‘Are you okay?’ Tayte heard Martinez ask her.
‘I think so,’ Mavro said, patting herself down.
‘You had me worried there. I saw that beam hit you and all I could think was that I might never have the chance to ask you out.’
‘You want to ask me out?’
Martinez smiled as he grabbed Mavro’s hands and helped her to her feet. ‘I thought you knew. I just didn’t think you were interested.’
‘Are you kidding?’
Reese’s voice suddenly cut through the air. ‘Agent Martinez! Get over here!’
Martinez let go of Mavro’s hand. ‘We’ll talk later.’
As he left, Tayte stepped closer. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
Mavro nodded. ‘I just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.’
Tayte held up his watch. ‘It’s barely eleven. We had a whole hour left according to the deadline Westlake gave me.’
‘Maybe something went wrong,’ Mavro offered. ‘Either that or he never meant to give us until midday. Maybe he saw us coming and panicked. He could still be here.’
They both looked around, but Tayte was distracted by the debris and the general aftermath of the explosion. He could see that those agents closest to the blast hadn’t fared so well. One was sitting up clutching his arm. Two were still down and neither was moving. He began to run towards them to offer any assistance he could, but as he drew closer, he stopped cold. The immediate area around the site of the explosion was covered with blood. It was on just about every piece of debris he could see. When he saw a low-heeled woman’s shoe in the midst of it all he fell to his knees and wept, knowing he had to be looking at what remained of Lauren Emerson.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two hours later, Tayte was with Reese at the FBI Field Office on 4th Street, sitting opposite him at his desk. He’d been called in so that Reese could update him on what had been found at the scene of the Genie’s latest murder, and because Reese had some news for him, sensitive enough that he wanted to talk to Tayte about it in person. Knowing how close Tayte had once been to Lauren Emerson, Tayte thought he knew what Reese was going to say.
‘You’re going to confirm Lauren’s dead, aren’t you? I think I already knew as much.’
Reese looked hot and very bothered as he finished rolling up his shirtsleeves. He sat forward on his elbows and sighed to himself, as if contemplating how best to handle what he was about to tell Tayte. ‘I’ll spare you the details, but yes, we’ve had positive confirmation that Emerson is dead.’ He paused, avoiding eye contact with Tayte until the silence began to make Tayte feel uneasy. ‘But that’s only a small part of why I wanted to see you.’
‘A small part?’ Tayte said, surprised, wondering how anything could be worse than the death of the woman they had been trying so hard to save.
Reese nodded. ‘Along with what remained of Lauren Emerson, another body was found at the scene.’
Tayte screwed up his face. ‘A second victim?’
‘No, it wasn’t another victim. It was Adam Westlake. We found a cell phone on him, but it was too badly damaged in the explosion to get anything out of it. It was probably stolen, just like all the others he’s been using to contact you.’
The news knocked Tayte back into his chair. ‘Westlake’s dead? How could that be?’
‘We have a few theories. The most likely is that Westlake got careless with his explosives, or maybe the timer was faulty. The explosion occurred almost an hour before it was supposed to, by which time Westlake should have been long gone. He wasn’t as close to the blast as Emerson obviously was, so perhaps he was leaving as we arrived, but he was close enough for the blast to kill him. It’s not how anyone wanted this to end, but it’s a mercy it finally has.’
Tayte was confused. ‘Are you sure?’
‘There’s no question that the body we found was that of Adam Peyton Westlake III.’
Tayte shook his head. ‘I mean, are you sure it’s over? Westlake has always been so meticulous—so careful.’
‘They all make mistakes sooner or later,’ Reese offered. ‘Westlake’s luck just ran out.’
Tayte couldn’t quite believe it, any more than he was ready to believe that the Genie’s reign of terror had at last come to an end. The reason he didn’t believe it was because he still didn’t think Westlake was the real Genie. Tayte chewed at his lower lip before saying what he really thought. He didn’t want to bring Michel Levant up again so soon after the incident at the National Archives Museum, but he couldn’t stop himself. Some things had to be said.
‘What about Michel Levant? What if I’m right and he is the real Genie?’
Tayte thought back to his time in London the year before, and he thought this was just Levant’s style. He used people, and when they were of no further use to him, they wound up dead, but never in any way that could be connected with him. It still sickened Tayte to think that the last time it happened, Levant had come out of it looking like a hero.
The expression on Reese’s face was less than encouraging. ‘Mr Tayte, I didn’t want to say this after everything you’ve been through today, but your obsession with this man, Levant, has to stop right now. Don’t you see that Lauren Emerson might still be alive if you hadn’t gone after him at the National Archives Museum like you did? If you hadn’t given the man cause to bring charges against you—serious charges, I might add—we may well have had enough time to save her.’
Tayte did see. It had been eating away at him since he saw Lauren’s shoe lying amongst the debris following the explosion that had so violently killed her. He would take back that visit to the National Archives Museum if he could, but nothing could change his instinct about Levant.
‘Look, Mr Tayte,’ Reese continued. ‘Right now, you have more important things to concern yourself with. As I said, I have some news for you.’
‘You mean that wasn’t it, either? There’s more?’
‘I’m afraid there is,’ Reese said with such gravity that it made Tayte sit up again.
‘Westlake is dead,’ Reese continued, ‘but that’s the only good news to come out of this. I’m afraid the rest of what I have to tell you is right up there with your worst nightmares.’
Reese opened his desk drawer and produced a transparent evidence envelope, inside which Tayte could see a sheet of paper.
‘This was found in Westlake’s pocket. It was inside an envelope with your name on it. Presumably he meant to leave it someplace for us to find. Maybe that’s what he was about to do when the explosives went off.’
Reese placed the evidence envelope on the desk and slid it across to Tayte. It was a typed list of all the victims’ names, with the most recent at the top, going back to the first victim to be discovered. The surnames came first and the first letter of each name was in bold. At the top of the list was a question mark.
?
EMERSON, LAUREN
ALEXANDER, GEORGE
NELSON, TIFFANY
SHAW, SAMUEL
UTTRIDGE, KELLY
MASTERSON, BOBBY
MASTERSON, LEE
EDWARDS, RANDALL
ROGERS, ANNABEL
As Tayte read down the line of bold lettering, his breathing became rapid and shallow. It was suddenly clear to him why the Genie had chosen these people from the great many members of his former clients’ families. They had been selected for no other reason than because their names fitted with the killer’s ultimate objective: Jean Summer. The Genie’s sick game had been pointing to her all along.
Tayte’s mouth was suddenly so parched he had trouble swallowing. He coughed before he read out the message at the bottom of the note. ‘The last round of the game is simple. Guess the missing letter. It’s a pity she doesn’t have a sister, or perhaps you could have married her instead.’
A cold sweat broke across Tayte’s forehead as he pulled out his phone to call Jean’s number. When his call went straight to voicemail he thought he was going to be sick. Why h
adn’t anyone spotted this pattern emerging? Why hadn’t he? The simple answer was that he’d never for a moment considered Jean to be a target. These were all local murders in DC. Jean was so far away, and up until now every single one of the victims had been a former client or one of their close relatives. He understood now that this hadn’t been about any of them, or about Jean. It was about him. It had always been about him. The Genie clearly wanted to destroy Tayte’s life and everything in it, including the woman he loved.
He tried Jean’s number again, recalling that she’d said she was travelling home from her seminar in Scotland today, and that she was going to stay with her parents over the weekend before returning to London. Once more, his call went straight to voicemail and he feared the worst. Knowing that the Genie had intended for his note to be found at the scene of Lauren Emerson’s murder could only mean that he’d arranged Jean’s abduction beforehand. Tayte quickly found her parents’ number in his phone’s address book and dialled it, breathing hard as he waited for someone to answer because he knew in his heart that it was already too late.
PART TWO
Chapter Twenty-Four
South Coast of England. Three months later.
Just a few more steps and all this would end.
Above the hurried wind all Tayte could hear was the ceaseless sound of the waves crashing over the chalk scree more than five hundred feet below him. It was a cold, miserable January, made colder by the creeping damp of the British winter and the howling onshore wind that came at him in gusts, as if trying to push him back to safety, but Tayte was having none of it. He took another good slug of Jack Daniel’s from the bottle he’d taken up to Beachy Head with him, and then he took another small step towards the cliff edge, knowing he would soon be at peace. And how he yearned for it.
It was late afternoon and already close to dark. The grey, featureless sky had brought the day to a premature end, but ahead of him, out over the brooding, turbulent sea, he could still make out the horizon. All he had to do was focus on that and keep walking. He tried to take another step, but either out of fear or some primal instinct to survive, he was suddenly unable to lift his loafers from the sodden grass that blanketed the clifftop. To steady his resolve, he took another slug from his now half-empty bottle, wondering if anyone would miss him. He shook his head. Misery was his only companion now, and how he’d grown tired of its tormenting voice constantly telling him his fiancée’s death was all his fault.
Jean . . .
Another tear fell on to Tayte’s cheek as he thought about her again, and for the umpteenth time he wondered what had happened to her. How could he go on without knowing? The pain was too much to bear. He thought back over the past three months, as he had done many times since leaving DC in search of answers—in search of Jean. Following the death of Adam Westlake, it hadn’t taken the FBI long to close the case. As far as SAC Reese was concerned, the Genie was dead. The killings had stopped and that was an end to it. He’d smoked his damn cigar. Tayte hadn’t much cared for Reese’s appraisal of the situation with Jean at the time, even if it had most likely proved to be an accurate one.
‘I know this isn’t what you want to hear,’ Reese had told him a few days after Westlake’s death, ‘but realistically, whoever this man hired to abduct your fiancée probably cut and ran as soon as he heard what had happened. It’s not a good sign that she still hasn’t turned up. Whatever’s happened to Jean Summer is a matter for the British police.’
Frankie Mavro had been far more sympathetic. ‘Anything you need, just let me know,’ she’d said, squeezing Tayte’s hand as he’d waited to board his plane for England. As kind as it was of her to offer her help, Tayte couldn’t see what she could do, so he’d kissed her on the cheek and bidden her farewell, glad to know that she now had someone special in her life, even if he was on the cusp of losing the one special person in his.
Tayte was still unable to shake the idea that Michel Levant was the real Genie behind it all, which had given him some small hope at first because if he was right about Levant, it stood to reason that the Frenchman had to know where Jean was. Two other things about Levant had served to compound his theory. The first was that Levant had dropped the assault charges against him—and it occurred to Tayte that he’d only brought the charges in the first place to obstruct Tayte’s attempt to save Lauren Emerson. The second was that Levant had apparently left DC immediately after dropping the charges. Having checked Levant’s further seminar dates at the National Archives Museum, bent on confronting him again despite what had happened on the previous occasion, he’d been told that all of Levant’s future talks had been cancelled. It was clear to Tayte that someone had been working with Westlake. Why not Levant? He was, after all, a man who had every reason to go after Tayte looking for retribution.
Tayte’s legs began to feel leaden as he braced himself against the wind, but he managed to take another tiny step closer to the edge of the cliff, willing this purgatory to end. Until he took his final step he knew it would not. He thought back to when he’d gone to see Jean’s parents after he’d returned to England, at their home near St Albans. Jean’s son, Elliot, had been there, and while everyone seemed pleased to see him at first, glad of any information he could give to them and to the police, as the days wore on with no positive news, their feelings towards Tayte turned to resentment. After that, his stay with Jean’s family had been short-lived. He could still hear Jean’s father’s parting words, which, true as they were, had added to the burden of guilt that was now drawing him steadily closer and closer to the edge of the cliff.
‘If you hadn’t come into her life, none of this would have happened!’
Tayte sighed and raised the bottle of Jack Daniel’s to his lips again, and this time he held it there until he began to sway. He’d told the British police about his theory regarding Michel Levant, but they had been no more interested in pursuing the Frenchman than had the FBI. Tayte pictured the detective in charge of the missing persons case, DI Rutherford. He was a short, clean-shaven man with appropriately tidy hair for a policeman and a face that seemed to Tayte to be set in a perennial frown. Tayte had quickly become a thorn in his side during the first month of the investigation.
During that time, thanks to CCTV footage, he’d learned that Jean was last seen at a motorway service station along the M1, not far from the St Albans turnoff, and that therefore she must have been abducted somewhere between there and her parents’ home. The hire car she’d been driving took longer to find, since it had been abandoned and burned out in a field near Dartford in Kent, delaying identification. Because of the connection with the killings in DC, it had been a high-profile case, with television and newspaper coverage for several weeks, but as the weeks wore into months with no further progress, Tayte’s hopes of ever seeing Jean again began to fade. He’d been told that most people reported missing were found within the first forty-eight hours, and he got the underlying message. Statistically, after three months the odds of Jean turning up alive, if at all, were unlikely.
Tayte wiped another tear from his cheek as he stepped to within three feet of the cliff edge. He could see the white chalk face to his left and right now, like a ghostly shadow in the near darkness that spread beneath him to the sea. He tried to peer over the edge, but he couldn’t see the bottom, which he was thankful for. He could only hear it as the waves continued to make their thunder below.
He’d been walking up to Beachy Head this past week while staying with Marcus Brown’s widow, Emmy, who had moved out of London to live with her sister, Joyce, in Eastbourne after Marcus’s death. He’d poured his heart out to both of them, telling them everything that had happened since he and Jean had visited Germany the previous summer looking into his own family history, and how Jean had proposed to him before they left. How he wished he could wind the clock back to that happiest of days.
Tayte pictured Jean’s smile as she’d asked him to marry her, and as he took another small step closer to the edge, he ima
gined she was there and that he was going to her. He raised his bottle of Jack Daniel’s to her memory and took another sip. Then, as he raised his right leg to take another step—his last step—he heard a faint voice calling to him on the wind.
Jean, he thought. I’m coming, Jean. Wait for me.
He completed the step, and was now so close to the edge that he could feel the wind rushing up at him. Then he heard the voice again, louder this time.
Jean? No, it can’t be. Jean never calls me Jefferson.
The voice came for a third time. ‘Jefferson!’
Tayte was sure now that it was a man’s voice, coming, not from in front of him, but from behind. He slowly turned around, staggering a little as he did so, as much from all the Jack Daniel’s he’d consumed as from the battering wind. When he saw who was standing there, not ten feet away, his brow set into a confused furrow. He recognised the man’s features immediately: his blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and that narrow strip of beard that ran down the centre of his chin.
It was his brother, Rudi.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Rudi! What are you doing here?’
Rudi stepped closer, his usually coiffed hair now dancing wildly in the wind. ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said with a British public-school accent that belied his German upbringing. He reached out his hand and his long grey overcoat began to flap as a gust of wind caught it. ‘Come away from the edge.’
Tayte swayed in the breeze, but his feet remained firmly planted. ‘I mean, what are you doing here in England? How did you know where to find me?’
‘You left my contact details with a woman called Emmy Brown yesterday. Apparently you told her I was your next of kin. She called and said you’d been coming up here all week and that she was worried about you. I’ve been calling you. Why didn’t you answer?’
‘What’s the point?’
Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6) Page 20
