Whisper For The Reaper: A spine tingling murder mystery (Detective Inspector Declan Walsh Book 4)

by Jack Gatland

  Eventually lunch arrived, and they ate heartily, possibly the most relaxed that the Last Chance Saloon had ever been. And, once they’d all finished, Jess and De’Geer were sent to take back the dirty plates, purely because of their time on the team.

  Once they returned, it was time to catch up on what they’d all learned.

  ‘Ellie Randall hadn’t told the police everything,’ Anjli started. ‘By that I mean she had tried to tell them something she’d seen, but it didn’t fit their narrative, so they ignored it. Apparently, when she was playing with some friends, she saw Craig in the woods with a man. Just sitting there, as if talking. She didn’t pay it any notice until later.’

  ‘Did she describe him?’

  ‘Caucasian, brown haired,’ De’Geer added. ‘But it was at a distance and she was distracted.’

  ‘There was one thing she was sure of,’ Anjli continued. ‘The man was flipping a coin.’

  Declan looked up at this. ‘You sure?’ he asked. Anjli nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Something that Karl Schnitter had said to me,’ Declan replied. ‘When he was in the Grenztruppen, Müller would tempt dissidents to run, so that when they tried it, they’d be shot. But he would flip an East German Mark to give them a sporting chance.’ He considered this for a moment. ‘Karl reckoned that the coin was faked, so that the ‘heads’ was on both sides. Bastards never had a chance.’

  ‘So what, Müller’s returned, and he’s doing it again?’ De’Geer asked. ‘Tosses a coin, convinces the victim that they’re getting a fighting chance? That’s shitty.’ He paled. ‘Pardon my language.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Davey replied. ‘It’s shitty.’

  ‘Jess? What did you find?’ Declan asked. Jess pulled out a small notebook. It wasn’t police issue, but it was as near as you could get. Declan felt a little swell of pride. She was really taking this on board.

  ‘So Nathanial Wing owed everyone money,’ she started. ‘Family was well off but Chinese and owing money was a no no. One of the kids I spoke to said he’d lost it all on crypto but was trying to build it back up.’

  ‘Like Bernard Lau?’ Declan asked. He knew Jess understood crypto, because she’d assisted him in understanding it when Bernard Lau had died in Mile End, before he’d even joined Monroe’s team a few months back.

  ‘Yeah but I got the impression that Wing was more like a gambler betting on horses because he liked the name,’ Jess replied. ‘He owed everyone, it seemed, in particular someone they thought was a loan shark with a German accent. One of his friends heard him on the phone to him, and said that the guy basically told Wing that if he didn’t fulfil his end of the bargain, the debt would pass to his parents.’

  Declan looked to Doctor Marcos at this.

  ‘Do you have the paper?’ he asked. Doctor Marcos nodded, pulling out the plastic bag holding the Temple Golf Club scorecard.

  ‘Did Wing have a pen when they found him?’ she asked Davey, who nodded.

  ‘Blue pilot G2,’ she replied. Doctor Marcos examined the words on the back for a moment.

  ‘’Yeah, that could be this. Definitely blue,’ she said. ‘We found this in the hole where Nathanial Wing died. We think he entered the club through the main entrance while our killer slipped over a fence down the road and away from CCTV. Because of this, Nathan had a moment or two to himself, and wrote a note on a discarded scorecard, folding it and holding it in his hand. When he died, it fell into the hole on the sixteenth green where it stuck to the side of the plastic hole tube, and was missed because of the amount of blood. Only reason I saw it was because there’d been rain the previous day.’

  She showed it to the group.

  IF I DON’T DO THIS THE GERMAN WILL KILL MY PARENTS.

  ‘So, we have a German owed by Nathan, although we don’t know if it’s money or not yet,’ Declan mused. ‘We also have a German Hauptmann who was believed to be the earlier Red Reaper, who used to flip a coin to decide someone’s fate, and a Caucasian male who was seen flipping a coin with Craig Randall.’

  ‘Then we have two suspects,’ Monroe spoke up. ‘The first is Wilhelm Müller.’

  ‘Who’s dead,’ Declan replied.

  ‘That we know of, and based on something your father told someone else,’ Anjli nodded. ‘What if he wasn’t killed, but was warned off? Then came back, killed Patrick Walsh and then realised he enjoyed doing this?’

  ‘Until we find a body somewhere with his DNA, then we need to class him as a suspect,’ Davey added. Declan nodded.

  ‘Then we have suspect two, Karl Schnitter,’ he continued. ‘I know he’s an old family friend, but Wintergreen suspected him, and he was around Müller at the start.’

  ‘He also claims that Müller performed the original murders to get at him though,’ Billy said, looking up from the laptop. Declan nodded.

  ‘True, he’s claiming the victim here, and he probably is. But I’ll only be happy with that once we discredit that theory. He was the mechanic who worked on my dad’s brakes, he would have easily been able to visit my mum before she died, and he knew both the Randalls and Dotty Brunel. We have to hold him as a potential.’

  ‘There’s a third,’ Billy said, leaning back. ‘Rolfe Müller.’

  ‘You’ve got something?’ Monroe asked. Billy shrugged.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘I played it dumb throughout the lunch, and Ilse was more than happy to talk. I think she needed more of a soundboard, a therapist than someone to gain information from.’ He picked up his notebook, where he’d scrawled some notes. ‘Not that easy to write notes while there, but I put down the salient facts of the matter.’ He smiled. ‘You were all too busy working out your lunch orders.’

  ‘Says the guy who had his lunch paid for,’ muttered Anjli. Billy grinned.

  ‘So, Ilse told me that Rolfe is her older brother, he’s thirty-seven, she’s thirty-four. They were both born before the fall of the wall, in East Berlin. Their father was a border guard Captain, but they didn’t say where.’

  ‘Captain is the same as Hauptmann,’ Monroe added in. ‘Could be the same Müller. We need to check into that.’

  ’Yeah, I think so too,’ Billy continued. ‘I got the impression that Ilse and daddy weren’t close, but Rolfe was as a toddler. Daddy also disappeared during the fall of the wall. Their mum died a few years back, so it was just the two of them. She used to be a PA in a pharmaceutical company, but lost her job and Rolfe hired her to be his assistant, mainly I think to monitor her.’

  ‘Are they close?’ De’Geer asked.

  ‘No,’ Billy shook his head. ‘There’s some kind of issue with either Ilse or Rolfe being an affair child? I couldn’t probe any deeper, but there was definitely some kind of half-sibling issue. And I couldn’t really go ‘I know a great DNA person, and we could find out for you’, you know.’

  ‘You could,’ Doctor Marcos muttered. ‘You totally could.’

  ‘So brother and sister don’t get along,’ Declan mused. ‘We might be able to use that. Did she say why they’re here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Billy looked back to his notes. ‘They’re hunting a war criminal.’

  ‘That’s what they also told me,’ Declan replied. ‘Any particular one?’

  Billy shook his head.

  ‘She didn’t say, but I felt there was some kind of familial thing going on.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Doctor Marcos asked. Billy turned to her as he spoke.

  ‘I got the impression, and it could be because of poor translations, that Rolfe is ashamed of something this guy did, they’ve been looking for him for a while and it’s more than just a standard case.’

  ‘Maybe they’re hunting Müller senior?’ Anjli suggested. ‘Or, it’s your mechanic friend.’

  ‘They’ve been here two weeks though,’ Declan frowned. ‘They’re literally drinking in the same bar that he does. If they’re hunting him, they’re doing a piss-poor job of it.’

  ‘Unless they’re waiting for something,’ Je
ss suggested. ‘Maybe it’s like you have with arrests, you need to see the crime being performed before you can arrest?’

  ‘I think you’ve been watching too much TV there, lassie, but I get your point,’ Monroe nodded. ‘They want Karl, or maybe their daddy, or maybe someone else to expose themselves somehow. But how?’

  ‘Maybe by being the Red Reaper,’ Declan walked to the sideboard and poured himself a sparkling water as he thought. ‘We said there was possibly a missing murder, and we know that the first one we know of is in Berlin. Maybe there’s something here we don’t know about?’

  ‘I’m going to have to become besties with Ilse, aren’t I?’ Billy moaned. Declan smiled.

  ‘Your undercover days are not over yet, William,’ he replied. ‘And while you’re on it, see if she knows anything about the break in at my house a couple of weeks back.’

  Billy pulled out a folded piece of notepaper from his pocket. ‘She gave me her number and email address, told me to contact her at any time,’ he explained. ‘I was going to throw it away…’

  ‘But now you’re going to email her back and arrange another meeting, lonely IT technician that you are,’ Monroe grinned. Billy sighed, tossing the note to the table where it landed next to the laptop.

  ‘I hate undercover,’ he muttered. ‘And I hate Billy Myers, IT Support.’

  ‘You think they might have done it?’ Anjli was surprised at this. She’d been there with Declan when he’d arrived at the house to find the back window broken and the iMac removed. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have a list of suspects who could have stolen my dad’s computer, and one by one they’re being struck off,’ Declan shrugged. ‘About time I put some more people on it.’

  He looked around the table.

  ‘We’ve had a good day today, and we’ve gained some positive leads. But we’ve also gained more questions than answers.’ He looked to Monroe. ‘What would you suggest we do next?’

  The DCI thought about this for a moment.

  ‘Interview anyone else we know connected to the previous murders,’ he suggested. ‘Dotty Brunel had a husband, I believe? He might still be in town. We also need to look into Berlin and see why Rolfe is even here—‘

  ‘I can answer that,’ a voice said from the door, and Declan turned around to see Tom Marlowe standing in the doorway.

  I hadn’t even seen the door open, he thought to himself. That guy’s good.

  ‘Guys, meet Tom Marlowe,’ Declan said. ‘Likely not his actual name, so don’t bother remembering it. He works for Emilia Wintergreen.’

  ‘I’ve got news from London,’ Tom said. ‘We cracked the USB cypher and opened up Patrick Walsh’s file.’

  Monroe rose at this.

  ‘Spook,’ he almost spat the word in disgust.

  Tom grinned.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Alex,’ he replied.

  13

  Family Feuds

  With Marlowe’s arrival, the afternoon’s plans were scrapped, as Billy worked through the files that the probable spy had brought with him. Many of them were doubles of the files that Jess had found and collated from Patrick Walsh’s secret filing cabinet, but there were some German files, and more than a few redacted CIA numbers that had caused a buzz of interest.

  ‘It looks like there was another murder,’ Billy announced as he flicked quickly through the files. ‘Or something similar.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Monroe asked, walking over to Billy to read the screen. Marlowe, now sitting in a chair by the coffee machine, stretched.

  ‘In 1988, two years before the fall of the wall, there was an attempted murder,’ he replied. ‘I read the files. Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to.’

  ‘Define attempted,’ Declan asked. Marlowe shrugged.

  ‘One that didn’t happen,’ he replied. ‘Basically, there was an eighteen-year-old woman named Eva Mencken who claimed that a border guard had attacked her and tried to force her to commit suicide after she’d helped two East Berliners escape to the West. Apparently she didn’t play along, and then a week later her parents were brutally murdered in a knife attack. She refused to speak to the police after that, and a month later she disappeared.’

  ‘She wasn’t killed though,’ Billy added as he read from the screen. ‘She went into hiding and only appeared when the wall fell.’ He leaned back. ‘Died of cancer though about fifteen years ago. Apparently raised a complaint about Wilhelm Müller in 1996, but they quashed it.’

  ‘Why would it be quashed?’ Declan asked.

  ‘Because someone high up wanted it stopped,’ Marlowe replied. ‘Müller had very high up friends, it seems. On both sides of the Iron Curtain.’

  Monroe looked to Billy, who’d paused scrolling through the Eva Mencken file, pointing to a line on the screen.

  ‘When she raised the complaint, she said that Müller flipped a one mark coin,’ he whispered. ‘She says he flipped a coin to see if she would live or die.’

  ‘A game he kept playing after the fall,’ Declan muttered. ‘Interesting though that they stopped it before she could continue.’

  ’No proof,’ Monroe replied. ‘Her word against a Hauptmann? Needs more than that. And we already know Müller had high up friends.’ He looked to Billy, still scrolling. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Most of this we already have,’ he admitted, ‘but I can go through it over the afternoon.’

  With this agreed, Anjli and De’Geer had left, going to visit the Brunel family, while Doctor Marcos and PC Davey worked through the forensics reports that Patrick Walsh had encrypted, on the off chance that something might appear. With nothing else to do for the moment, Declan and Jess decided to take a break back at the house, see if there was anything missed in Patrick Walsh’s secret study before returning in the evening, while Monroe and Marlowe returned with them; Monroe because he still hadn’t seen the secret room, and Marlowe because he simply didn’t seem to want to leave for London just yet.

  ‘So, tell me about Monroe being your uncle,’ Declan said as he passed Marlowe a coffee. Monroe was upstairs, being shown the secret study by Jess, playing the role of an eager tour guide, and this gave Declan a chance to talk alone with Marlowe, something that he felt the spy had wanted since he’d first arrived.

  ‘He’s not an uncle by blood, so to speak, but he was close enough to the family to be called that,’ Marlowe explained. ‘Wintergreen too, although she’s told me that if I call her Aunt Emilia one more time, she’ll ensure when I’m next out on ops, she’ll have someone whack me in the back of the skull.’ He mimicked a gunshot motion. ‘And to be honest, I believe her.’

  Declan nodded at this. He’d only met Wintergreen once, but he could easily believe that she was cold enough to do such a thing.

  ‘Anyway, my mum was in Military Intelligence,’ Marlowe continued. ‘Around 9/11 there was a lot of fear that something similar would happen in London, mainly Canary Wharf or the City, so the police were doing a lot more of the anti-terrorist thing, you know? One team was Patrick Walsh’s one. They’d just finished the Davies murder and were on a bit of a winner’s lap. Special Branch moved them onto the patch, and they liaised with Olivia, my mum.’

  ‘Wintergreen too?’

  ‘All of them,’ Marlowe counted on his fingers. ‘Walsh, Salmon, Wintergreen and Monroe.’ He looked back at Declan. ‘It was very much an ‘any means’ kinda remit. They were playing with terrorists who didn’t read the rulebook, so they had to be innovative, make deals with people they wouldn’t usually work with.’

  ‘The Twins,’ Declan nodded, finally understanding how his dad and Monroe had found themselves in league with Johnny and Jackie Lucas, the gangland kings of the East End of London. Marlowe nodded.

  ‘Yeah, that mad bastard was top of the list. He knew everything that was going on, and so they did a little quid pro quo with him.’ He sipped at the coffee. ‘That said, once you start down that route, you forget where the quid starts and the pro ends. You start turning your head, looking the other way. M
aybe take a little wad of cash for your problems. You’ve been told to do this by your bosses anyway, so why not make a little scratch?’

  ‘My dad?’

  ‘All of them, mate,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘For a good couple of years.’

  Declan sat for a moment as he digested this. ‘And then what happened?’ he asked.

  ‘My mum died,’ Marlowe replied as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘During the 7/7 attacks in 2005. She was following intel on one of the bombers, and followed him onto a train, intending to eradicate the threat.’

  He sighed.

  ‘She got to him just after they left Kings Cross Station, and right as he detonated his bomb, killing her and twenty-six others. They didn’t add her to the victim list because she wasn’t officially there, but everyone knew. After that, it became a little personal for Wintergreen, and she accepted a role in the same department, mainly to avenge my mum’s death.’

  ‘Where were you then?’

  ‘I’d just started training at CTCRM Lympstone,’ Marlowe replied. ‘They didn’t even tell me about this until after I finished.’

  ‘Commando training?’ Declan was impressed. He’d known that Marlowe had trained with the SAS but hadn’t been accepted; this had been stated when they drove together to Hurley, but Declan had faced a few commandos in his years as an SIS officer, and they were no slouches. Marlowe though, shrugged.

  ‘I intended to work the route to get in with mum,’ he said. ‘Never happened though. And then a few years later I was headhunted by Wintergreen.’

  ‘Yeah, I still don’t get that,’ Declan mused. ‘How she went from DS in my dad’s squad to basically M in James Bond.’

  ‘Blame Monroe for that,’ Marlowe replied. ‘They were married.’

  ‘What?’ Declan almost dropped his mug. Marlowe smiled.