Marked for Death

by Tony Kent

  ‘I’m going to have to get inside,’ Levy finally explained. ‘This is going to be a jurisdictional bun-fight.’

  ‘Any chance you’ll lose?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Levy smiled as she spoke. Sarah returned it. ‘Can you stay for a few hours? Until I’m done here? We should talk.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’ Sarah smiled again. ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Good.’

  Levy turned her back without another word and strode towards the house at the centre of the cordon; towards the Suffolk Detective Inspector who waited for her at its entrance.

  Even from a distance Sarah could see the friction as the two officers met. The hostility. The jurisdictional battle was brewing.

  Rather you than me, pal, was her only thought.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Vodka tonic. Lots of ice.’

  Sarah placed two glasses on the wooden table, stepped over the bench and settled opposite Levy.

  ‘Wine drinker,’ Levy observed.

  ‘No imagination, I guess.’ Sarah picked up her wine glass by the delicate stem and held it out ahead of her, halfway across the table. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Levy said in return. ‘And thanks. I need this after the last few days.’

  The clink of the glasses was a starter’s pistol. Both women took a mouthful of their drink. For Levy the relaxation was instant. Not from the alcohol; that would take a little longer to work its way into her bloodstream. No, it was the dopamine rush that did it. The brain’s reward for that first sip.

  Sarah had waited for less than an hour in Mill Lane. She had been ready to stay longer. Levy, it turned out, had not.

  Levy had known exactly what she was looking for in Adam Blunt’s home. And she had found it all. The more detailed forensic analysis was left to her crime-scene investigators.

  Once outside Blunt’s house she had approached Sarah and told her to follow. A short drive out of town and they were here: the empty garden of a quiet country pub.

  Levy had found a table in the shade while Sarah bought their drinks.

  ‘So I guess I was right?’ Sarah broke the silence. ‘It’s the same guy.’

  ‘It looks like it, yeah.’ Levy could not hide the resignation from her tone. Having to confirm Sarah’s instincts was an unwelcome task.

  ‘So that’s two within forty-eight hours,’ Sarah observed. ‘That’s a solid strike rate.’

  ‘I’ve seen better,’ Levy replied, ‘but not the way this guy does it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’d expect those numbers from a spree killer. Or more, if it was a lunatic shooting at random, or someone killing a partner or family member, then driving a hundred miles and killing another. But those guys are crude. Blunt. They kill, they get caught. Or they commit suicide.’

  ‘This guy’s different, then?’ Sarah seemed fascinated. ‘What is it? The crucifixion? The castration? What does that tell you?’

  ‘That tells me he’s a sick son of a bitch. Same thing it tells you. But no, that’s not what worries me.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Off the record?’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  ‘No it doesn’t, Sarah.’ Levy always believed in being direct. At least where possible. Right now, it was essential. ‘I’m taking a big risk talking to you. Which I’m only doing because you’ve shown yourself as trustworthy. But if I’m wrong about that – if you screw me over – you won’t want to deal with the consequences.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ Sarah smiled. She took another sip of wine. ‘My fiancé said the exact same thing.’

  ‘Your fiancé? Do I know him?’

  ‘Not really, no. At least not personally. He’s a barrister. Michael Devlin. I think he’s defended in a couple of your cases.’

  Levy did not answer immediately. Instead she trawled her memory. It did not take long. Her time in Shin Bet had included training in absolute recall. By its very nature, a talent she could not forget. The picture of a tall man with blonde hair focused in Levy’s mind.

  ‘Michael Devlin,’ Levy said, almost to herself at first. ‘I remember him. He’s good, Sarah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Handsome too. Lucky girl.’

  ‘Thanks again.’ This time Sarah laughed. ‘But seriously, anything you say to me is off the record. Hell, I could report what I already know – none of which comes from you – but I’m not even going to do that. There’s nothing you can tell me that’s more headline-grabbing than crucifixion.’

  ‘OK,’ Levy replied. ‘Then here’s what worries me. These killings, they’re identical. Ritualistic. Except it’s no kind of a ritual I’ve ever heard of. More a personal perversion of some sort.’

  ‘You mean sexual?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. More a perversion of the killer’s humanity, if that makes any sense?’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Maybe that’s not the perfect description,’ Levy continued. ‘But whatever it is, this guy is not a blunt instrument. He’s not killing just to kill. Just to cause death. He’s enjoying every inch of it. The torture. The dismemberment. The terror, no doubt. And the aftermath. Some of the sick stuff he does is post-mortem. And that’s for us. For whoever finds the bodies.’

  ‘And you don’t get that with a spree killer?’

  ‘Not in my experience. They just kill; the killing is all it’s about. But it’s not only the sickness that sets him apart. It’s his intent.’

  ‘His intent?’

  ‘That he fully intends to keep going. Spree killers, they kill until they’re caught or cornered. And they don’t do much to stop that happening. But this guy? This guy is covering his tracks and he is doing it very, very well.’

  ‘How? What is he doing?’

  ‘He’s using bleach, to cover his tracks. He soaks the body in it. He pours it down their throats. And then when he’s done he uses it to cover any part of the house he’s been in.’

  ‘To kill any DNA he’s left behind,’ Sarah observed.

  ‘Exactly,’ Levy replied, impressed that Sarah knew how effective simple bleach was as a crime-scene sanitiser. Most did not. ‘And a spree killer doesn’t do that. But someone who wants to kill again? They do. And that’s terrifying when he’s killing at this rate.’

  ‘Shit.’ Sarah sat backwards on the bench. The thought made her exhale deeply.

  ‘Exactly right,’ Levy replied, her own ramrod straight bearing unchanged.

  The two women fell silent. Levy gave Sarah a moment to digest the details. It was the first time Sarah had heard it, Levy knew, because it was the first time Levy had said it out loud. She was taking a risk sharing so much with a reporter, she knew that. But she considered herself a good judge of character and she felt Sarah was worth trusting. And in any event, without Sarah’s earlier tip off, it might have taken days for her and her team to be told about this latest murder.

  Finally Sarah broke the silence.

  ‘Whoever this bastard is, he’s a different breed.’

  Sarah reached into her handbag as she spoke. Peeling the wrapper from an unopened pack of cigarettes she had bought inside, she took one for herself before offering the open pack to Levy.

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘Once,’ Levy replied. ‘I gave up years ago.’

  ‘So did I.’ Sarah lit the cigarette. ‘But sometimes, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Sarah inhaled deeply, taking a moment to ride the nicotine hit. Levy looked on. She could remember the same feeling; could understand an ex-smoker lapsing in moments of stress. It was not something she could allow of herself. Not when stress was such a constant in her life.

  ‘What about suspects?’ Sarah asked. ‘Have you got any leads at all?’

  ‘We’ve got lines of enquiry. I’d be lying if I called them leads.’

  ‘Longman’s past cases, right? I mean, Longman must have been the target of
a lot of grudges from his time on the bench. So I guess you must have started trawling through his case files, looking for someone who might be capable of this sort of violence.’

  ‘Sounds like you should be working for me.’ Levy smiled. Took a sip of her drink. ‘But yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Or at least it’s what we were doing. Problem is the man’s caseload was huge. Even after we’d used a bunch of filters to whittle them down.’

  ‘Surely that will have changed now, though? With Blunt’s death?’

  ‘That depends,’ said Levy. ‘If they were targeted because of a connection then that narrows down the case files we have to shift through.’

  ‘Because it must relate to a case where Blunt was the lawyer,’ Sarah suggested. ‘Which massively cuts down which files are potentials, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Levy confirmed. ‘But the problem is, Blunt’s death also raises the possibility that this is just a maniac targeting lawyers. Or retired lawyers. However unlikely that is – and trust me, I know it’s bordering on the absurd – if it somehow turns out to be true then this just got a whole lot harder. Because if this is all random, then studying Longman’s cases won’t help at all.’

  ‘Then surely you need to focus your best bet?’ Sarah suggested. ‘If it’s a maniac who’s just offing random lawyers and covering his tracks this well, catching him is just going to be a case of getting lucky, isn’t it? And like you say, it’s just not that likely a scenario. But if you assume that there is a connection – that Longman and Blunt were targeted for some old case they were both involved in – then at least you have something to pursue. And if it is that, well, Blunt’s death must have just massively reduced your list of subjects.’

  Levy did not answer.

  The files on tables one, two and three had been on her mind since that morning. And the imperfect filtering system her team had needed to apply had been right there with them. But Sarah was right. That filtering system was irrelevant. A solicitor like Adam Blunt could not have appeared in as much as one per cent of Longman’s cases. It would bring the number to a manageable level. Certainly single figures.

  But not zero, Levy thought. Because zero means no connection and no connection makes the killings random. A lunatic just hunting lawyers.

  Levy got to her feet. Her drink less than half done.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, but I’ve got to go. We’ve got to act on this now.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘And Sarah?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks for the pep talk. And the drink. I needed them both.’

  Pale Eyes kept the volume of his speaker audible as he watched Joelle Levy walk away from the table, leaving Sarah Truman to finish her drink and her cigarette alone.

  The information coming from the speaker was worth hearing, but he would have much preferred to hear what the cop and the reporter had just discussed. There had been no way to get close enough, not with the pub garden empty.

  He would find out soon enough. Certainly sooner than they would find him. The latter would happen, of course. But only when he was ready. When he was done.

  He watched as Truman stubbed out her cigarette, left the table and walked towards the car park. She would not pass him. He had positioned his vehicle to ensure that neither woman had any reason to pay it any attention. And so he could continue to observe, as Truman reached her own car and drove away.

  Sarah Truman. The big guns.

  It gave him an unexpected feeling of satisfaction. Just two killings so far, and already he had a famous reporter on his tail. And by the time he was done, she would have one hell of a story.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Michael Devlin recognised every guard at the entrance of London’s Central Criminal Court. He greeted each of them warmly as he queued. Each guard greeted him back, most by his first name.

  More commonly known as the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court housed many of the country’s major criminal trials. This in turn attracted the country’s leading barristers. Michael was counted in that number.

  And today he was here to begin the murder trial of Simon Kash.

  The entrance to the court building was unusually secure. Heavy, metal-framed doors led from the street to a security foyer. Lawyers, police officers, defendants and witnesses could pass through. For everyone else, that foyer was as far as they would get.

  After all these years the security process was familiar. Knowing what was ahead, Michael could pass through the isolation tubes at the end of the foyer and then the magnetic gate that followed in a matter of seconds, delayed only by the speed of the conveyor belt on the X-ray machine through which he had to pass any bags and belongings.

  This morning was no exception. Michael was through the process in under a minute and making his way down the three steps that led to the building’s basement-level elevator bank.

  The basement elevator bank was almost identical to the banks on every other floor. Six elevators. Three a side. Ornate but ageing. The only difference was the large wooden door that sat at the far right-hand corner of the bank.

  It led to the court’s cell area.

  The cells where Michael would today meet Simon Kash for only the second time.

  Michael boarded the elevator nearest to the cell-area door and pressed ‘four’. The outdated lift mechanism kicked in and his stomach lurched with the sudden upward movement.

  When the doors opened at ‘four’ Michael stepped out and turned left. At the end of the bank – left again – were the antique oak and glass doors that led to the Old Bailey’s robing areas, where barristers changed from their twenty-first-century clothing into the eighteenth-century outfits unique to Britain’s courts.

  The doors led to three rooms. The largest by far was the male robing room, directly behind the doors. The others were much smaller. One was the female robing area. It sat on the right, immediately after the main entrance. A recent addition. Or, more accurately, an after-thought. The size of the room practically an insult.

  The remaining room was the QC’s robing space, which sat behind an antique oak door at the far end of the male area. It was as small as the female robing room, but in this case the size was justified. QCs were massively outnumbered by junior barristers.

  Michael still felt strange going into that last room. He had been coming to the Old Bailey for seventeen years. In all of that time he had used the main robing room. It seemed unnatural to do otherwise, but rules were rules. Especially here.

  He took less than five minutes to change clothes, transforming him from modern lawyer to traditionally dressed Queen’s Counsel. The wig was the same as always. The same horsehair he had bought in Ede and Ravenscroft when he was just twenty-one. His wing collar and court bands were also unchanged. But the rest of the outfit was new. In place of his suit jacket was a QC’s court coat; a cross between a waistcoat and a jacket, the three buttons at the end of each upturned sleeve was one of the clearest ways for a QC to be identified on sight. Finishing the costume was a thick, silk QC’s robe instead of the more flowing cotton robe Michael had worn for almost two decades.

  At the entrance to the men’s robing room was a hundred-year-old wooden staircase. It led only upwards, to the Old Bailey Bar Mess. A huge, high-ceilinged dining hall where only advocates were permitted.

  Michael took the stairs two at a time. It was 9.15 a.m. Already the Bar Mess was busy. Scores of barristers, seated on row after row of tables. All preparing themselves for the day with every kind of breakfast.

  Trials. Politics. Gossip. All were being discussed as Michael made his way across the room. He stopped at the coffee dispenser and filled a mug.

  ‘Michael.’ He looked around at the sound of his name. Jenny Draper had spotted him. ‘Over here. I’ve saved you a seat.’

  He headed towards her. Like him, she had already changed into her court outfit.

  It suits her, Michael thought. Like she was born to wear it.

  He took the empty seat, placed his
coffee cup on the table and dropped his battered wig next to it.

  ‘Have you tried the cells yet?’

  ‘I did,’ Draper replied. ‘I went down at 9 a.m. No vans had arrived and they had no ETA. The custody officer said she’d tannoy when the vans turn up.’

  ‘Right.’

  Michael was not surprised by either Draper’s efficiency or the lateness of the prison vans.

  ‘Did you hear about Adam Blunt?’ Draper almost whispered the question. As if Blunt’s death was gossip. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Didn’t everyone?’ Michael replied, surprised to hear the name so quickly. As always it made him uncomfortable, but he would not let himself show it.

  Draper seemed to take the hint from the tone of Michael’s reply. When she spoke again her voice was louder and more professional.

  ‘He instructed chambers before he retired. I did a couple of trials for him years ago.’

  ‘But did you ever meet him, Jenny?’

  ‘No. Never face to face.’

  ‘Then you’ve got sensible clerks. Adam Blunt would have been all over you like a rash.’

  ‘No he wouldn’t!’ Draper’s feigned outrage at the suggestion, but the act was betrayed by laughter. She tapped Michael’s wrist. A playful telling off. ‘So did you know him then?’

  ‘Since I was younger than you,’ Michael replied. ‘I knew him before he became a lawyer.’

  ‘My God, Michael.’ Draper’s face fell. Her reaction genuine. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise he was a friend of yours. What must you think of me, gossiping about him?’

  ‘Knowing him didn’t make us friends,’ Michael said. ‘To be honest I couldn’t stand him. Nasty old bastard, he was. And bitter.’

  ‘Well, OK, Mr Devlin. Tell us what you really think!’

  Michael forced a smile at the sarcasm, but he didn’t reply. Instead he drained the second half of his coffee cup.

  The less said about that man the better, he thought.

  ‘So did you hear anything about what actually happened to him?’ Draper’s whisper was back. ‘The news reports hinted that he died badly.’