‘What about the chess story? Is that true?’ I ask.
She glances at him, shakes her head.
‘You told him the chess story? Nice. Sure, detective, I’m a chess genius. And I got fucked by just about everyone I ever met for my trouble, including dear old Daddy. Happy?’
‘Let’s just leave them and go,’ says Baden again.
‘No,’ she replies, sharply.
He shakes his head.
‘Look, either way, we need to get out of here. We need to go and get my mother, and be on the road.’
‘Sure,’ she says, her tone suddenly more flippant.
‘Either we kill them before we go or not. But if he’s telling the truth, and it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that he talked about the case at some point in the last few days, then people are after us. This’ll just make it worse. Let’s leave them and get out.’
‘How many people have you killed in the past week, John?’ she asks.
I turn to see his face.
‘How many?’
Voice with a bit more edge. He doesn’t answer.
‘Aye, there’s the rub. You don’t want to be associated with murder at all, do you, you fucking coward? I’ve been killing people to make this easier, and now you’re like, “Oh I’m here, let’s not kill anyone else!” Jesus!’
‘Easier! You killed everyone I spoke to trying to track you down! I didn’t ask you to do that.’
‘You didn’t have to ask me. God, you don’t think those bastards out there, Andrei and his lot and whoever else is still running everything, you don’t think they were going to be after you? We need to disappear, and everyone who knew you were coming back here to find me, has to be dead. You know they do. There have to be no loose ends. I did it for us.’
They share an angry stare, then she walks to his side, reaches round and picks up the knife that’s lying on the table, the one she was holding to Edelman’s neck when we arrived. She holds it out for him.
‘On you go.’
He doesn’t take it. His eyes are on it, but I suspect it’s because he doesn’t have the strength to hold her gaze any more.
‘Take the fucking knife. It’s time you got your hands dirty.’
‘Jesus, seriously!’
Now he’s looking at her.
‘I’ve been living in a fucking forest in Estonia for the last twelve years.’
‘It didn’t sound so difficult the way you described it,’ she says.
Her voice has lost the urgency, but now it’s cold and harsh.
‘And this isn’t about the last twelve years, it’s about the last week. Kill them. Do it. Now.’
She holds the knife towards him, blade forward, close to his stomach.
‘Take it.’
Another long pause, then he takes the knife from her, the blade gingerly between his fingers, then turns it in his hand so he’s holding the handle. He steps away from her, then looks at Edelman and me. I wonder if he’s ever killed anyone before. He may be responsible for deaths by his actions or instructions, but it’s a different thing to actually thrust that knife into someone and watch them die.
Not everyone has it. Clearly, Emily King has. John Baden, I’m not so sure. Or perhaps he’s still weighing what I said about cop killers. I may have been stalling, but it was still entirely accurate. In general people don’t like the police, until someone kills a police officer, and then everybody likes them, and the dislike is transferred to the killer.
When he moves it’s fast, sudden, unexpected. A quick turn, and he drives the knife into Emily King’s stomach. There’s the noise of her being forced back against the table, her exhaled breath, the sound of the knife sucking on her internal organs as he pulls it quickly back out again.
She doesn’t react, as though her body has been shocked into complete inaction, but the look on her face is not one of surprise. Just hatred.
He drives the knife in again. This time she falls backwards, the table pushed to the side, and as he stands still, the knife leaves her body again as she tumbles to the floor.
The gurgling has started in her throat. Eyes wide, she stares up at him, but there will be no insightful final words. Nothing thrown his way. Blood on her lips, and then dripping down her chin. Head slumps. Eyes remain half-open, head falls slightly forward.
Dead.
The sudden burst of activity and noise is swallowed up by the room. I felt Edelman straining behind me to see what was happening, and now she’s turned back. I can just hear her breathing.
‘I thought it was supposed to be the woman who killed the man after sex,’ I say. Obviously still in action movie hero mode.
He doesn’t even dignify the line with a glance. He places the knife on the table, steps back, still staring down at King, and then finally he turns, looks at me, holds my gaze for a few moments, and then walks quickly from the room.
52
‘Have you got a plan?’
‘Yes.’
I don’t immediately elucidate the plan, because I’m still thinking about how likely it is that it’ll actually work.
‘Are you going to tell me the plan?’ she says after a while.
‘We shuffle the chairs over to the table,’ I begin.
‘We’ll never be able to reach up.’
‘We’re not going to reach up. We’re going to tip the table. The knife will fall off the table. Then, and I concede this isn’t going to be great, we’re going to have to tip ourselves over, try to land without banging our heads, then shuffle over beside the knife. Then one of us is going to have to try to pick it up, and then cut the ropes.’
I’m thinking it through. Visualising it. That’s what you’re supposed to do with plans. Playing it out in my head. It all sounds reasonably practical apart from the bit about cutting through the rope. Unless the knife is sharp and with a serrated edge, it will either be completely impossible, or will take a very long time. Better, I suppose, than sitting here until we rot.
‘That’s your plan?’ she says after a while. I don’t reply.
‘I was hoping you might have a way to communicate with the emergency services,’ she continues.
‘It’s all I’ve got.’
* * *
We shuffle around the room. There is a comically stupid tipping of the chair, followed by a very uncomfortable attempt at grasping the knife. All efforts at cutting the ropes are hampered by the knife being soaked in blood, and constantly slipping in my fingers. Finally, after two tense and frustrating hours, we are free. At that precise moment we hear the sound of vehicles outside, and immediately afterwards, before we have even lifted ourselves off the floor, the door is pounded in and the reinforcements from St Andrews arrive.
53
Sitting at my desk, Wednesday morning. Cup of coffee. Perfect strength, exactly the right temperature, just the right amount of milk. No sugar. A fleeting moment, of course. If one lingers over it, then it will cool down and will no longer be warm enough. So it has to be drunk quickly.
‘So, you were tied together for more than two hours?’
I nod. It’s nice to see that Sutherland is amused by the way I spent the previous evening.
‘Did you talk to each other?’
‘There was some conversation.’
He’s smiling.
‘What?’
‘That’s how romance develops,’ he says. ‘People thrown together in a crisis.’
Lower my eyes. Another drink of coffee. I think of my two hours tied together with Sergeant Edelman. It began jovially enough. Inevitably, however, the good humour gradually wore off. It was my fault. I was getting annoyed. She tried to make it light, but I was getting so frustrated with the bloody knife.
We didn’t argue, nothing particularly pointed was said. We just waited patiently for me to cut the rope, so that we could split up. In my head I hear a phone call where I, after a period of a week or two, call her up to apologise for being stressed and taking it out on her – although I didn’t really –
and she’s pleased to hear from me. It’s an easy in. I have an apology to make, and there’s an offer of dinner already on the table. Yet, sitting here, sadly contemplating the remains of a cup of coffee, I know I’ll likely never make the call.
Perhaps tying up the case will draw us back together, put us in contact again.
The smile has gone from Sutherland’s face, as he realises I’m not rising to the bait. As he sees that the thought of it ignites some sort of inner melancholy.
The door to the conference room opens and Quinn emerges, leaving the door open behind him. There was no one else in there. He was video conferencing with the suits at the Specialist Crime Division. I expected to be asked to sit in on it, but was quite happy that he chose to have the conversation without me.
‘Walk with me,’ he says, as he passes by our desk. ‘Both of you,’ he throws over his shoulder.
Given that he then walks into his office, which is no more than five yards away, there wasn’t a lot of walking to be done. Walk with me, however, has become the ubiquitous phrase of the manager, summoning his staff in an act of self-aggrandisement. Or, at least, it was fifteen years ago, and this is Quinn just catching up.
We follow him into his office, close the door behind us, and then sit down across the desk at the command of his perfunctory wave.
‘They’ve got him,’ he says.
‘Baden?’
‘Yes. Trying to get on a boat to Belgium leaving from Hull this morning.’
‘He has his mother with him?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Fine,’ he says, after a short pause, likely indicating that he’s taking it for granted, or hadn’t thought to ask.
‘They’re bringing him back up this afternoon,’ he continues, ‘and you won’t be taking him out for any more day trips, Inspector.’
I have nothing to say to that.
‘I spent most of my time in there getting my backside dragged over the coals for your act of cavalierism. You could at least have called them. Called somebody.’
‘I called Anstruther.’
That even sounds weak to me. Decide that I probably ought to keep my mouth shut. Limit talking to answering specific questions, and nothing else.
‘I didn’t find that argument of much use to me,’ he says dryly. ‘You’re going to spend the next couple of days putting together an airtight case here. I know the person you presume to have killed these others is now dead, and that Baden is in custody and at the very least, you and Sergeant Edelman are witness to him committing murder. But I want this thing nailed down. I want to know who was doing what to whom, when they did it, why they did it. I want the extent of the operation, I want details and dates and facts. I want money that changed hands. I want quotes. I want proof. More than anything, I want proof.
‘This will be taken out of our hands, I’m quite sure. Well, that’s fine, if that’s what they want to do. But I don’t want them looking at what we hand them and scoffing, throwing the damn thing out the window and starting all over again. If they’re going to take it, then so be it, but I’m determined we’re not going to look bad as a result. With Natterson gone, and God knows how long it’s going to be before we get a replacement, I can hardly afford for you two to be spending too long on this. But for now, for today, for the weekend, I don’t want you doing anything else. Nail this thing down. And don’t be thinking, the Super wants to look good in front of the Chief Constable. It’s not about me, it’s not about you. It’s about this station and about doing a good job, and I don’t think that’s what’s been done here so far.’
A pause, then he indicates the door with a nod, and Sutherland and I rise and walk quickly out the office. Half expect to get out there and find the entire place with their ears to the door listening. The office goes about its business, as it usually does, phone calls and reports and idle chatter and the sound of the photocopying machine.
We close the door behind us and stand for a moment. That turned into a bit more of a rebuke than I’d been expecting. In fact, if I’d known he was going to do that, I’d have insisted on Sutherland not being there.
Not, however, that I’ve got too much to complain about. The Specialist Crime suits are right to be annoyed at me. I just carted Baden off around the country, trusting him and trusting my own infallibility, and my ability to see the job through.
We glance at each other, not a lot to be said.
‘Another cup of coffee and we’ll start making a plan,’ I say.
Sutherland nods and we walk back to our desks.
* * *
Work until nine thirty, head home, stopping at the supermarket to buy a tuna steak, a packet of salad, ciabatta and a bottle of wine. Into the house, choose to put on a jumper rather than turn up the heating at this time of night, some of the salad and bread on the plate, fry the steak for a minute on each side, pour a glass of wine and a glass of water, and then sit at the table. No music, no radio, no television. A long day, nice to have the quiet.
We can work at it for another few days, but I doubt we’re ever going to have the kind of detailed proof that Quinn asked us for. Everybody’s dead. The thought of that, sitting here in wonderful silence and low lighting, makes me smile for some reason. Everybody’s dead.
There was an operation, run out of Eastern Europe, to harvest human bodies and sell the organs and blood illegally in the UK, and quite possibly around the rest of Europe. Emily King and John Baden were at the heart of this end of it. They hatched a plan, and it worked until the point when, if Emily is to be believed, Rosco saw a chance and landed Baden in it.
But Emily didn’t exactly wait for him. Came home, sorted her own life out. Split herself into two, after a fashion, and lived out the life of the half who wasn’t Emily King. And then, out of nowhere, John Baden appears and calls several people before actually getting hold of her. Must have done it before he turned up at the Embassy for the first time.
At that point, knowing he’ll be coming home, she goes about tying up loose ends, planning right from the off, presumably, that she’ll be jumping ship and moving on.
I doubt she needed to kill any of them. Perhaps she just wanted to. Enjoyed it.
The problem is still out there, of course. It looks like our murder case has been cleared up, but the harvesting of organs still goes on, and whatever route they use into the UK is likely unaffected. For the moment, though, we’re putting together a case against someone who’s already dead, dealt summary justice by her former boyfriend.
Work is done for the day, however. I can switch off, and concentrate on nothing other than the fact that I absolutely nailed this tuna steak. The only problem being, that when you cook a tuna steak to perfection, it’s cold in about three minutes.
54
The first of December, an early snowfall in London. Standing in a small cemetery in Balham. Temperature around freezing, but not much wind. The snow was light, and it won’t last. Just enough to give the ground a perfect covering, to make the cemetery attractive for the burial. As though it was planned.
Second burial in two days. Natterson yesterday. Still haven’t recovered. Another train ride down to London, the thought of the anguish – Ellen and all of us at the station, and Natterson’s broken parents travelling along with me.
By now, Jason Solomon’s mother knows that her son, whose return she has awaited for twelve years, is long dead. More heartbreak, another memorial service, the ashes of his body finally in the hands of his family.
There aren’t many people here. I guess Dorothy never made too many friends. Maybe she never saw the point, as she lived her life thinking that she was about to jump back into the old one at any moment. Perhaps she could think of nothing but the family she lost. Perhaps she was just an unhappy young woman who had constructed a story around herself that fitted the tragic narrative of the tragic person she needed to be.
I stand at the back and listen to the vicar. His words are heartfelt. Sad.
He is brief, but he goes beyond the usual platitudes of the minister brought off the substitutes’ bench because the deceased never actually attended church.
I wonder if she went to church in hope. She prayed for her life back, as though there was actually someone up there who might answer her call.
The sadness seeps up through my shoes, like the cold. It infects me as much as it infects everyone here. Most of the women are silently weeping. A couple of men too.
The brief few words are over, the public part of the burial is done. I take a further step back, as the small crowd around the grave begins to move away. There are a few who do not move.
How many times have I felt myself in Dorothy’s company since she died? Three or four? Was she really there, or was it just my imagination, bringing someone back who I wished could still be there?
‘Inspector Westphall?’
Come back from wherever it was that my mind was running. Had been staring straight ahead. Staring straight at the man before me, without seeing him.
‘Yes, sorry. Miles away.’
He holds out his hand, and I take off my glove to shake it.
‘Johnny Hughes, Dorothy’s brother.’
‘Hi. I’m sorry…’
‘That’s all right. She was… I don’t think any of us were surprised. You were with her in the car from Tallinn?’
‘Yes. I…’
Words run out. What can I possibly say?
‘You were the last person to talk to her. Well, apart from the hotel receptionist, of course.’
‘Yes.’
He turns and looks over his shoulder.
‘We’re just going back to Mum’s for something. You know, the usual, tea and sandwiches. You can see, it won’t be big. Wonder if you had the time to…’
‘I don’t know that…’
‘Really, it’s, you know, don’t worry. No one’s looking at you wondering what you said to her. It’s been coming, for so long. We’ve seen it. We tried to get her to get help. And then in the last few weeks… we don’t know what happened. Maybe you could have a word or two with Mum, when she’s calmed down. She’s not, you know, she’s not looking at you wondering what happened. Maybe if you could just say a word or two, anything really, anything that might help.’
Song of the Dead Page 31
