by Andy Maslen
Apparently she didn’t. Or chose not to. She closed the gap between her left shoulder and Stella’s right to less than an inch.
“Jennifer. That’s a nice name. Not as nice as Stella, though.”
4
Murderers’ Row
A butler garbed in a black frock coat and grey trousers placed a white-and-gold plate of oysters in front of each diner. After he left the room, De Bree spoke once more.
“We’ll discuss how to deal with those muggers later, but first, we need to talk about Leonard. What happened to him was terrible. A shock to us all, I think. Especially,” he glanced at Collier, “as we all, I think it’s safe to say, assumed that Adam’s attack dog would kill Detective Inspector Cole before she murdered Leonard.”
Collier interrupted.
“I agree. It was a tragedy. When Leonard came to me for help setting up Pro Patria Mori, he had a very clear vision. He wanted to wipe out the scum infesting our streets who, by legal or other means, managed to evade traditional justice. In his final days, he was having regrets about killing DI Cole’s husband and, let’s not forget, her baby daughter. It may have been those regrets that got him killed. We’ll never know.”
Massaging his arm, De Bree nodded, a small, tight smile stretching his mouth.
“Indeed. But now our group is leaderless, if not actually rudderless, and we need to replace Leonard.”
Ragib turned to him.
“And who are you suggesting, Christopher?”
He leaned over his plate, dripped some Tabasco sauce into an oyster, and brought it to his lips. He tipped the half-shell and gulped down the oyster, then dabbed at his lips with his thick, white napkin.
“As the senior member, I think it falls to me to assume the mantle of leadership. We can continue to meet here, or at my place in the country. Now, there being no objections, I’d like to propose that—”
“Before you propose anything, Christopher,” Fieldsend said, “I think we need just a little more discussion.” She looked straight at Collier and smiled. “There are five of us left, and I think we should have a choice who leads us.”
Collier spoke before De Bree could respond.
“Thank you, Debra. You are certainly our richest member, Christopher, and perhaps that’s what you meant just now. But seniority? That belongs to me. Not only that,” he laid his large hands flat on the tablecloth each side of his plate, “but I have access both to the resources we need to continue our work and the people who can divert or mislead any investigations.”
De Bree glared at Collier, the skin of his face pale in the light from the chandelier. He placed another empty oyster shell back on his plate with a small clink.
“You’re challenging me, Adam?” He smiled again. Another humourless expression in which his eyes maintained the cold, dead stare of a shark. “Listen, I respect what you’ve done for PPM, believe me. And your career itself speaks volumes for what determination and hard work can achieve. A boy from a comprehensive school in Watford getting into Cambridge was impressive enough. But then to parlay that into a high-ranking position within the Met, well,” he mimed applause, “what can one say? But there is a world of difference between running a police command,” he made it sound like Collier was running a public lavatory, “and an organisation like ours. No, on balance, I think it’s clear you are best suited to a purely operational role. Indeed—”
He paused for breath, but the doorbell prevented him from continuing. Frowning at Collier, he clamped his lips together and waited.
Moments later, the butler reappeared at his side, bent to whisper in De Bree’s ear, then left.
“Apparently, there’s a man at the door asking for you, Adam,” De Bree said.
Collier stood, checking the grandfather clock again. Not bad. Forty minutes from start to finish, he thought.
The front door was closed. Typical. The servant’s an even bigger snob than the master. He opened it. Standing before him was a man in his mid-forties. Cropped blond hair, craggy features. A fighter’s build. He held out a small black rucksack.
“Thanks, Simon,” Collier said, looking down at the man’s reddened knuckles. “See you soon.”
The man nodded, turned on his heel and walked away into the darkness.
When he returned to the dining room, the others were eating silently, except for De Bree, who was haranguing them about their lack of courage in the face of the muggers.
“Those two little shits—”
“Have been taken care of,” Collier said, before opening the flap of the rucksack and emptying its contents onto the centre of the immaculate table.
Out tumbled five watches, including a Patek Philippe, five phones, three wallets and two purses.
Gratifyingly, all four seated PPM members looked first at their valuables, then, openmouthed, up at him. Leaving them to retrieve their possessions, he sat, and waited.
“How, Adam?” Fieldsend asked, with a smile and one arched eyebrow. “That’s all. How?”
“As Christopher so rightly said a little while ago,” he looked at De Bree, whose face bore angry blotches of red high on his cheekbones, “I am skilled in operational matters.”
“Yes, well, that’s very much to your credit, Adam. And I am grateful for the return of my own watch, which, may I add, Charlie, is worth considerably more than that steel number on your wrist. But I still think—”
Whatever De Bree thought, his PPM colleagues would never know. With a grunt, he grabbed his left arm and tried to stand. Instead, he fell sideways against the hard wooden arm of his chair.
“Christopher?” Hester cried. “What is it?”
De Bree’s eyes had turned glassy, and a thin stream of spittle was descending from the corner of his mouth onto his right shoulder. His lips were stretched wide.
“He’s having a heart attack!” Howarth shouted.
As he reached De Bree, the older man’s head jerked back, then forwards, and his right hand fell away from his left arm. De Bree fell face-first into his oysters.
Ragib screamed. Fieldsend, though, was silent. She just sat there, waiting for Collier to speak again. Howarth had pushed back from the table and was halfway to his feet when Collier spoke to him.
“Sit down, Charlie. Let me explain a few things.”
Howarth sat, holding onto the arms of his chair to support his weight. “Call an ambulance!” he said, finally.
Collier rose, circled the table to De Bree’s place, and stuck two fingers into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. He looked at ceiling for ten seconds, then removed his fingers and went back to his seat.
“All in good time. He’s dead anyway, so there’s no hurry. Now listen to me. I was having my doubts about Christopher. I think he saw PPM membership as a stepping stone to a judgeship more than anything else. But what we need now is precisely the type of operational leadership that he seemed to find so beneath him. Let me tell you a few things about what, or rather who, we’re up against. And I don’t mean the people we pledged to eliminate from our country, either.”
He noticed the way Howarth and Ragib, though not Fieldsend, kept glancing at their dead colleague. But for the waxy sheen of his skin, he could have fallen asleep in his food after one too many pre-dinner cocktails.
“After we murdered Richard Drinkwater and, unfortunately, his daughter, DI Cole shot Leonard with a 9mm pistol. I suspect she found a way to spirit one out of our armoury, though I can’t prove it. We know this because we found a hollow-point round embedded in Leonard’s left humerus—the funny bone, although there was nothing particularly funny about the way he died. We found a second bullet lodged in the interior face of his occipital bone, having penetrated his frontal bone. In other words, she blew his brains out. But before she killed him, it appears she pulled one of his teeth out, having smashed the lower incisors, I assume with the pistol. There was also a deep cut to his left femur. She tortured him, in other words. Then she burnt what was left of him in his car. I don’t think she’s going to stop t
here. And if we’re going to survive this, we need to start thinking like her. More to the point, we need to start acting like her. Without mercy. So, as of now, I am taking control of Pro Patria Mori.”
Fieldsend slurped an oyster then turned to address the table, though Collier noted she avoided looking at De Bree.
“Adam’s right. Christopher was never going to be an effective leader when we’re being hunted down by a homicidal detective with a vigilante complex.”
“What do you mean, ‘hunted down’?” Hester asked, sounding panicky. “Surely now Leonard’s dead she’ll leave us alone?”
“Oh, please!” Fieldsend exclaimed. “Hester, do you really think she’s going to stop? If she got as far as figuring out it was Leonard behind the wheel, then she’ll know about the rest of us. Did they recover Leonard’s phone, Adam?”
“No. They didn’t. Which means she has it. Oh, and I forgot to mention, his right index finger was missing. So I think it’s safe to say she managed to bypass the security. That means she knows we exist as a group and that we four are members. My best guess? She’ll be looking for a way to get to us. That means we have to get to her first.”
5
Any Friend of Gordon’s
Stella reared back from the rail and spun round to face the woman. She knew she’d been rumbled. But not how. Possibilities whirled round in her mind. Another Pro Patria Mori hitter? A journalist sniffing after the same story as her friend Vicky Riley? A copper, here to arrest her for Ramage’s murder? Her hand went to her pocket again, fingers curling tightly round her little helper. The woman’s blue-eyed gaze dropped to follow her hand. Then she did something odd. She smiled, hands up in an “I surrender” gesture.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to kill you. Or arrest you, if that’s what you’re thinking. So whatever you’ve got in your pocket, please leave it there. We don’t want to frighten the horses, do we?”
Stella decided to go on the attack. She leaned closer, so close she smelled the woman’s perfume.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked. And she kept her fist tight round the homemade cosh given to her years before by Sergeant Doug “Rocky” Stevens, her unarmed defence tactics instructor.
“DCI Callie McDonald at your service. I work with Assistant Chief Constable Wade, up in Lothian and Borders. Although I gather from my last conversation with him that you call him Gordon.”
Stella was nonplussed. If McDonald wasn’t there to arrest her, then why exactly was she there? You’re a detective, Stel. Ask her.
“What do you want? And how did you find me?”
“Let’s get a coffee. It’s a bit public out here.”
Saying this, McDonald turned and pulled open the heavy steel door that led to the upper passenger deck. Stella had no option but to follow her. She grabbed the edge of the door before it could slam and stepped through.
They found a café that claimed to serve “freshly made speciality coffees,” though as far as Stella could see, that meant freshly whizzed up inside a stainless-steel cube with a row of buttons on the front. The carpet was a nauseating mess of swirling purples and browns, and Stella could feel it sticking slightly to the soles of her shoes.
McDonald paid for their coffees – skinny, decaf latte for her, full-fat, double-strength cappuccino for Stella – and pointed to a table in a corner by a window. Sitting opposite McDonald, Stella blew on the surface of her coffee and took an exploratory sip. She winced as the scalding liquid beneath the foam burnt her top lip.
“Fuck, that’s hot!” she muttered.
McDonald hadn’t touched hers.
“I’ll just let mine cool down a bit, then. No sense in both of us losing the skin off our tongues, is there?”
“Why do you drink that?” Stella asked by way of an answer. “Decaffeinated, skinny latte. It’s just a watery, coffee-flavour milkshake.”
McDonald shrugged. “My job keeps me wired enough, thanks very much. And the women in my family have a tendency to run to fat in middle age.”
Stella checked her out blatantly.
“You look all right so far.”
“Well, perhaps that’s because I drink skinny lattes.”
Stella grinned despite her suspicions. She warmed to this softly spoken female DCI with great dress sense and a wry sense of humour.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about, DCI McDonald?”
McDonald smiled.
“I suppose I should, shouldn’t I? But please, call me Callie. Short for Calpurnia, before you ask. My parents were big fans of Harper Lee.”
“Fine. Callie. Now before I just get up and leave, what are you doing on this ferry?”
Callie looked both ways. Seriously? Stella thought. You’ll be checking under the table for bugs in a minute.
“We know what you did at Craigmackhan. We know you killed Leonard Ramage.”
Stella bit back the self-incriminating question, How? She’d always remembered a line from an interviewing course she’d been on: “Ask questions and make proposals. That’s how you stay in control of the conversation.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you think you know? Because I was nowhere near” – she paused for a beat – “Craigmackhan, did you say? What’s that, a village?”
“As you know, Craigmackhan is the house owned jointly by Sir Leonard and his wife, and now solely by the widow Ramage. You tracked him there, shot and wounded one of his bodyguards and then despatched Ramage with, hmm,” she put a fingertip to the point of her chin, “a variety of methods.”
Stella’s mind was racing. She was trying to figure out the angles. But it was too complex. The DCI knew everything, it seemed. But she didn’t want to bring Stella in.
“Just for the sake of argument, supposing a DI from the Met did manage to make her – or his – way north and kill Leonard Ramage. And just supposing you and ACC Wade did manage to find that out. Shouldn’t you be slapping the handcuffs on that clearly rogue detective?”
Callie took a sip of her latte. Clearly it was cool enough now to risk it.
“Do you remember why Gordon gave you his card at that charity ball?”
“Of course I do,” Stella answered, without pausing to worry whether she was being drawn into a confession.
“You worked for him undercover on that anti-corruption operation a few years back. It’s always been his thing. Bent coppers. Bent lawyers. Bent anyone, really. He can’t abide it. He might like a drop or two of malt, but he’s a Calvinist streak a mile wide. Even his army days were spent in the Military Police. He had his suspicions about Ramage and set up a little team to investigate his links down south. Long story short, Stella, we know about Pro Patria Mori.”
Stella covered her confusion and bought some time by sipping her own coffee. Whatever this meeting was about, it wasn’t about bringing her to justice, a concept that had become increasingly slippery over the past few weeks. When she was ready, she replaced the cup in the thick, white saucer.
“Did you know they murdered my family?”
Callie nodded.
“We suspected it. Then when you asked Gordon about Ramage’s place in Scotland, that closed the circle for us. He had you followed. By me. I watched the whole thing go down at his house.”
“But you didn’t intervene. Why?” Now it was Stella’s turn to survey the room; the few people who’d ventured inside this early in the trip were seated comfortably far away. She lowered her voice to a murmur. “Off the record? Yes. I murdered him. I tortured him, as a matter of fact. And since it’s confession time, I also blew the foot off a Metropolitan Police SCO19 markswoman with a shotgun loaded with door-breaching rounds, although I think she’s a hitter for PPM.”
Callie leaned towards Stella across the table.
“It’s complicated. We know PPM are well connected. But they’re strictly a London thing. The Home Secretary herself asked Gordon to investigate. The brief was fairly unequivocal. Take them down and do it quietly. No media. No scrutiny. And definitely,
one hundred percent, no court cases. Can you imagine? Death squads on British soil? We’d look like a fucking failed state or one of those banana republics in South America.”
Stella was reeling as she tried to assimilate the information Callie was giving her. She finished her coffee, buying more time.
“You haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? We’re heading to Spain, in case you didn’t check your ticket too closely.”
Callie smiled.
“I know that. As it happens, I’m heading to Madrid to consult with an Interpol colleague. That was my last gig before I got the job with Gordon. Anti-terror. It’s why he hired me.” She paused. “It’s why he wants to hire you.”
“What do you mean, hire me?”
Callie shrugged. Then she finished her own coffee and shuddered.
“Ugh. Cold. It’s very simple. He’s personally selected and is now heading a unit tasked by the Home Secretary with breaking apart and destroying PPM. You seem to have made a good start, so he wants you aboard.”
Stella shook her head.
“I’m leaving. In case you hadn’t noticed, I discovered, amongst all the shit that was going down, that I lost my daughter as well as my husband to Ramage. I need some space. I did what I had to do and that’s it. I’m done.”
Someone else’s voice cut across their conversation.
“Oh, but we’re not, Stel. You know that. Not until they’re all dead. Especially Collier.”
The voice was audible, and Stella started as she looked around for the speaker. Yes. There she was, sitting with her back to Stella at the table behind her. The woman she’d christened Other Stella. The mad, bad and dangerous-to-know part of her who never panicked, never wavered and was there when she’d tortured and killed Ramage.
“Everything all right, Stella?” Callie asked, her forehead furrowed with lines of concern.
“Me? Yes. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You can see me, for one thing,” Other Stella said, over her shoulder.