by Frank Tayell
“I have never run from anything in my life,” Longfield said.
“You provided him with money, I suppose,” Ruth said, crossing to the bookshelf.
“Yes. Money, food, clothing, some personnel,” Longfield said, her voice rising. “Over the years I have had the need to employ people whose first language is violence. It is a sad truth about our world.”
“Was he one of them?” Ruth asked. She ran her finger along the shelf, looking for the book.
“Emmitt? Hardly. Our relationship is far more complicated than that. Look in the diary, and you will see for yourself.”
Ruth had found the book. Expecting some kind of trap, she tapped the spine with her finger, then moved it an inch and stepped back. Nothing happened. She took down the book. She opened it and flipped from page to page. They were all the same, filled with nothing but densely packed, printed text. She turned around.
“There’s nothing here.”
Longfield smiled and raised her hands to her mouth. “You promised to keep him safe.” She swallowed. “But only I can do that.”
“What did you do?”
Longfield shook. Trembled. Her legs stiffened. They kicked, violently. Ruth took a step forward, but the woman’s arms thrashed up and down. White foam and dark blood frothed from Longfield’s mouth, and then, just as suddenly, she was still.
“What did you do?” Ruth quietly repeated. There was something in the dead woman’s hand. It was a button, broken in two with a small cavity, large enough to hold a pill. She remembered that there had been a similar broken button found by Turnbull’s body, and that that was how they had been supposed to think the man had died.
Ruth sat down in a chair, opposite the body, and tried to work out why the woman had killed herself.
“Deering?” It was Captain Mitchell.
“Sir, how’s Riley?”
“I don’t know. The shotgun was loaded with buckshot. The vest took some of it, but there’s— what happened?” He’d stepped inside, and was now looking at the Longfield’s body.
“Poison,” Ruth said. “There’s a button, broken in two.”
Mitchell crossed the room, knelt down. “Just like on Turnbull. I always wondered about that.” He stood. “Did she say anything?”
“That there was a diary hidden in there,” Ruth said, pointing at the book on the floor. “There isn’t.”
“But there’s this,” Mitchell crossed to the desk. He picked up the tablet. “Cameras? And a battery pack under the desk, with a cable leading…” He lifted a rug, following a slim black wire across the room to where it disappeared into the wall. He looked up. “Is there an antenna, maybe? Or some kind of localised wireless network?” He walked over to the desk and collapsed into the chair.
“Sir, what about Riley?”
“Isaac and Kelly are taking her to the hospital.” Mitchell said, his voice taut. “And they’ll get her there faster than I can. I could go with them, and I would do anything and everything to save her life, but I’m not a doctor. There is truly nothing I can do to help her.” He raised a fist, then forced his hand open, and laid it slowly on the desk. “So I will do the only thing I can. I will solve this case.”
Ruth nodded. “There’s a coin,” she said. “Stuck to the back of that plate.”
“That makes four of them. We only need Emmitt’s to complete the set. What else did she say?”
“She said she paid for the conspiracy,” Ruth said. “That she provided food, and clothing. She wanted me to promise to protect Simon. In exchange, she’d tell me where Emmitt was. The location was in a diary, hidden inside a book. When I turned around, she’d broken the button and taken the pill. I guess she wasn’t ever going to tell us where he was. I don’t know whether that means everything else she was untrue, but she said that she did it all for Simon. And she said that Emmitt was here, but that he left when Longfield saw us coming. She saw it on that.” She pointed at the tablet. “There are cameras.”
“Really?” Mitchell picked up the tablet and began tapping at the screen. “Ah, pity. It seems there aren’t any cameras in the tower. No microphones either. That’s a shame. I don’t know whether the coin would stand up in court. On the other hand, I don’t particularly care. Cameras in the stairwell, the cottages. This one looks like the room that Riley interviewed Pine in. I’ll have to ask Riley to—” He stopped and let out a low growl. “There’s a file here marked Pine,” he said. “Looks like… yes, two video files, and four, no, five audio.” He tapped the screen. A moment later he tapped it again. “So that was how she was blackmailing him.”
“What is it?”
“If Rupert Pine wanted the world to know, then it wouldn’t be a secret, and this woman wouldn’t have been able to blackmail him. No, I have seen, and so I know, and that will be enough to get him to confess. He may have committed some crimes for which he will have to atone, but this secret is not one of them. Personally, I liked him. But Riley… perhaps this explains it.” He sighed and turned back to the tablet. “There are some other video files. It looks like Pine wasn’t the only one being blackmailed. But no diary.”
“Perhaps there isn’t one,” Ruth said.
“Then why call it a diary? Why use that word unless it was at the forefront of her mind. It doesn’t fit with what we know of her. She used this as her office, the reason being the tablet and her cameras. She viewed this room as safe, but not that safe. She kept the coin here, but you said it was stuck to the back of a plate? So she couldn’t leave it out in the open. Unlike this tablet… What book was it?”
“Dante’s Inferno.”
“Perhaps she chose that because her imminent demise was at the forefront of her mind, too. Or perhaps not. Check the rest of the books.”
Ruth started taking out books at random, but the contents all matched the spine.
Mitchell paced the room, looking at the walls, and finally back at the desk. He ran a hand down one leg, then underneath. There was a click. A narrow shelf popped out of the side. On it was a thin book.
“Is that the diary?” Ruth asked.
“It’s more of a journal,” Mitchell said. “Each page has a handwritten date. It does list some events that are coming up, and some dates have entries that look as if they’ve been written after the fact.”
“Is there any mention of Emmitt?” she asked.
“No… nothing at all personal. It’s as if it’s been written to be read, yet it was hidden. Here, the fifth of November. ‘Arrange game of bridge.’ Is that code?”
“She did confirm she was going to Scotland.”
“Yes, and on the sixth there’s a hunt, with a ball in the evening. Hmm. On the fourth there’s a reminder to ‘order twenty game pies from Fraser’s butcher’s.’ Game of bridge, game pies?” He turned the pages, leafing back and forth through the book. He closed it. “I could spend days looking for some hidden meaning, only to discover there isn’t one. Or discover it, and find it doesn’t matter. Not now that she’s dead.”
“But why did she kill herself?” Ruth asked. “She said it was to protect Simon, but from whom?”
“Emmitt.”
“Then why not give the man up?” Ruth asked. “Wait.” It came back to her. “Emmitt said that he was working for someone. It can’t be Longfield, or she wouldn’t be afraid of him, right?”
“Then there’s someone else,” Mitchell said. “Another conspirator?”
“There can’t be,” Ruth said. “At least, there can’t be more than five. That’s how many chairs there were for that table. Five chairs. Five stars. I… I think Emmitt and DeWitt confirmed there were five of them. I… I can’t really remember.”
“Wallace had a coin, and he’s dead. So did DeWitt and Longfield. We know about Emmitt. That leaves Donal. Donal?” He repeated the man’s name. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“That first coin. It was in Donal’s pocket. What if it wasn’t his? What if someone had put it there?”
“Who?” she asked.
�
�Someone else who was on the beach.”
“You mean Jameson?”
“He’s in custody, so why would Longfield be scared of him?” Mitchell picked up the tablet, put it into his pocket, and headed for the door.
“Where are we going?” Ruth asked.
“The hospital.”
Chapter 17
The Wire
Mitchell gave instructions to the Marines to guard the house. They were halfway down the drive when a platoon of horses arrived with Weaver at their head.
“What the hell’s going on?” Weaver asked. “I got some garbled message from a Marine saying you’d—”
“Simon Longfield was the spy in Police House. He was feeding information to his mother. She was the fifth conspirator,” Mitchell said, speaking quickly. “There’s a room at the top of the tower. On the back of an antique plate there’s one of those coins.”
“And the Longfields?”
“Dead. I killed Mr Longfield after he shot Riley. Self-defence. The woman killed herself. Emmitt was here, in one of those cottages.”
“Where is he now?” Weaver asked.
“Gone,” Mitchell said.
“You’ve no warrant. No suspects in custody. No witnesses other than police, and this lot, all of whom,” Weaver added, raising her voice so it would carry to Corporal Lin and her troops, “are here in defiance of orders. That’s a mutiny. A—”
“We did make arrests. There’s a butler handcuffed at the rear of the house,” Mitchell said.
“Is that meant to—”
“Riley’s in the hospital,” Mitchell interrupted. “She’s possibly dead. I’m going there. The rest of your questions can wait.”
When they got to the hospital, they didn’t head to the patients’ entrance but to the rear. Surrounded by bins and half broken wooden pallets was a service door. Ruth followed Mitchell into a green painted corridor that exuded disinfectant.
“The coroner is… this one,” Mitchell said, pushing open a door as anonymous as all the rest.
Inside, a bearded man looked up from a partially dissected corpse. “You can’t come barging in here. Get out,” the coroner said, gesticulating with a bloody metal saw. Ruth turned away.
“Have the victims from the ambushed train come here?” Mitchell asked.
“Of course.”
“I need to see them.”
“This is my jurisdiction,” the coroner said, “Not yours.” He bent his head over the body once more.
“One of my officers has been killed. This one has been tortured, and my… my sergeant is lying in an operating theatre less than a hundred yards away,” Mitchell said, his tone measured but far from calm. “I need to see those bodies before more people die.”
The coroner paused. “Most of them have been taken away by the Navy for proper burial,” he said.
“What about the civilians?”
“Two are as yet unidentified, the rest have either been claimed or are waiting for transportation to their home town.”
“What about the body parts from the explosion?”
“They’re still here.”
“I’d like to see them. Please.”
The coroner grudgingly nodded. He laid down the saw and led them to a door. “It’s the cold room,” he said. Inside were two large blocks of ice, and the gentle thrum of an air conditioning unit struggling to keep the room chilled. “J2 to K3 are the body parts. K4 to M2 are the remaining bodies.”
“The parts. Let me see those.”
“Be my guest,” the corner said, waving his bloody-gloved hand toward the wall.
Mitchell opened a door, and dragged out a metal tray, six feet in length. On it was a white sheet, easily covering a small mound. Ruth swallowed as Mitchell pulled off the sheet.
“No,” he said, and tried the next. In the third, he stopped. “This is it. An orange chequered suit. Is that all of it?” he asked.
“One arm, one thigh,” the corner said. “There are some feet in the next locker which may match.”
“Do you remember what shoes he wore?” Mitchell asked Ruth.
“No. Just the suit,” Ruth said.
“Me too. Do you have some scissors?” the captain asked.
The coroner passed them to Mitchell. He cut at the cloth prying it from the frozen flesh of the leg.
“Nothing.” Mitchell turned to the arm. He cut through the fabric and peeled it away from the charred remains. “Damn.”
On the arm was a tattoo. The top part was missing, but below a curve that might have been the bottom of an anchor was one misspelled word ‘SS Britania’.
“Thank you,” Mitchell said, handing the scissors back to the coroner.
“Is that what you were looking for?” the coroner asked. “What does it mean?”
But Mitchell didn’t answer.
Ruth followed him out into the corridor. He looked left and right, almost as if he was uncertain of what to do next.
“I was wrong,” he said. “All this time, we’ve been investigating the wrong crime.” He took a deep breath, and another. “I want to see Riley,” he said, and headed off, into the hospital.
They spotted Isaac first. He was pacing up and down an otherwise empty corridor.
“Where is she?” Mitchell asked.
“The operating theatre,” Isaac said. “Still alive last time they updated me.”
He actually looked nervous, Ruth thought. It was surprising to see.
“Where’s the doctor’s station?” Mitchell asked.
Isaac jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Wait here,” Mitchell said.
“Where’s Kelly?” Ruth asked.
“The roof. She likes having the high ground,” Isaac muttered. Ruth thought that was more of an attempt at humour than an explanation.
“Longfield killed herself,” she said.
“What? How?” Isaac asked.
Ruth told him. “What about Riley?” she asked. “How is she really?”
“They have to remove the shrapnel and repair the damage it did,” Isaac said. “Even if she survives the surgery, it’ll be touch and go for weeks.”
“Oh.” Ruth looked around. “Is she safe here? You didn’t think Gregory would be.”
“That was different. This isn’t just blood loss and the danger of infection. She’ll die without help. She might do so anyway, the equipment here is so primitive, but what can I do?”
“You’re really worried.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, she doesn’t like you,” Ruth said.
“We had a falling out, but that doesn’t mean…” Isaac took a deep breath. “I’ll make sure she’s safe.”
Ruth wasn’t reassured. “A falling out over what?” she asked.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Isaac said. “It doesn’t matter now. None of it does.”
Before Ruth could ask any more questions, Mitchell stormed through the double doors.
“There’s nothing I can do here. Nothing. Isaac, copy everything that’s on this.” He handed the man the tablet he’d taken from Longfield’s tower. “Deering you should stay here.”
“No, sir. I’m in this to the end. Where do we go next?”
“The last piece of the puzzle. Frobisher was right. I think this was a robbery, and I want to know what was stolen.”
The United States Embassy was more heavily guarded than ever, and it wasn’t the only building in the district to be so. Next door, a pair of British Marines stood sentry outside the telegraph office. Even the newspaper building next to that had two on the roof.
Mitchell stormed through the gate, Ruth followed, but they were stopped at the doors. They weren’t allowed in until the ambassador himself had been called. Then they had to wait until Perez and Clarke came down to the lobby to meet them.
“I want to see Fairmont’s cell,” Mitchell said.
“Why?” Ambassador Perez asked.
“I think the answer may be inside,” Mitchell said.
; “The answer to my question, or to yours?” Perez asked.
“To all of this,” Mitchell said. “The murders, the assassination, the counterfeiting. Everything.”
“You need to be more specific,” Perez said.
“Show me the cell, and I’ll tell you the rest,” Mitchell replied.
“I see. Clarke, lead the way.”
They followed Agent Clarke down to the basement. Again there was a guard on duty inside the door to the stairwell.
“Do you have other prisoners down here?” Ruth asked
“No. Oh, you mean the guard? That’s just procedure,” Perez said.
Clarke unlocked the cell. It was empty. Mitchell went inside. He stood in the middle of the room, looking up and then down as he turned a full circle.
“Well?” Perez prompted.
“Was this the only room Fairmont was held in?” Mitchell asked.
“From the moment we took custody, yes,” Perez said.
“And the suit? Why was he wearing that?”
“I told you,” Clarke said. “The money he made from selling information was spent on suits. He bragged about it. How it was important to be well-dressed.”
“That annoyed you, did it?” Mitchell asked.
“That a man would sell out his country for some clothes? Yes, that annoyed me,” Clarke said.
“So much so, that you made sure he wore something unflattering when we moved him?”
“He asked how much luggage he’d be allowed to bring,” Clarke said. “He wanted to make sure he’d have something good to wear. That’s why I found him that suit.”
Mitchell crossed to the far wall and opened the doors to the fixed cupboard. There was nothing inside.
“What are you looking for,” Perez asked.
“The answer’s here,” Mitchell said. He looked at Perez. The captain’s eyes narrowed. He reached a hand up to brush the ceiling. “I need some light. Clarke, can you get me a lamp from the corridor? No, two of them. Quickly!”
Clarke moved back out into the corridor. “But what are you looking for?” Perez asked again.
“I don’t think Fairmont died on that train,” Mitchell said. He walked over to the cot and sat down. Almost immediately he stood up again. He lifted the bed and upended it. There was nothing underneath. “It wasn’t an ambush, but a rescue.”