by Tim Heath
“I’m serious. If you play hard heartless bitch with her, you’ve got yourself a match. Don’t go there. You need her on your side.”
“Please, don’t lower me to her level. I’ve got here because of my hard work, knowledge and dedication. She’s got where she has because of daddy’s money, mother’s influence and a body most men would only dream of lying next to. It worked on you, didn’t it?”
Charlie shot her a look that expressed he wasn’t pleased by that last comment. Zoe shrugged it off. “If your unresolved issues with her are going to complicate matters, I’m going to be forced to get you removed from the investigation.”
“Let me remind you why I am here, Zoe.” He was angry now. “You are way out of your depth here, sweetheart. This situation has got the Home Office scampering, and I’m here to make sure we don’t have another international situation on our hands. Russian/UK relations are at an all-time low. The last thing we need is more fuel on the fire. Now we can work together, or you can go and find something more suitable to get on with. Have I made myself clear?”
“Oh, shut up, will you.” She walked off to the other side of the room.
Meanwhile, watching from the wings, Anya hadn’t missed a thing. All was not united on the British front. That gave her some leverage.
The following day, Charlie was sitting in an MI6 conference room with five others. He’d also brought Zoe along with him. She didn’t know why but was happy for the involvement.
“So tell me what we know,” Charlie said.
“How detailed do you want?” replied the young, still wet behind the ears, analyst.
“I said we needed to know everything. So let us have it. We also need to know what they were both doing in St Petersburg.”
“We’re still working on the Russia connection, but here’s what we have. I’ll start with the victim, Anthony Fernandes. He’s a well-connected businessman, that’s for sure. London, throughout the UK really, but especially London. His main overseas partners are in Moscow, hence his Russian connections. He has some offices in the Moscow region, though not too much that we know of in St Petersburg. Travels to Russia frequently...”
“Which means what, exactly?” Charlie cut in. He wanted specifics. He always did.
“Last year it was once a month, sometimes every fortnight. Never stays for more than two or three days. Always Moscow, at least this last year anyway, from what we can see. We are unsure of whether there was any internal movement between Moscow and St Petersburg, but his flights have been between the capitals. Apart from the one he took to St Petersburg last week.
From what we hear, he was planning a big software launch, and he’s been outspoken that he wants to do this from the Moscow base, not his London office. There’s a lot of money in Russia if you know where to look. I think the Kremlin would see it as a bit of a coup as well from their side, hence his close links with those in power there. He’s reportedly met with Putin twice this last year, though he mainly works with Putin’s inner circle, several of whom are billionaires themselves. Money and power are valuable commodities in Russia, as always.”
“And the software. What is it?” Zoe spoke up for the first time. She was the least informed of them all.
“It’s highly secret, but word is it’s intended to rival even the biggest of them all, Apple. The announcement was meant to be a few days from now. There’s no official statement from the remaining partners yet, but following his death, everything has been put on hold.”
“It could get messy,” Charlie said. “So, what more can you tell us? What about William?”
“There’s a lot less on him. He kept under the radar a little more, maybe. We know they used to be neighbours, William and Anthony, I mean. It was Anthony that moved away around twelve years ago. They lived next door to each other for about ten years. We’re confirming the details on that. Anthony then went on to bigger and better things, though William is far from poor. Lovely family house, large garden, and from what we can tell, well respected by everyone. Seems to have never put a finger wrong. After his wife died of cancer about a decade back, he split his time between his successful business and his growing charity work. He started his own cancer charity, in honour of his late wife and also worked with water projects, which he’d had a passion for since his younger years. He travelled to Africa several times in this regard. Was due to be knighted later this year.”
“I thought that was denied in the end?” Zoe said.
“Officially, yes. The Palace didn’t want the bad publicity. People who have been honoured have done some bad stuff before, but not often murder. Not a killing of this type, on foreign soil. We checked it with them. He’d been considered for a while and this year was on the list. He’d been sent an invitation to the Palace for the end of the year, which we collected from his house after the search. Between friends and family, it was widely known. He was a popular character, had time for everyone.”
“So why shoot Anthony?” Charlie said, asking the question on everyone’s mind.
“We looked to see if there were any neighbourly disputes from when Anthony lived next door. Nothing came up. Three others on the street also still live there from that time. None of them reported anything. In fact, they had nothing but positive things to say about William. Some even suggested it was Anthony that had the issues. The two people who actually remembered him didn’t have much time for him. They didn’t say why.”
“Find out, will you. We need everything on this,” Zoe said, the investigator in her coming out once more. The analyst glanced at Charlie, who nodded ever so slightly. It was meant to be subtle enough that no one saw, but Zoe noticed. Very little slipped past her. The analyst wrote down a note to check and carried on.
“William has no connections to Russia. His children do not know of him obtaining a visa for entry into Russia, nor any knowledge of why and from where he would have obtained the false passport. It’s not like him, they say. They actually totally deny it’s him at all. They claim we have the wrong man, that their father is innocent and has been accused of this crime he had no way of committing.”
“Have they been told the evidence we have?” Charlie said.
“No, of course not.”
“Okay, anyway. Why were they both in Russia?”
“We’re drawing a blank on that one, sir. We can guess why Anthony was there. The launch of his product is days away, and he travels there a lot anyway. Why he was in St Petersburg, we don’t know yet. As for William...” He sat back in the chair, hands raised, eyes looking to the ceiling. “I just don’t get it.”
“Go on,” Charlie said.
“You know the hunch you get? That feeling about someone.”
“Yes,” Charlie and Zoe said simultaneously.
“Working with the people we often come across, and you get a sense of something about someone. You know they are guilty. You see it in their associates, in the way they dress, the places they go, the women they sleep with. You know they are a player, and it’s just a case of connecting the dots. Well, with this guy, I just don’t see it. I don’t get it.”
“I know what you mean,” Zoe said. “But I’ve been wrong as well before.”
“No disrespect, Zoe, but when MI6 get involved, the players are usually at another level. And this guy isn’t a player.”
“Or he’s the best you’ve ever come up against?”
“Hardly. I mean, look at it this way. If he is that good, why shoot someone in broad daylight, witnessed and photographed by passers-by, then later be found with the fake passport and bloodied clothes? If you’re that good, you don’t make that mistake.”
“Unless he wanted to be caught,” Zoe said.
“Again, why? What purpose does that serve William?”
No one offered a suggestion to that.
“What are the Russians saying?” another person asked. Zoe turned to Charlie.
“They’ve been straight down the line with their demands. They want Hackett extradited, to face a jury trial for
the murder of Fernandes. They’ve handed over their evidence, which the Home Office has passed to the Crown Court to verify. It puts the UK in a difficult situation, as things stand.”
“And when do we get to examine the victim’s possessions, etc.”
“We’ve been given what they have, or so they’ve told us. Money, passport, documents, a briefcase, and his tablet. He was working on the device at the time of his death.”
“And the body?”
“There, we have a problem,” Charlie said.
“Problem?”
“It’s been cremated already. His personal wishes, apparently. They’ve produced his signed will to prove it. His widow knew nothing about it all. She’s devastated.”
“I bet she is,” Zoe said, but there was no real emotion in her voice.
“We have been able to check his medical files. He had a private hospital in London taking care of his health. DNA, dental, blood group, the lot, all on record. The blood stain on the sleeve of the shirt that we recovered from William’s home is a perfect match. No mistaking that it’s Anthony’s blood,” Charlie said.
“Has Hackett been formally charged, then, with the murder of Anthony Fernandes?”
“I read him his rights this morning, yes,” Zoe said.
“You think he’s guilty, don’t you?” someone asked Zoe.
“Yes, I do. The evidence is clear. We have DNA samples linking him to the victim. We have eyewitness accounts of him being in the park in St Petersburg at the time of the killing, a photo showing the accused holding a gun to the head of the victim moments before shooting him. We have video evidence of him flying to and returning from St Petersburg, and we have his fake documents to prove he could get in. There isn’t much to question, is there?”
“What about motive?”
“God, am I the only one that thinks this is as simple as it seems? What do we care about the motive? We have him bang to rights. Caught red-handed, with significant, concrete evidence to back up a murder conviction. From my point of view, I don’t see what option you have but to release him to the Russians.”
“Okay, Zoe, that’s enough,” Charlie said. He sounded like her father. She was not impressed. “The UK doesn’t extradite people to aggressive states. Russia is not the top of our list of staunch allies lately. There’s going to be a power struggle over this one. That’s why they’ve got Anya involved. They must have known she’d be received a little more politely because of her father’s connections than another agent might have been.”
“You certainly seem keen,” Zoe said. Charlie shot her a look that said, ‘shut up, you stupid, in-over-your-head, bitch.’
“The bottom line is that the UK doesn’t trust Russia at the moment. The Americans are pressuring us to hold back politically. This situation gives us the perfect opportunity.”
“But what grounds do we have? There is a mountain of evidence to support their charge.” It annoyed Zoe that in this situation she was the only one acting like a police officer, though it was true she was the only officer present. MI6 certainly worked on another trajectory, one that she didn’t agree with at all right now.
“We have no body, for one,” Charlie said. “That will slow things down for a little bit.”
“Buy some time, you mean? For what purpose? Isn’t it in our interest that justice is served?”
“Yes, Zoe, it is. But you have to understand that politically this causes us some large issues. We don’t know what sentence the Russians will bring, either. We don’t extradite in cases where the death penalty might be imposed.”
“Russia doesn’t have the death penalty, do they?”
“Technically, they still do. They’ve not executed anyone since 1996, and it’s believed to be on the way out. However, the death penalty remains codified under Russian law. The Council of Europe prohibits them from carrying out this sentence, but as we know, they are pulling further away from Europe. This could be the perfect opportunity to sever all ties.”
“That sounds like a load of rubbish to me. They’ll never buy that.”
“They don’t need to. If the Crown Court examine the evidence and in the light of that think that the rights of the accused will be violated in any way, they will not allow it to happen. The Russians can scream all they want, but he wouldn’t be going anywhere.”
“It’s all just a game to you people, isn’t it? One big game.” Zoe got up and paced to the window, the city alive with people on the streets below.
“Don’t get yourself so worked up, Zoe,” Charlie said. “Thanks, everyone. I think we’ll end the meeting here and continue working on it.” Everyone started collecting their things, and the room suddenly emptied. It was now just Charlie and Zoe, and he joined her at the window.
“You carry a lot of passion with you, don’t you?”
“I do my best, Charlie. That is all, just doing my job.”
“That’s just it. You say that, and imply we are not doing our jobs.”
“Read into it what you want. I work with evidence. I don’t deal with politics. But if you ever talk down to me like you did in front of those people again, you’ll have to find someone else to work with.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay, I forgive you.” It hadn’t been an apology, and they both knew it. Zoe turned from the window, a slight smirk on her face. Neither said another word as they left the building and got back in the car.
7
The questioning of William had been going on at length all day. By the afternoon, Anya was also allowed into the room, though only as a silent observer. Still, for a confused man like Bill, the presence of a Russian made it all the more daunting.
“So, William, for the record...” Charlie said before being interrupted.
“Please, call me Bill. My friends do, anyway.” Charlie smiled at the guy, though Zoe ploughed on regardless.
“William, do you understand what it is you have been charged with?” she said. “Do you have any idea of the enormity of the crime that you have been accused of?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“And you still deny being in St Petersburg a week ago today and killing Anthony Fernandes with this gun?” She proceeded to drop the weapon back onto the table as she had done several times already. It made a thump as it hit the desk. It had been dusted for prints, and a perfect match was found on the weapon for William’s fingerprints.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, I mean, I don’t think I have. I’ve said how I woke up, that day you came to the house. I was deeply shaken, disturbed. As if I’d woken from a dream. There were these thoughts, these memories, but they were just a nightmare. And then I found the bag with all that stuff in, and I got terrified. I have never seen it before in my life, and I don’t own a gun. I hate guns. I remember being on a plane, in the same nightmare that I had. I have no memory of being in a park. I don’t know what is happening. My doctor said...” but he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“Yes, your doctor said you are showing the first signs of dementia. Do you know what that means, sir?” Charlie had a much gentler approach to the situation.
“Yes, I am aware what that means, but it doesn’t mean that I did this. I’d surely remember something like that. I’m not a violent man. You have to believe me.” He started to break down, the third time he’d done so that day. Charlie went over to pour a cup of water and placed it in front of Bill, who had managed to calm himself somewhat. Zoe continued:
“Can you tell me, therefore, how witnesses spotted the attacker flee from the scene of the crime, first running east towards a canal that runs along the edge of the park? These same witnesses report that the weapon was thrown into the water. Russian divers were able to salvage the weapon, and it was checked for fingerprints. Can you, therefore, tell us, William, how your fingerprints happened to be the ones that match these prints exactly? Can you tell me how that is possible if as you claim, you were not in St Petersburg at the time in question? Can you please explain it
to me, sir? Because I’m confused.” Charlie put a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s enough, Zoe,” he said. Bill was not in good shape. He was not riding the punches well, these questions coming at him were hitting hard. There was no bouncing back, but he had not yet thrown in the towel. Charlie glanced over at Anya for the first time. She returned the look, a focus in her eyes that urged him to press on with the questioning. She seemed to want to break this old man.
“Bill, tell me what you do know,” Charlie said, being as friendly as he possibly could.
Bill smiled, and his shoulders relaxed just a little. “I’m not a young man anymore, Charlie. We all know that. And the doctor tells me my mind is starting to get confused. That things won’t always make sense. Certainly, nothing of this situation makes any sense to me right now. But I am not a killer. I’ve given years to help people. Since my wife lost her fight with cancer, I’ve been working hard to help make breakthroughs in the field of research. For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to help people have clean, fresh water. It’s our basic human right, and yet it’s not shared by everyone. That’s wrong, Charlie. That’s an injustice. I was a young man, a boy really when I first landed in Africa and had my eyes truly opened to the gross imbalance that exists between rich and poor. It’s not right, Charlie. It isn’t. I don’t know what happened to Anthony. I’ve told you we were once neighbours. He moved away sometime back before my wife got sick. We never really saw eye to eye, and I don’t know why that was. I was nothing but respectful to him and didn’t judge any of his actions. Tried to be a good neighbour. He upped, moved on, and didn’t tell any of us about it. And it wasn’t just with me before you ask. No one spoke to him, no one had the time for him, for various reasons. You’ll have to ask them all why; I can’t remember really. I never heard from him again though, once he’d moved on. Don’t even know where he lives. I’m not sure anyone did.”
“Were you angry that he moved away without telling you about it?” Zoe said.
