by Tim Ellis
She felt the hate coiled up in the space where her womb used to be, eating her insides away bit by bit like a parasitic being, turning her heart blacker than Lucifer’s soul. All she wanted was to kill the men who had stolen her innocence, but what then? Would it change anything? Would her life be better in some way? Would she get back what she had lost?
Maybe Emilia was right.
Maybe it was time to let go.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thursday, August 8
She crept out of her room and along the corridor. It was quarter to one. Quigg was sleeping in Ruth’s empty bed, but he always kept his keys in a tray on the small table by the front door.
Well, she’d peed all over the two test-kit sticks. One at four o’clock and the other an hour later. It was official – she wasn’t pregnant. Of course, it didn’t explain why her period hadn’t materialised at the appointed time. She went back to her diary and re-counted the days – she was a week out. Her period wasn’t due until next week. She felt like an idiot. She was an idiot. Thank fuck she was the only one who knew she was an idiot.
The keys were there. She picked them up and slipped the Mercedes key off the key ring.
Like taking candy from a baby.
She headed for the door.
The light came on.
Shit!
‘Hello?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Trying to appear confused and disoriented she said, ‘Oh! I must have been sleepwalking.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, why else would I be out here?’
‘Why else indeed? Show me your hands?’
‘I don’t think so. Can’t you see I’m still half-asleep.’
‘Especially the one with the Mercedes key in it.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Spread ‘em.’ He pushed her roughly against the back of the door, forced her legs apart and began frisking her.
He found the car key and relieved her of it, ran his hands down her front and then back up under her floppy top.
‘You’re not wearing a bra.’
‘That doesn’t mean you can spend all night feeling my tits.’
‘You have nice breasts.’
‘Thanks.’
He checked the waistband of her jeans, undid the button and zip and slipped his hand into her knickers.
‘It’s unlikely . . . Mmmm . . . that you’ll find . . . Mmmm . . . anything in there.’
‘We have to check everywhere. Well, you don’t seem to be carrying the gun.’
‘I decided not to take it.’
‘Take it where?’
‘Sleepwalking.’
‘Sleepwalking through a locked door, stealing . . .’
‘. . . Borrowing.’
‘. . . Stealing a car key and sleepdriving the car away without the owner’s consent . . .’
‘I have to go back there, Quigg.’
‘It’s a good job I came along when I did then.’
‘No, you don’t understand.’
‘I understand that I’ll have to handcuff you to the bed to prevent you from escaping.’
‘Yeah, I’d bet that type of thing turns you on, you pervert.’
‘Come on, let’s tuck you up safe in your bed.’
‘I know what you want.’
‘Do you know how long I’ve been staking out that front door? Once I’ve put the handcuffs on you, I think I’ll deserve some form of compensation for hours worked.’
‘You can come with me.’
‘That’s what I had in mind.’
‘To the house.’
‘That’s about as likely as those pigs sitting on the telephone wire outside taking off and flying over Battersea Power Station.’
‘You can drive.’
‘You’re not listening.’
‘I might have a surprise for you tomorrow.’
He licked his lips. ‘I like surprises.’
‘You’ll definitely like this one.’
‘Go on?’
‘If I told you what it was now it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?’
‘You’re just trying to get me to go with you.’
‘Is it working?’
‘No.’
‘Well, how about this. We go to Gatekeeper’s house, take the hard drive out of his computer, come back here and you can do anything you want with me?’
‘Anything?’
‘I can’t believe you’re a police officer.’
‘I’m only a police officer during working hours.’
‘Come on then, let’s get going. The sooner we get there, the sooner we get back, and the sooner you can stop pretending to be a normal person and be the pervert you really are.’
‘And what about tomorrow’s surprise?’
‘You’ll just have to wait and see.’
‘I suppose I’d better come along to make sure you don’t get into any trouble.’
She hugged and kissed him. ‘I think it’s a bit late for that, especially as we’ll be breaking into a crime scene and stealing a vital piece of evidence in a quadruple murder investigation.’
‘Not necessarily. I am a police officer, after all. Admittedly, it’s not my crime scene, but it is related to the case I’m working on. If we do get stopped, leave the talking to me.’
***
The flight time from Heathrow to Leipzig was one hour twenty minutes.
Kline slept for one hour nineteen minutes and fifty-five seconds, and dribbled all down the front of the abstract top she was wearing that belonged to Emilia.
‘Did you sleep?’ she asked Emilia, wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘No. There will be plenty of time to sleep when this is over.’
‘Isn’t it time you told me why we’re going to Leipzig?’
‘I will tell you in the taxi to the hotel.’
‘A hotel?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And real food?’
‘Yes.’
‘That sounds like my idea of paradise. Are we sharing?’
‘No.’
‘Fucking brilliant.’
It took them over an hour to travel from the plane to passport control, from there to baggage collection, navigate through the security checks and reach the taxi rank at the front of the airport.
They climbed into a taxi, Emilia spoke to the driver in fluent German and then said to Kline, ‘He is taking us to the Hotel Charlottenhof in Halle, which is half-way to our destination at Wansleben am See.’
‘And what’s there?’
‘A village by a lake.’
‘Lovely. Are we taking a holiday to recuperate?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ Emilia said, smiling at the thought of it. ‘But sadly – no. There will be no holiday for either of us just yet. In 2008 a computer specialist – called Hans Fröbel – was part of a team working for the German Intelligence Services. They were cataloguing the archives of East Germany’s secret police – the Stasi. He found a document which revealed how the SS had established a concentration camp, and below that camp they created a vast subterranean complex linking two mine shafts with secret tunnels to store treasures looted from occupied countries. Fifteen hundred Jewish prisoners from the camp were used to hack out the underground chambers – all of them died or were killed to keep the location secret.’
‘That’s what it’s all about?’
‘Yes. Hans Fröbel was found to be a member of the Neo-Nazi group – the Order of the Black Sun – and dismissed from the intelligence services shortly afterwards.’
‘And he took the knowledge of the buried treasure with him?’
‘Yes. The group believe they are the natural successors to the SS, and that the looted treasure belongs to them.’
‘And we’re going to stop them getting it?’
‘That
is my idea. One thing that the document did not reveal was the location of that concentration camp.’
‘But you know where it is?’
‘I think so.’
‘The tattoo?’
‘Yes, but it was only a piece of the puzzle – and it is not a complete piece.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The number retrieved from that poor woman’s body was 128145, but there are two numbers in the sequence that have been removed.’
‘And you just happened to have those two missing numbers?’
‘Yes. I came across a “5” and a “1” on another document relating to looted treasure. It took me some time to connect the numbers, and then fit them into place in the sequence. I expected it to be difficult, and it was difficult because it was too easy. The “5” goes in the first place, and the “1” goes in the fifth place, Therefore we have: 51281145.’
‘Longitude and latitude?’
‘You are not just a pretty face then.’
‘I’m not even that.’
‘You are much more than that, Tallie Kline. Yes, it is the coordinates for Wansleben am See.’
‘And there was a concentration camp there?’
‘As I said before, there are no documents identifying the camp, and no persons alive who were – or are – willing to speak of such a place.’
‘Mmmm!’
‘But there were two salt mines.’
‘Ah! So, in the morning we’re going salt mining?’
‘After a good German breakfast we will meet some people, and then go salt mining.’
‘People? Who?’
‘You will see.’
‘More underground tunnels – just what I fucking need.’
***
Seeing as Lucy didn’t have a licence – he drove the Mercedes.
They reached 73 Woodfield Drive in East Barnet at two-thirty in the morning.
‘Park down the road,’ Lucy said.
‘Why?’
‘Just in case.’
Away from the main roads East Barnet was eerily quiet, and resembled a graveyard that had been handed back to Mother Nature for just a short time.
They stared at the house for a few minutes to make sure no police officers had been left there to spoil their fun. Quigg thought it was unlikely when most police forces were struggling to cut budgets and keep officers on the beat.
He thought back to earlier when he’d walked into Professor Razinsky’s fire-damaged flat. It hadn’t been completely gutted, but it was bad enough.
‘Tell me neither of those two blackened corpses is Kline, Perkins.’
‘Neither of them is Kline, Sir. In fact, they’re both male bodies.’
‘Really? Any idea what happened?’
‘I have the feeling Kline was involved in their deaths, but I can’t prove it.’
‘Why?’
‘This one,’ he pointed to the corpse curled up in the foetal position. ‘His trousers are round his knees.’
‘That doesn’t prove anything.’
‘His hands are clenched over his reproductive organs.’
‘To stop them getting burnt, probably. I can understand that.’
‘When we prised his hands away, we found that his penis had been nearly severed close to the base.’
‘Jesus. With what?’
‘Dr Solberg will need to determine that, but there is an imprint on the skin which resembles a pair of pliers.’
‘Did they die in the fire?’
Perkins pointed to a small hole in the corpse’s temple. ‘A screwdriver or something similar. Also . . .’ He indicated another hole in the back of the neck of the second corpse. ‘I’d say they were already dead before the fire was started.’
‘They were murdered?’
‘That’s my guess.’
He looked more closely at the second corpse. ‘Is that a tattoo?’
Perkins nodded. ‘A swastika.’
‘The Einsatzgruppen,’ he mumbled.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Nothing. So, why do you think Kline had something to do with their deaths?’
‘I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?’
‘Does it involve aliens or the Devil?’
‘No.’
‘Go on then, but make it a short theory.’
‘Did you notice that the air vent cover is off?’ he asked, pointing to an oblong-shaped hole half-way up the wall about a foot away from the balcony door.
‘The heat shrivelled the plastic and it fell out.’
‘That would certainly be a possibility if it had been found on the floor, but we found it on the bed.’
‘The heat popped it out, it flew across the room and landed on the bed.’
‘Unlikely.’
‘But not impossible?’
‘On a scale from one to ten where ten is very likely, I’d estimate the chances of that happening as minus three. Also . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you seen the chair?’
‘It’s a burnt chair – what else is there to say about it?’
‘If the back was to the wall I’d agree with you, but it’s been placed side on to the wall.’
‘I feel rusty cogs, gears and pulleys beginning to creak inside my head, Perkins. Someone moved the chair to the wall, stood on it, prised the vent cover off, threw it on the bed and then reached inside the hole for . . . what?’
Perkins shrugged.
‘You still haven’t explained where Kline fits into your theory.’
‘We found pieces of a bra strap with the label still legible. I’m no expert, so I spoke with a few of my male colleagues, and they agree that Kline is probably a 32C.’
‘It’s a good job she’s not here listening to you.’
‘Exactly my point,’ he said, pointing to the corpse’s broken penis. ‘My guess is that Kline had a hand in that – no pun intended.’
‘Mmmm! You could be right.’
Was it Kline’s bra? What was it dong on the floor of Professor Razinsky’s flat? Why did one of the men have his trousers round his knees? Had they tried to rape her? Did they rape her? Had she killed both of the men? Who were they? What were they doing here?
He was disappointed that the fire had given him a lot more questions, but no answers. He was, however, buoyed by the idea that Kline was still alive. Why hadn’t she phoned him? Where was she now?
‘Thanks, Perkins. Can you let the Chief know what’s going on?’
‘If I must.’
‘I’ll leave you to it then.’
‘Very generous.’
Now, he followed Lucy across the road to number 73.
‘Are you in a rush?’
‘Remember what’s waiting for you at home?’
‘What?’
‘You have a short memory.’
The yellow and black crime scene tape was still criss-crossed over the front door:
CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS
‘Have you brought . . . ?’ he started to ask.
‘I’ve brought myself. What have you brought?’
He kicked the door in with the sole of his shoe. The noise of splintering wood was deafening. He expected the neighbours’ lights to come on, dogs to start barking and howling, and CO19 to appear out of the bushes.
Lucy made a noise with her mouth. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘We need to get inside, don’t we?’
‘I knew it was a mistake to bring you.’
‘I allowed you to come – remember?’
‘Do you want to wait in the car?’
‘No.’
‘Well, don’t kick any more open doors in.’
‘You said you didn’t bring anything to open it.’
She pointed to the door lock. ‘The bolt is still inside the mechanism. The door was fucking open.’
‘You seem to know more about locks than you should.’
‘And you seem to know less than you should.’
‘Come on. Le
t’s get in, get the hard drive and get out.’
‘What would I do without you?’ She ducked under the tape and hurried up the stairs to where she’d killed Hans Fröbel, and Gatekeeper had been tortured and decapitated. The computer was still where she’d last seen it.
She unzipped her tool bag and worked quickly in the dim light from the torch that Quigg held above her. It took her less than three minutes to open up the cabinet and extract the hard drive.
‘Right, let’s go,’ she said, leading the way again.
Half-way down the stairs they heard the sirens. At the bottom of the stairs they heard the police cars screech to a halt outside.
‘Now what?’
‘This way,’ she said, pulling him along the hall and into the kitchen.
She unlocked the back door and shut it after her.
He followed her down the garden to a back gate and into an alleyway where she began to walk in the direction of the parked Mercedes.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
‘Walking along an alley like a regular person.’
‘With a stolen hard drive.’
‘With my hard drive.’
‘We should run.’
‘What do you think the police would think about two people running through an alleyway at three in the morning?’
‘They’re in training for the London Marathon?’
‘You’re fucking unreal.’
They reached the end of the alley, and were just about to cross the road to the Mercedes when they noticed a uniformed police officer walking down the road towards them shining a torch into every car.
They kept to the shadows and walked out of Woodfield Drive.
‘What about my car?’ Quigg said.
‘You can go back and get it, if you want to.’
‘Have you got another plan?’
‘We catch a taxi home.’