Frank watched the light bulb go on behind the inspector’s eyes.
‘I’m not at liberty to say, sir. Can you be more specific about the threats?’
Frank joined his hands and cracked his knuckles. ‘She was rambling about some woman she claimed had worked here.’
‘Who?’
Careful. ‘I don’t recall the name. My assistant may remember.’ Frank gestured at Cheekbones, hovering outside the glass door. ‘Anyway, not someone currently employed by Zagrovyl.’ Oh, you silver-tongued wordsmith, you. ‘I regret to say that Jaqueline Silver is a dangerous fantasist, an unhinged troublemaker. She made a terrible scene. I had to call security.’
The slack-witted assistant burst in, holding up the visitors’ book, all puppyish enthusiasm and eagerness to please.
‘You were right, sir.’ Cheekbones pushed the book across the table to the detective. ‘Friday 11 March. Jaqueline Silver came here looking for a Dr Hatton.’
Good boy. The art of deception is . . . timing. ‘She made rather a scene, didn’t she?’ What was the boy’s name? Tarquin? Valentino?
Cheekbones didn’t miss a beat. ‘She wasn’t happy. Not happy at all. But what could I do? Dr Camilla Hatton doesn’t work for Zagrovyl. I had to call Mr Good.’
The DI made a note, his pen scratching against the paper. He looked up. ‘Did you hear Jaqueline Silver threaten Mr Good?’
The sergeant knocked on the glass door, phone in hand. DI Dias swivelled round and nodded him in.
Cheekbones glanced at Frank. Two sets of blue eyes sparked as they met. A query, a response, a flash of understanding passed between them, all in a millisecond.
‘Oh, yes,’ Cheekbones said. ‘The most terrible scene. Mr Good had to call security.’
Cheekbones might be a candidate for the fast track after all.
The sergeant entered and sat down next to DI Dias. He whispered something in his boss’s ear and passed him a slim mobile phone. The tabloid banner glowed from the screen. The DI scrolled down to the pictures of Jaqueline Silver and the victims at Seal Sands. He sighed and snapped his notebook shut.
‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, sir.’
‘Not at all, Inspector. Only too glad to be of help.’ Make all the allegations you want, Jaqueline. No one is going to listen to you now.
Outside it was still raining. Frank watched as DI Dias opened his umbrella. As the policemen crossed the car park, a gust of wind caught it, inverting the metal skeleton and tearing the coloured nylon to shreds.
Jaqueline Silver: licensed to handle explosives. Already under suspicion for manslaughter, now a murderer. Well, who would have thought?
PART III: RONDO SLOVENIA
Thursday 17 March, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Jaq left England before the Cumbrian police could detain her.
The warning came just in time. The police had been back to talk to Ben and Emma. Instead of contacting the Chemical Weapons Inspectorate as promised, the police first interviewed Frank Good. He’d deflected all the accusations and raked up some muck of his own: drawn police attention to Jaq’s history; accused her of threatening and harassing him; and implied that if they were looking for Bill Sharp’s murderer, they should look no further than Dr Jaqueline Silver.
The new police theory, Johan informed her, was that Jaq had attacked the man following her, locked Emma in the shed and staged a fake rescue of Ben from the lake to cover up the crime.
Jaq wasn’t sure what hurt more. The absurd allegation or the fact that it was Johan who phoned. Emma hadn’t spoken to her directly since Ben’s near drowning.
Now was not the time to dwell on a damaged friendship. Unless she moved quickly, the Cumbrian police might stop her. Detective Wilem Y’Ispe wanted to talk to her; some forensic results had come in. Time to get back to Slovenia.
The plane crossed the mountains and descended towards the flat fields where Ljubljana nestled in spring sunlight. Only a week since she had left, and already the trees were bursting with leaf and blossom.
The Specials, Specialna Enota Policije, operated from an old building in the centre of Ljubljana, pink stucco with red-tiled roof and ornate wrought-iron balconies looking over the town, the castle rising up behind them.
She hesitated outside. With the English police, she’d said too much too soon. When Jaq accused the man in the lake of having been sent to kill her, the detective raised an eyebrow. When she implicated Zagrovyl, he suggested she get some rest. When she demanded the police involve OPCW – the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – a sergeant made her a cup of tea, told her she’d had a nasty shock and offered victim support counselling. She got angry, blurted out her worst suspicions, named Frank Good, Camilla Hatton, Laurent Visquel, made the mistake of telling the police how to do their job.
And now they planned to arrest her.
Back in Slovenia, she had a chance to start again, to avoid making the same mistake twice. This time she would stay calm. She would listen and find out what the Specials knew, identify the gaps in their knowledge, let them make their own discoveries. Every successful woman needs to know when to let a man take the credit.
A sentry saluted and opened the wrought-iron gate which led into a cobbled courtyard. A uniformed officer guided Jaq into the main building and opened a heavy oak door. Detective Wilem Y’Ispe stood at a French window looking out on to the river, his thin frame silhouetted in the afternoon light. Sunbeams danced around his fair wispy hair, but as she moved towards him, the light flickered and faded, ignis fatuus, will-o’-the-wisp.
‘Dr Silver.’ He extended a hand. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Glad to help.’
The office of Detective Wilem Y’Ispe, Will-O’-the-Wisp as she now thought of him, was large with high ceilings, in need of redecoration and sparsely furnished. Underneath the stained ceiling and peeling wallpaper stood a desk with the computer almost obscured by piles of paper, more folders on top of a row of grey steel filing cabinets and a circular table with assorted chairs. He pulled out a seat for Jaq, retrieved a thick file from his desk and sat beside her at the circular table.
‘I have the forensics report for you.’ He opened the file and extracted a white envelope. ‘This is an unofficial copy – we’re waiting for Chief Inspector Goran Trubor to approve release.’
Inside were several closely typed pages. She began to read with a growing sense of unease, frowning as she struggled to make sense of the unexpected chemical analysis in the summary.
Will-O’-the-Wisp put a hand on the report before she could turn the page to the detail.
‘Before you read on, Dr Silver, I have a question. Who was in the warehouse at the time of the explosion?’
‘Fortunately, no one.’
He met her gaze. Green eyes.
A flicker of doubt, a spark of alarm. She crossed her arms, suppressing the flames of fear. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
He opened his folder again and laid a series of photographs on the table. It took her a moment to realise what she was looking at. She had seen the same scene in the explosives warehouse through the smoke and ash, but not in this detail.
Patrice, the relief security guard, had assured her there was no one working at Snow Science that Saturday morning. Her brain had taken the information and found another interpretation for the gooey mess. The photographs showed in graphic detail what happens when a soft body gets in the way of a violent chemical explosion. All that was left was a shard of jawbone with a few teeth still attached, a mutilated, severed hand, the remains of an eyeball that had popped from its socket and rolled away from the fire. What she had interpreted as melted red plastic, white electrical trunking and yellow insulation had been blood and bone and flesh.
The weariness started in her fingertips, a trembling, tingling sensation that fluttered from knuckle to knuckle, surging into the canyon of wrist and spreading up her arms, bringing a dead weight to her drooping shoulders. She tried to stand up, but
a sudden fatigue swept over her body, an icy wash seeping down her spine; her hips sagged, knees shook, ankles wobbled and she collapsed back onto the chair.
Will-O’-the-Wisp handed her a glass of water. ‘Do you need a break?’
‘No.’ She emptied the glass. ‘Sorry . . .’
‘Better than indifference.’ The weariness in his voice made her wonder what he had seen to make him so jaded so young.
‘Our forensics team have started to recover the remains,’ he continued. ‘Nothing has been established yet, and we won’t make this public until the press conference. But we have a missing person to identify.’
A body, or what was left of one. A jigsaw to put back together again. Someone, a human being, had died. Another one. An image of the corpse in the lake flashed into her mind and she shivered.
‘So, Dr Silver, who is the victim?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jaq bit her lip. All the employees and contractors were accounted for, no security guards or cleaners missing. It could only be someone who had no business being there, someone who broke in. Twice.
‘But you have a suspicion?’
Should she tell him? About Camilla Hatton, Laurent Visquel, Frank Good, Zagrovyl? Or keep quiet and trust him to do his job? Ben’s face flashed into her mind. Superimposed on the corpse of the child, the victim of the Sarin gas attack. She had to see this through. Somehow, she had to convince Will-O’-the-Wisp to act, lead him right back to where this whole mess began.
‘It all started with the samples.’
‘I’m listening.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Zagrovyl, our supplier, made a mistake with a delivery. There was something fishy about the material.’
‘Fishy, as in . . .?’
‘Odd.’ Too soon to be more specific. ‘Bear with me for a moment.’
Will-O’-the-Wisp nodded.
‘I took samples.’
‘The . . . odd . . . material you sampled, what happened to it?’
‘Zagrovyl picked it up, replaced it.’
‘And the samples?’
‘Before I could analyse them my boss destroyed them.’
‘Laurent Visquel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would he destroy your samples?’
‘Perhaps you should ask him.’
He made a note. ‘And what does our . . . missing person have to do with the samples?’
‘Whoever was in the warehouse when the explosion took place might have been trying to recover the samples.’
‘I see. You mean our victim might be someone who knew you’d taken samples, but didn’t know they’d been destroyed?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Any candidates?’
‘Camilla Hatton.’ Jaq described the meeting in Café Charlie. ‘She claimed to be from Zagrovyl.’
‘The company that supplied the . . . odd material?’
She nodded. ‘Zagrovyl deny that she is an employee.’
‘How can I contact her?’
‘I wish I knew.’ Frank and Cheekbones had kept the card. Jaq copied the details from her phone. ‘The number is dead,’ she added.
‘Pictures? Profile?’
‘She doesn’t seem to exist online. Not on Facebook or LinkedIn.’ Or Hairnet.
‘Can you describe her?’
‘In her fifties, I guess. Short white hair. Green eyes. Fit. Speaks English with a slight accent, maybe Scandinavian.’
‘Is there anyone else?’
‘Only if they inspected the return pallet.’
‘And if they did?’
She chose her words carefully. ‘The driver who collected the reject material, I saw him again when I was in Teesside and—’
Will-O’-the-Wisp interrupted. ‘So, he’s not the victim.’
No, but he’s dangerous. He was working with Mr Beige. With Zagrovyl. She wanted to scream it out, but stopped herself. That route led to a corpse in Lake Coniston. If Will-O’-the-Wisp contacted the Cumbrian police they would demand that she return to England. She couldn’t risk that. If the English police weren’t going to help her, she needed the Slovenian force on her side. At least while she gathered evidence to support her case.
‘Anyone else who might have known?’
She thought back. ‘Stefan, the security guard.’
‘The one who was injured in the first break-in?’
‘Yes.’
He opened the folder and checked his notes. ‘Stefan Resnik was still in hospital on the Saturday of the explosion. He is due to be released today. So, he’s not our victim. Anyone else?’
Jaq shrugged. ‘Someone else connected with Zagrovyl who was worried about what was in those samples?’
‘What do you think was in the samples?’
Jaq hesitated. She appraised the man sitting opposite her. Too soon to share her worst fears? Not ammonium nitrate or urea or urea nitrate. Perhaps DMC, N,N-dimethylaminoethyl hydrochloride, or its analogue, DEC. Precursors for drugs used to treat heart disease but, like all Schedule 2 chemicals, a potential chemical weapons precursor as well. Could Will-O’-the-Wisp handle this information? Or might he react the same way the English police had?
A uniformed sergeant entered with a document for him to sign and the moment was lost. Hold your fire. Take your time. Lead them to that bastard, Frank Good.
‘Can we come back to that?’
He frowned. ‘If you insist.’
‘Whoever perished must have had access to keys.’ She explained the security protocol and the two sets of keys.
‘Could they have used your keys?’
‘Why not my boss’s keys?’
‘Laurent Visquel’s keys were in a police safe. I can personally vouch for that.’
‘And my keys were with me at all times.’
Will-O’-the-Wisp flicked through the pages of his report, the thin paper crackling. ‘As I understand it, these are special keys, difficult to copy. But just for the record, is there anyone who might have had access to your keys long enough to try?’
She hung her head. No point in pretending she hadn’t considered the same thing. The reason she had gone to Teesside. Perhaps this young policeman could find Camilla where she had failed. Perhaps Camilla had already been found, what was left of her. She bowed her head.
‘Camilla Hatton,’ she said.
‘Camilla again.’ The detective made a note, the pen rasping against the paper of his notebook. ‘Well, she should be easy to rule in or out. We’ll have the first lab results soon. If the DNA is female we may have our victim.’ He looked up. But let’s explore all avenues in the meantime. ‘Anyone else who could have had access to your keys?’
Jaq thought about it and then shook her head.
‘What about your . . .’ he looked up from his papers, ‘. . . boyfriend?’
Memories of the Snow Science kangaroo court twisted at her stomach, the contemptuous words of the chairman. Shacking up with strangers. You are a grandmother, for goodness’ sake. What was it about women and sex that made men so angry? Doesn’t it always take two to tango? She thrust her chin forward and jerked her head up to meet his eyes. Calm. Clear. Candid. Pools of limpid green. Just an officer of the law doing his job. But he was on the wrong track with Karel.
‘I’m not judging you, Dr Silver. But what do you know about the man you met on the night of the karaoke party?’
Plenty. ‘Karel Žižek.’ She gave his work address. ‘He’s a ski instructor. But he was with me during the break-in and . . .’ she paused as the kitchen memories came flooding back, ‘. . . when the explosion happened.’
‘But he could have copied them and given them to an accomplice?’
‘As could any one of Laurent’s girlfriends,’ she said. ‘Or a policeman. Anything is possible.’
‘Fair enough.’ The detective snapped his notebook shut and gave her his card. ‘I’ll talk to Dr Visquel and the staff sergeant who took charge of his keys, but I’ll also need a statement from Karel. Don’t tell him about thi
s new development. Just ask him to call me.’
Jaq put the card in her pocket. ‘As soon as we finish here,’ she stood up, ‘I’m going back to Kranjskabel.’
To find out what really happened.
Thursday 17 March, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Boris lit a cigarette. He leant against the stone wall under a Roman arch and watched the citizens of Ljubljana go about their business. From the shadows he could see the gateway to the Specialna Enota Policije.
What was Silver doing in there? What was she telling them? How much did she know? How long did he have?
He’d left England fast. The police had stopped his hire car at the junction where the pass from the valley joined the main road. Asked him if he’d been out walking. Whether he’d witnessed anything in the lake. He acted the dumb tourist. Seen nothing. Heard nothing. They let him go, but it was a close-run thing.
After that he tracked her mobile phone signal. Nothing easier to follow. At least, where there was reception. Not like in godforsaken, waterlogged Cumbria.
It had been a good plan. Silver had ruined it.
So much for a thirty-minute run. Liar. She took more time. Time in which everything unravelled.
The man in the beige raincoat wasn’t the problem. Boris spotted him long before he stumbled from the steep path onto the beach, his smooth city shoes slipping on the mossy pebbles. Boris watched the dickhead shout out, pull off his hat, raincoat, jacket and shoes, preparing to jump in and save the boy. With the distraction in the lake, it was easy to run up behind him. Kokot! Poor, stupid hero.
Boris felled him with a blow to the back of the head. The man toppled straight into the shallows.
‘You mad bastard!’ He surfaced, gasping. ‘What sort of monster uses children as bait?’
So not just a passer-by.
‘Mummy!’
Not much time. Boris pulled the man back onto the beach and hit him again and again, twisting him onto his front, straddling his back, pinning his arms and forcing his mouth and nose into shallow water. Remaining there, panting, long after the man had stopped thrashing. Heart racing with the effort. And the excitement.
The Chemical Detective Page 15