The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  ‘You think it’s a drugs hit?’

  Fisher pursed her thin lips and glared at her partner, who wore the same shapeless blue protective suit. Hank Zeller should have known better than to ask her to speculate in front of the help.

  ‘I doubt if even the Colombians would have tortured the kids. Time of death?’

  The coroner’s technician looked up from where he was working over the body of one of the children.

  ‘Best estimate? Between one and three this morning. Maybe I can narrow it down more when I get a core temperature. The adult male is no good – there’s too much residual heat from his burns affecting the body. My best chance is with the female, but I’ll need more time.’

  Fisher nodded. It meant the killings had probably happened between five and seven hours earlier. She had uniformed cops checking with the neighbours for signs of any unusual activity. If they were lucky some insomniac would have seen or heard the killers’ vehicle. The gags explained why no one had been alerted by screaming and called 911.

  She and Zeller waited another hour while the forensics and fingerprints people checked every inch of the house for possible evidence, sifting through the piles of paper strewn across each room from drawers that had been torn out and upturned, and taking minute samples of dust and fabric.

  ‘We’re done.’ The crime scene manager wiped a hand across his brow.

  Fisher gave him a look that didn’t require any translation. He produced a noncommittal shrug. ‘The place is smothered in prints; all shapes and sizes, but I think you’ll find they’re mostly either family or friends. We have smudges on the light switch, the light cable and on the tape used to gag the victims. My guess is that your perp or perps wore gloves. Big help, huh? One thing: from the position of the smudges on the tape, I’d say the material used on the father and mother had been positioned and removed more than once. Okay? I’ll send in the medical examiner. Let me know when you need the coroner’s guys for the bodies.’

  The tall detective nodded and waited until she and Zeller were alone with the dead.

  ‘So what do we think?’

  Zeller stared intently at the scene. ‘They were after information. But what kind of information? The dead guy is a hardware store manager. No known criminal contacts. We sent a blue-and-white to check out the store. There was no sign of illegal entry. No sign of a search. Whatever they were looking for, they found it here.’

  He studied his partner as Fisher took up the story. Tall and rangy, with piercing electric-blue eyes, Danny Fisher was an enigma even to her closest colleagues at the 84th Precinct building on Gold Street. She had a reputation for never socializing with her fellow detectives, which, in their peculiar male-dominated world, had led to the inevitable questions about her sexuality: never proved. Zeller had heard the stories about the guys who had tried to make a move on the thirty-three-year-old and the painful consequences that followed. He had no intention of joining their number.

  ‘Silent entry,’ Fisher said confidently. ‘They didn’t force the front door and the chain was in place, so most likely they got in through the French doors at the back of the house. They were quick and they were efficient. Parents first. Gun to the head while they were sleeping, maybe, and threaten the kids. That would be enough to keep them cooperative. Bring them down. Truss them up and gag them. That’s when the real fear would have come. Maybe they brought the kids in to watch, maybe not.’ She paused and stared at the four lifeless pyjama-clad bodies. ‘I think probably not. That came later. They would have started with the father. Just a little light grilling with the blow torch to loosen him up. He must have known by then there was no escape, that no matter how long he held out he was going to die. He should have talked.’ She turned to the woman, still splayed obscenely against the frame. ‘But we know he didn’t, because then they used the wife as leverage. He had to watch and he knew she was screaming at him inside to tell them what they wanted. Anything to save her from what they were doing. But he didn’t.’

  ‘Or he couldn’t.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Because he didn’t know what it was they thought he knew.’

  ‘Jesus, the poor bastard.’

  ‘That was when they gave him the full works.’ She stepped in front of the scorched figure and crouched, inspecting the areas of carbonized flesh. What kind of human being would burn a man’s balls off? ‘The kids were their last chance to get what they wanted. They brought them in, eldest first, baby of the family – his favourite? – last. They must have known they didn’t need to use the blow torch, the threat would have been enough. But they did, and that,’ she paused to chew on the thought until it turned into a conclusion, ‘that, and the fact that the woman’s breast has been cut off, makes one of them a sadist. Because it was gratuitous. First they tortured them, so he could feel their pain, then they questioned him. And when he didn’t answer, they killed them. One by one.’ She looked down at the matted blond curls of the eldest of the four dead children, a slim girl just beginning the transformation to womanhood. ‘By smashing their skulls in with a hammer.’

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Detective.’ They turned to find the precinct’s medical examiner struggling into his coverall in the doorway. ‘A floater at the bridge,’ he said in explanation.

  Fisher raised an eyebrow. Someone being found dead in the water at Brooklyn Bridge was so common it was hardly worth mentioning, and certainly no excuse for holding up an investigation into six homicides.

  The examiner saw the look and shrugged. ‘Politics. Son of a city councillor.’ He switched on a digital recorder and moved quickly to the bodies, making his first brief inspection and at the same time speaking into the slim plastic rectangle. ‘First-degree burns on all four child victims, but initial inspection shows the cause of death to be blunt-force trauma to the skull. Adult female has suffered similar burning to the thighs, breast and stomach, left breast removed by a sharp instrument, probably …’ he bent to inspect the wound ‘… with a serrated edge. Also some evidence of sexual interference, but I won’t be able to confirm that until I carry out the autopsy. Again, her injuries would not have been enough to kill her.’ He frowned and inspected the area around the woman’s neck, which was hidden by her dark hair, then rose and did the same with the strung-up body in the centre of the room. When he was satisfied he turned to Fisher. ‘At first I reckoned they must have had their throats cut, and in a way I suppose they have, but it looks as if the major muscles, arteries and veins of the throat and neck have been severed by some kind of ligature. Whoever did it has come close to decapitating the victims.’

  ‘A garrotte?’

  He stared at her. ‘Why, yes, I suppose that’s right. A garrotte. Probably made of some kind of very narrow gauge wire.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve never come across anything like it. These people had knives, certainly, probably guns. Why would somebody use such a primitive weapon when they had other, more efficient tools at their disposal?’

  Fisher bit back the comment that it was her job to speculate on the how and the why, not his, but Zeller answered what had been a rhetorical question.

  ‘To make a point.’

  Fisher shook her head.

  ‘Because he enjoyed it.’

  The doctor nodded wearily and returned to the woman victim as the two detectives set off to inspect the rest of the house. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ The question was to no one in particular, but Fisher joined him beside the body and crouched at his side as he inspected the dried blood on the woman’s forehead. ‘There’s something here.’ He removed a pen and notebook from inside the coverall. ‘See, you can just make out the faint outline of the wound. It’s not like any natural cut or slash I’ve seen before.’ He drew a rough sketch on a page of the notebook. ‘See? A circle within a horizontal oval.’

  ‘Some kind of message? A gang symbol?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll have a clearer picture when I get her cleaned up.’

  Fisher nodded and got to her feet.
>
  ‘Such a nice family. What did you say their name was?’

  Zeller turned. ‘We didn’t.’

  Fisher looked back at the cosy domestic surroundings that had been turned into a scene of mass slaughter.

  ‘Hartmann.’

  V

  ‘OBVIOUSLY WE’LL KEEP an eye on you, sir, but I’m afraid there’s no question of full-time protection officers or anything like that. Not with the budgets the way they are.’

  ‘I suppose they’re all too busy clubbing with Fergie’s brood?’

  Jamie’s attempt at humour didn’t go down too well with Detective Sergeant Shreeves, the personal security adviser who had arrived at his tiny Old Bond Street office a week after Lotte Muller’s report landed on some poor, unsuspecting copper’s desk at New Scotland Yard.

  ‘Perhaps you should be taking this a little more seriously, Mr Saintclair.’

  Jamie picked up the piece of paper he’d just been given. ‘If it’s so serious why am I not being offered something more substantial than glaringly obvious advice?’ He read: ‘Try not to go out alone. Stay away from places that are potentially dangerous. Be careful when answering the door. For Christ’s sake, this will be a bona fide Mafia hitman. He won’t knock on my door and ask for Jamie Saintclair, art dealer of this parish. He’ll be waiting outside the office with a bunch of flowers and a smile and before I know it he’ll have clipped me with a 9 mm disguised as a bloody daffodil.’

  ‘I think you’ve been watching too many Godfather movies, sir.’ The plain-clothes officer from the Met gave the hint of a smile.

  ‘Surely there must be something else. Witness protection?’

  ‘If you want to call yourself Neville and live the rest of your life on a housing estate in Hull and never see your nearest and dearest again, I’m sure that can be arranged. They tell me packing fish can be a very rewarding profession.’

  Jamie cringed at the thought. In any case, he didn’t have any nearest and dearest. His grandfather, his last living relative, had been murdered a year earlier, less than twelve months after the death of his mother. He had never known his father. Correction. He didn’t even know his father’s identity. For the first time it hit him that if – for Christ’s sake, please make it if – he died in the nearish future, they’d be able to hold his wake in the nearest phone box. He could count his real friends on the fingers of one hand. By the time Sarah heard, it would be too late to come back from Boston for the funeral even if she wanted to. Gail, his part-time secretary, currently sent window shopping to ensure a bit of privacy in this cupboard that posed as a corporate headquarters for Saintclair Fine Arts, took on an entirely new significance. She at least would mourn him properly. Samantha would come along out of curiosity to see who else he’d been shagging – God, he hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed – and that was about it. His lawyer, a few people he hadn’t seen since Cambridge, and Perry Dacre and his ilk to shed a few crocodile tears …

  He looked up to see the other man studying him with a look that might have been sympathy. ‘Maybe it would be a good idea to take a holiday, sir. They tell me the weather’s very nice in Australia this time of year.’ Jamie opened his mouth to say something equally witty, but he realized Shreeves was being serious. ‘If, on the other hand, you decide to stay, sir, there’s a good possibility that this is just smoke and mirrors on the part of persons unknown. To be honest, a hundred grand in dollars isn’t that big an incentive to send someone suitably qualified across the Atlantic to take you out.’ He handed over a card. ‘If you do see anything suspicious you know where I am, though,’ he gave an embarrassed cough, ‘in the event of a real emergency it might be better to telephone 999.’

  Shreeves got up to go and Jamie squeezed past the desk to see him out. They shook hands in a manful, comradely fashion that made the younger man think of First World War colonels sending their subalterns over the top. It wasn’t the most reassuring image.

  ‘Best of luck, Mr Saintclair.’

  Thanks, old chap. Where can I get a gun? The thought came from nowhere and for a split second he thought he’d actually spoken it, but Detective Sergeant Shreeves’ stolid expression didn’t alter as he was ushered out of the door.

  Where can I get a gun? He actually owned a gun, but it was a .22 match rifle and it was chained up in a gun club out at Croydon. Three shots in three-quarters of an inch from a hundred yards wasn’t bad shooting, but he doubted he’d get far with a rifle on the Tube. What he really needed was a pistol, preferably an automatic, and that meant going beyond the law, to somewhere in the East End or, if he was feeling particularly brave, Lambeth. And there was the problem. He’d learned to shoot in the Army cadets and at OTC Cambridge. He was good, some people said very good. But his mother and his grandfather had brought him up to be the kind of law-abiding Englishman they thought still populated their rose-tinted island paradise. He might bend the law a little, but he wouldn’t lightly break it. The indoctrination of a lifetime couldn’t be shrugged off just because some Don Corleone lookalike in Little Italy might, or might not, have given the nod for his execution. Still, it was something to be considered. The door buzzer sounded, and he pressed the button that was Saintclair Fine Arts’ answer to a security system, at the same time thinking how silly he’d feel if a man sporting a moustache walked in with a silenced Beretta.

  Fortunately it was Gail, and she had an enormous polystyrene cup in her hand.

  ‘I bought you a coffee.’ She smiled. ‘You looked like you might need it after your meeting.’

  ‘Skinny latté?’

  She gave an unladylike snort at the old joke. The shop down the narrow street near the office only sold two kinds of coffee: black or white.

  ‘It might have cooled a little; the lift’s not working again.’

  ‘Bugger.’ Another reason for patrons of the arts to pass them by. The kind of high-rollers he needed to cultivate didn’t take well to climbing four flights of stairs.

  Gail settled down at her end of the battleground, the big desk they shared that filled most of the office and which was the scene of constant struggle between the forces of neatness and disorder. Jamie took a sip of his coffee and instantly felt revived enough to start trawling online art gallery and auction sites for the profitable work of genius everybody else had missed. This was what he thought of as the ‘muck-shifting’ part of the job. The big dealers employed dozens of bright-eyed, annoyingly enthusiastic, underpaid interns to do this kind of donkey work, sifting through the fakes and the gifted amateurs and the students who might or, more likely, might not be the next big thing. It was like a combination of blindfolded bog-snorkelling and hunt the thimble, and it wasn’t long before he felt as if he was drowning in dross and frustration.

  ‘Look, Gail, it’s possible I might have to go away again for a while.’

  She looked up from her computer and he saw the puzzlement in her eyes. The previous year he’d spent more than two months away from the office and although he’d been able to pay her for part of it, he knew it had made life difficult. This time he resolved to keep paying her. He’d rented out his grandfather’s house in Welwyn Garden City after the old man died. Maybe it would sell this time? He gave her his reassuring smile, but the emotions swept across her face like rainclouds and when she opened her mouth he knew she was going to say something significant, even potentially life-changing, but the phone rang before she could speak.

  ‘Saintclair Fine Arts, may I help you?’ She listened for a few moments, nodding occasionally, before putting her hand over the receiver. ‘A Detective Fisher for you. American.’

  Jamie eventually located his phone under the mountain of art catalogues at his end of the desk.

  ‘Jamie Saintclair speaking.’

  ‘The name’s Danny Fisher, Mr Saintclair, detective NYPD.’ The female voice distracted him for a moment. It was low and husky and the accent was as thick as East River silt. Something about it told him she was just out of bed, or possibly still in it. He glanced
at his watch: 11 a.m., which must make it about six in New York. ‘Mr Saintclair?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Still here.’

  She got straight to the point. ‘We, that is the New York Police Department, would like to ask for your help in a case we are currently investigating.’ She must have sensed something over the line: hesitation, or scepticism. ‘If you wish, I can give you a number to call at police headquarters that would properly establish my identity and we could continue this conversation at a time that suits you better?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I was just a little surprised. This isn’t the kind of phone call I usually get on Monday mornings. Of course I’ll help you with your investigation. What do you want to know about the attack?’

  Now it was her turn to be puzzled. ‘Attack?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought … Anyway, what kind of investigation is it?’

  ‘That would be a homicide investigation, sir. Nice folks, came to a bad end. As it happens, it has the same signature as a double homicide that occurred not so far from you in London. Maybe you read about it. Elderly couple, name of Hartman?’ He dredged up a memory. Yes, he’d heard about the killings at one of the upmarket new developments out in Docklands. It would have been difficult not to with all the gory details splashed all over the front of the more lurid tabloids and headlines hinting at some sort of psycho on the loose, possibly even ritual sacrifice.