The First Cut (Terrence Reid Mystery Series Book 2)

by Mary Birk

  “Not necessarily. All of those who are privy to the information have staff who may also have been given access to the reports.”

  “Obviously we need to make some changes. What exactly are you suggesting?”

  “We need to limit access to information even more stringently than we’ve been doing, and minimize the amount of information we put in writing. I’ll give you oral reports and you can share to those you deem necessary on a need-to-know basis, with the caveat that no one else—however trusted—be told.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Also, I’d like to bring in someone from Interpol to work with us on the international financial aspects. I want to be able to concentrate on Ramsey’s murder and Von Zandt himself. When the news gets out about Ramsey’s murder, we’ll have the press all over us. The death of an industrial tycoon like Ramsey is news, and if it’s murder, it’s front page news.”

  McMurty frowned. “Interpol has a way of trying to take over our operations. They seem to consider Scotland a third world country.”

  “I know, but we could use their resources. I thought I’d suggest they send my sister. At least we can be sure of her loyalties.”

  “Good idea. Go ahead.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Reid stood to leave. “I’d better be on my way.”

  McMurty got up from his chair as well. His face was grave. “We haven’t had a chance to discuss what happened in California.”

  Reid felt his face heat. “Nothing to discuss. Everything is under control.” There had been nothing in the tabloids for a few weeks now, and Reid was determined they’d have nothing else. No matter what happened.

  McMurty nodded. “Good, I don’t have to tell you that kind of publicity isn’t something the department likes to see.”

  “Understood.”

  “We don’t want you distracted.”

  “Understood.”

  “Don’t let us down. There’s too much at stake.”

  Reid took a deep breath, nodded. “I won’t.”

  Chapter 5

  REID SWUNG BY the High Street office in his black SUV to collect Allison for the notification of Ramsey’s wife. Allison was standing on the curb, waiting for him, a packet in her hand. The storefront of the narrow red brick building that housed their offices was covered with a discreet frosted glass treatment so that passersby could not see inside. There was no sign on the front of the building to announce what kind of work went on there: just the building number in simple black letters. The front door, like the back, was kept locked so that no one could wander in by mistake. Bordered by the urban camouflage of Johnnie’s Fish Bar on one side and an Evangelical Mission office on the other, the High Street office garnered less than no attention from the casual observer.

  For strategic reasons, Reid had not wanted to be situated in any of the various buildings that housed the different law enforcement agencies with which he worked. The entire police system in Scotland was in a state of flux, and Reid preferred to be out of the line of political fire.

  Luckily, because of overcrowding at all of those locations, he’d had no difficulty in convincing his superiors that his team be headquartered elsewhere. The seizure of this narrow three-story building for illegal activities serendipitously occurred at just the right time, and Reid ended up with the High Street shop for his team’s offices.

  Reid’s was an unconventional position. He was part of CID, yet apart from it, liaised with SCEDA, yet apart from it as well, and the location of his offices accentuated that separateness. That he was also affiliated with MI5 was known to only a select few. If and when the looming specter of a national police force became real, the Lord only knew what would happen to his job.

  Allison opened the car door, bounced in, and fastened her seat belt immediately. As soon as Reid heard the click of the buckle, he pulled into traffic. Once he was safely in a lane, he glanced at the young woman in the seat next to him.

  “Any word from DC Parsons?”

  “No, sir.”

  Reid frowned. “Nothing?”

  “I talked to his mum. She said he didn’t come home last night.”

  “Did she think he might just be off with some friends?”

  Allison gnawed on her lip, shaking her head. “She says he would have told her. She’s that upset, sir.”

  Reid considered. It was very possible Parson’s mother didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. If Parsons didn’t think he needed to report back to work until tomorrow, perhaps he’d gone to ground with a young lady and wasn’t checking his mobile.

  “And you checked in with the station again?”

  “Yes, sir. They’ve still heard nothing.”

  Reid had a bad feeling. “Did they check with his work mates to see if they knew anything?”

  “Yes, sir. No one has any idea where he is. It’s like he’s just vanished. I told them you wanted them to send someone out to search the area where he was last seen. They gave me grief, but I think they’re doing it.”

  “Good.” Tomorrow, if Parsons didn’t report for work, Reid would make sure to escalate efforts to find him. For now, he decided to change the subject.

  “This will be your first notification, won’t it?” Reid had been given free rein to choose all of his team members. Allison was the newest, the youngest. She’d been a good addition to his team. He’d picked Allison out from the crime analysis unit of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency to be on his team. Her evaluations at SCEDA indicated that she was outstanding in her mastery of the required courses and skills, and although she was still green, he’d recognized in her a quickness that he knew would work well with the other team members he’d selected.

  Learning that she had four older brothers with whom she seemed to be able to hold her own had sealed the deal for him. He’d wagered she would be able to also hold her own with the rest of his all-male team, even though they had more experience than she did. So far the young woman had not disappointed him. As a result, he’d been sending her to as many advanced training courses as came available, as well as trying to make sure she got all of the practical experience she needed to rise in the ranks.

  “Yes, guv.” Allison’s face was somber, but her voice betrayed her excitement. As ever, she was eager to learn. “Thanks for bringing me along.”

  He grimaced. “Don’t thank me yet. It’s not going to be much fun.” She would soon learn why this was one of the hardest parts of the job, and a part that most officers tried to avoid. But in a murder investigation, the notification of death could be one of the most important ways to get an impression of the real relationship the family had with the victim—before they’d had time to readjust their perceptions of their deceased family member. People not much loved during life often acquired the glowing qualities of a saint after death.

  Allison didn’t seem fazed. “All the same, I’m glad for the experience.” She held up a large envelope. “Sir, Frank sent a packet of things he thought you might want to review before tomorrow morning. I told him I thought you’d be coming back to High Street, but he wanted to make sure you had them just in case you went directly home.”

  “Just put them in the glovebox.” Frank Butterworth ran the administrative end of the High Street office from the wheelchair to which he’d been confined since he was injured in the line of duty as a Detective Sergeant with the Strathclyde police force. After Frank was injured three years ago, he’d undergone vigorous rehabilitation, but nothing he could do would enable him to use his legs—or his lower body—again. Consequently, his wife of fifteen years had left him for one of his able-bodied colleagues.

  The thought of Frank’s wife sent Reid’s mind skittering back to his own wife. He resisted the urge to pull out his mobile again and check for messages or missed calls, running their last morning in California through his mind for what had to be the millionth time. Had she changed her mind about giving their marriage another chance?

  Allison interrupted his thoughts. “Guv?”

&
nbsp; “Yes?”

  “I said, how do you decide what to say to the family?”

  “Good question. Each situation is different. It depends on what you know about them and about the crime when you go in. Some of it is just playing it by ear. Experience helps.”

  She blew out a breath. “I wish I had more experience.”

  “That will come in time.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “I promise you, it will.”

  “Sir, even without Mr. Ramsey’s help, we’ll be able to stop the next attacks, right? We won’t let what happened to those poor students happen again, will we?” Her face searched his for confirmation, as if he actually could know the answer, and Reid wondered if he’d ever been so young.

  “We’re all doing our best, but I’m afraid there are no guarantees.”

  “When do you think they’re planning to try again?”

  “I wish I knew.” They’d tried to figure out a likely date, but still had nothing more certain than that it would be this summer. The Heidelberg bombing had taken place on the day that many Sunni and some Shiite Muslims celebrated the birthday of the prophet Muhammad, so speculation was that the next attacks would also occur on a date of particular significance to the terrorists. From the few credible intelligence reports they’d received, it looked as if the Heidelberg bombing had been in the way of a practice run for the larger, more coordinated attacks being planned, and that likely the next attacks would occur simultaneously at different targets.

  “Harry says that the group that actually did Heidelberg might have been one of the Hamburg jihads.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Harry says that group was involved in the 9/11 attacks in the States.”

  “He does, does he?” Reid hid a smile at the repeated invocations of what Harry said, but was pleased to hear that Harry was taking his assigned role of mentor to Allison seriously. He’d noted some tension between the two early on, and had wondered if perhaps he’d made the wrong choice. But the brash young electronics expert was Reid’s right-hand man and knew what Reid wanted often without him having to say a word, so Allison couldn’t have a better teacher.

  Allison frowned. “So, the Hamburg jihad blokes, are they German?”

  “Probably not. Likely they’re Muslim from a variety of nationalities—but they organize out of Hamburg, and were probably trained in one of the terrorist camps in the Pakistani-Afghanistan border region. MI5 thinks a Nigerian extremist Muslim faction may be involved, and using the terrorist groups to do their dirty work.”

  Allison nodded. “So why now?”

  Reid reached for the takeaway cup of tea in the drink holder next to him. He took a sip, screwing up his face as he swallowed the bitter, lukewarm brew, knowing his empty stomach would rebel at more acid being sent its way. “No idea, but they seem to be perpetually at war.”

  “Why target students? What did they ever do to deserve it?”

  “I don’t know why, Allison, but I suspect that it’s because those kinds of attacks hit a country hard emotionally. Murdering so many young, innocent students garners more publicity than random, unfocused bombings. The publicity helps them recruit others to their cause.”

  Reid had arrived in Germany while the bodies were still being recovered from the rubble, and the horror of the grisly scene was burned into his brain, running just under his consciousness during the day, and erupting into his dreams at night. Night and day he’d been haunted by the urgent need to stop the next attacks.

  “Why does a man like Von Zandt get involved in something like this? He’s not Muslim, is he?”

  “No, for him, it’s all about money. He takes a healthy cut of the money as he launders it, and on anything else he does for them, such as supplying other items they want. Arms, in particular.” There had been rumors that Von Zandt had a pipeline to munitions, and Reid suspected that Ramsey had known a lot more about that than he’d let on, and that perhaps the subsidiary of Ramsey International that manufactured supposedly legitimate arms, was being used by Von Zandt for his own nefarious purposes.

  “It almost seems worse to do it for money than because you think you’ve got a holy mission.”

  “Money or religion, the result is the same. A blood bath of innocent people.”

  Chapter 6

  THE RAMSEY HOUSE, nestled securely in a prosperous neighborhood on the outskirts of town not far from the railroad tracks where Richard Ramsey’s body had been found, was large, imposing, and tastefully whispered old money. The front drive was circled with beds of vibrantly orange tulips emerging from beds of soft white flowers. Reid could recognize a tulip, but he couldn’t put a name to the white flowers. Anne would know, he thought automatically. He slipped his mobile out of his pocket as he got out of the car, quickly checked. Nothing.

  The societal circles of the privileged in Scotland were tight enough to ensure that a family such as the Ramsey family would be in at least occasional contact with Reid’s own prominent family. But that wasn’t why Reid knew this house inside and out. He’d studied blueprints of the Victorian gray stone manor, as well as its security diagrams. He also knew a great deal more about Richard Ramsey’s business dealings and family details than a mere social acquaintance would have known.

  A young maid led Reid and Allison to the drawing room, a spacious room carpeted in plush oriental carpets and appointed with ornate antiques. Even before they entered the room, the sounds of a piano accompanied by a woman’s voice singing an achingly poignant blues song reached them, pulling them in. Reid recognized the piece as one he’d heard on recordings by Billie Holiday, an American jazz singer. He knew the song. Lover Man.

  Barbara Ramsey had a voice that made an ache spread through Reid’s chest. She sat on a cushioned bench in front of a mahogany grand piano at the far end of the room. Long green sofas were positioned near a dark stone fireplace, and around the tastefully furnished room were additional groupings of chairs and tables. Vases of orange tulips punctuated by voluptuous white roses filled the room with a thick peppery fragrance that seemed to suit the mood of the music.

  Mrs. Ramsey was probably fifteen years younger than her husband. She was attractive, her sable hair styled in a dramatic swinging cut, her dark eyes framed with softly thick brows, but something about her seemed blurred, almost ghostlike. Reid remembered hearing that she’d been working as a professional singer in a small club when she’d met Ramsey.

  Reid signaled to Allison with his hand to let her know they were going to wait until Barbara Ramsey finished singing before trying to talk to her. He let himself feel the music, feel the emotion it held, knowing his news was going to change the woman’s life forever.

  The last words of the song still hung in the air, Lover man, oh where can you be, when she finally turned to them, her face almost instantly changing from the sensual softness it had while she sang, to a tentative, questioning frown. She stood up, came over to where they stood. Her glance took in Allison, registered puzzled, then went back to Reid.

  “Lord Reid?” She smiled. “I’m so sorry, but my husband isn’t here right now.”

  Reid took a deep breath. Telling Barbara Ramsey that her husband was dead wasn’t going to be easy, but there was only one way to do it: state the facts and offer condolences. He led the woman over to a sofa, and sat down beside her.

  “I have bad news, Mrs. Ramsey, and there’s no easy way to tell you. Richard is dead.”

  “Dead? He can’t be.” She looked helplessly at Reid. “You must be mistaken.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no doubt.”

  Stunned, she just kept shaking her head. “I need my son. I need Bert.”

  “Of course, we’ll get him. Is he here?”

  She nodded. “Upstairs.”

  Reid motioned to Allison to take care of finding the son.

  While they waited for Allison to return with Bert, Barbara Ramsey hugged her arms against her chest and rocked back and forth, keeping her eyes tightly shut.

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sp; Allison came back in and nodded to Reid, indicating that she’d accomplished her mission. Not long after that, a young man appeared in the doorway, quickly crossed the room, and Reid stood up, vacating the seat next to Barbara Ramsey to allow her son to take his place.

  Bertram Ramsey sat down next to his mother. She fell against him, and her face instantly folded into tears.

  “Mother, what happened? What’s wrong?” The young man pulled his mother close. He looked up at Reid in expectation of an answer. “Lord Reid?”

  Reid sat down on the opposing sofa. “I’ve brought bad news about Mr. Ramsey. He’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Reid nodded. “His body was found on the railroad tracks just outside of town early this morning. We don’t have a lot of details right now, but his body was hit by a train.”

  Bert Ramsey took the news in silence, rubbing his mother’s back as he held her. But Barbara Ramsey suddenly seemed to become alert. She pulled her face away from her son’s shoulder. “On the train tracks? In his car?”

  Reid said, “No. His car was nearby, but not on the tracks.”

  “Then why . . .” She shook her head. “No, that can’t be. He wouldn’t kill himself, if that’s what you’re thinking. He absolutely wouldn’t.” Her voice took on a pleading tone. “You won’t say he did, will you? I couldn’t bear everyone thinking that.”

  “We’re still investigating. We should have a report from the medical examiner by tomorrow, and we’ll know more then.” He wanted to tell her that it had definitely not been suicide, but he wasn’t going to rush his forensic fences. He did need to give her something, though. “Right now we don’t have any reason to think he did it deliberately.”

  She leaned back against her son, and started to cry again. “What am I going to do without him?”

  Bert seemed at a loss for words to comfort his mother. He just held her while she cried.

  Finally, her crying stopped, and she gulped in a breath. “I need a drink, Bert. Please get me a drink.”