‘I wasn’t, but thanks for saying so.’ He studied Palmer carefully, then said casually, ‘Had Miss Bellamy been in touch recently?’
Palmer felt the air around him crackle. Pell knew something. It could only mean he’d got a look at Helen’s phone or email records.
‘Actually, she emailed me something a few days ago,’ he admitted frankly. If he didn’t tell them, they’d soon find out. ‘It was a photo, but there was no explanatory message. I think it came to me by mistake.’
Pell glanced at Palmer’s PC. ‘May I see it?’
Palmer nodded and opened his email, then turned the monitor so that Pell could see the screen. The detective leaned forward to peer at the photo, but other than that, showed little reaction. ‘It’s an office block.’
‘Yes. I have no idea why she sent it. It was probably a mistake.’
‘Do you know the place?’
‘I’ve never seen it before.’
Pell sat back with a sigh.
‘Okay. What was your initial reaction to her murder?’
‘Shocked. Saddened. What do you expect?’
‘Angry?’
‘Of course.’
‘Weller described you as being very laid-back.’
Palmer shrugged. He wasn’t sure what Pell was leading up to, but he had a feeling it could be something he might not like.
‘He also added a ‘but’,’ Pell continued, and levered himself out of the chair. He looked down at Palmer for a moment. ‘A big one. He said you were totally loyal to your friends, and capable of doing anything on their behalf. I was wondering what that meant.’
‘Like I said, Weller mixes with the wrong crowd. It plays havoc with his imagination.’
Pell nodded. He seemed to toy with something for a moment, then said, ‘Our database is quite good these days. We get stuff turning up on it all the time; some of it’s useful, some not. It sits there until someone decides it’s no longer relevant. Or until something rings a bell. Literally, I mean. We have this little electronic sound reserved for entries or cases with more than five points of comparison — I forget what the techies call it. Anyway, whenever something similar to an existing entry pops up, the bell rings. It rang this morning.’
‘How dinky for you. So?’
Pell looked deadly serious. ‘This isn’t for public consumption, so don’t repeat it outside this office. But six weeks ago, the body of a young woman was discovered late one night alongside the A12 in Essex. She’d been thrown from a moving vehicle.’
Palmer waited, wondering why he’d been made privy to this bit of information. Weller, perhaps, playing his old games of stir the pot to see what was in there?
‘She was a German national, name of Annaliese Kellin. You ever heard the name?’
‘Never.’
‘Hardly surprising. She had no family or friends here in the UK. Interestingly, she shared three similar prime characteristics with Helen Bellamy.’
‘Such as?’ Palmer felt the breath catch in his throat. He suddenly knew with absolute certainty what Pell was going to tell him next.
‘Annaliese Kellin was a freelance reporter, specialising in business and commercial matters. That was one. When she was found, her hands were tied together.’ He gave Palmer a grim look, waiting for a reaction.
But Palmer merely said, ‘Three. You said there were three similarities.’ Pell hadn’t mentioned how Helen had died. This had to be it. He could feel it.
The policeman let out a lengthy sigh that seemed to come from deep within him. ‘Early indications,’ he said carefully, ‘and they haven’t yet confirmed which, is that Helen Bellamy died the same way as Annaliese Kellin: of a broken neck and/or strangulation.’
‘And/or? What the hell does that mean?’ Palmer’s jaw clenched tight.
‘We think,’ Pell forged on carefully, ‘that the killer used a stranglehold method, placing the arm round the neck from behind. There was bruising under the chin consistent with someone standing in an elevated position behind and above the victim.’ He sounded as if he was reading from an official report, and his face showed he wasn’t enjoying it.
‘She was sitting down?’
‘Or kneeling, yes. I’m told the blood circulation would have been cut off, along with the air supply. Then the neck was broken. One of my colleagues is ex-Special Forces. He said it’s not as easy as it looks and takes considerable commitment.’ He paused. ‘I know it’s no consolation, but it would have been quick.’
Palmer thought about it. Killing someone like that was just about the most intimate way you could think of ending someone’s life. You had to get right up close. And killing a woman that way took a special kind of cold-bloodedness.
‘You’re wrong.’ His voice was soft but sure, cutting through the charged atmosphere in the room like a blade. He looked right through Pell as if the policeman wasn’t there. ‘If you know it’s going to happen, how can it ever be quick?’
Outside on the pavement, Pell breathed deeply and stood for a moment, glad to out in the fresh air. He hadn’t enjoyed the visit, especially the bit when Palmer had looked at him after his verbal blunder. It was like being skewered by the eye of a killer shark.
He wondered at the nature of the relationship between Palmer and Riley Gavin. Riley came across as a hard-nosed reporter, yet with a softness he found intriguing — and attractive. He thought the softness reflected the real person. At least, he hoped so. Palmer, on the other hand, was harder in more ways than one, in spite of his apparent easy going attitude. His background was clearly that of someone not unaccustomed to death or violence, and therefore hardened to it, but it hadn’t made him immune to its consequences.
The contrast made him wonder if there was anything deeper between them; the attraction of opposites, perhaps?
He walked over to his car, where the uniformed officer was waiting, and tried telling himself that he was not secretly hoping that the relationship was purely professional; that he might have a reason to speak to Riley Gavin again.
18
Riley scrubbed at her eyes. They felt gritty after staring at her screen and wading through reams of paper, absorbing thousands of lines of type. Apart from the folder Varley had given her, her own research was continuing to unearth further material, all of which was emerging steadily like a paper fungus from the belly of her printer.
She watched the cat sprawl inelegantly across the carpet as if it had been tossed from a great height, and envied it the lack of stress. What she would have given for a complete reversal of circumstances, for none of the awful news she had been given, and the ability to choose only nice subjects with pleasant endings to work on. Then she told herself that she was daydreaming. If she had wanted nice, she’d have taken up patchwork.
She got up and made some tea. The cat stopped sprawling, its radar on ‘scan’, then followed her, eyeing the fridge with an intensity which had Riley automatically reaching for a fork.
While it ate, she thought about what she had accomplished so far. With all the reading and the paperwork, she had ended up with little more than fairly strong rumour and a whole host of speculation about Al-Bashir’s intentions, and the so-called lifestyle of his young wife. She was going to have to do some more digging.
She picked up the copy of East European Trade Varley had given her, which had migrated out to the kitchen on one of her earlier coffee runs. She flicked through it, still undecided about what to do. She either went with the assignment and got her name in this magazine, or she returned Varley’s cheque in spite of his assurances that it was non-returnable, and got on with helping Palmer solve his problem. Given the choice, she knew which she’d have opted for.
Then she stopped. She was staring at the inside title page of the magazine, her face suddenly as pale as the paper she was holding.
I don’t believe it, she muttered softly, and snatched up the phone. She dialled Palmer’s number. He answered on the second ring.
‘I need you to confirm something,’ she tol
d him. ‘Have you still got the postcard from the stuff Helen’s friend sent you?’
‘Sure.’ She heard his chair creak. ‘Okay, what about it?’
‘What’s the place name on the back?’
He read it out. ‘Sokhumi, Georgia. Unusual place for a holiday, unless you’re Russian.’ He paused. ‘Hang on, there’s something written alongside.’
‘I know,’ said Riley. She could almost picture the words; they hadn’t impacted on her when she’d first seen them. ‘Helen wrote Ercovoy, then Atcheveli 3-24.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Palmer’s voice was sharp with interest. She heard the chair creak as he got to his feet. ‘How did you know?’
‘The magazine I got for my new assignment,’ she told him, ‘is published by a company called Ercovoy. Their production office is at Atcheveli 3-24, Sokhumi, Republic of Georgia. It’s on the Black Sea.’
She ran out of words, trying to make sense of the information. How the hell could there be a connection between Helen and her own new assignment? It was crazy.
‘She must have gone out there for some reason.’ Palmer spoke softly. ‘But why — and why send the postcard?’
‘Maybe it was a genuine coincidence. She went out there for a break after getting the assignment and stumbled on the office. Stranger things have happened.’
‘Yeah.’ Palmer didn’t sound convinced.
‘There’s something else I found.’ Riley hesitated, then plunged in. ‘Some of the research notes for this job I’m looking at.’
‘What about them?’
‘A lot of the notes have been put together at random — as if someone went through a bunch of files and dragged out anything of interest. But some of it has been collated and written up by someone who knew what they were doing. A professional.’
The line hissed between them, then Palmer said, ‘A journalist?’
‘It feels like it. There was discussion about Al-Bashir’s bid for the telecoms licence in Eastern Europe, most of it very general. But one small entry, like a note to be added later, said his main opposition might come from wealthy Russian emigres.’
There was a longer silence, and Riley wondered if she’d done the wrong thing telling him. It was mere speculation on her part; an attempt to join up dots which might not be connected.
‘For emigres,’ he said finally, ‘read oligarchs.’
‘That word was in the file. It’s thin, but… ‘ She sighed, struggling to argue convincingly against her own thoughts and suspicions, and not liking what she was thinking.
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Palmer. ‘If she was worried about something, why didn’t she contact me?’ He sounded frustrated.
‘Maybe she was going to but never got round to it.’ Riley wanted to drag the words back as soon as she uttered them. Palmer was already feeling bad enough about Helen’s death; he didn’t need the additional burden of knowing she had been scared enough to consider asking an old boyfriend for help, but had been prevented at the last minute. He appeared not to have noticed, so she continued, ‘There’s something about Helen that struck me.’ She told him about her earlier research into Helen’s publishing history via the Internet. ‘Helen had a steady work rate, with regular jobs going back three or more years, here and overseas. That’s good going for a freelance. Some were fillers, where she was probably asked to stand in for staff writers. Others were normal, freelance assignments, which was her bread and butter.’
‘Like the jobs she did for Johnson.’
‘That’s right. There were probably a few I didn’t find, but there were no huge gaps.’
‘Go on.’
‘Suddenly, for the last six weeks, nothing. It was like she’d dropped off the map. It was unusual.’
The silence lengthened, then Palmer said, ‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, stay there and I’ll come to you. Oh, one more thing,’ he added sombrely. ‘I just had a visit from Pell.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said Helen wasn’t the first female freelance found dead recently.’
In his Finchley base, one of Donald Brask’s phones purred softly. He reached out to switch it to loudspeaker. The display told him it was Tony Nemeth, a reporter based in Ankara, Turkey. Donald had tracked him down the previous day with an urgent task, on the promise of further work if he came up with anything useful.
‘Anthony, dear boy,’ he breathed softly. ‘What have you got for me?’ He had been disturbed by Riley’s information about the magazine East European Trade. He had never come across it before, and one thing Brask prided himself on was knowing about all the potential paying markets out there waiting for him and his clients. The other source of disturbance was that he had a bad feeling about it which wouldn’t go away.
‘It’s difficult to say, Mr Brask,’ Nemeth’s voice sounded furred, probably by too many cigarettes and strong brandy. Now it held a tone of regret, even puzzlement. ‘I went to the address you told me. I had to hire a sea-plane taxi to save some time — I hope you’re okay for the fare? I got a good deal, though, from my cousin, Mehmet.’
‘Of course I’m good. What did you find?’
‘It’s a big apartment block. But not a nice place, you know? Shit plumbing, rotting concrete, lousy Soviet design — I’m surprised it didn’t come down in the last earthquake.’
‘The devil looks after his own. What else?’
‘If there’s a publishing company there, nobody knows about it,’ Nemeth replied succinctly. ‘It’s residential only — and I’m not saying high class, you know? Half the tenants are illegals, the electricity and water don’t work every day, the sewers are more often blocked than not… you know the kind of place I mean.’
‘Actually, dear boy, I’m relieved to say I don’t.’ Donald stared at the ceiling. He’d had a feeling about this from the moment Riley had first mentioned it. Publishing companies weren’t in the habit of splashing money around on spec, least of all those in Eastern Europe. Not, at least, the legitimate ones with nothing to hide. He’d decided to check out the place after receiving Riley’s text message.
‘Lucky you. I took a look at the number you gave me. It looks no more than a crummy flat, like all the others around it. There was nobody in.’ He paused, then added, ‘Someone’s got an interest, though.’
Donald sat up. This could be Nemeth adding some spice to make it look as if he’d come up with something good. ‘Like what?’
‘None of the locals would say much. But I’d only been there half an hour when a car arrived and couple of men went inside. They came out with a pile of envelopes and stuff and took off.’
‘You think somebody warned them?’
‘I don’t think so. One old guy I spoke to said it was a regular thing. They come and go at odd hours, he said. He also said none of the local kids go anywhere near the place ever since one of them tried to break in. He disappeared the next day.’
‘We could do with some of that round here. What else?’
‘ He called it a party car. Then he spat on the ground.’
‘Maybe he’s asthmatic.’ Donald was only half joking. He had a growing feeling that Nemeth wasn’t the sort to push for a story where there wasn’t one. ‘What else?’
‘He clammed up after that. I hinted at cash, but he looked at me like I’d offered to buy his sister.’
‘What did he mean by a party car? A stretch limo?’ Donald tried to picture one of the monster vehicles used by hen-night organisers to carry clutches of drunken women on tours of their favourite pubs. Somehow, it didn’t quite gel. Nemeth confirmed it.
‘No. He was referring to the old Communist Party — the Interior Ministry. They used to drive around in big, black saloons with blacked-out windows. The only difference was, this was a black BMW X5 instead. Easy to follow,’ he added cheerfully. ‘I got a kid on a motorbike to tail them.’
‘That was bloody brave of you.’
‘They drove from the flat to a freight fo
rwarding depot. When the passenger got out, he was carrying a box, all taped up and labelled. I think he’d parcelled up the stuff he’d collected from the apartment along the way.’
‘Anthony,’ Donald almost crooned down the line, ‘if you got the address where that parcel was going, I swear I’ll get you so much work, you’ll think your feet are on fire.’
Nemeth’s smile as he read out the address — one of the PO Box numbers Riley had provided — was evident in his voice and seemed to beam all the way into the room.
Donald had a sudden, chilling thought. ‘Wait. You said Interior Ministry. You mean it was a government car?’
‘The way they drove around the place, it had to be,’ the reporter replied. ‘I’m guessing the old guy spat because he was referring to the Russians. They’re currently called the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It’s the FSB to you. They used to be called the KGB.’
19
‘You should kick this job into the long grass.’ Palmer was looking grim.
After picking up Riley, they had decided to go to Donald Brask’s Finchley base for a conference. Palmer had just finished relaying Pell’s revelation about the murder of Annaliese Kellin. It had left a charged atmosphere in the room.
‘Why?’ Although shocked by the news, Riley instinctively challenged the notion of backing off from a job. Any job. ‘Are you going to let Helen’s murder go?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Crap,’ she replied with mild bluntness. ‘Pell’s jumping to conclusions. There might be no connection between the two murders. It could be random. Annaliese Kellin may have simply picked the wrong car for a lift.’
It was Palmer’s turn to look cynical. ‘She was tied up. That doesn’t sound very random to me.’
Riley shook her head obstinately and glared at him, daring further argument. She’d had the same thought herself. She switched her attention to Brask, who had remained quiet while Palmer was speaking.
The agent held up both hands. ‘Sweetie, I’m on your side. But Frank’s so right.’
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