by Zoe Sharp
134
DI O’Neill rattled the handle of yet another locked door and sighed in frustration. This was all taking far too long.
He heard footsteps, turned to see Dempsey approaching along the basement corridor.
“Anything?”
Dempsey shook his head, hunching his shoulders inside his jacket. “Not a very trusting lot are they?” he said. “Every door’s locked up tight.”
“Yeah,” O’Neill muttered, “and if there are explosives here they could be behind any one of them.”
He raked a hand through his hair, pursed his lips. Outside, the noise of the crowd swelled and broke as another stampede of winner and losers romped across the finish line. The headline race was rapidly approaching, he knew, and with it the perfect timing for a monstrous act of violence.
“We need to go back to Cheever,” he said. “Get him to rustle up a dog team.”
“Got to be the fastest way boss.” Dempsey was already turning away. “I’ll keep searching.”
“No,” O’Neill said quickly. “I’ll grab someone from racecourse security with some keys and do that. Why don’t you go and see if you have better luck with the charming Mr Cheever than I did?”
“But—”
O’Neill glared at him. “It might have been phrased as a question, detective constable but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t really an order deep down.”
Dempsey must have known what O’Neill was doing. He hesitated for a moment as if to argue then nodded gravely. “Give me the shitty end of the stick why don’t you?” he said but it was a half-hearted protest. He turned on his heel without waiting for a reply and hurried away.
O’Neill watched him go, aware of the inexorable ticking noise inside his head, his imagination painting a cartoon alarm clock surrounded by wires and sticks of ACME gelignite.
For a start, you can give over thinking like that.
He shook himself and reached for another handle.
135
When the door of the storeroom rattled from the outside, Dmitry froze. He was halfway through unloading a linen hamper filled with wine- and sauce-stained tablecloths and napkins. The hamper was what he wanted. A plastic tub on castors, it was plenty large enough to conceal-carry a body if he cracked a couple of the long bones to fold it inside. He didn’t think the body would object.
He waited utterly still, listening. And something in the quality of silence told him that whoever stood outside the locked door was listening too.
Dmitry relaxed slightly knowing they would tire first. He gave them nothing to sustain their interest, whoever they were.
After a moment or so he heard the grit of footsteps turning away, their muffled echo growing fainter. Another doorway, another rattle and pause. Check and move on.
Security guard maybe? Dmitry was unconcerned. He could handle the calibre of man who would work here. Especially one not high enough up the food chain to be trusted with his own set of keys. Either that or he was simply too lazy to use them.
Dmitry finished emptying the hamper, working quickly, leaving a few of the larger tablecloths in the bottom and adding some used towels from the washrooms. They would be more absorbent.
He grimaced. Damn Myshka and her temper!
In a pocket his iPhone began to sound. He dug for it, glanced at the display.
Speak of the devil . . .
“What is it?” he greeted, brusque.
Myshka showed her displeasure at his tone by a brief offended pause. “Where are you?” she demanded, matching him.
“Basement.”
“Well get back up here,” she said. “Quickly.”
He let his breath out through his nostrils. What do you think I’m doing—stopping for a cigarette break?
“I needed something to carry your—”
“Never mind that,” she growled. “The girl has found him anyway. She is with her boss—the old man. I manage to get out of there just in time. But if you hurry . . .”
Dmitry shoved the hamper away from him. “I’m on my way.”
136
It took Kelly a while to work her way down the building. Despite her words to Yana about fetching the cops—and the inevitable arrest which would follow—she had no intention of giving herself up just yet. Even allowing for shock and the obvious language barrier there were holes in the woman’s account that Kelly could have driven a bus through.
If Yana had locked herself in the bathroom as she’d claimed, where had the blood she’d tried to wash away come from? Indeed, why had she scrubbed herself clean in such an apparently methodical way if she was in shock and terrified? The woman herself appeared uninjured. And although she’d reacted to her husband’s body with apparent horror, Kelly was unconvinced by that. In her experience people lied a lot more readily than the physical evidence ever could.
In her brief examination of the private box she’d seen cast-off blood spatter across the walls and furniture. The voids and overlaps told her the beating had been prolonged and vicious. Without a more scientific analysis she could only guesstimate the point of origin but everything pointed towards the central conference table. There were enough small gouge marks and scratches on the surface to show that Warwick had probably been restrained there while he’d been worked over. It had not, she noted grimly, been a quick nor easy death.
And whatever she might say, Kelly suspected that Yana had been in the room while it had been happening.
Maybe she’d wanted to?
Maybe, she wondered with a sickened realisation, the beating had been for Yana.
She shook her head. She was allowing supposition to creep in and that was what had helped convict her six years ago.
Allardice made sure of that.
“I think you’re involved somehow, Yana,” she said out loud to an empty room, “but if you’re innocent I’ll do my damnedest to prove it.”
The question remained—who else had been in that room when Steve Warwick died? They had walked out dripping either Warwick’s blood or their own and summoned the lift at the end of the corridor.
And despite her determination to keep an open scientific mind, she couldn’t help the fear that unknown person might be Matthew Lytton. She told herself it didn’t matter but knew she was lying.
Kelly pressed all the floor buttons and held the doors open at each stop, bending to check the floor for any signs her quarry had passed that way.
By the time she reached the basement she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed it. Maybe they’d noticed the blood while they were in the lift and taken steps to stem the flow. In which case, the cast-off trail might be much less noticeable or have stopped altogether.
But as the doors slid open at the final stop she saw at once that this was not the case. If anything, the blood drops were larger and more frequent.
Compared to the luxurious decor upstairs the basement was utilitarian with no frills, lined by what looked like storerooms. The floor was painted concrete and the blood had disintegrated into satellite spatters as it hit and dispersed. Among the general stains and scuff marks ignored by the cleaning crew, it would not be obvious to the untrained eye.
She stepped out of the lift feeling a slight pang as the doors closed behind her, cutting off her escape route. The patches of blood were larger, Kelly saw, which the analytical side of her brain knew was simply down to the way it reacted to the roughened surface on which it fell. Nevertheless, her purely emotional side could not suppress a shiver.
The evidence led her to a doorway on the right. Kelly reached for the handle.
And stopped.
In the past she had worked the most horrific crime scenes but always with the knowledge that some other brave soul had been there first, cleared and secured the area. That whatever she found and documented was safe, in a way.
Now her brain raced ahead. On the other side of this door could be either another victim or a murderer. She had already been tried and convicted once. Did she really want to go leaving traces
at another scene? Would anyone believe she had nothing to do with it? Her imagination rioted.
“Would you please explain to the court Miss Jacks why you decided to investigate this yourself instead of doing what any normal, sane, law-abiding person would do—staying well clear and calling the professionals?”
Kelly let her hand drop and backed away from the door, her only instinct now to get out of there without discovery.
137
Harry Grogan yanked open the door of the private box with more force than was strictly necessary. The doors up here were sturdy solid timber and it bounced loudly against its stop.
He halted, took a breath. It was futile, he recognised, to take out his anger on inanimate objects. He stepped through, closing the door more calmly behind him and straightened his camel coat.
It was time to go down and see the colt saddled, to listen to the trainer’s brittle confidence and last minute instructions to a jockey who knew the horse better than anyone.
Grogan loved that part of ownership—watching the colt filled with the buzz of imminent action, seeing him stride round the parade ring with arrogant ease and burst from the starting gate like a grey rocket.
But part of the pleasure for Grogan had always been the sharing of it. And now Irene was not able to do that he’d thought his mistress might prove a worthy substitute.
Grogan reached the lifts and looked round automatically for Viktor then scowled. Staff, he realised, stabbing a finger on the call button, were starting to be a right royal pain in the arse. It was time for an organisational shake-up.
And he’d start with bloody Dmitry. Grogan knew he’d told him to make himself scarce but this was taking the piss. He’d expected to be photographed out there with a glamorous woman on his arm and muscle by his shoulder. Instead he’d be facing the cameras alone and that put out the wrong message for a man in his position. It was all about perception. He dealt with people who needed to be convinced he was still a force to be reckoned with or they’d start trying to elbow in and take what he’d fought so hard to acquire.
There would be hell to pay later.
The lift arrived. Grogan checked his watch as he stepped inside. He was cutting it fine but he knew he made the trainer nervous and that in turn communicated itself to the horse. Better for him to arrive at the last moment, stay only as long as necessary then return to his lofty aerie to watch the race itself.
And if he was compelled to spend this moment alone, that was just the price of his success.
Grogan fished in his pocket and dragged out his cellphone, hit the speed dial for Dmitry one last time. The number rang out half a dozen times then disconnected. Grogan blinked and tried again. This time it hardly rang before disappearing into silence.
“Ignore me would you, you ungrateful little bastard?” he murmured. “I’ll cut you off at the knees—you and your—”
The lift doors opened at the ground floor. Standing outside them was a high-ranking member of the Jockey Club who stepped back when he saw the grim expression on Grogan’s face.
“Good God Grogan, you look like you’re off to the gallows. Something I should know about the form of that colt of yours?”
Grogan took a breath, squared his shoulders. “Not at all, my lord,” he managed. “And just to prove it why don’t you come and watch him saddled with me?”
“Eh, of course old chap,” the man said. “Delighted.”
But Grogan did not miss the hesitation and would not forget it either.
One day all these bastards are going to give me the respect I deserve . . .
138
Dmitry was in the stairwell climbing when his phone buzzed. He reached for it, saw Grogan’s name come up on the screen and rejected the call without pausing. It rang again immediately. Dmitry almost threw the phone through the window, stabbing the button to ignore it again.
“Svoloch!” he growled, repeating Myshka’s earlier curse. Scum.
Above him he heard a door slam, glanced upwards but saw nothing. He swore again, in several languages this time, as he took the stairs two at a time.
The lift doors were closing as Dmitry yanked open the door leading from the stairwell. The floor indicator light showed the lift was heading downwards.
He spun and ran back for the stairs.
139
As soon as the lift began to slow, Kelly jammed her finger on the Doors Closed button and sent it back up again praying the software wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown and leave her stranded and exposed.
Fortunately the machinery obeyed without protest, climbing steadily. Kelly had no idea what the word she’d caught actually meant but she’d reacted on inflection and accent. It sounded kind of Russian and filled with invective. Either would have been enough to spook her. Both together sent her fleeing.
The lift reached the top floor and she braced for attack but when the doors parted the corridor was empty. She dived out and ran to the private box where she’d left McCarron and his charge.
She burst in, slammed and locked the door behind her. Someone had pulled the fur coat back over Steve Warwick’s body, she saw. Her imagination had the cover moving slightly as though the corpse under it still breathed.
McCarron rose shakily from a chair. She took one look at his face and knew.
“Where’s Yana?”
“I’m sorry Kelly love,” he said. “I went to use the bathroom. I told her not to open the door for anyone except you but—”
“And she did a runner,” Kelly said flatly.
“No, I think they took her. I heard a scream—by the time I got back out here she’d gone. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
Kelly shook her head reluctantly. Yana wasn’t telling her the truth about what happened but that didn’t necessarily make her guilty of anything more than evasion.
McCarron nodded to the locked door. “I’m guessing you didn’t find the cops, then?”
“No but I was almost found by the Russian guy—Grogan called him Dmitry.”
“The one who jumped me?” From his face Kelly couldn’t tell if McCarron was pleased or unnerved at the prospect of meeting his attacker again.
“The one who jumped both of us,” she said.
He dropped back awkwardly into his chair as if exhausted or defeated. Or both. “Christ Kel, if he’s got her . . . we’ve got to do something.”
“I know,” she said. “And as soon as I work out what, I’ll get back to you on that.”
140
Matthew Lytton had worked out in theory how to free himself, but the practice proved long-winded, frustrating and painful.
His wrists were bound behind him with plastic cable-ties, the kind he’d used hundreds of times on site to secure pipes or wiring. Once they were zipped tight the only way to release them should have been with cutters. He’d long ago discovered that jamming something like a nail-head between the locking tab and its ratchet track would loosen them off.
Of course, there was never anything like a protruding nail about when you needed it. He searched fruitlessly, writhing on the concrete floor and ruining his best suit in the process. Something tickled his nose and he twitched away but it was only a shed rose petal from the crushed buttonhole at his lapel.
He froze then squirmed until the miniature bouquet was right to his face. The roses had no scent but he guessed that some varieties were bred only for their colours. What the buttonhole did have, however, was a good sharp pin securing it.
Getting the pin loose with his teeth was the easy part. As was dropping it to the floor and manoeuvring to grasp it between fingers and thumb. But trying to contort his wrists far enough to reach the ties—when he couldn’t see what he was doing and his head felt about to explode—almost defeated him.
Lytton struggled for what seemed like hours. And every time he moved it was as if his head was filled with liquid that sloshed backwards and forwards inside his skull creating an almost unbearable pressure. The effect was motion sickness that
left him in constant danger of throwing up.
He gritted his teeth and kept working at it. He had only a hazy picture of what had happened to bring him here. His conversation with that smug copper O’Neill was reasonably in focus but after that it started to blur. He even thought he’d seen . . .
No!
With a final burst of adrenaline-fuelled anger his wrists came free. The wrench nearly made him pass out, the room spinning crazily so that he had to grab the floor and hold on until it stopped lurching under him.
