Estuary Killer was crowding in on him, since it was mentioned on all the front pages and he had heard mention of it on television news. He picked up the Washington Post and could scarcely miss the second lead, accompanied as it was by a large photo-artist identity of Carla Martin and a photograph of Matt Barker.

  “Hello,” he muttered to himself. “Here’s the bloke who died with his pecker out.” He recalled the cleaning lady mentioning that it was jutting out there, large as life.

  But it was not the pecker that arrested Jimmy’s attention. It was the dagger, which he thought sounded extremely old-fashioned. You just don’t hear it much, that’s all. You hear about knife crime, and stabbings, but you don’t hear about daggers. Except in Macbeth, or Julius Caesar—“Is this a pecker I see before me?”

  Jimmy chuckled, floored by his own amazing humor. But he was taken by the jeweled dagger, taken by its off-key presence and by its suggestion of the Middle East, like something out of Arabian Nights or the Crusades. I don’t care what anyone says, he mused. There’s no daggers in 21st-century Virginia. Guns, yes. Knives, yes. Maybe even bombs. But no daggers. And that’s final.

  Jimmy read on. And then he stopped dead. Brockhurst, now where the hell’s that? And where have I heard the name before? It’s too familiar. Someone has mentioned that town before.

  He poured himself a cup of hot coffee and tried to concentrate. Then he went to his computer database, hit search mode, and punched in Brockhurst. Nothing. He’d never filed anything that included that name before. He called Jane, and she could not even remember hearing the name.

  “See you later,” he said. “Call me if you remember anything.”

  “Don’t be late,” she replied, archly.

  He summoned up a big computerized wall map and searched for Brockhurst. Found it in the middle of nowhere, and confessed himself more baffled than he was before. Jesus, that place is in the bloody outback, he confirmed to no one in particular. I just can’t remember where or why I ever heard that name before. But I did.

  He glanced through the paper to check whether anything truly diabolical had happened, and was glad to see nothing had. Iraq was quiet, Afghanistan was quiet, and Iran for once was behaving itself. The right-wing French president was threatening to quit the European Union, and the Brits were running out of North Sea oil, probably going broke with their massive welfare programs and no resources.

  Then he had a brainwave. He called Jane and checked whether they had the embassy to themselves tonight, and, if they had, would she object to asking Arnold and Kathy to join them for dinner?

  “Well, Mum and Dad are going out, and we do have the staff on duty. I don’t really have a problem with inviting them. Do you want me to call Kathy?”

  “They probably can’t come,” said Jimmy. “But we’ve been to at least three really expensive restaurants with them lately, and it would be a good chance to repay something. You know Arnold always pays.”

  “Okay. I’ll call. Will he be all right with Aussie wine?”

  “I doubt it. He’ll call it grape juice. If they’re on, call me and I’ll try to do something.”

  Brockhurst. The word was revolving around in Jimmy’s mind. He sat quietly and racked his brains. And suddenly, thinking of Arnold’s predictable reaction to Australian Shiraz, it hit him.

  “It’s Kathy’s mum! I got it. That’s where she lives. I’ve seen a photograph of her house there. A picture of Kathy with two dogs, a big golden retriever and Kipper. That’s where Kathy goes when she visits.”

  Jim was proud of that. He rewarded himself with a fresh cup of coffee and sat for a few moments pondering the world. He picked up the Post and read the story in more detail. Beyond the Pecker, as it were.

  And he read with immense awareness of the hunt for the missing barmaid. Dark, beautiful, may have been the victim of a sex attack, covered her tracks and vanished. No other suspects.

  He read some other newspapers. He read all the accounts and assessed the many facts that were spread out before him. And as the afternoon wore on, he came up with one question, as he so often did when trying to solve something: what was this Middle East weapon doing rammed into someone’s body, two hundred yards from Kathy’s mum’s house?

  Did he like it? Absolutely not. And he cast his mind back to that big story in the Post, three or four months ago, the one that had painted Admiral Morgan as the archenemy of all Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

  Here we have a new situation, he pondered. From right out of the wide blue yonder, we have the first murder in a hundred years in the town of Brockhurst, Virginia, international crossroads to nowhere. The crime was committed with an obvious Middle East weapon, a jewel-encrusted dagger, which, from the photos, looks like it belonged to Abdul the Turk or someone.

  But it bloody didn’t, did it? It belonged to someone in Brockhurst, visiting or resident. Now what the hell’s a resident of a nice Virginia community doing with something like that? And then stabbing a bloke to death right down the road from the mother-in-law of the jihadists’ number one enemy. Don’t understand it. But I don’t like it.

  Jane called back. “Arnold and Kathy can’t come. They’re going to the Bedfords’.”

  “Well, at least we tried.”

  “And we might have to try harder,” added Jane. “They’re going on vacation in three weeks for most of August. Kipper’s going to Virginia.”

  “Okay, see you later,” said Jimmy.

  Right now, it seemed to him, the local police detective was certain that this Mystery Woman had probably committed the crime, stabbed this Barker character for whatever reason. And Jimmy was inclined to go along with that, because people do not make really elaborate plans to remain anonymous, cover up every one of their tracks, and then leave the area. Not without they were bloody well up to something.

  For Jimmy, that Middle Eastern dagger was critical. Because it had “jihadist” written all over it. He sipped his coffee and frowned. And he decided, then and there, that he would take a drive down to Brockhurst early tomorrow morning, try to get his facts in a row. Right now he would call Arnold, set out his suspicions, and then ask if it would be okay for him and Jane to visit Kathy’s mum while they were in the area.

  He would mention to the admiral what a coincidence it was
that they were headed down to the Brockhurst area on an entirely separate matter. But he understood with unerring certainty that there was about as much chance of Arnold believing that coincidence as there was of Copernicus joining the Flat Earth Society.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the admiral’s number. Arnold answered in person and immediately said how sorry he was they could not join Jimmy and Jane at the embassy. But then he paused, as if sensing that Jimmy was all business tonight.

  “What’s on your mind, kid?” he asked, flatly.

  “Well, it’s about that murder down in Brockhurst,” he began—

  “Guy with the pecker and the dagger?” interrupted Arnold.

  “That’s him,” said Jimmy, aware that the admiral’s voice betrayed impatience with a very large capital “I.” “And don’t you think it’s kind of strange that some Arab murderer, a professional by the look of it, should be plying his trade a half mile from Kathy’s mum’s house?”

  “Two things, Jimmy. One, the newspapers think the murderer was probably a girl. Two, the fact that the dagger was made in the Middle East does not mean it was being wielded by an Arab. Could have been used by a fucking Eskimo, for chrissakes. Ramshawe, you’re getting paranoid.”

  “It’s my job to be paranoid.”

  “Jimmy, right now there’s no connection whatsoever between this barmaid and the murder, except they left the hotel within twenty minutes of each other. But let’s say she did kill him, by accident if you like; then, so what? She didn’t kill Kathy’s mom, did she? She didn’t go to live in Brockhurst for that, did she?”

  “Then why did she go to live in Brockhurst?”

  “Christ knows, old buddy. It’s all a bit far-fetched for me. Coincidences. Disjointed, unconnected facts.”

  “Anyway, Arnie, the real purpose of my call was to ask you if it would be okay for Jane and me to visit Mrs. Gallagher while we’re in the area tomorrow.”