by Jack Gatland
‘I’ll ensure he’s okay, sir,’ Anjli said, bringing Declan back to the moment. Sutcliffe nodded.
‘I was actually hoping you could assist DI Frost,’ he replied. ‘He’ll need some getting to speed as he takes on the case.’
‘He’s taking the case?’ Declan was appalled.
‘You’re too close, and we need a DI in charge,’ Sutcliffe said coldly. ‘You can carry on with the Monroe investigation.’
‘I’ll assist DI Frost,’ Billy blurted. ‘If that’s okay?’
‘Going full Judas on us, are you?’ Still holding Declan, Anjli glared at Billy, who shrugged.
‘We make our own choices,’ he replied, staring directly at Anjli, as if daring her to reply.
‘Then it’s decided,’ DCI Sutcliffe looked back to the tent. ‘And someone get that bloody Doctor out of here, yeah? She’s banned from crime scenes for the next five months, so I’ve been told.’
As he walked away, DI Frost and Billy following, Anjli pulled Declan back.
‘You know more than you’re letting on,’ she said. ‘And we both know that your judge of character, although lousy, isn’t that bad. So what’s going on?’
‘I saw Kendis yesterday,’ Declan mumbled. ‘Secret meeting, right here, in this cemetery. This morning Trix appeared at my doorstep, telling me that Baker and a security company called Rattlestone are trying to take out both Kendis and myself, seemingly unconnected to each other and, and I heard a recording of that prick with the glasses attack Monroe.’
‘Do you still have it?’
‘I can get it.’
‘So we find proof and we nail the bastard,’ Anjli suggested. ‘What do we do about Kendis though? I can’t see you stepping back.’
‘I’m not,’ Declan replied. ‘Someone wants to create a new narrative, one where Kendis is a terrorist sympathiser whose word is worth shit.’
‘They don’t want her being believed,’ Anjli nodded.
Declan looked back to the tent, and to the hidden body of the woman he’d loved since he was a teenager.
‘Charles Baker started this,’ he hissed. ‘And now he’s going to pay.’
He pulled out his phone, dialling Jessica’s number. Someone had taken it, and he wanted to know who, and why.
As the phone started to ring, however, Declan saw Frost stop, touching his pocket, as if feeling something vibrate.
Then Frost turned to Declan, looking at him across the cemetery.
And smiled.
The call, unanswered, went to voicemail and Declan stared at the man with the rimless glasses, once more in his life, knowing without a doubt that not only did he attack and almost kill Alexander Monroe, but he also stole Jessica’s bag.
And that meant war.
11
Paparazzi
It wasn’t far from Brompton Cemetery to Kendis and Peter Taylor’s Putney house, and so Declan and Anjli decided to make the journey there now, to see if Peter was back from the trip he’d taken. Not only did he need to be told of the murder, but as next of kin he needed to officially identity the body of Kendis Taylor.
There was nobody in when they knocked on the door. Declan was a little relieved at this though; the last thing he wanted was to face Kendis’ husband the day after he’d left her bedroom in a walk of shame.
‘We’ll come back later,’ he suggested.
‘Billy and Frost can do it,’ Anjli replied. ‘Remember, this is their case right now. We’re just doing this because Sutcliffe wanted to be a prick to you.’
‘Is there a problem?’ An elderly, female voice spoke from the side, and Declan turned to see a small, frail old lady, a mop of white hair on her head leaning out of next door’s front door.
The one he’d passed the previous day.
He froze, completely sure that the old woman would recognise him, but after a moment he smiled and pulled out his warrant card.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said, showing it to the old lady. ‘I’m DI Walsh, and this is DS Kapoor. We were just looking for Peter Taylor.’
The old lady squinted at the IDs as they were shown. ‘Have we met?’ she asked.
‘No ma’am,’ Declan lied. ‘In fact, could you give us your name?’
‘Edith,’ she replied. ‘Edith Langham.’
‘Well Mrs Langham,’ Anjli leaned in now, passing her business card over. ‘When Mister Taylor returns, can you pass this to him and ask him to call us? We’d be very grateful.’
‘Is this about the woman?’ Edith read the business card, putting it away in her pocket.
‘Woman? You mean his wife?’ Declan asked.
‘Yes,’ Edith replied. ‘Always out, she was. Didn’t come back last night, neither. I would have heard her through the doors. Had men over too, when he wasn’t here.’
‘Men?’ Declan asked carefully. ‘More than one?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Edith spoke with the tone of an expert in the subject. ‘She claimed it was work related, but some were quite unsavoury. The swarthy one in the denim jacket was here yesterday morning, right after another man left yesterday morning, half dressed.’
‘Half dressed?’ Anjli glanced at Declan. ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
Edith looked at Declan. ‘Like him,’ she said. ‘But older. Fatter maybe. Similar hair.’
Declan released a silent, held breath. ‘So a tall, fat Caucasian man with brown hair?’
‘I know it’s quite generic,’ Edith continued. ‘But it was early, and I hadn’t had my tea yet.’
Declan smiled. ‘Anything you give is helpful,’ he replied. ‘Please, pass that to Peter Taylor when you see him.’
With the conversation now ended, Declan and Anjli walked back to the car.
‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ Anjli whispered as they reached it. ‘If she clocked you, that could have been game over. I’m guessing it was you she saw?’
Declan nodded. ‘And I think the swarthy man was Nasir Gill, her photographer,’ he replied.
‘Then you’re bloody lucky that you look like shit first thing in the morning,’ Anjli finished as she entered the car. Declan breathed out a pent up breath of frustration, climbing into the driver’s seat, and a moment later they drove off back towards Temple Inn.
Neither of them noticed the black Ford Focus with the shaven headed man that was parked across the road, watching them leave and noting the time down in his journal.
When they arrived back at Temple Inn, there was some kind of argument occurring with Sutcliffe, already taking over Monroe’s office, screaming at Billy and Frost.
‘I don’t care where they got it!’ he shouted. ‘I want to know how it was taken in the first place!’
‘Problem?’ Declan asked as he and Anjli entered the office. Sutcliffe looked up at them.
‘I’d say it was probably you, as you love leaking shit to the press, but your point of contact is the sodding story this time,’ he said, spinning his monitor to reveal the front page of The Daily Mail’s website. On it was a photo of a man, standing outside Brompton Cemetery, baseball cap and aviator glasses hiding his face. It was a zoomed in photo, so the image was grainy and slightly blurred. Under it read the headline
FACE OF A KILLER
FACE OF A TERRORIST
‘What the hell is that?’ Declan explained, moving in for a closer look. ‘Who gave them this?’
‘That, DI Walsh is the bloody Daily Mail telling the world of the death of a rival journalist and believed terrorist. And that is a picture of who we believe is her terrorist handler, moments before he met with her in a secret meeting.’ Sutcliffe sighed. ‘And now, thanks to the magic of the World Wide Web, everyone in the bloody world knows about it.’
Billy was reading the piece.
‘They say she was an extremist,’ he said.
‘Where?’ Anjli leaned in now. Billy pointed to the screen.
‘It says here they reckon that they have a source, claiming that when she was in Syria a few years back, an extremist
Muslim organisation turned her. They write that this man may have been her handler, and that he killed her because she failed some mission.’
‘This is bullshit!’ Declan exclaimed.
‘This is tabloid journalism,’ Billy replied.
‘Well, it’s out there now,’ Declan said. ‘Let’s move on and solve this before—‘
‘Oh, so you’re still on this case?’ Sutcliffe snapped. ‘The one I specifically told you to walk away from?’
‘Just offering to help,’ Declan suggested. ‘I assumed we have a briefing?’
Sutcliffe pointed at the briefing room, and Declan, Anjli, Billy and Frost entered it, with Sutcliffe walking in behind them.
‘I don’t know how to use this bloody plasma screen,’ Sutcliffe muttered. ‘So someone will have to work it for me as I talk.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Billy started tapping on his laptop and the screen filled with The Daily Mail’s website, complete with image.
Declan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking around. Nobody yet was staring at him, so he hoped the disguise would hold.
‘So as we all know, journalist Kendis Taylor was found murdered in Brompton Cemetery today,’ Sutcliffe started. ‘She was killed by a stab wound to the chest, likely inflicted elsewhere around eight pm last night, and was brought to this spot under cover of darkness. The wound is apparently an interesting one, according to your team as it’s double edged, like a tiny sword and it left behind a strange residue.’
‘Strange how?’
‘Ruthenium,’ Sutcliffe read the word from his phone. ‘Which is one of the rarest minerals in the world, apparently, and used in solar cell batteries and electrical contacts.’
‘So someone stabbed her with a sharpened solar cell?’
Sutcliffe raised a hand to stop the conversation, waiting for silence before continuing. ‘We’ve sent her personal items off to be examined, and hopefully we’ll get something from them.’
‘What were the items?’ Declan asked.
‘Two phones, a purse with twenty-five pounds in, some credit cards and her NUJ card—‘
’NUJ? Billy looked up.’
‘National Union of Journalists,’ Declan replied.
‘She also had a notebook with pages written in shorthand, which we’ve asked her newspaper to translate for us and a post it note with both TOTTERS LANE and FOB C written on it.’
‘Totters Lane is in Shoreditch,’ Billy said as he checked a page on his laptop. ‘Nothing of note, got obliterated in the war. People literally vaporised.’
‘Check if she had any connections there,’ Sutcliffe ordered. ‘It could have been her next target.’
Declan resisted the urge to respond to the comment.
‘FOB C?’ Anjli now looked up at the DCI. ‘As in key fob?’
‘No idea,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘If it is, it’s the third one in a series of fobs, so we need to work that out. Unless Mister Walsh, being our soldier on the scene knows?’
Declan looked to the desk. There was a term that he knew, used back when he was a Military police officer.
‘FOB can mean forward operating base,’ he reluctantly replied. ‘It’s a military term, more used by the US army, but it means any secured forward operational level military position that’s used to support tactical objectives and strategic military intentions.’
‘Look at that,’ Frost grinned. ‘A known extremist having a piece of paper that—‘
‘She’s not a known anything,’ Declan snapped. ‘And as Anjli said, a key fob is just as possible.’
‘Well, we’ll know more when we get a report back,’ Sutcliffe interjected.
‘DC Davey could have done that quicker, sir,’ Anjli spoke up.
‘DC Davey is a jobsworth who only does what her boss tells her to do,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘I’d rather a professional does it. Anyway, we have a rough timeline of her last day. She arrived at her desk at ten in the morning and was apparently quite agitated. She disappeared at around noon and turned her phone off, which is concerning.’
‘Or she was conserving her battery,’ Declan suggested.
‘Let’s go with the extreme terrorist idea first, shall we?’ Sutcliffe threw back. ‘Either way, she turned it back on around one thirty and sent a text message, arranging a meeting for three pm that afternoon at Brompton Cemetery, with this mysterious man, and a Nasir Gill, a co-worker with Muslim tendencies.’
‘Muslim tendencies?’ Anjli shook her head. ‘Do you mean he was a Muslim? That’s like saying someone has Christian tendencies.’
‘I’m sorry, was my statement not woke enough for you?’ Sutcliffe took a moment and then continued. ‘She also met with Nasir Gill, a co-worker and known Muslim.’
‘Who did she send the text to?’ Declan asked. ‘Maybe it can nail down the target?’
‘Unregistered sim,’ Billy replied. ‘And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter because it was one of the two phones she had on her body. The man must have given it back when they met. She then caught a taxi but almost immediately exited it, as if throwing someone off her trail, and then caught a bus to Victoria Coach Station with her Oyster card. We have the card being used again after this, but bus CCTV footage shows it being used by a young Asian man.’
‘He stole it?’
‘Or she gave it to him. This is still three hours before time of death. She then disappears from view until this morning, when we found her. At some point she was taken back to the cemetery that she’d been in earlier.’
‘What time does the cemetery close up?’ Declan asked.
‘Waiting to find out,’ Sutcliffe replied.
‘Two nights ago she used her credit card to buy a round of drinks in The Horse and Guard pub in Chelsea,’ Frost spoke now. ‘Apparently the bar staff remember her being there until closing, drinking with a tall, dark-haired man in his thirties or forties. Possibly the same man we have in the picture here. We’re waiting to look at their CCTV footage.’
‘What else?’ Anjli was writing into her notebook now as Declan felt sick. If the CCTV appeared of the night before, he’d be seen with her. Damned by association.
Sutcliffe looked at his phone as he beeped.
‘A message from Doctor Marcos,’ he said. ‘Apparently there were traces of semen in the body. With hubby not around, this has to be our guy’s DNA.’ His phone beeped again. Reading this message, Sutcliffe shook his head.
‘No,’ he simply said before walking out of the room, phone already to his ear.
‘We went to the Taylor house,’ Anjli continued in his absence. ‘We met his neighbour, an Edith Langham. She said that she saw a man leave early yesterday morning. He was white, brown hair—‘
‘Bit like you then, Declan,’ Frost smiled.
‘My friends call me Declan, everyone else calls me DI Walsh,’ Declan replied coldly. ‘You don’t get to call me anything. And yes, he looked like me. She told me that, before pointing out all the points where we differed.’
Sutcliffe walked back into the room now, seemingly chastened. He stared at the image of the man on the screen, as if staring through the glasses and the hat.
‘It’s you, Walsh,’ he said.
Declan felt his stomach fall.
‘Sorry?’
Sutcliffe turned to face him now, and the impotent fury was obvious in his body language.
‘I said it’s you,’ he repeated. ‘Lead on the case.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Declan looked around, in case he was missing something. ‘This is a murder case. A DCI runs that. And you told me that—‘
‘I know what I damn well told you!’ Sutcliffe shouted. ‘But that was Whitehall. Seems your friend Baker’s pulled some strings, wants you running it. Claims you’re the best detective he knows, and he therefore believes that you can solve this murder.’
Declan stared in shock at Sutcliffe. ‘Baker asked for me personally?’
‘Must be so great being special,’ Sutcliffe snapped. ‘Oh, and your boss,
Monroe? He’s woken up.’ He raised his voice as Billy, Anjli, and Declan rose. ‘Sit back down, dammit! We’ve got a murder to solve. Walsh, Kapoor, you’re tagged in. Find out what you can. Frost, Fitzwarren, go see Monroe and find out if he remembers anything about his attacker.’
Frost and Billy rose and left the room, Sutcliffe returning to Monroe’s office as Anjli looked to Declan.
‘So what now?’ she whispered. ‘I mean, we can’t hunt this guy down when he’s you!’
‘I know,’ Declan rose. ‘Let me think.’
Leaving the briefing room, Declan walked down the corridor at the back of the office that led to the toilets. Although it had several cubicles inside, it was a unisex room, mainly because of the small amount of officers working there. Now in the middle cubicle, Declan paused, leaned over the bowl and threw up anything that remained in his stomach. Images of the night with Kendis swum around his vision, forcing him to fall against the cubicle, while random thoughts flashed through his mind, striking at him as they did so.
Why did Baker want Declan to run the case?
Who killed Kendis?
Did Frost steal Jessie’s phone, and if so, did this give him an alibi for the murder?
Who was her contact, and how could Declan get them to pass everything to him?
Now at the sink, splashing cold water onto his face and swilling out his mouth, spitting into the basin and watching it swirl into the plug hole, Declan felt a little more normal. He had to hold it together. He had to work out what the next stage was, because everyone would try to learn the identity of Kendis’ terrorist ‘handler’.
And the moment they found out that it was Declan, there wouldn’t be a trial.
Declan would be taken to a black site and forgotten.
He looked back to the cubicle, walking over to the toilet and flushing it once more. Then, reaching around the back of the toilet tank, he felt the lump of a phone taped to the back.
He could take it and run, leave now, find a bolt hole and hide.
No.
He had to solve the murder, find out who killed Kendis Taylor and possibly bring down a Governmental coup before the world learned his identity.