“I’d better get out there,” Katie said.
He stayed watching at the hotel window as the official party went down the street to the nursing home and stood before the building for more pictures. The entire visit meant very little from a practical point of view, but Michael was nevertheless grateful that the nation was officially acknowledging the enormity of the crime. Starkworth and what happened here would be remembered.
It was later in the afternoon, when the prince had completed his visit, that Inspector Drexell returned. Michael knew he was back as soon as Dane Morgan entered the hotel accompanied by his grandfather. “So you found them,” he said to Drexel.
“It wasn’t difficult,” the Scotland Yard man told him. “You get to know the ways of these Travelers after a time.”
“Have you arrested them?”
“Dane Morgan is assisting with our inquiries.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” young Morgan insisted. “And neither has my grandfather. Why would we kill our own people?”
“Because they weren’t your people,” the inspector pointed out. “They were Gypsies from Eastern Europe coming to take over the land that had always been yours.”
“Not quite. My grandfather came from the same area sixty years ago.”
There was more activity in the command post as several of the inspector’s men returned from another mission. He stepped out briefly to speak with them and then returned with Colonel Jugger trailing behind. “Where is Miss Blackthorn?” he asked glancing around.
“Out in the news van reviewing the tapes she’s transmitting to London,” Michael told him.
“Good! This isn’t ready for the press yet.” He led Michael and the colonel aside, out of earshot of Dane and his grandfather. “London is demanding fast action and I think we have something. This fellow Cubberth, the one who was killed on the pier this morning – my men searched his house and found a small laboratory, just as Dane Morgan said. There were containers full of cyanide pellets and acid, just like the ones used at the nursing home. Cubberth’s our man. He may have cut his own throat on the pier this morning.”
“Then how would you explain the coat and hat on the stick? And why would he ask Katie to meet him if he was going to kill himself without making some sort of statement first?”
“What do you think happened?” Drexell asked, obviously anxious for some sort of quick resolution to the case. “Do you think she’s involved?”
“I don’t know. I think Cubberth supplied the chemicals to someone and that person used them. Then Cubberth was killed so he wouldn’t talk to the press. Once he saw what had happened with his chemicals, he wanted a way out for himself.”
More news was coming in and Drexell hurried off in answer to a summons. Michael went downstairs in search of Katie’s news van. The street between the hotel and the nursing home seemed to have grown a stand of trees during the day. Five vans were parked in a row. Their transmitting towers had been raised toward the heavens, seeking out satellites that would carry their pictures to London and beyond.
He found Katie Blackthorn’s van and peered inside. “Come in,” she told him. “I’ve had great news. We’re providing the feed for one of the big American networks!”
“Sounds good. What does it mean?”
“I’ll be on the telly in America on their evening news. Here, look at this tape! The segment started with a close up of Katie setting the scene. Then it cut to the center of the town and the bell tower of the town hall. “He has some great footage here. Watch this.” At the stroke of noon, as the bells started ringing, a flock of birds took off from the tower, spiraling skyward. Then the scene shifted back to Katie standing in front of the old nursing home. “That idyllic scene was shattered yesterday by an event that is already being dubbed the Starkworth Atrocity – the death by poison gas of fifty-three Gypsy immigrants and two volunteer aides.” She went on to run through the day’s events including the unsolved murder of a local resident on the town’s pier. There was a tape of the police at the pier and Cubberth’s body being removed. Then there was the arrival of the Prince of Wales with footage of his remarks.
“This is the short version for America,” she explained. “It runs fifty seconds which is all they can use. My London station will use lots more, of course. They’ll pick up a live feed from me in an hour.” The thing had become a media event. It was a matter of airtime rather than the deaths of all those people.
Her cameraman opened the door and called to Katie. “Something’s up! The inspector just came back again with some others. They were moving fast.”
She flipped off the switch on her video monitor. “Let’s go.”
Michael followed along as she broke into a run, followed by Dominick and his camera. There did seem to be some unusual activity at the hotel, and when they reached the elevator a Scotland Yard man with a clipboard blocked their paths. “Sorry, only authorized personnel allowed on the top floor. The dining room is closed this evening.”
“I’m Michael Vlado with Colonel Jugger.”
“Katie Blackthorn, and this is my cameraman, Dominick Withers. We’re both on your list.”
The man smiled slightly. “Not on this list. No press allowed. You can go up Mr. Vlado.”
“Michael!” she called after him. “I’ll wait for you in the bar!”
The elevator doors closed on him and he was whisked to the fifth floor. He entered the familiar conference rooms being used by the Scotland Yard investigators. Colonel Jugger and Inspector Drexell were seated across the desk from each other. “Michael my friend,” Jugger began.
“What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“We have a serious situation here,” Drexell announced. “Some important information has reached us regarding a possible new suspect.”
“Do you mean the Traveler, Dane Morgan?”
“No, I mean Colonel Jugger.”
The shock went through Michael like an electric current. “That’s impossible! We were together every minute of the journey. At the time of the killings we would have been still in France or just starting through your Chunnel.”
“Please hear me out,” the inspector said. “The facts we have uncovered are quite shocking. Colonel Jugger was born in Germany during the final days of World War Two. After the war his father was tried as a war criminal. The charges against him involved the gassing of hundreds of Gypsies at Auschwitz. He was convicted and given a life sentence, later commuted for health reasons. He was released from prison in nineteen seventy-one and died one year later. Is that correct Colonel?”
“It is correct,” Jugger answered in a subdued voice. “Are the sins of the fathers to be visited on their sons?”
“After what happened to your father you may have nursed a growing hatred for Gypsies.”
“On the contrary, I have devoted my life to erasing my father’s terrible crime.”
“But that crime was committed with the same weapon we see here at Starkworth. It seems like more than a coincidence.”
Michael had to interrupt. “How could he have been in two places at once Inspector? I told you –”
“I think we’re agreed that Cubberth prepared the necessary chemicals at the urging, or in the employ, of someone else. Otherwise there’d be no reason for silencing him. Suppose we take that a step further. Perhaps he was paid to supply the chemicals and use them on the Gypsies at the nursing home. If Colonel Jugger paid him and arrived after the killings, he was truly above suspicion.”
“If, if!” Michael hit the desk with his fist. “You have no proof for any of this!”
“We have the physical evidence from Cubberth’s house. With a bit more searching I think we’ll turn up the name of the person who hired him.”
It was a corner conference room and Michael walked to the wide window to stare out at the rolling sea, his mind in turmoil. Then, in the other direction, he could see dusk beginning to gather at the center of Starkworth. It was late now and there were no birds visible on the t
own-hall bell tower.
Michael turned and walked back to the table. “Get the press up here and I’ll tell you who killed them all – the fifty five people and Mr. Cubberth. I’ll tell you why too.”
Inspector Drexell resisted at first. It was obvious he was not about to release information to the press until he knew what it was. Finally Michael went off in a corner with him and talked for twenty minutes. Drexell sighed and stood up. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll try it.”
Within a half-hour the upstairs conference room was crowded with journalists and video cameras. By this time a shroud of darkness was draped over Starkworth and the windows toward the sea showed only the room’s reflected lights.
Drexell stepped to the battery of microphones. “I’m please to introduce Mr. Michael Vlado, a representative of the European Union, who was present with Colonel Jugger when the atrocity was discovered yesterday afternoon. Mr. Vlado has been working closely with Scotland Yard on its investigation and has provided a theory involving the person responsible for this terrible crime. I’ll let Mr. Vlado explain it in his own words.”
Michael stepped to the microphones, glancing toward Katie Blackthorn in the first row of journalists. Colonel Jugger had gathered some of the others connected with the case too, and was just ushering Dane Morgan and his grandfather Granza into the room. One of the officers had brought Carl Isaacson, the tragedy’s sole survivor, up to the room too.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, you must excuse my English, which is not always perfect,” Michael told them. “I come from a remote farming village in Romania, and I have a deep and abiding interest in truth, justice and brotherhood. I am myself a Gypsy and king of my small tribe but I have worked with the Romanian police and others in solving a number of crimes in the past. When I came here yesterday with Colonel Jugger to examine the problem of Gypsy immigrants, I never imagined I would find the horror that awaited us at the nursing home.”
Katie raised her hand with a question, but Michael said the time for questions would come later. “We all have questions, and perhaps the greatest now is how anyone could commit such a terrible crime. It is reminiscent of the worst atrocities of the Second World war when Jews and Gypsies at Auschwitz were gassed in this manner. That was our first question. Was this the work of a terrorist or a madman?
“A madman needs no rational motive, while for a terrorist the killings could have been a way of discouraging other Gypsy immigrants said to be on their way here.
“From my viewpoint, the first break in this case came earlier today when a local man named Cubberth was murdered on the town pier. I’d learned earlier that Cubberth was making LSD and other chemicals at a laboratory in his home, selling these things to local Travelers and others. Inspector Drexell’s men found evidence at Cubberth’s house that he had put together the chemicals responsible for the deaths of these fifty-five people. The killer had no doubt paid him to do it.”
This time Katie couldn’t be silenced, “How did you know Cubberth wasn’t the killer himself?” she called out.
Michael sighed and answered. “Because he called you to arrange a meeting at the pier this morning. What was he going to tell you? That he’d killed all those people? More likely he was going to supply knowledge of the crime and the person behind it. This was confirmed to some extent when Cubberth himself was murdered at the end of the pier as you came to meet him.”
“But what happened to the killer?”
“His disappearance is really quite simple. The prop coat and hat shielded him from view. Cubberth walked out there, thinking it might be you seated there. The killer slit his throat and then simply slipped off the end of the pier into the water as you walked toward him. I noticed he water was only a few feet deep, and the killer simply walked back to shore beneath the pier. Your eyes were on Cubberth and that dummy coat and hat, and you never saw him. The same was true of me, as I followed you out there. The killer made his escape, but this murder provided the first clue I needed to his identity.”
“He left no clues,” Katie argued. It had become a dialogue between the two of them recorded by the world’s press.
“Think back. How did the killer know Cubberth would be at the pier? Cubberth would hardly have told him, and I saw Cubberth myself walking onto the pier. The killer was already in place at the end so he hadn’t followed his victim there. No, the killer must have known of the proposed meeting in advance. I was present when Cubberth called you after breakfast on your cell phone, just as you finished interviewing me. You didn’t tell me what it was about, but you mentioned Cubberth’s name and the time and place of the meeting. That was all the killer needed to hear.”
“But no one else was there,” she argued.” There were just the two of us.”
Michael shook his head. “There was one other person. Your camera-man, Dominick.”
As Michael uttered the words, Dominick stopped filming and dropped his camera. Every eye in the room was suddenly on him. “This is madness!” he rasped out angrily.
“Is it? The killer would have been soaking wet after wading ashore beneath that pier. You were wearing a rock group T-shirt at breakfast but when Katie summoned you to the pier later to film the murder scene you’d changed to a striped T-shirt.”
He moistened his lips and moved forward a few steps. Behind him Katie Blackthorn knelt silently to retrieve his camera. She hoisted it to her shoulder and started filming. “I wasn’t at the pier till after she called,” Dominick said. “I was in the square shooting footage of the town-hall tower. You can look at the tape.”
“I did,” Michael told him. “You shot it exactly at noon with a flight of birds frightened by the tolling bells. A fine picture, but it proves you were there almost an hour after the murder, not while Cubberth was being killed.”
His face had gone white and Inspector Drexell started toward him. “Why would I do such an insane thing?” he asked as if he couldn’t quite understand it himself.
“I can’t explain exactly,” Michael said. “But it wasn’t the Gypsies, was it? They were only a cover for your true motive, the sort of motive that might make some men blow up an airliner to kill just one person on it. A little while ago, when the officer stopped us at the door, Katie gave your name as Dominick Withers. One of the volunteers killed by the gas was a Mrs. Withers. Who was she? Your wife or ex-wife perhaps?”
It was one revelation too many for him. Before Drexell or the others could move, he uttered a long scream and launched himself at the window overlooking the sea. Katie Blackthorn caught it all on videotape, but in the end her station decided it would have been in bad taste to show the suicide of a station employee on the evening news. She went back to London the following morning and Colonel Jugger came to meet Michael for breakfast.
“It was his mother, not his ex-wife,” he told Michael. “I suppose we’ll never know any more than that. He lived in Maidstone, halfway to London, so it was easy for him to drive down here in a half hour and set off Cubberth’s gas at the nursing home.”
“What now?” Michael asked, thinking about Katie Blackthorn.
“There’s another boatload of Gypsies crossing the channel. They land at Dover in less than an hour.”
Michael finished his coffee. “Let’s go.”
A WALL TOO HIGH
“I understand you are a Gypsy king,” the uniformed man addressed Michael Vlado, not without an edge of contempt in his voice. He was seated across the desk in an unadorned office fifty kilometers north of Prague. It was a sunny afternoon in early autumn, and Michael would rather have been back in the village with his wife and their horses.
He smiled, trying to cooperate with his inquisitor. “I am only a king to my people back in Romania. Here in the Czech Republic I am merely a tourist.”
The man, taller than Michael, had slicked-back hair and a tiny black mustache. He said his name was Lieutenant Lyrik and he spoke German after learning that Michael’s knowledge of the Czech language was limited. “More than a touri
st. Our police computer lists you as a trouble-maker, an agent provocateur.”
“Hardly that Lieutenant! I have not traveled this distance to incite anyone to anything. As you must have guessed, I’ve come about the wall.” The European Roma Rights center in Budapest has commissioned me to act on its behalf to request that the wall separating the Roma section of town from the rest be torn down at once.”
“What you refer to as a wall on Masarak Street is no more than a fence.”
Michael had dealt with this type of official before. It was never pleasant. “A seven foot high fence made of concrete?”
Lyrik shrugged. “There is a similar structure in Ústí nad Labem and that is called a fence too. You must realize that these Gypsies are criminals, beggars, thieves and fortunetellers squatting in decrepit apartment buildings usually without paying rent. Can we do nothing to protect the decent neighbors who live just across the street?”
Michael Vlado was growing impatient with this man. He had traveled from his village to do some good, not to hear a diatribe against the Roms. “You must know that seventy percent of Gypsy children in this country are shunted off to special schools for the mentally retarded. In many cases, their parents have been fired from their jobs, beaten and killed. The police do nothing.”
“What do you want?” the lieutenant asked. “Why have you been sent here?”
“The Roma Rights Center wants the walls here and in Ústí nad Labem torn down. They want the Gypsies free from segregation and persecution.”
“This is strictly a local matter. You have no authority here.” After a moment’s thought he stood up. “But we do not wish to seem uncooperative. Let me speak to my superior.”
Left alone, Michael let his eyes wander over the slate gray walls and the framed photograph of the country’s president, Vaclav Havel. The single window offered a view of the parking lot, and he noticed a uniformed officer checking his license plate and peering into the car. He wondered if they’d ask his permission to search it.
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