When the woman he knew as Alice Morton had rented the flat for three years, cash upfront, Peters had been suspicious of her. Another dealer? Nevertheless, as a body-builder himself with advanced qualifications in Thai boxing, he had been impressed by her obvious fitness, and challenged by her coldness. In an attempt to ingratiate himself with her, he had dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and told her about the hiding place. She had ignored him and hardly glanced at the cupboard. But she knew it was there and that was enough for Peters. She might have used it and he wanted to know.
Fortunately for Peters, the police search missed the concealed cupboard, the young forensic officer who looked under the sink not noticing the cupboard’s backboard was a foot closer to the doors than in the other cupboards. Now all the tenant’s other belongings had been returned, Peters had been itching to check it out.
Knowing the police would be watching the place, he had waited for a few days to get to know their schedule. Confident neither the little round sergeant nor the big black guy would show up before lunchtime, he decided to call in one morning after breakfast.
He parked his car outside the house and headed for the main door. Everything seemed quiet in the flat — the other downstairs door was locked, no sounds from upstairs — so Peters ran up the stairs and walked straight to the kitchen. He opened the doors to the cupboard below the sink and peered in. It was as he remembered: there were no screws, just a plain painted board. Whoever had installed it had mounted a large magnet on the rear side of the board that would engage with another magnet when it was brought up close on the outside, allowing the panel to be pulled away smoothly. The innocent-looking magnet on the fridge door had been left there for precisely that purpose. Peters retrieved it and leaned his hand forward into the cupboard, allowing magnetic attraction to do its work.
Peering into the gloom of the space behind the panel, he could see several packets. He reached in.
The first packet immediately confirmed his suspicions about Alice Morton. It contained passports, ten of them. He flicked through a couple but they didn’t interest him. If he had bothered to look more carefully at the personal data pages, he would have discovered that each passport was for a woman of about Alice Morton’s age, each of the women bearing a close resemblance to her.
He ducked his head back into the cupboard, reaching farther into the hidden space. As his hand folded around a plastic bag containing something long and thin wrapped in what felt like cotton cloth, the sudden sound of a voice from close behind him made him jump in alarm, his head banging hard against the sink’s downpipe.
“Looking for something, Clive? There’s no cash, if that’s what you’re after.”
Peters backed out of the cupboard and sprang to his feet. Alice Morton was standing about six feet away from him, a half-smile on her face, her eyes piercing into his.
“No, but the pile of passports is interesting, Morton,” he said shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. “Or should I call you Freneton? Ex-Superintendent Olivia Freneton. Seems you’re in a spot of trouble.”
Her eyes didn’t leave his for an instant, which is why she didn’t notice his right hand exploring the bag it was still gripping. He could feel a handle through the plastic and cloth.
“Well, Superintendent? Murdering bitch Superintendent? Your mates told me all about you, said you were good with your hands. Fast.”
He feinted a rapid movement with both hands, but Olivia didn’t so much as blink. However, what she did do was notice the packet in Peters’ hand as it flashed across her vision.
Her sneering smile hardened. “Knives, Clive. Two very sharp knives.”
“What?” he said, frowning.
“In the bag you’re holding, the one you picked up from under the sink. It contains two very sharp knives. One of them excellent for throwing, if you know what you’re doing. So it won’t be much use to you, will it?” she offered sarcastically.
Peters shrugged. “Don’t need no knives, not when you’ve got these,” he said, lobbing the packet to one side and starting to lift his fists.
But he had already made his mistake, and Olivia only needed one. As he lobbed the packet away, he had taken his eyes from Olivia’s for a fraction of a second. Out of nowhere, a searing, sickening pain enveloped his abdomen as his legs collapsed under him. Olivia’s right foot had done its work, crashing into his groin like a piledriver.
Olivia darted forward and seized Peters’ right hand from where it was instinctively reaching for his battered testicles. She spun him onto his front, twisting his arm and forcing it up his back.
He was big, but Olivia was strong. Keeping the pressure on the twisted arm, she hauled him to his feet and marched him to the top of the stairs where, before he had time to react, she pushed him hard out into the void of the stairwell. With no opportunity to find his feet, Peters tumbled awkwardly, his head striking a stair corner, the weight of his body dragging him on, still tumbling. His skull hit the concrete floor first, his body following, compressing and twisting his head. His neck broke with a sharp snap.
Olivia stood at the top of the stairs, watching for movement, but she knew he was dead from the lay of his body.
Returning to the kitchen, she picked up the discarded packets of passports and knives, after which she kneeled and reached into the hidden cupboard space to retrieve the pack of explosive charges. She pulled a drawstring cloth bag from her pocket and pushed all the items in. After carefully wiping the surface of the false panel Peters had removed and putting it back in place, she returned the magnet to the fridge door.
She glanced around the room, making sure everything was in place before carefully descending the stairs, avoiding any points of contact Peters had made with his head and other parts of his body as he fell.
Stepping over the body, she turned and bent to go through his pockets. As she did, a cruel smile of satisfaction spread across her face. Peters’ inside jacket pocket contained an envelope stuffed with twenty-pound notes; he must have been collecting back rents from various properties he owned. She made a rough count — around five thousand pounds; a most welcome top-up to her depleted funds.
When she checked his other pockets, she was further delighted to find his car keys. “Thank you, Clive,” she said, waving the keys at her landlord’s body. “The police won’t be looking for your car for quite a while, even if the next patrol comes by fairly soon. I can drive it with impunity, and an anonymous car parked in Thyme’s street will be far less noticeable than a motorcycle.”
After driving to her hotel, Olivia paced her room for ten minutes revising her schedule. She would undoubtedly be blamed for Peters’ death once his body was found, making it necessary to complete what she could of her intended programme that day. Not ideal, but among her many contingency plans there were several scenarios from which she could choose.
She had two objectives remaining: the disposals of Bottomley, Hawkins and Thyme, and searching Thyme’s flat for anything that would lead her to Cotton. It was still possible to complete all of these by the end of the day providing all went smoothly.
The logical order for the disposals was Bottomley, Hawkins and Thyme, since Thyme, as a single man, would be less likely to return to his flat early after work. However, the disposals were for later on; right now her priority was finding information on Cotton’s whereabouts.
She remained dressed in her jogging gear, but in a small rucksack she carried with her, she had a change of clothing, a wig and different dark glasses, just in case.
Driving slowly down Thyme’s street, she looked for signs of activity in the three-storey block that housed his flat. There was nothing.
The twelve flats were all small, one-bedroom units, aimed mainly at the young singles or newly-wed market, although the ground-floor flats with their tiny patches of garden would appeal to retirees.
And it was a retiree, a widow, who let her in. The elderly woman was leaving to walk to the supermarket three st
reets away as Olivia approached the main door. The woman even held the door for her.
“Thanks so much,” enthused Olivia as she looked up from the phone she’d pulled from her pocket. “I’m popping into Derek Thyme’s flat for something. He lent me his keys but I forgot the password for the door. I was just about to call him.” She held up her phone as proof of her story.
The woman smiled. “Pleased to be of help, dear. It’s seven-six-two-six, in case you call by again.”
“You’re very kind,” said Olivia. “Derek told me he had charming neighbours, and now I can see what he meant.”
She watched the woman walk the short path to the gate and head off down the street before taking the stairs to Derek’s flat on the first floor. Here she paused, sniffing the air, listening for sounds of activity behind the other three front doors. Nothing; no music, TV or radio. Just to be sure, she put her ear to each door and bent down to look underneath for any moving shadows.
Satisfied she was unlikely to be interrupted, she turned her attention to Derek’s front door. There were two deadlocks — one clearly new — and a Yale. The Yale would be easy, the work of seconds, but the deadlocks would require a little more. The presence of a new, second lock concerned her. Had Thyme beefed up his security? Was the place alarmed? She might only have time to grab his laptop and run.
Removing a set of picks from her rucksack, Olivia set about the deadlocks. Although they were chunky, impressive-looking devices, their mechanisms proved no barrier to her skills and she had them both open in under thirty seconds. The Yale, as expected, pleaded no contest.
She gently pushed open the door, checking the frame for telltale signs of an alarm trip. There was nothing obvious. From where she stood, she quickly scanned the room. There was only an entry phone, no indication of any alarm. Of course, it may be sophisticated, well hidden and controlled remotely through Thyme’s mobile phone. She would have to risk it, but to cover her bases, she checked the kitchen window. It looked out onto a small garden to the rear. Dropping down into it wouldn’t be a problem if she needed to leave in a hurry.
Thyme had left his computer on the dining table along with notebooks and papers. Olivia opened the laptop and the screen sprang to life, a box in the centre demanding a password. She hit the return button, just in case no password was required, but the on-screen box shook and the cursor kept flashing.
Luuk, Olivia’s fence in Amsterdam, as well as dealing in all types of stolen goods, knew far more than the average mortal about computers and computer security. Knowing his clients often wished to access files on their targets’ computers, he had put together a sophisticated program that examined a computer’s CPU with a view to discovering all passwords, but particularly the one that opened up the computer from scratch.
Olivia removed a flash drive containing the program from her rucksack and plugged it into one of the laptop’s USB ports. Within a few seconds, a panel appeared on the screen, a logo of a ripped-apart heart in its centre along with the word ‘Heartbreaker’. A small black panel within the main one filled with rapidly scrolling lines of code.
After only ten seconds, the scrolling stopped and Olivia expected the computer’s main home screen to appear. But instead another panel opened flashing the word ‘Danger’. Underneath was a short message. ‘This computer is protected by highly sophisticated security and cannot be accessed. Remove the drive immediately before any internal systems copy or destroy it, and before any message is transmitted to announce Heartbreaker’s attempted intrusion. You have five seconds. Four …’
Olivia snatched the drive from the port, her eyes searching the room for Thyme’s modem. Finding it, she tore the power cable from it along with the Internet feed.
She stared at the computer, almost expecting it to say something smug, but all the screen displayed was the original panel demanding a password.
Angered by this setback, she slammed the lid shut and turned her attention to the notebooks. She picked up each in turn, systematically searching through them so it wouldn’t be obvious they had been examined. But they were only casebooks: notes and aides memoires, references, cross-references, and summaries, one book for each major case Thyme had worked on or was working on. He was nothing if not thorough, although the ex-senior officer in Olivia was mentally reprimanding him for having such material sitting on his dining table. At the very least the notebooks should be in a safe. Did he even own a safe?
Olivia began a rapid search of the flat for anything else that might contain reference to Cotton. But there was no safe, no other notebooks, no photos. Nothing that made any mention of her.
Taking deep breaths to control her anger, Olivia considered what to do. There was nothing here, which was a huge disappointment. And in case there was a silent alarm or indeed the computer had managed to send a message to someone or something somewhere, she should leave. But before she did, she returned to Thyme’s bedroom where, supported on a pair of stands, were two racing bikes: a Cannondale and a Raleigh. She stared at them as she again rethought her day. Although she didn’t believe in luck or fate, she seemed to be having more than her fair share of setbacks. If something else went wrong, maybe she wouldn’t get a chance to return here later to kill Thyme. Perhaps she should take some action now. OK, it wouldn’t guarantee his death, but under the right circumstances …
She pulled a toolkit from her bag and set to work on the bikes.
Chapter Twenty
Henry Silk leaned back in a large, leather armchair, his cupped right hand warming the Armagnac in his brandy goblet, his eyes fixed on his daughter as she nestled comfortably on the sofa opposite him.
“What?” said Jennifer, raising her eyebrows in mock innocence as she pulled her feet more securely under her. She knew she couldn’t hold out much longer, but she wanted the questions to come from him.
Henry waited a few seconds before replying. When he spoke, his voice was soft, affectionate.
“Ever since I arrived in this paradise this afternoon you’ve spent the time using diversionary tactics. We’ve swum in the pool and the sea, we’ve walked the gardens where you surprised me with your knowledge of Mediterranean flora, you’ve reintroduced me to the wonderful Martina in the kitchen with whom I’ve swapped recipes, although I don’t think she thought much of mine, you’ve even allowed me to take over from Martina to show off my limited culinary skills and you’ve plied me with the most exquisite wines. Throughout all this, we’ve talked about anything and everything except what’s really on your mind. When are you going to tell me what’s going on? Tell me why, if you’re going to be working in an art fraud squad, there’s a need for such secrecy, why I still won’t be able to enjoy the pleasure of taking you to what I regard as the best Italian restaurants in London once you return to England?”
Jennifer shrugged. “You’re too modest, Mr Silk. Your culinary skills are anything but limited and you know it. I doubt there’s a restaurant anywhere that could better those linguine alle vongole; they were to die for.”
Henry dropped his eyes into a squint and put on his best Bronx accent. “Cut the crap, Cotton, and spill the beans.”
Jennifer giggled. “OK, boss, you win, but it’s no different from before. While I’m over the moon we’ve found each other, that I have a father who’s not only alive and amazing, but also one who is quite a celeb, I still don’t want my picture in all the glossies alongside yours. I hate the way these gossip-mongers — to call them journalists insults the professionals in the business — the way they assume they have the right to intrude on anyone’s life, that they can plaster your photo everywhere and pepper it with pathetic innuendo.”
Henry smiled. “I don’t recall seeing you in any of the glossies.”
“Exactly. I’m not a celeb and I don’t want to be one. It’s brilliant my name and photo have been kept away from the press so far, that they don’t know I’m your daughter. I know it hasn’t been easy and I’m so very grateful that you and everyone else has kept it quiet. It w
ouldn’t help me if you kept popping up in conversation in everything I do. You know this; we’ve been through it.”
“It will probably come out if Freneton’s ever found. She would delight in revealing our connection in court, if she got the chance.”
“I know, and because of that, I feel as if I’m living on borrowed time, career-wise. But while I am, I want to maintain the status quo. That’s why I haven’t taken you up on your offer of letting me live in your house in London once I’m back, which I’d really like to do. I love that house; it’s so … you. And I’d love to go out to restaurants with you, but you know exactly what would happen; I’d be featured as your latest conquest in the tabloids. And when they found the truth, they’d be all over me, and … well, it would place a huge constraint on my effectiveness.”
Henry took a sip of his brandy while watching her over the rim of the glass. “Interesting way to express it, Jennifer, but there’s more than that, isn’t there? I’ve got to know you very well in the past year, and I know you’re holding something back.”
She pulled a face. “You’d make a good police officer, or perhaps I’m just transparent.”
“I don’t think you’d be transparent to anyone else; your inscrutability is impressive, but possibly because we share so many characteristics, I can see through it.” He grinned. “You don’t know how good that makes me feel.”
She laughed. “Perhaps I should take up acting.”
“If ever being a plod gets too much, you should think about it.”
She straightened her back and lifted her chin. “Jennifer Cotton, star of stage and screen.” Sagging back into the sofa, she made a face. “Doesn’t quite cut it somehow. I think I’ll stick to chasing bad guys.”
“So tell me about them,” said Henry, “tell me about the bad guys in the art world. Are they really so bad?”
Jennifer nodded. “You better believe it. The bad ones are up to every trick in the book. Crafty as the proverbial cartload.”
Remorseless Page 14