I wasn’t trying to break the captain’s balls here. It wasn’t necessarily his job anyway. The one reason the name Bremmel had been fresh in my mind was that I’d only just finished browsing through www. recentlybutchered.com – Portman’s email correspondence.
Meanwhile, people were coming and going, making like sardines in Bremmel’s little booth. Any moment I was sure someone from the Guinness Book of Records was going to arrive and make the record official. Masters, Cain and I were standing around watching everyone else get their hands dirty. This wasn’t our country, nor was it our crime scene, but Bremmel was American. He was also ex-USAF, so arguably one of ours – OSI’s. It was an argument we’d lose, though, because of the ‘ex’. Bremmel was a civilian, which took him outside of our purview. But I figured that shouldn’t stop us from making an observation. ‘So we got Portman laid out like an Airfix model,’ I began. ‘And now Bremmel, a heavy hitter at TEI, the guy Portman was dealing with on a day-to-day basis, is sitting around with something that used to belong to the Attaché hidden in a dark place. Do you think the killers are maybe trying to tell us something?’
There were nods all round. The obvious will do that.
‘Did you say, “killers”?’ asked Cain.
I forgot I hadn’t brought the captain up to speed on our recent brainstorm. I was halfway through filling him in when Detective Sergeants Karli and Iyaz arrived to take control of the crime scene. They ignored us. The uniform taking tickets at the door for the show going on around Bremmel saluted and let them pass. Two minutes later they emerged and wandered over.
‘Thank you for being attending,’ said Karli. He put a clear plastic bag containing what I assumed were Bremmel’s effects under an arm while he loaded a mint into his mouth. ‘This one and the other one . . . we thin they are related.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ agreed Cain.
‘Are you going to impound his vehicle?’ I asked.
‘Whose vehicle?’ Karli appeared confused.
‘The victim’s.’ We were in a parking lot. The most likely scenario was that Bremmel was down here either about to get into his car or leave it parked for the evening. If he was attacked near his car, there might be vital clues in the vehicle, or around it. Frankly, I doubted that, but in this game you have to have the bases covered.
Karli and Iyaz looked around, overwhelmed. They were surrounded by automobiles, most of which looked like they might have been driven by rich American executives like Bremmel.
Masters gave a helpful smile, reached across and, through the plastic evidence bag held by Karli, pinched the remote attached to a bunch of keys. An alarm chirped on a nearby late-model Lexus SUV, and its indicators flashed twice, zapping the cold cement cavern around us with bursts of orange light.
Iyaz immediately yelled at a uniform and pointed at the vehicle excitedly, as if concerned it might try to flee the scene. Uniforms began running towards the SUV until Iyaz started shouting at them some more to stop. One of them turned and raced back to an equipment bag, grabbed a roll of crime-scene tape from it, and sprinted off to the Lexus anew to start wrapping it up.
‘So when do you think we could see the movie?’ I asked the two detectives.
‘Movie?’ said Karli.
I gestured behind him with a tilt of my head, at the round surveillance camera pod wedged into a shadow like a large bug trying hard not to be seen.
‘Yes, yes. We know this,’ Iyaz informed me.
Sure you do. What the hell . . . I told myself to easy up on these guys. Just because the local flatfoots spoke English like three-year-olds didn’t mean they were. To be fair, it took more than a couple of minutes to get your head around a crime scene, particularly one as bizarre as this. Bremmel’s body was seated, propped against the storeroom wall. His head was sitting beside him, resting on the clean-cut stump of his neck, one eye open and the other half-closed like he’d drunk a bottle of something on an empty stomach and was now paying for it. This lopsided stare was one I’d seen many times – like any moment the deceased would maybe snap out of it. But they never do. A moth had become helplessly trapped in the crimson pool of sticky blood covering most of the floor and was beating a wing furiously. A tree saw, most likely the instrument used for the heavy work, was embedded in the flesh below Bremmel’s collarbone as if the person sawing off his entire shoulder and arm had had a change of heart. Maybe, as Masters suggested, the killer had been disturbed. Bremmel’s severed hands were also sawn off his wrists and tossed aside. One was beside the body’s feet, the other had come to rest in a far corner amongst a collection of brooms, mops and buckets.
Iyaz stood beside me, looking about, hands on hips, while the teams that descend on a dead body got on with earning their pay. He then walked off to have a word with one of the forensics guys.
‘What do you think?’ Masters asked me.
‘I’m not sure what I think,’ I said.
‘I don’t believe it. Are you the Vin Cooper I know, or has an alien snatched your body?’
‘We’re not going to find anything the killers don’t want us to find, is what I think. There are no signs of a struggle, no witnesses, no easy clues like footprints or tyre skid marks, or handy buttons from the killer’s unique and expensive coat clutched in one of the severed hands.’
‘Okay, I get the picture. What about the surveillance TV footage?’
I saw that Iyaz had moved on to join a huddle comprising a couple of corporate types and a hotel security guy. One of the corporates pointed at the camera housing. ‘I don’t think we should get too excited about it,’ I told Masters. ‘This ain’t exactly post-9/11 downtown New York. I’ll bet that half the cameras in this place don’t work and the other half haven’t been switched on – or the tapes are so old and worn, all they capture is snow.’
‘Nothing like a bit of positive thinking, Vin,’ she said.
I shrugged. Maybe I was just getting tired of hanging around a parking lot that smelt of blood, dust, old exhaust fumes and cold concrete. I needed to go get something to clean out my insides, perhaps a couple of nice, clean blocks of ice wrapped around two fingers of single malt, then have some shut-eye and put this day in the trash.
I caught Karli as he strode past, his pants hitched so high they looked like his butt cheeks were slowly eating them. ‘Detective Sergeant?’
Karli raised his eyebrow at me in the universal can-I-help-you? gesture.
‘Do you know why the deceased was down here?’ I asked.
He gave me the puzzled look that was starting to get on my nerves.
‘The deceased, the dead guy – Bremmel,’ I tried again. ‘Why was he down here in the garage?’
Karli called Iyaz over and the two went into a huddle. Eventually they came out of it. Iyaz said, ‘Mr Bremmel made a visit here.’
‘Who was he visiting?’
‘A woman. The hotel says Mr Bremmel came every second Friday afternoon for months to visiting her.’
So, every other Friday at the Hilton for a little afternoon delight. Dutch Bremmel had made a tradition of it.
‘Do you know who she is?’ I enquired.
‘It is Mrs Bremmel.’
‘His wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure it’s not his niece?’
‘I am sorry?’
‘Never mind,’ I said, waving away the cynicism. Men didn’t take their wives to hotel rooms during business hours to do the business. They didn’t take their nieces either, come to think of it. I knew very little about Bremmel beyond his connection with Portman, but I was learning fast. I knew, for example, something about his character. I also knew that somewhere he did have a wife, otherwise there’d be little use for the dishonesty. ‘Where is the alleged Mrs Bremmel now?’
‘She has left,’ Iyaz replied.
‘What?’
‘Yes, gone.’ Iyaz didn’t seem to be getting my drift.
‘Do you have an address for her, aside from the one that came with her husband’s credit c
ard?’
Iyaz caught on, suddenly looked nervous. ‘No. But we will find her.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said. They’d turn up with her just like they were turning up with Portman’s hired help. Which reminded me. ‘You managed to track down Colonel Portman’s manservant?’
‘Who?’
‘Adem Fedai.’ I wasn’t sure I had the pronunciation right. Maybe this time it was me who was sounding like a three-year-old.
‘No. Still we cannot find him.’
‘And you tried calling him on his cell phone?’
‘Yes, we tried. No good.’ He shook his head. ‘We checked with phone company. The phone was switched off.’
I shrugged. ‘Worth a try. And the surveillance footage?’ I clarified my meaning by pointing at the camera wedged up high where the wall met the ceiling.
‘Yes, yes . . .’ he said. ‘We will see tomorrow. We will call you. We need time.’
Time to what? I wondered.
I noticed the gathering was thinning out. The paramedics were pushing their gurney slow, unhurried, towards the plant room. An empty body bag was laid out on top. If they somehow managed to get their trolley into that small space, I was going to call the people at Guinness. I turned to leave.
‘Where’re you going?’ Masters quizzed.
‘Bed. Wanna join me?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’
Ten
Turkey is a Moslem country, so I wasn’t expecting big things from the bar fridge in my room. I was happily rewarded, however, by a row of Johnnie Walker Black miniatures lined up along the door shelf like ducks at a shooting gallery. Was there such a thing as halal booze? Whatever. It was there for a reason – to get knocked down like those ducks, I supposed, even if it was blended sauce rather than single malt, my preferred variety. I cracked the seals on a couple of bottles and poured them together into a glass with ice, and drank half in a gulp. Dinner. Or maybe just the starter, I couldn’t decide. I examined my stomach and decided I was more tired than hungry, but the slug of whisky felt good.
I lay back on the double bed, closed my eyes and stared at the ceiling. It had just gone eleven o’clock, but it felt later than that. It’d been a busy day. I felt like a passenger who’d been riding events as they came along, catching them like streetcars. Two murders, both obviously related; no witnesses and, so far, no real clues. I downed the rest of the scotch and put the glass on the carpet beside my bed. I told myself I really should get up and have something to eat.
*
The room was dark and quiet when I woke, still fully dressed. The itch down inside the cast on my left hand had been the wake-up call. The bedside clock showed 5:10. I sat up, swung my feet over the side of the bed and kicked over the glass tumbler I’d placed on the carpet.
I rubbed my face with my good hand, turned on the bedside light and went to the john. Afterwards, I reached for my suitcase, a small Samsonite. I unlocked it and pulled out Nikes, shorts and a red Che Guevara T-shirt. A run would do me good, help me get things in some kind of order, even if it was only just to put one foot in front of the other. I’d started running a little over a year ago to help me recover from a case that had been bad news for me, and worse news for the guy I ended up planting in the ground. It was the case on which Masters and I had met, one that had also nearly killed her. After I’d been released from hospital, I’d started shuffling, which had eventually turned into running. Pounding a few regular miles had helped my body heal faster – or it could also have been all the sex with Anna that had done the trick. As I remembered it, getting regularly horizontal over that period hadn’t exactly been bad for her recovery either.
I changed and then used a knife from the kitchen to move the spiders I was convinced had taken up residence between the fibreglass cast and the skin on my wrist. Then, pocketing the room’s card key and a small wad of cash, I made my way to the elevator but decided to use the stairs instead, just to get things moving.
I walked through the foyer. The guy at reception was looking pasty with sleep deprivation. He tipped his forefinger at me. I knew what he was thinking: another crazy jogger – had to be American. Or maybe he was just thinking about the sack.
Outside the front door I got a surprise. Masters was bent over, stretching her hammies. She was wearing black skins with yellow stitching. I admired her legs. Her ass was hot enough to steam collars. I leaned against the wall. Why spoil the moment? Masters had gone back to the NYFD ball cap, her hair in the usual ponytail. No make-up. Those eyes of hers didn’t need any.
‘Morning,’ I said finally. The air was cold without being freezing and the wind had gone. Perfect running weather.
‘Oh . . .’ she said, surprised, looking around. ‘You been standing there long?’
‘Long enough.’
‘Long enough to what – or shouldn’t I ask?’
I countered her question with one of my own. ‘When did you start running?’
‘A few months ago. Took your advice. I hated it at first, but I’ve come around.’
It would have taken Masters a while to get used to running without a big toe, something she’d lost in a car accident, the one that had nearly killed her back in Germany. At the time, we’d agreed that the toe was a fair trade for her life. ‘You should take Uncle Vin’s advice more often,’ I told her.
Masters smiled and replied, ‘Where you headed?’
‘Thought I’d wing it. You?’
‘The concierge gave me a map.’ She pulled it from the pocket of a navy-coloured sleeveless fleece vest. ‘You want to join me? We can sightsee before the crowds arrive.’
‘Slow before steady,’ I said, indicating for her to lead on. Loud hailers burst into life nearby with the day’s first call to prayer.
Masters shook her head at me before breaking into a jog, loping towards a collection of stone towers lit by yellow spotlights up on a hill. I caught up and settled into a rhythm beside her. ‘So, this Stringer guy . . . I trust him as much as I trusted the last CIA guy I worked with.’
‘You know what they say about judging a book by its cover, Vin?’
‘Stringer’s got a lot of covering.’
We paused at a corner for a tractor making its way to a road crew digging up the tramlines in the middle of the street. Masters led off again, picking up the pace.
‘You trust him?’ I asked.
‘Innocent until proven guilty, I think is how it goes.’
‘The US Embassy has lost a full bird colonel to killers who could’ve taught Jack the Ripper a few tricks, but Stringer seemed more interested in dinner,’ I continued.
‘I think it was lunch.’
‘Whatever.’
‘How should he act?’
‘Very interested.’
‘Cooper, you don’t like the CIA, never have. In your eyes they’re always guilty of something. He could be just like the rest of us – stressed out, staying one step ahead of the meat grinder, doing too much and never getting enough of it done.’
Masters was right. Harvey Stringer was probably just like the rest of us, or maybe just like the rest of three of us put together.
We ran up a steep hill behind an ancient building and took the path around the front of the building along flagstones worn smooth by over a thousand years of footsteps. We stopped to take it all in, breathing hard. Across the square, another giant mosque sat bathed in warm orange spotlights. Behind it, against a luminous dark-navy sky, hung the burnished fingernail clipping of a crescent moon. The sun’s arrival was the barest rumour.
‘You know, Caesar could well have stood in this very spot,’ said Masters, a look approaching rapture on her face.
‘The guy who put croutons in salad? He stood here?’
‘Jesus, Vin . . .’ Masters sighed, turning away and breaking into a trot. I caught up. After a while she said, ‘So what do you want to do first? We’ve got the surveillance footage at 10:45.’
‘Set up interviews,’ I replied. ‘We shoul
d talk to this forensic shrink soonest – Cain’s contact.’
‘Doctor Aysun Merkit.’
‘If you say so.’ I didn’t have my notebook on me to check the name. ‘I want to get her reaction to this latest murder, see if she can weave some of that profiling magic for us.’ The cast on my hand was getting sticky with sweat, the spiders shifting about. ‘I also want to follow up on Portman’s appi-8 flight status, see if he’d been doing any flying in this part of the world.’
‘We can access that stuff through flight records back at Andrews,’ said Masters, timing the words with her breathing. ‘And maybe we can talk to someone down at Incirlik about this rape case – clear it off the board if we can.’
‘Yep.’
‘What about Portman’s manservant?’
My turn to be clever. ‘You mean Adem Fedai?’
‘Okay, okay. That’s one apiece,’ said Masters, now breathing hard.
We were heading up another hill, a steep one – like they had any other kind here. Both of us were feeling it but neither of us was willing to show it. Masters broke first.
‘You mind if we can the chitchat for a while?’ she asked.
Make that two–one. I took the lead and pushed the pedal to the floor, not that I’m in the least competitive or anything. I slipped into a comfortable lead and a good rhythm, watching the waves of cobblestones rush by beneath my running shoes. The hill plateaued in the courtyard of some ancient mosque – another one.
After a while, the fact that I was running disappeared and I was left with just my thoughts. I was thinking that if what we had here were serial killings, I had no experience with that kind of crime. What I did know was that making a breakthrough would revolve around finding the connection between the victims, the commonality. From this knowledge could potentially spring a lead to the killers. Only we already had the connection between the victims, didn’t we? The perps were going easy on us. Portman was the US Air Attaché handling any government issues between Washington and Ankara with the F-16 upgrade, and Bremmel was his opposite number at TEI, the program’s engine supplier. Simple. Or was it? Burnbaum, Stringer and Portman: an ex-spy, a current spy, and an appi-8 action man. I’d had enough experience with Washington’s notion of team building to know that people like this were most likely put together for a reason.
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