The History Book

by Humphrey Hawksley

  “We’re in her apartment, Kat.”

  “How could you, if you didn’t even know where she lived?”

  Sayer speaks softly and precisely. “The embassy was notified of the death of a U.S. citizen. I said I would handle it. The victim’s name was Charlotte Thomas. She turned out to be Suzy. Nancy and I have known Suzy since she was a baby. She’s your only sister. Why don’t you give us all some time to be sad and confused?”

  Kat looks away from the photograph. Tears have made her face wet, and she can’t see clearly. But looking away isn’t enough. She picks up the photo frame and throws it against the wall.

  “What’s that?” asks Sayer. “Are you all alone there?”

  “I’m fine.” Broken glass is scattered across the floor, some as far as the bathroom. “I’m coming over.”

  “No. Stay where you are. I’ll have Nancy call you. You need your strength for later. We’ll come there. We’ll bring Suzy back with us.”

  FIVE

  Saturday, 9:17 p.m., British Summer Time

  Breathing in the smell of aviation fuel, Kat shuffles off the plane onto the Jetway. Rain has leaked through, and she gets a bite of the wind. It’s supposed to be summer in England; a chill cuts through her.

  She downloaded the latest entry key for Suzy’s apartment and printed out the bar code. She got Cage to get her a new, encrypted phone with a six-digit tag code in which the figures change randomly every thirty seconds. Cage drove her to Dulles.

  Inside the terminal, Kat used it to call Vendetta, let him know the new number. When she told him Suzy was dead and that she was going to London, he didn’t speak for a while, then said, “You’re doing the right thing. If a person like you stays still at a time like this, you’ll end up dying, too.”

  “Thanks, M,” she said.

  She joins the line for immigration control, with its choice of a fingerprint or iris scan ID check. One notice warns VISITORS MAY BE SELECTED FOR RANDOM BODY SCREENING.

  Another says INFORMATION DERIVED FROM DNA SAMPLES MAY BE EXCHANGED BETWEEN SIGNATORY GOVERNMENTS AS AN EXEMPTION FROM THE DATA PROTECTION ACT.

  “Kat! Kathleen Polinski. Over here.” The voice is familiar—from way back in her past. And she should have expected it.

  Nancy Sayer, in an olive green woolen suit, is flapping a white handkerchief at Kat to attract her attention. Nancy is Kat’s godmother and the wife of Nate Sayer. With Nancy, the world is always fine, and anything bad can be turned to good. Nancy is Kat’s height, with grayish blond hair tied sensibly back, and skin stretched tight across her face, making her cheekbones jut out like polished wood.

  An immigration official unclips the cordon rope, asking Kat to step out of the line.

  Nancy touches Kat’s cheek. “You poor, poor child,” she says. They embrace, and Kat remembers the smell of her godmother from childhood.

  Kat holds Nancy until she’s managed to fight off tears. She pushes herself away. The two women stand back from each other, and Nancy picks up the question in Kat’s eyes. She nods sadly. “I’m so sorry, Kat. First your parents, now this.”

  “Is it true? Really?”

  Nancy’s eyes glisten. “It’s true.”

  “But how? What happened?”

  “I don’t exactly know. Nate’s been with the police.”

  “But what’s he told you? I mean—”

  “Best to wait.” Nancy squeezes her hand and keeps holding it.

  “Okay,” Kat says, her grief fading into anger. She pulls away and looks back at the immigration line.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Nancy says. “Nate fixed it . . . customs, immigration. There’s a car.”

  “I don’t want Nate—”

  “That’s fine,” Nancy says quickly. “We’ll just go ourselves.”

  “What I need to do,” she says, “is get to Suzy’s apartment.”

  Suzy’s place is a stunning converted boathouse, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a terrace on the upper floor, overlooking the river. The building is set back from a narrow street separating the boathouse from the river. The front door leads into a gym and garage on the ground floor, where Suzy kept a silver Mercedes coupé. Past that, another door opens to a staircase, which leads up to the living area.

  By the time Kat and Nancy get there, the wind has dropped. The moon hangs in a sky about to go dark from the long twilight. The night’s become warm.

  “Just think—Suzy was here all this time without letting us know,” says Nancy, looking around her.

  Nancy sits at the dining table by the big window to let Kat wander the apartment alone. The bedroom is airy, light, and textured, with a patterned quilt of blue cartoon elephants almost exactly as Kat remembers Suzy having at home. On the dressing table is a collection of ornamental pigs and a tiny stand-up chest of drawers, which Kat opens to find Suzy’s jewelry. Some she recognizes, like their mother’s butterfly brooch, so over-the-top with clashing colors that neither of them would wear it.

  Suzy had made the second bedroom into her office, complete with shelves of books, a desktop computer, and a view of a tiny patio garden and wall to the house next door.

  Kat shouts down to Nancy, “I’m taking a shower, okay?”

  “I’ll fix something.”

  “Coffee’s fine.”

  Nancy’s not telling her anything. Kat’s pushed and gotten nowhere. So she’s talking to keep things calm, as if nothing’s happened.

  Kat draws the curtain across the bathtub and steps in to take a shower. Suzy’s been using a scented soap, suds dried on it, with a watermark on the wall next to the tray. The towel, decorated with elephants, had been hurriedly hung over the rail, creased and untidy.

  Kat lets water run down her face, closes her eyes, and sees a static image of the man trying to kill her in the corridor of the Kazakh embassy.

  Breath becomes tight in her throat. Her knees weaken. She’s been expecting a physical reaction at some point, but the surge of it, only now, surprises her.

  She opens her eyes, tilts her head back, and closes them again, only to be hit by another image. Two women, her age, are at work on a Friday evening. Someone with a gun tells them to move over to the wall and stand underneath a picture advertising vacations. Suddenly, they know they are going to die. But they obey, because every second they’re alive is a chance. They hold hands. The next person who sees them is Kat, but by then they’ve slid down the wall, leaving only blood spatters to show where they stood.

  Water hits the plastic shower curtain. The light coming through it is dim and distorted. She can’t see or hear properly. She leans against the shower wall, turns off the water, steadies her breathing, draws back the curtain, gets out of the bathtub, slips on the floor tiles, finds her balance, snatches the towel off the rail, and wraps it around herself.

  Two pairs of Suzy’s sandals, one made of straw from Hawaii and one rubber, lie haphazardly between the bathroom door and the shower. A red T-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of white panties are draped over the back of a chair in the bedroom.

  Through the window, the moonlight splays across the river. Kat lets down the blind, bringing a chill to the room, and feels goose bumps rise, as if something cold, like a knife blade, is being drawn across her shoulders.

  “Kat, you okay?” Nancy calls softly with a tap on the door.

  “Fine,” says Kat. She turns toward the bathroom again and sees a photograph of Suzy with a bunch of people outside Buckingham Palace, maybe a dozen faces, none of which she knows.

  She checks CNN on her cell phone, then The Washington Post. There’s nothing on the Kazakh embassy. Cage has done his job.

  Kat’s carry-on bag is on the bed. She flips it open, puts on a white top, jeans, and a fresh pair of socks, and opens the door to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee coming up from downstairs. When she’s halfway down the staircase, she also picks up the sweetish smell of dying flowers.

  Nancy is back at the table by the window, pushing down the plunger of a pot of coffee. “You
’re looking just fine,” she says.

  “The police—” Kat begins.

  “It’s okay. They’ve been here,” says Nancy, as if she was talking about an electrician coming to fix a lightbulb. “Nate knew you’d want to come here first, so he made sure they did everything they needed already.”

  Kat sees the flowers in a vase on the floor next to a fireplace. They’re orchids, as she’d expected; Suzy’s favorites. She takes the vase, dumps its dirty water down the kitchen sink, lifts the trash can lid, and drops the orchids inside.

  Nancy stays exactly where she is with her coffee. “Nate’s waiting at the hospital,” she says.

  “Morgue, you mean?”

  “Suzy’s actually in the hospital mortuary. When you’re done there, come back and spend the night with us. I have a bed made up and . . .” Kat’s godmother’s voice trails off.

  Kat is standing across the table from her. “You know, Aunt Nance,” she says, “I really don’t want to deal with Uncle Nate right now. You know how . . . ,” she hesitates, “. . . sometimes we don’t exactly see eye to eye on things.”

  “I know,” says Nancy. “It’s tough. Tough on everyone.”

  As a child, whenever Kat looked into the face of her godmother, she saw happiness, far more than in her own mother. Kat looks at Nancy and realizes she’s hoping that something like that will come back.

  “Nate’s difficult, but he’s a good man.” Nancy tries on a smile. “You need good people with you right now.”

  “I just want to be with Suzy by myself,” says Kat.

  “I know, and Nate knows,” says Nancy. “That’s why he managed to get her body back to London.”

  “Back? From where?”

  SIX

  Saturday, 11:15 p.m., BST

  Nate Sayer stands behind a gurney. On it lies a body draped in a white sheet. Kat stops in the doorway of the mortuary. They look at each other in silence.

  Sayer is solid, his hair still thick. He’s in a green cotton shirt, a polo, arms bulging through the sleeves. He must have started lifting weights, except his stomach shows he’s losing the battle. Stocky, broad-shouldered, he runs his hands through his thick gray hair. He’s wearing dark, military-style pants, immaculately pressed.

  He gives a half wave, moves toward her, arms out to embrace, smile awkward. All Kat’s body language says don’t touch. “Hi, Nate,” she says.

  “Kat, I don’t know what to say . . .” His arms drop to his sides.

  “Where are the police?” she asks. “And why are you here?”

  “They’re coming.” He points his finger down the corridor behind her. “They’re getting the paperwork ready. As her sister, you’ll have to sign some papers.”

  Kat’s eyes search the room. On the wall, Suzy’s dental X-rays hang slightly askew in a light box. She swallows, takes a few steps inside, lets the door swing shut behind her. Sayer’s distorted reflection shines out of a line of cold body boxes on the back wall.

  “How’d she die?”

  “The police will fill you in.”

  She draws in a breath, swallows again. The air’s laden with chemicals, wetness, the brutality and stench of a mortuary.

  “It is Suzy, right? No mistake?”

  Sayer nods. “I’ve checked, and I’ve known you both since you were born.”

  Kat touches Sayer’s elbow. “Nate, before the police come, can I please have a minute alone with her?”

  “This isn’t a good place to be alone.”

  “I’m better like that.”

  Sayer knits his brow.

  “I don’t ask many favors,” presses Kat.

  “Okay,” he says softly. “If you need me, I’ll be out there with Nancy.”

  She watches him head down the corridor. Nancy appears, takes her husband’s arm, and leads him out of Kat’s view.

  For the briefest of moments, Kat lets herself imagine that they’ve screwed up Suzy’s ID and that, in a last-minute miracle, she’ll discover they’ve got the wrong person altogether.

  Eyes closed, she pulls down the sheet, not just a bit, but the whole thing in one long movement, bunching it up in her hand, holding the soft cotton to her face.

  People talk about looking peaceful in death, and someone’s clearly prepared Suzy, because she looks just like that. Her blood-drained face looks up at Kat, her eyes dull blue and empty, her lips slightly apart. She must have just had her hair done, short, blond, slightly spiked, with dark lowlights in it.

  Kat could have been looking down at her own dead face. Ten years might have separated them, but Kat and Suzy looked so alike that people got them mixed up all the time. As she turned from her twenties to thirties, Suzy was flattered by being mistaken for her kid sister. Kat tries to imagine her sister’s face as far back as she can, maybe twenty years ago, but still as it always was—gentle, secure, looking out for her little sister.

  Suzy’s right leg is slightly bent, with a plastic toe tag hanging off her big toe. Kat spots needle marks in her neck and groin, where they’ve taken out the blood. Her left leg is ramrod straight, as are her arms.

  She picks up Suzy’s right hand and feels the coldness of the fingers against her cheek. There’s a patch of charred skin on the shoulder. The fingers are curled like crab claws. On her left hand, the ring finger is doubled back on itself, broken.

  The ring, which Suzy rarely took off, is missing. It was their mom’s, and Suzy had worn it since their mother died.

  Since a shoulder burn and broken finger don’t kill a person, Kat looks away and back again, hoping she’ll see something different. She doesn’t.

  Kat brushes the hand, trying to sense something of Suzy. She wants to pray, recite a poem, or cry. But she’s too angry and confused for anything to come. She tucks Suzy’s hand next to the cold skin of her thigh and takes a step to kiss her on the forehead.

  As she leans over, she sees a tiny, dark red mark on her sister’s brow that someone’s tried to hide with makeup. There’s dried blood in the corner of one eye.

  Kat touches it gently and is about to lift up Suzy’s head when she lets out a scream and steps back. The back of Suzy’s skull has been blown away. Nothing’s there, just jagged, blood-dark edges of bone. Suzy’s face, propped up by hospital bedding, stares at the ceiling like an empty mask.

  SEVEN

  Saturday, 11:37 p.m., BST

  Through the thunder of blood in her ears, Kat hears the door open.

  “You okay, Miss Polinski?” It’s the voice of someone English, older than Sayer.

  “Are you the police?” she says, her back to him.

  Footsteps come up beside the gurney. She sees a hand picking the sheet up off the floor.

  “Wait,” snaps Kat. “Can you just back off for a few minutes?”

  “It’s okay . . . I’m sorry.” A different voice, not Sayer’s, either. It’s younger, cultured, somewhere between Boston and an ancient part of Europe.

  She looks up at the wall of stainless steel and, in the reflection, makes out a tall figure, thirties, dark hair but fair complexion, and after that the image gets distorted. Beside him is an older man in a light raincoat, with sandy gray hair. Behind them both is Sayer. Her eyes return to her sister’s body.

  “I am Assistant Commissioner Stephen Cranley from the London Metropolitan Police,” says the older man softly. “With me is Detective Inspector Max Grachev. And you know Nate Sayer from the U.S. embassy.”

  Kat takes back the sheet and folds it. She wants Suzy to stay uncovered. She turns to face them. They’re standing back, giving her space.

  Under his raincoat, Cranley’s wearing a dark uniform. He has eyes that could silence a room. The last time she saw such authority in a face—zero doubt, but no arrogance, either—was in her own father’s.

  Max Grachev looks less assured but better dressed, with a jacket, tie, and showing just enough cuffs to reveal inscribed cuff links. He’s about the same age as Suzy, a shade over six feet, with a high forehead created by a receding hair
line, and unsteady brown eyes, absorbing and reacting all the time.

  “My sister was shot,” says Kat flatly, looking at Cranley. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “Yes. She was murdered,” says Cranley. “Anything at all you have that might help us—”

  Kat cuts in, “How does Suzy rate an assistant commissioner handling her murder?”

  “It’s possible your sister fell victim to a wider criminal operation,” Cranley answers. “Charlotte Thomas, or Suzy Polinski as we now know she is, worked closely on setting up the Coalition for Peace and Security. As an international lawyer, her job involved standardizing legislation surrounding the CPS.” He glances across to Grachev. “There are loose ends. Why did she work under a false name? Why did she not let the U.S. embassy know she was in London?”

  Cranley’s sharp blue eyes do not move from Kat as he asks each question. “Did she run afoul of an interest group that will lose out when the CPS comes into force? If so, did they originate here, in Britain, or—more likely—somewhere else?”

  He glances over to Grachev. “This is why I’ve asked D.I. Grachev to help with the investigation. He’s on loan to us from a special criminal intelligence division in Moscow with expertise in international organized crime.”

  Grachev points to the sheet, then to Suzy’s body. “Perhaps we should?”

  His voice with its blend of Europe is gentle, like her grandmother’s. Kat lets him take one end, and together they drape the sheet over Suzy’s body, leaving the face uncovered. “Would you like to talk here, or—”

  “Here’s fine,” says Kat.

  Grachev nods. Cranley’s hand is on the door. “I have some paperwork to go over with Mr. Sayer,” he says. “We’ll be down the corridor.”

  Kat says nothing. Cranley and Sayer leave. Grachev moves around to the other side of the gurney so it’s between them.

  “She was shot by a single, very powerful, high-velocity round, which made a tiny incision in her forehead and destroyed her skull on exit,” he says, shifting his head slightly, settling his eyes on Suzy’s face. “We did some preliminary tests to check if she’d been sexually assaulted. She hadn’t been.”